SBVT - YES, THEY ARE LIARS

Kerry allows Navy release of military, medical records
Show numerous commendations
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff June 7, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/kerry_allows_navy_release_of_military_medical_records/


WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
Asked why he delayed signing the form for so long, Kerry said in a written response: ''The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."
The file does not provide new documents about various combat actions. It contains mostly a repetition of Kerry's citations for the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. For example, it does not include the combat ''after action reports" that detail what happened in some of the firefights in which Kerry participated. Those reports are available for public inspection at the Navy historical center in Washington and have already been widely disseminated.
John O'Neill, the leader of the Swift Boat veterans group and coauthor of the book ''Unfit for Command," said yesterday that he would be disappointed if Kerry's files do not contain new information. ''I would still have the same beliefs expressed in my book," he said.

GREAT DAILY KOs POST!!!!!

Downing Street Minutes is exhibit 23 of 43
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/5/184322/3073


Exhibit 1:1999: BUSH PLANS WAR IN '99, WELL BEFORE ELECTION
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761

Exhibit 2: 9/2000: Bush plans Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

Exhibit 3: 1/2001: Bush plans Iraq invasion before 9/11
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/

Exhibit 4: 3/2001: Cheney Task Force Eyes Iraq Oil
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/072003C.shtml

Exhibit 5:9/12/2001: Rumsfeld considers Iraq bombings one day after terror attacks
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/03/20/national0310EST0431.DTL

Exhibit 6:12/2001: Bush Begins to Plan Iraq War Three Months After 9/11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17347-2004Apr16.html

Exhibit 7:2002-2003: Cheney Pressures CIA on Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A15019-2003Jun4&notFound =true

Exhibit 8:Spring/2002: A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp/index_np.html

Exhibit 9:4/7/2002: The Crawford Deal: Blair signs up for war at Bush's Texas ranch in April 2002
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8165.htm

Exhibit 10:5/9/2002: U.S. war hawks oust Bustani from UN because he was attempting to get Iraq to allow chemical weapons inspectors in the country, which would have deprived Washington of a quasi-legal justification for military action against Baghdad.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/14/feature1.shtml

Exhibt 11:5/20/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE AIRCRAFT DETECTION SITE IN IRAQ
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020520-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 12:5/22/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE TWO IRAQI ANTI-AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020522-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 13:5/24/2002: COALITION AIRCRAFT STRIKE INTEGRATED AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020524-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 14:5/30/2002: COALITION AIRCRAFT STRIKE INTEGRATED AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020530-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 15:6/14/2002: COALITION STRIKES IRAQI OFFENSIVE AIR SITE
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020614-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 16:6/20/2002: COALITION STRIKES IRAQI OFFENSIVE MILITARY AIR DEFENSE SITE
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020620-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 17:6/28/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE AIR-DEFENSE FACILITIES
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020628-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 18:7/2002 President Bush diverts $700 million into Iraq invasion planning without informing Congress.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=46962

Exhibit 19:7/13/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE AIR-DEFENSE FACILITIES
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020713-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 20:7/15/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE MOBILE RADAR UNIT
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020715-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 21:7/18/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI COMMUNICATION FACILITIES
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020718-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 22:7/23/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI COMMUNICATION FACILITIES
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020723-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 23:7/23/2002: Downing Street Minutes
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

Exhibit 24:7/28/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI COMMUNICATION BUNKER
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020728-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 25:8/5/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI AIR DEFENSE COMMAND AND CONTROL FACILITY
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020805-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 26:8/14/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020814-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 27:8/15/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILE SITE
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020830-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 28:8/17/2002: Coalition Air Forces Strike Iraqi Mobile Radar Unit August 17
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020817-usia01.htm

Exhibit 29:8/20/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI MILITARY COMMAND AND CONTROL FACILITY
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020820-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 30:8/25/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE AIR DEFENSE RADAR SYSTEMS
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/mil-020825-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 31:8/27/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE IRAQI MILITARY COMMAND AND CONTROL FACILITY
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020827-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 32:8/29/2002: COALITION FORCES STRIKE MILITARY RADAR SYSTEM
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020829-centcom01.htm

