WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country's nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic's government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.
White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh's report, which appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.
Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.
"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin Dead at 71
George Carlin died of heart failure Sunday evening at the age of 71.
Carlin had survived three previous heart attacks. He was admitted to Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where he later died, after complaining of chest pains. Carlin had recently celebrated his 50th year in “show business”.
I am honestly, truly, saddened by this. Look, there was a huge dog and pony show over Russert’s death because the was “one of them”. I’m sure they’ll be a 30 second mention of Carlin on the networks. Hell, if it’s a slow news day, they might even play a censored clip. To me, though, this is a bigger loss than that of a news anchor. Don’t get me wrong, Russert was a giant in his own right, but I’m not sure I know of anyone in the “business” that encouraged us to pull our heads out of our collective asses more strongly than Carlin did.
I remember hearing George Carlin as a kid and thinking “ooh this feels wrong to be laughing at”. As an adult, I grew to appreciate his irreverence and razor-sharp wit.
He was more than a humorist, he held up a mirror and showed us what was wrong with us as a society. If you couldn’t see that he was right, and laugh at how ridiculous we are, then you’re a dim-wit. End of story.
In honor of one of Carlin’s more memorable routines, here now are the 7 words you can’t say on television.
Shit. Piss. Fuck. Cunt. Cocksucker. Motherfucker. Tits.
Ahh, that felt good.
There isn’t a single Carlin stand-up routine that didn’t make me literally ache from laughing, but here’s one I find particularly enjoyable.
Carlin had survived three previous heart attacks. He was admitted to Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where he later died, after complaining of chest pains. Carlin had recently celebrated his 50th year in “show business”.
I am honestly, truly, saddened by this. Look, there was a huge dog and pony show over Russert’s death because the was “one of them”. I’m sure they’ll be a 30 second mention of Carlin on the networks. Hell, if it’s a slow news day, they might even play a censored clip. To me, though, this is a bigger loss than that of a news anchor. Don’t get me wrong, Russert was a giant in his own right, but I’m not sure I know of anyone in the “business” that encouraged us to pull our heads out of our collective asses more strongly than Carlin did.
I remember hearing George Carlin as a kid and thinking “ooh this feels wrong to be laughing at”. As an adult, I grew to appreciate his irreverence and razor-sharp wit.
He was more than a humorist, he held up a mirror and showed us what was wrong with us as a society. If you couldn’t see that he was right, and laugh at how ridiculous we are, then you’re a dim-wit. End of story.
In honor of one of Carlin’s more memorable routines, here now are the 7 words you can’t say on television.
Shit. Piss. Fuck. Cunt. Cocksucker. Motherfucker. Tits.
Ahh, that felt good.
There isn’t a single Carlin stand-up routine that didn’t make me literally ache from laughing, but here’s one I find particularly enjoyable.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
It’s crazy, but it’s coming soon – from the same folks who brought us Iraq.
Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin.
This time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:
“We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.”
Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?
A member of Olmert’s delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that “the meetings focused on ‘operational matters’ pertaining to the Iranian threat.” So bring ‘em on!
A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?
You say you missed Olmert’s account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for including the quote in his article of June 8, “The Iran Trap.”
We can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert’s confident words about “Israel’s best friend” that week. Your attention – like mine – may have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence – the so-called “Phase II” investigation (also known, irreverently, as the “Waiting-for-Godot Study”).
Better late than never, I suppose.
Oversight?
Yet I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up succinctly:
“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
But as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous attack on Iran.
My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met considerable resonance in foreign media.
We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.
In a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers “beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.
Former U.N. senior weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the president’s praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to speak. Nor can we now.
The “Iranian Threat”
However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president’s “bubble.”
By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.
But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?
Well, this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.
This time no one is saying we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include – officially, at least – any U.S. boots on the ground.
Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline, the performance of the president’s staff has been spotty.
Think back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
“Wait, what did you just say?” the president interrupted. “You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?…That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”
A poll in January showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting $4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February, and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing the day before the president’s press conference.
Here’s the alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.
The lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between St. Helena’s High School and Mount St. Ursula.
Cheney’s Brainchild
Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if that is the correct word.
Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.
Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a “policy decision” regarding “what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks,” according to Carpenter.
Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, “mini-nukes.”
Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the “fear of the military leadership” that Iran would have “escalation dominance” in any conflict with the U.S.
Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that “escalation dominance” means, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”
The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.
Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.
The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).
In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.
Controlled Media
The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.
Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the “threat” from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.
At least this time we are spared the “mushroom cloud” bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.
In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.
But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.
So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that “just-following-orders” is no defense when war crimes are involved.
And still less when the “supreme international crime” – a war of aggression is involved.
Senior officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president, vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.
Where Are You, Conyers?
In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:
“To take away the excuse that we didn’t know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?’ when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative…none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that ‘somehow it escaped our notice.’”
In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.
On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.
A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers’ committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: “The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith.”
Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.
And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, “Constitution in Crisis,” containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.
Conyers’ complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won’t hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.
How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.
Afraid of the media?
During the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and during an interview in December on “Democracy Now,” Conyers was surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.
Ironically, this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid – witness their virtual silence on Kucinich’s very damning 35 Articles of Impeachment.
The only way to encourage constructive media attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things – like preparations for another “war of choice.”
I would argue that perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman urges – with impeachment “forthwith.”
Does Conyers not owe at least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in the Middle East?
Scott McClellan has been quite clear in reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has taken a similar decision with respect to Iran – with Olmert as his chief counsel, no less.
It is getting late, but this is due largely to Conyers’ own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.
What the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now surrounded by fancy lawyers and held in check by the House leaders.
In October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:
“This inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored…Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free.”
Someone needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does, he must summon the courage to “do what must be done.”
This time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:
“We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.”
Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?
A member of Olmert’s delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that “the meetings focused on ‘operational matters’ pertaining to the Iranian threat.” So bring ‘em on!
A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?
You say you missed Olmert’s account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for including the quote in his article of June 8, “The Iran Trap.”
We can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert’s confident words about “Israel’s best friend” that week. Your attention – like mine – may have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence – the so-called “Phase II” investigation (also known, irreverently, as the “Waiting-for-Godot Study”).
Better late than never, I suppose.
Oversight?
Yet I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up succinctly:
“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
But as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous attack on Iran.
My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met considerable resonance in foreign media.
We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.
In a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers “beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.
Former U.N. senior weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the president’s praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to speak. Nor can we now.
The “Iranian Threat”
However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president’s “bubble.”
By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.
But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?
Well, this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.
This time no one is saying we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include – officially, at least – any U.S. boots on the ground.
Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline, the performance of the president’s staff has been spotty.
Think back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
“Wait, what did you just say?” the president interrupted. “You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?…That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”
A poll in January showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting $4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February, and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing the day before the president’s press conference.
Here’s the alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.
The lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between St. Helena’s High School and Mount St. Ursula.
Cheney’s Brainchild
Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if that is the correct word.
Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.
Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a “policy decision” regarding “what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks,” according to Carpenter.
Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, “mini-nukes.”
Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the “fear of the military leadership” that Iran would have “escalation dominance” in any conflict with the U.S.
Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that “escalation dominance” means, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”
The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.
Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.
The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).
In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.
Controlled Media
The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.
Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the “threat” from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.
At least this time we are spared the “mushroom cloud” bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.
In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.
But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.
So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that “just-following-orders” is no defense when war crimes are involved.
And still less when the “supreme international crime” – a war of aggression is involved.
Senior officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president, vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.
Where Are You, Conyers?
In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:
“To take away the excuse that we didn’t know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?’ when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative…none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that ‘somehow it escaped our notice.’”
In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.
On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.
A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers’ committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: “The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith.”
Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.
And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, “Constitution in Crisis,” containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.
Conyers’ complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won’t hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.
How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.
Afraid of the media?
During the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and during an interview in December on “Democracy Now,” Conyers was surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.
Ironically, this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid – witness their virtual silence on Kucinich’s very damning 35 Articles of Impeachment.
The only way to encourage constructive media attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things – like preparations for another “war of choice.”
I would argue that perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman urges – with impeachment “forthwith.”
Does Conyers not owe at least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in the Middle East?
Scott McClellan has been quite clear in reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has taken a similar decision with respect to Iran – with Olmert as his chief counsel, no less.
It is getting late, but this is due largely to Conyers’ own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.
What the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now surrounded by fancy lawyers and held in check by the House leaders.
In October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:
“This inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored…Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free.”
Someone needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does, he must summon the courage to “do what must be done.”
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Big Oil Fuels John McCain's Straight Talk Express
Gas prices are hitting all-time highs. Our country is in the midst of a recession thanks in part to our crippling dependence on oil, so what's John McCain's plan? Will he hold the corporate leaders of the energy industry accountable when he addresses them today in Houston? Probably not, considering they are some of his biggest fund-raisers.
The Center for Responsive Politics finds that McCain has accepted over $1 million from the oil and gas industry. Many of McCain's top advisers have lobbied for big oil, which is why he now acts in their best interests, opposing environmental legislation and alternative energy plans. And that's exactly why we want everyone to know The REAL McCain.
McCain is desperate to distance himself from President Bush. But according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, McCain has received millions in donations from the same oil, coal, nuclear, chemical, utility, and auto companies that helped the Bush administration create its energy plan—a plan that has raised gasoline to $4 a gallon.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
TIM RUSSERT DIES FROM APPARENT HEART ATTACK
Tim Russert, NBC journalist and political heavyweight host of "Meet the Press," has died after collapsing at NBC's Washington news bureau. He was 58 years old.
Television sources said Russert was recording a voice-over when he collapsed in the studio today.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
*Update* House votes for Bush impeachment
The US House of Representatives has voted to send articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush to the Judiciary Committee.
