God, please don’t talk to John McCain…

John McCain is out of touch with the public and according to the newspapers. He is an old coot who can’t count either. Just what we need, another president who has no math acumen!
Todays headlines AP:
WASHINGTON - Days after he cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain acknowledged that he wasn’t sure how many houses he and his wealthy wife actually own. 
   Say what? Say this to yourself 3 times: he does not know how many houses he owns, he does not know how many houses he owns, he does not know how many houses he owns… did that sink in? Here’s an AP headline this morning:
    “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain responded to a question posed by Politico, according to a story Thursday on the publication’s Web site. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
   Do you know how many homes or condos you own? This is a guy who has no idea how the average person lives, he lives in la la land and his wife can pay to keep him there. He has no idea how much credit card expenses and interest his kids accrue, those kids have enough on their average monthly bill to put down payments on a couple more condos! (But that would just add to John’s confusion)
According to AP and Politico July 2, 2008:
  … Their credit card bills peaked between January 2007 and May 2008, during which time Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another, while one of their two dependent children had an AmEx card with a monthly balance as large as $50,000.
     Old John has no business running for the presidency, unless he picks a VP like Bush has Cheney. Someone needs to lead him around and show him the reality and expenses the average joe deals with on a daily basis! He is too old and too rich! He is forgetful and out of touch, (that’s why we often see old Lieberman taking McCain’s hand and whispering in his ear, it’s not sweet nothings, Joe is telling John the right answer to the reporters questions).
   McCain’s senior moment in the Whitehouse might involve sleep walking and pushing the “button” and have a world war of epidemic proportions and not even remember doing it!  We can only hope if he does get in, that Cindy will put him to sleep each night in his adult diaper, with his arm and leg restraints and a C-pap machine that delivers a good does of Tylenol PM so he can’t put us in harms way while delusuioning that he is living out his old Viet Nam detention…Lord help us, do us a favor, don’t talk to this one!!!

The first rule of ‘Olympic Table Tennis Fight Club’ is to only fight itself…

photocredit: BrickhouseBra via www.flicker.com

 I was watching the Olympic table tennis championships today and laughed my ass off when they said that we, The USA had never won at table tennis, it was always the Chinese.
So if you notice, the whole USA table tennis team is Chinese! The announcer said they actually had to even import players from China to do practices.
 So the strategy is, if we, the typical USA athlete can’t compete with China for table tennis, then we must build and import a competitive team…from China to beat them at their own game…SAY WHAT….

Look Ma, no wildlife - The GOP must be so proud of the King George legacy -

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to hate Dubya Bush
 According to the Associate Press:
   Bush to relax protected species rules By DINA CAPPIELLO
38 minutes ago
 WASHINGTON - Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don’t require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years …The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.
  Here’s one more to solidify the way Bush does business with wildlife:
    By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Aug 7, 6:17 PM ET  Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
WASHINGTON - Two years ago with fanfare, President Bush declared a remote chain of Hawaiian islands the biggest, most environmentally protected area of ocean in the world. It hasn’t worked out that way. Cleanup efforts have slowed, garbage is still piling up and Bush has cut his budget request by 80 percent.
…And the Bush administration slashed the debris cleanup budget from the $2.1 million spent in 2005, requesting only $400,000 a year through 2008.

     Why should it even come as a surprise that Bush is more interested in rewarding his cronies with big contracts and tax breaks than about caring for life? Is there a “Christian” bone in his body? The guy has no respect of life, (just by faking documents and the Downing Street Memo so he could “play war” can show you that.) And certainly, if he does not care about people, other than his own ilk, why would he care about animals and the environment? LOOK AT HIS RECORD PEOPLE!
  King George, isn’t he a pisser!!!

John Edwards - A DICKHEAD! (With really good hair)

Yep, John Edwards is officially a dickhead! After denial denial denial, guess who else had an affair and might have a love child? yep, that’s his photo at the bottom all right. As of now he is denying the baby. 
  No, he is no criminal, but that just pisses me off! Another lying scumbag politician! How could he do that to his family, especially Elizabeth! One GOP pundit guy said, “remember when John Edwards said there were two Americas? Well, there were two John Edwards!’”
  Even when he says in the press that he didn’t love that skuz bucket, Rielle, that sounds so damn dumb, what kind of rationalization is that? How can he even think anything can make it rational?
  Another politician with lust in his heart and dirt on his dick!
 Is there anyone honest who is running? Tonight at the grocery I saw in the Globe while standing there, a story suggesting Obama has a love child, please, I am so sick of such allegations, he better tell us now!  Even that “old white haired guy” McCain, was fooling around on his first wife with his present wife Cindy. These guys are dogs, put a women in there, these men are thinking with their other brain…  

