Bush Holds Cocktail Hour to Raise War Funds

So today we can only wish that were the truth as Bush demands we shell out $46 Billion More in War Funds. And he's demanding it by the end of the year. The rate Bush is going of course, his little foreign adventures are going to cost a total of $1 trillion dollars by the time his term is up. Yeah, that's more than the total of Vietnam and Korea. The total for this year alone in appropriations will be the highest year since the "War on Terror" began in 2001: $196.4 billion. As Pelosi points out, for the cost of 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care to 10 million children for a year. Even though Bush insists the war contractors need the money to buy nonexistent troops Christmas trees and pudding, we know the Pentagon doesn't need a penny more until after February and the primary elections. Bush made his announcement at the White House while surrounded by the family of a dead Marine, and exorting Democrats to prove they support the troops. Political theater much? Does this family have granite countertops?

Meanwhile, with the border between Iraq and Turkey heating up, we are faced with yet another Bush lie: that by staying in Iraq we reduce the chances for regional war. Undoubtedly, the presence of US troops gives courage to Kurdish insurgents, who dart into Turkey and back out to Iraqi strongholds which are technically within US borders. The surge of refugees out of Iraq continues to destabalize the societies and governments of countries that surround it, placing an enormous economic and social strain on allies in the region. Relief from them is likely never to come, as Iraqis displaced by ethnic fighting become the new international Palestinians, forever holding an identity with a country to which they can never go home. And after all of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the aggregate of the lives of Iraqis is worse than before the invasion of 2003. Far from reducing terrorism, the one last goal clung to by the Bush administration, Iraq has become a proving ground for terrorism tactics, and the successes are exported to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

What does Bush plan to do with this windfall if we give it to him? Get it stolen. Let's take a little peak into the $44.5 billion Iraqi reconstruction effort, and the auditing of just one $1.2 billion contract:

In a January audit of DynCorp's work under the INL contract, [auditors] found that the State Department paid $43.8 million for manufacturing and temporary storage of a residential camp that had never been used. The audit also questioned the State Department's payment of $36.4 million for weapons and equipment, including body armor, armored vehicles and communications equipment that couldn't be accounted for because "invoices were vague and there was no backup documentation." [Auditors] raised questions about INL's payment of business-class travel expenses for DynCorp officials. After INL questioned the charges, it said DynCorp re-paid $108,000. INL officials, according to Bowen's report, "have no confidence that the government has paid for only valid expenses under the contract."

Meanwhile, we find out that Blackwater ducks payroll taxes by calling it's employees "private contractors." Which might go a long way to explain why Blackwater takes no interest in their conduct. Who thinks Bush should get money to pay for this $H!T??!!

Vote Edwards in Democracy for America Poll!!

So today Republicans refused to vote for SCHIP on Capital Hill. A moment to reflect. Republicans sided with Bush even though he and their party pundits waged a horrible campaign full of deliberate misinformation, lies, and the slandering of a 12 year-old-boy and his family. Edwards released a statement that is spot on: Republicans should be made to pay a price at the polls.

Edwards dropped by the WaPost today to answer live questions from a few of the commentators there. He answered questions about health care and the No Child Left Behind Act, and about the excessive hype placed on standardized testing. As he points out: "You don't make a hog fatter by weighing' it."

I was pleased to see he had a ready answer for the likelihood that Republicans will campaign on tax cuts next year, despite the fact that Bush put us $9 trillion in the hole. Edwards went on to say he will point out to voters that Republicans mean to lower taxes on wealthy people, while Democrats lower taxes on working people. "If you believe we should finally value work, and not just wealth in America, you should vote for me."



In Iowa, the Edwards campaign announced today the formation of a Statewide Rural Advisory Committee, a wide group of leaders including first responders, business leaders, elected officials and agricultural leaders. One of it's most recognizable members is Denise O'Brien, an organic farmer and the founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, was the Democratic nominee for secretary of agriculture last year. Earlier this month, Edwards was endorsed by Iowa's Monroe County Supervisor Denny Ryan. Representing rural interests played a part in more more key endorsements from the Georgian Democratic Party, including the former Governor.

The importance of rural voter outreach extends to more than just the presidential caucus, as MyDD points out, as Democratic votes increased in rural counties in both 2004 and 2006. "That was a big change from the 1990s, when rural voters swung significantly against the Democratic Party. I believe that John Edwards would be by far the best candidate in our field to continue this trend, which would hurt the GOP badly. I urge you to consider this: the presidential election is more than 50 statewide elections. It also coincides with 435 House races and thousands of races for the state legislature." Out of the states come our national leaders and our next presidential candidates.



Edwards also signed the Presidential Pledge to expand Americorps to expand service positions by 100,000. Speaking before the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Edwards spoke about the need to return the production of our military's equipment to American soil, a point which I strongly support him. Edwards' also proposed a "Brownie's Law" which would require that those nominated as political appointees to federal agencies meet the same strict hiring requirements as a civil servant, and that they possess actual work experience for that position.

Another good policy point is that Edwards has proposed national cancer networks which would increase funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health, include specific research into what chemicals increase the likelihood of cancer, make more widely available home visits from nurses, and also called for an Internet clearinghouse for information about services that are available for families dealing with the disease.

Election data shows what happens when you match up each of the Democratic candidates against the Republicans: Edwards beats every Republican with a larger margin than either Clinton or Obama. Edwards is the only Democratic candidate with a significant lead against Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani. Edwards' out performance against Clinton and Obama in match ups with the Republicans are particularly is also significant in the key battleground states of Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio. We all know how important to a Democratic victory are voter margins in Ohio. As for swing voters, Edwards at this point demonstrates the greatest appeal among Democratic candidates to Independents, beating Giuliani by 13%. Obama wins Independents by 5% and Clinton wins them by 3% against Giuliani.



Vote for Edwards in the Democracy for America Poll!!!

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John Edwards, Democracy for America, current politics, poverty in america, breast cancer, education

Blackwater Attacked "Not Even By a Stone"

So today the Iraqi government released it's report concluding that Blackwater fatally shot 17 people at Nisoor Square without provocation on September 16th. The Iraqi government also reports that the number injured in the shootings is 27. The spokesperson for the Iraqi government, Ali al-Dabbagh, stated that Blackwater's presence was in response to a bombing near a State Department convoy earlier a mile away, but that the convoy in the Square itself had been threatened "not even by a stone." Ali al-Dabbagh went on to classify the incident as "an intentional murder that needed to be called to account according to the law." The findings of the Iraqi government reflect similar after action reports filed by the US military, which responded to the scene. Meanwhile, the US Embassy announced today a shift in the goals of the joint US-Iraqi Commission towards establishing a blueprint with the intentions that there even are ways to ensure that US-employed mercenaries "do not endanger public safety."

Britan will have it's troop strength to 2,500 by next spring. Brown made his announcment to day to ward off calls from political opponents for a definate time-table on withdrawal, also stating that logistics staff would be redeployed to surrounding nations, and that Britain will not guarantee to Bush to keep troops in Iraq past the end of 2008. Brown also stated that security around the south of Basra would be passed to Iraqi security forces by the end of two months time, ending Britan's combat operations in Iraq. Elsewhere, Petraeus spent the day holding a conference continuing accusations that Iran is actively destablizing the security situation in Iraq. Petraeus commented to Reuters that, "They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers." However, his press conference provided no evidence or declassified intelligence to support his assertions. The Iranian embassy didn't bother to comment.

Despite the public outcry in both the US and Iraqi, despite the reports coming from both the (supposedly independent) Iraqi government and from out own military, conservative commentators still cling to a candle for Blackwater. Despite of course, the enormous government malefescence that Blackwater's contracts represent, which is surprising for the supposedly fiscally responsible Republican Party. Richard Novak published a commentary in the Washington Post today containing a glaring number of inaccuracies, especially concerning the events of the attack on a Blackwater-escorted convoy of kitchen equipment in Fallujah of 2004. For one, he boldly lies that those who attacked and killed Blackwater's mercenaries wore the uniforms of Iraqi national police officers, in an attempt of conservatives to make the shooting of any uniformed Iraqi always justifiable.

