The terrorist watch list, which makes air travel extremely difficult for people on the list, is now made up of more than 1 million Americans. The FBI, which manages the list, says that people are only added to the list when "there is a reasonable suspicion to believe the individual is involved in terrorism."
Thus, according to our government 1 out of every 300 Americans can reasonably be suspected of being involved in terrorism. Which means that every time one attends a Redskins football game this year at FedEx Field, you can reasonably suspect that 303 fans in the 91,000 seat stadium are involved in terrorism.
Pakistan intelligence officials yesterday confirmed a key al-Qaeda expert on chemical and biological weapons was killed in an attack by a CIA-operated unpiloted drone, late on Sunday.
ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week's US missile attack in eastern Pakistan.
Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of four known major al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit in the village of Damadola early last Friday morning.
The first video is the ABC News investigative report, “The Principals”, which tells the story of how the highest ranking Bush admin officials - Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell (not such a good guy after all), Rice and Cheney - had meetings in the White House where they literally choreographed how prisoners would be tortured.
The second video is Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviewing constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley who was fairly clear about what all of this means:
“Well this is one meeting of principal, they are not talking about the Ali kind. And what you have is a bunch of people talking about something that is a crime for those of us that look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is. This is like meeting at The Bada Bing Club. These people are sitting around, regularly talking about something defined as a crime. And you even have John Ashcroft standing up and saying, ”Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at the White House“. Obviously that is quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far, it was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved at the very highest level. And it goes right to the President's desk.
And it's notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this and they found those lawyers in people like Jay Bybee and John Yoo and those people were handsomely rewarded. In Bybee's case he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.”
All of which makes Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Cheney - WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS! WAR CRIMINALS!
It's officially time to replace the American mantra of “innocent until proven guilty” with “guilty once proven innocent”. According to Democracy Now, two more men remain in prison despite being found innocent of terrorist related crimes by a jury of their peers. Esteemed GWU law professor Jonathan Turley makes clear what is going on with one of the prisoners mentioned in the video clip:
“The mistreatment of Dr. Al-Arian remains an international symbol of how the Bush Administration has discarded fundamental principles of fairness in a blind pursuit of retribution against this political activist.”
I have previously posted repeatedly about former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman who also remains behind bars as a political prisoner in America:
A Stanford law professor on the Jose Padilla case in the Washington Post:
As court filings indicate, Padilla was allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme temperatures. Worse, he was held without human contact, without a clock or even natural light -- with no way to know how quickly or slowly time was passing. When he was removed from his cell to visit a dentist, goggles and earmuffs were placed on him. Psychologists have long reported that extreme sensory deprivation is one of the quickest ways to drive people mad -- and make them willing to confess to anything.
The case challenging the constitutionality of Padilla's detention was in the federal courts for several years. It reached the Supreme Court in 2004, at which point the government finally allowed him to speak to a lawyer. But the high court did not review the merits; instead, it ruled on a technicality that the case should have been brought in South Carolina, not New York. Litigation continued and nearly reached the Supreme Court again in late 2005. By then, the administration had begun soft-pedaling the “dirty bomb” story, which it described as “loose talk” rather than an imminent plot. It put forward a new theory: Padilla was planning to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas. The government also argued that he could be detained as an “enemy combatant” because, it alleged, he had been in Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing campaign in late 2001.
Two business days before the government's brief was due in the Supreme Court, the administration switched tactics again. Fearful that the court would rule that a U.S. citizen arrested in the United States could not constitutionally be detained forever without criminal trial, the government announced that Padilla would be tried in a federal court in Miami. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit noted, the government's actions made it appear that it was trying to evade Supreme Court review.
The charges brought in Miami contained none of the allegations about the dirty-bomb plot, the apartment buildings or even Padilla's presence in Afghanistan in late 2001. Instead, the government alleged that Padilla had conspired in the 1990s to provide support to overseas jihadists in Bosnia and Chechnya. Commentators called even this weaker case notably thin, but Padilla was found guilty.
Third alleged offense is the charm I guess. Every American should be asking themselves, “Are you ready hey are you ready for this?”
