>President, though, is not being well served by his military advisors

Well, they fire the ones that come up with any *accurate* predictions, and promote the yes men. No surprise how that turns out.

In English, they are over "their" heads. They are not over "there" heads.

The blood from the war in Iraq--and the deaths of young Americans there--will stain and forever tarnish the hands and lives of every person who voted for Bush. You know who you are--those people who watch Fox News and CHOOSE to believe the claptrap. Everyone knows 9/11 was NOT caused by Saddam. I believe the actual perpetrator was....oh, what was his name? Oh, yes, that guy who still roams free, going wherever he pleases, whenever he pleases: Osama bin Laden. (Remember "Dead or Alive"?, lol) Where is he by the way? I don't believe we've gotten him dead OR alive. So, all you rabid religious righties who espouse the "culture of life", you've currently got about 2200 or so American deaths on your hands and your conscience--may it haunt you 'til the day you die. Everyone knows Republicans are closeted homosexuals. Too afraid to put their own lives on the line, they hide behind flag decals and patriotic slogans, oh so willing to send their compatriots to their deaths for a lie. Ask the active duty military, "If you knew before enlisting that you could be sent to war for a lie, would you still have enlisted?" The results would be interesting....

RC:
You were quick to judge. Just one post from a Katrina survivor who made factual observations which apparently you don't like because most Bush supports live in a fantasy world and you call the "crap"?
Come on back and let's chat and see who is full of crap?
When the American Bubble that we all live in bursts and reality hits, you my friend will have to eat a little crow.
If you bare the door against reality, it well come in through the window. You can't escape. 2006 is the year for US.

LONG LIVE FREEDOM!!

My name is Nicole and I am a displaced New Orleanian residing in Tempe, Arizona attending Arizona State University.

I have two questions:

1) Who was the Middle-Eastern woman and the Gentleman of Color sitting next to Laura Bush? They seemed like they were placed there for all the world to see.

2) When the President was speaking of the undemocratic nations of the world and he went through the list of countries, I couldn't help but notice that China wasn't mentioned. The Chinese people constitute the largest percentage of 'the half of the world that does not live in a democracy,' yet there was no mention of it. To me it was almost as if Communist China doesn't exist.

Why bother with DemUnderground when one can find the same deranged nonsense on the Washington Post's site? The Post's blog comment experiment is a failure and a waste of bandwidth. Even the moderated message boards were better than this crap.

You're misreading the battlefield, Mr Arkin. Being confused by the camouflage and deception operations.

President Bush does not give a hairy rodent's posterior what kind of government Iraq has.

The real war is the war for power --for control of the US Government. The war for money. Because that war determines whether the rich have to pay off their fair share of the $10 Trillion Reagan/Bush1/Bush2 debt --or whether the baby boomers eat dog food. Big stakes.

The really slick thing about Iraq is how Bush and Karl Rove used it to really , REALLY screw the Democratic leadership.
They potentially have destroyed the Democratic Party. The Democrats' treasury is starting to look a lot like Fallujah.

Bush knew that the Democratic Party is largely funded by billionaires who are strong supporters of Israel. He knew that while Hussein was not a real threat to the USA, Hussein was seen as a serious threat by Israel. (Partially because Hussein was getting angry over Israeli plans to take water out of the Euphrates River in the Turkey headwaters --via the Turkey -Israel pipeline.)

Bush knew that if he could bring Israel's wealthy US supporters over to the Republicans, it would really kneecap Democratic finances. He ben proven right.

