What’s wrong with this picture? Reports death-squad activity one day; killed by a US sniper the next

Motto of the sniper: One shot, one kill. It worked with Yasser Salihee. A single, well-aimed shot to the head killed him.



US Knight Ridder Exposes Systematic Torture, Murder Iraqi Sunnis; Writer Pays With Life


Jun 29, 2005

By Muhammad Abu Nasr, Free Arab Voice; Edited For Publication By JUS

Months after the stories began to surface in uncensored press, now American Knight Ridder newspaper has reported that so-called Iraqi security forces have been torturing and killing Iraqi Sunnis.

A story by Tom Lasseter and Yasser Salihee written for Knight Ridder was published on Monday 27 June 2005 and reported that “days after Iraq’s new Shi‘i-led [puppet] government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital’s central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.”
( http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/119
99355.htm )

The American agency reported that Fayiq Baqr, the director and chief forensic investigator at the central Baghdad morgue, said that the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases the dead men looked as if they had been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks, beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.”

The American news report said that marks on those bodies were similar to injuries found on prisoners that the so-called Iraqi “ministry for human rights,” prodded by families of victims, rescued from secret prisons run by the “interior ministry” according to family accounts and medical records.

Knight Ridder reported that American occupation authorities and collaborating Iraqi officials said that the so-called police murders are “not being investigated systematically.” The agency said, however, that in dozens of interviews with families and officials, and through a review of medical records a Knight Ridder reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week. They include 12 cases with specific dates, times, names, and witnesses who said they would be willing to come forward if asked to do so by the installed authorities.

The so-called “ministry of the interior,” which oversees the Iraqi police, denied any involvement in the murders, Knight Ridder reported. “But eyewitnesses said that many of the dead were apprehended by large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with [puppet] police markings.” Knight Ridder reported that “The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios, the witnesses said.”

American occupation officials cover up the systematic murders claiming that the victims were killed by resistance fighters dressed as puppet police. American Steven Casteel, a senior US adviser to the so-called “ministry of the interior” and a former American Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence chief, admitted that the puppet forces at times “abused detainees” but denied reports of systematic sectarian abduction and murder by his charges. When Knight Ridder attempted to contact the “interior minister” to get his comment on the reports, the agency was told that the “minister” “could not schedule an interview.”

The so-called “ministry of human rights”, though more accepting of the stories, was similarly evasive about the matter of placing blame for the murders.

Ra‘d Sultan, an official in puppet “ministry of human rights”, whose job is to monitor the treatment of Iraqis in prisons and detention centers, said some “interior ministry” employees have tortured Iraqis whom they suspected of supporting the Resistance.

For one thing, officials in the interior ministry’s intelligence division deny having any detainees, at all, claiming that they only question inmates in Iraqi prisons. But one investigation by the so-called “human rights ministry” found 32 detainees and another found 67 in “interior ministry” intelligence facilities. “The majority of the detainees had been tortured,” Knight Ridder quoted Sultan as saying.

Knight Ridder reported that “most of those who were tortured had their hands cuffed behind their backs, were blindfolded and had been beaten by cords or subjected to electrical shock, Sultan said.” The American news agency noted that “Fayiq Baqr, at the morgue, said the bodies that have been brought to him handcuffed and blindfolded had been similarly abused.”

But when it came to assigning blame for the torture and murder, the human rights official was evasive. Knight Ridder quoted Sultan as saying, “when battered corpses turn up outside ‘interior ministry’ facilities, How can I prove it is the security forces who were guilty of the torture and murder?

While it is evident to forensic investigator Fayiq Baqr what is going on, he too fears to state bluntly what is going on. Knight Ridder reported that “asked who he thought was behind the upsurge in such executions, Baqr said, ‘It is a very delicate subject for society when you are blaming the [puppet] police officers. . . . It is not an easy issue.” But Baqr cites the clear evidence of what is going on: “We hear that they are captured by the police and then the bodies are found killed . . . it’s obviously increasing.”

In fact the abductions, tortures and murders have been increasing at an overwhelming rate. Knight Ridder reported that Baqr said he had been unable to catalog the deaths because so many bodies have been brought through his morgue and because he doesn’t have enough doctors.

Before March 2003, he said, the morgue handled 200 to 250 suspicious deaths a month, about 16 of which included firearm injuries. He said he now sees 700 to 800 suspicious deaths a month, with some 500 having firearm wounds.

Many Iraqis say the giveaway that the abductors are at least connected to the police is the preponderance of reports involving Land Cruisers, Glocks and other expensive equipment.

Knight Ridder reported that on May 5, for example, 14 Sunni farmers were picked up from an east Baghdad vegetable market. The farmers had driven to the capital from al-Mada’in, a town south of Baghdad where the month before the puppet regime had concocted a false story about Resistance fighters kidnapping and executing Shi‘a – a story that later proved to be fabricated in an operation blamed on Iranian intelligence.

The bodies of the farmers were discovered in shallow graves the next day, Knight Ridder reported. They had been blindfolded and tortured, and their hands had been cuffed behind their backs.

In separate interviews this week, Knight Ridder reported, two men who were at the east Baghdad market at the time said they saw a large group of puppet police detain the farmers.

“A patrol of more than 10 police vehicles drove up and parked,” said ‘Ali Karim, a fruit vendor. “They were running through the street with their guns, saying that the farmers had a car bomb with them. They pushed them against the walls and asked them for their IDs.”

Knight Ridder reported that another vendor, Ahmed ‘Adil, gave a similar account in a separate interview.

“We were sitting,” Knight Ridder reported ‘Adil as saying, “and the [puppet] police cars pulled up and spread in different directions. A neighborhood guard asked the [puppet] police what they were doing - he said these are just farmers - and the police said don’t get involved, they have a car bomb with them.”

A brigadier general in the so-called “interior ministry,” who spoke to Knight Ridder on the condition of anonymity, said his brother was taken during a large raid on May 14 in his working-class Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad. The brother’s body was found a day later, bearing signs of torture.

The general, who was not present when his brother was detained, said he canvassed the neighborhood and interviewed one family after the next.

The descriptions of the abductors were identical in every case, he said: They came in white police Toyota Land Cruisers, wore [puppet] police commando uniforms, flak vests and helmets. They also had Glocks.

Knight Ridder reported that the general said he had tried, through the “interior ministry,” to find out which commando unit was in that neighborhood when his brother disappeared. He also said colleagues have told him that his own life is now in danger.
A day before the general’s brother disappeared in west Baghdad, Anwar Jasim, a Sunni welder at the puppet so-called “Iraqi ministry of industry and minerals,” went missing from his south Baghdad home.

Knight Ridder reported that Jasim’s family said he was taken by a large group of men dressed and equipped like puppet police commandos.

Another man taken in Jasim’s neighborhood, a local grocer who gave his name as Abu Ahmad, said he was taken to the same detention facility as Jasim. While he was there, he said, he and other men sat on the floor blindfolded and handcuffed. They listened to other prisoners screaming.

When the other prisoners were brought back into the room, Abu Ahmad said, they said they’d been pummeled with long wooden staffs.

“When we were in detention, they put blindfolds and handcuffs on us. On the second day, the soldiers were saying, ‘He’s dead,’” said Abu Ahmad. “Later, we found out it was Anwar.”