Exhibit 33:8/29/2002: Boucher Says Regime Change Is Only Way to Solve Iraq Problem
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-020829-usia02.htm

Exhibit 34:9/2002: White House Silences Experts Who Question Iraq Intel Six Months Before War
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold6.html

Exhibit 35:9/27/2002: Bush calls Saddam 'the guy who tried to kill my dad'
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/bush.war.talk/

Exhibit 36:10/2002: White House kills Pentagon plans to strike Zarqawi's camp in Northern Iraq in order to maintain the White House's claim that Iraq has ties to terrorists
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601

Exhibit 37:10/2002: National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq WMD stripped of dissenting opinions http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/special_packages/iraq/7917626.htm

Exhibit 38:*1/2003: Britain, U.S. spy on UN allies over war vote
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5526&fcategory_desc=Under+Reported

Exhibit 39:1/2003: 'We're Going to Have to Go to War,' Bush Says to Rice
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19691-2004Apr17.html

Exhibit 40:1/6/2003: It is revealed that special forces have been operating on missions inside Iraq since August of 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/05/1041566310159.html?oneclick=true

Exhibit 41:Spring/2003: Blix suspects U.S. spying on him
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1158353,00.html

Exhibit 42:3/17/2003: Ex-CIA Accuse Bush of Manipulating Iraq Evidence
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81148,00.html

Exhibit 43:9/2004: President Bush has Saddam's Pistol
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3623/is_200409/ai_n9421009?cm_ven=YPI

ANOTHER MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Nearly three weeks after U.S. forces reached Iraq's most important nuclear facility, the Bush administration has yet to begin an assessment of whether tons of radioactive material there remain intact, according to military officials here and in Washington.
Before the war began last month, the vast Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center held 3,896 pounds of partially enriched uranium, more than 94 tons of natural uranium and smaller quantities of cesium, cobalt and strontium, according to reports compiled through the 1990s by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Defense officials acknowledge that the U.S. government has no idea whether any of Tuwaitha's potentially deadly contents have been stolen, because it has not dispatched investigators to appraise the site. What it does know, according to officials at the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, is that the sprawling campus, 11 miles south of Baghdad, lay unguarded for days and that looters made their way inside.
The Marines reported that some of the buildings showed evident signs of looting. Until receiving reinforcements, the small unit was unable to prevent further intrusions by Iraqis who cut through barbed wire fencing and stole inside.

U.S. Has Not Inspected Iraqi Nuclear Facility; Site That Contained Uranium Was Looted After War; [FINAL Edition]
Barton Gellman. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Apr 25, 2003. pg. A.14

DEBUNKING ID

There's a nice little piece by a biologist in the New Yorker. Here are some highlights:

MASTER PLANNED
by H. ALLEN ORR
Why intelligent design isn’t.
Issue of 2005-05-30
Posted 2005-05-23


But biologists have shown that direct paths to irreducible complexity are possible, too. Suppose a part gets added to a system merely because the part improves the system’s performance; the part is not, at this stage, essential for function. But, because subsequent evolution builds on this addition, a part that was at first just advantageous might become essential. As this process is repeated through evolutionary time, more and more parts that were once merely beneficial become necessary. This idea was first set forth by H. J. Muller, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, in 1939, but it’s a familiar process in the development of human technologies. We add new parts like global-positioning systems to cars not because they’re necessary but because they’re nice. But no one would be surprised if, in fifty years, computers that rely on G.P.S. actually drove our cars. At that point, G.P.S. would no longer be an attractive option; it would be an essential piece of automotive technology. It’s important to see that this process is thoroughly Darwinian: each change might well be small and each represents an improvement.

