Bush never exhaled.

And now, this man who you are wise to keep completely away from your lawn tractor, AND YOUR lawn; this man has control of some 3700 nuclear weapons, in various sizes and shapes and delivery system options, and my thought, Mr. Big Sky, is what if his "enemies" in his head are from some kind of "withdrawal symptoms" or delirium tremens, or something like that!

"Delirium tremens" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Delirium tremens (colloquially, the DTs) is a condition almost invariably associated with complete alcohol withdrawal in an individual with a reported history of long-term alcohol consumption.

Symptoms

The symptoms include tremors and intense visual hallucinations (for example, drawings on wallpaper that the patient would perceive as giant spiders ready to attack her or him).

Delirium tremens typically manifests about 18 to 24 hours after initial withdrawal.

Since schizophrenic hallucinations are traditionally auditory and often of religious or police contents, the presence of intense visual hallucinations can indicate a diagnosis of delirium tremens.

The condition is caused by the effect of alcohol on the benzodiazepine-GABAa-chloride receptor complex for the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA.

Constant consumption of alcoholic beverages down regulates these receptors; when alcohol is no longer consumed, there are not as many receptors for GABA to bind to.

As GABA normally inhibits an action potential formation, fewer receptors mean that sympathetic activation is unopposed.

Treatment

Treatment is with benzodiazepines, such as diazepam, which enhance binding of GABA to the receptors.

end quotes

Can you imagine what will happen if George W. Bush sees "giant spiders" on the walls of the White House, and determines that it is some kind of "tay-rist" plot by Saddam Hussein to get him and his pap?

Why, he just might call in a nuclear attack against those "giant spiders", and then where will we all be?

And your lawn, as well, Mr. Big Sky!

Serious stuff, here!

Serious, indeed!

But not serious enough, apparently, to keep this man from being re-relected as president of OUR America, and there is the real telling statement; about us as a nation!

And speaking of "hits" to OUR national economy as a result of this protracted struggle that the inept Bush Co.'s have us embroiled in over there in Iraq, this next story is of some interest, as these base closings, IF THEY ACTUALLY OCCUR, are going to have an economic impact, here in OUR America!

For as the Bush Co.'s close bases here, they are really shifting the money, or "exporting" the money, to overseas locations, where the plan is to have MORE BASES:

White House - AP Cabinet & State

"More Military Bases in U.S. to Be Closed"

54 minutes ago

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Safe for a decade, military bases in the United States face an uncertain future.

The Pentagon plans to shut down or scale back some of the 425 facilities, the first such effort to save money in 10 years.

The downsizing is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's long-term transformation of the Cold War-era military.

The Pentagon chief argues that closing or consolidating stateside facilities could save $7 billion annually and that the money would be better spent improving fighting capabilities amid threats from terrorists.

"The department continues to maintain more military bases and facilities than are needed, consuming and diverting valuable personnel and resources," Rumsfeld recently told lawmakers.

Shrinking the domestic network of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps bases is a certain source of savings.

It also is a high-stakes political fight because it affects local economies in congressional districts.

Lawmakers have resisted efforts to shutter their bases, challenging past base closing rounds and lobbying hard to keep their installation off the final list.

"It's the perfect example of good policy and good politics not fitting in the same room together," said Christopher Hellman, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington.

"Conceptually, lawmakers buy the argument that base closures are important to make sure they are spending resources wisely."

"But they are reticent of closing bases in their cities because of job losses," Hellman said.

Rumsfeld has estimated that extra base capacity is at nearly 25 percent.

But Republican lawmakers said the secretary recently told them that the cuts will not be as deep, in part because the military needs a home for 70,000 troops returning from Europe.

The Pentagon says that all domestic bases are under consideration, but clearly some are more vulnerable than others.

Topping the list are aging facilities, small bases used by only one of the four services and large installations whose missions, training, ammunition or weapons are outdated.

The Northeast is home to many bases configured to defend against the Soviet threat.

They could absorb the biggest hit now that many former Soviet bloc nations are U.S. allies.

Congress authorized the fifth round of Base Realignment and Closure — commonly known as BRAC — last year.

The first deadline in the yearlong process is March 15, when President Bush must name a nine-member commission that will review a list of closures that Rumsfeld will propose by May.

Congressional leaders have submitted their six recommendations.

Bush will make his three choices known shortly.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., selected retired Gen. John G. Coburn, a former Army deputy chief of staff, and retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., a former supreme allied commander of the Atlantic.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., offered former Rep. James V. Hansen, R-Utah, and former Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada picked former Democratic Rep. James Bilbray, D-Nev.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recommended Phillip E. Coyle, a former Pentagon official and a defense researcher.

As the process gets under way, lawmakers and communities are stepping up efforts to show their bases are essential.

They also are lobbying for new missions and projects for their facilities to make the bases less attractive for closure.

Congress authorized the closures last year, rejecting a delay until 2007.

Still, some Republicans and Democrats continue to fight.

"I will try to stop it at any point and in any way I possibly can," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

Closing bases while the country is at war is "the worst possible timing," Lott says.

He lobbied hard during previous rounds to keep open the Meridian Naval Air Station in Mississippi, which barely escaped closure.

It could be targeted again this year.

Other lawmakers say the round will go forward.

"We had a debate."

"We voted."

"We had a majority say we're going forward."

"How could you possibly reverse it?"

"It would be crazy," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was essential for the military to eliminate "those bases, structures, buildings, compounds that aren't on the very edge of what we need to defend ourselves."

The Pentagon estimates that previous closures in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 eliminated 20 percent of domestic bases and saved about $16.7 billion through 2001, and roughly $7 billion annually since.

Congress has refused repeated requests by the Pentagon to close more bases since 1995.

Part of the reason was lingering Republican distrust after President Clinton moved to ease the economic impact from two base closings in vote-rich California and Texas just before his re-election campaign in 1996.

In 2001, with Clinton out of office, the Pentagon nearly got its wish for closures in 2003.

But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress delayed the closures until this year.
___

On the Net:

Defense Department background on base closings: http://www.defenselink.mil/brac/

And while we are on this topic of where the money to fuel OUR national economy is, or is going, we have this following, which ties in actually, with a post that jeffmoskin made over in "A.B.'s Corner", concerning "capitalism", which some today seem to take as a "God-given" requirement, here in OUR America, which it clearly is not!

America is a Republic with liberty and justice for all!

Nowhere is it said, that I am aware of, anyway, that America is a capitalist nation with complete and total immunity for multi-national corporations to "buy" our government, poison us for profits, and generally screw the "be-jaysus" out of us, for their finacial gain, and yet, THEY DO:

Business - AP

"U.S. Companies Bring Overseas Profits Home"

Sat Feb 19, 1:21 PM ET

By MARY DALRYMPLE, AP Tax Writer

WASHINGTON - Led by drug makers, American companies have started announcing their plans to use a temporary tax break and shift back to the United States billions of dollars in profits that have been stashed abroad.

An incentive to invest in the U.S. economy — that's how lawmakers promoted the short-term relief that lets companies avoid as much as 85 percent of the taxes they might otherwise pay on earnings abroad.

Critics say there is no assurance that new jobs will result.

"There are some alleged restrictions that are easy to get around," said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

Johnson & Johnson, which makes a broad range of health care products, plans to return $11 billion to the country.

Dell, the computer manufacturer, has $4 billion to repatriate.

Kellogg, known for its cereal and snacks, wants to return $1 billion to domestic operations.

The announcements stem from a law passed in October that allows companies, for one year, to pay a reduced 5.25 percent tax on overseas earnings returned to the United States.

The profits otherwise face tax rates as high as 35 percent.

Private estimates suggest that companies could bring more than $300 billion in overseas earnings back into the United States.

Few companies have said how they will use the money once it starts to stream back into domestic operations.

Allen Sinai, president and chief economist at Decision Economics, estimated that companies might be on track to announce a combined $100 billion repatriation during the first quarter of the year.

He estimated the influx of cash could generate 400,000 to 600,000 jobs over the next few years and boost economic growth this year.

"We're on the way to quite a bit of money coming back from overseas," Sinai said.

Lil Mills, a tax professor at the University of Arizona, said the bricks-and-mortar effect of the incentive will not be observed for some time.

"Does it really create new U.S. manufacturing jobs is a longer term economic study," she said.

The majority of lawmakers believed strongly enough in the idea that they rejected efforts by a few colleagues to put tighter reins on businesses and restrict them to using the money for wages, employee pensions, capital improvements and research.

Lawmakers wrote a "purposely nebulous" law that would give businesses lots of flexibility to invest in the U.S. economy, said Greg Kelly, a Washington analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group.

No part of the law requires companies to show they have increased spending in the areas where they devote money brought in under the law.

Repatriated money can displace dollars already spent on the approved uses, freeing up those funds for other purposes.

"At the end of the day, what was most important for Congress was this money would come back domestically," Kelly said.

Susquehanna surveyed large companies that lobbied for the law.

The firm estimated that as much as $320 billion, about two-thirds of the money qualifying for the tax break, could be returned.

"Regarding job creation, we would argue it's more important to look at the longer term effects," Kelly said.

The law requires that companies reinvest the money in their U.S. operations according to a plan approved by the company's top executive and board of directors.

The Treasury Department last month ruled that the money can be used to hire and train workers, make capital investments, conduct research and development, advertise and market products or stabilize the company's finances, among other uses.

The money cannot be used for executive compensation, shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, portfolio investments or tax payments.

In the first wave of announcements, companies were generally guarded about their plans for the money.

Kellogg executives told investors the law gives the company the flexibility to look at developing new products, advertising or buying other food companies.

Dell indicated an interest in research and development, marketing or new facilities.
___

On the Net:

Information on Public Law, the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, can be found at http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/publaw/108publ.html

And here, I must admit that once again, I have been over there in "A.B.s Corner", sitting around that stove, where the subject was just "politics", and nastiness!

My statement was that where there are people, there are all things that people carry with them, including politics and nastiness!

And so, even in here, this forum, I mean, and hopefully not this particular thread; or in church for that matter, you are going to find both politics and its seeming concomitant, nastiness.

Everywhere people are, they are, or can be, BUT .....!

So what, is what I say!

Carry on!

Do that which you are capable of doing, and move along, IN YOUR OWN LIFE!

The moments we have down here on earth are measured, and whether you use them or not, still, they are gone!

And so, why be bothered about nasty people?

Just don't be one yourself, and keep it down to 99% of the population, instead of making it a perfect one hundred percent by joining the other 99 who are themselves nasty!

And if you are not nasty, who knows?

You just might start a revolution that will transform the world!

And that is not a bad thing, actually!

And that brings me back to a topic that we are monitoring in here, which is Mr. George W. Bush going to Europe to call for unity, when he has been probably the biggest factor in the last fifty years in creating disharmony, not only here in OUR America, but all throughout the world as well, as though he were Gilgamesh reincarnated!

Mr. Bush is in Brussels right now, or at least he was, because I heard him on the radio a little bit ago, speaking from there, and so .....

In this following article, Mr. Bush is calling for unity!

Well, as jeffmoskin and A.B. have said above, and I concur, his call for unity just might be a little late, AS IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS, he has unified the world and at least half of the people in OUR America, AGAINST HIM AND HIS!

BUT .....

As we really have no choice now, we will continue to see where this all goes, this attempt now by the Bush Co.'s at "diplomacy", as we are all along for the ride, whether we like it or not; just as was the case for ALL the people of the candid world when Hitler himself, the original Hitler, that is, as opposed to this present "look-alike" that we are stuck with over here in OUR America in the form and guise of Mr. George W. Bush; when Hitler was in power.

SO!

Stay tuned!

The future which is at stake here just might be yours, and your childrens' and your grandchildrens'!

Europe - AP

"Bush Faces Iraq Critics, Calls for Unity"

1 hour, 27 minutes ago

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush dismissed the rift with Europe over Iraq as a "passing disagreement of governments" on Monday and urged greater trans-Atlantic cooperation, including more support for the fledgling Iraqi government.

"Now is the time for the established democracies to give tangible political, economic and security assistance to the world's newest democracy," Bush said in a speech intended for both European and American consumption.

Bush began a five-day European trip in Brussels, home to both the European Union and NATO.

He also planned to dine privately here with French President Jacques Chirac, one of his most outspoken critics on the Iraq war.

Despite his appeal to bury past differences, divisions remain over postwar Iraq, how to confront Iran's nuclear ambitions, a European proposal to end a 15-year arms embargo with China and a treaty on global warming spurned by Washington.

Aides conceded that much work needed to be done.

But the president's words were clearly conciliatory.

And his advisers said it was hoped they would lead to greater, and cooler, dialogue.

"As past debates fade, and great duties become clear, let us begin a new era of trans-Atlantic unity," Bush said in a prepared speech.

Excerpts were released before delivery.

"No temporary debate, no passing disagreement of governments, no power on earth will ever divide us," he said.

The site for Bush's speech was the Concert Noble, a 19th-century government building used for banquets and meetings.

"Our greatest opportunity, and our immediate goal, is peace in the Middle East," said Bush, who supports a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"We also know that a free and peaceful Palestine can add to the momentum of reform throughout the broader Middle East."

Before the speech, the president made a courtesy call on King Albert II and Queen Paola and Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.

Later, he was to meet with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

"Great to be back," Bush exclaimed as he walked across a courtyard toward the office of the prime minister, who opposed Bush's decision to launch a war in Iraq.

Inside, they posed for pictures, and Bush talked about Verhofstadt's biking skills.

"He's a great biker," Bush said.

"I need a little training."

Bush attends meetings of both the European Union and NATO on Tuesday, visits Germany on Wednesday and goes to Slovakia on Thursday.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said he regretted the rift that has widened between some European countries and the United States over Iraq.

"It was not easy to decide to go to Iraq, to Afghanistan ... but reality shows that it was the right decision at the right time," Dzurinda said, refusing to budge in his support of Washington.

In calling for more "tangible" support for Iraq, Bush said, "All nations now have an interest in the success of a free and democratic Iraq, which will fight terror, be a beacon of freedom, and be a source of true stability in the region."

While in Slovakia, Bush will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin has alarmed Western leaders with his crackdown on political dissent and rolling back of some democratic reforms.

The president reprised some of the themes he sounded in his inaugural address when he began his second term in January, vowing to work to spread democracy and freedom through the world.

