MORTARDUDE
01-23-2004, 09:20 PM
Upcoming Events
On Jan. 26 at 7 p.m., join ImpeachBush.Meetup.com. On Jan. 29, protest G.W. Bush (and his Nazi-financing grandfather Prescott) in Greenwich, CT. On March 20, "The World Still Says No To War" (unitedforpeace.org). Rush Holt's Verified Voting Bill has 107 co-sponsors - what about yours? (http://tinyurl.com/yqb4e)
http://www.legitgov.org/action.html
__Michael Moore Blasts Peter Jennings over Bush's AWOL
Michael Moore writes: Peter "Jennings, referring to me as 'the controversial filmmaker,' asked if Clark wanted to distance himself from me and my 'reckless' remark. Clark would not back down, stating how 'delighted' he was with my support, and that I was entitled to say what I wanted to say - AND that I was not the only one who had made these charges against Bush. The pundits immediately went berserk after the debate. As well they should. Because they know that they ignored this Bush AWOL story when it was first revealed by an investigation in the Boston Globe (in 2000). The Globe said it appeared George W. Bush skipped out in the middle of his Texas Air National Guard service - and no charges were ever brought against him. It was a damning story, and Bush has never provided any documents or evidence to refute the Globe's charges. George W. Bush was missing for at least a 12 month period. That is an undisputed fact. If you or I did that, we would serve time."
http://michaelmoore.com/
__John Buchanan Prepares Blockbuster Speech Demolishing Bush
While pundits moan about a "boring" Democratic primary in NH, the Republican Primary is as hot as molten steel. "Buchanan to deliver a real deal State of the Union address to New Hampshire at 7:30 Monday morning on WNDS TV Buchanan will challenge Bush's pathetic pandering to corporate funders and fundamentalist voters while totally evading his guilt for and exploitation of 9/11 to advance his corporatist war agenda and plunge our grandchildren into global loathing, environmental ruin and economic misery. He will focus particularly on the effects of the corporate coup locally in New Hampshire - the loss of jobs, the filthy air and the betrayed veteran community. The emperor not only has no clothes, he is lying and stealing yours. Tune in for a bracing dose of the thus far unspoken truth."
http://johnbuchanan.org/news/newsitem.php?section=PRS&id=1257&showcat=2
__Congress Must Cancel Overseas Internet Voting
NY Times opines, "Four computer scientists brought in by the Pentagon to analyze a plan for Internet voting by the military issued a blistering report this week, concluding that the program should be halted. These four are the only members of a 10-member advisory committee to issue a report on the program. Their findings make it clear that the potential for hackers to steal votes or otherwise subvert elections electronically is too high. Congress should suspend the program... There is every reason to believe that if federal elections can be tampered with, they will be, particularly when a single hacker, working alone, might be able to use an online voting system to steal a presidential election. The authors of this week's report concede that there is no way of knowing how likely it is that the Pentagon's voting system would be compromised. What is clear, however, is that until the vulnerabilities they identified are eliminated, the risks are too great."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/23/opinion/23FRI1.html
__David Kay Believes Iraqi WMD Never Existed
Brace yourself for the attacks on David Kay from George "Changing The Tone" Bush. Kay has now stated that the reason his search teams haven't found Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is that they never existed, since there was no Iraqi weapons program in the 1990s.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040123/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_kay_dc
__Halliburton Admits it Took BRIBES from Kuwaitis for US Taxpayer-Gouging Contracts
Sunspot reports: "Two Halliburton Co. officials accepted up to $6 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti company that was awarded contracts to supply U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a newspaper report. Halliburton disclosed the alleged impropriety to the Pentagon inspector general's office this week, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Friday. The two employees, who have been fired, worked for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root in Kuwait, the same division of the company involved in a highly scrutinized gasoline contract, the Journal said. The newspaper said the new allegations do not involve the gasoline controversy, in which the company charged the Army more than double the price for fuel brought in from Kuwait than for gas from Turkey." Yeah, sure they don't! Halliburton, sinking fast, is throwing bodies overboard - starting with these two guys - who represent just the TIP of the oil-drenched iceberg.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-halliburton-iraq,0,6017255.story
__Grand Jury Hears Plame Case
"Sources... tell Time that... a grand jury began hearing testimony Wednesday in the investigation of who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie... A huge unanswered question in this case is whether the leaker or leakers knew that Plame was undercover when they gave her identity away. That is a necessary element for any indictment for leaking the name of a covert agent. However, charges could also be brought for making false statements to the FBI, if a guilty party has falsely claimed innocence in interviews with government agents. It's also possible that prosecutors will learn who perpetrated the leak but won't have enough to bring charges. But true to form, the Bush administration continues to be extremely tight-lipped about the investigation -- even internally. 'No one knows what the hell is going on,' says someone who could be a witness, 'because the administration people are all terrified and the lawyers aren't sharing anything with each other either.'"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,581456,00.html
