And speaking of the whacky, zany world of politics .....

Here in what has become ....

The BIZARRO-WORLD of George W. Bush ....

And his pack of NEW CONS ....

And other asssorted HUCKSTERS .....

Where LIES are the only truth that can be told ...

And the TRUTH .....

IS A TOP GUMMINT SECRET .....

We have from George W. Bush's corrupt REPUBLICAN PARTY as follows ....

"Stretching the truth - One of Sen. Clinton's Republican rivals turns out to be less than what she claimed to be"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Kathleen Troia McFarland was probably in over her head in her campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat all along, even before there was reason to think she had fudged her resume and made some other odd statements.

Only now, with The New York Times reporting that she exaggerated her role as a Defense Department official during the Reagan administration, there's cause for wondering if Mrs. McFarland's candidacy isn't doomed already.

The credentials she cites, like being one of the authors of President Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech, would be of marginal value even if they were indisputably true.

The damage that comes with suggestions that she exaggerated, however, could be devastating.

Yes, Mrs. McFarland worked on that speech on national security policy.

But she had no role in the part that so many people still remember.

It was Mr. Reagan himself, along with a few top national security advisers, who proposed the lunacy of an anti-ballistic missile program that instantly became known, much to the White House's annoyance at the time, as "Star Wars."

Suddenly, John Spencer, Mrs. McFarland's rival for the Republican nomination, looks pretty good by comparison.

There's no disputing that he was once the mayor of Yonkers.

Why do politicians do this?

A bold enough exaggeration is tantamount to dishonesty, after all, the least desirable trait imaginable.

It's also an invitation, almost pleadingly so, to get caught.

It was in an uphill Senate campaign in 1982, for instance, that a candidate named Bruce Caputo had to abandon his quest to unseat Daniel Patrick Moynihan when it came out that he wasn't the combat veteran of the Vietnam war he claimed to be.

Five years later, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware had to give up an otherwise promising campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination when he turned out to have a far worse problem with speeches than Mrs. McFarland does.

Mr. Biden was cribbing the words of Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader at the time.

Even jokes can be an issue.

The big story in the New York Post last Saturday had Mrs. McFarland claiming that the Clinton campaign was spying on her.

Of course, Mrs. McFarland hastens to add, she isn't serious, even if Mr. Spencer heard her say all this and thought she meant it.

Heavens, Mrs. McFarland, you don't want a campaign resume, real or embellished, that smacks of Ross Perot, when he made similar accusations while running for president in 1992.

As for the spying, it would have to be a joke, however lame, we'd think.

Why would Mrs. Clinton eavesdrop on such a troubled campaign?

end quotes

Why do politicians lie ...

Well ..

Because it is what people have come to expect from them ....

And it really hasn't done George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or "CON-JOB CONNIE" Rice much harm .....

All their lying, that is ....

And so ...

When the LEADER of the nation promotes outright lying as the centerpiece of his adminstration .....

Why should his underlings and lackeys and such worry about telling the truth?

Afterall, the truth is a TOP GUMMINT SECRET .....

That we, the people, are totally incapable of handling ...

And so ...

The best way to protect us ...

From that truth ....

Is to tell us a bunch of lies ....

And to then give us a nice pat on the head ...

While sticking our thumbs back in our mouths ...

And so ...

Good morning, jeffmoskin .....

By the way ....

Out there in the haute couture world of California ....

Is it considered gauche .....

To serve a chilled white wine ...

With coyote .....

I mean ...

Well .....

Should it be a Beaujolais ....

Or am I getting too LIBERAL in here .....

Because back here ....

Coyotes are served up ...

By the CONSERVATIVES ....

With just a pitcher of beer ...

Or a jug of Ripple ...

And so ....

I like a nice Chardonnay with coyote fritters. I feel that a red wine is a little too heavy. You wouldn't want to mask the subtle flavor of the coyote.

Ah, yes ...

Nuance ....

And sublety .....

So important .....

And it seems that this coyote in New York City ....

Well, the "talk" now is ...

That it was in from somewhere around Perth Amboy, New Jersey ....

Or somewhere down there, anyway ....

And it was supposedly involved in "gang-related" activity .....

Although there is further talk ...

That George Pataki ....

The REPUBLICAN governor of New York ..,

Well ..

It is said ...

That he thinks ...

This coyote could be aligned .....

With al-Qaida ....

Although Pataki generally thinks everything is "aligned" with al-Qaida ...

And so ....

Anyway .....

Apparently, this coyote got all kinds of small dogs down there ...

Very tense ...

And so ...

The "Dog Psychologists" in New York City ....

Are themselves apparently being severely overloaded ....

Doing "grief counseling" for all these traumatized poodles and such ....

So that they are going to need counseling themselves ...

And so ...

WHERE WILL IT EVER STOP?

Is the world going crazy?

Or what?

If you have a clue, jeffmoskin ....

Please ...

For the sake of NATIONAL SECURITY ....

Keep it to yourself ...

And don't let anyone know ...

That you know ...

And so ....

You'll then be considered to be ...

A "GOOD AMERICAN" ....

And so ....

And speaking of the world going crazy ....

And "law and order" in OUR America ....

Going "up in smoke" ....

In this day and age of .....

George W. Bush .....

We have ....

"Crazy cat in Conn. ambushes the Avon lady"

Associated Press
Last updated: 6:25 p.m., Tuesday, March 28, 2006

FAIRFIELD, Conn. -- Residents of the neighborhood of Sunset Circle say they have been terrorized by a crazy cat named Lewis.

Lewis for his part has been uniquely cited, personally issued a restraining order by the town's animal control officer.

"He looks like Felix the Cat and has six toes on each foot, each with a long claw," Janet Kettman, a neighbor said Monday.

"They are formidable weapons."

The neighbors said those weapons, along with catlike stealth, have allowed Lewis to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush the Avon lady as she was getting out of her car.

Some of those who were bitten and scratched ended up seeking treatment at area hospitals.

Animal Control Officer Rachel Solveira placed a restraining order on him.

It was the first time such an action was taken against a cat in Fairfield.

In effect, Lewis is under house arrest, forbidden to leave his home.

Solveira also arrested the cat's owner, Ruth Cisero, charging her with failing to comply with the restraining order and reckless endangerment.

------

Information from: Connecticut Post, http://www.connpost.com

Well, of course it is a "matter of perception", Colonel ....

Yours ...

Versus the world's ....

And so ....

"Shiites shun talks after disputed raid - U.S. military leaders insist mosque was not attacked in Baghdad"

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press
First published: Tuesday, March 28, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Shiite politicians raged at the United States and halted negotiations on a new government Monday after a military assault killed at least 16 people in what Iraqis claim was a mosque.

Fresh violence erupted in the north, with 40 killed in a suicide bombing east of Tal Afar.

There were numerous conflicting statements from Iraqis and the Americans about Sunday's raid in northeast Baghdad.

Iraqi police, Shiite militia officials and major politicians have all said the structure attacked was the al-Mustafa mosque.

But the U.S. military disputed this, saying no mosques were entered and that the raid targeted a building used by "insurgents responsible for kidnapping and execution activities."

In a conference call with reporters early today, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, deputy commander in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. J.D. Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is in control of Baghdad, said 25 U.S. forces were in a backup role to 50 Iraqi Special Operations troops.

The mission, the generals said, was developed by the Iraqis on their intelligence that an Iraqi dental technician, kidnapped 12 hours earlier because he could not come up with $20,000, was being held in what they called an office complex.

"It's important to remember we had an Iraqi unit with us, an Iraqi unit of 50 folks and they told us point blank that this was not a mosque," Chiarelli said.

"It's not Mustafa mosque."

"Mustafa mosque is located six blocks north on our maps of this location."

Associated Press reporters who visited the scene of the raid identified it as a neighborhood Shiite mosque complex.

An earlier military statement said gunmen opened fire as Iraqi special operations troops closed in.

It said the troops then killed 16 insurgents and wounded three "during a house-to-house search," detained 18 men, found a significant weapons cache and freed the hostage.

"In our observation of the place and the activities that were going on, it's difficult for us to consider this a place of prayer," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman.

For their part, Iraqi police said gunmen fired on the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol from a position in the neighborhood but not from the mosque.

Police and representatives of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who holds great sway among poor Shiites in eastern Baghdad, said all those killed were in the complex for evening prayers and none was a gunman.

Police put the death toll at 17 -- seven members of al-Sadr's militia, seven civilians and three Shiite political activists.

The United Iraqi Alliance, the largest Shiite bloc in parliament, canceled Monday's session of negotiations to form a new government because of the raid, said lawmaker Jawad al-Maliki.

The Baghdad governor said he cut ties with U.S. forces and diplomats.

And all 37 members of the Baghdad provincial council suspended cooperation with the United States in reconstruction projects.

Documents on the Web

The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet.

All the documents are available on http://fmso.leavenworth.army .mil/products-docex.htm.

The documents' value is uncertain, some analysts said.

Why would the Iraqis need the Russians to tell them about what George W. Bush was going to do in IRAQINAM?

Before the actual invasion, George W. Bush was running his mouth so much .....

That a dead man would have known what was coming ...

And so ....

Leave off with the cheap theatrics, please, Ms. "CON-JOB" .....

For we have had one CON JOB too many from you already ...

And so ....

"Rice Asks Russians to Probe Spying Reports"

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer

1 hour, 9 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday she had asked her Russian counterpart for an investigation into a report that Russian intelligence fed U.S. battle plans to Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I have talked with the Russian foreign minister and asked them to look into this and to take it very seriously," Rice said.

At the same time, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raised the possibility that the allegation of Russian collusion might be "disinformation," which in military parlance could mean that American commanders had sought to spread false information about battle strategy in order to deceive Saddam about actual troop movements.

The allegation first became public last Friday with the release of a 210-page Pentagon report on how Saddam's government viewed the U.S. invasion.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said he was briefed extensively on the report months ago, said Tuesday he was not aware of the allegation against the Russians until last Friday.

"It merits looking into," he said.

Rumsfeld declined to say whether he thought there should be a U.S. investigation into whether someone inside the U.S. military gave classified information to the Russians, as is suggested in the report.

"I'd have to go back and read it carefully and see what credence one ought to give to it, and see what we may have discovered through other channels, and then make a decision," Rumsfeld said.

Rice, testifying at a Senate hearing, said, "We take very seriously any implication that someone might have been passing information that endangered the operation at the outset of the war, and we will look for an answer back from the Russian government."

Rice and other U.S. officials made no direct accusations against Russia, whose government has an increasingly prickly and complicated relationship with the United States.

"We've wanted not to conclude before we've had the discussion, but it's obviously a very serious matter and we're taking it up with the Russians," Rice said.

She placed a telephone call Tuesday to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to ask for an investigation, said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

Russian officials have said the allegation is false, and Lavrov has called it politically motivated.

The Russian government strongly opposed the U.S. invasion.

Pace, in his first public comments on the idea of Russian help to Saddam, expressed a degree of doubt about the veracity of the information as presented in a Joint Forces Command report.

The report cited two Iraqi documents captured during the early days of the invasion — one of which said the Russian ambassador in Baghdad had passed sensitive information about U.S. battle plans to Saddam.

The other document said Russian intelligence had obtained information from "sources" inside U.S. Central Command's war-fighting headquarters hear Doha, Qatar, and passed it to Iraqi officials.

"We still don't know whether or not the translation itself is 100 percent accurate," Pace said.

"We don't know if this is real information or disinformation."

"There's all kinds of pieces of this that need to be looked into."

The authors of the report, who briefed reporters on its details last Friday, said they saw no reason to doubt the authenticity of the information relating to alleged Russian collusion.

In at least one case, the report suggests that the information provided by the Russians did more harm than good for Saddam.

In fact it may have reinforced in Saddam's mind a mistaken impression about the timing of the U.S. ground assault into Baghdad — an impression that permitted U.S. forces to preserve an element of surprise.

Referring to a Russian letter to Saddam that claimed the Russians had "sources" inside the U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon report said, "Such external sources of information were only one of the fog-generators obscuring the minds of Iraq's senior leadership."

That letter was dated March 24, five days into the war.

On the other hand, the Russians also reportedly told Saddam that the main focus of U.S. ground forces moving toward Baghdad from the southwest was the area around the city of Karbala.

This was true.

After crossing a bridge over the Euphrates River outside of Karbala, the 3rd Infantry Division had a clear path to the Iraqi capital.
___

AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.
___

On the Net:

State Department: http://www.state.gov

Pentagon: http://defenselink.mil

"U.S., Iraqi forces attack rebel cleric's followers - At least 16 killed; al-Sadr's aides say the dead were innocent people in mosque"

By JONATHAN FINER and JOHN WARD ANDERSON, Washington Post
First published: Monday, March 27, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. and Iraqi Special Forces killed at least 16 followers of fiery Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in a twilight assault Sunday on what the military said was a "terrorist cell" responsible for attacks on soldiers and civilians.

No U.S. or Iraqi troops were killed in the clash, which occurred in the predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad, according to a U.S. military statement late Sunday.

One Iraqi soldier was wounded and 15 people were detained.

An unidentified hostage was found at the site, the statement said, along with materials used to fashion homemade bombs.

Aides to al-Sadr, who is backed by one of the country's largest and most feared militias, said those killed were innocents praying in the Mustaffa mosque in the Shaab neighborhood, well north of Adhamiya, when the assault began at 6 p.m.

But the U.S. military said in a statement that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

It was impossible to verify precisely where the raid took place because of a government-imposed curfew that begins at 8 p.m., hours before news of the incident broke.

The killings further inflamed an already capricious political climate as Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a new government amid mounting sectarian violence.

An outspoken and volatile opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq, al-Sadr has grown into a potent political force with more than 30 loyal members of Iraq's new parliament.

The incident Sunday was his deadliest encounter with U.S. and Iraqi forces since his Mahdi Army militia waged two violent uprisings in 2004.

"I think we are going to have a firm stance against the American forces because of this crime," said Salam Al-Maliki, the country's transportation minister and a close al-Sadr ally, appearing on Al-Iraqiya television, which aired footage throughout the night of bloody bodies on a concrete floor, lit with glow sticks by men who wrapped them in blankets and carried them away.

Al-Maliki blamed the incident on American ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has accused the Mahdi Army of carrying out a slew of recent killings in the wake of the bombing last month of a revered Shiite mosque north of Baghdad.

In a statement read by a government spokesman on Iraqiya television, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called for calm and said that he had spoken about the incident with Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who al-Jaafari said had "promised to investigate."

"We call upon the sons of our people to be aware of what is being plotted against the country," al-Jaafari said.

"We hope that they will enjoy patience till the conclusion of the ongoing, immediate investigations."

An aide to al-Jaafari, who was endorsed by al-Sadr's political wing to retain his job in the next government but is opposed by other Iraqi factions, said the government was not notified about the raid in advance.

"The incident has injured the whole political process," said the aide, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, referring to the deliberations about the makeup of the next government that have deadlocked since the country's elections in December.

"Some leaders will be dismayed of this situation and hesitate to participate knowing that such an incident took place and how the government was not aware."

"We need to sort of calm down the situation now."

The clash in the Iraqi capital was one of several incidents with potentially far-reaching political ramifications occurring Sunday.

Also in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed an Interior Ministry detention facility and found 17 foreign prisoners.

Wire services reported that as many as 40 police were detained in the operation.

Elsewhere in Iraq, army and medical officials in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad said 30 headless bodies were discovered in a deserted brush area 35 miles from the capital.

Meanwhile, in an incident apparently unrelated to the clashes involving his followers in Baghdad, al-Sadr escaped injury when two mortar shells struck near his Najaf home while he was inside.

Other developments

The White House will ask Russia about a report that Moscow turned over information on American troop movements and other military plans to Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

A confidential memo by a top British foreign policy official that was reviewed by The New York Times says that during a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, President Bush made it clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second U.N. resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons.

Well ...

Of course ...

That is not really true .....

New York State Attorney General Eliot "Big EL" Spitzer certainly has managed to get his name plastered all over the place as the "White Knight on Broadway" ...

Or some such crap as that ...

For taking on a small part of the corruption on Wall Street ....

In New York City ....

BUT ....

When it comes to GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION ....

"Big EL", or the "Elster", as he is affectionately known down there in the HALLS OF POWER in Albany, New York ....

Well, old "Oncle Eliot" ....

Why, he is just soft as anything on GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION ...

And so ....

That makes him popular with the MACHINE ...

Which is fueled by corruption ....

BUT ....

Unpopular with the handful of New Yorkers ....

Who are simply damn sick and tired of GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION ...

Here in OUR America ....

However .....

Since CORRUPTION rules the roost ....

"Upstate Democrats blast Suozzi campaigning - Spitzer allies claim Long Islander's phone calls show favoritism"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, March 29, 2006

ALBANY -- Gubernatorial hopeful Tom Suozzi drew fire Tuesday from allies of his opponent, who said a recorded phone call the Nassau County executive sent to thousands of Long Island Democrats showed he cares more about that region than the rest of New York.

Suozzi, a Democrat challenging state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the party's gubernatorial front-runner, started the call that went out Sunday and Monday nights with a familiar mantra -- "The biggest issue we face here on Long Island" is high local and school property taxes.

Later, Suozzi said: "Long Island needs a Long Island governor who has the independence and record of government reform to stand up to the insider politicians, shake things up and fix Albany."

That didn't sit well with Erie County Democratic Chairman Leonard Lenihan.

"When you're running statewide, you should present yourself as someone who cares about the whole state," said Lenihan, who was one of the first Democratic leaders to endorse Spitzer for governor.

Suozzi's campaign manager Kim Devlin responded the county executive "thinks everyone needs a Long Island governor, because a Long Islander, Tom Suozzi, is the only Democratic candidate who is a proven government reformer and chief executive, and has the independence and record to shake things up and fix Albany."

Assemblyman Paul Tokasz, D-Buffalo, another longtime Spitzer supporter, said he found Suozzi's call "troubling" and "a myopic view of the state."

Tokasz went so far as to suggest Suozzi had slighted upstate, much in the same way then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch did during the 1982 governor's race when he called upstate life "sterile" and "a joke."

Koch's comments became a liability, and he lost to Mario Cuomo in a Democratic gubernatorial primary that year.

Spitzer's Republican opponents have suggested Spitzer also has slighted upstate New York.

Earlier this month, the attorney general remarked that upstate is so economically depressed in some areas it "looks like Appalachia."

Suozzi ended his pre-recorded telephone call by asking listeners to press "1" if they "think Long Island needs a Long Island governor" and planned to support him, "2" if they weren't sure and "3" if they're backing someone else.

Suozzi has been trailing far behind Spitzer in fundraising and opinion polls.

A recent Newsday/NY1 poll showed Suozzi losing to Spitzer among Democrats in his home county of Nassau and in Suffolk County.

Elizabeth Benjamin can be reached at 454-5081 or by e-mail at ebenjamin@timesunion.com.

And with respect to New York State Attorney General Eliot "Big EL" Spitzer ....

Old "Oncle Eliot" ....

Way back when, in the opening days of this forum, right after the November 2004 elections, to be exact, I was reading a book entitled "The Power of Many" by Christian Crumlish, who himself had experience with the use of the internet as a real professional "tool" for communications among separate and disparate groups of people in the world during the Dean Campaign, and a point he made to me in that book was that on the internet, where none of us are in any sense of the word "real", i.e.: having discernable physical features that can be "read" by another, IT WILL BE HOW WE TREAT OUR SUBJECT MATTER, that we will be judged in here, and so ....

