The Choice Before Us

Brit Hume of Fox News Chanel: Amnesty for All Insurgents who Killed Americans is No Big Deal

Brit Hume tells us today that amnesty for all that killed Americans is not a serious problem.

Chris Wallace: ..killing Americans or attacking Americans should be…

Hume: This is not a serious policy issue. This is a political issue and it’s mostly a political issue in the United States and in my judgment it’s not worth much.

The lives of American soldiers and marines aren't worth much and are just a political issue? What the hell?

(Read the rest of this story…)

Republican Running for Congress in Utah has a Tough Opponent -- Claims Satan is Working Against his Campaign

John Jacob, Republican candidate for Congress, is claiming that Satan, the devil himself, is working against his getting elected. He is running against other Republicans in the Primary so apparently Beelzebub is pulling for another Republican (not an entirely unlikely situation at all now that I think of it). Jacob claims that Satan has been bedeviling his business deals as well.

“There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington DC,” he said. “It's the devil.”

These tribulations included deals gone bad, accusations that he illegally employed a Chilean couple, and statements against him by disloyal friends. Read more from Utah here. And even in the UK they are talking about him.

Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater and Republican gubernatorial candidate is calling for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants to use them “as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting.”

“Build us that wall - now!” Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 mile wall along the US-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.

Pentagon Becomes the Front Line in the War on the Democratic Party

Republicans have used the Pentagon to produce a 74-page briefing book for Republicans in Congress to be used as ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections. Our tax dollars and our US Military is being used to produce Republican campaign material. Can anyone say, "Soviet Union?"

The booklet was meant to be sent only to Republicans but was accidentally sent to a couple of Democrats by mistake. The Pentagon under the Bush Administration can’t afford to supply body armor and vehicle armor for our troops in Iraq, but somehow they find the money and time to produce a 74-page Republican campaign booklet.

If a Democratic president were using the Pentagon to produce material to be used to defeat Republicans in elections the news media and talk radio hosts would be screaming a blue streak about abuse of power and with very good reason. Yet this obvious abuse of power by the Republicans gets no play on the news and no mention from talk radio hosts 90% of whom are Right-Wingers.

America is goose stepping down the toilet, and the Soviet Premier in the White House and his Politburo in Congress are leading the charge (to mix a metaphor). The Republicans have definitely Sovietized the United States of America.

Afghan Government Threatens Press to Report Good News Or Else – Hey, It Worked for Bush in the US!

Kabul, Afghanistan --The war against the Taliban has gone badly these last months, but Afghanistan's national intelligence agency has devised a secret plan to reverse the tide of bad news.

In a coordinated action this week, the intelligence operatives drove up to TV stations and newspapers in muscular SUVs and dropped off an unsigned letter ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government.

In particular, the letter said, they should avoid "materials which deteriorate people's morale and cause disappointment to them."

The country’s warlords are not to be criticized or called "warlords" -- a common term in Afghanistan for the more powerful among them, the letter specified. And Afghans called back by Karzai from exile abroad to take posts in the government are not to be called "westernized."

The men from the National Security Directorate would not give their names, and to better ensure secrecy, the letter instructed journalists that "publishing or copying this document is unauthorized."

Read the whole article here.

Limbaugh Uses Death of US Soldiers to Lie to America about Liberals

As most of the Left half of the Blogosphere commented with sadness and grief on the report that the two missing US soldiers had been found dead, Rush Limbaugh used the news to spread lies claiming that we, the truly patriotic Americans, were happy that our troops had been killed and perhaps tortured. Leave it to Limbaugh to use the deaths of these two men to lie again to America. I only hope the estimated 13.5 to 15 million Americans who listen to Rush will be sickened by his exploiting the tragedy of these two fine Americans. But I really doubt it. He has committed too many similarly unconscionable exploitations of Americans’ suffering and dying, and his audience remains behind him. They must either be incredibly stupid or unthinkably hate-filled.

May God help us.

