Sunday, September 24, 2006

W: Terrorist Poster Boy, Baghdad, America Feels the Love, Principles are un-American, Let's Bomb Iran, Homeland Insecurity and Americans Don't Know.



Guess who the number one recruiter of America hating terrorists is? Why, it's George W. Bush. It just goes to show, that even the intellectually-challeged can excel in this country, if given the right opportunities.

If this comes as a shock to you, I'd suggest that you spend less time watching Fox News and spend a little more time on the internet.

Now this little bombshell doesn't come from the left-wing blogosphere, it comes from the National Intelligence Council, a U.S. government agency that provides the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community.

The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic
extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world
whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can
reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page
National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the
U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading
inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by
little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than
contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the
situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials
familiar with the classified document.


If you listen to the President you'd think that things were going so well in Iraq that, instead of terrorists, all it would be producing is free market, young Republicans. This must be the fault of the hostile media that refuses to report on all the neat stuff that's been happening in Iraq since the Bush Revolution.

BAGHDAD, Sept. 23 -- A fiery explosion tore through a line of people waiting to
buy fuel on Saturday and killed at least 38 people, most of them women and
children, continuing the wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killings.

The
horrific blast sent women engulfed in flames screaming through the streets. Two
preteen girls embraced each other as they burned to death, witnesses said.
Later, wailing mourners thronged the scene of the blast, which was strewn with
the shoes of victims and a woman's bloodied cloak, and voiced doubt that the
reprisal violence would ever end.


It's starting to look like the work of a vast left wing conspiracy whose purpose is to disrupt President Bush's visionary crusade against the evil doers. It's so vast that it even reaches into the UN.

UNITED NATIONS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad grabbed headlines last week by blasting U.S. policies from the dais
of the U.N. General Assembly. But while their words were harsh, in many ways
they merely expressed in bolder terms what a number of other world leaders and
foreign diplomats believe.


Anti-Americanism never really left the United Nations, but this year's
gathering of world leaders demonstrated an unusually strident disrespect for the
United States. The United States is perceived as weakened by a draining war in
Iraq, while many of its adversaries feel emboldened with newfound oil
wealth.

Resentment of American power has also been exacerbated by the United
States' close association with Israel during the recent war in Lebanon and even
the administration's campaign for greater democracy throughout the Middle East.
A theme running through a number of the speeches delivered here is that
democracy cannot be imposed through force.


Just think of the world we could have, if only George Bush could put his dream for America into effect. We would no longer have to live under the constraints of the antiquated institutions like the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions. We're Americans and we can do whatever we damned well please. And if someone disagrees, we could just torture them or lock them up until they do agree with us.

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by
our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not
only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away
and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so
they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in
the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even
whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace
its darkness?

Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not
understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped
in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the
name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each
of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so
possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?


We all know and believe that God talks to President Bush on a regular basis, so torture and unlawful imprisonment must be OK.

The scriptures of many traditions offer a version of the "golden rule": "Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you." This principle is the guide for
the lives of both individuals and nations. The moral basis is clear. Yet there
is also a simple utilitarian reason to observe this principle: abandon the rule
of law and you yourself will be subject to the consequences.

As religious leaders, we call upon our Congressional delegation and all
who would lead or represent us to stand firmly against this attempt to amend the
law of the land, to set the United States apart from international law. The
moral character and the security of our nation and its people are at
stake.


Now if Congress will just pass the laws to make the Bush dream legal, no one will have to worry about prosecution.


The United States is following the lead of “dirty war” nations, such as
Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S.
government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush,
who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.

While the focus of the current congressional debate has been on Bush’s
demands to redefine torture and to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, the
compromise legislation also would block prosecutions for violations already
committed during the five-year-old “war on terror.”


We don't know for sure, but if it's true that Osama bin Laden is dead, it means that we won't be seeing "Osama's, Help the GOP Get Out the Vote Before the Mid-Term Elections, Terrorist Threat" video tape this year.

Washington - US intelligence agencies "can't confirm" a French newspaper
report that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden died in August in his hideout in
Pakistan, a US official said on Saturday.

"I can't confirm that account," said the government official, who spoke
to AFP on the condition that neither his name nor his affiliation would be
revealed.


If Osama really is dead, it looks like Bush and the Republicans will have to resort to Plan B for their October surprise.

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US
military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation
has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the
deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft
carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort
and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast.
This information follows a report
in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of
ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the
Persian Gulf by October 1.


Bush and the Republicans figure that if they use the same pre-war strategy that they used for Iraq, that they would probably achieve much better results. You know, if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result, it means you're a neocon.

Here we go again. The clichés come frighteningly easy when one ponders the
recent efforts of the hawks to gin up the case for military confrontation with
Iran. The playbook is familiar: Pump up the threat, use the media as a conveyor
and watch public opinion swing toward war.

A campaign of this sort has been under way for weeks. In late August the
staff of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee released a report on Iran that
depicted it as a pressing strategic danger. Iran "probably" has a biological
weapons program and "likely" has a chemical weapons research and development
program, it said. More alarming, the report stated that Iran was definitely
"seeking" nuclear weapons and enriching weapons-grade uranium. It conceded that
US intelligence lacked crucial information on Iran's WMDs, but it warned
intelligence analysts not to be wimps in reaching assessments about Iran's WMD
capabilities and not to "shy away from provocative conclusions." That is, don't
wait for hard-and-fast evidence before pronouncing Iran a nuclear threat.


The Bush Administration is so disconnected from reality, that they are planning a twofer this time around. Since the U.S. military ground forces are stretched beyond the breaking point, we'll have to contract Halliburton to conduct the ground war.

Confirmed by official statements and military documents, the US in close
coordination with Britain (and in consultation with its NATO
partners), is planning to launch a war directed against Iran and
Syria. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has already initiated the draft
of a UN Security Council resolution with a view to imposing sanctions on Tehran
for its alleged (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program. Whether this resolution
is adopted is not the main issue. The US may decide to proceed in defiance of
the Security Council, following a veto by Russia and/or China. The vote of
France and Britain, among the permanent members has already been secured.



For those of you out there who think that the Bush Administration doesn't take homeland security seriously, I'll have you know, that you are absolutely right.

Eager to showcase fresh votes on national security before the fall
elections, Congress has loaded a $34 billion homeland security spending bill
with measures to beef up defenses at the nation's borders, ports and chemical
plants and to revamp its disaster management.

With few exceptions, however, the measures are less sweeping than they
appear, analysts said. Watered down to avoid controversy or budget-breaking
costs, several of the measures also run counter to the wishes of Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, reflecting how politics trumps policy come
election time, they said.

But Democrats and environmental groups said the pact is filled with
loopholes sought by industry, such as barring DHS from requiring companies to
switch to safer chemicals, failing to explicitly allow tougher state regulations
and exempting facilities such as drinking-water and wastewater plants.


In fact, the Bush Administration takes national security at least as seriously as it's education reforms.

WASHINGTON -- A scorching internal review of the Bush administration's
billion-dollar-a-year reading program says the Education Department ignored the
law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted.

The government audit is unsparing in its view that the Reading First
program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It
suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum
schools must use.


Here's proof that the propaganda machine is probably the only thing on the right that actually works.

One of the more amazing results, though much in line with other surveys, is
that almost one in three still say that Saddam Hussein "was personally involved"
in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Two other national polls in recent weeks found much the same, or even a
higher number, with upwards of two in three Republicans holding this view.




Have a good day, it'll be Monday before you know it.

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I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

John Stuart Mill (May 20 1806 – May 8 1873)