Has anybody seen Colin Powell lately? He was the darling of the build up to the Iraq War. He gave the convicting and convincing speech to the UN. The facts that led us to Iraq esentially melted like a candle in the light of day and then he was moved from front and center to the back row in the Bush Administration. He has been invisible as of late. Lou Dobbs said it well in that he could have been President if he would have said he wanted it. Paging Colin Powell…
H/T to JoeWo for this video and commentary!
Sharon DeYoung is the author of Soldier, The Life of Colin Powell. You can purchase the book here
The military, however, often informs family members of the circumstances of a fatality. Gee, that’s big of them!! A son, daughter, Father, Mother gets killed serving their country, and the military will decide if the family deserves to know the circumstances of their death. How nice of them!!
By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD - Sniper attacks on U.S. troops have risen dramatically as more Americans have been pulled into the capital to patrol on foot and in lightly armored vehicles amid raging religious violence.
Sniper attacks, generally defined as one or two well-aimed shots from a distance, have totaled 36 so far this month in Baghdad, according to U.S. military statistics.
That’s up from 23 such attacks in September and 11 in January.
The figures were confirmed by Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. “The total numbers are elevated, and the effectiveness has been greater,” he said.
At least eight of the 36 sniper attacks in Baghdad in October have been fatal, according to accounts by hometown newspapers reporting on the deaths of individual soldiers and Marines. Snipers have also killed four U.S. servicemembers in Anbar province this month.
Pentagon practice has been to withhold specifics about the cause of death from news releases about casualties to avoid letting enemy fighters know whether their tactics have been successful. The releases typically attribute deaths in such cases to “small-arms fire” or “combat operations.” The military, however, often informs family members of the circumstances of a fatality.
“Now people are telling me they have seen Michael J. Fox in interviews and he does appear the same way in the interviews as he does in this commercial,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on his Web site. “All right then, I stand corrected. . . . So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act.”
You big fat drug addict slob……. whether he was or was not on his meds, you owe this man, and ALL Parkinson’s disease victims an apology. To say that MJF was “acting” is beyond sickening. How dare you presume to know how someone with Parkinson’s Disease would act on or off medications. Are you now a friggin doctor who specializes in Parkinson’s Disease?
Then Limbaugh pivoted to a different critique: “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democratic politician.”
Michael J. Fox is shilling for stem cell research you fucking moron. He’s shilling to try and help people afflicted with this disease, and so many other diseases……who may benefit from stem cell research. He’s shilling for people who suffer without hope of a cure. He’s a brave, compassionate man who has opened himself up to assholes like you in order to try and promote research that may provide a cure for millions of people who suffer.
You disgust me. God help you if you ever contract such a disease…..because the Republicans, who you shill for and who are against stem cell research will do nothing for you. It will be brave souls like Michael J. Fox who will be out there fighting for a cure for your fat drug addicted ass. You are such a sorry excuse for a human being.
In anticipation of President Bush’s news conference this morning, the Democratic National Committee released a new web ad entitled, “Stay the Course?,” just days after President Bush cut and ran from his “stay the course” rhetoric on Iraq. For some time, Republicans in Washington have clung desperately to the President’s failed rhetoric. Now, two weeks before Election Day, the Bush Administration has attempted to change their tune, but still refuses to come up with a new plan for success.
More here
Next time I do something really offensive, I’m going to blame it on alcohol and see how it works for me!
October 25, 2006
MIAMI –A state legislator acknowledged leaving a profanity-laced message that included a racial slur on a colleague’s voice mail, and said he will seek counseling to control his temper, especially when drinking.
Police and the state Department of Law Enforcement are investigating the message the message left by Rep. Ralph Arza, as well as an anonymous message, because the recipient, Rep. Gus Barreiro, said the calls sounded threatening.
Barreiro, a Miami Beach Republican, filed a complaint last week with the House Rules Committee, claiming Arza used a racial epithet when referring to a black school official.
Arza, a Miami-area Republican, denied a similar allegation in May but apologized at the time for anything construed as offensive.
What pittance of rights these prisoners are left with is now going to be stripped away. Little by little by little by little.
US asks court to restrict talks with lawyers
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | October 25, 2006
WASHINGTON — The US government is seeking to sharply restrict communication between defense lawyers and inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison, asserting that some lawyers have given inmates “inflammatory” material such as reports of abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and news articles about terrorist attacks.
The government is seeking judicial approval for new rules that would allow defense lawyers only four visits with their clients, rather than the unlimited number now permitted; control the topics that can be discussed in such meetings; and restrict the types of information that can be exchanged between lawyers and detainees through the mail.