Each gene in an organism’s genome encodes a particular protein. Occasionally, the stretch of DNA that makes up a particular gene will get accidentally copied, yielding a genome that includes two versions of the gene. Over many generations, one version of the gene will often keep its original function while the other one slowly changes by mutation and natural selection, picking up a new, though usually related, function. This process of “gene duplication” has given rise to entire families of proteins that have similar functions; they often act in the same biochemical pathway or sit in the same cellular structure. There’s no doubt that gene duplication plays an extremely important role in the evolution of biological complexity.


It’s true that when you confront biologists with a particular complex structure like the flagellum they sometimes have a hard time saying which part appeared before which other parts. But then it can be hard, with any complex historical process, to reconstruct the exact order in which events occurred, especially when, as in evolution, the addition of new parts encourages the modification of old ones. When you’re looking at a bustling urban street, for example, you probably can’t tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on each other and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones (the new sushi place draws twenty-somethings who demand wireless Internet at the café next door). But it would be a little rash to conclude that all the shops must have begun business on the same day or that some Unseen Urban Planner had carefully determined just which business went where.
The most serious problem in Dembski’s account involves specified complexity. Organisms aren’t trying to match any “independently given pattern”: evolution has no goal, and the history of life isn’t trying to get anywhere. If building a sophisticated structure like an eye increases the number of children produced, evolution may well build an eye. But if destroying a sophisticated structure like the eye increases the number of children produced, evolution will just as happily destroy the eye. Species of fish and crustaceans that have moved into the total darkness of caves, where eyes are both unnecessary and costly, often have degenerate eyes, or eyes that begin to form only to be covered by skin—crazy contraptions that no intelligent agent would design. Despite all the loose talk about design and machines, organisms aren’t striving to realize some engineer’s blueprint; they’re striving (if they can be said to strive at all) only to have more offspring than the next fellow.
Another problem with Dembski’s arguments concerns the N.F.L. theorems. Recent work shows that these theorems don’t hold in the case of co-evolution, when two or more species evolve in response to one another. And most evolution is surely co-evolution. Organisms do not spend most of their time adapting to rocks; they are perpetually challenged by, and adapting to, a rapidly changing suite of viruses, parasites, predators, and prey. A theorem that doesn’t apply to these situations is a theorem whose relevance to biology is unclear. As it happens, David Wolpert, one of the authors of the N.F.L. theorems, recently denounced Dembski’s use of those theorems as “fatally informal and imprecise.” Dembski’s apparent response has been a tactical retreat. In 2002, Dembski triumphantly proclaimed, “The No Free Lunch theorems dash any hope of generating specified complexity via evolutionary algorithms.” Now he says, “I certainly never argued that the N.F.L. theorems provide a direct refutation of Darwinism.”

Of the five founding fathers of twentieth-century evolutionary biology—Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Ernst Mayr, and Theodosius Dobzhansky—one was a devout Anglican who preached sermons and published articles in church magazines, one a practicing Unitarian, one a dabbler in Eastern mysticism, one an apparent atheist, and one a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and the author of a book on religion and science. Pope John Paul II himself acknowledged, in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that new research “leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”

FALAFEL DON'T FLOAT

Via Atrios, Sweet Jesus I hate Bill O'Reilly has a scoop:


June 6, 2005 - EXCLUSIVE REPORT
S.S. O'Reilly Sinks Before Leaving Port

The Thomas More Law Center’s “The Battle For American Values” cruise with Bill O’Reilly has been canceled.
An automated message at Corporate Travel Service, Inc. didn’t try to hide the fact that there was little interest in spending eight nights on boat with FOX News Channel’s top personality:

“Hello and thank you for your interest in the Thomas More Law Center Cruise with Bill O’Reilly. Unfortunately, the cruise did not have the participation that all parties anticipated. Although the guest appearance by Mr. O’Reilly and the other speakershave been canceled, the ship will still sail...”