Everyone has a viewpoint!

And so ....

With respect to "Big EL" ....

Here is mine .....

Succinctly stated for the candid world to see in this e-mail letter from myself to Senator John Kerry sometime around the time of the Democratic National Convention .....

Just before the 2004 presidential elections ....

Dear Mr. Kerry:

I am an honorably-discharged, twice-wounded, fully disabled Viet Nam war veteran who is a life member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the D.A.V., the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Tri-County Viet Nam Veterans in the Albany, New York area.

In that capacity, as an honorably-discharged, fully disabled Viet Nam combat veteran, I am asking you personally on behalf of all other disabled veterans in this area of the State of New York who must rely upon the integrity of the medical health and public health fields in the State of New York to not allow New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer an opportunity to speak at the podium of the Democratic National Convention on the grounds that he is pandering to partisan political interests in the State of New York by countencing blatant acts of discrimination against a disabled veteran in the State of New York who has been working to expose corruption in county government in the capital district area of State of New York.

Presently, Mr. Kerry, as this appeal is being written to you personally in this community forum, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is actively engaged in defending in Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York what can only be termed blatant acts of discrimination and retaliation against this disabled Viet Nam veteran in New York State by Republicans in the State of New York who wish to permanently suppress this individual and his testimony to the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning Hobbs Act corruption involving Republicans in the Capital District area of the State of New York.

To stifle that testimony and evidence, in August of 2001, in the weeks before 9-11, as the record shows, this disabled veteran was the victim of what has become known in the Albany, New York area of the State of New York, as a "psychiatric takedown".

A "psychiatric takedown" is a defensive political manuver by which the Republicans in the capital district area of New York State have a witness against them removed by the vehicle of having a "pet doctor" sign a psychiatric arrest warrant for the individual which directs the New York State Police to take the individual into custody and transport them to the secure mental health facility of a local hospital, for psychiatric "care and treatment".

In this manner, the witness is removed, their crediblity is destroyed and their effectiveness as professional witnesses on behalf of the public health of the community is robbed forever.

In this case, the victim, in addition to being a disabled veteran, was also the local public health engineer, who had previously been commended in writing for his integrity by the New York State Health Commissioner.

In March of 1989, based upon an investigation conducted by this local public health engineer, the State Health Commissioner, a well-respected medical doctor named David Axelrod, declared that the public health and environment in our county was threatened by an inordinate amount of sewage system failures which were the legacy of ten years worth of negligence in the Environmental Health Division of the State Health Department itself.

A March 1989 Federal Bureau of Investigation report confirmed these findings by Dr. Axelrod, and further noted that the Republicans in charge of the county had no intention of cleaning up the corruption, and that to cover matters over after the Axelrod Report, the Republicans had removed the public health engineer from his position on grounds that his Viet Nam combat service had rendered him a threat to society.

Thus, ten years of corruption in the environmental health programs of the state public health services in the Capital District area of the State of New York was covered over as if it had never existed, and thus, has flourished up until this time.

In August of 2001, to prevent this same individual from coming forth with videotape evidence demonstrating that these corrupt public health practices have flourished to this day in the capital district area of the State of New York, the Republicans attempted a "pshchiatric takedown", and the result has been disastrous for this individual personally, and all fully disabled veterans who would rely upon this individual for his integrity and expertise in the public health field to boot.

Presently, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, by and through his New York State Department of Law, is defending the actions of a New York State Veterans' Service officer who made alleged false statements to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York in connection with the false arrest of this honorably-discharged, decorated veteran on mental health grounds.

Because of those false statements, which are still being defended by Eliot Spitzer at this time in the State of New York, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary in his possession, including a graphic videotape portrayal of a violent physical assault on this individual intended to deter him from appearing in court in connection with the matter, this disabled veteran has been branded in the State of New York as a dangerous mental patient with no opportunity afforded him whatsoever at due process to either confront or combat this theft of this person's real identity as an honorable professional person of good standing in the community.

In the face of all of this, which is known to the veterans' community in capital district area of the State of New York, to then allow Eliot Spitzer to stand up at your side and speak at the Democratic National Convention would be an abomination, a travesty, as far as the protection of the rights of the disabled to equal protection of law goes, and well as the public health protection of the disabled veteran population of the State of New York.

For the disabled veterans population of this area, from a civil rights and equal protection of law for the disabled perspective, having Eliot Spitzer standing by your side at the Democratic National Convention would be just like having George W. Bush or George Pataki themselves standing there.

It would make a mockery of all of your promises to the disabled veterans of America to help us have dignity in our own communities, despite our combat-related disabilities, equal to that enjoyed by Max Cleland in his own community in the United States.

Help us prove to America that despite our disabilities, which are often disfiguring, or totally disabling as far as being effective in modern society, that disabled combat veterans are citizens of America too, and that despite our disabilities, we deserve the protection of law in America too.

Help us make this point by keeping Eliot Spitzer off the podium at the DNC.

Thank you on behalf of the disabled veterans of the Capital District area of the State of New York in the United States of America for considering this request.

I remain, sincerely and respectfully, a patriotic disabled American veteran.

Livyjr

Thursday, July 29, 2004:

"New Yorkers make do in off-peak slots"

by Elizabeth Benjamin, Albany, New York Times Union:

Why some New Yorkers received coveted speaking roles while others remained on the sidelines was something of a mystery.

Meanwhile, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who built a national reputation fighting Wall Street corruption and flew to Mexico to endorse Kerry when President Bush's campaign attacked Kerry for his ties to "special interests", wasn't tapped to speak.

This fact caused a brief uproar when it was reported that Schumer used his clout to block the attorney general from speaking, the political explanation being that the two are considered possible rivals for the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Schumer has insisted he had nothing to do with Spitzer's absence behind the podium.

Friday, December 12, 2003

"Fund-raiser nets Spitzer $2 million - luncheon for likely gubernatorial candidate attracts hedge fund managers, lawyers"

by Matthew Cox, Bloomberg News:

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer collected more than $2 million at a political fund-raiser, with hedge fund managers and lawyers among the big donors, and said HE COULD ACCEPT CAMPAIGN FUNDS FROM THE INVESTMENT COMMUNITY WITHOUT COMPROMISING HIS ENFORCEMENT ROLE.

Spitzer, the leader of investigations into Wall Street conflicts of interest and mutual fund trading, has said he is interested in running for governor in 2006.

Though he hasn't officially declared his candidacy, Thursday's fund-raiser was Spitzer's biggest ever.

His investigations of "certain aspects of the securities market doesn't mean there can't be or shouldn't be contributions from anybody within that sector, any more than it would mean because we bring consumer-type cases, no consumer manufacturer could contribute," Spitzer told reporters.

He said his campaign committee has "a very careful vetting process" to avoid accepting gifts from donors under scrutiny by his office.

A Spitzer campaign aide who declined to be identified said HEDGE FUNDS, LAWYERS AND THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY were among his LEADING SOURCES of campaign MONEY.

The luncheon at the Sheraton New York Hotel drew hedge fund manager Daniel Nir of Gracie Capital LP, who with his wife, Jill Braufman, donated $50,000 in June; Cablevision President James Dolan; Miramax Film Corp. co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, and Melvyn Weiss, one of several lawyer donors who has sued securities firms for investors based on Spitzer's investigations.

"There are a lot of hedge funds that have not been trading the way the naughty ones have," said Roy Smith, a professor of finance at New York University.

"THEY WOULD LOVE TO HAVE MR. SPITZER INVESTIGATE ALL THEIR COMPETITION that's been too aggressive."

Spitzer's investigative work "gives investors a sense that someone's keeping an eye on what's in their best interest," said donor George Fox, founder of Titan Advisors, a hedge fund consultant.

Cynthia Darrison, managing director of the Spitzer campaign committee, said that the event attended by nearly 700 people generated more than $2 million.

"This is meant as a preemptive strike" with 35 months to go until the election, said Douglas Muzzio, professor of public affairs at Baruch College in New York.

"He's saying 'I can raise huge amounts of money.'"

end quotes

Yes ....

He certainly can ......

But by "selling" what?

Or "who", perhaps?

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8777

March 29, 2006
Fasten Your Seat Belt
The war in Iraq is about to escalate
by Justin Raimondo
With the American raid on the Mustafa mosque, the occupation of Iraq is rapidly reaching a point at which it is no longer tenable: as the Shi'ite giant awakens, the country is about to become a battleground in a much larger war, one that will envelop much of the Middle East.

The raid has provoked outrage, not from our ostensible enemies – the Sunni-led insurgency, al-Qaeda, and the rest – but from our supposed allies, the elected government whose installation was hailed by George W. Bush only a few months ago as the epitome of his much-touted "global democratic revolution." Abd al-Karim al-Enzi, the security minister, gave this account:

"At evening prayers, American soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops raided the Mustafa mosque and killed 37 people. They [the victims] were unarmed. They went in, tied up the people, and shot them all. They did not leave any wounded."

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr denounced the killings:

"Entering the mosque and killing worshippers was a horrible violation. Innocent people inside offering prayer at sunset were killed."

The governor of Baghdad, Hussein Tahan, announced:

"The Baghdad provincial council has decided to stop dealings in regards to services and politics with the coalition forces because of the cowardly attack on the mosque."

While all these officials belong to various Shi'ite parties – Da'wa, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), etc. – they are united in their outrage at the American aggression and wanton murder on a holy site. Iraqi state television ran shocking footage of the bodies piled on the ground and described the scene as a massacre: only later did they give an American official airtime to dismiss the charges as just "rumors."

There is, naturally enough, much dispute as to what actually happened: the Americans say they were fired upon first, and that the mosque was a base used by the Shi'ite militia to store weapons and hold hostages, while the Iraqis say the murdered were unarmed and simply praying. The Americans are now claiming the Iraqis "staged" the massacre and moved the bodies to make it look like unarmed worshippers were set upon and wantonly killed.

Whatever the truth of the matter, this much is clear: the Americans have crossed the Rubicon, and are in for a head-on collision with the Shi'ite majority, the very forces their invasion and occupation have brought to power. The volatility of this incident is ramped up by its context: a looming political confrontation between U.S. officials and the Shi'ite Alliance, which has a majority in the newly elected parliament. The Americans are not too keen on having the Da'wa Party's Ibrahim Jaafari installed as prime minister, and have been bringing pressure on the coalition to find someone else. But the Shi'ites must have been listening to President Bush's many speeches about the wonders of capital-D Democracy, because they have insisted on keeping Jaafari, and, what's more, have defied the Americans' preference for a decentralized political structure, much to the chagrin of the Kurds.

The Americans, it seems, are turning on their one-time allies and launching a two-front war against both the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. This seems like a military strategy straight out of the Bizarro World version of Clausewitz. It makes no sense – unless, that is, the Americans are planning on extending the war into Iran.

They have certainly set the stage, on the diplomatic front, with a full-scale assault on Tehran's nuclear ambitions in the UN. On the political front, they are accusing the Iranians of interfering in Iraq's internal affairs – an odd charge, coming from the overseers of a military occupation – and of sending arms to their Iraqi proxies.

The big problem for the Americans, however, is that these proxies constitute the elected government of Iraq, which was supposed to be a model for the entire region to follow. Did American soldiers fight and die – to say nothing of the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis – so that we could declare Iraq's fledgling democracy a spoke in the Axis of Evil?

This policy pivot will prove bewildering to the American people, who have been told that our big enemy in Iraq is Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, but only for a little while. The situation will clarify itself as the new enemy – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – takes the place of the old Ba'athist bogeyman, embodied by Saddam Hussein. Now that Saddam is safely stowed away in a prison cell awaiting rough justice, and his alleged "weapons of mass destruction" have dissolved like desert mirages, we'll be served up images of the mad mullahs of Tehran wielding nukes. That these nukes – which are 10 years away, in any event – will be aimed at Tel Aviv, and not Toledo, matters little, at least to American policymakers. As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out in a pathbreaking paper [.pdf] published by Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, our governing classes consistently favor the former while ignoring the clear interests of the latter.

The battle will not be joined all at once, however: don't expect a full-scale frontal assault on Iran any time soon. The struggle will break out between Iranian proxies – the Shi'ite party militias, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian-backed factions based in Syria – and the U.S. and its allies in the region, including not only the Israelis but also the Kurds and the Christian Lebanese factions.

Eric Haney, a founding member of Delta Force, the U.S. military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit, and author of Inside Delta Force, succinctly summed up where we are in a recent interview. Asked his assessment of the war in Iraq, he averred:

"Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. [Army Gen.] Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and … pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward. We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies."

The great mystery of how and why we got ourselves bogged down in this quagmire is going to provide scholars, and quite possibly the law enforcement community, with enough to do for quite some time. There are two ways to look at this question: if we accept the official version, then our invasion of Iraq based on the "certainty" that Saddam possessed WMD, and otherwise represented a direct threat to us and to his neighbors, was the consequence of a massive failure in our intelligence-gathering and evaluation procedures. And of course we couldn't have known that the invasion, conquest, and military occupation of the country would spark a persistent guerrilla resistance – could we? After all, it's not like anybody in the top echelons of military intelligence and policymaking circles knows any history, and as for having common sense – well, let's not go there.

The other, unofficial, version – and the one I wholeheartedly endorse – is this: the U.S. knew perfectly well what it was doing when it charged into Iraq, guns blazing. They knew the Sunnis and Shi'ites would soon be at each other's throats, they anticipated the insurgency and the depth of Iranian influence in post-war Iraq, and their attitude toward all this was expressed by none other than the president, albeit inadvertently, when he infamously bellowed: "Bring it on!"

Well, now it has been brought on, and in spades – and that's just what the neoconservatives in the administration were hoping for. Phase two of their war to "liberate" the Middle East is about to begin – and it promises to be far bloodier, and to encompass a much bigger battlefield, than the initial stage of what Haney calls the third world war.

Actually, the proponents of launching this twilight struggle call it "World War IV," as Norman Podhoretz and his fellow neocons would have it. World War III was the Cold War, which they wanted to turn hot, and the fourth, they hope, will be a "war of civilizations" – which, in their view, is already in progress.

Whether that is just wishful thinking on their part, or a horrific reality, we will see in the next few months. As American forces begin to take on the Shi'ites in Iraq, and Iran is drawn into the conflict, this new turn – as I predicted here, and quite a while ago here – could not be more ominous. If you thought the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a major military production, with more shock and awe than anyone was prepared to withstand, then wait until you get a gander at what's coming next. All I can say is: fasten your seat belts, because it's going to be a very bumpy ride.

A bumpy ride, indeed ....

It's going to be like a bucking bronco .....

Hang on tight ....

Or get bucked off in the dust ....

And so ....

Well, Snuf .....

The sun is out up here where I am ...

And the days are getting longer ...

And so ....

I am getting back here to the computer later and later each night it seems ...

And so ...

I didn't have time to "properly digest" this article of yours above here last night ...

Before it was time to sign back off again ....

And so .....

This BID-NESS with IRAQINAM surely is a conundrum, and that is a fact .....

BUT ...

Still in all ...

There is some real "HISTORY" that Mr. Raimondo is missing here ....

And that is that we did not go into IRAQ with guns blazing, per se ...

NOT THE ACTUAL ARMED INVASION BY THE HUMAN COMPONENTS OF THE VAUNTED BUSHCO MILITARY MACHINE, ANYWAY .....

Which essentially was the Third Armored Division .....

Followed by the 101st Airmobile Division ....

And some assorted Marines ...

And "others" .....

Actually ....

We went in ...

Without firing a shot ...

AND WITH NO AMERICAN FLAGS SHOWING ....

Because it wasn't supposed to be an INVASION ...

It was supposed to be a LIBERATION ...

And so ...

The VAUNTED BUSHCO's apparently believed that all these tanks and stuff coming into Iraq, without American flags being displayed, would not be viewed as hostile to the Iraqi people ....

Now ...

Whoever came up with that cock-a-manie idea ought to be put out on public display, here in OUR America ...

As the most perfect example of a pure fool that has been discovered on the face of this planet to date ...

And that might end up being George W. Bush ...

Although in all likelihood ....

That man is far too stupid to be classified as a fool ....

Like everyone else in America who is over the age of two-and-a-half years old ....

I was actually "there", here in OUR America, along with everyone else, during the days before the actual INVASION ....

And to be truthful ....

I never once thought that anyone down there in Washington, D.C. who was promoting this FARCE ....

To include all these IVORY-TOWER INTELLECTUALS who are the NEW CON MEN and women here in OUR America ....

Had a lick of sense whatever ...

Although they had arrogance ....

And conceit ...

By the barrel-full ...

And so ....

WHAT IS STARTED WRONG ....

Can only finish right ...

With great difficulty ...

And so ....

Here we now are ...

And the "control" of the situation ....

Is no longer in the hands of this pack of fools down there in Washington, D.C. ....

Despite any continued rhetoric from them ...

That they are actually in control of the destiny of anything .....

Let alone the Middle East ...

Which if I recall ...

Has actually been around ....

For a year or two longer than OUR America has been .....

There are 294 MILLION people here in OUR America .....

And it seems to me ...

That what has happened over time ...

Is that there has been a kind of "diffusion process" going on here in OUR America ....

Some kind of "osmotic pressure" perhaps ....

With Washington, D.C. acting as a kind of anode ...

Or cathode ....

That attracts all the very worst elements of society here in OUR America ...

As opposed to the "BEST AND BRIGHTEST" .....

And concentrates them down there in Washington, D.C. .....

As a kind of human "TOXIC SLUDGE" ......

With ABSOLUTE POWER ....

Not only over us ...

And OUR lives ...

But the lives of every human being ...

On the face of this earth of OURS ...

And so ....

And here ...

I think of all these "know-it-all" NEW CON IVORY-TOWER INTELLECTUALS who are the NEW CON MEN AND WOMEN of OUR world today ....

People like Billy Kristol at the Weekly Standard ...

Or whatever that rag he writes for is properly named ....

And all the other "pundits" down there ...

Who still don't know ...

Whether the sun rises ...

In the east ...

Or west ...

Or north ...

Or south ...

And so ....

Peddlars of PURE CRAP .....

And not much else .....

And so .....

My thought ...

From up here in the admittedly primitive HINTERLANDS OF CIVILIZATION here in OUR America ....

Where common sense is still a required commodity to make it through a long hard winter ....

Is that when you take a pack of arrogant conceited fools such are Washington, D.C. ......

And you put that pack of fools in charge of anything ...

Be it an invasion of IRAQINAM ...

Or diplomacy ....

Or hurricane-preparedness .....

That all you are going to get in return ...

Is a demonstration of pure stupidity in action ...

And so ....

No surprise up here, then, that such is now the case in IRAQINAM ....

And so ....

Cinch up your belts, boys, because hard times are a'comin ....

And so ....

And speaking of history ....

Which the IVORY-TOWER INTELLECTUALS of the BUSHCO regime don't need to know about ...

Since they are the ones actually re-writing the history of the world ...

To make it seem as if they have an inkling of what they are about in the world of today ....

And other "kings" ....

On the face of this earth of OURS ...

Before the present one named BUSH THE ALL-KNOWING AND ALL-POWERFUL came into ascendence ....

Here in OUR America ....

We have ....

