A great, short video of where we live.

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By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

05/23/07 “ABC News” — – - May 22, 2007. The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

“I can’t confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime,” said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.

A National Security Council spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, said, “The White House does not comment on intelligence matters.” A CIA spokesperson said, “As a matter of course, we do not comment on allegations of covert activity.”

The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.

Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.

“There are some channels where the United States government may want to do things without its hand showing, and legally, therefore, the administration would, if it’s doing that, need an intelligence finding and would need to tell the Congress,” said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official.

Current and former intelligence officials say the approval of the covert action means the Bush administration, for the time being, has decided not to pursue a military option against Iran.

“Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike,” said former CIA official Riedel, “but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides.”

The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.

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Is there anyone who falls for this shit anymore??? You don’t think if they foiled an attack on US soil two years ago we wouldn’t have heard about it then? Riggghhhttt. You really DO have to wonder if all this chatter of terrorism on US soil is leading to something……..

NEW LONDON, Conn. - President Bush, stressing that Americans face an ongoing threat from terrorists, shared intelligence on Wednesday asserting that Osama bin Laden was working in 2005 to set up a unit inside Iraq to hit U.S. targets.

Much of the information Bush cited in a commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy described terrorism plots already revealed, but he fleshed out details and highlighted U.S. successes in foiling planned attacks.

Bush said that intelligence showed that in January 2005, bin Laden tasked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his senior operative in Iraq, to set up the cell to use Iraq as a staging ground for attacks in the United States. Al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike.

More at MSNBC

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Following is the transcript of Keith Olbermann’s special comment this evening. You can watch the video here.

A Special Comment about the Democrats- deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq-and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history-whether executive or legislative, state or national-have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution-half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president-if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history-who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions-Stop The War-have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft’soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness-your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs-you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don-t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally-first, last and always-that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a A-second surge,- but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe-even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

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Hilla, May 23, 2007 (VOI) - Babel police said two more bodies believed to be of the kidnapped U.S. soldiers were found on Wednesday near a bank of the River Euphrates in al-Masayeb area.
“Babel police patrols today found two bodies believed to be from the two kidnapped U.S. soldiers near the Euphrates bank in al-Masyeb area,” the source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He added, “the bodies bore marks of torture with their heads smashed. They wore the U.S. military’style uniform.”
The source said “the two bodies were handed over to the U.S. forces at the location where they were found.”
U.S. forces immediately cordoned off the area, he also said.
No word has been heard so far from the U.S. army on the incident.
Earlier on Wednesday, Babel police found a body believed to of a kidnapped U.S. soldier.
Last week, a U.S. vehicle patrol was attacked just south of Baghdad where six soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed and the three service members were kidnapped.

Source

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From BlackAmericaWeb.com

In recent weeks, prices at the pump have hit an all-time high. The average price for a gallon of gas in the United States is currently $3.036, just two cents short of the record high reached in September 2005 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast.

Paradoxically, this year, rising gas prices are not being driven by increases in the cost of oil. In fact, a barrel of oil is actually $7 cheaper than it was this time last year. How is it possible for gas prices to reach record highs while the price of oil remains relatively stable?

We examined this and related questions during a House Judiciary Committee Antitrust Task Force hearing titled, “Prices at the Pump: Market Failure and the Oil Industry.” We found that America’s pain at the pump has three possible causes:

Cartels. OPEC accounts for two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves and over 40 percent of the world’s oil production. Most significantly, OPEC’s oil exports represent about 70 percent of the oil traded internationally. This affords them considerable control over the global market. Its net oil export revenues should reach nearly $395 billion this year, and its influence on the oil market is dominant, especially when it decides to reduce or increase its levels of production. For years, the OPEC Cartel has purposefully driven up the cost of imported crude oil to satisfy the greed of its members. We have long decried OPEC, but, sadly, no one in government has yet tried to take any action.

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But Stupak was forced to soften the bill so that he could get it passed by requiring a president to first declare an energy emergency before the anti-gouging law could be enforced. Oil’state Democrats had wanted such limits.

So it’s ok for Big Oil and gas stations to price gouge us until there’s an energy emergency. And what would constitute an energy emergency? I’d say $3.50 a gallon is a damn emergency.

WASHINGTON - The House, eager to do something about record high gasoline prices in advance of the Memorial Day weekend, voted narrowly Wednesday to approve stiff penalties for those found guilty of gasoline price gouging.

The bill directs the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to go after oil companies, traders or retail operators if they take “unfair advantage” or charge “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels.

The White House called the measure a form of price controls that could result in fuel shortages. It said President Bush would be urged to veto the legislation should it pass Congress.

The bill needed the approval of two-thirds of the members of the House because the leadership considered it under an expedited legislative process. Thus, the 284-141 vote was only one over the threshold for passage. A similar measure is being considered by the Senate.

The bill would for the first time create a federal law making energy price gouging illegal. It would cover not only gasoline, but also other fuels such as natural gas and heating oil.

Read more here

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If you ask me, Coca Cola could use Pepsi secrets……because Pepsi is a much better drink.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Two former Coca-Cola employees were sentenced Wednesday to serve federal prison terms for conspiring to steal and sell trade secrets to rival Pepsi.

Joya Williams, 42, of Norcross received an eight-year prison term, while Ibrahim Dimson, 31, got a five-year term, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Georgia. Both were ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution.

Williams was convicted in February on charges that stem from a plot to offer samples of a new Coca-Cola product to Pepsi for $1.5 million.