Novak goes on to boldly lie that the congressional hearings of last Tuesday had not been scheduled until after the September 16th shootings, when they were in fact scheduled early last year. Novak also goes on to accuse the lawyers of the families of the Blackwater mercenaries killed in Fallujah (and the families by extension) of being more interested in a big payout than justice. As to the question of the purpose of the hearings, Novak pushes the idea that Democrats have only the right to explore questions of the Iraq War which have occured since they took control of Congress in early 2007. Such assumption is rooted of course in the de facto assumption that Blackwater is as innocent now as Novak claims it was innocent of gross misconduct in the planning of the 2004 Fallujah convoy. Novak clings to Blackwater's innocence the way some wives cling to the innocence of their cheating spouses, even when the mistress shows up at the husbands birthday party trailing her bastard children.

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troop surge, Blackwater, iraq war, iran, current events, politics, moonbat, war contractors

Take Military Powers Away from Blackwater and ilk

389 to 30 last week, the US House voted to extend coverage of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to cover mercenaries in the employ of the State Department, in a bill cosponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). Schakowsky, who began pressuring for greater oversight of war contractors shortly after the invasion of Iraq, wrote into the bill provisions which would "require the Justice Department to disclose to Congress the number of complaints filed against contractors, the number of investigations it has initiated and the number of criminal cases it has opened, along with the results of those cases." The Illinois Democrat wrote a letter to Bush in April of 2006, asking him to explain how war contractors were held accountable for their conduct in Iraq. Since then, their numbers have increased from 25,000 to 150,000.

We don't look at the number of contractors who are engaged in military activities, we don't count the deaths of contractors. We think about 1,000 have died," but the numbers aren't official. "We don't really even scrutinize the cost," Schakowsky said.

Now she wants to go further and is drafting legislation to phase out the use of private contractors for military-like activities. "Not KP duty," Schakowsky emphasized. The Blackwater incident "helps pave the way for us to say, 'There are functions that are inherently governmental. Carrying weapons and engaging in strictly military-like activities should be done by people who are clearly accountable employees of the United States.' "

"The government has to have a monopoly on the use of force," she continued. "We have outsourced war to these people, and now we have to bring it back within the government."

Nine Iraqi civilians died in three seperate bombings across Baghdad early Sunday. One bombing targeted an Iraqi police patrol, one targeted a US military patrol, and one the Iranian embassy. All missed their targets and killed civilians instead. The work of the joint US-Iraqi Commission into the Sept. 16 shootings in Nisour Square began. Elsewhere, the US military launched a dawn raid and captured three Shiite milita fighters believed to have played a role in the May 29th abduction of four British mercenaries and a civilian computer expert. The US military still beleives the five to be alive.

Liberal bloggers fire back and forth the Los Angles Times op-ed peice "I survived Blackwater." Janessa Gans served as a US official in Baghdad for two years, and Blackwater provided her security. Gans recounts that indeed, pelting Iraqis with water bottles is a favorite past time of Blackwater mercenaries, and the harrowing speeds they observed driving in the streets. In one particular incident, the Blackwater SUV she was being ferried in, attempted to intimidate one vehicle carrying an older man, a woman, and several children. The Blackwater driver honked and motioned furiously that the slower vehicle should move out of the path of the SUV:

The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt.

Until that point I had never mentioned anything to my drivers about their tactics, but this time I could not contain myself.

"Where do you all expect them to go?" I shrieked. "It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?"

My driver responded impassively: "Ma'am, we've been trained to view anyone as a potential threat. You don't know who they might use as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone."

"Well, if they weren't terrorists before, they certainly are now!" I retorted. Sulking in my seat, I was stunned by the driver's indifference.

Another op-ed in the Washington Post outlines the arguement against outsourcing war at all. In the debate it's interesting to note that in his congressional testimony, Blackwater executive Erik Prince, when pressed for details of outsourcing's benefits, went from claiming cost-savings to pleading ignorance of his own company's profit margin. But oh, he makes about 800,000 than moonbat. Beyond the cash cow that needs to be pasturized, the contracting of the powers of war is a disaster for any democracy. Our politicians incur only private costs instead of facing public accountability. Blackwater operates in Iraq in situations where it deliberately sacrifices the US mission in order to acheive it's own goals, regardless of the consequences. And as we saw in Fallujah in 2004, private decisions have the effect of committing our generals to courses of action, taking away from our military key decision making powers in tactics and strategy. War is too important an issue for the survival of a democracy for us to allow people to buy that power.

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Blackwater, Iraq war, war, current events, politics, moonbat, liberal, war contractors

Blackwater Faulted By Military for Baghdad Carnage

So today a senior US military official announced that reports from US soldiers present at the scene of the Nisoor Square shooting spree by Blackwater indicate that Blackwater was never fired on by insurgents and used excessive force in the incident. The total Blackwater killed is listed at 14 by Iraqi hospital records. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government revealed that the Blackwater convoy instigated another shooting a mere 150 meters after leaving the square, firing on five fleeing vehicles and killing another unarmed and innocent civilian. In response to its investigations, the US military has halted issuing weapons permits to mercenary companies through the DoD, holding the current level of such permits around 7,000.

"It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," said the U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident remains the subject of several investigations. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP or any of the local security forces fired back at them," he added, using a military abbreviation for the Iraqi police. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, the official said.

The company has said its guards acted appropriately after being attacked. Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, in previously unpublicized remarks prepared for delivery at a congressional hearing Tuesday, said the Blackwater guards "came under small-arms fire" and "returned fire at threatening targets."

Time for Congress to pass an amendment censuring Prince for lying to them and the American people. Time for American politicians to be serious about crime again, instead of flying murderers home first class and letting them loose on our streets. Defenders of Blackwater are quick to portray their mercenaries as former US soldiers (when they aren't former members of Columbian death squads), and to ask you who you want to defend you: Congressman Waxman or Prince. (Surely we have not come to the point in the US where we judge the integrity of a man by the size of his muscles?)One of them heads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The other one heads a private army operating outside an oath of loyalty to the American people, but amassed on our shores. (Like the Madhi Army, say.) One stands for democratic traditions upon which America was founded and the other one isn't even a real American. One defends liberty and justice for all, and the other one wants to hold power over the streets of our cities without answering to the Constitution. And let's remember how they would exercise that power on the defenseless:

Mohammed Abdul Razzaq was driving into Nusoor Square with his sister, her three children and his 9-year-old son Ali at the same time the Blackwater team arrived.

"They gestured stop, so we all stopped," Razzaq said. "It's a secure area so we thought it will be the usual, we would stop for a bit as convoys pass. Shortly after that they opened heavy fire randomly at the cars with no exception."

"My son was sitting behind me," he said. "He was shot in the head and his brains were all over the back of the car."

Blackwater also lied to Democratic Rep. Waxman of the when it claimed that it could not release documents requested for current congressional investigations without State Department approval. But State Department spokesman Tom Casey revealed that State had already granted permission. Congress isn't the only one having difficulty investigating the Sept. 16th incidents. Blackwater has refused communication with the Iraqi government outside of the FBI's investigation, stating that it is under no legal compulsion to cooperate. Additionally, Blackwater's been giving the US military the cold shoulder:

U.S. soldiers have reviewed statements from eyewitnesses and video footage recorded at Nisoor Square, the official said. Members of a U.S. unit working with Iraqi police were present in the area at the time of the shootings. U.S. soldiers also helped ferry victims to hospitals.

Blackwater, whose primary task in Iraq is to protect U.S. diplomats, has been unwilling to share information about the incident with the U.S. military, the official said, adding that military officials went to Blackwater's compound in the Green Zone but were denied access to company managers.

