destruction
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...and assulting AP photojournalist.
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Senate votes for ban on torture
Uncertain future: Bush has threatened to veto the military spending bill if the amendment stays
By Joseph L. Galloway
and James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder News Service
WASHINGTON -The Senate delivered a rebuke to the Bush administration Wednesday night, adding language banning U.S. torture of military prisoners to a $440 billion military spending bill in defiance of a White House threat to veto the whole bill if the anti-torture language was attached.
The Republican-majority Senate followed the lead of maverick Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voting 90-9 to add the anti-torture language to the legislation.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired Army general, joined 28 other retired senior military officers in endorsing the McCain-Graham amendment.
Their measure would ban the use of ''cruel, inhuman or degrading'' treatment of any prisoner in the hands of the United States. It's a response to the revelations of torture by U.S. personnel of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, which roused worldwide disgust.
McCain, who was a prisoner of war tortured by his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War, cited a letter written to him recently by Army Capt. Ian Fishback asking Congress to do justice to men and women in uniform.
''Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for,'' Fishback wrote the senator.
''We owe it to them,'' McCain said on the Senate floor. ''We threw out the rules that our soldiers had trained on and replaced them with a confusing and constantly changing array of standards. . . . We demanded intelligence without ever clearly telling our troops what was permitted and what was forbidden.''
However, even if the Senate passes the spending bill with the anti-torture language included, both face an uncertain future. The House of Representatives already has passed a similar bill without any anti-torture language.
Before any legislation could go to President Bush to be vetoed or signed into law, negotiators from the House and Senate must iron out a single version in a conference committee.
Bush never has vetoed any legislation. Vetoing a big military spending bill during wartime would be highly unusual if not unprecedented.
McCain said his amendment merely codifies current policy and reaffirms what was assumed to be the law for years. It would require that all U.S. troops - and other federal agencies, such as the CIA - adhere to the standards for interrogation of prisoners outlined in the Army Field Manual on detention and interrogation.
Opposition to McCain and Graham was led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., as well as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the National Security Council staff and White House lobbyists.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a World War II fighter pilot, argued that the amendment would force U.S. troops to relinquish control of prisoners and turn custody over to foreign troops. He said that would prevent ''our people from taking the leadership.''
The battle on Capitol Hill came in the wake of a federal court order to the Pentagon requiring the release of more photographs of American soldiers mistreating Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.
Powell - who served two tours in combat in Vietnam and later was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 war against Iraq - said in a letter to McCain: ''Our troops need to hear from the Congress, which has an obligation to speak to such matters. . . . I also believe the world will note that America is making a clear statement with respect to the expected future behavior of our soldiers.''
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Id even go as far as delivering it to him PERSONALLY...
Bic lighter...... $1.25
lighter fluid......$2.75
US Flag (made in China, sold at Walmart).........$28.50
Having the honor to beat a dillusionally unrealistic illogical instigating son of a bitch to a limpless veggie....
Priceless...
I'd even sing God Bless America while doing so.... rythmically kicking and thumping along with the song...
Sure... may be slightly aggression filled...
But who cares.... fuck you...
That's assult and battery asshole. So you'd resort to violent crime to get your point across? Thanks for showing me what conservatives really think and what they really are. Criminals. All of them. How is the weather in New Jersey?
You forgot to mention Made in China, sold at Walmart in the flag part. I did it for you.
fuck you...Keep the dick in your pants faggot. You're making igloo horney.
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Destruction is a social defect who defines repulsiveness. I too would like to see him burn a flag in front of those returning from serving, and see what happens. Fucking scumbag
I'll tell you what? I won't burn one if you head to the recruiting office and enlist to die for Bush and Halliburton and other politically involved corporations with no bid contracts. You know you must fight the same war you support. If not, it's burn baby burn...
CHICKENHAWK!!Oh, Katrina... Wait a minute retard. You're right. It wasn't Bush's fault. It was the YAKUZA that caused Katrina... Yeah, that's it....
Weatherman Scott Stevens has proof that "Japanese gangsters known as the Yakuza caused Hurricane Katrina.Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the hurricane, he is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators from ground-based microwave transmitters. The generators emit a soundwave between three and 30 megahertz and Stevens claims the Russians invented the storm-creating technology back in 1976 and sold it to others in the late 1980s. Stevens says the clouds formed by the generators are different than normal clouds and are able to appear out of nowhere and says Katrina had many rotation points that are unusual for hurricanes. At least ten nations and organizations possess the technology but Stevens suspects the Japanese Yakuza created Katrina in order to make a fortune in the futures market and to get even with the U.S. for the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.
Also check out Scott Stevens's website, Weather Wars, where he elaborates on his theory of scalar weather and provides a lot of hurricane imagery to make his case.
