Bush Won't Block Abuse of Detainees
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers
Thursday 28 July 2005
Washington - President Bush, who bills himself as a "compassionate conservative," refuses to rule out cruel, abusive treatment of prisoners of war and detainees.
He has gone so far as to threaten to veto the vital $491 billion defense bill if an amendment barring mistreatment of prisoners is attached.
This is the president who - along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - was shocked last year when he saw photos of leashed naked prisoners under US guard at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
The irony is that Bush's close adviser, Karen Hughes, has just been put in charge of the State Department's public diplomacy division to improve the nation's tattered global image. Millions spent on this effort will go to waste if we do not wipe out the impression that the United States tolerates torture.

US Aims to Sharply Cut Iraq Force within a Year
It appeared to be the first time since the insurgency worsened in April that top Pentagon officials have suggested a timeline for withdrawal. Casey's remarks came as a new poll showed most Americans think the United States will lose the war in Iraq.

Guard Unit Probed in Abuse Allegations
The company, comprising about 130 soldiers, is stationed at Forward Operating Base Falcon outside Baghdad and has been put on restricted duty while the Army reviews its performance. Lt. Col. Patrick Frey, the battalion's commander, has been suspended.
"There are unanswered questions — for example, how did it get to this point — and that's what the investigation is for," said Capt. Daniel Markert, commander of the battalion's rear detachment in Modesto.
The Los Angeles Times, citing several sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported Wednesday that the investigation appeared to deal with allegations that an electric stun gun was used to abuse or torture Iraqi detainees after an insurgent attack in June.
One soldier told the newspaper that the use of a stun gun on a man who had been handcuffed and blindfolded was videotaped.
In addition, at least six soldiers in the battalion are alleged to have extorted money from Iraqi business owners, apparently in exchange for protection from insurgents. The payments allegedly exceeded $30,000 and were made in U.S. currency, the newspaper said.

US plans Iraq troop cuts as revolt rages
Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published July 27, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The struggle against the Iraq insurgency passed a crucial tipping point Wednesday with the current prime minister calling for major U.S. troop withdrawals and the U.S. ground commander there acknowledging they will probably come next year.
The commander, however, made clear he did not expect the insurgency to have dropped by then significantly below its current level.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made his comments in Baghdad at a joint news conference with visiting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"We confirm and we desire speed in that regard," he said.

I'm sorry folks, but this is just plain infuriating.
'Enemies of humanity' quote raises Iraq PR questions
The U.S. military on Sunday said it was looking into how virtually identical quotations ended up in two of its news releases about different insurgent attacks.
Following a car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military issued a statement with a quotation attributed to an unidentified Iraqi that was virtually identical to a quote reacting to an attack on July 13.
After questioning by news media, the military released the statement without the quotation.
Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said use of the quote was an "administrative error." He said the military was looking into the matter.
Sunday's news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."
The July 13 news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. 'They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.'"

Pentagon Blocks Release of Abu Ghraib Images: Here's Why
So what is shown on the 87 photographs and four videos from
Abu Ghraib prison that the
Pentagon, in an eleventh hour move, blocked from release this weekend? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images: "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe." They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane."
"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
"The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men.The women were passing messages saying Please come and kill me, because of what's happened."
"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys...children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

July 21, 2005 A security guard's daughter screamed after her father, Jalil Shaalan, was shot by gunmen outside a Baghdad school compound yesterday.

They Are Not “Conspiracy Theories”, They Are, in Fact, “Discoveries”
When researchers,...or whatever you want to call us, present newly discovered, yet verifiable information to the public, we are directly attacked as promoters of a conspiracy theory and lambasted with the usual assortment of insults. . This is totally unacceptable. We can no longer allow the conspiracy theory tag to be indiscriminately used whenever anyone has new discoveries to reveal.
Those who opt to disclose new discoveries must clearly separate the theoretical elements of their presentation from the information they disclose.
Those to whom information is presented must deal with their personal unwillingness to hear new facts. They must become more receptive to new evidence and avoid dismissing verifiable evidence simply because the ramifications are distressing or difficult to conceive.

