- rob 4:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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£3bn Iraq rebuilding cash 'goes missing'

At least $5 billion (£3bn) has been passed to the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a leading UK aid agency has calculated.

But only a fifth of those development funds have been accounted for, figures unearthed by Christian Aid show.

And that missing four billion dollar "black hole" will double by the end of the year unless the CPA’s accounts are made public.

The allegations emerged as British aid agencies claimed millions of pounds of government aid cash will have to be diverted from poor countries in South America, Eastern and Central Asia to rebuilding Iraq.

Hey, this might just be an accounting screwup, and as George Bush has said "Accounting is not always black and white." Though diplomacy and foreign relations is, of course.

But if the money is missing it really isn't a surprise, maintaining and expanding Cheney's underground secret lair isn't cheap you know. And wait until you see how he can turn one of his secret bunkers into a towering huge walking robot that shoots missles from its hands. It cost billions, but when you see it you'll understand it was worth it because it was sooooo cool. But stay away from the feet, Dick loves doing that "squish" thing.

- rob 2:36 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Rumsfeld Draws Republicans' Ire

"The Pentagon is not exactly Capitol Hill's favorite department anymore," said one prominent Republican staff member. "Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz just give off this sense that they know better than thou, and that they don't have to answer our questions."

Which makes you wonder what is Capitol Hill's favorite department now? Could it be the department of "we've abicated our duties to the nation and have rendered ourselves powerless over the past two and a half years by giving the executive branch new and far reaching powers without using our powers to question and audit." Or is it one of those non-existant departments like those departments that publish stories in Mad Magazine, like say, "from the at least we can still give ourselves raises department."

- rob 1:35 PM - [PermaLink] -

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GOP to put challengers in black voting precincts

Challenging voters is how the GOP trains its future Supreme Court nominees.

- rob 1:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Matt Groening: Fox Threatened to Sue "The Simpsons"

Watch Fox News commentators, they always yell about the overly litigous society we now live in. Yet they just love to so, whether it be anyone who use the phrase "Fair and Balanced" (thus our page title) or themselves.

One of the great things we did last year was we parodied the Fox News Channel and we did the crawl along the bottom of the screen and Fox fought against it and said they would sue, they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself so we got away with it but now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls in the bottom of the screen on a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking its real news.

Click the link to read the news crawl, as you'd expect from the Simpsons, it is hilarious. ...Bible Says Jesus Favored Capital-Gains Cut...

- rob 1:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Senate Approves Pay Increase for Itself

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted itself a pay raise for the fifth straight year, boosting the annual salary to about $158,000 in 2004.

The House also agreed last month to accept an increase in the annual cost-of-living allowance, which gives all members of Congress a boost of about 2.2 percent in their take-home pay starting in January.

Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who every year stands up against pay increases, said that with the economy still weak and many Americans finding it hard to make ends meet, it was "the wrong time for Congress to give itself a pay hike."

"This automatic stealth pay raise system is just wrong," he added.

Feingold said that with an annual increase of about $3,400 slated for next year, an election year, members of Congress will have received a $21,000 raise in their pay over the past five years.

The Senate, by a 60-34 margin, tabled or killed his amendment to a pending appropriations bill.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said it was a mistake to call it a pay raise, and that lawmakers were merely receiving a cost-of-living increase being given to other federal workers and military personnel.

"This increase is required by law," he said.

Information for Senator Stevens:
* Definition of raise: An increase in pay.
* Laws are written be Senators, it looks bad to use that as a defense.

Can I just say, making an assumption about Senator Stevens, which may be perhaps unfair, that when he campaigns he campaigns against unions in the federal government and their mandatory raises and crap like that, and he can if he want to, but he is a hypocrite.

- rob 2:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Diebold Update

Students Fight E-Vote Firm

A group of students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has launched an "electronic civil disobedience" campaign against voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems.

The students are protesting efforts by Diebold to prevent them and other website owners from linking to some 15,000 internal company memos that reveal the company was aware of security flaws in its e-voting software for years but sold the faulty systems to states anyway. The memos were leaked to voting activists and journalists by a hacker who broke into an insecure Diebold FTP server in March.

