CIA analyst: Cheney, Libby lied to Congress about Pakistani nukes

When Richard Barlow joined the CIA in 1985 as a counter-proliferation intelligence officer with particular expertise on Pakistan, he quickly realized that Pakistan was continuing to develop its nuclear program, and that some of its clandestine and illegal procurement activity was occurring within the US.

It didn't take Barlow long to realize that US officials knew what Pakistan was doing. According to Barlow, individuals at the State Department later actively facilitated procurement, tipping off targets of sealed arrest warrants in undercover operations and illegally approving export licenses for restricted goods.

Some dare call it treason.

The Ordeal of Chaplain James Yee

He had become one of them.

Like the suspected terrorists with whom he spoke as an Army Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Capt. James Yee was accused of being an enemy to the country. He was detained at a Jacksonville, Fla., airport without being told why. All his wife knew back in Olympia, Wash., where he had been headed, was that he didn't show up.

He was arrested and shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles. Goggles painted black were placed over his eyes. Large earmuffs blocked his hearing, he said.

"It's called sensory deprivation," Yee told about 500 people Monday night at UC Santa Barbara. "It's done to instill fear, intimidation and confusion."

"To instill fear, intimidation and confusion." That is an apt description of the broader policies of the Bush regime.

"We cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

--retired Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, former Director of the National Security Agency

John Kerry talks about the collapse of World Trade Center Building Seven and Controlled Demolition. Is this just a gaffe?

George McGovern:

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad Exposed

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on election night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004 , Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website—which gave the world the presidential election results—was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been recruiting former military and government intelligence officers for a branch of its global security office aimed at identifying threats to the world's largest retailer, including from "suspect individuals and groups".

Scumbag Tom DeLay says top Dems close to treason

Democratic leaders are acting like traitors by opposing the Iraq war, and President Bush must answer with a toughened stance, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Monday.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "are getting very, very close to treason," DeLay said in a meeting with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

He remains under indictment in his home state of Texas on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Iran Foreign Minister accuses US of supporting terrorism

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday claimed in Havana that Washington supported terrorism in various parts of the world, criticizing last week's release of a former CIA operative convicted in the deadly 1976 downing of a Cuban airliner.

The Iranian diplomat, who was on a two-day visit to Cuba, decried what he called Washington's "support for terrorism in various parts of the world."

His remarks followed last week's release on bail of former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela for a 1976 bombing that killed all 73 people aboard a Cuban passenger jet.

The Office of Special Counsel will investigate U.S. attorney firings and other political activities led by Karl Rove.

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."

I hope they nail the bastard.

AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Unidentified gunmen have killed 23 people in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

All the victims were said to be members of the Yazidi religious minority which follows a pre-Islamic religion and worships an angel figure.

As I recall the story, Gurdjieff once witnesses a frightened Yazidi (or Yezidi) boy "trapped" inside a circle drawn in the dirt.

Respect for America in the world sinks lower with each Iraqi death and mutilation. Like the empires before it, America today looks like a pitiful Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, essentially powerless against a disparate and decentralized occupation resistance.

Maury Island Update:

Wreckage from secret 1947 mission found

It was a mysterious, secret government mission. It ended in a fiery plane crash, and a crash site that was all but unknown. Almost 60-years after that plane went down, a curious explorer has found the wreckage, and is now trying to uncover its secrets.

http://www.seattlechatclub.org/Arnold.html

The plane had impacted the hill at the base of three alder trees and there was burnt debris everywhere. The military had used Davenport¹s property as a base camp and spent over a week in cleaning up the debris. Also found in the area was a large black stone which directors believe may have been one of the pieces of slag the officers may have been hoping to analyze.

The Tacoma Times that day¹s headlines read ³Sabotage Hinted in Crash of Army Bomber at Kelso and a sub-headline read ³Plane May Hold Flying Disk Secret². Written by Paul Lance the article stated the plane had been sabotaged or shot down to prevent shipment of flying disk fragments to Hamilton Field, California, for analysis.