A Moment of Silence and Prayer for Two US Soldiers

The bodies of two US soldiers believed to be Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, TX and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. were found south of Bagdad. There are as yet unconfirmed rumors that they were the victims of torture. The Left half of the Blogosphere pauses for a moment of silent tribute and prayer for the two.

Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and the families of the more than 2,500 other Americans who have died in the Iraq War.

To Defend Bush's Low Poll Numbers, Limbaugh Lies About Clinton, Reagan and Carter

This from JABS blospot

It often amazes me how conservative pundits create alternate realities for their listeners. These fact-challenged realities make great radio -- no one lies to weaken an argument -- but ultimately do listeners a great disservice.

Case in point: On the June 6 edition of his popular radio show, Rush Limbaugh so desperately wants to defend President Bush's continued unpopularity that he offers a "parallel" to former Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter that simply doesn't exist.

LIMBAUGH: The latest USA Today/Gallup update on George W. Bush's presidential job approval rating finds 36 percent of Americans approving of the job the president's doing; 57 percent disapprove. This represents a modest improvement in that measure from recent weeks, a finding mirrored in several other national surveys. In early May, just 31 percent approved of Bush, marking the low point of his administration to date. ... (I)f you went back and looked at several other second-term presidents at this time in their terms, you'd find almost parallel poll results. We know that Bill Clinton was down in the 20s at one point. Jimmy Carter was way down. Reagan was down. This is really -- really not unique.

Let's look at the stupidity of this argument. First, of course, is that Jimmy Carter never had a second term.

But what about Clinton and Reagan? Did Americans ever give them approval ratings of 36% -- the poll figure Limbaugh cited -- in their second terms? No.

According to the polling archive of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Clinton's lowest approval rating was 36% -- in his first term. In his second term, Clinton's approval rating never dropped below 52% in any poll. And in the "parallel" year -- the second year of his second term, or 1998 -- Clinton's approval ratings ranged from 53% to 73%.

What about President Reagan? His lowest approval rating was 35%, in 1983 -- again, in his first term. In his second term, Reagan's approval rating never dropped below 43% in any poll. And in the "parallel" year -- the second year of his second term, or 1986 -- Reagan's approval ratings ranged from 47% to 64%.

Limbaugh has long praised himself as being among the most influential players in politics today, and has been given credit for providing momentum to help usher in the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994, when Republicans took 75 seats to gain control of the House of Representatives.

Roughly 13.5 milion people listen to Limbaugh daily -- more than the number watching the nightly news on any of ABC, CBS or NBC. Want to know why surveys have found that listeners and viewers of "conservative media" are consistently less informed than, say, listeners of NPR or viewers of PBS? Limbaugh's "parallel year" argument is a clear example why.

There are thousands of such instances where Rush Limbaugh and his like have deliberately misled American listeners. 13.5 million Americans here in the states don’t realize that they are being lied to, and keep in mind that under the Bush Administration only right wingers like Rush can be broadcast to our troops oversees on Armed Forces Radio. They are afraid to let our troops hear moderate or progressive talk radio. Only right wingers like Rush Limbaugh. Now that Americans have challenged this practice the Bush Administration is planning on removing all talk radio from Armed Forces Radio and replacing it with rap and hip-hop because they can’t afford to let our troops hear another viewpoint than the right wing. Aren’t our troops fighting for Democratic ideals like Free Speech? Over 2,500 Americans have already died in Iraq. More than 20,000 have been wounded with half of those crippled for life. Why is the Bush Administration afraid of the very freedoms our troops are fighting and dying for?

Joe

My Response to a Reader of this Blog

A reader of this blog, Andrew Pass asks, “My only real question is how could a civilized government ever possibly win a war against terrorists?”

