Officials Foresee No Ebb in Iraq Violence

When Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker brief Congress this week, they will be hard-pressed to depict Iraq as moving toward stability in the wake of recent violence that sent deaths soaring to their highest level in seven months.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's move against Shiite Muslim militias has revealed the gravity of the country's Shiite rivalries, just as U.S. forces are decreasing their presence.

The intense combat in southern Iraq that pitted Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army against Iraqi and American forces has largely wound down for the time being, but the enmity that fueled it remains. Fighting between the two sides flared Sunday in Baghdad, leaving as many as 22 dead.

The military campaign in the southern port of Basra, which the government says targeted all armed groups, unraveled a seven-month freeze on armed operations observed by the Mahdi Army that had been considered pivotal to Iraq's recent reduction in violence.

"We are now locked in a battle," said a high-ranking Iraqi government official, who predicted more confrontations in the coming months. "I think this will be a hot summer in Iraq."

Crocker, in a meeting with foreign journalists Thursday, praised Maliki for taking on militias but said the prime minister had started a fight that could not be dropped.

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VA workers charge $2.6B on gov't credit cards at luxury hotels, high-end retailers

Veterans Affairs employees last year racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin Covey — and government auditors are investigating, citing past spending abuses.

All told, VA staff charged $2.6 billion to their government credit cards.

The Associated Press, through a Freedom of Information request, obtained the VA list of 3.1 million purchases made in the 2007 budget year. The list offers a detailed look into the everyday spending at the government's second largest department.

By and large, it reveals few outward signs of questionable spending, with hundreds of purchases at prosthetic, orthopedic and other medical supply stores.

But there are multiple charges that have caught the eye of government investigators.

At least 13 purchases totaling $8,471 were charged at Sharper Image, a specialty store featuring high-tech electronics and gizmos such as robotic barking dogs. In addition, 19 charges worth $1,999.56 were made at Franklin Covey, which sells leather totes and planners geared toward corporate executives.

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$3 Trillion May Be Too Low

By Joseph Stiglitz

Our original estimate of the cost of the Iraq war was too conservative: in reality the cost for the US will be much higher!

President Bush has tried to give the impression that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost of the war that we provide in our new book may be exaggerated.

We believe that it is in fact conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.

Our numbers differ from theirs for three reasons: first, we are estimating the total cost of the war, under alternative conservative scenarios, derived from the defence department and congressional budget office. We are not looking at McCain’s 100-year scenario - we assume that we are there, in diminished strength, only through to 2017. But neither are we looking at a scenario that sees our troops pulled out within six months. With operational spending going on at $12 billion a month, and with every year costing more than the last, it is easy to come to a total operational cost that is double the $600 billon already spent.

Second, we include war expenditures hidden elsewhere in the budget, and budgetary expenditures that we would have to incur in the future even if we left tomorrow.

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Iraqis Angered by Renewal of Blackwater Contract

Iraqis expressed anger on Saturday at news the United States had renewed the contract of Blackwater, a private security firm blamed for killing up to 17 people in a shooting incident last year.

"Renewing this contract means we will see this sort of thing again in the streets," Abbas Hasoun, a grocer, said. "I wish we could turn the page on this, but keeping this company here means bloodshed will continue."

A traffic policeman who said he was questioned in Turkey by the FBI about the shooting was patrolling on Saturday the same busy traffic circle where the incident took place.

"I went to Turkey and testified about what I saw, but all my efforts were in vain when I heard the news," said the policeman who asked that his name not be published for security reasons.

The FBI is investigating whether Blackwater employees broke the law during the shooting last September when Blackwater staff, apparently believing they were under attack, fired into cars in heavy traffic, killing civilians.

In spite of the criminal probe, the State Department announced on Friday the firm's contract to protect U.S. personnel in Baghdad would be renewed.

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Lawmakers Worry About Who Will Be Indicted Next

There is fear in the halls of the Alabama Statehouse. Your colleague may be wired. Somebody may be watching you.

An indictment looms.

After a dozen legislators received subpoenas one day last month in a criminal investigation, an atmosphere of paranoia and anxiety has descended on the gleaming white building that houses the state Legislature, many of its occupants say.

Legislators are sweeping their offices for bugs. Routine horse-trading for votes is stymied, for fear it could be misinterpreted. A wary lawmaker agrees to meet a reporter only in a wide-open parking lot. After-hours get-togethers are off.