"We ... have a call beyond our comfort: we must raise our sights to the wider world," Bush said.

"Our ideals and our interests lead in the same direction."

"By bringing progress and hope to nations in need, we can improve many lives, and lift up falling states, and remove the causes and sanctuaries of terror."

An alliance of 88 environmental, human rights, peace and other groups planned two days of protests in Brussels to demand "no European complicity" in a U.S.-designed world order.

Brussels police readied 2,500 officers — 1,000 more than the usual number for the three or four summit meetings that bring European Union leaders to the Belgian capital every year.

Washington strongly opposes Europe's plans to lift the arms embargo against China.

Bush has been cool toward Europe's negotiations to persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The White House prefers asking the U.N. Security Council to punish Tehran.

Hard feelings linger from Bush's opposition to the Kyoto climate change treaty and the International Criminal Court.

An issue where the allies may find common ground is a demand that Syria withdraw its forces from Lebanon — a declaration prompted by the assassination of a former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in a massive bombing in Beirut last week.

LIFE!

In OUR America!

Who has it?

And why?

These are some of the issues, or themes, perhaps, that we look at and delve into in here, in this thread, and sometimes, life in OUR America has a "pleasantness" about it that we all cherish, and sometimes ......

Well, let us just say that life is not always a rose garden, for whatever reasons that just may be!

And as to life, EACH OF US REALLY HAS IT, in OUR own ways, which is what this "LIBERTY" and "JUSTICE" business here in OUR America is really all about.

Now, understanding this liberty and justice business is hard work, or at least it seems to be so, to me, anyway, who has been trying to fathom its "roots" for many years now, because, while "LIBERTY" and "JUSTICE" are concepts that many people talk about, their absence on this earth of ours is probably more prevalent than their presence, which is why America revolted against England back in 1776!

SO?

What is "LIBERTY"?

Well, here is maybe the most basic definition, which is where any discussion of "LIBERTY" must really start, and out of this, will come "JUSTICE", or at least, the road to where JUSTICE might, or should be found, is pointed out, to the wayfarer through life.

NATURAL LIBERTY: The power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature. The right which nature gives to all mankind of disposing of their persons and property after the manner they judge most consistent with their happiness, on condition of their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and so as not to interfere with an equal exercise of the same rights by other men, and women!

And so as not to interfere with an equal exercise of the same rights by other men, and women?

BUT ......

Doesn't that then strip us of power?

If we cannot interfere with the rights of others to be who they want or need to be, so as to "enjoy" themselves an alleged right which nature allegedly gives to all mankind of disposing of their persons and property after the manner they judge most consistent with their happiness, then, why, aren't we all just equal?

Equal to an Iraqi, maybe, or a French man or woman?

Equal to a Palestinean?

Or a Vietnamese?

And who wants that?

What is the sense of being equal, if it strips you of power and mastery over others?

SO?

Maybe we should ALL "get real", and just toss out this liberty business, here in OUR America, for once and for all, and give up the false pretexts that we really have it, or are for it, as George W. Bush is out there now trying to convince the candid world, after four years of hypocrisy and falseness on his part that clearly demonstrate its complete and total absence as a concept down there in Washington, D.C.?

After all, if George W. Bush and his pack of Republicans and NEW CONS have no real intentions of doing anything other than mouthing empty words about "democracy", devoid of liberty, then why should we adhere to it, ourselves?

What's "in it" for us, as you hear people saying all the time these days?

Except our own futures, perhaps ......

And here is George W. Bush, with his "unity" schtick":

Top Stories - AP

"Bush Issues Forceful Words to Iran, Syria"

38 minutes ago

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush appealed to Europe on Monday to move beyond animosities over Iraq and join forces in encouraging democratic reforms across the Middle East.

He also prodded Russia to reverse a crackdown on political dissent, demanded that Iran end its nuclear ambitions and told Syria to get out of Lebanon.

Bush did not rule out using military force in Iran, saying all options remain on the table.

But, addressing widespread concerns in Europe that Iran is the next U.S. target after Iraq, Bush said:

"Iran is ... different from Iraq."

"We're in the early stages of diplomacy."

Bush's speech on a five-day fence-mending trip to Europe was aimed at both U.S. and European audiences.

"In a new century, the alliance of America and Europe is the main pillar of our security," he said.

He used the word "alliance" 12 times in his speech to underscore his aim to repair relations frayed by the war in Iraq.

But not all his speech was conciliatory.

Bush had pointed criticism for Russia three days ahead of a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia.

Referring to Putin's recent steps to consolidate power, rollback democratic reforms and curb press and political freedoms, Bush said:

"We must always remind Russia that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law."

"The United States should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia."

Bush's speech was delivered in an ornate ballroom of Brussels' Concert Noble hall before an audience of business leaders, academics and diplomats.

It was greeted mostly by subdued applause.

He was having a private dinner later Monday with French President Jacques Chirac, one of his harshest critics on Iraq.

His trip also included stops in Germany and Slovakia.

Bush urged greater "tangible political, economic and security assistance to the world's newest democracy," Iraq.

And he called for European allies to stand by fledgling democracy movements throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East.

On the same day that he spoke, European Union foreign ministers decided to open a Baghdad office to coordinate the training of more than 700 Iraqi judges and prosecutors.

The office will be the first EU representation in Iraq since the war, and European officials said it reflects their willingness to take on a more active rebuilding role and help smooth relations with Bush.

Bush said he recognized that full democracy could take awhile to root.

Even in the United States, democracy came slowly, Bush said, pointing out that women and minorities were not treated equally "and that struggle hasn't ended."

Bush had sharp words for Syria, calling on leaders in Damascus to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.

As Bush spoke, thousands of opposition supporters in Beirut shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government, marking a week since the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's most prominent politician.

The United States has withdrawn its ambassador from Syria for consultations to protest a suspected link between the assassination and Syria.

"The Lebanese people have the right to be free, and the United States and Europe share an interest in an independent, democratic Lebanon," Bush said.

On Iran, Bush said the United States was working with European allies Britain, France and Germany on a diplomatic solution to end Iran's nuclear program.

His administration, however, has been skeptical of the Europeans' approach to offer Iran economic and political incentives not to develop nuclear arms.

"The results of this approach now depend largely on Iran," Bush said.

"The time has arrived for the Iranian regime to listen to the Iranian people and respect their rights and join in the movement toward liberty that is taking place all around them."

And he had pointed advice for two pivotal U.S. allies in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

"The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future," Bush said, urging greater move toward giving Saudi more political freedom.

"The great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East," Bush said.

Addressing the long-running conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, one of keen interest to Europe, Bush said a future Palestinian state must be "contiguous" because a state "on scattered territories will not work."

This appeared to signal Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he may have to be more forthcoming on giving up Israeli settlements in the West Bank when peace negotiations on a Palestinian state reach their final stage.

Before the speech, the president made a courtesy call on King Albert II and Queen Paola, Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Verhofstadt, who introduced Bush at the speech, said the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was divisive — but with pressing problems in Africa and other parts of the world, "It makes little sense arguing about who was right."

Bush sought to minimize past differences on Iraq.

"Some Europeans joined the fight to liberate Iraq, while others did not," Bush said.

"All nations now have an interest in the success of a free and democratic Iraq, which will fight terror, which will be a beacon of freedom and which will be a source of true stability in the region."

Despite Bush's appeal to bury past differences, divisions remain over other issues, including the U.S. decision not to enter the Kyoto climate change treaty, which many European nations supported.

"All of us expressed our views on the Kyoto Protocol, and now we must work together on the way forward," Bush said.

He suggested the answer lies in "the power of human ingenuity" and emerging technologies.

The world's newest democracy?

Is it?

And if so, when did that happen?

Middle East - AP

"Shiites Weigh Possible PMs As Raids Go On"

1 hour, 51 minutes ago

By JAMIE TARABAY, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Marines broke down doors and raided houses Monday on the second day of an offensive aimed at cracking down on insurgent activity in several troubled cities west of Baghdad.

The forays occurred as Shiites of the winning United Iraqi Alliance met in Baghdad to hash out a final prime ministerial candidate for the newly elected 275-member National Assembly.

Debate has intensified among the members of the alliance, who formed a 21-member committee to decide on two nominees for the job because they could not agree on a candidate.

The two main candidates so far had been the former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the interim vice president.

The race may get more complicated following reports that the Shiite's initial pick for prime minister, Finance Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, could return as a compromise candidate.

Abdul-Mahdi, who has close ties to Iran, dropped out Feb. 16.

Meanwhile, gunmen in the northern city of Mosul abducted an Iraqi television presenter, an official from her network said Monday.

Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan was abducted by several masked gunmen Sunday night while she was returning home, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. military said insurgents targeted the local TV station "several times in the past week because they have been broadcasting programs that highlighted the negative effects of insurgent activity."

"Those programs have had rapidly growing support from Iraqi citizens and therefore have caused the station to be targeted."

The U.S. announcement added that "insurgents contacted the station and threatened to continue to target employees."

Two Indonesian journalists and their Jordanian driver missing since last week were freed by militants and arrived safely Monday at the Iraq-Jordan border, according to a spokeswoman for Metro TV, their employer.

The three were abducted last week outside Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

A video delivered anonymously to Associated Press Television News in Baghdad on Monday apparently showed the two journalists — Meutya Viada Hafid and Budiyanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name — shaking hands with a militant before they were released.

A masked person in the video, reading from a notebook, said, "Based on the good will they showed, and respecting the feelings of brotherhood and Islam between the two countries, and respecting the Indonesian anti-occupation role, we decided to release the two journalists without any conditions and ransom."

Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, was critical of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, and has refused to send troops to the country.

In Ukraine, which did send troops, more than 2,000 protesters rallied Monday in front of the president's office in downtown Kiev to demand the immediate withdrawal of 1,650 Ukrainian soldiers from Iraq.

President Viktor Yushchenko, who took office in January, told the crowd that that the soldiers "fulfilled their mission," but added that a pullout had to be coordinated with allies.

Six explosions boomed through the capital before midday.

The cause of the blasts was not immediately known.

Footage from Associated Press Television News showed U.S. troops treating an American soldier apparently injured in one of the blasts, which overturned a Humvee in the southern Doura neighborhood.

In Ramadi, U.S. Marines fanned out across the city, setting up checkpoints, searching cars and sealing off areas to prevent people from entering or leaving as they carried out raids.

The operation came one day after launching the operation and putting in place a nighttime curfew.

Iraqi Maj. Abdul Karim al-Faraji said troops detained a prominent Sunni Muslim sheik, Mohammed Nasir Ali al-Ijbie, who heads the al-Bufaraj tribe, along with 12 of his relatives.

The new operation was under way in several other Euphrates River cities in Anbar, including Heet, Baghdadi, Hadithah and the provincial capital Ramadi, the military said.

Hadithah residents reported parts of the city were bombarded by coalition aircraft overnight.

There was no word on casualties.

On Saturday, an American soldier was killed in Mosul by small-arms fire, the U.S. military said Monday, without elaborating.

As the Shiite majority prepared to take control of the country's first freely elected government, tribal chiefs representing Sunni Arabs in six provinces issued a list of demands — including participation in the government and drafting a new constitution — after previously refusing to acknowledge the vote's legitimacy.

"We made a big mistake when we didn't vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh.

"Our votes were very important."

He said threats from insurgents — not sectarian differences — kept most Sunnis from voting.

Sunnis make up 20 percent of Iraq's population of 26 million; Shiite make up 60 percent.

Gathering in a central Baghdad hotel on Sunday, about 70 tribal leaders from six provinces tried to devise a strategy for participation in a future government.

There was an air of desperation in some quarters of the smoke-filled conference room.

"When we said that we are not going to take part, that didn't mean that we are not going to take part in the political process."

"We have to take part in the political process and draft the new constitution," said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Sunni Endowments in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, a powerful Sunni organization believed to have ties with the insurgents sought to condemn the weekend attacks largely aimed at Shiites that left nearly 100 Iraqis dead.

"We won't remain silent over those crimes which target the Iraqi people Sunnis or Shiites, Islamic or non-Islamic," Sheik Harith al-Dhari, of the Association of Muslim Scholars, told a news conference.

Iraqis, he said, should unite "against those who are trying to incite hatred between us."

end quotes

The world's newest democracy?

Where?

Or is this the model that George W. Bush intends to import back to here; one party rule with that being him and his?

"The United States should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia?"

How about America's "dialogue" with Venzuela?

What's to be the tone and tenor there, I wonder?

World - AP Latin America

"Chavez Threatens to Stop Oil Exports"

Mon Feb 21,12:00 AM ET World - AP Latin America

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he would stop oil exports to the United States if the U.S. government tries to assassinate him.

"If anything happens to me, forget about Venezuelan oil Mr. (George W.) Bush," said Chavez during his weekly radio and television show.

Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro accused the United States last week of planning to assassinate Chavez.

"If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States."

"You must take action if this happens," Chavez said to listeners of his show.

Relations with the United States, Venezuela's main oil buyer, have deteriorated in the past months due to Washington's criticism of weapons purchases by Venezuela.

Venezuela is the world's fifth oil exporter and is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, shipping nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude to U.S. ports daily.

However, relations have been tense under Chavez, a strong critic of U.S. involvement in Iraq and free market deals backed by Washington.

Chavez has accused the U.S. government of being behind a 2002 coup attempt that it was slow to condemn.

Is life getting wierder and wierder, or does it just seem that way, these days?

And it looks like we won't have Hunter Thompson around anymore to get that answer from, from the sounds of things here, anyway!

And if anyone out there knew wierdness, it just might have been him!

After all, he did hang out with Millhouse "Tricky Dick" Nixxon, and that was a source of some real wierdness, if anyone was, back in those days anyway!

Top Stories - Los Angeles Times

"'Gonzo' Journalist Thompson Kills Self"

Mon Feb 21, 7:55 AM ET

By David Kelly Times Staff Writer

DENVER — Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture literary figure who rode with the Hells Angels, famously chronicled the Nixon-McGovern presidential race and coined the term "gonzo journalism," committed suicide Sunday night at his secluded home outside Aspen, Colo., his son said.

Thompson was 67.

"Hunter Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek," Juan Thompson said in a statement.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask his friends and admirers to respect that privacy as well as that of his family."

Pitkin County sheriff's officials confirmed Sunday that Thompson died of a gunshot wound, saying they received a call from his home about 6 p.m.