Well, Andrew, you don’t win it by lowering yourself to the level of the terrorists by torture and indefinite detention. Terrorism is caused by people who feel aggrieved against those they inflict terror or some other persons on whom they cannot inflict terror so they find another victim. Many who support terrorism feel that it is their only avenue for airing their side of the argument at the core of this grievance. Leaders of terrorist groups often play upon ignorance of their supporters and prejudices that their supporters have toward the target of their terrorism. Often the poverty of supporters adds to their anger and they turn to the terrorists as their champions to raise them out of their mean existence. The Islamic terrorists don’t “hate our freedom” as President Bush, his administration and his apologists in the media claim. They hate elements of US foreign policy and they perceive the growing American cultural intrusion into their society as a morally lacking cancer leading the people away from a more right-wing conservative religious stance (yes, Islamic fundamentalists are right-wing conservatives in their culture) to a more liberal viewpoint approaching that of Americans.

Also you cannot “win” a war on terrorism anymore than you can “win” a war on murder or theft. You can reduce the incidents of the above, but you will never eliminate the possibility. I think that may be what you were getting at by your question.

You can decrease the support for terrorists by understanding the arguments the terrorists use to gain the assent of their supporters. Learn the source of the grievances and address those feelings letting the supporters know that their side can be told and understood without resorting to violence. Some terrorist leaders have ulterior motives and are only using the grievances of their supporters as means to gain more power for themselves. Addressing the source of the problems removes from the terrorists their greatest recruitment tool. Without the support of the masses the terrorists are viewed as bullies and villains by the people they claim to be fighting for.

This would be the closest thing to winning the war on terror. But we would need a leader willing to think like this. Willing to use diplomacy over the military option. Our current leader thinks that it is possible to bomb and shoot the masses into submission. This will only strengthen support for the terrorists and drive that support underground where it will be impossible for us to track.

I hope we someday have a leader willing to mount a true War on Terror, but that day for now must remain in our future.

Joe

Read the News

Al Qaeda documents show they want US to go to war with Iran – Will Bush obey the terrorists?

Read it here.

100 leading American foreign-policy analysts both Republicans and Democrats say Bush is losing the War on Terror and has made the US and the World less safe. These experts include an ex-secretary of state and former heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, along with prominent members of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment from both parties. 62 per cent identified Saudi Arabia as the premier incubator for terrorists. So few experts think Iran is a threat and so many regard Iraq as a mistake that it "turns the administration's policies on their head."

Read it here.

6 in 10 Americans say that because of the Iraq War the image of the U.S. is "worse off," with only 11% saying it is "better off."

Read it here.

On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Today, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it.
Specter wants the committee to approve a bill he drafted that tinkers dangerously with the rules on wiretapping, even though the president has said the law doesn't apply to him anyway, and even though Mr. Specter and most of the panel are just as much in the dark as that judge in Detroit. The bill could well diminish the power of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which was passed in 1978 to prevent just the sort of abuse committed during the Nixon Administration that Mr. Bush's program represents today.

Read it here.


President Bush To Legally Blind Reporter: ‘Are You Going to Ask That Question with Shades On?’

Read it here.


Karl Rove Helped Raise Money for Illegal Vote Suppression Tactics -- And the Mainstream Media Couldn't Give a Hoot

Read it here.

Bush’s War on Terror increases risk of terrorist attacks according to UK think tank echoing findings of US foreign policy experts above (2nd item)

Read it here.


House Majority Leader Boehner’s Confidential Strategy Memo for Thursday’s Iraq Debate:

1. Exploit 9-11
2. Attack anyone who criticizes Bush policy
3. Create a false choice between supporting Bush or supporting terrorists

Read it here.


"War on Terror" "briefing book" just issued by Donald Rumsfeld's office to help Republicans use the 3,000 dead from September 11 to win the congressional elections in the fall advise GOP about “Osama bin Landen” No wonder they can’t find him. They don’t know his name.

Read it here.

I haven’t seen any of these stories on the evening news where 90% of Americans get their information on current events. Why haven’t these and other stories so important to the US been broadcast to the American people?