So far, Blackwater's key public strategies have included lying about what happened, and stressing that their mercenaries are mostly former US soldiers, in an attempt to dilute what it means to actually have the uniform on. As the details out of Nisoor Square get more gruesome as each day passes, these tactics are likely to cause the military to seek more distance in public, as it has today. A desperate Blackwater just hired itself a Public Relations firm to save it's public image. Really. The company in question, Burson-Marsteller, represents such clients as the cigarette maker Philip Morris, nuclear power plants, and the makers of Botox. How fitting of course, since Botox is an toxic agent of war. Even juicier is that Robert Tappan, one of the executives in charge of the account, worked at the State Department as the deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, and he spent six months in Baghdad as director of strategic communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority under Bremer. Undoubtedly, guarded by Blackwater mercenaries.

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Blackwater, war contractors, Iraq war, current events, politics, liberal, moonbat

Blackwater Bloggers Plan to Hunt Down Liberals in USA

Blackwater has the guns and money to go to any means to save it's hold on the taxpayers' teat. For example, the issue of coverage in blogs, or shall we say, the fine art of creating a blog to promote your own company. Blackwater Facts which claims that "We're supporters of Blackwater USA, the heroic private security company that has lost more than two dozen of its own men while protecting American diplomats, VIPs and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. We set up this blog shortly after the September 16, 2007 incident in which terrorists attacked an American diplomatic convoy near Baghdad, because we were fed up with all the misleading media coverage." Right under the blog archives which allow you to read the April 23, 2006 post written to promote the idea of employing Blackwater as international peacekeepers instead of the United Nations. (LIE) Whoever Standish was, his blogger identity was last altered this month. The name choice likely refers to Captain Miles Standish, who gets referred to excitedly as private security contractor, but in truth he was an English Knight, first retained as the military captain of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and once they reached Plymouth, elected as military captain of the colony, much in the way that we elect Sherriffs.

"Standish" also boosts the blog with a link to another blog he/they set up, "About Blackwater." Set up September 24, 2007, it's one post is basically a wholesale copyright infringement of Blackwater's entire "about" section on it's website. As "friendly links," Standish includes the International Peace Operations Association and a mirror blog BlackwaterReporting, which you can follow throught to the original blog, FairReporting. All careful to claim they have no affiliation with Blackwater, except IPOA. The curious nature of Standish differs from sheer idiocy because BlackwaterFacts is a poison of a different sort: blog branding. Namely, when either employees pretend to be independent bloggers who just admire their company, or the company hires a branding company to pretend to be harmless "we love" bloggers. Standish's post of 5:09 Wednesday afternoon attracted the attention of TMR. After some 40 taunts and jibs, the blogger finally confessed:

I am a contractor for Blackwater and they are the best emplyoer I have ever had. My family is well provided for and I live the life of adventure, and defend freedom. You liberals are spinless lackeys of Islamist terror, and anti-free market biasd toward the liberal. I get all my information from real blogs not left wing and Fox News. America, rest easy, support your troops AND Blackwater. I fear that if you don't you will be sorry.

THIS IS LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS CRAP, MADE UP TO AID THE ENEMY, NOT TRUE! LIBERALS, WHEN WE COME HOME, WE WILL HUNT DOWN THOSE WHO HURT THE USA!

Moonbat isn't exaggerating about how common it is to hear these things declared in the comment sections for "we love" Blackwater blogs. Often, comments are made referrencing a coming civil war where conservatives will hunt down and purge America of all liberals. You won't find the above quotes in the comments section of BlackwaterFacts anymore. After two hours of onslaught by muckraking bloggers, the BlackwaterFacts threw up comment moderation, and finally today errased all of it's self-confessional comments, and all comments made to it's blog yesterday. Although like most of the other "we love" Blackwater blogs out there, which can be traced to brand marketing firms through their ISP numbers, as a blogger.com creation, BlackwaterFacts gets some cover by a more low-brow approach. But the purpose of Blackwater facts becomes clear in the pages of it's own proflifferic blogging today, when it posts in self-congratulations for reaching the #1 of Google Blog Search for searches keyed to Blackwater. Or so it claims....



What people really are looking at isn't Google rank, by google blog search which ranks by relevance and date of the blog's posting. There is no number one slot, as it updates as each new entry is made. Even no name blogs can land the slot as the first blog in the search, if they were the newest blog published. When I began blogging today, Crooks and Liars had just bumped them off. And even now, they've been bumped off by a Media Matters for America story. An aside on the second story: In their coverage of the oversight hearings, USAToday and the LATimes both noted that Republicans united in defending Blackwater, but neither noted extensive campaign contributions by Blackwater executives or its founder, or the involvement of its founder with the conservative Council for National Policy, which supported Bush in his bid for the Presidency. I digress... So as soon as a new blog entry for "Blackwater" gets published by anyone with links, that new entry becomes the top of the heap. Sometimes it takes a little investigation and clicking on links, but you can catch a lot of people puffing up their own importance. Of course, as they love to remind you, they are bloggers with guns and they have plans for us liberals...

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Blackwater, current events, blogging, politics, liberal, moonbat, Iraq war

The Smoking Guns of Blackwater's Mercenaries

So today the world has a view into the lives of five of the innocent people gunned down by Blackwater's mercenaries in Baghdad's Nisoor Square on September 16th. Construction workers had just finished painting flowers on the walls of the square following reconstruction after a truck bombing. A banner reading "Creators of Life are Always Victorious" fluttered in the noon breeze. Ali Khalil was a 54-year-old blacksmith and father of six children, and had felt safe enough in the capital to reopen his shop three days earlier. Osama Fadhil Abbas was a 40-year-old car dealer on business. Mehasin Muhsin Kadhum, a 46-year-old doctor, and her twenty-year-old son Ahmed Haitham, were returning home with college application forms for Kadhum's daughter. At 25, Mahdi Sahib supported his whole ten member family on his taxi driver's salary of $480 a month, and while he could not replace the broken windshield wipers of his taxi, continued to nurse the hope that he would one day save enough money to marry. Fifteen minutes later, as Blackwater sped away from the smoking scene, their murdered victims would range from grandfathers to wives to schoolgirls to an infant.

On that day, the Blackwater convoy was responding to a bombing near a State Department convoy about a mile away. As the Blackwater armored vehicles entered the square, a heavily guarded area near Baghdad's affluent Mansour neighborhood, Iraqi police officers moved to stop traffic.

Kadhum, the doctor, and her son Haitham, who were in the flow of cars the officers were trying to stop, didn't react quickly enough. A Blackwater guard fired, striking Haitham as he sat in the driver's seat, three witnesses said.

"The bullet went through the windshield and split his head open," recalled traffic police officer Sarhan Thiab. "His mother was holding him, screaming for help."

The car, which had an automatic transmission, kept rolling. Another officer, Ali Khalaf, tried to stop the vehicle as another spray of bullets killed Kadhum.

Thiab fled first, then Khalaf, followed by bullets that struck a traffic light pole, a billboard and their police guard post. Then the Blackwater guards escalated their firepower, engulfing the sedan in flames.

Osama died trying to flee from his truck when Blackwater turned their guns on it next. Khalil died within minutes of being brought to the hospital; when his wife arrived with bed sheets and water, she was sent to the morgue. Sahib died slowly over three hours from internal bleeding, while family members held his hands. The uncle of twenty-year-old Ahmed Haitham, had rushed to aid the shooting victims, and come upon Ahmed's and his mother's burned bodies in the hospital. He called Ahmed's father, who rushed to the Square, only to find the family's charred car missing it's license plate, but the number written next to it in the sand. Later in the hospital, Haitham Ahmed was able to recognize the bodies of his family by his wife's dental work and one of his son's shoes.

On the cab roof of Osama's white Volkswagon truck are bullet entry holes, with trajectories that indicate they came from fire from above. Although witnesses testify that Blackwater mercenaries fired out of their helicopters as people tried to flee for their lives, the company has denied this claim. Dr. Kadhum's white car still sits in Nisoor Square, and Haitham Ahmed is determined to see it remains there until there is justice for the deaths of his wife and son. Iraq's government has not responded to his inquiries.

"They have killed my beloveds. They were innocent," he lamented on Wednesday. "We don't have any contacts with any party, any side. We are all doctors."

"What I want is the law to prevail," he added. "I hope that this act will not go without punishment."

