Ever notice how these guys all look like slimeballs?

In March 2003, weeks after the invasion of Iraq, war architect Richard Perle resigned from his position on the Defense Policy Board in an attempt to “defuse a controversy over charges he stood to profit from the war in Iraq.”

But that hasn’t stopped Perle from continuing to seek profit from the war. Citing documents and people close to the negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reports today that Perle “has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan. One of the oil tracts, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, “is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International”:

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

More at Think Progress

If anyone in the Bush administration steps in front of a microphone and open their mouths, you just KNOW the bullshit is about to pour forth! On Bush’s approval of the Army’s request to execute a soldier [Pvt. Ronald Gray] convicted of rape and murder:

“While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander-in-chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. (emphasis mine)

You would know how funny and how outrageous a comment that was if you really knew just how “Shallow And Callous” Bush has been in his past. I think such things gives the man a hard-on.

Just and warranted

Impeachment is just and warranted too. But, thanks to a pack of spineless democrats, (who, if you asked me, should be horse-whipped all the way back to their home states), have taken impeachment off the table.

Kinda funny really… One one side of the aisle, we have a bunch of whiny-assed crybabies, pissing and moaning to have everything their way. On the other side of the aisle are a bunch of babies too weak to even lift their heads. What a fucked country this is.

Here’s a roundup of “Mission Accomplished“……. 5 years later. H/T Dear Kitty for the photo.

JUAN COLE: 5 Years after Mission Accomplished; April US Troop Toll 50 Killed;
1,073 Iraqis Killed this Month. Memorable phrases from Bush’s speech 5 years ago.

DAILY KOS: Another mission NOT accomplished

HUFFINGTON POST: Mission Accomplished banner reminder of U.S. misjudgements and mistakes in Iraq war.

SOUTHERN BEALE: If this is winning, I’d hate to see what losing looks like!

SHADOWED FOREST OF WORLD POLITICS: Neocon Mission in Iraq Accomplished?? YOU BET!

Blue Girl, Red State: Mission NOT accomplished: The top reconstruction project in Iraq is a $277 million failure

BOOMAN TRIBUNE: Reminds of us the MSM’s love for Bush on Mission Accomplished day five years ago. (get puke bucket)

Just a side note. While looking around at some of my favorite blogs to compile a roundup, I have found that Fade at The House of the Rising Sons is calling it a day, and so is Ken Anderson at Anything They Say.
They will be missed!

I’d say unfuckingbelievable, but that’s just not the case anymore.

A U.S. House committee chairman has begun an investigation into the electrocutions of at least 12 service members in Iraq, including that of a Pittsburgh soldier killed in January by a jolt of electricity while showering.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday he has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to hand over documents relating to the management of electrical systems at facilities in Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, died Jan. 2 of cardiac arrest after being electrocuted while showering at his barracks in Baghdad.

Also Wednesday, Maseth’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Allegheny County Court against KBR Inc., the Houston-based contractor responsible for maintaining Maseth’s barracks.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and costs, alleges that KBR allowed U.S. troops to continue using electrical systems “which KBR knew to be dangerous and knew had caused prior instances of electrocution.”

More at the Sun Sentinel

Asshole of the day award goes to Major Stefan Wolfe…….fucking heartless prick!

From Military.com:

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside listened last week as an Army prosecutor outlined the criminal case against her. The charges: attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.

Her hands trembled as Maj. Stefan Wolfe, the prosecutor, argued that Whiteside, now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, should be court-martialed. After seven years of exemplary service, the 25- year-old Army reservist faces the possibility of life in prison if she is tried and convicted.

Military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined Whiteside after she recovered from a self-inflicted gun wound in the stomach diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone. But Whiteside’s superiors considered her mental illness “an excuse” for criminal conduct, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the hearing, Wolfe, who already had warned Whiteside’s lawyer of the risk of using a “psychobabble” defense, pressed a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed to justify his diagnosis.

(more…)

From MediaMatters:

Work that crowd, Pat! Your finger-pointing helps people like me forget how you and your kind have spent a life-time selling the rest of us Americans down the river.

Treasonous fucker……… how do these people live with themselves? I hope your book tanks.

The White House cover-up in the Valerie Plame case — the leaking of the identity of an undercover CIA operative — went all the way up to President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, former press secretary Scott McClellan wrote in an upcoming memoir.

A brief excerpt from the memoir, What Happened, was posted online at the publisher’s site on Tuesday. In the excerpt, McClellan claims that he was told to insist that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were “not involved” in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

“There was one problem. It was not true,” McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. “I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff and the president himself.”

More here

Will this wake up congress and the American people? Probably not. Maybe the meltdown of the dollar and the housing crash will do it. I wish something would do it……

Two CIA officers have revealed Dick Cheney tried to silence dissidents within US intelligence who contradicted him over Iran’s nuclear case.

