But we here in OUR America already knew that, my good friend Snuffysmith .....

Look back to 2004, and OUR own elections ...

Where the "WAR PARTY" here in OUR own America was certainly "empowered" ....

And actually, throughout history, this same end result has been demonstrated many times over ...

Xerxes, for example ....

Or Rome and the Mithridatic War ....

Where Crassus the Triumvir met his death at the willing hands of the Parthians in or around what is now modern IRAQINAM, after plotting and intriguing while Consul of Rome to have himself put in charge of Rome's forces fighting to put down King Mithridates ....

And you go back to the Greeks ...

And their city states ..

The Spartans ...

The Argives ....

The Athenians ....

And the story is always the same ..

And while the end results might vary, generally, it is not for the good of the people, themselves ...

Which point most, if not all, of OUR nation's founders were well aware of, since they did not have television and video games back then to load their heads up with so much crap that their eyes would turn brown and they would be unable to think coherently for themselves .....

And that is why these founders then structured OUR federal government the way that they did ...

With two houses in the Legislative branch instead of one ...

And an executive who was answerable to the PEOPLE through the laws set in place IN THE LAND by the the elected REPRESENTATIVES of those people ....

All of which has or is going by the boards, right here in OUR own nation ..

Which is no longer a NATION OF LAWS, if it ever was ....

To truly "kill a dictator", Snuffysmith, what I would say is that you would have to kill the concept itself ...

And that has never yet been done, so far as I can see, anyway ...

And the testament to that can be found right here in OUR own alleged "democracy", where we in fact have a dictator in power, no matter how "benevolent" he might appear to be, which to me, is not very, at all ...

Look at Rome and SULLA, for an example ...

Was SULLA good for Rome?

Was he bad for Rome?

Or was he just there?

As for me, I would say that the times in Rome produced SULLA, and that was that ....

And the people of Rome accepted SULLA, just as they later accepted POMPEY THE GREAT as a dictator in or around 52 B.C.E., when public unrest in Rome prevented the scheduled consular elections from taking place as scheduled ....

And POMPEY did not use his dictatorship to start any wars ....

To the contrary, he restored "law and order" in Rome, and then voluntarily and willingly relinquished TO THE PEOPLE OF ROME the power given to him by the people of Rome to be dictator for a period ....

And this is all real history ...

If we believe it to be so, anyway ....

And this all serves to refute this theory above about "killing dictators" .....

As to George W. Bush himself, I seriously doubt that he really has a clue as to what has gone on in the world before his ASCENSION to power here as OUR MESSIAH, our alleged "DELIVERER", and I say that based upon comments made in posts before this one by George W. Bush's own people ...

"WE DO NOT NEED TO STUDY HISTORY ..."

"WE WRITE THE HISTORY THAT OTHERS WILL STUDY WHEN WE ARE GONE ..."

Well ...

Okay, George .....

And that is really a good part of what we are doing here in this thread, Snuffysmith ....

Through your efforts, and those of jeffmoskin, and others ...

We are watching this "HISTORY" scroll by this little viewing window in here, real-time as it were, and sometimes we comment on it, but more often, simply report upon it as it happens, and there we are ....

No more right or wrong than were Suetonius, or Juvenal, or Sallust, or even Livy when they "reported" on what was transpiring in Rome in their own times .....

And the main difference likely is only with the "immediacy" of OUR reportage, versus theirs ....

We can have our thoughts posted in here in a heartbeat, sometimes within minutes of the events themselves transpiring, where the Romans were at a little farther remove .....

And that is about all, so far as I can see ....

My dead Roman friend Marcus Aurelius is always saying that if you live for thirty years or maybe forty, you will have seen all that has ever been seen by humankind before, and I think with respect to politics, and relations between nations, that he is largely correct ....

THE DANCE ....

Someone has taken George W. Bush and they have scripted him, and dressed him up in various costumes, and they have given him a good hairdresser, and now he is dancing around out there on the world stage, just as have countless others before him ..

And so it goes ....

And it affects OUR lives to the degree that we allow it to, is my thought, anyway ....

Just as the snow and ice outside my window today affects my life ...

To the degree that I allow it to ...

And maybe that is a part of the exercise in here as well ...

TO WHAT DEGREE SHALL THAT COLLECTIVELY BE?

Or is there never a "collective", which is to say, "common ground" .....

And so ...

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0602a.asp

Democracy, Hypocrisy, and U.S. Foreign Policy
by Jacob G. Hornberger, February 1, 2006

After singing the praises of democracy all over the world, not to mention bombing, killing, and maiming people in the name of spreading it, the overwhelming win in Palestinian elections by Hamas, which U.S. officials have labeled a terrorist organization, is reminding U.S. officials that democracy sometimes produces results that are not very satisfactory from their own perspective.

There’s also, of course, Iraq, where voters rejected the CIA and Pentagon puppets, Iyad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi, that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney had hoped they could install to replace Saddam Hussein, who had declined the U.S. puppet position despite having received significant amounts of U.S. aid. Instead, “democracy in Iraq” has produced a radical, brutal, torturous, Iran-aligned, Islamic Shi’ite regime that is now using U.S. forces to kill its enemies.

In my January 23 blog, I pointed out that U.S. officials were pumping a couple of million dollars of U.S. taxpayer-funded handouts into the campaign of Hamas’s opponent, the Fatah Party, headed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Talk about foreign-aid blowback! I wonder how many Palestinians voted for Hamas simply because they found out that the U.S. government was helping the other side. After all, don’t forget how reluctant Abbas himself was to claim credit for the U.S.-provided trees, schoolroom additions, street cleaning, computers, and other U.S. federal freebies.

It is truly fascinating that U.S. officials are simply oblivious to how much they are disliked around the world. They seem to have this quaint notion that they are loved everywhere or that the problem is simply a PR one, which they think they can cure if they can just “get their message out.” They don’t realize that the more they get their message out, they more they are disliked by people everywhere.

Of course, the Iraqi and Palestinian elections are not the only recent example of what appears to be democratic blowback against the U.S. government. Chilean voters recently elected a socialist, which ought to be of some concern to the new Chilean president, given that the last time Chilean voters elected a socialist (and communist) — Salvador Allende, the U.S. government encouraged a coup and, in the process, even played a role in the murder of a young American journalist. The coup ended up getting Allende killed and replaced by an unelected military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, whose military and intelligence agency (DINA) engaged in many of the same tactics against prisoners that President Bush’s military and intelligence agency (CIA) are engaging in — kidnapping, torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder.

And there’s also Bolivia, where voters recently elected a man who has threatened to legalize the coca industry, much to the chagrin of U.S. officials, for whom the drug war is a tremendous boon in terms of money and power notwithstanding the fact that it has produced so much death and destruction in Latin America.

And there’s also Venezuela, whose president, Hugh Chavez, continues to thumb his nose at U.S. officials, which many believe has caused Chavez to be added to the list of potential U.S. assassination targets and Venezuela to be added to the list of potential invasion targets by the U.S. government.

In fact, any country in which the voters fail to use democracy in a “correct and responsible” way should be concerned. Don’t forget what U.S. officials did to Iran and Guatemala after voters voted the “wrong” way in those countries.

In fact, it is truly amazing that U.S. officials are still unable to figure out why the Iranian people still dislike and distrust the U.S. government so much. After all, the way U.S. officials figure it is, What’s the big deal of using the CIA to oust people’s popular and democractically elected prime minister and replacing him with a brutal CIA-approved puppet, the Shah of Iran, for the next several decades?

And then U.S. officials scratch their heads in bewilderment over why people dislike the U.S. government so much. They even hire PR people to “get their message out,” teaching foreigners that U.S. officials really do mean well and that foreigners would simply be better off accepting their U.S-imposed fate and submitting to the inevitable.

President Bush might now be hoping that his fantasy that his invasion of Iraq will engender genuine democracy in the Middle East never comes to fruition. After all, who can doubt that voters in such countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan would sweep out of office the brutal and corrupt pro-U.S. regimes that rule over them and replace them with radical anti-U.S. Islamic regimes? (Of course, this would benefit U.S. taxpayers because U.S. officials would undoubtedly cut off U.S. foreign aid to the new regimes, as they are now threatening to do to the Palestianians in the wake of the Hamas victory.)

The problem, which all too many Americans fail to recognize, is that people all over the world, especially in Latin America and the Middle East, don’t like the U.S. government and its foreign policy. Equally important, what all too many Americans fail or refuse to recognize is that such dislike is well-founded and justified.

Unlike Americans, foreigners have had first-hand experience with the arrogance, obnoxiousness, and hypocrisy that characterize U.S. foreign policy.

Unlike Americans, foreigners know that U.S. officials show no reluctance to support brutal regimes that do their bidding, no matter how tyrannical they are to their own people (Iraq under Saddam, Iran under the shah, and Pakistan come to mind).

Unlike Americans, foreigners know that U.S. officials show no reluctance to squeeze foreign citizenries as a way to punish their ruler (i.e., sanctions in Iraq and Cuba) and no reluctance or remorse about invading a country that has never attacked the United States (Iraq, Grenada, Panama, and Haiti) for the purpose of regime change, even when the action kills and maims tens of thousands of innocent people.

Unlike Americans, foreigners clearly understand the hypocrisy reflected by the following two U.S. proclamations: “We love you and, therefore, are willing to liberate you with bombs and missiles” and “Don’t even think of emigrating to the United States because we will jail you or repatriate you if we catch you.”

Does foreign dislike for our government and its policies mean that foreigners hate America? On the contrary! This is where U.S. officials just don't get it. Foreigners love Americans and they love the principles and values for which our nation stands. They just don’t like our government and its policies. It’s that simple.

Therefore, U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, have it all wrong. The solution is not to continue unleashing U.S. government power overseas, even while increasingly isolating the American people from the rest of the world with trade barriers, immigration and visa controls, and walls along our borders. The solution is instead to (1) rein in the federal government by dismantling its overseas diplomatic and military empire, ending all foreign aid and bringing all U.S. overseas troops home, discharging them into the private sector, and (2) unleash our nation’s greatest diplomats — businessmen, tourists, cultural groups, and everyone else in the private sector — to freely interact once again with the people of the world. There is no other solution to the foreign-policy/terrorism woes that continue to bedevil our country.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

February 1, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Didn't See It Coming, Again

By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington

The White House should hire an anthropologist.

Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign policy team doesn't understand any of the markets where it is barging around ineptly trying to sell America and democracy.

The brand value of America has been in steady decline. The state of the union is sour but the state of the world is chilling, thanks to a hideously ham-handed Bush foreign policy crew that was once billed as a seasoned "dream team."

The more the White House tries to force-feed democracy to tempestuous parts of the world, the more it discovers that you may be able to spin and scare voters in the U.S., but the Middle East is not so easy to manipulate. W. believes in self-determination only if he's doing the determining. Fundamentalists in America like to vote for Mr. Bush, but elsewhere they're violently opposing him.

It's stunning that nearly four decades after Vietnam, our government could be even more culturally illiterate and pigheaded. The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.

One smart anthropologist reinforcing the idea that "mirroring" — assuming other cultures think like us — doesn't work would be a lot more helpful than all of the discredited intelligence agencies that are costing $30 billion a year to miss everything from the breakup of the Soviet Union to 9/11 to no W.M.D. to Osama's hiding place to the Hamas victory.

Bush officials keep claiming they couldn't have anticipated disasters — from the terrorist attacks to Katrina — even when they got specific warnings beforehand. Busy building up the fake nuclear threat in Iraq, they misplayed the real ones in Iran and North Korea. In London Sunday, Condi Rice admitted that all of our diplomats and spies were caught off guard by the Hamas win. "I've asked why nobody saw it coming," she said. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."

Instead of paying the Lincoln Group millions to plant fake newspaper stories in Iraq, the Bush team might try reading real newspaper stories here. Instead of simply believing any fact that makes him feel self-important, the president might try reading history.

Like many other presidential candidates I've interviewed, W. said he liked Winston Churchill. But if he really had read Churchill, he would at least have understood that the Middle East never turns out the way you expect. Churchill, who called Iraq "an ungrateful volcano," would not have been surprised by the new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll showing that close to half of Iraqis approve of attacks on American forces.

The State of the Union is a non-event. But Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, being blown up by a roadside bomb has forced the media to focus on what the Bushies try to hide — all the injured and maimed coming home from Iraq.

Mark Landler's Times piece noted that the ABC journalists came to the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, "on a military transport plane carrying 31 wounded soldiers — about a normal daily influx for this hospital."

As Denise Grady wrote in The Times, the survival rate in Iraq is higher than in other wars, but the wounds are multiple and awful: "combinations of damaged brains and spinal cords, vision and hearing loss, disfigured faces, burns, amputations, mangled limbs, and psychological ills like depression and post-traumatic stress."

The Oilman in Chief lecturing us last night, after five oblivious years, about being drunk on oil, now that Halliburton and Exxon are swimming in profits — Exxon's revenues were bigger than the gross domestic product of either Saudi Arabia or Indonesia — was rich.

A more honest TV moment was Christiane Amanpour labeling Iraq "a black hole." The "spiraling security disaster," she told Larry King, had robbed Iraqis of hope, "and by any indication whether you take the number of journalists killed or wounded, whether you take the number of American soldiers killed or wounded, whether you take the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded, contractors, people working there, it just gets worse and worse."

But, hey, how could the Bushies have known that occupying a Middle East country — and flipping the balance of power from one sect to another — without enough troops to secure it could go wrong? Who on earth could predict the inevitable?

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/opini...1&hp&oref=login

And so it goes indeed ....

Saturday morning, I was someplace where there was a TV going and CNN was on, I believe it was ...

Anyway, they were doing a story about George W. Bush and Tony Blair being unlikely allies in something or other, and as they were doing the story, out come George and Tony and George is decked out in this leather jacket that makes him look like some crusty old sea captain whose carrier took a few rounds during the battle of Coral Sea in W2, but it didn't faze old Cap'n George not one bit ....

And I am looking at him, and wondering just what on earth has been done to that poor man to make him look the way he did ...

Which was very oddly proportioned, indeed ....

And then I realized what it was ....

The Deputy Dog look, I think you would call it ...

