News and Views you don't have to lose:

The AWOL Bush Dishonors Veterans on Veteran's Day but shortchanges them

Bush said on Veteran Day: "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and mislead the American people about why we went to war,"

“These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops, and to an enemy that is questioning America’s will,” (translated: give aid and comfort to the enemy—the constitutional definition of treason)

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges,"

“It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began.”

http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx1111

Shat US Senator Patty Murray, D-Washington, did last summer when it was revealed that the Department of Veterans Affairs did not have the resources to provide adequate care for soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Murray, who had voted against authorizing President Bush to go to war, offered an amendment to address the shortfall of more than $1 billion. But her move was blocked by Senate Republicans who claimed that the money was not needed.

Former US Senator Max Cleland said, "Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111205Z.shtml
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53% of Americans Support Impeachment

"By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003." This was a Zogby poll conducted from October 29 through Nov 2.

http://www.democrats.com/impeachpac-announced
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Commentary by Larry C. Johnson, former CIA officer and a former counterterrorism official

"Cheney's plea to permit CIA officers unrestricted interrogation methods would be the death of the CIA as a professional intelligence service and another stain on the reputation of the U.S....

...If you inflict enough pain on someone, they will give you information, but what they tell you may not be true. You will have to corroborate it, which will take time. And, unless you kill every suspect you brutalize, you will make enemies of them, their families, maybe their entire villages....

... And that's the point. We should never use our fear of being attacked as justification for dehumanizing ourselves or others....

... I am not advocating that terrorists be given room service at the Four Seasons. Some sleep deprivation - of the sort mothers of newborns all endure - and spartan living conditions are appropriate. What we must not do is use physical pain or the threat of drowning, as in "water-boarding," to gain information. Tough, relentless questioning is OK. Torture is not." unquote.

Comment: Former CIA officer Johnson's motivation for writing this commentary partly has to with defending the CIA. He writes, "Before the CIA gets all the blame for promoting the torture mentality..." He must not know about the history of the CIA's involvement in war crimes and drug trafficking. I am also talking about past administrations classifying information to cover-up embarrassing governmental actions because it may damage national security. The facts are that very damn few people within the CIA know all of what the CIA is doing or has done.

Furthermore, the is the privately funding rouge "Enterprise" or Octopus establish up by Bush Sr, Gen Secord, Oliver North, etc., and others former out-sourced, contract CIA players/operators, for example, former anti-Castro Cubans/drug traffickers. This private anti-communist, foreign policy, outfit has been funded by drug trafficking since JFK decided it was time to change things in June 1961. These cold war anti-socialist/anti-union extremist decided they needed to take things into their own hands. And on and on it goes.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111205E.shtml
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Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?

The house belongs to Mark Swanner, a forty-six-year-old C.I.A. officer who hasperformed interrogations and polygraph tests for theagency, which has employed him at least since thenineteen-nineties. (He is not a covert operative.) Twoyears ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, anIraqi prisoner in Swanner's custody, Manadelal-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head hadbeen covered with a plastic bag,! and he was shackledin a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his abilityto breathe; according to forensic pathologists who
have examined the case, he asphyxiated. In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi's death as a "homicide," meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.

According to witnesses, Jamadi was walking and speaking when he arrived at the prison. He was taken to a shower room for interrogation. Some forty-five minutes later, he was dead.

For most of the time that Jamadi was being interrogated at Abu Ghraib, there were only two people in the room with him. One was an Arabic-speaking translator for the C.I.A. working on a private contract, who has been identified in military-court papers only as "Clint C." He was given immunity against criminal prosecution in exchange for his coöperation. The other person was Mark Swanner.


After September 11th, the Justice Department fashioned secret legal guidelines that appear to indemnify C.I.A. officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations outside the United States...