The concern is a result of a long-running federal investigation into corruption within the state's system of two-year colleges that has led to guilty pleas on bribery and corruption charges by one state lawmaker and the system's former chancellor. The Birmingham News reported in 2006 that a quarter of the 140 members of the Legislature had financial ties to the college system, with most of the jobs or contracts going to lawmakers or their relatives. Recent reports indicate the number has grown to nearly a third of the Legislature.

The fear is all the more acute in that the current investigation centers on Democrats in their last redoubt of power here, the state Legislature, and takes place against a backdrop of intense partisan ill-feeling. Many here maintain that a former governor, Don Siegelman, who was convicted by federal prosecutors and jailed last year, was singled out because he is a Democrat.

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Questions in Portugal About CIA Flights

By Mario de Queiroz, Inter Press Service

Lisbon - Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates and his predecessor José Manuel Barroso should answer "clearly and transparently" questions about secret CIA flights transporting prisoners to Guantánamo, says British lawyer and activist Clive Stafford Smith.

Speaking to the press in Lisbon on Thursday, Stafford Smith, the head of the non-governmental British human rights group Reprieve, said the Portuguese government may be sued if it fails to cooperate voluntarily in the search for the truth.

Reprieve says it has documentary evidence that Portugal was involved in the illegal transfer of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisoners, in CIA or chartered planes, to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

The case of the so-called CIA "extraordinary renditions" flights goes back to November 2005, when a U.S. newspaper, The Washington Post, revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons in several countries, and the illegal transport of prisoners, particularly to Guantánamo.

The CIA extraordinary rendition programme involves flying or otherwise transferring terror suspects from their place of detention to countries where they are not nationals, and where the security services are known to practise torture.

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What the Fed Won't Say

By Niel Irwin / Washington Post

It will be a quiet week for economic data, but after Friday's lousy employment report, it may be nice to have a breather. On Tuesday(4-8-08), the Fed will release minutes of its March 18 meeting, when it cut the interest rate it controls by three-quarters of a point.

Expect a document that indicates extensive concern about inflation and the slowing economy but offers no strong guidance on what interest rate action the Fed will take next.

The minutes will also give details of some central bank decisions meant to improve market functioning but not of the crucial meetings when it intervened to rescue investment bank Bear Stearns.

The most significant data this week will be in a report on the trade deficit on Thursday(4-10-08).

Bush Bypasses Several Levels to Rely On Petraeus

For months, a debate raged at the top levels of the Bush administration over how quickly to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. But the discussion shut down soon after President Bush flew to Camp Arifjan, a dusty Army base near the Iraqi border in Kuwait, in January for a face-to-face meeting with the man whose counsel on the war he values most: Gen. David H. Petraeus.

During an 80-minute session, the president questioned his top commander in Iraq on whether further troop reductions, beyond those planned through July, would compromise security gains. According to officials familiar with the exchange, Petraeus said he wanted to wait until the summer to evaluate conditions -- and Bush made it clear he would support him and take any political heat.

"My attitude is, if he didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me," Bush said before television cameras later, with Petraeus standing by his side. "I said to the general: 'If you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you.' "

In the waning months of his administration, Bush has hitched his fortunes to those of his bookish four-star general, bypassing several levels of the military chain of command to give Petraeus a privileged voice in White House deliberations over Iraq, according to current and former administration officials and retired officers.

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New Iraq Assessment is Nothing New!

By Alicia Hope

A new report of U.S. policy in Iraq by the same experts who advised the original Iraq Study Group concludes that political progress is "so slow, halting and superficial" and political fragmentation "so pronounced" that the United States is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago.

The report partially states that if Iraq fails to act, Washington should "cut its losses" and work out a withdrawal schedule!

Duh!

They should have cut their losses a long time ago but they'll keep trying to force this thing down the throats of the rest of the world! After all, they need their 14 "enduring" bases for global imperialism!

There needs to be a report that says,"The New Order of the Ages is an evil, demonic agenda that is doomed to fail!"

"Reductions in troop levels will likely result in some degree of chaos and violence no matter what," the report warns. "The decentralized, fragmented political dynamic in Iraq cannot be reversed." Creation of a strong central government that can take on security is unlikely to happen in the time left for the current expanded U.S. military presence.

The report is due for release today(4-6-08).

Army Worried by Rising Stress of Return Tours to Iraq

Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.

Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers’ mental health.

The stress of long and multiple deployments to Iraq is just one of the concerns being voiced by senior military officers in Washington as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Iraq commander, prepares to tell Congress this week that he is not ready to endorse any drawdowns beyond those already scheduled through July.