Police: Brazilian shot not tied to bombs



LONDON, England (CNN) Police say the man they shot dead at a London Underground station was a Brazilian national "not connected" with this week's attempted bombings on the city's transit system.

Poll: Americans Say World War III Likely
"I feel like we're in a world war right now," said Susan Aser, a real estate agent from Rochester, N.Y.

STRATCOM Preparing for Attack on Iran
The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing - that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

The Great Debt
Government and private debt piled so high it defies comprehension. How high will it go? That's impossible to say. We are living on borrowed time - - time generously donated by foreigners who for some unfathomable reason are willing to continue purchasing our worthless IOUs.
Just how bad is it? As of July 7, 2005 the public debt as reported by the government is $7,838,410,800,630.51. This does not include private debts such as mortgages, home equity loans, car loans, "personal" loans, credit card accounts, layaway plans or any other type of personal debt. Nor does this number include corporate debt, or even your state or local government debts, it is purely a measure of how much debt the federal government alone has taken on.

The Destructive Greenspan
"Thanks to rock-bottom interest rates and easy ways to borrow, consumers have been on an all-out spending spree for several years. Now, though, there are signs that the bills may be piling up too high.
"The portion of Americans’ disposable income devoted to paying off debt hit a record high recently, even though interest rates have stayed at record lows. That could put a financial squeeze on many households if and when long-term interest rates finally start to go up.
"... Could put a squeeze on many households?" We will take a wild guess: the coming contraction will grab them by the neck. Many will suffocate.
We wrote four years ago that Alan Greenspan wanted to avoid a Japan-like slump in the worst possible way. Well, he found the worst possible way – the destruction of America’s middle class homeowners.

A choice of poisons
Richard Daughty
...the angriest guy in economics
The Mogambo Guru
Jul 21, 2005
Total Fed Credit, the marvelous, magical wellhead from which flows the fabled "money from thin air", is again sputtering and drying up, and it went down by $3.8 billion last week.
But when price inflation starts getting going, bad things happen, and people get grumpy, and then politicians start taking heat, and they don't like that. Then, as the government hurriedly tries to create and spend more money to alleviate the pain, they just make it worse and worse, and then prices increase more and more, and soon there are food riots in the streets, and then there is increasing societal collapse, and pretty soon the country is in a shambles, and tribal warfare breaks out, with murder and robbery and mayhem everywhere...

AN OPEN STATEMENT TO THE LEADERS OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE
Former Us intelligence officers respond to the public debate over the ongoing Department of Justice investigation into who leaked the name of Valerie Plame...

You can't win a war unless you know who your enemy is
You can't have a war against terrorism because, as many people have pointed out, terrorism is a tactic employed by people who have no real military power. It is not an entity. There is no worldwide terrorist organization.
Terrorist tactics work because we live in a wired world. Ten or 12 people can set off a few bombs in London, and the world turns its electronic eyes on the story and chats, discusses and shows video clips until some other event distracts it. The media attention and the inflated rhetoric of politicians magnify the terrorist act far beyond its actual import...remember that terrorist attacks are primarily media events. You still have more to fear from the flu or accidents than you do from terrorists.

Go on the offensive against terror
Another tool would have our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within Al Qaeda's ranks, causing operatives to doubt others' identities and to question the validity of communications.

Surviving the Big, Scary 'Mega-Bubble'
By PAUL B. FARRELL
MarketWatch
July 17, 2005
Is there a global mega-bubble about to burst?
I gave you a 20-question quiz June 26 that focused on 20 smaller potential bubbles, asking you to score each from 1 to 5 in terms of risk. A score above 50 put you in the mega-bubble camp.
It turns out that this is a real hot-button issue. I received 1,249 emails, three times as many as on any column I've written in eight years. I read every response.
All told, 86% of you scored the bubble risks at 50 or more. And 39% scored between 75 and 100. Only 14% scored under 50.
Many of those who emailed identified themselves as officers in banks or securities firms, professional financial advisers, corporate executives, federal and state government professionals, mortgage bankers, building contractors and real-estate pros. They scored the bubble risk as very high.

