GW Bush nickname-of-the-day
Bomby McSmarmypants, by Nicole at Go Fish.
July 31, 2003
Keeping Track
Thanks to Bohemian Mama, who says it so much better than I could:
"You may have been fooled of late by the various reports in the media of 45 or so deaths of soldiers since the president's May 1 announcement of "Mission Accomplished," because you know that it must be more than that. Well, there is a site keeping track of it all for you: the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. The authors of the site have done extensive research and are keeping close track of the count, which is averaging 1 per day right now. The fact that the media does not portray deaths that happen because of friendly fire or vehicle or weapons accidents as "counting" is disturbing, as if those soldiers did not die on the battlefield or in the course of duty. What's even more disturbing are the 3 possible suicides amongst the dead. It's time for the press to start being honest with the American people about the toll this war is taking on our troops...and by extension, their families and the country that supports them."
GOP Chair Calls On Dean to Open Record To Public
As seen on the fretard site - email from the Vermont Republican Party to their protohuman mouthbreathing dittospanks:
Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jim Barnett today called on former Governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean to open his gubernatorial record to public scrutiny. Dean has sealed his papers for a decade. "If Howard Dean plans to run on his record in Vermont, he needs to share that record with the public" said Barnett. "The American people should not just have to take his word for it." "By refusing to subject his record to public scrutiny, Howard Dean is telling the American people to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Barnett continued.
"If Howard Dean is serious about straight talk, he can start by being upfront with the American people about his tenure as Governor of Vermont. If he doesn't open his record, it obviously means there's something he wants to hide from us," said Barnett.
Ummmmm, fuckwit, I guess that goes for your idiot-in-chief, too:
Poindexter just resigned
Poindexter to Quit Pentagon Post Amid Controversy
Thu July 31, 2003 01:59 PM ET, WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who spearheaded two sharply criticized Pentagon projects, intends to resign from his Defense Department post within weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.
"It's my understanding that he ... expects to, within a few weeks, offer his resignation," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
Poindexter was involved with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's abandoned futures-trading market for predicting assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East, and earlier with the so-called Total Information Awareness program that drew fire from civil rights groups.
Missing the point completely
Misadministration apologist talks out of ass while blowing Karl Rove
Carl Limbacher, of the WH Propaganda Ministry, NoozeMax division, writes:
"The Washington press corps has begun its daily drumbeat over U.S. casualties in Iraq, with reporters citing 'body count' statistics as evidence that the Bush administration is 'losing the peace.' And while even a single U.S. soldier's combat death is one too many, the truth is, more Americans are being killed daily in Washington, D.C. than in Baghdad."
'The theft of your vote is just a chip away'
"Are computerized voting machines a wide-open back door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has moved from the Internet to CNN, to UK newspapers, and the pages of The New York Times. People are cautiously beginning to connect the dots, and the picture that seems to be emerging is troubling." - - I'll say. Very troubling reading, here and here.
Murderous tyrant with WMD terrorizes own people
Stop me if you've heard this before...
"Top U.S. arms negotiator John Bolton described North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Thursday as a tyrannical dictator who lived like royalty while jailing thousands and keeping many hungry in a 'hellish nightmare.'"Gee, sounds familiar, dunnit??
"Bolton also said Kim was mistaken if he thought threats to proliferate nuclear weapons would weaken international resolve to halt his atomic ambitions."So - is it "let's roll!" time? Do we invade, to keep the smoking gun from becoming a smoking mushroom cloud? Are we gonna go in and liberate those poor N. Koreans from their murderous evildoer terrist tyrant? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
"Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom Bolton advises on arms control, told Reuters in Washington Wednesday there was a "distinct possibility" of talks this year."Woop-de-fucking-doo.
Swell.
U.S. Official Says N.Korea a 'Hellish Nightmare' - headline at Yahoo News this morning.
Duh
Rice Feels 'Responsible' for Iraq Uranium Charge - another headline at Yahoo News.
Bah-dum-bum
Bob Hope Obituary Writer for NY Times Died in 2000 - yet another.
What the hell, let's blame Jeb
Florida Homes Mistakenly Given Wastewater - ......
We're definately blaming the Bushies here
US-interviewed Iraqi scientists still deny Iraq pursued WMD: report - one more.
Condo, you ignorant slut
Henry Waxman writes to Condoleezza 'fried' Rice, "Dear Dr. Rice: On June 10, I wrote to you to seek answers to basic questions regarding the Bush Administration's repeated claims that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. I asked why you claimed on national television that no White House officials, 'knew that there were doubts and suspicions' about these claims when both the CIA and the State Department's intelligence bureau had raised significant concerns with White House officials prior to [Bush's] State of the Union address. I also wanted to know who in the Administration had expressed doubts about this information, who had been briefed on those concerns, and what role... Cheney or his office played in this matter. To date, I have received no response to these inquiries. Therefore, I am writing to renew my request that you answer these questions and provide the information requested." - - more here (thanks to democrats.com).
And in a related story...
Dick, you ignorant dickhead
Did Cheney's Secret Energy Meeting Set Stage for Iraq Attack?
Tom Fitton writes for Judicial Watch: "Here is the smoking gun pointing directly to Vice President [sic] Richard Cheney's secret energy company meetings held at the White House in early 2001. Some of the documents of the meetings reveal charts of 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts' and a 'map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals' ... Congress and the press should immediately and thoroughly investigate any linkage between the secret White House deals, the fake California energy crisis, the Enron collapse, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The question to ask is: Did the White House sell US foreign policy to the highest energy company bidder?"
Bush called 'President Shrub' in government memo
WINNIPEG - Saskatchewan's government has tried everything to get the U.S. border opened to its beef: pleading, cajoling and even threatening a ban. Now a researcher for the ruling New Democratic Party has resorted to name-calling, in a memo that described George W. Bush as "Shrub."
Titled, "Re: petition to President Shrub," the bulletin on NDP caucus letterhead was distributed this week to members of the legislature, candidates for Saskatchewan's coming election and MPs in Ottawa. Media outlets received the memo by mistake.
"We were just appalled," said Elwin Hermanson, leader of the opposition Saskatchewan Party, who received the bulletin yesterday. "It should have read 'petition for Resident Stupid'." - link.
Former Fox Reichsfrau's show in sh*tter
CNN dumped Connie Chung last year because her ratings were disappointing - but her replacement, vapid mouthbreather Paula Zahn, is doing even worse.
On average, 761,000 viewers watched Chung's 8 p.m. show last July compared to 579,000 for Zahn's show this month. In all, Zahn's ratings are down 24 percent compared to the same hour last year when Chung was on the air.
Zahn, the Cheney Nooze Network's cheesy $2 million anchor/bimbette, returned to the air in late June after nearly a seven-week absence to take over the 8 p.m. timeslot and launch a new show, tentatively titled, "American Evening."
Zahn has called her program "a show in progress" and said that over the next few months producers will be adding "a new name, surroundings and features."
Unfortunately, adding a new host isn't in the cards. - NY comPost.
