New Model Army - “Vengeance”

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the subpoenas! Take that, you fascist wankers, from the smallest tosser to the biggest git! Oi!

24 months at a time in a combat zone…….now is that bullshit or what?
In practice, Pace said, the Pentagon intends to limit all future mobilizations to 12 months.
Intends…..uh huh. Sure

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen’soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours.

The Pentagon also announced it is proposing to Congress that the size of the Army be increased by 65,000, to 547,000 and that the Marine Corps, the smallest of the services, grow by 27,000, to 202,000, over the next five years. No cost estimate was provided, but officials said it would be at least several billion dollars.

Until now, the Pentagon’s policy on the Guard or Reserve was that members’ cumulative time on active duty for the Iraq or Afghan wars could not exceed 24 months. That cumulative limit is now lifted; the remaining limit is on the length of any single mobilization, which may not exceed 24 consecutive months, Pace said.

In other words, a citizen’soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as an additional 24 months. In practice, Pace said, the Pentagon intends to limit all future mobilizations to 12 months.

Read more at YahooNews

Today marked 5 years since the first “terrorist” was brought to Guantanamo. This anniversary was marked with worldwide protests.

By Guy Dinmore in Washington

Published: January 10 2007 20:00 | Last updated: January 10 2007 20:00

Prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba are being driven insane by a tightening of conditions and the situation of their indefinite detention without trial, according to lawyers and rights activists involved with the US camp.

The lawyers and activists also doubt whether the Bush administration intends to carry out its stated desire to close the facility.

Protesters around the world plan to mark Thursday’s fifth anniversary of the first delivery of detainees to Guantánamo with demonstrations calling for its closure. American anti-war activists and at least one former British prisoner intend to march to the perimeter of the US-held enclave in eastern Cuba.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, says the isolation regime at Guantánamo has tightened in recent months, piling the mental pressure on inmates who have “no fair procedure” that would lead to possible release.

Read more here

How long you think they’re going to get away with this “it’s a matter of national security” shit? Or, we don’t want our enemies to knnow what we do crap? I wonder…..

New York, Jan 11: The CIA cannot reveal “alternative interrogation methods” used on terrorists because doing so would cause exceptionally grave damage to national security by telling enemies how the agency gathers intelligence, the government has told a judge.

In a document dated Friday and filed in US district court in Manhattan, the CIA said it cannot reveal more than what President George W Bush said last summer about the detention and questioning of terrorism suspects.

The American civil liberties union had asked the court to require the CIA to turn over two Department of Justice memos discussing interrogation methods and a presidential order concerning the CIA’s authorisation to set up detention facilities outside the United States.

Yesterday, ACLU Attorney Amrit Singh said in a release that the CIA court document “uses national security as a pretext for withholding evidence that high-level government officials in all likelihood authorised abusive techniques that amount to torture.”

Read more here

Crossposted from House of the Rising Sons. Thank you Fade!!

A few brave Republicans have taken up the No More! chant and are standing against President Bush’s escalation plans in Iraq.

Sen. Hagel (R-Neb) leads the charge as he grilled Condoleeza Rice and chastised her for her lies.
(from MSNBC: )

In a heated exchange with Hagel, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, Rice disputed his characterization of Bush’s buildup as an “escalation.”

“Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?” Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and longtime critic of Bush’s Iraq policy, asked. “Would you call it a decrease?”

“I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad,” she said. She disputed that Iraq was in the throes of a civil war.

To that, Hagel said, “To sit there and say that, that’s just not true.”

Contact Sen.Hagel to show your support for Republicans who stand up to George Bush and his failed dream in Iraq. Let him know that America HAS spoken, and the political futures of those Republicans who still hang on Bush’s coattails will be short. Bush has almost single handedly destroyed the Republican party with his “dream” for controlling the oilfields of Iraq. True Conservatives must distance themselves from Bush and listen to their constituents.

(again, From the MSNBC article)
Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio also said Bush could no longer count on his support.

“You-re going to have to do a much better job” explaining the rationale for the war, “and so is the president,” Voinovich told Rice. “I-ve gone along with the president on this and I-ve bought into his dream and at this stage of the game I just don-t think it’s going to happen.”

Again, show some support for those Republicans who are strong enough to stand against Bush and for America. Contact Sen. Voinovich here

Getting out of Iraq will take a bi-partisan effort to defeat any filibusters. Who would be such an anti-American coward as to support Bush against the American people? Why, Sen. McConnell of Kentucky would:

(from MSNBC)
The Nebraska Republican vowed to “resist” the plan, but the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., threatened a filibuster to block any legislation expressing disapproval of Bush’s strategy.

Please, contact HIM as well, and express the American opinion. Tell him what you think about filibustering efforts to save American lives and get us out of the Iraq quagmire.

Contact McConnell

And what are other Senators saying concerning the new escalation?

From the biggest two-faced bastard out there:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., expressed both doubts and optimism about the strategy.

Ah yes, having an actual OPINION is too much for the likes of McCain. Our favorite Republican mole, Lieberman, (thanks For nothing Connecticut!) of course Loves Bush strategy and is “staying the course”. I don’t encourage anyone to contact this steaming pile of excrement. He’s bought and paid for and I don’t expect he listens to any of his constituents any more.

One Democrat who previously supported Bush on Iraq has changed course, however. Senator Bill Nelson had this to say as he withdrew his backing, after a 12 day visit to the Middle East:

“I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth,” Nelson said.

You can contact him and welcome him back to the reality based community here.

It’s time to take back our country from these short’sighted imbeciles. It’s time to push Morality and Responsibility. The end doesn’t justify the means, and in George Bush’s dreams, the Means cannot result in a decent end.