__Canadian Police and Ashcroft Frantically Accuse Journalist As 'Exported Torture' Victim Files Federal Lawsuit
Ottawa journalist Juliet O'Neill's home was raided on Jan. 21 by Royal Canadian Mounted Police who accused her of leaking classified info to the press. The raid occurred THE DAY AFTER the US news reported that Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar was filing a lawsuit against the US government for detaining him without due cause, then shipping him to Syria to be tortured. But while the RCMP are investigating O'Neill, the RCMP is being investigated by Canadian feds, who suspect the RCMP illegally leaked information to Washington about Arar. "The whole affair started with the RCMP," says Kerry Prither, Arar's spokesperson. "First they whispered to the Americans that Maher Arar was a terrorist, which led to his deportation and torture. Then the RCMP tried to smear Maher Arar by whispering the same allegations to journalists. Now it's raiding journalists' offices as if journalists are the problem." Sounds about right for Bush World.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0121-13.htm
__Was It Murder? Coroner To Reopen Probe of Kelly's Death To Review Suppressed Evidence
The Age reports: "A British coroner is prepared to open a new inquest into the death of David Kelly, the weapons expert at the centre of claims the Blair Government 'sexed up' intelligence on Iraq. A judicial inquiry, headed by senior judge Lord Hutton, is set to report potentially explosive findings on Dr Kelly's death next Wednesday but Nicholas Gardiner, the Oxfordshire Coroner, believes the inquiry was unable to examine all the evidence. At least five witnesses refused to release their statements to the Hutton inquiry and police handed Lord Hutton only 70 of the 300 witness statements they took during their inquiries, the newspaper said. 'What their motives migh be for not handing over their statements I have no idea but I think I ought to see them.' Mr Gardiner intends to meet senior police officers this week to demand access to documents unseen by Lord Hutton." And so the plot thickens...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/22/1074732537993.html
__Bush Begs UN to Clean Up His Mess
After lying to America about conditions in Iraq this week, after years of bashing the UN as useless, now Bush has been forced to admit just how bad things have become in the war zone and is pleading for the organization to come clean up the mess he has made before it's too late to salvage. Reports ABC: "'It's a comeuppance,' said Joseph Montville, a U.S. diplomat to Baghdad in the 1960s who now heads a diplomacy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The US has asked the UN to settle a U.S.-Iraqi dispute over how to select leaders to rule the country after U.S. occupation authorities hand over sovereignty on June 30." It is an issue that has pushed a bad situation into the red zone. ABC says Bush hopes to pull out all but 100,000 troops as soon as the UN "fixes" things. At present, more than half of the nation's 450,000 active military personnel are tied up in Iraq - a situation that has severely stretched US resources.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040123_144.html
__Kurds Turn Against Bush As He Renegs on Autonomy Promises
The Independent reports: "Iraqi Kurds, the one Iraqi community that has broadly supported the American occupation, are expressing growing anger at the failure of the United States and its allies to give them full control of their own affairs and allow the Kurds to expel Arabs placed in Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told The Independent in an interview that the Kurds had been offered less autonomy 'than we had agreed in 1974 with the regime of Saddam Hussein'. There are the seeds here for a savage ethnic conflict. The Arabs and Turkomans in Kirkuk are frightened. Many of the Arab settlers have been there for more than a generation and it is not clear where they would go. The last year has seen a number of small-scale but bloody clashes." Hmm...funny, the US media never mentioned that "little detail."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=483202
__Bush 'Environmental Restoration' Scheme In Iraq - Is It Driven By Religious Delusions?
We know from Bush's track record here at home that he doesn't give a damn about the environment: just look at the devastation the administration has inflicted on America's environment in the past few months alone (See http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/2003.asp) So what is his motivation for pouring millions into restoring Iraq's vast marshlands? Here's a hint: the same marshlands are believed by Biblical scholars to be the site of the Garden of Eden. Bush is a self-styled religious fanatic. Therefore, it isn't a stretch to suggest that his showering of millions in cash and man hours into an environmental restoration project he'd never dream of doing back home is motivated by bizarro religious delusions. He probably believes all those "halo shots" of him by AP aren't just tricks of lighting!