Update: Here's a page with more pictures of supposedly artificially created scalar weather phenomena.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/yakuza_caused_katrina/
Yup. Looks like we'll have to nuke those "slant-eyed" Japanese "nips" again...
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Chickenhawks support wars they refuse to participate in. Chickenhawks send other kids off to war to fight their battles only to die so chickenhawks like you won't have to die so when are you going to fight the same war you support? You know you must. What's wrong? Afraid to die for Bush and Halliburton and other politically involved corporations with no bid contracts?
Oh, the flag. I'll tell you what? I won't burn one if you head to the recruiting office and re-enlist. If not, it's burn baby burn...
Think of it like this... It's your chance to avenge the death of your cousin... by killing the "ragheads".... All for Bush and Halliburton.... And revenge for the death your cousin.
What? Too chicken??
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Bush: God told me to invade Iraq
President 'revealed reasons for war in private meeting'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 07 October 2005
President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.
The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month.
The revelation comes after Mr Bush launched an impassioned attack yesterday in Washington on Islamic militants, likening their ideology to that of Communism, and accusing them of seeking to "enslave whole nations" and set up a radical Islamic empire "that spans from Spain to Indonesia". In the programmeElusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, which starts on Monday, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."
And "now again", Mr Bush is quoted as telling the two, "I feel God's words coming to me: 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God, I'm gonna do it."
Mr Abbas remembers how the US President told him he had a "moral and religious obligation" to act. The White House has refused to comment on what it terms a private conversation. But the BBC account is anything but implausible, given how throughout his presidency Mr Bush, a born-again Christian, has never hidden the importance of his faith.
From the outset he has couched the "global war on terror" in quasi-religious terms, as a struggle between good and evil. Al-Qa'ida terrorists are routinely described as evil-doers. For Mr Bush, the invasion of Iraq has always been part of the struggle against terrorism, and he appears to see himself as the executor of the divine will.
He told Bob Woodward - whose 2004 book, Plan of Attack, is the definitive account of the administration's road to war in Iraq - that after giving the order to invade in March 2003, he walked in the White House garden, praying "that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty". As he went into this critical period, he told Mr Woodward, "I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will.
"I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I will be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then of course, I pray for forgiveness."
Another telling sign of Mr Bush's religion was his answer to Mr Woodward's question on whether he had asked his father - the former president who refused to launch a full-scale invasion of Iraq after driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 - for advice on what to do.
The current President replied that his earthly father was "the wrong father to appeal to for advice ... there is a higher father that I appeal to".
The same sense of mission permeated his speech at the National Endowment of Democracy yesterday. Its main news was Mr Bush's claim that Western security services had thwarted 10 planned attacks by al-Qa'ida since 11 September 2001, three of them against mainland US.
More striking though was his unrelenting portrayal of radical Islam as a global menace, which only the forces of freedom - led by the US - could repel. It was delivered at a moment when Mr Bush's domestic approval ratings are at their lowest ebb, in large part because of the war in Iraq, in which 1,950 US troops have died, with no end in sight.
It came amid continuing violence on the ground, nine days before the critical referendum on the new constitution that offers perhaps the last chance of securing a unitary and democratic Iraq. "The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region" and set up a radical empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia, he said.
The insurgents' aim was to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world". He portrayed Islamic radicals as a single global movement, from the Middle East to Chechnya and Bali and the jungles of the Philippines.
He rejected claims that the US military presence in Iraq was fuelling terrorism: 11 September 2001 occurred long before American troops set foot in Iraq - and Russia's opposition to the invasion did not stop terrorists carrying out the Beslan atrocity in which 300 children died.
Mr Bush also accused Syria and Iran of supporting radical groups. They "have a long history of collaboration with terrorists and they deserve no patience". The US, he warned, "makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbour them because they're equally as guilty of murder".
"Wars are not won without sacrifice and this war will require more sacrifice, more time and more resolve," Mr Bush declared. But progress was being made in Iraq, and, he proclaimed: "We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory."
President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.
The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month.
The revelation comes after Mr Bush launched an impassioned attack yesterday in Washington on Islamic militants, likening their ideology to that of Communism, and accusing them of seeking to "enslave whole nations" and set up a radical Islamic empire "that spans from Spain to Indonesia". In the programmeElusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, which starts on Monday, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath says Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."
And "now again", Mr Bush is quoted as telling the two, "I feel God's words coming to me: 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God, I'm gonna do it."
Mr Abbas remembers how the US President told him he had a "moral and religious obligation" to act. The White House has refused to comment on what it terms a private conversation. But the BBC account is anything but implausible, given how throughout his presidency Mr Bush, a born-again Christian, has never hidden the importance of his faith.