I have to correct Wired here (and they should really know better), but I don't think saying "a hacker who broke into an insecure Deibold FTP server" is appropriate when the person just entered anonymous as the password. Do you break into a house when a door is open? And what do you think of a manufacture of ATM machines and voting machines, i.e. machines that require well thought out security features, placing all these documents on an anonymous ftp site?

Among the revelations in the memos was news that the Microsoft Access database used by the Diebold system to count votes was not protected by a password. This means anyone could alter votes by entering the database through an insecure backdoor, via physical access to the machine or remotely, via the phone system.

The memos also reveal that the audit log, which records any activity in the Access database, could be easily altered so that an intruder could erase a record of the intrusion.

These security flaws were pointed out to Diebold in 2001 in memos from a firm that was being paid to audit and certify the software. A Diebold engineer responded by saying the company preferred not to password-protect the database because it was easier for them (presumably Diebold employees) to go into the software and do "end-runs" in the system -- a term that describes when someone changes software to fix or work around coding problems.

Other memos indicate that patches were installed in systems after the systems already were certified and delivered to states.

Maryland. If you are listening, you can probably get your money back.

- rob 2:35 PM - [PermaLink] -

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All things Texas not very popular in DC anymore

It doesn't mean anything other than what it is. It's not a symbol or a sign or a portent. But Jeffrey's at the Watergate, the outpost of Texas cooking that arrived in town shortly after the Bush administration, has ridden off into the sunset. So it's happy trails to chorizo-stuffed quail and the fried Gulf Coast oysters with yuca-root chips.

And don't read any meaning into the fact that the restaurant that has taken the place of Jeffrey's is named Aquarelle (2650 Virginia Ave. NW; 202-298-4455), as it was known during the Clinton administration.

From the description of Jeffrey's:

There's a Texas native in town, and we don't mean in The White House!

Jeffrey's At The Watergate is the sister of Jeffrey's Restaurant of Austin, Texas and needless to say it has become a "hot spot" of the First Couple, not to mention local opinion makers and celebrities alike.

With one of the city's most spectacular views of the Potomac, the restaurant's ambiance is equally matched by its culinary excellence. Jeffrey's At The Watergate features sophisticated cuisine under the expertise of Executive Chef David Garrido whose specialties include Crispy Texas Gulf Coast Oysters on yucca root chips with habanero honey aioli; Roasted Texas Hill Country Quail stuffed with cornbread, served with mango, black-eyed peas and corn salsa; and a to-die-for Chocolate Intempeerance Cake with gold dusted berries.

I know that last paragraph really isn't pertinent but I'd assume those yucca root chips with habanero honey aioli don't really have much habanero in them. Bush ain't that Texan.

Also that line about having "one of the city's most spectacular views of the Potomac," is pretty funny too, if you think looking across a street to a little river "spectacular."

I have to disagree with the Washington Post (who doesn't), I do think meaning can be read into this. It is a little itty bitty ray of hope, or at least an opportunity for the Watergate Hotel to improve their business. And with George's economy, we can all understand the difficulty of that.

- rob 12:35 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Reporters sans frontières - Second world press freedom ranking

Thanks to George, we're tied for 31. We are the nation of freedom, that is our battle cry, but in a survey of journalists we are ranked 31, not number 1, not in the top 10, or top 20, or top 25. We're 31.

The American media is free though, they, or their own will choose to act as if they weren't free, and didn't ask questions and printed press releases as news, and now, as they blink their eyes, they wonder why they aren't as free as they were.

Special situation of the United States and Israel The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders.

George is a fighter for freedom though, why look at the Iraqi War and what's its done for freedom of the press for the region:

General deterioration in the Arab world The war in Iraq played a major role in an increased crackdown on the press by the Arab regimes. Concerned about maintaining their image and facing public opinion largely opposed to the war, they stepped up control of the press and increased pressure on journalists, who are forced to use self-censorship.

- rob 12:19 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Dr. James J. Zogby: US bends statistical data on Iraqi surveys

Cheney can't stop lying. He honestly doesn't no how to stop. He's a cyborg on a mission!

In fact, Zogby International, ZI, in Iraq had conducted the poll, and the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, did publish their interpretation of the findings.

