Today several human rights groups published a paper in a 39 people who have been disappeared by the United States all over the world. Last September “President” George Bush exclaimed on national television that 11 suspects that were held in illegal secret CIA prisons had been turned over to the US military, his exact statement was, “So I’m announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.” Now the interesting thing about this announcement was that until that day the administration denied that the CIA even had secret prisons. One of the interesting tidbits from that same press conference was Bush also telling us, “The current transfers mean that there are now no terrorists in the CIA program.” So the statement begs the question, if the illegal CIA rendition program has no terrorists in it, then where are the 39 missing people?

Now one of the most disturbing things that came out of this report was the following statement…

Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.

That is the best we can expect from the United States under the Bush of ministration, under Bush, the once beacon of human rights, now condones tortures children. Six and eight-year-olds are now considered terrorists to Bush, and it is okay to torture them. What the flop happened to my American.

Reason number 2,394 on how Bush and his Republican backers don’t give a rats-ass about the troops. According to the ArmyTimes the White House Budget Office is balking at the Democrats attempt to give the troops a 3.5% raise for 2008. They said it“strongly opposes” the effort by Democrats and said the raises were “unnecessary.” In other words, according to Bush, nothing is to good for our troops, and nothing is what they are going to get. They are already fighting an illegal war for you George, and they are providing cover for your rich buddies to bilk billions from out coffers, can you not spare an extra .5%?

If that did not chap your ass, the Bush administration is threatening a veto of the budget if the “Buy American” prevision is left in the bill. The White House says, “[it] would impose unrealistically arduous requirements.” Your kidding right, the White House, the “President” of the United States of America is against a policy that required a government office to fist seek the items they desire from an AMERICAN source before going overseas?Can we impeach yet?

Richard Wolffe and Holly Baile of NewsWeek do a great job at looking at the facts behind the AG scandle and the very odd speech given by the "President" Tuesday.

I really want everyone to go and read the whole thing, but I want to point out this paragraph

Reasonable, right? It almost sounded convincing. But wait! Who was it that had provided those confusing and incomplete explanations in the first place? Hadn't it been … the president and the attorney general? And hadn't previous administrations agreed to let key aides testify before Congress under oath? Meaning, the level of cooperation was perhaps slightly less "extraordinary" than the president presumed. But perhaps the most interesting, um, irony in the president's press conference was his approach to Democrats on Capitol Hill. They'd better not launch off on a partisan fishing expedition, Bush warned. They'd better not "waste time" investigating the firings, or "promote confrontation." There were too many important issues to address. But the firings themselves smack of a partisan fishing expedition in the eyes of the president's critics. After all, one of the criteria in weighing who got canned was whether prosecutors were "loyal Bushies," as Gonzales's former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote in one telling e-mail. And arguably, the firings themselves were what was distracting Congress and the country from more vital matters at hand. In other words, Bush seemed to be saying, it's fine for me to play politics. But it's not OK for the Democrats to do it.

It was not the first time a little inconsistency crept into the White House's efforts to control the damage over the Justice Department firings. In fact, things have been a bit wobbly ever since the story broke.

Oh, and they are right, so far everytime Bush opens his mouth more reasons to dig deeper fall out. He spent 15 mins telling the Dems not to push, or he will turn this into a political thing, yet that is the very reason these AG's were fired.

Also, what of the missing documents George, if we are to trust you, and we do not, nothing happened in the White House from November 15th to December 4th, because all of the documents from that time period are missing. The firings took place on Dec 7th, it sure did get quite in the weeks leading up to this, or, and I think I am right, you "Forgot" to put them in the dump, reason?

This is all real simple, if everything was so above the board, why the secrets? Sunlight is the best way to see the truth, and unless you are a liar, you should not fear the sun. I am sure that nothing would make your case more clear, and show the American people that you did nothing wrong by putting it ALL out there, and allowed those involved to be sworn to tell the truth… But you are not allowing that and begs the question, what do you have to hide?