Look at what's happened:

a) November 2000- 2002: The biggest campaign donor to the Democratic Party is Israeli billionaire Haim Saban, who contributes $12.7 million in the
2000 and 2002 campaign cycles. (His wife Cheryl's donations raises the total to
$13.7 million) See Reference [1] below

b) May 2002: Haim Saban funds the "Saban Center for Middle East Policy" at the Brookings Institute. One of the four stated research areas is "the implications of regime change in Iraq". Another task is providing "future policymakers with a better understanding of the complexities of the Middle East and the process of developing effective policies to deal with
them"[2]

c) June 30,2002: St Petersburg Times notes that "leading congressional Democrats were concerned that Jewish voters and donors were reassessing their relationship "with the Democratic Party given Bush's strong pro-Israel stance [3]

d) September 10, 2002: During a conference at the University of Virginia, high level intelligence adviser to the White House, Philip Zelikow, states: "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," [4]

e) December 19, 2002: In a Los Angeles Times op-ed "Lock and Load", the Directors of Haim Saban's Center for Middle East Policy ,Martin Indyk and Kenneth Pollack, state "Saddam Hussein has failed to come clean. His denial of possessing any weapons of mass destruction makes that clear ... As former U.S. government officials who had access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence on Iraq, we are well aware of Iraq's continued efforts to retain and enhance its weapons capabilities" They then advocate launching a war on Iraq.[5]

f) January 17, 2003: Atlanta Jewish Times notes that " pro-Israel interests have contributed $41.3 million" in campaign donations over the past decade, with more than two thirds going to the Democrats. Article also notes that Republicans are making a strong push to court those big donors. [6]

g) June 20, 2003: In a New York Times column, "Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find
Them", Saban Center Director Kenneth Pollack tries to excuse his earlier claims re Iraq WMDs (see (e) above ) by stating "Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately we don't yet have a good answer... In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the search for Iraq's nonconventional weapons program has only just begun." [7]

h) September 2004: John Kerry attempts to criticize the Bush war on Iraq but can only make incoherent, strangled sounds.

i) November 2004: Instead of $12.7 million, Haim Saban's campaign donations
in the 2004 election only total $84,000 -- and $2,000 goes to George W Bush, in case
the Democrats don't get the message.[8]

j) November 2000-2002: Another large Democratic donor is billionaire S Daniel Abraham of West Palm Beach, Florida --who donates over $2.3 million to the Democrats in 2000-2002. [9]
Mr Abraham has long been a strong advocate for Israel in US foreign policy circles via his Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation [10]

k) March 18,2003: S Daniel Abraham donates $2,000 to Howard Dean's campaign [11]

l) September 11, 2003: Howard Dean receives a storm of criticism from the Democratic leadership after saying that the US needs to be evenhanded in the Israel-Palestinian issue [12]

k) November 2003-Feb 2004: Howard Dean campaign is destroyed in Iowa primary by barrage of attack ads from a mysterious group "Americans for Jobs and Healthcare". Leader of group refuses to disclose funding sources. Disclosure to FEC not required until end of quarter. [13]

l) March 2004: FEC report indicates that attack group "Americans for Jobs" received $1 million in funding, with the largest donation --$200,000 -- coming from S Daniel Abraham.[13]

m) November 2004: Instead of $Millions, S Daniel Abraham only gives the Democrats $81,500 in the 2004 election [11]

n) October 2004: John Kerry attempts to criticize Bush's invasion of Iraq but can only make incoherent, strangled sounds.

o) Jan 2005: Capital Hill Democratic insiders are aghast when Howard Dean is put in as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee during a revolt by grassroots activists in the party. (It's easier to find out the membership of Al Qaeda than it is to find out who's on the "Democratic" Committee. )

p) One Year Later on Jan 30, 2006: Roll Call reports that "Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are privately bristling over Howard Dean’s management of the Democratic National Committee and have made those sentiments clear after new fundraising numbers showed he has spent nearly all the committee’s cash and has little left to support their efforts to gain seats this cycle. ".[14] The specific war chest numbers are Democrats $5.5 million, Republicans $34 million.[15]

-------------------
References:
[1]http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Saban, Haim" and select election cycles 2000,2002