There were opportunities, he said, for his family to flee Iraq. But he and his wife believed in the promise of a new Iraq. "I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq," he said.

His son was going to follow in his footsteps. In his third year of medical school, the soccer-loving, multilingual Ahmed planned to become a surgeon.

Now, he said, his two other children, Mariam, 18, and Haidar, 16, are concerned about his safety. "Enough of the pain, enough of death in Iraq."

Mariam was born in the last phases of the Iran-Iraq conflict. Her eyes filling with tears, she said she wanted to leave: "I was born in one war, I don't want to die in another."

Original plans for the FBI's investigation included Blackwater guards. It took a release to the press about these plans and pressure from Congress, and 24 hours, for the State Department to think it was wise to alter these arrangements so that the department's Diplomatic Security Services would be assigned to that task. The White House is meanwhile denouncing legislation passed by the House which would apply all regulations currently used to provide oversight and federal jurisdiction over Defense Department war contractors in Iraq, to those under contract with State, including Blackwater. The law in question is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. The bill passed 389-30. Via the Office of Budget Management is the claim that such equal jurisdiction in contracting would have "intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."

Questions continue to emerge on the conduct and operations of Blackwater on that day. Blackwater revamped it's website since the shooting, dropping press reports and news briefings, and reducing the publicly available information about it's company. However, you can still buy company apparel. The State Department's intial report on the Sept. 16th incident was written by a current Blackwater employee. Secretary of State Condollezza Rice exerted pressure on the Iraqi government to allow Blackwater to remain inside Iraq, creating the public perception that the government of Iraq cannot act with autonomy. Even the officials Blackwater guarded on September 16th highlight the need for impartial investigations:

A bomb exploded on the median of a road a few hundred yards away from the meeting, causing no injuries to the Americans, but prompting a fateful decision to evacuate. One American official who knew about the meeting cast doubt on the decision to move the diplomats out of a secure compound.

“It raises the first question of why didn’t they just stay in place, since they are safe in the compound,” the official said. “Usually the concept would be, if an I.E.D. detonates in the street, you would wait 15 to 30 minutes, until things calmed down,” he said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.

But instead of waiting, a Blackwater convoy began carrying the diplomats south, toward the Green Zone. Because their route would pass through Nisour Square, another convoy drove there to block traffic and ensure that the diplomats would be able to pass.

CNN interviewed one of the Iraqi Police stationed at the Square, who stated that Blackwater threw water bottles at the police upon entering the Square and then proceeded to drive the wrong way around. The police officer Sarhan noticed that the guards looked nervous. When the traffic didn't immediately halt, the mercenaries opened fire with warning shots, and then began shooting vehicles. When Sarhan attempted to rescue Kadhum, after her son was shot dead in the driver's seat, he and another police officer were unable to halt the rolling car. Even in uniform, he too became a target:

"I wanted to get his mother out, but could not because she was holding her son tight and did not want to let him go," Sarhan said. "They immediately opened heavy fire at us."

"Each of their four vehicles opened heavy fire in all directions, they shot and killed everyone in cars facing them and people standing on the street," Sarhan said.

The shooting lasted about 20 minutes, he said.

"When it was over we were looking around and about 15 cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road."

Sarhan said no one ever fired at the Blackwater team.

"They became the terrorists, not attacked by the terrorists," he said.

"I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me, blow up and then her entire body was charred," he said. "What do you expect my reaction to be? Are they protecting the country? No. If I had a weapon I would have shot at them."

War is ugly, that much is true. But this was not war, this was murder, done by a company operating for profit committing acts of barbarity for which our own uniformed soldiers will face an accounting for on the streets of Baghdad. For how much longer will we tolerate having a military and a foreign policy held hostage to the profit margins of neoconservatives, who would see the power to make war and peace shifted to an auction? How does having the readiness of our forces undermined to create overpaid positions for at-will war contractors further American security? What does it say about the future of democracy as a government about humans that we allow senseless bloodshed for the mere sake of convenience? Who should be held accountable for the descent of the "war of the willing" into the "war of the billing?" How long will the burned out car of a woman doctor sit on the side of the road?

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Blackwater, war contractors, Iraq war, current events, politics, moonbat, liberal

Blackwater is Another Term for Human Waste Water

So today let us reveiw what it's like to give congressional oversight to a company that goes by a word for what you flush down the toliet.

Biggest bombshell of the day is the fact that there's no budgetary justification for employing war contractors to replace our military's soldiers after all. One Blackwater mercenary costs America more than $400,000 while his counterpart in the US military costs only $50,000 to $70,000. Astounding.... but that get's a little lost in the cauterwailing on the Republican side of the aisle over the idea that Blackwater needs its "conduct" examined by Congress. What do we find in these murky waters?

In one incident last Christmas Eve, [b]a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed a security guard for one of Iraq's vice presidents[/b], and the State Department allowed the contractor to leave Iraq, the report said.



In response to questions about the Christmas Eve shooting, Prince said that the employee was promptly fired and fined "multiple thousands of dollars" but that Blackwater did not have authority to take other punitive action.

"I'm not going to make any apologies for what he did," Prince said. "He clearly violated our policies." He said Blackwater acquired an airline ticket for the employee to return to the United States "by direction of the State Department."

Blackwater shelled out $15,000 to the family of the Iraqi guard, which the State Department handed off. The made the mercenary in question pay for his own airplane ticket and then withheld a bonus, but that does not constitute a "fine." Neatly, the bonus comes out a bit shy of what they paid to the family of the guard. You can bet that $15,000 didn't come out of Blackwater profits.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said [b]the Justice Department has informed the committee that it is still investigating the Christmas shooting nine months later.[/b]

[b]Prince also was asked about an initial erroneous report that the Iraqi security guard had been shot by a drunken U.S. soldier, rather than a private contractor. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) pointed to a Blackwater e-mail referring to the mistake and saying that "at least the ID of the shooter will take the heat off us."[/b]

Prince said Blackwater did not take any action to correct the account because it is prohibited by contract from engaging with the news media. "I don't believe that false story lasted in the media for more than a few hours," the Blackwater chief executive said.

He also disputed charges that Blackwater guards have killed innocent Iraqi civilians in reckless shootings while escorting convoys, but he said there have been "times when guys are using defensive force" to protect themselves or their convoys and could have killed civilians through "ricochets" or "traffic accidents."

So we have Prince testifying before Congress that never have Blackwater mercenaries ever pointed their weapons at an unarmed and innocent Iraqi and just killed them. The only civilians Blackwater mercenaries kill, are the Iraqis that they don't aim at. So I geuss they just define insurgents and terrorists as anyone they aim at? Hey- they may be better at fudging numbers than the White House.

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) said he was "a little saddened by this hearing" because Blackwater is a member of "our team." He said the committee "should not go to the extent of undermining Blackwater's ability to perform as our team."

But Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.), voicing rare GOP criticism of Blackwater at the hearing, observed that [b]Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, earns about $180,000 a year, less than half the salary of a Blackwater official in charge of a 34-member security team[/b].

The war in Iraq has produced some of the most "lavish" and "excessive" contracts in U.S. history, Duncan said. "Fiscal conservatives should feel no obligation to defend this kind of contracting. . . . In fact, fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by this."

Time will tell if the Republicans send through an ammendment giving Petraeus a raise to the level of what a Blackwater official for a security team gets paid. You know, if they really valued his service. On the other hand, it's good to have clear to the world exactly what some Republican members of Congress place as the value of an innocent Iraqi life. Even lower than $15,000 it seems, if it's not worth even the slightest public embarressment for a Republican campaign contributor.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released preliminary information gleaned about Blackwater's conduct.

Blackwater security contractors in Iraq have been involved in at least 195 "escalation of force" incidents since early 2005, including several previously unreported killings of Iraqi civilians, according to a new congressional account of State Department and company documents.

In one of the killings, according to a State Department document, Blackwater personnel tried to cover up what had occurred and provided a false report. In another case, involving a Blackwater convoy's collision with 18 civilian vehicles, the firm accused its own personnel of lying about the event.