John Radsan, a lawyer formerly in the C.I.A’s Office of General Counsel, says, "... this (case) could open a can of worms if a C.I.A. official in this case got indicted—a big fat can of worms about what set of rules apply to people like Jamadi. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: What has been authorized? Can the C.I.A. torture people? A case like this opens up Pandora’s box."

The government has brought charges against only one person affiliated with the agency: David Passaro, a low-level contract employee, not a full-fledged C.I.A. officer. In 2003, Passaro, while interrogating an Afghan prisoner, allegedly beat him with a flashlight so severely that he eventually died from his injuries.

In two other incidents of prisoner abuse, the Times reported last month, charges probably will not be brought against C.I.A. personnel: the 2003 case of an Iraqi prisoner who was forced head first into a sleeping bag, then beaten; and the 2002 abuse of an Afghan prisoner who froze to death after being stripped and chained to the floor of a concrete cell. (The C.I.A. supervisor involved in the latter case was subsequently promoted.)

Comment: During 1964, Soviet Col. Yuri Nosenko defected to the CIA after working as a spy for the CIA for two years. Nosenko was imprisoned in solitary confinement in an 8 X 8 foot cell, had his teeth knocked out, and was subject to hostile interrogation and drugged, all violation civil rights granted to anyone on US soil. The CIA imprisoned Nosenko for three years in the US to keep him from talking to the Warren Commission.

When Nosenko defected he said he had important information for the Warren Commission, but he was never allowed to speak to them. Nosenko told the CIA that Oswald was never associated with Soviet Intelligence and they suspected he was associated with American Intelligence. He provided the CIA with the names of KGB spies as proof of he (Nosenko) was a real defector. No one in the CIA has been tried for this crime. (Source: Plausible Denial by Mark Lane)

http://www.uruknet.com/?p=17552
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U.N. Blasts Practice of Outsourcing Torture

Inter Press Service: "Six countries -- the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan -- have been singled out for violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1110-01.htm
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Enemy Combatant

Comment: What is an "enemy"? Well, it is a soldier of an "enemy" country with which the USA is at WAR. What is a transnational criminal? I am stating that we can not make WAR against terrorism because it is not a country. Making WAR means going into a place and taking territory and establishing our law on the citizens of that land as a way of defending our country in accordance with internation law.


12 November 2005 -- Four of the five Democrats who supported the provision to strip detainees at Guantánamo of the legal tool the Supreme Court gave them to appeal their incarcerations said on Friday that they drew the line at allowing the prisoners unfettered access to United States courts to challenge the underlying rationale for their detention. The Senate approved the measure, an amendment to a military budget bill, 49 to 42.

A group of legal scholars, including Judith Resnick of Yale Law School, David Shapiro and Frank Michelman of Harvard Law School, and Burt Neuborne of New York University Law School, were circulating a letter on Friday urging senators to reject Mr. Graham's measure.
"The Graham amendment embodies an effort to alter fundamental precepts of our constitutional order," the letter said. "It consigns the protection of fundamental human liberties to unilateral executive determination."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111205G.shtml
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Able Danger Scandal Looming

Currently there are two committees in the Senate and four in the House investigating Able Danger and as of yesterday the Inspector general at the Pentagon is investigating as well. But still the key witnesses are effectively gagged by the DoD. In response, REP. CURT WELDON (R), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: has initiated a petition yesterday already signed by over 100 of his colleagues calling upon the DoD to permit testimony of Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, Captain Scott Phillpott, and the other witnesses in an open hearing.

Below are a few select quotes from Rep. Weldon's press conference on November 11, 2005.

There is a cover-up here. It is clear. It is unequivocal.

I have no other recourse but to ask for a criminal investigation.

The 9/11 Commission refers to Able Danger as historically insignificant.

It is my contention that there was a deliberate attempt to not have this story told to the American people.

There is no mention of Able Danger in the entire 9/11 Commission Report.

There's been nothing but denial and spin since the story broke in the first week of August. Denial and Spin.