Whenever Bush is on the Ropes for Lying and Incompetence, He Starts Up with the "Terrorist Alerts." It's a Proven Pattern. The Man is Not to be Trusted as Far as a Dead Dog Can Spit. - headline at BuzzFlash this morning. The story:
Asked about a day-old Department of Homeland Security warning of the possibility of hijackings, serial liar/bungler pReznit Gameboy said: "The threat is a real threat."
"Now that's enough darn questions. I'm goin' on vacation."
Planned Air Marshal Cuts Meet with Hostility
A Bush misadministration plan to cut back the air marshal program that mushroomed after the Sept. 11 attacks was rejected by Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Democratic senators on Wednesday denounced the plan as "crazy" and "mindboggling" in light of a new warning that al-Qaida may try more suicide hijackings.
It's almost ironic that an AWOL war deserter could actually remember how to pull off a perfect "about face," but the spurious simian managed it. Bunnypants quickly reversed his decision.
The Transportation Security Administration will immediately begin scheduling air marshals back on the high-risk cross-country and international flights. The move comes less than 24 hours after MSNBC.com reported that air marshals were being pulled from those flights because of budget problems. The move to pull marshals from those flights was particularly disturbing because it coincided with a new high-level hijacking threat issued by the Department of Homeland Security, that 'at least one of these attacks could be executed by the end of the summer.'
July 30, 2003
Bush Shuns Calls to Legalize Gay Marriage
"Homos are icky!"
Intolerant Impotant-tate Emperor Snippy said Wednesday he has government lawyers working on a law that would define marriage as a union between a woman and a man, casting aside calls to legalize gay marriages.
"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that," the Smirking Moron said a news conference at the White House Rose Garden.
Bunnypants also urged, however, that America remain a "welcoming country" — not polarized on the issue of homosexuality.
"I am mindful that we're all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own," serial liar/deserter Squinty McEnron said. "I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts."
"On the other hand, that does not mean that someone like me needs to compromise on the issue of marriage," added the fav'rit preznit of the Holy Baby Jesus (link).
From the How do you know he's lying? department
Another day, another story. Sorry, but I'm just NOT IMPRESSED.
Bamboozler/bungler Napoleon Bonehead today "accepted personal responsibility" for his State of the Union claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear material from Africa.
"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, absolutely," the pretend-pretzaldent said at a White House news conference.
He also "strongly defended" chronic liar/fellow incompetant Condoleezza Rice, saying she was an "honest fabulous person" and the United States was lucky to have her in government.
'9/11 report raises serious questions about WH statements'
Bluntly stated, either the Bush White House knew about the potential of terrorists flying airplanes into skyscrapers (notwithstanding their claims to the contrary), or the CIA failed to give the White House this essential information, which it possessed and provided to others.
Bush is withholding the document that answers this question. Accordingly, it seems more likely that the former possibility is the truth. That is, it seems very probable that those in the White House knew much more than they have admitted, and they are covering up their failure to take action.
The facts, however, speak for themselves....
- - read all of John Dean's column here.
In an unusual expression of anger, Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said, "I really resent it" when supporters of the war argue that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cast the threat from Iraq in a new light, "when the evidence is to the contrary." Chafee cited a l998 letter that Wolfowitz and others had sent to President Bill Clinton. It said in part, "the strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."
"Oh, come on now! Does anyone here at the table think that we're going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year? Raise your hand, any one of you. You know it's going to be more than that. See, you know it's going to be at least $2 1/2-billion a month. Give me a break, will you? When are you guys starting to be honest with us? Come on! I mean, this is ridiculous." - Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., to Paul Wolfowitz yesterday.
Treasonous offence
Enough already. Enough excuse-making.
"We know that two senior members of the Bush administration intentionally blew the cover of an undercover CIA officer whose job is combating weapons of mass destruction proliferation. And their motivation was pure politics.
"The president should find out who they are, reprimand them or, preferably, fire them. But instead of being outraged, he doesn’t even seem to care.
"By telling the world who she really works for, those senior administration officials not only jeopardized her career, they also compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, whatever networks she may have developed or relationships she may have cultivated. According to one highly-respected retired CIA officer who I spoke to Monday, revealing the identity of a “NOC” (“nonofficial” cover) like Plame could literally put the lives of those who cooperated with her at risk. To reveal her identity, he told me, was “grossly irresponsible.”
"If the president wanted to, he could wrap this up with a few quick phone calls. So why doesn’t he?
"A few years back, this town sped into paroxysms over claims that the Clinton White House had used FBI files to smear its critics. Even according to Ken Starr, those charges turned out to be baseless. This outrage, on the other hand, actually happened. And, when you think about it, that sort of makes it worse."
- - Josh Marshall
"America…Is George Bush's re-election worth your sons' blood?" - huge sign posted by Radcliff resident Norman Walters, a two-time Army enlistee and Vietnam veteran. - - link.
Senators kick neocon's ass on Iraq policies
Not buying Bush-league bullshit
"I would ask you, Secretary Wolfowitz, are you sure we have our eye on the ball?" - Senator Russ Feingold
Just back from a trip to Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called it the central battleground in the war on terrorism.
"Right now it is where it's being fought and that's why these terrorists are coming in there," Wolfowitz said. "There is no doubt in my mind that we will be much more secure when we win this battle in Iraq."
But several lawmakers said he was exaggerating Iraq's connections to terror groups. "We just haven't seen any proof of linkages between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," said Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican who said Liberia had much clearer ties to terrorists.
Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said the administration should deal honestly with the situation in Iraq "instead of constantly trying to pretend that Sept. 11 and Iraq are the same issue."
Feeling safer yet?
Air marshals pulled from key flights
Yep, it's true:
“The fact that this is coinciding with the new airline threats, it just blows our minds,” an air marshal said.
Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights. The decision to drop coverage on flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack apparently stems from a policy decision to rework schedules so that air marshals don’t have to incur the expense of staying overnight in hotels. - MSNBC.
BTW...
We're spending one billion dollars a week in Iraq.
Meanwhile...
Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?
And in a related story...
US Nobel Laureate: Bush govt - "worst in American history"
George A. Akerlof, 2001 Nobel prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley, lashed out at the government of George W. Bush, calling it the "worst ever" in American history, the online site of the weekly Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday.
"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy," he said.
July 29, 2003
This just in
Thousands of soldiers in Iraq, dying at the rate of one to three a day.
The economy's in the crapper.
No idea where Saddam or Osama are.
States going bankrupt all over the map.
N Korea threatening with nukes.
Liberia in turmoil, crying for help.
The Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan.
New terror warnings of airline hijackings.
Bunnypants to stay at Texas "ranch" for a month.
In between fundraisers. He leaves for Crawford this Saturday.
- - thanks to gratuitous.
In other news
NOTE: For reasons of national security, the names Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice and Rumsfeld are blacked out.)
Cites lack of forged documents indicating President Taylor has WMDs
And that’s the good news.
If election were held again, he'd lose to Gore by same margin.
Starting unprovoked war "not as bad" as getting blow job from intern.
He answers by raising additional thirty million dollars.
- - from IronicTimes.
WTF?!
Who says irony is dead?
Bushista calls Arab TV "biased" on.....
....wait for it.....
Faux News!!
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz accused the Al-Jazeera network of bias in their reporting.