There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man
And bring him to the ground
You can beat him
You can cheat him
You can treat him bad and leave him
When he's down yeah
But I'm ready yes I'm ready for you
I'm standing on my own two feet
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
Repeating to the sound of the beat
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone and another one gone
Another one bites the dust yeah
Hey I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
Shoot out
One hopes that with all the money the wealthiest 0.6% of Americans - who received 75% of $92 Billion in savings from Bush's generous tax policies on capital gains and dividends in 2005 - were able to get themselves a sweet second or third yacht. Of course, this is a double whammy for the other 99.4% of us who not only didn't see much benefit from Bush's tax cuts but now share in the responsibility of making up those lost revenues to the government. Some more fun stats from Citizens for Tax Justice:
*Half of all tax filers (67 million Americans) reported an adjusted gross income of less than $30,000 and received virtually NONE of the benefits from the tax cuts.
*0.6% reported incomes greater than $500,000 and received tax deductions averaging $81,204 and accounted for 73.4% of the total tax savings.
*13,776 tax filers with gross incomes greater than $10 million or 0.1% of all filers, received 28.2% of the total benefits averaging $1,876,280 each!!!!!
*The number of Americans living in extreme poverty has grown 26% since 2000. In all, 37 million Americans, or about 12% of the country, now live with “low food security,” uh, poverty.
*2 out of 5 elderly Americans live on less than $18,000 a year including social security.
*Low income Americans with disabilities experienced 50% cuts in their housing programs.
*Half of all IRS audits are now conducted on Americans making less than $25,000 per year.
For more dismal statistics on the rich poor divide see one of my earlier BRAD BLOG posts.
Thankfully Bush recognizes a problem when he sees it and before leaving on his month long vacation stressed that we need a new round of corporate tax cuts to make sure US corporations stay competitive!
In all fairness, it takes huge balls and a lot of propaganda to convince anyone that what the country needs is more corporate giveaways to the rich. That is a tall order that will require great effort by Bush. And it will be essential for him to recharge his batteries over a long vacation before the big sell. And if it means that he crushes Ronald Reagan's two term vacation record with 17 months to go in office, so be it.
Plus, nobody wants to be in the Capital during the God awful month of August when temperatures regularly hit a humid 100 degrees. Perhaps it was the heat that allowed Congressional Democrats to pass the new FISA law - which seems to get worse and worse by the day - before leaving on vacation. But Washington heat ain't nothing compared to Baghdad heat, huh, Tony Snow:
“You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August.”
Which helps explain why the Iraqi parliament is taking the month off as well. Surely our troops, a record 162,000 strong in Iraq, will get the month off too, right? I mean, one suspects that with all their gear, outdoor work and combat, the misery index (weather, though both work) would be worse for our troops than say an air-conditioned Oval Office, uh, speed boat.
Actually, while George W. Bush smashes records for vacation days our troops are getting tours of duty extended from a year to 15 months. And it is a bit odd that Bush would take off so much time right before the crucial General Petreaus report on Iraq. Especially since we are amidst:
“the inescapable calling of our generation”
Oh, I almost forgot that the greater troop levels were the result of Bush's January “Surge” plan. You might recall that the new plan came after great deliberation and partying during which time hundreds of our troops lost their lives:
Ultimately Bush decided upon following neocon Fred Kagan's (fresh off a “very cool” chinook helicopter ride over the Potomac) “Surge” plan which called for an additional 50,000 troops, uh, 35,000, no, 30,000, wait, 50,000, no, 30,000, hold on, 31,500, stop, 20,000, then 35,000, oh, let's just say more troops.
But here's the thing, while Bush and the lawmakers are getting much needed R&R, our depleted troops are dying in the heat of the Iraqi desert by the droves. Long time reporters in Iraq write about the grim picture. According to our own ambassador in Iraq, electricity in Baghdad can be counted on for “an hour or two a day” which is down from six hours earlier in the year and 16-24 hours under Saddam. Even the Brits admit the Surge will not succeed.
