Postings from June 15 to June 1

6-15-03 In the land of the free, a freedom worth fighting for "We all want to be secure, of course. We all want to 'win the war on terrorism.' But at what cost to our basic values as a nation? "

6-15-03 Poll: Many Americans misinformed about Iraq, 9/11 attacks Gee, can't imagine how they got that way.

6-15-03 Thought crimes "Not only have we failed to find WMDs, but it appears that the Bush Administration knew all along of the slim possibility of finding any in Iraq. The administration withheld this information as it pressed its case for war.…"

6-14-03 Father's Day: A reluctant defense

6-14-03 Biographies of Neo-cons: Richard Perle "He worked as an aide to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and was an author of the 1996 report 'A Clean Break' prepared for Netanyahu, which has proved to outline with uncanny prescience the way things have developed—or from the Arab point of view deteriorated—in the Middle East since then.…"

6-13-03 Too early to use the "I" word about Bush? Jules Witcover of the The Baltimore Sun, believes it is too soon to talk about impeachment, writing: "Practically speaking, Mr. Bush's popularity and stature as a wartime president make it unlikely right now that anybody in Congress would consider taking the drastic step of introducing articles of impeachment against him." [Real News 24/7 comment: Bush assured the world last Fall that he had undeniable proof that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, a statement now shown to be untrue, thus he no longer is entitled to "popularity and stature as a wartime president," since that war is an unjust war.] 

6-13-03 Smoking guns and mushroom clouds "Six months before the United States was dead-set on invading Iraq to rid the country of its alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), experts in the field of nuclear science warned officials in the George W Bush administration that intelligence reports showing Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons was unreliable, and that the country did not pose an imminent threat to its neighbors in the Middle East or the US."

6-13-03 Poll: Israelis oppose military strikes "The survey in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper found that 58 percent of Israelis believe that Israel should temporarily halt the killing of militants to give the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, time to establish himself in his position.…The poll also showed that 67 percent of Israelis agree with recent statements by Sharon that Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian areas."

6-12-03 States craft budget plans, tax increases A state-by-state rundown.

6-12-03 Remember Kosovo? And why you should "What is happening in Iraq now is merely a re-run of what happened in Kosovo. Because the Empire got away with murder, literally, launching a clear war of aggression and occupation while spinning all sorts of preposterous lies about it, Kosovo made Iraq possible. Never forget that."

6-12-03 Suppose you wanted to have a Permanent War "Amid the all-around rejoicing, however, the power elite appreciate that nearly two years have elapsed since September 11, 2001, and the public’s panic has begun to subside. That won’t do. Accordingly, on June 9 the government released a report that there is a “high probability” of an al-Qaida attack with a weapon of mass destruction in the next two years. If no such attach should eventuate, of course, then the authorities will have to release another such terrifying report at the appropriate time. Got to keep people on their toes—“vigilant,” as the Homeland Security czar likes to say."

6-11-03 Powell, Rice's credibility at risk "The administration’s refusal to allow international inspectors into Iraq to participate in the search increases the likelihood that many in the world would believe that any belatedly found weapons were planted to justify Bush’s war."

6-11-03 Republicans limit probe of Iraq intelligence The Congressional cover-up commences.

6-11-03 An informed citizenry: telling trend takes hold "Congress directly rebuffed Attorney General John Ashcroft's attempt to set up a neighborhood snitch program in the existing Patriot Act. But that didn't stop police departments in the East and Midwest from launching their own private 'civil defense' programs, a polite description of a snitch network, and tying them together into a communal database.

6-10-03 U.S. hunt for banned weapons slows "The slowdown comes after checks of more than 230 sites — drawn from a master intelligence list compiled before the war — turned up none of the chemical or biological weapons the Bush administration said it went after Saddam Hussein to destroy."

6-10-03 North Korea's nuclear threat …and other news briefs

6-10-03 Canadian court backs same-sex unions "The right to marry should be extended to same-sex couples, Ontario's Appeal Court ruled Tuesday in a decision that effectively deems Canadian law on traditional marriage unconstitutional." Oppose such decisions in the United States! Support the Federal Marriage Amendment.

6-10-03  Bush scolds Israel over assassination attempt "Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying a senior Hamas leader today, wounding him, killing two others and jeopardizing the U.S.-backed road map to Mideast peace. President Bush criticized Israel, saying he was "deeply troubled" by the strike."

6-10-03 Sketicism mounting about motive for war  "Facing mounting worldwide skepticism of repeated U.S. assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, President Bush declared Monday that he is "absolutely convinced" that his administration will be vindicated."

6-10-3 Mobile lies Remember when President Bush assured us that those trailers captured in Iraq were proof that Saddam's scientists were engaged in making biweapons? Oops! It turns out they're actually part of an Artillery Meteorological System sold by the British to the Iraqi army in 1987. 