Friends and neighbors said late Sunday that they were shocked by Thompson's suicide, but knew he had his demons.

"We don't know anything about the circumstances surrounding his death, but he was a volatile person," said Troy Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News and a longtime friend of the writer.

"I was at his house last week and there was nothing in his behavior that was different."

"He was no more distraught than usual; he was often either up or down."

Hooper said Thompson had been in pain from back surgery and an artificial hip.

And he had broken his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii.

"He said he was executing a hairpin turn at the minibar when he broke it," said Hooper, who said he was acting as the family's spokesman.

"Hunter was one of the literary giants of the 20th century."

"We are all just shocked."

Thompson, whose works included "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," which chronicled the race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, was a well-known firearms aficionado who took frequent target practice in his backyard.

In 2000, he slightly wounded an assistant while trying to shoot a bear on his property.

Woody Creek, a small town about eight miles northwest of Aspen, is home to a number of celebrities including the TV actor Don Johnson and John Oates of the singing duo Hall and Oates.

Thompson spent much of his time socializing at the Woody Creek Tavern.

"We're letting it rest for tonight," said a woman who answered the phone Sunday at the tavern, where Thompson ate lunch most days.

Buddy Ortega, 62, a real estate broker and ski instructor, met Thompson in the 1960s at a party.

The pair socialized over the years, and Ortega supported Thompson's quixotic run for sheriff — though he figured it was a longshot when he saw campaign posters with pictures of hallucinogenic peyote buds.

In recent years, Ortega said, the hard-living journalist had become more reclusive, hanging out at the home he called his "compound" and taking advantage of open space to fire his automatic weapons.

But Ortega hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary recently.

He said he last saw Thompson two days ago at Woody Creek's post office, and everything seemed fine.

"We all have demons," Ortega said.

"Who knows, man?"

"You sit down, have a few cocktails or maybe nothing — maybe you have a cup of green tea — and maybe nothing seems right."

"He was a little more complex than most of us, so maybe some of those demons surfaced and he didn't like what he saw."

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky.

His father, Jack, was an insurance agent.

In 1963, he married Sandra Dawn, the mother of his son Juan.

He served two years in the Air Force in Florida, where he was a newspaper sports editor.

He was the Caribbean correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in 1959, and worked as a South American correspondent for the New York-based National Observer from 1961 to 1963.

But he earned his outsized reputation for his work in Rolling Stone magazine.

Thompson was the flip side of American novelist Tom Wolfe.

Both established themselves as brand names in the literary journalism movement that sought to capture the strife and youthful boldness of the 1960s.

Thompson was the wild man who embraced the chaos, while Wolfe was often portrayed as the buttoned-down neutral observer.

Thompson called what he did "gonzo journalism," differentiating it from mainstream reporting by aggressively injecting himself into the story and giving up any pretense of objectivity.

Thompson's style of journalism — well-armed, well-drugged and wildly iconoclastic — made him a counterculture figure of rare longevity.

"I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they've always worked for me," Thompson said.

His irascible and volatile persona seemed to outsize the books and essays he wrote.

Twice his life was brought to the screen — once by Bill Murray in 1980's "Where the Buffalo Roam," and again in the 1998 Terry Gilliam film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," in which Johnny Depp took his turn as Thompson.

Both actors remained friends with Thompson.

Thompson also triumphed on the comics page — ensuring that the most maverick journalist of his generation could get a spot in the mainstream newspapers that would never dare print his profanity-laced essays.

The character of "Uncle" Duke in the "Doonesbury" strip has for decades been a thinly disguised and always mercenary caricature of Thompson.

William McKeen, a University of Florida professor who wrote the 1991 critical biography "Hunter S. Thompson," kept in touch with the journalist.

"He had clearly been amid a great renaissance in recent years where the public had rediscovered his value and their interest in him," McKeen said Sunday night.

"The news is stunning."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writers Samantha Bonar, Geoff Boucher, Megan Garvey, Ashley Powers and Richard Fausset contributed to this report.

end quotes

And I have to wonder what Hugo Chavez thinks about this?

A plot here, maybe?

Him and Hunter as a twosome?

Strange stuff!

Strange stuff, indeed!

Well,as somebody once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

So Hugo Chavez, the elected president of the people of Venezuela, was briefly overthrown by Pedro Carmona, in a CIA sponsored "coup" which they were only able to maintain for 48 hours. What the coup leaders hadn't counted on was the sheer determination of the Venezuelan people to rise up and defend their democracy against a dangerous, fascist attitude - covertly and unscrupulously played out by the United States over the years in numerous countries around the world - that ignores
and would contemptuously trample on the will of the majority for the benefit
of big business and the wealthy few.

Chavez's ultimate crime was that of being an independent thinker whose, some
might argue "misguided," measures undertaken in trying to revise flawed,
inequitable domestic policies had somehow become "unacceptable" to
Washington. Translated that means, he dared to place the interests of his
own impoverished people over and above the corporate, money-making interests
of the United States.

Can't fool him again.

I wish George Bush well. I really do.

The very bottom line is -- What's best for America ?

It's really tempting to want to see George Bush fail in his attempts to build a few bridges with his counterparts in Europe.

And if it were just his reputation and his well being on the line, it would be a very easy decision to make.

Let him go down.

However, if he is able to get some kind of help in Iraq, ANY kind of help, from the Europeans, especially France and if this would shorten the time the American troops are being bull dozed into staying in Iraq, I say " let's go for it. "

American lives are worth more than his ego.

There will be enough heartaches and misery in the next four years for us to handle.

We do not need a failure creating a failure.

We will see photo after photo of Bush shaking hands with Chirac, both smiling like the fox that just outsmarted the hunter and the hounds.

We will see picture after picture of our side in ' serious conultation ' with the other side.

It will mean nothing.

Europe has changed course since 911.

No longer will they automatically our lead.

The EU has already made up its mind about what they will do.

If there is enough in it for them, they will get in step with us, but not for any long distance.

If there is no gain for them, they will say all sorts of nice things about our new attitude.

And they will do nothing. And that may hurt George Bush, politically, but ---

It will also hurt all of the rest of us.

So, I do hope we get a commitment for some help.

God knows we need it.

A.B.

Great article in today's ( 2-22-05 ) N. Y. Yimes, by columnist Paul Krugman.

It's worth a read.

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Wag-the-Dog Protection
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 22, 2005


he campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.

The political landscape today reminds me of the spring of 2002, after the big revelations of corporate fraud. Then as now, the administration was on the defensive, and Democrats expected to do well in midterm elections.

Then, suddenly, it was all Iraq, all the time, and Harken Energy and Halliburton vanished from the headlines.

I don't know which foreign threat the administration will start playing up this time, but Bush critics should be prepared for the shift. They must curb their natural inclination to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues, and challenge the administration on national security policy, too.

I say this even though many critics, myself included, would prefer to stick with the domestic issues. After all, domestic issues, particularly Social Security, are very comfortable ground for moderates and liberals. The relevant facts are all in the public domain, voters clearly oppose the administration's hard-right agenda, and Mr. Bush's attack on Social Security stumbled badly out of the gate. It's understandable, then, that critiques of the administration's national security policy have faded into the background in recent months.

But a president can always change the subject to national security if he wants to - and Mr. Bush has repeatedly shown himself willing to play the terrorism card when he is losing the debate on other issues. So it's important to point out that Mr. Bush, for all his posturing, has done a very bad job of protecting the nation - and to make that point now, rather than in the heat of the next foreign crisis.

The fact is that Mr. Bush, while willing to go to war on weak evidence, hasn't taken the task of protecting America from terrorists at all seriously.

Consider, for example, the case of chemical plants.

Just days after 9/11, many analysts identified sites that store toxic chemicals as a major terror risk, and called for new safety rules. But as The New York Times reported last fall, "after the oil and chemical industries met with Karl Rove ... the White House quietly blocked those efforts."

Nearly three and a half years after 9/11, those chemical plants are still unprotected.

Other major risks identified within days of the attack included the possibility of terrorist attacks on major ports or nuclear plants. But in the months after 9/11, the administration flatly refused to allocate the sums that members of the House and Senate from both parties thought necessary to secure these sites.

And when the administration does spend money protecting possible terrorist targets, politics, not national security, dictates where the money goes. Remember the "first responders" program that ended up spending seven times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it spent protecting each resident of New York?

Well, it's still happening. An audit of the Homeland Security Department's (greatly inadequate) program to protect ports found that much of the money went to unlikely locations, including six sites in landlocked Arkansas, where the department's recently resigned chief of border and transportation security is reported to be considering a run for governor.

Nor are Mr. Bush's national security failures limited to nonmilitary policy. The administration appears to be in a state of denial over the effects of the endless war in Iraq on U.S. military readiness, particularly the strains on the reserves and the National Guard.

The ultimate demonstration of Mr. Bush's true priorities was his attempt to appoint Bernard Kerik as homeland security director. Either the administration didn't bother to do even the most basic background checks, or it regarded protecting the nation from terrorists as a matter of so little importance that it didn't matter who was in charge.

My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling into an unnecessary trap if they focus only on domestic policies, and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart.


A.B.

Not to mention:

Enron. Kennyboy Lay still at large

Plame. Judith Miller awaits jail sentence while Robert Novak continues to bloviate.

Torture. The promption of Alberto Gonzalez to Torturer General.

"Mission Accomplished". Shouldn't we have a National Holiday to celebrate this feat?

My memory still works, Mr. Bush. Although I can't remember what I had for dinner.

You know, Mr. A.B., YOU ARE RIGHT in your attitude here, about George W. Bush failing!

If ever I have been in what I would call a baby-and-bathwater situation here, this is it!

And it really makes me think on "government", and what it is, and what it should be, separate and apart from "politics", which is not at all the same thing, BUT, usually gets right up "front-and-center" in the limelight, or spotlight, ALL THE TIME!

Do I want to see George W. Bush "fail"?

No way, as an American, but it is my belief, A.B., that he already has, AND THAT IS WHAT IS BAD FOR AMERICA, and the only real cure that I can see is for George W. Bush to vacate the White House, like Nixxon did, all those years ago!

There have been too many lies, too many deceptions, and too little veracity out of this administration, and to me, they have used up their credibility, and consequently, their time!

"Give up the stage here, boys, and let the next contender take a turn; the act is just stale now!"

As your article from the New York Times makes clear, this crowd is nothing more than a "one-trick" pony, and that is the last thing that we need now, a one-trick pony!

I'm running tight here, today, because of another death in the family, and the necessaries that go with that, so, I'll have to be brief, right now, but A.B., and jeffmoskin too; this "my way or the highway" crap out of George W. Bush just does not cut it, and I am not "going over" to his side!

No way!

Not with what it means for "DEMOCRACY", and for OUR America as well!

And when I come back, I am going to develop that theme, as I have been doing above, with my talk on "LIBERTY", and "JUSTICE", versus "FREEDOM", all of which are at their roots, "mental constructs" underlying true democracy, versus the "demockery" of George W. Bush, which I equate to slavery, for me, anyway, and likely for all of you as well, unless, of course, you "convert" to being Republicans, before the "sword" comes down on your neck for being an "unbeliever" in George W. Bush.

We are now approaching being "old men", and so, we should be beyond "glee" at the downfall of ANYONE, including George W. Bush, which is why I continue to call for us having compassion for him as a fellow human being, BUT ....

OUR compassion can also blind us, and make us into fools, if we do not have some balance here!

SO!

Hard times ahead, A.B., as I see it.

Hard times!

My condolences, Livyjr. You seem to have had more than your share of these lately.

A.B.,
Here's my paranoid take on the administration's attempts to quietly block homeland security: they want to leave us wide open. Terrorist attacks will only benefit this administration. Especially if they occur around the 2006 or 2008 elections. Terror makes people seek out the father-figure GOP. They will use the threat of terror, and if that fails, the terror itself, to retain power, maintain the public's focus on war, so they can continue to pilfer the public's coffers.



Once or twice I could understand Bush's denial. But this pattern is repeated over & over again. This group of neocons in power behind Bush are no group of dummies. It is my conclusion that they know full well the "effects of the endless war in Iraq on U.S. military readiness" and that for some reason they are choosing this course of action. I like to follow the money in these sorts of situations. Seems to me all money flows into Halliburton, the defense industry, and is ciphoned off into the GOP's efforts to dismantle Rosevelt's New Deal.

Mine, too, Livyjr.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the bastards aren't out to get you."- R.D. Laing

And when you say "Defense Industry," don't forget to include "The Carlyle Group"
which includes Dubya's Pappy.

You have hit on the point that drives me most insane about BushCo and the American people's reactions - that innocents are punished while the guilty go free - over and over and over again.

And there is no public outrage.

Soldiers in Abu Ghraib are imprisoned for years for carrying out orders that came directly from the Oval Office.

Martha Stewart sits in a WV jail while Ken Lay is free to do as he pleases, year after year.

I totally support a Mission Accomplished national holiday! We can all buy fighter pilot's suits and hang Mission Accomplished banners on our homes/apt. buildings. I think we owe it to Fearless Leader to fully honor his true moment of patriotic glory!!!

Mine too Livyjr

A.B.

I don't normally post commentary - but I must say this is an excellent thread and I thank you all for running it. Unfortunately, I don't think there will be any outrage unless and until there is another 9/11 type incident and then I fear big time for this country. There will be no excuse at that point for the goverment, the Congress, and the media to hide behind wmds in Iraq, government inertia, FAA failings, and the whole nine yards of incompetence and coverup.

You are right. Gabrielle expressed this earlier in the thread:

Well, I am back, and thank you everyone for the condolences!

They are appreciated!

Welcome, Livyjr. May your next gatherings be for other than purposes of burials.

Apropos of nothing, I was talking to my butcher, Roy, today. We are both the same age and both of us share a desire to drive to Texas one day for the sole purpose of urinating on the grave of LBJ. He has his reasons; I have mine.

On the way home my mind wandered (it does that a lot of late) to an HBO series that aired several years ago called, "Band of Brothers." I wonder if any of you saw it. It ran Sunday nights at 10PM out here. I had to tape it because it was so intense that if I watched it in "real time" I would not get to sleep. Consequently, I watched it Monday afternoon.