Wolfowitz told Fox News that the network incites violence against American forces with slanted reports that he asserted are funded by Middle East governments. - link.
Bunnypants' poll numbers down? Time for another terralert!
The Department of Homeland Security has warned the airline industry of possible suicide hijackings and bombings by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for the rest of the summer.
No change was anticipated in the nation's terror alert level. The level remains at "yellow" or a "chance of pissing your pants" risk of attack.
Quote of the day
"[T]he Democratic Leadership Council still claims that Democrats are losing ground among 'white males.' To the extent their numbers show that to be true, I actually agree.
"But, it's NOT because the Democrats are weak on defense or because they are drifting to the left politically.
"It's because, until very recently, the entire party acted like George W. Bush's prison bitch."
- - Hesiod.
'Roman Cosmetics' Found at London Temple Dig
Archaeologists excavating the site of a major Roman temple in London have found a sealed box containing a white cream still bearing the fingermarks of the person who last used it, nearly 2,000 years ago.
The box was found at the bottom of a ditch on the edge of the site of the temple next to the merging of two major roads into Roman London -- Watling Street from the port of Dover and Stane Street from the garrison town of Chichester.
The site -- which last year revealed a stone tablet with the earliest known inscription bearing the Roman name of London -- dates from 50 AD and contained two small temples, a guest house for travelers, plinths for statues and a stone pillar.
"The site has been remarkable. It has revealed far more than we could possibly have expected," said Gary Brown, managing director of Pre-Construct Archaeology, which has been digging the soccer pitch-sized area for the past year.
Apart from the tin box and stone tablet, the site in modern day Southwark about two miles south of central London has also revealed pieces of statues, leather shoes and a wooden writing tablet among many other artifacts.
It will disappear under concrete this Summer when construction of a shopping and housing complex starts. - link.
Turning the other cheek
Sanctimonious hypocrite Bill 'roll 'em' Bennett is considering filing lawsuits against Las Vegas casino companies that may have leaked documents detailing his gambling habits.
While Bennett did not dispute the legitimacy of the documents and said he had no problem with the reporters who have written stories on his gambling, he told Tim 'G.E.' Russert in an interview that the release of the information was not legal and he is looking into the possibility of legal action against the casinos.
Quote
"If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources, New York Times reporter Judith Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now." - Jack Shafer, in Slate.
Warner says Pentagon threat-bet program to be canceled
"Unbelievably stupid"
The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he spoke by phone with the head of the agency overseeing the program "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."
Later, in an interview, Warner said that the agancy "didn't think through the full ramifications of the program."
He said they would recommend that the Pentagon not spend any funds already in place for the program and said they would pull the plug on it during House-Senate budget conference committee negotiations later on this year.
Dumber dumbing-down
'The president and his aides lied from the very beginning, because they couldn't win by telling the truth.
'As [Steven] Den Beste puts it: "We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self-interest. We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it's the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us. So why did George W. Bush and Tony Blair, in making the case for war, put so much emphasis on U.N. resolutions and weapons of mass destruction? Honesty and plain speaking are not virtues for politicians and diplomats. If either Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair had said what I did, it would have hit the fan big-time. Making clear a year ago that this was our true agenda would have virtually guaranteed that it would fail."'
- - from Joe Conason's Journal, at Salon.com.
White House Won't Declassify 9-11 Report
3 minutes ago: The White House, facing a crucial meeting Tuesday with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, refused to declassify part of an intelligence report on possible links between individuals in the Saudi government and some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
After the report was released last Thursday, Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan issued a statement saying that "28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people." The Saudis are said to be furious.
"Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages," he said. Bandar has joined in asking that the pages be declassified.
The request was denied.
Mounting Evidence that Tony Blair was Instrumental in David Kelly's Exposure
The noose is now tightening on Tony Blair, as source after source - some of them high level government officials who know the PM well, comes forward to assert that Blair was involved intimately in the David Kelly tragedy. One source close to the PM said Blair's "fingerprints were all over it" while a close friend of Kelly's says he's sure Blair is directly connected to the death. One former minister, who is regarded as a moderate figure close to Gordon Brown, said: "I can't believe that such a key decision [leaking Kelly's identity] would be taken without passing it to someone in Downing Street." - from The Scotsman, thanks to democrats.com.
Meanwhile, serial liar/fascist punk Smirky McAWOL is still getting treated with kidgloves and puckered orifices by the SCLM.
Cover-up? Read Between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages
Even censored, 9/11 report shows the focus was on the wrong nation.
"Love the truth; it ultimately bows to no master. Even for the president of the United States, the commander in chief of the world's most powerful propaganda machine, deceptions inevitably unravel.
"In the last week we've moved from the 16 deceitful words in George W. Bush's State of the Union speech to the 28 White House-censored pages in the congressional report that dealt with Saudi Arabia's role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States.
"Yet even in its sanitized version, the bipartisan report, long delayed by an embarrassed White House, makes clear that the U.S. should have focused on Saudi Arabia, and not Iraq, in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
"The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now quite clear that the president — unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden — pursued Hussein as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror. That seems to be the implication of the 28 pages, which the White House demanded be kept from the American people when the full report was released.
"After all, is it really likely that career-conscious FBI and CIA officers would be willing to criticize possible Al Qaeda-House of Saud links when the president's father is out hustling business ties with the same family?
"Even after Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration immediately protected Saudis in the United States, including allowing members of the large Bin Laden family who were in this country to be spirited home on their government's aircraft before they could be questioned. This at a time when many immigrants from all over the world were being detained arbitrarily.
"Bush has used Sept. 11 as an excuse to turn this country upside down, making a hash of civil liberties and bankrupting our federal government with unprecedented deficit spending on war and its materiel. Before we do any more irrevocable damage in the name of an open-ended "war against evil," we have a right and a responsibility to confront the uncensored truth of what happened that black day — no matter what powerful people are brought to account." - snipped from Robert Scheer's column in the LA Times.
US workers doubt economy, "leadership"
Worker confidence in the U.S. economy and political leadership is at a six-year low, according to a national work force poll taken in June.
Researchers said Monday that nearly one-fifth of American workers were laid off from their jobs during the last three years and that the duration of their unemployment has continued to lengthen. Workers who remained employed saw their average weekly paychecks, adjusted for inflation and seasonal factors, shrink, while the nation's gross national product rose during the first quarter, the report said. Those findings were published in the survey report "The Disposable Worker."
Botched Raid by US Troops Turns into Massacre
"Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants ... whatever political advantages were gained by the killing of Saddam's sons have been squandered." - Robert Fisk.
Meanwhile.....
Osama bin Forgotten....
The Taliban gains strength in southern Afghanistan - link.
Quote
"Washington recognizes only itself and ignores international legitimacy. The administration of pResident Bush is exceptional. Perhaps there have been similar administrations in the past, but never one at the same level of violence and stupidity." - Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al-Shar'a , in the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat.
BFEE Fixer Will Not Join Iraq Reconstruction
Too busy planning the theft of the 2004 election.
The Bush misadministration said yesterday that former secretary of state/nanny James Baker will not join the Iraq reconstruction effort, as some officials had hoped.