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2004/01/23/news/world/7776947.htm
__Coalition Faces New Battlefront : Pop Music
As Americans flood Iraq's airwaves with radio stations playing harmless Western and Arab pop tunes, the young are turning elsewhere for their musical inspiration. They turn to artists like Sabah al-Jenabi who sings: "America has come and occupied Baghdad. The army and people have weapons and ammunition. Let's go fight and call out the name of God." Banned from the air, such songs are proving increasingly popular in the CD and tape shops of Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=64722004
__Wars are 'Useful', says US Army Chief
"General Schoomaker said the attacks on America in September 2001 and subsequent events had given the US army a rare opportunity to change. 'There is a huge silver lining in this cloud,' he said. 'War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph.' He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train. 'There's got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for,' he said." We thought that was defending America from attack - not conquering foreign nations!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3419715.stm
__Number of Names on John Ashcroft's List of 'Enemies' Reaches an Obscene FIVE MILLION
Reports the Toronto Sun: "U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. "The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem," Brian Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document obtained by the Sun. Names on the list are compared against those applying for visas or on flights travelling to the U.S. Anyone whose name is on the list is questioned or banned from entering the U.S." Or locked up indefinitely. Or roughed up. Or sent abroad to be tortured. Or all of the above. Impeach Bush Now!
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/01/20/318488.html
__Will Bush play the Bioterror Card?
Lori R. Price writes, "There is no way on God's green earth that Karl Rove will let the Idiot Usurper debate *any* Democratic candidate three nights in a row on national television, and Rove can't 'Wellstone' all of them... Even a staged bin Laden 'capture' may not be enough. Bush needs to turn to something that would grab a little more attention and the desired clampdown, just in time for the 2004 s-election."
http://www.legitgov.org/essay_price_will_bush_play_the_bioterror_card_0122 04.html
__Onward Christian Terrorists: Calls to Violence Mark Roe v. Wade Anniversary
ABC reports: "An anti-abortion activist, calling for a new wave of violence against clinics and doctors, is following the example of violent Islamic fundamentalists, telling those who share his views to become "Christian terrorists" and promising them a reward in Heaven. There is some question among academics and others who follow extremist movements in the United States about how seriously to take the rhetoric, particularly because none believe that such views are shared by more than, at most, a few hundred people." This is reassuring? It only took a 19 men with boxcutters to kill nearly 3,000 people. Worse, the Bush government, stuffed with religious fanatics, is fueling the problem, while failing to take any steps to curb it. (See http://www.newsinsider.org/seal/unchecked_and_unreported.html)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/US/WorldNewsTonight/antiabortion_violence_040122-1.html
__Interfaith Coalition Blasts Bush's Speech to Anti-Abortion Rally
Interfaith Coalition for Reproductive Rights writes, "Bush addressed the annual anti-abortion rally on the National Mall with facile words about creating a "culture of life" -- without mentioning women's lives or suggesting how a compassionate society can be created unless women are equal, free, and respected. We ask Bush how he can believe that all life is sacred and yet promote legislation and policies that result in exactly the opposite outcome for women and men, adults and teens. He boasted of refusing to spend tax dollars on promoting abortion overseas -- when in reality, the Administration's refusal to fund humanitarian family planning programs in poor countries has left millions of women without basic health care. He boasted of opposing "the destruction of embryos for stem cell research" -- when, in reality, those embryos, which could be used for life- saving research, were created for in vitro fertilization and will be discarded."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=158-01222004
__Bush's War on Obesity Ends Before It Begins
So much for Bush's much-touted war on obesity! "Leading scientists accused the Bush administration of putting the interests of powerful American sugar barons ahead of the global fight against obesity," reports the Guardian. "More than half of all Americans are overweight...in Bush's Texas, nearly 1/3 of the population is obese. One of [Bush's] main fundraisers is sugar baron Jose 'Pepe' Fanjul, head of Florida Crystals." He has showered $100,000 onto the Bush reelection campaign. "Bush argues there is little robust evidence that drinking sugary drinks or eating too much sugar is a direct cause of obesity." He wants to block a recommendation that just 10% of people's energy intake should come from added sugar. At a meeting on this issue with WHO next week, guess who will represent the US? Bill Steiger, George Bush Sr's godson. Steiger will make the idiotic claim that junk food does not contribute to weight gain in children!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1125768,00.html
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On Jan. 26 at 7 p.m., join ImpeachBush.Meetup.com. On Jan. 29, protest G.W. Bush (and his Nazi-financing grandfather Prescott) in Greenwich, CT. On March 20, "The World Still Says No To War" (unitedforpeace.org). Rush Holt's Verified Voting Bill has 107 co-sponsors - what about yours? (http://tinyurl.com/yqb4e)
http://www.legitgov.org/action.html
__Michael Moore Blasts Peter Jennings over Bush's AWOL
Michael Moore writes: Peter "Jennings, referring to me as 'the controversial filmmaker,' asked if Clark wanted to distance himself from me and my 'reckless' remark. Clark would not back down, stating how 'delighted' he was with my support, and that I was entitled to say what I wanted to say - AND that I was not the only one who had made these charges against Bush. The pundits immediately went berserk after the debate. As well they should. Because they know that they ignored this Bush AWOL story when it was first revealed by an investigation in the Boston Globe (in 2000). The Globe said it appeared George W. Bush skipped out in the middle of his Texas Air National Guard service - and no charges were ever brought against him. It was a damning story, and Bush has never provided any documents or evidence to refute the Globe's charges. George W. Bush was missing for at least a 12 month period. That is an undisputed fact. If you or I did that, we would serve time."
