From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary:


Main Entry: devil theory
Function: noun
Date: 1937
: a theory of history: political and social crises arise from the deliberate actions of evil or misguided leaders rather than as a natural result of conditions

Note the date when this term was coined.

- Michael 2:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Here is a short primer on some very interesting history that is much mythologized and widely misunderstood today. It should be pointed out that Nixon sabotaged Johnson's plan to end the war to win an election, and that Nixon's own plan was to nuke North Vietnam, and we came extremely close. Bear that in mind, because Dick Cheney was making noises three years ago about "limited nuclear war" in the Middle East and spoke at great length (and obvious delight in anticipation) of deploying "tactical nukes" in that region, and over at the Pentagon the military geniuses have already designed and manufactured these tiny monstrosities. Also remember that the first George Bush used 300 tons of spent uranium 235 in the Gulf War, which is still killing people there, most of whom are children who were born after the war. Infant mortality in Iraq is over 68%. So we have a history of practicing limited nuclear war in the Middle East, something you never hear about in all the talk about weapons of mass destruction. Merry Christmas!

- Michael 10:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Have a Merry Christmas Everyone!

- rob 12:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Weep

9-11 IN NEVERNEVERLAND Widows Bush Treason Suit Vanishes in Blink of Media Eye

Think you're already amazed, alarmed or appalled enough by the state of US journalism today? Chew on this a while and think again.

Grieving New Hampshire widow who lost her man on 9/11 refuses the government's million dollar hush money payoff, studies the facts of the day for nearly two years, and comes to believe the White House "intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen" to launch a so-called "War on Terrorism" for personal and political gain.

She retains a prominent lawyer, a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, who served with distinction under both Democrats and Republicans and was once a strong candidate for the governor's seat.

The attorney files a 62-page complaint in federal district court (including 40 pages of prima facie evidence) charging that "President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice,
Ashcroft and Tenet":

1. had adequate foreknowledge of 911 yet failed to warn the county or attempt to prevent it;
   
2. have since been covering up the truth of that day;
   
3. have therefore abetted the murder of plaintiff's husband and violated the Constitution and multiple laws of the United States; and
   
4. are thus being sued under the Civil RICO (Racketeering, Influence, and Corrupt Organization) Act for malfeasant conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death.

The suit text goes on to document the detailed forewarnings from foreign governments and FBI agents; the unprecedented delinquency of our air defense; the inexplicable half hour dawdle of our Commander in Chief at a primary school after hearing the nation was under deadly attack; the incessant invocation of national security and executive privilege to suppress the facts; and the obstruction of all subsequent efforts to investigate the disaster. It concludes that "compelling evidence will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power, and testimony [that] Defendants failed to act and prevent 9/11 knowing the attacks would lead to an 'International War on Terror' which would benefit Defendants both financially and politically."

Press releases detailing these explosive allegations are sent out to 3000 journalists in the print and broadcast media, and a press conference to announce the filing is held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on November 26th (commemorating the end of the first futile year of the independent National 9/11 Commission).

Imagine the world-churning implications of these charges. Imagine the furor if just one was proved true. Imagine the courage of this bribe- shunning widow and an eminent attorney with his rep on the line. Then imagine a press conference to which nobody came.

(Well, more precisely, imagine a press conference at which only FOX News appears, tapes for 40 minutes, and never airs an inch.)

Read the one press release of 3,000 that was published.

Read the court filing yourself.

Found this on Bartcop

- rob 12:25 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Articles that will make you sick
or
Leaders without morals

Documents: Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in ’84 Despite Chemical Raids

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz [board member of Bechtel, see below] to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.

During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.

The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein. Emphasis Mine.
...

In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting. "The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person." Emphasis Mine. That must have been high praise indeed - person to person

When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But when presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.

Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that there was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on his missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.

And 1+1 is 3 you liberal anti-patriotic leftist media jackass! Stop asking questions!

Iraq received a green light to invade Kuwait?

The Arab world's conspiracy theorists argue that when 100,000 troops and 300 tanks were poised at Kuwait's border in late July 1990, about to attack, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, gave Saddam the distinct impression the U.S. didn't care what happened. She had just returned to the U.S. Embassy from a meeting at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry when she got word that she was to come back to the ministry immediately. Without any explanation as to where she was going, she was taken to see Saddam. It was her first meeting with the president.

In a much-reported exchange, Miss Glaspie told Saddam "your inter-Arab disputes do not concern the United States but we strongly believe they should be settled peacefully." Next day, Miss Glaspie left Iraq to pick up her mother in London and begin a long planned home leave.

On July 31, two days before the balloon went up, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly testified before Congress that the U.S. had no defense treaty with Kuwait or other Persian Gulf countries. On Aug. 1, the Bush 41 administration approved the sale of advanced data-transmission devices to Iraq. And the day after that, Aug. 2, 1990, Saddam gave his generals the green light to invade Kuwait. Throughout the Arab world's 22 countries, present and former policymakers believe this was the direct result of that ill-fated meeting with the U.S. ambassador when she flashed what Saddam interpreted to be either a yellow or green light.

