[Zentric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheTurtle', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'S')o, in summary, Smallpoxgirl and Zentric--It's a draw.

[EnemyCombatant]

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/art ... 1000952574

'USA Today' Defends Lack of Coverage for Downing Street Memo

[EnemyCombatant]

It's time to take action people. Full court press: Memo

[url=http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=NONE&SEC={456ECCD5-4EAC-4C6D-8A17-89728B250AE2}]John Conyers[/url]
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')riends -- As many of you know, my website has been overwhelmed with responses to the "Downing Street Minutes" and many citizens sending emails. At times, I am receiving ten emails a minute. To reduce traffic to the site, I am taking down the email box for the time being and starting an open thread, where email traffic will be redirected. Excuse the caps, but to clear up any confusion: THE LETTER ABOUT THE DOWNING STREEET MINUTES, HOWEVER, IS STILL AVAILABLE THROUGH THE LINK TO THE LEFT OR NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

[EnemyCombatant]

Here's the latest:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')ohn Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being "fixed" around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they agreed to "manufacture" the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.
He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.
Frustrated at the refusal by the White House to respond to their letter, the congressmen have set up a website - www.downingstreetmemo.com - to collect signatures on a petition demanding the same answers.
Conyers promised to deliver it to Bush once it reached 250,000 signatures. By Friday morning it already had more than 500,000 with as many as 1m expected to have been obtained when he delivers it to the White House on Thursday.
AfterDowningStreet.org, another website set up as a result of the memo, is calling for a congressional committee to consider whether Bush's actions as depicted in the memo constitute grounds for impeachment.
It has been flooded with visits from people angry at what they see as media self-censorship in ignoring the memo. It claims to have attracted more than 1m hits a day.
Democrats.com, another website, even offered $1,000 (about £550) to any journalist who quizzed Bush about the memo's contents, although the Reuters reporter who asked the question last Tuesday was not aware of the reward and has no intention of claiming it.
The complaints of media self-censorship have been backed up by the ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National Public Radio, who have questioned the lack of attention the minutes have received from their organisations.

[TheSupplyGuy]

How bout that, I got to hear Joseph Wilson speak and even go to ask a question. Well, tomorrow we'll find out how true this story is about Kerry, and then on Thursday about the other Democrats. Let's not forget last year's Plume lawsuit that never materialized.

[Tapas]

Professor James Petras writes a detailed analysis of how the Neo-cons pushed the Bush administration into an illegal war.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The Pentagon Zionists were among the first to link Iraq with the events of 9/11 in an attempt to manipulate US public anger against the secular Iraqi state.
They were responsible for fabricating the story that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger for the purposes of developing nuclear weapons.

[erl]

Sorry, but you lost me with: "The Pentagon Zionists..."
I stopped reading after that.

[merecat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('erl', 'S')orry, but you lost me with: "The Pentagon Zionists..."
I stopped reading after that.

[RG73]

Given that there are no Zionists running Israel, how can there be Zionists running the US government?

These same "Zionists" have forced Israel into moving huge numbers of people from their homes and giving up strategic territory to terrorists. These same US Zionists are forcing Israel to be divided into two discontinous states so that the Arabs can have a contiguous territory. They are going to force Israel to give up the Golan Heights--all while harping on Syria's support of Iraqi insurgents. And they will, eventually, force Israel into giving up it's nukes. Given that Israel has gained nothing at all during Bush's term in office, that it is being forced to give up territory and security, it is beyond absurd to claim that there are Zionists giving the US government marching orders. Everything the US has done since Bush has been in office has only further inflamed the Islamic world against Israel and made Israel less secure. Because Israel has been forbidden to take any real action against terrorists (lest we get another oil embargo), their tourist economy has gone in the tubes (which was a major source of their income). Israel is not getting oil from Iraq. They are not getting money from Iraq.

The fact is that Israel was a client state of the US and used as a pawn by the US in the Cold War. Given that Bush is far friendlier with the Saudi's than with the Israeli's, and given that Israel does not provide the US any security against Soviet client states, nor any economic benefit, it is being abandoned. Israel has no strategic importance, and it pisses off our oil suppliers. Israel certainly has a strong lobby in the US, it is certainly disproportionately powerful for such a small nation--but the Bush Administration has left little doubt for anyone who has watched that Israel will be defanged and it will be sacrificed. The only thing that really protects Israel at the moment is not Neo-Cons, but nutter Christian groups in the US who do not want Jerusalem in Islamic hands (Jews being the lesser of two evils in this case). The Bush Administration has been motivated by it's own interests---not the interest of a few million Jews half way across the world (the interest of Jews has rarely had much weight in the world).

There is no Jewish conspiracy. The US is acting to maintain US energy security--not the security of Israel.

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]Sorry, but you lost me with: "The Pentagon Zionists..."
I stopped reading after that.

[Tapas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('merecat', 'G')reat subject and thread Tapas! There's no question or doubt about it, US/UK governments lied about the reasons for starting the iraq war. Plus an honest and truthful englishman was murdered just because he began to leak the truth to a UK newspaper.

