No One in Bush Administration Knew Who they were Turning Our Ports Over to – Doesn’t THAT Fill You with Confidence?

Jonathan Moseley, the Executive Director of the US Seaport Commission, expressed concern that if the deal to turn our US ports over to a United Arab Emirates company goes through, the record keeping of Dubai Ports World would be kept in Dubai, and also noted that in the 30-day review process of the plan, there has been only one meeting held to evaluate it. The Bush Administration held one meeting to determine who would control the security of our ports and therefore our National Security. One meeting. And the law required they hold a 45 day investigation which they didn’t.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was not aware a Dubai-owned company was seeking to operate terminals in six U.S. ports and that his agency was leading the review until after the deal's approval, an administration official said yesterday. Chertoff is the third Bush Cabinet official to acknowledge he did not know his agency had signed off on the plan as a member of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). Both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow have publicly said they were unaware of the deal. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060224-123748-3727r.htm

That’s from the pro-GOP Moony newspaper, the Washington Times. As previously posted these three (Chertoff, Rumsfeld and Snow all senior Cabinet members) were members of the committee that unanimously agreed to the deal. They agreed to turn over the security of our sea ports and didn’t even know who they were turning it over to. Bush says he didn’t know either. No one in the Bush Administration knows what the hell they are doing. Chertoff was behind much of the screw ups in failing to respond to Hurricane Katrina. As previously posted here, Rumsfeld and Bush had responsibilities during Katrina, but failed to fulfill their duties because they were on vacation and couldn’t be disturbed. Now they couldn’t be bothered to find out who they were turning our ports over to.

Just 17% Favor Dubai Ports Deal says the pro-Republican Rasmussen Reports survey which found that 64% of Americans disagree and believe the sale should not be allowed http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/February%20Dailies/Dubai%20Ports.htm

Bush says that he will veto any attempt to block the deal. He hasn’t vetoed any bill yet in more than 5 years, but he will veto any attempt to block the handing over of our ports over to a nation where two of the 9/11 hijackers came from and which has had dealings with and support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Can we fire these clowns yet?

Bush Broke Law Giving United Arab Emirates Our Ports

The Bush Administration broke the law by approving the turning over of our ports to a United Arab Emirates company. The law requires a mandatory 45 day investigation that the Bush Administration didn't bother doing:

From Talking Points Memo:

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IS THIS ADMINISTRATION WILLING TO BREAK THE LAW TO GET THIS DUBAI PORT DEAL THROUGH?

The NY Times reported today that the law governing this sort of deal, when "the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government," requires a "mandatory," 45-day investigation. That was never done, and what's more, "Administration officials ... could not say why a 45-day investigation did not occur."

But here's the thing: it's not too late. The President can still order the investigation. And Sens. Schumer (D-NY) and Clinton (D-NY), along with Mayor Bloomberg, have asked for it.
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What? George Bush is ignoring the law and is breaking it just because he can? I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you! By the way that's Republican Mayor Bloomberg who is demanding the investigation.

It turns out that members of the Bush Administration have financial ties to the Arab firm getting our ports. Surprise surprise surprise! Bush says he didn’t know that it was an Arab firm owned by the UAE government before approving the deal, but he will use his first ever veto if Congress tries to block the deal. Don’t stand between a Texan and his graft.

Rumsfeld said that he didn’t know about the deal either. Problem is he was on the board that approved it UNANIMOUSLY! OOPS!

Rumsfeld also recently told the world that the military had stopped paying newspapers to plant stories only to have to admit yesterday that they had NOT actually stopped. DOUBLE OOPS!

Remember the movie Airplane when Lloyd Bridges says, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.” That’s Rumbsfeld right now.

At least Cheney was drunk when he shot someone. What’s up with Rumsfeld?

Post number 401!