President Bush has signaled that he will endorse General Petraeus’s recommendation, a decision that will leave close to 140,000 American troops in Iraq at least through the summer. But in a meeting with Mr. Bush late last month in advance of General Petraeus’s testimony, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed deep concern about stress on the force, senior Defense Department and military officials said.

Among the 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times, according to a separate set of statistics provided this week by Army personnel officers. The percentage of troops sent back to Iraq for repeat deployments would have to increase in the months ahead.

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The U.S. establishment media in a nutshell

In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq -- that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight -- has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above. "The Clintons are Rich!!!!" will undoubtedly soon be at the top of this heap within a matter of a day or two.

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Congress Freaks Out Over Second Life Terrorism

Oh no, the virtual terrorists are coming to get us! Well, maybe. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, had an entire hearing about virtual worlds and terrorism, even calling in the chief executive of Linden Lab to testify about the possibility of Second Life being used for evil terrorist ends. One of the concerns, brought up by some members of Congress, was that Second Life could be used launder terrorist funds.  The possibility was quickly dispelled:

The average withdrawal from Second Life -- from Linden dollars into U.S. dollars -- is one dollar, so it's "relatively easy to spot larger transactions," [Philip] Rosedale said. "We have managed to maintain a fraud rate that is a fraction of a percentage point. The industry average is closer to 1 percent."

Virtual community Entropia Universe last year earned $400,000 after it auctioned off banking licenses to several well-known virtual world players. The licenses allow their owners to lend cash to the community's participants for the virtual purchase of anything from game-fighting weapons to real estate.

Second Life celeb Anshe Chung was among those who purchased a license.

Lawmakers on Tuesday denied that they were looking to regulate the virtual world.

Virtual reality is "going to be a highly competitive world. We just want to make sure it's not highly regulated," said ranking member Cliff Stearns of Florida.

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U.S. Can't Stop Chinese Missile; No Tests 'Til 2014

The U.S. Navy can't stop China's most sophisticated anti-ship missile -- and won't even start testing a defense until 2014.

"Most anti-ship cruise missiles fly below the speed of sound and on a straight path, making them easier to track and target," notes Bloomberg News' Tony Capaccio.  Not China's so-called "Sizzler" missile, already aboard eight Kilo-class submarines.

The Sizzler starts at subsonic speeds. Within 10 nautical miles of its target, a rocket-propelled warhead separates and accelerates to three times the speed of sound, flying no more than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.  On final approach, the missile 'has the potential to perform very high defensive maneuvers,' including sharp-angled dodges, the Office of Naval Intelligence said in a manual on worldwide maritime threats.

The Navy doesn't have a test target that can mimic how the Sizzler flies. They haven't even "picked a contractor to develop the test target," Capaccio notes.  Industry proposals for building the target missile were received in February and a contract valued at about $107 million will be awarded by Oct. 1 for a 54-month development phase and first fielding by 2014."

Admiral Timothy Keating, who heads the U.S. Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee last month that “we are currently not as capable of defending against that missile as I would like.”

Al-Qaeda to McCain: Iran is our common foe

Al-Qaeda's number two leader snubs Republican Senator John McCain for claiming that Iran is working with the terrorist organization.

During a new online Q&A session, Ayman al-Zawahiri said al-Qaeda wants to see the destruction of Iran - a Shia nation battling the terrorists.

"We hope that war 'saps' both Washington and Tehran," he said.

"The dispute between America and Iran is a genuine struggle, and the possibility of the US striking Iran is real," al-Zawahiri said.

"Whichever country that emerges victorious will find itself in an intensified and fierce battle [with al-Qaeda]," he continued.

Al-Zawahiri was referring to recent remarks by the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, who has claimed that Iranian operatives are 'taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back' to Iraq.

Although McCain's campaign has attempted to whitewash the senator's remarks as a mishap, pundits have questioned McCain's awareness of current world affairs.

Constitutional Lawyer: Bush 'ordered war crimes'

By Nick Juliano

This week's revelation of another secret Bush administration memo that seemed to eliminate any boundaries on the treatment of detainees added to the already substantial evidence that US military and intelligence interrogators have abused and perhaps even tortured prisoners rounded up during the "war on terror."

Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo wrote in 2003 that Bush's seemingly supreme authority in wartime trumped federal laws "prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes," as the Washington Post reported. For constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, the latest memo should be more than enough reason for Congress to begin some serious investigations, but hesitance to really dig into Bush-authorized "war crimes" have precluded them from doing so, he says.

