Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been criticized for planning, as part of his current world tour, to meet both with Israeli and Palestinian officials in the Middle East.

Supporters of Republican John McCain, who met with the Israelis but refused to meet wit the Palestinians during a recent visit to the region, say Obama is being too even-handed in his approach.

Who is right?

Let's ask George Washington. In his 1796 farewell address to the nation, the first president declared that, "(Nothing) is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

Comments (43)

1. http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/365.html Scott Ritter

   What an attack on Iran will look like

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 08:18am

2. The American Colonists left Europe for religous freedom and to get away from the Religous wars of the Inqusition.............

   http://www.leozagami.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=57&func=v iew&id=517&catid=13

   In my four years of full time research, I've discovered something that will shock you, and will also help explain what nobody seems to be able to comprehend about what's really happening in this country. Few know, and even fewer dare to talk about it. Particularly the media.

   As you know, our unalienable rights are these: Freedom of speech, press, conscience, religion, bear arms, assembly, privacy, swift and fair trial by jury of peers, habeas corpus, posse comitatus, AND free and fair elections.

   Do you know what is unique about these specific freedoms besides being God given and unalienable?

   They are all uniquely PROTESTANT freedoms!

   What makes them PROTESTANT freedoms?

   Because virtually every single one of these freedoms are not only forbidden, but are specifically condemned in Roman Catholic Canon Law.

   Please keep reading and let me substantiate my assertions. You will be stunned by much of it. I'm going to tell you things that people just won't talk about.

   Ever wonder why there seems to be so much debate of late as to whether or not there really is a wall of separation between church and state?

   Ever wonder why the Roman Catholic Church is so politically active, and why the Ecumenical Protestant Churches are joining that political activism?

   This political activism is being contrived to prepare them for the coming union of church and state in the USA.

   Ever wonder why there are 155 practicing Catholics in Congress, and the next largest religious group has only 30 or so practitioners? And don't forget, MOST of the Protestants represented in Congress are ECUMENICAL Protestants! (Look up Vatican II and the definition of Ecumenism).

   Did you know that Congressman Nancy Pelosi, who swore to impeach President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors, is a deeply religious Catholic devoted to her pope, and who, before being sworn in as Speaker of the US House, was given a private ceremony and mass by a Jesuit priest, and that, soon after taking Speaker, slowly backed away from threats to impeach her brother in the Catholic faith in the White House?

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 08:21am

3. The Pope in ddition to ngering Muslims, and Jews has proclaimed

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#25728056

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/

   Pope: Other denominations not true churches Benedict issues statement asserting that Jesus established ‘only one church' NBC News video

   Jews have concerns over Latin mass July 10: NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports on Pope Benedict XVI's revival of the traditional Latin mass and the firestorm it is generating. Today show

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 08:24am

4. The failure of a Congress to impeach a dictator who wants to make the laws would enrage George Washington!

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 08:35am

5. Hey Rese:

   read the comments here:

   http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.h tml

   Check out all the headlines on Raw Story...and read the comments about Rove, Fitzgerald, Chertoff, etc. It's getting ugly.

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 08:54am

6. One thing for certain:

   Barack could eqate the tortue of Palestinians to that of American Blacks.And McCain would not while bashing women for enjoying rape.

   1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ­not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

   2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

   3. " [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

   4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

   5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

   6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

   7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

   8. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

   9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

   10. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

   11. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

   12. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

   13. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

   14. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

   15. "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

   16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

   17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

   18. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

   19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

   20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

   21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

   22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

   23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

   24. "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

   25. "We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own." (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).

   26. "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

   27. "We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world." (Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Judische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920)

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 09:31am

7. Plunger:

   So great to hear from you!

   Tried:

   got Your search - http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.h tml - did not match any documents.

   Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 09:35am

8. just go to Raw Story and click on the Fitzgerald headline

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 09:49am

9. just go to Raw Story and click on the Fitzgerald headline

   Posted by plunger at 07/18/2008 @ 09:49am

10. Plunger: You mean this one?: http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.h tml

    Fitzgerald says Rove was trying to fire him during CIA leak probe Marcy Wheeler Published: Thursday July 17, 2008

    Print This Email This

    In a supplement to his responses to the House Judiciary Committee, Patrick Fitzgerald confirms what we've always suspected: Karl Rove was trying to have Patrick Fitzgerald fired while Fitzgerald was still investigating Rove for his role in leaking Valerie Wilson's identity--and the timing lines up perfectly with the Administration's efforts to fire a bunch of US Attorneys.

    Remember back in June, when Fitzgerald publicly suggested he had more details to share with Congress about Rove's efforts to get him fired?

    "If I owe a response [about the putsch to remove him from his job], I owe it to Congress, first," Fitzgerald said when asked about all this after the verdict.

    Well, it turns out Fitzgerald did share those details with Congress. And those details make it clear that Fitzgerald learned Rove was trying to fire him while Fitzgerald was still actively investigating Rove's role in the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity.

    In my answers submitted on May 2,2008, I noted in my response to Question Eleven that I omitted discussion of when I first learned that I might be asked to resign as United States Attorney. I declined to answer more fully due to the then pending trial of United States v. Antoin Rezko in the Northern District of Illinois. With that trial concluded, I can briefly elaborate further: I learned some time in or about early 2005 from agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") that a cooperating witness (who later testified at the Rezko trial, but not about this topic) had advised the FBI agents that he had earlier been told by one of Mr. Rezko's co-schemers that it was the responsibility of a third person in Illinois to have me replaced as United States Attorney. I should be clear that I did not understand that any putative effort to replace me as United States Attorney was related to my conduct as Special Counsel but understood instead that it was related to the investigative activities of federal agents and prosecutors conducting a corruption investigation in Illinois. [my emphasis]

    As a reminder, here's the allegation with all the names handily added in (though I think Fitzgerald is referring to someone besides Ata, because Ata was not yet cooperating with the Rezko prosecutors):

    In a hearing before court began, prosecutors said they hoped to call Ali Ata, the former Blagojevich administration official who pleaded guilty to corruption yesterday, to the stand.

    Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton said she believed Ata would testify to conversations Ata had with his political patron, Rezko, about working to pull strings to kill the criminal investigation into Rezko and others when it was in its early stages in 2004.

    "[Ata] had conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that Mr. Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed," Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

    Note, Fitzgerald emphasizes that Rove was trying to fire him to protect Republican donor Bob Kjellander, not to protect Rove and Libby and Cheney. But that doesn't change the fact that Rove was in discussions about firing Fitzgerald while he--Rove--was under active investigation.