Small hips flaring upwards to a deep chest and huge shoulders ....

And I was wondering exactly how they got that look on George ...

Whether it was duct tape, or what ....

I remember that one general who was thinking of running for president talking about how his aides would use duct tape to have his uniform appear thus and so ..

And I wondered if maybe George's handlers caught wind of that and started using duct tape on him ...

Because they heard that that was what a real general did to make himself look like a real general on television ...

Whatever, it made George look like a damn fool so far as I could see, anyway .......

"Bush Urges Confidence in His Leadership"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

12 minutes ago

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - President Bush said Wednesday he understands why the nation he has led for five years has become more anxious, and he urged people to have confidence in him.

Bush maintained his optimistic message in a lengthy speech at the Grand Ole Opry House that was designed to build momentum from the previous night's State of the Union address.

But in a rare acknowledgment of the troubled times on his watch, he tried to show empathy with the public's worries.

"People are uncertain, in spite of our strong union, because of war, and I understand that," Bush said.

Democrats are trying to capitalize at the ballot box this year on uncertainty about Bush's leadership and about ethics scandals in Congress.

Bush said he is leading a strong nation that is protecting itself and spreading freedom.

He said the economy is "roaring," despite concerns that people have after being forced to change jobs in the face of competition from China, India and elsewhere.

"My worry is that people see that uncertainty and decide to adopt isolationist policies or protectionist policies," Bush said.

"In other words, in uncertain times it's easy for people to lose confidence in the capacity of this country to lead and to shape our future."

Bush said America's challenge is to stay ahead of competition without withdrawing from the world.

He planned to expand his thoughts on the issue in a tour to Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas on Thursday and Friday.

Bush's laid out his entire agenda in the 57-minute speech, going even beyond his State of the Union address.

He touched on everything from war and education to technology in the automobile industry and medical malpractice suits.

The friendly audience at the packed Grand Ole Opry House frequently interrupted the president with applause and laughter.

Among the crowd were several country music stars, including Barbara Mandrell, Larry Gatlin, Lee Greenwood, Lorrie Morgan and the Oak Ridge Boys.

Bush joked that he should have given the State of the Union at the hall.

"How cool would it be to give a State of the Union address in a Porter Wagoner outfit?" he said, referencing the flashy singer who frequently played host on the stage.

Outside, more than 100 protesters held up their own signs that said "No Confidence" and "No warrant, no wiretap, no W."

That was a reference to Bush's much-debated secret program of eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails in an attempt to sniff out terrorist plots, which he vigorously defended in his State of the Union address and inside the concert hall.

"Let me put it to you in Texan: If al-Qaida is calling into the United States, we want to know," Bush said.

___

On the Net:

White House: http://whitehouse.gov

Grand Ole Opry: http://www.opry.com/

"Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are 'ready' for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress."

-- George W. Bush, Nov. 6, 2003

"The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are now showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure."

-- George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2005

"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations."

-- Edmund Burke

AOL Poll taken after George W. Bush's speech last night ....

How convincing was Bush's speech?

Not at all 50%

Very 39%

Somewhat 11%

How would you rate the state of the union?

Poor 41%

Excellent 29%

Good 16%

Fair 13%

Total Votes: 107,688

VOLUME FIVE?????


DO WE REALY POST THAT MUCH???


WE NEED TO GET A LIFE.

IN OUR AMERICA.

Snuffy mentions "Why we Fight," a new film by Jsutin Raimondo on the war and on American Imperialism

It turns out that Frank Capra made the original for WWII, and every entering GI saw it as a requirement.

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/Filmnotes/whywefight.html

I still like Ben Franklin's comment: "There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace."

February 2, 2006
Going Old School on al-Qaeda
High tech no substitute for
human intelligence
Charles Peña
Most of the controversy surrounding the White House policy of warrantless telephone and e-mail eavesdropping has centered on whether President Bush has overstepped his authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which was created in 1978. The provisions of FISA allow the president to authorize electronic surveillance without a court order for up to a year provided it is only for foreign intelligence information, targeted against foreign powers or their agents, and that there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will involve any communications of a U.S. citizen. Alternatively, the government can obtain a court order to conduct surveillance from a secret FISA court. Moreover, the government has up to 72 hours after initiating surveillance to get FISA court approval, so there's really no excuse for not getting a warrant.

Sadly, most of the debate has been over working within the guidelines of FISA and not about the constitutional and civil liberties issues of FISA itself. Sadder yet, a mid-January ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 51 percent of Americans thought it was acceptable to conduct warrantless monitoring of telephone calls and e-mails, 65 percent thought it was more important to investigate possible terrorist threats than to respect privacy, and 48 percent thought that President Bush would not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights. But beyond these important constitutional and civil liberties concerns, the administration's domestic spying program also demonstrates the government's unhealthy infatuation with technology as a solution to the problem of terrorism.

For example, consider the misguided program proposal Total Information Awareness, or TIA, which was developed under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and claimed "to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack" – the same claim President Bush makes defending his use of warrantless wiretaps and e-mail monitoring.

The premise behind TIA was to build a database of public and private records to be analyzed for patterns indicative of terrorist activities. TIA essentially depended on the law of large numbers or what marketing companies call "data mining," which develops profiles of people who should be good customers for a particular product or service. A large pool of people who fit the profile is targeted, knowing that only a small fraction will actually be customers. TIA would use the same concept, but instead of potential customers, the profiles would be for aspiring terrorists. The problem is that, like commercial data mining, only a small fraction of the pool of people who fit the profile of a terrorist will, in fact, be actual terrorists.

A "back of the envelope" Bayesian statistical analysis demonstrates that TIA was bad math. Assume a U.S. population of 240 million adults (i.e., children are not would-be terrorist candidates). Assume we believe there are 5,000 terrorists lurking among us. Assume a 99.9 percent probability (i.e., near perfect and very highly unlikely) of correctly identifying a suspect as an actual terrorist – that is, if you suspect someone is a terrorist, he is actually a terrorist. And assume a 99.9 percent probability (again, highly unlikely) of correctly identifying a suspect as an innocent person. The results would be:


244,299 people will be identified as suspected terrorists (and remember that this is with near-perfect accuracy of being able to correctly identify terrorists and innocent people).
239,995 innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists.
The probability of finding a real terrorist is 2 percent.
Even if the number of people subjected to TIA was reduced, the results would not necessarily be any better. For example, assume we were looking for 19 hijackers among 3.6 million U.S. male Muslims. And assume the same near-perfect 99.9 percent accuracy as in the above example. How hard would it have been to find the hijackers and potentially avert 9/11?


3,619 people would have been identified as suspected terrorists.
3,600 innocent people would have been misidentified as terrorists.
The probability of finding a real hijacker would have been about one-half of one percent.
Technology may give U.S. military forces superiority on the battlefield, but – as TIA demonstrates – we have to be careful about pinning our hopes on technology as the way to catch terrorists. In Tony Scott's 2001 movie Spy Game, CIA case officer Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) says he is "old school," meaning he relies more on the tricks of spy tradecraft rather than being dependent on high-tech gadgetry. We would do well to follow that lead and focus more on human intelligence, i.e., spies on the ground inside al-Qaeda and the larger radical Islamic movement, rather than an over-reliance on technical intelligence-gathering.

In a strange twist, the United States actually has a model for penetrating al-Qaeda: John Walker Lindh. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in affluent Marin County, California, Lindh was the "American Taliban" captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in November 2001. As shocking as it is that an American would be a soldier for the Taliban regime fighting against U.S. forces, even more remarkable is that someone like Lindh – white and middle class – would be taken in and trusted by radical Islamists. In 1997, Lindh converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. A year later, he traveled to Yemen for nine months. After returning home to California, Lindh went back to Yemen and then to Pakistan in 2000. There he enrolled in a madrassa and became interested in the Muslim fight in Kashmir. Lindh first joined the Harakat-ul Mujahedeen al-Almi (HUM) – a militant Islamic group that operates in Kashmir – but then decided he wanted to join the Taliban. But because he was not a native of Afghanistan and did not speak the local languages, Lindh was directed to the "Afghan Arabs," or al-Qaeda. Beginning in June 2001, Lindh spent seven weeks at an al-Qaeda training camp near Kandahar and even met with Osama bin Laden. So if someone described as a "sweet kid" from a "Birkenstock family" of Irish Catholic descent living in a community sometimes lampooned as a "hot tub haven" can join the ranks of al-Qaeda, certainly America's intelligence agencies can also find a way – but domestic spying is not the answer.

President Bush has vigorously defended his domestic spying program as "vital and critical" to "saving American lives" and protecting the country against another terrorist attack. But – constitutional and civil liberties concerns notwithstanding – monitoring phone calls and e-mails in the United States is a last-ditch defense, the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. There is also the question of whether any of the conversations or e-mails being monitored are real or disinformation deliberately intended to mislead us (after all, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has admitted that the terrorists "jerk us around").

In his State of the Union address, President Bush claimed that "the terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent attacks" (but did not cite any specifics) and that "it remains essential to the security of America." But instead of defending the unconstitutional use of warrantless spying on Americans (the president claims such authority has been given to him by the Constitution and by statute, but only the latter is true), U.S. security would be better served if President Bush spent as much time and energy on a spy program to infiltrate al-Qaeda. Old school.

SIDEBAR

In touting the accomplishments of the US-VISIT (Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) program – which was originally promoted as "part of a comprehensive program to ensure that our borders remain open to visitors but closed to terrorists" – the government claims that more than 600 criminals and illegal aliens have been apprehended as a result of the program – but not one terrorist. Perhaps that's why President Bush is so adamant about the need to spy on people in the United States.

And in the end, technology does not even really do that .....

Give our military any real superiority on the battlefield ....

And to think so is self-defeating ....

For technology is merely an aid ...

True, it might be a tireless one ...

But it is far from a perfect one ...

And you use technology as a crutch when you are too weak to walk yourself ...

But too arrogant and cock-sure to admit that, or have it be known ....

By your enemies ....

If I had to fight an enemy, I would much rather fight one that was technology dependent, than not ....

Now, obviously, if it was a matter of the technology-dependent enemy merely scorching from a long distance away, all of the earth where I could possibly be, it is possible that they could win, and since I might by then be dead, so what?

But if it came down to an invasion, where with patience, I could have this technology-dependent enemy right in among me and mine, where we could neutralize the effects of that technology, oh well ...

America has become fairly good at killing its enemies from a distance, perhaps, although even that is debatable, but America cannot really use that same technology to win the hearts and minds of anyone, and ultimately, unless you do scorch the earth, in the end all those gizmos do not much at all for you, and so ....

"Wars", however big or small, are won when there is no one shooting back at you ..

For more than a few days running ...

And that is something to do with the human factor ....

Not technology ....

Yes, jeffmoskin ....

Here we are once again .....

Back to page one all over again .....

And talk about getting a life ...

I really felt an absence in my life when my computer was down with that CONSERVATIVE PROFILE which had it flashing its lights and making a lot of noise, but disconnected from its higher intelligence ......

An actual emptiness ....

Do you think ....

Could this be ....

OH NO ....

I'm addicted to a computer forum ......

Oh, well ....

And I am not really addicted to this forum ...

But it certainly has become a part of my life that I do look forward to on a day to day basis ....

For it is kind of nice in here, actually ...

There is a lot of freedom ....

Elbow-room kind of freedom, I mean ....

We are not all crowded in here together ....

Room to spread out ....

So that if you don't like what is going on in this room ...

Well, you can just slide on down the hall to the next ...

And that is one of the best features of this forum to me ...

That ability to browse around at your leisure ....

What you don't like, you simply disregard ...

Don't read it ...

Move on ...

It is that simple ...

And here I would really like to take a moment to THANK all of you out there who have stopped by in here during the life of this thread, which thanks to all of you is now on its fifth volume ...

Without all of you, this never would or could have happened ....

And so ...

The Same.

[quote=Livyjr,Feb 2 2006, 02:21 PM]
And in the end, technology does not even really do that .....

Give our military any real superiority on the battlefield ....

And to think so is self-defeating ....

For technology is merely an aid ...

True, it might be a tireless one ...

But it is far from a perfect one ...

And you use technology as a crutch when you are too weak to walk yourself ...

But too arrogant and cock-sure to admit that, or have it be known ....

By your enemies ....

If I had to fight an enemy, I would much rather fight one that was technology dependent, than not ....


But this argument Liv leads to resurrecting the old SDI (Star Wars Program). And I'm not sure that's where you want to go with this. Curiously, the Soviets well understood that heading down that road would accelerate their bankruptcy. I'm not sure the US has learned this lesson yet.

February 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
State of Delusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN
So President Bush's plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out to be no more substantial than his plan — floated two years ago, then flushed down the memory hole — to send humans to Mars.

But what did you expect? After five years in power, the Bush administration is still — perhaps more than ever — run by Mayberry Machiavellis, who don't take the business of governing seriously.

Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address Mr. Bush suggested that "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol" and other technologies would allow us "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East."

But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what he said. "This was purely an example," said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped Tuesday night: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. "A veteran researcher," reports The New York Times, "said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol."

Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them? The best guess is that the energy "plan" was hastily thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say.

For weeks administration sources told reporters that the State of the Union address would focus on health care. But at the last minute the White House might have realized that its health care proposals, based on the idea that Americans have too much insurance, would suffer the same political fate as its attempt to privatize Social Security. ("Congress," Mr. Bush said, "did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security." Democrats responded with a standing ovation.)

So Mr. Bush's speechwriters were told to replace the health care proposals with fine words about energy independence, words not backed by any actual policy.

What about the rest of the speech? The State of the Union is normally an occasion for boasting about an administration's achievements. But what's a speechwriter to do when there are no achievements?

One answer is to pretend that the bad stuff never happened. The Medicare drug benefit is Mr. Bush's largest domestic initiative to date. It's also a disaster: at enormous cost, the administration has managed to make millions of elderly Americans worse off. So drugs went unmentioned in the State of the Union.

Another answer is to rely on evasive language. In Iraq, said Mr. Bush, we've "changed our approach to reconstruction."