If Pakistan can impeach Musharraf for eroding the trust of the nation, how come we can’t do the same for Bush and Cheney

Wait a minute, how come Pakistan can find the honesty to bring impeachment charges against Musharraf for “eroding the trust of the nation,” and we have fifty scandalous things to pin on Bush, but can’t bring hold him down to one single impeachable offense! How about Iraq, Katrina, largest deficit ever, spying, , how about our soldiers lack of care, Gitmo, Torture, buying an election via Diebold in Ohio…
 How about this for starters:
   Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel
National Journal
By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources. Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney’s office — and Libby in particular — pushed to be included in Powell’s speech, the sources said.
    It goes to show that some countries have balls! We have a bunch of losers except for Dennis Kucinich who are only worried about their upcoming elections!
   It’s not to late! IMPEACH THE ASSCLOWNS BUSH AND CHENEY - WE HAVE PLENTY OF REASONS!!!
  From Associated press, August 6.
By MUNIR AHMAD, 
   SLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s ruling coalition said Thursday it would seek the impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf, alleging the U.S.-backed former general had “eroded the trust of the nation” and increasing pressure on him to resign…
“His policies have weakened the federation and eroded the trust of the nation in national institutions,” Zardari added. “The coalition further decided that it will immediately initiate impeachment proceedings. The coalition leadership will present a charge sheet against Gen. Musharraf,” Zardari told a news conference, alongside leaders of the other coalition parties.
   Why not us? We can say the same!
   Write your senator and tell them Bush and Cheney need impeaching ASAP use the same reason, They have eroded the trust of our nation!!!

Lies beyond Suskind’s assertions - How about Cheney’s push for Iran

While The White House denies Ron Suskind’s “forged letter” - linking Mohammed Atta to Saddam Hussein so Bush could go to war with Iraq, here’s a time line and some other facts to make you think about other lies that have been proposed by White House. Little lies can have big consequences! This is to show how these lies are used, (as I have quoted) via people like Bill O’reilly Fox News and beyond - read and then you decide if someone like Robot neo-con, Dick Cheney ‘might’ have put pressure to take the country to not just one, but other wars if he had the time…Cheney has been busy, who else could have planted the seed for the link of Mohammed Atta? It has been reported years ago how much time HE was spending leaning on the CIA, pressuring them…NOT ONLY THAT.. he wants Iran too!
   Here’s the statement by Suskind that would constitute an impeachable offence:
    The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind wrote. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al-Qaida, something the vice-president’s office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”  
 From David Knowles AOL news 8/5/08:
   “While accusations of this magnitude should always be met with skepticism, one only needs to look back to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to realize that such tactics of deception have been employed before to start a war. In fact, as Seymour Hersh recently uncovered, the Bush Administration was planning similar smoke-and-mirrors options for Iran.” 
  And more recently, how about these Iranian ties:
  From reporter Gareth Porter - The Iran Attack that Wasn’t 8/2/2007 The American Prospect:
      The revival of the charge of Iranian involvement in the Karbala attack, despite the earlier Petraeus denial, has the all the hallmarks of a White House decision. The alleged Iranian export of arms to Iraqi Shiites, on which the U.S. command briefed the media in Baghdad in February, reflected the administration’s decisions in the preceding months to hold Iran responsible for the killing of U.S. troops in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives. After the replacement of the top commander in Iraq with a general who had pledged to carry out the surge strategy chosen by the White House, and the June arrival of a new U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad — Gen. Bergner — who had been special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq, the command’s briefings were tied more closely to the White House propaganda machine than ever before.
 OR —David Manning’s famous memos - a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war anyway: a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, :
“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
“ OR –How about this ruse planned by Cheney
   EXCLUSIVE: By ThinkProgressive.Org To Provoke War,
 Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.<

   
  The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’” by Con Coughlin. It ran the day Hussein was captured and was used by the U.S. media. Coughlin was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
   “Fox’s Bill O’Reilly  on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ talking about details of the story and exhorting, ‘Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.’” (From Suskind’s book, Way of The World)
  From CNS  James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq
Timeline:December 2, 2001
Secretary of State Colin Powell on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: “As you know, some former government officials and perhaps some within the government are saying there are some strong signs that the Iraqis were connected to the September 11 terrorist attack, specifically the meetings in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader, and Iraqi intelligence, an Iraqi intelligence agent.  As far as you’re concerned, was there a connection there?”
POWELL: “Certainly, these meetings took place.”
<strong>December 9, 2001

Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC News’ Meet the Press  
“It’s been pretty well confirmed that [Mohamed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
December 17, 2001The U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reports 
“Czech police said yesterday they had no evidence that the ringleader of the suicide attacks, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague earlier this year.
“…Jiri Kolar, the police chief, said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time this year…”
December 28, 2001
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, writes an Op-Ed entitled “The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein” for the New York Times
“Evidence of a meeting in Prague between a senior Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, the Sept. 11 ringleader, is convincing.”
April 28, 2002
Journalist Michael Isikoff reports in “The Phantom Link to Iraq” in Newsweek that  September 8, 2002
Vice President Dick Cheney speaks with Tim Russert on NBC News’ Meet the Press 
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center…
Mr. RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point.
 October 21, 2002
The New York Times reports 
“The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohamed Atta, the leader in the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials…
“Czech officials did not say precisely when Mr. Havel told the White House to disregard the reports of the meeting, but extensive interviews with leading Czech figures make clear that he did so quietly some time earlier this year in an effort to avoid publicly embarrassing other prominent officials in his government…
“For months, American intelligence and law enforcement officials have cast doubt on the reports of the Prague meeting, which proved to be based on the statements of a single informant, and last week the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, told Congress that his agency could find no evidence to confirm that the meeting took place.”
February 5, 2003   [reported at a later date]
Lawrence Wilkerson, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, chronicled the days he spent at CIA headquarters helping to prepare Powell’s U.N. presentation of February 5, 2003 (from Wilkerson’s testimony on June 26, 2006, before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee’s “Oversight Hearing on Pre-War Intelligence Relating to Iraq”)
“In the rehearsal and discussion sessions at Langley [CIA headquarters], the give and take was mostly the Secretary of State trying to eliminate unsubstantiated and/or unhelpful material and others from the White House trying to keep that material in, or add more. One such incident occurred several times and the final time it occurred provided an example of the Secretary’s growing frustration. Repeatedly, the OVP [Office of the Vice President] or NCS [U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Communications System] staff personnel tried to insert into the presentation the alleged meeting in Prague between al-Qaeda operative and 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence personnel. Repeatedly, Secretary Powell eliminated it based on the DCI’s [Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s] refusal to corroborate it. Finally, at one of the last Langley rehearsals, Secretary Powell was stopped in mid-presentation by deputy national security advisor Steve Hadley and asked what had happened to the paragraph describing the meeting in Prague. Secretary Powell fixed Hadley with a firm stare and said with some pique, ‘We took it out, Steve — and it’s staying out.’”
March 19, 2003
The U.S. launches military strikes, commencing the Iraq War.
August 3, 2003 The Boston Globe reports 
“Last week, congressional investigators declared in their major report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that after tracing Atta’s movements for two years, including trips made under all known aliases, there was no evidence of the Prague meeting. A former intelligence official in the Bush administration told the Globe the CIA obtained evidence soon after the Czech report that the Iraqi agent [al-Ani] was elsewhere at the time of the purported meeting.
“‘The CIA had proof that Iraqi guy was not in Prague at the time,’ said the official, who asked not to be named. ‘The mystery here is why did the CIA allow that story to live when it could disprove it with hard information.’”
September 14, 2003
Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC News’ Meet the Press 
“With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.”
December 19, 2003
Newsweek reports that the FBI has found no evidence to support the alleged meeting 
“… [The FBI] has long since discounted claims by Czech intelligence—and widely promoted by some Iraq hawks in the Bush administration—that Atta had flown to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent around April 8, 2001.
“FBI records show Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi checking out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach, Va., and writing a check for cash for $8,000 for a SunTrust account in that city on April 4, 2001. For the rest of that week, Atta’s cell phone was used to make repeated calls to Florida. On April 11, Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Fla. While acknowledging that a few days are unaccounted for, the FBI has found no evidence that Atta departed the country overseas during this period, an official said.”
“… Newsweek has learned that a few months ago, the Czechs quietly acknowledged that they may have been mistaken about the whole thing [Atta allegedly meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague]. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials now believe that Atta wasn’t even in Prague at the time the Czechs claimed. ‘We looked at this real hard because, obviously, if it were true, it would be huge,’ one senior U.S. law enforcement official told Newsweek. ‘But nothing has matched up.’
Here’s some more facts:
    November, 2003 New York Times story by James Risen. Risen’s article is about last-minute attempts by Iraq to avert war, using a Lebanese-American intermediary, Imad Hage aqauintance of Richard Perle:
<em>”A week [after February, 2003 meetings in Beirut with the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s chief of foreign operations], Mr. Hage said, he agreed to hold further meetings in Baghdad. When he arrived, he was driven to a large, well-guarded compound, where he was met by a gray-haired man in a military uniform. It was Tahir Jalil Habbush, the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, who is No. 16 on the United States list of most wanted Iraqi leaders. Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush asked him if it was true that he knew Mr. Perle. “Have you met him?”
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush began to vent his frustration over what the Americans really wanted. He said that to demonstrate the Iraqis’ willingness to help fight terrorism, Mr. Habbush offered to hand over Abdul Rahman Yasin, who has been indicted in United States in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mr. Yasin fled to Iraq after the bombing, and the United States put up a $25 million reward for his capture.
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush offered to turn him over to Mr. Hage, but Mr. Hage said he would pass on the message that Mr. Yasin was available.
Mr. Hage said Mr. Habbush also insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and added, “Let your friends send in people and we will open everything to them.”
Mr. Hage said he asked Mr. Habbush, “Why don’t you tell this to the Bush administration?” He said Mr. Habbush replied cryptically, “We have talks with people.”
Mr. Hage said he later learned that one contact was in Rome between the C.I.A. and representatives of the Iraqi intelligence service. American officials confirm that the meeting took place, but say that the Iraqi representative was not a current intelligence official and that the meeting was not productive.
In addition, there was an attempt to set up a meeting in Morocco between Mr. Habbush and United States officials, but it never took place, according to American officials.
  Nouri Sabri,Iraq’s foreign minister secretly told the US in 2002 that Iraq had no
active WMD programs.
• Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center, told an acquaintance just before the war that he expected we would find “Not much, if anything.”
AS of October 2006, Cheney still insisted on al qaeda- Iraq link:
Satellite Interview of the Vice President by WSBT-TV, South Bend, Indiana
2nd Congressional District -
Representative Chris Chocola  1:36 P.M. EDT 
Q.  Republican Chris Chocola, asked them about the upcoming November election, which issue was most important to them. The issue most named was the war in Iraq. Do you agree with those voters? Is the war in Iraq the most important issue in this upcoming election?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s certainly among the top two or three as I travel the country. I’ve done about 114 campaigns now, and I talk about the global war on terror, in particular, and Iraq, as well as the economy, taxes, a number of other issues.
Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. The sectarian violence that we see now, in part, has been stimulated by the fact of al Qaeda attacks intended to try to create conflict between Shia and Sunni… Reminder this was said in 2006