By 251-166, House members dispatched the measure to the committee on Wednesday but it is not likely to hold hearings before the end of his term next January 20, AP reported.
The leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, long ago declared the prospects for impeachment proceedings "off the table.''
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat who ran for president earlier this year, resented articles of impeachment against Bush to Congress late Monday.
Kucinich said Bush "fraudulently" justified the war on Iraq and misled "the American people and members of Congress to believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction so as to manufacture a false case for war."
Kucinich's articles also charge Bush with failing to provide troops with vehicle armor, illegally detaining both foreign nationals and Americans, condoning torture, mishandling the government's response to Hurricane Katrina and undermining efforts to address global warning.
Firefox 3 to Drop on Tuesday
Mozilla announces that Firefox 3 will be officially released this coming Tuesday, June 17th. Get your clickers ready, because they're aiming to break a world downloading record that day.
Kucinich: Judiciary Committee must begin review of impeachment articles
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), two days after presenting 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush, urged in a statement that a key House committee commence examination of the articles.
“It is now imperative that the Judiciary Committee begin a review of the 35 articles,” said Kucinich. “I will be providing supporting documentation to the committee so that it can proceed in an orderly manner.
“The weight of evidence contained in the articles makes it clear that President Bush violated the Constitution and the U.S. Code as well as international law,” said the Ohio lawmaker, whose efforts to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The House of Representatives approved Kucinich’s motion today to refer the articles of impeachment to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Kucinich said on Wednesday that he would meet with Conyers this week.
Conyers has yet to release a public statement on the motion, but has in the past not been supportive of impeachment efforts. The resolution to impeach Cheney, which Kucinich presented in April 2007, remains stalled in the committee he chairs.
“It is the House’s responsibility as a co-equal branch of government to provide an effective check and balance to executive abuse of power,” Kucinich continued in the statement. “President Bush was principally responsible for directing the United States Armed Forces to attack Iraq.
“I believe that there is sufficient evidence in the articles to support the charge that President Bush allowed, authorized and sanctioned the manipulation of intelligence by those acting under his direction and control, misleading Congress to approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.
“As a result over 4,000 United States soldiers have died in combat in Iraq, with tens of thousands injured, many of them permanently impaired,” explained Kucinich. “Over a million innocent Iraqis have perished in a war which was based on lies, a war which will cost the American taxpayers as much as three trillion dollars.
The Ohio lawmaker said that it is now “incumbent” for the Judiciary Committee to review evidence he presented. He promised that if the committee failed to hold any hearings on the resolution within thirty days, he would repeat his efforts. He told one reporter Wednesday, “Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the dead. … I will be bringing the resolution up again, and I won’t be the only one reading it.”
Kucinich closed in his statement, “We must not only create an historical record of the misconduct of the Bush administration, but we must make sure that any future administration is forewarned about the constitutionally proscribed limits of executive authority and exercise of power contravening the Constitution.”
Senate Republicans Block Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil Companies
Democrats fall eight votes short of preventing filibuster
With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, Senate Democrats wanted the U.S. government to throttle back on the billions of dollars in profits being taken in by the major oil companies. But with the White House threatening a veto of the bill, the Senate voted 51-43 to close debate, well shy of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.
The proposed windfall profits tax would have been somewhere between 10 and 12 billion dollars for this year, and it would have been levied against the country’s five largest oil companies. The legislation would have also rescinded $17 billion in tax breaks the companies expect to enjoy over the next decade.
“The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, warning that if oil prices are not reined in, “we’re going to find ourselves in a deep recession.”
A statement issued by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said, “Rather than addressing the principal cause of fuel price increases — rising world petroleum demand without a similar increase in supply — (the bill would) undercut U.S. energy security and decrease U.S. energy production, thus exacerbating market tightness and increasing energy prices.”
I find it quite striking that the White House is still claiming that the principal reason for the precipitous jump in oil prices is the rise in global demand, when according to Chevron Vice President of Strategic Planning, Paul Siegele, demand is not currently on the rise. Siegele raised this very point with me less than two weeks ago at a panel discussion at Stanford. (For more on the slowing of global oil demand, this article in MarketWatch reports on the International Energy Association’s projected slowdown).
Following the bill’s defeat, Democrats said they may work on separate legislation to increase oversight of trading by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Many argue that one of the principal drivers of rising gas prices is actually because of futures speculation on the commodities market. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that parts of the windfall tax bill including commission provisions could be split into separate proposals.
Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores
Let's not hire a smart person to be a cop.
A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test.
In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.
Mr. Jordan, 48, who has a bachelor's degree in literature and is an officer with the State Department of Corrections, said he was considering an appeal. ''I was eliminated on the basis of my intellectual makeup,'' he said. ''It's the same as discrimination on the basis of gender or religion or race.''
A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test.
In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.
Mr. Jordan, 48, who has a bachelor's degree in literature and is an officer with the State Department of Corrections, said he was considering an appeal. ''I was eliminated on the basis of my intellectual makeup,'' he said. ''It's the same as discrimination on the basis of gender or religion or race.''
McCain wants more war.
Sen. John McCain appeared on the Today Show this morning and continued to promote his idea of a long occupation in Iraq. But whatever merits there may be for his message, his delivery is once again promising to get him into trouble.
When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded:
"No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq."
Sen. John McCain appeared on the Today Show this morning and continued to promote his idea of a long occupation in Iraq. But whatever merits there may be for his message, his delivery is once again promising to get him into trouble.
When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded:
"No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq."
UPDATE: Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has responded:
"McCain's statement today that withdrawing troops doesn't matter is a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn't get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course - Osama bin Laden is freely plotting attacks, our efforts in Afghanistan are undermanned, and our military readiness has been dangerously diminished. We need a smart change in strategy to make America more secure, not a commitment to indefinitely keep our troops in an intractable civil war."
UPDATE (11:00 AM): The responses are coming fast and furious from both parties, as the McCain hits back for his comments this morning:
McCain camp:
Sen. McCain has consistently opposed a timeline for withdrawing our troops from Iraq. And our friends on the opposite side of the aisle have a long history of attempting to twist Sen. McCain's words on Iraq. The fact that Sen. McCain opposes a timeline for withdrawal and is principally concerned about the safety of American troops and the security of Iraq is pretty much "dog bites man."
Meanwhile, the Dems are beginning to pile on. Here's Biden's response:
"Senator McCain's comment is evidence that he is totally out of touch with the needs of our troops and the national security needs of our nation. I think many of our brave soldiers and their families would disagree that it's 'not too important' when they come home.
UPDATE: Via HuffPost's Sam Stein, Sen. John Kerry ripped into McCain over the remarks:
Sensing political blood, Democrats pounded on John McCain, for saying that it was "not too important" when American forces were drawn down provided that casualty levels were acceptably low.
Perhaps the most pointed criticism, ironically, came from Sen. John Kerry -- no stranger to having Iraq comments be used against him in a political election context. Taking to a conference call with aides to Sen. Barack Obama, the 2004 Democratic nominee accused McCain of being "unbelievably out of touch," lacking a general understanding, and was having a "debate with himself" over the issue of Iraq. The alleged flip-flopper was now doing the alleging.
"The job of the Commander in Chief is to understand the fundamentals of the conflict in which you have the troops engaged. And it is becoming crystal clear that John McCain doesn't understand it," said Kerry. "This is an enormous flaw on his candidacy, which is supposedly hung on his ability to serve as commander in chief... There are series of contradictions in his statements that reflect a fundamental misunderstands of the conflict."
As evidence, Kerry ushered in McCain's misstatements on the historical conflict between Sunni and Shiites, his falsehood that Iran was arming al-Qaeda in Iraq (they're not), and the varying times in which the Arizona Republican has said he was against a South Korea style model of troop presence in the Middle East, something he now favors.
"This is not a small matter as far as I am concerned. And I think John McCain is offering a recipe to keep the military overextended," he said. "And our attention diverted from the real center of the war on terror which is Afghanistan and Pakistan."
As the conference call proceeded, the McCain campaign sought to stem the damage of the remark. In an email response to reporters, spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of trying to hide his own "willingness to disregard facts on the ground," and insisted that "John McCain has always said, that [troop drawdown] is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field."
This, however, came only weeks after the McCain campaign had released an advertisement explicitly suggesting that violence in the country would be ebbed by 2013 - a clear indication that timetables were, in fact, important.
"He threw out 2013 as the date for American forces to be out of Iraq," said Susan Rice, Obama's foreign policy adviser. "And today he says he has no idea."
UPDATE (12:00): Another statement from the McCain camp, this one targeting Obama:
"The Obama campaign is embarking on a false attack on John McCain to hide their own candidate's willingness to disregard facts on the ground in pursuit of withdrawal no matter what the costs. John McCain was asked if he had a 'better estimate' for a timeline for withdrawal. As John McCain has always said, that is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field. Any reasonable person who reads the full transcript would see this and reject the Obama campaign's attempt to manipulate, twist and distort the truth."
When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded:
"No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq."
Sen. John McCain appeared on the Today Show this morning and continued to promote his idea of a long occupation in Iraq. But whatever merits there may be for his message, his delivery is once again promising to get him into trouble.
When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded:
"No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq."
UPDATE: Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has responded:
"McCain's statement today that withdrawing troops doesn't matter is a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn't get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course - Osama bin Laden is freely plotting attacks, our efforts in Afghanistan are undermanned, and our military readiness has been dangerously diminished. We need a smart change in strategy to make America more secure, not a commitment to indefinitely keep our troops in an intractable civil war."
UPDATE (11:00 AM): The responses are coming fast and furious from both parties, as the McCain hits back for his comments this morning:
McCain camp:
Sen. McCain has consistently opposed a timeline for withdrawing our troops from Iraq. And our friends on the opposite side of the aisle have a long history of attempting to twist Sen. McCain's words on Iraq. The fact that Sen. McCain opposes a timeline for withdrawal and is principally concerned about the safety of American troops and the security of Iraq is pretty much "dog bites man."