Corporate Travel Service told Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly, Intl. that the goal was to get 800 people onboard for a Caribbean fantasy week with O’Reilly. Even though the cruise was promoted heavily on The O'Reilly Factor television program, the Radio Factor, and O'Reilly's Web site, they sold only a fraction of the tickets available. According to the Thomas More Law Center, the response was surprisingly poor. The organization ultimately renegotiated with Holland America Cruise Line in an attempt to pare down the expected guest list but maintain the event as scheduled. Sales continued to trickle in and finally, after two more negotiations with Holland America to reduce the group size, the event was finally scrapped. Sadly, “The Battle for American Values" will be hard for Mr. O'Reilly to win if he can't manage to launch a single ship.

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE CLASS WAR

David Cay Johnston's book Perfectly Legal covers this much more extensively but he had a shorter version on Sunday:


Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: June 5, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html?ei=5090&en=f1af44c9cec8c79e&ex=1275624000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast. The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell.

Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes, investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400 households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number has grown more than 400 percent since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while the total number of households has grown only 27 percent.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.

¶Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000.
¶Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.
¶The alternative minimum tax, created 36 years ago to make sure the very richest paid taxes, takes back a growing share of the tax cuts over time from the majority of families earning $75,000 to $1 million - thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars annually. Far fewer of the very wealthiest will be affected by this tax.

From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000.

Speaking of the increasing concentration of incomes, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned in Congressional testimony a year ago: "For the democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow it to happen."

FLAT TAX/CLASS WARFARE 

WHERE ARE ALL THE BUSH PATRIOTS?

You may have noticed that recruiting is down and our Army is nearing the breaking point. So far, I haven't heard any of the radio liars, such as Ingaham and Hannity, urging their listeners to enlist. Via Atrios, I came across this from Jesus' General:

(excerpt)

Many, if not most, of the warriors in the Inland Empire Chapter are either students or unemployed. "Perhaps," I thought, "we could all go to the recruitment center in Spokane and sign up to serve in the military." I quickly put my thoughts into an email to all fifty-one members of the chapter.

From: "Gen. JC Christian, Patriot"
Subject: Re: HQ chapter broadcast: Protest Warriors
JJ, I agree that we need to get a successful mission under our belt. We've all heard about how the military is not meeting its recruitment goals. We're facing a manpower crisis. When I look at our membership, I see a lot of able-bodied men and women of military age. I say we hold a rally at the recruiting station. Then, after a few speeches, we all go in and sign up. Heck, we can always fight the liberals later. It's time to take the Protest Warrior flag to Iraq.

I received two emails in response. The first came from reader Kent's sweetheart, Risawn, who's serving in Kosovo, and the second from Commander JJ, who noted that he did his service during peace time.Other than that, nothing. None of the other forty-eight warriors responded. That includes: Ben Lange, an unemployed student; Daniel Brutocao, President of the Gonzaga College Republicans and member of the school's golfing team; Steven Himes, whose PW profile lists his hobby as "heroics;" Bill Benson, who claims to be an expert in "terrorism threat assessment, physical security;" Jane Provinsal of the Gonzaga College Republicans; and Cody Clary who claims to be a ninja.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE & LIES FROM THE RIGHT

Months ago, I heard Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988, claim that the legalization of same-sex marriages in the Scandinavian countries had led to a decline in marriage rates and thus must be opposed. I looked around to get the facts about this but I was unable to find any. Fortunately, MediaMatters has come up with some real research about this issue: http://mediamatters.org/items/200506030007

You can find the research paper MM's article is based on here:
http://www.freedomtomarry.org/pdf/scandinaviaBEPressArticle.pdf

Here is a key excerpt from the paper:

