Veeeeeeerrrry interesting ......

While President Bush fights for legislation that would hand the US government liberal permission to spy and eavesdrop on emails, phone calls, communication of all sorts of us citizens at large (including the media), supposedly *just* looking for terrorists - when it comes to giving congress access to White House communication and correspondence by him, Dick Cheney and his own administration - something that is *supposed* to be a matter of public record?

Um, they can't be found. Oooooopsie. Missing. Thousands of emails "erased." Transcriptions of phone calls, copies of letters, yadda yadda yadda. Somehow just can't be found.

Uh-huh.

So we are supposed to believe that this administration will respect the rights of privacy for other than terrorist suspects (unless we are all suspects) and actually handle what communication they track down responsibly when they tend only to cherry pick what they save for the public record themselves?

I hope the US House of Representatives stands up to this bullying and doesn't cave as the US Senate has.

A general testifies before congress

The same thing that was said in 2004, 2005, 2006 and now 2007. Stay the course.

And makes no mention of:

What a "victory" would be.

What a "victory" would look like.

How a "victory" could be achieved.

Why any sort of "victory" appears to be out of reach, no matter how many Americans and innocent Iraqis are killed.

Why terrorism would be defeated with the obfuscated idea of a "win" in Iraq - which is admittedly unattainable, because the only "win" we can identify is to hold off all the factions fighting between themselves and the US.

As the war in Iraq happens, the number of terrorist attacks around the world continue to increase and the number of Americans and innocent Iraqis continue to be killed there - more this year than last.

I remember when right-wingers warned us that we had to stay and fight in Vietnam (we wanted their natural resources for pennies) because if Vietnam was not "won" by the US, Vietnam and all the surrounding countries would go "commie." Um, didn't happen.

Today we are warned that we have to stay in Iraq because if Iraq isn't "won" by the US, then Iraq and all the surrounding countries would go terrorist/Al Qaeda.

Really. Saudi Arabia - our "ally" just west of Iraq, would go Al Qaeda? Sure, the majority of foreign Iraqi fighters are coming from and financed by Saudi Arabians, and the majority of those who attacked the US Sept. 11, 2001 were Saudi Arabians ... but would the entire nation - a wealthy monarchy headed by King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz - "go" Al Qaeda? Think about it.

Would Iran, already a fundamentalist Muslim state, go Al Qaeda? I don't see that happening, even though president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is meshugenah.

Kuwait is too rich and conservative to go Al Qaeda. Check out the map for all the nations involved.

Jordan? Nope.

Syria already hosts terrorists of all stripes so it doesn't have to go Al Qaeda.

Turkey? Go Al Qaeda? Um, can't see it.

I have to wonder why we are we so afraid of terrorists to begin with.

If we are afraid of them, like any bully, they have already "won."

Their point is to scare us, to put us in a state of terror, and wow, have they been successful in the US, with the help of lots of politicians who have actually not done a whole lot to protect us from them.

After all, what are terrorists going to do? Turn us all into fundamentalist Muslims? Or have *us* go Al Qaeda? I seriously hope you are laughing.

Attack us? The US can handle any attack (well, if there are any soldiers left here to fight) - and thanks to the Bush administration's failure to secure our borders, the failed Department of Homeland Security and sadly incompetent FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), we probably will have to deal with an attack one day.

I'm not saying there is nothing to be concerned about - but I'd prefer us to spend more time actually outwitting the terrorists than being afraid of them; spending more money protecting us from them than fighting a needless war.

Want to know how? Read Thinking Like A Terrorist by Mike German.

Unfortunately, President Bush confused the people who actually did attack us - mostly Saudi Arabian Al Qaeda members - with Iraqis. Not a single Iraqi attacked us Sept. 11, 2001, but he had the US military open fire on the Iraqis more than five years ago and today we are in a warring quagmire the US military is incapable of managing properly because it's a predominantly political problem that needs to be solved by the Iraqis themselves.

More, Osama bin Ladin's Al Qaeda wasn't even in Iraq until after we attacked and occupied Iraq. Interestingly, I doubt if Iraqis will ultimately fall for the political or religious lines of Al Qaeda - Iraqis just needed their help to fight their enemies.

I hope the souls killed in the attack on New York's Twin Towers, the Pentagon and United Flight 93 six years ago are resting in peace, ignoring how their President has sullied their memories, used them as political fodder to fulfill a personal or religious fantasy that has unnecessarily cost thousands' more American lives in Iraq and by extension Gulf victims of Katrina, and used the date of their deaths as a means to foster his political and - after he leaves office - financial coffers (according to Dead Certain, an interview with President Bush by Robert Draper).