U.S. Terror Attack — 'Ninety Days at Most'
I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.

Bush honesty rating drops to lowest point
Furthermore, only 41 percent give Bush good marks for being “honest and straightforward” — his lowest ranking on this question since he became president. This finding comes at a time when the Bush administration is battling the perception that its rhetoric doesn’t match the realities in Iraq, and also allegations that chief political adviser Karl Rove leaked sensitive information about a CIA agent to a reporter. (The survey, however, was taken just before these allegations about Rove exploded into the current controversy.)

Experts fear 'endless' terror war
The experts aren’t encouraged. One prominent terrorism researcher sees the prospect of “endless” war. Adds the man who tracked Osama bin Laden for the CIA, “I don’t think it’s even started yet.”
An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London’s bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear.
In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.

They're all wasted
450 Sheep Jump to Their Deaths in Turkey
ISTANBUL, Turkey - First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff...

The Impeachment Question
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.
But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out.
You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.
Nevertheless, could there be anything that 42 percent of Americans agree on that the media care about so little?

Oil 'will hit $100 by winter'
Worst-ever crisis looms, says analyst.
Surging demand to keep prices high.
Oil prices could rocket to $100 within six months, plunging the world into an unprecedented fuel crisis, controversial Texan oil analyst Matt Simmons has warned.
After crude surged through $60 a barrel last week, nervous investors were pinning their hopes on a build-up in US oil-stocks to depress prices in the coming months.
But Simmons believes surging demand will keep prices bubbling well above $50. 'We could be at $100 by this winter. We have the biggest risk we have ever had of demand exceeding supply. We are now just about to face up to the biggest crisis we have ever had,' he said.

Why Right Wing Blogs Don't Allow Comments

"Can we eradicate Islam now, please?"

"If there are no Arabs there are no attacks. How many more need be sacrificed?"

"It is now time to force muslims to make a choice: Live peacefully or die. I prefer the latter."

"We need to stop fucking with these people and kill every one involved. I mean anyone with prior knowledge, anyone who payed for it, and anyone who supported it. Regardless of nationality."

"Britain should END ALL ISLAMIC IMMIGRATION NOW....Continuing to welcome the enemy into your country is insane."

"Martyring Muslims doesn't seem to make much of a difference to the fanatics. What is needed is to take their human capital out their hands - their children. No more warped children, no more jihadis. "

The deficit has moved beyond practical fiscal control!
When the U.S. Treasury reported the official 2004 federal budget deficit at a record $413 billion last October, the hisses and boos in the financial media were unrelenting. Two months later, the Treasury reported the actual 2004 deficit -- using generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) -- was really an incredible $11.1 trillion, up from $3.7 trillion in 2003, yet nary a word was heard in the financial media, from Wall Street or from any political denizen...
The silence partially reflects the financial-market terror that would accompany an effective national bankruptcy. Such is the risk when a government's fiscal ills spin so wildly out of control that they no longer are containable within the existing system.
Consider the traditional solution of raising taxes. Putting the $11.1 trillion deficit in perspective, if the government raised individual and corporate income taxes to 100%, seizing all salaries, wages and profits, the government's 2004 operations still would have been in deficit by trillions of dollars. The deficit has moved beyond practical fiscal control! Many in government and the markets are aware of the underlying deficit reality, but few dare to sound the alarm, for the ultimate resolutions to the situation all are political or financial nightmares.