The last episode featured some of the surviving "real" soldiers of "Easy Company." Hearing them talk, seeing them weep! brought tears to my eyes. Here were 80 year-old men crying about the awful experiences they had some 60-odd years before.

Incredible.

Worth watching if you haven't seen it. It's probably out on DVD. Most everything is.

And thank you again, jeffmoskin, for your kind thoughts!

The family was really trimmed down quite a bit in this last week or so!

But today, we gathered, those that are left, and we reminisced about those who are now gone, and what was really nice was to hear that a generation younger than mine has memories of their own of those who have passed, and so ....

For us older ones, however, our own mortality stares us right in the face, and that just is as it is, I guess!

As to "gatherings", when I came in here, it was for that purpose, to get back to "LIFE" again, although, to be truthful, I am still a little discombobulated in my thoughts right now, BUT ....

LIFE must go on!

SO!

And here, jeffmoskin, I have to confess that while I know of this excellent series that you talk about, "Band of Brothers", and even had someone give me the series on videotape, I didn't watch it, because in truth, I just cannot!

I have to stay clean away from it, even after all these years, which are as nothing!

Now, of course, if it was going to be a videotape or better yet, live footage, of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice all getting their a**es booted out of a helicopter into the heart of Sadr City, so that THEY WOULD HAVE TO FIGHT THEIR WAY BACK OUT, then that is something that I just might force myself to watch, and perhaps with relish, just to see how much they would enjoy the "experience" they are presently affording to all these real soldiers like those in "Band of Brothers" had to experience in a war many wars before this present one we are now embroiled in over there in Iraq, which incidentally is supposed to be both a democracy and a sovereign nation standing on its own, which it clearly is not, on either count!

But as to the real thing, or portrayals?

NO, I have to stay away!

Been there, done that, had it done to me, and to this day, I am still sick to my heart about it, and I don't wish that experience on any other living human beings, except for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, this Wolfowitz, and all those in the world who think war is cool!

Put them all in a great big pit somewhere, where they cannot get out, and let them have at it!

As for the rest of us, boy, the peace that would bring us!

And that is where I must keep my thoughts focused these days, jeffmoskin, lest I too die of a broken heart for what could have been, but wasn't, because of war!

I completely understand, Livyjr. I wish you closure and peace.

Gabrielle -----

I sincerely doubt that you are paranoid.

What you are is AWARE.

You are seeing things that are not supposed to be seen.

Your leaders ( and mine ) count on the American's people's desire to not look very deeply into what's really going on.

Thank God, you do.

When enough Americans care enough to peer under the lid, we might get some other people to lead the country.

Hopefully, they will be cut from a better bolt of cloth.


A.B..

I'm starting to understand you a little better Livyjr. I'm starting to understand more and more the uncanny beauty I find here.

You have seen and done things no human being should ever have to see/do.

In my profession I've had the priveledge of working with many men and women like you - but mostly men.

The combat veterans I've met from WWII, Korea, Vietnam & Desert Strom have one thing in common: the dept of their experiences and the profound effect those experiences have had on the way they see life. The veteran's understanding of life, war, death, horror, tragedy, community, isolation, home, is so much more profound. And they are so much more beautiful to me because of this fact.

You know, last night I read a post of yours over at A.B.'s corner about my grandmother and how she was to be admired because she had not been beaten down. I'm still a bit unsure of myself in these threads and so I did not say what initially came to my mind after reading that comment, which I may very well be taking out of context.

But since I have a clearer vision this evening after reading your posts on Vietnam I will share my original thoughts with you.

That I respect people like A.B., my grandmother, you, and many others, not because they have not been beaten down. The way I see it life is incredibly hard on people. I respect you all because life has beaten you down but some force inside of each of you refuses to stay down, refuses to follow the well-travelled paths of the masses. Because you all have faced down your own demons - some of them repeatedly, some of them daily, and some of them will continue to challenge you (us) all until the day you (we) die. I respect people like you because I see the human condition so clearly in your eyes, your words, your actions. Men and women who have greatly suffered and overcome (I use this term fairly loosly as "overcome" is often a fluid, cyclical process) see everything around them with a clarity of vision that often escapes the rest.

Not only do I admire these people, but I also find them to be the touchstones I run to when I am lost. Not because they have never been lost or broken - but because they have been.

There are so many ways people are broken. And it is in those broken places that I think people are their most beautiful.

Very beautifully said, Gabrielle. Very beautifully said.

A.B.,
I don't think I'm paranoid, either.

After over a year's worth of "research" I've come to a fairly solid conclusion that there is a cohesive thread running through the Bush administration's odd approach to the threat of terrorism. And I can't imagine that the rest of America isn't starting to catch on.

Thanks, Jeff. I feel the same way about you, too.

Well, Gabrielle, we are on the same page!

When I said that your grandmother was not "beaten down", I mean what you are saying; SHE GOT BACK UP!

She did not quit!

That is really the point!

And that is really what I mean when I say "not beaten down"!

She is tempered and annealed, and so, she becomes an example to me, even though I have never met the lady!

And I bet she can look back and laugh at herself "flying up that mountain" that night, and yet I know that she was probably in a real state of terror that night, which is nothing to laugh at, but in truth, AFTERWARDS, that is exactly what country people would do!

Laugh at it!

Somehow, that defuses something that just needs to be defused!

As for me, someday I will die, and this will all come to rest for me!

In the meantime, living is the trick, and of all the things that I have been involved in, this forum is one of the most therapeutic, probably because in here, I can be just words, an invisible physical presence, and so, I can choose what to leave out, and that is volumes more than I ever speak!

And you probably know that very well, so, I will leave that where it is!

Between us!

And it's back to life here, so, I must discombobulate my thinking processes here and try to get back in the swim of things, because the current remains quite strong, and things in the world and OUR America seem to be happening very rapidly, with uncertainty rising much more than it is receding!

SO?

A waterfall ahead?

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, exactly what is going on over there in George W. Bush "newest" alleged "democracy" venture over there in his "client" state of Iraq where HIS "troops" are out breaking down people's doors and murdering people with impunity, and complete and total immunity from any laws, whatsoever?

Democracy?

Or "de-mockery", like we have here?

Let's look:

Middle East - AP

"Kurdish VP: Race for Iraq PM Far From Over"

52 minutes ago

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's Kurdish interim vice president on Wednesday said negotiations to pick the country's new prime minister were far from over, as Iraq's new political king-makers sought to secure top jobs, including the largely ceremonial post of president.

Haggling over senior positions in the upcoming government came against the backdrop of more violence.

A car bomb killed two people and wounded 14 in the northern city of Mosul, and a U.S. soldier was killed in a separate bomb attack north of Baghdad, officials said.

The dominant Shiite coalition on Tuesday chose Ibrahim al-Jaafari, one of two interim vice presidents and leader of a religious party that fought Saddam Hussein, as its candidate for prime minister — making him the overwhelming favorite for the post.

But for al-Jaafari to take the premiership he must build a coalition to gain agreement from Kurds and others on the presidency and candidates for Cabinet posts before seeking the support of a majority of the National Assembly elected Jan. 30.

Incumbent premier Ayad Allawi has shown no sign of giving up his own bid for the powerful post.

Al-Jaafari is "a man I can work with, but to discuss who will be the prime minister of Iraq, this still needs more time," Kurdish interim vice president Rowsch Nouri Shaways told reporters.

"We aim to get high rank in the government institutions."

"We aim to get one of the top positions and we aim to participate in the Council of Ministers, suitable with our percentage in the elections."

Kurdish parties, which won 75 seats in the 275-seat national assembly, want Jalal Talabani, a secular Sunni Kurd and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to be Iraq's next president.

The Shiite Muslim clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance won 140 seats, while Allawi's secular Shiite Iraqi List party won 40 seats.

Nine other parties divided the remaining 20 seats.

According to the interim constitution adopted last year under the U.S. occupation, parliament must elect a president and two vice presidents by a two-thirds majority, or 182 seats.

The three must then unanimously choose a prime minister subject to assembly approval.

There is no timetable for the assembly to convene, and al-Jaafari and his alliance must agree with other elected parties on who will fill the three posts and the Cabinet.

Even then, the prime minister has a month to name his Cabinet before the assembly vote.

Wednesday's car bomb exploded in western Mosul, said Essam Youssef of the city's Jamhouri hospital, where some of the casualties were brought.

It was not immediately clear what the target of the bomb was.

Witnesses said no U.S. or Iraqi forces in the area where the explosion took place.

In a statement, the U.S. military said two people were killed and 14 wounded in the attack.

Also in Mosul, U.S. soldiers shot dead a civilian in a pickup truck who approached their convoy too closely as he was trying to pass it, policeman Ahmed Rashid said.

Weary of car bombs, most U.S. military vehicles carry signs warning drivers to keep away.

Elsewhere, a soldier from the U.S. Task Force Liberty was killed Wednesday when assailants set off the bomb near Tuz, 105 miles north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Al-Jaafari's selection on Tuesday came after former Washington ally Ahmad Chalabi dropped out of the race following three days of round-the-clock bargaining.

Al-Jaafari has been seen as having close ties to Iran's ruling clergy, though he denies any links to a government that President Bush has said is part of an "axis of evil."

For al-Jaafari, 58, to succeed, he'll have to meet conflicting demands from Kurds, Sunni Arabs and even Islamic hard-liners within his United Iraqi Alliance

Iraq's secular Kurds and many Sunnis worry that al-Jaafari will try to impose his Dawa Party's brand of conservative Islam on the country, particularly because the assembly will be charged with writing a new constitution.

Al-Jaafari told the AP last week that Islam should be the official religion of Iraq "and one of the main sources for legislation, along with other sources that do not harm Muslim sensibilities."

He skirted his party's official position, which explicitly urges the "Islamization" of Iraqi society and the state, including the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law.

"Theory is different from practice," al-Jaafari said.

And in counterpoint to all of this continuing violence above, which, in my opinion, Mr. George W. Bush is the chief architect of, we have this following from yesterday's news, which is going to serve as a basis for more "talk" in here tomarrow, and the tomarrow after that, in all likelihood, as to me, any "peace" that George W. Bush might talk about seems to entail a form of servitude to him and his, and an "embracing", by us, of course, the "chattel" here in OUR America, of an immunity FROM THE LAW, or impunity, for him and his, while the rest of us are merely cattle in a feed-lot for him and his, to be dealt with in any manner that George W. Bush deems fit, so as to continue that immunity from the law, FOR HIM AND HIS!

"Bush offers vision of peace - During visit to Europe, President outlines international agenda and speaks of U.S., allies setting 'history on a hopeful course'"

By TERENCE HUNT, Associated Press
First published: Tuesday, February 22, 2005

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- In a wide-ranging foreign-policy speech, President Bush on Monday told Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon, demanded Iran stop its suspected nuclear arms program and scolded Russia for backsliding on democracy.

Standing before diplomats and leaders gathered from many nations, he urged Mideast allies to take difficult steps for peace, appealing for Europe's help in both troubled areas to "set history on a hopeful course."

Bush opened his discussions with a gesture of reconciliation toward allies, hosting a dinner for French President Jacques Chirac, the harshest critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

On Lebanon, Bush and Chirac issued a joint statement urging all parties to cooperate in the investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a massive bombing in Beirut.

They urged full implementation of a United Nations resolution demanding the withdrawal of Syrian soldiers from Lebanon.

It also called for a Lebanese government "free from foreign domination."

On Iran, Bush did not rule out using military force, saying all options remain on the table.

But, addressing widespread concerns in Europe that Iran is the next U.S. target after Iraq, Bush said: "Iran is ... different from Iraq."

"We're in the early stages of diplomacy."

Three days before he is to see Vladimir Putin in Slovakia, Bush admonished the Russian leader to "renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law."

Putin has raised alarms in the West by consolidating power, rolling back democratic reforms and curbing press and political freedoms.

Bush said the United States and all European countries "should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia."

The President suggested that Moscow's entry in the World Trade Organization could hinge on whether it changes course.

"I've got a good relationship with Vladimir; I intend to keep it that way," Bush said, adding, "But as well, I intend to remind him that if his interests lie West, that we share values ... and those values are important."

In the keynote address of his five-day trip to Europe, Bush signaled that the United States will become more involved in the Mideast to foster growing hopes for peace.

"America and Europe have made a moral commitment: We will not stand by as another generation in the Holy Land grows up in an atmosphere of violence and hopelessness," Bush told an audience of diplomats, business leaders and academics in an opulent ballroom of Brussels' Concert Noble hall.

The President outlined a White House checklist of actions for key players in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia should give its citizens more freedom, Bush said, and Egypt should expand democracy.

Israel should freeze settlement activities and the Palestinians must dismantle terrorist groups and fight corruption, Bush said.

He challenged Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, at a conference in London next month, "to put forward a strategy of reform which can and will gain support from the international community, including financial support."

"I hope he will seize the moment."

"All the parties have responsibilities to meet," Bush said.

"Arab states must end incitement in their own media, cut off public and private funding for terrorism, stop their support for extremist education and establish normal relations with Israel," the President said.

In his speech, Bush said Europe and the United States must be key players in fighting terrorism and spreading liberty.

"Our alliance has the ability and the duty to tip the balance of history in the favor of freedom," Bush declared.

"Today, America and Europe face a moment of consequence and opportunity.

Together, we can once again set history on a hopeful course."

While the Iraq invasion caused one of the alliance's worst breaches, all 26 countries in NATO are expected to join together today in offering Baghdad help in the form of money, equipment, training or soldiers.

European Union foreign ministers, meanwhile, approved the opening of a Baghdad office to coordinate the training of hundreds of Iraqi judges and prosecutors.

Bush also appeared more relaxed with Chirac.

"I'm looking for a good cowboy," Bush joshed when a reporter asked if relations had improved to the point where Chirac might receive an invitation to the President's Texas ranch.

Chirac said U.S.-French relations have been excellent for 200 years and the war had not changed that.

Despite the cordial meeting, Bush told Chirac the United States adamantly opposes Europe's plans to lift its 15-year arms embargo against China.

Europe seemed eager for Bush's charm offensive after bitter divisions over global climate control, Iraq and other problems.

Dozens of world leaders were hurrying to Brussels for twin summits today at NATO and the European Union.

European officials have complained Bush did not listen to them during his first term, and they wanted to see if he has changed.

About 4,000 people registered their unhappiness in a noisy protest outside the U.S. Embassy as Bush met with Chirac.