By the way, I recently purchsed a copy of Ray Palmer's The Coming of the Saucers on e-Bay, and Ray Palmer, Jr. related to me that he still has a piece of the "slag" that was allegedy ejected from the saucer in the Maury Island Incident, for sale if the price is right.

Via Cannonfire

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war."

``I think it was Osama bin Laden's,'' Rove replied.

Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

How They Stole Ohio (and thus the election)

Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including 24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry. In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.

Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that Karl Rove and the GOP had real-time computer access to both the actual vote numbers in Ohio as well as the exit polling data that would have allowed them to direct how many votes they needed from the suspect Ohio southwestern Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin of victory in the 2004 election. Stay tuned.

"There seems to be a complete failure to understand that we have been trying to suppress a rebellion against our occupation."

"As long as we are there we are the number one public enemy for the Muslim-Arab world."

"We were after all, a Christian army occupying a Muslim Arab country, something which in the Middle East is essentially a disaster."

--retired Army Col Doug McGreggor, a former advisor to Don Rumsfeld

We got it right during the early days of Afghanistan -- and then lost focus. We have never gotten it right in Iraq.

--retired Marine General John J. Sheehan, in the Washington Post

What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass.

Sadr's party says split from Iraq govt inevitable

BAGHDAD, April 14 (Reuters) - The political movement of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was on the verge of withdrawing from the Iraqi government because of Baghdad's close ties to Washington, a senior official in the movement said on Saturday.

Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri said Sadr's movement, which has six ministers in cabinet including those for health and agriculture, would not remain in a government which he said constantly defended the U.S. occupation.
"Our withdrawal from the government is now inevitable and might take place in a matter of days," he said.

"If there is no change from the government and its policy of appeasement for the occupation, then we will go ahead," Muteyri told Reuters.

Read in conjunction with the next story this is truly frightening.

Iran trains 'thousands' of Iraqi insurgents

Thousands of Iraqi Shias are being trained in advanced guerrilla warfare tactics at a secret camp near the Iranian capital, according to militants who say they have spent time there.

Through an Iraqi intermediary who also went to Iran, The Independent on Sunday spoke to two seasoned guerrilla fighters. They said large numbers of Mahdi Army volunteers loyal to the maverick Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had gone to the base in Jalil Azad, near Tehran, for instruction.

Abu Amer, a 39-year-old Mahdi Army fighter who asked that his full name not be used, said he had been trained by instructors he believed were from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "Shia fighters are being trained in modern fighting methods, such as use of powerful explosives and bringing down helicopters," he told the IoS.

This report is credible enough although the title is somewhat misleading. The insurgents we are currently fighting in Iraq are Sunnis not Shiites. However, I believe that we will be fighting against the al Sadre movement soon enough and then all hell will break loose in Iraq. How will the Bush administration respond? The worse option would be an attack on Iraq, a fact which, in itself, is almost enough to lead me to predict that that is what will happen.

Guantánamo's lost souls

Bisher and Jamil have withstood various forms of physical torture during their five years as prisoners. Both have suffered numerous beatings (Bisher suffered broken ribs and, perhaps, a broken foot because of beatings by guards - both injuries went untreated despite Bisher's requests for medical assistance), stress positions, temperature extremes, extreme sleep deprivation, death threats, threats to family, and, at various times, starvation and the lack of potable water.

These two men are probably innocent and the U.S. Government knows it. Still, the torture continues. The U.S. Government continues to maintain that all prisoners at Guantanamo are treated humanely. That is a lie.

"Guantanamo Bay's secret weapon," he said, is "the use of Islam against prisoners to break them." He said prisoners were forced to prostrate in the center of a circle inscribed with a pentagram by a guard who yelled, "Satan is your God now, not Allah." He said female interrogators "exploit(ed) conservative Islamic etiquette" by undressing before interrogating detainees and "giving lap dances" to unnerve them.