This story is about intimidation, it's about harassment, it's about ruining the career of a professional military officer. Weldon says the defense intelligence agency is now trying to smear the reputation of Able Danger member Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, for speaking out about the scandal.

It's about denying the American people the basic facts of what happened to 3000 human beings and 17 sailors *. It is unacceptable. It's outrageous. It's un-American. It's undemocratic, it's not what our country stands for.

The 9/11 Commission missed the boat. They flubbed it. They have no credibility on this issue whatsoever.

* In addition to identifying the ringleaders of the 9/11 attacks, Congressman Weldon says Able Danger warned defense officials about terrorist activity in the Port of Aden in Yemen, two weeks before that bombing of the U.S. the bombs of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 killing 17 sailors.

------------------

SLADE GORTON, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: Well, Able Danger worked out very interesting. It didn't identify Mohammed Atta a year beforehand. Unfortunately, no one identified Mohammed Atta beforehand. Able Danger was simply irrelevant to our report and still is.


REP. WELDON Unbelievable. Slade Gorton has never talked to any principle involved with Able Danger. And how he can go off and profess to know something about something that he's never talked to anyone about, is beyond me.

Slade Gorton is into what the 9/11 commission is doing, Lou. It's called c, y, a. Cover their butts, pretend it didn't happen.

Source via Mark Nagel

http://911citizenswatch.org/modules.php
op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=721&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
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Pre-war CIA report questioned al Qaeda-Iraq ties

Nov. 11, 2005 -- CNN obtained a January 2003 CIA document/report raised doubts about a claim that al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons -- assertions that were repeated later on February 2003 by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in making the case for the invasion of Iraq.

The CIA report appears to support a recently declassified document that revealed the Defense Intelligence Agency also raising doubts that al Qaeda operatives to Iraq.

The document obtained by CNN was provided recently to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been pressing for an investigation into the ways in which the Bush administration used intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/iraq.intel/
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Ahmad Chalabi goes to Washington, DC

Nov. 8 -- Fresh off this past weekend's return trip to Tehran, neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi hits Washington Nov 8, 2005-- his first visit to the nation's capital in over two years.

Chalabi is currently under investigation, suspected of telling the Iranian government that America had broken the code it used for secret communications -- an offense the administration said could "get people killed." When this information came to light 17 months ago, Condi Rice promised a criminal investigation of the charges. But close to a year and a half later, the FBI has still not questioned Chalabi.

Comment: And wanted in Jordan for bank fraud. So now do we have Bush jr. aiding and abetting?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com
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U.N. Urges Cleanup of Iraq Waste Sites

November 10, 2005-- Newsday: "Thousands of contaminated industrial and military sites left over from wars in Iraq must urgently be cleaned up to stop them from further harming people's health and the environment, a U.N. agency said Thursday."

The sites include chemical and petrochemical factories, mines, military scrap-yards and sites polluted by depleted uranium. Almost all the sites have been repeatedly looted after they were destroyed or bombed during past wars.

Leaking heavy metal wastes contaminate the soil, ground and drinking water, UNEP said. Children from nearby dwellings often play on such sites and touch or even ingest toxic materials, the agency noted.

http://www.democrats.com/node/6810
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British Patriot Act Rejected

09 November 2005 London - In a political blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair, British lawmakers on Wednesday rejected tough anti-terrorism legislation that would have allowed suspects to be detained for 90 days without charge.
The House of Commons vote was the first major defeat of Blair's premiership and raises serious questions about his grip on power. Blair had staked his authority on the measure and doggedly refused to compromise.

Lawmakers, including 49 members of Blair's Labour Party, opted instead for a maximum detention period for terror suspects of 28 days without charge.


Lawmakers voted 322 to 291 against 90-day detentions and backed the 28-day period by 323-290 votes.
The result is a humiliating blow to Blair. For eight years, his Labour government commanded an unassailable lead in the Commons and easily swatted aside opposition to its legislation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110905Q.shtml
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Doomsday: The Final Months of the "Housing Bubble"
by Mike Whitney

July 27, 2005

"The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history.
Prepare for the economic pain when it pops."