"Archaeologist Links Ancient Palace, Ajax"

By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS, Associated Press Writer

Wed Mar 29, 9:09 PM ET

ATHENS, Greece - Among the ruins of a 3,200-year-old palace near Athens, researchers are piecing together the story of legendary Greek warrior-king Ajax, hero of the Trojan War.

Archaeologist Yiannis Lolos found remains of the palace while hiking on the island of Salamis in 1999, and has led excavations there for the past six years.

Now, he's confident he's found the site where Ajax ruled, which has also provided evidence to support a theory that residents of the Mycenean island kingdom fled to Cyprus after the king's death.

"This was Ajax' capital," excavation leader Lolos, professor of archaeology at Ioannina University, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"It was the seat of the maritime kingdom of Salamis — small compared to other Mycenaean kingdoms — that was involved in trade, warfare and piracy in the eastern Mediterranean."

Ajax was one of the top fighters in the legendary Greek army that besieged Troy to win back the abducted queen of Sparta, Helen.

Described in Homer's Iliad as a towering hero protected by a huge shield, Ajax killed himself after a quarrel with other Greek leaders.

On a wooded hill overlooking the sea at Kanakia on Salamis' southwestern coast, Lolos' team has excavated a town surmounted by a fortified palace complex.

The site flourished in the 13th century B.C. — at the same time as the major centers of Mycenae and Pylos in southern Greece — and was abandoned during widespread unrest about 100 years later.

Scholars have long suspected a core of historical truth in the story of Troy, and archaeological evidence from the Kanakia dig appears to agree.

Lolos also believes that, faced by an external threat, part of Salamis' population left for Cyprus, founding a new town named after their homeland.

"There is no other explanation for the creation on Cyprus of a city named Salamis," he said.

"We established that there was a population exodus from Salamis, which was completely abandoned shortly after 1200 B.C. ..."

"They must first have gone to Enkomi on Cyprus, which was already an established center."

Salamis was founded around 1100 B.C., when Enkomi — some 2.5 miles away — was abandoned.

"It was probably the refugees' children that moved there," Lolos said.

The emigration theory would explain why almost no high-value artifacts were found at the Greek site, which bore no signs of destruction or enemy occupation.

"The emigrants, who would have been the city's ruling class, took a lot with them, including nearly all the valuables," Lolos said.

The rest of the population moved to a new settlement further inland that offered better protection from seaborne raids.

Kanakia was first inhabited around 3000 B.C.

The Mycenaean settlement covers some 12.5 acres, and features houses, workshops and storage areas.

So far, archaeologists have uncovered 33 rooms in the 8,000-square-foot palace, including two central royal residences containing what appear to be two bench-like beds.

"This recalls a reference by Homer to the king of Pylos sleeping at the back of his house," Lolos said.

Finds include pottery, stone tools, a sealstone and copper implements.

Lolos is particularly pleased with a piece of a copper mail shirt stamped with the name of Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279-1213 B.C.

"This is a unique find, which may have belonged to a Mycenaean mercenary soldier serving with the Egyptians," he said.

"It could have been a souvenir, a mark of honor or even some kind of a medal."

Excavations will continue in September, while future targets include the settlement's cemetery, which Lolos has located nearby.

Situated just off the coast of Athens, Salamis is best known for the naval battle in 480 B.C., when the Athenians defeated an invading Persian fleet.

The ancient playwright Euripides was born there, and a cave excavated by Lolos in 1997 has been identified as a hideout where the poet composed his work.

end quotes

Of course, since according to Karl Rove, the world is only a few thousand years old ....

This history could not have happened, as reported ....

Because it would have had to have happened before the world actually existed ....

And so ...

FOR THE SAKE OF NATIONAL SECURITY .....

Which is especially tenuous today .....

Where maybe five or six TAY-RISTS can take over an entire nation of 294 MILLIONS of people in maybe five or six hours .....

PLEASE ....

Disregard this history as a likely fabrication ....

And then ....

Put your thumbs back in your mouths ....

And stay tuned for further instructions ..

From Karl Rove and Scottie "BOY" McClellan ....

On what to think in order to be a "GOOD AMERICAN" circa 2006 ....

And so ...

Will their "truth" set you free?

Well ...

That remains to be seen ...

But as for me ...

Well ..

I don't think so ...

And so ...

Stay tuned ...

And tomarrow ...

Well, if there is one ...

Likely we will hear about it on FOX NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED YOU DECIDE ....

And so ...

Then, we'll all know ......

And so ....

And it looks like I was right ....

For here comes something off the wire ....

Right now as we speak ...

And so ...

You get to decide .....

Just like if this was FOX FAIR AND BALANCED ....

And so ....

Let's see if FOX talks about this one tomarrow ....

And so ....

"Ex-FBI agent indicted in mob killings"

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press
Last updated: 5:56 p.m., Thursday, March 30, 2006

NEW YORK -- A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday for allegedly taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn.

R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of "confidential leaks, payoffs and death" dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said.

DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail.

He did not speak at his arraignment.

One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail.

The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

Colleagues of the FBI veteran were quick to defend him against the charges.

"We all know Lin, and we all know he's not capable of doing these kinds of things," James Kossler, a former supervisor with the FBI's New York office, said Wednesday.

"It's so sad it could happen to a guy like this."

Hynes said the charges stemmed from the unusually close relationship between DeVecchio -- then head of the FBI's Colombo crime family squad -- and Gregory Scarpa Sr., a government informant and Colombo captain nicknamed "The Grim Reaper."

The pair met each week during the 1980s and '90s and discussed a bloody civil war within the Colombo family.

In exchange for bribes, DeVecchio "counseled Scarpa to protect himself by eliminating imminent threats," Hynes said.

In 1984, DeVecchio allegedly warned Scarpa that the girlfriend of a high-ranking Colombo figure was cooperating with federal authorities.

As a result, authorities say, she was shot and killed in a Brooklyn social club -- a pattern prosecutors said was repeated in three slayings of Scarpa rivals, the last one in 1992.

Scarpa gave DeVecchio weekly payments and also enhanced the agent's reputation within the FBI by helping him solve important cases, Hynes said.

DeVecchio surrendered Wednesday night at the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

He had no comment as he entered.

Kossler, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, ex-agent Joe Pistone, known for infiltrating the mob as Donnie Brasco, and other supporters in law enforcement have begun raising money for DeVecchio's defense on a Web site.

The site notes that the agent was cleared in previous investigations, and it attributes the renewed allegations to convicted mobsters eager to lie in exchange for leniency.

DeVecchio retired in 1996.

Scarpa died in prison in 1994.

------

On the Net:

The Friends of Lin DeVecchio Trust: http://www.lindevecchio.com

Brooklyn District Attorney: http://www.brooklynda.org

And then ...

There is this, too ....

News straight from the BIZARRO-WORLD that George W. Bush has instituted here in OUR America as his standard of what OUR America should be in this NEW CENTURY .....

Where five or six TAY-RISTS armed with old blunderbusses and such like ....

Are able to stall George W. Bush's whole military machine ....

And bog it down ....

In the quagmire ...

Of the deserts of Iraq ....

"Army bans use of privately bought armor"

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:25 p.m., Thursday, March 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Soldiers will no longer be allowed to wear body armor other than the protective gear issued by the military, Army officials said Thursday, the latest twist in a running battle over the equipment the Pentagon gives its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army officials told The Associated Press that the order was prompted by concerns that soldiers or their families were buying inadequate or untested commercial armor from private companies -- including the popular Dragon Skin gear made by California-based Pinnacle Armor.

"We're very concerned that people are spending their hard-earned money on something that doesn't provide the level of protection that the Army requires people to wear."

"So they're, frankly, wasting their money on substandard stuff," said Col. Thomas Spoehr, director of materiel for the Army.

Murray Neal, chief executive officer of Pinnacle, said he hadn't seen the directive and wants to review it.

"We know of no reason the Army may have to justify this action," Neal said.

"On the surface this looks to be another of many attempts by the Army to cover up the billions of dollars spent on ineffective body armor systems which they continue to try quick fixes on to no avail."

The move was a rare one by the Army.

Spoehr said he doesn't recall any similar bans on personal armor or devices.

The directives are most often issued when there are problems with aircraft or other large equipment.

Veterans groups immediately denounced the decision.

Nathaniel R. Helms, editor of the Soldiers for the Truth online magazine Defense Watch, said he has already received a number of e-mails from soldiers complaining about the policy.

"Outrageously we've seen that (soldiers) haven't been getting what they need in terms of equipment and body armor," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who wrote legislation to have troops reimbursed for equipment purchases.

"That's totally unacceptable, and why this directive by the Pentagon needs to be scrutinized in much greater detail."

But another veterans group backed the move.

"I don't think the Army is wrong by doing this, because the Army has to ensure some level of quality," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

"They don't want soldiers relying on equipment that is weak or substandard."

But, Rieckhoff said, the military is partially to blame for the problem because it took too long to get soldiers the armor they needed.

"This is the monster they made," he said.

Early in the Iraq war, soldiers and their families were spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on protective gear that they said the military was not providing.

Then, last October, after months of pressure from families and members of Congress, the military began a reimbursement program for soldiers who purchased their own protective equipment.

In January, an unreleased Pentagon study found that side armor could have saved dozens of U.S. lives in Iraq, prompting the Army and Marine Corps to order thousands of ceramic body armor plates to be shipped to troops there this year.

The Army ban covers all commercial armor.

It refers specifically to Pinnacle's armor, saying that while the company advertising implies that Dragon Skin "is superior in performance" to the Interceptor Body Armor the military issues to soldiers, "the Army has been unable to determine the veracity of these claims."

"In its current state of development, Dragon Skin's capabilities do not meet Army requirements," the Army order says, and it "has not been certified to protect against several small arms threats that the military is encountering in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Marine Corps has not issued a similar directive, but Marines are "encouraged to wear Marine Corps-issued body armor since this armor has been tested to meet fleet standards," spokesman Bruce Scott said.

Military officials have acknowledged that some troops -- often National Guard or Reservists -- went to war with lesser-quality protective gear than other soldiers were issued.

"We'll be upfront and recognize that at the start of the conflict there were some soldiers that didn't have the levels of protection that we wanted," Spoehr said.

Now, he added, "we can categorically say that whatever you're going to buy isn't as good as what you're going to get" from the military.

In interviews Thursday, Army officials said aggressive marketing by body armor manufacturers was fueling public concerns that troops are not getting the protection they need.

Army Lt. Col. Scott Campbell said the Army has asked Pinnacle to provide 30 sets of the full Dragon Skin armor so it can be independently tested.

He said Pinnacle has indicated it won't be able to provide that armor until May, and the company said that is still the plan.

Campbell said initial military tests on small sections of the Dragon Skin armor had disappointing results.

He said Pinnacle has received $840,000 in research funding to develop improved armor.

Spoehr said he believes the directive will have little impact on soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan because it's likely that nearly all are wearing the military-issued body armor.

There have been repeated reports of soldiers or families of soldiers buying commercial equipment or trying to raise thousands of dollars to buy it for troops who are preparing to deploy overseas.

------

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

Pinnacle Armor: http://www.pinnaclearmor.com

And here is what some in OUR America ....

Might label ....

As a pot ...

Calling a kettle black .....

"Spitzer slams Bush policies- Gubernatorial hopeful touts record on environment as he leads rivals in new poll"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, March 30, 2006

ALBANY -- Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Eliot Spitzer outlined an environmental policy Wednesday focusing on renewable energy, cleaning the Hudson River and beefing up staffing at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Speaking to a friendly audience of about 200 people at WAMC's Linda Norris Auditorium, Spitzer railed against President Bush, whose policies have angered many environmentalists.

The state attorney general called Bush "hands down the worst president on environmental and energy issues that this country has ever seen" and said it will be increasingly up to state and local governments to safeguard their own air, water and land.

Spitzer said he has sued the Bush administration "no less than 17 times to block their attempts to dismantle our environmental protection laws."

He called for more incentives for renewable energy such as solar, hydro and wind power, and said the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County should be closed as soon as replacement sources can be found for the 2,000 megawatts it produces.

Spitzer praised Republican Gov. George Pataki's open space conservation efforts, which include a goal to protect 1 million wilderness acres.

But, he said, more preservation needs to be done in urban and suburban areas.

Spitzer also called for "adequate" staffing at the DEC, saying that with 800 fewer employees today than in the mid-1990s, inspection and oversight jobs go unfilled.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found Spitzer leading fellow Democrat Tom Suozzi, 69 percent to 14 percent among Democrats.

A January Quinnipiac poll had Spitzer leading the Nassau County executive 72 percent to 8 percent.

Spitzer and Suozzi both polled ahead of the Republican hopefuls: former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, former state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso and former state Secretary of State Randy Daniels.

The poll showed Faso passing Weld, 22 percent to 16 percent, with Daniels at 8 percent.

The poll of 1,674 voters was conducted March 21-27 and has a 2 point margin of error overall, 3.7 points among Democrats and 4.2 percent among Republicans.

Elizabeth Benjamin can be reached at 454-5081 or by e-mail at ebenjamin@timesunion.com.

And to start out the day ....

Since we left off talking about "politics" in the State of New York .....

And New York State Attorney General Eliot "Big EL" Spitzer .....

Whose record of disregarding local land-use regulations ...

Along with environmental and public health protection in the State of New York ...

Likely rivals that of George W. Bush ....

We have some local "American history" ....

From back in the days ...

When it was still a feudal society ...

Up here in the State of New York ....

And so ....

"200 years of feisty freedom - Controversy has been a constant in Nassau since town's founding"

By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, March 31, 2006

NASSAU -- From tarring and feathering the sheriff over land rents to picketing a rash of graywacke rock mining proposals, this town has been no stranger to controversy for 200 years.

European settlers put down stakes in the area as early as the mid-1700s and on March 31, 1806, a law created Philipstown, in honor of patroon and landowner Philip Van Rensselaer.

Two years later, the name was changed to Nassau.

Today this southern Rensselaer County town of roughly 5,000 people will officially celebrate its bicentennial with an evening of historic displays and festivities.

To help mark the occasion, the Rensselaer County Legislature earlier this month passed a resolution recognizing the rich history of the town, which is less than 20 miles outside of Albany.

The first town meeting was in the tavern of Pliny Miller in what is now East Nassau, according to county historical records on file at the Nassau Free Library.

Joseph Hicks, Chester Griswold and Asa Upham were appointed the "Overseers of Swine" and "Voted that hogs may run in the highway provided they have on their necks a sufficient yoke and in their noses a sufficient ring and not otherwise."

Early inhabitants found the land too steep for profitable farming.

Former Town Supervisor Carol Sanford said her family knew too well the problems.

"There were little farms all over the place in town at one time, but farmers used to say if there was money in rocks, we'd be rich," Sanford said.

That old saying proved prophetic.

The town has existing gravel mines and two companies have three different proposals for mining hard rock out of the hills.

Leaders of grass-roots opposition to hard rock mining on Snake Mountain on the southern edge of town formed the village of East Nassau in 1997.

More recently, a group failed to secede from the town to form the village of Dunham Hollow.

"People here have always been proud and connected to their land and property and have resisted outside influences trying to tell them what to do with their property," Sanford said.

In 1844, a group of radicals who hung out at the old Martin Tavern in Hoags Corners fomented a revolt aimed at stopping the feudal-like payment of rents to the rich landowners, or patroons.

The leader of the rebels, who called themselves the "Calico Indians," was "Big Thunder" -- Dr. Smith A. Boughton, according to a history of Nassau by George Baker Anderson.

Big Thunder's home still stands on Route 43 in the town's secluded hills, called Alps.

On July 4, 1844, Hoags Corners residents were setting up their traditional Independence Day celebration with a parade, muzzle-loading shooting matches, games and political speeches.

In the midst of one of the speeches "suddenly arose a chorus of tin dinner horns and the sound of horses' hoofs."

The rebels circled the stunned crowd, according to historical accounts.

Big Thunder mounted the stage and announced:

"Brother serfs of Lord Van Rensselaer, these Indians have a battle cry that means your safety and your future."

"Down with the rent!"

The "anti-rent wars" leading to the abolition of the patroon system had begun.

It got nastier.

At one point, the rebels waylaid Sheriff Gideon Reynolds and a posse of 25 men.

Their horses were turned loose and the posse marched back to the Alps.

"The legal papers in possession of the force were found on the deputy (sheriff) who was summarily treated to a dose of tar and feathers and sent home with his comrades," the historical account reads.

Some of the anti-rent activists fell out of favor after turning more violent.

Boughton was one of the first prisoners at the new Clinton State Prison at Dannemora.

He was later pardoned by the governor for his medical work saving prisoners and guards during an epidemic in the prison.

Beginning in 1983, the residents of Hoags Corners re-created that Fourth of July revolt as part of their annual celebration, but the practice waned.

In 1987, Rensselaer County Sheriff W. Warren McGreevy played the part of Reynolds, without the tar and feathers.

Town bicentennial

What: Town of Nassau Bicentennial Celebration

When: 7 to 9 p.m. today

Where: Donald P. Sutherland Elementary School on John Street in the village of Nassau

Events: Participants will re-enact characters from the town's past and town elders will share their memories. Residents are encouraged to dress in period attire. There will be demonstrations of early games for children, displays of historic artifacts and food.

And since we are on the subject of New York State Attorney General Eliot "Big EL" Spitzer in here this morning ...

Let's go see what his opponent, the UNDERDOG Tom Suozzi, is up to today ...

Or yesterday, to be more precise ...

Since it is me who is a day behind in here .....

Due to nice weather and a lot of sunshine out there ....

In the non-virtual reality ...

That I have to occupy ....

Some part of the day, anyway ...

"Suozzi says Spitzer fudging data - Rival questions attorney general's claims on Medicaid fraud money"

By CANDICE CHOI, Associated Press
First published: Thursday, March 30, 2006

ALBANY -- State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's announcement that investigations into Medicaid fraud last year recovered a record amount of money by his office is misleading, a political opponent said Wednesday.

Tom Suozzi, who is battling Spitzer for the Democratic nomination for governor, said the vast majority of the recovered money came from a federal lawsuit led by the Department of Justice, not by Spitzer's office.

Spitzer spokesman Paul Larrabee said the investigation was led by a prosecutor from the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

The attorney general's office is required to report all financial recoveries, including those that were part of nationwide settlements, he said.

"Of course some of it comes from multistate efforts ... that is the nature of how we do it," Spitzer said.

The Nassau County executive's criticism came a day after Spitzer's office announced it had recovered $274 million in 2005, up from $63 million the previous year.

Suozzi said $171 million of last year's total came from a federal settlement.

"This is not the first time that the attorney general has released misleading recovery numbers," Suozzi said in a statement.

Suozzi said Spitzer also inflated numbers in 2004 by including the state's $31 million share of a nationwide settlement with two pharmaceutical companies over drug pricing.

Suozzi also said that between 1999 and 2003, Spitzer's office spent $142 million to investigate Medicaid fraud, yet recovered only $149 million.

And then ...

There is Ms. Hillary ....

Who it seems ...

People either like ...

Or hate ....

Can the REPUBLICANS beat Ms. Hillary?

Or more specifically ...

Can this Spencer dude who is taking in all of this "out-of-state" money ....

Can he beat Ms. Hillary?

For that matter ...

Can he even "beat" his way out of a wet paper bag?

Let's look and see what the pundits or polls are saying ....

And so ....