[2]http://www.brookings.edu/comm/news/20020509saban.htm

[3] http://www.sptimes.com/2002/06/30/Columns/Jewish_voters_noticin.shtml

[4] http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23083

[5] http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/indyk/20021219.htm

[6] http://www.atljewishtimes.com/archives/2003/011703cs.htm

[7] http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/pollack/20030620.htm

[8] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp (enter "Saban, Haim" and
choose 2004 )

[9] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Abraham, S Daniel"
and 2000,2002

[10] http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/mojo_400/1_abraham.html

[11] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Abraham, S
Daniel" and 2004

[12] http://www.cbs2.com/politics/politicsla_story_254070009.html

[13] http://www.public-i.org/report.aspx?aid=194&sid=200

[14] http://www.rollcall.com/issues/51_74/news/11931-1.html

[15] http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/13751602.htm?source=rss&channel=kansascity_politics

For more on the "long war," as spelled out in the Quadrennial Defense Review, go here:

http://defense.iwpnewsstand.com/insider.asp?issue=1312006

otherside123.blogspot.com
www.onlinejournal.com
www.takingaim.info

Halliburton Detention Camps For Political Subversives

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 1 2006

In another shining example of modern day corporate fascism, it was announced recently that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used "as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency."

Discussions of federal concentration camps is no longer the rhetoric of paranoid Internet conspiracy theorists, it is mainstream news.

Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig and is only just now getting a trial.

In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.

Okanogan County Commissioner Dave Schulz went public three years ago with his contention that his county was set to be a location for one of the camps.

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.

The move towards the database state in the US and the UK, where every offence is arrestable and DNA records of every suspect, even if later proven innocent, are permanently kept on record, is the only tool necessary to create a master list of 'subversives' that would be subject to internment in a manufactured time of national emergency.

The national ID card is also intended to be used for this purpose, just as the Nazis used early IBM computer punch card technology to catalogue lists of homosexuals, gypsies and Jews before the round-ups began.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act in Britain enables police to obtain name and address details of anyone they choose, whether they are acting suspiciously or not. Those details remain on a database forever. To date, 119,000 names of political activists have been taken and this is a figure that will skyrocket once the post 7/7 figures are taken into account. At the height of the Iraq war protests, around a million people marched across the country. However, most of these people were taking part in a political protest for the first time and as a one off. Even if we take a figure of half, 500,000 people being politically active in Britain, that means that the government has already registered around a quarter of political activists in the UK.

In truth the number is probably above half because we are not factoring in those already on MI5 'subversive' lists and those listed after the 7/7 bombings, when the powers were used even more broadly.

Concurrently in the US, a new provision in the extended Patriot Act bill would allow Secret Service agents to arrest and jail protesters accused of breaching any security perimeter, even if the President or any other protected official isn't present. The definition of 'free speech zones' can be shifted around loosely and this would open the floodgates for protesters to be grabbed and hauled away in any circumstance at the whim of the Secret Service.

During the 2004 RNC protests, thousands of New Yorkers were arrested en masse in indiscriminate round-ups and taken to Pier 57 (pictured), a condemned, asbestos poisoned old bus depot, where they were imprisoned without charge for up to 24 hours or more.

The existence and development of internment camps are solely intended to be used to round up en masse and imprison 'political dissidents' (anyone who isn't prepared to lick government boots) after a simulated tactical nuke or biological attack on a major US or European city.

otherside123.blogspot.com
www.onlinejournal.com
www.takingaim.info

www.unknownnews.org

Attorney General says Bush will keep using PATRIOT Act powers even if Congress votes "no"

by Charlie Savage, The Boston Globe

Jan. 25, 2006

A footnote in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's 42-page legal memo defending President Bush's domestic spying program appears to argue that the administration does not need Congress to extend the USA PATRIOT Act in order to keep using the law's investigative powers against terror suspects.

The memo states that Congress gave Bush the power to investigate terror suspects using whatever tactics he deemed necessary when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. When Congress later passed the PATRIOT Act, Bush already had the power to use enhanced surveillance techniques against Al Qaeda, according to the footnote.

