Tuesday, March 21, 2006

When Will America Tame the World's Most Powerful Brat?

Let us pretend we are Rummy and we can answer our own questions.

What happens if a spoiled brat gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar? The brat lies...How many times will they lie to do what they want? As many lies as it takes.

How long will they continue to lie? Until someone stops them...

Prissy and poster Nancy have a new list of lies coming up this week. More than 300 of them...

Protest in Cleveland, Ohio Sunday (thanks to a reader for this picture)

Hot Links

What’s Become of Americans? By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Wall Street Journal Editor, Ass't to Secretary of the Treasurer under Ronald Reagan. Dr. Roberts is indeed a statesman our forefathers would be proud of. He actually cares about American values and freedom. Being a wealthy Republican white guy, he could have just shut-up and enjoyed the tax cuts...but he didn't! He is an American hero, for sure.

Readers tell me that Americans don’t live here any more. They ask what responsible American citizenry would put up with the trashing of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers, with wars based on deception, and with pathological liars in control of their government? One reader recently wrote that he believes that "no element of the U.S. government has been left untainted" by the lies and manipulations that have driven away accountability. So-called leaders, he wrote, "talk a great story of American pride and patriotism," but in their hands patriotism is merely a device for "cynical manipulation and fraud."

The Bush regime acknowledges that 30,000 Iraqi civilians, largely women and children, have been killed as a result of Bush’s invasion. Others who have looked at civilian casualties with greater attention have come up with numbers three to six times as large. The Johns Hopkins study accounted for 98,000 civilian deaths. Andrew Cockburn, using more sophisticated statistical analysis, concluded that 180,000 Iraqis died as a result of Bush’s invasion. The former prime minister Iyad Allawi says that Iraqi sectarian violence alone is claiming 50–60 deaths per day, or 18,000–22,000 annually, a figure that could quickly worsen.

Captured Iraqi Documents Look Strangely Familiar

But the documents released by the DNI are a decidedly mixed bag.

Illustrating their eclectic nature, one of the captured Iraqi documents (pdf) is a print-out of an article from the Federation of American Scientists web site.

"This file contains document relevant to the Mukhabarat or Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), it explains the structure of the IIS," according to the DNI synopsis of the document (record number CMPC-2003-006430).

In fact, the document was written in 1997 by John Pike (then at FAS, now at GlobalSecurity.org), except for an added cover page which is handwritten in Arabic.

Caught them again-CYA...Administration to release prewar Iraq documents (But they aren't new-pp)

The news was greeted with enthusiasm by U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who has strongly urged the administration to release the material.

He suggested some of the information could shed light on prewar U.S. intelligence reports that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The WMD allegation provided President George W. Bush with a central justification for the war in Iraq. But no such weapons have been found, and the Iraq Survey Group discovered no new evidence of WMD in its review of the prewar material.

"With so many questions about prewar Iraq unanswered, I'm glad to see there is finally the sense of urgency to get this done," Hoekstra said in a statement.

Gaza on brink of humanitarian crisis, says UN

Gaza City - The Gaza Strip is dangerously short of basic foodstuffs and is facing a looming humanitarian crisis as a result of the continued closure of the main trade crossing with Israel, the United Nations warned on Sunday.

John Ging, the Gaza director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said his organisation had now run out of food supplies to distribute to the most impoverished families because the central Karni border crossing remains closed.

"Every day is taking us closer to a humanitarian crisis," Ging told reporters.

"Flour and wheat are not the only products in short supply. There is a shortage of sugar, oil and many of the other basic commodities.

Wait a minute...this is an occupied area. Aren't the occupiers supposed to feed and secure those they occupy? Oh my, what was Prissy thinking...

From the BBC Iraq war veteran wins US primary

In addition to Ms Duckworth, they have recruited a number of other Iraq veterans for election races across the US.

They include army reservist Justin Behrens (running in Pennsylvania), Andrew Duck (Maryland) who served as an army intelligence officer, Marine reservist Tim Dunn (North Carolina) Army reservist David Harris (Texas) and former Marine officer Andrew Horne (Kentucky).

Also running are Bronze Star winner Patrick Murphy (Pennsylvania), Joseph Sestak Jr (Pennsylvania) a Navy veteran, and Tim Walz (Minnesota) who served in Italy in support of the Afghan mission.

Van Taylor - a marine reservist who participated in the operation to rescue Pte Jessica Lynch - is running for the Republican ticket in a Texas district.

All Democrats- but one? Readers, Prissy is going to assume you know the Jessica Lynch rescue was a falsely staged event to make good press fodder for Dubya's war. Ms. Lynch has spoken on this subject many times. So who can be impressed Van Taylor is running on anything, except more of the same...

International Herald Tribune 3-22-06 Bush sees no Iraq pullout before '09

WASHINGTON At a time of mounting public uncertainty about Iraq, President George W. Bush insisted at a news conference Tuesday that the violence there had not evolved into a civil war, but he acknowledged that the war would not end during his tenure and that a decision on complete American troop withdrawal would fall to "future presidents."