The demonstrators came from a coalition of 88 environmental, human rights, peace and other groups opposed to Bush's policies.

end quotes

"I'm looking for a good cowboy," Bush joshed when a reporter asked if relations had improved to the point where Chirac might receive an invitation to the President's Texas ranch?

Yeah, George, I just bet you are!

And you have to go all over the world to find one, don't you, because "RANCHERS" like you, the ones who hire the "Tom Horn's" to kill off the competition, RANCHERS like you are the ones that the REAL cowboys over here, the ones who wear the real "white hats", stay far, far away from!

And for good reason!

As I see it anyway, once having been one of them, for a while anyway!

Too many lies, too many half-truths, if they even come up to that "half" point, and way too many distortions!

Real cowboys just don't like that kind of environment, and neither do I, so it is no wonder you are now out there scouring the world trying to find one who will come and work for you!

Maybe you ought to try Nigeria, that is where all the scam artists seem to be hanging these days!

Down there, you might just find a whole host ready and willing to cleave to your "standard"!

Birds of a feather .......

South of Chugwater on Iron Mountain Road, a graded road periodically punctuated by cattle grates, is the ghost town of Diamond.

Further south in Iron Mountain was the Iron Mountain Ranch Company, owned by John Coble and Henry C. Bosler.

The ranch served as a "home away from home" of Tom Horn when he was working as a "cattle detective."

To the west lies Bosler, a town which today barely survives.

Horn's cabin is still on the Iron Mountain Ranch near Bosler.

In August and September 1895, the area was shaken by the unsolved shooting of two local ranchers, William Lewis and Fred U. Powell.

A manuscript fragment by an unknown author, sympathetic to Tom Horn, describes the killings and their impact:

Tom Horn

William Lewis made the rounds of all who lived near him again, that August morning after a bullet landed at his feet, and once more he accused and threatened everyone.

He was a man, those neighbors testified later, who didn't have a friend in the world.

He had his chance the very next morning, for exactly the same thing happened again.

"Just let me meet up with that damned bushwhackin' coward face-to-face!" he exploded.

"That's all I ask."

He never got that chance.

For the unseen, ghostlike rifleman aimed a little higher the third time.

A .30-30 bullet smashed directly into the center of William Lewis' chest.

He slumped against a log fence rail, then tried to lift himself.

Two more shots followed in quick succession, dropping him limp and huddled on the ground.

An inquest was held, and after a good deal of testimony about the anonymous notes, the county coroner estimated that the shooting had been done from a distance of 300 yards.

Rumors of the offer Tom Horn had made at the Stockgrowers' Association meeting had leaked out by then, and as a grand jury investigation of the murder got underway, the prosecuting attorney, a Colonel Baird, ordered that the tall stock detective be summoned for questioning.

It took some time to locate Horn.

He was finally found in the Bates Hole region of Natrona County, two counties away.

[Laramie County] Prosecutor [John C.] Baird immediately assumed he was hiding out there after the shooting and began preparing an indictment.

But that indictment was never made.

For Tom Horn, it turned out, had a number of rancher and cowboy witnesses ready and willing to swear with straight faces that he had been in Bates Hole the day of the killing.

The former scout's alibi couldn't be shaken.

The authorities had to release him.

He immediately rode on to Cheyenne, threw a ten-day drinking spree and dropped some very strong hints among friends.

"Dead center at three hundred yards, that coroner said!"

He'd grin.

"Three shots in that fella 'fore he hit the ground."

"You reckon there's two men in this state can shoot like that."

Publicly, he denied everything.

Privately, he created and magnified an image of himself as a hired assassin.

For a blood-chilling ring of terror to the very sound of his name was the tool he needed for the job he'd promised to do.

The unknown author continues in the description of the killing of Powell:

Tom Horn was soon back at work, giving his secret employers their money's worth.

A good many beef-hungry settlers were accepting the death of William Lewis as proof that the warning notes were not idle threats.

The company herds were being raided less often, and cabins and soddies all over the range were standing deserted.

But there were other homesteaders who passed the Lewis murder off as a personal grudge killing, the work of one of his neighbors.

The rustling problem was by no means solved.

Even in the very area where the shooting had been done, cattle were still disappearing.

For less than a dozen miles from the unplowed land of the dead man lived another settler who had ignored the warnings that his existence might be foreclosed on; a blatant and defiant rustler named Fred Powell.

"Fred was mighty crude about the way he took in cattle," his own hired man, Andy Ross, mentioned later.

"Everyone knew it, but he sort of acted like he didn't care who knew it -- even after them notes came, even after he'd heard about Lewis, even after he'd been shot at a couple o' times hisself."

On the morning of September 10, 1895, Powell and Ross rose at dawn and began their day's work.

Haying time was close at hand, and they needed some strong branches to repair a hay rack.

Harnessing a team to a buckboard, they drove out to a willow-lined creek about a half-mile off, then climbed down and began chopping.

Andy Ross had just started swinging an ax at his second willow when the distant blast of a rifle sounded.

He looked around in surprise, then noticed that Fred Powell was clutching his chest.

The hired man ran over to help his boss.

"My God , I'm shot!" Powell gasped.

And he collapsed and died instantly.

Ross had no intention of searching for the assassin.

He heaved the dead man onto the buckboard, yelled and lashed at the team and got out of there fast.

But he brought back the sheriff and several deputies, and to the lawmen the entire affair seemed a repetition of the Lewis killing.

A detailed scouring of the entire area revealed nothing beyond a ledge of rocks that might have been the rifleman's hiding place.

There were no tracks of either hoofs or boots.

Not even an empty cartridge case could be found.

Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.

Once again , he shook his head, kept his face expressionless and his voice very calm, and had a strongly supported alibi ready.

Later, riding in for some lusty enjoyment of the liquor and professional ladies of Cheyenne, he laid claim to the killing with the vague insinuations he made.

"Exterminatin' cow thieves is just a business proposition with me", he'd blandly announce.

"And I sort o' got a corner on the market."

"Tom," a friend asked him once, "how come you bushwhacked them rustlers."

"They wouldn't o' stood no chance with you in a plain, straight-out shoot-em-down."

He had lots of friends, then as always.

Even as he became widely known as a professional killer, nearly every cowboy and rancher in Wyoming seemed proud to call him a friend.

No man 's name brought more cheers when it was announced in a rodeo.

He explained, "s'posin' you was a nester swingin' the long rope?"

"Which would you be most scairt of, a dry-gulchin' or a shoot-down."

"Yeah, I can see that", the friend was forced to agree.

"But ... well, it just don't seem sportin' somehow."

The tall sunburnt rustler-hunter stared in amazement.

"I seen a lot o' things in my time."

"I found a trooper once the Apache had spread-eagled on an ant hill, and another time we ran across some teamsters they'd caught, tied upside down on their own wagon wheels over little fires until their brains was exploded right out o' their skulls."

"I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death."

"But there's one thing I never seen or heard of, one thing I just don't think there is, and that's a sportin' way o' killin' a man."

The unknown writer continues with a description of the impact of the killings on rustling in Albany and Laramie Counties:

After the first two murders, the warning notes were rarely ignored.

The lesson had been learned.

The examples were plain.

When Fred Powell's brother-in-law, Charlie Keane, moved into the dead man's home, the anonymous letter writer took no chances on Charlie taking up where Fred had left off and wasted no time on a first notice: "IF YOU DON'T LEAVE THIS COUNTRY WITHIN 3 DAYS, YOUR LIFE WILL BE TAKEN THE SAME AS POWELL'S WAS."

This was the message found tacked to the cabin door.

Keane left, within three days.

All through Albany and Laramie counties, other men were doing the same.

Houses of settlers who'd treated the company herds as a natural resource, free for the taking, were sitting empty, with weeds growing high in their yards.

The small half-heartedly tended fields of men who'd spent more time rustling cattle than farming were lying fallow.

No cow thief could count on a jury of his sympathetic peers to free him any longer.

Jury, judge and executioner were riding the range in the form of a single unknown figure that could materialize anywhere, at any time, to dispense an ancient brand of justice the men of the new West had believed long outdated.

For three straight years, Tom Horn patrolled the southern Wyoming pastures, and how many men he killed after Lewis and Powell.

If he killed Lewis and Powell will never be known.

And perhaps we can call it, "Pox Americana", a new form of theocracy, de-mockery, and hypocrisy, all rolled (or roiled) into one.

"E pluribus Sputum," declared George W Bush, expectorating to his left while genuflecting to his right.

"Ahhm lookin' fer the man who shot mah paw," he quppied, but quickly recanted that remark when reminded by Karl Rove that Saddam had already been incarcerated.

"Ahhm lookin' fer a good cowboy," he re-stated.

Well, we all know where to go to find a rotten one.

John C. Coble

1859 (Pennsylvania) - 1914 (Elko, Nevada)

On December 4, 1914, at 12:30am he walked into Elko's Commercial Hotel/Casino through the door at 4th Street.

Went up to the front desk asked the Night Clerk, Mr. Owen Merrick, for some stationery.

Wrote a short note, then went to the unoccupied ladies restroom - shot himself in the head with a Smith & Wesson .32 caliber revolver.

Mr. Coble was very successful, 'smart' (graduated from University of PA), a man of genial disposition who had many loyal friends.

To summarize he was a wealthy, respected rancher in Wyoming.

"Coble was partner of Henry C. Bosler, a Pennsylvania capitalist, in the Iron Mountain Ranch company, with headquarters at Bosler, Wyo. "

"The company used the government range, and when Kels T. Nickel, a small ranchman of the Iron Mountain District, brought in sheep, Coble objected.

A meeting of cattlemen was held, and Coble attempted to organize a raid to drive Nickel and his sheep out of the county.

Nickel and Coble met at the Iron Mountain railway station one day following the meeting, and Nickel, having been advised of Coble's plan, took him to task.

Coble attempted to draw his gun, but Nickel plunged a bowie knife into the cattleman's stomach before Coble could get his sixshooter into play.

For this, Coble threatened "to get" Nickel, and soon after Coble left the hospital, Tom Horn, a notorious southwest range fighter, made his appearance at the Iron Mountain ranch.

Horn warned Nickel of instant death if he did not leave the country.

But Nickel was game, and remained.

One day as he was hauling logs from the hills, Horn appeared and opened fire on the sheepman.

Nickel ran, and escaped to his home with a shattered elbow.

A week later, Willie Nickel was shot and killed near the Nickel ranch, and Horn in his confession to Joe LaFors, the detective who ran him down, said he was laying for old man Nickel, when the boy appeared, and he had to kill him to prevent spreading alarm."

- Elko Independent 12-11-1914

Tom Horn was arrested for killing Willie Nickell (note actual last name spelling), the 14 year old son of Kels Nickell.

You know, jeffmoskin, I wonder really, who can be fooled?

That is a question which has been going around in my mind, over and over and over again, especially since 9-11, which I have said many times reminds me more of the Reichstag Fire than it does anything else, for it was just to pat!

Too smooth!

Too slick!

Too well orchestrated!

And the only ones who benefitted were George W. Bush and some big banks and somebody allegedly invested heavily in airline stocks just before 9-11!

San Francisco Chronicle

"Suspicious profits sit uncollected - Airline investors seem to be lying low"

Christian Berthelsen, Scott Winokur, Chronicle Staff Writers

Saturday, September 29, 2001

Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.

The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors -- whose identities and nationalities have not been made public -- had advance knowledge of the strikes.

"Usually, if someone has a windfall like that, you take the money and run," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Whoever did this thought the exchange would not be closed for four days.

"This smells real bad."

The source and others in the financial industry speculate that the purchaser or purchasers -- having initially assumed the money could be picked up without detection -- now fear exposure, or that the account has been frozen.

The markets were closed for four days after the attack, giving investigators time to notice the anomalous trades.

Securities regulators and law-enforcement agents throughout the United States and Europe are investigating unusual patterns in short sales and the purchase of "put" options, both of which are financial-market bets that the price of a given stock will fall.

Authorities here and abroad have not publicly disclosed any conclusions they have reached and refuse to discuss the case.

There was an unusually large jump in purchases of put options on the stocks of UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. in the three business days before the attack on major options exchanges in the United States.

On one day, UAL put option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average.

In the month before the attacks, short sales jumped by 40 percent for UAL and 20 percent for American.

A put option gives the buyer a right to sell the underlying security at a certain price on a certain date; the purchaser profits when the share price drops lower than the agreed sale price.

In a short sale, an investor borrows stock from a broker and sells it, hoping to buy it back at a lower price.

October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each.

Those options are now selling at more than $12 each.

There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding, according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.

Other financial professionals have told The Chronicle that an estimated $5 million to $10 million in all could have been made on the trades, including trading on other days and purchases of options on the parent company of American, AMR Corp.

Four United and American aircraft crashed in the attacks.

BIN LADEN'S FINANCES

Meanwhile, in Herzliya, Israel, a group headed by former Israeli intelligence officials -- the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank -- has issued a report on Osama bin Laden's finances ("Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?") saying insiders profited by nearly $16 million.

The money was made on Sept. 6, 7 and 10 in transactions involving United, American, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., the center said.

Morgan Stanley occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center; Merrill Lynch's headquarters offices were nearby.

The figure excluded other unusual trades involving insurance companies with significant exposure to damage claims resulting from the attacks.

These include Munich Re of Germany, which expects to pay out more than $1.5 billion, and the AXA Group, a French firm, which could be on the hook for $550 million.

A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment on a New York Times report yesterday that the SEC had found "benign" explanations for the trading activity.

But the spokesman, John Heine, said the commission stands by a statement made eight days after the attack by Stephen M. Cutler, acting SEC enforcement director.

The statement -- reiterated in substance Wednesday by SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt -- said the commission was "pursuing all credible leads."

SHORT-SELLING OF INSURANCE

Spokesmen for British securities regulators and the AXA Group also confirmed yesterday that investigations are continuing.

The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of the options.

Rohini Pragasam, a bank spokeswoman, declined comment.

Investigators' attentions previously had been drawn to Germany because of the residence there earlier in the year of some of the principal suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks and unusual patterns in the short-selling of insurance, airline and other financial company stocks there prior to the attacks.

Last weekend, German central bank president Ernst Welteke said a study pointed to "terrorism insider trading" in those stocks.