From the outset he has couched the "global war on terror" in quasi-religious terms, as a struggle between good and evil. Al-Qa'ida terrorists are routinely described as evil-doers. For Mr Bush, the invasion of Iraq has always been part of the struggle against terrorism, and he appears to see himself as the executor of the divine will.
He told Bob Woodward - whose 2004 book, Plan of Attack, is the definitive account of the administration's road to war in Iraq - that after giving the order to invade in March 2003, he walked in the White House garden, praying "that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty". As he went into this critical period, he told Mr Woodward, "I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will.
"I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I will be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then of course, I pray for forgiveness."
Another telling sign of Mr Bush's religion was his answer to Mr Woodward's question on whether he had asked his father - the former president who refused to launch a full-scale invasion of Iraq after driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 - for advice on what to do.
The current President replied that his earthly father was "the wrong father to appeal to for advice ... there is a higher father that I appeal to".
The same sense of mission permeated his speech at the National Endowment of Democracy yesterday. Its main news was Mr Bush's claim that Western security services had thwarted 10 planned attacks by al-Qa'ida since 11 September 2001, three of them against mainland US.
More striking though was his unrelenting portrayal of radical Islam as a global menace, which only the forces of freedom - led by the US - could repel. It was delivered at a moment when Mr Bush's domestic approval ratings are at their lowest ebb, in large part because of the war in Iraq, in which 1,950 US troops have died, with no end in sight.
It came amid continuing violence on the ground, nine days before the critical referendum on the new constitution that offers perhaps the last chance of securing a unitary and democratic Iraq. "The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region" and set up a radical empire stretching from Spain to Indonesia, he said.
The insurgents' aim was to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world". He portrayed Islamic radicals as a single global movement, from the Middle East to Chechnya and Bali and the jungles of the Philippines.
He rejected claims that the US military presence in Iraq was fuelling terrorism: 11 September 2001 occurred long before American troops set foot in Iraq - and Russia's opposition to the invasion did not stop terrorists carrying out the Beslan atrocity in which 300 children died.
Mr Bush also accused Syria and Iran of supporting radical groups. They "have a long history of collaboration with terrorists and they deserve no patience". The US, he warned, "makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbour them because they're equally as guilty of murder".
"Wars are not won without sacrifice and this war will require more sacrifice, more time and more resolve," Mr Bush declared. But progress was being made in Iraq, and, he proclaimed: "We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article317805.ece
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8 October 2005
IS THIS THE DEATH OF AMERICA?
America's sense of itself - its pride in its power - has been profoundly damaged.
By Dermot Purgavie, Veteran US Correspondent
THIS week Karen Hughes, long-time political adviser to George Bush, began her new mission as the State Department's official defender of America's image with a tour of the Middle East.
She might have been more help to her beleaguered president had she stayed at home and used her PR skills on her neighbours. At the end of a cruel and turbulent summer, nobody is more dismayed and demoralised about America than Americans.
They have watched with growing disbelief and horror as a convergence of events - dominated by the unending war in Iraq and two hurricanes - have exposed ugly and disturbing things in the undergrowth that shame and embarrass Americans and undermine their belief in the nation and its values.
With TV providing a ceaseless backdrop of the country's failings - a crippled and tone-deaf president, a negligent government, corruption, military atrocities, soaring debt, racial conflict, poverty, bloated bodies in floodwater, people dying on camera for want of food, water and medicine - it seemed things were falling apart in the land where happiness is promoted in the constitution.
Disillusioning news was everywhere. In the flight from Hurricane Rita, evacuees fought knife fights over cans of petrol. In storm-hit Louisiana there were long queues at gun stores as people armed themselves against looters.
AMERICA, which has the world's costliest health care, had, it turned out, higher infant mortality rates than the broke and despised Cuba.
Tom De Lay, Republican enforcer in the House of Representatives, was indicted for conspiracy and money laundering. The leader of the Republicans in the Senate was under investigation for his stock dealings. And Osama bin Laden was still on the loose.
Americans are the planet's biggest flag wavers. They are reared on the conceit that theirs is the world's best and most enviable country, born only the day before yesterday but a model society with freedom, opportunity and prosperity not found, they think, in older cultures.
They rejoice that "We are No.1", and in many ways they are.
But events have revealed a creeping mildew of pain and privation, graft and injustice and much incompetence lurking beneath the glow of star-spangled superiority.
Many here feel the country is breaking down and losing its moral and political authority.
"US in funk" say the headlines. "I am ashamed to be an American," say the letters to the editor. We are seeing, say the commentators, a crumbling - and humbling - of America.