....In total, the documents indicate, Blackwater has terminated 122 employees under its State Department contract. According to Prince, the company currently has about 1,000 employees in Iraq.

...Based on more than 437 Blackwater documents and "a limited number of incident reports and documents from the State Department," the Democratic staff memo said, Blackwater personnel had participated in 195 incidents in which they discharged firearms, with Blackwater firing first in more than 80 percent of them. At least 16 Iraqi casualties resulted.

Another blogger over at Pissed On Politics worked on the numbers for Blackwater a little more. Blackwater charges Regency a baseline of $815 for a single mercenary and $1,075 a day for a senior manager. How much does Petraeus make a day? $493

Let's do a little more math. Not much, moonbat's honor. So if you have about 1,000 employees in Iraq, and you have to fire 122 of them for conduct reasons, that means 17% of your employees were a problem and got caught. Let's emphasize the "got caught" part. Is anyone going to try to say that the percentage of military personal we have had to prosecute for conduct in Iraq even approaches this horrifying number?

In a June 24, 2005, incident -- reported in a U.S. Embassy memo that was cited by the committee and obtained by The Washington Post -- a Blackwater security detail in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, shot a civilian man standing at the side of the street as the contractors drove by. "This is the case involving the PSD [personal security detail] who failed to report the shooting, covered it up, and subsequently were removed" from the city, an embassy security officer wrote in a July 1, 2005, report.

Everyone remember what Prince said about Blackwater mercenaries not shooting civilians intentionally? Oh, did our little Prince just lie? To Congress? No you see, anyone Blackwater mercenaries aim at is de facto a terrorist, even if they are unamred and walking down the street to the bakery. Prince fired the shooter not for murdering some guy in cold blood for fun, but for not filling out the paperwork afterwards.

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Blackwater, current events, blogging, politics, congress, moonbat, Iraq war

MoveOn Haters Require the Suspension of Disbelief

So today C-SPAN took a stream of callers on that phony ginned-up artificial manufactured vat-grown faux-controversy over Move-On's "General Betray Us" ad. Moonbat found herself chewing the steering wheel when none of the Democratic callers could stay focused on the statistics, but at least the Republicans were amusing enough to use Petraeus' report as a justification to nuke Baghdad. Guiliani's frogs hop about promoting his own, closer to the front page, denouncement of Hillary Clinton, for not being a spokesperson for MoveOn, so that she can hurt her own campaign by being stupid enough to give into his demands to apologize for the ad. MSNBC's political analyist Joe Watkins claims on television that MoveOn's ad contained only the words "General Betray Us?" and a mug shot of General Petraeus, so outrageously taken of his unflattering side. And oh yes... TalkLeft's call for liberals to denounce MoveOn has been reposted to raise advertising revenue.

Con-blogs whipped themselves into hysteria over the idea that MoveOn got a $167,000 full page-ad for only $65,000. "This is tantamount to an endorsement in my opinion. If THE preeminent paper in the nation is willing to go so far as endorse this deplorable and mindless behavior, then "baby killers" shouted in the streets can't be far off." (Beware the ad-ware that downloads off this site!) Heck, it's even McCarthyism to demand accountability, not for your political affiliation anymore, but testimony you're going to give to Congress. McCarthyism? MoveOn must be calling Petraeus a communist, oh my!

BlackFive takes the cake by filing a very sad complaint with the Federal Elections Commission. "I sold political advertising ...during the 2006 elections. We were informed that there could be absolutely no discounts to the rate card prices for political or advocacy advertising ...to stop the paper from favoring one viewpoint over another. It seems evident that if the reports are true, the NY Times has favored MoveOn by offering a huge discount to them for political advocacy advertising." Blackfive and it's dear readers seem unaware that the New York Times is available online, where spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis explains how political advocacy groups can save a little green by running ads on ""standby." Wait.. it get's better!!

Who backs up the NYTimes against Blackfive but Freedom Watch. “The New York Times representative explained to us that we could run a standby rate ad for $65,000, but we could not pick the date or placement of the ad.” Freedom Watch expresses the doubt that MoveOn would have the political savvy to leak it's own ad once the NYT phoned them before putting the paper to bed.. but who cares about sour grapes? Perhaps it's even too little to point out Blackfive's selective revision of the English language when UncleJimbo "defines" betray... as "to deliver or expose to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty: Benedict Arnold betrayed his country." Now, clicking on the link provided we find something beyond such an elementary understanding of our language:

1. to deliver or expose to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty: Benedict Arnold betrayed his country.
2. to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining, or fulfilling: to betray a trust.
3. to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; be disloyal to: to betray one's friends.
4. to reveal or disclose in violation of confidence: to betray a secret.
5. to reveal unconsciously (something one would preferably conceal): Her nervousness betrays her insecurity.
6. to show or exhibit; reveal; disclose: an unfeeling remark that betrays his lack of concern.
7. to deceive, misguide, or corrupt: a young lawyer betrayed by political ambitions into irreparable folly.
8. to seduce and desert.

Moonbat discovered that not a single one attempted to actually defend Petraeus' redefinition of determining who is or is not a terrorist by how they pump you with lead. In fact, poor reading skills led Newsbusters to claim MoveOn cited Iraq sectarian death statistics wrong. MoveOn's Ad stated "For example, death by car bombs don't count." Newsbusters quoted the NewYorkTimes incorrectly to refute that statement:

Victims from car bombs are treated as sectarian casualties if the attack appears to be directed at a sectarian or ethnic group ....Casualties that result from fighting between groups, like the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps, however, are not classified as sectarian, as they are the result of clashes between two Shiite organizations. But victims of all car bomb attacks and Shiite and Sunni infighting are included in the overall civilian casualty count.

Key parts they misread are in bold. Car bombings that strike open market places in cities, or random buses, or police stations, or Coalition military personnel are not counted. Only the overall civilian count, which General Petraeus did not use, includes all deaths by car bombs. Unless a car bomb strikes a mosque or an isolated tribe, that car bombing has been excluded as an indication of the continued insurgency. The difference made means de facto, MoveOn is right.

Giuliani forgets Aesop's parable about the little yappy dog who tries to bite two steaks at once and looses both, aiming poorly at MoveOn and Hillary at the same time. At least he's not as sad as Thompson, whose words of wisdom are that veterans are stupider than youngsters who he doesn't trust to drink beer. McCain perhaps does him better by saying Hillary can prove she's a man's-man by not showing she understands something as hard as math. Moonbat will let her dear readers be the decider.

Interesting to see if this fantasy love-affair between MoveOn and Hillary Clinton will become the stuff of pop legend. Beyond conservatives insisting that any elite with a PhD or who has been called a Great Leader by a magazine deserves having their reputation defended by a congressional resolution, Hillary Clinton's full testimony gets hacked into unrecognizable tidbits which she "huffed" when she pointed dared grill the General over the point that to accept his report as accurate, several other recent independent reports must be dismissed wholesale. Clinton even went out of her way to point out that no one should expect Petraeus to have to answer for the years of Bush's policy, to be a spokesperson for everything that came before him. Sheesh. Giuliani dearly would love Americans to be so uncultured as to equate the phrase "the willing suspension of disbelief" with deliberate falsehood... but no, we is more learned than that, yes?

While the surge strategy gets hashed to pieces, at least the BBC got around to asking the Iraqi people what they thought of the surge:

"The United States has increased the number of its forces in Baghdad and surrounding provinces in the past six months. Please tell me if you think this increase of forces has made it better, worse, or had no effect?"



"How long do you think US and other Coalition forces should remain in Iraq?"

"Some 47% of respondents now back an immediate withdrawal, compared with 35% in February. The poll also shows dwindling support for troops remaining in the country, even in support of the Iraqi government and security forces. Only 10% of those surveyed favor coalition forces remaining for that purpose."