Thus, legal specialists say, the administration is asserting that Bush would be able to keep using the powers outlined in the PATRIOT Act for Al Qaeda investigations, regardless of whether Congress reauthorizes the law.

''It turns out they didn't need the PATRIOT Act for dealing with Al Qaeda after all," said Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton administration who now teaches law at Georgetown University.

Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor, and Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, also said the administration's footnote indicates that Bush would not need Congress to renew the PATRIOT Act to keep using its investigative powers in the war on terrorism.

But Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse disputed their interpretation.

''This is an inaccurate and misinformed interpretation of the administration's legal analysis," Roehrkasse said in an e-mail.

Roehrkasse attached a Justice Department statement arguing that Congress gave Bush broad wartime powers to fight the war on terror as he saw fit when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. The footnote, it said, seeks to explain why those wartime powers include surveillance authority even though Congress separately addressed the subject in the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department said, affected far more than Al Qaeda. The act made changes to surveillance laws for use against foreign spies and terrorists who are not affiliated with Al Qaeda. The act also made it easier to use surveillance information as evidence if the administration prosecuted an Al Qaeda suspect in court, the department said.

But Fein, the former Reagan administration lawyer, said the footnote in the Gonzales memo can only mean that the PATRIOT Act is irrelevant to the tactics used to investigate Al Qaeda. According to the memo, he said, Bush could continue to use PATRIOT Act techniques in investigating possible Al Qaeda plots even if Congress lets the PATRIOT Act expire.

''Under the position they are staking out in the footnote and throughout the memo, the debate over the PATRIOT Act is superfluous," Fein said. ''The president is flailing Congress for refusing to act on a matter that he says is irrelevant to the war anyway, because he can do all of these things under the authorization to use military force."

The PATRIOT Act has been the subject of intense debate in Congress. It is set to expire Feb. 3 under a new deadline set last month after Congress deadlocked over whether some of its provisions violate civil liberties. Bush has demanded that Congress extend the act, warning that allowing the powers to expire could cost American lives.

''The PATRIOT Act may be set to expire, but the threats to the United States haven't expired," Bush said in a speech Monday. ''Congress extended this PATRIOT Act to Feb. 3. That's not good enough for the American people, it seems like to me. . . . they need to make sure they extend all aspects of the PATRIOT Act to protect the American people."

But the footnote in the memo suggests the government does not need the PATRIOT Act to aggressively investigate Al Qaeda suspects, the scholars said. The footnote says Congress gave Bush the power to set his own rules for counterterrorism investigations when it authorized the president to use ''all necessary and appropriate force" against Al Qaeda a week after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Instead, the memo said, the PATRIOT Act simply gave the government new investigative powers to use against non-Al Qaeda terrorists and ''in contexts unrelated to terrorism."

''The USA PATRIOT Act amendments made important corrections in the general application of" existing laws governing searches and wiretaps, the footnote said, adding that the act was ''not intended to define the precise incidents of military force that would be available to the president in prosecuting the current armed conflict against Al Qaeda and its allies."

Hutchinson, the University of Chicago law professor, said that in trying to show that Congress gave Bush unlimited powers to investigate possible Al Qaeda plots, the administration has contradicted its arguments that it is necessary for Congress to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act in order to protect the nation from terror threats.

''It muddies the waters," Hutchinson said.

Pressed by the Globe during a briefing last week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to answer directly when asked whether Bush had the power to authorize the FBI to keep using PATRIOT Act-style techniques when hunting for Al Qaeda suspects even if Congress lets the law expire.

The White House press secretary said Bush would ''continue to use every lawful tool at his disposal to prevent attacks and to defeat the terrorists" -- without defining what tools Bush believed were lawfully at his disposal.

''We always look at what authorities we have in order to move forward and to prevent attacks from happening," McClellan said. ''The Constitution spells out very clearly that the role of the president is to protect Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And the terrorist threat is the number one threat that we face."