-- The Economist


I sold my home three weeks ago anticipating what I believe will be "Economic
Armageddon" in the United States. It wasn't an easy thing to do. My wife and
I have lived in the same home for 25 years, raised both of our children
there, and owned the property outright without any loans or mortgage. The
house was paid for in "sweat-equity", that is, by wielding a shovel day in
and day out in my one-man landscape business. I don't say that for sympathy,
but to illustrate that we played by the rules, worked hard, paid our taxes,
and took advantage of the American dream of home ownership.

All that has changed.

I sold my home for one reason: George W. Bush. He and his protégé at the
Federal Reserve have submerged the country into a morass of "unsustainable"
debt, disrupted the nation's economic equilibrium and thrust us towards
fiscal disaster. They've also generated a humongous housing bubble through
their irresponsible and self-serving manipulation of interest rates.

The facts are astonishing.

The current housing bubble is "larger than the global stock market bubble in
the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's
stock market bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks
like the biggest bubble in history." (The Economist, June 16, 2005)

The banks have lowered the standards for home loans to such an extent that
the traditional loan of 20% down and a fixed interest rate is virtually a
thing of the past. Instead, those conservative practices have been replaced
with "creative financing" schemes that put the entire housing market at
risk.

Consider this: In 2004 "one-fourth of all home-buyers -- including 42% of
first-time buyers -- made no down payment." (New York Times, July 7, 2005)

No down payment?!

Sorry, but if a buyer can't come up with at least $5,000 dollars for a down
payment, he shouldn't qualify for a home loan.

Equally troubling is the fact that "nearly one third of all new mortgages
this year call for interest-only payments (in California, it's almost half)"
(NY Times) This tells us that a large number of new buyers can barely make
their payments, but are gambling that their property value will go up enough
to justify their investment. This is "equity roulette," a shell game that
anticipates that salaries will go up while interest rates stay low.

Is that a reasonable judgment?

No, Greenspan has said that he will continue to ratchet up interest rates to
head off inflation. This means that an economic slowdown is a near
certainty. Remember, "class-warrior" Alan Greenspan lowered the prime rate
to a ridiculously low 1% in 2002 to keep the economy humming along while
$300 billion was sluiced into Bush's "preemptive" war in Iraq and while the
tax cuts were siphoning the last borrowed farthing out of the public
coffers. The Bush tax cuts transferred an average of $400 billion dollars
per year into the pockets of America's plutocrats. Now, the country is flat
broke and Greenspan will have to "incrementally" raise rates to stabilize
the sagging dollar. This means a sluggish economy for most of us and
doomsday for over-extended homeowners.

Greenspan assumed he could carry out his plan without too much unnecessary
carnage. Unfortunately, gluttonous mortgage lenders have lowered long-term
loans while the prime rate continues to go up. The banks, it seems, are
addicted to the "cash cow" of shaky lending and are providing even riskier
loans to new applicants. This has upset the Fed master's strategy for a
"soft landing", and Greenspan has begun feverishly issuing warnings about an
inevitable "adjustment" when the market bogs down. The bottom line is that
the housing bubble is getting bigger by the day and increasing the potential
for catastrophe.

The current problem is compounded by the dramatic surge of speculation in
the housing market. As The Economist says, "A study by the National
Association of Realtors (NAR) found that 23% of all American houses bought
in 2004 were for investment, not owner-occupation. Another 13% were bought
as second homes. Investors are prepared to buy houses they will rent out at
a loss; just because they think prices will keep rising -- the very
definition of a financial bubble."

What will happen to these "speculative" buyers when the market "flattens
out" or the economy takes a sudden dip?

And, what will happen to the US economy when the jobs that depend on new
home sales vanish overnight?