———————————————————————- 
And finally this to president assclown Bush from Henry Waxman:
This documentation appears in the June 13, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review
DOCUMENTATION
Waxman: ‘Explain Why
You Cited Forged Evidence’
The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:

Increasing questions are now being raised within the United States and around the world about whether you and other senior U.S. officials misrepresented the evidence regarding Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability. In response, investigations have been launched and your spokesman has stated that everything you said was “valid.”[1]

As these investigations move forward. I urge you to explain why you cited forged evidence about Iraq’s efforts to obtain nuclear materials in your State of the Union address on January 28, 2003.

I first wrote to you about this matter on March 17, before the Iraq war had begun. As I explained in that letter, your own intelligence experts at the CIA questioned the veracity of the nuclear evidence at the same time that you and other senior Administration officials were repeatedly using the evidence as a major part of the case against Iraq. Yet despite the seriousness of this matter, the only response I received was an ambiguous one-page letter from the State Department that raises far more questions than it answers.

News reports this weekend were filled with accounts of how carefully Secretary Powell prepared for his February 5 address to the United Nations, spending nearly a week at CIA headquarters going over his remarks to ensure their accuracy. But there is no speech given by any government official that is more carefully constructed than a State of the Union address. The State of the Union address takes weeks—not days—to prepare, and every line is reviewed by a myriad of high-ranking officials. That a President could cite forged evidence in such an address on a matter as momentous as impending war should be unthinkable.

There are many complex issues that are now being raised by our failure to date to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These need to be examined closely in the coming months. But explaining your statements in the State of the Union should not take months of investigation—just candor. With the credibility of the United States being called into question around the world, I urge you to address this vital matter without further delay.

The Evidence in Question
The allegation that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear material from an African country was first made publicly by the British government on September 24, 2002, when Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 50-page report on Iraqi efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As the New York Times reported in a front-page article, one of the two “chief new elements” in the report was the claim that Iraq had “sought to acquire uranium in Africa that could be used to make nuclear weapons.”[2] According to the Washington Post, the evidence included “a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger.”[3]

It is now conceded that these letters were rudimentary forgeries. Recent accounts in the news media explain that the forgers “made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away—including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written.”[4]

The world did not learn that this evidence was forged, however, until March 7, 2003, when the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, released the results of his analysis of the evidence. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications that should have been evident to novice intelligence officials. As a result, Director ElBaradei reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were “in fact not authentic.”[5]

We also now know that the CIA was not incompetent in this matter—it had consistently expressed significant doubts about the validity of these documents. Press reports are replete with statements by CIA officials who warned about the lack of credibility of this information.[6] As the Washington Post reported on March 22, CIA officials “communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence.”[7] According to another CIA official, “it’s not fair to accuse the analysts for what others say about our material.”[8] Indeed, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof revealed that Vice President Cheney’s office became aware of the evidence early in the process and dispatched a former U.S. ambassador to Niger to investigate. On February 22, 2002—nearly a year before your State of the Union address—the ambassador “reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.”[9]

The Use of the Forged Evidence
Despite the doubts of your own intelligence experts, you and your most senior advisers asserted repeatedly over a period of months that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear material from Niger. The State Department featured the evidence in its written response to the Iraqi weapons declaration in December.[10] National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice made this allegation again on January 23, 2003,1[1] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeated this allegation on January 29, 2003,[12] and senior officials continued to repeat this claim in contacts with press outlets. As a result of the emphasis given the evidence by senior Administration officials, the nuclear evidence was featured on national network news and front-page articles in major national newspapers.[13].