http://michaelmoore.com/
__John Buchanan Prepares Blockbuster Speech Demolishing Bush
While pundits moan about a "boring" Democratic primary in NH, the Republican Primary is as hot as molten steel. "Buchanan to deliver a real deal State of the Union address to New Hampshire at 7:30 Monday morning on WNDS TV Buchanan will challenge Bush's pathetic pandering to corporate funders and fundamentalist voters while totally evading his guilt for and exploitation of 9/11 to advance his corporatist war agenda and plunge our grandchildren into global loathing, environmental ruin and economic misery. He will focus particularly on the effects of the corporate coup locally in New Hampshire - the loss of jobs, the filthy air and the betrayed veteran community. The emperor not only has no clothes, he is lying and stealing yours. Tune in for a bracing dose of the thus far unspoken truth."
http://johnbuchanan.org/news/newsitem.php?section=PRS&id=1257&showcat=2
__Congress Must Cancel Overseas Internet Voting
NY Times opines, "Four computer scientists brought in by the Pentagon to analyze a plan for Internet voting by the military issued a blistering report this week, concluding that the program should be halted. These four are the only members of a 10-member advisory committee to issue a report on the program. Their findings make it clear that the potential for hackers to steal votes or otherwise subvert elections electronically is too high. Congress should suspend the program... There is every reason to believe that if federal elections can be tampered with, they will be, particularly when a single hacker, working alone, might be able to use an online voting system to steal a presidential election. The authors of this week's report concede that there is no way of knowing how likely it is that the Pentagon's voting system would be compromised. What is clear, however, is that until the vulnerabilities they identified are eliminated, the risks are too great."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/23/opinion/23FRI1.html
__David Kay Believes Iraqi WMD Never Existed
Brace yourself for the attacks on David Kay from George "Changing The Tone" Bush. Kay has now stated that the reason his search teams haven't found Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is that they never existed, since there was no Iraqi weapons program in the 1990s.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040123/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_kay_dc
__Halliburton Admits it Took BRIBES from Kuwaitis for US Taxpayer-Gouging Contracts
Sunspot reports: "Two Halliburton Co. officials accepted up to $6 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti company that was awarded contracts to supply U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a newspaper report. Halliburton disclosed the alleged impropriety to the Pentagon inspector general's office this week, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Friday. The two employees, who have been fired, worked for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root in Kuwait, the same division of the company involved in a highly scrutinized gasoline contract, the Journal said. The newspaper said the new allegations do not involve the gasoline controversy, in which the company charged the Army more than double the price for fuel brought in from Kuwait than for gas from Turkey." Yeah, sure they don't! Halliburton, sinking fast, is throwing bodies overboard - starting with these two guys - who represent just the TIP of the oil-drenched iceberg.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-halliburton-iraq,0,6017255.story
__Grand Jury Hears Plame Case
"Sources... tell Time that... a grand jury began hearing testimony Wednesday in the investigation of who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie... A huge unanswered question in this case is whether the leaker or leakers knew that Plame was undercover when they gave her identity away. That is a necessary element for any indictment for leaking the name of a covert agent. However, charges could also be brought for making false statements to the FBI, if a guilty party has falsely claimed innocence in interviews with government agents. It's also possible that prosecutors will learn who perpetrated the leak but won't have enough to bring charges. But true to form, the Bush administration continues to be extremely tight-lipped about the investigation -- even internally. 'No one knows what the hell is going on,' says someone who could be a witness, 'because the administration people are all terrified and the lawyers aren't sharing anything with each other either.'"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,581456,00.html