"It is really amazing because Congress -- including the Democrats -- have avoided any type of investigation into torture because they do not want to deal with the fact that the president ordered war crimes," Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Thursday night. "But evidence keeps on coming out.... What you get from this is this was a premeditated and carefully orchestrated torture program. Not torture, but a torture program."

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Ritter: U.S. War With Iran in the Offing

Press TV
Friday, April 4, 2008

Former Chief Inspector of the UN Commission on Iraq Scott Ritter has claimed that there is an 80 percent chance of a US war with Iran.

Ritter made the remarks at Middlebury College as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Vermont Peace and Justice Center, The Rutland Herald said on Wednesday.

Ritter further noted that the pattern of preparations for such a conflict has been steadily developing and involves Congress as well as the Bush-Cheney administration.

According to Ritter, a war with Iran would speed up the ongoing decline of US standing in the world, and afterward Russia and China would be ready to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum.

Ahead of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the ex-inspector had said that there were no weapons of mass destruction to justify an attack on the country.

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on Wrong Track

By David Leonhardt and Marjorie Connelly / NY Times

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one.

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Murtha: Bush Jeopardized U.S. Defense

Congressman John Murtha says President George W. Bush's 'preventive strike' on Iraq has jeopardized the US defense 'for a long time'.

"A preventive strike is something you say to yourself, there may be some cases for doing it," the Vietnam vet told the Huffington Post.

"We are never going to do another preventive strike because of what Bush did. He has hurt our defense for a long time, maybe for history," congressman Murtha continued.

The Vietnam vet, who is one of the fiercest war critics in Congress, said the Bush administration has created an environment in which diplomacy is anathema.

Murtha added that telling the truth in the Bush era gets one in trouble, suggesting that Navy Admiral William Fallon was forced to resign over his position on the prospects of war against Iran.

The chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee said, "Admiral Fallon made a mistake," by expressing his concerns on Iraq and "trying to make changes in Iraq that need to be done. He was trying to get the troops out."

Senate Drops Aid for Bankrupt Homeowners

Republicans and business-friendly Democrats on Thursday scuttled a plan to give people threatened with losing their homes more leverage in winning favorable loan terms from their lenders in bankruptcy courts.

The Senate killed the bankruptcy plan by a 58-36 vote on the first full day of debate on a bill designed to boost the slumping housing market.

The Democratic-backed bankruptcy law changes, opposed by banks and their GOP allies and a handful of Democrats, would have given judges the power to cut interest rates and principal on troubled mortgages to help desperate borrowers trapped in subprime mortgages keep their homes.

The idea was to give borrowers duped into abusive mortgages leverage in getting their loan terms adjusted. Such power, said the plan's chief proponent, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have helped "more people than all of the provisions combined" in the rest the bill.

But Republicans and 10 Democrats, along with Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, voted to scuttle the bankruptcy provision. Opponents argued that, despite modifications by Durbin, the proposal would hurt more than it would have helped by leading mortgage lenders to ratchet up interest rates and thereby put another drag on the soft housing market.

The defeat of the bankruptcy plan highlighted a weakness that many people find with the bill - that it showers generous tax breaks on money-losing businesses like home builders but does little to help people facing foreclosure.

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Secret Memo Fails to Address Reasonable Doubt or Burden of Proof

By Alicia Hope / GangsterGovernment.com

Any competent lawyer could easily defeat the government's case in front of 12 jurors. The fact that these detainees were threatened in military tribunals with the death penalty, while not being shown the evidence against them, is suspicious(at the very least)!! It is really an indication and evidence that the government knows that it has no case! Oh, I forgot to mention that some detainees were tortured and forced to confess to involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Would those type of confessions hold up in front of a jury of twelve? I think not!

When anyone is making a bold claim, it is not someone else's responsibility to disprove the claim, it is the responsibility of the person who is making the bold claim to prove it. In this case, that would be the U.S. government and they can't prove Al-Qaeda carried out the attacks on 9-11-2001. In fact, if the defense were to bring to the hypothetical court room some experts on physics and architecture(i.e. Stephen Jones and Richard Gage), the government's whole case would fall apart because there would now be reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors that the defendants or Al Qaeda had anything to do with the collapse of the WTC buildings!

In fact, the clear and convincing evidence would point to an inside job! And 9/11 Truth is not old news! It's quite relevant!

ACLU Lawyers need to get these cases in front of a jury! With more than half the country doubting the official 9/11 story, many detainees would be less likely to end up as fall guys for the crimes of the real evil-doers!

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