6-10-03 Charley Reese: Medical malpractice crisis "High-toned scholars at Harvard have estimated that doctors knock off about 90,000 to 100,000 people a year with innocent mistakes or plain malpractice. That compares, by the way, with about 1,400 accidental deaths from firearms."
 

6-9-03  Dead for a Lie "John Straseskie who had served in the Army and National Guard for 26 years expressed anger at the loss of his son in a war that that he now thinks was sold under false pretenses. 'He put our troops over there to finish what his dad didn't do. They found no weapons of mass destruction,' he told the Capital Times, a Madison, WI. newspaper."

6-9-03 Iraqis poisoned by nuclear waste

6-9-03 Bin Laden "shunned Iraqi terror link-up" "Osama bin Laden rejected proposals to plot joint terror attacks with Saddam Hussein's regime, according to two captured al-Qaida leaders."

6-9-03 WMD quotes—before and after the invasion

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
March 23, 2003

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice
May 12, 2003

6-8-03 Right wing Columbian group cuts talks, claims young people massacred and other news briefs.

6-8-03 Monkeypox or "wag the monkey"? Reports of illness take media attention from Bush's missing WMDs.

6-8-03 TIA redux: still bad math "The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, which launched TIA, claims that the new TIA is designed 'to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack.' But the core of the new TIA is the same as the old: a database of public and private records to be analyzed for patterns indicative of terrorist activities."

6-8-03 Muslim charities sue "60 Minutes"  "Two Virginia-based Muslim charities are suing CBS for $80 million, claiming a "60 Minutes" report falsely linked them to Osama bin Laden."

6-7-03 Report: No proof Iraq had chemicals  "The Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main spy unit, stated in a report last fall that there was 'no definitive, reliable information' that Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical or biological weapons, casting the most serious doubts yet on the Bush administration's prewar contentions that Saddam Hussein was operating a widespread gas and germ warfare program." Another nail in the Bush credibility coffin!

6-7-03 Some analysts of Iraq trailers reject germ use American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. Yet another nail in the Bush credibility coffin!

6-7-03 Ex official: U.S. distorted evidence for war  "The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war." And yet…well, you get the picture.

6-7-03 Truth is out about detainees; Ashcroft should step down  " Despite the claim by Attorney General John Ashcroft in a Sept. 17, 2001, memo that the detainees were 'persons who participate in, or lend support to, terrorist activities,'' not one of them was charged with a terrorism-related crime."

6-7-03  Gains for Germany's Jews "Germany's parliament unanimously approved a landmark agreement Friday that puts the country's fast-growing Jewish community on a legal par with Germany's main Christian churches, which are Lutheran and Roman Catholic." …and other news briefs

6-6-03 Violence dulls Mideast peace hopes Just a day after the summit, Israeli forces on Thursday shot and killed two Palestinians in the West Bank, a sign the 32 months of violence Washington had hoped to end was unlikely to abate.

6-6-03 Hamas cuts off talks with Abbas The militant Hamas group ended talks with  Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas after he made what it deemed unacceptable commitments at a U.S.-led summit with Israel in Aqaba, Jordan.…and other news briefs

6-6-03 Cheney's CIA visits pressured us: analysts "Multiple visits to the CIA by the United States Vice-President, Dick Cheney, created an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments on Iraq fit with Bush Administration policy objectives, intelligence officials said."

6-6-03 Weapons dossier "sent back six times" Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith repeated his call for a full independent inquiry into whether intelligence documents on Iraq's weapons were changed on the orders of Downing Street to strengthen the case for military action.

6-6-03 Antivirus-killing virus threat upgraded  "Antivirus companies warned PC users on Thursday that a variant of the nine-month-old Bugbear virus has started spreading across the Internet, installing tools on infected computers that let intruders control the systems."

6-6-03 Top 100 corporate criminals of the decade

6-5-03 Fresh Israeli incursion Hours After Aqaba Summit   "Ten Palestinians were injured and several houses demolished in a fresh incursion by Israeli occupation forces on the West Bank and Gaza Strip Wednesday, June 4, hours after a U.S.-led summit in Jordan’s Aqaba promised better future for the Palestinians and an end to more than a century of occupation and daily aggressions."

6-5-03 Alleged "20th hijacker" may be tried before military tribunal Zacarias Moussaoui is an American by birth, yet the Bush administration seeks to strip him of his Constitutional rights.

6-5-03 Jim Traficant's letter from prison "I know why I was targeted: I was not afraid of the government, and I had learned too much!"

6-5-03 Dead in the Water BBC Documentary on the USS Liberty.

6-5-03 Examples of hate speech Gee, do you think the ADL has a dossier on these guys?