Meanwhile, the Dems are beginning to pile on. Here's Biden's response:
"Senator McCain's comment is evidence that he is totally out of touch with the needs of our troops and the national security needs of our nation. I think many of our brave soldiers and their families would disagree that it's 'not too important' when they come home.
UPDATE: Via HuffPost's Sam Stein, Sen. John Kerry ripped into McCain over the remarks:
Sensing political blood, Democrats pounded on John McCain, for saying that it was "not too important" when American forces were drawn down provided that casualty levels were acceptably low.
Perhaps the most pointed criticism, ironically, came from Sen. John Kerry -- no stranger to having Iraq comments be used against him in a political election context. Taking to a conference call with aides to Sen. Barack Obama, the 2004 Democratic nominee accused McCain of being "unbelievably out of touch," lacking a general understanding, and was having a "debate with himself" over the issue of Iraq. The alleged flip-flopper was now doing the alleging.
"The job of the Commander in Chief is to understand the fundamentals of the conflict in which you have the troops engaged. And it is becoming crystal clear that John McCain doesn't understand it," said Kerry. "This is an enormous flaw on his candidacy, which is supposedly hung on his ability to serve as commander in chief... There are series of contradictions in his statements that reflect a fundamental misunderstands of the conflict."
As evidence, Kerry ushered in McCain's misstatements on the historical conflict between Sunni and Shiites, his falsehood that Iran was arming al-Qaeda in Iraq (they're not), and the varying times in which the Arizona Republican has said he was against a South Korea style model of troop presence in the Middle East, something he now favors.
"This is not a small matter as far as I am concerned. And I think John McCain is offering a recipe to keep the military overextended," he said. "And our attention diverted from the real center of the war on terror which is Afghanistan and Pakistan."
As the conference call proceeded, the McCain campaign sought to stem the damage of the remark. In an email response to reporters, spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of trying to hide his own "willingness to disregard facts on the ground," and insisted that "John McCain has always said, that [troop drawdown] is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field."
This, however, came only weeks after the McCain campaign had released an advertisement explicitly suggesting that violence in the country would be ebbed by 2013 - a clear indication that timetables were, in fact, important.
"He threw out 2013 as the date for American forces to be out of Iraq," said Susan Rice, Obama's foreign policy adviser. "And today he says he has no idea."
UPDATE (12:00): Another statement from the McCain camp, this one targeting Obama:
"The Obama campaign is embarking on a false attack on John McCain to hide their own candidate's willingness to disregard facts on the ground in pursuit of withdrawal no matter what the costs. John McCain was asked if he had a 'better estimate' for a timeline for withdrawal. As John McCain has always said, that is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field. Any reasonable person who reads the full transcript would see this and reject the Obama campaign's attempt to manipulate, twist and distort the truth."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bug in Mouth Brings Out the Street in Reporter
There is cursing so turn down the speakers if you are at work. Enjoy.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve
A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.
All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".
Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.
"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.
One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".
Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."
But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."
Ransomware virus that uses 1024-bit encryption key
A virus that takes all your important files hostage and then demand money is on the loose according to security experts.
This blackmailer virus uses 1024-bit key to encrypt data on user’s PC and then demands money for decryption key.
According to Kaspersky Lab public should be on the lookout for ransomware virus named “Gpcode” which encrypts your files using an RSA encryption algorithm with a 1024-bit key.
A cryptovirus, cryptotrojan or cryptoworm is a type of malware that encrypts the data belonging to an individual on a computer, demanding a ransom for its restoration. The term ransomware is commonly used to describe such software, although the field known as cryptovirology predates the term “ransomware”.
Gpcode (many variants: Gpcode.ac, Gpcode.ag, etc.) is thought to access PCs via unpatched browsers. Once active it encodes most of the data on the
computer, including .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg and .png files. After that a ReadMe file is left on the machine giving an email address to send money in order to get the decryption key.
The malware is a revision of a previous virus, thought to be from the same author, which appeared two years ago but only used a 660-bit key. The first piece of ransomware to use a sophisticated encryption algorithm, Gpcode.ac, was detected in January 2006 and used the RSA algorithm to create a 56-bit key.
According to Timur Tsoriev of Kaspersky Labs:
Virus researchers have been able to crack keys up to 660 bits. This was the result of a detailed analysis of the RSA algorithm implementation. If the encryption algorithm is implemented correctly, it could take one PC with a 2.2GHz processor around 30 years to crack a 660-bit key.
The company recommends that victims contact them by email to stopgpcode@kaspersky.com if they get infected, using another computer, and tell them exactly what they were doing in the five minutes before infection and the exact time and date of infection. Kaspersky also stresses that users do not restart or power down the infected computer.
Tsoriev said:
We urge infected users not to yield to the blackmailer, but to contact us and your local cyber-crime law enforcement units. Yielding to blackmailers only continues the cycle.
This blackmailer virus uses 1024-bit key to encrypt data on user’s PC and then demands money for decryption key.
According to Kaspersky Lab public should be on the lookout for ransomware virus named “Gpcode” which encrypts your files using an RSA encryption algorithm with a 1024-bit key.
A cryptovirus, cryptotrojan or cryptoworm is a type of malware that encrypts the data belonging to an individual on a computer, demanding a ransom for its restoration. The term ransomware is commonly used to describe such software, although the field known as cryptovirology predates the term “ransomware”.
Gpcode (many variants: Gpcode.ac, Gpcode.ag, etc.) is thought to access PCs via unpatched browsers. Once active it encodes most of the data on the
computer, including .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg and .png files. After that a ReadMe file is left on the machine giving an email address to send money in order to get the decryption key.
The malware is a revision of a previous virus, thought to be from the same author, which appeared two years ago but only used a 660-bit key. The first piece of ransomware to use a sophisticated encryption algorithm, Gpcode.ac, was detected in January 2006 and used the RSA algorithm to create a 56-bit key.
According to Timur Tsoriev of Kaspersky Labs:
Virus researchers have been able to crack keys up to 660 bits. This was the result of a detailed analysis of the RSA algorithm implementation. If the encryption algorithm is implemented correctly, it could take one PC with a 2.2GHz processor around 30 years to crack a 660-bit key.
The company recommends that victims contact them by email to stopgpcode@kaspersky.com if they get infected, using another computer, and tell them exactly what they were doing in the five minutes before infection and the exact time and date of infection. Kaspersky also stresses that users do not restart or power down the infected computer.
Tsoriev said:
We urge infected users not to yield to the blackmailer, but to contact us and your local cyber-crime law enforcement units. Yielding to blackmailers only continues the cycle.
The Truth About the War
It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.
It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.
The report shows clearly that President Bush should have known that important claims he made about Iraq did not conform with intelligence reports. In other cases, he could have learned the truth if he had asked better questions or encouraged more honest answers.
The report confirms one serious intelligence failure: President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials were told that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons and did not learn that these reports were wrong until after the invasion. But Mr. Bush and his team made even that intelligence seem more solid, more recent and more dangerous than it was.
The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.
Over all, the report makes it clear that top officials, especially Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war.
The report was supported by only two of the seven Republicans on the 15-member Senate panel. The five dissenting Republicans first tried to kill it, and then to delete most of its conclusions. They finally settled for appending objections. The bulk of their criticisms were sophistry transparently intended to protect Mr. Bush and deny the public a full accounting of how he took America into a disastrous war.
The report documents how time and again Mr. Bush and his team took vague and dubious intelligence reports on Iraq’s weapons programs and made them sound like hard and incontrovertible fact.
“They continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, adding that “we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.”
On Oct. 7, 2002, Mr. Bush told an audience in Cincinnati that Iraq “is seeking nuclear weapons” and that “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” Saddam Hussein, he said, “is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.”
Later, both men talked about Iraq trying to buy uranium in Africa and about the purchase of aluminum tubes that they said could only be used for a nuclear weapons program. They talked about Iraq having such a weapon in five years, then in three years, then in one.
If they had wanted to give an honest accounting of the intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would have said it indicated that Mr. Hussein’s nuclear weapons program had been destroyed years earlier by American military strikes.
As for Iraq’s supposed efforts to “reconstitute” that program, they would have had to say that reports about the uranium shopping and the aluminum tubes were the extent of the evidence — and those claims were already in serious doubt when Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney told the public about them. That would not have been nearly as persuasive, of course, as Mr. Bush’s infamous “mushroom cloud” warning.
The report said Mr. Bush was justified in saying that intelligence analysts believed Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But even then, he and his aides glossed over inconvenient facts — that the only new data on biological weapons came from a dubious source code-named Curveball and proved to be false.
Yet Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney persisted in talking as if there were ironclad proof of Iraq’s weapons and plans for global mayhem.
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 29, 2002.
Actually, there was plenty of doubt — at the time — about that second point. According to the Senate report, there was no evidence that Mr. Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, and the intelligence community never said there was.
The committee’s dissenting Republicans attempted to have this entire section of the report deleted — along with a conclusion that the administration misrepresented the intelligence when it warned of a risk that Mr. Hussein could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. They said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney never used the word “intent” and were merely trying to suggest that Iraq “could” do those terrible things.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone drew that distinction after hearing Mr. Bush declare that “Saddam Hussein would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind.” Or when he said: “Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.”
The Senate report shows that the intelligence Mr. Bush had did not support those statements — or Mr. Rumsfeld’s that “every month that goes by, his W.M.D. programs are progressing, and he moves closer to his goal of possessing the capability to strike our population, and our allies, and hold them hostage to blackmail.”
Claims by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld that Iraq had longstanding ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups also were false, and the Senate committee’s report shows that the two men knew it, or should have.
We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.
It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.
The report shows clearly that President Bush should have known that important claims he made about Iraq did not conform with intelligence reports. In other cases, he could have learned the truth if he had asked better questions or encouraged more honest answers.