Bunnypants' nursemaids said the lying bungler would support changes in the reconstruction effort only at Paul Bremer's request. Over the weekend, officials said that when the idea of reaching out to Baker was made public, it quickly became clear that it would be seen as undermining Bremer and any such notion was discarded.
More on the Betting-on-Terror Scandal
July 28, 2003
I just loved this headline
Ex-CIA Agent on Cheney Iraq Speech: "Longest Statement of Disinformation" Ever Fed U.S. Public
DLC to Dems: "don't vote for Dean"
Dems to DLC: suck on it!
Dems to DLC: you had your chance and you blew it!
Dems to DLC: nobody's listening!
Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean's campaign has excited the party's liberal activists, but centrists have only one thing to say about the candidate: Don't vote for him.
Many members of the Democratic Leadership Council are convinced that Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq makes him too liberal for middle America, and they worry that if he wins the nomination it could undo years of work to persuade the country that the Democratic Party isn't controlled by its left wing.
...no, it's CONTROLLED BY THE GOP, actually.
Just for the hell of it, ladies and gentleman, I give you Joe 'the Jewish Gee-Duhbya' Lieberman, on C-Span today: "I strongly disagree with the way the pResident misled us into war. However, I am for the war. It was to protect our security and the security of the world."
Enabling fucktard.
Has he been too busy spit-shining the inside of Karl Rove's rectum to READ A GODDAMN PAPER????
Just how out-of-touch can one person get??
Oh wait. Never mind.
Now I've seen everything
Defense Dept. Program Taking Terror Bets - Program Models 'Futures' Markets
POSTED: 3:20 p.m. EDT July 28, 2003: A new Department of Defense program allows traders to bet on the likelihood of future terrorist attacks.
The department's "Defense Advanced Research Project Agency" designed what it calls the "The Policy Analysis Market." The program works much like the financial markets where traders buy and sell "futures" based on the possibility of a specific event in the Middle East.
Some of the examples listed on the agency's Web site include the assassination of Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat and a missile attack by North Korea. Bidders would profit if the events for which they hold futures occur.
Defense officials said the market-based system is highly accurate when assessing such things as political and civil stability, economic health and military disposition of Middle East countries.
Members of Congress said the market idea is not only wasteful, but repugnant.
"I think this is unbelievably stupid. That is a gentle thing to say about a program that is so devoid of value," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, said. "It combines the worst of all our values in my judgment. It's a tragic waste of taxpayer money. It will be totally offensive to almost everyone."
"[The] idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridicules and grotesque," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said.
Registration for the site begins Friday and will be limited to the first 1,000 traders. Actual trading will begin Sept. 1 and the Department of Defense plans to open the site to 10,000 traders by Jan. 1, 2004.
I'm REALLY hoping this turns out to be just a sick hoax.
But I wouldn't put ANYTHING past this misadministration.
Staged puppet show should further prove the deaths of Uday and Qusay, says the US
The United States, furthering their attempt to convince the Iraqi public of the deaths of Saddam's two most powerful and sadistic sons, will display Uday and Qusay in a staged puppet show this upcoming Tuesday. Jonathan Freeman, the voice of Jafar in the Disney movie Aladdin has been tapped to play the voice of Uday while Gilbert Gottfried will play Qusay, the crazy yet hilarious sidekick, for comedy relief.
The two brothers were killed in a firefight with US soldiers in Mosul last Tuesday. The US decided to show the bodies to the Iraqi public, in an attempt to calm fears and slow some of the resistance that has been going on for the last few weeks. After the bodies were first displayed last week, many Iraqis were left unconvinced given the bodies' appearances. Both men were shown battered and bruised, wearing long beards and looked to have gained weight.
On Friday, the US displayed the two bodies again, this time groomed and prepped in order to more resemble the how the public remembered them. But even this time, with post-mortem setting in and an obvious touch-up job by the morticians, some still seem unconvinced.
While some of the Iraqis are calling this planned display disgusting, immoral and completely disrespectful, not only to Iraqis but to the Islamic faith, others seem a little more open to the idea.
"At first I was thinking, what hypocritical assholes. They don't want Al-Jazeera airing dead US soldiers being paraded around but this is okay?" said Muhammad al-Hadi, a local barber. "But then I saw some test footage and saw that they snagged Gilbert Gottfried. Freaking hilarious. I love that guy."
NBC is in talks with the government to either put the show into syndication or possibly use the bodies for an upcoming Saturday morning kids show. - from Wired Press.
This just in
Uday's love rivals fed to lions (drudge).
"Good thing we carpetbombed the country, ruined their infrastructure, killed thousands of innocent civilians and slaughtered them two evildoers in a major firefight!" chirped repugnant incompetant Chimpy the Red-eyed Crackfiend from the campaign trail today.
Boneheaded quote of the day
"The lesson of 9-11 is that, if you're not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you're going to have to act after the fact." - Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Faux Nooze Sunday.
Ummmmmm....actually, we had damn good evidence of the coming attacks prior to 9/11, and we DIDN'T ACT AT ALL. Not only did Condo the oilqueen and the intel community f*ck up, but Karl wasn't about to spoil petulant pissant Smirky McNumbnuts' summer vacation - yep, the incompetant bungler in the WH was just coming off another one of his 1-month vacations at his pseudo-ranch, the Lazy W.
Max Cleland speaks out on the 9/11 report
"... the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow-walked, because the Administration's policy was, and its priority was, we're gonna take Saddam Hussein out."
"The joint intelligence inquiry, the executive summary, was available December 10th. Why did it take nine months to go over what ought to be held out of that? Now, I'm saying that that was slow-walked. I am also saying why did it take eight months to get this 9/11 Commission really cranked up and going, and the first step was to use the Intelligence Committee report as a jumping off point? Why did all of this take so long?
"Because the real priority of the White House was not the 9/11 Commission — they fought it. And it was just, and it really was their interest was to delay the revelation of this report. One of the reasons they didn't want it is they didn't want all this stuff out there."
"Who declared war on the country? It was Osama bin Laden, and his terrorist cadre. And Islamic fanatics. That's what 9/11 was all about. It was not about Saddam Hussein. Who has the worst or, the greatest… who is the greatest threat in the world today to us, in terms of weapons of mass destruction? It's not Saddam Hussein. It's North Korea. So, why are we making this big deal? We should've found Osama bin Laden. We should've destroyed his network around the world. That was gonna take time.
"It wasn't gonna make headlines. You can't do that war in three weeks, and say 'Major combat's over.'"
"But look at what's happening. The Administration, the White House, has put several blocks in the road. One, they run all the information to the 9/11 Commission through a political coordinator in Ashcroft's Justice Department. Duh. Why's that?
"Secondly, they want to put minders — that's people who sit in the room when we have an interview with people in NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of… in DIA — in the Pentagon, and Immigration and Naturalization Services. They want to put minders in there. That to shut down information. That's not to reveal information." - Max Cleland, member of the 9/11 Commission, on PBS's NOW, 7/25/03.
Silencing Saddam's sons
Were Uday and Qusay killed to keep them silent on lack of WMD?