6-5-03 Phyllis Schlafly: Why is Bush perpetuating Clinton policies? "President Bush seems to have forgotten that his steadfast support of Second Amendment rights was the main reason he carried the Democratic states of Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia in November 2000.  If he had lost any one of those, Al Gore would be president."

6-5-03 A woman suicide bomber ambushed a bus near Chechnya, blowing it up and killing herself and at least 17 others, report Russian officials.  …and other news briefs.

6-4-03 The truth, the whole truth and nothing but… "This is potentially very serious," said one Congressional aide. "If it's shown we went to war because of intelligence that was 'cooked' by the administration, heads will have to roll, and not just little heads, big ones."

6-4-03 U.S. tribunals in Cuba reflect contempt for the Constitution "Why is the U.S. government holding the trials in Cuba rather than in the United States?…There’s one — and only one — reason: to avoid the constraints of our Constitution — the document that U.S. officials purportedly take an oath to support and defend."

6-4-03 Pat Buchanan: War party's saber rattling "Should we undertake war on Iran, there is surely no doubt as to the outcome. But few believe it would be a 'cake walk,' with only 125 U.S. dead and Iran's capital falling with only token resistance."

6-4-03 Snow Job "How is it possible for an economy to be 'strong' with people going broke at a record rate...and businesses unable to make any money?"

6-4-03 Charley Reese: Stop the foreign work program "These programs allow foreigners to take American jobs while millions of Americans are unemployed. The whole idea was a fraud to begin with."

6-3-03 Conspiracy theories thrive after Wellstone's plane crash "In Internet chat groups, political Web sites and the published reports of several leftist academics, conspiracy theories about Wellstone's death last October maintain a life of their own, particularly in northern Minnesota."

 

6-3-03 N. Korea warns of war amid South's shots "A South Korean patrol boat fired eight shots from machine guns into the sky to force a North Korean vessel back into their territory, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The North Korean boat turned back in five minutes, it said."

6-3-03 Iraqis Protest U.S. Presence, Women Body Searches "Thousands of Iraqi Muslims marched through Baghdad Tuesday, threatening violence unless U.S. troops withdraw from the country and venting their anger over body searches of women in the capital.…Some threatened to chop off the hands of any soldier who tried to search an Iraqi woman. Security searches are common at checkpoints in the city. 'It is unacceptable in Islam that a man searches the body of a woman. The American troops are doing that to our women,' cleric Ali Baghdadi said."
 

6-3-03 Report: CIA believes Saddam Hussein alive in Iraq  " In Internet chat groups, political Web sites and the published reports of several leftist academics, conspiracy theories about Wellstone's death last October maintain a life of their own, particularly in northern Minnesota."

6-3-03 Rudolph to be tried in '98 clinic attack "Sean Devereux, an Asheville lawyer assigned to represent Rudolph during his hearing here, described his client "as a reflective individual, and he has a lot to think about. He is not an uncaring person." Devereux interview

6-3-03 When eminent domain = theft "In many cases, the homes were considered blighted because they lacked three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and an attached two-car garage."

6-2-03 Appeals for mention of Christian heritage ignored in EU constitution

6-2-03 Privacy, free speech collide in hate speech case "A federal jury slammed the Anti-Defamation League, which publicly attacked the Quigleys, with a $10.5 million verdict for, among other things, defamation. The national, New York-based group, acting through its Denver office, falsely accused the Quigleys of being militant anti-Semites, invaded their privacy and broke federal wiretap law, the jury found."

6-2-03 Jewish settlers attack Palestinian farmers, seize crops Road map? We don't need no stinkin' road map!

6-2-03 Al-Qaeda operatives may be in the US, officials say No WMDs are anywhere to be found and war fervor is on the wane. The public is clamoring for explanations. What to do for a much needed diversion? No problem. Simply press the Terrorist hot button for instant fear.

6-2-03 War crime threat to Blair Ann Nichol's, who's son died in the Iraqi War, thinks Prime Minister Tony Blair should be prosecuted as a war criminal if no WMDs are found. "If they don't find any weapons of mass destruction then this war has been based on a pack of lies and they have put all of our sons and daughters lives on the line for a lie."

6-2-03 USS Liberty memorial made by survivors

6-1-03 United States, Russia warn Iran, North Korea President continues to insist Iraq did have prohibited arms.  (He's calling the the so-called "mobile biological laboratories" weapons, but Pentagon and US weapons experts say the labs don't qualify as WMDs.)

6-1-03 Federal Marriage Amendment introduced in House Freshman Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) says the purpose to "protect the sacred institution of marriage" from attacks upon the traditional family structure. …and other political updates. Rep. Musgrave's website

 

 6-1-03 Supreme Court yet to rule on race, "gay" sex, free speech cases

Postings June 16-30