In fact, reconstruction has failed. Almost three years after the war began, oil production is well below prewar levels, Baghdad is getting only an average of 3.2 hours of electricity a day, and more than 60 percent of water and sanitation projects have been canceled.

So now, having squandered billions in Iraqi oil revenue as well as U.S. taxpayer dollars, we've told the Iraqis that from now on it's their problem. America's would-be Marshall Plan in Iraq, reports The Los Angeles Times, "is drawing to a close this year with much of its promise unmet and no plans to extend its funding." I guess you can call that a change in approach.

There's a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq, the botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the botched drug program, and the nonexistent energy program. John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy, explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. ... I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues."

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That's why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It's why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it's why the state of the union — the thing itself, not the speech — is so grim.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Oh ....

Not at all, Snuffysmith ...

And here, of course, I am talking as a "warrior", or one who would actually go to where the "fighting" was to actually be, as opposed to someone killing from a long distance away, such as George W. Bush ....

And I am looking at this from the perspective of one who is continually pondering human nature through the vehicle of reading history ..

Which to me is a story of human nature .....

As well as events .....

I don't know about any other nation out there on the face of the earth, but America is definitely technology-dependent ....

And is thus militarily weak as a nation ....

Because technology is an illusion of safety ....

And not safety itself ...

Technology is unreliable ...

And it fails right when you need it ..

A corollary of Murphy's Law ....

Right when you need it most is when it won't work ....

I went into real combat, real enough to get wounded twice, anyway, and I wore a green pair of pants made of a rip-stop material, a green shirt made of the same, a pair of boots, a pair of socks, a green canvas web belt around my waist loaded with canteens of water, a claymore bag with twenty magazines for an M-16 in there, a towel around my neck to hold in the palm of my left hand in a prolonged fire fight to keep it from being burned ....

And that was about it ....

No real technology at all, except for the M-16, and that thing was a piece of **** .....

And from what I hear coming back from IRAQINAM, it still is ....

And if I had to do it all over again today, that is how I would still do it ...

Absent the M-16, in all likelihood .....

But I have experience of it, and so ...

America on the other hand is stuck in LA-LA LAND, or CLOUD-CUCKOO LAND, perhaps, and I don't think it knows doodly-squat ....

And that starts with George ...

And Dick is in there with him ...

And RUMHEAD, too ....

They know how to spend a lot of money on toys and GIZ-MATICS and such ....

And they know how to run their mouths and talk real big ...

BUT ...

In the world of non-America, where people live in hardship, and thus are hard, themselves, watching a couple of fat-bottoms patting themselves on the back as to how tough they are because they can kill women and children from ten thousand miles away, without even having to get up from their easy chairs does not impress ....

Not at all ...

I know it does not impress me, anyway ....

And so ....

And if I went back over some of this guy's previous writings, I think I would find him to generally be PRO-BUSH ....

Which is not to knock him at all ...

But rather to make the point that that is how transparent this whole farce really is .....

And this is one of the most concise synopses of the waste of OUR time that this administration of George W. Bush has been that I have seen come down the pike in a while ....

To me, right from the get-go, and this goes back to 1998, or 1999, the goal of the REPUBLICANS was to capture power in Washington, D.C. .....

And not only Washington, D.C., but America as well ...

But Washington was certainly the key ...

And George W. Bush emerged as the magical elixer ....

A means to an end ...

The boy born on third base who thought he had hit a triple ....

What made George W. Bush "presidential" back then was name-recognition ....

And that was his "selling point" ....

You know ...

"Big George's boy, young George ..."

"OH, yes, you're right ..."

I still remember those REPUBLICAN debates over who their candidate would be, and it came down to who could win, and not who could govern ....

I never remember the REPUBLICANS talking about governing, in fact ...

But I do remember a lot of talk about CONTROL ....

As if it were the same ....

Which to the REPUBLICANS ...

IT IS .....

And I don't think that sinks in to the "harnies" of people here in OUR America ....

This very real difference between REPUBLICANS and everybody else in that regard .....

The REPUBLICANS are truly the party of DRED SCOTT ...

But most people in America don't understand that, either, and so ...

We are a nation of slaves ....

And the REPUBLICANS hold the keys to the shackles .....

And that is the purpose of the exercise .....

When I was young here in what should be OUR America, people used to talk about going out to CONK an N-word ....

Like it was a kind of sport ...

Which it was ....

Take a baseball bat, or a two-by-four, and get beered up, and go down the road in your buddy's '57 Chevrolet, and look for N-words walking along the road ...

And when you would see one, well, you would lean out the passenger side window, and CONK the N-word right in the head ...

And the word CONK apparently came from the sound the baseball bat or two-by-four made when it hit the N-word's head .....

AND THERE WAS PEACE IN THE LAND ...

A place for everybody ...

And everbody in their place ...

The crew-cutted young "WHITE BOYS" laughing it up in a roadside dive or honky-tonk afterwards ...

And the N-word in a ditch with a busted head ....

The way GOD intended it to be ....

And for those not necessarily interested in CONKING N-words, there was always GAY-BASHING, or ROLLING Q-words .....

One of the heros would go in some place where a Q-word was likely to be found, and that hero would lure the Q-word outside, where more heros were waiting, and they would essentially kidnap the Q-word and take him someplace where these heros could beat him up at their leisure ...

AND THERE WAS PEACE IN THE LAND ....

GOD WAS IN HIS HEAVEN ..

AND ALL WAS RIGHT HERE ON EARTH ...

AND GOD BLESS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FOR THAT ...

And then ....

Along came GODLESS COMMIE-NIZM .....

Yes, America ...

THE SCOURGE ....

And these GODLESS COMMIES, well, first, they went to the N-words, and they got the N-words all riled up about getting CONKED ....

CONKING, which used to be a GOOD THING here in OUR America, was made out by these GODLESS COMMIES to be bad instead ...

And so ..

The N-words got all kinds of uppity ..

And so ..

CONKING kind of fell by the wayside ....

For a bit, anyway ....

And then, these GODLESS COMMIES got the Q-words all riled up about getting rolled ....

And the Q-words started acting up and making a fuss ...

AND GOD'S NATURAL ORDER DOWN HERE ON EARTH WAS DESTROYED ....

Just like that ...

And almost overnight ....

Which was also the time of ascension of DEMOCRATS, here in OUR America ....

Weak, spineless "women-men" who were too squeamish to CONK an N-word "real good", or to roll a Q-word till he was bleeding out of his ears and eyes at the same time .....

AND SO ...

We had a crisis here in OUR America ....

AMERICA THE VERY MIGHTY was made weak by these "women-men" Democrats and these COMMIES, who really are the same thing, although being devious, they use two different names so as to confuse GOOD AMERICANS into thinking there is a difference .....

N-words were walking down the road, NO LONGER IN FEAR ....

And Q-words were coming out of hiding, NO LONGER IN FEAR ...

And America was dying ...

Or so said the CONSERVATIVES, anyway ....

And so ...

HOW TO DO GOD'S WORK ...

WHEN GOD HIM OR HERSELF NO LONGER APPEARED TO BE CAPABLE OF DOING IT HIM OR HERSELF ....

After all, why on earth would GOD have ever invented the No. 32 Louisville SLUGGER baseball bat with the nice fat end on it unless he wanted that nice fat end laid just and so up against the back of some N-word's head at about thirty miles an hour vehicle speed, plus the speed of the swing of the bat itself just before impact .....

And the ANSWER, of course, was to find a CHAMPION ....

Someone man enough to fight on GOD'S behalf .....

And that turned out to be George W. Bush .....

"PUT THE TEXICAN STOMP ON THEM, GEORGE ..."

Put them N-words back in the ditch where they belong ....

Put them Q-words back into the closet ....

Turn abortion back into the back-street butchery that it was in the days of my youth ....

GET GOD'S NATURAL ORDER BACK ON TRACK, HERE IN OUR AMERICA ......

And so ....

American History 101 ....

It is as simple as that .....

And speaking of REAL AMERICAN HEROS ....

And GOD'S NATURAL ORDER ....

And the TEXICAN STOMP, which is RIGHTEOUS AND AMERICAN, of course ....

And a town in Massachusetts that appears to be FULL OF GODLESS COMMIES, including its Police force .....

And thus needs to be invaded and taken back from these GODLESS COMMIES by GOOD AMERICANS, for the GOOD OF AMERICA ....

We have .....

ZEIG HEIL ...

"Police Hunt for Suspect in Gay Bar Attack"

By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 6 minutes ago

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. - The attack on three patrons at a gay bar was a crime against the entire city, the mayor said at a candlelight vigil outside the nightspot.

Mayor Scott Lang joined about 150 people Thursday night outside Puzzles Lounge, where a young man dressed all in black went on a rampage with a hatchet and a gun earlier in the day, wounding three patrons, including one critically.

Police said the attack appeared to be a hate crime.

Authorities searched for 18-year-old Jacob D. Robida, who was wanted on charges of attempted murder, assault and civil-rights violations.

He was still at large early Friday, police said.

Under heavy police presence, community members and local politicians denounced the attack at the vigil.

Gays have the right to gather in safety and without fear of violence, said Andrew Pollock, president of the Marriage Equality Coalition of the South Seacoast.

"When you take the rights away from one group, you are dehumanizing that group and making them more vulnerable to violence," he said.

According to court papers, Robida's mother told police that he briefly stopped by the house less than an hour after the brawl and was bleeding from the head.

Officers found Nazi regalia in Robida's bedroom and anti-Semitic writings on the wall.

"Obviously we have a man who's dangerous, who's not rational, and he has weapons," prosecutor Paul Walsh Jr. said.

A bartender said it was around midnight when a teen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants walked into Puzzles, a gay nightspot in this historic seaport city of 94,000 people about 50 miles from Boston.

He flashed an apparently fake ID and ordered a drink, then asked if the place was a gay bar and was told it was, said the bartender, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Phillip, because of fear for his safety.

The bartender said the teen finished his drink and walked back to where two men were playing pool.

He shoved one of them to the ground, then pulled a hatchet from his sweatshirt and began swinging at the man's head, cutting him, Phillip said.

Other patrons tackled the man, sending the hatchet sliding across the floor, the bartender said.

Then the attacker pulled a gun, shot a man, and then fired another bullet into the chest of a patron who was leaving the bathroom, the bartender said.

He then ran off into the night.

Police recovered the hatchet and found a knife outside.

The knife was not apparently used in the attack.

Authorities identified the injured men as Robert Perry, Alex Taylor and Luis Rosado.

One has a gunshot wound to the chest, another a gunshot wound to the back and severe cuts to his face, and a third suffered multiple cuts, police said.

They would not specify which man suffered which injuries.

All three victims remained hospitalized.

Police said one was in critical condition, but would not say which man.

A family friend who answered the door at Robida's home said his mother had no comment.

Some patrons said there has been occasional low-level harassment at the bar over the years.

Puzzles has been egged, cars parked outside have had windows smashed and teenagers have thrown rocks and bricks at the building's facade for years, said Dan Sheteron, 51, who lives upstairs.

Anti-gay graffiti often defaces the building.

"This doesn't surprise me," Sheteron said of the attack.

"It was either going to be this or a firebomb through the front window."

THE STATE OF OUR UNION .....

IS STRONG ....

"Bloody attack on Mass. gay bar stuns region"

By David Ortiz

2 hours, 5 minutes ago

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts (Reuters) - An attack by a neo-Nazi teenager, accused of shooting two people and bludgeoning a third with a hatchet in a Massachusetts gay bar before fleeing, has stunned gays in the region and sparked fears that the assailant could strike again.

A manhunt was under way on Friday for an 18-year-old whom police say walked into Puzzles Lounge in the city of New Bedford late on Wednesday, ordered two drinks and then went on a rampage after asking a bartender "is this a gay bar?"

Jacob Robida faces about a dozen charges, including three counts of attempted murder and civil rights violations for the attack that left three men seriously wounded, police said.

"It's a vicious and ugly reminder of anti-gay prejudice," David Smith, head of policy and strategy at the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said.

"What is unique about hate crimes is that they terrorize the whole community."

When told he was in a gay bar, Robida walked into a back area where several men played pool, reached into his coat and pulled out a hatchet, police said.

He lunged at several men, striking two in the face with the hatchet before several of the bar's 18 patrons attempted to restrain him.

He then drew a gun and began firing in the pink-walled venue, according to police and witnesses.

About 150 people, including New Bedford's mayor and several of the city's politicians, held a candlelight vigil late on Thursday on the street outside of the bar about 58 miles (93 km) south of Boston, the state's capital.

"We think he could strike again."

"We don't know what he will do, especially if he gets desperate," Paul Walsh, Bristol Dist. Attorney, told Reuters.

"He's armed and extremely dangerous."

"We also cannot rule out that he could be suicidal."

Police across the Northeast U.S. coast are on alert for Robida, who was last seen by his mother when he returned home early on Thursday bleeding from a head wound and then leaving his house in a green Pontiac car, Walsh said.

NEO-NAZI LITERATURE

A search of Robida's bedroom turned up neo-Nazi literature and posters slurring gays, Jews and African-Americans, Walsh said.

He also appears on a Web site posing with Nazi flags.

"I've had friends jumped before, but it wasn't with weapons and nothing on this scale," said Jeffrey Robbins, 33, a gay resident of New Bedford.

He said his friends were concerned for their safety and feared a copy-cat attack.

"We're all just going to be more observant, walking each other to our cars with keys in our hands if we have to defend ourselves," he said.

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, called on Washington to pass a bill that would extend the federal law on hate crimes to cover offenses targeting people because of sexual orientation.

Massachusetts has hate crime laws that cover sexual orientation but 29 states do not.

"This tragic incident underlines the problem of anti-gay violence in this country," Frank, who is gay and whose district includes New Bedford, said in a statement.

"I will continue to press for amendments to existing federal hate crimes laws to cover this sort of horrible crime."

The crime stunned residents in the blue-collar city.

"It's crazy that it happened in this day and age," said Craig Paiva, a 29-year-old New Bedford resident who lives two blocks from Robida's home.

"You wonder how someone could hate a group of people so badly at the age of 18."

(Additional reporting by Jason Szep in Boston)

Just out of curiosity ....