The long-term trend in Scandinavia has been lower marriage rates, higher divorce rates, and higher rates of nonmarital births. This has been a trend lasting at least two generations -- long predating registered partnership laws adopted in 1989 (Denmark) and 1994 (Sweden). The trend has mainly been cultural and social. To the extent that law has made a difference, one would expect the liberalization of alternatives (cohabitation) and exit (no-fault divorce) to be the key legal developments contributing to these changes in marriage and divorce rates. In both Denmark and Sweden, these legal changes occurred between 1969 and 1980, and the data in Tables D-1 and S-1 reveal a close correlation between these particular legal changes and lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates. Less dramatic legal changes, such as state support for working women with children, have also contributed to rising births of non-marital children.
Can Kurtz convincingly show that registered partnerships accelerated the pace of change in marriage that had been going on for most of the twentieth century, and that had been dramatic since 1970? Because registered partnership laws have been in effect for almost 15 years in Denmark and almost 9 years in Sweden, these countries might offer laboratories for testing his hypothesis. If state-recognized same-sex partnerships "contributed" to the decline of marriage and the rise of illegitimacy, even if indirectly by reinforcing an expanded-choice norm, we would expect to see (ceteris paribus) something more than falling marriage rates, rising divorce rates, and rising non-marital birth rates in Denmark after 1989 and in Sweden after 1994; those were the trends before 1989 and 1994. Rather, we should expect to see marriage rates falling faster, divorce rates accelerating upward, and a surge in non-marital birth rates. The data reveal no such trend. Not only do the registered partnership laws in Denmark and Sweden not correlate to super-normal plunges in marriage rates and super-elevated divorce rates, but some of the trends move in the other direction. The 1990s see no stake through the heart of marriage--indeed, the institution shows renewed signs of life in the new millennium. It is Kurtz's hypothesis that dies, according to the data.

EVEN MORE "WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS"

American-run assistance center sometimes struggles to help Iraqis
By Alaa al Baldawy, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thu Jun 2, 6:14 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050602/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_usiraq_assistance_wa



BAGHDAD, Iraq - As soon as Morooj Abdul Lateef's husband returned from morning prayers at his Baghdad mosque, a group of soldiers knocked on the door of their house and politely asked to detain him. They would be back in 10 minutes, the soldiers promised.

That was on May 14. She hasn't seen him since, and with a mix of American, Iraqi and private militia forces securing the country, she didn't know who came for her husband or where to start looking for him.

Desperate, she went to the Iraqi Assistance Center, an American-run office based in Baghdad that's designed to help Iraqis find arrested relatives, get medical care, get compensation for those wronged by American soldiers and find jobs.

The center depends on donated plane tickets to get sick people to better medical care or for a hospital to make space for someone. As a U.S. military-funded organization, it can't accept cash donations, Wernicki said.

Funding aside, it's still hard to help people. The Iraqi government is fragmented, and information about arrests, accidents or medical procedures is scattered.

The most common request is to help find a detained person, like Lateef's husband. The center receives up to 100 requests a day, a worker at the center said, but can only help find people in American prisons.

FOOL ME ONCE....

Reports of terrorists meeting in Syria were flawed, U.S. officials say
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Posted on Fri, Jun. 03, 2005
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11810108.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has no evidence that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi visited Syria in recent months to plan bombings in Iraq, and experts don't believe the widely publicized meeting ever happened, according to U.S. officials.
Two weeks ago, a top U.S. military official in Baghdad, Iraq, told reporters that Zarqawi had traveled to Syria in April and met with leaders of the Iraqi insurgency to plan the recent wave of bombings against American troops and the Iraqi government. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In the following days, top Bush administration and Iraqi officials increased their threats against Syria.
Three officials who said that the reports of Zarqawi's travels were apparently bogus spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified and because discussing the mistaken report could embarrass the White House and trigger retaliation against them.
The allegation by the U.S. military official in Baghdad that Zarqawi and his lieutenants met in Syria suggests that, despite the controversy over the Bush administration's use of flimsy and bogus intelligence to make its case for war in Iraq, some officials are still quick to embrace dubious intelligence when it supports the administration's case - this time against Damascus.
One of the U.S. officials said the initial report was based on a single human source, who has since changed his story significantly. Another official said the source and his information were quickly dismissed as unreliable by intelligence officials but caught the attention of some political appointees.
These officials and two others said the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were mystified by the reports of Zarqawi's visit because they had no such information.
"We are not aware of any information that suggests that Zarqawi met in Syria with his lieutenants in April," a defense official said. "However, it doesn't preclude his having met with them most likely in al Anbar," a largely Sunni Muslim province in western Iraq.