Knight Ridder reported that the abductors dropped Jasim’s body at Baghdad’s al-Yarmuk hospital the next day, hospital staffers said. According to hospital records, Jasim had a bullet wound in the back of his head and cuts and bruises on his abdomen, back and neck.

The man in charge of the al-Yarmuk morgue, who gave his name as Abu ‘Amir, said he remembers the day the commandos brought Jasim’s corpse.

“The commandos told me to keep the body outside of the refrigerator so that the dogs could eat it because he’s a terrorist and he deserves it,” Abu ‘Amir said, according to the Knight Ridder Reporters.

The killings didn’t stop in May, Knight Ridder noted.

Sa‘di Khalif’s body was also found at al-Yarmuk. The 52-year-old Sunni, along with his brother Muhammad, was taken from his home in western Baghdad on June 10. His abductors rode up in pickup trucks painted with Iraqi puppet police insignia, his family said. About 10 came into the house, while about twice as many fanned out in the street outside, forming a security perimeter. They had radios, uniforms, flak vests and helmets, family members said.

“The doctor told us he was choked and tortured before they shot him,” said Ahmad Khalif, one of Sa‘di’s brothers. “He looked like he had been dragged by a car.”

Muhammad Khalif, 47, also beaten and shot, still had on metal handcuffs at the al-Yarmuk morgue.

The Knight Ridder report concluded by noting that Yasser Salihee was a special correspondent who worked on the report. He was shot and killed last week in Baghdad in circumstances that remain unclear. Special correspondent Mohammed al Dulaimy also contributed to the report from Baghdad, Knight Ridder added.


“Yasser Salihee, 30, was killed while driving alone in Baghdad on June 24, his day off. A single bullet pierced his windshield and struck him in the head. It appeared that a U.S. sniper shot him.” - The Guardian, June 30, 2005
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5110207,
00.html )

"stay the crooked course"

June 29, 2005
Bush, Ft. Bragg and "Disassemble"
Stay the Crooked Course

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA Analyst

The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would "raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks." Kudos for that insight! Better three years late than never, I suppose.

Forget the documentary evidence (the Downing Street minutes) that the war on Iraq was fraudulent from the outset. Forget that the U.S. and U.K. starting pulverizing Iraq with stepped-up bombing months before president or prime minister breathed a word to Congress or Parliament. Forget that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his merry men-his co-opted, castrated military brass-have no clue regarding what U.S. forces are up against in Iraq. The president insists that we must stay the course.

As was the case in Vietnam, the Iraq war is being run by civilians innocent of military experience and disdainful of advice from the colonels and majors who know which end is up. Aping the president's practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks-men who "kiss up and kick down," in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, describing UN-nominee John Bolton's modus operandi at the State Department. So when the president assures us, as he did yesterday, that he will be guided by the "sober judgment of our military leaders" he is referring to the castrati.

This is all lost on doting congresspeople like Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who has been around long enough to know better than to recite oxymorons. Most striking last week was his quixotic appeal to the military's top brass to give a candid assessment of the situation.

Is there no top military official-active-duty or retired-around to tell it like it is? Active-duty? No. Retired? Sure there are. But the latter get little or no ink or airtime in our domesticated media. There are, Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, for example, or Gen. Brent Scowcroft (USAF), who was national security adviser to George H. W. Bush and, until this year, Chair of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. If their remarks are reported at all, one must dig deep into the inside pages to find them.


A General with the Courage to Speak Truth

More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (US Army, ret), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of "staying the course" in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks.

Her is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV's Panorama program:

"When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties.

"When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Half-way down he says, 'I am still on course.' Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course...

"Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism."

At Fort Bragg yesterday, the president spoke of the need to "prevent al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends." Too late, Mr. President, has no one told you that you've succeeded in accomplishing that yourself?

Gen. Odom, now professor at Yale and senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, does not confine his criticism to the president, Rumsfeld, and the malleable generals they have promoted. Odom has also been highly critical of leaders of the intelligence community, an area he knows intimately, having served as chief of Army Intelligence (1981-85) and Director of the National Security Agency (1985-88). Commenting on the farcical pre-election-campaign "intelligence reform" last summer, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, observing:

"No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents."

Odom is spot-on. In my 27 years of experience as an intelligence analyst I learned the painful lesson that lack of professionalism is the inevitable handmaiden of sycophancy. Military and intelligence officers and diplomats who bubble to the top in this kind of environment do not tend to be the real professionals.

And who pays the price? The young men and women we send off to a misbegotten, unnecessary war.

When the president spoke last evening, Medal of Freedom winners former CIA director George Tenet, Gen. Tommy Franks, and Ambassador Paul Bremer no doubt were cheering him on from their armchairs. A most unsavory spectacle.

If they question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a contributor to Imperial Crusades, CounterPunch's hot new book on the Afghan/Iraq wars. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org

war with iran --already started says scott ritter

The US war with Iran has already begun
Scott Ritter, Aljazeera.net

Sunday 19 June 2005 - Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war.

On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary."

We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.

These operations were designed to degrade Iraqi air defence and command and control capabilities. They also paved the way for the insertion of US Special Operations units, who were conducting strategic reconnaissance, and later direct action, operations against specific targets inside Iraq, prior to the 19 March 2003 commencement of hostilities.

President Bush had signed a covert finding in late spring 2002, which authorised the CIA and US Special Operations forces to dispatch clandestine units into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The fact is that the Iraq war had begun by the beginning of summer 2002, if not earlier.

This timeline of events has ramifications that go beyond historical trivia or political investigation into the events of the past.

It represents a record of precedent on the part of the Bush administration which must be acknowledged when considering the ongoing events regarding US-Iran relations. As was the case with Iraq pre-March 2003, the Bush administration today speaks of "diplomacy" and a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the Iranian question.

But the facts speak of another agenda, that of war and the forceful removal of the theocratic regime, currently wielding the reigns of power in Tehran.

As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people.

"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.

By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.

But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.

As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream.

The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.

The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.

Perhaps the adage of "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" has finally been embraced by the White House, exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror.

But the CIA-backed campaign of MEK terror bombings in Iran are not the only action ongoing against Iran.

To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.

Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the blinkered Western media, but Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.

The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.

But this is only one use the US has planned for Azerbaijan. American military aircraft, operating from forward bases in Azerbaijan, will have a much shorter distance to fly when striking targets in and around Tehran.

In fact, US air power should be able to maintain a nearly 24-hour a day presence over Tehran airspace once military hostilities commence.

No longer will the United States need to consider employment of Cold War-dated plans which called for moving on Tehran from the Persian Gulf cities of Chah Bahar and Bandar Abbas. US Marine Corps units will be able to secure these towns in order to protect the vital Straits of Hormuz, but the need to advance inland has been eliminated.

A much shorter route to Tehran now exists - the coastal highway running along the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan to Tehran.

US military planners have already begun war games calling for the deployment of multi-divisional forces into Azerbaijan.

Logistical planning is well advanced concerning the basing of US air and ground power in Azerbaijan.

Given the fact that the bulk of the logistical support and command and control capability required to wage a war with Iran is already forward deployed in the region thanks to the massive US presence in Iraq, the build-up time for a war with Iran will be significantly reduced compared to even the accelerated time tables witnessed with Iraq in 2002-2003.