The most prominent use of the forged nuclear evidence occurred during your State of the Union address to Congress. You stated: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”[14] As I wrote you on March 17, your statement was worded in a way to suggest that it was carefully crafted to be both literally true and deliberately misleading at the same time. The statement itself may be technically accurate, since this appears to have been official British position. But given what the CIA knew at the time, the implication you intended—that there was credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa—-was simply false.

This was not the only time you emphasized Iraq’s nuclear threat. Just four days before Congress was scheduled to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, you claimed that Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.[15] You also raised the ominous specter of a “mushroom cloud” if the war resolution was not adopted.[16] On March 17, just days before the war began, Vice President Cheney said: “We know he’s been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.[17]

These statements played a pivotal role in shaping congressional and public opinion about the need for military intervention in Iraq. I voted for the congressional resolution condemning Iraq and authorizing the use of force. Like other members, I was particularly influenced by your views about Iraq’s nuclear intentions. Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no threat is greater than the threat of nuclear weapons and no subject requires greater candor.

The Ambiguous State Department Response
In order to obtain information about your Administration’s reliance on the forged nuclear evidence, I wrote to you on March 17, 2003. As I stated in that letter, it is hard to imagine how this situation could have developed. The two most obvious explanations—knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence—both have immediate and profound implications. Consequently, I urged you address the matter without delay and provide an alternative explanation, if there was one.

Unfortunately, to date I have received only a cursory, one-page response from the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs. Although this April 29, 2003, letter asserts that the Administration acted “in good faith,” the letter in fact further confuses the situation and raises additional questions.

The State Department letter makes clear that the nuclear evidence from Britain that you cited in your State of the Union address was the evidence that was “discredited” as a forgery. The letter also indicates that this evidence was “available to the U.S.” The response thus appears to rule out the unlikely explanation that the CIA did not know the basis of the British evidence when you gave your State of the Union address. But the letter does not begin to explain why you used the obviously forged evidence in your State of the Union address.

The letter says that another Western European nation relayed similar information about Iraq’s nuclear program to the United States privately. But the letter acknowledges that the United States did not know the basis of this information until March 4, over a month after the State of the Union, at which time the United States learned that the information was based on the same forged documents. Moreover, the letter reveals that during the period prior to March 4, U.S. intelligence officials were aware that the information might be based on the same discredited information provided by the British and “sought several times to determine the basis for the … assessment, and whether it was based on independent evidence not otherwise available to the U.S.” No explanation is offered for why it took so long to learn the basis of the reporting from this “Western European ally.”

At its core, the argument in the State Department letter is ludicrous. U.S. intelligence officials knew that the available Niger evidence was unreliable and based on forged documents. Despite this, the State Department argues that it was acceptable for the United States to use this information as a central part of the case for military action in Iraq, because the United States received reporting from another nation. In essence, the argument seems to be that it is permissible to use fake evidence so long as the evidence can be attributed to another source.

The State Department response also raises questions about the CIA’s role in reviewing and clearing various Administration statements relating to the Niger allegation. The letter states that the written information about the forged nuclear evidence provided to the United Nations on December 19 “was a product developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department.” But this is contradicted by other published accounts. Just last weekend, the Washington Post quoted a senior intelligence official as saying that the “only” statement that was “reviewed by the intelligence agencies in detail and backed by detailed intelligence” was Secretary Powell’s February 5 speech before the United Nations.[18] In fact, according to one administration official, when the State Department document was issued on December 19, “people winced and thought, ‘Why are you repeating this trash?’ “19

Conclusion
Mr. President, I recognize that you have many demands on your time and that there are many issues that you cannot address. But this issue should be different. The credibility of the United States is now in question.

To date, you have offered no explanation as to why you and your most senior advisers made repeated allegations based on forged documents. Yet your entire pre-emption doctrine depends on the ability of the United States to gather accurate intelligence and make honest assessments. This matter raises fundamental issues that cannot be ignored. So I again request that you respond to my March 17 letter and the additional questions raised in this letter.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman
Ranking Minority Member
——————————————————————————–
some articles to look up-

Nicholas D. Kristof, “Missing in Action: Truth,” New York Times (May 6, 2003).