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift suggested on the McLaughlin Group over the weekend that the in killing Uday and Qusay Hussein, “two intelligence assets who could potentially lead us to the weapons of mass destruction,” the misadministration “surrendered a major opportunity to uncover” those weapons “unless,” she added, “they don’t believe those weapons are there.”
Later, she equated serial liar/bungling punk Squinty McSquirtypants' State of the Union line about Iraq “seeking” uranium in Africa with the tape erasure in the Nixon White House: “The 16 words are taking on the aura of the 18-minute gap under a former President.”
On the deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Clift argued: “The way they went sent another message. You don’t send in a TOW missile if you want to capture them alive. And these are two intelligence assets who could potentially lead us to the weapons of mass destruction. And the fact that the administration really made very little attempt to take them alive -- they wanted to spare themselves the headache of a trial -- but they also surrendered a major opportunity to uncover the real reason we went to war -- unless they don’t believe those weapons are there.”
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go thru life, son
Inebriated German driver’s honesty cost him his license after he told police he had drunk “20 beers at most”
GERMANY - During a routine traffic check in the western city of Essen, police asked if the 25-year-old man had drunk anything. He answered: “Twenty beers at most if you want me to be perfectly honest, officer. But that’s it, really.”
Police carried out a breath test, confirming the man’s claims, and confiscated his license.
"I’ve no idea why he told them,” said Raymund Sandach, a spokesman for Essen police. “Maybe because he was drunk.” - Yahoo News.
Phthththth!
Headlines at drudge:
oh, and
We're taking entries for what the possible title of Annthrax's new screed will be, in the comments section.
Bob Novak accuses Bushies of arrogance
Telephone calls from the Hill are not returned by the White House. Congressional appointments with senior officials are difficult to make and sometimes broken. Senior lawmakers are admonished by junior White House aides to refrain from being too chummy with Democrats.
This litany of irritations adds up to a perception of smugness by the president and his inner circle. - link.
Loyalty pays off in Bush camp
Job security seems to depend on it regardless of the facts.
Tom Raum: In the rising controversy over how the Bush administration built its case for war in Iraq, one curious fact stands out. Some who gave President Bush unwelcome information that turned out to be accurate are gone. Those who did the opposite are still around.
Former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki voiced concerns about the expense, aftermath and forces that would be needed -- concerns now proving to be true. These men are no longer in the picture.
By contrast, nobody so far has come under apparent pressure to resign in the events that led up to the president's mention in his State of the Union address in January of a British intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. That claim was based on forged documents and challenged by the CIA.
While resignations may yet come, all the major players in the drama have expressed strong loyalty to Bush, noted Stephen Hess, a scholar with the Brookings Institution. "And it's pretty hard to lose much by being loyal to the boss.'' Meanwhile, the naysayers on Iraq are becoming an endangered species.
Lindsey, while chairman of Bush's National Economic Council, suggested in September that the cost of war with Iraq could range from $100 billion to $200 billion. The White House openly contradicted him, saying that figure was far too high. He was eased out in a winter shake-up of Bush's economic team. But his estimates are bearing out.
Zinni, Bush's Middle East mediator, angered the White House when he told a foreign policy forum in October that Bush had far more pressing foreign policy priorities than Iraq and suggested there could be a prolonged, difficult aftermath to a war. He was not reappointed as Mideast envoy.
Shineski, then-Army chief of staff, told a Senate committee in February that a military occupying force for postwar Iraq could amount to several hundred thousand troops. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz immediately denounced that level as "wildly off the mark.'' Nearly 150,000 U.S. military personnel are in Iraq now. Shineski retired in June.
Vets pissed off at Cap'n Clueless
Serial liar/incompetant lying punk Smirky McLiar and the Republicon Party are facing a political backlash from an unlikely group - retired veterans.
Normally Republican, many vets are fuming that Idiot Boy and the Repuglican-controlled Congress are blocking remedies to two problems with health and pension benefits. They say they feel particularly betrayed by fabricating phony/fratboy fuckup Snippy the Chimp, who appealed to them in his 2000 campaign, and who vowed on the eve of his inauguration that "promises made to our veterans will be promises kept."
"He pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions," said Charles Carter of Shawnee, Okla., a retired Navy senior chief petty officer.
Any significant erosion of support for the lying fascist punk and the repukes could hurt in a close election. It could be particularly troublesome in states such as Florida that are politically divided and crowded with military retirees.
Registered Republican James Cook, who retired to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after 24 years in the Air Force, said he is abandoning a party that he said abandoned him. "Bush is a liar," he said. "The Republicans in Congress, with very few exceptions, are gutless party lapdogs who listen to what puts money in their own pockets or what will get them re-elected."
America's 'murky' intelligence muddies the water
By David Charter, Chief Political Correspondent, London Times:
Tony Blair's difficulties over weapons of mass destruction deepened last night when the US Government admitted that the Iraq war had been fought on the basis of “murky intelligence”.
The Prime Minister was already facing tough questions about British intelligence with the failure to find Iraq’s weapons and the controversy over government claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium.
But his problems worsened when Paul Wolfowitz , the Deputy Defence Secretary, said that the US had not been prepared to wait for clear evidence of Iraq’s threat before attacking .
“The nature of terrorism is that intelligence about terrorism is murky,” Mr Wolfowitz told Fox News Sunday.
His remarks will be seen as continuing to prepare Americans for the possibility that WMD might never be found. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, said in May that it was “possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict”.
Operation qWagmire update
Two U.S. soldiers were badly wounded and may have been killed in a grenade attack in central Baghdad on Monday, hours after the U.S. ground forces commander in Iraq said the country is becoming a magnet for foreign terrorists targeting Americans.
Local eyewitnesses said the two soldiers appeared to have died after a man dropped a grenade on their vehicle from a road bridge at an intersection in broad daylight. Reuters journalists saw two motionless soldiers, one slumped in the rear seat of the Humvee, the other lying on the road. Both appeared dead and were receiving no medical aid. Iraqi police said they were dead, but a U.S. officer at the scene told Reuters that two of his men had been badly wounded in the attack but declined to say whether they had died.
July 27, 2003
'A one-sided 'gunfight''
By Les Payne, Newsday: In the wake of this glorious superpower victory that some rank up there with VJ Day, the Bush administration decided to beat its hairy chest in public.
Pentagon photographs of both Uday and Qusay were released in the full-color bloom of blood and gore. Qusay, the quieter and stockier of the two brothers, appeared to have been slightly less dreadfully wrenched by the onslaught. Lying on a pile of bedsheets, he was matched with a Pentagon-released 2001 photo of happier times.
Administration officials had no final qualms about this public display of the grisly gloat. Two top face cards in their assassination deck had been upturned, and they felt triumphal. The harsh, almost cowardly imbalance in the alleged shootout fazed the Bush administration not at all.
On the day of the release, Dick Cheney, in defilade until now, stormed to the press barricade to defend the indefensible. The administration told Americans that troops were committed to Iraq because Saddam Hussein posed, or soon would pose, a nuclear threat to the United States. In his speech of mass deception, president Bush's infamous 16-word statement drew a solid nuclear link between Iraq and Niger that has since been discredited as whole cloth. No nuclear threat has been revealed, nor have other weapons of mass destruction been discovered.
