War's Cost Brings Democratic Anger
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by symbolman

The Pentagon's new estimate that military costs for Iraq would average $3.9 billion monthly for the first nine months of this year produced surprise and anger today among Congressional Democrats, who said the amount was not only more than they had been told, but far too large given the budget deficit.

The most pointed critique came from Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who pressed Mr. Rumsfeld during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday to produce the best estimate of military costs for Iraq. Mr. Byrd said his warnings about the failure to assemble an international coalition before the war had proved true, as American lives are lost in the postwar period and as allies continue to be reluctant to volunteer large numbers of troops to replace battle-weary Americans.

"This administration should think hard about whether we have the money to single-handedly pay for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq," he said. "At a time when the United States is running record-breaking deficits of $400 billion each year, the administration has not even included these $58 billion in occupation costs in its budget. In sharp contrast to the 1991 Persian Gulf war, where our allies contributed $54 billion of the $61 billion cost of that war, the American taxpayer is virtually alone in bearing the burden for the staggering cost of this most recent war with Iraq.">> More

Byrd is a national treasure - BUT - perhaps if the Democrats hadn't VOTED for this "war" (INVASION) we wouldn't be in this predicament. The Democrats and the Media are just as culpable as Bush and Co for this mess. Thousands have died over all this Lip Service. Support the Troops - Bring them HOME and Impeach BUSH & Cheney.

Sharon shuns BBC over documentary
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by vgdesign

By Chris McGreal in Jerusalem, The Guardian

Ariel Sharon has barred the BBC from his meeting with the British press during a visit to London next week amid accusations that the corporation made false allegations against Israel in a report on weapons of mass destruction.

The bar follows a decision made by Mr Sharon's office a fortnight ago to "withdraw cooperation" from the BBC in protest at a documentary that looked at the lack of international scrutiny of Israel's nuclear and biological weapons programmes and the double standard compared with Iraq.

Although the programme, Israel's Secret Weapon, was broadcast in Britain in March, it was a trailer on BBC World rather than the content that provoked Israeli anger. It showed pictures of the nuclear reactor at Dimona and the biological institute in Nes Tziona as a narrator asked: "Which country in the Middle East has not declared the nuclear and biological weapons in its possession?" >>More

Fox News Fauxs Up
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by vgdesign

Naked City by LEE NICHOLS, The Austin Chronicle

Common sense would have said to ignore it, and it would die a quiet death. But common sense, lawyers, and Fox News obviously don't mix.

At several anti-war protests this year, much ire was vented toward Fox News (aka the media wing of the Republican Party), spawning the "Faux News" T-shirts (see photo) that popped up, first here in Austin and then around the nation. The T-shirts parody both Fox News' logo and its laughable "We Report, You Decide" motto as "We Distort, You Comply." A companion T-shirt featured an Aryan boy wearing a Nazi Brown Shirt uniform with the motto "O'Reilly Youth," referring to Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly.

Fox found this none too funny, and last month sent a cease-and-desist order to the T-shirt's Austin creators, Richard Luckett, Brad First, and Rick Elms (doing business as Agitproperties). Fox's cease-and-desist letter not only accuses Agitproperties of copyright infringement, but also declares that the O'Reilly youth T "shows incredibly poor taste on your part, [and] is highly offensive." >>More

Jim Lobe: Digging for dirt
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by vgdesign

"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit [of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD]. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9-11." - Donald Rumsfeld

"As of March, 2003, Iraq posed no major military threat to the United States." - Gregory Thielmann

The administration of President George W Bush is finding itself increasingly beleaguered by growing charges by retired intelligence and foreign service officers that administration hawks exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in order to press Washington into war.

The White House was forced to admit earlier this week that Bush's assertion during his State of the Union address in late January regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged attempts to buy uranium in Africa for a supposed nuclear arms program was based on flawed intelligence and should have been omitted from the speech.