I wonder how many hours a week this Robida listens to Rush Limbaugh ....

And leaving the world of today ...

Which we can do in here ....

And whisking back in time to the world of yesterday .....

We have ....

"Alpine ice man may have been childless outcast"

By Sophie Hardach

Fri Feb 3, 2:18 PM ET

MILAN (Reuters) - A Stone Age man found frozen in the Alps some 5,300 years after he was murdered under mysterious circumstances may have been a childless social outcast, a new study showed.

Italian anthropologist Franco Rollo studied fragments of the DNA belonging to Oetzi, as the mummy has come to be known, and found two typical mutations common among men with reduced sperm mobility, the museum that stores the "iceman" said.

A high percentage of men with such a condition are sterile.

"Insofar as the 'iceman' was found to possess both mutations, the possibility that he was unable to father offspring cannot be eliminated," the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in the Alpine town of Bolzano said in a statement.

"This not improbable hypothesis raises new questions concerning his social rank within his society," it added, arguing that the new evidence supported a theory that viewed the man as a social outcast.

Hikers discovered Oetzi in the mountains between Italy and Austria in 1991.

In 2001, scientists found an arrowhead in the iceman's shoulder blade, and tests revealed blood from four different people on his clothes and a cut in his hand, possibly from a fight.

Medicine in the man's pockets and sophisticated weapons seemed to indicate that he was a shaman or a chieftain, and one theory says Oetzi was the victim of a power struggle in his own tribe.

A rival theory proposes the opposite -- that he was a reject.

Rollo, a researcher at the University of Camerino in Italy, was also able to assign the mummy's DNA to one of the basic groups of human DNA historically occurring in Europe.

His basic DNA resembles that of the Ladines, an ethnic group still living in the region today, and that of residents of the Oetztal valley where he was found, the museum said.

Rollo's latest research findings will be published in February's edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Actually, he was not murdered. He was struck in the shoulder with his own arrow which ricocheted off his intended prey. This is called, "the single arrow theory."

I heard it was one of those experimental "boomerang arrows" that they were trying out back then as a labor-saving device ....

It came back alright .....

Just not to his hand ....

And that is the notorious "BEWARE SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES THEORY" ......

Yesterday, in the mail, I received this little envelope bearing FEMA logo on it ...

And in the middle, right above my name and address was this red "WARNING" label staring me right square in the face ....

And I said to myself, "Now, what on earth is this?"

Is FEMA sending each of us in America a personal warning that it is incompetent and untrustowrthy, just in case we did not already know?

But no ...

That was not it ....

It was from someone named David Maurstad, Acting Director, FEMA Mitigation Division and Federal Insurance Administration ....

The envelope had on it the adress of U.S. Department of Homeland Security, P.O. Box 2012, Jessup, Md. 20794 ....

It was mailed from New Brunswick, New Jersey on permit No. 1512 .....

And it directed me to buy flood insurance from Jim Mylod, Allstate Insurance, 639 Pawling Avenue, Troy, N.Y. 12180, or David A. Fazioli, Fazioli and Sons, Inc., 1813 5th Avenue, Troy, N.Y. 12180 .....

SO ...

What is this, then?

Free government advertising for these insurance companies?

We, the GUMMINT of the United States of MURRIKA want you to have this special insurance, and this is where we, the GUMMINT of the United States of MURRIKA, want you to go to get it .....

I wonder how much this is costing us American citizens ....

And more to the point, I wonder if this is going on all over the country ...

The GUMMINT using OUR resources to advertise for politically-connected local insurance brokers .....

BOOM ....BOOM ......BOOM ....BOOM .....

WAR DRUMS BEATING ...

A big fire burning ....

Dick Cheney, with a special gold-plated Abercrombie & Fitch BI-CENTENNIAL EDITION hatchet at only $750, half-naked, dressed only in a designer breech-clout and a special pair of leggings that he got in a Jackson Hole boutique for $3500, mouth drawn back in a rictus, teeth showing like a big Wyoming GRIZ, whirls and capers and cavorts around the fire like an imp released from the bowels of hell itself, gibbering and alternately grunting in some tongue intelligible to only himself, if even that ....

While Donald Rumsfeld, painted up to beat the band in rouge and vermillion and whatever that brown stuff on him is, dressed in the skin of an IRAQINAMI, head still attached, stands up on a stump and shouts exhortations to the assembled crowd .....

WAR ..... WAR .... WAR .... WAR

And here we go again ..

Except this time, since they are using the same script that was used for the IRAQINAM DEBACLE, we are supposed to be saving some money ....

On the front-end load, anyway ....

"Rumsfeld: Iran Regime Sponsors Terrorism"

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

32 minutes ago

MUNICH, Germany - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged America's allies to increase their military spending to prevent the rise of a "global extremist Islamic empire."

He also urged the world to work for a "diplomatic solution" to halt Iran's nuclear program.

"The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," he said in prepared remarks.

"The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran."

Rumsfeld was in Munich to address a defense conference focused on the relationship between America and its European allies.

The remarks came as the U.N. nuclear agency was meeting in Vienna, Austria to vote on a U.S.-backed proposal to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over concerns Tehran may be developing nuclear weapons.

Rumsfeld said terrorists hope to use Iraq as the "central front" in their war, turning it into a training and recruitment area like they had done in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

He warned "a war has been declared on all of our nations" and said their "futures depend on determination and unity in the face of the terrorist threat."

"We could choose to pretend, as some suggest, that the enemy is not at our doorstep."

"We could choose to believe, as some contend, that the threat is exaggerated."

"But those who would follow such a course must ask: what if they are wrong?"

"What if at this moment, the enemy is counting on being underestimated, counting on being dismissed, and counting on our preoccupation," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was to follow German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the opening speeches on the second day of 42nd annual Munich security conference.

In the past defense experts and policy-makers have used the prestigious gathering in southern Germany for frank exchanges.

Rumsfeld said violent extremism is a danger faced as much in Europe as in the United States.

"The struggle ahead promises to be a long war that will cause us all to recalibrate our strategies, perhaps further adjust our institutions, and certainly work closely together," he said.

He said Islamic militants are on the move and have to be checked.

"They seek to take over governments from North Africa to Southeast Asia and to re-establish a caliphate they hope, one day, will include every continent," he said.

"They have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire."

Likening the war on terror to the Cold War, Rumsfeld said the battle could be won if nations persevered.

He invoked Merkel's own experience — growing up in Communist East Germany to become chancellor of a unified Germany.

"Freedom prevailed because our free nations showed resolve when retreat would have been easier, and showed courage when concession seemed simpler," he said.

But he pointed out that the United States spends 3.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on national defense while 19 of the 25 other NATO nations spend less than 2 percent of their GDP on defense.

He did not name countries, but Germany, which spends 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense, and others have been under pressure to step up their funding.

"It may be easier for all of us to use our scarce tax dollars to meet urgent needs we all have at home," Rumsfeld said.

"But unless we invest in our defense and security, our homelands will be at risk."

WELL ....

What the heck ...

I mean, after all, the energy companies have their own SHILL embedded in OUR government in the form and personna of the "WYOMING GRIZ" himself, Mr. Dick Cheney ....

So why shouldn't the SECURITY INDUSTRY have their own SHILL as well ....

Right, RUMHEAD, er, Rummy, er, Mr. Rumsfeld?

"Pentagon prepares 'long war' strategy"

By ANN SCOTT TYSON, Washington Post
First published: Saturday, February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon laid out a new 20-year defense strategy Friday that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other untraditional threats, readying for what it calls a "long war."

Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.

China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.

The latest top-level reassessment of strategy, or Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is the first to fully take stock of the starkly increased demands on the U.S. military -- both in fighting wars abroad and defending the homeland -- since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Under the 2001 review, the Pentagon planned to be able to "swiftly defeat" two adversaries in overlapping military campaigns, with the option of overthrowing a hostile government in one.

In the new strategy, one of those two campaigns can be a large-scale, prolonged "irregular" conflict, such as the counterinsurgency in Iraq.

It calls for no net increases in troop levels, and seeks no dramatic cuts or additions to currently planned weapons systems.

The new strategy marks a clear shift away from the Pentagon's long-standing emphasis on conventional wars of tanks, fighter jets and destroyers against nation states.

Instead, it concentrates on four new goals: defeating terrorist networks; countering nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; dissuading major powers such as China, India and Russia from becoming adversaries; and creating a more robust homeland defense.

end quotes

And of course, what it really does is dump a ton of OUR tax money down the pockets of some influential people in OUR America who have Rumhead, er, Rummy, in there in OUR government as their SHILL ....

And maybe Don's own extensive stock holdings will get a boost here, as well ..

But of course ...

That would be merely accidental ....

"It may be easier for all of us to use our scarce tax dollars to meet urgent needs we all have at home," Rumsfeld said.

"But hell, folks, if we do that ..."

"Well, WHAT IS GOING TO BE LEFT TO SHOVE DOWN OUR OWN POCKETS?"

"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN ..."

And George does ......

"Bush plans hefty cuts to Medicare spending - President looks to slash payments to health care providers by billions"

By ROBERT PEAR, New York Times
First published: Saturday, February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In his budget next week, President Bush will propose substantial savings in Medicare, stepping up his efforts to rein in the growing costs of social insurance programs, administration officials and health care lobbyists said Friday.

For the first time since taking office five years ago, they said, Bush will try to reduce projected Medicare payments to hospitals and other health care providers by billions of dollars over the next five years.

In addition, they said, Bush intends to seek further increases in Medicare premiums for high-income people, beyond those already scheduled to take effect next year.

Despite the failure of his plan to overhaul Social Security last year, Bush has signaled that he intends to remain aggressive in confronting rapid increases in federal spending linked to the aging of the population.

"The retirement of the baby boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government," Bush said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Administration officials, congressional aides and lobbyists said the President was contemplating a package of proposals that would cut projected Medicare spending by $30 billion to $35 billion in the next five years.

That represents less than 1.5 percent of total Medicare spending in those years.

But whether Congress has the appetite to trim popular benefit programs in an election year is unclear.

The House passed another deficit-reduction bill this week by just two votes, underscoring the qualms among moderate Republicans about how far to go in limiting the growth of domestic programs at a time when the administration continues to push its tax-cutting agenda.

Bush plans to send his budget request for next year to Congress on Monday.

Many of his proposals follow recommendations from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel.

At a meeting last month, the panel said that hospitals did not have to be fully compensated for the increased costs of the goods and services.

These costs are expected to rise 3.4 percent in the fiscal year 2007.

But the panel said that hospitals could get along with a smaller increase, just 2.95 percent, if they became more efficient.

Jack Ashby, a research director at the commission, said, "We expect the recommendation to have no effect on hospitals' ability to furnish care to Medicare beneficiaries."

But Richard J. Pollack, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, said the cutback could damage the quality of hospital care.

Already, he said, two-thirds of hospitals lose money serving Medicare patients.

The President's 2007 budget also calls for a freeze in Medicare payments to nursing homes and home health agencies, as recommended by the commission.

In addition, he proposes to reduce payments for oxygen equipment provided to Medicare beneficiaries who have trouble breathing.

This proposal is likely to touch off protests from a coalition of patients and oxygen suppliers.

The coalition has been running television commercials against a powerful California congressman who has supported such changes.

In one commercial, an Air Force veteran, with an oxygen tube in his nose, asks the Congressman, Republican Rep. Bill Thomas:

"I was proud to fight for my country."

"Why are you not willing to fight for me?"

Thomas denounced the commercials.

"It's outrageous that some companies are trying to scare seniors," he said Friday.

Nursing home operators said it would be absurd to freeze their Medicare payments at a time when the Bush administration is demanding improvements in the quality of care.

The staff of the Medicare payment commission said current rates were "more than adequate."

Bush's budget does not seek any change in Medicare payments for doctors.

Their payments were frozen this year.

Under current law, they will be cut more than 4 percent next year.

Beneficiaries now pay premiums of $88.50 a month -- more than $1,000 a year -- for coverage of doctors' visits and other outpatient care.

Under the 2003 Medicare law, any beneficiary with more than $80,000 of annual income will have to pay higher premiums in 2007 and later years.

For people with incomes of $100,000 to $150,000, premiums would more than double.

Under the law, the income thresholds are increased each year to reflect inflation.

Bush's proposal would eliminate these adjustments, so that more people would have to pay the higher premiums each year.

The last three presidents regularly proposed to cut Medicare payments to hospitals below the levels needed to keep up with inflation.

But in the last five years, Bush generally avoided making such proposals.

Medicare spending totaled $333 billion last year.

Under current law, it will climb by one-third in two years, reaching $445 billion in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office says.

"Bill to ensure drug coverage vetoed - State would have been required to pay for seniors' prescriptions while feds sort out new Medicare plan"

By JAY JOCHNOWITZ, State editor, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, February 4, 2006

ALBANY -- Gov. George Pataki on Friday vetoed a bill that would have required the state to keep paying for senior citizens' prescription drugs while the federal government straightens out problems with a new Medicare drug program.

The governor's move, announced at 5:30 p.m. while he was away on a political trip in Iowa, essentially maintains the status quo.

Seniors affected by the decision -- an estimated 600,000 people who are "dual eligible" for Medicaid and Medicare -- will continue to get their prescriptions filled, with the state picking up the cost if necessary, at least through March 8.

But legislators who had pushed the bill as a way to give poor, elderly people some certainty about being able to afford their medications were openly displeased.

There were hints of a possible veto override.

"I will be studying all steps that the Legislature can take in the wake of the governor's veto to make sure that this promise to our seniors is kept," Senate Health Committee Chairman Kemp Hannon, R-Nassau County, said.

His Assembly counterpart, Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, said the veto was "a slap at senior citizens and it violates New York's responsibility to its senior citizens."

A key problem, which is not isolated to New York, is that the new "Medicare D" prescription drug program fails to recognize many Medicaid clients as eligible for coverage.

Previously, Medicaid covered their drugs, but under federal rules Medicaid clients who are eligible for Medicare must switch to Medicare D.

The confusion raised the specter of people going without medications they need to survive.

Last month, Pataki had the Health Department suspend the rules and allow people to be covered under Medicaid for a week.