America and the Western nations continue to be fixated on the ongoing tragedy and debacle that is Iraq. Much needed debate on the reasoning behind the war with Iraq and the failed post-war occupation of Iraq is finally starting to spring up in the United States and elsewhere.

Normally, this would represent a good turn of events. But with everyone's heads rooted in the events of the past, many are missing out on the crime that is about to be repeated by the Bush administration in Iran - an illegal war of aggression, based on false premise, carried out with little regard to either the people of Iran or the United States.

Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.

We now know that the war had started much earlier. Likewise, history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran.

Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, and author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, to be published by I B Tauris in October 2005.

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.




english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7896BBD4-28AB-48BA-A949-2096A02F864D.htm

but if "president" cheney is in the hospital who is running the government ?

this guy who lives in the whitehouse?



or this one?

cheney in hospital ?

Cheney Checks Into Vail Hospital...

Huffington Post | permalink


Vice President Dick Cheney was taken to the cardiac unit of the Vail Valley Medical Center Friday. Contrary to Associated Press reports that he went to see orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Steadman, at the Steadman Hawkins clinic for a knee injury, Vice President Cheney passed through the Steadman Hawkins clinic and the Colorado Mountain Medical Center to get to the cardiac unit to see Dr. Jack Eck and his team. The Vice President checked into the hospital under the name of Dr. Hoffman.


Posted June 24, 2005 10:06 PM

celebrities homeless--did latest victims lose their dwelling under supreme court's new interpretation of eminent domain?

could even shopping carts of the homeless be in jeopardy under the supreme court's ruling expanding government's powers of 'eminent domain' ?

further erosion of protections for average citizens under the bill of rights

the supreme court ruling that the concept of eminent domain under the fifth amendment now means that the government can force private citizens to sell their land or homes not just to advance the public interest --not just to build projects like roads , bridges, highways , railroads , subways and other public infrastructure, but the supreme court's new ruling means that federal state and local government may now also force private citizens to sell their houses , small businesses and land for non-public projects like privately owned office buildings, department stores and stripmalls .

so for the sake of extreme example , if wallmart , starbucks or mc donald's wants to build where your house is--- under this new supreme court interpretation , if your local government agrees with walmart , starbucks or mc donalds---then you can be forced to sell .

---the property owning poor are going to get slapped around by this---especially if they are like the black homeowners in the 80s and 90s --living on prime locations that the cities wanted to redevelop .

the black home owners living in key locations that were desired by big urban planning interests for re-development saw their property values rapidly plummet because of the crack cocaine epidemics and the dramatic increases in crime violence and destruction of economic and family life in their communities .

this plummeting in property values was followed up in some cases by big developers coming in and buying up black properties for pennies on the dollar ---the areas then were re-developed into yuppie economically upscale communities the original black families could no longer afford to live in --unless they had been paid full market value for their old homes .

in effect , this new supreme court decision means that a wealthy private company or wealthy private developer can finance a mayor's or city council member's election campaign , put into office candidates favorable to the developers plans and then use eminent domain to force homeowners to sell their properties to the city for use by the wealthy developer for their own private projects. .

this is basically , simply a transfer of little people's property into the hands of the wealthy for whatever projects the wealthy choose.

it wouldn't take much for the developers to figure out that the lower the appraisals given on the
houses or land they wish to acquire , the greater the final profit margin . once they gain control of the property appraisal process --if they haven't already --then they've got the whole game in their pocket.

the potential for abuse in this matter against the poor and middle classes is tremendously great.

in effect government becomes a transferring agent of little people's property to the wealthy .

--whether the little people want to sell or not , government has the go-ahead from the supreme court to force them to sell .


i heard yesterday that 97% of the citizen's from new london, conneticut who brought this case to the supreme court , trying to save their homes from a privately owned city development project , were black ...so we know the name of that tune .

in the 60s and 70s , historic black business districts in places like detroit were bought up by the city and state under the eminent domain principle. in detroit eminent domain was used in order to build a federal inter-state highway that was deliberately planned through the city's black business section --in part to get rid of successful black competition to larger mainstream businesses .

this new , much wider interpretation of eminent domain could easily be used against small and minority business owners by big corporations as well as being used against small home owners and small land owners to promote --"development"-- and in some cases of businesses , to eliminate competition .

lynching victim --mc duffie county , georgia 1960 ---apology not accepted 

night rider--1908 lyncher of black family and white lawyer-- tennessee--apology not accepted --eat lead punk... 

photo from official "citadel" military academy yearbook-- young klansmen posing with rope around victim's neck---may each of these racist terrorists rot in hell --ideally after having died extremely slowly from a lead blizzard--apology not accepted 

lynching of abram smith aged19 and thomas shipp aged 18 marion , indiana 1930 --apology not accepted 

lynching of lint shaw --rayston ,georgia 1936--apology not accepted 

lynching of rubin stacey 1935 ft. lauderdale , fla.--apology not accepted 

3 men lynched 1920 -- deluth , minnesota --apology not accepted . 

apology not accepted---too little too late.

Senate approves lynching resolution

By Ana Radelat
Clarion-Ledger Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers demonstrated overwhelming support Monday for a resolution that apologizes for the Senate's failure to do anything to stop lynchings that killed thousands of people over more than eight decades.

About 80 of the 100 members of the Senate co-sponsored the resolution. But Republican Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott were not among them, even though Mississippi led the nation in the numbers of lynchings.

The resolution passed on the same day juror selection began in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, charged with murder in the 1964 slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba County.

Sponsored by Sens. George Allen, R-Va., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., the resolution pointed out that 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century, and three were approved by the House. But the Senate failed to pass any of them.

Jenny Manley, Cochran's press secretary, said the senator is on a congressional trip to the Paris Air Show and could not be reached for comment.

Lott also could not be reached for comment.

Landrieu said she was moved to sponsor the resolution by a book of photographs of lynchings called "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America."

The resolution, approved by voice vote, "expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regret of the Senate to the descendants of the victims of lynchings, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded to all citizens of the United States."

One co-sponsor, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chided colleagues who did not sign on to the resolution.

Lynchings took hold during Reconstruction after the Civil War. From 1882 to 1968, there were 4,743. They occurred in nearly every state. Four out of five victims were black. According to the Tuskegee Institute archives, there were 581 lynchings in Mississippi, followed by 531 in Georgia, 391 in Texas, 391 in Louisiana and 347 in Alabama.

Simon Wright, the cousin of Mississippi lynching victim Emmett Till, also came to Washington to witness the event. Till was killed for allegedly whistling at the wife of a white man, Roy Bryant.

Wright, now 62, was sleeping next to the 14-year-old Till on the night of Aug. 28, 1955, when he was awakened by two men he identified as Bryant and J.W. Milam. The men took Till away. Till's mutilated body was later found in a river.

Wright said he felt terror that night, then sadness, outrage and hopelessness. He said the Senate apology was "not enough, but it's a step in the right direction."

"Some people say, 'Don't open old wounds,' " Wright said. "But they weren't wounded. I was."



*what cowardly little punks they are! --too scared to go on record as voting for or against issuing an apology for the senate never having stood up against lynching . america's leadership vacillates between acting like either a bunch of spineless milquetoasts , or a gang of blatant , dimwitted thugs , thieves and murderers...

Anti-lynching vote
Critics: Frist vetoed roll call
> Senators were not required to go on record on issue

> By SCOTT SHEPARD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> Published on: 06/15/05

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.

