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The Big Picture  Rating:  Rating
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 Posted: Mon Oct 29th, 2007 03:58 pm
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Joe Kelley
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 http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSDAH86038420071028

"And there are documents and information available proving America's support for terrorist groups in the region," he said, without giving details. Jalili is also the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

 

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710



C.P.A. officials tried to keep a rough running tab on the amount disbursed to individual Iraqi agencies such as the Ministry of Finance ($7.7 billion). But there was little detail, nothing specific, on how the money was actually used. The system basically operated on "trust and faith," as one former C.P.A. official put it. Once the cash passed into the hands of the Iraqis or any other party, no one knew where it went. The C.P.A. turned over $1.5 billion in cash to Iraqi banks, for instance, but later auditors could account for less than $500 million. The United Nations retained a team of auditors to look over American shoulders. They didn't see much, because they were largely cut off from access while the C.P.A. held power. As a report by the U.N.'s accounting consultant, KPMG, noted dryly, "We encountered difficulties in performing our duties and meeting with key C.P.A. personnel."
Did any withdrawals from the vault pay for secret activities by government personnel? It is an obvious possibility. Much of the cash was clearly destined for American contractors or Iraqi subcontractors. Sometimes the Iraqis came to the palace to collect their cash; other times, when they were reluctant to show up at the American compound, U.S. military personnel had to deliver it themselves. One of the riskier jobs for some U.S. military men was to fill up a car with bags of cash and drive the money to contractors in Baghdad neighborhoods, handing it over like a postal worker delivering mail.

 

The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn't care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur.



 
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 Posted: Mon Oct 29th, 2007 07:52 pm
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 http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/29/when-the-president-does-it-that-means-that-it-is-not-illegal/
Moyers: ‘When the President Does it, That Means That it is Not Illegal’
 
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 02:23 pm
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 http://www.wtprn.com/Sibel_Edmonds.html



Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.

Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege"? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America."
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 03:25 pm
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 http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/10/29/mukasey-wont-say-waterboarding-is-torture/

[In] 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he sai

 

Waterboarding has become an isssue because the Bush White House signed off on it as an interrogation technique — and thus moved the United States into the company of pariah states that permit torture — after the 9/11 attacks.
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 03:28 pm
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 Foreign contractors in Iraq are immune from prosecution under Iraqi law under a decree issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004.
 

http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN29552797
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 03:41 pm
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 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

 
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 03:59 pm
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 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/26/1559232

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Dick Cheney, when he was Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War, one of the last things he did before leaving office was to create an unprecedented lucrative market for the firm that he would go on to head, Halliburton. He commissioned [a] Halliburton [division] to do a study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. That effectively created the groundwork for the absolute war profiteer bonanza that we’ve seen unfold in the aftermath of 9/11. I mean, Clinton was totally on board with all of this, but it has exploded since 9/11. And so, Cheney, after he left office, when the first Bush was the president, went on to work at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which really led the push for privatization of the government, not just the military.
And then, when these guys took office, Rumsfeld's first real major address, delivered on September 10, 2001, he literally declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy and said he had come to liberate the Pentagon. And what he meant by that -- and he wrote this in an article in Foreign Affairs -- was that governments, unlike companies, can't die. He literally said that. So you have to figure out new incentives for competition, and Rumsfeld said that it should be run more like a corporation than a bureaucracy. And so, the company that most embodies that vision -- and they call it a revolutionary in military affairs. It’s a total part of the Project for a New American Century and the neoconservative movement. The company that most embodies that is not Halliburton; it’s Blackwater.


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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 04:10 pm
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 http://public.cq.com/public/20061122_homeland.html

With all the lawsuits over kidnapping and torture marching toward the Bush administration, you might think the top officials running the global war on terror would be worried just a little about the prospect that some day they might end up in court — if not having nightmares about getting measured for orange jumpsuits at Danbury Federal Prison.

