2 GOP Senators want new Iraq strategy

Thank you Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia, who are two new Republicans speaking out against Bush's current plan,or lack thereof, for Iraq. NOw we need more Republicans to speak ou against the U.S. foreign policy in general. How about speaking out against the extremely flawed and phoney 'War on Terror' and 'War on Drugs' too!

Anyway, here's what Senator Hagel had to say: "The American people are not going to continue to support, sustain a policy that puts American troops in the middle of a civil war."

Yes, Hagel is very correct. WE won't support you Bush. Never. People are beginning to see through the bullshit like never before and it's beautiful. Full article.

We can see the tables ARE turning, slowly but surely, as long as people continue to have revelations and realize the hegemonistic nature of the Bush Administration. We are sure to win against the Republic. Even people in other nations are taking notice of the masses of people turning their backs on Bush finally: See the article "America is Finally Revolting Against the Republicans."

Yummy Links of the Day

One man still locked up from 9/11 sweeps (AP)
3/4 Americans want Troops Home From Iraq (Think Progress)
1 million U.S. retirees invade Mexico (SF Gate)
Rape charges recommended for Israeli President (CNN)

Very nice clothes for your body

A while ago we found Progresswear, a hip site with lots of anti-Republic and political gear. Today I found Ban T-Shirts, which also provides high quality anti-Bush garments and political message gear.

So grab a shirt or two and show your feelings about this great Administration we are under! Yay!

O'Reilly gets by murder talk, but not 14 yr old teen?

It's a big story but I am sure not all of you have heard about the 14 year old girl in Sacremento who was questioned by the Secret Service for writing the phrase"Kill Bush" on her MySpace profile. But she later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.

Bill O'Reilly has talked of murdering George Soros. However, this is apparently not taken seriously by the Federal or Local Governments because George Soros is not that significant to them.

O'Reilly has declared, among other things, that "[t]hey ought to hang this Soros guy." Most recently, O'Reilly compared Soros to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and alleged that Soros believes that "we're Nazis" because of U.S. policies on Iraq and torture.

The Secret Service (the SS, haha) or law enforcement does not interfere. Then O'Reilly straight up denies "go[ing] after" Soros.

I think this is completely ridiculous that the Bush Administration is trying to scare and intimidate people by going after a 14-year-old on MySpace, it's obviously an SS PR stunt. They got a great chance to show that they are "serious" and they took it. Well that's great SS, but shouldn't we take murderous threats against anyone seriously then?

Yummy Links of the Day

Hi everyone! I'm starting the 'Yummy Links of the Day' to share valuable informative articles and sites that I've found. There are so many great links and sites, it's hard to keep up with, so thats sort of why I am starting this.

A Timeline of Bush's Lies (Mother Jones)
American Fascism Is on the Rise (AlterNet)
Military Maintains Big Database on Antiwar Protests (NY Times)
Bush Keeps Revising War Justification (AP News)
Who's Running Afghan Policy? (The Nation)

Kerry speaking out

Way to go Kerry. OR NOT. Should have stood up to Bush during the election! Well, I do give Kerry credit for at least speaking out, UNLIKE some other still push-over democrats who voted for the Military Commissions Act.

"They tell us we're making progress in Iraq and that there is no civil war. That is a lie," he said. "It's immoral to lie about progress in that war in order to get through a news cycle or an election cycle.

"Kerry criticized the Bush administration for blaming the North Korean nuclear test on former Pres. Clinton. (Tell me what kind of leader doesn't take responsibilities for HIS actions and blames them on others, OH THE BUSH KIND!) "That is a lie. North Korea's nuclear program was frozen under BIl Clinton. Read the full article

Free America will end on Tuesday 10/17

On Tuesday, October 17, at 9:35 a.m., George W. Bush will sign the Military Commissions Act (more via Wikipedia) and abolish some important rights that our founding fathers had placed at the heart of our so-called democracy.

Thereafter, Bush and his minions will have the power to arbitrarily decide that you may be a threat to this nation. They can then lock you up and throw away the key. They don't need to tell you why you're being detained. They may torture you, as long as they don't call it that. They don't have to reveal whatever evidence they might have against you, so there is no way that you'll ever be able to dispute that secret evidence or prove your innocence. You're at their mercy.

This sounds like the kind of thing that goes on in brutal third-world dictatorships. But soon it will be the new American way. Every day we are dragged closer to the supressive, totalitarian society that George Orwell warned us about in his book '1984.' See the votes and how representatives from your state voted. via OpEdNews.com

For an even more in depth analysis of the problem read Nick Zsabo's "Liberty and habeas corpus" - Part I and Part II. (Thanks Nick!)

U.S. military Internet clean up campaign

This is almost as disturbing as cameras with loudspeakers. But not quite. "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be," according to the Army. The Manassas-based Guardsmen are on a one-year assignment to clamp down on both "official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations."