"Senate poll picks new GOP hopeful - "KT" McFarland holds early lead in pick to challenge Clinton for seat with many voters undecided"

By MARC HUMBERT, Associated Press
First published: Friday, March 31, 2006

ALBANY -- Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, the new contender in the battle to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election bid, holds a double-digit lead over her main rival for this year's GOP Senate nomination in New York, a statewide poll reported Thursday.

The good news for the embattled candidacy of the Reagan-era Pentagon official came one day after state GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik endorsed the rival Senate candidacy of former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer.

The poll, from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, had McFarland leading Spencer, 35 percent to 22 percent, among Republican voters, but also showed 37 percent of the voters undecided.

It was the first statewide poll matching McFarland against Spencer since she announced her candidacy in early March.

The poll found Clinton with 2-1 leads over both her potential challengers.

The former first lady led McFarland, 60 percent to 29 percent, and topped Spencer, 60 percent to 30 percent.

Clinton had the same lead over Spencer in a January poll from Quinnipiac.

"In the Senate race, there's a generic Republican vote of a bit less than a third. Clinton gets the rest," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden, Conn.-based polling institute.

The GOP nomination is also being sought by a little-known tax attorney from Sullivan County, William Brenner, but his name was not included in the polling.

The new poll had Clinton's approval rating among New York voters at 57 percent, down from a high of 65 percent recorded in a Quinnipiac poll out in February of last year.

The Spencer campaign quickly dismissed the poll results, with strategist John McLaughlin questioning the methodology of the survey and saying "this poll right now is way too early for any real judgment to be made."

"The fact is that while primary voters don't know much about either candidate, Republican and Conservative leaders already know and that is why they are backing John Spencer," added Spencer aide Kevin Collins.

"KT McFarland's candidacy is a joke perpetrated by consultants who make a living fleecing wealthy yet naive candidates."

The telephone poll of 1,674 registered voters was conducted March 21-27 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

end quotes

Now ...

There is a statement that just may come back to haunt this mouth-runner for this REPUBLICAN PICK, Spencer ....

Telling all the candid world that this woman's campaign is a joke ....

Because Ms. McFarland is allegedly naive .....

Now ...

With that statement made ....

My attention has been caught ...

And so ...

Mr. Spencer ...

And the REPUBLICAN PARTY who backs you ....

Let's see what happens between now ...

And November ...

And then we will all know ...

Won't we?

And so ...

And then ...

What would life in OUR America be ....

Without the corrupt United States Congress ......

Which has become ...

A big part of ...

OUR national symbol .....

Out there on the world stage ....

"HEY, HEY, GET YA SENATORS HERE ..."

"THREE FOR A DOLLAR ..."

"BEST POLITICIANS IN THE WORLD THAT MONEY CAN BUY ..."

"HURRY, HURRY, HURRY, STEP RIGHT UP HERE, FOLKS ..."

"NO PUSHING ..."

"NO SHOVING ..."

THEY'RE ALL FOR SALE ..."

"AND WE HAVE PLENTY TO GO AROUND ..."

And so ...

"Dereliction of duty - The Senate's idea of lobbying reform is no substantive reform at all"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, March 31, 2006

If only the events of Wednesday, when Jack Abramoff, who used to wine, dine and buy congressmen, was sent off to prison for almost six years and the Senate voted for a mockery of lobbying reform, had come just three days later.

It would have made for a wonderful April Fools' Day spoof.

Instead, the joke is on all the people the Senate is supposed to represent.

The lobbying laws passed by a vote of 90 to 8, with both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Charles Schumer in the ignominious majority, don't go nearly far enough to effectively stop a culture of corruption in Washington.

Their emphasis is on disclosing the unseemly relationships between legislators and lobbyists, not severing them.

Oh, the ban on members of Congress taking free meals and other gifts from lobbyists that the Senate voted for is overdue.

But what changes, really, when the lobbyists themselves are required to disclose their dealings with lawmakers four times a year, rather than merely twice a year?

Or when congressmen's junkets are still permitted under certain circumstances?

Lobbying laws and ethics laws worthy of the name require an independent office to enforce them.

Congress needs that, and every bit as much as the New York Legislature needs the state lobbying commission and needs the powers of the state ethics commission extended to cover it.

Any chance of a law with real teeth was gone by Wednesday, though.

On Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have created an Office of Public Integrity to investigate charges of ethics violations in the Senate.

Both houses of Congress have made it all too clear that they're incapable of investigating their own members.

"Trust is the foundation of our Democratic government," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Wednesday as his colleagues prepared to vote for these tepid reforms.

"We have to do a better job of retaining that trust and that confidence."

Talk about a waste of breath.

It was Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who better got to the point, taking note of the Abramoff scandal.

"There will be more indictments and we will be revisiting this issue," he predicted.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., gets it as well.

He says there will be a political price to pay for not passing stringent reforms of how Congress operates.

"You can wash the outside of the cup all you want," he said.

"If the inside is still unclean, you're going to have the same problems."

In addition to Mr. McCain and Mr. Coburn, those voting against the lobbying curbs were Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Reassuring proof, then, that not everyone in the Senate is won over by farce.

And while we are on the subject of polls here in OUR America ...

Here is an interesting one ...

"Bush tops Dahmer, barely"

By JOHN KELSO

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, March 30, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas -- President Bush beat the rest of the field like an orchestra timpani in my poll to find out who's least admired among a list of shaky characters.

A couple weeks ago, I asked y'all to vote on who you thought should have the lowest approval rating:

* George W.

* Saddam Hussein

* Kenneth Lay

* O.J. Simpson

* Barry Bonds, and

* Jeffrey "Let's Do Lunch" Dahmer among them.

One guy e-mailed me all honked off for including Osama bin Laden in the same poll with George W.

I never mentioned bin Laden in my poll, and I told the guy so.

Seems he had gotten bin Laden and Saddam mixed up.

Bush was a shoo-in for lowest approval rating with 534 votes, or 62.17 percent of the vote.

A nasty old former bartender from a local saloon came in a distant second with 89 votes, or 10.36 percent.

The rest of the field came in like this: Hussein, 83 votes (9.66 percent); Dahmer, 47 votes (5.47 percent); Simpson, 45 votes (5.24 percent); Bonds, 32 votes (3.73 percent) and Lay, 29 votes (3.38 percent).

So Bush didn't do so well.

But I always figured that even if George W. Bush's dog hauled off and bit him, he could always head out to his old oil patch stomping grounds and be universally loved.

Even out in conservative Odessa, the newspaper last week ran an editorial attacking the administration's "aggressive promotion of democracy" through military conflict.

I spent a couple of days last week in Odessa, not exactly hippie territory.

Inside La Margarita, a Mexican restaurant, a guy was wearing a red Halliburton jumpsuit.

In Austin, that's a Halloween outfit.

Still, the Odessa American had an editorial last week saying the Bush administration's policy "bids fair to have the United States involved in open military and lower-level conflicts for years and even decades to come."

"... The administration seems to have learned nothing from experience over the last four years," the editorial concludes.

"Sadly, America could be the worse for it."

Is there no place this guy can go and not get bagged?

To be fair, Ken Brodnax, the American's editorial page editor, says "this is still Bush country, and this is generally a pretty conservative area, so he still has huge support out here," Brodnax said.

Hey, it's nice to know there's at least one place left where people would vote for Bush over Jeffrey Dahmer.

Although there might be a runoff.

John Kelso writes for the Austin American-Statesman. His e-mail address is jkelso@statesman.com

And since we are talking about subjective opinions ....

Here is one that strikes a chord with me ...

Who am an "older American" ....

Which means ...

That I too recall ...

Another America ...

That was much nearer ...

And dearer ...

To my own liberty-loving heart ....

Than is this current version imposed upon us ...

By George W. Bush ....

And so ...

"We can thank Bush for all of this"

Letter to the Editor, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Where is the America I grew up with?

We are a people more divided than ever.

Congress has just raised the ceiling on our already gigantic debt.

We are a pariah to the Third World and a disappointment to our friends.

Our civil rights erode by the day.

We are spied upon by our own government.

We have a president who believes that he and his administration are above the law.

Fear mongering is a common political tactic.

The separation of church and state is a thing of the past.

We have been transformed in less than six years.

Thank you, George W. Bush.

RICHARD R.

Berne

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...30-112745-2009r
Commentary: Rebuilding Iraq while the U.S. decays
By Arnaud de Borchgrave and Harlan Ullman
United Press International
Published March 30, 2006


WASHINGTON -- By the end of this year, the U.S. will have spent almost half a trillion dollars on Iraq since the 2003 invasion. This could easily double by the time the U.S. successfully nurtures a new Iraqi democracy to viability including returning basic services such as water, electricity and transport even to pre-war levels. To paraphrase the late great Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, that is getting to be "real money."

Meanwhile, as we "rebuild" Iraq, what is happening here to our own society and its infrastructure?

From hospitals to bridges, highways, roads and streets, mass transit systems, power grids, drinking water systems and hospitals and health care facilities, America is in a sad state of disrepair. One third of all bridges are deemed "structurally deficient" by the American Society of Civil Engineers. U.S. infrastructure thus gets a falling "D" grade, down from D+ five years ago. Estimated costs to put America's infrastructure back on its feet: $1.6 trillion.

According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 75 percent of America's school buildings are "inadequate" to meet the needs of school children. Some $300 billion are needed to bring school plants and teaching faculties up to scratch. The country's 16,000 wastewater systems face a $12 billion shortfall for infrastructure needs not counting funding to protect them from terrorist attack. Some sewer systems are over 100 years old. As Katrina demonstrated, our domestic infrastructure problems are a lot more urgent than the meritorious attempt to democratize 25 million Iraqis.

For the most part, America's managerial class does not use public transportation and is unaware of the extent of crumbling infrastructure, from public schools to unsafe neighborhoods. Nor as Congress grapples with immigration reform has anyone raised the social, economic and legal costs arising from this witches brew of failing infrastructure, illegal aliens, health care and rampant crime.

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are for illegal aliens. The lethal 18th Street Gang has an estimated 20,000 members, over half illegal aliens, according to a ranking member of the LAPD, speaking not for attribution. The LA-based MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), whose membership was originally limited to street-tough Salvadorans, now numbers 50,000 (10,000 in LA alone). These gangs thrive where infrastructure decays.

This criminal imprint stretches from coast to coast and is present in every major city. MS-13 arose from the defeated Marxist FMLN in El Salvador and now has links with the Cosa Nostra. FBI counterintelligence agents worry about al Qaida infiltration through Central America. MS-13 has an estimated 300,000 members in Mexico and Central America. Interestingly, its MO is to redistribute the fruits of its crimes to a network of corner stores owned and operated by Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants that sell at heavily discounted prices and causes them to think they steal from the rich to give to the poor, uncynically pirating the Robin Hood sobriquet.

With one out of four illegals caught crossing the 1,940-mile border with Mexico, the net illegal influx into the United States is between three and four million each and every year. So 20 million illegals now in the U.S. is probably a safer bet than the 12 million figure bandied about Congress. All of this adds huge costs to the nation, especially for healthcare. Pregnant women who deliver "anchor" babies shortly after eluding border patrols have an instant U.S. citizen in the family. The 14th Amendment stipulates anyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen. Anchor strains on emergency facilities have bankrupted scores of hospitals in the Border States.

The 1985 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, an unfunded federal mandate, requires emergency departments to treat any uninsured emergency free of charge. Anchor babies pull illegal mothers, fathers and siblings into permanent residency -- and public welfare aid.

Scams are common. In one clinic, some 300 people were diagnosed as "mildly mentally retarded." They all had the same translator, psychiatrist, symptoms -- and similar stipends. All of these put further pressure on a health care system whose costs are soaring out of sight.

Iraq has been debated politically, strategically, legally and emotionally. It must also be examined in the harsh light of "how much is enough" and what the nation must forego to pay for Iraq.

As for America's infrastructure, no doubt it would take an event comparable to September 11, 2001, or worse, for us to react. Whether we can afford for that to happen or not can easily become the dominant issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But consider first the costs of failing to take action now before the expense of "spending real money" is really unaffordable

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm

PREWAR INTELLIGENCE
Insulating Bush
By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.


As the 2004 election loomed, the White House was determined to keep the wraps on a potentially damaging memo about Iraq.



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Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."

Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

The previously undisclosed review by Hadley was part of a damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding the uranium were not true. The CIA had sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to investigate the purported procurement efforts by Iraq; he reported that they were most likely a hoax.

The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence. Then-CIA Director George Tenet swiftly and publicly took the blame for the entire episode, saying that he and the CIA were at fault for not warning Bush and his aides that the information might be untrue.

But Hadley and other administration officials realized that it would be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his statements regarding the aluminum tubes, for several reasons.

For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

And finally, full disclosure of the internal dissent over the importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up to war.

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes." A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."

The President's Summary
Most troublesome to those leading the damage-control effort was documentary evidence -- albeit in highly classified government records that they might be able to keep secret -- that the president had been advised that many in the intelligence community believed that the tubes were meant for conventional weapons.

The one-page documents known as the "President's Summary" are distilled from the much lengthier National Intelligence Estimates, which combine the analysis of as many as six intelligence agencies regarding major national security issues. Bush's knowledge of the State and Energy departments' dissent over the tubes was disclosed in a March 4, 2006, National Journal story -- more than three years after the intelligence assessment was provided to the president, and some 16 months after the 2004 presidential election.

The President's Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes, according to government records and interviews with former and current officials.

In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President's Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren't certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials.

Official records and interviews with current and former officials also reveal that the president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons.

When U.S. inspectors entered Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime, they determined that Iraq's nuclear program had been dormant for more than a decade and that the aluminum tubes had been used only for conventional weapons.

In the end, the White House's damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of the president's knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush's re-election.

Choreography
The new disclosures regarding the tubes may also shed light on why officials so vigorously attempted to discredit Wilson's allegations regarding Niger, including by leaking information to the media that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Administration officials hoped that the suggestion that Plame had played a role in the agency's choice of Wilson for the Niger trip might cast doubt on his allegations.

I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted on October 28 on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice in attempting to conceal his role in outing Plame as an undercover CIA operative. Signaling a possible defense strategy, Libby's attorneys filed papers in federal court on March 17 asserting that he had not intentionally deceived FBI agents and a federal grand jury while answering questions about Plame because her role was only "peripheral" to potentially more serious questions regarding the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the prewar debate. "The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson's criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department, and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq's WMD capabilities," Libby's attorneys said in court papers.

Plame's identity was disclosed during "a period of increasing bureaucratic infighting, when certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability," the attorneys said. "The White House and the CIA were widely regarded to be at war."

Only two months before Wilson went public with his allegations, the Iraq war was being viewed as one of the greatest achievements of Bush's presidency. Rove, whom Bush would later call the "architect" of his re-election campaign, was determined to exploit the war for the president's electoral success. On May 1, 2003, Bush made a dramatic landing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce to the nation the cessation of major combat operations in Iraq. Dressed in a military flight suit, the president emerged from a four-seat Navy S-3B Viking with the words "George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief" painted just below the cockpit window.

The New York Times later reported that White House aides "had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the 'Mission Accomplished' banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot."

On May 6, in a column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof quoted an unnamed former ambassador as saying that allegations that Saddam had attempted to procure uranium from Africa were "unequivocally wrong" and that "documents had been forged." But the column drew little notice.

A month later, on June 5, the president made a triumphant visit to Camp As Sayliyah, the regional headquarters of Central Command just outside Qatar's capital, where he spoke to 1,000 troops who were in camouflage fatigues. Afterward, Rove took out a camera and began snapping pictures of service personnel with various presidential advisers. "Step right up! Get your photo with Ari Fleischer -- get 'em while they're hot. Get your Condi Rice," Rove said, according to press accounts of the trip. On the trip home, as Air Force One flew at 31,000 feet over Iraqi airspace, escorted by pairs of F-18 fighters off each wing, the plane's pilots dipped the wings as a sign, an administration spokesperson explained, "that Iraq is now free."

There were few hints of what lay ahead: that sectarian violence would engulf Iraq to the point where some fear civil war and that more than 2,440 American troops and contractors would lose their lives in Iraq and an additional 17,260 servicemen and -women would be wounded.

Blame The CIA
The pre-election damage-control effort in response to Wilson's allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials: blame the CIA for the use of the Niger information in the president's State of the Union address; discredit and undermine Wilson; and make sure that the public did not learn that the president had been personally warned that the intelligence assessments he was citing about the aluminum tubes might be wrong.

On July 8, 2003, two days after Wilson challenged the Niger-uranium claim in an op-ed article in The New York Times, Libby met with Judith Miller, then a Times reporter, for breakfast at the St. Regis hotel in Washington. Libby told Miller that Wilson's wife, Plame, worked for the CIA, and he suggested that Wilson could not be trusted because his wife may have played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. Also during that meeting, according to accounts given by both Miller and Libby, Libby provided the reporter with details of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE contained detailed information that Iraq had been attempting to procure uranium from Niger and perhaps two other African nations. Libby and other administration officials believed that the NIE showed that Bush's statements reflected the consensus view of the intelligence community at the time.

According to Miller's account of that meeting in The Times, Libby told her that "the assessments of the classified estimate" that Iraq had attempted to get uranium from Africa and was attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program "were even stronger" than a declassified White Paper on Iraq that the administration had made public to make the case for war.

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has said that he considers the selective disclosure of elements of the NIE to be "inextricably intertwined" with the outing of Plame. Papers filed in federal court by Libby's attorneys on March 17 stated that Libby "believed his actions were authorized" and that he had "testified before the grand jury that this disclosure was authorized," a reference to the NIE details he gave to Miller.

In the same filings, Libby's attorneys said that Hadley played a key role in attempting to have the NIE declassified and made available to reporters: "Mr. Hadley was active in discussions about the need to declassify and disseminate the NIE and [also] had numerous conversations during [this] critical early-July period with Mr. Tenet about the 16 words [the Niger claim in the State of the Union address] and Mr. Tenet's public statements about that issue."

Three days later, on July 11, while on a visit to Africa, Bush and his top aides intensified their efforts to counter the damage done by Wilson's Niger allegations.

Aboard Air Force One, en route to Entebbe, Uganda, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave a background briefing for reporters. A reporter pointed out that when Secretary Powell had addressed the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he -- unlike others in the Bush administration -- had noted that some in the U.S. government did not believe that Iraq's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for nuclear weapons.

Responding, Rice said: "I'm saying that when we put [Powell's speech] together ... the secretary decided that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did.... The secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold that view." Rice added, "Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or me."

In fact, contrary to Rice's statement, the president was indeed informed of such doubts when he received the October 2002 President's Summary of the NIE. Both Cheney and Rice also got copies of the summary, as well as a number of other intelligence reports about the State and Energy departments' doubts that the tubes were meant for a nuclear weapons program.

Discrediting Wilson
After Air Force One landed in Entebbe, the president placed the blame squarely on the CIA for the Niger information in the State of the Union: "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." Within hours, Tenet accepted full responsibility. The intelligence information on Niger, Tenet said in a prepared statement, "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed." Tenet went on to say, "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."

Behind the scenes, the White House and Tenet had coordinated their statements for maximum effect. Hadley, Libby, and Rove had reviewed drafts of Tenet's statement days in advance. And Hadley and Rove even suggested changes in the draft, according to government records and interviews.

Meanwhile, as the president, Rice, and White House advisers worked to contain the damage from overseas, Rove and Libby, who had remained in Washington, moved forward with their effort to discredit Wilson. That same day, July 11, the two spoke privately at the close of a White House senior staff meeting.