There are many reasons the bets against United and American could have been innocent, in view of the tough time the airline industry has had this year and heavy losses experienced by both airlines in particular.

But the trades were not replicated in the stocks or options of any of the airlines' competitors.

CANDIDATES LIVE IN ARAB NATIONS

While the identities of possible beneficiaries of advance knowledge of the attacks were not known publicly, experts were quick to point to possible candidates -- all presumed to be affluent residents of Arab nations.

The former chairman of the State Department's National Commission on Terrorism, L. Paul Bremer, said he obtained classified government analyses early last year of bin Laden's finances confirming the assistance of affluent Middle Easterners.

E-mail the writers at cberthelsen@sfchronicle.com and swinokur@sfchronicle.com.

On 9-11, I drove down to the small city, near to where I live, and walked into a downtown coffee shop, where the owner, a nice but excitable young man, came up to me and asked me if I had heard, and I said, no, I did not think that I had heard anything, and so, he told me that airplanes full of terrorists were attacking all over the United States, and that one had hit the World Trade Center, and just about that time, a second plane flew into the second tower, and then they fell down, and I finished my coffee, and went and did my business that day!

I had some papers to deliver, and as I was doing that, some woman that I did not know came running up to me, and said to me, "hadn't I heard", and I said, well, yes, by then I thought everyone had heard, and she said to me, "well, what was I going to do about it?", and I said nothing, it was too late for that, and I had stuff that I had to do, and so, I went and did it.

And later, I heard that a lot of business records in the possession of the New York State Attorney General in connection with investigations into corporate fraud had been destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, which, of course, was an unexpected, and heaven-sent boon to those corporations that had been under investigation on 9-11!

Those stories, of course, about the business records were in the New York State newspapers, because it was the Office of the New York State Attorney General in the World trade Center where those records were located, and I don't know if they were really carried outside of New York.

While I hunt down those stories, here in another interesting anecdote about who benefitted from the collapse of the World Trade Center besides George W. Bush, and the Republican Party:

"Following the Sept. 11 money trail - Tower computers scoured for clues to cash transfers"

12/18/2001
The Toronto Star
Ontario
Page A08

German computer experts are working around the clock to unlock the truth behind an unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center Sept. 11.

Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the center shortly before the planes hit the twin towers?

Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded?

A world leader in retrieving data, German-based firm Convar, is trying to answer those questions and help credit card companies, telecommunications firms and accountants in New York recover records from computer hard drives that have been partially damaged by fire, water or fine dust.

Using a pioneering laser scanning technology to find data on damaged computer hard drives and main frames found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and other nearby collapsed buildings, Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings.

"The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send financial transaction commands and authorizations in the belief that amid all the chaos the criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start," said Convar director Peter Henschel.

"Of course it is also possible that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for the unusual rise in business volume," he told Reuters in an interview.

"It could turn out that Americans went on an absolute shopping binge on that Tuesday morning."

"But at this point there are many transactions that cannot be accounted for," he said.

Inside Convar's ultra-high security building in Pirmasens, Germany, is a dust-free "clean room" where damaged computer drives retrieved from the rubble are coaxed back to life.

Henschel said the raw material recovered, up to 40 gigabytes per computer hard drive, is sent immediately by satellite or courier back to New York.

Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster.

"There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million," Wagner said.

"They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed."

"We have been quite surprised that so many of the hard drives were in good enough shape to retrieve the data," Henschel said.

"The contamination rate is high."

"The fine dust that was everywhere in the area got pressed under high pressure into the drives."

"But we've still been able to retrieve 100 percent of the data on most of the drives we've received.

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http://www.wanttoknow.info/011218reuters - 14k

Dismantling the "New Deal" might just be a "sidebar" for the Bush Co.'s, is my thought!

The money for the Bush Co.'s is in war!

And you are right about the NEW CONS!

They are not dummies!

This is all right according to the script, is how I see it!

February 15, 2005

Robert Scheer, LA Times:

"What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us"

COMMENTARY

Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot.

Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent.

Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks.

But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.

The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.

The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks.

Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report.

Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.

And let's be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression.

Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.

Even worse, what we do know calls into question our government's explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society.

What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically:

"The system was blinking red."

Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day.

And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened.

Instead, an administration that resisted spending the tens of millions required to fortify airline security before 9/11 is nearing the $300-billion mark on Afghanistan and Iraq.

And declassified documents have unmistakably said the latter had nothing to do with 9/11.

Meanwhile, those countries that at least indirectly did, most notably "allies" Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been let off the hook.

Indeed, the 9/11 commission was not allowed to get near that story:

It is an unnoticed but startling truth that the basic narrative on the tragedy derives from the interrogations of key detainees whom the 9/11 commissioners were not allowed to interview.

Nor were they permitted to even take testimony from the U.S. intelligence personnel who interrogated those prisoners.

When the truth and governmental transparency are arbitrarily trumped by the invocation of national security, the public is simply incapable of making informed decisions on the most crucial decisions we face — starting with whom we elect as our commander in chief.

And while I continue to hunt for the information concerning records of the New York State Attorney General on business fraud being destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11, we have this up-date of the Bush Co's trip to Europe to unify that portion of OUR earth with the rest of the solar system, of which George W. Bush is the president, and is that for life?

Never can seem to remember these things, anymore!

World - AFP

Thousands protest against Bush visit to Germany"

Wed Feb 23, 2:06 PM ET

MAINZ, Germany (AFP) - At least 4,000 demonstrators vented their anger at the visit of US President George W. Bush to Germany but were kept well away from the security ring around him.

The centre of the picturesque western city was almost totally deserted after being shut to traffic and pedestrians during Bush's visit, with only a few police vehicles and armoured cars visible in the streets.

The protesters brandished placards reading "Terrorist Nr 1" and "Bush Swim Home" while police helicopters circled overhead.

The organizers of the rallies, an alliance of pacifist groups under the motto "Not Welcome, Mr Bush", said they were expecting 10,000 people to attend, but police put the numbers at about 4,000.

"Everything is very peaceful," said the organisers' spokesman Reiner Braun.

The stretch of the Rhine river that flows through Mainz was shut to shipping, but police confirmed that a boat with an anti-Bush protester on board had managed to sail towards a bridge shortly before the president's motorcade crossed it.

Three police launches intercepted the boat before it reached the bridge.

Police sealed manhole covers, removed mailboxes, insisted garage doors remain open and even temporarily closed the airspace to protect the US leader.

German airline Lufthansa complained that the security measures for Bush's visit had forced the cancellation of 71 of its flights from Frankfurt airport.

Frankfurt, Germany's biggest airport, was closed for 25 minutes on Wednesday morning to allow Bush's jet to land at the nearby US airbase Rhein-Main.

But Lufthansa said none of its flights were able to take off in the 45 minutes which followed Bush's arrival.

"We had to cancel 71 flights because of the temporary closure of Frankfurt airport and because of the reduced frequency on the takeoff and landing runways," said Lufthansa spokesman Thomas Jachnow.

The extent of the security measures for Bush's visit "were hard to understand in our opinion", he added.

Jachnow said a total of 4,675 passengers on Lufthansa and other flights were affected by the disruption.

A spokesman for Frankfurt airport confirmed that 104 flights were cancelled because of the US president's arrival but said that bad weather conditions were to blame.

There was a 57-kilometre-wide (35.4-mile-wide) air exclusion zone in operation over Mainz.

Security was also tight in the neighbouring city of Wiesbaden where Bush visited US troops later on Wednesday.

Bush made a one-day visit to Germany during which he and Schroeder discussed the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Middle East Peace process, the role of Syria in Lebanon and efforts to stabilize Iraq.

And this is interesting!

I am trying all kinds of different search word combinations to find those stories on the destroyed business records of alleged corporate fraud, and so far, no luck!

In the meantime, we have this:

"Mounting Evidence of Larger Conspiracy Begs More Questions Regarding 9-11 Insider Trading"

Evidence is piling up about insiders with ties to the CIA capitalizing on their foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks.

Particularly intriguing is the very real possibility that the Enron financial debacle may be, in some way, linked to the pre-9-11 insider trading.

By Tom Flocco

There is growing evidence that the FBI and other government intelligence entities are closely linked to the pre-Sept. 11 insider trading profits.

But thus far the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee has not publicly referred to prior knowledge of the attacks related to stock transaction profits.

The secret congressional meeting has also failed, after nine months, to publicize the critical Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “control list” report which traced the alleged insider stock trading.

CIA spokesman Tom Crispell denied that the intelligence agency was monitoring “real-time,” pre-9-11 stock trading activity within U.S. borders using such software as the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS) or the Echelon satellite monitoring system.

However, when asked whether the CIA had been scrutinizing world financial markets for national security purposes, Crispell said:

“I have no way of knowing what operations are [being affected by our assets] outside the country.”

Given 3,000 deaths, victim family lawyers may want to know.

A Houston Chronicle report Jan. 23 revealed that Enron Corporation’s top security team, including four former CIA officers and an ex-FBI agent, left the company to form a private firm, Secure Solutions Inter national (SSI), while continuing with Enron as consultants.

John W. Presley, the FBI agent now heading SSI, could not be reached for comment.

But the team probed a “variety of allegations of fraud and other kinds of rule-breaking by Enron workers,” the Chronicle said.

Team member and former CIA agent David M. Cromley’s business biography at Enron listed him as Enron’s director of business analysis, the paper reported, adding that Cromley gave Enron executives “detailed and unique information” allowing them to make “investments, sales of assets, joint ventures and [financial] products.”

But no public information has been forthcoming as to whether such “detailed and unique information” or sensitive CIA software was used in conjunction with Enron’s controversial off-shore investment products, or whether its missing assets may have been employed in what former German Minister of Technology Andreas von Bulow, in an interview published in the Jan. 13 issue of Tagesspiegel, a Berlin publication, estimated as $15 billion in insider trading profits.

Von Bulow then buttressed his astounding charges:

“26 intelligence services in the U.S. with a budget of $30 billion . . . . For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence let fighter jets stay on the ground . . . . 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide hijackers."

"But within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them [whose names were used by the persons presumably aboard the planes and named by U.S. officials as the hijackers—Ed.] were still alive.”

SSI’s web site states that its corporate members have “managed cutting-edge counterterrorism and counterproliferation operations for the CIA, implemented advanced technical information and security programs for the CIA, and conducted a wide range of investigations for the FBI,” while also “overseeing all security arrangements for several large gas pipeline companies.”

It is not known if Congress will publicly question CIA Director George Tenet as to whether CIA and FBI employees “loaned” to Enron’s corporate espionage program were involved in personal pre-9-11 insider trading, or were merely relaying sensitive insider political information to others involved in prior knowledge of the attacks.

However, victim family lawyers will likely be forced to subpoena government documents and officials to effectively prosecute any negligence claims against government entities.

In the last eight years, Enron has had at least 20 CIA agents on its payroll.

But while the Chronicle reported the operatives as “former” CIA, the Feb. 26 National Enquirer quoted a top Washington insider familiar with several secret investigations into Enron as saying they were given “leaves of absence without pay and put on the Enron payroll.”

The source added that Enron’s CIA members used “info gleaned from a satellite project called ‘Echelon,’ which intercepted emails, phone calls and faxes with detailed business information,” adding that “pure and simple, [taxpayer-funded] U.S. intelligence agents were involved in corporate espionage.”

Another source with ties to the CIA revealed that “the cozy deal between Enron and the CIA allowed the ‘on-loan’ undercover operatives to return to the agency’s payroll before Enron’s collapse.”

Known CIA links traverse a curious variety of unexamined threads in the U.S. financial community.

Said Larry Chin of On-Line Journal, an Internet news site:

“Citigroup has repeatedly been charged with money laundering."

"This, as its board of directors includes John Deutch, former CIA director, Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary, and intimate friend of Enron’s Ken Lay, but also former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin.”

Even Congress has a close CIA link.

Senate Joint Intelligence Co-Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and his House Intelligence Co-Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.)—himself a former CIA covert operations official—were meeting with the chief of the Pakistani intelligence service on the morning of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to published reports.

(Graham himself is related to the Graham family which publishes The Washington Post—the influential national capital daily which has long been known for its intimate ties to the CIA.—Ed.)

On the heels of alleged CIA involvement in public stock trading and use of sensitive prior knowledge of last fall’s attacks, on May 22, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate were charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Royer was also charged with extortion, according to an examination of an unsealed federal indictment: United States v. Elgindy, Royer, Wingate, Cleveland and Peters, filed in New York District Court by Alan Vinegard, U.S. attorney—all of which clouds either open or secret congressional probes of pre-attack insider trading profits.

Vinegard’s press release said:

“The allegations reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain.”

Moreover, Royer and Wingate allegedly used the FBI’s Automated Case Support database to actually monitor the investigation, passing confidential information about the investigations of companies to participants in a stock manipulation scheme, according to The Washington Post on May 23.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Breen said stock advisor Amir Ibrahim Elgindy, charged in the indictment, called his Salomon Smith Barney broker trying to sell $300,000 in stock from his children’s trust funds on Sept.10.

During the conversation, Elgindy “predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000,” reported The New York Times on May 25, thus begging the question whether Congress will publicly disclose other indications of alleged CIA or FBI complicity in prior knowledge of the 9-11 attacks.

Two individuals with close intelligence ties told The Boston Globe on Sept. 27 that since Sept. 11, the super secret National Security Agency (NSA), acting on the advice of lawyers, has been destroying data collected on American citizens and corporations, angering other intelligence agencies seeking leads in the anti-terrorist probe.

Two calls by American Free Press to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking minority member of the Joint-Congressional Intelligence Committee, to confirm details revealed by the sources were not returned.

Since the October Globe report, no other media outlet has examined the heated discussions with the CIA and intelligence committee staff members, as NSA lawyers turned down requests to preserve the intelligence because regulations prohibit data collecting on Americans, according to the two former senior U.S. officials.

However, Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA director of counter-terrorism, said: “The law allows [intelligence officials] exceptions in certain circumstances.”

Both the CIA and FBI had declined comment.

Cannistraro added that “If American citizens are believed to be involved in a foreign intelligence operation that could lead to terrorism against this country, I believe the NSA is required to save or maintain the information.”

When asked about the NSA and the 9-11 attacks, the former CIA official told AFP:

“In this case, I believe they should have saved the surveillance data.”