As dozens of descendants of lynching victims watched from the Senate gallery, the resolution was adopted Monday evening under a voice vote procedure that did not require any senator's presence.

Eighty senators, however, had signed as co-sponsors, putting themselves on record as supporting the resolution. By the time the Senate recessed Tuesday evening, five other senators had added their names as co-sponsors, leaving 15 Republicans who had not.

Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was among the 80 sponsors listed Monday night. Chambliss' name was added to the list of co-sponsors after the resolution was adopted, according to the Congressional Record. But his office said he had signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor before Monday's vote.

The resolution was adopted under what is called "unanimous consent," whereby it is adopted as long as no senator expresses opposition.

But the group that was the driving force behind the resolution had asked Frist for a formal procedure that would have required all 100 senators to vote. And the group had asked that the debate take place during "business hours" during the week, instead of Monday evening, when most senators were traveling back to the capital.

Frist declined both requests, the group's chief counsel, Mark Planning, said Tuesday evening.

"It was very disappointing" that Frist handled the matter the way he did, Planning said. "Other groups have gotten roll call votes, so there was nothing new to this, nothing different that we were asking for."

Bob Stevenson, Frist's chief spokesman, said Tuesday evening the procedure the majority leader established was "requested by the sponsors."

The chief sponsors of the resolution, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.), disputed that assertion.

Landrieu said Monday before the resolution was adopted she would have preferred a roll call vote but had to accept the conditions set by Senate leaders.

When Stevenson was informed of Landrieu's statement, he amended his comments to say "at least one of the sponsors" had requested adoption on a voice vote and in combination with a resolution related to Black History Month.

Allen press secretary David Snepp took issue with Stevenson. "I don't know why Bob Stevenson would characterize it that way," he said.

Snepp said Allen, since agreeing to sponsor the resolution, had insisted that he preferred a roll call vote.

Planning agreed that Landrieu and Allen "made every effort" to have the resolution debated during the day, when it would attract the most attention from the public, and with a formal roll call of the senators.

"We were very perplexed" that Frist would not agree to that, Planning said.

Jan Cohen, the wife of former Defense Secretary William Cohen and one of the key figures in the Committee for a Formal Apology, expressed outrage over the lack of a roll call vote.

"America is home of the brave, but I'm afraid there may be a few cowards who have to cower to their very narrow-minded and backward, hateful constituency," Cohen told ABC News. "They're hiding out, and it's reminiscent of a pattern of hiding out under a hood, in the night, riding past, scaring people."



Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/0605/15natlynch.html

"bush lied people died" 

"We attacked Iraq Because of 9/11 ; Is clearly a Lie"

most of the links have expired but the few left are good examples of how the gang of bush repeated the big lie about the so-called saddam /al qaeda alliance until the gullible in the american public actually believed it .




We attacked Iraq Because Of 9/11: Is Clearly A lie

Let us remind our President of some of his other statements on this issue.

06/19/05

Sky News (London): "One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?"

Bush: "I can't make that claim.'
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/2003013...

Bush: No evidence Saddam Hussein involved in Nine-Eleven attacks
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1447698

Rice: U.S. Never Said Saddam Was Behind 9/11
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/983821/posts

Rumsfeld sees no link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-16-rums...

Wolfowitz: Iraq Was Not Involved In 9-11 Terrorist Attacks, No Ties To Al-Qaeda
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4372.ht...

Brent Scowcroft, one of the Republican Party’s most respected foreign policy advisors;

"Don't Attack Saddam. It would undermine our antiterror efforts. There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id...

Allies Find No Links Between Iraq, Al Qaeda

"What I'm asked is if I've seen any evidence of that. (Iraq links to al Qaeda) And the answer is: I haven't.” -British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who supports U.S. invasion & occupation of Iraq.]
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-noqaeda4nov04,0,4538810.st...

British Intelligence agencies, MI6 and MI5

A dossier prepared by the two agencies “showed no discernible links between Iraq and al-Qaida,”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.j...

Richard Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who lead an internal review of the CIA's prewar intelligence;

“the CIA has not found any proof of operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.”
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?pid=8...

The White House’s own publication, A Decade of Defiance and Deception, makes no mention of Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.htm...

The 2002 congressional joint intelligence committee’s report on the Sept. 11 attacks revealed that the Bush administration had no evidence to support its claim that Saddam’s government was supporting al-Qaeda.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030723-064812-949...

No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ID/3909150

According to a "top secret British document", quoted by the BBC, "there is nothing but enmity between Iraq and Al Qaeda." The BBC said the leak came from intelligence officials upset that their work was being used to justify war." (quoted in Daily News, New York, 6 February 2003).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html

Three former Bush administration officials who worked on intelligence and national security issues have told National Journal that the prewar evidence tying al Qaeda to Iraq was tenuous, exaggerated, and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0803/080803nj2.htm

"…analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said."

and…

"At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden|s network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D1EF8...

This is consistent with what they were saying back in October 2002.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=artic...

"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."
-Richard Clarke, former terrorism chief under bush.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/mai...

Iraq-al Qaeda ties have not been found

Bush administration hyped sketchy and false evidence to push for war
The Bush administration’s claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda — one of the administration’s central arguments for a pre-emptive war — appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration’s claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam’s links with al Qaeda, and several key parts of the administration’s case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/2004/03/04/news/na...

Iraq and al Qaeda: What Evidence?
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF...

bush's own hand-picked Republican weapons hunter ISG, Dr. David Kay;

David Kay was on the ground for months investigating the activities of Hussein's regime. He concluded "But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all."

He called a speech where Cheney made the claim there was a link, as being "evidence free."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2...

Israeli intelligence (the Moussad)

“According to Israeli intelligence, Palestinians are still not connected to the global terror network, and neither is Iraq.”
http://www.haaretz.com /

bush's second and final hand-picked Republican weapons hunter ISG, Dr. Charles Dueffler;

Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq, no capability since 1991, no evidence of ties to al Qaeda, no serious threat;
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/06/1096949583...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/i... /

OFFICIAL VERDICT: WHITE HOUSE MISLED WORLD OVER SADDAM-AL QAEDA TIES
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0617-03.htm

No evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties: 9/11 commission
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/06/cheney.911

"CIA Review Finds No Evidence Saddam Had Ties to Islamic Terrorists"
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1005-01.htm

NO ties between Iraq and international terrorists, al-Qaeda or otherwise:

1. Central to the Saddam - al Qaeda connection claim is the assertion that Czech authorities had evidence of a meeting between one of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001.

Both Czech President Vaclav Havel and Czech intelligence refuted this report.
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security...

More than that, so do the FBI and CIA; Only one problem with that story, the FBI pointed out. Atta was traveling at the time between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va. (The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/060203A.shtml

This lie of BushCo's was debunked last year. But to this day, members of the Administration cite the Prague report as evidence of an Iraq - al Qaeda connection.

2. Cheney also claimed that 1993 World Trade Center bombing co-conspirator Abdul Rahman Yasin had received “financing” and “safe haven” from Saddam’s government.

You have to really love this one...yeah he did. Sort of. He was in an Iraqi JAIL from 1994 until shortly before the invasion;

"He was being clothed and fed by them so long as he wore stripes,” joked one U.S. investigator.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067794 /

Yasin had hopped onto a plane for Iraq. He was picked up by the Iraqi police a year later and had been held without a charge placed against him. Iraq had twice offered to deliver him to the United States, but only upon written receipt that Iraq had given him up… "like a receipt for a FedEx package"
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00755.html

but the US refused the offer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2022991.st...