But the AEI's "spin" and the Vice-President's use of their "spin" created a faulty impression of the poll's results and, therefore, of the attitudes of the Iraqi people.

For example, while Cheney noted that when asked what kind of government they would like, Iraqis chose "the US … hands down," in fact, the results of the poll are actually quite different.

Twenty-three per cent of Iraqis say that they would like to model their new government after the US; 17.5 per cent would like their model to be Saudi Arabia; 12 per cent say Syria, 7 per cent say Egypt and 37 per cent say "none of the above." That's hardly "winning hands down."

When given the choice as to whether they "would like to see the American and British forces leave Iraq in six months, one year, or two years," 31.5 per cent of Iraqis say these forces should leave in six months; 34 per cent say a year, and only 25 per cent say two or more years.

So while technically Cheney might say that "over 60 per cent (actually it's 59 per cent) … want the US to stay at least another year," an equally correct observation would be that 65.5 per cent want the US and Britain to leave in one year or less.

- rob 12:09 PM - [PermaLink] -

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DoD News: Secretary Rumsfeld Media Stakeout following Briefing for Senators

Q: Getting back to the memo, sir, you said in the memo it would be a long, hard slog, the reconstruction. How long and how hard?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You're incorrect. The memo did not say the reconstruction would be a long, hard slog.

Q: What did -- (off mike)?

SEC. RUMSFELD: It said that -- first of all, the entire memo was cast about the global war on terror. In a section of it -- and this is on the Internet, I think people can read it -- I mentioned that we can win Iraq -- the battle in Iraq and the battle in Afghanistan; it will be a slog, a long, hard slog. But the big question is the broader one about the global war on terror. And I didn't use that phrase in the connection with the subject of the memo, namely the global war on terror.

Huh?

- rob 12:02 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Hagel Says Bush Has Too Much Leeway (washingtonpost.com)

OMAHA, Oct. 21 -- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is strongly criticizing Congress, saying it gave President Bush too much latitude in conducting foreign policy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hagel voiced his disapproval Monday in a speech at the Gallup Organization World Conference in Omaha.

"When the security of this nation is threatened, Congress and the American people give the president great latitude," he said. "We probably have given this president more flexibility, more latitude, more range, unquestioned, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt -- probably too much. The Congress, in my opinion, really abrogated much of its responsibility."

You'll hear more statements of sanity from GOP senators the farther Bush goes down in the polls and the closer we get to the election. Loyalty to the President is based extensively on the President's ability to get you re-elected. George is becoming a liability.

- rob 10:51 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo

Now when Rumsfeld asks "Didn't you get the damn memo?" everyone can hold up their USA Today and say "yes."

October 16, 2003

TO: Gen. Dick Myers
Paul Wolfowitz
Gen. Pete Pace
Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:

* We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

* USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.

* USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.

* With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.

That shouting you hear is Rove yelling "there is nothing behind that curtain over there."

- rob 2:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Joint Chiefs Chairman Worried by Morale Poll

Unlike Bush some people of authority don't like blinders:

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers expressed concern Thursday over a survey suggesting major morale problems among U.S. troops in Iraq, saying he was worried that he and other top officers were sometimes allowed to talk only to "all the happy folks" when they visited service members.

"I want to see the folks that have complaints. And sometimes they won't let them near me," Myers said when asked about the Stars and Stripes newspaper survey in which half of 1,939 troops responding said morale in their units was low or very low and that they did not plan to reenlist.

- rob 2:54 PM - [PermaLink] -

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THE STOVEPIPE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.

The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.”
...

By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war. The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed.

Chalabi’s defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President’s office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. “They’d pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,” Greg Thielmann told me. “There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi’s sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President.”

The Iraqi war weakened our fight against Al Qaeda and was built on lies and has left the world a more dangerous place. And the weird thing is, the Iraqi war is Bush's only campaign strength.

- rob 2:53 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Fix Social Security: End Cap

A great, but boring, post on real tax rates and the "progressive" tax now in place.

