Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.
Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.
Feith’s book, ‘War and Decision’, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W. Bush on Sep. 30, 2001 calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing ‘new regimes’ in a series of states by ‘aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism.’
In quoting from that document, Feith deletes the names of all of the states to be targeted except Afghanistan, inserting the phrase ’some other states’ in brackets. In a facsimile of a page from a related Pentagon ‘campaign plan’ document, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes are listed as ’state regimes’ against which ‘plans and operations’ might be mounted, but the names of four other states are blacked out ‘for security reasons’.
Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded the NATO bombing campaign in the Kosovo War, recalls in his 2003 book ‘Winning Modern Wars’ being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.
Clark writes that the list also included Lebanon. Feith reveals that Rumsfeld’s paper called for getting ‘Syria out of Lebanon’ as a major goal of U.S. policy.
When this writer asked Feith after a recent public appearance which countries’ names were deleted from the documents, he cited security reasons for the deletion. But when he was asked which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, ‘All of them.’… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <IPS>
This is confirmation of a story I posted here in March, 2007. That story was the video of a statement by Gen. Clark, which I am reposting here:
Now we have confirmation from within the inner circle of the GOP Reich that Iraq was only part of a plan for world domination through military force. They made the US a rogue state, and all involved in their attempt to implement this plan should be tried as war criminals.
On the campaign trail, McBoomBoom has promised more wars. I submit to you that these are the wars.
All articles cross-posted from Politics Plus
Defying President Bush, House Democrats are preparing to forge ahead with a war spending measure that would include extended unemployment assistance and new educational benefits for returning veterans.
After a meeting Monday evening of House Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped to bring a $178 billion measure to the floor this week. What could be a contentious debate on the matter is likely to be held on Thursday, aides said.
Ms. Pelosi, of California, did not disclose details of the proposed bill, which will be presented to rank-and-file Democrats at a closed party session on Tuesday. But Democratic officials, who did not want to be identified since the bill was still being put into final form, said the legislative package would include provisions requiring a significant withdrawal of troops from Iraq by December 2009 and measures that would force Iraq to share more costs of its reconstruction.
Democrats also intend to make veterans eligible for new educational assistance if they have served from three months to three years or more on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001. The aid would be equivalent to a four-year scholarship at a public university for those with three years or more service, with payments prorated for those with less time.
Mr. Bush has steadily insisted he would not approve any legislation that exceeds his spending request for the war, sets any withdrawal deadlines or adds domestic money he opposes like the unemployment benefits. And House Republicans, angry that the measure is not going through formal committee consideration, began on Monday to open procedural attacks on the House floor in protest, forcing extra votes on noncontroversial measures.
“The Democrat leaders of the House and Senate are attempting to jam a 200-plus-billion-dollar spending bill through the Congress with absolutely no oversight or scrutiny by a vast majority of members, senators or their constituents,” Representative Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Monday. “Never in my 30 years in Congress has there been such an abuse of the processes and rules of the House.”
Democrats said privately that they expected the provisions setting a withdrawal deadline and putting other conditions on the war money to be eliminated by the Senate before a final House vote later this spring… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Of course there is no way this bill can ever get through the automatic GOP filibuster in the Senate. Nevertheless it’s still a good idea, because it gives GOP Senators a choice to actually do something for America or come down solidly against the unemployed and veterans in the height of election season.
Representative Jerry Lewis needs help for his comedy routine from his side-kick, Dean Martin. Throughout the GOP dominated 109th, no bill made it to committee without having first been approved by a majority of the House Repuglicans.
Think how much better it would have been if the Democratic majority in the House had wasted time with impeachment hearings instead of with posturing!
In March, House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced that he was investigating the accidental electrocution of troops in Iraq and pressed Defense Secretary Robert Gates for uncensored details on at least a dozen deaths since 2003. Contractor KBR is at the center of the probe, with questions about whether it irresponsibly ignored wiring problems.