The government filed the new rules in August with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which is currently reviewing them in connection with the case of a Guantanamo detainee. If the court agrees to the limitations, they are expected to be applied to future cases.
Read more at Boston.Com
Since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has battled to keep information about them secret — including their names — and to prevent them from having access to defense lawyers.
Halliburton made $8 Billion in Iraq contracts in 2004, alone. War Profiteers, indeed…….
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 25, 2006;
Administrative overhead accounted for more than half the costs that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary passed on to the government under a key contract to restore Iraq’s oil industry, a figure that critics said was unusually high.
A report released yesterday by the inspector general’s office overseeing Iraq spending found that at least 55 percent, or $163 million, of $296 million in total costs rung up by Halliburton unit KBR went to expenses such as back-office support, transportation and security. That percentage was significantly higher than it was on work by other firms in Iraq, and experts said it is far above what is typically found on a government contract.
The findings are the latest that call into question KBR’s work under the deal, which required the company to rehabilitate oil facilities in southern Iraq. Under the contract’s terms, KBR is reimbursed for its costs and then receives a percentage for profit on top, an arrangement that critics contend has given the firm an incentive to run up its bills.
Comedians, artists and certainly political cartoonists tend to possess an anti-authoritarian, skeptical, irreverent streak. This makes the staunchly conservative cartoonist an especially odd bird. Flipping the traditional journalist ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, rightwing cartoonists tend to ridicule the disenfranchised and excuse the abuses inflicted by the powerful. In some cases, their cartoons literally spout the latest GOP talking points, revealing themselves to be not independent voices, but one more cog in a vast propaganda machine. There’s a key difference between being a critic and a shill.
A few days later than usual, this installment of Rightwing Cartoon Watch will cover cartoons published between 10-14-06 and 10-21-06.
Let’s see what irritated our rightwing cartoonists this week! Read more »
I swear, if Bill O’Reilly and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark were in the same room Billo should be removed because he is just using the oxygen that the General could use. Maybe Clark will teach Bill a few things as he is on next week…maybe not. Clark also talks about George Soros.
H/T to JoeWo for this post!
The Shame of the Nation: A Collective Perversion - by Stephen Lendman
The daily headlines about a single congressman’s online pedophiliac behavior obscure the greater issue of a nation off its moorings and afflicted by the collective perversion of defiling the foundational equity and justice-for-all letter and spirit of what the nation long-claimed to stand for but no longer does if it ever did. Nearly everyone in the administration, Congress and courts share the collective guilt and shame and by their actions destroyed Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address “resolve….that this nation….shall have a new birth of freedom (in a) “government of the people, by the people, for the people (that) shall not perish from the earth.”
They conspiratorially participated in the crimes of a nation that go against Lincoln’s hope that the dead he spoke of hadn’t “died in vain” on “the great battle-field” where he stood and all the other civil war ones he referred to. They also defiled what the Founders stood for and gave us in 1787 when 55 of them met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, and framed an historic foundational document for the new federal republic they hoped would last into “remote futurity.” Benjamin Franklin was there but wasn’t so sure and openly and presciently warned we might not be able to keep it. Even at our nation’s birth, he understood the risk.
Where are the leaders now with the kind of wisdom, foresight, character, courage and honor our Founders and Lincoln had. A modern-day Diogenes would search in vain for them. We’ve come a long way in the last 220 years and since the time Lincoln spoke of a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today democracy and freedom are somewhere between life support and the crematorium, and Ben Franklin would have said I warned you. The only speculation now is whether we’ve already gone over the edge, sunk too low, and it’s too late to save the republic. It’s visibly sinking fast into the dustbin of a worthy experiment gone sour because those with the power to nurture it spurned the chance. They sacrificed it on the alter of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely.
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer
Posted October 24 2006
WASHINGTON - A major effort to draw Latinos and blacks into the Republican Party, a central element of the GOP plan to build a long-lasting majority, is in danger of collapse amid anger over the immigration debate and claims that Republican leaders have not delivered on promises to direct more money to church-based social services.
President Bush, strategist Karl Rove and other top Republicans have wooed Latino and black leaders, many of them evangelical clergy who lead large congregations, in hopes of peeling away the traditional Democratic base. But now some of the leaders who helped Bush win in 2004 are revisiting their loyalty to the Republican Party and, in some cases, abandoning it.
“If Democrats who hate Bush and who hate the war in Iraq win, the insurgents win. I’m sorry but it’s true. America will set a date to get out and Jihad will have carried the day.”
Wednesday, October 25th
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