This graphic demonstrates it best:



Now people will note that Social Security is not a tax and that is why it has a cap. Yet where does social security money go? To pay for the cost of paying to run the country, just like you tax dollars. Yes a bit of it goes to seniors, but the incoming is dramatically larger than the outgoing. The actual federal deficit is much larger, becuase it includes this surplus, despite the fact that we will have to pay for the coming baby boom generation benefits starting in just 10 years. Then social security will be taking in a lot less then it needs to pay out. Boy those will be fun days.

The piece goes on to state that if you include the cap gains cuts of Bush, the tax rate goes down the more you make. I never hear the republicans complain about America's "regressive" tax. I wonder why.

- rob 1:45 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Soldiers' Honor Caught in White House Propaganda

Today the Republicans in the Senate today voted AGAINST an amendment to provide an Iraqi Liberation medal to troops serving in Iraq for purely political reasons. The White House propaganda machine won't honor our soldiers serving in Iraq because they don't want to make a distinction between the Iraq War and the War on Terror. Why, all of a sudden, is a medal of honor normally granted to soldiers who fight in different battles, being thwarted by Republicans? Why, while our troops are fighting and dying in Iraq, have Republicans in the Senate refused to recognize them for their commitment and courage in Iraq?

The Congress has historically honored our service men and women with time honored medals for battles from the Spanish War medal, the Army Occupation of Germany medal, the World War II Victory medal, the Berlin Airlift medal.

Why after liberating an entire nation from a repressive regime are we going against normal practice?

This is a slap in the face to the soldiers who have been trying to rebuild Iraq and have been working with Iraqi's to create a better life for a people oppressed for so long. We need a Democratic Senate for so many reasons not least of all to recognize the extraordinary courage and sacrifice of our service members.

- rob 1:32 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 131

2. The Pentagon
Last week Our Great Leader kept up his push to explain to America that everything is going just fine in Iraq, while U.S. soldiers continue to die on an almost daily basis. But Bush's optimistic proclamations of great success were given a healthy boost by Republican lawmakers who were recently taken on carefully-planned guided tours of Baghdad and returned from Iraq bearing - surprise - good news. Take Rep. George Nethercutt, for example, who said, "The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day." Well I guess that depends on whether you're related to one of those soldiers or not. But if you think you might not be getting the whole picture here - you're right. Last week Senator Chris Dodd and other top Democrats were denied entry to Iraq by the Pentagon. Why? Because according to the Pentagon, "no planes were available to ferry the group from Jordan to Iraq." Yeah, right. So the next time you see George W. Bush complaining about how the news coming out of Iraq isn't fair and balanced you'll know that he's right - only Republicans are allowed to see what's going on over there.

3. Leaders of The War On Terror
Last week the International Institute for Strategic Studies released a report called "The Military Balance" which, according to the UK Guardian, says that "War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al-Qaida and 'galvanised its will' by increasing radical passions among Muslims." Are you shocked? Perhaps if you'd been given the same information as the prime movers behind the war in Iraq, you wouldn't be. The Guardian article goes on to note that "The parliamentary intelligence and security committee reported last month that Tony Blair was warned by his intelligence chiefs on the eve of war that an invasion of Iraq would increase the danger of terrorist attacks." Funny... I thought that the whole point of the war was to reduce the danger of terrorist attacks. Or was it to find weapons of mass destruction? Or free the Iraqi people? It all seems so fuzzy these days.

4. George W. Bush
Looks like Our Great Leader is really getting a handle on this White House leak thing. Two weeks ago he simultaneously promised to catch the senior administration official who revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent, and said that he had "no idea" if the person would be caught (see Idiots 130), which is pretty impressive. But last week he really put his foot down, telling top officials to "stop the leaks" - or else. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Bush "'didn't want to see any stories' quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences." And how do we know all this? Because it was told to the Inquirer by "a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used." Good job, George. You'll have those pesky leaks under control before you can say "The Floccinaucinihilipilification Administration."
...