    Also note the timing: while the discussions between this cooperating witness and (presumably) Kjellander happened earlier, the timing lines up with the effort to fire all the US Attorneys--and then, when Kyle Sampson suggested his name, Fitzgerald specifically--at the beginning of 2005.

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 09:54am

11. Abramoff & Bush mafia money laundering connected to Rove real estate 07.Nov.2005 10:36

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    researcher link

    -------------------------------

    Florida investigators have discovered that the beach tract where Rove's home is located (for which he paid a mere $165,000 for the land in 2002) was owned by the St. Joe Company, Florida's largest private land owner and a firm that George H. W. Bush and the DuPont family have had a significant financial stake. An informed source told WMR that Rove's sweetheart land deal is tied to the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff money laundering scandal.

    -------------------------------

    Rove Soon To Leave For Florida 'Republican Riviera'? By Wayne Madsen 11-6-2005

    Rove soon to be living on "Republican Riviera?" As rumors swirl around Washington that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may soon be leaving the White House soon "to spend more time with his family," there is renewed interest in how he obtained a sweetheart land deal on his Rosemary Beach home on the Florida Panhandle.

    Florida investigators have discovered that the beach tract where Rove's home is located (for which he paid a mere $165,000 for the land in 2002) was owned by the St. Joe Company, Florida's largest private land owner and a firm that George H. W. Bush and the DuPont family have had a significant financial stake. An informed source told WMR that Rove's sweetheart land deal is tied to the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff money laundering scandal. "Florida is the center-of-gravity with Abramoff's deals," said the source.

    St. Joe also owns half of the real estate development firm Codina Group, founded by Armando Codina, a personal friend of George H. W. Bush and one-time business partner of Governor Jeb Bush.

    Until 1994, when Jeb Bush first ran for governor, the Codina Group was known as the Codina Bush Group. Since Jeb Bush became governor, he's taken care of his old business friends, selling them state-owned land at cut rate prices.

    Conveniently, Rove's Panhandle neighbors will include some of Jeb's and Dubya's top fund raisers and friends -- people financially tied in with St. Joe and Codina.

    http://waynemadsenreport.com/

    ABRAMOFF:

    from above:

    --- In 1995 supposed Jewish Zionist Abramoff....worked for the Global Council of Islamic Banks, whose chairman, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, was under investigation for alleged funding of terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden....

    below:

    "In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements. At the time the system was more sophisticated than necessary for their actual needs....It was decided to use a part of the system's memory to host the Islamic Conference's database."

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 09:58am

12. GROVER NORDQUIST:

    and of course Grover Nordquist and Rove have Al-Queda tie in's as well.

    Grover Nordquist, Republican operative, AL-QUEDA MIDDLEMAN for Bush Admin. [[ AL-ARIAN [Baraka Group in Tampa, FL funding] , AL-AMOUDI [World Association of Muslim Youth/Abdullah bin Laden, Virginia branch of funding], GROVER NORDQUIST/KARL ROVE [connected with AL-AMOUDI! this is the chain of people via which loyal FBI agents were told by the "White House" to stop investigating 9-11 false flag operations going on]]

    "The busy Mr. AL-ARIAN had contacts not only with Mohamed Atta and al-Qaeda, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, but also with Karl Rove and the Bush Administration, through REPUBLICAN INSIDER GROVER NORDQUIST, who is a close friend of Karl Rove, and who was hired by Al-Amoudi as the front for him. "

    "John Loftus, ex-DOJ official: About a year-and-a-half ago, people in the intelligence community came and said-guys like Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and other terrorists weren't being touched because they'd been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them." "But, who was it that fixed the cases?... the answer is coming out in a very strange [though logical] place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist... He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic institute and he's the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute. "The rumpled, balding figure [Al-Arian] was spotted darting into the offices of Republican power broker Grover Norquist last July... Sami Al-Arian emerged more than two hours later... Al-Arian was visiting the Islamic Institute, a Muslim outreach group cofounded by Norquist and housed within his office suite." [Norquist is close friend of Karl Rove.] "In 1998... the Islamic Institute [Norquist/Al-Arian], the AMC [al-Amoudi] and Al-Arian [Islamic Institute/Grover Norquist] were all working together."

    "John Loftus, ex-DOJ official: About a year-and-a-half ago, people in the intelligence community came and said-guys like Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and other terrorists weren't being touched because they'd been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them."

    "But, who was it that fixed the cases?... the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist... He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic institute and he's the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute. Grover Norquist's best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things."...

    "Think of the Muslim chaplain's program that he set up as a spy service for al-Qaeda."

    KARL ROVE:

    KARL ROVE, AL-QUEDA CONTACT IN WHITE HOUSE, THROUGH CLOSE FRIEND GROVER NORQUIST: "Grover Norquist's best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things [through Karl Rove, so that 9-11 covert op of false flagger (drug dealer) connections 'performed' at the FL/San Diego, CA flight schools were allowed to continue as the laying down of red herrings pre-9-11 for importnat post-9-11 blame narrative to be useful to invade Afghanistan and Iraq--and other countries.]."...

    Title: World Beware: The US as rogue state! BUSH personally MEETS FALSE FLAGGER SIDE OF 9-11 http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/301639.shtml

    BUSH/AL-ARAIN & BUSH/AL-AMOUDI PHOTOGRAPHED TOGETHER!: Sami al-Arian and Abdurahman al-Amoudi have been photographed with the President and met with Administration Officials post-9/11, yet both have links to the September 11 plot. Even though their 'background' as operatives was well known as early as 1996, one month before 9.11 President George W. Bush thanked Al-Arian's wife for a book she sent him, expressing "regret" about how her son was being treated. "Al-Arian's appearance at the White House... The group that included Al-Arian was scheduled to be briefed by Vice President Cheney, but Cheney canceled. That morning, the Jerusalem Post had run a front-page article headlined, "Cheney to host pro-terrorist Muslim group." [as well:] Records showed that Al-Arian was admitted to the White House at least once during the Clinton administration, the official said"... "The [al-Arian] family said that Bush gave their lanky son, Abdullah, the nickname "Big Dude."'...