But none of this or the rising troop deaths can dissuade the Bushies who have already kicked up the propaganda so many notches that Emeril Lagasse must be envious. Sadly, the American people continue to buy into it. And the real big propaganda push will not hit until September.
Sadly, the truth is that there is nothing that Petraeus could say that would change the course of the war. As Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:
But if you think Bush is going to care what Petraeus's report says in September, get out of the sun immediately and drink lots of water. You're delirious.
Clearly Bush will continue this unjust, horrific war until the end of his presidency. And nothing from escalating American and Iraqi body counts to American geopolitical strategy can change his decision which was made long ago. W. has even stated that his presidency will be judged on the long term outcome of Iraq. And since pulling out or significantly reducing troops is akin to failure, Bush ain't budging. In other words, he's passing the buck to the next president.
This alone is immoral and it is patently absurd that a decision of this magnitude should rest with a man with such an obvious conflict of interest. And since everyone knows this, it is also immoral for the American people to standby and leave the decision to Bush.
And that would be true even if Bush were a moral person. The fact that he is not just makes the situation that much clearer. Lest we forget that he:
*Continues to push legislation to further enrich the super wealthy at the expense of the most needy in society.
*Imposes anti-condom policies throughout Africa which has led to a remarkable rise in HIV/AIDS.
*Signed a secret executive order authorizing the policy of “extraordinary rendition” which allows the CIA to kidnap any terror suspect from anywhere in the world and transfers them to prisons to be tortured and sometimes killed in countries like Uzbekistan and Egypt.
*Invades countries under false pretenses to further enrich the military industrial complex and his corporatist cronies.
Sick. Martin Luther King Jr. had it right when he said that “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” How can anyone read that short list of transgressions above and not believe that time is now?
*In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
*When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
*Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
*Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
*The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
We Americans like to think ourselves noble and a country that has done great things for the world. We stopped Hitler for crying out loud. Yes, but that was a couple of generations ago. And by remaining silent, this generation is burying the memory of the “Greatest Generation.” And our lack of action, for whatever reason, is as immoral as George W. Bush's action.
It is imperative that we wake-up to our faults and correct them before it is too late. For example, a glance at the two pictures below describe a world turned upside down by American military spending and penchant for war and killing:
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
We Americans seem to be the only ones oblivious to our faults. The entire world has been telling us we are ill for some time. The general consensus around the globe is that the US is a greater threat to world peace than even Iran and North Korea! And our best friends, the Brits, believe that only Osama bin Laden is a greater threat to world peace than the United States.
We are a sick country whose leaders continue to exploit our weakness. And our continued silence is immoral. We sit silently while our government exchanged our leader of the free world status with leader of rogue nations lambast. And if the people will not stand up united and force our leaders to listen to our will, we will become the “infamous generation” whose silence enabled George W. Bush and the corporate elite to destroy the Republic.
Next time some pundit or politico says that impeachment is not practical or that it is political suicide, direct them to the case of Jose Padilla:
Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.
The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say.
Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All three say he may never recover.
This is sick and twisted and I want no part of it. Do any Americans really want to be party to this crazy awful torture? To have this done in our name? Beyond just being absolutely disgusting, the Bush administration's treatment of Padilla raises some big issues like:
whether the Constitution ever permits the government to force a man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risk destruction of a portion of his mind.
The answer to this should be clearer than the desert sky - a big fat NO! And the answer ought to be no if the victim were Osama bin Laden. That said, Padilla makes an excellent case study. Here's some of what we know about Padilla:
In the middle of the 2003 firestorm about pre-9/11 intelligence bungling, then Attorney General John Ashcroft announced from Moscow that a terrorist named Jose Padilla was arrested entering the US. Only it was later revealed that Padilla was arrested a month earlier.
Padilla was being held as a material witness and the government faced a deadline to press charges against him when it declared him an enemy combatant. Thus, Padilla, who was not charged with anything and was tossed into a military brig.
It was alleged by Bush and Ashcroft that Padilla was planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” but insiders said their was no evidence of a plot and that Padilla was a “small fish.”
The government even admits that the person that helped finger Padilla “may not have been completely candid.”
