The first flagraising atop Mount Suribachi, February 23, 1945. Hank Hansen (without helmet), Boots Thomas (seated), John Bradley (behind Thomas) Phil Ward (hand visible grasping pole), Jim Michaels (with carbine) and Chuck Lindberg (behind Michaels).
The first flag comes down as the second flag goes up.... And let us not forget: after WWII, Japanese soldiers who'd waterboarded their American prisoners were put to death by the US military for committing unconscionable acts of torture ...
Rush Limbaugh: 'We're Trying to Avoid a 50 State Landslide!'
The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.
Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.
Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, has been indicted on federal charges following an investigation into his relationship with a former business partner regarding land deals, the Justice Department said Friday.
In a 35-count indictment, Renzi is charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and insurance fraud.
A growing number of active duty soldiers or recent Iraq war veterans are speaking up about the war in Iraq.
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"The honest truth is that if the American people knew what was going on over there everyday, they would be raising their voices too. They would be saying, 'Hey, bring those guys home," Sgt. Selena Coppa said.
Coppa blames lawmakers in Washington for filtering the facts on the war in Iraq. She said there's no real end in sight.
"There is a cost to this war. This war is being paid in American blood, in my soldier's blood. And that is not okay," Coppa said.
"We lost really good friends, really good leaders who died in Iraq. From my perspective, it didn't make any sense, we didn't
accomplish anything, and I talked to a lot of other soldiers who feel the same way," Fort Hood soldier Casey Porter said.
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The two major Kurdish parties don't have a massive amount of love for the PKK, but they are fierce defenders of the territory and concept of a de-facto quasi-sovereign sub-state of Kurdistan, so this is not what they want/need. If the raid lasts for more than a couple of days, there will be significant pressure for the peshmerga to begin active guerrilla operations against the large Turkish force if that force presses too far south.
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For years, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has railed against lobbyists and the influence of "special interests" in Washington, touting on his campaign Web site his fight against "the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided."
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But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.
Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae. [my em]
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.
U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.
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Myth Number One: The Central Intelligence Agency is the central intelligence organization in the intelligence community, which consists of 15 intelligence agencies and departments. This has always been a myth, although it was President Harry Truman’s intention to create centrality for the CIA. But the agency met with opposition from the Pentagon, which opposed the objective and balanced intelligence estimates and assessments of the CIA, as well as from the FBI, which did not want any competition in the field of counter-intelligence. Under the Bush administration, the CIA has been steadily weakened, with a director, Michael Hayden, who is a four-star general, and the creation of the post of director of national intelligence, currently Admiral Mike McConnell, who has taken charge of national intelligence estimates as well as the daily briefings of the president. By placing the position of the DNI in the hands of the military, the Bush administration has completed the militarization of the CIA and even the intelligence community itself, where active-duty and retired general officers run the Office of National Intelligence, the CIA, the National Counter-Terrorism Center, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. The Pentagon is responsible for nearly 90% of all personnel in the intelligence community and 85% of the community’s $50 billion budget. The absence of an independent civilian counter to the power of military intelligence threatens civilian control of the decision to use military power and makes it more likely that intelligence will be tailored to suit the purposes of the Pentagon. This is exactly what President Truman wanted to prevent.
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Yesterday, President Bush defended his decision not to send U.S. troops into the Darfur genocide, saying he learned lessons from the genocide in Rwanda. Ignorant of the comparison to Iraq, Bush said foreign troops would only be divisive and “unbelievably counterproductive”:
BUSH: A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. In other words, people came from other countries — I guess you’d call them colonialists — and they pitted one group of people against another.
Atrios noted the irony, adding, “The museum was the Rwandan genocide museum.”
Al Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-qaida, Al Qayda, and so on ad infinitum. The usual garbage trotted out by the usual suspects with the same tired old pack of lies, that everything in Irak is either the work of the omnipresent, damn near omnipotent Alfredo “Just call me ‘Al’ ” Keida. (He’s one of the Keidas, surely you know of them? They’re a fine old samurai family from Osaka who moved to Irak in 1947 and went native … such a pity that ‘Al’ turned out so badly.)
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We are supposed to believe that within less than an hour of those two horrific bombings that the interior ministry “police” who are very good at extracting, teeth, fingernails, and toenails, all without the aid of anaesthetics, but not so good at actually being … you know … policemen. Managed to identify the bombers one of whom had her head blown off.