Iraq's Congress takes off -- all of August ..

Without passing any laws that would help stabilize the country before they flew away for their vacation.

Every day they are vacationing, living it up outside the dangerous areas of "their nation," more than 8 million of their fellow Iraqis are suffering - trying to survive without basic resources like water, food, electricity, health care, housing and any measure of safety.

This after the US has paid some 200 billion *borrowed* dollars for reconstruction of the nation devastated from invasion and now civil war, with US soldiers caught in the middle.

Every day in August that American soldiers and civilian workers are wounded, maimed or killed because the Iraqi government literally refuses to stay and work to take control of their country is another day that President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney claim they need to "stay the course" and "win the war."

Exactly what does that "win" look like?

We Americans will have to pay for the hundreds of billions that Bush has borrowed to invade and fight that war, plus interest. A war we ought to have never entered to begin with.

Iraqi congress members are not stupid. Why should they stay and do their work when they can be on a paid vacation while the US keeps spending money on their corruption and time off, letting Americans die for President Bush's "crusade."

Rightly, those 8 million suffering Iraqis blame the US for their plight. If we had not invaded and occupied their nation, these problems would literally not exist.

Our military would have actually been able to disarm the terrorists at their previous and current headquarters in Afghanistan along the Pakistani border.

And, gosh, it's been proved a dozen times over that half the insurgents in Iraq killing Americans are from our "ally" Saudi Arabia. Just like the terrorists who flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9-11.

More, Saudis are funding these insurgents.

But what did we do for Saudi Arabia just last week?

President Bush asked the US Congress to allow the sale to Saudi Arabia $20 billion dollars in state-of-the-art weapons! They include advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighter planes and spanking new naval vessels.

Why give the Saudis all those advanced weapons?

In the minds of the Saudis, to offset Iran's supposed building of nuclear power, and President Bush agrees with his Saudi friends.

His close Saudi friends who warned him NOT to invade Iraq because he would set off more problems than he solved if he did.

And of course arming the Saudis means that we'll have to give another ally, Israel, more billions in support and sell them the same state-of-art weaponry because you *know* Israel is screaming that they are now more vulnerable with the Arabians having those state-of-the art weapons.

Hmm. True. But do you understand that this escalation is because of President Bush's "crusade?"

Do you understand that it's only common sense that many more world stability dominos will fall thanks to the "crusade" that President Bush is hell bent on "winning" at our expense.

Our "ally" Pakistan, which also houses terrorists, right on the border of Afghanistan from which Bush ordered our forces withdrawn to be redeployed to Iraq a few years ago, already has nuclear weapon capability.

So does India (thanks to the US), Pakistan's longstanding enemy.

Before President Bush invaded Iraq, there were serious concerns about these nations, their growing ability to arm themselves with nuclear weaponry because the stability of the entire region hung by a thread.

Please look at the map to see the close proximity of all these nations to one another and understand that leaders from all other nations and many members of the US Congress who voted against giving President Bush authority to invade Iraq were well aware of the tenuous relationships they had before the invasion of Iraq.

Um, none of those countries have moved. They were in the same place and just as close to one another before President Bush decided to make Iraq a democracy. Which it has no chance of becoming because of the additional warring factions of the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds.

All three factions of Iraq who are no different now than they were before the invasion. Except they're armed. And dangerous to each other as well as to American soldiers.

Yep, the Bush-Cheney team not only broke the thread, they cut it with a hachet in 20 places.

All compliments of you and me paying our taxes, unlike Haliburton, which is paid billions to "rebuild" Iraq. It moved its headquarters from Texas to Dubai in order to avoid paying taxes in the US.

I have no idea how it could possibly happen - seriously - but I believe that as more and more facts emerge about the astonishingly dishonest actions and proclamations made by Bush and Cheney and their henchmen over the past six years, US Attorney General Alberto ("I don't remember.") Gonzales will be out within a month; and that Bush and Cheney will be out of jobs long before the end of their term.

Not because of any sort of liberal movement - but because conservatives are just as upset with him as the liberals. They believe Bush lied to them and is in no way reflecting a conservative agenda.

Piling up so much national debt is a good start; conservatives don't like government spending money. Disregarding the US Constitution and Bill of Rights comes a close second. Not supporting our troops comes right behind that - the troops are not getting what they need in the way of armaments to protect themselves (perhaps if they were Saudi Arabians....), the war in Iraq was mismanaged from the getgo, and US veterans are not receiving proper care when they come back wounded, maimed and in coffins.