PEAK OIL PRIMER

Kevin Drum has written a 5-part article that's pretty good. The gateway page is here:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006421.php

BACK TO THE '50s

But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seem to resemble ideas.

Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, p. ix, 1950

Not much has changed.

WINGNUTS COMPARING NOXIN TO CLINTON

I got a comparison of Noxin & Clinton in the mail from www.mediamatters.org and I'd like to share some of it with you:


Offenses
NIXON: Presiding over most corrupt administration in history; bugging opponents' offices; breaking into opposition headquarters; breaking into psychiatrist's office; forgery; using the IRS and the Justice Department to harass political opponents and reporters, and much more.

CLINTON:Lying about inappropriate personal relationship; losing $48,000 in land deal.

Result
NIXON: resigned in disgrace, accepted a blanket pardon "for all offenses against the United States" he committed while president.

CLINTON: Countless investigations of everything from a 15-year-old land deal to the suicide of a White House employee to allegations of drug running to White House personnel decisions to campaign fund-raising to Arlington Cemetery burial procedures revealed no criminal wrongdoing by Clintons.

Top aides who went to jail
NIXON: Campaign manager/Attorney General John Mitchell convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for his role in Watergate break-in and cover-up; chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice; White House counsel John W. Dean III convicted of obstruction of justice; special counsel Charles W. Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

CLINTON: Associate attorney general Webster Hubbell, whose conviction for stealing money from Rose Law Firm colleagues, including Hillary Clinton, related to crimes he committed long before working in the Clinton administration.

TAKE THIS WAR AND SHOVE IT!

Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents
By DAMIEN CAVE
June 3, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html?ei=5094&en=7488119338909c3e&hp=&ex=1117857600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

Two years into the war in Iraq, as the Army and Marines struggle to refill their ranks, parents have become boulders of opposition that recruiters cannot move. Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed - or kill - in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.
A Department of Defense survey last November, the latest, shows that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.
Recruiters, in interviews over the past six months, said that opposition can be fierce. Three years ago, perhaps 1 or 2 of 10 parents would hang up immediately on a cold call to a potential recruit's home, said a recruiter in New York who, like most others interviewed, insisted on anonymity to protect his career. "Now," he said, "in the past year or two, people hang up all the time. "
Mr. Terrazas, 51, the father of a Whittier High School junior, said the notification was buried among other documents in a preregistration packet sent out last summer.
"It didn't say that the military has access to students' information," he said. "It just said to write a letter if you didn't want your kid listed in a public directory."
A few years ago, after Sept. 11, the issue might not have gotten Mr. Terrazas's attention. His father served in World War II, his brother in Vietnam, and he said that he had always supported having a strong military able to defend the country.
But after the war in Iraq yielded no weapons of mass destruction, and as the death toll has mounted, he cannot reconcile the pride he feels at seeing marines deliver aid after the tsunami in Asia with his concern over the effort in Baghdad, he said.
"Because of the situation we're in now, I would not want my son to serve," he said. "It's the policy that I'm against, not the military."

IS IT ME OR IS BUSH STUPID?

THE PRESIDENT: As you know, I also had an event here at the White House with little babies that had been born as a result of the embryos that had been frozen -- they're called "snowflakes" -- indicating there's an alternative to the destruction of life.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050531.html

From Stem Cell Opponents, an Embryo Crusade
By PAM BELLUCK
June 2, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/national/02embryo.html?ei=5094&en=3b1fc360e0a53540&hp=&ex=1117771200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

Ron Stoddart, the executive director of the Nightlight Christian Adoption agency, which started Snowflakes in 1997 and named it to reflect the frozen uniqueness of each embryo, said that he expected fewer embryos to be available in the future because fertility clinics are increasingly successful at implantation and will not need to create so many.
Mr. Stoddart, whose group has so far assisted 59 families in giving birth to 81 babies, said that once embryos are donated, only half survive the thawing process, and of those, only about 35 percent result in a baby. One mother died last year from pregnancy complications, said Lori Maze, director of Snowflakes.