Today, The New York Times has more details on this malpractice, including the fact that senior KBR and Pentagon officials repeatedly ignored warnings by KBR electricians:
One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was “a disaster waiting to happen.” Another said he witnessed an American soldier in Afghanistan receiving a potentially lethal shock. A third provided e-mail messages and other documents showing that he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.
KBR itself told the Pentagon in early 2007 about unsafe electrical wiring at a base near the Baghdad airport, but no repairs were made. Less than a year later, a soldier was electrocuted in a shower there.
John McLain, the electrician who in 2007 told a visiting defense contracting agency official about his concerns over the logs, was fired shortly after the incident. Another employee “said his KBR bosses mocked him for raising safety issues.”
This sort of refusal to acknowledge and correct errors seems to be standard operating procedure within KBR, unfortunately. Former employee Jamie Leigh Jones revealed that after she was gang-raped by co-workers, not only did the company place her “under guard in a shipping container,” but warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she would lose her job. In an opposite situation, a KBR employee who was “busted by the military” for looting in Iraq was “given a promotion.”
Similarly, Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse, who oversaw contracts for the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Senate in 2005, that KBR represented the “most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.” Reflecting the Pentagon’s efforts to protect KBR, Greenhouse was demoted almost two months to the day after voicing that critique.
Despite all these irresponsible, unethical actions (as well as providing contaminated water to troops and evading millions in taxes), KBR recently announced that it had tripled its first quarter net profits and received new contracts worth up to $150 million for 10 years to provide assistance to the U.S. military overseas.
Inserted from <Think Progress>
There you have it. If your company kills US troops through fraudulent contracting practices, you will reap the rewards of record profit and more no-bid contracts from the Bush/McBoomBoom/GOP Reich. This is especially true is a good chunk of those profits end up in the pockets of ChickenHawk Cheney.
How do they get away with it? Despite many requests for a DOJ investigation into KBR’s illegal activities, the DOJ has ignored all such requests. This will not go on indefinitely. With a Democrat in the White House and an honest AG, the investigations will proceed. Under a statute from WWII, the federal government can sue them for treble damages. Unfortunately, they have foreseen this. As I explained on March 12, 2007, Halliburton relocated their corporate HQ to Dubai to place themselves out of reach of US courts. In addition, they spun-off KBR, so it is now a subsidiary. They can raid the KBR for its assets and let it fail should the judgements pile up.
Yesterday McBoomBoom had another accident and, in a move very rare for him, he told the truth. He admitted that the Iraq war was not about WMD, was not about links to Al Qaeda, and was not about freedom for the Iraqi people. Instead, it was about oil! Then, returning to his normal mode, McFlipFlop flip-flopped and claimed that he had intended to mean the first Iraq war. McConJob has a unique way of positioning himself on both sides of every issue. His explanation was quite easy to debunk, and that’s exactly what Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow did:
All articles cross-posted from Politics Plus
Ports along the U.S. West Coast, including the country’s busiest port complex in Los Angeles, shut down on Thursday as some 10,000 dock workers went on a one-day strike to protest the war in Iraq, port and union officials said.
Twenty-nine ports from San Diego to Washington state that handle more than half of U.S waterborne trade ground to a halt, but shipping experts said the economic costs of the walk-out would be limited.
“We are hearing there is no activity taking place up and down the West Coast,” said Steve Getzug, spokesman of the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents all 29 ports. “There is no unloading or loading.”
At the Los Angeles-area port of Long Beach, a hub for trade with Asia, a Reuters reporter said the normally bustling area was unusually quiet and there were no signs of protesters…
Inserted from <Reuters>
Hats off to the union workers!
It was a picture-perfect moment, made for the TV cameras, in which a military leader stood before heroes and heroines to declare a victory which seemed to come easier than anyone dared hope, in a conflict which was opposed by many friends and foes alike.
May 1 marks the fifth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
After being landed on the deck of the carrier in an S-3B Viking 30 miles off the coast San Diego (Ari Fleischer said the president “could have helicoptered,” but “he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing”), Mr. Bush appeared in a flight suit to the cheers of the ship’s personnel and the glare of television lights.