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I would like to see some evidence to support these allegations by people who like their American masters have committed one atrocity after another and just like their American masters been caught lying about it repeatedly. In the absence of such evidence I am going to make the entirely reasonable assumption based on past performance that this is yet another pack of lies and a pack of lies moreover so stupid that it is not even meant to deceive.
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BAGHDAD — Psychiatric case files of two female suicide bombers who killed nearly 100 people in Baghdad this month show that they suffered from depression and schizophrenia but do not contain information indicating they had Down syndrome, American officials said Wednesday.
In the aftermath of the Feb. 1 bombings — the most devastating attacks in Baghdad since summer — Iraqi officials said that the women had Down syndrome, a genetic disorder. They based their opinion partly on the appearance of the remains of the women, whose heads, as often happens in suicide bombings, were severed by the blasts.
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No jokes about "lobbyists" and "pork."
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Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
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This is not the Democratic Party, this is a party of values. We assume our candidates have been loyal to their family.
The unraveling of Pervez Musharraf's presidency has dealt a severe blow to Bush's fatally flawed policy in the region.
[...] Although George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have built their war on terrorism on a close alliance with Musharraf, that entire hollow pillar of Bush administration policy has been dealt a severe, perhaps fatal, blow.
The full dimensions of the election catastrophe for Musharraf were clear by Tuesday afternoon. With almost all the results in, Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League 1-Q, or "king's party," had only 14 percent of the 272 seats in the National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, for which the public votes directly. The party chairman and former prime minister, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, could not even get elected to Parliament, nor could some of Musharraf's Cabinet ministers. The party, now a small minority, admitted that it will have to sit in the opposition as its rivals form a government.
It's possible that the new civilian Pakistani government about to be formed will foster a more stable country, which is ultimately in the interest of Pakistan and of the United States. Meanwhile, President Bush the Wilsonian, who said he wanted to spread democracy across the Muslim world, and President Bush the militarist, who favored invasions and occupations, have been at war with each other for some time now. In Pakistan, the spreading of democracy -- regardless of whether the outcome is in line with U.S. expectations -- may be the only path left for the Bush administration now.
The office of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr signaled today that he was leaning toward lifting his militia's cease-fire when it expires at the end of the month, a move that could bring a renewal of sectarian and anti-U.S. violence.
Sadr called on his Mahdi Army to lay down its arms last August and said the freeze in military activities would last six months. U.S. military officials credit the move with helping bring about a major decrease in violence in Iraq.
But in comments today, Sadr representatives said the movement felt that its gesture had not been reciprocated, either by the U.S. military or by the Iraqi government.
Nassar Rubaie, the chief of the political bloc in the Iraqi parliament loyal to Sadr, said the cleric's opponents had "exploited" the cease-fire to persecute and detain his loyalists.
Earlier this month, US Attorney General Mukasey publicly formalized what has been the Bush Administration’s functional program of impunity for alleged war crimes and other international crimes committed by civilians during the Administration’s unlawful program of secret detention and “coercive interrogation.” For the next year, Mukasey assured, there will be no investigations and no prosecutions.
In fact, as explained in my book Beyond the Law, for the last seven years no person of any nationality or status has been prosecuted under the War Crimes Act, alternative legislation for prosecution of all war crimes, the torture statute, the genocide statute, or the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act.
Refusal to faithfully execute the law was previously obvious. Now it is official.
As a matter of common sense, it is legally and morally impossible for any member of the executive branch to be acting lawfully or within the scope of his or her authority while following OLC opinions that are manifestly inconsistent with or violative of the law. General Mukasey, just following orders is no defense!
How never to withdraw from Iraq.
Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying, but it doesn't seem to matter. Their latest "abracadabra," the President's "surge strategy" of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 "concerned citizens," as the President likes to call them), and magically lowered "violence" in Iraq. Even more miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a cesspool and a slagheap - its capital now has a "lake" of sewage so large that it can be viewed "as a big black spot on Google Earth" - almost entirely disappear from view in the U.S.
Of course, what they needed to be effective was that classic adjunct to any magician's act, the perfect assistant. This has been a role long held, and still played with mysterious willingness, by the mainstream media. There are certainly many reporters in Iraq doing their jobs as best they can in difficult circumstances. When it comes to those who make the media decisions at home, however, they have practically clamored for the Bush administration to put them in a coffin-like box and saw it in half. Thanks to their news choices, Iraq has for months been whisked deep inside most papers and into the softest sections of network and cable news programs. Only one Iraq subject has gotten significant front-page attention: How much "success" has the President's surge strategy had?