The catalogue of afflictions is long and grisly. Hurricane Katrina revealed confusion and incompetence throughout government, from town hall to White House.
President Bush, accused of an alarming failure of leadership over the disaster, has now been to the Gulf coast seven times for carefully orchestrated photo opps.
But his approval has dropped below 40 per cent. Public doubt about his capacity to deal with pressing problems is growing.
Americans feel ashamed by the violent, predatory behaviour Katrina triggered - nothing similar happened in the tsunami-hit Third World countries - and by the deep racial and class divisions it revealed.
The press has since been giving the country a crash course on poverty and race, informing the flag wavers that an uncaring America may be No.1 on the world inequities index.
IT has 37 million living under the poverty line, largely unnoticed by the richest in a country with more than three million millionaires.
The typical white family has $80,000 in assets; the average black family about $6,000. It's a wealth gap out of the Middle Ages. Some 46 million can't afford health insurance, 18,000 of whom will die early because of it.
The US, we learn, is 43rd in the world infant mortality rankings. A baby born in Beijing has nearly three times the chance of reaching its first birthday than a baby born in Washington. Those who survive face rotten schools. On reading and maths tests for 15-year-olds, America is 24th out of 29 nations.
On the other side of the tracks, 18 corporate executives have so far been jailed for cooking the books and looting billions. The prosecution of Mr Bush's pals at Enron - the showcase trial of the greed-is-good culture - will be soon.
But the backroom deal lives on and, in an orgy of cronyism, billions of dollars are being carved up in no-bid contracts awarded to politically-connected firms for work in the hurricane-hit states and in Iraq.
The war, seen as unwinnable, is becoming a bleak burden, with nearly 2,000 American dead. Two-thirds think the invasion was a mistake.
The war costs $6billion a month, driving up a nose-bleed high $331billion budget deficit. In five years the conflict will have cost each American family $11,300, it is said.
Mr Bush says blithely he'll cut existing programmes to pay for the war and fund an estimated $200billion for hurricane damage. He won't, he says, rescind his tax cuts. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says Mr Bush is "disconnected from reality".
Americans have been angered by a reports that US troops have routinely tortured Iraqi prisoners. Some 230 low-rankers have been convicted - but not one general or Pentagon overseer. Disgruntled young officers are leaving in increasing numbers.
Meanwhile, further damaging Americans' self image, there's Afghanistan. The White House says its operations there were a success, yet last year Afghanistan supplied 90 per cent of the world's heroin.
America's sense of itself - its pride in its power and authority, its faith in its institutions and its belief in its leaders - has been profoundly damaged. And now the talking heads in Washington predict dramatic political change and the death of the Republicans' hope of becoming the permanent government.
IS AMERICA FINISHED?
YES: Tel 0901 383 4421 NO: Tel 0901 383 4422
Calls from landlines cost 25p per vote. Those from mobiles may vary
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no just don't like you
-yawn-
Shut the fuck up. You hate democracy. You deserve dictatorship.
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Perfect illustration of why you are inconsequential
Kudos to you MOGAGO!
http://bbs.clubplanet.com/showthread.php?t=283445
Nazi!!
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Ex-Marine Says He Committed Atrocities
By JOELLE DIDERICH
10/07/05 "AP" -- -- A former U.S. Marine in Iraq alleges that his battalion committed atrocities against Iraqi civilians during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, including shooting unarmed protesters.
Jimmy Massey, a staff sergeant who was in the Marines for 12 years and served three months in Iraq before being honorably discharged with post-traumatic stress syndrome, details the allegations in his book "Kill! Kill! Kill!", written with the French journalist Natasha Saulnier and published in France.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said Massey's complaints had already been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.
Massey said he was in charge of a platoon in the 3rd Batallion of Regimental Combat Team 7, responsible for setting up checkpoints and providing armed cover against terrorists and insurgents.
He alleges that over a period of a month and a half in 2003, his platoon killed more than 30 civilians in Iraq.
"We in fact, I feel, escalated the violence," he told The Associated Press in an interview.
Massey, however, said in one case shortly after April 2003, Marines who heard a gunshot fired upon 10 Iraqi demonstrators shouting anti-U.S. slogans and wielding banners saying "Go Home" near the sprawling Al-Rashid military complex southeast of the city center. All but one of the demonstrators were killed, said Massey, who estimated he himself fired about 12 shots.
Massey said he later found several rocket-propelled grenades propped on a wall some 500 feet away. He interpreted the demonstrators' failure to use the weapons as a sign of their peaceful intentions.
"That day we shot the protesters in the Rashid complex was when I had a moment of clarity and I understood that by our actions of doing that, we set the tone overall for what the Iraqis were seeing and the brutality of what we were doing was being displayed," he told AP.
Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Marine Corps headquarters in the Pentagon, said the Marines are committed to investigating all allegations of violations of "law of war or rules of engagement."
"Mr. Massey made allegations of genocide by members of his command, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, resulting in an investigation," she said.
The investigation was completed in June 2004, "and these allegations were found to be unsubstantiated in regards to law or rules of engagement violations," Chapin said.
The French-language version of Massey's book went on sale in France this week.
Massey said he was not surprised by the reluctance of U.S. publishers. "The picture that I paint within the book is very difficult for a lot of Americans to grasp, and I understand that," he said.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/12847237.htm
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Bush Likens War on Terror to Cold War
# Iraq is a staging ground for militants who seek a 'radical Islamic empire,' he warns, and says 10 Al Qaeda plots have been foiled since 9/11.
By Warren Vieth and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Thursday compared the war on terrorism to the struggle against communism and said a network of Islamic extremists was determined to use Iraq as a staging ground to topple moderate governments in the region and to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said, the United States and its allies have disrupted at least 10 Al Qaeda terrorist plots against the West, including three planned attacks on U.S. soil, and stopped at least five additional attempts to scout out potential targets in this country.
The White House later issued a list of the foiled plots, citing potential Sept. 11-style airliner attacks on both coasts, a plan to blow up apartment buildings and surveillance of gas stations, bridges and tourist sites nationwide. But several senior law enforcement officials interviewed later questioned whether many of the incidents on the list constituted an imminent threat to public safety and said that authorities had not disrupted any operational terrorist plot within the United States since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Although the arguments Bush used in his lengthy speech were not new, he described the U.S.-declared war on terrorism and its link to Iraq in grander terms than previously, equating it to the Cold War that dominated U.S. foreign policy throughout the second half of the 20th century and comparing terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi to such tyrants as Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Cambodia's Pol Pot.
"Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism," Bush said in his remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy, a nongovernmental advocacy group in Washington. "Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam."
Bush described what he saw as the depth of the terrorist threat on a day when New Yorkers were alerted to an unspecified threat to the subway system.
The speech, billed as a major policy address, came at the end of a weeklong effort by his administration to shore up popular support for the central tenets of his foreign policy. Bush's approval rating has fallen to new lows in recent polls, and support for the Iraq war has declined.
The remarks also suggested a renewed effort by the administration to regain favor in the wake of criticism over its handling of Hurricane Katrina and were intended in part as a response to the antiwar movement, coming just weeks after a big demonstration in Washington and a monthlong protest outside his vacation home in Texas brought new visibility to the war's opponents.
Bush, in his remarks, appeared to counter recent statements by military commanders in Iraq, including two generals who told lawmakers last week that the presence of U.S. troops was fueling the insurgency in Iraq and energizing terrorists across the Middle East.
Pulling out of Iraq, the president said, would not cause the anger of terrorists to subside.
"We were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, and Al Qaeda attacked us anyway," he said. "The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse."
It was not the first time Bush's message differed from that of his generals. Over the summer, generals suggested that U.S. troops could begin coming home in the spring, but Bush insisted that they would remain in Iraq until the insurgency was defeated.
Bush said America's failure to respond more aggressively to attacks in Beirut during the Reagan administration and Mogadishu, Somalia, during the Clinton presidency had convinced terrorists that they had a winning strategy: "They hit us and expect us to run."
Pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq would only reinforce that conviction, Bush said, and it would not happen on his watch. "Against such an enemy there is only one effective response," he said. "We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory."
He acknowledged the toll of the war in Iraq, where more than 1,900 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis have been killed, and said the casualty count would certainly rise. U.S. officials have predicted an upsurge of violence as Iraq's Oct. 15 constitutional referendum nears.
On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders said the president's speech demonstrated his "strong, principled leadership."
Democrats countered that Bush was perpetuating what they called a false linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war.
"The president went into Iraq on the basis of a false premise, without a plan, and has totally mismanaged the war," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said. "Now he's trying to justify his actions with a series of excuses that are not reasons for us to be there."
The reaction in some foreign capitals was equally skeptical. Ahmed J. Versi, editor of the Muslim News in London, said Bush was exaggerating the power and influence of Al Qaeda among Muslims and disregarding perceptions of U.S. foreign policy in the region.
"It is so glaringly obvious to most of the Muslim world that it is the American policies that are the problem," Versi said. "People are not against the American people, it is the policies of the American government that are the issue."
Bush said the global terrorist threat had evolved from a centralized operation directed by Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders to a confederation of distinct organizations, paramilitary groups, separatist movements and local cells.
"Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command," he said. "Yet these operatives, fighting on scattered battlefields, share a similar ideology and vision for our world."
Hours after the speech, the White House described the 10 "serious" terrorist plots Bush had mentioned, including three Al Qaeda "plots to attack within the United States." It also briefly described five instances of "casings and infiltrations" in which individuals were believed to have been assigned by terrorist groups to gather information on potential U.S. targets.
One of the three "terrorist plots" against the U.S. cited by the White House was the case of Jose Padilla, who has been accused of being an enemy combatant and is being held by the U.S. military. The White House said that U.S. authorities disrupted a plan by Padilla and others to blow up apartment buildings in the United States and that the suspect had discussed the possible detonation of a radioactive "dirty bomb" somewhere on U.S. soil.
Senior federal law enforcement officials, who asked to remain anonymous because of departmental guidelines, said later that although Padilla was believed to have discussed terrorist attacks in the United States with the senior Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, they hadn't found any evidence of co-conspirators inside the U.S. or other indication that the plot had developed into any kind of operational plan.
The other two U.S.-based plots cited by the White House involved plans to use hijacked airplanes to attack targets on the West Coast in 2002 and the East Coast in 2003. The senior law enforcement officials interviewed by the Los Angeles Times said that although they knew of no instance in which such a plot was disrupted, the White House mention of the 2002 case apparently was a reference to the so-called second wave of suicide hijackings that was disclosed last year by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
The second wave apparently never rose to the level of a coordinated plan. The Sept. 11 commission report said that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind behind the 2001 terrorist attacks, became "too busy" to complete the planning for subsequent strikes and that the plots did not progress beyond theoretical stages.
"I don't think we ever resolved these," a federal counter-terrorism official said. He said the plots described by the White House were "on the boards, but they never got anywhere."
That official and three others declined to say why the White House would include such alleged plots in a list of thwarted or foiled plots. "Everyone is allowed to count in their own way," a second federal counter-terrorism official said.
Bush also said that U.S. agents and allies had "stopped at least five more Al Qaeda efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country." The White House list included a description of the detention of Ohio truck driver Iyman Faris, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen who admitted providing material support to Al Qaeda by exploring the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
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British and American leaders likened to Nazi war criminals
By Andrew Sparrow, Political Correspondent
(Filed: 08/10/2005)
Tony Blair and George Bush were compared to Nazi war criminals yesterday by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector.
"Both these men could be pulled up as war criminals for engaging in actions that we condemned Germany in 1946 for doing," he said.
He said the Prime Minister and the US President were "guilty of the crime of planning and committing aggressive warfare". Speaking in London at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Mr Ritter said the two leaders would have been in a much stronger position if they had got a UN resolution explicitly authorising the invasion.
He also said Britain gained very little from the "special relationship". "Britain gets nothing, other than to say they are America's closest ally in Europe," he said.
Mr Ritter, who was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, said intelligence services had been correct to say that Iraq's missile programme had been destroyed soon after the first Gulf conflict of 1991.
He recalled how he delivered a report in 1992 stating that the programme had been eliminated. It was met with "stony silence" and he was told that Iraq still possessed 200 missiles.
The inspectors returned to track down the weapons, which never materialised.
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When the source is unreliable.How does a story like this get such little attention? -
U ignored my post?
We did not train or aid him in any way...
It was the French. Yeah, that's it...
http://www.foxnews.com/news/france_trained_usama_bin_laden.htm
The US does nothing wrong because we are invincible and no matter what we do it's always right because we have God's blessings. /sarcasm
You have yet to provide any proof of your weak claim. Seriously iglost, I would like to know who told you this or were you told to say this.
A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan ``multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."
Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the launching of "punitive actions" directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: "When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".
The following text outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden and the links of the Islamic "Jihad" to the formulation of US foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.
Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an "international terrorist" for his role in the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders". 1
In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.2:
With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.3The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:
Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow.5Pakistan's Intelligence Apparatus
Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". The CIA covert support to the "jihad" operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
In the words of CIA's Milton Beardman "We didn't train Arabs". Yet according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had been imparted "with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA" 6
CIA's Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help". 7
Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.
With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". 8 The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. 9
Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
'Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course.10The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle
The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 11 In this regard, Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2 million by 1985 -- a much steeper rise than in any other nation":12<blockquote> CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a re
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November 2, 2005 Must Be a Day When History Starts to Turn
by Sunsara Taylor, an initiator of World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime!, correspondent for Revolution newspaper
Revolution #017, October 9, 2005, posted at revcom.us
Years from now, when children want to know the character of their parents - as they lived in a country that was normalizing torture, moving to condemn half the population to enforced motherhood or back-alley dangers, attacking science and critical thought, enforcing a narrow brand of fundamentalist religion and bigotry, disenfranchising and then abandoning hundreds of thousands of Black people in an illegitimate "election" and a foreseen natural disaster, waging wars of preemption based on outrageous lies, snatching people off the street without lawyers or charges, and no major office-holder was making a stink-- they will ask, "Were you in the streets that day, on November 2, 2005?"