[erl]

Glad to have helped.

[Tapas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'E')xcellent read Tapas, I too believe it's a small cult in the Presidents inner circle leading the little boy around because it is most certainly NOT in the national security interest of the USA to engage in this costly and wasteful war.

[MD]

RG73 wins my vote for this thread's "Most Level-Headed Post to Date".
The rest of you need to work on limiting your use of inflammatory language, grandioise claims and glad-handing if you wish to gain credibility.

[EnemyCombatant]

Joseph Wilson is already committed to the hearing.
Kerry tried to jump on the Downing Street Memo as damage control to protect his fellow bonesman. But the grassroots people don't trust Kerry, they trust Conyers. So Conyers is the man leading the charge.

In addition, a former CIA person (don't know who) claims he has many more memos he will provide for the hearing.
Why do I get the feeling this hearing will not take place. To know what I mean, did anyone watch the Patriot Act Expansion hearing??

[Carlhole]

Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties by Eric Hobsbawm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hree continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR. This hegemony no longer rests on the sheer size of the US economy. Large though this is, it has declined since 1945 and its relative decline continues. It is no longer the giant of global manufacturing. The centre of the industrialised world is rapidly shifting to the eastern half of Asia. Unlike older imperialist countries, and unlike most other developed industrial countries, the US has ceased to be a net exporter of capital, or indeed the largest player in the international game of buying up or establishing firms in other countries, and the financial strength of the state rests on the continued willingness of others, mostly Asians, to maintain an otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit.

[Carlhole]

William John Cox is currently a senior prosecutor for the State Bar of California. As a professional police officer he authored the Policy Manual of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Role of the Police in America for a National Advisory Commission during the Nixon administration:
Twice fooled–shame on us: The case for impeachment By William John Cox Online Journal Contributing Writer
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')une 25, 2005—George W. Bush stole the 2000 election and we let him get away with it. While the Democrats cried because Al Gore had won the vote, the Republicans counted their loot and planned the next heist. Crime does pay when the justices of the Supreme Court are in on the caper, and they can't be impeached if the crooks control the Congress.
At first, most of us (irrespective of politics) thought that, even though Bush was sort of a goofy guy, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other retainers from the reigns of Ronnie the Great and George I would be able to run things for four years. The world was at peace, the economy was good, and, much as he had done for the Rangers baseball team, Bush would play the part, lead the cheers and leave the big decisions to those better equipped to think deep thoughts. Sooner or later, the voters would catch on that they'd been had, and the doofus would be replaced with someone who could read, write and think for him (or her)self.
But, suddenly, on September 11, 2001, the game changed. At first, things appeared the same. While the president was flying around in circles, without a clue and out of touch, Cheney and the other grownups dealt with the emergency and scripted Bush's response.

[Carlhole]

The Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun by JEREMY SCAHILL
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.

But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began. ...
"It reminded me of a boxing match in which one of the boxers is told not to move while the other is allowed to punch and only stop when he is convinced that he has weakened his opponent to the point where he is defeated before the fight begins," says former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Von Sponeck, a thirty-year career diplomat who was the top UN official in Iraq from 1998 to 2000. During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Washington has consistently and falsely claimed these attacks were mandated by UN Resolution 688, passed after the Gulf War, which called for an end to the Iraqi government's repression in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Von Sponeck dismissed this justification as a "total misnomer." In an interview with The Nation, Von Sponeck said that the new information "belatedly confirms" what he has long argued: "The no-fly zones had little to do with protecting ethnic and religious groups from Saddam Hussein's brutality" but were in fact an "illegal establishment...for bilateral interests of the US and the UK."

[katkinkate]

Well, it all goes to confirm what I've believed for years now. One of the key skills required to be a polititian is the ability and readiness to lie to achieve your goals. The higher up the hierarchy a polly is the more he/she has lied and cheated in their journey there.

I like Terry Pratchet's solution from his book 'The Last Continent' As soon as a Prime Minister was elected he was immediately put in jail to save time and court costs.
David/Leah Eddings had a neat idea also. While in government the polititians don't get paid, just living expences covered. You'd be more likely to get people who want to serve the country rather than just themselves.

[savethehumans]

Want to know how bad it's gotten, folks? This, from a story about the reporters who are appealing to the Supreme Court about keeping their sources confidential:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ooper and Miller have been the most prominent in a recent pageant of journalists jailed or fined for ignoring court orders to reveal sources. Cooper has gained acclaim as Time's dogged, wisecracking White House correspondent; Miller has been praised, and criticized, for pushing forward stories about weapons of mass destruction.
Many in their profession, and outside it, see the case as a harbinger of future journalistic freedoms.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, recently described how a colleague explained to a group of Russian journalists visiting the Times how Miller might go to jail for refusing to reveal the identity of confidential sources.
"The Russians were flabbergasted," Keller said, "since they have grown up regarding our freedoms with envy."