<snip>

"He can't do that! Wait, can he? Can he do that? Isn't there some sort of, like, legal or constitutional mechanism in place to stop him from doing stuff like that?" Pelosi scanned the confused faces of the various congressional aides standing around her office, but got nothing back but lots of people staring at their feet. "Hello? Anyone? What the hell do I pay you people for?!"

Pelosi then sighed heavily and sipped some organic green tea. "You know what it makes me wish? It makes me wish there some sort of, say, large political body here in Washington, one that was right now controlled by, say, a completely different political party than this awful president," she said wistfully, as the aides glanced at each other furtively and rolled their eyes.

"Wouldn't that be great? And this group would have, say, some sort of legal and political oversight power to step in and stop this sort of thing, to formally rebuke the president and demand some sort of accountability and maybe even launch formal impeachment proceedings? Can you imagine?"

"I like to think it would be some sort of deeply flawed but absolutely essential system of, oh I don't know, checks and balances or something, and it would help ensure that this cretinous mealy mouthed little sonofabitch couldn't get away with stuff like this anymore.

"That would be so cool, wouldn't it? Man, I wish we had something like that here in America. Don't you?"

Let us put to rest the notion that Iran is supplying Iraqi Insurgents with weapons or any of their "stuff" as Gen Pace said. Where is their proof? Have they trotted out any? No! Because Iran would not supply anything to the Sunnis, or al-Sadr or "al-Qaeda in Iraq". The only folks Iran is on great terms with in Iraq are OUR guys the Shiia in the Iraqi government.

Now, given all of that why are so many in congress repeating the same mistakes that took us into Iraq now with regard to Iran? There are no facts to back up the bullshit spewed by this administration as they charge toward an attack on Iran!

Now what about Americans helping to arm the insurgency even inadvertantly? He are some issues congress needs to be aware of and it seems entirely plausible to me. Much more so than an Iranian hand in Iraq......

<snip>

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.

He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. "He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them." He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.

These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. "We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country." But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. "Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment."

The box of 700 bullets that Rami buys for $450 today would have cost between $150 and $175 a year ago. The price of a Kalashnikov has risen from $300 to $400 in the same period. The inflation in arms prices reflects Iraq's plunge toward civil war but, largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Sunni insurgency has also changed. The conflict into which 20,000 more American troops will be catapulted over the next few weeks is very different to the one their comrades experienced even a year ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,19...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_on_...

TYRE, Lebanon - Hamid Asan Hasan dropped his wallet, and as he stooped to pick it up he spotted the small round object. Curious, he picked that up too. It exploded and blew off part of his hand.

<snip>

"The place is full of unexploded ordnance, shells and mortars," said Chris Clark, program manager for the U.N. Mine Action Coordination center in Tyre.

But that's not the biggest problem, he said.

The most dangerous of the ordnance littering south Lebanon after 34 days of Israeli bombardment are bomblets spewed from cluster bombs packed into Israeli artillery shells, Clark explained.

"Our primary problem is the cluster bombs," he said. The bomblets they spit out are small round explosives that Clark likened to a small grenade. A cluster bomb can be delivered either by air or by artillery shells. In this war, he said, Israel delivered them by shells that exploded before hitting the ground. That sprayed small bomblets over an area half the size of a football field.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?ed...

<snip>

"We couldn't get out of our neighborhood because there are only two roads leading out and the Israelis bombed them both several days ago," said Mohammad Shalhoub, a disabled 41-year-old who was recovering in Tyre's government hospital.

Both families were asleep when the two bombs dropped hit the building in rapid succession at 1 a.m.

"I felt the blast throw me across the room. I was buried under the rubble along with the martyrs," Mohammad said.

Mohammad's wife, Rabab, hauled him clear of the debris and rescued their son, Hassan, 4, but his daughter Zeinab, 6, was left dead under the rubble. He also lost his sister, Fatmeh, and brother, Tayseer.

Further air strikes and heavy artillery bombardments during the night - which destroyed at least four other houses in the neighborhood - meant that it was another six hours before the rescue services could reach the stricken village


<snip>

Blanford reveals that Israeli warplanes actually continued to bomb the town while the rescue workers were pulling ragdoll-dead children out of the building. That's cold, man. Cold:

' An earth-mover ground down the lane and began clawing chunks of concrete away from the building. Even as the rescue team toiled to recover the dead, Israeli jets continued to roar overhead and the thump of air strikes and exploding artillery shells reverberated around the steep valley. '

http://www.juancole.com /

this Lebanon atrocity has exposed all of the Israel apologist democrats in their full glory. I wonder how much hil and schumer are getting from AIPAC?