9. Clear Channel DJs
With the war on terror all but over - if you discount the fact that our soldiers are dying every day in Iraq, al Qaeda's membership is on the rise, and we can't find Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any weapons of mass destruction - Clear Channel DJs are looking for another group of evildoers to spew venom at. And they seem to have found a worthy target - cyclists! It appears that at least three Clear Channel stations - in Cleveland, Houston, and Raleigh, NC - have been instructing their listeners to run cyclists off the road or pelt them with bottles. And not only that, but they've been instructing them in the best way to do it; even getting advice from callers. Surprise - cyclists are pissed. Email campaigns and boycotts have forced at least one station to issue a formal apology, but the fact that this anti-cyclist campaign seems to be spreading across the Clear Channel airwaves concerns some people. "When you incite people to violence, you've crossed the line," said Houston cyclist Frank Karbarz, who helped organize against the station. "They did it almost like a tutorial. It wasn't humorous. It was how to hurt someone." Of course, I don't imagine that this has anything to do with the fact that most Clear Channel listeners associate cycling with liberalism - get off the road, you stupid environmentalist hippie! - and I'm sure that this isn't just an underhanded way of suggesting that red-blooded, pickup driving American patriots should get out there and start running down the scum-sucking liberal treehuggers - but I'm certainly interested to see where they go with this next...

- rob 1:14 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Diebold / Voting Machine Update:

Firm's attempts to down hyperlinks an attack on free speech, says EFF

THE ANTICS OF DIEBOLD, a maker of electronic voting systems, which has been leaning on ISPs to get them to prevent linking to a election of its internal memos here, have drawn the EFF into the ring.

The memos seem to show how Diebold sought to demo software it didn't have and apparently installed outdated versions of its GEM software in elections.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says it stepped in because it wants to defend the right to link to controversial information about flaws in electronic voting systems: "What topic could be more important to our democracy than discussions about the mechanics and legitimacy of electronic voting systems now being introduced nationwide?" said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer, in a statement.

Diebold sent out dozens of notices to ISPs hosting IndyMedia and other websites linking to or publishing copies of Diebold internal memos. The only ISP to resist so far, says the EFF, is the non-profit Online Policy Group (OPG) ISP.

Hey, let join in the fun: Here's a link to one of those memos.

And here's the kind of fun you can expect from reading them:

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

Here's all the downloads that are getting people sued!

To all those county and state administrators who say these machines are flawless, maybe you should read other material than Diebold press releases.

- rob 3:03 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Don't ask, don't know

AT A TIME when President Bush ought to be doing everything he can to show that he is an engaged commander in chief, he is acting as though there is nothing he can or should do to discover and punish the officials who leaked to columnist Robert Novak the identity of the CIA's Valerie Plame Wilson. Bush's passivity in response to a political dirty trick that harms US intelligence operations and demoralizes intelligence officers is an abdication of responsibility.

- rob 2:15 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Antidepressant traces in creek raise concerns

Researchers at Baylor University have found traces of a pharmaceutical antidepressant in the livers, muscles and brains of bluegills in a Denton County creek, raising concerns about the welfare of the popular sports fish and people who eat them.

The chemical is fluoxetine -- the primary component in Prozac. It likely came from a city of Denton wastewater treatment plant, which discharges into Pecan Creek and flows into Lake Lewisville in North Texas. Traces of the drug that are not absorbed into the body can flow down the toilet and through wastewater treatment plants, which are not designed to filter out pharmaceuticals.

You might have though I was going to take the anti-pharma angle on this. Or you might have thought I was going to point out Bush's fraudulent environmental policies on this. But no, I'm just concerned about why people in Denton County, Texas are so so sp depressed as to make their poop prozac.

- rob 2:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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United Press International: Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First off, this is not how we support our troops. 2nd, it not like we didn't suspect the vaccines earlier, 3rd, thanks to Rumsfeld the soldiers never got a pre-deployment exam (archived here), so proving pre-existing (or dis-proving) is pretty much impossible. Here's more on that:

Public Law 105-85 requires the Pentagon to collect health data on troops before and after deployment to a war zone. But troops headed to Iraq were not examined as the law specifically requires -- through physical exams and blood tests -- as The Kansas City Star first reported in March.

Pentagon officials admit they haven’t followed the law. They say a short questionnaire suffices in place of a medical exam. They say there’s no sense testing a generally healthy population of soldiers. They say there wasn’t time for exams in the rush to war, and troops returning home won’t sit still long enough for an exam.

Oh yeah, why was there a rush again? Oh that's right, because Saddam was an Imminent threat. Please tell me why Bush is getting even 49% support?

- rob 2:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison



"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.