The Legislature, however, decided on a more permanent solution.

It passed a bill requiring the state to continue paying for dual-eligibles' prescriptions until Health Commissioner Antonia Novello declared in writing that the Medicare D program is fixed.

Pataki said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services assured him it would cover the state's costs through Feb. 15.

After that, Pataki said, pharmacists will "be required to attempt again" to submit claims to the federal government.

If that fails, the federal government would reimburse the state, at least through March 8.

The program is expected to work properly by then.

Jay Jochnowitz can be reached at 454-5424 or by e-mail at jjochnowitz@timesunion.com.

And here is some of that history that BUSHCO's are writing, right now .....

"Sunni Chiefs Raise Warnings of Civil War"

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 1 minute ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni politicians warned of civil war Saturday after the bullet-riddled bodies of 14 Sunni Arab men were found in Baghdad — apparently the latest victims of sectarian death squads.

One person was killed and 12 injured when a mortar shell exploded near a Shiite mosque north of the capital.

Sunni leaders claimed the 14 men were seized last week by Shiite-led security forces.

There was no confirmation from the Shiite-led Interior Ministry that government troops were responsible.

A top ministry official, Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, said the bodies were shot multiple times and dumped in the back of a truck in northern Baghdad late Friday.

He denounced the killings as a "criminal" act and said "we have nothing so far" to indicate government forces were to blame.

Leaders of several major Sunni Arab political organizations insisted the Interior Ministry was responsible for the killings.

Khalaf al-Ilyan, head of the National Dialogue Council, said the men were arrested by Interior Ministry troops at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad and killed in an unknown location.

"The government is pushing hard toward a civil war," al-Ilyan told reporters.

Dr. Salman al-Jumaili, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, part of the largest Sunni bloc in the new parliament, threatened to carry through with a threat by his party's leader Wednesday to launch a "civil disobedience" campaign if attacks against Sunnis do not stop.

"There is an escalation in organized assassinations by parties belonging to government security forces," al-Jumaili said.

"There is an organized and well-trained force at the Interior Ministry conducting this sectarian cleansing against us."

The 14 bodies were taken to a morgue to be collected by their families, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group, said in a statement.

The bodies of a father and son were taken to the headquarters of the National Dialogue Council, another Sunni political group, and displayed to reporters.

Shiites, an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people, also have been the victims of sectarian killings and often have been targeted in suicide bombings.

Long oppressed under Saddam Hussein, Shiites insist they must maintain control of the security forces to defend themselves and to prevent the return of Saddam-style dictatorship.

Late Saturday, a mortar shell exploded a few yards from a Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

One person was killed and 12 injured, including three children, police Capt. Layth Mohammed said.

Top Sunni political leaders have demanded that Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of the biggest Shiite party, be dismissed and that the post in the new government go to someone without close ties to Shiite religious parties.

U.S. and United Nations diplomats have also called for control of the key security ministries to taken out of the hands of sectarian groups.

The issue is expected to hinder quick agreement on a new government when talks among Iraq's parties begin in earnest this month.

Voters chose a new parliament in elections Dec. 15 but no government has been formed because major parties have been awaiting final certification of results, expected in the coming week.

Shiite religious parties, who dominate the outgoing government, won the biggest number of seats — 128 out of 275 — in the new parliament.

That's not enough to govern without partners, and U.S. officials have been pressing hard for a major role for Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds.

Sunni Arab parties won 55 seats, a threefold increase over representation in the outgoing parliament.

The U.S. hopes that an inclusive government will encourage many Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and join the political process.

Mainstream Sunni politicians warn that killings of Sunni civilians will undermine that goal.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed a former official of Saddam's Baath Party as he left his home in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, police Capt. Ahmed Khalil said.

U.S. troops also found a large weapons cache west of Fallujah, the 11th such discovery in 13 days, the military said Saturday.

Also Saturday, protests continued in Iraq against caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that were originally published in a Danish newspaper.

___

Associated Press correspondents Paul Garwood, Bushra Juhi and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.

"Syrians torch embassies over caricatures"

By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:17 p.m., Saturday, February 4, 2006

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Thousands of Syrians enraged by caricatures of Islam's revered prophet torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday -- the most violent in days of furious protests by Muslims in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

In Gaza, Palestinians marched through the streets, storming European buildings and burning German and Danish flags.

Protesters smashed the windows of the German cultural center and threw stones at the European Commission building, police said.

Iraqis rallying by the hundreds demanded an apology from the European Union, and the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas called the cartoons "an unforgivable insult" that merited punishment by death.

Pakistan summoned the envoys of nine Western countries in protest, and even Europeans took to the streets in Denmark and Britain to voice their anger.

At the heart of the protest: 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media in the past week.

One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.

The paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

Aggravating the affront, Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said repeatedly he cannot apologize for his country's free press.

But other European leaders tried Saturday to calm the storm.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said she understood Muslims were hurt -- though that did not justify violence.

"Freedom of the press is one of the great assets as a component of democracy, but we also have the value and asset of freedom of religion," Merkel told an international security conference in Munich, Germany.

The Vatican deplored the violence but said certain provocative forms of criticism were unacceptable.

"The right to freedom of thought and expression ... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," the Vatican said in its first statement on the controversy.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has criticized European media for reprinting the caricatures, said there was no justification for the violence in Damascus.

"We stand in solidarity with the Danish government in its call for calm and its demand that all its diplomats and diplomatic premises are properly protected."

"It's incumbent on the Syrian authorities to act in this regard."

But Denmark and Norway did not wait for more violence.

With their Damascus embassies up in flames, the foreign ministries advised their citizens to leave Syria without delay.

"It's horrible and totally unacceptable," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish public television Saturday.

No diplomats were injured in the Syrian violence, officials said.

But Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds -- whose country, along with Chile, has an embassy in the same building -- said she would lodge a formal protest over the lack of security.

In Santiago, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Chilean Embassy in Damascus was also torched but nobody was injured.

The demonstrations in Damascus began peacefully with protesters gathering outside the building housing the Danish Embassy.

But they began throwing stones and eventually broke through police barricades.

Some scrambled up concrete barriers protecting the embassy, climbed into the building and set a fire.

"With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!" the demonstrators chanted.

Some removed the Danish flag and replaced it with a green flag printed with the words: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Demonstrators moved onto the Norwegian Embassy about 4 miles away, also setting fire to it before being dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons.

Hundreds of police and troops barricaded the road leading to the French Embassy, but protesters were able to break through briefly before fleeing from the force of water cannons.

Amid the furor, Syria's Grand Mufti urged calm, noting the demonstration had started in a "nice and disciplined way," but then turned violent because of "some members who do not understand the language of dialogue."

"We never expressed our anger in such a way, and we believe that dialogue should be done through guidance and teaching, not through killing, harming and burning," Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun said in remarks carried by state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA.

In Gaza, masked gunmen affiliated with the Fatah Party called on the Palestinian Authority and Muslim nations to recall their diplomatic missions from Denmark until the government apologizes.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, about 50 Palestinians marched to the headquarters of the international observer mission there, burned a Danish flag and demanded a boycott of Danish goods.

"We will redeem our prophet Muhammad with our blood!" they chanted.

Mahmoud Zahar, leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, told the Italian daily Il Giornale the cartoonists should be punished by death.

We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet and instead here we are, protesting peacefully." he said.

Hundreds of Iraqis rallied south of Baghdad, some carrying banners urging "honest people all over the world to condemn this act" and demanding an EU apology.

Anger swelled in Europe, too.

Young Muslims clashed briefly with police in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, and some 700 people rallied outside the Danish Embassy in London.

A South African court banned the country's Sunday newspapers from reprinting the cartoons.

Iran's president ordered his commerce minister to study canceling all trade contracts with European countries whose newspapers have published the caricatures, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the caricatures showed the "impudence and rudeness" of Western newspapers against the prophet as well as the "maximum resentment of the Zionists (Jews) ruling these countries against Islam and Muslims."

The leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan denounced the publication of the caricatures.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned nine envoys to lodge protests against the publication of the "blasphemous" sketches.

------

Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

"George Bush's Ministry of Truth"

By Reggie Rivers
DenverPost.com

When I first read George Orwell's novel "1984" in high school, I was struck by the ability of the Ministry's of Truth to cause the public to forget a truth simply by stating its opposite.

The Ministry's three slogans - "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength" - revealed its talent for reversing the meaning of words.

In high school, I assumed that this type of manipulation would never work in the real world, but now and again I wonder - especially when I hear President Bush attempt to reshape our perception of actual events by telling us that the truth is the opposite of what we're seeing.

During the State of the Union address this week, he said, "We seek the end of tyranny in our world."

Yet, his administration has engaged in extremely tyrannical behavior: invading a sovereign nation, incarcerating people without trials, committing torture, spying on its own citizens and shrouding itself in secrecy.

Regarding the war in Iraq, he said, "If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone."

"They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores."

Though it has long been proved that the Sept. 11 terrorists weren't from Iraq, had no connection to Iraq, and are not now in Iraq, President Bush continues to insist that the war is related to Sept. 11.

He said, "There is no peace in retreat."

"And there is no honor in retreat."

Of course, there can be peace and honor in retreat, but since he practices a doctrine of never considering alternatives and never admitting mistakes, denigrating the merits of retreat is like a scorched-Earth policy that forces combatants forward even if it's suicidal to continue.

He said, "We are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory."

Because of the challenges related to fighting a shadow army of insurgents, the coalition has been on the defensive for most of the war.

The only thing that has been clear from the start is that the Bush administration never has had a well-developed plan.

About the war, President Bush said, "We are winning."

More than 2,200 U.S. troops have been killed, more than 16,500 have been injured, and combat operations have cost hundreds of billions of dollars with no end in sight.

The statement "We are winning" is pure puffery.

"Our coalition has learned from experience in Iraq," he said.

President Bush loves to suggest that he has learned things, but he never reveals what he has learned and, when pressed, he always insists that he wouldn't change any of his previous choices.

True to form, he followed up his comment about learning with, "Hindsight alone is not wisdom."

"Second-guessing is not a strategy."

This is clever speechwriting, but it's simply not true.

If a drunk driver received a DWI citation or, worse, caused an accident, the courts would use hindsight and second-guessing to punish him and to instill greater wisdom in his future choices.

President Bush said, "However we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option."

Again, he suggests that he has learned something, but then insists that the only possible choice is to continue doing what he's been doing from the start.

Whether it's deliberate or accidental, President Bush is channeling the Ministry of Truth in making these statements that are intended to manipulate the American people into believing the words coming out of his mouth more than the evidence they can see with their own eyes.

His poll numbers continue to drop, so it seems that Americans, unlike the citizens in Orwell's book, are able to see through his lies.

Former Bronco Reggie Rivers (reggierivers2002@yahoo.com) is the host of "Global Agenda" Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.

February 4, 2006

New York Times Editorial

"Tax Talk Goes Orwellian"

President Bush had it exactly backwards in his speech Tuesday night when he exhorted lawmakers to keep cutting taxes.

He noted that when the going gets tough, leaders are tempted to take stands that are crowd pleasing yet counterproductive, like championing protectionism in the face of global competition.

Fair enough.

But then he warned that in today's uncertain times, lawmakers might even be tempted to do something as weak-kneed as "increasing taxes."

If Mr. Bush is trying to say that tax cutting is politically courageous, that ignores reality.

Politicians cut taxes to please the crowd, and they are always and understandably reluctant to vote against a cut or — gasp — vote for a tax increase because that could make them unpopular.

Mr. Bush knows that.

He was basically warning the assembled lawmakers, actually the Republicans, that they would never make the cheerleading squad if they didn't extend his temporary tax cuts.

We hope Congress will realize that extending the tax cuts would be an act of political cowardice, not courage.

The country is already deep in debt, and the tax cuts are largely to blame.

In the next two weeks, the administration expects to hit the nation's legal debt limit — $8,184,000,000,000 — and has told Congress it needs to vote to raise the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion, a 51 percent increase since 2001, when Mr. Bush took office.

Congress must raise the limit or the government will default.

But Congressional leaders are looking for ways to downplay the vote, precisely because it's a disgrace.

Casting the tax cuts in stone now would be particularly craven because they don't expire for another three to five years.

But Mr. Bush and his supporters in Congress are hot to act now.

That is because the cuts they want to extend the most — special low tax rates for investment income — overwhelmingly enrich the rich and will be even harder to justify in the years to come, when, by all reasonable estimates, the country's financial outlook will have deteriorated further.

The tax cutters are not being brave.

They are afraid they won't get their way if they wait.

Well ...

There was quite a bit of speculation over these last few days as to where this young CONSERVATIVE who made the attack on the gay bar in Massachusetts would run to ....

And who he would call for sanctuary ....

And whether he would make it to that sanctuary ...

Or not ....

Some thought that he was already packed up and spirited off on his way to IRAQINAM as a civilian contractor, having just proved by his attack in that gay bar that he had the "RIGHT STUFF" to be a HOLY WARRIOR for George W. Bush's CAUSE ....

Some people wondered if he would call Karl Rove, and have Karl get him sanctuary somewhere with some of Karl's "people" ...

Others were betting that he was heading right towards Rush Limbaugh's studio itself, believing perhaps that if he could just get to Rush, everything would be made right for him ...

And likely, he would emerge as a NEW DARLING for the CONSERVATIVE SET, here in OUR America ....

Whatever ...

He didn't quite make it ....

And maybe he will end up emerging here as a MARTYER for the CONSERVATIVES here in OUR America ....

A new SYMBOL of their "VALUES" for them to rally around ...

Now that George's ratings are falling ever lower ....

"Teen Wanted in Mass. Gay Bar Attack Caught"

By NOAH TRISTER, Associated Press Writer

54 minutes ago

GASSVILLE, Ark. - Two days after a violent rampage at a gay bar in Massachusetts, authorities said the teen suspect fled 1,500 miles to Arkansas where he fatally shot a police officer and a 33-year-old woman.

Jacob D. Robida, a high school dropout who friends said glorified Naziism, was shot twice in the head in a gun battle with police Saturday, officials said.

He was critically injured.