Yasin was picked up by the FBI a few days after the bombing in an apartment in Jersey City, N.J., that he was sharing with his mother. He was so helpful and cooperative, giving the FBI names and addresses, that they released him.

Yasin says he was even driven back home in an FBI car.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/31/60minutes/mai...

The FBI agree, saying they decided to let Yasin go free.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/31/60minutes/mai...

Yasin, whose picture is on the FBI Web site along with Osama bin Laden, is one of President Bush’s 22 most-wanted terrorists.

3. Ansar al-Islam, a radical Kurdish group, whose leader lives a free man in Norway, after 2 FBI interrogations found nothing to even declare him an "enemy combatant".

Of course there's that other pesky little fact, that Ansar al lives in the Kurdish north of Iraq, out of Saddam's control and under Kurdish AND AMERICAN control for the past 13 years.

http://www.iht.com/articles/85957.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO302B.html

Iraq had no ties to al Qaeda, and nothing to do with the 911 attacks; so would a bush-supporting moron please explain why bush is suddenly again LYING by implying Iraq was involved with the 911 attacks?

And yes, his "We went to war because we were attacked..." is clearly a LIE.

Copyright © Information Clearing House. All rights reserved. You may republish under the following conditions: An active link to the original publication must be provided. You must not alter, edit or remove any text within the article, including this copyright notice.

Research for this item by LynnTheDem

representative john conyers 

Congressman Conyers hammers the Washington Post's Dana Milbank

Congressman Conyers hammers the Washington Post's Dana Milbank
John Conyers, Jr., RAW STORY

The following letter was carbon-copied to RAW STORY < http://rawstory.com/ >.

#
June 17, 2005

Mr. Michael Abramowitz, NThe Washington Postational Editor; Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman; Mr. Dana Milbank; The Washington Post < http://www.washingtonpost.com/ >, 1150 15th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20071

Dear Sirs:

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report, "Democrats Play House to Rally Against the War," which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol yesterday. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the lead up to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

In an inaccurate piece of reporting that typifies the article, Milbank implies that one of the obstacles the Members in the meeting have is that "only one" member has mentioned the Downing Street Minutes on the floor of either the House or Senate. This is not only incorrect but misleading. In fact, just yesterday, the Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, mentioned it on the Senate floor. Senator Boxer talked at some length about it at the recent confirmation hearing for the Ambassador to Iraq. The House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, recently signed on to my letter, along with 121 other Democrats asking for answers about the memo. This information is not difficult to find either. For example, the Reid speech was the subject of an AP wire service report posted on the Washington Post website < http://www.washingtonpost.com/ > with the headline "Democrats Cite Downing Street Memo in Bolton Fight". Other similar mistakes, mischaracterizations and cheap shots are littered throughout the article.

The article begins with an especially mean and nasty tone, claiming that House Democrats "pretended" a small conference was the Judiciary Committee hearing room and deriding the decor of the room. Milbank fails to share with his readers one essential fact: the reason the hearing was held in that room, an important piece of context. Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them. Milbank could have written about the perseverance of many of my colleagues in the face of such adverse circumstances, but declined to do so. Milbank also ignores the critical fact picked up by the AP, CNN and other newsletters that at the very moment the hearing was scheduled to begin, the Republican Leadership scheduled an almost unprecedented number of 11 consecutive floor votes, making it next to impossible for most Members to participate in the first hour and one half of the hearing.

In what can only be described as a deliberate effort to discredit the entire hearing, Milbank quotes one of the witnesses as making an anti-semitic assertion and further describes anti-semitic literature that was being handed out in the overflow room for the event. First, let me be clear: I consider myself to be friend and supporter of Israel and there were a number of other staunchly pro-Israel members who were in attendance at the hearing. I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive.

That said, to give such emphasis to 100 seconds of a 3 hour and five minute hearing that included the powerful and sad testimony (hardly mentioned by Milbank) of a woman who lost her son in the Iraq war and now feels lied to as a result of the Downing Street Minutes, is incredibly misleading. Many, many different pamphlets were being passed out at the overflow room, including pamphlets about getting out of the Iraq war and anti-Central American Free Trade Agreement, and it is puzzling why Milbank saw fit to only mention the one he did.

In a typically derisive and uninformed passage, Milbank makes much of other lawmakers calling me "Mr. Chairman" and says I liked it so much that I used "chairmanly phrases." Milbank may not know that I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee from 1988 to 1994. By protocol and tradition in the House, once you have been a Chairman you are always referred to as such. Thus, there was nothing unusual about my being referred to as Mr. Chairman.

To administer his coup-de-grace, Milbank literally makes up another cheap shot that I "was having so much fun that [I] ignored aides' entreaties to end the session." This did not occur. None of my aides offered entreaties to end the session and I have no idea where Milbank gets that information. The hearing certainly ran longer than expected, but that was because so many Members of Congress persevered under very difficult circumstances to attend, and I thought - given that - the least I could do was allow them to say their piece. That is called courtesy, not "fun."

By the way, the "Downing Street Memo" is actually the minutes of a British cabinet meeting. In the meeting, British officials - having just met with their American counterparts - describe their discussions with such counterparts. I mention this because that basic piece of context, a simple description of the memo, is found nowhere in Milbank's article.

The fact that I and my fellow Democrats had to stuff a hearing into a room the size of a large closet to hold a hearing on an important issue shouldn't make us the object of ridicule. In my opinion, the ridicule should be placed in two places: first, at the feet of Republicans who are so afraid to discuss ideas and facts that they try to sabotage our efforts to do so; and second, on Dana Milbank and the Washington Post, who do not feel the need to give serious coverage on a serious hearing about a serious matter-whether more than 1700 Americans have died because of a deliberate lie. Milbank may disagree, but the Post certainly owed its readers some coverage of that viewpoint.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.




rawstory.com/news/2005/Congressman_Conyers_hammers_the_Washington_Posts_D_0617.h
tml

rep. conyers' spotlights bush's pack of lies

Rep. Conyers’ Spotlights Bush’s Pack of Lies


William Hughes

17 Jun 2005


See also

* http://homepage.mac.com/bhughes2/iMovieTheater138.html

License
©Copyright by the author. All rights reserved.

The Downing St. Memo was center stage on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, on June 16, 2005. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) called a hearing to focus on that leaked document, which shows that President George W. Bush, Jr., and his cohorts, were looking to “cook the intelligence” on the Iraqi War. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said Bush is “a liar” and it’s time to bring the troops home!

Washington, D.C. - Rep. John Conyers, Jr., the ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, held a hearing on June 16, 2005, on the “Downing Street Memo.” The leaked British document is “a smoking gun,” in that it shows that, as early as July, 2002, President George Bush([search]), Jr., and others in his administration, had decided to remove Iraq([search])’s Saddam Hussein from power, via a preemptive military invasion of that country. In order to justify that action, Bush and his cohorts are suspected of putting in motion a plot, to “fix the policy...around the intelligence and the facts... dealing with the conjunction of terrorism and WMD...” In other words, they stand accused of “cooking the intelligence” to suit their own warmongering agenda!