According to grand jury testimony from both men, Rove told Libby that he had spoken to columnist Robert Novak on July 9 and that Novak had said he would soon be writing a column about Valerie Plame. On July 12, the day after Rice's briefing, the president's and Tenet's comments, and the conversation between Rove and Libby regarding Novak, the issue of discrediting Wilson through his wife was still high on the agenda. According to the indictment of Libby: "Libby flew with the vice president and others to and from Norfolk, Virginia on Air Force Two." On the return trip, "Libby discussed with other officials aboard the plane what Libby should say in response to certain pending media inquiries" regarding Wilson's allegations.

Later that day, Libby spoke on the phone with Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Cooper had been told days earlier that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. During this conversation, according to Libby's indictment, "Libby confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information, too." Also that day, Libby's indictment charged, "Libby spoke by telephone with Judith Miller ... and discussed Wilson's wife, and that she worked at the CIA."

On July 14, Novak published his now-famous column identifying Plame as a CIA "operative" and reporting that she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

On July 18, the Bush administration declassified a relatively small portion of the NIE and held a press briefing to discuss it, in a further effort to show that the president had used the Niger information only because the intelligence community had vouched for it. Reporters noted that an "alternate view" box in the NIE stated that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as INR) believed that claims of Iraqi purchases of uranium from Africa were "highly dubious" and that State and DOE also believed that the aluminum tubes were "most likely for the production of artillery shells."

But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett suggested that both the president and Rice had been unaware of this information: "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document." Later, addressing the same issue, Bartlett said, "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."

Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President's Summary that informed him that both State's INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose.

(Ironically, at one point, before he had reviewed the one-page summary, Hadley considered declassifying it because it said nothing about the Niger intelligence information being untrue. However, after reviewing the summary and realizing that it would have disclosed presidential knowledge that INR and DOE had doubts about the tubes, senior Bush administration officials became preoccupied with ensuring that the text of the document remained classified, according to an account provided by an administration official.)

On July 22, the White House arranged yet another briefing for reporters regarding the Niger controversy. Hadley, when asked whether there was any reason that the president should have hesitated in citing Iraq's procurement of aluminum tubes as evidence of Saddam's nuclear ambitions, answered, "It is an assessment in which the director and the CIA stand by to this day. And, therefore, we have every reason to be confident."

Later that summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation of intelligence agencies to determine why they failed to accurately assess that Saddam had no viable programs to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion.

As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

In July 2004, when the Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on its investigation of prewar intelligence by the CIA and other agencies, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said in his own "Additional Views" to the report, "Concurrent with the production of a National Intelligence Estimate is the production of a one-page President's Summary of the NIE. A one-page President's Summary was completed and disseminated for the October 2002 NIE ... though there is no mention of this fact in [this] report. These one-page NIE summaries are ... written exclusively for the president and senior policy makers and are therefore tailored for that audience."

Durbin concluded, "In determining what the president was told about the contents of the NIE dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- qualifiers and all -- there is nothing clearer than this single page."

-- Previous coverage of pre-war intelligence and the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas. Brian Beutler provided research assistance for this report.

The fruits of Connie's CON JOB ....

Ripen on the vine ...

For all the candid world to see ....

"WE ARE INCOMPETENT ..."

"DO YOU HEAR US, WORLD?"

"UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH ..."

"AMERICA IS INCOMPETENT ..."

And so ...

"Rice Concedes 'Tactical Errors' in Iraq"

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer

Fri Mar 31, 3:30 PM ET

BLACKBURN, England - Heckled during a visit to Washington's closest ally, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the United States has made thousands of mistakes but is pursuing worthy goals in Iraq.

"I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure," Rice said at a foreign policy gathering, but history will judge whether the larger aims and decisions were correct.

The top U.S. diplomat also said international sanctions must be an option if the nuclear standoff with Iran continues.

That made explicit what had been an unspoken threat now that Iran's case is before the United Nations Security Council.

The United States has avoided for months talking about economic sanctions or other tough consequences for Iran if it does not comply, out of deference to allies and partners who oppose any punitive moves.

Rice defended the three-year-old Iraq war as the right way to rid the world of a threatening dictator and said Iraqis will make a success of their new democracy.

"Saddam Hussein wasn't going anywhere without military intervention," Rice said.

She gave no timetable for withdrawal of U.S. or British forces.

Britain has the second-largest contingent of troops in Iraq after the United States, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has stuck by President Bush despite widespread opposition to the war at home.

Rice met loud anti-war protests in the streets of this northern industrial town, including chants of "Hey, Condi, hey, how many kids did you kill today," at one stop.

At a Liverpool performing arts school once attended by Paul McCartney, one group of students sang for Rice while others booed her.

"People have a right to protest," Rice told students at a Blackburn high school.

It's part of her job to listen, Rice said.

"I'm not just going to visit places where people agree with me."

Police estimated that 1,500 people crowded an intersection near a Liverpool Philharmonic concert Rice was attending.

Amid a cacophony of whistles, steel drums and mock police sirens, they chanted songs accusing Rice of war crimes.

Police on horseback formed a barrier around a short stretch of road between the venue and Rice's hotel, with other officers wearing riot helmets and body armor on standby, hidden from view down a side street.

The protests were the reverse of the warm reception Rice received last fall when she invited British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for a down-home tour of her native Alabama.

Then, elderly white women lined up to shake the hand of a black native daughter made good, football fans cheered and the tantalizing possibility of a run for president — something she discounts — surrounded Rice.

To reciprocate, Straw is hosting Rice for two days in his largely working-class legislative district.

Rice faced skeptical questions about U.S. involvement in Iraq at a question-and-answer session organized by the British foreign policy think tank Chatham House, including one about whether Washington had learned from its "mistakes over the past three years."

Rice invoked her academic background to answer.

"I'm quite certain that there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration, and I will probably even oversee some of them when I go back to Stanford," Rice said.

She batted away questions about whether she might run for president, saying she intends to return to teaching when she leaves government.

Rice was a professor and provost at Stanford University before becoming Bush's first-term national security adviser and second-term secretary of state.

Rice was a chief architect of the Iraq war now in its fourth year.

That history was at the center of the opposition she faced Friday, although demonstrators also objected to U.S. policies in pursuit of terrorists.

"Why should we be seen to endorse the policies of this woman?" demanded Jon Netton, 22, an acting student at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts who said Rice's visit had disrupted his practice schedule for an upcoming concert.

A planned visit to a mosque in Blackburn for Friday prayers was canceled because of concern that demonstrators would be too disruptive, mosque leaders said.

About a quarter of the town is of South Asian heritage, and many are Muslims.

A prominent poet and actress pulled out of planned appearances at an evening concert in Liverpool in protest of U.S. policies.

And while we are on the VERY RIPE subject of the CULTURE OF CORRUPTION in Washington, D.C. .....

Here's Tommy ...

You know ...

TOMMY THE REPUBLICAN .....

Yeah .....

That Tommy ...

"Former DeLay aide pleads guilty"

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
Last updated: 5:36 p.m., Friday, March 31, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A former top aide to Rep. Tom DeLay pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and promised to help with an investigation of bribery and lobbying fraud that has already netted three convictions and sparked calls for ethics reform in Congress.

Tony Rudy, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, admitted conspiring with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- both while Rudy worked for the Texas congressman and after he left the lawmaker's staff to become a lobbyist himself.

He is the second former DeLay staffer to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the lobbying probe.

The plea agreement makes no allegation that DeLay did anything wrong.

Rudy faces up to five years in prison but could receive much less based on the extent of his help with the investigation.

Court papers for the first time also referred to a third former DeLay aide, Ed Buckham.

Buckham, a onetime DeLay chief of staff, is described only as Lobbyist B, but is easily identifiable because the documents say Rudy worked with him after a brief stint at Abramoff's lobbying firm.

Beginning in 1997, Abramoff, his clients and Buckham's clients plied Rudy with expensive meals, trips, sports tickets, golf games and clubs, according to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Washington.

The gifts included a trip to Hilton Head, S.C., in 1999 with Rudy's wife and a trip to Pebble Beach, Calif., for the 2000 U.S. Open.

Rudy was given use of a suite and seven more seats to host a bachelor party at a Washington Redskins game in August 2000.

He received tickets to the Daytona 500 stock car race.

Rudy also arranged payments through Abramoff and Buckham to a consulting firm that he created and his wife, Lisa, ran.

Liberty Consulting received $86,000 in payments from or at the direction of Abramoff and others while Rudy worked for DeLay.

At the same time, according to the court document, Rudy agreed to "perform a series of official acts."

These included:

--Working to get federal money for the Northern Mariana Islands, which both Abramoff and Buckham wanted.

--Getting DeLay to oppose a postal rate increase that was opposed by magazine publishers who were represented by Abramoff.

--Persuading DeLay and other leading Republicans to defeat legislation that would have restricted Internet gambling.

Later, while working as a lobbyist, Rudy also was involved in arranging a golf trip to Scotland for Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican described as Representative 1, and congressional staffers, the court papers said.

He also helped attract $50,000 from two Abramoff clients to Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation that eventually was used to pay for the Scotland trip.

Richard Cullen, DeLay's lawyer, called Rudy's plea good news for his client because there is nothing in it that suggested DeLay was aware of Rudy's actions.

"DeLay has said repeatedly for many months that he took official actions and cast votes based only on his principles and his beliefs, and clearly nothing in the filing today indicates anything to the contrary," Cullen said.

Cullen said he has turned over to prosecutors e-mails from DeLay's congressional office that involve Abramoff, Rudy and Buckham.

Other ethics lawyers and experts, however, said the Rudy plea could be ominous for DeLay, who already is under indictment in Texas.

Prosecutors "are not going to lay out a case against him in this indictment," said Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer and former counsel to House Democrats.

"There is a kind of well-worn method at the Justice Department to trade up by indicting the lower-downs."

After leaving DeLay's staff at the end of 2000, Rudy first joined Abramoff's lobbying team at the Greenberg Traurig law firm.

Soon after, he signed on with Buckham at the Alexander Strategy Group.

DeLay's wife, Christine, also worked there.

Rudy is the first person to plead guilty in the case since Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud charges in January.

Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay press secretary who later became a lobbying partner with Abramoff, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to bribe public officials.

Abramoff was sentenced to nearly six years in prison this week for fraud in connection with a separate case, a casino boat business deal, but was allowed to remain free while helping the congressional corruption investigation in Washington.

As part of the deal Friday, Rudy pleaded guilty to the single conspiracy count and prosecutors agreed not to pursue other possible charges against him or his wife.

"The American public loses when officials and lobbyists conspire to buy and sell influence in such a corrupt and brazen manner."

"By his admission in open court today, Mr. Rudy paints a picture of Washington which the American public and law enforcement will simply not tolerate," said Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

Rudy, a 39-year-old lawyer, answered U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle's questions in a strong voice but seemed more subdued when she asked if he understood that he was pleading guilty to a felony and would lose some rights.

"Yes your honor," he said quietly.

His lawyer, Laura Ariane Miller, objected when Huvelle described the allegation that he took things "in exchange" for official acts.

Instead, Miller said that her client sought and received gifts.

Rudy was allowed to remain free pending the sentencing.

He and his lawyer left the courthouse without commenting to reporters.

While the court papers said nothing damaging about DeLay, prosecutors again alleged that Ney took action in exchange for trips, meals and tickets provided by Abramoff, Rudy and others.

Ney's lawyer, Mark Tuohey, said a guilty plea by Rudy doesn't change Ney's situation.

The congressman continues to maintain his innocence.

Tuohey said he hadn't seen the court papers filed Friday and couldn't comment in detail on them.

------

Associated Press writers Gina Holland and David Hammer contributed to this report.

Moral: The More Things Change, The More They Remain the Same



Intelligence Redo Is Harshly Judged
A Judge Critiques 9/11 Overhaul, and Finds It Top-Heavy

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 31, 2006; Page A17

U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner sharply criticized the restructuring of U.S. intelligence agencies last week, telling CIA lawyers that the overhaul has done nothing to rectify flaws exposed by al-Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that the changes "in the end . . . will amount to rather little."

Posner, who has written extensively on intelligence matters, questioned "the wisdom and consequences" of the intelligence overhaul passed by Congress in December 2004, which he said was based on "a deep misunderstanding of the limitations of national security intelligence."

That misunderstanding, Posner said, came from a naive belief that intelligence agencies can somehow be made infallible. "Failure in a democratic society," he said, "demands a response that promises, however improbably, to prevent future failures. [And] the preferred response is a reorganization, because it is at once dramatic and relatively cheap."

Posner made his remarks last Friday at an off-site conference of the CIA's office of general counsel, and a revised text was made available to The Washington Post.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said yesterday that the judge was invited because he is a well-known writer on intelligence issues and that "the CIA believes its officers should hear a range of informed opinion on issues affecting their work." Posner has a book being published next week, "Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform." His book "Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11" was published last spring.

In Posner's analysis, the director of national intelligence (DNI), created by Congress to be the president's top intelligence adviser, was given too much to do. DNI John D. Negroponte oversees the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies, including those at the Pentagon. Negroponte's staff, which has grown to about 1,000, "has become a new bureaucracy layered on top of the intelligence community," Posner said.

In the process, he said, the DNI's office has absorbed "many of the responsibilities of the CIA and demoted the agency to little more than a spy service." He points out that Negroponte runs the National Counterterrorism Center, which used to be part of the CIA. The agency also prepared the President's Daily Brief, the most sensitive intelligence delivered to President Bush and his top national security team each morning, but that now is prepared by the DNI.

At the same time, the DNI has floundered in its task of coordinating the agencies within the intelligence community, according to Posner, in part because of "three distinct and largely incompatible intelligence cultures that are poorly balanced: military intelligence, civilian intelligence and criminal investigation intelligence."

The military culture, with its "up-and-out promotions system . . . discipline and strong mission orientation," views the CIA with "a degree of hostility and disdain, which the agency reciprocates," Posner said. In addition, CIA and Pentagon intelligence officers compete in strategic intelligence work, a situation aggravated by the fact that the military operates the spy satellite agencies, whose capabilities it often does not wish to share.

Meanwhile, the FBI culture, focused in the past on catching criminals, is having problems with intelligence gathering because, as Posner put it, "the aim is to prevent the crime, not punish the criminals." Counterterrorist intelligence, he said, requires "casting a very wide net, following up on clues, assembling bits of information, and often failing because there is as yet no crime."

Complicating these differences, he noted, was the "profound political imbalance" extant among the three intelligence cultures. The military "is immensely popular, immensely powerful politically" and "ambitious to expand its intelligence activities under the forceful leadership of Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld and Under Secretary for Intelligence [Stephen A.] Cambone." Posner added that for "all these reasons" Pentagon intelligence is "out of the practical control of the DNI."

He said the FBI "is also immensely popular . . . and politically powerful . . . and stubbornly resistant to change." The CIA was left, Posner said, "in a situation of considerable vulnerability, as an unpopular agency and therefore a natural scapegoat" for intelligence failures of Sept. 11 and prewar Iraq.

Posner said that the DNI should have been given only a coordinating role in U.S. intelligence, and that the CIA director, now Porter J. Goss, should have remained the president's senior intelligence adviser. That approach would have eliminated the requirement that the DNI's office build its own bureaucracy of analysts, he said.

"America", Snuf, as you well know, is simply a concept ...

Not an actuality ...

In the sense that "it" is something "absolute" .....

"Something" that God "loves", as some people like to say ...

Which is their right, of course ....

Although I will ask them, "Does he really?"

But I digress ....

While to us, it might be an "ideal" ...

Another competing "reality" ...

Is that OUR America ....

And all within it .....

Is simply something to be exploited ...

And so it is ....

As my post above yours in the little window above here clearly demonstrates ....

To the REPUBLICANS, who I have considerable experience with .....

EXPLOITATION is simply a way of life ...

Polluted water means BID-NESS opportunities ...

Polluted air means profits ...

And BID-NESS opportunities ....

DECAYED INFRASTRUCTURE means real big bucks ...

Because in emergencies ...

You can extort more money for repairs ...

Than you can doing preventative maintenance ...

And so ....

OUR America is being run right into the ground ...

Just as it has been for at least thirty years now ...

As a part of an intentional philosophy ...

To enrich a few ...

At the expense of the many ...

And so .....

Oh Liv - I wish it were so simple:



Moussaoui's Star Witnesses

By Andrew Cohen
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, March 31, 2006; 12:00 PM

With jurors now in the midst of their capital sentencing deliberations, it ought to tell you something about the case against Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that no fewer than six current or former Bush Administration officials testified on his behalf Tuesday.

The list reads like a litany of Who's Who in Washington over the past few years -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet and counterterrorism guru Richard Clarke all went to bat for the terrorist the government wants to execute for knowing in advance about the 9-11 plot and not telling anyone.


These luminaries did not of course come into federal court and appear live at the witness stand on behalf of the man connected to the worst crime in American history. But they did offer in their own words, on videotape, during testimony they gave years ago to the 9/11 Commission some of the most convincing evidence at the trial that nothing Moussaoui would have said when arrested in August, 2001 would have enabled the government to prevent the terror attacks.

And those words were highlighted by defense attorney Edward MacMahon during his closing arguments Wednesday. Over and over again, he cited Rice and Company to support defense claims that our government was simple unable and unwilling before 9/11 to understand and process what was about to happen. In this often surreal trial, where defense attorneys impeached the credibility of their own client, and prosecution witnesses embarrassed the US government more than Moussaoui ever could, it was a delicious bit of endgame theatrics from Moussaoui's lawyers to throw back at vital policy makers some of the fancy phrases (and pathetic excuses) they offered Commission members in discussing how it came to be that a few dozen men took down the mighty World Trade Center and gravely damaged the Pentagon. The message could not have been lost on jurors: the government has been saying out of court something completely different from what prosecutors are saying in court about the cause of 9/11.

Take Rice, for example, who was the head of the National Security Council on 9/11. She testified that there "was no silver bullet" that would have foiled the attacks in advance and that the government could not have hardened aircraft cockpits in three months even if it had known of a direct threat by hijackers. This is crucial to the case against Moussaoui because a prosecution witness last week had told jurors of many security measures that would have been implemented in the 25 days between Moussaoui's arrest and the terror attacks, if there had been advance warning. Rice's statement was so devastating to this government claim that prosecutors did not even mention the possibility of hardened cockpits during their closing argument.

John Ashcroft, meanwhile, also appeared in the trial, on tape and on behalf of the confessed terrorist he once famously, and incorrectly, labeled as the "20th hijacker." He told the 9/11 Commission that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's computer system actually was "42 systems" that often did not communicate with one another. Ashcroft also told the Commission, and therefore jurors, that the pre-9/11 legal wall that precluded intelligence sharing among law enforcement and spy agencies "impeded the investigation" of Moussoaui before the terror attacks. Remarks like this forced prosecutors to tell jurors during closing arguments to "keep your focus. This stuff is not what this case is about."

Meanwhile, Thomas Pickard, the acting FBI director from June to September 4, 2001, told the Commission, and therefore jurors, that he "was not aware" of Moussoaui before 9/11, despite frantic pleas for action by the agent who arrested Moussaoui. Pickard also testified that he was not made aware of the search for two Al Qaeda operatives (who later turned out to be 9/11 hijackers) who were known to be in the United States in the summer of 2001. The FBI, he said, was "being fed out of a fire hydrant" and could not process "tons of material" and for good measure he told the panel that the Attorney General had cut the budget for counterterrorism.