He also expressed full confidence in his top advisers, despite calls even from senior Republicans for an injection of fresh blood to help deal with surprises in Bush's second term that have undermined his standing in opinion polls and sapped his political capital. But the president did not rule out changes in the White House.

Bush has repeatedly refused to set any timetable for a complete pullout, saying that to do so would encourage insurgents. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - whose work Bush defended Tuesday - has said that wars on insurgencies often last a dozen years or more.

The Washington Post tells the truth (sort of)A Punchy President Meets the Press

He identified Terry Hunt, the Associated Press's veteran White House correspondent, as the generic "AP Person." He accused New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller of sleeping through his speech Monday in Cleveland. After USA Today's David Jackson interrupted a Bush non-answer, the president queried: "Now, what is your follow-up yell?"

And he made a show of reading from his stage directions. Rambling his way through a question about interest rates, Bush paused to confess, "I'm kind of stalling for time here." Checking his seating chart before calling on a questioner, he confided, "They've told me what to say." After announcing that "there's going to be a P-5," the president translated his own jargon: "That's diplomatic sloganeering."

Whether it's the strain of the office, the weight of international crises, or simply his old Delta Kappa Epsilon roots showing, Bush has been President Punchy of late. In Cleveland on Monday, he said there were 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions about Iraq, then called on an unsuspecting Dick Keil, a Bloomberg News reporter. "I think 16 -- is that right, Stretch, 16?" Bush inquired, using the nickname he assigned Keil. "I like to, like, reverse roles sometimes," the president explained.

Truthout Woodward's Plame Leak Deep Throat By Jason Leopold

He is referred to as "official one" and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

The identity of this official is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, his name, government status, and the substance of his conversation with Woodward about the undercover officer are under a protective seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

But Woodward tape-recorded the interview he had with "official one." Woodward gave a copy of the tape and a transcript to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

And some say Steven Hadley spilled the beans, others say Richard Armitage. The Scooter Libby camp is the one saying Armitage, Sec. Colin Powells former advisor. Prissy puts her money on Hadley.

More from Truthout...One thing is for sure, neither Hadley nor Armitage are commenting, not even to issue a denial. Last week, Armitage's assistant at his lobbying firm, Armitage International, said last week that Armitage would comment on the "rumors" once Fitzgerald completed his investigation. Hadley's spokesman would not confirm or deny anything related to the National Security Adviser's involvement in the leak.

Dearest Readers, remember this? Prissy told you this Sunday, October 23, 2005. You already know Prissy isn't too patient about these things, but it is finally coming around. From the Pen: Posted on The Prissy Patriot Tis the Season For Indictments

For those who are still trying to get their minds around the possible indictment of Rove and Libby, now a near certainty, consider that no one in the Bush camp is capable of telling the truth under any circumstances. As for Bush himself, one of his Harvard Business School professors said that Dubya was "famous" in his class for being a "pathological" liar. Bush has known all along who the leakers were, and he's been lying all along. Fitzgerald interviewed Bush for over an hour, and it's unlikely that he told the truth in any respect. Bad move, George. Fitzie don't play that.

But wait, you say; that interview wasn't under oath. Try telling that to Martha Stewart who just got out of prison from her conviction for deceiving an investigator. Likewise with Dick Cheney. Even if two of his bag men had not cut deals with Fitzgerald already. And as for those who did testify untruthfully to the grand jury under oath, ask Li'l Kim what heinous lie she told to keep her in federal prison for a year. All she did was deny that she knew somebody that she did, in fact, know.

So let's put it together. We have a president who seems unable to tell the truth. We have an independent prosecutor of immaculate integrity who will not tolerate a lie. The INESCAPABLE conclusion is that Bush will be indicted, along with each and every member of his administration who participated in this. There has been talk on the web of 22 indictments. Rove and Libby -- (that's two), add two for Hannah and Wurmser (already cooperating but not given immunity), plus Bush and Cheney -- that gets us up to six . . . why don't we just say conservatively for the purposes of the pool . . . that 12 people will be indicted.

Besides perjury (and false statements), Fitzgerald has conspiracy and obstruction of justice to pick from as well, and those are just a couple of the technical crimes. Remember that he has the authority to pursue this investigation wherever it leads, and he is driven to do just that. He was born for this. Among other things, he requested from the Italian authorities the files on the forging of the Niger documents themselves. That was what Joe Wilson's trip was all about. And why they were so compelled to "out" his wife in the first place in their clumsy attempt to discredit him. What do you think the chances are that the most zealous prosecutor they could have appointed won't get to the bottom of that one, too? He may even expose what really happened on 9/11. Wouldn't that be the "coup de grace"?

Quotes of the Day

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.--Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804 - 1881), Sybil, 1845

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.--Enrico Fermi, Manhattan Project Scientist (1901 - 1954)

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.--Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) Asimov was a Russian-born American Jewish author and biochemist

He who will not economize will have to agonize.--Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)