Later, he stood at a podium against a backdrop of an enormous banner reading “Mission Accomplished.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <CBS>
It could not be more clear that the mission was NOT accomplished when Cowardly ChickenHawk made the announcement before a banner which the White House claimed was a tribute to him from the troops, but was really printed in the White House basement. Five years later, it’s even more clear.
The killings of five U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 49, making it the deadliest month since September. One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The second died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.
A third soldier died after being struck by a bomb while on a foot patrol early Wednesday in a northern section of the capital, while another roadside bomb killed two American soldiers in southern Baghdad, the military said in separate statements.
The spike in U.S. troop deaths comes as intense combat has been raging in Sadr City and other neighborhoods between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.
In all, at least 4,061 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <AP>
The only mission Bush and the GOP have accomplished is No Millionaire Left Behind! McBoomBoom says 100 more years is fine with him.
On April 9, Spc. Jon Town was featured on the cover of The Nation, in an article that told how he was wounded in Iraq, won a Purple Heart and was then denied all disability and medical benefits. Town’s doctor had concluded that his headaches and hearing loss were not caused by the 107-millimeter rocket that knocked him unconscious but by a psychological condition, “personality disorder,” a pre-existing illness for which one cannot collect disability pay or receive medical care.
Soon Town became a national figure, the human face of the 22,500 soldiers discharged with personality disorder in the past six years. His story was picked up by the Army Times, Washington Post Radio and ABC News’s Bob Woodruff. It was dramatized in a May episode of NBC’s Law & Order. And rock star Dave Matthews began discussing Town’s plight at every stop in his spring concert series.
Further investigation by The Nation has uncovered more than a dozen cases like Town’s from bases across the country. All of the soldiers interviewed passed the rigorous health screening given recruits before being accepted into the Army. All were deemed physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well, before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat. None of the soldiers interviewed during this eleven-month investigation had a documented history of psychological problems.
Yet after they returned from Iraq wounded and sought treatment, each was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then denied benefits. As in Town’s case, Army doctors determined that the soldiers’ ailments were pre-existing without interviewing friends, family or fellow soldiers who knew them before they were wounded in combat.
In this article you will hear from Army doctors who say wounded soldiers are routinely misdiagnosed. One says he was pressured by superiors to diagnose personality disorder in cases where soldiers were physically wounded or suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general of the Army, was briefed on the problems with the Army’s personality disorder discharges. Instead of correcting cases like Town’s, she buried them. The surgeon general released a series of memos filled with fabrications. Pollock then informed wounded soldiers that their cases had been thoroughly reviewed by an independent panel of health experts when in fact no such review was conducted.
“This is not the way the government ought to work. It’s not the way they should be responding to veterans,” says Representative Bob Filner, chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. He first heard Town’s story in April and began working soon afterward to bring the soldier to Washington. There Town would get his chance to tell Congress everything: about his diagnosis, his discharge and the work of Surgeon General Pollock… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Nation>
This is just the introduction to a major five page article, and I urge you strongly to click through and read the rest. I have watched with growing frustration as Democrats in Congress have put forward measure after measure to improve the lot of our troops and veterans only to see them either vetoed by the ChickenHawk-in-Chief or fall to GOP filibusters, in which the GOP could always count on John McHypocrite to vote against our nation’s troops and vets.
GW Bush, McConJob, and the GOP have a formula for supporting our troops and vets. I call it The Arlington Plan. If that isn’t clear, see the graphic.
All articles cross-posted from Politics Plus
It had to happen sooner or later, and yesterday afternoon it did. I received my first campaign call in which a human, not a machine, was on the other end of the line, so I spent about forty five minutes chatting with a lady who was urging me to support Hillary Clinton. Except for interrupting me several times early on, once she got her planned talking points out of the way she was polite, respectful, and willing to settle down and talk issues.
I told her that I am an undecided voter, but that I will support whichever Democrat wins the nomination in the general election. I also told her that I am a B-list political blogger, but she did not seem to know what a blogger is.