To the thousands we spoke to at the September 24 antiwar protests:
You met us. We listened to you. Almost all of you loved the idea of not waiting until 2006 or 2008, but the question you asked over and over again was: "How do you drive out a regime?" Here’s what we have to say:
In recent years, millions have spoken out, protested, refused to comply with outrageous new repressive measures, given money, voted, and more.
Still, the Bush juggernaut of war, repression, and hurtful fundamentalist morality has rolled ahead. All this has shown two things:
1. There are, indeed, tens of millions who are deeply disturbed by and opposed to the whole direction that the Bush administration is dragging our world into.
2. This will of the people means nothing to the Bush regime. The people’s will must be forged into an organized political resistance which repudiates and reverses the whole direction of society and where Bush himself is driven from office.
Of course, everyone wants to know exactly what steps will be taken to create a political situation where these things happen. But setting out to drive out a regime, in particular this regime, in this country has never been done before and there is no familiar script for how this will all unfold or what its final days will look like. On the other hand, we have a vision and more than a few ideas on this. And one thing for sure: You won’t drive out this regime by waiting on a move by the Democratic Party, who keep coming up with pale imitations and "yes, buts" every time this regime comes out with yet another reactionary monstrosity. It’s up to us.
The future is unwritten. Right now, we need very urgently to start writing a new chapter.
Think about this: When four young people sat in at a lunch counter in the South, they didn’t know exactly what forms of struggle the Civil Rights movement would develop or how many and who would join them. When women and doctors developed networks to provide abortions and held speak-outs to make it legal, they didn’t know exactly what court ruling or piece of legislation would codify this right. When a thousand young people stepped up the militance of the anti-Vietnam War struggle by attempting to shut down the Oakland Induction Center during "Stop the Draft" week, they did so before millions of others were prepared to take such steps.
They did these things because living one more day as things had been was intolerable. And, by doing what was right and not compromising, and having the confidence that people were ready to hear and join them, they set new terms for society, changed what was deemed possible and realistic, and galvanized many thousands more in ways they couldn’t have predicted.
Today we are facing an unprecedented situation. The challenge is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the Bush regime is relentlessly hammering their agenda into place, public opinion be damned. There is a moment to seize right now while millions are seething with anger and aching with desire to affect things. The world cannot wait. The Bush regime must be driven from power. But we must leave the comfortable ruts of familiar territory and politics-as-usual if we are to stand a chance.
Think of how many people were inspired by the uncompromising and courageous stand of Cindy Sheehan. We are in a moment when one person stepping boldly forward, pointing out that the emperor not only has no clothes, but is a lying, callous brute, can change the whole national discourse. Imagine what can happen when hundreds of thousands, on one day, refuse to bite their tongues or stay at home.
November 2, 2005 will be a launch of a new kind of movement, a society-wide resistance. It holds the potential to break open new space and possibilities for the struggle going forward.
November 2, 2005 must be a day when history starts to turn.
November 2 will be a day when those who hate and fear the future Bush is creating will pour into the streets together, out from beneath the suffocating "mandate" Bush claimed last November 2, out of the "acceptable" political framework that forces people to speak in "reasoned" tones about compromise positions in the face of utterly insane measures, out of the dynamic of fighting Bush’s outrages one at a time constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught, out of the logic of waiting…and waiting…and waiting for someone somewhere else to say what must be said and do what must be done, while each day people grow accustomed to unspeakable crimes.
On November 2, in society-wide outpourings--in large cities and small towns, emptying high schools and colleges and lining the highways in rural areas, buzzing through the media and provoking frank debates among families, friends and coworkers--we will say: NO MORE! WE REFUSE TO BE RULED IN THIS WAY! BUSH DOES NOT REPRESENT US AND WE WILL DRIVE HIM OUT! THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT!
People who come out will be clear--this outpouring is just the beginning of a new kind of movement which takes the offensive in society and really wages a pitched political battle for the whole direction of the future. The gatherings will bring together the impatience of the youth who walk out of school, with the experience of those from the ‘60s generation, with the stature and creativity of prominent artists and intellectuals, together with the anger and perspective of those who have been hardest hit by the Bush program of repression and heightened poverty and racism. The organizers will lead participants to trade phone numbers and emails, forging thousands into new communities of resistance which actually defend and take the counter-offensive around those who come under attack and who spend time reading and discussing the history of fascism and resistance movements elsewhere.