Yee said the Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God, was "desecrated in many different ways," such as being urinated upon and "tossed on the floor." These acts resulted in "hunger strikes" and "mass suicide attempts," he said. Yee said he tried to create more tolerance for detainees' faith by helping institute new policies that were more respectful towards the Quran.

So they arrested him.

Stephen Soldz has an excellent article on torture, pulling together a lot of information. See Aid and Comfort for Torturers

Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state.

Scott Horton in Harpers. Read the whole thing.

After four years of war, 3,200 American deaths, 23,000 U.S. troops wounded and possibly in excess of 100,000 Iraqis killed, U.S. policymakers are now making what may prove to be their worst mistake yet: They may be on a new collision course with Moqtada al-Sadr.

Lake of Blood in Baghdad

I'm sure there is a logical explanation for this. Click here for my own google satellite search. Further speculation on lake of blood here, may be actual blood.

Gerald Ford's Final Memoir

In this posthumous publication, the former president speaks as the last surviving member of the legendary Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In a detailed outline of the Commission's final report, President Ford addresses the lingering questions and conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination oneby one, and confirms the role of the CIA in hiding and destroying information regarding the assassination.

Available here

Mormon Students Protest Cheney

The problem is this is a morally dubious man,” said Andrew Christensen, a 22-year-old Republican from Salt Lake City. “It’s challenging the morality and integrity of this institution.”

Photo of the Day (click to enlarge)

Cheney's view on the Presidency: Defends "monarchical notions of prerogative"

The quote above is from the minority report of the Iran-Contra Committee. The minority was headed by then Rep. Dick Cheney.

Among the report's signers was then-Rep. Dick Cheney, who led the group. They rejected the idea that separation of powers would "preclude the exercise of arbitrary power" and argued that the president needed to act expeditiously and secretly to achieve American aims in a dangerous world. Their solution to executive abuse was to water down congressional and judicial oversight. The minority report referred approvingly to "monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit [presidents] to exceed the law" if Congress tried to exercise oversight on national security matters. Cheney later insisted in an interview that "you have to preserve the prerogative of the president in extraordinary circumstances," by not notifying Congress of intelligence operations.

Cheney's views have not shifted since then. In December 2005, he referred reporters to the minority report for his view of "the president's prerogatives." And for the first time in U.S. history, executive branch lawyers have argued that the president has power to "suspend" laws permanently in the name of national security. In signing statements for new laws, President Bush has repeatedly asserted this broad power. In internal legal opinions on torture, Justice Department lawyers have proposed that the president can set aside laws that conflict with his ideas of national security. Under this logic, laws against torture, warrantless surveillance and transfers of detainees to governments that torture all buckle.

Professor who criticized Bush added to terrorist 'no-fly' list

A top Constitutional scholar from Princeton who gave a televised speech that slammed President George W. Bush's executive overreach recently learned that he had been added to the Transportation Security Administration's terrorist watch list. He shared his experience this weekend at the law blog Balkinization.

Walter F. Murphy, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Emeritus, at Princeton University, attempted to check his luggage at the curbside in Albuquerque before boarding a plane to Newark, New Jersey. Murphy was told he could not use the service.

"I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list," he said.
When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any peace marches.

"We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," a clerk said.

Murphy then explained that he had not marched, but had "in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution."

The clerk responded, "That'll do it."

And what is Professor Murphy's professional opinion on these events, as a distinguished constitutional scholar? He offers this opinion at a post at a law blog titled Another Enemy of the People?

"I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government.

Professor Murphy is aso a decorated Marine. My father was a Marine, and I'm telling you, you don't mess with the Marines.

I can think of worse ways to spend Easter than watching Richard Dawkins' BBC documentary on religion The Root of all Evil? This is the first 10 minutes of Episode 1. You can find the rest at YouTube or Google Video.