    The busy Mr. AL-ARIAN had contacts not only with Mohamed Atta and al-Qaeda, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, but also with Karl Rove and the Bush Administration, through REPUBLICAN INSIDER GROVER NORDQUIST, who is a close friend of Karl Rove, and who was hired by Al-Amoudi as the front for him. AL-ARIAN's THE BARAKA GROUP (dissolved Sept. 28, 2001!) & AL-QUEDA/false flaggers financing claimed by John Loftus: "[Former Justice Department prosecutor John] Loftus's accusations against Al-Arian go even further than links with Jihad. Loftus said he believes Al-Arian had a link to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. [Ex-US Department of Justice Nazi Prosecutor] Loftus said Al-Arian was involved with a group called Baraka that he alleges laundered money to support the suicide pilots (sic) as they [pretended to be] trained at Florida airports." "My sources keep me very current on Al-Arian," Loftus said. "I had very high security clearances from all U.S. intelligence and NATO agencies when I worked for the attorney general... Loftus said he has evidence to link [Islamic] Jihad and Al-Arian to the al Qaeda terrorist organization, which has been blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. In addition, Loftus said evidence suggests Al-Arian may have personally played a part in the execution of the attacks. "It is a matter of record that an organization known as the Baraka group laundered the money to the skyjackers of Sept. 11. Sami Al-Arian incorporated Baraka in the state of Florida, which was dissolved on Sept. 28, 2001." "Had the government thrown Al-Arian in jail, Loftus said, many acts of terrorism could have been prevented, even the most notorious of them all: the attacks on America... "Al-Arian is connected to al-Qaida, Loftus said, because the same Saudi groups that donated money to WISE and ICP -- the same groups which were raided by the FBI last month -- also had connection to Mohammed Atta,..."

    KARL ROVE, AL-QUEDA CONTACT IN WHITE HOUSE, THROUGH CLOSE FRIEND GROVER NORQUIST: "Grover Norquist's best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things [through Karl Rove, so that 9-11 covert op of false flagger (drug dealer) connections 'performed' at the FL/San Diego, CA flight schools were allowed to continue as the laying down of red herrings pre-9-11 for importnat post-9-11 blame narrative to be useful to invade Afghanistan and Iraq--and other countries.]."...

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 09:59am

13. AND IN VIRGINIA: ABDURAHMAN AL-AMOUDI, AL-QUEDA CONTACT [W.A.M.Y. VICE PRESIDENT; PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN MUSLIM FOUNDATION; MEETINGS WITH HAMBURG CELL OF AL-QUEDA; MEETINGS WITH BUSH], PENTAGON CONSULTANT: "Al-Arian is not the only Islamist zealot who has gained access to Bush and his inner circle. Consider, for example, Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder of the American Muslim Council... In October 2000, he was cheered at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, D.C., when he declared: "We are all supporters of Hamas. . . I am also a supporter of Hezbollah." Three months later he was in Beirut for a terrorist summit, along with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda." Muslim activist, Abdurahman Muhammed Alamoudi, president of the American Muslim Foundation, played a key role in the chaplain program, publicly boasting to reporters that he was first person authorized by the U.S. military to recruit Islamic clerics"... "Abdurahman Alamoudi, a consultant to the Pentagon on the chaplain program for more than a decade, is now accused of helping Osama bin Laden and Hamas. Court documents filed late Wednesday night claim Alamoudi has provided "financial support to Hamas" and "financial support to fronts for al-Qaida." One of the groups allegedly tied to Alamoudi is a charity that gave a Virginia post office as its address. [!!! WAMY World Association of Muslim Youth, an organization that actual law abiding countries already have banned as a known terrorist front. In the United States, it is run by a bin Laden familiy member, & it was allowed to continue and---!!! &...] Alamoudi was the charity's vice president." "Who founded it? Abdullah bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's nephew.

    Evidence recently obtained by prosecutors from German police files show[s]... that Alamoudi also had meetings in the fall of 2000 with Mohammed Belfas, an elder from the Islamic community in Hamburg who had multiple ties to key figures in the September 11 terror attacks. Belfas--who once shared an apartment with Ramzi bin al-Shibh,..."After the September 11 attacks, German police raided Belfas's Hamburg apartment and... discovered multiple connections between the two men and several leaders of the September 11 plot, including bin al-Shibh and Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers.""[Belfas'] recently discovered dealings with Alamoudi are likely to get new attention. [THIS STORY WAS SQUASHED.] Among the evidence seized from Belfas's [Hamburg 'Al-Queda' hangout] apartment is a picture showing Belfas and Budiman meeting with Alamoudi at his office in Arlington." 'New attention' was not forthcoming. This Newsweek article is the press's sole mention of the connection between al-Amoudi, Belfas and Budiman. Once the backgrounds of Belfas and Budiman are examined, it is easy to see why: it shows they were doing more than monitoring the 'terrorists. They were meeting with them in the Pentagon, at Florida military bases, and through White House insiders as well who kept the loyal FBI off the terror networks trail. The 9-11 terror network trail does lead to the Bush White House: both Bush and Karl Rove.

    AL-AMOUDI--THE GUY WHO MEETS WITH BUSH MULTIPLE TIMES--HAS AT LEAST SIX PHONE NUMBERS OF U.S.-ACCUSED GLOBAL TERRORISTS ON HIS 'PHONE SPEED DIAL,' COURT SUIT POINTS OUT:] Also ringing alarms: Alamoudi's Palm Pilot, which the government claims included the names and numbers of six designated global terrorists. The government also alleges Alamoudi had a Swiss bank account and $2.2 million"...

    AL-AMOUDI'S AL-QUEDA CONTACTS ARE ON OFFICIAL WATCH LIST OF FBI, THOUGH NOTHING HAPPENS: "Both Budiman and Belfas are among 370 names included on a detailed FBI list of people sought for questioning in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The list was released last month by Finnish banking authorities. Budiman is identified on the list as a U.S. contact person for Atta, the presumed ringleader of the 19 hijackers. Belfas is identified as a contact person for bin Laden, the prime U.S. suspect in the attacks...

    [despite there being:

    Al-Queda's Belfas in Hamburg-->Al-Amoudi/Virginia WAMY/Nordquist/Rove-->Bush link!!

    and a

    Al-Queda Tampa offices-->Al-Arian-->Bush link!! ] Title: SPEECH:"Bin Laden, Etc Are CIA Stooges" - EX-Deputy Attorney General; Bush 911 TERROR PAL Al-Arian jailed Author: grouping Date: 2005.07.21 02:03 Description: The lawsuit of 2002 that this guy files against Al-Arian--the Tampa, FL 9-11 cell connection--is most interesting. Why is it interesting? Well, because Bush is hard and fast friends with Al-Arain; why settle for treasonous Rove? Get treasonous Bush, who meets with Al-Arian who is currently in federal prison awaiting trial for terrorism connections to 9-11. Bush is conversing with his family merely one month before 9-11; terrorist Al-Arian scheduled to meet in the White House with VP Cheney, though Cheney cancels the meeting.