Congress has been tight-lipped, and government investigators are extremely frustrated that many possible leads stemming from the 9-11 attack were not being followed because of the NSA position.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) privately asked North American securities firms to participate in an information-sharing system to trace “large numbers of trades in securities of companies [directly] affected by the attacks.”

Curiously the SEC asked companies “to designate senior personnel who appreciate ‘the sensitive nature’ of the case [pre-attack insider trading], and can be relied upon to ‘exercise appropriate discretion,’ as ‘point’ people linking government investigators and the [securities] industry.”

Then the SEC asked for the names, titles, phone numbers and email of the designated senior personnel.

Canadian securities officials confirmed on Oct. 2 that the SEC had asked firms to review records for 38 companies, suggesting that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the attacks, according to the Chronicle.

The Center for Public Integrity’s financial records of the top 100 Bush administration officials reveals ownership of millions of dollars in these 38 stocks.

At first glance, the fact that top-level officials own this stock is no different from any other wealthy American.

However, Congress has refused to make public what the Chronicle reported as an SEC “control list” containing confidential information about transactions, individuals, relationships and entities identified by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the probe.

There is as of yet no reporting regarding whether the “entities” were special purpose entities (SPE) linked to Enron—those off-balance sheets and off-shore products heavily involved in Enron’s demise and run by Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.

The SEC said: “Because the control list contains confidential information, we ask that you disseminate it within your institution only on a need-to-know basis.”

Congress or the courts may ultimately decide whether the families of Sept. 11 also need to know the identities of individuals with prior knowledge—allegedly involved in the profits of death.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Secret Service was also probing an unusually high volume of five-year U.S. Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks—one purchase included a single $5 billion trade.

The Journal noted that Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, with their value having risen substantially since Sept. 11.

The Associated Press re ported that a German Central Bank study strongly pointed to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures.

The evidence linking Deutsche bank to the terrorists and insider trading is clearly extraordinary:

The alleged lead hijacker and two accomplices had bank accounts at its Deutschebank’s Hamburg branch and one of its unnamed private investors never claimed $2.5 million in United Airlines “put option” profits following the attacks.

Deutschebank’s global “private banking” chief Mayo Shattuck III resigned the day after the attacks in the middle of a three-year $40 million contract.

The German bank hired away SEC enforcement and investigation chief Richard Walker just 20 days after the attacks.

Deutschebank’s recent senior investment banker Kevin Ingram pled guilty to money laundering involving sales of stinger missiles and other arms to Pakistani and Egyptian citizens just 14 days prior to Sept. 11.

Also, Deutschebank was heavily involved in the 9-11 insider trading but Congress has not questioned the former division head of the investments firm, A.B. Brown, “Buzzy” Krongard appointed by President Bush as executive director of the CIA—regarding intelligence and “real-time” stock trade monitoring.

European reporters found that most of the suspicious pre-attack trades passed through Deutschebank and especially via CIA Executive Director Krongard’s former Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions.

But Congress has not revealed whether it will call Krongard and other Alex Brown traders to testify or whether it will subpoena the pre-attack documents.

CFO.com, an Internet site with news and analysis directed to corporate executives, revealed on Jan. 28 that Deutsche bank was a limited partner in controversial Enron SPEs, LJM and Chewco.

This begs the question as to whether Congress or the courts will determine whether missing funds from Enron were possibly part of a scheme to develop funds to profit from the attacks—given the many interwoven ties between Enron and Deutschebank.

CFO.com also revealed that a former Enron employee prepared an SEC filing, deleting Deutsche bank’s name from a version sent to the SEC.

But curiously, “that deletion was made at the behest of William McLucas,” former SEC enforcement director, hired by Enron after the attacks on Oct. 31.

The former employee also claims to have received instructions to destroy the draft of the SEC filing.

John P. Schmitz, deputy counsel during Bush the Elder’s presidency, will likely be a key player if Americans force Congress to become serious about its 9-11 probe.

NEVER COMPLIED

During the Iran-Contra investigation, the Office of the Independent Counsel reported that each witness interviewed regarding document production complied except for Schmitz, who asserted that his documents were privileged.

Schmitz, fluent in German and a partner in the global law firm Mayer, Brown & Platt, has clients that include Bayer AG, the German maker of the antibiotic Cipro which fights Anthrax.

Schmitz’s Mayer-Brown profile reveals that he represents Enron, adding that “we were active in Germany [with Enron] until the end. . . . Its [bankruptcy] surprised me as well as anyone else,” Reuters reported January. 1.

Mayer-Brown also represents Deutschebank on a regular basis regarding its electronic commerce activities, and, curiously, Schmitz’s law firm maintains an office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, along with Enron—if only to make sure oil is well in the Caspian Sea basin.

Even many 9-11 victim families will come to recognize Mayer-Brown, for, conveniently, the firm also represents United Airlines against 9-11 family lawyers Mary Schiavo and Donald Nolan.

And, given partner Schmitz’s close former relationships with the Bush family, Mayer-Brown’s many water coolers may become intriguing conduits when Schiavo and Nolan begin their respective legal discovery initiatives regarding who will be subpoenaed or deposed and what evidence is or is not revealed.

In an interview with American Free Press, former U.S. attorney for Washington, Joseph de Genova, took a hard-line, saying: “If the Congress does not want to get answers to these critical questions regarding who profited [from prior knowledge of the attacks], then it needs to be litigated.”

Asked whether American citizens have a right to know who sold large blocks of stock shares in companies and airlines directly affected by the attacks or purchased billions in ultra-safe Treasury notes directly prior to 9-11, de Genova said:

“I believe someone will litigate the Freedom of Information Act is sue if government agencies keep obstructing the media —the sooner, the better.”

"The Real Deal: 9-11 Profiteering"

Monday, 22 March 2004, 4:52 pm

Column: http://www.UnansweredQuestions.org

originally published by Global Research at www.globalresearch.ca **

22 March 2004 **

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FIT403A.html

Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire

Sign up for the wire at:
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/headlines.php

Unanswered Questions : Thinking for ourselves.

"9-11 Profiteering - A Framework for Building the 'Cui Bono?'"

UnAnswered Questions By Catherine Austin Fitts

"We are America's...

-Oldest company

-Largest company

-Busiest company

-Most successful company"

--DOD 101, an introductory overview of the Department of Defense from their website (1)

"Pass a law, make a business."
-- Old New Jersey street saying

Something to Hide

Much has transpired since September 11, 2001.

We have learned that numerous heads of state and foreign intelligence agencies tried to warn us before 9-11 (2);

We have watched many deeply disturbing unanswered questions of 9-11 emerge through global Internet media (3);

We have worked with the 9-11 time-line (4) and realized that the official explanation of events is conspiracy theory, not conforming to documented fact;

We have watched the US government suppress facts and restrict of the 9-11 Commission's access to information (5);

We have watched the 9-11 Commission fail to answer the unanswered questions and concede to official suppression of information (5) ;

We have watched the leaders of the national security infrastructure richly rewarded for their failure to protect America on 9-11 (6);

We have noted the material ommissions of the corporate media (7);

Something does not add up.

Someone has something to hide.

"Cui Bono?"

"Cui Bono?" is Latin for "who benefits?"

Is there a connection between the rich flow of profit and market manipulations flowing from 9-11 and the stonewalling by the Administration and the agency members of the National Security Council?

Time has passed since September 11, 2001.

As new budgets are approved, financial statements published, laws passed, taxes cut and stocks go up, it is easier to identify who benefited politically and financially from 9-11.

As we map out the financial "real deal" on 9-11, we realize there are three categories of people benefiting.

Richly Guilty: The first category of people who benefited were those who are guilty and complicit in designing, implementing and financing the 9-11 operation.

On such a sophisticated and successful covert operation, the people responsible would have had budgets and financing and would have organized the operation to maximize their political and financial benefits.

This is the nature of economic warfare.

Richly Opportunistic: The second category of people who benefited were those who were opportunistic in taking advantage of 9-11 as an economic and political event as soon as it happened.

Some folks, such as money managers, are obligated as fiduciaries to be opportunistic.

Others, such as government officials, may be opportunistic at the cost of ignoring their fiduciary obligations.

As one retired banking executive said, "Let's face it, if the guys in Washington had been doing their job instead of helping their pals make money, 9-11 could never have happened."

Sustainably Naïve: The third category of people who benefited where those who shared in the political and economic profits generated by the first two categories.

Taking the position that, "money has no smell," the large number of people in this category are generally not cognizant of their complicity through the incentive system created by "voting with their money, time and attention."

Where to begin to determine the specifics of who benefited?

This is a significant task for private citizens who do not have the rich flow of investigatory, intelligence and enforcement resources of government.

Hence, a citizen led effort will need to break the task down into manageable collaborative pieces.

One way for global networks of researchers, blog authors and Internet media to start to build the "Cui Bono?" unanswered questions of 9-11 is to develop a framework that outlines the general areas of profiteering.

Top 20 Areas of 9-11 Profiteering

Here are my candidates for the top twenty profit flows resulting from or related to 9-11 and the response to 9-11:

**** # # # ****

Money Missing from the US Treasury

In fiscal 1999 and 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) reported $3.3 trillion of undocumentable adjustments in the process of failing to produce audited financial statements.

In the summer of 2001, the appropriations for DOD failed to report out of committee before the summer recess.

The political tension between arms manufacturers and defense contractors who anticipated pay back from the Bush election victory and those pressing for federal spending and financing to conform to spending and securities law was resolved by 9-11.

The questions remain – who has the $3.3 trillion plus missing from the US Treasury? what is the role of the NY Federal Reserve Bank and its members as depository for the US government and agent for the Exchange Stabilization Fund? and why are we proposing to cut back social security rather than getting these resources back?

Useful Link:

Where is the Money?
http://www.whereisthemoney.org

US Stock Market Pump & Dump Fraud

At the time of 9-11, federal and state enforcement leaders were facing a mountain of documentation that up to $6 trillion had been fraudulently skimmed out of pension funds and retail stock holdings through insider trading and other forms of corporate and banking financial fraud and securities law violations.

The events of 9-11 are alleged to have destroyed significant amounts of documentation related to investigations against Wall Street firms and leading New York Federal Reserve members.

Subsequent to 9-11, enforcement bureaucracies attention shifted in response to the Patriot Act and a shift in budgetary resources away from policing white collar crime by corporate and banking leadership.

Useful Links:

Le Metropole Cafe
http://www.lemetropolecafe.com

Sanders Research Associates
http://www.sandersresearch.com

Scoop Media
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason

From the Wilderness
http:///www.fromthewilderness.com

No More Fake News
http://www.nomorefakenews.com

Tom Flocco
http://www.tomflocco.com

Federal Credit Arbitrage & Relaxed Monetary Policy

Financial institutions who have access to the federal credit can use such credit to raise deposits and savings from citizens, paying little or no interest, and then lend it back to the citizens at much higher interest rates through financing the US Treasury, mortgage agency securities or in relaxed lending policies which charge relatively expensive interest and fees.

Hence, it is now a common fact pattern to find people in America earning 2% on their bank CD's while their neighbors are paying Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and the IRS 18% on their debt.

Subsequent to 9-11, these types of rich federal credit arbitrage profits appear to have skyrocketed as the facilitating ease in monetary policy was matched by extraordinary increases in government debt and easing in consumer debt policies and more industry favorable bankruptcy and lending laws.

In short, 9-11 appears to have been used by Greenspan and the NY Federal Reserve to promote the back door liquidation of middle class equity through federal credit arbitrage.

This kind of manipulation allows sophisticated financial institutions to "put" their losses back to the government and the citizens in a "heads we win, tails we win" economic model which is hard for the non-financially literate citizen to understand.

Useful Links:

Le Metropole Cafe
http://www.lemetropolecafe.com

Sanders Research Associates
http://www.sandersresearch.com

US Military and Policing Deployment Globally

With important air cover from 9-11 and the 9-11 response, the flow of government contracts and economic activity is diminishing throughout the United States.

That is because our military is being deployed abroad.

As these government contracts and related economic flows move to Eurasia, the private equity pump and dumps move from onshore to offshore.

Useful Links:

Centre for Research on Globalization
http://www.globalresearch.ca

From the Wilderness
http://www.fromthewilderness.com

UnAnswered Questions re: CSC DynCorp
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00158.htm

Eagle Eye
http://www.eagleeyeinc.com/

DynCorp wins $1.75 global policing contract to support
US Department of State $6 billion contact support for civilian policing missions
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040224/latu054_1.html

Scoop Media
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason

The American Tapeworm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00228.htm

Eurasian Oil & Gas/Afghanistan & Iraq War & Occupation

The 9-11 response has been used to justify increased military, political and covert support to ensure that American and European oil interests are protected in the Middle East and worldwide.

As part of the 9-11 response, the US has invaded and occupied two sovereign nations and, in the process, increased war profiteering, narcotics trafficking and organized crime flows in these areas.

Of particular concern is the necessity that the draft will be re-instituted after the Presidential election and global invasions will continue to subsidize the war profiteering business model.

This model is essentially one in which government pays all the expenses, the citizens give their lands, lives and limbs, and the economic benefits and private booty flow to a handful of private parties and their investors.

When viewed by age group, it is a war on the young by the old.

See links above.

Insurance Industry Legislation

After 9-11, the insurance industry won important legislation that shifts significant risk from private investors to citizens.

Useful Link:

Under New Bill, Taxpayers to Underwrite Insurance Losses
http://www.american-reporter.com/2,307/709.html

Airline & Other Special Legislation

Additional legislation and special benefits were provided to the airline industries as well as other corporate and banking interests.

Significant tax cuts would fit into this category.

Useful Link:

Tom Flocco
http://www.tomflocco.com
Increased National Security Appropriations

Budgets for the national security state increased across the board, including to support its control over domestic functions and to deploy globally both in space and on land.

Useful Link:

Sanders Research Associates
http://www.sandersresearch.com

Commodity & Financial Market Manipulations

While allegations of insider trading on 9-11 have circulated in the press, there has been little comment on the extent to which the 9-11 response supported continued manipulation by the NY Federal Reserve and its member banks, including through the US Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund, of the gold, silver, stock and other capital markets and the continued build up of private unregulated derivative positions.