U.S. Department of State, Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council (Dec. 19, 2002).

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, “Why We Know Iraq is Lying” (Jan. 23, 2003) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030123-1.html).

Press Conference with Donald Rumsfeld, General Richard Myers, Cable News Network (Jan. 29, 2003).

“U.S. Accuses Iraqi Weapons Report of Failing to Meet U.N. Demands,” NBC Nightly News (Dec. 19, 2002); “Threats and Responses: Report by Iraq; Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say,” New York Times (Dec. 12, 2002); “U.S. Issues a List of Shortcomings in Iraqi Arms Declaration,” Los Angeles Times (Dec. 20, 2002); “Iraqi Weapons Declaration Full of Holes, U.S. Officials Say,” Associated Press (Dec. 12, 2003).

The White House, “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat” (Oct. 7, 2002) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html); see also “Matters of Emphasis,” New York Times (Apr. 23, 2003) (noting that President Bush cited an IABA report for this assertion, but that no such report exists).

U.S. Officials Make It Clear: Exile or War,” Washington Post (Mar. 17, 2003).

Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence,” Washington Post (May 31, 2003).

CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore,” Washington Post, (Mar. 22, 2003).

WHY IS OUR PRESIDENT A WOMEN HATER

 What year is this? Who is running our country — The Taliban? No, it’s that asshole president Dubya and he does not want women using birth control, he thinks it’s wrong to deny our country a larger population of more starving and neglected people! What the Hell did Babs do to make Dubya Bush so cynical about women and their choices? He does not think women know themselves at all and George Dubya thinks he does — so he is about to mandate orders to take away their reproductive rights!   (GO TO naral.org and sign their petition - copied at bottom.)      It was bad enough that one of his first bills when he became our president was to outlaw all funding for overseas abortion and limit birth control in favor of using abstinence. He virtually shut off resources for women overseas at family planning clinics telling them to use abstinence –sure, remember that if your are about to be raped, try and talk your attacker into using abstinence because a condom is considered birth control and might be banned under the new HHS guidelines! Plus, Bush’s ‘peeps’ who will be assigned the task of rape cases will then deny you help with emergency contraception.
   Now Bush wants to play God again and staff our federally funded hospitals with personnel who oppose  ANY birth control options including the pill! Suddenly that ass of a man wants to screw the female sex over by denying them their rights to birth control options.
From July 31st Wall Street Journal:
   A draft regulation, still being revised and debated, treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they can work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. The regulation considers that destroying “the life of a human being.”
   But on top of that he will have selected people put into place who do not believe in birth control of any kind! THIS IS INSULTING AND THIS IS MISOGYNY!
   Hillary Clinton was one of the first to put her opposition to this. How can any person in Congress even think twice about this proposal regarding all the women in their districts? HOW DARE BUSH THINK ABOUT MANDATING THIS INTO LAW! 
  Wasn’t it bad enough he had that abstinence program put into place so he could  reward his buddy, Dr. Joe McIlhaney with a large contract for using questionable facts?
  From Salon.com 2004, Michele Goldberg
   The Bush administration has lately come under fire for distorting science for political expediency. Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on the administration’s abuse of science, along with a statement signed by more than 60 scientific luminaries, including 20 Nobel laureates. “When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions,” the statement says. “This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front.”

As an example of the president’s disregard for science, the report lists Bush’s appointment of abstinence advocate Dr. Joe McIlhaney to government advisory panels. It describes McIlhaney as a doctor of “<strong>questionable credentials</strong>” who is “known for his published disdain for the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and his continued advocacy of abstinence-only programs despite negligible evidence that they actually reduce pregnancy rates among young people.”

The founder of a Texas-based pro-abstinence think tank called the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, McIlhaney is an <strong>old Bush friend</strong> who many say has shaped the president’s policies on abstinence. Demonstrating his faith in the doctor, Bush placed him on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and on the advisory committee to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s an enormous leap in legitimacy for McIlhaney, a former OB-GYN and conservative Christian who just nine years ago was reprimanded by the Texas Department of Health for spreading false information about sexually transmitted diseases and condoms’ ineffectiveness. In 1995, the Texas Department of Health wrote a letter to McIlhaney’s institute criticizing a slide presentation he’d been showing throughout the state. It included a detailed slide-by-slide critique, prepared by two doctors, a registered nurse and the director of the state’s HIV/STD Epidemiology Division, that pointed out a number of distorted, downright false and “ridiculous” statements in McIlhaney’s lesson. “Some of the data presented suffers from investigator bias,” the letter said. “Dr. McIlhaney’s presentation tended to report the outlier data as ‘proof’ that condoms don’t work rather than present those reports in the context of the entire data set. The only data that was reported in the presentation are those which supported his bias on the topics he addressed. Intellectual honesty demands that he present all the data.”
Yet even as the Texas Department of Health was criticizing McIlhaney’s program, the state’s governor, George W. Bush, was embracing it.
“When he was governor of Texas, he promoted and lobbied for and pushed abstinence-only education,” says Fred Peterson, a professor of health education at the University of Texas at Austin, who trains instructors to teach comprehensive sexual education classes. McIlhaney was and is a “major player” in Bush’s abstinence agenda, says Peterson. He’s also a beneficiary — his Medical Institute for Sexual Health has received $1.5 million in federal contracts related to abstinence education and STD research.