Bush Turned Down At Least Three Opportunities to Take Zarkawi Out

It is very good news that Zarkawi is no longer able to threaten our troops or the Iraqi people. But it must be remembered that the US military offered several plans to take out Zarkawi and his terrorist organization before the start of the Iraq War, but the Bush White House turned them all down fearing that it might lessen support for invading Iraq according to terrorism expert and former Bush Administration National Security Council member Roger Cressey. At least three separate times the military begged the Bush White House to let them take Zarkawi and his terrorist organization out and every time the White House refused because it might lessen international support for invading Iraq. So they let him live and his most heinous activities occurred after that point until his death this month.

Zarkawi was operating a terrorist training camp in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq north of the No Fly Zone in an area that Saddam had no control over because UN sanctions prevented him from sending his fighter planes there and without air cover his ground troops wouldn’t survive in the Kurdish North. Even Colin Powell while he was Secretary of State and pushing for war in Iraq admitted this was so. Bush refused to take out a known terrorist after September 11, in an area that Saddam didn’t control because it might have drawn attention to a terrorist group set on overthrowing Saddam.

At the time that Bush had a chance to take out Zarkawi, Zarkawi was working with an al-Qaeda aligned and Kurdish supported terrorist group set on overthrowing Saddam Hussein. After Saddam was overthrown by our forces, Zarkawi turned his hatred on the US and committed his most vile atrocities.

Zarkawi was a known terrorist in 2002, when our troops wanted to take him out. Bush put aside his desire to punish al-Qaeda linked terrorists in favor of ousting Saddam and the result was that al-Qaeda linked terrorists outside the area of Saddam’s control moved in to fill the vacuum and became much stronger in Iraq and the world. Bush also pulled US troops who had cornered bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan sending them to Iraq well before the start of the Iraq War. This is why bin Laden is alive today and why Zarkawi was allowed to become such a bloodthirsty butcher in Iraq.

More information about Zarkawi is available from these articles: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=89600
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5058262.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-alterman/getting-zarqawi-four-year_b_22545.html

US Military Admits Exaggerating Zarqawi’s Importance

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, worked to overthrow Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the Iraq War. He and his al Qaeda connected terrorist camp operated in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq North of the No Fly Zone, an area where Saddam was not able to control because US sanctions prevented his planes from entering the region. Prior to that Zarqawi tried to over throw the government in Jordan and was imprisoned there for his attempted coup in Jordan. In April senior US military intelligence officers admitted that the Bush Administration was conducting a psyops (psychological operations) campaign to make Zarkawi seem more important than he actually was. Although Army Col. James A. Treadwell will only admit that the Iraqi people were the target of the psyops campaigns concerning Zarkawi, internal military documents and officers familiar with the program show that the US Home Front was a target of these disinformation campaigns as well. Videos produced for this purpose were shown not only on Iraqi TV, but also on Fox News Chanel here the United States according to this article from April, 10. Zarkawi was killed in a US bombing mission this past week.

The point here is not whether Zarkawi was an evil terrorist, he most certainly was. The point here is that under Bush the US Government targeted the American people for a psyops disinformation campaign designed to deliberately mislead us. These are the types of campaigns used against an enemy. Under Bush the enemy is us, the American people.

US Intelligence Agents Admit Bush Administration Knew Niger Documents were Forgeries Long Before Bush Lied to America in State of Union Address

Vanity Fair article also available here reports on the fact that the Bush Administration canceled the fact that the Niger documents President Bush used in his State of the Union Address to push for war in Iraq were forgeries. It was the “cornerstone of a highly successful ‘black propaganda’ campaign with links to the White House” designed to mislead the American people.

In addition, Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness."

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White House's agenda.

20 Separate Federal Agencies of the Bush Administration “planted fake news stories on American TV”

This article is available by subscription here and for free, here. This news is being reported around the world, but surprisingly not in the Mainstream Media in the US.

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington for the British newspaper the Independent
Published: 29 May 2006

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.

The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.

The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.

Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."

The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."

The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (£17,500).