Rep. Conyers, from Michigan, wanted to hold his hearing on Capitol Hill, in one of the large House office building rooms, but Republicans on his committee balked. Instead, he was forced to move his forum to a smaller room, “HC-9,” located in the Capitol itself. Nevertheless, 50 members of Congress showed up to lend their support to his efforts and almost every major news organization was present. The hearing lasted from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM. I understand it included stellar testimony from a number of witnesses. I could only get into the hearing for a few minutes because of the size of the crowd, however I did make it to a rally afterwards at Lafayette Park, which was planned by progressive groups around the hearing. Fortunately, C-Span is planning to rebroadcast the Downing St. Memo hearing at a later date. Many who spoke at the congressional hearing earlier in the day, also showed up to talk at the Lafayette Park rally in front of the White House that followed.

One of the witnesses at that hearing and the rally was Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star Mother. Sheehan said, “I think maybe, (after the hearing today), that I’m going to get some justice for Casey (her son, who was killed in Iraq), and for the 1,713 other brave Americans and the tens of thousands, uncounted and countless Iraqi people who have been killed by lies and by the betrayal of our country.” She continued, “President George W. Bush doesn’t deserve our allegiance. He doesn’t deserve to go back to Crawford, Texas. He deserves to go to prison for what he did.”

The Downing St. Memo, a/k/a “Downing St. Minutes,” has gained such notoriety since its release that a number of newspapers in the U.S. have felt compelled to publish its contents in full. (1) More once-secret British documents relevant to the insidious deception campaign of the Bush-Cheney Gang have also recently been released. (2) Meanwhile, polls show that support for the Iraqi War is declining in the country, and that at least one GOP congressman, Rep. Walter Jones of N.C., has come out against the war.

Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange was also a speaker at the rally. She said, “The smoking gun is the Downing St. Memo! We will not let the Downing St. Memo get away from us. We want this to be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq. And, the beginning and the end of the Bush administration!”

On May 5, 2005, the sponsor of this hearing, Rep. Conyers, and 88 other congressional members, demanded in a letter to Bush, that he answer five questions that related to the leaked British document. To date, Bush has stonewalled that request. Meanwhile, a grass roots drive, via the Internet, had secured over 560,000 signatures of concerned citizens in support of Conyers’ letter. That Petition, with the signatures, was personally delivered, at 6: 15 PM last night, to the guards at a White House gate, on Pennsylvania Ave., by Rep. Conyers, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Diane E. Watson (D-CA), Rep. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and other congressional members.

Rep. Waters also spoke to the rally at Lafayette Park, whose crowd of enthusiasts numbered in the hundreds. She said, “Today is a new beginning. We are now focusing on the ‘big lie.’ The Congress has come alive. We are going to take on this president in a real way. We are going to take it to the streets.” Waters then emphasized that President Bush was “a liar.” She said, “There were never any WMD.” She also blasted V.P. Dick Cheney and Secretary of State, Condi Rice. Waters let the crowd know that fifty members of the House have already signed on to the new “Out of Iraq Caucus.” She finished by saying, “We’re going to bring our troops home!”

From the beginning, Rep. Conyers, almost alone in the Congress, has been a sharp critic of Bush’s rush to war with Iraq. On March 15, 2003, Conyers was one of the keynote speakers at a massive anti-war rally on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C. At that time, only days before Bush was to launch his criminal enterprise against Iraq, Conyers said it was the U.S., not Iraq, that needed “a regime change.” He labeled the Bush-Cheney Gang as one that has shown great disdain for the “Constitution and the democratic process.”

Meanwhile, in a related matter, on the legal front, a Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, has been indicted in an espionage case involving Israel. Ex-employees of AIPAC, a powerful lobbying group for Israel, are suspected of being involved in the case. The investigation is continuing. There is speculation that this probe could lead to Neocon operatives within the U.S. government, who were also “cooking the evidence,” with respect to Iraq! (3)

Rep. Conyers said at the rally, “This is great, historic day in America. We have finally broken through the stonewalling that has been going on in the Congress. Now, we were told one thing in America (about Iraq), but in London they were planning a war all the time...We need more hearings, more questions and more marches and more protests. This is only a beginning, which is going to turn this sad and terrible war around,” he predicted.

Finally, if it could be proven that Bush deliberately lied to the Congress on March 18, 2003, about the reasons he gave it for going to war with Iraq, it would be an impeachable offense under the U.S. Constitution. To date, 1,713 American military personnel have died in that unjust and illegal conflict and over $177 billion has been wasted. In addition, under the precedents established at Nuremberg, Bush, and other members of his administration, who may have had conspiratorial roles in that supposed campaign of deception-like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and others, too-could, if the cases against them are properly established, be indicted and tried for War Crimes, under International Law.

© William Hughes 2005

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (Iuniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at: liamhughes (at) comcast.net.

Notes:

1. Baltimore Sun, June 15, 2005.
2. afterdowningstreet.org.
3. www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6316

bush told blair 9 days after 9-11 "Tony we're going to Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and go right into Iraq"---ray mc govern quoting memoirs of UK ambassador christopher myer 

more 'smoking gun' from ray mc govern

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june05/warmemos_6-16.html

"I would go back to an earlier conversation, and this happened on the 20th of September, 2001, so nine days after 9/11. This involved Tony Blair, who was in Washington having dinner with the president. How do we know about this? We know this because Christopher Meyer, the UK ambassador, was there at the dinner, and he's written his memoirs.

And what does he say? The conversation went like this. President Bush: Tony we're going to Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and go right into Iraq, are you with me Tony? Are you with me? And Christopher Meyer says my goodness, it was really, that Tony was sort of nonplused but he said yes sir, I'm with you, Mr. President. "



*note from this blogger -- observe that the timeline bush mentions also hints at 9-11 foreknowledge .

9 +14 = 23

how could a major operation like the war in afghanistan be ready with thousands of troops and their equipment in position in 23 days ?

it took a six month build-up for the first gulf war . afghanistan is even farther and more remote...the Us response should clearly have taken longer than the 23 days bush projected to blair .

one of the infamous iraqi mobile labs "capable of launching wmd against the UK and europe in 45 minutes" -- in actuality , harmless weather balloon equipment --sold to iraq by the UK ! how's that for selective amnesia and deliberately slanting the evidence ? 

and what's wrong over at npr?

national public radio's intelligence correspondent mary louise kelly covered john conyer's hearings and does as writer joe reinhart claims , ignore completely ray mc govern's testimony.

she refers to the 4 people giving testimony as "not an unbiased panel"--- "the witnesses--we heard from 4 witnesses --cindy sheehan who has been outspoken in protesting the bush administration's policies ... a boston lawyer who opposes the bush administration ,and also from joe wilson who of course is the former US ambassador who's been very critical of the bush administration and has actually written a book titled 'the politics of truth inside the lies that led to war', so this was not an unbiased panel"


her "unbiased" reporting on congressman conyers' hearings are available for listening at NPR's program "all things considered "

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4706664


she refers to the people interested or involved in the downing street memo investigation primarily as "a strong herd of liberal bloggers" but ray mcgovern 27 year veteran of cia--if my memory is correct-- did the daily cia morning briefings for the first president bush--making mc govern hardly a "liberal".