I asked her why Hillary has not supported a single-payer health care system. She said that her brother has had problems with the VA and that she thinks it may be because government health care isn’t that good. I explained that we can leave the care private, but make the coverage public, cutting the insurance industry out of their obscene profits and coverage decisions. I told her that health care decisions should not be left to greedy corporations for whom profit trumps care. She agreed that was a better idea, and suggested that Hillary might switch to such a plan after she was elected. She went on to stress that Clinton’s plan was superior to Obama’s. I asked her in what ways it was superior. She didn’t know the details but knew that it was.
I asked her whether or not Hillary would pursue criminal charges against Bush and his minions for war crimes and other crimes while in office. She did not know. I pointed out that Obama had committed to have DOJ investigate them. She said she hopes that Clinton will too, and suggested that, although they should be tried for their crimes, it might take a long time, like it did with Pinochet. I pointed out that Pinochet had been charged, but never tried.
I asked her why Hillary had never admitted her error in voting for the Iraq war. She said that was Bush’s fault, because Clinton was going on what she thought was reliable intelligence. I told her that I knew and had documented, before the war, that the intelligence was was flawed with far less resources than a Senator enjoys. If I could find that out, why couldn’t Clinton. She didn’t know.
I told her that I was displeased with some of Hillary’s campaign tactics. She said that politics is a dirty business, and I should be glad to have a candidate who can do that well, because those skills will be needed against McCain.
At the end of each of these discussions, she kept coming back to one central theme. The party needs a candidate that can win in November, and that although Obama is a wonderful person, Clinton is the candidate who can win. After ignoring that several times, I rose to the bait. I brought up the last debate, and asked her if Clinton had not said that Obama could win too. She replied that Clinton had to say “Yes, yes, yes”, because she was on the spot, and the media would have roasted her, if she had said anything else. She repeated that Clinton really is the electable candidate, and Obama is not. So I asked, “So are you telling me that Clinton lied when she said that?” Dead silence. Then she said that it wasn’t really lying, it was just saying what she had to say at the time, and asked what she was supposed to do when put on the spot like that? I said, “Well I’d hope she would have realized that the American people deserve the truth, even if that truth is not what we want to hear.”
That undid the poor lady. I could almost hear her thinking that she wished she had never called me, as she said she had to get on to the next person she had to call. She asked me if I would vote for Clinton, and I told her I am still not committed.
I was not impressed with her knowledge of the issues, and frankly, turned off by her insistence that Obama is not electable. After Clinton committed herself publicly that both are electable, that issue should be off the table.
In fairness, I have not yet received a similar call from the Obama campaign, and when I do, I will be just as hard on that person as I was on this poor lady, who remained personable and respectful throughout my inquisition.
On the other hand, if McConJob’s people call, the crapola is going to hit the fan… big time!! 
All articles cross-posted from Politics Plus
When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.
But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.
Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.
Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.
Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, “The department does not discuss pending litigation.”
Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize. In general, the armed forces have regulations, Ms. Lainez said, that respect “the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”
To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.
“They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable and might break, since you don’t have God to rely on,” Specialist Hall said of those who proselytize in the military. “The message is, ‘It’s a Christian nation, and you need to recognize that.’ ”
Soft-spoken and younger looking than his 23 years, Specialist Hall began a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, to support others like him.
At the July meeting, Major Welborn told the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major Welborn said, according to the statement: “I love you guys; I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth and know what I mean.”
Major Welborn declined to comment beyond saying, “I’d love to tell my side of the story because it’s such a false story.”
But Timothy Feary, the other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message: “Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed everything.”
It is unclear how widespread religious discrimination or proselytizing is in the armed forces, constitutional law experts and leaders of veterans’ groups said. No one has independently studied the issue, and service members are reluctant to come forward because of possible backlash, those experts said… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Were this a single isolated incident, I would be inclined to pass it off as one man’s fanaticism, but in context with ongoing attempts by the Bush/GOP Reich to proselytize out troops, this can only be viewed as an intentional violation of the Constitution by the GOP.