__Canadian Police and Ashcroft Frantically Accuse Journalist As 'Exported Torture' Victim Files Federal Lawsuit
Ottawa journalist Juliet O'Neill's home was raided on Jan. 21 by Royal Canadian Mounted Police who accused her of leaking classified info to the press. The raid occurred THE DAY AFTER the US news reported that Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar was filing a lawsuit against the US government for detaining him without due cause, then shipping him to Syria to be tortured. But while the RCMP are investigating O'Neill, the RCMP is being investigated by Canadian feds, who suspect the RCMP illegally leaked information to Washington about Arar. "The whole affair started with the RCMP," says Kerry Prither, Arar's spokesperson. "First they whispered to the Americans that Maher Arar was a terrorist, which led to his deportation and torture. Then the RCMP tried to smear Maher Arar by whispering the same allegations to journalists. Now it's raiding journalists' offices as if journalists are the problem." Sounds about right for Bush World.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0121-13.htm
__Was It Murder? Coroner To Reopen Probe of Kelly's Death To Review Suppressed Evidence
The Age reports: "A British coroner is prepared to open a new inquest into the death of David Kelly, the weapons expert at the centre of claims the Blair Government 'sexed up' intelligence on Iraq. A judicial inquiry, headed by senior judge Lord Hutton, is set to report potentially explosive findings on Dr Kelly's death next Wednesday but Nicholas Gardiner, the Oxfordshire Coroner, believes the inquiry was unable to examine all the evidence. At least five witnesses refused to release their statements to the Hutton inquiry and police handed Lord Hutton only 70 of the 300 witness statements they took during their inquiries, the newspaper said. 'What their motives migh be for not handing over their statements I have no idea but I think I ought to see them.' Mr Gardiner intends to meet senior police officers this week to demand access to documents unseen by Lord Hutton." And so the plot thickens...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/22/1074732537993.html
__Bush Begs UN to Clean Up His Mess
After lying to America about conditions in Iraq this week, after years of bashing the UN as useless, now Bush has been forced to admit just how bad things have become in the war zone and is pleading for the organization to come clean up the mess he has made before it's too late to salvage. Reports ABC: "'It's a comeuppance,' said Joseph Montville, a U.S. diplomat to Baghdad in the 1960s who now heads a diplomacy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The US has asked the UN to settle a U.S.-Iraqi dispute over how to select leaders to rule the country after U.S. occupation authorities hand over sovereignty on June 30." It is an issue that has pushed a bad situation into the red zone. ABC says Bush hopes to pull out all but 100,000 troops as soon as the UN "fixes" things. At present, more than half of the nation's 450,000 active military personnel are tied up in Iraq - a situation that has severely stretched US resources.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040123_144.html
__Kurds Turn Against Bush As He Renegs on Autonomy Promises
The Independent reports: "Iraqi Kurds, the one Iraqi community that has broadly supported the American occupation, are expressing growing anger at the failure of the United States and its allies to give them full control of their own affairs and allow the Kurds to expel Arabs placed in Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told The Independent in an interview that the Kurds had been offered less autonomy 'than we had agreed in 1974 with the regime of Saddam Hussein'. There are the seeds here for a savage ethnic conflict. The Arabs and Turkomans in Kirkuk are frightened. Many of the Arab settlers have been there for more than a generation and it is not clear where they would go. The last year has seen a number of small-scale but bloody clashes." Hmm...funny, the US media never mentioned that "little detail."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=483202
__Bush 'Environmental Restoration' Scheme In Iraq - Is It Driven By Religious Delusions?
We know from Bush's track record here at home that he doesn't give a damn about the environment: just look at the devastation the administration has inflicted on America's environment in the past few months alone (See http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/2003.asp) So what is his motivation for pouring millions into restoring Iraq's vast marshlands? Here's a hint: the same marshlands are believed by Biblical scholars to be the site of the Garden of Eden. Bush is a self-styled religious fanatic. Therefore, it isn't a stretch to suggest that his showering of millions in cash and man hours into an environmental restoration project he'd never dream of doing back home is motivated by bizarro religious delusions. He probably believes all those "halo shots" of him by AP aren't just tricks of lighting!