“The publication of a position paper on Iran, bringing together the views of the various American intelligence agencies, was adjourned for more than a year,” ISNA reported from Le Monde.

According to a former CIA official who was involved in the preparation of the fact sheet, known as the National Intelligence Estimate, brings together the analysis of the sixteen American intelligence agencies, the report has been ready for a year and gives an account of assessments different from that espoused by the White House and Dick Cheney.

“They [the White House] have refused to publish the reports of these divergent appraisals,” said the ex-officer.

More at PressTV

My boyfriend, who was in the Air Force for 7 years, went crazy yesterday when he heard about the transporting of nuclear tipped weapons “MISTAKE.” I’m going to try and write this the best I can and hope it makes sense to you! Here’s what he said:

We cannot fly assembled nukes around this country because of various Cold War Treaties we signed. So WHY would they be flying with ARMED nukes? Normal routine B52 bomber runs within the United States do not include nuclear tipped weapons. Only if they are part of SAC (Strategic Air Command), flying 24/7 around the U.S borders so they could respond within a moments notice to a possible attack. They cannot fly nuclear tipped weapons within the country. For example, they would be flown unassembled to a base like Barksdale, assembled there, and then they’d take off into the Gulf of Mexico and out of the country. This was all ordained back in the 40’s when the Air Force was split off from the Army, the Navy was split off from the Marines and all given seperate commanders, chain of command and authority to protect the country from any possible repeat of a Pearl Harbor.

Here’s why the boyfriend went crazy. From his experience in the Air Force, and involvement in security issues concerning nuclear weapons when in Europe with the USAF and then later part of NATO exercises involving other countries with our planes and weapons, there was a simple rule applied to all nuclear weapons. Each person who had ANY dealings with nuclear weapons, whether a pilot, a navigator, a weapons specialist, a secuirty guard or a bomb dump expert, i.e., person who would assemble weapons to load on planes for ready status. followed the “Fail Safe Sytem.” This system required two people and mulitples thereof, to be trained in the “Fail Safe System” which insured that both people have equal security clearance or one could be higher. Both had to be of equal rank or one higher. If these people were found not to have these credentials, the orders were to stop at all costs, even using lethal persuasion to avoid a renegede lunatic from starting WWIII.

Now let’s look at the “mistake” that was made yesterday. If what the boyfriend said is true, how was this A MISTAKE? Someone in high command at Minot Air Force Base ordered, based on his orders from higher ups, to move these nuclear tipped cruise missles from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base. Hence, the people of Minot moved these weapons to the B52 for shipment. Please remember the entire crew of the B52 would have had to been mislead, in order to transport these weapons because of the Fail Safe System noted above. If the crew actually knew what they were carrying they would have refused the orders because of their fail safe training. They had to be lied to. Upon arrival at Barksdale, which has B52’s taking off and landing on a regular basis would be no big deal. However, after the crew secured the aircraft at their designated pad, they notified ground control that they had a load to be unloaded. As far as the crew was concerned, they had a very successful, non-event mission. The ground crew, who also did not know that these were nuclear tipped missles in a ready status, alerted everyone in the world when they realized what they had to unload…… and they were not qualified to unload. This is what they call a “MISTAKE?” It just can’t happen.

He thinks they were trying to move them illegally for deployment to the middle east or to a “friendly” airbase that we use. A buildup is taking place, without anyone’s knowledge, to take out Iran.

Then when we get home tonight and turn on the news, we find out that Israel is flying bombers over Syria because of the so-called Iranian weapons that were used to defeat Israel last year in Lebanon. Israel is dropping ordinances in northern Syria trying to provoke a retaliation. Was this why the “MISTAKE” happened yesterday???

He’s been going on about this for 24 hours. The other thing is why isn’t congress totally batshit crazy that this happened???????? Will they do anything about it? Noooooooo………

Now Larry Johnson’s thoughts:

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can-t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can-t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don-t know, but it is a question worth asking.

Millions of dollars and so much time wasted investigating consensual sex between two adults, and this bastard walks freely with not so much as a shudder of disgust from fellow republicans. Could the christian-right be any more transparent? A “God-agenda”, my ass!

Foley may be off hook in Florida

WASHINGTON - Former Congressman Mark Foley is unlikely to face criminal charges for sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys, sources close to the year-long investigation have told Scripps Howard News Service.

That could change if new evidence surfaces in the next week that proves Foley, 52, sent online messages to male teenagers with the intent to “seduce, solicit, lure, entice, or attempt to seduce a child,” a third degree felony under Florida law.

But as of now, the end of Foley’s political career may be the most severe consequence the former congressman faces for the revelations that stunned his longtime supporters and prompted his immediate resignation, just weeks before the 2006 election. The Fort Pierce Republican represented parts of St. Lucie, Martin, Okeechobee and Palm Beach counties.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said this week the investigation should be completed within the next several days.

Source: Scripps Newspaper Group