FREEPERS ON THE DOWNING STREET MEMO

To: Baraonda
www.downingstreetmemo.com Just did a google search Glanced through it....boring.
63 posted on 06/02/2005 10:00:44 PM PDT by Protect the Bill of Rights
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 47 View Replies Report Abuse ]

To: kromike
This memo is the most laughable example of desperation we've seen from the moonbats yet. They honestly think they have something substantial here and it will lead to impeachment and conviction. I would pity them if I could ever stop laughing at them.
121 posted on 06/02/2005 10:35:51 PM PDT by EricOF
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CONNECTIONS

The Big Brass Blog and AfterDowningStreet were organized to keep the pressure on about the Downing Street Memo. You can join these groups and also sign John Conyer's letter to Bush about the memo.

Here are three media contact pages:

League of Women Voters: http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media/
NOTE: no e-mail for CBS or ABC but you can use FAIR's page for them

FAIR's media contact page: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111

Rumor Mill News: http://www.rumormillnews.com/MEDIA_EMAIL_ADDRESSES.htm
This is a massive list of individuals in the media.

THE "I" WORD

The post immediately below shows that there was planning to overthrow Saddam in January 2001 but that is just a small part of the evidence needed for an impeachment inquiry. LoadedMouth has a great entry that provides more damning evidence. Here's an excerpt:

Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice," where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.
Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'" Meyer also said, in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.

AGENDA FOR FREDO'S 2ND NSC MEETING

VERY EARLY PLANNING ABOUT IRAQ 

ANOTHER LTE PUBLISHED!

Career envy
Ann Coulter writes Moyers' broadcast career is "crashing down around him."
Let's have a very brief review of that career: 33 Emmy awards, 10 Peabody awards, Polk Award for lifetime achievement and two DuPont Columbia Gold Batons.
On the other hand, Coulter has been fired from MSNBC, the National Review Online and USA Today.
Moyers has had a career; Coulter has envy.
Steven J.
Tucson

HARPER'S ARTICLE ON THE CHRISTIAN TOTALISTS

Harper's has another great article on a serious threat to freedom in America:

Feeling the hate with the National Religious Broadcasters
Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005.
Originally from May 2005.
By Chris Hedges.

Again, I encourage you to read the whole article. Here are some excerpts...

Orange County, along with Colorado Springs, is a center of the new militant Christianity, and it is here, among friends, that the National Religious Broadcasters association—which brings together some 1,600 Christian radio and television broadcasters, who claim to reach up to 141 million listeners and viewers—is holding its annual convention.

I see anti-abortion booths and evidence of fringe groups such as Jews for Jesus and Accuracy in Media, one of whose representatives hands me a report with the title “American Troops Cheer Attacks on U.S. Media.”

In fact, this movement is a curious hybrid of fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, conservative Catholics, Charismatics, and other evangelicals, all of whom are at war doctrinally but who nonetheless share a belief that America is destined to become a Christian nation, led by Christian men who are in turn directed by God.

Ryan, [Dobsons' son] with closely cropped blond hair and a drooping Fu Manchu mustache, exhorts the audience to find a cause “worth fighting for” and “worth dying for.” He says he has learned how to reach young people. He knows their culture. He talks about his passion for surfing and skateboarding. Then he says, “People keep saying we need to change the discussion on abortion before we can ban it. We don’t need to change the discussion. Like, 80 percent of the country is against abortion. What kind of a country fines people $25,000 for killing a bald eagle but doesn’t do anything when unborn babies get thrown in the trash?”

ROGERLSIMON 6/1/05

So why did Amnesty make such an insane (word choice deliberate) accusation? That is what is perplexing me. Why are some people, in this case an important human rights organization, incapable of rational discourse? The answers are depressing, I think, and lie at the intersection of psychoanalysis and greed. What America has tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq provokes rage in many people because they feel their own personas threatened. At the same time, organizations like Amnesty believe their fund-raising goals are best achieved through making outrageous statements - a dangerous combination.