To launch our resistance onto this new trajectory, these outpourings must be powerful enough to become the top story in small towns and large cities on the news that night. In this way, this day will give heart and inspiration to millions of others who are looking for a way to stop this direction and will bring them into an organized resistance--perhaps more quickly than we can now even imagine. It will put a challenge to many who still support Bush, causing them to question and, for some, begin to break with a program that is not in their interests. And, it will give notice to the regime and its die-hard supporters that they will not have a free hand in reshaping the world, leaving them further exposed in the eyes of millions.
This day alone will not stop the regime, but it will introduce a whole new dynamic that can enable millions to make a big leap towards a movement that can. Finally, the relentlessness of this regime will be matched, but our relentlessness will be in the pursuit of justice as people will continue to press, uncompromisingly, for what the whole world wants and needs--the ouster of this regime. November 2 will embolden individuals and groups everywhere to speak up, to defend others who come under attack, to challenge the Bushian mentality and program everywhere it pops up--from the local school boards pushing "Intelligent Design" and Abstinence Only, to the unjust war and continuing torture, to the pulpits promoting hurtful intolerance of gays and non-Christians--all as part of an escalating coherent movement to drive this regime from power.
November 2 is a day for which thousands must immediately throw in all their energies and time, creativity and critical thought, connections, skills and finances to pull off on a scale that accomplishes this important beginning.
From here, further organization and planning will be required, but all of it will be in a new context and with new strength. As organizers of the World Can’t Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, we pledge to take responsibility for leading and broadening the core of those leading this all the way through. We will hold a national summit to chart our next steps, bringing to bear all the strength and momentum and lessons we have gathered and surge ahead on a higher level which impacts the terrain again nationally and internationally.
Years from now, when children want to know the character of their parents--as they lived in a country that was normalizing torture, moving to condemn half the population to enforced motherhood or back-alley dangers, attacking science and critical thought, enforcing a narrow brand of fundamentalist religion and bigotry, disenfranchising and then abandoning hundreds of thousands of Black people in an illegitimate "election" and a foreseen natural disaster, waging wars of preemption based on outrageous lies, snatching immigrants and others off the street without lawyers or charges, and no major office-holder was making a stink-- they will ask, "Were you in the streets that day, on November 2, 2005?"
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Destruction is a social defect who defines repulsiveness. I too would like to see him burn a flag in front of those returning from serving, and see what happens. Fucking scumbag
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Social defect,
Why don't you simply shut the fuck already...you are a repulsive scumbag with a rotted, miserable being .......you are a fucking low-life cunt who realizes he has no redeeming qualities, so you spill your vomit and hate on to others in a disgraceful, pathetic display of who you are.....
Simply kill yourself....trust me, you are an insignificant shitstain who offers nothing, so you will not be missed............
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You hade behind false patriotism. What's your excuse?
Death wishes and threats are two different things. I don't make threats. You did. You broke the law. I didn't.
I have respect for the dead. My WW2 father is dead of pnumonia. You don't even know my parents and what they taught me and respect is one of them. I have no respect for you.
Pray that you can hide from the law.
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u stupid fuck!
keep up the great work w/ all the "Bush is the devil" garbage. Your dumb ass does not even recognize how you cancel yourselves out of the equation when you veer off on your emotional rants.
Great job and way to be a patriot!
On this thread, you have AGAIN rendered yourself irrelvant w/ no help from me. Well, maybe a little push demanding you admit what you feel?
ps...Pray we never meet, puta!
http://bbs.clubplanet.com/showpost.php?p=2840581&postcount=8
As for the little comment about my cousin.........You know if I ever run into you, I'm breaking your fucking face! No questions asked. No warnings. Pray I don't find a way to track you down. I'll leave it at that!
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." -Thomas Jefferson
Without dissent, democracy fails and dictatorship takes it's place.
You threaten me yet I'm the "stupid fuck" for exercising my first amendment rights.
No need for you to "push" me. I would've said it anyhow. Shows the kind of balls I have unlike you who resorts to cowardess by initiating threats and attacking my first amendment rights. Only faux patriots do that. You're no patriot. You're a fraud.
Real patriots don't threaten people. Patriots report them to authorities. You've made it. You've been reported. I printed post #8 and have given it to authorities. Pray they don't knock on your door equipped with a yoyo (warrant).
I printed that post and attached it here. Don't even try to hide your threat by editing it. Too late.
You're all done.
CHICKENHAWK!!
Reports: Plot to attack Paris subway, airport
in Useless Blabber
Posted
point well taken.
I bet he believes the French trained him though he cannot find anything to back that.