The Bush administration pulled out every stop in an attempt to keep Padilla from ever seeing his day in court. The Bushies used a similar tactic with another American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan. Like Padilla, Hamdi was declared an enemy combatant and locked away for three years. The entire time the Bush administration assured us that both Padilla and Hamdi were terrible, horrible, terrorists who should be locked up for the rest of their lives without so much as a trial.
But, lo and behold, on October 9, 2004, the Bushies released Hamdi. The evil terrorist was forced to renounce his US citizenship and then was deported to Saudi Arabia a free man. Imagine that. Surely Hamdi was tortured just like Padilla and he could easily be the human vegetable right now. A free, innocent, vegetable. And all because George W. Bush ordered the despicable, inhumane, psychological torture of alleged terrorists.
As a result of the actions of the state at the behest of Bush, a man is a vegetable today. It is entirely possible, even likely, that he did not commit the crimes he is on trial for. In fact, the entire government case is borderline ridiculous. No longer is there talk about a dirty bomb. Instead, Padilla was charged with supporting terrorism:
Prosecutors want jurors to convict Padilla largely on the basis of a five-page “mujahedeen data form” he supposedly filled out in 2000 to attend an al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
Seven of Padilla's fingerprints were on the form which the CIA discovered in 2001 but tested for fingerprints (cough) last year. Frankly, it is shameful that the government even brought a case as flimsy as this one to trial. Nonetheless, he will undoubtedly be found guilty as no person wants to face the ridicule of letting a member of al-Qaeda go free after 9/11.
Either way he will live out his life a vegetable. And for this George W. Bush should face war crimes, never mind impeachment.
Glenn Greenwald: “It is inconceivable on every level that the Democrats would capitulate in this way and it is disgraceful beyond what can be adequately described.”
Marjorie Cohn: “This is a Congress that has remained terrorized by the Bush administration since 9/11.”
Marjorie Cohn: “It takes the power out of judges hands and puts it in the power of Alberto Gonzales and the Director of Intelligence.”
Glenn Greenwald: “Two months earlier James Comey testified before the Senate that he and Aschroft and others had discovered that whatever it was that they were doing from 2001 to 2004 was so illegal, so unconscionable, that they had all decided to resign en masse from the government unless that behavior seized immediately.” And Greenwald interviewed Senator Chris Dodd this weekend, “and I asked him whether or not Senators had any idea of how they had been using this secret spying in order to spy on Americans - what these additional programs are, what it was that they were doing that made James Comey and John Ashcroft threaten to resign from the government - he has absolutely no idea nor do the other Senators.”
In other words, Congress passed a law for which it knows nothing about but that we know was so unconscionable that John Ashcroft threatened to resign over it. And if that is not scary enough, the rubber stamp judges of the FISA court have been replaced by Alberto Gonzales.
Marjorie Cohn: “Even though I am a criminal defense attorney, I quite enjoyed writing up a sample indictment of Alberto Gonzales for War Crimes. He's a war criminal because it was memos that he signed and policies that he put into place, that he convinced Bush to put into place, that led to torture of prisoners in US custody.”
“Torture is illegal under our law. It's illegal under three treaties we have ratified -- the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And notwithstanding the Bush administration's distaste for treaties and so-called international law, our Constitution has a provision called the Supremacy Clause and it says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. That means that treaties are US law. And pursuant to those treaties we have enacted two federal US statutes -- the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act. Under the War Crimes Act, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions constitute war crimes. So torture is illegal, all the time. And, in fact, the Torture Convention says, no exceptional circumstances, even a state of war can ever be used as a justification for torture.”
And yet we torture at Gitmo, Abu-Ghareb, all around Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black-sites.
Glenn Greenwald: “The greatest threat, the truly unresolved issue is whether we will have a military confrontation with Iran prior to the end of the Bush presidency.”
Amy Goodman: “And yet your explanation of the Democrats and how they are dealing with the president at his lowest polling ever -- perhaps in modern polling history, still caving in bill after bill.”