   You know the drill - Contact your Senators and give them the news, we are not run by the Taliban, women should still have reproductive rights! DENY THIS PROPOSAL BY HHS! And write a note to Mike Levitt who heads HHS and give him a piece of your mind. Women are still second class to these old farts who have been given license to set the agenda for dealing with our reproductive systems, Don’t give them that privilege! GET TO WORK BEFORE BUSH TAKES AWAY OUR SHOES AND KEEPS US BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT JUST BECAUSE HE CAN!
GO TO naral.org AND SIGN THE PETITION - DON’T LET RAPE VICTIMS AND WOMEN LOSE THEIR PERSONAL RIGHTS AND SET US BACK IN THE DARK AGES AGAIN JUST BECAUSE dUBYA IS REWARDING HIS CONSERVATIVE BASE - IT’S INSANE,
IMPEACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From naral.org below:
 

Oppose the Bush Administration’s Attack on Birth Control

The Bush administration is proposing a new regulation that could discourage doctors and health-care clinics from providing birth control to women who need it. This proposed regulation deliberately confuses the definitions of contraception and abortion.

• This regulation could undermine good state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors and ensure that pharmacies fill women’s prescriptions for birth control.
• The proposal could allow health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, and health plans) to refuse to provide services or make referrals for birth control.
• The proposed regulation could affect Medicaid and the Title X family-planning program. For instance, staff at clinics or health-care plans that contract for Medicaid services could refuse to provide contraception.

This proposal is an example of the Bush administration stretching existing federal laws beyond their original intent and further injecting politics into health-care services.

Tell your members of Congress that you support their efforts to get the Bush administration to reconsider this terrible idea.

 

* = Required Fields * Title:. Required. Mr. Ms. Mrs. Miss Dr. * First Name:. Required. * Last Name:. Required. * Address 1:. Required. Address 2: * City:. Required. * State / Province:. Required. Choose a State AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY AS FM GU MH MP PR PW VI * ZIP / Postal Code:. Required.   * Your Email:. Required. Yes, I would like to receive periodic updates and communications from NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Choice Action Network . Remember me. What’s this?

Subject: Dear [Decision maker], I’m writing to express my opposition to a proposed new Health and Human Services regulation that could discourage doctors and health-care clinics from providing contraception to women who need it. Please personalize your message Federal law already allows doctors and even health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, and health plans) to refuse to provide services or make referrals for abortion. The new rule, which deliberately confuses the definitions of contraception and abortion, would cause disarray in law, regulations, and policy, and make it more difficult for women to obtain birth control. I know it’s an uphill battle, but I encourage you to do everything you can to try and convince the Bush administration to change course on the regulation.   Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Address] [City, State ZIP]

The Recent Mississippi Oil Spill Kept Too Quiet

photocredit: news.nationalgeographic.com

The Mississippi oil spill last week did not get much press, but “Staggering” profits announced for Exxon today sure is generating a lot of publicity. Shell had huge profits too. Our President is on the news saying that after almost 8 years of his presidency, and 6 of them under GOP domination, the Democrats are to blame for his not doing one damn thing for the energy crisis. His big speeches before leaving office are all about blaming everyone else for all his failures. Are you surprised? Not me, that’s what he has done through out his life and then his father usually comes to his rescue, Not this time though, Bush will finally be remembered for the lying doofus his is. All his flaws are now fully exposed and the majority of us see the phony assclown that he is. 
  But enough about that. Bush suddenly is insisting on drilling all over the place while Pelosi says there are many many existing sites with leases not being used.  And it is “we the people” who end up getting screwed!
  But one argument for me against drilling anywhere near Florida is because of what happened last week on the Mississippi River after an ‘accident’ that is kept so quiet -
   July 24, 2008  (CNN) — The U.S. Coast Guard closed 98 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Louisiana, southward after a fuel barge and a tanker collided early Wednesday, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil. Coast Guard personnel try to contain a fuel oil spill in the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Wednesday.
   The closure — on what is a major shipping route between the Midwest and the Gulf of Mexico — could last days, and the cleanup could take weeks, said Capt. Lincoln Stroh, the Coast Guard chief in New Orleans.  The collision between the Liberian-flagged chemical tanker Tintomara and the barge pushed by the tug Mel Oliver happened about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, splitting the barge nearly in half and dumping more than 419,000 gallons of oil into the river, the Coast Guard said…
  The accident left a sheen of oil over much of the river and its banks. Booms were deployed to contain the oil, and skimmers are being used to suck it off the surface, said Petty Officer Thomas Blue, a Coast Guard spokesman.     … Wilma Subra, a chemist who advises the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said the oil could affect wildlife and work its way up the food chain into residents, many of whom fish for subsistence.  This is a spill that occurred in a very urban area, and it can impact a very large number of people,” she said. 