London Calling
So, exactly who does this benefit?
Well, Bush and Blair are both circling the political “lame duck” drain. Left and right, people are abandoning each of their respective ships. Pressure is beginning to mount from all sides regarding the Downing Street Memos and the Valerie Plame leak, support for the war is at an all time low, and approval ratings have never been more dismal. Nothing short of an extraordinary and catastrophic event could begin to stem or reverse the flow.
What exactly could help to bring people together behind their leaders, garner lost support for the illegal war in Iraq, and help along the hysterical drum beating for the coming attractions in Iran and Syria? What could possibly take the media and everyone else’s attention off of the Downing Street Memos and the Karl Rove CIA leak stories? What could make people look away from such issues as John Bolton, The Supreme Court, and…
BOOM!!!

Israel Warned United Kingdom About Possible Attacks
There has been massive confusion over a denial made by the Israelis that the Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks “minutes before” the first bomb went off July 7. Israel warned London of the attacks a “couple of days ago,” but British authorities failed to respond accordingly to deter the attacks, according to an unconfirmed rumor circulating in intelligence circles. While Israel is keeping quiet for the time-being, British Prime Minister Tony Blair soon will be facing the heat for his failure to take action.

Mom, Who Lost Son In Iraq, Talks About 'Disgusting' White House Private Meeting
(A story about Cindy Sheehan, who has become an anti-war activist.)
...what she encountered was an arrogant man with eyes lacking the slightest bit of compassion, a President totally "detached from humanity" and a man who didn’t even bother to remember her son’s name when they were first introduced.
Instead of a kind gesture or a warm handshake, Sheehan said she immediately got a taste of Bush arrogance when he entered the room and "in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent," said: "Who we’all honorin’ here today?"

Wednesday, July 6th, 2005
The Gitmo Experiment: How Methods Developed by the U.S. Military For Withstanding Torture are Being Used Against Detainees at Guantanamo Bay
A major article in this week's issue of The New Yorker magazine reveals how methods developed by the US military for withstanding torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
According to the article, titled "The Gitmo Experiment," a number of medical and scientific personnel working at Guantanmo Bay are not at the prison camp to provide care for detainees but rather to use their skills to assist in interrogations. The people working in this capacity are members of what are called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams or BSCT's - in military jargon they are known simply as Biscuits.
In Gitmo
The New Yorker
Posted 2005-07-06
What kind of line can be drawn between the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo and the abuses at Abu Ghraib?
One obvious line is the career trajectory of General Geoffrey D. Miller, who was commander first in Guantánamo, and then was sent to Iraq to oversee Abu Ghraib. It was General Miller who created the bscts to aid in interrogations. He imported the bsct idea with him when he went to Iraq.

Pliant American Press Behaving Like Pravda in Coverage of the U.S. President
In a televised address last week, Bush portrayed U.S. actions in Iraq as defensive, as necessary to protect America from another 9/11.
I saw no mention in the TV coverage of what the British memos reveal: that those with inside knowledge knew Saddam's arsenal posed no danger, that the intelligence was being "fixed" and that the U.S. dropped bombs to try to provoke a war — while insisting it was doing everything it could to avoid one.

Preliminary Declaration Of The Jury Of Conscience
In pursuit of their agenda of empire, the Bush and Blair blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war expressed by millions of people around the world. They embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly wars in history.

Show your Independence on the 4th; Burn a Flag
It's odd that Congress would pass a bill banning flag burning on the same week that reports confirmed the US military used napalm in Iraq. Apparently, it's alright to incinerate Iraqis, but not okay to burn a 5'x7' piece of tri-colored cloth.

Mud, lies and a wretched war
From the roadsides and the hills the rebels attacked and ran, their army having been defeated in almost every major encounter. Still, these insurgents and their leader would not give in or give up. Insurgents fighting on their own soil don't lose wars or win wars; they merely outlast the occupying force.
And that's the way it's going in Iraq on this Independence Day weekend. The latest technology, laser-aimed missiles and supersonic jets, pound the insurgents daily, wipe out nests of them, kill scores in powerful sweeps of villages - and victory is nowhere in sight.