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:01am

14. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/allcomments?pid=175246&rpg=3#pid17 6675

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:04am

15. ZIOCON/GOP = another name for MAFIA MONEY; Abramoff scandal ties to 9-11 Atta drugrunning! http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/326565.shtml

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:05am

16. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0722-07.htm Village Voice, June 1, 2004: Sibel Edmonds... said, however, that "there are a lot of activities in the U.S. A lot of money... and these activities involve money laundering, drugs, a support network for terrorism... people in high places... [people] in the political arena." link to www.911truth.org http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/620561/posts

    Majed & Mahmoud Atta lived and worked just 2 miles down the road from Khalil bin Laden in Winter Garden, FL. Khalil's home address in Winter Garden can be found on the FBI's 9/11 suspect list under the name Geny Castanheira from Brazil (17920 W. Colonial Dr.). Khalil happens to be the Saudi ambassador to Brazil... and a known terrorist.

    Associated Press June 11, 2004:

    [A] seizure of $27,000 by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department during a traffic stop [occurred] in March [2004]... The vehicle was occupied by Palestinian immigrants Atiya Saleh and Shareef Quattom and Jordanian immigrant Majed Atta, all of New Orleans, who claimed the money originated from a business transaction... Lincoln County Sheriff Wiley Calcote questioned that account. "The only document they had was that they had sold one store and were buying another store, but there was nothing tying the money to that transaction, and they gave conflicting information about the amount and origin of the money," Calcote said.

    This may not come as a surprise to our regular readers, as we recently published a story with the headline 'Terror Suspect Tied to Moroccan Military Attaché'. However, the connections of the Moroccan embassy in Washington D.C. to the 9/11 plot run deep. The above information buried in the notes of the 9/11 Commission's report confirms that fact. At least the Commission did not succeed in its goal of a complete 'whitewash', though nothing more is mentioned regarding Atta's contacts with the Moroccan embassy.

    For those who did not catch the story (or click on the link and read the first few paragraphs) here is the basics. It starts in tiny Punta Gorda, Florida, a town literally founded by the CIA.

    As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch put it, "Founded in 1958 by two former CIA colleagues, publicly held Punta Gorda had been one of Florida's largest landholders".

    Palm Beach Post, September 24, 2001:

    The FBI , Professional Aviation Flight Training University in Punta Gorda, after tipsters said they saw Atta there late last year or early this year.

    Palm Beach Post

    The Hamouda family owns Professional Aviation and several other facilities at the Charlotte County Airport near Punta Gorda. Though the Hamouda's connection to 9/11 does not end there:

    The Hamouda's also housed Mohammed Arara, who is listed on multiple FBI 9/11 Suspect Lists. One of the more detailed FBI lists contains a handful of addresses for Arara, three of which are owned by the Hamoudas (This 'unique' family plays a leading role in 'Welcome to Terrorland').

    Additionally, Arara is an FAA-certified commercial pilot. This could explain why the FBI's addresses for Arara border upon airports in Punta Gorda, Sarasota and Lake Worth, FL. While in the U.S., Atta only trained at four airports: in Venice, and of course, Punta Gorda, Sarasota and Lake Worth. And when Atta lived in Coral Springs, FL, Arara was using a mailing address only 2000 feet away from Atta's apartment.

    So then, who is Mohammed Arara? This 9/11 suspect is also a relative and business partner of the Military Attaché for the Moroccan Embassy in D.C., Colonel Ahmed Arara.

    Perhaps this is why Atta would be calling the Moroccan Embassy in Washington... perhaps. And perhaps connections with wanted 9/11 terrorists has something to do with this federal court case involving the ever-present Hamoudas and John Ashcroft:

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:17am

17. Sunday Herald November 2, 2003:

    A French intelligence agency noted "according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and suspected terror cells lived in... Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity to the Israeli spy cells". The report contended that Mossad agents were spying on Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi, two of leaders of the 9/11 hijack teams. Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would never know the truth, saying: "If we found evidence of unauthorised intelligence operations that would be classified material."

    http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707

    German newspaper Die Zeit... uncovered details of a major Israeli spy ring involving some a 120 agents for the intelligence service Mossad operating across America and some masquerading as arts students. The ring was reportedly hard on the heels of at least four members of the hijack gang, including its leader Mohammed Atta. But the Israeli agents were detected by their American counterparts and thrown out of the country, it says. Just a month before the deadly attacks, the paper said, Mossad handed over to the Americans a detailed report naming several suspects they believe were preparing an attack on the United States.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2294487.stm

    If you're sitting there wondering why you have never read these facts about Mohammed Atta before, that means you haven't yet read 'Welcome to Terrorland'. As you can see, this information isn't available anywhere else so don't wait another six months to get the goods on Mohammed Atta and his 9/11 terrorist cadre --

    Title: BUSH PUNISHES MARIANI for RICO suit: 9-11 widow fights estate challenge....linked to Bush Author: repost Date: 2004.09.28 11:21 Description: An attorney employed by Abramoff-linked GREENBERG TRAURIG law firm, which has multiple ties to President Bush, met with a 9-11 widow's step-daughter prior to her commencement of an estate takeover attempt which could limit Ms. Mariani's future financial and thus legal options as she seeks to hold Mr. Bush and others accountable in her multi billion dollar RICO suit against the Bush regime for organizing and perpetrating 9-11 ... [A]n estate challenge filed more than a year ago by Mariani's step-daughter Lauren Peters, ***who met with attorney Daniel Bakinowski in the Boston office of Greenberg Traurig--a Miami-based firm with several close links to both President George W. Bush and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.***

    THE GREENBERG TRAURIG law firm: ---

    [1] represented President Bush in the Bush-Gore 2000 Florida election vote recount,

    [2] personally represents Governor Jeb Bush,

    [3] hired the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on election day 2000--after which Justice Scalia cast one of the deciding votes which placed Bush in the presidency about seven weeks later, and

    [4] Miami-headquartered firm partially funded/sponsored delegation to Israel by House-Senate Armed Services Committee members and government contractors to witnes and be briefed on interrogation resistance procedures and torture techniques....One of the lobbyists joining them to Israel included Jack London, CEO of CACI International Inc., American defense contractor firm implicated by U.S. Major General Taguba in torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

    [9] GREENBERG TRAURIG TAKES OVER DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS WELL: A FIRM PARTNER IS MARVIN ROSEN, the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (DNC) FINANCE CHAIRMAN who supervised activities of convicted fund-raiser and DNC vice-chairman of finance John Huang who had to return half of $3 million+ raised by him because of contributions from illegal foreign sources. [Chinese mafia money into the Democrats; Sicilian/Israeli/Colombian mafia money into the Republicans...]