Instead of presenting evidence, Cheney shifted the sand. "What would that country look like today if we had failed to act?" No one doubts that the United States has the power to change regimes of sovereign nations that the sitting vice president might not like. The question is should the U.S. administration lie to the American people in committing their sons and daughters to topple such targeted regimes?
One need not be an electrician to know that president Bush's light is out.
'Lies, oaths, and high crimes'
By Allen Snyder, OpEdNews.com:
First, they said it wasn't the sex, it was the lying.
Then they said it wasn't the lying, it was the lying under oath.
And with that pant-load of pseudo-logic, the right wingnuts excoriated, vilified, and tripped over each other impeaching Clinton for lying about his oral dalliances with 'that woman.' 'Is' became a word searching for meaning, Ken Starr made a fortune, but found nothing, and we learned way too much about Bill Clinton's stamped package, secondary uses for cigars, and spunk-stained dresses.
On the surface, BushCo's lies appear worse than Clinton's, but BushCo spin-meisters imply they're a different breed altogether. 'Technically', Bush is not 'under oath', not in court, not perjuring himself. National security, executive privilege, and a corral of convenient scapegoats are all he needs.
I've said this before, I'll say it again. This is the most Constitutionally-deprived bunch that ever sat in the White House. They never saw an Constitutional Article they couldn't...well...they never saw a Constitutional Article. But if they did, they'd see they're violating all sorts of them.
Bush isn't under oath, my ass!
An interesting passage in Article II, Section 1 reads:
"Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States'" (all emphasis added).
Dubya parroted this oath (with aid of cue cards, no doubt) when he received his cut from the 2000 presidential election heist. Too bad it didn't read 'I (state your name) do solemnly swear...' so we could have all had a really good 'Animal House' initiation belly-laugh.
Every time Bush opens his mouth, he does it under oath. Every time he opens his mouth, he lies. Therefore, every time he lies, he does so under oath. Such simple logic, even a conservative can understand it. .. {snip} ..
[Y]ou'd have to trick yourself into believing a handful of blow-jobs and the ensuing hoo-hah over them was worse (that could mean worse morally, practically, politically, ideologically or whatever you want it to mean) than lies that caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, made the nation less safe, disrupted the world, perhaps beyond repair in some ways, and betrayed the trust of every American whether you voted for him or not. Quite the mouthful.
Or maybe they're right. Maybe Bush's lying really isn't a high crime or misdemeanor after all.
Maybe it's treason.
Best sellers
1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter Bk. 5) by J. K. Rowling
2. Dr. Atkins' New Carbohydrate Gram Counter by Robert Charles Atkins
3. Living History: Memoir of White House Years by Hillary Rodham Clinton
13.Treason by mAnn Coulter.
- - Yahoo
1. Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg
2. Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
3. Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
4. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
5. The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein
6. Treason by Annthrax Coulter (+)
- - A dagger (+) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders. NY Times.
"Since GW Bush has taken office, he has shown the world what a man of integrity and leadership he truly is" - mouthbreather at the fretard site this morning.
Oh yeah???
- - Just a small sampling, thanks to BuzzFlash.
Trouble mounts for Bush as lethal Iraqi resistance claims more lives
From the UK Independant: Just how organised is the resistance, and who is doing the organising, is not clear. But yesterday's grenade attack which killed three US troops outside a children's hospital north of Baghdad and injured four others has banished the hope that the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons would halt the de facto guerrilla war against the American forces occupying Iraq.
Even more ominously for pResident Bush, it can only deliver another blow to the morale of soldiers deployed in an inhospitable and scorching hot country, and alarm a public opinion growing steadily more disenchanted with an operation whose costs are soaring and of which no end is in sight.
Since Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed in Mosul on Tuesday, the ambushes have, if anything, become deadlier.
Five US soldiers die in 24 hours: the NY Times. The attack is a blow to hopes that the slaying of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, would weaken the resolve of Iraqi insurgents.
This has been one of the deadliest weeks for American troops since liar/war deserter/golfcart cowboy Napoleon Bonehead declared major combat operations over on May 1. Of the 104 Americans who have died in Iraq since then, 14 have been killed in the last seven days.
Spinmeisters in need of fodder
Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star:
It's almost as if the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division in Iraq didn't get the memo. Not to take away from its successful shredding of the evil spawn of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, but could it have timed it any worse?
Tuesday was all set as the White House's very own production of American Idol, the return of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 20, to her West Virginia hometown. The media Lynch mob should have been enough to divert attention away for at least a day from the slow but steady sinking of George W. Bush in the polls, as well as his administration's fudging of yellowcake and the making of other cow pies that led to war and the sad state of his economy.
What? You think it was pure coinkidink that, on Thursday, when that blacked-out 9/11 commission report was released that
(1) so were photos of the very dead Brothers Badenov;
(2) the government staged a very videogenic Al Qaeda attack drill, or;
(3) that Vice-President Dick Cheney finally slithered out of his nest to speechify about how no president has fought terrorism like Bush has?
[N]ow that Lynch is home and the Hussein boys are "really most sincerely dead,'' the White House spinmeisters will need yet another diversionary, dog-wagging tactic. Yet another terror alert is not likely to do the trick. Besides, we've seen that show before.
WMD May as Well Be a Four-Letter Word
The Washingtoon comPost comments on Bunnypants' weaselly avoidance of former speech staples:
Serial liar/bungler Smirky McAWOL, as he did so successfully with the also-at-large Osama bin Laden, doesn't mention WMD anymore.
"A reliable staple of past addresses, the four words did not cross his lips during two public appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan on Thursday," Reuters reporter Patricia Wilson wrote. "Nor did Bush use the phrase on Wednesday in a formal update on the progress U.S. forces have made in Iraq that he delivered from the White House Rose Garden."
And don't forget THIS:
Bush Cartel Blows CIA Agent's Cover
The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by "two senior administration officials."
Intelligence officials confirmed that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until she was named by columnist Robert Novak.
Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.
Think of it. The White House exposed a CIA operative. During wartime.
Isn't that a treasonous offense?
CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat
The CIA is getting PISSED.
By Jason Leopold of Online Journal: A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.
The former agents will present a final report on their findings to the Pentagon, the CIA and possibly Congress later this year. More than a dozen calls to the White House, the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment were not returned.
The agents said the Office of Special Plans is responsible for providing the National Security Council and Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld with the bulk of the intelligence information on Iraq's weapons program that turned out to be wrong. But White House officials used the information it received from the Office of Special Plans to win support from the public and Congress to start a war in Iraq even though the White House knew much of the information was dubious, the CIA agents said.
Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image
Controversy Stirs Questions of Reports Unread, Statements Contradicted
The serial liar's National Security Advisor is also a serial liar.
"It's implausible that the national security adviser would be too busy to pay attention to something that's going to come out of the president's mouth."
From the WaPo: Condoleezza Rice has become enmeshed in the controversy over the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to war. She has been made to appear out of the loop by colleagues' claims that she did not read or recall vital pieces of intelligence. And she has made statements about U.S. intelligence on Iraq that have been contradicted by facts that later emerged.