It is a delusion to believe that the U.S. military is a force that stands between Iraqis and catastrophe. It is a significant part of the catastrophe and, as long as Washington is committed to any form of permanency (however euphemistically described), it cannot help but remain so.
Every day that passes, the Bush administration is digging us in further, even though surge commander General David Petraeus recently observed that "there is no light at the end of the tunnel that we're seeing." Every day that passes makes withdrawal that much harder and yet brings it ineradicably closer.
Getting out, when it comes, won't be elegant. That's a sure thing by now; but, honestly, you don't have to be a military specialist to know that, if we were determined to leave, it wouldn't take us forever and a day to do so. It isn't actually that hard to drive a combat brigade's equipment south to Kuwait. (And there's no reason to expect serious opposition from our Iraqis opponents, who overwhelmingly want us to depart.)
When withdrawal finally comes, the Iraqis will be the greatest losers. They will be left in a dismantled country. They deserve better. Perhaps an American administration determined to withdraw in all due haste could still muster the energy to offer better. But leave we must. All of us.
FEBRUARY 20-21: total eclipse of the Moon. The entire eclipse can be seen from eastern and central North America. The Moon enters Earth's umbral shadow on February 20 at 8:43 P.M. EST, and the eclipse becomes total at 10:01 P.M. EST. Totality ends at 10:52 P.M. EST, and the umbral phase ends at 12:09 A.M. EST on February 21. The penumbral phase (only) will occur over western North America, at the time of moonrise; it will be difficult to see changes in the Moon's appearance. See Animation.
Letterman last night: "McCain looks like that old guy in the coffee shop still complaining about the designated hitter.'"
Diwaniya, Feb 18, (VOI) – Residents of Diwaniya city have a new threat of a different sort; street-dogs that form groups, especially at night, are attacking them.
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The physician added “This is a very dangerous situation, because street-dogs are sources of contagious diseases,” demanding the veterinary authorities in Diwaniya province to “interfere to eliminate those street-dogs, precisely in neighborhoods.”
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"and I mean free and fair, not those staged elections the Castro brothers try to foist off on the people."
“The myth is broken; it was a huge wave against Musharraf,” said Athar Minallah, a lawyer involved in the anti-Musharraf lawyers’ movement. “Right across the board his party was defeated, in the urban and rural areas. The margins are so big they couldn’t have rigged it even if they tried.”
Ready to Serve: Buckles (right), now 107, in a photo taken when he enlisted in the Army in 1917. At left, French troops stand guard along trenches in World War I.
Of the 2 million American soldiers sent to the trenches during World War I, only Frank Woodruff Buckles is still alive. The retired Army corporal, who turned 107 this month, is all that prevents the first world war from slipping into the secondhand past. [...]
In America, the first world war remains a largely forgotten conflict. It has no national monument on the Washington Mall, no blockbuster film, no iconic image equivalent to soldiers' raising the flag on Iwo Jima. [...]
Rebooting the memory of WWI matters for reasons other than nostalgia. Historians see the conflict as the original canvas on which many aspects of today's Iraq War were drawn. "Most of the problems we're grappling with in the Middle East are legacies of the great military binge of 1914–1918," says Niall Ferguson, a revisionist British historian and author of several studies of war. He adds that the British also faced an insurgency when they invaded Baghdad and declared themselves liberators in 1917. "The American case in Iraq is one of historical ignorance," he says. In recent years, Buckles has also become a reluctant spokesperson for his generation—its impact and its memory. "Might as well be me," he told NEWSWEEK, adding that an official service honoring all U.S. veterans when he dies would be the "right thing to do."
Bush Judge Appointee Resigns After DUI Arrest While Cross Dressing
When authorities removed him from the vehicle, they said he wore a black women’s cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels.
But in his mug shot, the judge appears to be wearing blue eye shadow. Way to wreck a really chic look, Robert.
No word on whether Judge Somma looks good with blue eye shadow, or in pumps. We’ll try to get that news for you later.
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Amtrak is adopting new security measures and will unveil those changes on Tuesday.
The railroad company will be showing off a new initiative that includes random screenings of carry-on bags and armed patrols on platforms and trains.
Unlike airlines, the company has had little visible increase in security since the September 11th terror attacks in 2001. But concern about Amtrak security has mounted since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid.
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Choosing naval aviation, he was at best an average pilot, a daredevil, "kick-the-tires and light-the-fire" type who sacrificed careful preparation for more time at the O Club bar. He wanted combat in Vietnam and got it. On his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, on Oct. 26, 1967, he was flying through heavy flak over Hanoi, dodging SAM missiles that looked "like flying telephone poles," when he heard a "beep" signaling that a SAM had locked on to his plane. McCain was just about to drop his bomb on target. He writes that he should have jinked to evade the missile, but out of stubbornness, or a mad kind of bravery, he flew straight on and toggled the bomb switch—just as the missile blew off the right wing of his plane. The force of the ejection from the spinning plane broke his right leg and both arms.
One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org. Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikileaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq [see my The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq], the 2003 and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya [see also here] that apparently affected the Kenyan elections. Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta.
Now censorship has extended to the United States of America, land of the First Amendment. As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages. Today I received a message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by lawyers for the Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer. It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings. Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice “by email” and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet. The result was this totally unprecedented attempt to totally wipe out the existence of Wikileaks:
There have, of course, been previous attempts by the U.S. Government and others to block publication of particular documents, most famously in 1971 when the Nixon administration attempted to stop publication by the New York Times of excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. But trying to close down an entire site in this way is truly unprecedented. Not even the Nixon administration, when they sought to block publication of the Pentagon Papers, considered closing down the New York Times in response.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks still exists. Its founders, knowing that governments and institutions will go to extreme lengths to censor the truth, have created an extensive network of cover names from which one can access their materials or continue leaking the secrets of governments and the corrupt rich and powerful. Thus, everything is available at Wikileaks.be, among other names. Let the leaks continue!
"Now Tim, you wouldn't really need a Secretary of the Treasury, since Matthew was a tax collector. And since most of the other apostles were fishermen, they could collect our food, guard our coasts, and tell the kind of tall tales that constitute the core of the Republican party."
The Dallas County District Attorney's Office has announced the discovery of a trove of documents relating to the assassination of John Kennedy.
Among the documents is an alleged transcript of a conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, planning the assassination together on behalf of the Mafia. This document has aroused the greatest amount of interest but has also been described as "highly suspect."
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins explained at a news conference on Monday morning that the documents were found in a safe about a year ago -- soon after he took office -- and that his staff have been examining and cataloging them ever since. Previous DA's had decided not to reveal the information, but Watkins said his administration is devoted to openness and felt it was "too important to keep secret."
"It will open up the debate as to whether there was a conspiracy to assassinate the president," Watkins stated.
When Clinton was President the Republican Congress issued more than 1000 subpoenas, and the Clinton administration complied with every single one.
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But then the Democrats took control of Congress and asked for some onformation [sic]. The Bush administration refused to provide it. So they issued a few subpoenas, and the Bush administration refused to comply ...
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s campaign advisers will ask the White House to deploy President Bush for major Republican fund-raising, but they do not want the president to appear too often at his side, top aides to Mr. McCain said Sunday.
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But even as the consensus was that Mr. McCain needed to “stand in the sun” on his own, as one adviser put it, without the large shadow cast by Mr. Bush, left unsaid was the difficult calculus the McCain campaign faces: Using Mr. Bush enough to try to make the tough sell of Mr. McCain to conservatives but not so much that he will drive away the independents and some moderate Democrats that Mr. McCain is counting on in November.
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Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has made its first loans in New York in an attempt to bring its pioneering microfinance techniques to the tens of millions of people in the world’s richest country who have no bank account.
Citigroup has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
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... As much as the big financial companies would like us to believe they're OK, this is alarming. This is not that different from a traditional run on the bank ...
Gitmo, the secret CIA prisons, and Abu Ghraib are all mile markers on that slippery slope we're heading down toward Third World Banana Republic status.
... In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health problems and are in need of constant medical attention ...
... Between 30 to 40 children per month are born with defects attributed to their mothers inhalation of radioactive dust from depleted uranium rounds. The American army used depleted uranium during the last war and this was confirmed by a German team who visited Irak recently and were able to obtain a missile which proved after checking that the American forces used depleted uranium [my em]...
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Back in the day, when confronted with a Republican my default presumptions were usually, "Doesn't want to pay taxes. Enjoys war." Now, they're straight out of the "Paraphilias and Sexual Disorders" section of the DSM-IV or the sex offenses section of the local penal code ...