The team, working "under the direction of the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" hunts for "documents, pictures and other items that may compromise security" -- and then orders the parties to take the offensive content offline.

Since the relatively wide-open days following the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Pentagon has been slowly tightening the screws on military bloggers. Officers started busting frontline diarists for their websites. In Iraq, new rules required bloggers to check with their commanders before posting.

Then, in August, a message came from highest levels of the military that "EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, NO INFORMATION MAY BE PLACED ON WEBSITES THAT ARE READILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC UNLESS IT HAS BEEN REVIEWED FOR SECURITY CONCERNS AND APPROVED IN ACCORDANCE WITH DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MEMORANDUM WEB SITE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES, DECEMBER 7, 1998."

More at DefenseTech via The Raw Story

Bush's Approval Ratings Decline AGAIN

The Wall St. Journal is reporting that the latest Harris Interactive Poll shows that President Bush's approval rating dropped four points this month, from 38% to 34%.

Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults now have a negative view of Mr. Bush's job performance, compared with 61% who ranked him "only fair" or "poor" in a similar poll last month. The drop follows a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed the president's job approval rating fell to 39% from 42% earlier in October.

With less than a month to go before the midterm congressional elections, 47% of registered voters said they would vote for a Democratic candidate, compared with 35% who said they would pick a Republican candidate. When asked about recent Capitol Hill scandals involving charges of corruption and sexual improprieties, 64% said they believed those activities were the just the "tip of the iceberg," compared with 25% who believed they were "isolated incidents."

Rumsfeld Allies Campaign Against NATO General

Gen. James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was quoted in Bob Woodward’s State of Denial as believing the Iraq war is a “debacle” and that “the Joint Chiefs have been systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld.” Jones is also quoted as cautioning Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: “You should not be the parrot on the secretary’s shoulder.”

To the dismay of Rumsfeld and his supporters, Jones has stood by the criticisms reported in the book. He recently said, “I don’t challenge Bob’s characterization of it, except that had I seen [the book], I probably would have suggested that the tone was more critical than I intended it to be. … I did talk about Iraq with a concern that Iraq deserves.” Read the rest at Think Progress

Serious Intelligence Failure on N. Korean Nukes

Bill Gertz reports that the intelligence community has seriously botched its forecasts on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Recent U.S. intelligence analyses of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were flawed and the lack of clarity on the issue hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert the underground blast detected Sunday, according to Bush administration officials.

Some recent secret reports stated that Pyongyang did not have nuclear arms and until recently was bluffing about plans for a test, according to officials who have read the classified assessments. The analyses in question included a National Intelligence Estimate a consensus report of all U.S. spy agencies produced several months ago and at least two other classified reports on North Korea produced by senior officials within the office of the Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. The officials said there were as many as 10 failures related to intelligence reporting on North Korean missile tests and the suspected nuclear test that harmed administration efforts to deal with the issue.

According to officials familiar with the reports, the failures included judgments that cast doubt about whether North Korea’s nuclear program posed an immediate threat, whether North Korea could produce a militarily useful nuclear bomb, whether North Korea was capable of conducting an underground nuclear test and whether Pyongyang was bluffing by claiming it could carry one out.

The failures would be the latest in a string suffered by U.S. intelligence in recent years, as described in a series of government and nongovernment reports. Past stumbles have included missing chances to detect or stop the September 11 attacks, faulty assessments of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, the failure to predict the 1998 round of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, and overly optimistic predictions of the Iraqi reaction to a U.S. invasion.

U.S. has killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam

he Lancet, the respected British medical journal, will come out with this on Saturday. (it is not on their Web site yet).
The death toll is appalling!

This is account will be in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.

A similar story is now on the The New York Times Web site. And The Washington Post.

Excerpts of this report will be in Wednesday's New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

The study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July.

The Defense Department until 2004 eschewed any effort to compute the number of Iraqi dead but this summer released a study putting the civilian casualty rate between May and August at 117 people a day.

Other tabulations using different methodologies put the range of total civilian fatalities so far from about 50,000 to more than 150,000. President Bush in December said "30,000, more or less" had died in Iraq during the invasion and in the violence since.
The Johns Hopkins team conducted its study using a methodology known as "cluster sampling." That involved randomly picking 47 clusters of households for a total 1,849 households, scattered across Iraq. Team members interviewed each household about any deaths in the family during the 40 months since the invasion, as well as in the year before the invasion. The team says it reviewed death certificates for 92 percent of all deaths reported. Based on those figures, it tabulated national mortality rates for various periods before and after the start of the war. The mortality rate last year was nearly four times the preinvasion rate, the study found.

"Since March 2003, an additional 2.5 percent of Iraq's population has died above what would have occurred without conflict," the report said. The country`s population is roughly 24 million people.

Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

Via DailyKos