But a growing number of lawmakers and independent analysts are suggesting that the uranium report - which was actually based on crudely forged documents supposedly provided by an Italian intelligence agency - may be just the tip of the iceberg of an effort by neo-conservative and right-wing hawks centered primarily in the Pentagon and around Vice President Dick Cheney to skew the intelligence to make their case for war. >>More

It's Time for the Truth
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by vgdesign

DEAN SAYS THOSE IN ADMINISTRATION WHO MISLED NATION SHOULD RESIGN

Manchester, NH -- Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean issued the following statement today:

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's statement yesterday - that he only found out that the Niger documents were forgeries -- "within recent days" was stunning.

"What is now clear is that there are those in this administration that misled the President, misled the nation, and misled the world in making the case for the war in Iraq."

"They know who they are. And they should resign today." >>More

Bush LIED - Americans DIED
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2003 by symbolman

Robert C. Byrd: Letter to Rumsfeld Expressing Concerns of Guard Families
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:

I have been contacted by a number of my constituents about the extended deployments of National Guard and Reserve units from West Virginia. I write to express my serious concern about the content of these reports.

I have received letters, e-mails, and phone calls from the families of those who serve in the 459th Engineer Company, the 157th Military Police Company, the 1092nd Engineer Battalion, the 363rd Military Police Company, the 233rd Quartermaster Company, and various members of the Individual Ready Reserve.

All of the letters I have received express deep frustration with the length of deployment of the National Guard and Reserve units.
...
Along with the frustration about the length of deployments for members of the reserve component, several constituents have reported that their units in Iraq are without a useful or well-defined mission. Units have complained of daily tasks that are either wasteful or insufficient to keep the troops occupied. Others report that they never received any training for potentially dangerous missions, such as hauling Iraqi ammunition.

Another e-mail, whose author says that she is writing on behalf of a military police company, stated her point succinctly. She wrote: "They want me to emphasize that they did indeed join the military to serve their country. However, they were told that they have no mission and do not want to be sent to Iraq merely for someone's political gain. They really just want to know when they are coming home."

I have also received several reports of rationing of basic supplies and services. At a family support meeting, families were told that one unit had limited supplies of food and water rations of just 20 ounces per day. Soldiers with another National Guard unit have reported through their families that they are only allowed one 10-minute phone call home every several weeks.

In addition to these reports, the wife of one soldier has reported that, during a family readiness meeting, she was warned not to contact her representatives in Congress to seek redress of these legitimate grievances because her husband's commanding officer might take away from his troops telephone use and other privileges. >>More

President Top Gun: Affirmatively Missing in Action
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Greg Palast, NEW WEBLOG!

Forty-eight hours before ordering our troops into Iraq, our President told us, “There’s no certainty in war but the certainty of sacrifice.” For most of us, yes, but not, however, if your name is ‘Bush.’

According to discomforting information my BBC investigative team reported last week. In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the ‘champagne’ unit of the Texas Air National Guard. There, Top Gun fighter pilot George W was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air attack. >>More

Cheney Task Force Loses Place To Hide
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Dan Ackman, Forbes

In the battle over the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, the Bush Administration has been trying every defense except one: executive privilege. But it has been dancing around it. Yesterday, the administration lost a preliminary battle to keep task force records secret, though the court invited the vice president to test the one privilege he has refused to invoke.

The administration formed the National Energy Policy Development Group, as the task force is known, shortly after taking power and assigned it the job of developing energy policy. Cabinet secretaries, agency heads and senior presidential aides were members. A lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, later joined by the Sierra Club, alleged that private executives and lobbyists were also invited to consult.

The list of nongovernmental advisors allegedly included Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute; Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a lobbyist; Haley Barbour, a former Bush campaign advisor and a lobbyist for Southern Company; and, most ominously, Kenneth Lay, former chairman of Enron. >>More

Impeach CHENEY First!

Dixie Chicks' radio ban on Senate panel hit list
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Brooks Boliek, The Hollywood Reporter

They may have been thousands of miles away, but the members of Dixie Chicks were the stars of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday examining the effects of consolidation in the radio industry.

Senators used the band as an example of what can go wrong when a single media company controls hundreds of stations across the United States.