Alas, no. Thanks to the legerdemain of Bush administration lawyers, a provision quietly tucked into the Military Commissions Act ([url=javascript:simplePopup('displaylawcard.do?lawNumber=366&congress=109','billCard',680,430);]PL 109-366[/url]) just before it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 17, would ease any worries they might’ve had. It not only redefines torture upward, removing the harshest, most controversial techniques from the definition of war crimes, it also exempts the perpetrators — interrogators and their bosses — from punishment all the way back to Nov. 1997.

 
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30th, 2007 04:13 pm
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 http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11.  The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI.  When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” 

 
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 Posted: Wed Oct 31st, 2007 07:08 pm
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What Now?

The only thing that seems to be standing in the way of a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is foot-dragging by the U.S. military.

It seems likely that the senior military have told the president and Cheney: This time let us brief you on what to expect on Day 2, on Week 4, on Month 6—and on the many serious things Iran can do to Israel, and to us in Iraq and elsewhere.

CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon is reliably reported to have said, “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” And in an online Q-and-A, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently spoke of a possible “revolt” if pilots were ordered to fly missions against Iran. She added:

“This is a little bit of hyperbole, but not much. Just look at what Gen. [George] Casey, the Army chief, has said...that the tempo of operations in Iraq would make it very hard for the military to respond to a major crisis elsewhere. Beside, it's not the ‘war’ or ‘bombing’ part that's difficult; it's the morning after and all the days after that. Haven't we learned that (again) from Iraq?”

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18645.htm
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 Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 05:49 pm
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 http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,26111,00.html

This is the very worst part of allowing a criminal gang to run a Nation.

The criminal gang produces enemies of the Nation. The cost is very high; immeasurably high. Opportunities to combine production power, trade, greater market volume, diversity, specialization, division of labor, cost reductions, economies of scale, all is lost for what – the profit of a few at the expense of the many = including the expense of the profiteers?

Warren coined “Civilized Cannibalism” and that term applies. Civilization destroys itself.

 
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 Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 07:41 pm
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 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380718519&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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 Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 07:49 pm
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 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18655.htm







Missing Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya



11/02/07 "Global Research" --- - According to a wide range of reports, several nuclear bombs were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off August 29/30, 2007 on a “cross-country journey” across the U.S., from U.S.A.F Base Minot in North Dakota to U.S.A.F. Base Barksdale in Louisiana. [1] Reportedly, in total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were “lost.” [2] The story was first reported by the Military Times, after military servicemen leaked the story.
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 Posted: Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 07:51 pm
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 http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski194.html

With one leg firmly planted at the American Enterprise Institute and the other even more firmly planted in the jelly-like mass we know as the United States Congress, neocons in Washington are in serious need of something constructive to do.

 

That lady has more principle going than the entire mass of jelly-like soft tissue known as the United States Limited Liability Corporate Nation State.

 

 
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 Posted: Tue Nov 6th, 2007 11:59 am
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 http://digg.com/world_news/Top_Secret_Pictures_from_Iran

 
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 Posted: Fri Nov 9th, 2007 02:43 pm
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 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18687.htm


The Neoconservative Agenda to Sacrifice the Fifth Fleet 



The New Pearl Harbor 



By Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D.
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 Posted: Fri Nov 9th, 2007 06:44 pm
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 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18697.htm



Suddenly, Impeachment Hearings Are Looking Like a Strong Possibility

By Dave Lindorff
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 Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 01:39 pm
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 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=492804&in_page_id=1811

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

 
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 Posted: Sun Nov 18th, 2007 09:04 am
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 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1867691819991815704&hl=en

 
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 Posted: Sun Nov 18th, 2007 10:17 am
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 http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/68064/

Look out -- here they come again! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing another Muslim nation, shouting warnings about weapons of mass destruction, bellowing for regime change, and generally trying to whoop up a new war. Having done so well in Iraq, George W and Cheney are pushing feverishly to hype up a national-security threat and commit our nation, our bedraggled military, our depleted treasury, and our country's already-tarnished name to another of their fantasyland, neocon, preemptive invasions of a sovereign people who are doing no harm to us. Their target this time: Iran.
You might be thinking, oh, come on, Hightower, surely not. You're paranoid -- even the Bushites aren't that crazy. I wish.
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