The report confirms one serious intelligence failure: President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials were told that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons and did not learn that these reports were wrong until after the invasion. But Mr. Bush and his team made even that intelligence seem more solid, more recent and more dangerous than it was.
The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.
Over all, the report makes it clear that top officials, especially Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war.
The report was supported by only two of the seven Republicans on the 15-member Senate panel. The five dissenting Republicans first tried to kill it, and then to delete most of its conclusions. They finally settled for appending objections. The bulk of their criticisms were sophistry transparently intended to protect Mr. Bush and deny the public a full accounting of how he took America into a disastrous war.
The report documents how time and again Mr. Bush and his team took vague and dubious intelligence reports on Iraq’s weapons programs and made them sound like hard and incontrovertible fact.
“They continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, adding that “we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.”
On Oct. 7, 2002, Mr. Bush told an audience in Cincinnati that Iraq “is seeking nuclear weapons” and that “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” Saddam Hussein, he said, “is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.”
Later, both men talked about Iraq trying to buy uranium in Africa and about the purchase of aluminum tubes that they said could only be used for a nuclear weapons program. They talked about Iraq having such a weapon in five years, then in three years, then in one.
If they had wanted to give an honest accounting of the intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would have said it indicated that Mr. Hussein’s nuclear weapons program had been destroyed years earlier by American military strikes.
As for Iraq’s supposed efforts to “reconstitute” that program, they would have had to say that reports about the uranium shopping and the aluminum tubes were the extent of the evidence — and those claims were already in serious doubt when Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney told the public about them. That would not have been nearly as persuasive, of course, as Mr. Bush’s infamous “mushroom cloud” warning.
The report said Mr. Bush was justified in saying that intelligence analysts believed Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But even then, he and his aides glossed over inconvenient facts — that the only new data on biological weapons came from a dubious source code-named Curveball and proved to be false.
Yet Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney persisted in talking as if there were ironclad proof of Iraq’s weapons and plans for global mayhem.
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 29, 2002.
Actually, there was plenty of doubt — at the time — about that second point. According to the Senate report, there was no evidence that Mr. Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, and the intelligence community never said there was.
The committee’s dissenting Republicans attempted to have this entire section of the report deleted — along with a conclusion that the administration misrepresented the intelligence when it warned of a risk that Mr. Hussein could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. They said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney never used the word “intent” and were merely trying to suggest that Iraq “could” do those terrible things.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone drew that distinction after hearing Mr. Bush declare that “Saddam Hussein would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind.” Or when he said: “Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.”
The Senate report shows that the intelligence Mr. Bush had did not support those statements — or Mr. Rumsfeld’s that “every month that goes by, his W.M.D. programs are progressing, and he moves closer to his goal of possessing the capability to strike our population, and our allies, and hold them hostage to blackmail.”
Claims by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld that Iraq had longstanding ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups also were false, and the Senate committee’s report shows that the two men knew it, or should have.
We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.
Déjà vu all over again
When it comes to Iran's nuclear capabilities, whose word would you rather take: that of a Nobel prize-winning head of an international agency specializing in nuclear issues who was proved triumphantly right about Iraq, or that of a bunch of belligerent neocons who make no secret of their desire to whack Iran at the earliest opportunity and who made such a pigs ear of Iraq?
That is the stark choice facing the sane people of the world, given the smearing of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei for not joining the hysterical lynch mob building up against Iran. Criticised by Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration, it is uncannily reminiscent of the slurs against him and UN weapons inspector Hans Blix in the run up to the invasion of Iraq - and we should remember that the US vindictively tried to unseat him afterwards for not joining in the lying game.
ElBaradei is hardly acting as cheerleader for the Iranians. He says that his inspectors have not seen "any concrete evidence that there is a parallel military program," though he could not yet swear to its absence. But he does believe that our issues with Iran can be resolved through negotiations - in which it would help if the US were not implicitly threatening war. But it looks as though we have reached a similar stage to when Saddam let in the inspectors. When they found no WMDs Washington cried foul, ordered the UN inspectors out and sent the troops in. The US and its allies will not accept anything short of regime change in Teheran - no matter what ordinary Iranians might want and what the IAEA says.
The only difference from last time is that France has defected, and France's opposition to the war in Iraq was as much because of Saddam's oil contracts with Total and Elf-Aquitaine as any deep attachment to international law. Teheran should sign a contract immediately!
There are, of course, several separate issues here. One is whether Iran has the right to enrich uranium. The second is whether it is abusing the putative right to build nuclear weapons. A third is whether the nuclear issue is not just some sort of White House feint, since we all know that if the shooting starts, it will really be about fighting terrorism, liberating gays and women, restoring democracy and taking down a major rival in the region to both Saudi Arabia and Israel - or any permutation of the above.
On the first question, stupid though it is, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not ban countries from reprocessing and purifying uranium. It should have done, and it should have allowed more intrusive inspections, but it doesn't, and one reason for that is that the US, under the influence of the people who now want to cite non-proliferation against Iran, fought against attempts to strengthen the treaty. These are the same people, in fact, who have successfully fought against the senate ratifying the comprehensive test ban treaty.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's maladroit diplomacy led to Iran being outmanoeuvred. His comments on Israel and the Holocaust, no matter whether interpreted correctly or not, have made it difficult for many countries to support him. The US got a resolution against Iran through the IAEA council calling on Iran to stop its uranium reprocessing, largely by promising council member India a free pass for developing nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and with the enthusiastic support of Israel, the only definite nuclear state in the Middle East.
The US then took that IAEA council resolution to the UN security council, whose word, whether Iran likes it or not, is law under the UN charter, even though it is manifestly a political rather than a judicial body. (The law is not always just, and that goes for international law as well). It does not help Iran as much as it should that Washington, a major scofflaw in the international field, is once again talking piously about the need to enforce UN resolutions, with its own interpretation and its own timetable - just as was the case with Iraq.
Iran is playing a dangerous game. Most countries have deep reservations about what the US, France and, to a lesser extent, the UK are up to, but few of them are prepared to go to the wall, diplomatically, let alone militarily, for the ayatollahs.
Iran should accept the additional and more intrusive inspections that it did before, and throw open its program to the IAEA inspectors, but the war talk in Washington and Jerusalem gives it a plausible excuse not to, since it would be tantamount to offering them a list of targets.
Of course it is difficult to support someone like Ahmadinejad, even when he does for once have a point in the nuclear stand-off. But we can support ElBaradei and the IAEA, as the only sane voices around. With enemies such as ElBaradei has marshalling against him, he must be right.
Friday, June 6, 2008
128 ways to Dump your Bike
Because of my wreck
* 1 Putting your foot into a hole when stopping.
* 2 Putting your foot down on something slippery when stopping.
* 3 Locking the front wheel during overenthusiastic braking.
* 4 Missing the driveway and sliding on the grass.
* 5 Not putting the kickstand down when getting off.
* 6 Make a turn from stop in gravel or sand at high throttle.
* 7 Not putting a board ('foot')under the kickstand on asphalt on a hot day.
* 8 Letting overenthusiastic people sit on your bike who have never been on a bike.
* 9 Forgetting the bike's in gear when you jump on the kickstarter.
* 10 Revving the engine, releasing clutch, and putting feet on pegs when the light
turns green, but the bike's in neutral.
* 11 Not putting your foot down when stopping at red light.
* 12 Losing balance when putting it on the centerstand.
* 13 Take an hour ride in 30 degree weather with no gloves, stop at a stop sign and pop the clutch when you start because you've lost feeling in your hands.
* 14 Putting your foot down at a toll booth on the thick layer of grease that builds up when cars stop.
* 15 Using too much power when you pull out of a greasy toll booth.
* 16 Ignoring the sand that builds up in the spring at the side of the road (in places where roads are sanded and salted in winter.)
* 17 Kicking your kickstand in a cool fashion and having it bounce back up instead of staying down.
* 18 Getting off your bike while it is running and forgetting that is in gear.
* 19 Trying to kick start your first bike over and over because you didn't realize that it was really out of fuel, and getting the goofy metal ring on the side of your boot caught in the kickstarter, causing you (and the bike) to go over on the right side.
* 20 Starting your brand-new electric-start trail-bike, riding around an ornamental shrub on full left lock, throwing it to the right and accelerating to wheelie over the curb onto the street and _then_ discovering that you hadn't unlocked the steering-lock...
* 21 On same bike, getting the dual-range lever caught inside your jeans as you come to a stop...
* 22 Having your boot/jeans catch the gear-lever and putting your running bike into first gear whilst reaching for the side-stand (which is why I now automatically pull in the clutch whenever deploying or retracting the stand.)
* 23 Having "green" racing linings which have much higher coefficient of friction on the slight rust that forms on the polished drum when you've not ridden for a few hours, and lose the front-end holding the brakes on against the throttle to wear off the rust.
* 24 Having a three-cylinder two-stroke that's so smooth you think you're in second when you're actually in first, so you spin out when the undercarriage touches down in a tight corner passing a car and you think, "just a bit more throttle will help here..."
* 25 Revving bike in impressive squidly fashion at red light, thinking it's in neutral; dropping clutch and standing in place while bike wheelies and backflips into intersection.
* 26 Having your fat-ass brother (as a pillion) lean waaay over to the side to look at something on the ground while at a stop sign.
* 27 Wife gets foot caught on saddlebag while getting on before you.
* 28 Rebuild carbs and treat bike like it still needs full gas away from a stop.
* 29 Bald tires, and a smatter of rain.
* 30 Look at the sand at the edge of the exit ramp rather than through the turn.
* 31 Neither you nor your dad watching while he's backing his car up to the woodpile to unload wood.
* 32 Not putting the pin that holds the center stand all the way in and then trying to put the bike on the center stand.