Has anyone heard of any Hezbollah deaths in all of this killing?




Lebanese people despair as Israeli strikes kill residents in the southern market town of Nabatiyeh


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/519...


Dozens die in fresh Lebanon raids

Southern Lebanon is sustaining heavy damage

At least 40 civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes in Lebanon.

At least 12 people died and about 30 were wounded in the southern village of Srifa, near Tyre, where residents said at least 10 homes were flattened.

There was also heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese side of the border, with Israeli casualties reported.

At least 270 Lebanese - mostly civilians - have been killed since then.



<snip>

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The death toll late Tuesday stood at 235 people killed in Lebanon and 25 in Israeli. About half of the Israeli deaths were military personnel. Only a handful of the Lebanese deaths have been military, and only a fraction of those have been Hizbullah fighters. In fact, have even ten Hizbullah guerrillas been killed by the Israelis since this fight began? They say it is a fight with Hizbullah. But then they bomb Greek Orthodox churches and milk factories far from Shiite areas. Hmmmm.

Israeli air strikes killed 30 more civilians on Tuesday:

The Israeli attacks were mainly concentrated on the Bekaa district, as Israeli warplanes launched missiles at the towns of Zahle, Baalbek, Rachaya al-Fokhar and others. The St. Gregorius Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar suffered a direct hit, as did the Lake Qaraoun Dam and the ambulance donated by the Emirates in Dahr al-Baydar. Dozens of civilians were killed and wounded in the attacks. Over 30 civilians were killed in Israeli air strikes against Lebanon on Tuesday. Ten civilians who had taken refuge inside the Greek Orthodox Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar were wounded in an attack. Lebanese security sources said Israel had used phosphorous missiles in the attack, an internationally banned weapon.



Some people just don't like their neighbors to have nice things. The Israelis hit Lebanese privately owned factories on Tuesday, including a dairy farm! These targets had absolutely nothing to do with Hizbullah, and were not military targets. These strikes are war crimes and part of a continuing Israeli campaign to ensure that Lebanon is economically poor and weak for decades to come:


Israel switched gears in its military campaign against Lebanon Monday and Tuesday, launching a series of debilitating air strikes against privately owned factories throughout the country and dealing a devastating blow to an economy already paralyzed by a week of hits on residential areas and crucial infrastructure. The production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country's largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant - have been disabled or completely destroyed. Industry insiders say the losses will cripple the economy for decades to come.


http://www.juancole.com /

Thank you Stan Goff.....


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-goff/th...

<snip>

And the discussion of Zionism for what it is -- exactly as we are witnessing right now -- a secular, racist political movement, characterized by expansionism and militarism , is going to have to happen online, because neither the mainstream press nor mainstream politicians will touch it with a ten-foot pole... even when it is piling up more bodies as it leads the world into a regional disaster.


Let's just get something out of the way right up front, before I go any further. Zionism is not Judaism; being Jewish does not make anyone Zionist; and anti-Zionism is not equivalent to anti-Semitism.

It is now well past time for the United States to withdraw all rogue state, Israel; though that is unlikely to happen without a movement to make it happen, because the US is now effectively the biggest and most dangerous rogue state on the planet.

Democrats won't touch this issue for the same reason they avoid that other P-Word, Prison. They are as complict in the incarceration of 2 million people here -- mostly of color -- as they are in the continuing support of the terror state of Israel.

So let's just talk briefly about what Zionism actually is, and get away from the mythology promoted by AIPAC.

Another deadly day for americans and especially for Iraqis...



A boy wounded in a bomb attack near a courthouse walks with his brother after receiving treatment from a hospital in Baghdad May 4, 2006. (Kareem Raheem/Reuters)



Iraqis react as they transfer the body of their relative killed in a suicide bomb attack, outside Kindi hospital in central Baghdad, Thursday, May 4, 2006. A suicide bomber attacked a crowd of people waiting outside a heavily guarded court building in Baghdad on Thursday, killing 10 Iraqis and wounding 52 police said. (AP Photo/Mohammed Hato)



U.S. soldiers provide first aid to their colleagues injured in an attack on their armored vehicle in central Baghdad, Thursday, May 4, 2006. A roadside bomb hit a U.S. military convoy on a service road near the airport road. Witnesses said one soldier was wounded and evacuated by helicopter. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)



U.S. soldiers provide first aid to their colleagues injured in an attack, as smoke rises from their armored vehicle in Baghdad, Thursday, May 4, 2006. A roadside bomb hit a U.S. military convoy on a service road near the airport road. Witnesses said one soldier was wounded and evacuated by helicopter. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)



U.S. soldiers provide first aid to their colleague injured in an attack on their armored vehicle in Baghdad, Thursday, May 4, 2006. A roadside bomb hit a U.S. military convoy on a service road near the airport road. Witnesses said one soldier was wounded and evacuated by helicopter. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

The above photos are separate from this attack....