Con-blogs better batten down the hatches, pile up the Pepsi, and hook up that pee-bag: MoveOn Moves On to presidential shrubbery on September 17th. "Before the surge, George Bush had 130,000 troops stuck in Iraq," says the narrator of the new ad. "Americans had elected a new Congress to bring them home. Instead, Bush sent 30,000 more troops. Now he's making a big deal about you guessed it . . . pulling out 30,000. So, next year, there will still be 130,000 troops stuck in Iraq. George Bush. A Betrayal of Trust." 130,000 + 30,000 - 30,000 = 130,000 Which means the surge got us right back to start. But wait, I suppose that's more math moonbat shouldn't worry her cute little curls over??

Technorati Tags:
General Petraeus, troop surge, Iraq, Move On, withdrawal, politics, current affairs, moonbat

Passengers Fail to Observe 9-11 Moment of Silence

So today, the vast majority of Americans seem to have chickened out on flying, count that towards what you will: no one believes Petraeus, people have noticed how many Al-Q terrorist cells keep getting arrested trying to make explosives, rainy weather. Those few who trickled through airports local to moonbat overwhelmingly booked flights without realizing what date they were picking, or else flew for business, because heck, gotta make that buck. Several offical attempts were made to observe moments of silence when the first World Trade Center was struck, as passengers rolled their eyes and continued to take off their shoes. Moonbat found herself off eating lentil soup and completely missed the correct time. Headquarters provided nifty little posters for everyone to sign stating that they remembered the reason why they came to work. As a mark of low morale, no one signed.

En route to and from defending the nation from Osama bin Laden, and to and from the one intelligence class at her college there's been enough student interest in to run, moonbat has been listening to tidbits of Petraeus' "I swear I wrote this despite that the White House rewrites everyone else's testimony, but I hid mine in my underwear drawer and Cheyne would never think to look there" testimony. So sectarian violence is down 45% since last December and 80% in Baghdad alone... as long as you don't include car bombs, Diyala province and anyone shot anywhere else than the back of the head. What are we to do with a General who defines the difference between a terrorist and a criminal by how they shoot you?? Under the spit and polish, the truth remains that the surge has failed. Sectarian violence remains above levels in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Ducking under one month in the last twelve by spinning numbers is political manuevering unexpected from General Betray Us.

People should read the ad before swallowing the inevitable attempts at Republican spin and give MoveOn a fair chance. A difference remains between calling someone a traitor for voicing dissapproval of their President's policy and the commendable act of saying the General has no clothes. When numbers given as Congressional testimony are misleading and false, a General who speaks them betrays the trust of the public, and that act is not removed from moral outrage just because even moonbat favors a few of his overall ideas. Nor should Democrats feel the need to return MoveOn's money. You'd think con-blogs would assume Petraeus had any skin at all.

Six years later.... our military tetters on the edge of an abyss and meets it's recuitment goals only by large cash payments. We still can't translate most of our intercepted SIGINT. Our country got milked by almost $60 billion in wasted contracting dollars by Republican election donors pretending to "work" in Iraq. Electricity production in Baghdad remains 2 hours a day. The Taliban are just about as popular as ever in Afghanistan. Al-Q's mobile terrorist training camps still churn out bomb-makers from international schools in Pakistan. China spends it's time on a Marshal Plan for Africa. Osama bin Laden finds the time to die his beard and follow the real estate mortage crisis in the United States. What has the Republican party done for you lately??

Going Down for the War on Terror

So today moonbat has appeared to rant about how America is loosing the war on terror. Flat out, we must be dead last. As Bush could have been dead a few days ago, when Osama Bin Laden snuck through two security checkpoints at the APEC summit in Australia. Interestingly enough, the international security community is being allowed to huffingly brush off the incident, in reality a bunch of comedians from an Aussie t.v. show "The Chaser," as proof about how "the incident fully vindicated the strength of the events security." And we, the public, seem content to let this one side, despite the fact that real terrorists, who think the same zany way as comedians do, could have easily incinerated the "leader of the capitalist world" almost six years to the anniversary of 9-11. Perhaps the next Director of National Intelligence should be selected from the writer's staff of Saturday Night Live.. as an improvement...



Elsewhere than Iraq, the real war on terror spills over into new battlegrounds, as Al-Q continues to be left relatively unmolested by the US military. White German citizens converted to Islam traveled to PAKISTAN, where they trained in camps last year run by the Islamic Jihad Union, a Central Asian group affiliated with al-Qaeda. Young white men, not Arabs or Persians or Indians or Africans, to all of you who object to airline security so much because, by the gods, you are white.

In June, the Taliban circulated a DVD among local journalists in Pakistan that purported to show a training camp graduation ceremony. Among the 250 graduates were more than a dozen white-skinned young men. One Taliban figure in the video was identified as the leader of a small group of German recruits, according to a copy of the video viewed by a Washington Post correspondent.

Wait, who are these Taliban?? Oh, they still run a whole lot of this country we supposedly have liberated from radical Islamic forces, Afghanistan, where we are now also loosing the war against international heroin. Nothing beats an Administration that can loose two wars in the same country at the same time.

Germany's arrests arrive hard on the heels of the arrests of an unrelated Islamic terrorist cell in Denmark. Two isolated cells, both of which had acquired materials to begin cooking explosives. Cheery.

The Muslims arrested ranged from 19 to 29 years old. They came from Afghan, Pakistani, Somali and Turkish backgrounds and six were Danish citizens, Scharf said.

Mmmm... why aren't they Iraqi, do you suppose? No Iranians?

Moonbat lies awake at night often thinking about terrorism. No big surprise considering that unlike a lot of hot-air baffoons, her job entails preventing them from killing innocent Americans should all those intelligence and police operatives fail to discover and stop them in time. But the time has passed for sleepless nights. The time has come for laughter. The time of employing comedians in the ranks of our intelligence agencies, and in our congressional committees has arrived. Comedians understand the mind of a terrorist. Obviously, we can't rely on the Republicans anymore. The life of our President is clearly at stake.

Moonbat Takes On Idiot Private Security Force

So today found moonbat off to do her volunteer work at her favorite Museum, all up in her girlie clothes and girlie heels. Of course, just beyond the front door lies the private security force and their little amateur screening area, which impresses a real Transportation Security Officer not in the least bit. One key difference between TSA and this gaggle of guards, is that unlike an airport there is no same-gender screening, which means that they have a group of 30-40 year old men waiting around to screen women who set off the alarm because they were high heels. As moonbat prefers and has done for the past two years, she yanked hers off and tossed them on the x-ray belt. One of the male officers immediately jumped forward and insisted that she had to wear them through the walk-through metal detector.

Oh yeah? There might be glass. Really? Now, if all passengers who fly on airplanes are required to remove their shoes to pass through airport security at the decision of the Department of Homeland Security, one can reasonably conclude that there are no realistic legal or saftey concerns, especially since liability rests with the Museum and not the security force. So why the eager insistance? Well... moonbat could trip. What, into your waiting arms? So, moonbat insists on a supervisor, and after it becomes apparent that no one else will be allowed to enter until one is summoned, behold, when it was insisted that none were in the building, one can be found. After listening to the presented case, and looking at the growing line of scowling visitors, the supervisor relents.

Moonbat prances shoe-free through the walk-through metal detector. She slings her now x-rayed purse up onto her shoulder and begins to put on her heels. Supervisor insists that she come with him because he is going to have to file an incident report about her behavior, so that her supervisor can councel her on cooperating with security in the future. Sure. Glad to put things on paper. Not a problem. Moonbat reaches for her other heel.

Oh no, that won't do. Even though so many concerns were sighted to prevent moonbat from removing her heels for screening, it suddenly is okay for her to walk through the museum in bare feet.... because the supervisor seizes moonbat via her purse and attempt to haul her physically across the museum whilst she puts her other heel back on her foot. Oh now it was on. A good measure of steel in "take your hands off me" and he let go, all full of apologies, and made a quick retreat to his office. Another guard waddled up and with almost 300 lbs of authority told me there was no need to have an "attitude" and took down moonbat's information on a napkin. Moonbat found great amusement in forcing a choice between allowed to use her cell phone in the security area to listen to her voicemail (which even TSA allows) and being able to give the extention of her boss. Hah! So the guard had to waddle back off to look up the correct number. Now of course, for moonbat's chance to file a grievance. Only after twice insisting that complaint forms be provided for her, were such forms produced, and she was assured she could fill them out at her station and drop them off on her way out of the Museum later. Likely there was some hope moonbat would cool off and forget. Fat chance!!