Glenn Greenwald: “What is so baffling about it is, i think people forget that immediately before the midterm election in 2006, Karl Rove's strategy was to force a vote on the military commissions act and warrantless eavesdropping.” And Democrats voted against both and the Republicans tried to make a huge deal about Democrats being weak on terror. “And the Republicans got crushed with that strategy. And Democrats refuse to realize that that strategy no longer works. Americans are largely immune to this fear-mongering.”
Marjorie Cohn: “The war was premeditated, deliberate, violation of the law. The UN Charter, also a treaty, also part of US law says the only two instances where a country can use force against another is in self-defense or when the Security Council agrees. And there was never any evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to us or any other country...and the Bush administration knew that...they intended to invade Iraq since way before 9/11. And now it's really clear why they did that. And that is to install huge permanent military bases, the biggest in the world, and the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad. And to privatize Iraq's oil. They are trying to push through this Iraqi oil law that even Congress is touting as a benchmark for Iraqi progress and it would give control of 3/4 of Iraq's oil to foreign oil companies.”
“It is very important not to say that the war was a mistake, the war is being fought incompetently. The war is illegal and it is also immoral. It is killing thousands of US soldiers. It is killing tens of thousands of Iraqis and draining our national treasury. And the majority of American people know this. But Congress has not caught on yet. ”
“The passage of the new FISA bill by the Senate and now the House demonstrates that the Democrats stand neither for defending civil liberties nor for checking executive power. They stand for nothing at all.”
“I’m not thrilled,” “There are some changes we need to make to make sure that American citizens are protected. But it’s a lot better than a lot of things that have been forced down this Congress’ throat right before recesses that trampled on American’s liberties.”
“it must be the case that the NSA's aim is not simply to surveille foreigners who it already suspects as being part of Al Qaeda. It can obtain a FISA order as to those folks. What it wants, instead, is to be able to intercept foreign communications coming over domestic wires where (i) it does not have probable cause to believe that any of the parties is a terrorist or agent of a foreign power; and (ii) there is a chance that some of the intercepted communications will be with persons in the U.S. ”
“The day we start deferring to someone who's not a member of this body is a sad day for the U.S. Senate” “We make the policy, not the executive branch.”
“We're hugely disappointed with the Democrats. The idea they let themselves be manipulated into accepting the White House proposal, certainly taking a great deal of it, when they're in control well it's mind-boggling.”
“This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances,” “I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
“Of the many problems surrounding the new FISA bill (soon to be law), the most frustrating one is that we (the public) didn’t really have a chance to debate it. And I mean this in two different respects. First, and most obviously, Congress railroaded the bill through too quickly for meaningful debate. But more importantly, the terms of the debate were fundamentally dishonest. I wish that, for once, we could debate these proposals honestly and on the actual merits.”
“Rather than pass this bill, my Republican colleagues chose to rubberstamp a flawed administration proposal that fails to provide the accountability needed in light of the administration’s repeated past mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror,
lawmakers ”are not going to leave Alberto Gonzales as the gatekeeper on American civil liberties.“ ”That's the fundamental problem, and we're going to fix it when we come back,“ ”We had to do it. We did what we needed to do. The Democrats are united in fixing this flawed law.“
Rep. Rahm Emanuel
”The result was predictable. Through fear, threats, and the unmentioned “club” of bad PR, should another attack take place, the Democrat Party of 2007 proved once and for all that the voters were snookered in 2006. After all that hard work, all that time and effort, all that money, sweat and tears, what did we achieve? We replaced a few of the crooks and criminals from the GOP with some spineless, blue dog, DLC-bootlicking bastards of the Democrat Party. In effect, we replaced one set of bastards with an identical horse of a different color.“
”I find this cave-in most discouraging.“ ”One central disappointing aspect of this story is that the Bush administration is apparently still able to use completely bogus scare tactics of its usual post-9/11 sort to intimidate the Democrats.“
”By passing a FISA modernization bill that the president can sign before we go home for recess, the Senate has taken immediate and decisive action to improve the security of our country,“