"Over the past four years, consumer spending and residential construction
have together accounted for 90% of the total growth in GDP. And over
two-fifths of all private sector jobs created since 2001 have been in
housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage
broking." (The Economist)

"Two out of every five" private sector jobs are now entirely dependent on an
industry that is built on pure quicksand.

So, why would banks foolishly loan money to people who can't even scrap
together a few thousand dollars for a down payment or who can scarcely meet
their "interest-only" obligations?

The reason is simple: because they are not the ones taking the risk.
Mortgage loans are acquired by investment banks and chopped up into various
securities where they are sold in mutual funds, hedge funds and pension
funds, etc. To some extent, this takes the lenders off the hook, but it also
means that the shock to the system will be much more widespread when the day
of reckoning finally arrives. If we encounter a major glitch in the economy
the shock waves will be felt throughout the world. "Investors now hold $4.6
trillion in mortgage backed securities. That's more than the outstanding
value of the US Treasuries." (NY Times) Think about it.

Shaky lending, interest-only loans, no down payments, a US government that
is $8 trillion in debt due to Washington's profligate spending, and a
"ticking-time bomb" of adjustable-rate mortgages that will reset within
three years -- the table is set for a disaster of Biblical proportions. If
we hit a bump in the economic road ahead (rising gas prices? recession?) the
"Land of the Free" will be knee deep in bankruptcies and foreclosures. We'll
all be fighting for a soft spot under the freeway onramp.

The fatuous Greenspan believes that all this can be avoided by regulating
the money supply.

He's dead wrong, and I bet my house on it.

Note, the current dilemma could have been avoided if Greenspan had
incrementally raised rates as the bubble began to appear. Instead he lowered
rates to facilitate Bush's war in Iraq. It was purely a political decision
that "postponed" the economic pain of the conflict and allowed the Bush
administration to shift the cost of the war onto future generations.

Consider, also, how Greenspan paved the way for the budget-busting tax cuts
(which he enthusiastically approved) and how they have increased America's
debt by $3 trillion. This is real money that American workers will
eventually have to pay back in the form of taxes and a higher cost of
living. This "class loyalty" is strikingly at odds with his philosophy as a
young man when he said, "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the
confiscation of wealth."

So it is. And the $3 trillion dollars that evaporated on Greenspan's watch
was in fact stolen from the American people while the Fed chief concealed
the crime behind the smokescreen of low-interest rates. In the final
analysis, Greenspan will be seen as a greater traitor than Bush.

www.dissidentvoice.org
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The Cross on Mount Soledad

September 3, 2005 -- SAN DIEGO – Supporters of the campaign to save the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial were shocked and dismayed after Judge Patricia Cowett issued a temporary restraining order barring the City of San Diego from transferring the site of the historic monument to the federal government as approved by an overwhelming 75% supermajority who voted “Yes” on Proposition A in the July special election.

Judge Cowett ruled that “the transfer is again an unconstitutional preference of the Christian religion to the exclusion of other religions and non-religious beliefs,” in violation of the state constitution. Cowett also ruled that the city's attempt to transfer the land to the federal government without compensation “for the purpose of saving the cross is also an unconstitutional aid to the Christian religion.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050903/news_1n3soledad.html
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All -- not some -- but all the voting machine
errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor
of Bush or Republican candidates.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/
ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=
News&file=article&sid=950

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm



Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again
always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically
demonstrated and experts are recommending further
investigation.

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/
ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/
policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/

Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global
Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even
though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony
theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a
consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for
programming the optical scanning software now used in
most of the United States.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of
planting back doors in his software and using a "high
degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a
period of 2 years.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

80% of all votes in America are counted by only
two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landeshtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold


There is no federal agency with regulatory
authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine
industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landeshtml
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose
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Kenneth R. Brown, professor of biology at Brown University said, "Scientific theories are not hunches. When we say 'theory,' we mean a strong, overarching explanation that ties together many facts and enables us to make testable predictions."