Flew through the paperwork, scanned off a copy for her dear readers and also for the head cheese, and pranced right back down to drop them off. Of course, the real sticker is that this will likely result in absolutely no discipline measures against the guard, or any productive change in screening policies, like same gender or the right to remove your heels. Though people might love to whine and complain about the security screening procedures for airports done by TSA, few consider the alternatives of using private security firms to whom politicians have to curry favor in order to get campaign contributions. If Lockheed Martin did airport screening, you can be assured that your local Congressmen could never afford to investigate any real offense that occurred... but since it's all in house, it's safe to wack away at any infraction on the part of TSA. So for all those of you who like to complain that you got screened because the wire in your bra set off the walk-through metal detector, imagine instead of a female screener, an eager 30-year-old and 6 ft tall slobering hulk. And oh, yes, moonbat always wears her Victoria Secret... even today. Cheers!!

Technorati Tags:
liberal, democrat, washington DC, security, privatization, big government, congress, homeland security, TSA, moonbat

Israel Turns Back on Holocaust and God

So today Israel placed the goat on the endangered species list, that's how many burnt sacrafices God shall now require to cleanse the bloody hands of it's people. Israel announced today the expulsion of all refugees from the killing feilds of Darfur, back across the Egyptian border, from whence they shall be returned to Sudan. The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center disparages them as "economic refugees;" the Egyptian government prosecutes those captured fleeing into Israel as Israeli infiltrators and sentences them to prison. Israeli law itself denies any asylum to citizens of enemy nations, and the mostly Muslim Sudan maintains no diplomatic ties to Israel. Where now do we find the voice of Holocaust survivors? Where are those outraged that the world turned aside Jewish refugees fleeing certain death in Germany when Germany declared itself an enemy to the world?

Israel proceeds to deport 1,160 odd souls to their doom, to gun and machete and rape. Would it do so perhaps if Sudan had ordered gas chambers from the Chinese instead of lush palaces? Let moonbat put this in context: the US accepted 52,835 refugees in 2004, of that 4,291 from Sudan, the same year that Israel whines it had to shelter and feed... FIVE!! For decades we Americans have built memorials and demonstrated contrition for turning aside desperate and pleading European Jews, for denying visas and all compassion. Israel seems hell bent on the slaughter of these innocent to return them to their persecutors, instead of even so much as just booking them on a cruise ship and shipping them abroad. Has the compassion due Israel over the sins of the world in those recent dark hours of it's Holocaust expired?

Although one may find alternative opinions inside of Isael, the majority elected it's current government that follows this path, and it's government acts without fear of a distabilizing rebuke. Meanwhile, conservatives in America angle to undermine the idea of a world responsibility to prevent genocide, such as the ever charming Ann Coulter:

"These people can't even wrap up genocide. We've been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever -- and they still haven't finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It's like genocide by committee. Who's running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA?"

Coulter contiues on to memorably suggest that successful reconstruction occurs only after bombing the population into quivering terror, but I digress. Meanwhile, despite the earlier expounding of the 2/3 successful intervention rate of the UN compared to 1/2 by the United States, as reported by the Rand Corporation, conservatives continue to labor under the delusion that the UN has a worse record than the US. (An old refrain.) Conservatives seem to be hatching an incubated campaign-egg-tactic which crossbreds general ignorance of the immense work on human rights issues done worldwide by liberals, with the worn image of the compassionate conservative. Despite that Amnesty International has focused on the country since 1995, and MS Woman of the Year 2004 Samantha Powers berated Congress for turning a blind eye, commentators speak of conservatives speaking words against Darfur as the advent of a new era of global human rights. Others move to blur the vast difference between occupation and humanitarian intervention. Enough to camoflage a complete lack of progress on Darfur by a conservative led Congress and a compassionate-conservative President? For the sake of the innocents in the killing fields of Darfur- let's pray not.




If you don't feel outrage, you're not frakking paying attention.

Texas Republican Hides 'Stench' Behind Patriotism

Moonbat enjoyed having voted for Steny Hoyer last fall, especially since he gave a royal thrashing to Texas Republican Lamar Smith, that aired this morning on CSPAN. Sweet!! At contention was Hate Crimes Bill 1592, which would "provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes." Lamar Smith expounded at length that we as a society should expand the hate crimes bill to protect current and former members of the military, and when given the opportunity to have that ammendment added, objected to his own ammendment, my beloved southern gentleman took that skinny stick of a man out in front of the podium and the cameras and turned his good name into ground chuck roast. Out of the Judiciary Committee went 1592, on to passage through the work of 212 fine-looking Democrats. Do Hoyer proud and go visit these 14 Cowards about their likewise "stench." Oh Hoyer, if only you were a few years younger.

The New Republic runs down why the Republican Party's so-called "objections" to the bill don't hold water:

Christian Right groups claim that the bill will prevent Tony Perkins from gay-bashing every Sunday. That's doubtful. The National Review argues that "[T]here is no evidence that local law enforcement has a special need for federal resources to help it combat hate crimes." That's not true. Republicans complain that the bill wouldn't protect senior citizens and members of the military. But when John Conyers offered to add those protections to the bill, the GOP refused. NR, again, says that it could "open the door to legal punishment for harboring incorrect thoughts." That doesn't seem right, either: The bill pretty clearly states that a defendant's past statements or associations can't be used as evidence unless they "specifically relate to the offense."

Also noted that it's unsurprising Bush threatens a veto, given he believes hate crimes don't exist.

A curious conservative reaction, found via the American Renissance newsfeed. The AP story in snippets and then come the comments: "The real reason for “hate crimes” laws are to take white people’s ability to organize away from them. If white people can no longer even discuss, the effect that non-white’s have on their communities, then their ability to organize politically will no longer exist. Also, if a white person has to think twice about defending him/herself from a non-white on the street, this will keep white people in a state of fear, that will make them very easy to manage politically." {Some advice on how to prove a Jew is faking a hate crime.} How can this nation ever identify itself and fair when it singles out specific people for special protection? I get more and more disgusted by these politicians every day. I find myself starting to agree more and more with this nation’s enemies. Did I read that? "Hate Crime Bills" increase recruitment for Al-Qaeda? And I thought I had read it all.

Technorati Tags:
Steny Hoyer, Lamar Smith, liberal, conservative, congress, hate crimes, racism, feminism

Lessons of the Matrix for "the War on Terror"

So today moonbat shall expound on how Osama bin Laden uses The Matrix (1999) to plot his global jihad and recruit otherwise luckless young people to go blow themselves to pieces in foreign countries. You see, it's one thing to declare war on the United States, fast food and the Jerry Springer Show, and quite another to have a clue. Now, OBL got schooled in the usual Saudi customs and road construction, yet neither provide a road map for how to organize a global network of terror without potential recruits laughing in your face and going back to the Arab version of moonshine. And then OBL got his lucky break: a movie came out in America. A movie about a young man waking up to the corrupt system that keeps his true nature a prisoner and the soulless machines whose power must be challenged and whose citadels can be destroyed. That evil liberal Hollywood; don't those directors ever think about how their movies could be emboldening the enemy? So OBL hops on Ebay and snags a pirated copy from a Chinese seller, leaves some positive feedback and an exhortation to read the Koran, and throws a bag of black market Pop-Secret popcorn in the microwave. And Morpheus expounds to him all the secrets of how to recruit idiot young men:

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it....What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad... What is the Matrix? Control.

