6.02.2005
Another Fatal Month
"The level of activity [by the insurgents] that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."-- Dick Cheney
Mr Cheney or reality- you be the judge.
Iraq's security services have suffered their deadliest month since the fall of Saddam Hussein, illustrating the rise in violence in the country.
Yesterday's announcement by the interior ministry gives the lie to suggestions that better intelligence and more arrests had reduced the insurgents' capability to strike.
Officials reported that at least 220 police officers and soldiers were killed in May, mainly by suicide bombings. The figure does not include potential recruits killed while queuing up to join the forces, a favoured target.
"This figure does not even include those killed in the last two or three days," a senior police officer said.
Or the Americans that continue to die... Because they believed Mr Bush and company.
AfterDowningStreet.org
6/02/2005
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An comprehensive way to awaken the sleeping.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
6/02/2005
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6.01.2005
Impeachment
From The Progressive Democrats of America:
The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.
Progressive Democrats of America has joined with Global Exchange, Gold Star Families for Peace, Democrats.com, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Democracy Rising, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the Velvet Revolution, and Brad Blog to form the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition. These organizations, are asking their members to contact their congress members to urge support of a Resolution of Inquiry.
The 'I' Word By Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.
Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.
President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.
Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''nonthreatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States:
Time to walk the talk folks....
6/01/2005
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This Guardian article reminds us that Mr Chavez, like FDR did here in the states, is trying to make a better life for his people.
Something amazing has been taking place in Latin America in recent years that deserves wider attention than the continent has been accustomed to attract. The chrysalis of the Venezuelan revolution led by Chávez, often attacked and derided as the incoherent vision of an authoritarian leader, has finally emerged as a resplendent butterfly whose image and example will radiate for decades to come.
Most of the reports about this revolution over the past six years, at home and abroad, have been uniquely hostile, heavily influenced by politicians and journalists associated with the opposition. It is as if news of the French or the Russian revolutions had been supplied solely by the courtiers of the king and the tsar. These criticisms have been echoed by senior US figures, from the president downwards, creating a negative framework within which the revolution has inevitably been viewed. At best, Chávez is seen as outdated and populist. At worst, he is considered a military dictator in the making.
Yet the wheel of history rolls on, and the atmosphere in Venezuela has changed dramatically since last year when Chávez won yet another overwhelming victory at the polls. The once triumphalist opposition has retired bruised to its tent, wounded perhaps mortally by the outcome of the referendum on Chávez's presidency that it called for and then resoundingly lost. The viciously hostile media has calmed down, and those who don't like Chávez have abandoned their hopes of his immediate overthrow. No one is any doubt that he will win next year's presidential election.
Read the full article
6/01/2005
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Israeli firms 'ran vast spy ring'
Police in Israel say they have uncovered a huge industrial spying ring which used computer viruses to probe the systems of many major companies.
At least 15 Israeli firms have been implicated in the espionage plot, with 18 people arrested in Israel and two more held by British police.
Among those under suspicion are major Israeli telecoms and media companies.
Police say the companies used a "Trojan horse" computer virus written by an Israeli to hack into rivals' systems.
6/01/2005
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5.30.2005
A Memorial Day Thought
No time to write myself, here's an editorial from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Editorial: Memorial Day/Praise bravery, seek forgiveness
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.
The "smoking gun," as some call it, surfaced on May 1 in the London Times. It is a highly classified document containing the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting at 10 Downing Street in which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair on talks he'd just held in Washington. His mission was to determine the Bush administration's intentions toward Iraq.
At a time when the White House was saying it had "no plans" for an invasion, the British document says Dearlove reported that there had been "a perceptible shift in attitude" in Washington. "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
It turns out that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were right. Both have been pilloried for writing that by summer 2002 Bush had already decided to invade.
further on
As this bloody month of car bombs and American deaths -- the most since January -- comes to a close, as we gather in groups small and large to honor our war dead, let us all sing of their bravery and sacrifice. But let us also ask their forgiveness for sending them to a war that should never have happened. In the 1960s it was Vietnam. Today it is Iraq. Let us resolve to never, ever make this mistake again. Our young people are simply too precious.
Help the truth to light.
5/30/2005
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