52% of Americans Want Bush Impeached. 43% Don’t. News *NOT* at Eleven

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Americans favor impeaching President Bush and only forty-three percent (43%) don’t want him impeached a new poll shows. Strangely (or not so strangely) the Corporate Mainstream Media in the US is not covering this. Whereas during the Clinton Administration when fifty-nine percent (59%) of the American people did NOT want President Clinton impeached the Media was frothing at the mouth covering the impeachment fever bubbling over the Republican held Congress. A recent Gallup poll shows that a majority (58%) of American citizens judge Bush’s presidency to be a failure, and 53% said they believe his administration deliberately misled the public about Iraq's purported weapons program before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Did you see that on the evening news? No, you did not. Leading Republicans are even criticizing Bush. But not the Media. Not the evening news. Not the front page of leading newspapers. Anyone else realizing that the Media in the US is anything but Liberal? (Yes, I realize that “media” is a plural, but anyone who actually says “the Media in the US ARE anything but Liberal” would sound like 19th century schoolmarm.)

By the way, this marks my 400th post to this blog. Just doing my bit to inform my fellow Americans.

Dangerous Enemy Threatens the US

William Rivers Pitt warns, in this article from truthout.org, of an insidious enemy that threatens to destroy our nation. The following is required reading for all patriotic Americans:

The Enemy
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Perspective

Friday, 17 February, 2006

They called it "Cyber Storm," and it was a war-game exercise run last week by the Department of Homeland Security. The war game had nothing to do with testing the security of our shipping ports, borders, infrastructure or airports. "Cyber Storm" was testing the government's ability to withstand an onslaught of information and protest from bloggers and online activists.

"Participants confirmed," wrote the Associated Press, that "parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."

Say what? Online expressions of political opinion are so dangerous that the Department of Homeland Security must war-game scenarios to deal with them? Bloggers are potential terrorists now? Bloggers are the enemy? Last week, as far as DHS was concerned, they were.

We hear a great deal about enemies these days. Don't criticize the war, or you'll embolden the enemy. The enemy is clever and cruel. Stick with the White House and we'll defeat the enemy. Since the Bush administration no longer likes to mention the name Osama bin "Stayin' Alive" Laden in public, lest everyone remember a dramatic promise long broken, any specific definition of an enemy changes with the moment.

Sometimes, the enemy is in Iraq, and we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Sometimes, the enemy is in Iran, allegedly toiling with all its collective might to manufacture nuclear weapons. Sometimes, the enemy is in Palestine, where Hamas used George W. Bush's exported democracy to take over the government. Sometimes, the enemy is an American face on a television offering criticism of the White House. Last week, the enemy was a blogger making a political expression.

The enemy is never in Saudi Arabia, though that nation is the very birthing bed of international terrorism. The enemy is never in Israel, though that nation's far-right leadership has been a good deal of the impetus behind the Bush administration's calamitous push into Iraq. The enemy is never in China, even when they smack our planes out of the sky, because they own a substantial portion of our debt. The enemy is never in Pakistan, though that nation's fundamentalist wing allies itself with the Taliban, and though they actually do possess nuclear weapons. The enemy is occasionally mentioned as being in North Korea, but not often, because we want no part of that fight.

For a time, the enemy was in the United Arab Emirates. Two of the hijackers of the September 11 aircraft were citizens of the United Arab Emirates, and the funding behind those attacks was wired through the UAE's banking system. Republican and Democratic Senators believe the UAE has been used as a conduit for the proliferation of nuclear technology.

That was then, however. A company named Dubai Ports World intends to spend $6.8 billion to gain control of the management of shipping ports in New York and New Jersey, as well as in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami. Dubai Ports World is foreign-owned, but is backed financially by the government of the United Arab Emirates. In other words, a nation suspected of being a significant player in the September 11 attacks is being allowed to take control of our borders. For the record, US ports handle an estimated two billion tons of cargo annually, with only 5% of that cargo undergoing inspection. The deal has already been granted regulatory clearance by the White House.