Then, it was left to Tenet, from the CIA, to summarize the essence of this part of the Moussaoui's defense. He told the Commission that a specific attack warning "is not good enough without a structure to put it into action." That's precisely what Moussaoui's lawyers say -- that even if Moussaoui had told federal agents whatever he knew about plans to use planes as missile, the bureaucratic structure in place before 9/11 would not have enabled enough people to know enough to do anything to prevent the attacks.

And, finally, Clarke's image was brought to the jury. The controversial face of anti-terror measures both before and after 9/11 also echoed a major defense theme of the case-- that it is only for the realm of regret and speculation to wonder what might have happened on 9/11 if things had happened differently before that awful day. "We'll never know" what would have happened, Clarke told the Commission. Later, he told Commissioners "I don't know what we would have done" with the information Moussaoui and other terrorists might have provided before 9/11. That's vital to the case because prosecutors must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that had Moussaoui told the truth when arrested, the terror plot, or a great part of it, would have been foiled.

None of this testimony guarantees or even suggests that jurors will reject the government's argument that Moussaoui caused death on 9/11 and therefore is eligible for the death penalty. But now the record is even clearer than before that there were many reasons why Tuesday, September 11, 2001 turned out to be one of the worst days in American history. Jurors now are deciding whether and to what extent Moussaoui is culpable for what happened that day. But as Moussaoui's star-studded, surprise witnesses pointed out on video, the verdict already is out on the government's role in this sad affair.

CORRUPTION, especially, means money in the pocket ...

For the person in charge of something ...

To turn their back ......

And look the other way .....

Up here, where I am ....

We had a public health engineer who refused to turn his back ...

And look the other way ....

And the State of New York ...

Simply took this engineer ...

And they crushed him .....

Which required them to violate the law, of course ...

But since both the law and the Constitution are nothing but a bunch of BULL **** here in OUR America ....

This engineer was crushed with impunity ....

And in the meantime ...

Well, you just can never have enough "PROFITS" ....

And so ...

It is BID-NESS as usual ....

In the warped and twisted MURRIKA ...

Of the REPUBLICAN PARTY ...

And its own GOD EMPORER, the ILLUSTRIOUS BUSH THE ALL-WISE AND EXCEEDINGLY MERITORIOUS ....

And so ....

"EPA wants to dilute water rules - Agency proposes to allow higher levels of arsenic, other contaminants in small communities"

By JULIET EILPERIN, Washington Post
First published: Saturday, April 1, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits.

The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation.

About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change.

In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards.

Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account the fact that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards.

"We're taking the position both public health protection and affordability can be achieved together," Grumbles said in an interview this week.

"When you're looking at small communities, oftentimes they cannot comply with the (current) standard."

But Erik Olson, a senior lawyer for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the move a broad attack on public health.

"It could have serious impacts on people's health, not just in small-town America," Olson said.

The question of how to regulate drinking water quality has roiled Washington for years.

Just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton imposed a more stringent standard for arsenic, dictating that drinking water should contain no more than 10 parts per billion of the poison, which in small amounts is a known carcinogen. '

President Bush suspended the standard after taking office, but Congress voted to reinstate it, and in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued a study saying arsenic was more dangerous than the EPA had previously believed.

The deadline for water systems to comply with the arsenic rule was January of this year.

Several public officials and environmental experts said they were just starting to review the administration's plan, but some said they worry that it could lead to broad exemptions from the current federal contaminant standards cities and larger towns must also meet.

Besides arsenic, other water contaminants including radon and lead pose a health threat in some communities.

James Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said he and others are concerned that the less stringent standard will "become the rule, rather than the exception" if larger communities press for similar relief.

The administration may face a fight on Capitol Hill over the proposal.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who helped write the 1996 law, said EPA's proposal, "if finalized, would allow weakened drinking water standards, not just in rural areas, but in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States."

As I tell younger people all the time who are concerned about what is going on in OUR America today vis-a-vis all this lying and crap and CORRUPTION that we are getting from this BUSH REGIME ...

And the REPUBLICAN PARTY ...

Of which the BUSH REGIME is a central part ..

Or facet ....

A study of history reveals ...

That all too often ...

Absolute fools and real stupid venal men ...

Gain power and control ...

Over large bodies of people ...

And nations ...

To their detriment ...

And many times ...

Destruction ...

And OUR America is no exception to the "rule" ......

And why should it be?

Because some god or other is alleged to "love it"?

"Gods" have allegedly and supposedly loved many nations in the past ...

And they are now gone ....

And so .....

As Forrest Gump would have it ...

"Stupid is, as stupid does" ......

And so .....

At its inception ...

There were grave doubts about whether OUR America could continue to survive as a REPUBLIC ...

Which form of government REQUIRES an intelligent, informed, educated body of citizens ......

As opposed to the other forms ...

Which only require a large grouping of bovine-like unquestioning SUBJECTS ....

And so ....

When OUR America itself reaches a point of where we have a larger group of BOVINE SUBJECTS than is contained in the other group, the intelligent, thinking, educated and informed citizens .....

Well, there is the death of the REPUBLIC right there ...

And no one is going to stand up and announce that fact .....

IT WILL SIMPLY BE EXPLOITED INSTEAD ....

And so ....

As your stories above clearly demonstrate ....

Karl Rove ...

And the REPUBLICANS ...

Are betting that we have reached and passed that critical juncture ....

And so ...

But it is that simple, Snuf ....

At least for us country folk out here in the hinterlands of civilization ...

Where lying and deceit are still considered detrimental .....

To long-term survival ...

And so ....

We tend to be less prone to hyperbole .....

Like this statement above ...

About 9-11 being one of the worst days in American history .....

What a myopic view, actually ...

From a country person's perspective, anyway .....

9-11 was simply another day in a long string of days ...

And that is that .....

What makes 9-11 somehow special ....

Perhaps ...

Is all of the government stupidity and lying associated with it ....

But out here in the country ...

Where memories have to be a bit longer than five or maybe eight nano-seconds .....

We are used to stupidity and lying by the government ...

Especially here in New York State ...

Which has one of the most corrupt and least-democratic governments of any state in OUR union ....

And so, Snuf ....

BID-NESS as usual .....

And so ....

And speaking of IRAQINAM ....

Where the FABULOUS FLYING BUSHCOS have finally admiited to making THOUSANDS OF TACTICAL ERRORS .....

Which is BID-NESS AS USUAL for the FABULOUS FLYING BUSHCOS .....

We have ....

"Status of U.S. Copter Crew in Iraq Unknown"

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 20 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter crashed Saturday during a "combat air patrol" southwest of Baghdad, but the status of the crew was unknown, according to the American command.

Meanwhile, pressure mounted on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step aside as the Shiite bloc's nominee for a second term, with some fellow Shiites urging him to withdraw to break the deadlock over a new government amid increasing sectarian violence.

A U.S. statement said the helicopter went down about 5:30 p.m. during a combat patrol southwest of the capital but gave no further details, except to say that the fate of the crew was unknown.

The statement did not identify the type of helicopter.

It was the first loss of a U.S. helicopter since three of them crashed in a 10-day period in January, killing a total of 18 American military personnel.

At least two of the helicopters were shot down.

The U.S. command also said a Marine was killed Friday during combat operations in Anbar province west of the capital.

The Marine's death brought to at least 2,328 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The violence came as U.S. officials expressed increasing impatience with the slow pace of government talks following the Dec. 15 elections.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged the Iraqis to speed up the process to prevent the country from sliding into civil war.

"The terrorists are seeking to provoke sectarian war, and Iraq needs a government of national unity in the face of this threat," Khalilzad said in a statement released Saturday.

"This government needs to have a good program to govern from the center, and needs good ministers who are competent."

"Iraq is bleeding while they are moving at a very slow pace," he added.

At least 22 people were killed Saturday in fresh violence in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq's two largest cities.

Six others — all Shiite men — died Friday evening when gunmen opened fire on a minibus near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, the town's mayor, Mohammed Maarouf, said.

U.S. officials believe formation of a government of national unity would be a major step toward calming the insurgency and restoring order three years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

That would enable the U.S. and its coalition partners to begin withdrawing troops.

But talks among Iraqi political leaders have bogged down, prompting Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians to call for al-Jaafari's replacement.

The Shiites get first crack at the prime minister's job because they are the largest bloc in parliament.

On Saturday, a former Shiite Cabinet minister, Qassim Dawoud, joined those calls, saying al-Jaafari should step aside to break the deadlock.

"I personally asked that he withdraw his nomination," Dawoud told The Associated Press.

Dawoud later said four major parties within the Shiite alliance had agreed to "reconsider" al-Jaafari's nomination.

But Jawad al-Maliki, a member of the prime minister's Dawa party, insisted to Al-Arabiya television that the alliance "is united in its position" and "is backing its candidate," meaning al-Jaafari.

Other Shiite officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Dawoud was not alone in his opposition to al-Jaafari, and that representatives of major factions within the Shiite alliance would decide soon whether to withdraw the nomination.

Al-Jaafari, a physician who spent years in exile in Iran and Britain, edged out Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi for the nomination during an alliance caucus in February thanks to the support of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The prospect of a prime minister politically beholden to the vehemently anti-American al-Sadr has alarmed both Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Al-Sadr's bloc in parliament reaffirmed its support for al-Jaafari.

"We will not abandon our decision regarding al-Jaafari's candidacy," the bloc's leader in parliament, Salam al-Maliki, told Al-Arabiya television on Saturday.

Officials said that despite opposition to al-Jaafari, Shiite leaders were hesitant to move against him for fear of splitting the alliance.

Tension between the rival Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities escalated following the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics in Baghdad, Basra and other religiously mixed cities.

On Saturday, gunmen killed three ice cream vendors in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Dora, while a butcher and his son were killed and another son was wounded in east Baghdad, police said.

The owner of an air conditioner repair shop was shot to death on his way to work in western Baghdad.

Police also found nine bodies, mostly young men who were shot in the head or strangled in Baghdad.

Witnesses also told police they saw three gunmen in a BMW pull a handcuffed man out of the car and shoot him near a highway in west Baghdad.

In Basra, a Sunni sheik was killed by gunmen in a speeding car when he left his home in the southern city.

Two policemen also were killed in a bombing south of Basra, police said.

West of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed three suspected insurgents, including a woman, and captured three others Saturday in an operation in Amiriyah in Anbar province, the U.S. military said.
__

Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

I am an older American myself ...

Or at least I believe I am, since I don't know exactly what age you must be to qualify as one .....

In any event ...

I was born at the close of WWII .....

Which war a lot of young people in OUR America today ....

Know absolutely nothing about .....

And I served in Viet Nam ....

And I was "there" ...

Meaning alive and cognizant ...

When John F. Kennedy was killed ....

Just as I was alive and cognizant ...

When Millhouse "TRICKY DICK" Nixxon left the White House in what I thought ...

Was a well-deserved state of disgrace ....

And I live "out in the country" ....

And so ...

I tend to have my own thoughts and opinions about things ...

And this thread allows me an opportunity ...

To voice those thoughts ...

In a non-confrontational manner .....

Since in here ...

No one can be forced to have to listen to another ...

Against their will ....

And so ....

Which is not to say that everyone who comes into here ...

Agrees with me ...

Or even likes what I have to say ....

Neither of which are the point of the exercise, anyway ...

As I see it anyway .....

The "popularity" thing, I mean ...

Or the creation of yet another faction here in OUR America ...

On top of the too many that we already have .....

Just with the Democrats ...

And the Republicans ....

When I started this thread ....

It was with an idea to just kind of follow things along, here in OUR America ...

To see where we might be going in essence ...

And my "style" ...

If indeed I even have one ...

Would be along the lines of "CHRONICLING" .....

Which is to say, maintaining a daily log of what happened .....

Or what was reported to have happened anyway ....

So that periodically ...

Thanks to the memory storage in here ...

Coupled with the search engine feature ....

I could go back in time ...

And retrieve an article ....

To see where we were .....

Months ago ..

Or years ago, in the case now of IRAQINAM .....

Because to me ...

Without CONTEXT ....

It is difficult to make judgments ....

And so .....

A "jump" back in time ....

"Allawi Blames U.S. for 'Gross Negligence'"

By Jackie Spinner, Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; 5:07 PM

BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, on Tuesday accused foreign troops in the country of "gross negligence" in the massacre of 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits over the weekend, an unusually critical remark by the U.S.-backed leader.

Allawi, in a weekly address to the Iraqi National Assembly, said his government had launched an investigation into the deaths of the U.S.-trained recruits, most of whom were lined up and executed shortly after sunset Saturday near the National Guard's main training base in Kirkush, about 60 miles northeast of the capital.

"A terrible crime was committed in which a large number of the ING were martyred," Allawi said.

"We think this shows, in addition to gross negligence on the side of some of the multinational forces, it shows the kind of insistence to hurt Iraq and its people."

Allawi, whose interim administration assumed political authority from the U.S.-led occupation authority in late June, did not explain how foreign forces had been negligent.

Efforts to reach government spokesmen on Tuesday night were unsuccessful.

The remark was an unusual public condemnation of the U.S. military and its allies in Iraq from the prime minister, who worked closely with Washington as an exile leader during the rule of President Saddam Hussein.

His political party, the Iraqi National Accord, was funded for several years by the CIA.

In a statement on Tuesday, the U.S. military called the killings "a cold-blooded and systematic move by terrorists" and said U.S.-led forces were not responsible.

The terrorists "and no one else must be held fully accountable for these attacks," the statement said.

The Iraqi interim government "is investigating this tragic incident."

"Multinational forces will fully support and cooperate to establish the facts and avoid repetition of similar events."

In Washington, a former top occupation security official said that more Iraqis were being trained for the country's security forces than the United States and its allies are capable of protecting.

"There are so many being trained now, U.S. forces can't watch them all now," Peter Khalil, an Australian defense expert who was in Iraq from last summer until this spring as the director of national security policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"There are 40 battalions of the Iraqi National Guard, six or seven battalions of the Iraqi army."

"Recruits are coming in all the time."

"You don't have force levels to protect indigenous forces."

Insurgents in recent months have carried out frequent attacks on Iraqi security forces and recruits, who are being trained to eventually assume responsibility for security in the country.

There are about 100,000 members of the Iraqi security forces, and that number is expected to increase to 145,000 by January and 250,000 by the end of next year, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

The unarmed recruits killed Saturday had just left the Kirkush training base aboard three buses when they were stopped at a checkpoint manned by insurgents dressed as Iraqi police officers, according to Iraqi officials.

The recruits appeared to have been forced off the buses, lined up, ordered to lie facedown and then shot.

The buses, which were taking the recruits from the base for the start of a 20-day leave, were not accompanied by security vehicles.

Meanwhile, an insurgent group, the Ansar al-Sunna Army, said Tuesday that it had kidnapped 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen, according to a statement posted on its Web site, the Reuters news agency reported.

"The mujaheddin in the army of Ansar al-Sunna captured a group of militia linked to the coalition forces that was out on patrol along the Baghdad-to-Hilla road," the group said in the statement.

Hilla is about 60 miles south of Baghdad.

The claim could not immediately be verified, but a video and photographs of the men and their captors was posted on the site.

In the insurgent-held city of Fallujah, the U.S. military said it had killed an associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant whose organization claimed responsibility for Saturday's massacre.

The military said multiple sources reported that the associate was in a house in northwest Fallujah when it was attacked by U.S. aircraft at 3 a.m. on Tuesday.

The U.S. government, which has accused Zarqawi of engineering many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq in recent months, has offered a $25 million reward for his capture or death.

Military forces have struck Fallujah, where they believe Zarqawi and his operatives are based, almost nightly for the past several weeks.

A major offensive there is expected, possibly after the U.S. presidential election, and most of the city's residents have fled in anticipation.

Allawi predicted on Tuesday that insurgent attacks would increase and become even more violent.

"The enemies know if Iraqi stabilizes, it will be a serious defeat to them," he said.

"Thus, they'll escalate the situation."

"You should expect wider operations than ones done now against Iraq."

Striking a more familiar tone of optimism, Allawi vowed that the insurgents would ultimately lose in their campaign of upheaval.

"I am confident that the majority of Iraqis are willing to cooperate to stabilize the country, and the Iraqi political powers insist to defeat those gangs," he said.

Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.

And while we are on the subject of IRAQINAM ....

And pure goose fools .....

SYCOPHANT: a servile, self-seeking flatterer, a parasite!

"Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force's Size"

By Eric Schmitt, New York Times
February 28, 2003

In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq.

House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.

Mr. Wolfowitz, with Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, at his side, tried to mollify the Democratic lawmakers, promising to fill them in eventually on the administration's internal cost estimates.

"There will be an appropriate moment," he said, when the Pentagon would provide Congress with cost ranges.

"We're not in a position to do that right now."

At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy's comments.

Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz mentioned General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name.

But both men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a postwar Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to join a reconstruction effort.

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq.

He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo.

He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force.

And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it.

"I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many nations agreed in advance of hostilities to help pay for a conflict that eventually cost about $61 billion.

Mr. Wolfowitz said that this time around the administration was dealing with "countries that are quite frightened of their own shadows" in assembling a coalition to force President Saddam Hussein to disarm.

Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said.

"I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables.

Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion.

"To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect.

Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that."

"It's not useful."

Ah, yes ...

History ....

Which is never complete .....

As it is still happening ...

All around us ....

Even as I write these words in here ...

And so .....

Middle East - AP

"Iraq Faces Profound Shift in Power"

Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:08 PM ET

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq in 2005 faces the likelihood of the most profound shift of political power in its modern history, while struggling with an insurgency that has confounded U.S. strategists and their optimistic forecasts that preceded the war.

Starting with national elections on Jan. 30, Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls three times next year — first to choose a new parliament, then to decide on a new constitution and finally — if the charter is ratified — to choose yet another legislature by the end of the year.

The January ballot will be the first since the April 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.

And the vote in December will complete the steps envisioned by the Bush administration to transform Iraq from one of the Middle East's most ruthless dictatorships into a functioning, albeit flawed, democracy.

That's a tall order for a nation of nearly 26 million people, a volatile Sunni-Shiite divide and large areas that are virtual no-go zones for Westerners, government officials and the country's own security forces.

If the plan works, the United States may be able to see a time when it can bring home substantial numbers of U.S. troops.

However, few of the optimistic predictions about Iraq — from jubilant Iraqis showering invading troops with flowers, to the vast oil revenues paying for the country's own reconstruction, to Iraqis taking charge of their own security — have come true.

Instead, Iraq, already America's bloodiest military operation since the Vietnam war, is awash not only in the wreckage of failed forecasts but also in tons of missing Iraqi weapons and ammunition feared to have fallen into the hands of insurgents.

This time in 2003, some American planners envisioned U.S. troops fading into the background while Iraqi police and soldiers dealt with the guerrillas.

A year later, U.S. troops were locked in their most intense urban combat — for the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah — since Vietnam.

Instead of cutbacks, the Pentagon is boosting U.S. force levels to about 150,000 by mid-January — more U.S. troops than invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Petroleum exports have lagged due to poor infrastructure, sabotage and a security situation which makes large-scale renovation projects too dangerous.

The world's most powerful military has been unable to stop suicide bombings on the 10 miles of highway from the center of Baghdad to the airport — much less protect the oil wells and the thousands of miles of pipelines.