After Thursday's hatchet-and-gun attack at Puzzles Lounge in New Bedford, Mass., which injured three people, police said the 18-year-old fled in a green Pontiac and picked up Jennifer Rena Bailey, at her Charleston, W. Va., home.

"Apparently she's had a prior relationship with this guy and had been corresponding with him," said West Virginia State Police Sgt. C.J. Ellyson.

They were driving through the northern Arkansas town of Gassville when Officer Jim Sell pulled them over for a traffic stop.

The teen twice shot Sell, 56, said Massachusetts prosecutor Paul Walsh Jr.

Witness Maryann Hoyne said she saw the officer's squad car bumper to bumper with Robida's car, and heard three gunshots.

Sell was on the ground and Robida got back into his car and drove off, she said.

Robida returned a moment later to retrieve his gun, which he had left at the side of the officer, said Hoyne, manager of the Brass Door Motel in Gassville.

About 25 miles away, Robida drove over spike strips set out by state troopers and drove with two punctured tires into downtown Norfork.

Robida's car then careened into several parked vehicles to avoid a police barricade.

"When he wrecked he started firing at our officer and a state police officer, and the officers returned fire," said Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery.

The teen shot the woman in the car with him before he was wounded in the shootout with police, Walsh said.

State police wouldn't confirm Walsh's account and said ballistics tests would determine how the woman died.

Robida was taken to a Springfield, Mo., hospital, according to Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler.

One victim of the Massachusetts attack — which police have called a hate crime — said he was "elated" the teen had been apprehended.

"Right now I'd like him to be able to regain consciousness and answer some questions," said Bob Perry, who was released from a Boston hospital Friday.

He had a black eye, a five-inch gash on his right cheek and a bullet hole in his back.

Another victim remained hospitalized, and officials would not disclose the location of the third.

Police said Robida would be charged with attempted murder, assault and civil rights violations in the attack.

end quotes

Just out of curiosity .....

I wonder how much this Robida was listening to the DEMAGOGUE Rick Santorum before he went on this rampage .....

Or that Reverend Lusk character .....

Getting the latest poop from them on CONSERVATIVE "VALUES" ....

Here in OUR America ...

And being a GOOD AMERICAN, of course, one who listens assiduously to Scott McClellan and Rush Limbaugh every day for my instructions on how to see life and how to think as a GOOD AMERICAN should think, well ....

Having accepted that I know absolutely nothing about science ...

And that WHITE HOUSE lawyers know everything that ever was, is, or could be known on the subject ....

Well ....

You know ....

And so ...

Having accepted that these WHITE HOUSE lawyers are right, and correct, that GLOBAL WARMING really is a VERY GOOD THING for the world, and thus, as a corrollary that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems, what I have decided I can do as a GOOD American is to simply report the facts as they develop on this WHITE HOUSE LAWYER THEORY ....

Specifically ...

Adapting to problems in the face of all of this unfettered economic growth that IS resulting from GLOBAL WARMING ...

And here is some now ....

"Earthen dam threatens homes - Debris from landslide holds back creek, posing downstream concern"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

GREENPORT -- Officials are concerned that an earthen dam that formed when a landslide tumbled into the Claverack Creek earlier this week may break apart, threatening downstream homes.

The new fears prompted local and state authorities to declare a limited state of emergency and to reopen a command post on the site where a 300-yard-section of embankment tumbled into the creek on Thursday.

The landslide has diverted Claverack Creek from its normal path and has led a considerable amount of water to build up behind the massive pile of earth and rock that was formed.

"We're concerned that if the blockage lets loose, a sudden surge of water will come through, especially in low lying areas," said town of Stockport Supervisor Leo Pulcher.

A couple dozen homes in Stockport, about two miles downstream from the landslide, lie in the creek's path, Pulcher said.

Officials plan to continue around-the-clock presence at the site, in case the dam begins to give away.

If it does, authorities expect high water that could dampen homes, but not a massive flood.

"You're not going to have a 15 or 20-feet wall of water coming through," Pulcher said.

"We just want people to know what's going on."

-- Matt Pacenza

end quotes

I mean ...

Well ...

Maybe this is not the economic opportunity of the century here ....

BUT ....

There is some money to be made here, isn't there?

I think this is the kind of GOOD STUFF that these WHITE HOUSE lawyers are telling us is going to be coming our way, this unfettered opportunity for economic growth as a result of GLOBAL WARMING .....

If you are selling boats, anyway ...

Interesting .....

How many people here in OUR America were betting that this guy would make the run to Texas .....

Get himself down there to the HOLY GRAIL .....

Maybe take out some of Cindy Sheehan's people outside the gates ...

And then .....

"Man Held in Bar Attack Dies After Shootout"

By NOAH TRISTER, Associated Press Writer

46 minutes ago

GASSVILLE, Ark. - The teenager suspected of a hatchet-and-gun attack in a Massachusetts gay bar and in the killing of two people in Arkansas, including a policeman, died Sunday of wounds suffered in a gun battle with officers, authorities said.

Jacob D. Robida, 18, died at 3:38 a.m. Sunday at Cox-South Hospital in Springfield, Mo., said hospital spokesman Randy Berger.

Robida, a high school dropout who friends said glorified Naziism, was shot twice in the head in a shootout with police Saturday after he killed a Gassville police officer and a woman in his car, authorities said.

Two days earlier, he allegedly went on a rampage at the Puzzles Lounge in New Bedford, Mass., that injured three men, one critically.

Police labeled that attack a hate crime.

"I wish he would have lived and gone on trial," said Dan Sheterom, 51, who lives above Puzzles Lounge and frequents the tavern.

"I would have liked to have seen if the commonwealth here would have taken it up to the federal government as a hate crime."

After Thursday's attack, police say Robida drove off and picked up 33-year-old Jennifer Rena Bailey at her home in Charleston, W.Va.

"Apparently she's had a prior relationship with this guy and had been corresponding with him," said West Virginia State Police Sgt. C.J. Ellyson.

They were driving through the northern Arkansas town of Gassville when Officer Jim Sell pulled them over for a traffic violation Saturday.

Sell, 56, was shot twice, said Bristol, Mass., District Attorney Paul Walsh Jr.

Witness Maryann Hoyne said she saw the officer's squad car sitting bumper to bumper with Robida's car, and heard three gunshots.

She saw Sell on the ground as Robida got back into his car and drove off, she said.

Robida returned a moment later to retrieve his gun, which he had left beside the officer, said Hoyne, manager of the Brass Door Motel in Gassville.

About 25 miles away, Robida drove over spike strips set out by state troopers and continued driving with two punctured tires into downtown Norfork, where he smashed into several parked vehicles to avoid a police barricade.

"When he wrecked he started firing at our officer and a state police officer, and the officers returned fire," said Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery.

The teen shot Bailey before he was wounded in the shootout with police, Walsh said.

State police wouldn't confirm Walsh's account and said ballistics tests would determine how the woman died.

One victim of the Massachusetts attack said he was "elated" the teen had been stopped.

Bob Perry was released from a Boston hospital Friday.

He had a black eye, a five-inch gash on his right cheek and a bullet hole in his back.

Another victim remained hospitalized, and officials would not disclose the location of the third.

Before Robida's death, Massachusetts police had said he would be charged with attempted murder, assault and civil rights violations in the attack.

In Arkansas, killing a police officer is punishable by death.

Robida's friends said he had, at times, glorified Nazism and bore a swastika tattoo, but had not previously expressed prejudice toward homosexuals.

Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay congressman whose district includes New Bedford, said the community has a history of tolerance.

"This is not some general problem with the people of New Bedford," Frank said.

"This is one disturbed 18-year-old."
___

Associated Press writers Ray Henry in New Bedford, Mass.; John Raby in Charleston, W.Va.; and Tom Parsons in Little Rock contributed to this report.

And then there is this, of course ....

I'm heading into my sixtieth year ...

And it was my hope to end my days in a world at peace ...

HAH!

"Violence spreads over Muhammad caricatures"

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press
Last updated: 2:46 p.m., Sunday, February 5, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Thousands of Muslims rampaged Sunday in Beirut, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags and lobbing stones at a Maronite Catholic church as violent protests over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spread from neighboring Syria.

Troops fired bullets into the air and used tear gas and water cannons to push the crowds back after a small group of Islamic extremists tried to break through the security barrier outside the embassy.

Flames and smoke billowed from the building.

Security officials said at least 30 people were injured.

The Danish Foreign Ministry urged Danes to leave Lebanon as soon as possible, while Danes and Norwegians heeded a similar call in Syria, where violent protests broke out on Saturday.

"It is a critical situation and it is very serious," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said Sunday on Danish public radio.

Protesters also took to the streets by the thousands elsewhere in the Muslim world, a day after demonstrators in Syria charged security barriers outside the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and sent the buildings up in flames.

Those attacks earned widespread condemnation from European nations and the U.S., which accused the Syrian government of backing the protests.

The Danish foreign minister said: "enough is enough."

"Now it has become more than a case about the drawings: Now there are forces that wants a confrontation between our cultures," Moeller said.

"It is in no one's interest, neither them or us."

Syria blamed Denmark for the protests, criticizing the Scandinavian nation for refusing to apologize for the caricatures of Islam's holiest figure.

"(Denmark's) government was able to avoid reaching this point ... simply through an apology" as requested by Arab and Muslim diplomats, state-run daily Al-Thawra said in an editorial Sunday.

"It is unjustifiable under any kind of personal freedoms to allow a person or a group to insult the beliefs of millions of Muslims," the paper said.

Anger has broken out across the Muslim world over 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and reprinted in European media and New Zealand in the past week.

One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.

The paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.

Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said he personally disapproves of the caricatures and any attacks on religion -- but insisted he cannot apologize on behalf of his country's independent press.

Iraqi Transport Minister Salam al-Maliki said his country has decided to cancel its contracts with Danish firms and reject any offers of reconstruction money from Copenhagen to protest the publication of the caricatures.

The government had issued no official statement and the value of the transportation contracts was not available.

Iran also said it has recalled its ambassador to Denmark amid the controversy.

"Insulting the prophet was unacceptable, resentful, and a sign of barbarism," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, adding that Tehran planned to take further action.

Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have also recalled their ambassadors to Copenhagen in condemnation of the caricatures.

Lebanon's Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani denounced the violence and appealed for calm, accusing infiltrators of sowing the dissent to "harm the stability of Lebanon."

Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud denounced the violence, saying: "National unity should remain protected and consolidated."

He warned against attempts to destabilize the country, and his government called for an emergency Cabinet meeting later Sunday.

In Beirut, protesters came by the busloads to rally outside the Danish Embassy, where they chanted, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God!"

Some 2,000 troops and riot police were deployed.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said staff at the Danish Embassy had been evacuated two days ago.

The trouble threatened to rile sectarian tensions in Beirut when protesters began stoning St. Maroun Church, one of the city's main Maronite Catholic churches, and property in Ashrafieh, a Christian area.

Sectarian tension is a sensitive issue in Lebanon, where Muslims and Christian fought a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

Lebanon's Justice Minister Charles Rizk, a Christian, urged leaders to help end the violence.

"What is the guilt of the citizens of Ashrafieh of caricatures that were published in Denmark?"

"This sabotage should stop," Rizk said on LBC television.

In the Afghan city of Mihtarlam, some 3,000 demonstrators burned a Danish flag and demanded that the editors at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten be prosecuted for blasphemy, Gov. Sher Mohammed Safi said.

Some 1,000 people tried to march to the offices of the United Nations and other aid groups in Fayzabad.

Police fired shots into the air to disperse them, officials said.

Nobody was hurt.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed anger over the cartoons but said Danish troops and other citizens should feel safe in his country.

"It's not the responsibility of Danish troops, it's not the responsibility of Danish government, it's the free media."

"... We must not hold the troops who are serving in Afghanistan responsible for this," he said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, students in uniform -- age 13 and even younger -- carried protest posters and shouted: "No to offending our prophet."

Dozens of Palestinian gunmen also defaced the entrance to a French learning center and attacked a man who tried to protect the closed building in Nablus.

In Iraq, about 1,000 Sunni Muslims demonstrated outside a mosque in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi.

A giant banner read: "Iraq must end political, diplomatic, cultural and economic relations with the European countries that supported the Danish insult against Prophet Muhammad and all Muslims."

Another 1,000 supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in Amarah, denouncing Denmark, Israel and the United States and demanding that Danish and Norwegian diplomats be expelled.

More than 700 Muslims marched through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, to protest the cartoons' publication in two New Zealand newspapers.

European leaders urged calm and respect -- both for religion and freedom of the press.

"The violence now, particularly the burning of Danish missions abroad, is absolutely outrageous and totally unjustified, and what we want to see is this matter being calmed down," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in London, adding that the media must exercise its free speech privilege responsibly.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pushed for intercultural dialogue.

"We all agree that words and deeds that insult or ridicule other religions or cultures do not contribute to mutual understanding," he said at a security conference in Germany.

"Both freedom of the press ... and freedom of religion are great liberties -- those who use them must use them with care."

"Specter criticizes rationale for spying"

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press
Last updated: 3:35 p.m., Sunday, February 5, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not adequately justified why the Bush administration failed to seek court approval for domestic surveillance, said the senator in charge of a hearing Monday on the program.

Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes that President Bush violated a 1978 law specifically calling for a secret court to consider and approve such monitoring.

The Pennsylvania Republican branded Gonzales' explanations to date as "strained and unrealistic."

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, predicted that the committee would have to subpoena the administration to obtain internal documents that lay out the legal basis for the program.

Justice Department officials have declined, citing in part the confidential nature of legal communications.

Specter said he would have his committee consider such a step if the attorney general does not go beyond his prior statements and prepared testimony that the spying is legal, necessary and narrowly defined to fight terrorists.

"This issue of the foreign intelligence surveillance court is really big, big, big because the president, the administration, could take this entire program and lay it on the line to that court," Specter told NBC's "Meet the Press."

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 established legal procedures for conducting intelligence-related searches and surveillance inside the United States.

Specter said the FISA court "has really an outstanding record of not leaking, and of being experts."

"And they would be pre-eminently well-qualified to evaluate this program and either say it's OK or it's not OK."