       d.

Also:
     Mississippi River Oil Spill Almost 100 Miles Long, Barge Still Leaking
Jul 25, 2008 | Parker Waichman Alonso LLP
The  slick from the oil spill that occurred Wednesday on the Mississippi River in New Orleans now spans nearly 100 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.  The barge involved in the spill is still leaking heavy fuel oil into the river, and officials in New Orleans have characterized the incident as the city’s worst oil spill in a decade.  Concerns are rising that the toxic oil could soon endanger wildlife in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge down stream.   Two days after the spill, fumes from the fuel oil can still be smelled throughout New Orleans and up and down the river.   Despite the acrid odor, health officials say the fumes pose no respiratory risks to residents.
  …there is a great deal of concern about its impact on the Delta National Wildlife Refuge.  According to The New York Times, tens of thousands of feet of the plastic booms had already been put in place around the refuge.  Thursday. If the oil flows through the main pass, or outlet, and on into the Gulf of Mexico, the effect will be limited; but if it seeps into the secondary passes, there is a more serious risk to the environment. …when it goes down to the area where there are no longer levees, it gets into the swamp,” said Wilma Subra of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network told The New York Times. “It’s going to contaminate the marsh.” 
      This is scary to me, we have a beautiful coast, we make money from our tourist industry. They try to calm the nerves of our locals saying they will drill 50 miles out, well look at the reality of what can happen, the spill travels a lot further than that!
   If you live in Florida and value this place, write your senators and tell them to drill somewhere else! Don’t let a catastrophy happen here from an accident or a hurricane that damages oil rigs. Our wildlife, rivers and ocean are so much more valuable than that! Let the GOP screw up the other states, leave my Florida alone!

The Arrogance of Bob Novak

  So I am hearing that poor “Prince of Darkness”, Bob Novak has a brain tumor. Very sad to hear, but how does that excuse his hit and run and a $50 fine for hitting and running? Could you or I do that without being put in jail for attempted homocide? We would have had to pay a huge bond for such antics!
  The pedestrian who Novak hit said Novak’s black corvette was not going to stop. A bicyclist had to stop Novak and tell him what he did.
  From The politico:
       The bicyclist was David Bono, a partner at Harkins Cunningham, who was on his usual bike commute to work at 1700 K St. N.W. when he witnessed the accident. As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said “a black Corvette convertible with top closed plows into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed into the windshield.” Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “This car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.  He said he chased Novak half a block down K Street, finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block it and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blaring, until commuters behind Novak backed up so he could pull over. 
    In 2001 Novak gave his opinion about pedestrian jaywalkers:
         “Novak explained to the paper: “He was crossing on the red light. I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don’t run the country, all I can do is yell at ‘em. The other option is to run ‘em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that.” 
       And that my friends, (to quote every other word out of John McCain’s campaigning mouth,) is the difference between you and I, Joe Public and the Prince of darkness who has money and clout! A mere $50 for running down a man. Brain tumor or no brain tumor, this sounds like Novak arrogance, true to form.

Scott McClellan reveals how FOX is used by the Whitehouse

 

 Scott McClellan was on Hardball Friday night and Chris asked him straight out if the White House fed news and talking points to FOX to use for swaying the public and Scott said yes, FOX was used by the Whitehouse to spread their ‘propaganda’, (my words, not Scott’s.)
   So if people actually thought that FOX was “fair and balanced”, they have it straight for the horses ‘patootie’ that FOX is the butthole that craps out the GOP shit from Dubyas spin machine and pretends it is fair and balanced. The only ones who don’t know this are the diehard FOX viewers. Guess they enjoy thinking their news
is from honest brokers. There could be nothing further from the truth, ask Scott, he is revealing the B/S he used to lie about for Bush and the Administration during his job as Press Secretary. I’m sure you can hear the clip on ‘You Tube’…now if only the FOX viewers could distinguish the difference between truth and consequences…And if only Dennis Kucinich could bring those articles of Impeachment to the forefront to be voted on, ah, life is such a bitch! 158 days and the biggest idiot is out of office!!!