I do not use the "Must Read" Banner to much, because there is so much that you should read that I save it, I save it for the MUST READS.

Are Bush's Wars Winding Down or Heating Up?

Most Americans believe that Bush's Iraqi misadventure is over. The occupation has lost the support of the electorate, the Congress, the generals and the troops. The Democrats are sitting back waiting for Bush to come to terms with reality. They don't want to be accused of losing the war by forcing Bush out of Iraq. There are no more troops to commit, and when the "surge" fails, Bush will have no recourse but to withdraw. A little longer, everyone figures, and the senseless killing will be over.

Recent news reports indicate that this conclusion could be an even bigger miscalculation than the original invasion.

On January 7 the London Times reported that it has learned from "several Israeli military sources" that "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons."

The report is great, if it were May of 2006. It is not, and the Iraq this report is written for has long descended into a chaos that Baker never dreamed of�

Here is a great analysis of the Report from Christopher Dickey of Newsweek.

On this the day of the Grand Plan, such as it is, let�s dream that a year from now there are a new set of givens in the Middle East growing out of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: the United States, working with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has trained up an efficient military and police force. Baghdad is secure. Tens of thousands of American ground combat forces are on their way home. (Many tens of thousands more remain for air-to-ground combat, intelligence, logistics, training, advising, embedding and such.)

Meanwhile, the Palestinians and Israelis, prodded by Washington, are moving ahead toward a resolution of the issue that has bled the region like an ulcer for more than 50 years. Damascus is tilting away from Tehran and democracy is allowed to flourish once more in Lebanon. We�re still spending more than $2 billion a week on the Iraq adventure, but there seems to be an end in sight.

We all know Bush spent the first half of his life drunk and/or stoned out of his mind, we also know the Bush girls are quickly following in their father�s footsteps. Well Wonkette has a great post about the Bush twins being kicked out of Argentina, where they were celebrating their 25th Birthday. Go read and prepare yourself for what we all know is coming. It will include nude photos, girl on girl kissing, and/or a secret abortion.

Check out what Bent Corner found out. Walmart is selling SS memorabilia.

From Wikipedia

SS Division Totenkopf ("Death's Head") is also known as 3. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf and 3. SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf. It was one of the 38 divisions fielded by the Waffen- during World War II. Prior to achieving division status, the formation was known as Kampfgruppe Eicke. The division's military record is infamous due to numerous war crimes and the fact that most of the initial enlisted men were SS-Totenkopfverb�nde ( concentration camp guards).

This is page 1 of 3 from CNN’s website, it is a Must Read people

All: I haven’t written very much from Iraq. There’s really not much to write about. More exactly, there’s not much I can write about because practically everything I do, read or hear is classified military information or is depressing to the point that I’d rather just forget about it, never mind write about it. The gaps in between all of that are filled with the pure tedium of daily life in an armed camp. So it’s a bit of a struggle to think of anything to put into a letter that’s worth reading. Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, every day. The quest to draw a clear picture of what the insurgents are up to never ends. Problems and frictions crop up faster than solutions. Every challenge demands a response. It’s like this every day. Before I know it, I can’t see straight, because it’s 0400 and I’ve been at work for 20 hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven’t written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It’s not really like Ground Hog Day, it’s more like a level from Dante’s Inferno.

Rather than attempting to sum up the last seven months, I figured I’d just hit the record-setting highlights of 2006 in Iraq. These are among the events and experiences I’ll remember best.

Worst Case of Déjà Vu — I thought I was familiar with the feeling of déjà vu until I arrived back here in Fallujah in February. The moment I stepped off of the helicopter, just as dawn broke, and saw the camp just as I had left it ten months before — that was déjà vu. Kind of unnerving. It was as if I had never left. Same work area, same busted desk, same chair, same computer, same room, same creaky rack, same… everything. Same everything for the next year. It was like entering a parallel universe. Home wasn’t 10,000 miles away, it was a different lifetime.

Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.

Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."