The failure of Nato forces to deliver security and development and rising civilian casualties inflicted by Western forces in clashes with the Taliban have led to a loss of support in Kandahar. "How can we forgive the Americans?" asked Mr Karigar, who like most people here does not distinguish among the different elements in Nato. "I will fight them any way I can."

al-Sadr calls for attacks on U.S. troops

BAGHDAD - The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday.

This is bad. More American soldiers will die. Can America take almost two more years of Bush-Cheney? I would certainly support impeachment if there were enough votes to impeach and convict both Bush and Cheny.

Mysterious Deaths of Bees

US beekeepers have been stung in recent months by the mysterious disappearance of millions of bees threatening honey supplies as well as crops which depend on the insects for pollination.

Bee numbers on parts of the east coast and in Texas have fallen by more than 70 percent, while California has seen colonies drop by 30 to 60 percent.

The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.

CIA terrorist released by U.S. judge

That being Luis Posada Carriles.

Washington refuses to release Posada to Cuba and Venezuela, saying that he might be tortured. At the same time, the judicial system has refused to free him, calling him a threat to the national security.

Declassified U.S. documents show that Posada Carriles worked for the CIA from 1965 to June 1976. He reportedly helped the U.S. government ferry supplies to the Contra rebels that waged a bloody campaign to topple the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Note how the US Government is taking the moral high ground on torture.

A young Bill O'Reilly reports on the House Select Committee on Assassinations

21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital.

The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer after Best Buy Co., fired 3,400 of its highest-paid hourly workers and will hire replacements willing to work for less.

So they are firing what are probably their best, most experienced workers and replacing them for people who will work for less. Earlier they had moved from a commission-based pay structure to an hourly rate, only to see sales drop. They are firing the wrong people. They should fire the highest payed salaried employees. Boycot Circuit City!

The Secret War against Iran

The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.

"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said.

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

73%. That is a mind-boggling statistic. We are a nation of scientific illiterates.

Aerial Device falls in Somalia

Mogadishu 26, March.07 ( Sh.M.Network) A mysterious device looking like a satellite or UFO has landed and spotted near buulo burde town in south Somalia.

Villagers report that the device fell five days ago in area which lies forty kilo meters north of Buulo burde town.

The device is occupying in an area of one hundred Meters Square as villagers who spotted this device confirmed to Shabelle Radio.

“In the evening of last Wednesday, a large device flew over our head and moments later, we heard a large sound, BAM” said Ilyas Ali, a villager who lives nearby where this large device has fallen.

Ilyas spoke of the device, telling that in the daylight it glitters and in a nighttime, it turns lights and speaks a strange language which can’t be understood by the villagers.

The impact of the unidentified device has killed a camel which was grazing nearby.

Because of the remote area it fell, news of the device is emerging gradually now despite its fall of five days ago.

Joseph Cannon, who should probably be ashamed of himself, posts today on Ann Coulter's Penis. One must note that today is April Fool's Day. One must also remember his story of last April 1, raising the question of is Barbara Bush the daughter of Aleister Crowley, the infamous black magician.

."Historians readily acknowledge that the Copernican Revolution [i.e., the idea that 'the earth moves and turns'] spawned the bloody French and Bolshevic revolutions... set the stage for the ancient Greek dogma of evolution...led to Marxism and Communism...It is reported that Marx even acknowledged his indebtedness to Copernicus, without whom Marx believed that his ideas would not have gained much acceptance...It is thus a small step to total rejection of the Bible and the precepts of morality and law taught therein." - Gerardus Bouw, Ph.D.,

Similar arguments have long been made against the theory of evolution. This article looks at those who say that Copernicus was Wrong. Should geocentrism be taught alongside the Copernican theory in the public schools? True, it has been abandoned long ago by virtually all scientists and is demonstrably wrong, but that does not stop the advocates of "creation science", which should always be put in quotes as it is not science.

For more about geocentrism from a Catholic perspective see Catholic Truths