”But lost in the gales of rage is an aspect of this political pantie raid that seems overlooked: why is this even happening? The White House has long asserted that the president has the authority to conduct this program with or without congressional approval and in violation of FISA; that because Bush is a “war president,” he doesn't actually violate any law because he is the law. FISA, or any other law for that matter, has no jurisdiction over the president in “war time,” and that such approbation grants Bush carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to win the War on Terra.™ In the name of national security, that is, a banana republic banner that can and has been slapped on almost anything.“
”The Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, has assured me that this bill gives him what he needs to continue to protect the country, and therefore I will sign this legislation as soon as it gets to my desk.“
George W. Bush
”We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk,“ ”Time is short“
”This law gives our intelligence professionals this greater flexibility while closing a dangerous gap in our intelligence-gathering activities that threatened to weaken our defenses,“
George W. Bush
”Over the past three decades, this law has not kept pace with revolutionary changes in technology,“ ”As a result, our intelligence professionals have told us that they are missing significant intelligence information that they need to protect the country.“
George W. Bush
”And I will no longer support the Democratic party until they start acting like the majority and representing their party. And that begins with telling the president to fuck off when it comes to spying on Americans.“
16 Democratic Senators and one Independent a-hole from Connecticut voted to expand Bush's authority to spy on Americans including Diane Feinstein (D-California), Evan Bahh (D-Indiana) and Jim Webb (D-Virginia)
Video and article are a couple of weeks old but I missed it back then and it doesn't appear to me that many in the MSM picked it up. In the video above, Keith Olbermann discusses the results of the Pentagon wargaming a withdrawal of US troops out of Iraq with Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks. Ricks article on the subject, from July 17, can be read at WaPo.
Not surprisingly, the exercises produce a far different result than the dire predictions offered by George the Crazy and Dick the Evil, both of whom love to scare Americans with tall tales of an Iranian takeover of Iraq and Iraq becoming a breeding ground for al-Qaeda (ridiculous on its face since al-Qaeda - think 15 of 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia - and Iran are enemies). Ricks even quotes Bush as saying that al-Qaeda would “be able to recruit better and raise more money from which to launch their objectives” of attacking the US which is again laughable considering nothing is a better recruitment tool than the US occupation of a Muslim country for its oil.
So, just what did the war games find? Iraq is likely to split into three separate countries -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish. Iran would likely attempt to exert its influence and “become bogged down in southern Iraq. And al-Qaeda is hardly the threat Bush claims:
U.S. intelligence analysts, however, have a somewhat different view of al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq, noting that the local branch takes its inspiration but not its orders from bin Laden. Its enemies -- the overwhelming majority of whom are Iraqis -- reside in Baghdad and Shiite-majority areas of Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia or the United States. While intelligence officials have described the Sunni insurgent group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq as an ”accelerant“ for violence, they have cited domestic sectarian divisions as the main impediment to peace.
W., of course, will not take into account the results of the Pentagon war games because he views Iraq as a game that is to be won or lost. Bush's troubled psyche does not even allow him to consider the facts, common sense, reason or the lives of Iraqis and US soldiers. The only thing on the line as far as he is concerned is his own disgraceful legacy. Thus, he has absolutely nothing to lose by continuing full speed ahead.
What do Republicans do when the shit really hits the fan? Say, on a day when the FBI Director all but declares that the Attorney General committed perjury while testifying under oath in front of the Senate. On the day after said Attorney General basically admits, accidentally, that US attorneys were fired for improper reasons. On a day when evidence is revealed that makes the Pat Tillman friendly fire death cover-up look even worse than what was universally believed. On a day when the president's top advisor is subpoenaed to appear before the Senate to testify about the criminal conspiracy he coordinated to steal elections.
Well, the email (below) from the ultra-conservative NewsMax that I received minutes ago offers a fairly straightforward answer:
Translation: FEAR, FEAR, FEAR, FEAR, FEAR, FEAR and more FEAR. Sadly, things are getting so bad for the criminal enterprise that is the Bush administration that I believe NewsMax. Clearly that's what Republican presidential candidate and current Texas Congressman, Ron Paul, had in mind a few weeks ago when he warned that the country was in “great danger” of a staged terrorist attack or Gulf of Tonkin replay.
Lori Price at 