    18.Aug.2005 20:28 9.11 investigation | drug war | election fraud

    Atta's 'drug trade cell' stayed in USA due to Jeb Bush's & Katherine Harris's protection

    Mohamed Atta was protected from official scrutiny as part of an officially-protected cocaine and heroin trafficking network with ties to top political figures, including Republican officials Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, and it was this fact--and not the terrible lapses of weak on terror Clinton Administration officials cited by Republican Congressman Curt Weldon--which shielded him from being apprehended before the 9.11 attack. ---

    A two-year investigation in Venice, Fl. into the flight school attended by Atta and his bodyguard Marwan Al-Shehhi and which provided them with their cover while in the U.S. unearthed the amazing fact that during the same month the two men began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, July of 2000, the flight schools owner's Lear jet was seized on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport by Federal Agents who found 43-pounds of HEROIN onboard....[A]uthorities called the bust BIGGEST DRUG SEIZURE IN CENTRAL FLORIDA HISTORY. --- And even while Wally Hilliards's [mafia backed] companies were being used to train terrorists to fly and smuggling heroin into the U.S., prominent Florida politicians Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris PUBLICLY ENDORSED Hilliard's operation [while he's training the false flag team there]. Jeb honored Hilliard's operation with a personal visit, posing for photos.... --- Katherine Harris' endorsement of Hilliard's operation was splashed across the pages of her beloved hometown Sarasota Herald Tribune. (6 comments

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:19am

18. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/323251.shtml

    Watching the river (of heroin) flow

    As far back as 1991, military investigators had been detailed to Hamburg Germany, tracking what one military investigator who was there told us were Al Qaeda heroin flows from Afghanistan to the West.

    A two-year investigation in Venice, Fl. into the flight school attended by Atta and his bodyguard Marwan Al-Shehhi and which provided them with their cover while in the U.S. unearthed the amazing fact that during the same month the two men began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, July of 2000, the flight schools owner's Lear jet was seized on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport by Federal Agents who found 43-pounds of heroin onboard.

    43 pounds of heroin is known in the drug trade as heavy weight.

    In a story in the August 2, 2000 Orlando Sentinel authorities called the bust the biggest drug seizure in central Florida history.

    It confirms the sad fact that a massive amount of heroin is coming through Central Florida, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Brent Eaton told the paper. Its very disturbing to the DEA that more and more high quality heroin is coming from Colombia and at a cheaper price.

    The DEA was very disturbed enough to look more closely at Wally Hilliards jet charter operation. The result was their firm opposition to returning the Lear to Hilliard, even though no one from Hilliards company, Plane 1 Leasing, had been charged with any crime.

    In fact, they did nothing of the sort, which strongly indicates that the Armys secret military intelligence unit Able Dangers inability to prod federal authorities to move on Atta and other terrorists known to be in the U.S. encountered the same obstacles, and for the same reason.

    In fact, the only effort made at holding financier Wallace J. Hilliard, 70, of Naples, Florida accountable was the weak one of confiscating his plane. When Hilliard sued to get the DEA to return the Lear jet inn forfeiture hearings, attempting to show himself to have been an innocent owner, his motion was opposed by the Government and roundly rejected in court.

    The U.S. Attorneys office opposed the plane's return. Their motion said, because the property was used or acquired as a result of a violation of the Controlled Substances Act.

    Court documents revealed that Hilliards leasing company, Plane 1 Leasing, had been paid in cash for each charter by the two Latin passengers, which aviation experts in South Florida said strains credulity.

    DEA would not return it, they auctioned it off, they told Wally they had reasons, said an aviation source in Naples. It was the first seizure in history for a so-called innocent person where they took and kept the plane.

    The court concluded Hilliards company knew what was going on. Affidavits later filed by the machine-gun toting DEA agents who had surrounded the Lear jet indicated Hilliard's company's involvement went much deeper than anyone was willing to acknowledge publicly.

    Amazingly, the smuggling operation being protected continues to this day.

    The pilot of Hilliard's busted Lear, Venezuelan Diego Levine Texar, was not taken into custody.

    The pilot was not arrested, according to a DEA spokesman, because of a lack of evidence, reported the Orlando Sentinel. He has since been identified as also being the chief pilot on Venezuelas Air Force One, which provides a bit of context for last week's news that the State Department was revoking the visas of three Venezuelan military officers suspected of involvement in drug trafficking.

    When we first published the DEAs official report to the court about the Orlando heroin bust (read it here) on our website and in the appendix to the book Welcome to TerrorLand, we received a very credible death threat... ever though the report is a public document available to anyone.

    http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/05/289770.shtml book chapter: Drug Running Bush Family and their Fake War on Drugs: Police as drug pushers author: tarplay But the whole truth is much uglier. We have documented in detail how the Iran-contra drug-running and gun-running operations run out of Bush's own office played their role in increasing the heroin, crack, cocain, and marijuana brought into this country.

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:20am

19. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9289

    9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics

    by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

    Global Research, June 11, 2008

    The Deep State and 9/11

    The unthinkable – that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians – has become not only thinkable but commonplace in the last century. A seminal example was in French Algeria, where dissident elements of the French armed forces, resisting General de Gaulle's plans for Algerian independence, organized as the Secret Army Organization and bombed civilians indiscriminately, with targets including hospitals and schools.1 Critics like Alexander Litvinenko, who was subsequently murdered in London in November 2006, have charged that the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings around Moscow, attributed to Chechen separatists, were in fact the work of the Russian secret service (FSB).2

    Similar attacks in Turkey have given rise to the notion there of an extra-legal "deep state" – a combination of forces, ranging from former members of the CIA-organized Gladio organization, to "a vast matrix of security and intelligence officials, ultranationalist members of the Turkish underworld and renegade former members of the [Kurdish separatist] PKK."3 The deep state, financed in part by Turkey's substantial heroin traffic, has been accused of killing thousands of civilians, in incidents such as the lethal bomb attack in November 2005 on a bookshop in Semdinli. This attack, initially attributed to the Kurdish separatist PKK, turned out to have been committed by members of Turkey's paramilitary police intelligence service, together with a former PKK member turned informer.4 On April 23, 2008, the former Interior Minister Mehmet Agar was ordered to stand trial for his role in this dirty war during the 1990s.5

    In my book The Road to 9/11, I have argued that there has existed, at least since World War Two if not earlier, an analogous American deep state, also combining intelligence officials with elements from the drug-trafficking underworld.6 I also pointed to recent decades of collaboration between the U.S. deep state and al-Qaeda, a terrorist underworld whose drug-trafficking activities have been played down in the 9/11 Commission Report and the mainstream U.S. media.7

    Still to be explained is the suppressed anomalous fact that al-Qaeda's top trainer on airplane hijackings, Ali Mohamed, was simultaneously a double-agent reporting to the FBI, and almost certainly still maintained a connection to the CIA which had used him as an agent and helped bring him to this country in the 1980s.8 It is not disputed that Ali Mohamed organized the Embassy bombing in Kenya; and that he did so after the RCMP, who had detained him in Vancouver in the presence of another known terrorist, released Mohamed on instructions from the FBI.9

    From this historic background of collaboration, I would offer a hypothesis for further investigation: that the American deep state is somehow implicated with al-Qaeda in the atrocity of 9/11; and that this helps explain the conspicuous involvement of the CIA and other U.S. agencies in the ensuing cover-up.

    Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish-American who was formerly an FBI translator, has publicly linked both al-Qaeda and American officials to the Turkish heroin trafficking that underlies the Turkish deep state. Although she has been prevented from speaking directly by an extraordinary court order,10 her allegations have been summarized by Daniel Ellsberg:

    Al Qaeda, she's been saying to congress, according to these interviews, is financed 95% by drug money - drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours - such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan - all the 'Stans - in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe's heroin, by Albanians, either in Albania or Kosovo - Albanian Muslims in Kosovo - basically the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which we backed heavily in that episode at the end of the century….Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.11

    In 2005 Sibel Edmonds' charges were partly aired in Vanity Fair. There it was revealed that she had had access to FBI wiretaps of conversations among members of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), about bribing elected US officials, and about "what sounded like references to large-scale drug shipments and other crimes."12

    Posted by Rese at 07/18/2008 @ 10:25am

20. Imagine that! An American leader at least willing to acknowledge the existence of Palestinians as something other than "The Terrorists", that vague mob of swarthy, be-turban'd, bearded miscreants brandishing AK-47's and box cutters.

    Seriously, I doubt that Obama is very serious about addressing the Palestinians' issues; to do so requires upsetting the Israeli apple cart and no American politician will dare to do that while in office.

    Posted by Zero at 07/18/2008 @ 10:46am

21. Hmm they criticize him for NOT going to Afghanistan, they criticize him FOR going to Palestine. The Republican attack machine could criticize him for anything. They don't care about the politics of it they are just yelling trying to be heard.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 07/18/2008 @ 12:59pm

22. Hmm they criticize him for NOT going to Afghanistan, they criticize him FOR going to Palestine. The Republican attack machine could criticize him for anything. They don't care about the politics of it they are just yelling trying to be heard.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 07/18/2008 @ 12:59pm

    hmmm...THIS IS TRUE...

    They criticize him for not going to AfGANISTAN AND THEN trying to make policy. This is a little different than the articles point.

    The Republicans can't be blamed for criticizing him for anything, since he has done nothing at all...so 140 days in the Senate and , ah, "community organising" are not really doing something thyat would qualify for the highest office in the world.

    Yes, they are trying to be heard since the MSM is in Obies corner....doubts? Check out his "world tour" coming up.

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 07/18/2008 @ 1:13pm

23. If Obama wants to meet with Abbas, I don't see any harm. But not with Hamas.

    And Washington was addressing communications with nations, not terrorists. I don't recall Washington advocating dialogue with Pirates during his Administration.

    Hamas should be given one communication:

    "Recognize Israel's right to exist and give up your terrorism, and we won't destroy you".

    Posted by lvliberty1 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:01pm

24. Another test post --and I appreciate the feedback, "ramara".

    SWALLOWING THE RED PILL:

    Musings on The Nation's sadly mistaken Obama endorsement, Kevin Phillips' new must read book on our collapsing economy, and finally, a death defying gaze into the "phantasmagorical" AIPAC conference.

    It's been alarmingly evident over the last several weeks that Obama's hard right turn has left progressives with little alternative but to emphatically state their intention to vote for a Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney candidacy in protest.

    As anyone who happened to watch the most recent Moyers Journal interviews (7/11, online viewing recommended) with the interesting and engaging conservative commentators, Mickey Edwards and Ross Douthat --authors of the new books, "Reclaiming Conservatism" and "Grand New Party", respectively-- it was quite revealing how well Obama's message and manner, of late in particular, has dovetailed so snuggly with these guys views and temperament. I found both men to be highly intelligent, articulate and genial, but like Obama they share at least one overarching and fatal flaw. They embrace the blindly delusional view of "American exceptionalism."

    If one overarching fact is to be acknowledged in an ailing society it is the need for self-examination, and the admission of often harsh realities. Probably the single most damaging force today that blocks such critical actions is the stranglehold on society by the so-called mainstream media.

    John Pilger recalls the brilliant Nobel acceptance speech by Harold Pinter from 2006:

    In his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the playwright Harold Pinter made an epic speech. He asked why, and I quote him, "The systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought" in Stalinist Russia were well known in the West, while American state crimes were "merely superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all." And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said Pinter, "You wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." Pinter's words were more than surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's most famous dramatist.

    Now, we fast forward to the current predicament.

    The devil next door is, quite clearly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are bleeding the U.S. Treasury, sapping the nation emotionally, and have decimated the currency of global American respect to an all-time low –not to mention the fast sinking dollar as oil prices spiral upwards, the deaths of countless innocent people, and the global crisis levels of displaced persons within and from Iraq.

    Of at least equal importance –-and probably much greater in my opinion-- is the devil that most of us don't know. This is the one that the sober conservative commentator, Kevin Phillips, documents in his latest book, "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism", Viking, April ‘08.

    Excerpt:

    As for the pitfalls of the domination of the United States by finance, both "Wealth and Democracy" and "American Theocracy" dwelled at length on the unnerving precedents of what that meant for the Dutch and British. Part of what "Bad Money" deals with that I have not touched on before is the financial sector's massive use of private debt and leverage during the 1990's and then again in the first decade of the twenty-first century to expand its size, global reach, and extraordinary profitability. This is less a market-based Adam Smith brand of triumph than a mercantilist joint venture with U.S. government authority, strategic direction, funding support, and periodic Federal Reserve or U.S. Treasury bailouts of overextended financial institutions....

    Farms and factories were expendable, but certain banks and other financial institutions could not be allowed to fail. The coordinating body, handed its government franchise in 1988, following the 1987 stock market crash, was the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, built around the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Its existence has never been secret, only the record of its discussions and the nature of its occasional interventions in the financial markets.

    And later in the book:

    The Working Group's purposes, as elaborated in a 1997 Washington Post article, were to enhance "the integrity, efficiency, orderliness and competitiveness of financial markets and [maintain] investor confidence." It set up something of a war room, maintained a global as well as a national list of key contacts, and carried out simulated emergency drills....

    Just how much power the Working Group was allowed to exercise was never publicly made clear. A year after its launch, Robert Heller, a retiring member of the Fed's Board, wrote in a widely discussed op-ed the Wall Street Journal that there was a better alternative in emergencies than rate reduction: "Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole." Besides being relatively inexpensive, the focus on futures market activity made sense. No conclusions were ever reached in writing, but Heller's recommendations may have been accepted backstairs....

    Apart from the one groundbreaking article in the Washington Post, the opinion-molding journals in the United States generally let the group's operations go without serious investigation or comment. The overseas English-speaking press, however, was more intrigued. The Telegraph in London ran several articles, in 1998 and 2006, eventually describing the Plunge Protection Team as a "shadowy body with powers to support stock index, currency and credit futures in a crash." The newspaper also quoted George Stephanopoulos, the former top aide to Bill Clinton, as saying that the PPT -–the preferred handle in the press-- had "an informal agreement among major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem." In September 2001, the London Observer reported that the PPT was "ready to coordinate intervention by the Federal Reserve on an unprecedented scale. The Fed, supported by the banks, will buy equities from mutual funds and other institutional sellers if there is evidence of panic selling in the wake of last week's carnage."

    Phillips' further referenced the 1997 Post article in his book with the deliciously dry description, "eye opening." Indeed.

    The Working Group's ostensible purpose is to enhance the market's "integrity." One hardly needs The Onion to elaborate.

    Today we talk pretty regularly of "bubbles" of various sorts, but in reference to the above revelations by Kevin Phillips, we might more appropriately use the term "volcanoes". The U.S. Fed and Treasury, under the auspices of the "Working Group" and the "Plunge Protection Team" have been enabling big players in the market to seek greater and greater risk in the full knowledge that a bailout –wider and deeper in scope than the one's we hear about in the news-- is waiting if things get a little "too hot".

    Well, no one who is paying attention should be surprised if at some point in the near future things get a little hotter than anyone has seen in a long, long time as the fallout from a global financial meltdown begins hurtling back to Earth. I'm not predicting a cataclysm, but if you think it's not possible I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

    And that brings us to Barack "Brought to you by Wall Street" Obama.

    Pilger again:

    In the meantime, Iran is being softened up, with the liberal media playing almost the same role it played before the Iraq invasion. And as for the Democrats, look at how Barack Obama has become the voice of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the propaganda organs of the old liberal Washington establishment. Obama writes that while he wants the troops home, "We must not rule out military force against long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria." Listen to this from the liberal Obama: "At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world, that we stood and fought for the freedom sought by billions of people beyond their borders."

    That is the nub of the propaganda, the brainwashing if you like, that seeps into the lives of every American, and many of us who are not Americans. From right to left, secular to God-fearing, what so few people know is that in the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown fifty governments--many of them democracies. In the process, thirty countries have been attacked and bombed, with the loss of countless lives. Bush bashing is all very well--and is justified--but the moment we begin to accept the siren call of the Democrats' drivel about standing up and fighting for freedom sought by billions, the battle for history is lost, and we ourselves are silenced.

    This is the same Obama that The Nation chose to endorse, against its better instincts, last January.

    Let's be frank, that was a misguided decision to be generous. All the warning signs were clearly in evidence to any semi-alert observer, yet The Nation chose to ignore them in the incautious hope that Obama would somehow become the more-or-less progressive president that we projected on him. Katrina vanden Heuvel famously said on Stephanopoulos recently, "Barack Obama is not the Messiah". But the amount of trust that The Nation placed in him with its endorsement would suggest a commensurate level of blind faith that renders Katrina's "not the Messiah" comment empty at best, and (it pains me to say this) perhaps more accurately, crass.

    Although The Nation's endorsement was likely not instrumental in Obama's securing the Democratic nomination, as a matter of principle it should be noted that endorsements, when given, should go to candidates that clearly articulate a largely progressive platform.

    But here's the central point in regards to Obama's "new" trajectory.

    We progressives have represented Obama's core support group and have held the key to his most promising door to victory --that is, the path of conviction on such popular fronts as NAFTA reform, complete withdrawal from the Iraq quagmire, reengagement with rest of the planet on global warming and foreign policy, Constitutional restoration, and massive investment at home to reinvigorate our ailing manufacturing base and sagging infrastructure.

    Instead, Obama has calculatingly and callously chosen the same tired old tactics of three yards and a cloud of dust over bold leadership and slashing new tactics.

    It is progressives who offered Obama a brand new playbook of multiple offensive sets and multiple receivers to confuse and confound the defense. We saw in his oratorical ability the talent to run our sophisticated "west coast" offense, but he has failed to deliver even a single crisp pass since securing the nomination.

    That's not "change we can believe in", but business as usual. And that's not gonna cut it.

    Yes, Obama will very likely win the White House this Fall, but he's already set himself up for a fall in the process. And if he does somehow manage to lose the election, it's likely to be largely attributable to his lack of principled leadership.

    We've seen this movie before -–too many times.

    The time is fast ripening for action on the part of all of us who see clearly the imminent danger of an increasingly corporatized and commoditized society. I conclude that The Nation needs to get fully on board or get out of the way.

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:52pm

25. AIPAC CONFERENCE: EXPOSED --Part One:

    I have stated here before that I will occasionally post lengthy articles that are of high interest in a bit of protest against the lack of linking ability here at The Nation.

    A good one follows.

    I discovered the article when it appeared at Tom Feeley's invaluable Information Clearing House website. I strongly encourage readers to visit often and support Tom's work.

    Looking Into the Lobby

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference is one of Washington's most important--and least reported--events.