If elections do take place, they are expected to shift power to the long-suppressed Shiite Muslim community, an estimated 60 percent of the population.

That would spell the end of Sunni domination which predates the establishment of the modern Iraqi state after World War I.

Iraq would become the only Arab land with a Shiite-dominated government — an unnerving prospect for Arab countries with large and potentially restive Shiite populations.

Only non-Arab Iran is currently under Shiite rule.

Some urban, Westernized Iraqis shudder at the prospect of Tehran-style clerical rule, although key Shiite politicians dismiss those concerns as unfounded.

Nevertheless, it will take considerable political skill for Iraq's leaders to maneuver through a tectonic power shift without inflaming sectarian and ethnic passions among Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Turkomen, Christians and others who make up this country's mosaic.

Sunni Arabs already form the core of the insurgency — much of it believed the old network of Saddam's Baath party.

If the Sunnis feel deprived of a meaningful role in the new Iraq, rebel ranks will swell.

The Kurds, estimated between 14 percent and 20 percent of the population and the most pro-American group, are anxious to maintain the self-rule they have enjoyed in the north since 1991.

If they feel threatened, or if the new constitution strips them of that right, the Kurds may push for independence, arguing that Washington owes them that for providing militiamen to fight alongside U.S. troops in the 2003 invasion.

But the dismemberment of Iraq would alarm not only every country in the region but the Europeans and the Americans as well.

More worrisome would be the response of the Sunni Arab minority — the political and social elite under Saddam, concentrated in the center and north.

Sunnis were also the backbone of Saddam's Republican Guard and security services, which went underground following the collapse of the regime, forging alliances with foreign and Iraqi Islamic extremists.

The Sunnis are divided between those who have opted to participate in politics, such as Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, and elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, and those who reject anything that smacks of cooperation with an American force they regard as ccupiers.

Among the rejectionists is an alliance of about 3,000 Sunni clerics — the Association of Muslim Scholars.

They have called for a boycott of elections to protest both the attack on Fallujah and the continued U.S. presence.

The challenges facing Iraq will be to draw them into the political process, perhaps through power-sharing formulas or guarantees of Sunni status to lure them away from Islamic extremists.

Meanwhile, steps to prosecute Saddam were slowed after the government fired the director of the war crimes tribunal, Salem Chalabi, and the Iraqi leader isn't expect to stand trial soon.

But the interim government announced in mid-December that it expected to issue formal indictments against some of Saddam's top aides early in the new year.

European experts have shied away from helping excavate mass graves and gather other evidence because Iraq has reinstituted the death penalty, which Europe has abolished.

History ...

And politics ....

Equal Life ...

Here in OUR America ....

And so ....

"Katherine Harris campaign loses core staff"

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:06 a.m., Sunday, April 2, 2006

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Katherine Harris' U.S. Senate campaign lost what was left of its core team when a top adviser, campaign manager, and communications director resigned this weekend.

Harris, a Republican congresswoman challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, said Saturday she would introduce new members of her campaign early in the week.

"We are stronger as a campaign today than we were yesterday," Harris said in a press release.

Harris said her campaign has lined up people who believe in her candidacy, are committed, and support the "values of mainstream Florida citizens."

Former campaign manager Jim Dornan, who resigned in November, said, "She had the best people in the country."

"She can't get any better than that."

"This is a campaign that is spiraling downward by the minute," he said, adding she should drop out of the race.

Among those resigning over the weekend were Ed Rollins, a political adviser to President Reagan; campaign manager Jamie Miller; press secretary Morgan Dobbs; and other key staff.

Phone messages left for Rollins and Dobbs were not immediately returned, while contact information was not found for Miller.

Harris didn't immediately return a call Saturday for additional comment.

Her campaign has struggled since announcing plans to challenge Nelson last summer.

For months, GOP leaders in Washington tried recruiting someone else into the race, and Harris' fundraising was slow from the start.

Turnover has also been a problem.

She recently lost a pollster, a national financial director, treasurer and media consultant.

Advisers urged her to get out of the race.

She refused and announced last month that she would spend $10 million of her own money to compete with Nelson, whom she has trailed significantly in several polls.

end quotes

Consternation in the camp of the "ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY" here in OUR America ....

Which is the REPUBLICAN PARTY, of course ....

The "KINGS" of the "CULTURE OF CORRUPTION" presently reigning in Washington, D.C. ....

And so ...

And then ...

What else?

IRAQINAM .....

Where "CON-JOB CONNIE" Rice has finally confirmed ....

What most Americans already know ...

That the BUSHCO REGIME ...

In just a short amount of time, actually ...

Has made thousands of TACTICAL ERRORS in IRAQINAM ....

Which is the HALLMARK of George W. Bush's miserable presidency ....

To date ....

Here in OUR America ....

And so ....

"Rice, Straw make unannounced visit to Iraq"

By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press
Last updated: 8:55 a.m., Sunday, April 2, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The top U.S and British diplomats made a surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday to prod the country's struggling leaders to end nearly four months of wrangling and form a new government.

"We're going to urge that the negotiations be wrapped up," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew overnight to the Iraqi capital for meetings with the current interim government and ethnic and religious power brokers.

Straw said the choice of leaders is up to Iraqis alone, but neither he nor Rice disguised the blunt nature of their mission.

"There is significant international concern about the time the formation of this government is taking, and therefore we believe and we will be urging the Iraqi leaders we see to press ahead more quickly," Straw said.

The British diplomat was making his third trip to Iraq this year.

Rice was last in Iraq in November.

"We've wanted to be out there at times that we thought we could help move the process forward," Rice said.

"And of course it's important to have fresh messages from time to time from Washington and from London about the concern that a government be formed."

Britain is Washington's closest ally in the 3-year-old war and stations the second largest number of troops in the country after the United States.

Rice and Straw were meeting with President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other leaders.

The diplomats' visit comes amid growing pressure on al-Jaafari to step aside as the Shiite nominee for a second term to break the stalemate in talks on forming a new government.

Before sitting down with al-Jaafari, Rice and Straw posed for pictures with stiff smiles.

Rice looked especially uncomfortable, and said little before the cameras were ushered away.

She did not answer a reporter's question about whether she would tell the prime minister he is through.

A statement released by Talabani's office said he discussed "the efforts exerted by the representatives of the political blocs" with Rice and Straw.

Talabani also briefed his visitors on the negotiations and on the decision to form a political council for national security and a ministerial committee for national security, the statement said.

Talks among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders have stalled, in part because of opposition to al-Jaafari's nomination by the Shiite bloc.

On Saturday, Shiite politician Qassim Dawoud joined Sunnis and Kurds in calling for a new Shiite nominee, the first time a Shiite figure has issued such a public call.

Rice and Straw, who had been in northern England, arrived during a driving rain and thunderstorm at a time when U.S. officials here have been expressing increasing impatience with the slow pace of government talks following the Dec. 15 elections.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has urged the Iraqis to speed up the process to prevent the country from sliding into civil war.

U.S. officials believe the formation of a government of national unity would be a major step toward calming the insurgency and restoring order three years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

That would enable the U.S. and its coalition partners to begin withdrawing troops.

But talks among Iraqi political leaders have bogged down, prompting Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians to call for al-Jaafari's replacement.

The Shiites get first crack at the prime minister's job because they are the largest bloc in parliament.

------

Associated Press reporter Vanessa Arrington in Baghdad contributed to this report.

If there has been a bigger fool than George W. Bush ...

As an alleged "world leader" ...

In the last four ..

Or five thousand years ....

I, for one ...

Would like to know ...

Who that bigger fool was ....

Because so far as I can see ...

The GEORGE of America has won that dubious honor and distinction ...

Hands down ...

And so ....

"Iraqis flee mixed areas - Thousands of civilians desert their homes as nation moves to ethnic, religious partition"

By EDWARD WONG and KIRK SEMPLE
First published: Sunday, April 2, 2006

New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with the killings of Iraqi civilians rising significantly in daily sectarian violence while American casualties have declined.

The increased violence is spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas.

The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics from the past six months and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines -- an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years.

The nature of the Iraq war has been changing since at least the late autumn, when political friction between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs rose even as American troops began implementing a long-term plan to decrease their street presence.

But the killing accelerated after the bombing on Feb. 22 of a revered Shiite shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting.

Approximately 900 Iraqi civilians died violently in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to military statistics and the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths.

The Brookings Institution put the U.S. figure at 30.

Meanwhile, at least 29 American troops were killed in March, the second-lowest monthly total since the war began.

The White House says that little violence occurs in most of Iraq's 18 provinces.

But those four or five provinces where the majority of the killings and migrations take place are Iraq's major population centers, generally mixed regions that include Baghdad, and contain much of the nation's infrastructure -- crucial factors in Iraq's prospects for stability.

The Iraqi public's reaction to the violence has been dramatic.

Since the shrine bombing, 30,000 to 36,000 Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence or fear of reprisals, say officials at the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva.

The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated that at least 5,500 families have moved, with the biggest group being 1,250 families settling in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after leaving Baghdad and Sunni-dominated towns in central Iraq.

The families are living with relatives or in abandoned buildings, and a crisis of food and water shortages is starting to build, officials say.

"We lived in Latifiya for 30 years," said Abu Hussein al-Ramahi, a Shiite farmer with a family of seven, referring to a village south of Baghdad that is a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

"But a month ago, two armed people with masks on their faces said if I stayed in this area, my family and I would no longer remain alive."

"They shot bullets near my feet."

"I went back home immediately and we left the area early next morning for Najaf."

Al-Ramahi's family and other migrants are now squatting in a derelict hotel in the holy city.

"It's almost a creeping polarization of Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In the chaos, he said, "We see a slow, steady loss of confidence, a growing process of distrust which you see day by day as people at the political level bicker."

"Everything has become sectarian and ethnic."

The shifts in violence and migration patterns are fueling discussion about whether Iraq is devolving into civil war.

Although that determination may be impossible to make in the short term, the debate itself could increase the political pressure that President Bush is facing at home to draw down significantly the force of 133,000 American troops here.

Even if American deaths keep falling, polls show the American public has little appetite for engagement in an Iraqi civil war.

Commanders in Iraq say the insurgent groups in the country, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq, have shifted the focus of their attacks in an effort to foment civil war and undermine negotiations to form a four-year government.

"What we are seeing him do now is shift his target from the coalition forces to Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior spokesman for the American command.

"The enemy is trying to stop the formation of this national unity government; he's trying to inflame sectarian violence."

American officials say that the solution to the sectarian bloodshed lies in the Iraqis quickly forming a national unity government, with representatives of all major groups in Iraq checking each other through compromises.

But with each political milestone -- the transfer of sovereignty in 2004, two sets of elections in 2005, the referendum on the constitution -- the Americans have asserted that the country would stabilize.

Instead, the violence has continued unabated, sometimes changing in nature, as it is doing now, but never declining.

In any case, the mass migrations could mean that Iraq's political groups will have little incentive to compromise with one another, as they separate into their enclaves.

For example, at least 761 families have settled in Baghdad after moving from Anbar Province and other Sunni-dominated areas to the west, according to Iraqi government statistics.

The same is happening on the Sunni Arab end -- there are reports of 50 families moving from Baghdad to the Sunni enclave of Fallujah.

"The situation for those displaced won't be resolved anytime soon," said Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration.

And before I must go ...

Some more history ...

This time ...

From right here ...

In OUR own nation ....

"Archaeologists Launch Large Dig in Va."

Sat Apr 1, 10:59 AM ET

KING WILLIAM, Va. - Archaeologists are expected to begin searching thousands of acres on the Middle Peninsula this summer for Indian artifacts, marking one of the biggest investigations of its kind in Virginia history.

The area to be explored is the future site of a reservoir approved for construction last year, a project that has drawn fierce opposition from three Indian tribes.

The tribes also are upset about the archaeological dig, which will focus on 6,000 acres of forests and fields.

"Let the poor people rest, let the artifacts rest," said Warren Cook, assistant chief of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe.

The Pamunkey, Mattaponi and Upper Mattaponi tribes have refused to sign an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which governs the archaeological project.

But their opposition is largely symbolic.

Under federal law, Newport News must locate archaeological resources under threat from the reservoir and protect them or mitigate their loss.

"We've felt all along that you cannot mitigate this sort of problem," said Upper Mattaponi Chief Ken Adams.

"We've been here ... 10,000 years and (Newport News) has been here 400 years and they want us to mitigate?"

"That's impossible."

The Mattaponi and Pamunkey reservations are within three miles of the reservoir site and the Upper Mattaponi tribe owns acreage about 8 miles away.

"This is not like digging up Aztec remains in Mexico," said David Bailey, a lawyer representing the Mattaponi in its fight against the reservoir.

"The tribe is literally 2 miles away, so it's very sensitive."

Newport News proposed the 1,500-acre reservoir several years ago and offered the tribes $1.5 million in compensation, which they rejected.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the reservoir last year.

The tribes contend the reservoir will violate a 17th-century peace treaty that protects their right to hunt and fish.

Newport News has a state permit to divert up to 75 million gallons of river water a day into the reservoir, which the Mattaponi fear will hurt the local shad population.

The city is studying the shad migration to determine safe times to pump the water.

The archaeological investigation could last for several years.

Researchers hope it will give them a clearer picture of the evolution of Indian culture in Virginia, said Chris Stevenson, of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Archaeologists who surveyed the site of the proposed reservoir in 1996 found — but did not excavate — 112 camp sites.

Artifacts revealed Indians had lived in the area for 8,000 years.

"There's going to be some really exciting stuff," said Tim Thompson, the corps' Norfolk District archaeologist.

___

Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com

For my West Coast Friends and roots from a Los Angeles transplant:

N.C.A.A. Tournament
Bruins Have a Shot at Title No. 12

Published: April 2, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS, April 1 — The U.C.L.A. traveling party gathered on the floor of Conseco Fieldhouse early Saturday afternoon, already celebrating glory's grand return.
When U.C.L.A. officials planned this pregame pep rally, reserving time on the Indiana Pacers' home court, they also arranged for a guest speaker — a surprise guest speaker, in every sense of the term.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was never known as a master orator, but when he took the floor in front of fans, he made a point that will be remembered like one of his skyhooks. He told the baby-blue throng not to expect another John Wooden era. He told them to savor whatever era is beginning right now.

It was a simple point, but one that has been difficult to grasp for the past few decades at U.C.L.A. Whether or not this year's Bruins remind anyone of Abdul-Jabbar and Wooden, they are in position nonetheless to capture the team's 12th national championship and end 11 years of frustration. U.C.L.A. throttled Louisiana State on Saturday night at the RCA Dome, 59-45, in as convincing a fashion as ever.

Three years after the Bruins went 10-19 and two years after they went 11-17, they will play for the title Monday night against Florida. If the Bruins win — they are 11-1 in championship games — they will surely be compared to North Carolina's basketball program, another traditional power that won the title last season, three years removed from an 8-20 record.

On the same court where U.C.L.A. suffered its most famous humiliation — a first-round loss to Princeton in 1996, the year after winning the national title — the Bruins played Saturday night like they were the ultimate underdogs. Ignoring hand checks and diving for loose balls, U.C.L.A. showed how much it has changed.

"Our intensity defensively for the entire 40 minutes was really, really incredible," U.C.L.A. coach Ben Howland said. "That's the best defense we played all year."

Four and a half minutes into the game, Howland sprinted to midcourt during a timeout to congratulate his team for taking an early lead. Then he started screaming "Stance!" every time the Bruins went on defense. In one stretch, when his players made three steals in a row, he jumped up and down on the sideline.

U.C.L.A. demoralized the Tigers at the outset, countering their overwhelming size advantage with Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, a lanky freshman from Cameroon. Mbah a Moute, who is nicknamed the Prince of Westwood because he is the prince of his village in Cameroon, became king for a day.

Slashing between L.S.U.'s most formidable bodies — Tyrus Thomas and Glen (Big Baby) Davis — Mbah a Moute scored 17 points and added 9 rebounds. He was cheered by supporters who waved Cameroonian flags and wore T-shirts that read "Cameroon Crazie." Now if only Mbah a Moute could get a postgame meal of viper and boa constrictor, two of his favorite dishes.

Playing U.C.L.A. looks about as pleasant as eating live rattlesnake. While many teams talk about defensive intensity, the Bruins demonstrate it on almost every possession. To reach the Final Four, they held Memphis to 45 points. To reach the championship game, they held L.S.U. to 45 points. The Tigers shot just 32 percent from the field, did not make a 3-pointer, and watched the Bruins run off with 10 steals.

Asked how other teams react to the defensive pressure, U.C.L.A. point guard Jordan Farmar said: "They don't do things normally. They look at each other, they point fingers. Their eyes get big, like deer in the headlights, like they don't know what hit them."

Los Angeles usually likes its champions more glamorous, running the floor and throwing lob passes for dunks, but U.C.L.A. has waited too long to be choosy.

This matchup was supposed to pit the U.C.L.A. guards, Jordan Farmar and Arron Afflalo, against L.S.U.'s more athletic frontcourt. But Davis shot 5 of 17, Thomas scored only 5 points, and the Bruins elbowed them aside. U.C.L.A. center Ryan Hollins, who sustained a bruised knee during practice Friday, came skipping out onto the court for introductions. Lorenzo Mata, the backup center who broke his nose in practice Wednesday, played with a mask on his face.

The U.C.L.A. practices might have been tougher than the game. The Bruins led by 16 points in the first half and 24 in the second half, then rested in the final minutes. The Bruins expected to outwork the Tigers, but they could not have imagined that they would also outrebound them, 42-33.

After Farmar cinched the victory with a deep 3-pointer as the shot clock expired, he turned to the L.S.U. band and drummed the letters on his jersey. It was the kind of gesture that is common around college basketball, but on Saturday night, it took on greater significance, simply because of the letters involved.

Star-gazers soon began turning their attention to the U.C.L.A. cheering section, filled with celebrity alums — football player Troy Aikman, actor Tim Robbins and Abdul-Jabbar. Children could be seen running up and down the aisles to fetch autographs.

In recent years, it has not been so easy being a Bruin. Alumni have seen their crosstown rival, Southern California, rediscover its football dominance while U.C.L.A. continued searching for its elusive basketball tradition.

Life in Los Angeles, after a few upside-down decades, may be returning to normal.

Well, Snuf ...

I wonder what jeffmoskin will have to say about any of that ....

And so ....

Or John McCain, for that matter .....

Is he waffling here ...

Or what?

"McCain Softens Language on Jerry Falwell"

Sun Apr 2, 12:59 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Potential presidential candidate John McCain says he longer considers evangelist Jerry Falwell to be one of the "agents of intolerance" that he criticized during a previous White House run.

The Republican senator from Arizona will be the commencement speaker in May at Liberty University, the Lynchburg, Va., institution that Falwell founded in 1971.

"We agreed to disagree on certain issues, and we agreed to move forward," McCain said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

In 2000, as he sought the Republican nomination that eventually went to George W. Bush, McCain said:

"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right."

On Sunday, McCain said that Christian conservatives have a major role to play in the Republican Party, but added, "I don't have to agree with everything they stand for."

end quotes

No, Senator ...

That is right ...

In OUR America ...

Despite the intolerant views of a few ...

Whom you have identified ....

You are entitled to your own views ...

And so ....

And starting out in here this morning ...

We have the weather ...

Which to me ....

Is and remains a far greater thing to be worried about ....

Here in OUR America .....

Than this al Qaida crowd .....