"a strong herd of liberal bloggers of anti-war demonstrators and of politicians --as we saw from today's hearing -who are determined not to let this story die and they have been very successful in the 6 weeks since this memo first came to light in getting the media to pay attention"--- does she use the term "herd" as in mindless cows or sheep following blindly ?

or does kelly mean citizens determined that the media finally do it's job in a democracy and cover a story that the media's tried to ignore since the downing street memo first came out

she repeats the whitehouse line of john conyers being a member of congress who voted against the war and is merely "re-hashing an old debate"

interesting to note is that the republican-controlled congress recently cut by 25 percent the funding for public broadcasting --republicans citing the "liberal bias" of pbs as their reasoning ---this coverage , or better yet miscoverage of this story by npr shows that the exact opposite is the case ---the public media supposed to be most unbiased ,is found to be blatantly covering up for the bush administration ...npr is really sinking to new lows.



what's worse is that mary louise kelly repeats almost verbatim the spin issued by the white house in response to the charges.

"press secretary scott mccllean ...he insisted again the focus of the president is gonna be not on the past but on the future in trying to look ahead in iraq ...the whitehouse of course has been determined to have the opposite outcome (on citizen demands for congressional investigation into the downing street memo ), to let this die away and they have insisted repeatedly that there is nothing new in this memo , they were simply investigating the options for war in the summer of 2002 --no decision had been made ."--npr intelligence correspondent mary louise kelly

she slanders the hearings as "polarized" on party lines --reminds listeners that no republican members of congress were there.

she slanders the four witnesses giving testimony to the hearing as- "not unbiased"... she slanders representative conyers by repeating whitehouse spin about him being originally opposed to the war and "rehashing old debate" and in effect also slanders, by calling them a "herd of liberal bloggers" , the more than 500,000 citizens who signed conyers' internet based petition after the downing street memo came out --demanding congressional hearings into whether bush deliberately slanted the facts on iraq into lies to convince congress and the public that iraq was a regional and global threat to the Us.

then ms kelly finishes by repeating almost verbatim whitehouse press secretary spin on the matter --the whitehouse repeatedly insists don't focus on the past --look forward ---don't rehash old debate --look forward--the liberal herd may be determined to force investigation of this story -and has forced the butt-kissing media to do so ---but the whitehouse of course has been determined to have the opposite outcome , to let this die away and they have insisted repeatedly that there is nothing new in this memo ,they were simply investigating the options for war in the summer of 2002 --no decision had been made .

this short-memoried npr "intelligence" correspondent ends with a subtly worded , subtly spun and delivered suggestion effective only for the "true bush believers/the still gullible"-- that we are to swallow the now obvious lie --"no decision had been made" in advance to go to war in iraq --yet the facts clearly show the future bush administration neo-cons authored a paper to bill clinton in 1998 demanding regime change in iraq--candidate bush in 1999 said to his biographer that if he got the "chance to invade" he wasn't going to waste it-- and intended to use that "chance" to ramrod his domestic agenda up congress' arse --the first national security council meeting of dub bush's presidency in jan 2001, treasury secretary paul o'neil said in his later book that he was stunned that the first topic was toppling saddam hussein --without mentioning any evidence of any threat or danger he posed--it was assumed that toppling saddam was just something that had to be done --with no reason given---and 9 months later , before the dust from the destroyed world trade center towers had cleared --the bush administration was trying frantically to connect the attacks to saddam hussein--followed up by dick-head cheney's repeated and highly unusual visits to cia headquarters --pressuring intel anaylsts to 'dig deeper' and rejecting evidence to the contrary of the whitehouse wmd/al qaeda lies to justify an invasion of iraq .

*ray mc govern --27 year veteran of cia , co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity (v.i.p.s.) says downing street memo is the smoking gun--watergate-like evidence to sink the bush administration for lying to the american people and lying to congress about reasons for invading iraq 

congressman conyers' hearing on the downing street memo--and what's wrong over at NPR?

note from this blogger *was npr covering for bush administration by ignoring testimony of ray mcgovern?


Friday 17th June 2005
Conyers’ Hearing on The Memo: This evidence is so compelling, it must be investigated- period.


http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6515

Yesterday’s phenomenal testimony at the John Conyers’ Hearing on the Downing Street Memo left many jaws gaping. All news organizations are now faced with a choice, are they going to continue to cover for the Bush Administration, or are they going to cover The Downing Street Memo story like it ought to be covered?

For a taste of the hearing, download this audio clip- Ray McGovern’s opening statement. McGovern 6.5 min, 3mb mp3 (right-click > save as)

Testimony was given by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, Constitutional Lawyer John Bonifaz, and 27yr CIA Veteran Ray McGovern. Thanks to Republican Denial, the hearing was held in a tiny room of the Capitol Basement. Despite the cramped quarters, dozens of Democratic Representatives showed up (122 signed on to Conyers’ letter), but only about 10 could make it into the room at any one time, so they came in shifts.

Republicans across America need to know how their party leaders in DC are acting. From Conyersblog.us:

At approximately 2:15 PM (with hearing scheduled to begin at 2:30), the Republicans scheduled 11 consecutive floor votes, lasting until approximately 4 PM.

Democratic Congressmembers had to take turns shuffling back and forth between the House Floor and the basement all afternoon. In other words, Republican leaders:

* refused to call a full hearing themselves
* refused to give Democrats a room to hold their hearing in
* scheduled a bunch of votes timed to intentionally disrupt the Conyers’ Hearings.

One has to ask, what are the Republican leaders afraid of? The same goes for the national news networks... what are the executives so afraid of?

NPR weighed in with a ludicrous story on All Things Considered, shamelessly pimping the Bush line. This was the most lopsided, pro-bush propaganda piece I’ve heard on NPR- and that’s saying something! They played one 40 sec clip from Cindy Sheehan, then the ’journalist’ downplayed the minutes of a top secret meeting as meaningless. Every twist to the story was bent to favor Bush, it was comical when she said there were four panelists, but listed only three- she ’forgot’ to mention 27yr CIA vet Ray McGovern. NPR listeners, please compare NPR’s version vs. this clip from the hearing itself- Ray McGovern 06-16-05, the fellow NPR’s reporter ’forgot’ to mention.

Of the six national US television networks, only PBS Newshour mentioned Ray McGovern at all- in fact he was a guest on their show, albeit alongside a Bush representative. NBC, ABC, Fox, and CNN ’covered’ the hearing (CBS did not), but for some reason Mr. McGovern was not mentioned in any of their stories. Why? Because Mr. McGovern gave some of the most compelling testimony- from McGovern’s PBS interview:

"The facts here are this: On July 23, 2002, Richard Dearlove, the head of Britain’s CIA, came back from a long visit to Washington where he consulted with the top U.S. officials including George Tenet, his opposite number. His big news was threefold: There had been a major change and now war was seen as inevitable. The president was determined to remove Saddam Hussein by force, and force regime change that way; that this was to be, in quotes, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.

Now let me translate that from British English -- justified by the thought that Iraq has all this weapons of mass destruction, and is likely to give it to terrorists. And finally, when Jack Straw, the foreign minister said, well, the evidence on weapons of mass destruction is rather thin was his word, Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence says, no problem; the intelligence and the facts are being fixed around the policy.

This is documentary. This is a secret minutes of this meeting prepared the same day; it’s of a different species of all the other circumstantial evidence we have that the president had long since decided to do war. And so the circumstances, you can forget circumstantial, we have a flaming -- we have a smoking gun here, and we have something equivalent to the Nixon tapes on Watergate."