Ask Arab interlocutors, again off the record, why the U.S. would have wanted Saddam to take over Kuwait? The answers are usually variations on the same theme: As a pretext to bring America's full military power into the Gulf to establish a protectorate over its vast oil resources. So the Bush family and their ilk tried again?
...

In April 1990, when Saddam's resort to chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds was already well known, a delegation of five Farm Belt senators led by Bob Dole of Kansas, then the Republican leader in the Senate, met with Saddam in Mosul. The senators' main concern was to keep open the Iraqi market for American growers of rice and other grains. Mr. Dole told Saddam President Bush had asked him to say that "he wants better relations, and the U.S. government wants better relations with Iraq." Sen. Alan Simpson, Wyoming Republican, explained to Saddam that Iraq's problem was with the "haughty and pampered" Western media, not with the U.S. government.

That very same day, back in Washington, Mr. Baker instructed Ambassador Glaspie to inform Saddam that "as concerned as we are about Iraq's chemical, nuclear and missile programs, we are not in any sense preparing the way for a pre-emptive military unilateral effort to eliminate these programs. She was also to remind Saddam that when Israel, in 1981, bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant, "we condemned the 1981 raid. And would do so again today. We are telling Israel so."

Ah yes, Jim Baker friend to terrorists, tyrants, and Bush. How proud we must all be of our administration. It should be obvious that Bush, Baker, Rumsfeld, etc. really only love America because that is where they happen to live where they made money. It is the love of money that feeds their patriotic fervor, not the love of freedom and democracy, our grand experiment of rule by the people. It is obvious that their friends like Halliburton and Bechtel have no alligence to this nation, they are truly just in it for the money:

US Firm Bechtel Planned to Evade 1988 Iraq Sanctions

WASHINGTON - U.S. construction giant Bechtel, a firm with a major contract to help rebuild Iraq, planned to hire ”non-U.S. suppliers of technology” so it could evade economic sanctions imposed by Washington after Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iraq's Kurdish minority, according to a newly declassified document.

In April 2003 Bechtel was awarded one of the largest contracts to date by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for infrastructure repair work in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The deal is worth an initial payment of 34.6 million dollars and up to 680 million dollars in total.

Bechtel maintains that it has always respected and complied with U.S. government prohibitions in Iraq, but the uncovered document shows how its officials were prepared to challenge even its Washington allies to retain its business.

According to a 1988 confidential State Department cable, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the non-profit National Security Archive (NSA), U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie wrote that Bechtel officials threatened to bypass the sanctions, passed by the Senate in 1988.

”Bechtel representatives said that if economic sanctions contained in the Senate act are signed into law, Bechtel will turn to non-U.S. suppliers of technology and continue to do business in Iraq,” the cable said.

The document also shows further behind-the-scenes particulars of how the U.S. corporation, now part of President George W. Bush's project to bring democracy to post-Saddam Iraq, courted the dictatorial regime with full knowledge of Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and the Kurds -- with the approval of U.S. diplomats.

People ask why I am angered by the Bush administration. Read the above. If you aren't angry that the Bush administration is more interested in business relationships then the lives of Kurds, Iraqis, and Americans, then go ahead, vote for him. You deserve him.

- rob 12:09 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Christmas Cheer!

Bush ratings show little gain from Saddam capture

Saddam caught = good thing
Bush still low in ratings = good thing

The American public is actually a very bright group, considering all the lies they are told, they are still beginning to see the truth: Our President is a fraud.

- rob 11:47 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Worshipping at the Altar of Mediocrity...

Remember Bush's Resume that was making the rounds a few months ago? Well here's an old posting at a site that does a real good job of documenting Bush's failures the make up his resume:

1. I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
2. I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
3. I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
4. I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.
5. I am the first president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
6. I set the the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one year period.
7. After taking-off the entire month of August 2001, I then presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
8. I attacked and overtook two countries, promised to rebuild them and have not yet done so.
9. I am supporting development of a "Tactical Bunker Buster" nuke, a WMD.
10. I am getting our troops killed, under the lie of WMD components, then blaming the lie on our British friends and the CIA, where, coincidentally, my daddy used to lead.
11. I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. president.
12. In my first year in office over 2-million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month, leaving us in higher than ever unemployment.

Etc. etc. It goes on and on... kind of depressing as he is the President, but it says a lot about America that even with such a monkey as President... we still got it going on.

- rob 11:34 AM - [PermaLink] -

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I have a theory that no one actually believes in neo-con concepts. Every proponent of these ideas seems to be on the "neo-con dole."

Krugman: Citizen Conrad’s Friends

These days, everything old is new again. Income is once again concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, and money rules politics to an extent not seen since the Gilded Age. The Iraq war bears an eerie resemblance to the Spanish-American war. (There was never any evidence linking Spain to the Maine's demise.) And Citizen Kane is back, in the form of an incestuous media-political complex.