Useful Links:

Le Metropole Cafe
http://www.lemetropolecafe.com

Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
http://www.gata.org

Is Silver Scandal on the Horizon?
http://www.insightmag.com/news/
2004/03/30/National/Is.Silver.Scandal.On.The.Horizon-632699.shtml

Fund Raising for Trusts & Endowments

While not-for-profits raised a tremendous amount of donations as a result of 9-11, where the money went is a question.

Was it used to respond to 9-11 or did it enrich endowments that were reinvested in corporate and bank stocks and the securities financing the profiteering?

Useful Link:

The Red Cross in the Cross Hairs?
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include...&storyid=117216

Privatization and Redevelopment of the WTC

The World Trade Center was sold by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with a transfer of mortgage shortly before 9-11.

Understanding the economics of these transfers, the controls and economics of the losses and the potential profits of the redevelopment are essential to understanding what has happened.

Also essential is understanding the various insurance and security company players who had access to the building and building specifications, information systems and archives and the law firms who represent them.

Useful Link:

Centre for Research on Globalization
http://www.globalresearch.ca

Airport & Building Security Contracts

The increase in airport and building security and the centralizing control of it's outsourcing has contributed significantly to the costs of these facilities, who controls the facilities, flow of traffic and data and the profits flowing to selective parties providing these services.

A look at the economics of the related insurance business and premiums is warranted.

Analysis of the average time to move through the facilities of corporate travelers and their luggage versus non-corporate travelers and their luggage and who controls that differential and the related data will be instructive.

Useful Links:

Kroll claims 10,000 building security assignments after 9-11
http://www.solariactionnetwork.com/phpBB2/...php?p=2321#2321

Suppression of the Florida Media Recount & Black Box Voting

US media canceled the announcement of their recount of the Florida presidential election as a result of 9-11.

Allegedly, this would have raised legitimate questions as to the Bush Administration's legitimacy.

After 9-11, the installation of computer voting systems for which there is no verifiable paper trail has accelerated.

This increases the chances that Florida type events will increase.

The companies doing the installation appear to be predominantly Republican owned and controlled.

Profits are generated both from installation of the system, as well from the benefits to those who can rig elections as a result.

For example, it is worth estimating the extent to which rigging the Florida election impacted who got how much 9-11 profits.

Useful Links:

Major Media Suppress Recount Study of Florida Vote
http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/54/MediaSupress.htm

Scoop Media's Black Box Voting Series
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

Patriot Act Consolidation of Banking & Money Laundering Market Share

The Patriot Act, available off the shelf at 9-11, was passed with little legislative access or discussion.

It authorized extraordinary control of financial cash flows and data about financial cash flows.

What is the value of controlling an estimated $500 billion- $1 trillion of annual US money laundering?

Retirement Benefit Privitization & Cutbacks

In the shift to a permanent war time economy, the alleged insolvency of the Pension Benefit Corporation, Social Security, the health care system and the credits behind the mortgage securities and other securitized consumer debt held in US pension funds and retirements savings has received short shrift financially and conversationally.

Corporate Media

It is essential to understand the impact of 9-11 and the 9-11 response to the market share and profits of corporate media and the linkages between investors in corporate media and in the corporations and banks that most benefited from the policies promoted by corporate media.

HAARP, Ocean, Space & Satellite Weaponry

Since 9-11, we have watched the role out of a significant amount of black budget technology.

The intimate militarization of all planetary air, land, water and oceans and space with electromagnetic, laser, sonar and other invisible weaponry implies a zero privacy world for all living things.

This is a world where our thoughts and feelings are not free of 24-7 interference and influence unless we wish to tunnel deep underground.

Perhaps that is why the black budget is financing so many underground facilities.

Useful Link:

Dr. Nick Beglich on HARRP
http://alberta.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/4519.php

Centre for Research on Globalization
http://www.globalresearch.ca

From the Wilderness
http://www.fromthewilderness.com

Law Firms

Always telling, a review of what law firms are representing the parties profiting in all the other categories will say a great deal.

Attorney client priveledge remains the primary railroad to protect the rich flow of organized crime profits behind national security law.

Lawyers are often the channel for political campaign contributions and political lobbying as well.

Useful Links:

Open Secrets
http://www.opensecrets.org

The American Lawyer Law 100
http://www.law.com/special/professionals/
amlaw/2003/amlaw100/amlaw_100main.html

9-11 and Enron

The crossover between the players involved in 9-11 profiteering and in Enron's rise, fall and clean-up are mystifying.

There are linkages here that can offer important clues if we analyze them as related economic flows.

One hypothesis is that Enron was being used by the NY Federal Reserve member banks as US Treasury depositories to launder some of the monies disappearing from the federal government.

Useful Link:

The Real Deal on Enron
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00031.htm

Promotions

Who has been promoted following 9-11?

The salaries, stock options, health care and other perks of the key players both private and public are well worth reviewing carefully.

Useful Link:

They Let it Happen on Purpose
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00068.htm

**** # # # ****

This list of twenty profit areas does does not include payments to the 9-11 victims or their families.

Such payments have been a remarkably effective tool to negate the political influence of the families, and should be viewed economically as an effective advertising expense relative to the total profit flows.

For example, the Republican convention is being held in New York this fall to concide with the 9-11 anniversary.

It is essential for this event that the 9-11 families are muted as an independent voice against 9-11 profiteering.

The potential failure to do so is a major Bush Administration political vulnerability.

Invitation to the "Cui Bono?" Conversation

One opportunity to build a better understanding of 9-11 will flow from an analysis of 9-11 profiteering.

As we understand the profit flows, we can then drill down to define the banks, companies, organizations and investors who benefited as well as the particular individuals in key leadership positions who profited personally.

In an ideal collaborative research effort, we would attempt to estimate the total financial profits and capital gains to the individuals who have enjoyed the greatest 9-11 benefits.

We would also attempt to ascertain patterns between these benefits.

For example, we would look at the flow of donations into the current political campaigns.

In addition, we would want to understand the shift of capital from the US to Asia to finance the outsourcing of US jobs, to finance the privatization of US government and assets at below market prices or above market contracts, and to park and enjoy the freedoms of offshore havens.

The Administration has something to hide.

Rather than lose time and resources getting lost in the White House fog, let's follow the alleged advice of one of the 9-11 Commissioners, Fred Fielding, thought to be the "deep throat" long ago who leaked the Watergate secrets while a Deputy White House Counsel:

"Follow the Money"

*************

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari in Hickory Valley, Tennessee.

Ms. Fitts is a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, and President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc.

Ms. Fitts is a member of the Advisory Board of Sanders Research in London, a founder of UnAnsweredQuestions.org and publishes The Real Deal, a column with Scoop Media in New Zealand.

*************

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STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us.

Wow. Quite a post here,Livyjr.

Follow the money.

Hard to do with so much lying and obfuscation by BushCorp. If only we had gotten RID of these guys, maybe, just maybe, we might have found some answers.

[quote=Livyjr,Feb 23 2005, 08:04 PM]
"The Real Deal: 9-11 Profiteering"

Monday, 22 March 2004, 4:52 pm

Column: http://www.UnansweredQuestions.org

originally published by Global Research at www.globalresearch.ca **
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What an article!!

Thanks for putting it up. Livyjr.

Somehow, we're not totally surprised by these revelations.

What does that say about the state of the union?

A.B.

I think what it says about the "union", Mr. A.B. is best summarized in some words posted in here by jeffmoskin a little while back about "as the size of the trough increases, there is room for more snouts; and so, more snouts will come to that extra space in the trough!"

And what a metaphor, if indeed that is a metaphor!

Having been trained as an engineer, of course, I am deficient in the more nuanced use of the English language, and so, I might mistake a simile for a metaphor, I never am quite sure, but as to the "trough", and the "snouts", whatever that saying of jeffmoskin's really was, it is on the money with me, for that is what OUR union has become, a great big trough full of swill, and these "money boys" are going to eat that trough clean, and then eat the trough itself, and we are going to have the privilege of paying for their feast.

That story about the skimming of the pension funds and such was actually a story up here in the corrupt State of New York, and so, I was aware of that, BEFORE 9-11; and therefore knew that something was going on, and therefore, the silence, ON THAT ISSUE, afterwards, is what caught my attention.

On the other hand, the short-selling, or "puts" on the airline stocks was printed out in California, for some reason, and I do not believe I ever saw or heard that particular news here on the east coast, and was in fact "put in touch" with that "puzzle piece" by someone in California who has been tracking that aspect, but was themselves unaware of the pension funds side of things.

And I find all of this to be quite interesting.

Now, of course, there are two or three million conspiracy theories floating around out there, and so, one has to do a lot of careful "wading" to separate wheat from chaff, so anyone picking the story up the day after 9-11 has a much harder time following things along than someone who was already monitoring events in the world the day before, such as I have been for some time now, just to have an idea about the world I live in, and where it might be going, as for the nonce, I am stuck on board, and so, like to know whether to grab a deck chair or a life vest at any given moment.

Dangerous assumptions, Mr. A.B., and jeffmoskin, as well; IT IS A DANGEROUS ASSUMPTION TO ASSUME KNOWLEDGE IS EITHER UNIVERSAL, OR UNIVERSALLY AVAILABLE!

Especially print news!

Every newspaper does not cover the same news, nor is everything of seeming national importance necessarily covered nationally, and we are the arbiters of that ourselves, IN HERE, just as newspaper editors are OUT THERE!

That is why I tend to bring the actual "news" itself into here, so that we are on the same page, and thus, are all pointing at the same words or the same phrase, when we talk back and forth to each other about what is going on OUT THERE, where we all are when we are not virtual in here.

In summary, 9-11 stinks to high heaven, and it has right from the moment those planes hit the Trade Center Towers!

It was all just a little bit too pat, too convenient for too many "big money" interests, and especially those under investigation for doing all this alleged skimming, as is mentioned in that article above.

It is interesting, when you go looking for information on that subject, how scarce any mention of it is, just as was the case with Kenny "BOY" Lay and Enron, the day after 9-11.

In fact, that is all myself and a few old timers up here kept talking about in the days after 9-11, was how 9-11 took the spotlight right clean off Kenny Boy and his relationship with George W. Bush, as if Enron had never happened!

The state of the union!

Poor, Mr. A.B., would be my prognosis, poor!

The day and age of the looters has re-arrived, here in OUR America!

Jay Gould redux!

And here, Mr. A.B., I have to say that the one "quality" that both you and jeffmoskin bring to this picnic, is your "outlook" on life, and politics, and history!

You have both sat by the side of the dam long enough now to know, and therefore not be excited or distracted by the fact that not the same amount of water is always flowing over it!

You both are "observers" of the human condition, and over time, you have become what I will call "expansive" in your outlook, which means that you have risen above provincialism, and being parochial!

Being expansive means that you have room in your minds to both assimilate new data, and to consider it, without it "blowing you clean away".

At the same time, you have both escaped, in large part anyway, having becoming jaded or cynical, which tend to close people's minds right on down to a pinpoint smaller than a DelMonte pea!

History IS PEOPLE!

Politics IS PEOPLE!

Therefore, whatever people have done, they just might do again, in a different place, or a different day and age, and that is where both you and jeffmoskin serve to bring balance into here, BECAUSE YOU BOTH KNOW THIS, and hence, you do not get so excited about the fact that a mosquito just landed on a dog's nose, and therefore might bite the dog.

You wait; you observe, because you know just as well that the dog might swat the mosquito, and end its biting days forever!

The give and take of life in motion, and here is some more of that right now, from up here in George Pataki's corrupt Empire State of New York, which to me, indicates the "state of the union" in spades:

"Hevesi warns of expanding budget gap - Comptroller says deficit could grow to twice the level forecast by Pataki"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, February 24, 2005

ALBANY -- Comptroller Alan Hevesi warned on Wednesday that Gov. George Pataki's budget hinges on risky proposals and predicted an exploding budget deficit if Pataki's spending cuts and fee proposals don't happen.

Saying he isn't siding with the Republican governor's $105.2 billion budget plan, Hevesi, a Democrat, said the gap between revenues and spending could grow to $11 billion during the two years ending March 31, 2008 if the Legislature rejects Pataki's cost containments and fee plans.

That estimate is more than twice the $5 billion hole Pataki has predicted through 2008.

With a $4.2 billion gap projected in the upcoming fiscal year, Pataki proposes to close it with a series of fee increases, new taxes on hospitals, permanent taxes on clothing sales and other revenue-raisers and cost containments.

Some of the plans are risky, Hevesi said, largely because it is uncertain the Legislature will go along.

Hevesi said Pataki's proposed budget ignored the cost of the Campaign For Fiscal Equity case, in which a judge has ruled that New York City schools should receive $1.4 billion more in funding next year, rising to $5.6 billion more annually in four years.

Pataki planned only $325 million more from "tenuous video lottery terminal revenues," Hevesi said.

"The governor's plan pushes far too many problems into the future, instead of providing solutions today," Hevesi wrote in his analysis of Pataki's plan.

He said the governor may have underestimated spending in some areas as well.

Hevesi also cautioned that several of Pataki's proposals to reduce spending or raise revenues, such as limiting Tuition Assistance Payments, have been strongly opposed by the Legislature in previous years.

Further, Pataki balances his budget by reducing the state's pension payments, something only Hevesi can allow as sole trustee of the pension system.

The plan, which calls for pension savings of $367 million, isn't legal, Hevesi said.

Pataki's pension restructuring would also save local governments $621 million.

Hevesi said health care funding could be short by more than $1 billion if the state isn't allowed to use $2.2 billion it has budgeted from the conversion of not-for-profit health insurers into for-profit companies that would sell stock.

The sum includes $1.8 billion held in trust pending the outcome of a suit opposing the Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield conversion, and $400 million the state hopes to gain from the proposed conversion of other not-for-profit insurers.

"Although the ... proposed budget is balanced, it contains an estimated $4.6 billion in financial plan risks," Hevesi said.

"We are pleased that the comptroller has determined that the executive budget is balanced," Pataki spokesman Scott Reiff said.

He said Hevesi is on target by projecting bigger gaps without what Pataki's office calls "sensible reforms."

Hevesi also noted that Medicaid funds from Washington may decrease by $7.6 billion over the next 10 years.

Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for Hevesi, said the estimate is based on an editorial in the Elmira Star Gazette.

Reiff said the Division of Budget could not respond to Hevesi's calculations and Pataki told reporters he was unable to discuss the report not having read it.

The comptroller called for the fiscal year to be moved to July 1 from April 1 so that better data would be available for budgeting.