I documented HERE, that according to the Treaty of Tripoli, unanimously approved by the US Senate on June 7, 1797, the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. Thus the claims made by Major Welborn are lies.
Speaking as a Christian, I’m all for Christianity, but the dogma of the religious right is not Christian. Their attempts to impose their supply-side gospel of hate, war, death, bigotry, greed, and intolerance is criminal.
The ability of injured veterans to vote in November’s presidential election rests in the hands of Bush Administration officials, who have so far refused demands from advocates and lawmakers that the Department of Veterans Affairs help hospitalized veterans register to vote.
“‘It is an insult to those who have fought to spread democracy and freedom overseas to be denied the right to participate in their own democracy here at home,’” wrote Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) to the Department of Veterans Affairs in March. “‘If each facility took a few simple steps to provide voter registration materials, the VA could do its part to guarantee access to voter registration.’”…
…In response, VA Secretary James Peake opposed efforts by lawmakers to get the federal agency to provide voter registration opportunities under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 “‘without any legal basis or rational explanation,’” said Kerry, as reported by AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld on April 10.
Peake claimed that “department policy restricts partisan political activities in VA facilities and the department also does not have the resources to be responsible for a large-scale voter registration effort,” wrote Rick Maze of the Marine Corps News on April 18.
Peake was responding to Feinstein and Kerry, who had written the department in both March 2007 and 2008 concerning voter registration for veterans. The senators never received a reply to the 2007 letter from the former VA Secretary James Nicholson, although the VA has since “‘engaged in litigation against voter registration efforts by third party groups in VA facilities,’” according to the senators’ 2008 letter.
“The litigation cited in the senators’ letter refers to Preminger v. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Menlo Park suit where the VA argued before federal district and appeals courts that, in essence, political activity, including First Amendment speech and voter registration efforts, should not occur in its facilities because those activities were not medical in nature and were political, [veteran voting rights attorney Scott] Rafferty said, summarizing the litigation.”
“‘The argument that providing access to voter registration at facilities would distract from the medical goals is as unfortunate as it is counterproductive,’” the senators wrote. Not only is the “medical-only rationale” counterproductive, it is untrue, according to Rafferty. The attorney claims VA facilities have been used across the country for university libraries, parks, and even “pro-Republican demonstrations” as wells as partisan voter registration drives, according to a March 18 report by Rosenfeld.
The issue with voter registration at government agencies under NVRA is not exclusive to the Veterans Department.
“‘America, among western democracies, is unique in putting the responsibility on the individual, not the state, to register voters,’” said Project Vote Deputy Director Michael Slater. “‘Today, 63 million Americans, about a third of eligible voting age population, are not registered to vote.’”
“‘When we try to shift the onus from the individual to the state, we see reluctance — and the VA is one example,’ Slater said, saying that many state social service agencies that already are required to offer voter registration opportunities to public aid recipients have not followed through.” For example, if California registered as many food stamp recipients as Oregon, there would be an additional 180,000 voters in the state, he said.
“There is just this huge potential if government agencies like the VA finally offered voter registration.”
“Veterans who have not previously registered, as well as registered voters who move, must reregister with new addresses in order to vote,” an activity well-established at motor vehicle offices across the country, the most visible and well-implemented aspect of the NRVA (and the source of its “Motor Voter” nickname). “By not helping the injured veterans to do so,” Rosenfeld wrote, “it is likely that former soldiers seeking care at VA facilities will lose their right to vote in 2008.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Open Left>
Now that these maimed veterans, who have given us their best, are no longer useful as cannon fodder in the Bush/McBoomBoom/GOP war for oil, greed and conquest, The Reich wants to disenfranchise them. I suspect that it is because nobody understands the costs of this horrible war more than the heroes that went into the meat grinder and paid the price. This is the thanks they get! They deserve better!! But Bush, McHypocrite and the GOP have consistently vetoed, filibustered and opposed almost all attempts by Democrats to improve the lot of our vets.