Posted by Roger L. Simon at 09:36 AM
Email this post Comments (125) Link

Yup, my "persona" is threatened because we've allowed Afghanistan to turn into a narco-state and because there are no WMD in Iraq.

Roger, you said "What America has tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq provokes rage in many people because they feel their own personas threatened."

Something about that struck me as fundamentally right, but I'm not sure what. Can you say more what you meant about that?


Posted by: Jim Mc at June 1, 2005 10:46 AM

Don't worry Jim, Roger doesn't know either.

POLPUNDIT ENTRIES & COMMENTS 6/1/05

SEC Chairman
President Bush will appoint California Congressman Chris Cox to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hopefully, Cox will use the new connections to eventually return home and win a Senate seat. -- Alexander K. McClurePosted at 11:02 pm Link to this post Comments
(2)

Nothing like a corporate whore to head the SEC.

What is truely amazing is the fact that the Viet Nam war was “OK”as long as the libs were in charge. Then came Nixon and all of a sudden the lib press and politicians didn’t even know how to say war. AND it was all Nixon’s fault. It has always been the same since WW II, libs get us in, start to lose, Republicans bail us out. That is a BIG reason why they want Iraq to fail. Republicans took us to war and lost. I can see the headlines and campaign ads now.
Comment by catnip Email 6/1/2005 - 9:43
pm

Maybe this guy never heard of the chant "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" or is unfamiliar with the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Let’s also not forget that had Clinton not failed so miserably in his handling of Iraq and terrorism in general, we may not even have these problems today.
In a real sense, Bush is having to finish the war that started under Clinton…only problem was that under Clinton, only the terrorists were fighting that war at that time. Clinton unilaterally did not fight.
Comment by Another Thought 6/1/2005 - 9:45
pm

And this is only the 3rd comment! Usually, the Clinton smears come later in the thread.

IMPERVIOUS

Cult members have an extemely adaptable belief system. No matter how inconvenient the facts are, they can be adjusted to without challenging the core beliefs of the system.
Last night, I was in a YAHOO political chat room and I was trying to spread the word about the Downing Street Memo. One person didn't find the memo site acceptable as evidence so I asked him if he would like a link to The London Times but that was a "leftie" paper and therefore unacceptable.

Normally that would be the end of the story but Fox News had an article about the memo, so I thought I'd give the guy one more try. This was his response:

bigsky: rad because its on fox doesnt mean its true fox is slideing to the left
YAHOO, WASHINGTON WATCH ROOM ONE, 6/1/05

I thought about asking him what he meant by "right" but then I recalled poster on an AOL message board:

This election proves that Liberalism is dead. Conservatives control now, and we are going to do things right. We are no longer going to support the disenfranchised, minorities, endangered species, worker's rights, the environment or any other liberal money pit. The natural resources are here to be exploited, that is what an industrialized nation does. You liberals have tied the hands of business in this country long enough. We are going to stop your environmental nonsense, your minimum wage stupidity, this pointless affirmative action movement. All these things that have lowered profits and increased corporate costs. We have our people in place now and we are going to keep them there. The war in Iraq will be won, and we will stand as the example to the world as what conservative policies can do. Iran and North Korea will realize they are no match for us. Mr. Bush will show the world our power. Americans no longer will be slaves to your liberal thinking.

Message 40 of 139 Subject 408 of 450
Subject: Re: Liberals Don't get it
Date: 11/4/04 4:55 PM US Mountain Standard Time
From: GOPisBEST9
MsgId: 547788:1181

Pretty scary.

ANOTHER TURNING POINT

D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/30/lkl.01.html

AARGH!

THE PRESIDENT: It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050531.html


Main Entry: dis·as·sem·ble
Pronunciation: "di-s&-'sem-b&l
Function: verb
transitive senses : to take apart
intransitive senses 1 : to come apart
2 : DISPERSE, SCATTER - dis·as·sem·bly /-blE/ noun

(From Merriam-Webster)