The remarks by Rice and her associates raise two uncomfortable possibilities for the national security adviser. Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false.
"If Condi didn't know the exact state of intel on Saddam's nuclear programs ...she wasn't doing her job," said Brookings Institution foreign policy specialist Michael E. O'Hanlon. "This was foreign policy priority number one for the administration last summer, so the claim that someone else should have done her homework for her is unconvincing."
One person who has worked with Rice describes as "inconceivable" the claims that she was not more actively involved. Indeed, subsequent to the July 18 briefing, another senior administration official said Rice had been briefed immediately on the NIE -- including the doubts about Iraq's nuclear program -- and had "skimmed" the document. The official said that within a couple of weeks, Rice "read it all."
"If the national security adviser didn't understand the repeated State Department and CIA warnings about the uranium allegation, that's a frightening level of incompetence," said Rep. Henry Waxman, who as the ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee has led the charge on the intelligence issue. "It's even more serious if she knew and ignored the intelligence warnings and has deliberately misled our nation.
Rice was the first administration official to place responsibility on CIA Director Tenet for the inclusion in Bunnypants' State of the Union address of the Africa uranium charge. The White House now concedes that pinning responsibility on Tenet was a costly mistake. CIA officials have since made clear to the White House and to Congress that intelligence agencies had repeatedly tried to wave the White House off the allegation.
July 26, 2003
Billionaire challenges case for war
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers challenging the honesty of the Bush misadministration's case for waging war in Iraq.
The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."
A dozen statements made by serial liar Napoleon Bonehead, Dick 'Chicanery' Cheney, Secretary of State Colin 'rectum' Powell and Secretary of Defence Donald 'warboner' Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.
The Hungarian-born Soros, 72, emigrated to the United States from Britain in 1956 and built a fortune as a financier. He is founder of a network of philanthropic organisations active in more than 50 countries that focus on education, public health, human rights and economic reform.
In other news
Ho ho! Poppy to the rescue of Daddy's Little Fuckup
"Bush considers new overhaul of postwar Iraq administration - White House aims to address concerns as cost, casualties mount"
Serial liar/hapless bungler/incompetant impotus pReznit Gameboy is contemplating the second overhaul in three months of his post-war administration of Iraq, as the White House faces up to the enormity of the task and the need to demonstrate progress to maintain political support for the effort, administration officials said today.
As part of an effort to beef up the reconstruction, the White House is considering asking several major figures, including former secretary of state James Baker, to help with specific tasks like seeking funds from other countries or helping restructure Iraq's debt.
If Bunnypants called on Baker, the assignment would be the latest of a series of high-profile missions he has undertaken for the Bush family evil empire. Baker headed the Republican team during the Florida recount litigation after the disputed election of 2000. He agreed to manage President George H.W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992, and was secretary of state in the first Bush administration - WaComPo.
Oh, and by the way, the Washingtoon comPost's original headline was ""White House Wants Baker to Head Iraq Reconstruction - Unresolved Whether Baker or Bremer Would Have Final Word"
And you want to be my National Security Advisor...*
The Amazing Stories of Condoleezza Rice, a BuzzFlash commentary:
CONDI’S AMAZING SEPTEMBER 11TH STORY – FALSELY CLAIMED WHITE HOUSE HAD NO PRIOR WARNING OF HIJACKINGS
CONDI’S AMAZING PEACE STORY – PUBLICLY CLAIMED TO SEEK PEACE, WHILE TELLING STATE DEPT. WAR PRE-DETERMINED
CONDI’S AMAZING IRAQ-NUKE STORY #1 – FALSELY CLAIMED WHITE HOUSE DID NOT KNOW OF NUCLEAR MISGIVINGS
CONDI’S AMAZING IRAQ-NUKE STORY #2 – ADMITTED WHITE HOUSE KNEW MISGIVINGS, FALSELY CLAIMED CIA APPROVED
CONDI’S AMAZING IRAQ-NUKE STORY #3 – ADMITS CIA OBJECTED, THEN CLAIMED THAT SHE SIMPLY DIDN’T READ MEMO
*with props to Jerry Seinfeld.
Welcome (back) The River!
I'm trying to recover from a BBQ we had last night for my family - guests of honor, some of our cousins from Italy. Sangria, ribs on the smoker, biscuits, asshole chicken (whole chickens cooked over low heat on the grill, with cans of beer rammed up their poopchutes), coleslaw, key lime pie, grappa, cigars, 20-year-old rum...God, I'm fried this morning.
July 25, 2003
Dean to Smirky the Chimp: "It's time for the truth"
"When George W. Bush ran for president three years ago, he promised us an era of responsibility in Washington--instead we've got an era of irresponsibility unparalleled in our history. A week after discovering that the cost of occupying Iraq will be double the original estimates, we found out that the nation's deficit is 50 percent higher than estimated just five months ago. In fact, during his two-and-a-half years in office, the President has misled us, the American people, on nearly every policy initiative his administration has put forth...." - read the rest here!
Jesus, what an asshole
"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," Tom DeLay said in an interview Thursday.
"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."
DeLay instead called on the administration to carry out a "Marshall Plan" for Palestinian areas, with the United States paying to rebuild the economy there rather than supporting a Palestinian regime. - - seen at the fretard site just now.
"This is what happens when it's all a house of cards."
"This is what happens when you build your entire presidency on an intricate network of aww-shucks glibness and bad hair and cronyism and corporate fellatio and warmongering and sham enemies and economy-gutting policies and endless blank-eyed smirks that tell the world, every single day, whelp, sure 'nuff, the U.S. is full of it.
"Shrub's numbers are down. The nation is catching on. The armor of money and power is cracking. The smirk is waning. Dick's defibrillator is running on fumes.
"And Karl Rove, Shrub's master strategist, is scrambling, rushing down hallways, sweating hard, mapping out lib-killer tactics and frantically redirecting blame (CIA! FBI! The NSA!) as nine Demo candidates have a field day knocking all of Shrub's shortcomings out of the ideological park." - Mark Morford.
Ewwwwwww
And look! If we do THIS, we can make him look like Yakov Smirnoff!
U.S. forces in Iraq partly rebuilt the faces of two bodies shown to journalists on Friday in an effort to convince Iraqis that the corpses were those of Saddam Hussein's sons.
A U.S. military official said "facial reconstruction" was used to repair wounds, particularly to the face of the elder son Uday, which had disfigured the bodies shown originally to the public in photographs taken by soldiers after the battle.
An uncharacteristic beard on the body of Qusay, seen in those U.S. pictures, had been shaved off, leaving a mustache. - link.
Nothing fishy here....
Poll shows many Germans see U.S. Behind Sept 11 Attacks
BERLIN, July 23 (>Reuters) - Almost one in three Germans below the age of 30 believes the U.S. government may have sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published on Wednesday. And about 20 percent of Germans in all age groups hold this view, a survey of 1,000 people conducted for the weekly Die Zeit said. It also said 68 percent of all Germans felt the media had not reported the full truth behind the attacks, in which some 3,000 people were killed.
Die Zeit said widespread disbelief about the reasons given by the United States for going to war in Iraq and suspicion about media coverage of the conflict had fostered a climate in which conspiracy theories flourished.