And so ...

"Storms Across 6 States Leave 19 Dead"

By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer

37 minutes ago

RUTHERFORD, Tenn. - Severe thunderstorms packing tornadoes and softball-sized hail left a path of destruction across six Midwest states, killing 15 people in west Tennessee and at least four others in Missouri and Illinois, officials said.

The Sunday storms caused a clothing store to collapse in Illinois, overturned mobile homes in several states, and pelted thousands of concertgoers with rain in downtown Indianapolis.

Power was knocked out to at least 300,000 customers in Illinois, Missouri and Indiana.

Half a dozen tornadoes and softball-sized hail were reported in northeast Arkansas, where about half of the town of Marmaduke had evacuated because of gas leaks and other concerns, police said.

In Tennessee, eight people died near Newbern in Dyer County and seven in neighboring Gibson County, local emergency officials said.

Gibson County emergency officials set up a temporary emergency command post, triage center and morgue in Rutherford, where three people were killed.

A family of four were killed in nearby Bradford, Gibson County emergency official Bryan Cathey said.

"Our resources were just overwhelmed," he said.

A twister carved a path through a cluster of homes near the Jimmy Dean Foods plant north of Newbern, where several victims died.

The plant, which makes breakfast sausages and other food products, also sustained some damage, a security guard said.

In Fayette County, just east of Memphis, a home was thrown from its foundation, a grain silo destroyed and a mobile home overturned, The Tennessean reported.

The National Weather Service in Memphis preliminarily reported tornadoes in five counties in West Tennessee — Dyer, Carroll, Haywood, Gibson and Fayette — and officials said the storms caused extensive damage to buildings.

In Missouri, strong winds were blamed for at least three deaths.

A 42-year-old man was killed when winds knocked over his mobile home near Circle City, Stoddard County Sheriff Carl Hefner said.

A second death was reported in Braggadocio in Pemiscot County, the state emergency management office said, but no details were available.

Another man was killed when a tree fell on him as he walked along a trail in Castlewood State Park near Ballwin in St. Louis County, a spokeswoman for St. Louis County police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A state of emergency was declared in the southeast Missouri city of Caruthersville after a tornado caused heavy damage there.

Details of the damage weren't available.

High winds caused an Illinois clothing store to collapse in Fairview Heights, east of St. Louis, killing a 54-year-old man, police Capt. Nick Gailius said.

Emergency crews were searching the rubble for any additional victims, their progress slowed by a gas leak, Gailius said.

Others were injured in the collapse, he said.

A Kentucky county declared a state of emergency early Monday after rescue workers struggled to get to rural areas because of power lines and trees that blocked roadways.

"We're concerned that there's a lot of hidden back roads that are hard to get to," said Matt Snorton, Christian County's emergency management director.

He said at least three dozen people were injured in what officials believe was a tornado.

At least 30 people sought medical care at the emergency room in Hopkinsville, he said, and a couple were considered seriously injured.

Severe thunderstorms also struck Indianapolis as thousands of fans departed a free John Mellencamp concert that was part of the NCAA's Final Four weekend.

Concertgoers scrambled for cover as tornado sirens sounded and sheets of heavy rain lashed the sidewalks and streets, according to television reports.

Meteorologists were also trying to confirm reports of a tornado in downtown Indianapolis.

In Ohio, the storms ripped off the roof and chimney from a home in Warren County northeast of Cincinnati.

Downed trees and power lines were widespread.

"In every county in southwest Ohio, there has been some type of damage," said Myron Padgett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington.

And since we are on the subject of storms on the horizon ...

Well ...

We might as well jump over there to IRAQINAM .....

Where one is brewing ....

Thanks to George W. Bush ...

And his incompetence ...

And especially ...

His inability to be able to take in data ....

And make course corrections ...

In mid-stream ....

Because George just doesn't seem capable of grasping the fact ...

That he is not MASTER OF THE WORLD ...

With the world at his feet ...

Prancing around ....

On its hind feet ....

Like a little dog begging for a bone .....

"Violence Between Shiites, Sunnis Escalates"

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

23 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs exploded in Baghdad on Monday, killing a bystander and wounding half a dozen others.

Gunmen shot down six people, including a child, in a market area of the southern city of Basra, police said.

Also Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged Iraqi leaders to form a government as soon as possible to curb the bloodshed and rein in sectarian militias behind much of the violence.

Violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims has escalated since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra.

In Baghdad's Dora district, four gunmen charged into a Shiite home late Sunday, lined up a brother, two sisters, and an uncle against a wall and shot them dead, police said.

The father of the family, a grocery shop owner, had been killed six months earlier by gunmen in the same neighborhood, one of Baghdad's most dangerous.

The mother was visiting relatives when the Sunday attack occurred, police said.

The victims of the drive-by shooters in Basra included a navy officer, two policemen, two workers at an electrical plant, and a boy, police said.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The car bombings happened early Monday, one in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the other in the central district of Karradah, both mostly Shiite areas.

The Sadr City explosion killed at least one civilian and wounded four others, and two were wounded in Karradah.

The targets were not known, police said.

Bombings in Buhriz damaged several buildings including a barber shop and grocery store in a market district of the town, which is a former Saddam stronghold about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.

Police discovered two bodies in eastern Baghdad — one in Mashtal that was handcuffed and shot in the head, another in Baladiyat that was strangled and covered with bandages.

In Dora, drive-by shooters killed a police captain outside his home late Sunday, police said.

In northern Iraq, the regional government of Kurdistan released the Kurdish writer Kamal Karim just a week after he received an 18-month sentence for articles on a Kurdish Web site that accused one of the region's top leaders of corruption, said Mohamed Khoshnaw, a government spokesman.

The prime minister of the Kurdish regional government issued a pardon for Karim, citing international pressure to release the writer.

The visit by Rice and Straw comes at a time of uncertainty over the fate of interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite nominee for a second term but widely blamed for the deadlock in talks on forming a unity government following the Dec. 15 election.

Sunni and Kurdish politicians have called for the Shiite bloc to replace al-Jaafari as its nominee.

Last weekend, two prominent Shiite politicians joined calls for the prime minister to step aside — a sign that al-Jaafari's support is cracking.

Rice and Straw, who arrived Sunday for a surprise, two-day visit, made clear they are frustrated with the slow pace of talks on a new government and said the country needs a strong prime minister as quickly as possible.

During a news conference before departing Monday, both Rice and Straw were careful to avoid specifically calling for al-Jaafari to be shunted aside.

But Rice said the next Iraqi prime minister must be a "strong leader" capable of unifying the people of this fractured land.

"We have emphasized, Secretary Rice and myself, time and again that who becomes nominated and elected ... including the prime minister is a matter of sovereign decisions by the sovereign parliament," Straw said.

But he added "somebody has to fill these positions and fill them quickly and we've urged those we have been speaking to do so."

Both Rice and Straw spoke of the need for the next government to curb the power of sectarian militias.

"You have to have the state with a monopoly of power," Rice said.

"We have sent very strong messages" that there must be "a reining in of militias."

Rice and Straw said they set no deadlines, and there were no immediate signs of progress following the string of meetings the two held Sunday with Iraqi politicians and ethnic and religious power brokers.

___

Associated Press writers Mariam Fam and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

CONNIE'S CON-JOB .....

Connie being Condoleeza Rice, of course .....

Connie had "all the right stuff" to help herself along the GUMMINT career path ...

Down there in the CAPITAL of the CULTURE OF CORRUPTION in Washington, D.C. .....

Help the BIG BOSS along ...

With a passle of lies .....

And you get to go along, yourself ...

And so Connie did ....

Now, that the chickens are coming home to roost ...

We get to have an almost daily spectacle of CONNIE and the FRUITS of HER CON-JOB dancing around out there on center stage ...

Looking like real damn fools ...

For all the candid world to see ...

And to mock ...

And deride ...

Because Connie ...

While lies and graft and corruption ...

Might get you far in Washington, D.C. ....

Outside of that very small city .....

Where life is a little more real ...

And demanding than it is down there ...

In "UN-REALITY VILLE" ......

Liars aren't worth doodly-squat ....

And so ....

"Rice presses Iraqis to form government"

By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:05 a.m., Monday, April 3, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Secretary of State Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday that while it is up to the Iraqi people to chose their own leaders, the international backers who have spent blood and money to end a dictatorship here have a right to expect that it will happen quickly.

Neither Rice nor Straw pointed to any specific accomplishment from a day and a half spent huddling with nearly all of Iraq's squabbling factions.

But they said their message that Iraq must quickly form a government of national unity got through.

"We are entitled to say that whilst it is up to you, the Iraqis, to say who will fill these positions, someone must fill these positions and fill them quickly," Straw told reporters at a news conference.

"There is no doubt the political vacuum that is here at the moment is not assisting the security situation," Straw said.

Rice said the troubles in Iraq called for a strong leader who could help unify the people of this war-ravaged land.

But, she added, "It's not our job to say who that person ought to be."

Rice said the quick formation of a new government "is something that the international community has a right to expect."

"You cannot have a circumstance in which there is a political vacuum in a country like this that faces so much threat of violence," Rice said.

Both Rice and Straw emphasized that it was up to the Iraqis to decide on their new prime minister.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the nominee of the Shiite bloc, has been widely criticized by Sunni and Kurdish politicians whom the Shiites need as partners to govern.

Straw and Rice both acknowledged that the Iraqis had made progress in building a democratic system after decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, economic sanctions and conflict.

The two diplomats spoke of the need for the next government to curb the power of sectarian militias alleged to have been behind the wave of reprisal killings of Shiites and Sunnis.

"You have to have the state with a monopoly of power," Rice said.

"We have sent very strong messages" that there must be "a reining in of militias."

Rice and Straw said they set no deadlines, and there were no immediate signs of progress following the string of meetings the two held with Iraqi politicians and ethnic and religious power brokers.

Rice stayed overnight in the fortified Green Zone, the first time she has done so.

The move was intended to signal confidence in Iraqi security measures and counter the impression among Iraqis that high U.S. officials swoop in to give orders and then quickly depart.

Mortar fire could be heard in the Green Zone as she dined with Sunni leaders and others.

Britain is Washington's closest ally in the 3-year-old war, and stations the second largest number of troops in the country after the United States.

U.S. officials and others have been stepping up pressure on the Iraqis to settle their differences and set up a new Cabinet based on results of December parliamentary elections.

Rice, Straw and other leaders hope a unified government would have both symbolic and practical effect to curb the continual violence and pave the way for U.S. and other coalition troops to begin heading home.

U.S. officials have allowed it to become an open secret that Washington wants al-Jaafari gone, and Rice looked pained as she made small talk with him for a few minutes before the cameras were ushered out.

Talks among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders have stalled, in part because of opposition to al-Jaafari's nomination by the Shiite bloc.

On Saturday, Shiite politician Qassim Dawoud joined Sunnis and Kurds in urging a new Shiite nominee, the first time a Shiite figure has issued such a public call.

On Sunday another Shiite legislator Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer called for al-Jaafari to withdraw his nomination, saying the prime minister no longer had the acceptance of Iraqi parties and the international community.

IRAQINAM .....

When we ....

Or more properly ...

George W. Bush's followers were getting ready to invade IRAQINAM .....

I had all these younger folks ...

In their thirties ....

Born after Viet Nam was over ...

Telling me ...

A Viet Nam combat veteran ...

That IRAQINAM was not going to be another Viet Nam ....

Because of how smart George W. Bush really was ....

And when people like me would question that assertion ...

Especially the one that implied George W. Bush even had the sense to get in out of the rain ....

Let alone prevent IRAQINAM from becoming another Viet Nam ...

I at least ...

Was dismissed as nothing but an old fool ...

And a real loser ..

Because, of course ...

I was a Viet Nam veteran ...

And EVERYBODY knows about them .....

And that is alright with me ....

That these people have their opinions ....

Because it doesn't really change anything ....

And so ....

Viet Nam ......

And Ngo Dinh Diem .....

Who, if he had a brain in his head ...

This IRAQINAMI politician, al-Jaafari .....

Should be considering the fate of ...

Now that "CON-JOB CONNIE" Rice is over there in IRAQINAM ....

Selling him out .....

And looking for his head on a platter ...

To appease some other faction over there ...

In IRAQINAM .....

JUST LIKE WAS DONE IN VIET NAM .....

By America ...

And so ....

NGO DINH DIEM

Ngo Dinh Diem was born in Vietnam in 1901.

His ancestors had been converted to Christianity by Catholic missionaries in the 17th Century.

Diem, like previous generations of his family, was educated in French Catholic schools.

After he graduated he was trained as an administrator for the French authorities in Vietnam.

At the age of twenty-five he became a provincial governor.

During the French-Indochina War, Diem left Vietnam for the United States.

While there he met influential Catholics like John F. Kennedy.

He told them that he opposed both communism and French colonialism and argued that he would make a good leader of Vietnam if the French decided to withdraw.

When the Geneva conference took place in 1954, the United States delegation proposed Diem's name as the new ruler of South Vietnam.

The French argued against this claiming that Diem was "not only incapable but mad".

However, eventually it was decided that Diem presented the best opportunity to keep South Vietnam from falling under the control of communism.

Once in power, the Americans discovered that Diem was unwilling to be a 'puppet' ruler.

He constantly rejected their advice and made decisions that upset the South Vietnamese people.

Several attempts were made to overthrow Diem but although the Americans were unhappy with his performance as president, they felt they had no choice but to support him.

In October, 1955, the South Vietnamese people were asked to choose between Bo Dai, the former Emperor of Vietnam, and Diem for the leadership of the country.

Colonel Edward Lansdale suggested that Diem should provide two ballot papers, red for Diem and green for Bao Dai.

Lansdale hoped that the Vietnamese belief that red signified good luck whilst green indicated bad fortune, would help influence the result.

When the voters arrived at the polling stations they found Diem's supporters in attendance.

One voter complained afterwards:

"They told us to put the red ballot into envelopes and to throw the green ones into the wastebasket."

"A few people, faithful to Bao Dai, disobeyed."

"As soon as they left, the agents went after them, and roughed them up ..."

"They beat one of my relatives to pulp."

After the election Diem informed his American advisers that he had achieved 98.2 per cent of the vote.

They warned him that these figures would not be believed and suggested that he publish a figure of around 70 per cent.

Diem refused and as the Americans predicted, the election undermined his authority.

The North Vietnamese government reminded Diem that a General Election for the whole of the country was due in July, 1956.

Diem refused to accept this and instead began arresting his opponents.

In a short period of time, approximately 100,000 people were put in prison camps.

Communists and socialists were his main targets but journalists, trade-unionists and leaders of religious groups were also arrested.

Even children found writing anti-Diem messages on walls were put in prison.

When it became clear that Diem had no intention of holding elections for a united Vietnam, his political opponents began to consider alternative ways of obtaining their objectives.

Some came to the conclusion that violence was the only way to persuade Diem to agree to the terms of the 1954 Geneva Conference.

The year following the cancelled elections saw a large increase in the number of people leaving their homes to form armed groups in the forests of Vietnam.

At first they were not in a position to take on the South Vietnamese Army and instead concentrated on what became known as 'soft targets'.

In 1959, an estimated 1,200 of Diem's government officials were murdered.

Roman Catholics made up only just over 10% of the population in South Vietnam.

As a reward for adopting the religion of their French masters. Catholics had always held a privileged position in Vietnam.

The Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country and most of the officials who helped administer the country for the French were Catholics.

The main religion in Vietnam was Buddhism.

Surveys carried out in the 1960s suggest that around 70% of the population were followers of Buddha.

The French, aware of the potential threat of Buddhism to their authority, passed laws to discourage its growth.

After the French left Vietnam the Catholics managed to hold onto their power in the country.

Deim was a devout Catholic and tended to appoint people to positions of authority who shared his religious beliefs.

This angered Buddhists, especially when the new government refused to repeal the anti-Buddhist laws passed by the French.

On May 8, 1963, Buddhists assembled in Hue to celebrate the 2527th birthday of the Buddha.

Attempts were made by the police to disperse the crowds by opening fire on them.

One woman and eight children were killed in their attempts to flee from the police.

The Buddhists were furious and began a series of demonstrations against the Diem government.

In an attempt to let the world know how strongly they felt about the South Vietnamese government, it was decided to ask for volunteers to commit suicide.

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Due, a sixty-six year old monk, sat down in the middle of a busy Saigon road.

He was then surrounded by a group of Buddhist monks and nuns who poured petrol over his head and then set fire to him.

One eyewitness later commented:

"As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."

While Thich Quang Due was burning to death, the monks and nuns gave out leaflets calling for Diem's government to show "charity and compassion " to all religions.

The government's response to this suicide was to arrest thousands of Buddhist monks.

Many disappeared and were never seen again.

By August another five monks had committed suicide by setting fire to themselves.

One member of the South Vietnamese government responded to these self-immolations by telling a newspaper reporter:

"Let them burn, and we shall clap our hands."

Another offered to supply Buddhists who wanted to commit suicide with the necessary petrol.

These events convinced President John F. Kennedy that Diem would never be able to unite the South Vietnamese against communism.

Several attempts had already been made to overthrow Diem but Kennedy had always instructed the CIA and the US military forces in Vietnam to protect him.

In order to obtain a more popular leader of South Vietnam, Kennedy agreed that the role of the CIA should change.

Lucien Conein, a CIA operative, provided a group of South Vietnamese generals with $40,000 to carry out the coup with the promise that US forces would make no attempt to protect Diem.

At the beginning of November, 1963, President Diem was overthrown by a military coup.

After the generals had promised Diem that he would be allowed to leave the country they changed their mind and killed him.

He was replaced by Nguyen Van Thieu, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of South Vietnam.

During those hectic months of late summer in 1963 when the Kennedy Administration appeared to be frustrated and disenchanted with the ten-year regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon, it approved the plans for the military coup d'état that would overthrow President Diem and get rid of his brother Nhu.

The Kennedy Administration gave its support to a cabal of Vietnamese generals who were determined to remove the Ngos from power.

Having gone so far as to withdraw its support of the Diem government and to all but openly support the coup, the Administration became impatient with delays and uncertainties from the generals in Saigon, and by late September dispatched General Maxwell D. Taylor, then Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Secretary of Defense McNamara to Saigon.

Upon their return, following a brief trip, they submitted a report to President Kennedy, which in proper chronology was the one immediately preceding the remarkable one of December 21, 1963.

This earlier report said, among other things "There is no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem and Nhu is always a possibility."

The latter part of this sentence contained the substantive information.

A coup d'état, or assassination is never certain from the point of view of the planners; but whenever United States support of the government in power is withdrawn and a possible coup d'état or assassination is not adamantly opposed, it will happen.

Only three days after this report, on October 5, 1963, the White House cabled Ambassador Lodge in Saigon:

"There should be... urgent covert effort . . . to identify and build contact with possible alternate leadership."

Knowledge of a statement such as this one made by the ostensible defenders and supporters of the Diem regime was all those coup planners needed to know.

In less than one month Diem was dead, along with his brother.

Thus, what was considered to be a first prerequisite for a more favorable climate in Vietnam was fulfilled.

With the Ngo family out of the way, President Kennedy felt that he had the option to bring the war to a close on his own terms or to continue pressure with covert activities such as had been under way for many years.

Because the real authors were well aware of his desires, there was another most important statement in the McNamara-Taylor report of October 2, 1963:

"It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time...." (the end of 1965).

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNngo.htm