Two U.S. soldiers killed by bomb in Iraq's capital



May 4, 2006 5:08 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A roadside bomb killed two U.S. Army soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday, the military said.

The Multinational Division-Baghdad soldiers died at about 11:45 a.m. when their vehicle was struck by the bomb in south-central Baghdad. The identities of the soldiers were not released.

At least 2,409 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/artic...

http://www.juancole.com /

<snip>


The IAEA found no smoking gun.

Here is its conclusion, which others will not quote for you at such length:


' 33. All the nuclear material declared by Iran to the Agency is accounted for. Apart from the small quantities previously reported to the Board, the Agency has found no other undeclared nuclear material in Iran. However, gaps remain in the Agency’s knowledge with respect to the scope and
content of Iran’s centrifuge programme. Because of this, and other gaps in the Agency’s knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

34. After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran’s nuclear
programme, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern. '


This ambiguity is being twisted by the Bush administration to make it seem as though Iran has done something illegal. The report can be read to say that there is no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal.

In fact, under the NPT, countries do have the right to do the sort of experiments Iran is doing. Most of the complaints are not about substance but about something else.




"What? I Can't HEAR You"!

It is worth remembering that the US has slaughtered whole families and babies since Shock and Awe. There have been two instances in the last six months of slaughters in Iraq that have gotten a little attention in the US media. This one went totally unnoticed in the pro-war rah rah USA ferver at the beginning of the war.

Using Cluster Bombs on Civilians is a War Crime! From April 02, 2003

Children Killed and Maimed in Cluster Bomb Attack on Town
by Robert Fisk in Baghdad and Justin Huggler


<snip>

Reporters from the Reuters news agency said they counted the bodies of 11 civilians and two Iraqi fighters in the Babylon suburb, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Nine of the dead were children, one a baby. Hospital workers said as many as 33 civilians were killed.

Terrifying film of women and children later emerged after Reuters and the Associated Press were permitted by the Iraqi authorities to take their cameras into the town. Their pictures – the first by Western news agencies from the Iraqi side of the battlefront – showed babies cut in half and children with amputation wounds, apparently caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs.

Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television and the agencies' Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby and screaming "cowards, cowards'' into the camera. Two lorryloads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the Hilla hospital.

Dr Nazem el-Adali, who was trained in Edinburgh, said almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs dropped around Hella and in the neighboring village of Mazarak. One woman, Alia Mukhtaff, is seen lying wounded on a bed; she lost six of her children and her husband in the attacks. Another man is seen with an arm missing, and a second man, Majeed Djelil, whose wife and two of his children were killed, can be seen sitting next to his third and surviving child, whose foot is missing. The mortuary of the hospital, a butcher's shop of chopped up corpses, is seen briefly in the tape.





Razzaq Kazem al-Khafaj grieves over the bodies of his children in Hilla in the southern province of Babylon. Khafaj lost 15 members (including six children) of his family as his car was bombed by coalition helicopters while fleeing al-Haidariyeh towards Babylon.(AFP/Karim Sahib)

He picks the fundraiser, what a surprise. A typical day in America. Soldiers are buried and their CIC flies around the country raising money for his corrupt enablers and doing ridiculously transparent "town hall meetings".




Marine Staff Sgt. Eric McIntosh's mother Betty receives a folded U.S. flag during her son's burial service at Airlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, April 11, 2006. McIntosh, 29, who grew up in Indianapolis, died April 2 during combat operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Yuri Gripas)



The casket containing the remains of U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Eric McIntosh is carried to his gravesite by military honor guard at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, April 11, 2006. McIntosh, 29, who grew up in Indianapolis, died April 2 during combat operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Yuri Gripas)



Kevin Procopio, right, and his wife Mary, center, parents of Marine Cpl. Scott J. Procopio, of Saugus, Mass., and Kristal Procopio, Procopio's widow, watch as his casket is carried to a hearse following funeral services, Tuesday, April 11, 2006, at Veterans Memorial Elementary School in Saugus. Procopio was killed in Iraq on April 2. (AP Photo/Bizuayehu Tesfaye)



Jaromin Wyatt, 2, of Saugus, Mass., salutes as a hearse carrying the casket of Marine Cpl. Scott J. Procopio, of Saugus, passes by following funeral services Tuesday, April 11, 2006, at Veterans Memorial Elementary School in Saugus. Procopio was killed in Iraq on April 2. (AP Photo/Bizuayehu Tesfaye)







President Bush talks with U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, center, and U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, second from left, after arriving, Tuesday, April 11, 2006, at the Des Moines International Airport in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

<snip>

In Iowa, besides talking with seniors about the prescription drug program, Bush helped raise about $1 million for Rep. Jim Nussle (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, an eight-term congressman who is the only GOP candidate running for governor of the state.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/2661...


BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A cruel and bloody civil war has started in Iraq, a country that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to free from fear and establish democracy. I have been visiting Iraq since 1978, but for the first time, I am becoming convinced that the country will not survive.

Three suicide bombers disguised themselves as women Friday and, with explosives hidden by long black cloaks, killed 79 people and wounded more than 160 when they blew themselves up in a Shiite mosque in the capital. One bomber came through the women's security checkpoint at the Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad and detonated explosives just as worshippers were leaving at the end of Friday prayers.

<snip>

I have been covering the war in Iraq ever since it began three years ago and I have never seen the situation so grim. More than a week ago, I was in the northern city of Mosul, protected by 3,000 Kurdish soldiers, but even so it was considered too dangerous to send out patrols in daytime. It is safer at night because of a curfew.

In March alone, the U.S. military said 1,313 people were killed in sectarian attacks. Many bodies, buried in pits or thrown in the rivers, are never found.

The real figure is probably twice as high. All over the country people are on the move as Sunnis and Shiites flee each other's areas.





Iraqi Shiite women weep as their families pack their belongings after being ordered to leave by unidentified militants Monday April 10, 2006, near Buhriz, a former Saddam stronghold about 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. Growing violence in the neighborhoods of Baghdad as well as other Iraqi cities has driven thousands to abandon their homes to live in camps in relatively safer areas.(AP Photo/Mohammed Hamed)

And not "Operational" as Seymour Hersh alleges in his New Yorker article. Barbara Starr assured us this morning with that worthless Miles O'Brien that Hersh's allegations are fiction. The WH is depending on diplomacy in dealings with Iran's nuclear ambitions. Any Pentagon plans are purely contingency plan and not operational! Gee I am so relieved Barbara! Thank you for that in depth analysis you propaganda spewing worthless piece of crap!

Reality check!

What Seymour Hersh says the bush administration is up to right NOW!....

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/arti...

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.



The White House Reaction....

U.S. Tries to Dampen Talk of Iran Strike

WASHINGTON - While stressing that diplomacy is the first course for dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, the White House is not ruling out a military response and says "normal defense and intelligence planning" is under way.

The White House, sensitive to President Bush's image as a war hawk, is trying to play down the possibility of a military strike on the country that Bush included among nations forming the "axis of evil."

"The president's priority is to find a diplomatic solution to a problem the entire world recognizes," Bush counselor Dan Bartlett told The Associated Press on Sunday. "And those who are drawing broad, definitive conclusions based on normal defense and intelligence planning are ill-informed and are not knowledgeable of the administration's thinking on Iran."


Now let us take a trip in the way back machine:

What the bush administration said and actually did before the Iraq invasion....


Bush: 'No war plans on my desk' for Iraq

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/05/23/gen.... /

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- President Bush reiterated Thursday that Iraq remains a significant threat, but he stopped short of saying the United States will go to war with the Middle Eastern country.

"I have no war plans on my desk," Bush said at a Berlin news conference during the first stop of his European tour. "We've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein."



Pentagon Funded Mideast Plans In Secret Prior to Iraq-War Vote

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=2...

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon acknowledged that in tandem with its secret planning for the Iraq war two years ago, it funded 21 military-related projects in the Mideast when the Bush administration had yet to seek a war resolution from Congress.

The administration said in late summer 2002 that $178.4 million was spent on projects that could be justified as part of the larger war against terrorism. The first detailed accounting of that spending was provided to Congress just this week, and even lawmakers who supported military action against Saddam Hussein say the Defense Department stretched its authority and hid facts that should have been shared with lawmakers.


Now how fucking stupid do they think we are? Fool me once, shame on me. Though I was never fooled, the folks that were back then aren't going to fall for it this time.

... Wise words from Joseph Cirincione in Hersh's piece:

<snip>

The Administration’s case against Iran is compromised by its history of promoting false intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy Web site, entitled “Fool Me Twice,” Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote, “The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war.” He noted several parallels:

The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism.