Bush: Debt Vampire

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There are still people who call Dubya "our beloved President Bush." I know one - he's a neighbor.

One reason why Bush gets away with mistake after mistake - [or calculated policy after calculated policy] - to kill America is because of his folksy, friendly bumpkin image.

Yeah, he's friendly to America all right, just like "friendly fire" is friendly to American troops.

The image of a vampire is more in keeping with the truth of what Bush is doing to us.

He's killing America - bankrupting our finances and our morals - through his policies built upon irresponsibility, greed and corruption.

He's killing America by destroying every program devised to help the disadvantaged gain hope and motivation so they may be inspired to contribute to our country.

He's killing every social service he can, including our beleaguered public schools, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaide.

He's killing our air and water through decreased environmental regulations, killing our forests through defying all evidence about Global Warming (the bark beetle thrives in warmer weather.

He's allowing lumber companies to harvest our public lands,

He's killing us with a war that is decimating American families even as it turns Middle-East Muslims against Americans in record numbers.

He's killed our hopes for security by not funding Homeland Seurity, cutting funds for the military and veterans and by lying to us in order to get us embroiled in Iraq.

And now he wants to open the door to Middle-Eastern terrorists through the Dubai Port Deal.

The fact is, he and his friends make money off destruction and chaos.

He and his ilk are vampires on the world, and on America.

Dubya: Determined To Destroy U.S.

Bush is pathetic. Once again, he is the last to know what's happening regarding the Dubai Port deal. Nonetheless, he defends the sale and has threatened a veto if Congress tries to block it.

Unbelievable.

Given that the Sept. 11 hijackers used the United Arab Emirates as an operational and financial base and that the UAE is thought to have been a transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya, there is no way our ports should be handed over to Dubai Ports World which is owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai.

As so many of us have suspected, all Bush's talk about "keeping America safe from terror" has been empty rhetoric employed shamelessly to blind Americans into agreeing to what he wants.

Don't let him get away with it. You know the administration's got an agenda that doesn't serve us. Write your representatives now and say: "NO!" And if they don't listen, organize a protest.

Bush: Still Paving The Way For Osama

The Bush administration gave Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, a $6.8 billion deal last week in which they will buy control of six of our largest and most crucial ports: New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Only a flimsy investigation and weak "good faith" agreements guarantees the company in charge will - or can - stop Osama bin Laden operatives from infiltrating its workforce.

Given that the United Arab Emirates gave the Taliban refuge, this is an unbelievably stupid move. As Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told "Fox News Sunday":

"It's unbelievably tone-deaf politically at this point in our history, four years after 9/11, to entertain the idea of turning port security over to a company based in the UAE, (which) vows to destroy Israel."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded that President Bush personally intervene.

"The president must act," he said at a news conference with New York Harbor as a backdrop. "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with long involvement in terrorism is a homeland security accident waiting to happen."

But Bush, approved it and, as usual, is unconcerned. He dropped the ball before 9-11. He dropped the ball before and after Katrina. He's created a Medicare mess, a mess in our schools, a disaster in Iraq and is bankrupting us.

Another terror attack would certainly give the GOP the absolute power it craves, since it is so close now.

And, although Bush perports to love the U.S. he spouts rhetoric as opposed to analyzing what's best for her. As Bush said himself while aboard Air Force One on June 4, 2003:

"I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking... about why I do things."

And don't we see the result of that! Now, to crown his legacy of disastrous leadership, he's throwning open the door to another terrorist attack.

Write to your representatives. If they don't care, organize a protest.

Regarding a related issue, has anyone actually read the 2/15/06 testimony of Anthony A. Shaffer, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve, Senior Intelligence Officer in regard to project ABLE DANGER in which he maintains that 9-11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and his al Quaeda cell were identified a year before 9-11?

Here are some quotes:

Pg. 7: "...much of the critical data that was harvested for the ABLE DANGER project, that could be used again now in the search for sleeper cells and others that matched the 'Atta' profile is now gone - destroyed at the direction of the DoD officials in the 2000 timeframe. You have heard from Eric Kleinsmith of his work on ABLE DANGER, and his receiving direction to 'destroy the data and background documents or go to jail' - which he did."

Pg. 16: "Mr. William Huntington, who was just promoted to serve as the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who after becoming the Deputy Director of HUMINT in the early 2001 timeframe passed the buck. When I attempted to brief him on the DORHAWK GALLEY project, to include information on the ABLE DANGER project that was to use specific portions of the ABLE DANGER methodology to sort through and separate U.S. Person information from Foreign Intelligence information, he refused to hear the briefing, announcing that 'I can't be here, I can't see this' as he left his office and refused to return to hear the information. By doing this, he could later feign ignorance of the project."

Pg. 22: "In the late January early February 2000 timeframe...all information relating to Atta, and the other terrorist[s] that are identified as working and living in the U.S. or have connections to U.S. persons become 'off limits'."

Pg. 25: "Late Spring/Early Summer 2000. [ ]Based on my unit's enhanced relationship with the FBI, I set up three separate meetings between SOCOM (COL Worthington the then ABLE DANGER chief) and FBI Counter-terrorism Special Agents in Washington DC. SOCOM cancels all three meetings."

Pg. 28: "May 2001. Scott Phillpott calls me in desperation in the May 2001 timeframe on my mobile phone. He asked if he can bring 'the ABLE DANGER options' that ABLE DANGER had come up with to DC and to use one of my STRATUS IVY facilities to do the work. I tell him with all candor that I would love nothing better than to loan him my facility and work the options with him (to exploit them for both Intel potential and for actual offensive operations) but tell him that my DIA chain of command has directed me to stop all support to him and the project.

In good faith, I ask my boss, COL Mary Moffitt if I can help Scott and exploit the options - and that there would be a DIA quid pro quo of obtaining new 'lead' information from the project. She takes [offense] at me even mentioning ABLE DANGER in this conversation, tells me that I am being insubordinate, and begins the process of removing me from my position as chief of STRATUS IVY. As a direct result of this conversation, she directs that I be "moved" to a desk officer position to oversee Defense HUMINT operations in Latin America."

"11 Sep 2001. We are attacked."

"Late September 2001 Eileen Preisser calls me for coffee and tells me she has something she needs to show me.

At coffee she shows me a chart she had brought with her - a large desk top size chart. On it she has me look at the 'Brooklyn Cell.' I was confused at first - but she kept telling me to look - and in the 'cluster'. I eventually found the picture of Atta. She [continued in testimony on page 29] pointed out ( and I recognized) that this was one of the charts I LIWA had produced in Jan 2000, and that I had taken down to Tampa.

I was shocked - and had a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach - I felt that we had been on the right track - and that because of the bureaucracy we had been stopped - and that we might well have been able to have done something to stop the 9/11 attack. I ask Eileen what she plans to do with the information/chart - she tells me that she does not know but she plans to do something."

Throughout his testimony Shaffer conveys his experience and perception of how the administration - through the DIA - has worked to discredit and harass him. He certainly makes his point that what has been used against him seems flimsy. And on page 39 he reports finding out in June or July of 2004 that his office documents and holdings had been moved and his classified documents destroyed.

He gives his opinion that agency bureaucrats are more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting America and calls for better protection for whistleblowers.

Shafter also raises what should be an important question:

"If there can be a cover-up on a [cut-and-dried] issue like the truth about Sgt. Tillman's death, [who was killed as a result of friendly fire, not in fighting insurgents as reported] to what length do you think government bureaucrats, who were never held accountable for their failures to detect and prevent the 9/11 attack would do to suppress direct evidence that we had an offensive capability that could well have been used to pre-emptively target and destroy Al Qaeda a full year before we were attacked?"

On 2/16 William M. Arkin wrote about the ABLE DANGER issue in The Washington Post. He concluded that Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, who refutes Shaffer's testimony that Mohammed Atta and other terrorists were known and their pictures were on a chart, "...cannot necessarily be believed because he is the mouthpiece for a damaged administration and a Pentagon that is not above lying when it suits it."

However, he also says Shaffer can not be relied upon "...because he is a nut."

After reading through Shaffer's testimony, I disagree.

Shaffer does not sound insane. He does convey the kind of fervor that is common in the military, which is the desire to be a hero, to fight the bad guys and win.

The fact that his testimony leads one to believe he believes he inadvertently discovered evidence of a conspiracy by the U.S. government to cover up information, does not necessarily make him crazy nor paranoid. We've seen ample incidences of cover-ups and conspiracies orchestrated by the U.S. government, with Watergate holding the number one spot for the worst abuses uncovered to date.

What detracts from Shaffer's testimony is the fact that he, obviously, did not have his prepared testimony proofread. There are a number of grammatical errors, misspellings and misuse/overuses of quotes which have the effect of detracting from his credibility as a communicator and professional.

He also reaches in making his points, looking even to obscure historical references for evidence to show that he is not the first to be maligned and that it is those who are discrediting him who need investigation.

Lastly, he rambles at times, as most of us would ramble if we were to find ourselves torn between allegiance to the U.S. and stunned consternation that our government is discrediting us and our direct experience. This emotional component does not make him crazy. It shows he's upset.

And if Shaffer is emotional, it may be akin to the emotional turmoil that Hal, in Kubrick's 2001, was shown to go through in trying to keep his charges safe while he, himself, was expected to operate on two conflicting and mutually exclusive premises.

Bottom line, it's obvious that Shaffer loves his country and he was trying to keep her safe, but seems to have found himself up against an agenda that not only was never adequately explained, but was denied.

Shaffer thinks bureaucrats killed his program and destroyed his files in an effort to protect their jobs and butts. Most likely, but why?

Between the lines is the subtext that the government was conducting secret, illegal surveillance and there was fear that this would come out and fall under the scrutiny of civil rights activist groups. The argument he claims he was given was that data mined from spying could not be kept, for fear that these groups would discover how it was gathered and make waves.

If he did not give the start of this shut down as occuring just before Bush's election, I would scoff at this idea, given how little this administration cares for civil rights - or about what those, concerned with constitutional rights, think.

But what happened once BushCo got into office? Did personnel not probe into these intelligence issues? They were not completely ignorant of them, for we were told that the President was given a report on the potential for a terrorist attack only one month before 9/11. But did that information rely, in part upon ABLE DANGER's data?

Did they receive a general warning? Or did they find out they had specifics?

We don't know. But the administration's spokesperson seems to be denying that they had specifics.

Yet we know the new administration was itching for a reason to invade Iraq.

Because of this, I cannot shake the idea that someone, somewhere, in the new administration got wind of how close Shaffer and his group were to preventing a terrorist attack on home soil. If so, what could possibly prevent them from pounding nails in the coffin of ABLE DANGER?

For only an attack here, on our soil, would have aroused the American people to support a war.

The fact that records were destroyed under Bush's watch is suspicious. And the word of the Bush administraton appointee who refutes Shaffer's testimoney isn't worth much.

After all, every time we turn around the White House is discovered to have manufactured another lie. The most flagrant of these was in telling us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to get us to go to war.

As for Shaffer, who once thought of himself as being on the "side of good," he has now been expelled from that roll. Imposing that kind of powerlessness and identity change on a formerly competent and respected intelligence profession might be seen as a deliberate attempt to drive him over the edge, when he and we are continually being told that the next terrorist attack is not an issue of if but of an imminent when.

Sadly, there is no political will to uncover the truth, even if it were possible.

And I doubt that Bush knows. After all, he doesn't seem to know much before it happens. Besides, we saw his face on 9/11 and he seemed stunned.

But we never saw Cheney's first reaction.

Judging from the secrecy of this administration, it's doubtful we'll ever know the truth. From all appearances Watergate didn't teach Republicans to stop overreaching themselves, but simply to orchestrate better cover-ups when they do.

Protest Irony

Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons continues to be front page news.

Meanwhile a 2/14/06 blurb, that portends the death of freedom in the U.S., was relegated to the back pages.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, two workers for CityWatcher.com were voluntarily embedded with tiny silicon chips. The chips, according to CEO Sean Darks, work “like an access card.”

Recall that Wal-Mart revolutionized retailing by introducing barcodes. Wal-Mart has since introduced the next retail revolution: embedding RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in its products.

Does anyone doubt that embedding employees with ID chips is the next step? Or that government will begin to look at embedding us with ID chips to “fight terrorism?”

This possibility should be guarded against by every American, given that the President is secretly and illegally wiretapping millions of American’s private communications.

Unfortunately, Americans are not connecting the dots.

Instead we’re divided over the seriousness of the President’s crimes. Yet his secret spying is part of an all-or-none package that includes unrestricted authority to use full war powers against all Americans.

With these unlimited, unrestricted and non-expiring war powers, Americans are giving the President the authority to deny them their rights to an attorney and trial by their peers. As a result, American citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely and tortured, for the purpose of extracting confessions. If an American citizen is killed during this process, it will be without penalty or avenue of redress.

Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will have the power to revoke these non-expiring war powers once their use is accepted as law.

Considering that newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is expected to side with the President and give him unlimited power over our lives, one would think Americans would be organizing massive protests to protest his spying.

Yet we aren’t protesting our loss of fundamental rights. Unlike our forefathers who put their lives on the line for liberty, most of us are AWOL.

Is it possible that Americans do not realize that, by 2008, they must have federally approved ID cards with a “machine readable zone” that will allow easy capture of all data on the ID by stores – or anyone else with a reader?

Or that these cards, vulnerable to technological glitches and false security alerts, will control all access to air and train travel, opening a bank account, entering federal buildings and “any other purposes that the Secretary [of Homeland Security] shall determine?”

But if we know, how is it we are so calm?

Does anyone doubt that the government’s next step will be to promote the embedding of RFID tags in us?

Once in place, required tagging – in combination with the President’s unlimited war powers – must mark the death of freedom, individuality and dissent in the United States.

In the profit sector, an employer will be able to track all employee movements. The potential to coerce workers through manipulation, harassment and firings will be staggering.

As computing power grows, the government will gain the ability to track all tags, 24/7. Since spying will be the norm, we will have no recourse if we are called in for questioning. If they don’t like our answers, can’t make up their minds about us or don’t have time to think about it, we can be plopped in a cell until further notice, to undergo whatever treatment thought necessary.

We will become one of those countries that jail, torture and kill “dissidents” – citizens – who are concerned about the environment, globalization, jobs, health care, peace, justice and freedom of speech.

And we will be hard pressed to find out about the fates of our fellow citizens. PBS is slated by the GOP for extinction and the corporations that “own the pipes” of Internet broadband are insisting they have the right to control the Internet and, effectively, screen out what they don’t want us to read.

So have your lobotomy now.

Of course, there’s another option.

Let’s not pretend that Americans care about freedom. Instead, let’s focus on American strength: our desire for fun, entertainment and winning. Let's play a game. After all, we like competition.

Let’s play World Cup Protest.

Who’s going to win? Will it be the nearly one million believers in the sanctity of Mohammed who are protesting against the Muhammad cartoons?

Or can we get a couple of million believers in the sanctity of freedom to march on Washington in protest of the President’s spying on us?

True, we might need a fund raiser to get prizes to reward people for showing up.

We also may need top entertainment – bands and comedians – to generate interest.

And advertising – we’ll have to buy a lot of air time – if the networks will sell it to us.

Last, but not least, we’ll need a big, engraved trophy – maybe a silver reproduction of Lady Liberty – for the winning protestors.

But, surely, having our government declare war against us – combined with a future of being tagged so we’re easy targets for control and detention – is worth the effort.

Because won’t it be ironic when those against freedom win the protest game?

Americans: All The President's Enemies

People who listen to sound bites don't understand the gravity of what this President is doing. He is attacking us - the American people - on all fronts. He has used a "divide and conquer" strategy that has worked well for him. As we've bickered among ourselves, throwing epithets back and forth, he has quietly changed 90% of our environmental laws and has indebted us - on purpose - so that we will eventually have no money for any social programs whatsoever. The rising interest on our debt will see to that.

The group of neo-cons which he represents - to which he prostituted himself in order to become President of the United States - hates people. To them we're like roaches. Sending our kids to war doesn't bother them in the least. We're expendable. We're just consumers, maleable sheep they'll own. So for them, killing Social Security, public schools, public libraries and public television is part of their long term plan. They're committed to that part of their plan just as they were committed to finding a way to implement their long term plan to begin a seige on the Middle-East.

They'll bide their time as they continue to hammer the coffin nails of miserliness into our educational system. They'll continue to craft "created-to-fail" policies for our schools and assure that only the privileged will lead this country.

They're eliminating Head Start and food programs for children. They're turning student loans into a privatized, expensive scam. They are pursuing every way possible to disempower the populace and are doing so at an amazing rate, economically, as they, simultaneously, undermine our constitution.

They've done this while we the people have been busy watching American Idol and CSI.

Now corporate America is set to take over the Internet. Once they do so, the blog you are reading now, for instance, along with on-line pages from foreign newspapers where you might see the real news, will become inaccessible to you through broadband. The Republican party is operating on lies. It makes sense they would not want anything smacking of the truth to be seen. In addition, the owners of broadband also intend to charge you for everything you do on the Internet and everything you see.

Bush, of course, is leading all this. He's doing, you see, for his friends, the very rich owners and shareholders of corporations that want to own us all, lock, stock and barrel to the point that we cannot change laws, cannot communicate effectively with each other in order to take action against them, cannot protest against our slavery, cannot appeal to the courts.

Think I'm an alarmist? Just look at how he's setting the scene with his insistence he can spy on Americans at will:

According to Glenn Greenwald, a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, Gonzales’ argument is that this administration - and all administrations to come - "...have the right to use all war powers — of which warrantless eavesdropping is but one of many examples — against American citizens within the country.

And not only do they have the right to use those war powers against us, they have the right to use them even if Congress makes it a crime to do so or the courts rule that doing so is illegal.

Put another way, the administration has now baldly stated that whatever it is allowed to do against our enemies in a war, it is equally entitled to exercise all of the same powers against American citizens on American soil. …

The “war powers” which a president can use in war against our enemies are virtually limitless — they include indefinite detention in prison with no charges or access to lawyers, limitless eavesdropping, interrogation by means up to and perhaps including torture, and even killing.

The reason the administration claims it can engage in warrantless eavesdropping against Americans is because it has the general right to use all of these war powers against Americans on American soil, of which eavesdropping is but one example.

Without hyperbole (exaggeration), it is hard to imagine a theory more dangerous or contrary to our nation’s principles than a theory that vests the president — not just Bush but all future presidents — limitless authority to use war powers against American citizens within this country."

It's time to start writing letters to the White House, to your representatives and to the media. It's time to say you do not want to be thrown in jail, without bail, for looking at a blog critical of your government.

If we do not take action now, these neo-cons will do their best to take our remaining freedom from us. As the jobs dry up, one day people are going to wake up and want to protest. But guess what? It'll be Kent State in spades, with no restitution.

It happened in Germany. It happened in Italy. It happened in Spain. It happened in Greece.

Fascism is alive and well and marching steadily into a country you live in. It's coming in behind a man who seems inept, stupid, yet friendly so you don't recognize it. But he's just the front man, the wolf in sheep's clothing.

The time to act is now, not when after your livelihood and your liberty have been devoured and you find the only freedom you have is whether to buy generic brand X or Z.