Leahy charged that Bush misled the public when he said during the presidential campaign in April 2004 that his administration was following the law by getting warrants for wiretapping.

"I think ultimately we're going to have to subpoena them," Leahy said on CBS' "Face the Nation," expressing doubt that lawmakers would get the material otherwise.

Under the National Security Agency program put in place after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has eavesdropped, without seeking warrants, on international phone calls and e-mails of people within the United States who are deemed to be a terrorism risk.

In testimony prepared for Monday's hearing, Gonzales argues that Bush had authority under a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing force in the fight against terrorism and that heeding the 1978 law would be too cumbersome.

"The terrorist surveillance program operated by the NSA requires the maximum in speed and agility, since even a very short delay may make the difference between success and failure in preventing the next attack," Gonzales said in statements obtained by The Associated Press.

Specter was not so sure.

"I believe that contention is very strained and unrealistic," Specter said.

If the FISA law was inadequate, he said, Bush should have asked Congress to change it rather than ignore it.

"The authorization for the use of force doesn't say anything about electronic surveillance."

Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., was expected to press Gonzales on why, during Gonzales' confirmation hearings last year to be attorney general, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a situation in which the government conducted warrantless eavesdropping.

The NSA program was long in place by then, and Gonzales was White House counsel.

Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, in a letter Friday to Feingold, said Gonzales was referring to as "hypothetical" the idea that Bush would allow warrantless monitoring that was illegal.

That statement is accurate, Moschella wrote in a letter obtained by the AP, because the administration's position is that Bush had legal authority under the 2001 congressional resolution.

Gonzales has acknowledged disagreement with former Justice Department officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey, about the legality of the program.

In responses to written questions from Specter, Gonzales challenged media portrayals about the scope of the spy program, saying it is not "a dragnet that sucks in all conversations and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest."

The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, reported Sunday that the program involves computers sifting through hundreds of thousands of communications to select for human review.

The program has resulted in thousands of conversations in which someone in the U.S. has been at least briefly monitored, the Post said.

The Post report said that nearly all of them were quickly dismissed as insignificant and that perhaps no more than 10 solid leads a year have been pursued with further domestic surveillance, usually with a court warrant.

But Gen. Michael Hayden, the No. 2 intelligence official in the government, said it was "not true" that "we somehow grab the content of communications and then use the content of the communications to determine which of the communications we really want to listen to."

"When NSA goes after the content of a communication under this authorization from the president, the NSA has already established its reasons for being interested in that specific communication," Hayden said on "Fox News Sunday."

In addition to possibly pursuing documents about the program's legal basis, Specter said he might seek testimony from Ashcroft and Comey.

"If we come to it and we need it, I'll be open about it," Specter said, referring to subpoenas.

"If the necessity arises, I won't be timid."

Specter also said the administration should tread carefully when it came to using subpoenas against journalists to investigate leaks of classified information.

The New York Times in December disclosed the existence of the NSA program, which is classified.

"I think if you move into the area of really serious national security issues, that there may be a justification for it," he said.

And here is a story of our times, alright ...

"More hurt by medical charges"

By CANDICE CHOI, Associated Press
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

ALBANY -- In the span of a few years, Pat Juliano was socked with a string of tragedies including the death of a partner, a heart attack and numerous ambulance trips to the hospital.

In the end, it was the staggering medical bills that nearly did him in.

The 62-year-old Albany resident is among a sea of people across New York state and the country being pushed into financial ruin and even bankruptcy as a result of towering medical bills, according to a report released last week by the Empire Center for Justice, an advocacy group.

The survey found 65 percent of people attending bankruptcy clinics in urban communities across upstate New York had medical-related debts.

The findings are a snapshot of what's happening across the country, said Trilby DeJung, author of the report.

A national study by Harvard University last year found half of those who file for personal bankruptcy cited medical bills as a reason for their financial ruin.

The study also found that most people who file for bankruptcy protection because of medical problems have health insurance.

The report by the Empire Justice Center corroborates those findings; 68 percent of those with medical bills were working and nearly half had health insurance.

Eighty-six percent had some type of coverage within the past year.

The survey was distributed to 348 people in bankruptcy clinics across upstate New York.

"This is putting a New York face on a national problem," said Assemblyman Alexander "Pete" Grannis, who announced the report's findings along with Assemblyman Richard Gottfried this week.

The Manhattan Democrats are backing a package of bills that would improve health coverage for the poor in the state.

The Empire Justice Center survey found nearly all those struggling with medical debt are wiping out their savings, racking up credit-card debt and asking family and friends for help to pay off bills.

Of those with medical bills, 62 percent owed $5,000 or less while 27 percent owed $10,000 or more -- a significant amount for those surviving on very low incomes, DeJung said.

Seventy-three percent also said they were being pursued by a collection agency as a result of unpaid medical bills and 23 percent said they were sued over their medical debt.

More than half of people had put off medical care and had difficulty getting loans because of unpaid medical bills, according to the Empire Center report.

Those with high hospital bills often don't know where to start looking for financial assistance either.

"Complaints force Weld site change - Articles from newspapers altered to cut criticism given explanatory notes"

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

NEW YORK -- Republican gubernatorial candidate William Weld made changes to his campaign Web site after being criticized for posting newspaper articles altered to remove criticism of him, or any mention of a criminal investigation at a technical college he once led.

The campaign site http://www.weldfornewyork.org still contained at least two edited articles in its "News" section Saturday, but each now bears a note indicating they are "excerpted" versions.

The campaign added the notes after the alterations, which were small but had the effect of making balanced articles appear more favorable to Weld, were noticed by The New York Times.

"It was not intended to mislead people," Weld spokesman Dominick Ianno said Saturday.

"If there was any misunderstanding, we corrected it."

One of the changed articles was a Jan. 21 profile of Weld by Times writer Patrick Healy.

In the original version, Healy led off by writing that Weld's campaign appeared to be "on life support."

"By his own admission, Mr. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, has been wounded by a federal investigation of a Kentucky college he once ran," Healy wrote, adding, "while some New York Republican leaders endorsed him early on, others are now iffy or worse."

"Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former senator, despises Mr. Weld, and he is saying so to anyone who will listen."

The edited version on Weld's site cut those sentences and jumped to the fourth paragraph, beginning, "Mr. Weld is a singular sort -- a man who has never had a bad day, as Massachusetts politicians said about him."

A second altered article was a Jan. 25 story by Yancey Roy, of Gannett News Service, outlining Weld's reform plans for the state.

The version posted by the campaign eliminated sections saying that his campaign was in a "mini-slump," and "dogged by an investigation of a shuttered private Kentucky college he once ran."

Of the more than two dozen newspaper articles posted on http://www.weldfornewyork.org, most are easily identifiable as shortened versions of longer articles, and include a link reading "Click here to read the full story" that allows readers to access the original.

Those links did not appear on the Gannett and Times articles.

Ianno said that was an oversight.

He added that he believed there was nothing wrong with using excerpts from a news article to promote a candidate, and likened it to film studios using one-word movie critic quotes, like "Incredible!" and "Thrilling!" in advertisements.

Weld's potential campaign rivals, Republican John Faso and Democrat Eliot Spitzer, also included newspaper articles on their Web sites, but none reviewed by The Associated Press appeared to have been edited.

Faso's site, http://www.johnfaso2006.com, included an article from the Times Union that mentioned he was trailing Spitzer badly in the polls.

Spitzer's site, http://www.spitzer2006.com, included articles from The Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine that, while generally praising him, contained criticism that he was a political opportunist.

And did I already say another story in here was a story of OUR times, right now, here in OUR America?

Well ...

Okay ...

But this one is too ....

"Evacuees ask hotel to pay for move"

Associated Press
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

NEW YORK -- A group of Hurricane Katrina evacuees staying at a Queens hotel want it to contribute $2,500 to each family as an incentive to move, but the hotel's owners are questioning their obligation to pay.

Charlie King, a lawyer and a Democratic candidate for New York attorney general who was involved in a meeting this week on the proposal between hotel management and community leaders, told The New York Times that the money also would help cover costs for families seeking permanent housing.

The owners of the hotel, Radisson J.F.K. Airport, are expected to meet with the families' representatives on Tuesday.

"What the hotel is wondering is why private citizens are coming forward and asking the hotel for things that are FEMA's responsibility," said Marc Leffman, chief executive of Atlanta-based French Quarter Hospitality, which owns the hotel.

About 30 families remain at the Radisson, the last of about 120 Gulf Coast-area families who arrived there after the hurricane.

Their rooms are being paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In January, the Radisson's managers told remaining evacuees that they would need to find new housing by the end of the month because of a scheduled $7 million hotel renovation.

And by God, so is this one too .....

"Whitman, EPA short on truth"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman is probably not sleeping well these days.

Don't look for any sympathy here.

One particularly nasty bit of business still unresolved from 9/11 concerns what happened after the attacks.

Whitman broadcast dangerous assurances two days after the collapse of the World Trade Center, and continuously after, that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe.

"Don't concern yourselves, citizens, go about your business" was the gist of repeated announcements from Sept. 13, 2001 on.

What made it dangerous -- and plain outrageous -- is that Whitman had no right to offer those assurances.

She had no data to support it.

In fact, more sophisticated testing than the EPA was doing at the time would have shown heavy concentrations of airborne asbestos as fine particulate in the air and in buildings even miles away.

That would be true for years.

In addition, we later learned the EPA wasn't even testing for many common toxins that were hovering in lower Manhattan air at the time.

At the same time, there were scientists and doctors at the scene, particularly from nearby Mount Sinai Hospital, who were leery of the asbestos and toxin-laden air and suggesting it did pose a hazard.

We got wind of who was right when, in 2003, the EPA's own inspector general unexpectedly and pointedly criticized Whitman and her statements of assurance.

The sum of the inspector general's evaluation was that when Whitman made those statements, she didn't really know what she was talking about.

As a result of the inspector general's report, it came out that every statement and news release uttered soothingly by Whitman during those hellacious days had been vetted by the White House, and that warnings of health concerns raised by her own scientists were deleted from news releases and statements.

"We didn't want to scare people," she told Newsweek.

Now the other shoe has dropped on Whitman.

In a little-publicized ruling Thursday, Federal Court Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan cleared the way for class-action civil suits against Whitman personally and as the administrator of EPA, and against the agency.

Let the floodgates open, and let Whitman and the feds get hammered.

What an unspeakable thing to do to a stunned and helpless citizenry surely not expecting further misery from our own government.

The judge's ruling related to a 2004 class-action suit on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who claim they were subjected to contaminated air in buildings near the World Trade Center -- a situation the EPA either turned its back on or stated was not harmful.

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge stated, terming Whitman's cotton-mouthed assurances as "conscience-shocking."

Now this only clears the way for civil trials and settlements.

Those bringing the suits still have to prove they were hurt as a result of Whitman's words.

But there's no question the judge's ruling clearly establishes that as far as the court is concerned, Whitman and the EPA had a legal as well as a moral responsibility to speak the truth.

And that they did not.

Fred LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.com.

And this following just goes to show ...

That in OUR America, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED .....

But that GOOD can come from that in the end, regardless .....

Which is something to consider ...

If you are one of those in that position ...

Of having your own good deeds punished by this government of somebody's ...

Here in OUR America .....

Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 5:17 PM

Subject: DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

DID YOU EVER HEAR ABOUT HARRY BINGHAM?

READ ON .....

Sometime ago, then Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a posthumous award for "constructive dissent" to Hiram (or Harry) Bingham IV.

For over fifty years, the State Department resisted any attempt to honor Bingham.

For them, he was an insubordinate member of the US diplomatic service, a dangerous maverick who was eventually demoted.

Now, after his death, he has been officially recognized as a hero.

Bingham came from an illustrious family.

His father (on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru in 1911.

Harry entered the US diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France as American vice-consul.

The USA was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews.

Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his career, did all in his power to undermine it.

In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA visas to Jewish and other refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer, Thomas Mann.

He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe.

He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean, and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket.

In 1941, Washington lost patience with him.

He was sent to Argentina, where, later, he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.

Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely.

Bingham died almost penniless in 1988.

Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some letters in his belongings after his death.

Many groups and organizations including the United Nations and the State of Israel have now honored him.

His postage stamp will be out in 2006.

PLEASE honor his memory and resend.

Excellent, wonderful post, Livyjr.

Harry Bingham IV. ----- A man with vision, with morals, and with the guts to do do what he knew was right.

I had never heard of him.

Thank you for posting that.

A.B.

Poor George .....

The one man here in OUR America without a clue ...

There he was ...

Living life large as the profligate son ...

And doing quite well at it ...

By all accounts ....

When one day ...

All of a sudden ...

Young George wakes up to find himself being called "Mr. President" ....

And it all began to go downhill from there ...

For all of us ...

And the candid world too ...

And still ...

Young George ...

Has no clue ....

EDITORIAL DESK, NY Times

"A President Who Can Do No Right"

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 26, 2006

We should be used to it by now.

There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, ''There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do.''

Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress.

He's amazing.

Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers.

George W. Bush does what he wants to do.

He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation.

He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself -- a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam -- as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.

Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush.

The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees.

That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29.

On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, ''I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.''

This guy is something.

Remember his ''Top Gun'' moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln?

And his famous taunt -- ''Bring 'em on'' -- to the insurgents in Iraq?

His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence.

And that's the real problem.

That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.

Fantasy may be in fashion.

Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch.

But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time.

Many thousands of people -- men, women and children -- have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush, counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war.

As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, ''At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land."

"Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?''

George W. Bush had no such concerns.

In fact, he joked about his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Like a frat boy making cracks about a bad bet on a football game, Mr. Bush displayed what he felt was a hilarious set of photos during a spoof that he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association in March 2004.

The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture in the Oval Office for the missing weapons.

Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, ''Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.''

And, ''Nope, no weapons over there, maybe under here.''

This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued, we learned from a draft report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction that, like the war itself, the Bush plan for rebuilding Iraq has been crippled by incompetence and extreme shortages of personnel.

I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any of his other failures.

He seems to truly believe that he can do no wrong.

The fiasco in Iraq and the president's response to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe were Mr. Bush's two most spectacular foul-ups.

There have been many others.