The country group was banned from radio stations owned by Cumulus Media Inc. and Cox Communications after lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience at a March concert in London that the band was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

While Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he disagreed with Maines' sentiment, the fact that giant radio groups could ban a group's music because of a political statement was an "incredible, incredible act" that serves as an example of how radio industry consolidation is causing the "erosion of the First Amendment." >>More

White House 'lied about Saddam threat'
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian

A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
The claims came as the Bush administration was fighting to shore up its credibility among a series of anonymous government leaks over its distortion of US intelligence to manufacture a case against Saddam.

This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.

Mr Thielmannn said yesterday: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq."

He conceded that part of the problem lay with US intelligence, but added: "Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided." >>More

Scientist named as BBC contact
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

New twist in row over source for story on Iraq's banned weapons
By Richard Norton-Taylor and Matt Wells, Media Guardian

A former senior UN weapons inspector was named yesterday as the person said by the Ministry of Defence to have had an "unauthorised" meeting with Andrew Gilligan, the BBC journalist at the centre of the row over Iraq's banned weapons programme.

David Kelly, an adviser to the government and an expert in biological warfare, was the individual who had admitted discussing the government's September dossier with Gilligan, the MoD said.

Dr Kelly is a renowned microbiologist and was an adviser to the Foreign Office before moving to the MoD. He spent seven years as an Unscom inspector in the 1990s, visiting Iraq on 37 occasions.
...
It also emerged last night that the parliamentary body chosen by Mr Blair to review the government's case about the threat posed by Iraq's banned weapons programme will not be given access to the full intelligence behind the government's claims. >>More

Websites DUPED by fake story - retracted here
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by symbolman

White House admits Bush lied about Iraqi nukes

---Not Verified--- An intelligence consultant who was present at two White House briefings where the uranium report was discussed confirmed that the President was told the intelligence was questionable and that his national security advisors urged him not to include the claim in his State of the Union address.---Not Verified---


>> Retraction

Along with a few other sites TBTM got duped by this website (who claimes they were duped) and will no longer post anything from them - you'll find their retraction on their main page. We won't be reading or posting from it anymore.

One more thing, please DO NOT think the Wilson story is fraudulent because of the scam Wilkinson story.

U.S. Election Integrity Flaw Discovered At Diebold
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by symbolman

Walk right in, sit right down. Replace vote-counting files with your own.

Recently, technicians and programmers for Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no-paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw.

"Technology transfer for updates!" This is among the benefits in the Diebold PowerPoint sales presentation given to the State of Georgia. Easy updating -- too easy, apparently.

The files on the Diebold FTP server are sensitive. If you want to tamper with election results, you either want to change the program or change the data file. That is why the program files, which control how the votes are tabulated, and the data files, which contain the actual vote count, should not be available for swapping back and forth like recipes on a cookbook site.

In "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century," I am examining the integrity of current electronic voting systems, and in connection with this I installed a Whistleblowers page at the Black Box Voting web site ( http://www.blackboxvoting.com/whistle.html). We've been getting about four new reports a day, and some of them are quite serious. Like this:

Diebold Election Systems, which builds the AccuVote machines, both optical scan and touch-screen, has been parking files on an unprotected public Internet location. Thousands of files were available: election files, hardware and software specifications, program files, voting program patches.>> More

A MUST READ! THIS is how they are going to steal the elections - some think that the last Senate election was just a test - this is HUGE and Computer CODE is not "faked" - this is for real folks. Read this and head over to Bev Harris's site for the TRUTH and how to fight for True Democracy!

Tell Tucker Carlson to start boiling his shoes and tie.
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by symbolman

Hillary Clinton's Book Sales Top 1 Million

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) has sold more than 1 million copies of her memoir "Living History," in almost exactly a month, her publisher announced Wednesday.

"What has been particularly exciting is the speed with which it has achieved such unprecedented sales levels," Simon & Schuster executive Carolyn Reidy said in a statement.