We hear a great deal about enemies, both real and contrived. Let us ponder, for a moment, the existence of another enemy so insidious that it operates fully in daylight but beyond control. This enemy seeks to destroy the rule of constitutional law in the United States. This enemy seeks to destroy the seed-corn defense against tyranny in this nation, the separation of powers. This enemy gathers more and more power to itself to achieve these goals, and uses fear and division to do so. This enemy will lie with impunity, stonewall endlessly and ruin anyone who might disrupt its plans.

This enemy stood by and did nothing while a major American city was devoured by the ocean. When New Orleans was drowned, many voices were raised in panicked unison that the White House must do something, and do something now. A conference call was held between key members of the Department of Homeland Security and other administration officials on August 29th, the day the catastrophe began for real. Investigators are seeking the transcript of this call, but administration officials claim the transcript has somehow disappeared. There are many transcripts of calls before and after this one, but the five-hour call on August 29th, the specific call investigators want to see, simply cannot be found.

This enemy deliberately reached out and destroyed the career of a deep-cover CIA agent named Valerie Plame, because her husband dared to criticize the White House about its "uranium from Niger" lie regarding Iraq. Plame, among other things, worked clandestinely to track any person, group or nation that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists; in other words, Plame worked to track the individuals this White House never fails to label as the enemy. Her work was derailed and her network destroyed because this White House did not want any discussion of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, despite miles of claims that the stuff was there.

TruthOut correspondent Jason Leopold reported this week that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is refusing to turn over incriminating emails to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, emails that allegedly indicate the involvement of Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking administration officials in the unmasking of Agent Plame. "The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," reported Leopold. "Moreover, according to sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments [Plame's husband] Joseph Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence."

I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was recently indicted by Fitzgerald for lying under oath during the investigation into this matter. Recently, Libby stated that he was authorized by his superiors to expose the classified name of Valerie Plame. Given his position, Libby's main superior is none other than Cheney himself. Cheney recently claimed that he is authorized by an Executive Order to declassify any information he pleases. "I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in declassification decisions," said Cheney this week. "There's an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president."

This is a new trend for the White House: rendering an illegal act legal retroactively by fiat. The trend manifested itself in another area of illegal activity by the White House, the warrantless wiretapping of thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency, in defiance of the black-letter law contained within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. For several weeks now, Congress has been threatening to hold hearings on the matter. Bush advisor Karl Rove worked feverishly behind the scenes to keep such hearings from taking place, and has succeeded. Rather than investigate the matter, Congress will instead rewrite the FISA law, thus rendering retroactively legal White House activities that blatantly broke the law.

We hear a great deal about enemies these days, and many of them are quite real and quite perilous. It is difficult to imagine a more perilous enemy, however, than the one operating out of Washington today. This enemy would set itself on high, beyond control or censure, and create of itself that permanent faction James Madison so earnestly warned us of. This enemy deletes or hides evidence of its calumny, or simply alters existing laws that would otherwise derail its plans. This enemy destroys lives out of hand, lives by the tens of thousands, and reaps a pretty profit in the process.

The difference between the enemies we hear about and the one in Washington is simple and deadly: only the enemy in Washington can annihilate the constitutional government we have enjoyed for more than two centuries. The idea that is America cannot be terminated by terrorists or rogue states. Were the nation entire to be somehow obliterated, the idea that is America would endure. Only its keepers can kill it completely. They are well on their way.

"As nightfall does not come at once," wrote Justice William O. Douglas, "neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness."

We must deal with the enemy within the halls of our government, the enemy whose power to destroy far outstrips any enemy beyond our borders. In doing so, we save that which is unique in the world. In doing so, we deal a death blow to all other enemies. In doing so, we save ourselves from that darkness.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

The Bush Administration claims that American citizen bloggers expressing their political opinions and informing their fellow Americans are “the enemy” while the real enemy does true lasting damage to our nation freely in the halls of power: on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

Bush Administration Wasted over $1,600,000,000 (1.6 Billion) of Our Tax Dollars Paying Off Reporters and Producing Fake News

The Bush Administration wasted over $1,600,000,000 (1.6 Billion) of our tax dollars paying off reporters and producing fake news reports. This according to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office report on the matter. The 154-page report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the scope of federal spending on government-sponsored prepackaged news and journalism-for-sale courtesy of 1.6 billion of our tax dollars.

"Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat of the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement yesterday.

Anti-Science Bush Appointee to NASA Quits When Blogger Exposes him as Fraud and Liar

President Bush’s appointee to head NASA public affairs, George Deutsch, was forced to resign when it came out that he lied about having a college degree. Deutsch who claimed to be a graduate of Texas A&M had been censoring NASA scientists from speaking about Global Warming and inisting that scientists speak about the Big Bang from a religious perspective was exposed by a blogger, Nick Anthis, who operates the blog scientificactivist.blogspot.com and is himself a graduate of Texas A&M. Deutsch (Bush's NASA appointee) was an intern in the Bush-Cheney 2004 'war room'. That apparently qualified him for his next assignment: screening the scientific information NASA personnel could communicate to the American public. The blogger exposed that Deutch lied to on his resume by making a single phone call.

A single phone call!

To get a top job in NASA public affairs, the FBI and NASA itself closely examine the applicants’ resumes to make sure that they actually have a college degree and graduated from the university they claimed to have. This is Standard Operating Policy and has been for decades. The fact that this was not uncovered and Deutsch’s appointment by Bush was not stopped in the first place is yet another example of Bush Administration cronyism and another example of the US Mainstream Media dropping the ball and a common citizen blogger having to do their job for them. Again this citizen blogger exposed the Bush appointee as a fraud and a liar with a single phone call that any reporter worth his or her salt could have made and the FBI and NASA should have made.

How many thousands more unqualified cronies are sucking up our tax dollars and not serving the American people like Mike Brown the former head of FEMA and George Deutch the now former head of NASA public affairs? We have no idea since the Corporate Mainstream Media won’t bother to find out.

We have no free press in America except through the Blogoshere. Welcome to the Real Media. The Real Free Press.

Joe

President Bush Can Do Anything: Tap Your Phone, Torture You or Even Kill You According to Administration Officials

The Bush Administration and their apologists are up to their old tricks with the “Ticking Bomb” argument to justify their actions to undermine the rule of law in the US. Recently Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel testified before Congress that under several imagined scenarios President Bush could order the assassination of someone even on American soil believed to be a terrorist. They used the argument that if those involved in the September 11 attack were killed before they instigated the terrorist attack, the tragedy would not have happed. Earlier the Bush Administration and their apologists used the same argument to justify torture of detainees. If those who knew about 9/11 were tortured before the attack, it could be avoided. Ignoring the fact that experts from the CIA and military tell us that information gained from torture is notoriously unreliable, these arguments presuppose a prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks on the part of the torturers or assassins. The Bush Administration would have to have known that 9/11 was going to occur to allow them to justify killing or torturing those they believed involved. Otherwise they can say that at any time there may be a ticking bomb about to go off endangering thousands or millions of lives, so killing or torturing anyone they think might be involved is fully justified to avoid a greater tragedy. Following this line of reasoning the US quickly decays into a lawless chaos in which anyone the Administration chooses is tortured or killed and the possibility of an act of terrorism is used as the excuse.

Despotisms of the past have used similar arguments to justify the policies of their totalitarian regimes. Will the US abandon the rule of law and the duty of the Congress to oversee the Executive Branch to prevent the President from becoming one of the tyrants we as a nation have long despised? Remember that our country was formed because the people here ruled by a despotic King George, who had no interest in their rights, revolted to assert their independence and desire to live in a nation guided by the rule of law. Under that King George any American could be locked up for any reason and anyone who disagreed with King George was in danger of losing their liberty or their lives. Let us not abandon the American Dream of our forbearers who fought that King George to win the independent nation ruled by law and not by the whims of another King George.