John Bonifaz, lawyer and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, said the lack of interest by congressional Republicans in the Downing Street memo is like Congress during Nixon’s presidency saying "we don’t want" the Watergate tapes.

This was one of the key points made at the hearing:
The evidence is so compelling, it must be investigated- period.

Any failure to do so is a failure to uphold the Constitution. There is no legal or logical grounds not to investigate- the only reason is to protect Bush and Co.

Republican Congressman have been put into a tough position- do they continue to side with Bush when the evidence is so damning? All the evidence indicates that Bush and Cheney deliberately lied to start they war, can they really remain silent in the face of such damning testimony? If they do, then these Congressmen and their media counterparts may also be held accountable in the future.


by : Joe Reinhart
Friday 17th June 2005

"counting heroes"

Counting heroes, but by whose measure for an Iraq death toll?

By PIERRE TRISTAM
ESSAYS

Last update: June 14, 2005

When I saw the headline over a brief editorial in Friday's Wall Street Journal -- "12,000 Heroes" -- I thought the headline referred to Americans wounded in Iraq: Finally, the major media were beginning to pay attention to a more complete picture of the carnage in Iraq. I was wrong. So was the Journal's headline, which was actually referring to Iraqi civilians killed in the last 18 months. The Journal was calling the dead "heroes" because it was buying into Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr's claim that those civilians were killed exclusively by insurgents. Strange. On Sept. 24, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported that "operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis -- most of them civilians -- as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry." Health and Interior must have different priorities.

Here's a clue as to why. The health ministry's numbers are culled from hospitals in 15 provinces. Its leadership is neither high-profile nor political (yet). Interior's Bayan Jabr is a Shiite activist who joined the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iran during the Saddam years, then headed the council's office in Syria. The council's military branch is the Badr militia, which, as Knight Ridder reported last week, "has gained enormous power since Iraq's January elections and now is accused of conducting a terror campaign against Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes kidnappings, threats and murders." The Badr militia is devoted to the destruction of Sunnis with the same blind fanaticism that Hamas is devoted to the destruction of Israel. Badr is supplied and trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which also supplies and trains Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia also big on destroying Israel and classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Leave it to what goes for American foresight in Iraq to tap Jabr as a minister despite his history of anti-Sunni militancy. Jabr may be playing an even more divisive, if not outright violent, role now as one of Badr's most powerful politicos in Iraq. Of course he'll blame every death on the insurgency. To the Journal's editorial board though, Bayan Jabr playing advocate for civilian deaths is an example of "moral clarity" superior to "some of our own politicians."

Civilians are always any war's cruelest toll. But to call them heroes is crueler still. It assumes that they would have willingly accepted their own sacrifice in a cause they believe in (tell that to a dead five year old's mother), when chances are that, whoever was doing the killing, they couldn't care less about greater causes, let alone America's grab-bag of pseudo-causes since the war began in 2003. They're victims, pointless, wasted victims whose numbers, wherever they are, have long ago reached massacre proportions. The one valid cause to have ended Saddam's reign -- to end his massacres of Iraqis -- is no longer valid.

The figure most often reported this side of insanity is the death toll among American soldiers. That one is grimly accurate. It just hit 1,700. At this rate of two deaths per day, it will reach 2,000 just before Thanksgiving. No mystery what many families will not give thanks for come November 24. Those lost lives, too, are a waste. Domestic news media rarely report the death toll among coalition forces, which includes 185 soldiers, 89 of them British. Or the death toll in Afghanistan, which hit 190 American fatalities last week, 36 of them this year -- a death rate double that of 2002 and 2003. And still President Bush's ministry of information pretends we're losing neither the original war on terror in Afghanistan nor its Gong Show spin-off in Iraq. It takes a village idiot.

What about the other 12,000, the ones I mistook the Journal's headline reference for? Through the end of May, the Department of Defense has tallied up 12,348 American wounded there, a staggering number. "At least as many U.S. soldiers have been injured in combat in this war as in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, or the first five years of the Vietnam conflict, from 1961 through 1965," Atul Gawade wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in December. Soldiers are surviving injuries in greater proportions -- 90 percent in this war compared to 70 percent in World War II and 76 percent in Vietnam. But surviving as what if so many of them are shredded remains of their former selves? Even the number of wounded understates the real toll. Of the 1 million troops who've served in Afghanistan and Iraq so far, a third will need mental health treatment if Vietnam's rates are any indication.

There's heroism in there somewhere, but only in spite of America's folly in Iraq. Trivial compensation for lives lost to a wasteland.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net.

after that "if i have a chance to invade" remark by candidate bush back in 1999, this pic makes you wonder if sometimes there's truth in jest ? 

bush -- an american psycho

The Bush Chronicles revisited -- if you dare
P.M. Carpenter

bush_-_american_psycho.jpeg

June 10, 2005

I had forgotten about published conversations between presidential-candidate George W. Bush and his autobiographical ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, until a reader reminded me via a reprinted article ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm ) from October, 2004. Journalist Herskowitz had met with Bush numerous times in 1999 in preparation for a campaign-puff volume, and much of what he heard and later made public -- though not without genuine reservations -- made him realize that “Bush's true views … and basic essence had eluded the American people.”

Had they ever.

For instance here’s Bush explaining the relationship between domestic and foreign policy with a superficiality that stuns:

One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.

In reading the above musings of candidate Bush I’m unsure which reaction a thoughtful reader experiences more -- disgust or sadness. Both are pronounced. The future president comes off as a cross between a cold-blooded opportunist willing to expend others’ lives in the pursuit of political goals and an insecure adolescent possessed of a precocious grandeur.

“If I have chance to invade” -- an astounding self-delusion about deploying toy soldiers, not human beings.

Herskowitz saw that Bush regarded human life as an expendable commodity not primarily in the defense of liberty, but in the goal of achieving ideological victory. Bush seemed unreflective on the righteousness of that victory -- just that winning was everything.

As told to Herskowitz, Bush and his advisors were quite impressed -- politically speaking, of course -- with the minor military victories of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Falklands War) and former presidents Ronald Reagan and dear old dad (the first Gulf War was a bad scene, as mentioned, but the Grenada and Panama “campaigns” were terrific political coups). Said Herskowitz of Bush & Co.’s view of Thatcher: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at her and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches." Looking back further, they believed Jimmy Carter's political troubles emerged as the inherent result of a peaceful presidency.

So what a successful presidency came down to for Bush, according to Herskowitz, was this: “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Once accomplished the chief executive will have secured the support needed for ramming through his domestic agenda. Seen through this lens, then, 9/11 for George W. Bush wasn’t so much tragedy as opportunity. He had his “chance to invade.”

One might argue that pre-9/11 circumstances had discredited any inclination for war on Bush’s part. For instance right up until that tragic day he and his congressional friends were shoving through tax cuts at a feverish and wildly successful pace. The domestic policy assistance that a costly foreign war could provide was hardly necessary, let alone desirable.

Yet the Bush interviews reveal that the president was genuinely fixated on war as a policy staple -- it would secure what you might call a permanent revolution. Nothing was to be left to chance. Peace presented a constant political threat.

Now of course we have the Downing Street Memo as proof that we would have war -- justified or not, necessary or not. Thousands of lives for “political capital” -- Bush's “basic essence.”






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