* 33 Trying to hold the bike upright before deploying the center stand only to find our knees are too weak from riding.
* 34 Park behind friend's mom's minivan figuring "If anybody goes anywhere, they'll surely see it. 'specially since there'll be 5 of them getting into the van.
* 35 After getting fuel at gas station and holding the bike level with your legs in order to fill it completely, jumping off forgetting that your legs were holding it upright not the kickstand.
* 36 Entering a DR ("decreasing radius") turn too fast. This is especially dangerous when making a right turn where if you attempt to straighten up and brake, you'll plow into oncoming traffic.
* 37 Trying to countersteer (or wheelie) your shaft driven bike? [Obviously the person who posted this doesn't have a clue.]
* 38 Getting your boot/ shoelace caught on the gearshift. (I wear laceless boots now.)
* 39 Attempting to kick start a cantankerous '84 CR500, whilst standing on a picnic table bench, and she *kicks* back!
* 40 Getting pissed off for dropping it in the first place, yanking it vigorously off the ground, only to have it drop to the _other_ side.
* 41 Pulling out the swing arm stand, and forgetting to put the sidestand down first.
* 42 Backing down an inclined driveway, turning to either side with a full tank of gas.
* 43 Taking the bike off the centerstand and forgetting the sidestand.
* 44 Riding on wet grass with street tires (Almost as bad as ice!!)
* 45 Riding on wet asphalt with dirt tires (Almost as bad as ice!!)
* 46 *Thinking* the kick stand was down when it wasn't.
* 47 Kick stand slowly burying itself in hot asphalt.
* 48 Kick stand slowly burying itself in soft ground.
* 49 Backing up perpendicular to a steeply sloped driveway and attempting to put your foot down on the downhill side while on a large bike with a high seat. (By the time your foot reaches the ground the bike is so far off center balance you won't be able to hold it up.)
* 50 Backing your bike down a plank, by yourself, from the bed of a pickup truck. Works great as long as you remember that once you start moving, stopping for any correction is out of the question. Get two people to stand on each side of you and the bike.
* 51 Losing your balance when coming to a stop because of fatigue from a long trip. The wind and the buzz of the bike induces an unexpected case of vertigo. Stop often and rest.
* 52 Riding beyond your limits while trying to keep up with someone who is probably riding beyond their own. Always a temptation. The best riders/racers understand and use discipline when riding.
* 53 Not paying attention. Always strive to anticipate what could possibly go wrong and be planning what you're going to do when it happens, eventually it will - and you'll be ready, instead of surprised when you're much more likely to do something stupid and reactionary.
* 54 Assuming that all wet roads are created equal. They are much more slippery when it first starts to rain - until the oil and dirt are washed away.
* 55 Assuming that the condition of a blind corner is the same as it was the last time you rode it. Instead you find sticks, road kill, oil, rain wash, stones, pot holes, garbage, etc.
* 56 Not understanding how to get set-up for a corner when pushing the limits. In most cases the bike could have made the corner but the rider decided it couldn't and while in a panic attempted to correct the situation with the brake. WRONG! MSF course will discuss this at length.
* 57 Riding without all of the protective equipment because I forgot to bring it and after all it was just this one time. Turned out to be the wrong time! I forgot my MX boots and fell on a steeply banked corner and the foot peg attempted to drill into the back of my right calf. On crutches for 3 weeks with a deep bruise.
* 58 Using a little too much power turning the first corner after you've put on new tires (with that nice slippery release compound on them).
* 59 Being too short for the bike you're riding, and coming to a stop sign.
* 60 Your rider hops on before you are ready.
* 61 Pushing your bike into the garage and letting it get leaned just a little away from you, pulling you on top of it to the ground.
* 62 Pulling off both fork caps while the bike is on its centerstand.
* 64 Park pointing downhill, don't leave it in gear.
* 65 Park with sidestand facing up hill, sidestand is too long.
* 66 Allow friend to ride bike that has either no riding experience, or only tiny dirt bike riding experience (they will wheelie out of control, fly straight at the nearest object, or drop it attempting to stop suddenly.)
* 67 Pulling into Dairy Queen and slipping on a spilt chocolate malt.
* 68 Sitting on your bike on an inclined driveway talking to a very pretty girl, forgetting where in the hell your mind is and then noticing that it's already too close to the ground to stop.
* 69 Change rear-end oil on a shaft drive bike, spill 90w on tire, don't clean it up and then make a really sharp turn out of the driveway. *Splat*
* 70 Parking your bike so that it stands upright with the kickstand down and then having a slow leak in the rear tire which causes the kickstand to push the bike over.
* 71 Running into a bus after a 120mph+ high speed chase where there is helicopter pursuit and you are being taped by 5 local news stations.
* 72 Spending 3 hours washing and waxing your bike and then stepping back to admire it with some buddies and then watch it fall right off its side stand while it was warming up.
* 73 Pushing it over.
* 74 Covering it with a windsail (aka canvas cover) and letting the wind push it over.
* 75 Unbolting too many components from the back so that the bike falls off the jack.
* 76 Having an internally rusted CX500 center stand come apart whilst putting the bike onto it.
* 77 Discovering when you stop and try to put your foot down that the kickstart lever is up your pant leg.
* 78 Letting your wife drive the bike and having her stall it on an inclined driveway while in a 45 degree angle to the incline.
* 79 Entering a banked freeway onramp with a stoplight at the end, and realizing a little too late that the downside is just a _little_ steeper than you thought.
* 80 Whacking the throttle open on the highway when you think there's no cop around then slowing to normal speed again only to realize that a trooper has been trying to catch up with you for two miles and he's pissed so he decides to run you off the road because he thinks you were trying to run away from him, even though you explain to him that if you were trying to run that he wouldn't have caught you then getting out of any ticjet because *@!!$#, uh I mean cop, felt bad even though he never said "I'm sorry" . . . .but I'm not bitter.
* 81 While pushing your bike in an attempt to start it by compression, jumping on side-saddle with excessive vigor.
* 82 Successfully compression starting your bike while running along side, only to find out that you'd held a BIT too much throttle!
* 83 Deploying the centre-stand without noticing that the ground falls away on the other side.
* 84 Taking the wife on a ride on your brand new, first bike in 20+ years and making a slow, tight, turn on gravel.
* 85 Riding in stilettos and getting stuck on the footrest.
* 86 Swinging your legs too enthusiastically over the bike with tight trousers on and kicking it over.
* 87 Dismounting while trying not to wet yourself (cold weather..tuh!)
* 88 Riding short distances side-saddle fashion.
* 89 Pulling off with a blood alcohol level exceeding the stated limit.
* 90 Reaching down to pick up your gloves/keys/glasses.
* 91 Paying too much attention to the tiltometer on your valkarie.
* 92 Dropping your dirtbike on the side of a steep hill covered in pine humus, then while getting it righted go over the down side because it's too far of an angle to get a foot down.
* 93 Trying to ride away on the side of a steep hill covered in pine humus which is slipperier than sand.
* 94 Bopping down the freshly-oiled farm lane to see the neighbor kid with my brother on the back, cautiously toeing the rear brake, feeling the rear wheel slide as we headed straight for the barn, grabbing a panicky handful of front brake, doing a slow highside despite dabbing mightily, sliding right up to the barn door prone on the well-oiled bike with my brother on top of the pile, and hearing the neighbor say "Didn't that thing used to be orange?"
* 95 kill the bike while leaned over trying to make a slow, sharp turn in a parking lot.
* 96 Forgetting to remove the disc lock and taking off from the curb with haste...Tends to break the front caliper, too.
* 97 Falling asleep.
* 98 Getting help from a neighbor in pushing your 750 up a steep ramp into a moving truck. Though he might assure you that he used to ride a motorcycle, it turns out it was a 125 in Bombay. He gets 2/3 of the way up the ramp, looks panicked, and his knees buckle. Crunch.
* 99 Looking at the pretty curb to your left on a right-hand bank.
* 100 Trying to get a wasp or bee out of your jacket while sitting on the bike.
* 101 Trying to start out in a quick turn (leaning in anticipation of giving it throttle) and stalling it out because the engine hasn't warmed yet - it's a nice, slow drop...
* 102 Forgetting to put in oil after an oil change. Starting 'er up, and wondering why the low oil pressure dummy light doesn't turn off.
* 103 After a brake job, forgetting to pump the lever/pedal a few times, and taking off, wondering why there's no brakes as you're coming up on the intersection.
* 104 Having a mechanical gate close on you as you're trying to ride through.
* 105 Hitting that patch of sand which has washed across the road on a blind bend.
* 106 Absentmindedly putting the bike on the kick stand and walking away before you check to see if the driveway is level.
* 107 Applying your usual amount of throttle but with a passenger behind you ... "cool ... look at that plane".
* 108 Pushing your bike into a crowded garage, letting it get leaned just a little away from you, pulling you on top of it into your vintage MG.
* 109 Popping a wheelie while showing off for a girl, almost looping it, slamming on the rear brake to compensate, and passing out from the bollocking several yards later.
* 110 Assuming the puddle of liquid behind the convenience store was water when it was actually used motor oil.
* 111 Starting bike while habitually squeezing clutch lever, standing to the left of the bike, remembering too late that the bike is in gear. Realize too late that the choke gives the bike enough power to drag you 30' across the parking lot in first gear.
* 112 On your third ride with your first ever bike. Stop at a red light. When the light turns green, you have to start uphill, and turn right at the same time. Somehow that overwhelmed me.
* 113 Parking on a bit of an incline (slopes down right to left), having your left foot slip a little when getting back on the bike, and slowly loosing your balance.
* 114 Let your buddy ride it. And if you are really stupid let him ride it again.
* 115 Turning onto a busy street and in the middle of the turn you suddenly remember that this street has trolley tracks.
* 116 Put armor all on your tires to make them look nice and pretty and then ride on the white safety lane line as you take a HARD right turn at 35mph.