The president's new Medicare prescription drug program has been a monumental embarrassment, leaving some of the most vulnerable members of our society without essential medication.

Prominent members of the president's own party are balking at the heavy hand of his No Child Left Behind law, which was supposed to radically upgrade the quality of public education.

The Constitution?

Civil liberties?

Don't ask.

Just keep in mind, whatever your political beliefs, that incompetence in high places can have devastating consequences.

We sure could do with a lot more like him in OUR government, and that is for sure, Mr. A.B. .....

But can you imagine this guy signing a LOYALTY OATH to work for George W. Bush ....

"Bush's speech conjures up empty foe of isolationism"

By ANDREW J. BACEVICH

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

In his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders."

His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself."

Turning inward, the President cautioned, would provide "false comfort" because isolationism inevitably "ends in danger and decline."

But who exactly are these isolationists eager to pull up the drawbridges?

What party do they control?

What influential journals of opinion do they publish?

Who are their leaders?

Which foundations bankroll this isolationist cause?

The President provided no such details, and for good reason: In present-day American politics, isolationism does not exist.

It is a fiction, a fabrication and a smear imported from another era.

Isolationism survives in contemporary American political discourse because it retains utility as a cheap device employed to impose discipline.

Think of it as akin to red-baiting -- conjuring up bogus fears to enforce conformity in the realm of foreign policy.

In that regard, the beleaguered Bush, his standing in public opinion polls tumbling, is by no means the first president to sound the alarm about supposed isolationists subverting American statecraft.

The problem is that scaremongering about nonexistent isolationists pre-empts a much-needed debate over the principles that ought to inform our behavior as a world power.

Call that debate George Washington versus Woodrow Wilson.

After 9/11, Bush the born-again Christian became a born-again Wilsonian, embracing the American mission of spreading liberty around the world.

In his State of the Union address, the President affirmed his commitment to that mission, vowing that his administration will "act boldly in freedom's cause" and "seek the end of tyranny in our world."

The Wilsonian project derives from two convictions: that history has an identifiable direction and purpose, and that providence calls upon Americans to fulfill that purpose, which is the triumph of liberty.

On Tuesday, the President reaffirmed his adherence to those convictions, declaring, "we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed."

Responding to these calls from above, Wilsonians tend to neglect mundane details about feasibility.

Wilson had no patience with the idea of limits, and neither do his disciples.

Thus Bush asserts that there is nothing a righteous America acting in pursuit of a righteous cause cannot accomplish.

One will search Bush's speech in vain for any doubts regarding American omnipotence.

It was Bush channeling Wilson that landed us in Iraq.

Even today, many Americans agree with the President's view of the U.S. invasion as an act of liberation, although many others view the war as patently misguided and morally unjustifiable.

What can hardly be denied is that it has exacted enormous, unsustainable costs.

Put bluntly, we don't have enough soldiers, enough money or enough friends to persist in this crusade, much less to implement the Bush doctrine elsewhere to bring freedom and democracy to the entire Mideast.

This is where the tradition of George Washington comes in.

As even a glance at the first president's Farewell Address affirms, Washington was anything but an isolationist.

He was instead the founding father of American realism, a school of thought based on a lively appreciation for the limits of power and for the fragility of the American experiment in republican government.

Washington did not counsel his countrymen to turn away from the world but to approach it warily and without illusions, choosing "war or peace, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."

The Wilsonian tradition, emphasizing universal values, is an authentic expression of the American purpose.

So too is the tradition of Washington, emphasizing freedom of action.

There is no easy way of reconciling these two views.

Yet in the tension between them may lie our best hope of navigating safely through a perilous world.

Can America be America absent Wilsonian ideals?

Perhaps not.

But an America intoxicated with its self-assigned mission of salvation while disregarding prudential considerations will court exhaustion, both moral and material.

Our present circumstances may not dictate a full retreat.

But they do require a revived appreciation of what we can and cannot do.

Contriving phony charges of isolationism to dodge tough, practical questions is not only dishonest, it is reckless and irresponsible.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War." He wrote this article for The Washington Post.

"It's a delicate balancing act about Bush for GOP hopefuls"

By RUTH MARCUS

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, February 5, 2006

The early glimmerings of presidential separation anxiety, 2008-style, were on display at a recent event in Washington with Mitt Romney, the not-yet-announced but oh-so-obviously-running governor of Massachusetts.

When it comes to President Bush, Romney seems to have chosen distance over embrace, clarity over subtlety.

Running to replace a retiring president of the same party inevitably entails a fine calibration of competing interests: embracing the departing administration vs. establishing independence; hewing to the policies of the incumbent vs. charting a different course; pleasing the loyal base vs. alienating the up-for-grabs voter.

When the retiring president is unpopular, achieving the proper political balance can be an even more precarious undertaking.

Speaking at a gathering sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor -- it was lunch, but Romney not only didn't eat a bite, he also didn't sit down, the better to address the crowded room.

He was relentlessly analytical, Romney kept saying; he liked -- nay, he demanded -- to be challenged by his aides: "I don't want to hear just one side of the argument."

Forget the Harvard Business School CEO-style delegator; meet the Harvard Business School case-studier.

Though he blandly demurred when asked whether he was contrasting himself with Bush, the governor might as well have hung a sign over his head pointing to the White House several blocks away and reading, "I'm Not Like Him."

"No one would have slam-dunked me on weapons of mass destruction."

Likewise, on matters of substance -- Iraq, the Medicare prescription drug bill -- Romney wasn't shy about distinguishing himself from Bush.

Indeed, he edged about as close as he could to saying that the administration had messed up and that President Romney would have done better.

So far in the run-up to the 2008 campaign, the chatter about how to separate the candidate from the president has focused on the Democratic side: How will Hillary Rodham Clinton, if she runs, remove herself from, or wrap herself in, the aura of Bill?

Eight years ago the twin challenges faced by Vice President Al Gore were to reap the benefits of Clintonism without being loaded down with Clinton's baggage and to establish his autonomy from an administration in which he had served for eight years.

In the 2008 election, none of the not-yet-candidates faces the conundrum of a sitting vice president required to finesse his relationship with the incumbent.

Yet Republicans in 2008 have to grapple with the fact of a similarly polarizing -- but far less popular -- president of their own party.

They confront a restless electorate, even to some extent a restless base -- one that still supports Bush but that has been holding its nose over some Bush policies (the Medicare drug bill, deficit spending) and has been waiting to exhale.

The test for these candidates will be to sell themselves as a sort of new, improved version of the GOP brand -- without alienating those who are satisfied with the current model.

Voters, or so the candidates hope, may not be prepared to try an entirely new type of laundry detergent, but they do seem ready for something more than a little different.

And so, there was Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, on NBC's "Meet the Press" last weekend -- looking like he was counting the days until he could stop being shackled to the President and going so far as to say that, in hindsight, Bush should have put more troops on the ground in Iraq at the outset.

Virginia Sen. George Allen distanced himself from the President over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

Of all the 2008 possibilities, Arizona Sen. John McCain, R-Iconoclast, may have the most latitude when it comes to Bush: He can run on Being John McCain.

For now, though, the closest analogue to 2008 could be a half-century ago, when another unpopular president waging a controversial war was leaving the White House without a vice president running to succeed him.

Historian David McCullough writes in his biography of Harry Truman about how the Democratic nominee in 1952, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, was "frantic to distance himself from Truman."

So far, at least, the 2008 candidates aren't showing anything like that kind of alarm.

But they're clearly starting to calculate the optimal degrees of separation from the President they hope to succeed.

Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post.

"Democrats hold all the cards"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, February 6, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove is whistling in the dark if he thinks his trademark political attacks on Democrats can work again in the mid-term elections this fall.

The American people are finally waking up, and the Democrats have the cards.

Americans know that President Bush's strategy for victory in Iraq is costing more lives -- American and Iraqi -- almost every day as he heads into the third anniversary of the invasion of that oil-rich country.

It was supposed to be a "cakewalk," remember?

Rove -- deputy White House chief of staff and the Republican Party's political guru -- seems to forget that Bush has picked up a lot of baggage since the last election.

The Hurricane Katrina debacle and the Iraq quagmire come to mind and partially explain his decline in public opinion polls.

Rove will continue operating under a cloud until special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald completes his investigation of the unlawful leak of the identity of former CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame to some Washington journalists.

Rove headlined a recent pep rally for the nervous Republican Party faithful and made it clear that he believes accusations that the Democrats are weak on national security will resonate with the voters in November.

Bush boasted after his triumph in that election that he had earned a lot of political capital to spend.

Then the roof fell in.

The first year of Bush's second term has been marked by spectacular ineptitude, highlighted by failures in handling the hurricane catastrophes.

His performance has raised doubts that the administration can handle other national crises.

Those doubts deepen against the background of the endless U.S. occupation of Iraq, with its links to the torture of prisoners in American and Iraqi custody, the secret CIA-run prisons and Bush's pathetic insistence that he could simply ignore the law and spy on Americans without a court order.

Bush's party is deeply mired in the Jack Abramoff influence-buying scandal.

And Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Tex., was forced to resign as House Republican leader because of his own ethics morass.

None of this bodes well for the GOP.

That may explain Rove's resort to his favorite tactic of resorting to a national security scare.

"The United States faces a ruthless enemy," Rove said in the campaign's opening salvo, "and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in."

"President Bush and the Republican Party do."

"Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

At a recent news conference, Bush insisted that the November "election is about peace and prosperity."

Well, hardly.

Where is the peace?

And where is the prosperity for thousands of American workers facing layoffs in auto factories?

Senate hearings begin this week into Bush's decision to order eavesdropping inside the U.S. by the National Security Agency, the government's giant electronic ear.

The White House spin doctors are trying to paint that as the "terrorist surveillance program," more of the administration's strategy of scare-the-heck-out-of everyone and you can get away with anything you want to do.

It's interesting to note that the law Bush has ignored -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- allows domestic surveillance only with a court warrant that must be obtained either before the eavesdropping or within 72 hours afterward.

The law was written in 1978.

"We're having this discussion in 2006," he said.

"It's a different world."

If Bush thought the law needed updating, he should have asked Congress to change it.

Bush should be reminded that he twice has sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

Helen Thomas' e-mail address is hthomas@hearstdc.com.

"Hard facts outweigh President's lofty goals"

By MOLLY IVINS

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Monday, February 6, 2006

"We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory."

"First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized."

"Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefit of freedom."

"And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy."

-- George W. Bush

"The Iraq war has been a disaster." -- CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour

The number of terrorist attacks per day in Iraq grew from 55 in December 2004 to 77 per day in December 2005.

Electricity production in Iraq has not yet recovered to prewar levels, and the electricity in Baghdad is on less today than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Telephone and Internet uses are up.

No hard numbers but repeated reports of the loss of educated, middle-class Iraqis, especially doctors, fleeing Iraq because of lack of security.

Iraq today produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein.

The current oil minister is Ahmad Chalabi, onetime darling of the neo-con set and convicted of bank fraud in Jordan.

The majority of Iraqis favor complete American troop withdrawal; time frames they prefer vary.

"To the extent we stay there with big forces indefinitely, Iraqis will come up with all these theories that we really want to stay here for their oil."

"We want to use their country as a springboard for more aggression."

"They still see us as occupiers. ..."

-- Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institute

"A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our allies to death and prison ... and put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country."

-- George W. Bush

Actually, the insurgency in Iraqi is comprised mostly of native Iraqis -- old Baathists and others who don't like being occupied by infidels.

International terrorist jihadists are a negligible fraction of those fighting, and they are there to fight Americans, not to take over Iraq.

The war in Iraq costs the United States $1 billion per week, $251 billion so far.

Bush originally said it would cost $70 billion.

Before the war, he fired his top economic adviser, Larry Lindsay, who said it would cost $200 billion.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economist, now estimates the total cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.

He includes lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of resources diverted to the war.

More than 2,200 Americans have been killed in action in Iraq and 16,000 seriously wounded.

Because we are doing a better job saving lives of the wounded, those who survive often have devastating injuries from which there is no recovery.

After our main purpose in invading Iraq stopped being the presence of weapons of mass destruction (the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud), or the nonexistent linkage between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, or alleged links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists in general, our main purpose in invading Iraq became the spread of democracy in the Middle East.

So far, we've boosted the electoral results for Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, next, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The remaining allies in Iraq plan to withdraw 25 percent or more of their 22,000 troops this year.

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction released an audit last week containing extensive findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion.

Among the billions of dollars listed as wasted, I especially liked the $100,000 someone decided to spend to refurbish an Olympic-sized swimming pool, except that all that got done was shining the pumps.

Soldiers used reconstruction money for gambling, and millions were stored in footlockers and bathrooms.

Three Iraqis fell to their deaths in a supposedly rebuilt hospital elevator that had been certified as safe.

Because of its total misjudgment of the war in Iraq, the administration has failed to enlarge the regular Army and has therefore put the entire institution under immense strain.

The "stop-loss" refusal to let people leave at the end of their enlistments now affects 50,000 soldiers, and mobilization of the reserves and extended service are a form of draft.

Despite chipper denials from the Pentagon, the Army has serious problems with recruiting, especially getting quality recruits, and with regular Army re-enlistment.

The reason the numbers are not worse is because of the bonuses being offered.

The officer corps is also being hollowed out, as younger officers quit in such numbers that 100 percent of those remaining are automatically moved up the ladder.

For example, last year the Army promoted 97 percent of all eligible captains, up from a historical average of 70 percent to 80 percent.

This information is from Pentagon data in a report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

It is quite possible this administration is destroying the professional Army.

The most important question about the war in Iraq is whether it is doing any good, and an increasing pool of evidence shows that it has become a rallying and recruiting tool for global terrorists.

Like the other information in this article, the evidence comes from official reports.

I do hope this is responsible criticism that aims for cures, not defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure.

end quotes

Stay the course, there, Molly ...

You are right on the mark ...

And you are doing quite fine ...

As a result ...

And yes ....

I would say your criticism of this seeming madman's regime ...

Is right on the money ....

The Democrats hold all the cards????

Who are these Democrats???

I have heard NOTHING from any Democrats.

Are they in the witless protection program?