Witness tampering by the White House

You know those people who *used* to be employed by the Bush administration who have been told not to testify?

Those folks are now ordinary, private citizens.

They've told congress over and over again that President Bush instructed them not to testify or not to give congress any information they seek or both.

Here's the deal: If I publicly told a *former* employee not to testify in a courtroom or for congress? I would be, um, arrested and tried and found guilty of witness tampering.

Which would put me in jail. For a long time.

Apparently the president doesn't think any witness tampering laws apply to him ... not because he's the president (these laws do apply) ... but because he's George W. Bush, a president who doesn't seem to understand how government and the rule of law work in the US.

Even military service people, under the Nuremberg Rules, Nuremberg Agreement and Nuremberg Principles, do not have to follow orders to commit illegal acts or crimes against humanity, even in times of war.

On that basis, if witnesses refuse to testify, they would be open to criminal charges of contempt.

Some would argue that under the Nuremberg Rules, Agreement and Principles, as well as several articles of the United Nations Charter that the US invasion of Iraq is illegal.

You know, I get no thrill from talking about my US president this way. In fact, it just plain hurts.

I simply can't believe someone who is so completely without conscience or integrity or knowledge was elected by us to run our nation - a country that prides itself in the promise of the US Constitution and whose integrity is supposed to be upheld by the rule of law.

Only recently Bush indicated that finding the person in his administration who outed an undercover CIA agent wasn't high on his list. He hoped they would step forward, but he wasn't interested in investigating an act considered treasonous in time of war -- identifying an undercover CIA agent.

Apparently he wont' take any legal action because it's one of his people and he's just loyal to his loyal peeps.

Like I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whose jail sentence was commuted by Bush because Libby knows where all the Bush administration skeletons are hidden in all those White House closets (I mean this *only* as a colloquialism!) and would probably be too tempted to share that information if he were sitting in jail with not much else to do.

It is so sad. I swear, I do not understand why people do not take responsibility for their actions when they have harmed others. Bush says he commuted Libby's sentence because it was tough on his wife and kids (which under the law judges are not supposed to consider when they sentence convicted criminals).

It seems to me that the best thing Libby could do for his family - especially his children - is be a good role model and man up, taking responsibility for hurting a lot of people and their families through his illegal actions.

ABC's Brian Ross reports suicide bombers coming here

Ross says that a video said to be photographed by a Pakistani journalist (possibly in Afghanistan or Pakistan) showed some of the 300 people, represented as suicide bombers as young as 12 trained by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

According to Ross's story, they are broken into teams supposedly assigned to destroy targets in the US, Canada, UK and Germany.

A man represented as a Taliban military commander, whose brother was killed by US forces, says that the teams are themselves actually citizens of the US, Germany, the UK and Canada.

American Intelligence officials scoff at the report, saying it's just part of an aggressive propaganda campaign by the terrorists; others take the report seriously.

Yep.

See?

The Bush administration has been so adamant - insisting the reason US soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq is to prevent the terrorists from coming over here. Because, you know - we're fighting them over there so they won't come here.

I believe there are actually few terrorists Iraq because the Iraqis are too busy fighting each other and US forces, keeping our military busy and distracted while wearing down our economy, military and national morale.

They know how to manipulate president Bush; it's simple because they know how he thinks, what he thinks and what he can be counted to say and do day after day. No surprises. Bush's answer to everything going on and going wrong in Iraq is to send more soldiers. Which only results in more US military and innocent Iraqi deaths.

His obsession of concentrating so many of our resources in Iraq frees the terrorists to go anywhere they wish to do their deadly, idiotic, hateful work.

The Taliban are re-emerging in Afghanistan because of a lessened US military presence.

I have to wonder what could have happened if we had maintained a noteable presence in Afghanistan rather than pulled our forces and diverted them to Iraq. The possibility of capturing Al Qaeda's leaders? Decimating their ranks? Crippling the Taliban? Reducing the heroin trade from Afghanistan to the US instead of allowing it to increase (by some estimates) 80%?

Memorial Day

Today...

Please think of the veterans who won't be coming home to take advantage of all those sales that "honor" them.
God bless our fallen heroes.

God bless the families and loved ones they leave behind.

God bless the more than 600,000 innocent Iraqis who have been killed in the US-Iraqi war.

And ask President Bush why he has never attended one funeral of any soldier killed in the US-Iraq war.