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2004/01/23/news/world/7776947.htm
__Coalition Faces New Battlefront : Pop Music
As Americans flood Iraq's airwaves with radio stations playing harmless Western and Arab pop tunes, the young are turning elsewhere for their musical inspiration. They turn to artists like Sabah al-Jenabi who sings: "America has come and occupied Baghdad. The army and people have weapons and ammunition. Let's go fight and call out the name of God." Banned from the air, such songs are proving increasingly popular in the CD and tape shops of Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=64722004
__Wars are 'Useful', says US Army Chief
"General Schoomaker said the attacks on America in September 2001 and subsequent events had given the US army a rare opportunity to change. 'There is a huge silver lining in this cloud,' he said. 'War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph.' He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train. 'There's got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for,' he said." We thought that was defending America from attack - not conquering foreign nations!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3419715.stm
__Number of Names on John Ashcroft's List of 'Enemies' Reaches an Obscene FIVE MILLION
Reports the Toronto Sun: "U.S. security agents have a master list of five million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals, officials say. "The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem," Brian Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential document obtained by the Sun. Names on the list are compared against those applying for visas or on flights travelling to the U.S. Anyone whose name is on the list is questioned or banned from entering the U.S." Or locked up indefinitely. Or roughed up. Or sent abroad to be tortured. Or all of the above. Impeach Bush Now!
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/01/20/318488.html
__Will Bush play the Bioterror Card?
Lori R. Price writes, "There is no way on God's green earth that Karl Rove will let the Idiot Usurper debate *any* Democratic candidate three nights in a row on national television, and Rove can't 'Wellstone' all of them... Even a staged bin Laden 'capture' may not be enough. Bush needs to turn to something that would grab a little more attention and the desired clampdown, just in time for the 2004 s-election."
http://www.legitgov.org/essay_price_will_bush_play_the_bioterror_card_0122 04.html
__Onward Christian Terrorists: Calls to Violence Mark Roe v. Wade Anniversary
ABC reports: "An anti-abortion activist, calling for a new wave of violence against clinics and doctors, is following the example of violent Islamic fundamentalists, telling those who share his views to become "Christian terrorists" and promising them a reward in Heaven. There is some question among academics and others who follow extremist movements in the United States about how seriously to take the rhetoric, particularly because none believe that such views are shared by more than, at most, a few hundred people." This is reassuring? It only took a 19 men with boxcutters to kill nearly 3,000 people. Worse, the Bush government, stuffed with religious fanatics, is fueling the problem, while failing to take any steps to curb it. (See http://www.newsinsider.org/seal/unchecked_and_unreported.html)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/US/WorldNewsTonight/antiabortion_violence_040122-1.html
__Interfaith Coalition Blasts Bush's Speech to Anti-Abortion Rally
Interfaith Coalition for Reproductive Rights writes, "Bush addressed the annual anti-abortion rally on the National Mall with facile words about creating a "culture of life" -- without mentioning women's lives or suggesting how a compassionate society can be created unless women are equal, free, and respected. We ask Bush how he can believe that all life is sacred and yet promote legislation and policies that result in exactly the opposite outcome for women and men, adults and teens. He boasted of refusing to spend tax dollars on promoting abortion overseas -- when in reality, the Administration's refusal to fund humanitarian family planning programs in poor countries has left millions of women without basic health care. He boasted of opposing "the destruction of embryos for stem cell research" -- when, in reality, those embryos, which could be used for life- saving research, were created for in vitro fertilization and will be discarded."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=158-01222004
__Bush's War on Obesity Ends Before It Begins
So much for Bush's much-touted war on obesity! "Leading scientists accused the Bush administration of putting the interests of powerful American sugar barons ahead of the global fight against obesity," reports the Guardian. "More than half of all Americans are overweight...in Bush's Texas, nearly 1/3 of the population is obese. One of [Bush's] main fundraisers is sugar baron Jose 'Pepe' Fanjul, head of Florida Crystals." He has showered $100,000 onto the Bush reelection campaign. "Bush argues there is little robust evidence that drinking sugary drinks or eating too much sugar is a direct cause of obesity." He wants to block a recommendation that just 10% of people's energy intake should come from added sugar. At a meeting on this issue with WHO next week, guess who will represent the US? Bill Steiger, George Bush Sr's godson. Steiger will make the idiotic claim that junk food does not contribute to weight gain in children!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1125768,00.html
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