"The news is controlled," 17-year old Kenny Donaubaur was quoted as saying. "You could see that in the Iraq war. It doesn't seem to me that you get the full truth."
You got THAT right.
Excessive force?
From MSNBC: The U.S. military is celebrating the deaths of Saddam’s sons. But some are questioning whether Uday and Qusay could—and should—have been taken alive.
"The whole operation was a cockup,” said a British intelligence officer. "There was no need to go after four lightly armed men with such overwhelming firepower. They would have been much more useful alive."
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, squirmed his way past that question repeatedly. It was, he said, the decision of the commander on the ground based on the circumstances and his judgment—”and it was the right decision.”
But a total of 200 heavily armed U.S. troops, backed by missiles, armored personnel carriers and helicopters? An officer at the scene made the improbable claim to a Newsweek reporter that tear gas might have hurt neighbors. As it was, there were no reported civilian casualties with the much heavier weaponry; the house, which belonged to a prominent local sheik, was set well away from others.
"Bollocks," said one former Special Forces soldier. "A SWAT team could have taken them. It didn’t need a company."
WMD missing in Iraq, Bush speeches
Demoted with 'Osama' from the Chimpboy lexicon
Weapons of mass destruction have proven hard to find in Iraq and now they've disappeared from serial liar/bungler Smirky McStupid's speeches.
Before the invasion and during the war, Bunnypants' speeches were peppered with references to weapons of mass destruction and the specter of apocalyptic havoc that chemical and biological arms might wreak on the United States, its friends and allies. He used the words so much that sometimes they became simply "WMD."
But now that Saddam has been ousted and with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the lying punk has spoken more of "weapons programs" and "illegal weapons," although he has said he "remains confident" that banned arms will be uncovered. - - from here.
Let freedom ring!
Entertainer banned after Bush remark
Apparently, it's become un-American--or at least highly controversial--for a woman to publicly say that the president of the United States' body is less than perfect.
A Baltimore acoustic artist has been banned from playing the Fredericksburg Borders Books & Music store--apparently because she made fun of President Bush's legs between songs in her show Friday night at Central Park.
Julia Rose, a singer-songwriter and a fitness advocate who often shows audiences her six-pack abs, told a Fredericksburg Borders audience Friday: "George Bush has chicken legs. He needs to pump some iron."
She said most of the audience laughed. But a few were offended and reportedly contacted Amy Korsun, area marketing manager for Borders Books & Music, to complain about Rose making "political" comments.
Korsun confirmed Wednesday that Rose has been banned from performing at the Fredericksburg store after Friday's show. - - from here.
George W. Nixon
Fall guys, intimidation and leaked personal attacks on enemies are back in at the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How Nixonian. How disappointing...
Political enemy number one is former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson.
Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times on July 6 that infuriated the White House. Eight days after Wilson published his piece, veteran reporter Robert Novak wrote a column that said, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate [the reports]."
Wilson’s wife, it has been reported elsewhere, worked undercover. The "two senior officials" who blew her cover to Novak probably did something illegal. They certainly did something vile. Chuck Colson, the keeper of Nixon’s enemies list, would be so proud.
Wilson told Newsday, "This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation, but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward."
Political enemy number two is ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman.
Kofman filed a story that reported on morale problems of troops with the Third Infantry long stationed in Iraq. He had a quote from a soldier who said, "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I’d ask him for his resignation." The Texans didn't 'ppreciate that.
After the piece ran, Matt Drudge says he got a call from a White House aide who anonymously leaked the inflammatory secret that Kofman is (young readers, please do not continue)…Canadian. A Canuck, reporting on our boys? I never...Oh yeah, the leaker also disclosed that Kofman is gay.
So far, the Bush Team hasn’t had as much luck with fall guys. CIA chief George Tenet tried to take the bullet for the "yellowcake" flap, but the flap flapped on. So NSC aide Stephen Hadley was sent out to take it on the chin. Neither resigned, neither was fired. They just took responsibility.
That is something the President has not done. - - - from an editorial by Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com.
Meanwhile...
Sen. Charles Schumer urged the FBI on Thursday to investigate government leaks that he said may have unmasked a CIA covert operative amid the political fight over prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Schumer said administration officials may have broken federal law in unmasking an operative who had been gathering information on weapons of mass destruction.
The senator sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller asking him to order an immediate criminal investigation.
White House kept key portions of 9/11 report classified
Preznit Personal Responsibility was warned in a more specific way than was previously admitted about the intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda terrorists were seeking to attack the United States, a report on the Sept. 11 attacks indicated yesterday. Separately, the report cited one CIA memo that concluded there was "incontrovertible evidence" that Saudi individuals provided financial assistance to al Qaeda operatives in the United States.
The CIA refused to permit publication of information potentially implicating Saudi officials on national security grounds, arguing that disclosure could upset relations with a key U.S. ally. Lawmakers complained it was merely to avoid embarrassment.
The White House, meanwhile, resisted efforts to pin down straight-shooter Snippy the Chimp's knowledge of al Qaeda threats. Democrats said the secrecy was meant to protect Preznit Poopypants from criticism. - - from the NY Times.
Oh, and by the way
The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001 reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida.
"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official.
Oh, and Dick...?
Rush Limbaughtomy has done a tremendous job breaking down the connections between Stephen Hadley, the Bush/Cheney oil conspiracy, and the marketing of the war on Iraq.
Computer problems.
Insiders: Condoleezza Rice could be headed for crapper
US News reports: As White House officials try to control the latest fallout over president Bush's flawed suggestion in the State of the Union address that Iraq was buying nuclear bomb materials, there's growing talk by insiders that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may take the blame and resign.
For most insiders, it's inconceivable that Rice, touted as a future secretary of state, California governor, and even vice president, would go, but the latest revelations that her shop and deputy Stephen Hadley mishandled CIA warnings have put the NSC in the bull's eye of controversy.
While it's unclear how serious the talk is inside the administration about the future of Rice or Hadley with the NSC, a few top aides are already suggesting replacements for Rice. They include former Bush administration National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, NASA chief and former Navy Secretary Sean O'Keefe, and Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq.
Dick to Dems: you're doodoo!
Brave Dick "dick" Cheney crawled out of his well-appointed bunker and struck back at critics of his pass-the-buck boss' Iraq policy yesterday, in a speech hastily arranged to stave off the furor over the bogus intelligence report cited in liar/bungler Smirky McOilpump's State of the Union speech.
Cheney used the phrase "irresponsible in the extreme" three times, implying Democrats are playing partisan politics with national security by charging that the administration hyped the case against Saddam.
"Critics of the liberation of Iraq must also answer another question: What would that country look like today if we had failed to act?" he said.
"If we had not acted, Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be in power ... the torture chambers would still be in operation, the prison cells for children would still be filled, the mass graves would still be undiscovered," he said. Meanwhile, in Liberia and N Korea.......
For all his bombast, the chickenshit chickenhawk chose a friendly, partisan, conservative think-tank as his audience. Not only did he once work there, but his wife, the humorless harpy Lynne, is a senior fellow there. - - - from the NY Daily News.
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