The company ordered 1 million copies for the first printing, an extraordinarily high number for a nonfiction book.

"Living History" hit stores June 9 amid a wave of publicity and promotional appearances by the former first lady.>> More

Take Back the Media is holding "Ducker" Carlson responsible for his statement made quite a few times that he will "Eat his shoes and his tie" if Hillary sells a Million copies of her book. Well - What are you gonna do Homeboy? Watch him start dodging and whining now. It's because like all right wingers he only believes in personal responsibility if it's for his benefit. EAT YOUR SHOES AND TIE OR RESIGN CARLSON.

Ted Rall: 'Whether, not who, is the question about the 2004 election'
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

He has canceled elections in Iraq. He will probably cancel them in Afghanistan. Will George W. Bush put the kibosh on elections in the United States next year?

Frightened by Bush's rapidly accruing personal power and the Democrats' inability and/or unwillingness to stand up to him, panicked lefties worry that he might use the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to declare a state of emergency, suspend civil liberties and jail political opponents.

People who have spoken out against Bush are talking exit strategy--not Alec Baldwin style, just to make a statement, but fleeing the U.S. in order to save their skins. "Do you or your spouse have a European-born parent?" is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain dual nationality and a European Union passport that would allow you to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown.

To these people, whether or not the 2004 elections actually take place as scheduled is the ultimate test for American democracy. >>More

Tim Rutten: A mighty rhetorical change
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

There is a lingering question about the Savage affair. He may be off TV, but why have he and his ilk — home-grown rhetorical terrorists — been allowed to find a secure haven in the electronic Afghanistan of talk radio?

Ethnic stereotypes and exaggerated dialect were staples of late 19th century American satire, particularly among progressive writers.

So, in 1901, when columnist Finley Peter Dunne — a fervent anti-imperialist — came to criticize Supreme Court decisions sanctioning the United States' acquisition of territorial spoils from the very popular war against Spain, his redoubtable Archery Road saloonkeeper, Mr. Dooley, told his favorite foil, Hinnissy:

"No matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not the' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns."

That's still true, but the country also follows the court. That's part of the reason the shambling managers of MSNBC, the faltering cable-news network, so quickly fired talk-show host Michael Savage after a homophobic outburst on his Saturday program.
...
"The decision to cancel the show was not difficult," MSNBC Vice President Jeremy Gaines has said. >>More

Michael Wolff:  En Guardian! The British are coming—again
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

The launch of a U.S. edition of the unabashedly liberal Guardian may be just what the Bush-whacked U.S. press needs.

It was a daylong conference about the media’s role in the Iraq war, sponsored by the Guardian newspaper and held in its archive center—a newly refurbished building with café—across the street from the Guardian’s main building on Farringdon Road in London.

Everything about the conference seemed foreign—not just the self-critical nature of the conversation, but the bad air-conditioning and stifling temperature of the room. I tried to imagine such an event in New York or Washington—picking at the fresh scab of how we had covered the war—and what news organization would sponsor it. Of course, the real subject here—which so much of the U.S. media had closed ranks around—was the U.S. itself. That most massive of Bigfoots.

Indeed, more and more, the foreign media had a distinct journalistic advantage over the U.S. media: Foreigners could go after the central story and openly dispute the Bush-administration message, whereas U.S. journalists were tied to the party line by a complicated emotional, social, political, and corporate etiquette. >>More

Laureate faces silence of the iambs
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2003 by vgdesign

By Gary Younge in New York, The Guardian

New Jersey's legislature has voted to abolish the position of state poet laureate after the governor discovered that he could not sack the current holder of the post.

Amiri Baraka, who was appointed by the Democrat state governor, James McGreevey, has attracted criticism since reading his poem Somebody Blew Up America  at a festival last year.

The poem, a series of rhetorical questions, is primarily a diatribe against American racism and imperialism, asking "Who stole Puerto Rico", "Who killed the most Jews" and "Who keep the Irish a colony".
...
The poem also asks: "Who know why five Israelis was filming the explosion /And cracking they sides at the notion?" >>More