* 117 Throw a party and get together with a random girl on your bike in the garage while extremely drunk.
* 118 Pull into parking and failed to ensure proper extension of the sidestand then with near perfect execution of the Laugh-in scene where the bike topples over onto your leg, and you're going down, pinned beneath.
* 119 Stop for gas, carefully shut off ignition and take key out (to unlock tank), carefully remove helmet and set it over mirror, carefully remove gloves and place on instruments, open jacket, step off bike ... forgetting to put sidestand down.
* 120 With bike off, try to make walking U-turn in driveway. Bike doesn't have necessary turning radius, front wheel leaves pavement and goes into soft dirt.
* 121 The setting: Bikes at inside end of driveway, on centerstands, facing away from front of driveway. Backing cage into driveway ... slowly ... at about the right point, stop ... note that cover on bike #1 is moving slightly ... notice bike #1 ever-so-slowly roll forward off its centerstand, then sideways into bike #2. Bike #2 stands there and takes it without falling ... but there's no way to get it to lift #1.
* 122 Tweaking the front brake at a light as you JUST come to a stop with the forks turned to either side at ALL on a top-heavy bike.
* 123 Jump an old dirt bike over your parents' fence (use a rramp to get enough height). Realize on the way down that you *don't* know how to land. (I believe this was caused by "Adolescent Invincibility Syndrome".)
* 124 Test-ride an Electra Glide Sport (OK, these days it would have to be a Road King) around the old, cracked pavement in Brisbane near the Cow Palace.
* 125 Have a BMW with the sidestand linked to the clutch lever, so that pulling in the clutch retracts the stand.
* 126 Put the bike back together after waiting months since the last crash for a part to arrive, and don't install fuel filters. Gas tank rust clogs carburetor float needles, overflow tubes lube rear tire, brake to avoid manhole cover in curve, the waited-for part is broken.
* 127 Park next to some %$#@ on a Triumph who leaves his disc lock on, and return to find your XV1100 with a few dents and a little note saying 'Sorry' in the brake lever. (I left my phone number too...)
* 128 While riding home the day after getting your shiny new bike turn onto a dirt road and discover that they are in the process of combing the road and your front tire is now sliding through four inches of loose wet sand (Did I mention it was raining). While picking up your bike be sure to grind plenty of sand into the tank.
* 1 Putting your foot into a hole when stopping.
* 2 Putting your foot down on something slippery when stopping.
* 3 Locking the front wheel during overenthusiastic braking.
* 4 Missing the driveway and sliding on the grass.
* 5 Not putting the kickstand down when getting off.
* 6 Make a turn from stop in gravel or sand at high throttle.
* 7 Not putting a board ('foot')under the kickstand on asphalt on a hot day.
* 8 Letting overenthusiastic people sit on your bike who have never been on a bike.
* 9 Forgetting the bike's in gear when you jump on the kickstarter.
* 10 Revving the engine, releasing clutch, and putting feet on pegs when the light
turns green, but the bike's in neutral.
* 11 Not putting your foot down when stopping at red light.
* 12 Losing balance when putting it on the centerstand.
* 13 Take an hour ride in 30 degree weather with no gloves, stop at a stop sign and pop the clutch when you start because you've lost feeling in your hands.
* 14 Putting your foot down at a toll booth on the thick layer of grease that builds up when cars stop.
* 15 Using too much power when you pull out of a greasy toll booth.
* 16 Ignoring the sand that builds up in the spring at the side of the road (in places where roads are sanded and salted in winter.)
* 17 Kicking your kickstand in a cool fashion and having it bounce back up instead of staying down.
* 18 Getting off your bike while it is running and forgetting that is in gear.
* 19 Trying to kick start your first bike over and over because you didn't realize that it was really out of fuel, and getting the goofy metal ring on the side of your boot caught in the kickstarter, causing you (and the bike) to go over on the right side.
* 20 Starting your brand-new electric-start trail-bike, riding around an ornamental shrub on full left lock, throwing it to the right and accelerating to wheelie over the curb onto the street and _then_ discovering that you hadn't unlocked the steering-lock...
* 21 On same bike, getting the dual-range lever caught inside your jeans as you come to a stop...
* 22 Having your boot/jeans catch the gear-lever and putting your running bike into first gear whilst reaching for the side-stand (which is why I now automatically pull in the clutch whenever deploying or retracting the stand.)
* 23 Having "green" racing linings which have much higher coefficient of friction on the slight rust that forms on the polished drum when you've not ridden for a few hours, and lose the front-end holding the brakes on against the throttle to wear off the rust.
* 24 Having a three-cylinder two-stroke that's so smooth you think you're in second when you're actually in first, so you spin out when the undercarriage touches down in a tight corner passing a car and you think, "just a bit more throttle will help here..."
* 25 Revving bike in impressive squidly fashion at red light, thinking it's in neutral; dropping clutch and standing in place while bike wheelies and backflips into intersection.
* 26 Having your fat-ass brother (as a pillion) lean waaay over to the side to look at something on the ground while at a stop sign.
* 27 Wife gets foot caught on saddlebag while getting on before you.
* 28 Rebuild carbs and treat bike like it still needs full gas away from a stop.
* 29 Bald tires, and a smatter of rain.
* 30 Look at the sand at the edge of the exit ramp rather than through the turn.
* 31 Neither you nor your dad watching while he's backing his car up to the woodpile to unload wood.
* 32 Not putting the pin that holds the center stand all the way in and then trying to put the bike on the center stand.
* 33 Trying to hold the bike upright before deploying the center stand only to find our knees are too weak from riding.
* 34 Park behind friend's mom's minivan figuring "If anybody goes anywhere, they'll surely see it. 'specially since there'll be 5 of them getting into the van.
* 35 After getting fuel at gas station and holding the bike level with your legs in order to fill it completely, jumping off forgetting that your legs were holding it upright not the kickstand.
* 36 Entering a DR ("decreasing radius") turn too fast. This is especially dangerous when making a right turn where if you attempt to straighten up and brake, you'll plow into oncoming traffic.
* 37 Trying to countersteer (or wheelie) your shaft driven bike? [Obviously the person who posted this doesn't have a clue.]
* 38 Getting your boot/ shoelace caught on the gearshift. (I wear laceless boots now.)
* 39 Attempting to kick start a cantankerous '84 CR500, whilst standing on a picnic table bench, and she *kicks* back!
* 40 Getting pissed off for dropping it in the first place, yanking it vigorously off the ground, only to have it drop to the _other_ side.
* 41 Pulling out the swing arm stand, and forgetting to put the sidestand down first.
* 42 Backing down an inclined driveway, turning to either side with a full tank of gas.
* 43 Taking the bike off the centerstand and forgetting the sidestand.
* 44 Riding on wet grass with street tires (Almost as bad as ice!!)
* 45 Riding on wet asphalt with dirt tires (Almost as bad as ice!!)
* 46 *Thinking* the kick stand was down when it wasn't.
* 47 Kick stand slowly burying itself in hot asphalt.
* 48 Kick stand slowly burying itself in soft ground.
* 49 Backing up perpendicular to a steeply sloped driveway and attempting to put your foot down on the downhill side while on a large bike with a high seat. (By the time your foot reaches the ground the bike is so far off center balance you won't be able to hold it up.)
* 50 Backing your bike down a plank, by yourself, from the bed of a pickup truck. Works great as long as you remember that once you start moving, stopping for any correction is out of the question. Get two people to stand on each side of you and the bike.
* 51 Losing your balance when coming to a stop because of fatigue from a long trip. The wind and the buzz of the bike induces an unexpected case of vertigo. Stop often and rest.
* 52 Riding beyond your limits while trying to keep up with someone who is probably riding beyond their own. Always a temptation. The best riders/racers understand and use discipline when riding.
* 53 Not paying attention. Always strive to anticipate what could possibly go wrong and be planning what you're going to do when it happens, eventually it will - and you'll be ready, instead of surprised when you're much more likely to do something stupid and reactionary.
* 54 Assuming that all wet roads are created equal. They are much more slippery when it first starts to rain - until the oil and dirt are washed away.
* 55 Assuming that the condition of a blind corner is the same as it was the last time you rode it. Instead you find sticks, road kill, oil, rain wash, stones, pot holes, garbage, etc.
* 56 Not understanding how to get set-up for a corner when pushing the limits. In most cases the bike could have made the corner but the rider decided it couldn't and while in a panic attempted to correct the situation with the brake. WRONG! MSF course will discuss this at length.
* 57 Riding without all of the protective equipment because I forgot to bring it and after all it was just this one time. Turned out to be the wrong time! I forgot my MX boots and fell on a steeply banked corner and the foot peg attempted to drill into the back of my right calf. On crutches for 3 weeks with a deep bruise.
* 58 Using a little too much power turning the first corner after you've put on new tires (with that nice slippery release compound on them).
* 59 Being too short for the bike you're riding, and coming to a stop sign.
* 60 Your rider hops on before you are ready.
* 61 Pushing your bike into the garage and letting it get leaned just a little away from you, pulling you on top of it to the ground.
* 62 Pulling off both fork caps while the bike is on its centerstand.
* 64 Park pointing downhill, don't leave it in gear.
* 65 Park with sidestand facing up hill, sidestand is too long.
* 66 Allow friend to ride bike that has either no riding experience, or only tiny dirt bike riding experience (they will wheelie out of control, fly straight at the nearest object, or drop it attempting to stop suddenly.)
* 67 Pulling into Dairy Queen and slipping on a spilt chocolate malt.
* 68 Sitting on your bike on an inclined driveway talking to a very pretty girl, forgetting where in the hell your mind is and then noticing that it's already too close to the ground to stop.