Dimson, who is from New York, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in October.

Edmund Duhaney, 43, of the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, will be sentenced at a later date, said the news release from the U.S. attorney’s office.

The trio was arrested last July after a federal sting operation was launched when Pepsi tipped off Coke that it was being offered inside information.

All three are charged with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling trade secrets from the Coca-Cola Co.

“As the market becomes more global, the need to protect intellectual property becomes even more vital to protecting American companies and our economic growth,” U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias said of the case.

“This case is an example of good corporate citizenship leading to a successful prosecution, and that unlawfully gaining a competitive advantage by stealing another’s trade secrets can lead straight to federal prison.”

More at CNN

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Right out of the box, Monica Goodling said Gonzales is a liar. The deputy is a liar. She’s frying them. Listen and/or watch here

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A nice story…….

When he first met James Wright, the president of Dartmouth College, two years ago, Samuel Crist was in a hospital bed at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, recuperating from gunshot wounds from a firefight in Falluja, Iraq.

“I was pretty heavily medicated, so my memory is a little bit foggy, but he was visiting people and asking about their experiences in the war and pushing people to get an education,” said Crist, 22, who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana. “He said he’d been a marine, too, and he’d gone to college after he got out as a lance corporal, the same rank I separated at.”

That hospital visit changed things for both Crist and Wright: On Wright’s advice, Crist enrolled in college courses in Texas, and next autumn he will transfer to Dartmouth.

Wright, 67, meanwhile, has made eight more visits to wounded veterans at Bethesda and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and, with the American Council on Education, started a program to provide individualized college counseling to seriously injured veterans.

Because of advances in medical care, and the speed with which those wounded on the battlefield are treated, the survival rate for service members with serious injuries is far higher in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts than in previous wars. These circumstances have created a pool of young men and women who must remake their lives with brain injuries, amputations and other significant limitations.

Injured or not, veterans get extensive educational benefits. But while service members on active duty have access to many educational counseling programs, such access is harder for those who have left active duty and face long recuperation, especially if they are from families where college is not a given.

More at the International Herald Tribune

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Somehow, I have the vision in my head of Dick Cheney sitting in a darkened room, watching this on closed-circuit television, getting highly aroused.

By BARBARA SURK, Associated Press Writer
via YAHOO! NEWS

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

Show of force

The carrier strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes landing ships carrying members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The Navy said nine U.S. warships passed through the narrow Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Merchant ships passing through the busy strait carry two-fifths of the world’s oil exports.

Aircraft aboard the three carriers and the Bonhomme Richard were to conduct air training while the ships ran submarine, mine and other exercises.

The maneuvers came just two months after a previous exercise in March when two U.S. carrier groups carried out two days of air and sea maneuvers off the Iranian coast.

Before the arrival of the Bonhomme Richard strike group, the Navy maintained around 20,000 U.S personnel at sea in the Gulf and neighboring waters.

U.S. warships have frequently collided with merchant ships in the busy shipping lanes of the Gulf.

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And as far as I’m concerned, the blood is on the Democrats hands as well at this point. We voted in November. We told them we want out. They have ignored the will of the American people, just as the Republicans have. Shame shame shame.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in five separate attacks across Iraq over the past 48 hours, most of them by roadside bombs, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

In the worst single attack, three soldiers were killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by “multiple improvised explosive devices” 5 km (3 miles) south of Baghdad on Monday, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The military had said in an earlier statement that the attack, in which an interpreter was also wounded, had happened on Tuesday.

Three other attacks took place in different locations around Baghdad on Tuesday.

Two soldiers were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad province. Another three were wounded in the same attack.

One more soldier was killed and another wounded when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad.

Another soldier was killed when his patrol was hit by small arms fire in the west of the capital, while two Marines were also killed in western Anbar province on Tuesday.

Eighty soldiers have now been killed since the beginning of the month, keeping May on track to be among the bloodiest months for the U.S. military since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

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From the Nation,
John Nichols

The question is not whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid flinched in their negotiations with the Bush administration over the continuation of the Iraq occupation.

They did. Despite some happy talk about benchmarks that have been attached to the Iraq supplemental spending bill that is expected to be considered by Congress this week, the willingness of Pelosi and Reid to advance a measure that does not include a withdrawal timeline allows Bush to conduct the war as he chooses for much if not all of the remainder of his presidency. This failure to abide by the will of the people who elected Democrats to end the war will haunt Pelosi, Reid and their party — not to mention the United States and the battered shell that is Iraq.

This “compromise” legislation is such an embarrassing example of what happens when raw politics overwhelms principle — and political common sense — that House Democrats have divided the $12O billion measure into two sections. That will allow Republicans and sold-out Democrats to vote for the president’s Iraq funding, while anti-war Democrats and their handful of Republican allies can vote “no.” Then both Democratic camps can vote separately for the second section — including a federal minimum-wage increase and more than $8 billion in funding for domestic programs — while Republicans oppose this section.

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HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - The half-naked body of one of three missing U.S. soldiers was found on Wednesday in the Euphrates River in the town of Mussayab south of Baghdad, police said.

The U.S. military said it was investigating reports that a body had been found in a canal in the area.

Hilla police spokesman Captain Muthanna al-Maamouri said there were bullet wounds to the torso and head of the body, which was wearing U.S. Army-issue pants and boots and had a tattoo on the left arm.

Maamouri said the body had been turned over to U.S. forces.

More at Reuters

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