Worst City in al-Anbar Province — Ramadi, hands down. The provincial capital of 400,000 people. Lots and lots of insurgents killed in there since we arrived in February. Every day is a nasty gun battle. They blast us with giant bombs in the road, snipers, mortars and small arms. We blast them with tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, our snipers (much better than theirs), and every weapon that an infantryman can carry. Every day. Incredibly, I rarely see Ramadi in the news. We have as many attacks out here in the west as Baghdad. Yet, Baghdad has 7 million people, we have just 1.2 million. Per capita, al-Anbar province is the most violent place in Iraq by several orders of magnitude. I suppose it was no accident that the Marines were assigned this area in 2003.

Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — Any Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD Tech). How’d you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who’s just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day. Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment.

Second Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — It’s a 20,000-way tie among all these Marines and Soldiers who venture out on the highways and through the towns of al-Anbar every day, not knowing if it will be their last — and for a couple of them, it will be.

Worst E-Mail Message — "The Walking Blood Bank is Activated. We need blood type A+ stat." I always head down to the surgical unit as soon as I get these messages, but I never give blood — there’s always about 80 Marines in line, night or day.

Biggest Surprise — Iraqi Police. All local guys. I never figured that we’d get a police force established in the cities in al-Anbar. I estimated that insurgents would kill the first few, scaring off the rest. Well, insurgents did kill the first few, but the cops kept on coming. The insurgents continue to target the police, killing them in their homes and on the streets, but the cops won’t give up. Absolutely incredible tenacity. The insurgents know that the police are far better at finding them than we are — and they are finding them. Now, if we could just get them out of the habit of beating prisoners to a pulp…

Go and read the rest…

From the Washington Post (bolds are mine)

The war in Iraq has become the primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers are increasing faster than the United States and its allies are eliminating the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. Rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, it concludes that the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

"It’s a very candid assessment," one intelligence official said yesterday of the estimate, the first formal examination of global terrorist trends written by the National Intelligence Council since the March 2003 invasion. "It’s stating the obvious."

From Agence France Presse (bold are mine)

US spy agencies have dropped a political bombshell six weeks before national elections, with the leak of a classified report concluding that the war in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism.

The intelligence document on Sunday rocked a central pillar of the Republican Party’s campaign platform ahead of November elections: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein made America safer, not weaker.

With opinion polls showing President George W. Bush’s party possibly losing control of both houses of Congress in the the mid-term polls, in large part due to unhappiness over the war in Iraq, the report stating categorically the opposite will make for painful reading at the White House.

Bush has argued repeatedly in pre-election speeches that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism and that demands for a US troop withdrawal from the country by the opposition Democrats underscores why the center-left party should not be trusted with the nation’s security.

"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Bush said in one speech on August 31.

Such assertions were looking decidedly shaky Sunday after The New York Times and The Washington Post released details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, the most comprehensive assessment yet of the war, based on analyses of all 16 of America’s intelligence agencies.

The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, says "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," an official familiar with the document told The Times.

The Washington Post said the report described the Iraq conflict as the primary recruiting vehicle for violent Islamic extremists.

"While the US has seriously damaged Al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to carry out major operations since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, it noted, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

This is a Must Read, All I will say is why would you want to kill the War Crimes Act unless you plan on doing War Crimes?

From the Nation

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority–perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?

American prohibitions on abuse of prisoners go back to the Lieber Code promulgated by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The first international Geneva Convention dates from the following year.

After World War II, international law protecting prisoners of war and all noncombatants was codified in the Geneva Conventions. They were ratified by the US Senate and, under Article II of the Constitution, they thereby became the law of the land.

I think that you should know this, and be ready for it. I also think that if I get one, fill it out, burn it, and send in the ashes. Now the plan is to send this out all the time, not every 10 years as laid out in the United States Constitution.

From the International Society for Individual Liberty

The federal government has quietly begun using an incredibly intrusive new census form called "The American Community Survey." Up to 1 million households a year will receive this form.