* 69 Change rear-end oil on a shaft drive bike, spill 90w on tire, don't clean it up and then make a really sharp turn out of the driveway. *Splat*
* 70 Parking your bike so that it stands upright with the kickstand down and then having a slow leak in the rear tire which causes the kickstand to push the bike over.
* 71 Running into a bus after a 120mph+ high speed chase where there is helicopter pursuit and you are being taped by 5 local news stations.
* 72 Spending 3 hours washing and waxing your bike and then stepping back to admire it with some buddies and then watch it fall right off its side stand while it was warming up.
* 73 Pushing it over.
* 74 Covering it with a windsail (aka canvas cover) and letting the wind push it over.
* 75 Unbolting too many components from the back so that the bike falls off the jack.
* 76 Having an internally rusted CX500 center stand come apart whilst putting the bike onto it.
* 77 Discovering when you stop and try to put your foot down that the kickstart lever is up your pant leg.
* 78 Letting your wife drive the bike and having her stall it on an inclined driveway while in a 45 degree angle to the incline.
* 79 Entering a banked freeway onramp with a stoplight at the end, and realizing a little too late that the downside is just a _little_ steeper than you thought.
* 80 Whacking the throttle open on the highway when you think there's no cop around then slowing to normal speed again only to realize that a trooper has been trying to catch up with you for two miles and he's pissed so he decides to run you off the road because he thinks you were trying to run away from him, even though you explain to him that if you were trying to run that he wouldn't have caught you then getting out of any ticjet because *@!!$#, uh I mean cop, felt bad even though he never said "I'm sorry" . . . .but I'm not bitter.
* 81 While pushing your bike in an attempt to start it by compression, jumping on side-saddle with excessive vigor.
* 82 Successfully compression starting your bike while running along side, only to find out that you'd held a BIT too much throttle!
* 83 Deploying the centre-stand without noticing that the ground falls away on the other side.
* 84 Taking the wife on a ride on your brand new, first bike in 20+ years and making a slow, tight, turn on gravel.
* 85 Riding in stilettos and getting stuck on the footrest.
* 86 Swinging your legs too enthusiastically over the bike with tight trousers on and kicking it over.
* 87 Dismounting while trying not to wet yourself (cold weather..tuh!)
* 88 Riding short distances side-saddle fashion.
* 89 Pulling off with a blood alcohol level exceeding the stated limit.
* 90 Reaching down to pick up your gloves/keys/glasses.
* 91 Paying too much attention to the tiltometer on your valkarie.
* 92 Dropping your dirtbike on the side of a steep hill covered in pine humus, then while getting it righted go over the down side because it's too far of an angle to get a foot down.
* 93 Trying to ride away on the side of a steep hill covered in pine humus which is slipperier than sand.
* 94 Bopping down the freshly-oiled farm lane to see the neighbor kid with my brother on the back, cautiously toeing the rear brake, feeling the rear wheel slide as we headed straight for the barn, grabbing a panicky handful of front brake, doing a slow highside despite dabbing mightily, sliding right up to the barn door prone on the well-oiled bike with my brother on top of the pile, and hearing the neighbor say "Didn't that thing used to be orange?"
* 95 kill the bike while leaned over trying to make a slow, sharp turn in a parking lot.
* 96 Forgetting to remove the disc lock and taking off from the curb with haste...Tends to break the front caliper, too.
* 97 Falling asleep.
* 98 Getting help from a neighbor in pushing your 750 up a steep ramp into a moving truck. Though he might assure you that he used to ride a motorcycle, it turns out it was a 125 in Bombay. He gets 2/3 of the way up the ramp, looks panicked, and his knees buckle. Crunch.
* 99 Looking at the pretty curb to your left on a right-hand bank.
* 100 Trying to get a wasp or bee out of your jacket while sitting on the bike.
* 101 Trying to start out in a quick turn (leaning in anticipation of giving it throttle) and stalling it out because the engine hasn't warmed yet - it's a nice, slow drop...
* 102 Forgetting to put in oil after an oil change. Starting 'er up, and wondering why the low oil pressure dummy light doesn't turn off.
* 103 After a brake job, forgetting to pump the lever/pedal a few times, and taking off, wondering why there's no brakes as you're coming up on the intersection.
* 104 Having a mechanical gate close on you as you're trying to ride through.
* 105 Hitting that patch of sand which has washed across the road on a blind bend.
* 106 Absentmindedly putting the bike on the kick stand and walking away before you check to see if the driveway is level.
* 107 Applying your usual amount of throttle but with a passenger behind you ... "cool ... look at that plane".
* 108 Pushing your bike into a crowded garage, letting it get leaned just a little away from you, pulling you on top of it into your vintage MG.
* 109 Popping a wheelie while showing off for a girl, almost looping it, slamming on the rear brake to compensate, and passing out from the bollocking several yards later.
* 110 Assuming the puddle of liquid behind the convenience store was water when it was actually used motor oil.
* 111 Starting bike while habitually squeezing clutch lever, standing to the left of the bike, remembering too late that the bike is in gear. Realize too late that the choke gives the bike enough power to drag you 30' across the parking lot in first gear.
* 112 On your third ride with your first ever bike. Stop at a red light. When the light turns green, you have to start uphill, and turn right at the same time. Somehow that overwhelmed me.
* 113 Parking on a bit of an incline (slopes down right to left), having your left foot slip a little when getting back on the bike, and slowly loosing your balance.
* 114 Let your buddy ride it. And if you are really stupid let him ride it again.
* 115 Turning onto a busy street and in the middle of the turn you suddenly remember that this street has trolley tracks.
* 116 Put armor all on your tires to make them look nice and pretty and then ride on the white safety lane line as you take a HARD right turn at 35mph.
* 117 Throw a party and get together with a random girl on your bike in the garage while extremely drunk.
* 118 Pull into parking and failed to ensure proper extension of the sidestand then with near perfect execution of the Laugh-in scene where the bike topples over onto your leg, and you're going down, pinned beneath.
* 119 Stop for gas, carefully shut off ignition and take key out (to unlock tank), carefully remove helmet and set it over mirror, carefully remove gloves and place on instruments, open jacket, step off bike ... forgetting to put sidestand down.
* 120 With bike off, try to make walking U-turn in driveway. Bike doesn't have necessary turning radius, front wheel leaves pavement and goes into soft dirt.
* 121 The setting: Bikes at inside end of driveway, on centerstands, facing away from front of driveway. Backing cage into driveway ... slowly ... at about the right point, stop ... note that cover on bike #1 is moving slightly ... notice bike #1 ever-so-slowly roll forward off its centerstand, then sideways into bike #2. Bike #2 stands there and takes it without falling ... but there's no way to get it to lift #1.
* 122 Tweaking the front brake at a light as you JUST come to a stop with the forks turned to either side at ALL on a top-heavy bike.
* 123 Jump an old dirt bike over your parents' fence (use a rramp to get enough height). Realize on the way down that you *don't* know how to land. (I believe this was caused by "Adolescent Invincibility Syndrome".)
* 124 Test-ride an Electra Glide Sport (OK, these days it would have to be a Road King) around the old, cracked pavement in Brisbane near the Cow Palace.
* 125 Have a BMW with the sidestand linked to the clutch lever, so that pulling in the clutch retracts the stand.
* 126 Put the bike back together after waiting months since the last crash for a part to arrive, and don't install fuel filters. Gas tank rust clogs carburetor float needles, overflow tubes lube rear tire, brake to avoid manhole cover in curve, the waited-for part is broken.
* 127 Park next to some %$#@ on a Triumph who leaves his disc lock on, and return to find your XV1100 with a few dents and a little note saying 'Sorry' in the brake lever. (I left my phone number too...)
* 128 While riding home the day after getting your shiny new bike turn onto a dirt road and discover that they are in the process of combing the road and your front tire is now sliding through four inches of loose wet sand (Did I mention it was raining). While picking up your bike be sure to grind plenty of sand into the tank.
An Actual letter to the Canadian Passport office
Dear Mr. Minister,
I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.
How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?
My birth date you have on my social insurance card, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30 years. It is on my health insurance card, my driver’s license, on the last eight goddamn passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at election times.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Maryanne, my father’s name is Robert and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!!!!
SHIT!
I apologize, Mr. Minister. I’m really pissed off this morning. Between you an’ me, I’ve had enough of this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my fuckin’ address. What is going on? You have a gang of Neanderthals assholes workin’ there!
Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for …… sake. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach.
And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone!
Well, I have to go now, ’cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another ‘ copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60!!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day??
Nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You’d rather have us running all over the ….. place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some idiot to confirm that it’s really me on the goddamn picture - you know, the one where we’re not allowed to smile?! (morons)
Hey, you know why we can’t smile? We’re totally pissed off!
Signed - An Irate f……g Canadian Citizen.
P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it’s me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 when one of my forefathers took up arms against the Americans. I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had security clearances up the yingyang.
I was aide de camp to the lieutenant governor of our province for ten years and I have been doing volunteer work for the RCMP for about five years.
However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN COMMUNIST CHINA!!
I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.
How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.
For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?
My birth date you have on my social insurance card, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30 years. It is on my health insurance card, my driver’s license, on the last eight goddamn passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at election times.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Maryanne, my father’s name is Robert and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!!!!
SHIT!
I apologize, Mr. Minister. I’m really pissed off this morning. Between you an’ me, I’ve had enough of this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my fuckin’ address. What is going on? You have a gang of Neanderthals assholes workin’ there!
Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for …… sake. I just want to go and park my ass on a sandy beach.
And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone!
Well, I have to go now, ’cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another ‘ copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60!!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day??
Nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You’d rather have us running all over the ….. place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some idiot to confirm that it’s really me on the goddamn picture - you know, the one where we’re not allowed to smile?! (morons)
Hey, you know why we can’t smile? We’re totally pissed off!
Signed - An Irate f……g Canadian Citizen.
P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it’s me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 when one of my forefathers took up arms against the Americans. I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had security clearances up the yingyang.
I was aide de camp to the lieutenant governor of our province for ten years and I have been doing volunteer work for the RCMP for about five years.
However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN COMMUNIST CHINA!!
Blog | Study | Writing | Tools | Contact | About | Syndication If McCain is the “Military” Candidate, Why Did Ron Paul, Who Wants to Pull Out of Iraq
Through all this talk about whether McCain or Obama is a better candidate on foreign policy we’ve forgotten a key piece of information.
McCain thinks Bush was right about Iraq. Obama thinks he was wrong about Iraq. So who’s the tie-breaker? How about Military voters?
From the AirForceTimes:
During the reporting period, Paul — a former Air Force surgeon who broke with his party to vote against the Iraq war — received the most military contributions, with $201,271.
That’s significantly more than the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain from Arizona, who received $132,133 from military donors, according to CRP.
Think about that. A non-interventionist, anti-war candidate received the most support in the election from the Military. Keep that in mind when evaluating Obama vs. McCain on foreign policy.:
–
Edit: A commenter noted something interesting. The candidate who got the second largest share of campaign contributions from the Military was also anti-war. It was Obama.
McCain thinks Bush was right about Iraq. Obama thinks he was wrong about Iraq. So who’s the tie-breaker? How about Military voters?
From the AirForceTimes:
During the reporting period, Paul — a former Air Force surgeon who broke with his party to vote against the Iraq war — received the most military contributions, with $201,271.
That’s significantly more than the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain from Arizona, who received $132,133 from military donors, according to CRP.
Think about that. A non-interventionist, anti-war candidate received the most support in the election from the Military. Keep that in mind when evaluating Obama vs. McCain on foreign policy.:
–
Edit: A commenter noted something interesting. The candidate who got the second largest share of campaign contributions from the Military was also anti-war. It was Obama.
Senate Report: Bush Used Iraq Intel He Knew Was False
More than five years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally gone on the record: the Bush administration misused, and in some cases disregarded, intelligence which led the nation into war. The two final sections of a long-delayed and much anticipated "Phase II" report on the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, released on Thursday morning, accuse senior White House officials of repeatedly misrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.
In addition, the report on Iraq war intelligence harshly criticizes a Pentagon office for executing "inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities" without the proper knowledge of the State Department and other agencies.
In addition to judgments that could prove troublesome for the White House and make waves in the presidential race, the report also contains some stinging minority reports from Republican committee members who allege that Democrats turned the intelligence review process into a "partisan exercise."
However, when the GOP controlled the intelligence committee and steered its "Phase I" reporting on the use of Iraq war intelligence, critics complained that tough questions about the Bush administration's actions had been kicked down the road, and thus required a second round of fact finding -- dubbed "Phase II." The committee's delay in producing that full report to the public was seen by Democrats as evidence of a stonewalling campaign executed by President Bush's Republican Senate allies.
Former Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) often vacillated over whether or not the report was worth completing, first promising in 2004 that the work would be finished, and then calling it a "monumental waste of time" later in 2005. When Democrats gained control of the Senate after the 2006 midterm elections, they gained a majority of seats on the committee and set the course for the production of the final reports. Whether by partisan design or simple chance, however, the committee managed to save some of the best questions for last.
The "Phase II" report states -- in terms clearer than any previous government publication -- that there was no operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that Bush officials were not truthful about the difficulties the United States would face in post-war Iraq and that their public statements did not reflect intelligence they had at the time, and, specifically, that the intelligence community would not confirm any meeting between Iraqi officials and Mohamed Atta -- a claim that was nevertheless publicly repeated.
"Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.
"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed. ... There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."
In a minority report authored by Sens. Orrin Hatch, Christopher Bond and Richard Burr, the Republicans accuse committee Democrats of committing a key error of governmental logic. "Intelligence informs policy. It does not dictate policy," they wrote. "Intelligence professionals are responsible for their failures in intelligence collection, analysis, counter-intelligence and covert action. Policymakers must also bear the burden of their mistakes, an entirely different order of mistakes. It is a pity this report fails to illuminate this distinction."
The key findings released by Rockefeller and his divided committee brings the five-part "Phase II" of the committee's report on prewar intelligence to completion. The investigation's first phase was released on July 2004, and two less controversial parts of "Phase II" were declassified in September 2006.
The potential election year impact of these latest findings is uncertain. On the stump, Sen. John McCain has explained his support of the "surge" strategy in Iraq by saying the country has become the "central front" in the war on terror -- a framing that attempts to shoot past the question of Iraq's status in the terror hierarchy during the 2003 campaign waged in Congress to authorize military action.
Still, the breadth of the Committee's citations of examples in which the Bush administration's comments were not supported by intelligence could reignite public dissatisfaction over the war. According to a release from Rockefeller's office that was provided to The Huffington Post, these examples include:
-- Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
-- Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
-- Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
-- Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
-- The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
-- The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
"It has been four years since the Committee began the second phase of its review," Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote in her note attached to the report. "The results are now in. Even though the intelligence before the war supported inaccurate statements, this Administration distorted the intelligence in order to build its case to go to war. The Executive Branch released only those findings that supported the argument, did not relay uncertainties, and at times made statements beyond what the intelligence supported."
In addition, the report on Iraq war intelligence harshly criticizes a Pentagon office for executing "inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities" without the proper knowledge of the State Department and other agencies.
In addition to judgments that could prove troublesome for the White House and make waves in the presidential race, the report also contains some stinging minority reports from Republican committee members who allege that Democrats turned the intelligence review process into a "partisan exercise."
However, when the GOP controlled the intelligence committee and steered its "Phase I" reporting on the use of Iraq war intelligence, critics complained that tough questions about the Bush administration's actions had been kicked down the road, and thus required a second round of fact finding -- dubbed "Phase II." The committee's delay in producing that full report to the public was seen by Democrats as evidence of a stonewalling campaign executed by President Bush's Republican Senate allies.
Former Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) often vacillated over whether or not the report was worth completing, first promising in 2004 that the work would be finished, and then calling it a "monumental waste of time" later in 2005. When Democrats gained control of the Senate after the 2006 midterm elections, they gained a majority of seats on the committee and set the course for the production of the final reports. Whether by partisan design or simple chance, however, the committee managed to save some of the best questions for last.
The "Phase II" report states -- in terms clearer than any previous government publication -- that there was no operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that Bush officials were not truthful about the difficulties the United States would face in post-war Iraq and that their public statements did not reflect intelligence they had at the time, and, specifically, that the intelligence community would not confirm any meeting between Iraqi officials and Mohamed Atta -- a claim that was nevertheless publicly repeated.
"Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.
"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed. ... There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."
In a minority report authored by Sens. Orrin Hatch, Christopher Bond and Richard Burr, the Republicans accuse committee Democrats of committing a key error of governmental logic. "Intelligence informs policy. It does not dictate policy," they wrote. "Intelligence professionals are responsible for their failures in intelligence collection, analysis, counter-intelligence and covert action. Policymakers must also bear the burden of their mistakes, an entirely different order of mistakes. It is a pity this report fails to illuminate this distinction."
The key findings released by Rockefeller and his divided committee brings the five-part "Phase II" of the committee's report on prewar intelligence to completion. The investigation's first phase was released on July 2004, and two less controversial parts of "Phase II" were declassified in September 2006.
The potential election year impact of these latest findings is uncertain. On the stump, Sen. John McCain has explained his support of the "surge" strategy in Iraq by saying the country has become the "central front" in the war on terror -- a framing that attempts to shoot past the question of Iraq's status in the terror hierarchy during the 2003 campaign waged in Congress to authorize military action.
Still, the breadth of the Committee's citations of examples in which the Bush administration's comments were not supported by intelligence could reignite public dissatisfaction over the war. According to a release from Rockefeller's office that was provided to The Huffington Post, these examples include:
-- Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
-- Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
-- Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
-- Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
-- The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
-- The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
"It has been four years since the Committee began the second phase of its review," Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote in her note attached to the report. "The results are now in. Even though the intelligence before the war supported inaccurate statements, this Administration distorted the intelligence in order to build its case to go to war. The Executive Branch released only those findings that supported the argument, did not relay uncertainties, and at times made statements beyond what the intelligence supported."
Thursday, June 5, 2008
I don't like bush.
Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.
Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.
The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.
The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.
The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favor a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.
Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.
The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.
The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.
The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favor a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.
Click the link for the whole story.
Click the link for the whole story.
Ghettofabulous Prom
Sometimes people carry a stereotype with no help. If you click the link I'm sure you will agree. This prom IS the reason there is still racism in America. (Oh for family and friends only, how did Otis get into that prom? Why is he so angry? Inside joke for anyone who may read this elsewhere.)
What the/how the hell does one make their hair look like a helicopter. Notice the wire that would make the rotor on top spin. Also mister white guy in the blue suit, you are not a pimp and are probably just tolerated. Stop it.
There is something to be said about women that like to show skin, it's sexy. Well sometimes it is, most of these pics prove otherwise. If the clothing doesn't fit please don't make us look at your fat rolls hanging out. It is gross.
Hey pregnant girl, no one wants your fat belly stupid. Don't cut a hole in your dress to show us. Are you advertising for the unknown father to show up?
Please click the title link and leave me a comment. This has to be a joke.
What the/how the hell does one make their hair look like a helicopter. Notice the wire that would make the rotor on top spin. Also mister white guy in the blue suit, you are not a pimp and are probably just tolerated. Stop it.
There is something to be said about women that like to show skin, it's sexy. Well sometimes it is, most of these pics prove otherwise. If the clothing doesn't fit please don't make us look at your fat rolls hanging out. It is gross.
Hey pregnant girl, no one wants your fat belly stupid. Don't cut a hole in your dress to show us. Are you advertising for the unknown father to show up?
Please click the title link and leave me a comment. This has to be a joke.
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