Conrad Black's empire includes The Daily Telegraph in London, The Jerusalem Post and The Chicago Sun-Times. He switched from Canadian to British citizenship — an action that forced him to give up control of Canada's National Post — when the Canadian government prevented him from becoming a member of the House of Lords.

Now he's a lord in trouble. Hollinger, it turns out, has paid hundreds of millions in fees to companies controlled by Lord Black and to individual executives. Some of these payments were secret and were unauthorized by the board. Even if viewed purely as a corporate scandal, this is pretty major stuff.

But the Black affair isn't just about bad corporate governance. It goes without saying that Lord Black, like Rupert Murdoch, has used his media empire to promote a conservative political agenda. The Telegraph, in particular, has a habit of "finding" documents of unproven authenticity that just happen to support neoconservative rationales for war. We're now learning that Lord Black also used his control of Hollinger to reward friends, including journalists, who share his political views.

Inevitably the list includes both Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle, whom I hereby propose (stealing an idea from Slate's Tim Noah) as the subject of a parlor game about cronyism, along the lines of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." The former Pentagon official, who has close ties to Donald Rumsfeld, has enthusiastically embraced the advantages of being both a businessman and a policy insider. His prestigious if part-time official position on the Defense Policy Board provides him with credibility, and at least the suggestion of both inside information and policy influence. This has led to lucrative consulting deals, and has attracted investments in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners.

Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Mr. Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon's controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn't disclose Boeing's $2.5 million investment in Trireme.

Sure enough, Hollinger also invested $2.5 million in Trireme, which is advised by Lord Black. In addition, Mr. Perle was paid more than $300,000 a year and received $2 million in bonuses as head of a Hollinger subsidiary. It's good to have friends.

The real surprise, though, is that two prominent journalists, William Buckley and George Will, were also regular paid advisors to Hollinger. Now, I thought there were rules here. First, if you're a full-time journalist, you shouldn't be in that kind of relationship. Second, whoever you are, if you write a favorable article about someone with whom you have a personal or financial connection — like Mr. Perle's piece on the tanker deal or Mr. Will's March column praising Lord Black's wisdom — you disclose that connection. But I guess the old rules no longer apply.

- rob 11:10 AM - [PermaLink] -

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But I thought Bush found him in the spider whole all by himself?!

Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops

LONDON, (AFP) - Saddam Hussein was captured by US troops only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

I don't think it'd be good for Bush if this became big news, better do something to distract everyone... Oh, back to Orange it is (the very next day no less).

- rob 4:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Freedom dies behind closed doors
(okay I think the quote is "democracy dies behind closed doors" but all this talk about Bush loving Freedom, when he obviously doesn't even know what it means makes me like the above version of the quote more.)

Listen to the slamming of doors all over Washington.

Modern (neo-con) Conservatives are so weak at defending their ideas that they decided to go on the offensive - making other ideas disappear.

White House Web Scrubbing

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site. Emphasis mine.

- rob 4:11 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Cheney doesn't suport our troops

Actually, I don't know that, though his actions seem to show that he doesn't (what with pushing them to a war under false pretences), but it is obvious his buddies sure don't support our troops.

Contractor served troops dirty food in dirty kitchens

The Pentagon repeatedly warned contractor Halliburton-KBR that the food it served to US troops in Iraq was "dirty," as were as the kitchens it was served in, NBC News reported on Friday.

Halliburton-Kellogg Brown and Root's promises to improve "have not been followed through," according to a Pentagon report that warned "serious repercussions may result" if the contractor did not clean up.

The Pentagon reported finding "blood all over the floor," "dirty pans," "dirty grills," "dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats ... and vegetables" in four of the military messes the company operates in Iraq, NBC said, citing Pentagon documents.

The report came as President George W. Bush fended off Pentagon reports that Halliburton-KBR overcharged US$61 million for gasoline it sold the military in Iraq. Dick Cheney ran Halliburton for five years until becoming vice president.

The company feeds 110,000 US and coalition troops daily at a cost of US$28 per troop per day, NBC said.

- rob 3:49 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Unelectable

For fun: Type Unelectable at Google and click "I'm feeling lucky," guess where you go.

- rob 3:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Out a CIA agent, and still be a respected conservative "columnist"

Robert Novak: The Dean dilemma

The hope inside the Democratic establishment has been that once Dean perceived himself on the road to the nomination, he would pivot sharply toward the center. He may be unable to perform or even attempt this maneuver. He is no ideologue, but he has not outgrown being the smart-aleck kid from Park Avenue with a hard edge. The Democratic savants I have contacted can only shake their heads over his stubborn insistence that Saddam Hussein's capture has not made the country safer.

I guess when he says "savants" he meant idiots. Saddam's capture will hopefully make our soldiers over in Iraq safer, but it has absolutely no effect on us. Or did we just go back up to level Orange because the GOP donor that makes duct tape needing a little extra Christmas cash?

- rob 3:34 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Merry Christmas for Osama and Bush

Back up to Alert Level Orange



It looks like our store is current again.

sad.

- rob 3:31 PM - [PermaLink] -

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