This new "census" form is 24-pages long, and demands that you lay bare every detail of your life, including how much you earn, what your home is worth, details of your health, when you leave for work, previous addresses, pregnancies, monies received from government, and on and on.

I say demand because you can be fined up to $1,000 for each of the 72 questions you don?t answer or which you answer "incorrectly." However, so far no one has been fined for not answering, nor are they likely to be if public resistance is strong.

The ways the government could use this information to harm you are mind-boggling. For instance, any financial discrepancy with IRS or Social Security records could result in your criminal prosecution. Knowing when you leave for work could enable police, acting under the Patriot Act, to secretly enter your home.

The American Community Survey also demands that you to report on the activities of relatives, employers and roommates. Joseph Stalin could hardly ask for more surveillance powers. You can download the survey at www.census.gov/acs/www/

Article I of the Constitution allows the government to conduct a count of the American people once every ten years to determine voting districts. Nothing in the Constitution gives government the power to continuously spy on the people or probe every intimate detail of their lives.

As Congressman Ron Paul observes, questions on the American Community Survey are "both ludicrous and insulting," and this information is simply none of the government’s business. I fervently hope that millions of Americans will burn their forms or accidentally lose them.

It’s official, everyone hates the US and our Iraq war.

UK Guardian

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

I urge you to read this, this is the bill that will distroy America.

Thanks to Balkinization for hosting the PDF

From the Washington Post (Bolds are Mine, So there)

The discord at a conference in Rome yesterday over a proposed cease-fire in Israel and Lebanon underscored the widening gap between the United States and Europe over how to stop the fighting. And the images of mayhem from the two-week-old war, combined with the rising death toll in Iraq, have further rattled a domestic audience that polls show was already uncertain about Bush’s leadership.

For the president, the timing could not be much worse. In a second term marked by one setback after another, the White House was in the midst of a rebuilding effort aimed at a political comeback before November’s critical midterm elections. Now the president faces the challenge of responding to events that seem to be spinning out of control again, all but sidelining his domestic agenda for the moment and complicating his effort to rally the world to stop nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

The crisis imperils one of Bush’s signature ambitions. This is a president who eschewed Middle East peacemaking of the past as futile, embarking instead on a grand plan to remake the region into a more democratic, peaceful place. A year ago, a wave of reform seemed to take hold. Yet today radicalism is on the rise, Iran is believed to be closer to nuclear weapons and Bush is sending thousands more troops to Baghdad to quell spiraling violence.

End Short the Washington Post is saying, Bush, the “President” of the United States is a total failure, everything he touches turns to crap, because crap makes crap.

Go and read this now, this is very likly and I want you to be able to spot the "Flag" when it unflods.

From OnlineJournal

False flag scenarios would be entirely more effective from the point of view of the war planners. CNN and MSNBC coverage this Saturday morning has been stressing the situation of the 25,000 Americans now stuck in Lebanon. These Americans are being invited to register with the US consulates for possible evacuation. The State Department and the US military have been remarkably slow to begin such an evacuation.

One possible provocation scenario to bring the US into the war is that a helicopter carrying US citizens being evacuated out of Lebanon is hit by a missile and destroyed, killing all on board. The missile might be fired by the Israelis or by their allies among the fascist Lebanese Phalangists. The Israelis would announce that the helicopter had been destroyed by Hezbollah, opening the way for a hysterical campaign by Fox News and the rest of the neocon mass brainwashing apparatus to secure an early US attack on Syria and Iran.

-snip-

The "Christian" Phalangist (or "Kataeb Party") have long been a willing cat’s paw for the US and Israelis in Lebanon. It was the Phalangists, controlled by the Gemayel family, who did most of the actual killing at the infamous Tel-al-Zaatar massacre in August 1976, in the midst of the Kissinger-provoked Lebanese civil war. The Phalangists in that case did the dirty work under the supervision of the Israelis. Although the controlled media have been silent about the Phalange, it is clear that they are still available for dirty operations.