If there's anything young people want it's to be the ones in control, to be outside the system, to be above the powers that be. And all that Morpheus tells Neo, all that he promises Neo he will become if he swallows the Red Pill, that my dear readers, that's what OBL tells his recruits into Al-Q. Step outside the system, your actions are for a higher cause, accept no boundaries and no limitations, you will find glory. Of course, not everyone can be the chosen one, even if you tell everyone that they will be the chosen one. Running a terrorist cell in a Western Country, staying under the radar, and reaching your target do take at least a few braincells, and not all your "Neos" have enough to suffice? So you have to get rid of them, and what better form of euthanasia than someone else's occupation? Like... an occupation by a certain Western Country in an Arab land. Iraq. You hardly need persuade your not-quite graduates to the worthiness of their target, since from a distance everything American looks the same.

Moonbat found cause to desire pills for several hours herself today, listening to the debate on the floor of the House in Congress. Republicans denied funding for the troops, of course. Republican after Republican took to the floor, not to admit that 4 previous surges have failed, not to admit that they spent years hiding the total cost of the Iraq War in six other supplemental funding bills, but to insist they were right about investing in an endless war for the mere sake that such a pursuit is fundamental to being American. Meanwhile, the total cost of the Iraq War soon shall surpass $500 billion. Calculate out how many millions and hour that is. And how much did moonbat contribute in taxes for 2007? $3,900. Did moonbat literally pay for a nanosecond of our occupation in Iraq? For the dry erase markers used by defense contractors to teach Iraqi Security Forces to yell "Drop your weapons!!" .. in English? If I insist I would rather have paid for something besides dry erase, of course, that would be emboldening the enemy. Not that they don't laugh about dry erase markers already...

Back to the Matrix. So OBL got the point clean off, that the heart of the movement should have an ethereal city away from the war with the "West" and should strike by slipping in and out of the false world, removing recruits and eliminating targets. Show recruits that the false world can be used to defeat it's own masters, and that by having secret knowledge and faith, an individual could become stronger than the weapons of war, and transcend them, even if only in death. The glamorous image of the warrior that the villains fail to see, touch or stop, destroying even those central artifices of power which reason holds as impenetrable. Shut down the system built to ignore you and your anger at it, again and again and again.

Of course "Zion" is not Iraq. The point of having a "Zion" is so that no matter where you fight you cannot be defeated, your source of fighters will not be lost, your flag is never in jeopardy. Yet out on that House floor, the Republican Party tried to cling to a world without computers, a world without cellphones, a world without globalization. A world where war is a seige of a castle, or a capital, or a country. And as always, appearances for appearances sake. The pure wish that if everything looks good, then everything is good. That the presence of American troops on every street corner in Iraq stops training camps from being set up in Pakistan-when it does not. That the existence of the Green Zone prevents Islamic extremists from a hostile takeover of other countries- when it did not. Republicans hiss and spit over Beruit and Somalia, and neglect to mention that when al-Q assisted the radical Islamic takeover of Somalia last year... the Republicans left that to Ethiopia. Oh yes, but we can't have a second Somalia, they plead. Don't they mean a third?

So long as we humor Bush and his elephant friends by calling this a "war on terror," the longer we remain caught in that loosing equation of energy expenditures that Morphous demonstrated to Neo: takes twice as much energy to swing and miss, as it does to swing and hit. No matter how many "Al-Qaeda operatives" go down in Iraq, the West always misses Al-Q. Anytime Al-Q carries out a terrorist attack on a Western target, they strike us. How can they loose? As long as you can't hit Morpheus, and he can hit you, he always wins. And instead of seeing this, the Republicans lower their heads and flail away at a target that remains always out of reach, only to get blind-sided time and again. Four other times, four other surges, all promised to work. Meanwhile, the monstrous appeal of being at war against an evil enemy keeps debate over not getting our fanny whomped time and again constrained to the classical idea of war: battlefields, generals, tanks, soldiers. But like Morpheus, OBL pursues targets not in the "desert of the real," but in the false cities of the Matrix, in the West.



Democrats like the shine of the term "war on terror," that much is true. Obama and Clinton remain on very romantic terms with GWOT, and so far, only Edwards perceives the relationship might be a little.. limiting. "I also think it suggests that there's a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don't think that's true." Not true in Britain, where investigative work uncovered and stopped a 2003 Al-Q bombing plot and just netted 5 life imprisonments. No weapons of mass destruction were found, however, just plant food. Such a point finds itself hard to be understood. Democrats everywhere who seek to broaden efforts to combat international terrorist networks will be accused of trying to abandon the use of military force and being irresponsible. And people do understand what our "war on terror" means; it's something for which no one has to be responsible. A broad catch-phrase for whatever your chosen politician advocates, from sound environmental policies to the highway robbery that gets itself called cost-plus defense contracting. Want funding? It's for the "war on terror." Don't support tax cuts for the rich? By golly- you must be one of those terrorists!!

War remains the ultimate defense, even ones of last resort and even pre-emptive ones. You find war an appealing choice because you were lazy or too proud to deal with the five thousand things that led up to the war itself. You never will hear conservatives admit they should have listened when liberal American call for intervention in Afghanistan and the ousting of the Taliban... in 1997. Never. You will hear continued Republican refusal to intervene in Darfur (including Bush's "I really mean I might think about doing something about you" speech to Sudan) used by the Republicans to support as many surges as it takes to surpress an insurgency in a country where everyone and his brother has a weapons cache. From old Iraqi Army munitions depos. Which Bush and his cronies failed to secure. Too busy printing up that "Mission Accomplished" banner, eh? As long as we see this only as a war, all we focus on as a nation is the art of war. Not homeland security, not airline security, not international security. Not the black market, not passports and visas, not how much plant food Muhammad is buying on Aisle 5. Not of course, all the future Timothy McVeighs out there either. But I digress.

Giuliani's idea that a Democratic President would mean a return to pre-9/11 mentalities on the reach of global jihad is more than "plain wrong" as Edwards replied, it's plain hysteria. Guiliani remains the kind of politician who believes there are no cockroaches if you stamp on all the ones you see. That sort of mentality leads to the idea that if you make war on the Al-Qaeda network you can see, there is no other network in the world. While the U.S. made war on Al-Q in Afghanistan, and later after the fall of Saddam and the entry of Grand Viceroy Bremer, in Iraq, Al-Qaeda merrily trained the bombers of the "Operation Crevice" intercepted 2003 plot and the successful 2005 "7/7" bombing of our allies, in London. Two years of occupying Iraq failed to prevent, by some form of magic, the ability of Al-Qaeda to target and strike a Western City. Perhaps that is why the Republican Party stood up on the floor of Congress today and declared that "Europe was lost."

Moonbat gets it. Iraq we can't loose, but our Allies can fall to the enemy. What does a dusty little desert country have that our time-honored and true Allies don't? Oh wait, we didn't go into Iraq for oil. So it must be goat meat!!



Whatever we are there for, the pentagon has made a few moves to keep America from ever ever knowing. Opinions about
the surge perhaps:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Based on what I read and the soldiers with whom I communicate, it's my view that military personnel in Iraq are deeply divided over whether the "surge" will work. There seems to be far more support among officers, even junior officers, than there is among enlisted personnel. That may well be because enlisted personnel are often the ones at the greatest risk over there because they are the ones running convoys, going on patrols, etc. They also are able to see how Iraqis on the street level relate to them and whether the presence of additional U.S. forces is changing Iraqi attitudes.

The reporter in question would be the author of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." Reporters may soon be our only source of info out of Iraq, whatever your stripe, besides the rare Iraqi blogger. On April 19th the U.S. Army issued a directive prohibiting all unauthorized blogging or personal e-mail, including one imagines, anything criticizing your CO or anything NC-17 for the wife.

Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC) (.pdf) restricts more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on Internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.

No resumes? No Monster.com? A ploy to increase retention, by limiting job-hunting? Not all bloggers always went unscathed before, though now anyone seems fair game for telling the truth. Of course, while this may be the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging, there's little talk about this "emboldening the enemy." Only that it would cut down on PR for the U.S. military, keep the real glory of war and the success stories from getting through the MSM and countering the bleak accounts given by the anti-war crowd of misery and death. Of course, all of OBL's little Neos won't be fooled into thinking that just because they've gone silent, there's been a withdrawal of the American military....

Neo: I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

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