From YahooNews:

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A top U.S. official in the region said Thursday that none of the al-Qaida suspects believed to be hiding in Somalia died in a U.S. airstrike this week, but Somalis with close ties to the terrorist group were killed.

A day earlier, a Somali official said a U.S. intelligence report had referred to the death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the three senior al-Qaida members blamed for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But the U.S. official in Kenya, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that Ethiopian troops and U.S. special forces were still pursuing the three suspects in southern Somalia.

U.S. and Somali officials said Wednesday that a small team of U.S. special operations forces are in Somalia hunting suspected al-Qaida fighters and providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground.

The U.S. forces entered Somalia with Ethiopian forces late last month when Ethiopians launched their attack against a Somali Islamic movement said to be sheltering al-Qaida figures, one of the officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

GULFPORT, Miss. - A federal judge ruled against an insurance company Thursday in a Hurricane Katrina damage case that may have implications for hundreds of other homeowner lawsuits against insurers who refused to cover billions of dollars in damage from the storm’s surge.

U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled that State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. is liable for $223,292 in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to a Biloxi couple’s home, but said a jury must decide whether to award millions of dollars more in punitive damages.

The jury was expected to start weighing punitive damages on Thursday afternoon.

Some of Senter’s earlier rulings in other Katrina cases have favored the insurance industry, but his decision Thursday could give a boost to other lawsuits that homeowners filed against insurers after the storm.

Read more at YahooNews

Gee, ya think Dubya will read this and change his mind?

WASHINGTON - Americans overwhelmingly oppose sending more U.S. forces to Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll that serves as a strong repudiation of President Bush’s plan to send another 21,500 troops.

The opposition to boosting troop levels in Iraq reflects growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place and that a stable, democratic government can be established there. Just 35 percent think it was right for the United States to go to war, a new low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago, when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move.

Sixty percent, meanwhile, think it is unlikely that a stable, democratic Iraqi government will be established.

Fully 70 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops, and a like number don’t think such an increase would help stabilize the situation there. The telephone survey of 1,002 adults was conducted Monday through Wednesday night, when the president made his speech calling for an increase in troops. News had already surfaced before the polling period that Bush wanted to boost U.S. forces in Iraq.

Democrats are far more inclined to oppose an increase of troops, with 87 percent against the idea, compared to 42 percent of Republicans. Overall, 52 percent of Republicans support an increase in troops, although some key GOP constituencies are opposed. For example, 60 percent of white evangelical Christians oppose the idea and 56 percent of self-described conservatives are opposed.

The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I would not call someone who has knowingly twisted the facts as a career a defender of the First Amendment. I would not call Roger Ailes a defender of one of the sacred tenants of our nation. He, who is the brains behind FOX News, has handed more people half truths and out and out lies than just about anyone else in the media. We have First Amendment restrictions in this country such as not yelling fire in a crowded room and not inciting others to riot. We have voting rights laws that ensure people are not harassed with voting advertisements within a certain distance of a polling place. Is knowingly leading someone astray in political issues a right that is granted by the First Amendment? Is the American electorate supposed to have their BS detectors on and be able to tell that I am about to knowingly lead them astray? What if I told them the wrong day or place to vote? What if on Election Day I put the Democratic office on speed dial and kept their line busy all day so they could not conduct business at all as was done by radio host Laura Ingram? What if I urged you with lies to vote for a President who has killed over 700,000 people and 3,000 Americans with more deaths to come? What if I called a Senator an “enemy of the state” which happened the other day on FOX News or said a day off in Congress was due to a Democrat but was actually due to a request from a Republican? What if I ask you a strawman argument because of course, “some say” that FOX News regularly includes straman arguments and receives its marching orders directly from the Republican Party. To give Roger Ailes this award is the equivalent of giving the creator of the Hummer an award for environmental excellence. What planet are these people on that give Roger Ailes a First Amendment leadership award?

Fox News Channel’s Roger Ailes will receive the 2006 First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation at its annual awards dinner March 8 in Washington.

Ailes joins a list of past honorees that include Ted Turner, founder of FNC rival CNN; Don Hewitt of CBS; and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post.

“The news organization you have built offers, just as the framers intended, a variety of viewpoints, independent voices, and probing investigations that hold important institutions accountable,” said RTNDF in the letter telling Ailes of his selection.

RTNDF also cited FNC’s tenth anniversary last fall.

Also honored will be Bob Woodruff of ABC and Kimberly Dozier of CBS, both of whom were wounded while covering the war in Iraq. They will receive the Len Zeidenberg First Amendment Award, named after the former B&C chief Washington correspondent. The tribute to Woodruff and Dozier will include a salute to “all journalists who have been injured or who died while covering the war in Iraq.”

Read more here

H/T JoeWo for this post

So he comes up with 20,000 more troops. But can he come up with the thousands of prosthetic arms and legs that they’ll need when they come home? We can come up with billions for an Iraqi work program, to paint buildings and clean streets, but we’re going to send our own troops in unprepared. Another great plan George…..bravo.

WASHINGTON // The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said.

Vehicles such as the Cougar and the M1117 Armored Security Vehicle have proven ability to save lives, but production started late and relatively small numbers are in use in Iraq, mostly because of money shortages, industry officials said.

More than 1,000 American troops have been killed by roadside bombs since the war began in March 2003. At present there are fewer than 1,000 of the new armored trucks in Iraq. At $500,000 to $700,000 each, they cost more than twice as much as a standard Humvee, but already they are proving their worth.

“They are expensive, but they are going to save lives,” said Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, during a recent trip to Iraq, where he reviewed the service’s effort to get more of the vehicles.

Read more at the BaltimoreSun