    By Philip Weiss

    09/08/07 "American Conservative" -- - For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the question of how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot of grousing about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and AIPAC officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. "We are not a debate society or a protest movement. … our goal is to have a friend in the White House," executive director Howard Kohr said in a strict tone. It wasn't hard to imagine things going poorly: Obama gets booed on national television. He feels insulted. Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to Obama. He becomes president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval Office.

    But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example the conference provides of a powerful man truckling. Two years ago, it was Vice President Cheney's red-meat speech attacking the Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee's scary speech saying that giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a similar line. He suggested that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem "must remain undivided," a statement so disastrous to the peace process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big deal. The actual meeting had gone swimmingly.

    This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its "roll call," where the names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.

    The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC conference is a media no man's land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars in their 50s--Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year's book The Israel Lobby.

    The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto transplanted to the biggest hall in Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing. The staging is faultless. Little documentaries called "Zionist Stories" play on the Jumbotron, complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then the subject of the documentary comes out on stage to thundering applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle East policy and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and Leon Wieseltier. The press was excluded from "Advanced Lobbying Techniques," but still this is a feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is described by AIPAC as the largest seated dinner in Washington. The wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.

    My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to the Democratic Party. After his Zionist story, Saban came out on stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver gray suit. He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab look--black-haired, wide forehead. He was surrounded by 200 college students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he sponsors at AIPAC.

    On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his Republican counterparts, who are there in equal force. The main hall of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced banners featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside statements of their mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real estate developer whom the New York Times recently profiled on the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times said nothing in its piece about Diamond's Israel work. But that was all the banner was about. "The U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most important determinant of democracy in the world, and we must commit to securing it," Diamond wrote. "It is so obvious to us that the Jewish community is a family and that we have to take care of each other."

    I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my credentials. The audience for this stuff isn't the public, it's people in the hall--other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in their wills.

    At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the AIPAC'ers didn't come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people they don't know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if not the Vegas schmaltz. "There is a tremendous amount of love in this place," Meir Nissensohn, an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. "If it was a beaker, it would explode." Even a sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.

    Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest AIPAC line? This is the organization's function. After consulting closely with the Israeli political leadership (leaning toward the right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy to its followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American politicians. AIPAC'ers do this with the conviction that Israel's life is on the line. "It is we that are the guardians of that relationship," AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the Lowes executive and leader in the Jewish community, warned the audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not for them.

    AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America's line by cultivating politicians before they reach the national scene. Victor described this process when he warned the audience that 10 percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: "Do we know them? Do they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about?" Finding Israel activists in the suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. "But how about finding the one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs, Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships." And people accused Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:54pm

26. AIPAC CONFERENCE: EXPOSED --Part Two:

    AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards. Bill Kristol said that Hart Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to shaping Dan Quayle's view of Israel, having "spent a lot of time" with Quayle when he was still a congressman. (Quayle's office later told me, "The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly accurate. Mr. Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and sources, not specifically from Mr. Hasten.") Dan Senor, an analyst on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted that AIPAC won over Spencer Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt, and an AIPAC leader helped him pay that off. And of course, the famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel Sharon's helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and saying of Israel's ten-mile waist, "We have driveways in Texas longer than that."

    The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few people have had a chance to get to him. The relationship guy is Lee Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. "I can personally attest that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel," he said. In 2006, Obama "fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community" and visited Israel. And the topper: Obama "has gotten to know" Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against ever dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained--as queasily forceful as a mob boss vouching for an unknown family's bona fides.

    The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the organization is belligerent: speakers emphasized the need to attack Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on Hamas. But peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank and with the Syrians for the return of the Golan Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the West Bank. But they received only a smattering of applause, and in one instance the moderator said the questioner was using inappropriate language.

    The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly personable Israeli negotiator. "I see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids," he said, promising that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement, their goal is "to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking."

    Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for more than 30 years promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast policy over Israeli intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed by 76 senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and told them to give up their idea of a Greater Israel including the West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed by 94 senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli government line and nullifying American policymaking.

    No, AIPAC's change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They're not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of the '30s and '40s, who also abandoned their judgment to a far off authority even as they argued this and that subclause codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents to complain that Obama's views on Israel seemed "tailored" and "he's never really stood up for Israel." Indoctrination, pure and simple.

    The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is whether they don't have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of everything "we" should do to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in our hearts. People who emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings the "Star Spangled Banner," but the "Hatikvah" has two cantors belting it out, with the audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing Israeli politician sharply criticizing Olmert's policy in the West Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American politicians went abroad and criticized the president's foreign policy. It's no scandal here because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.

    Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that American and Israeli interests are identical. I wonder how those politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel rhetoric is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too much--an impression that if there weren't so much money at stake, they would run from Israel with winged heels.

    AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the Jews. The Holocaust imagery never stops. And there is a related theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society. The very last of the "Zionist Stories" AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton spoke was of a scientist, IBM's Nissensohn. The piece emphasized Israel's contribution to high-tech industry from software to desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to flourish, it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban's story made the same point. Look what Egypt lost when it forced the Saban family to flee.

    The theme of the conference was "The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built to Last." But that seems another case of protesting too much. AIPAC is beset on many sides.

    It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring for commemorations of the Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession narrative. About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab societies following the formation of Israel. One of them was novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged Baghdad and was forced into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and berated AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.

    Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews from Israel's hardline policies, especially as those Jews do well here and assimilate. "I worry a lot more about the American Jewish community than I do about Israel--about which I have grave doubts," Wieseltier said.

    AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I sat at the same table with Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jews as a litmus issue. Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn't hold my breath. Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a high-school girl who said, "But isn't Israel an apartheid state?"

    The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at visiting his son's college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in the Middle East at which Israel was demonized. Some of the kids at that table were surely Jews.

    Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on its left, AIPAC seems to be making gestures in a more peaceable direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli city bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or face political doom. (I think it's Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable that someone from the region would take the stage, and it's impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen Abrahams, a pretty, soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The audience was utterly quiet as she described the terrible price her community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the Palestinians have paid, I'd note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it was real schmaltz. At the end of her taped appearance, Abrahams said, "My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to them, I don't believe in wiping them out." I was stunned.

    Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck me that it might be possible to take all the loving energy in this place now directed at helping other Jews and redirect it to great effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will only be safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also safe--without checkpoints, without a siege, with the dignity and freedom that Jews have had in the West--all these arrayed powers might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a miracle at last.

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 07/18/2008 @ 2:56pm

27. This is the funny papers on drugs! Now from the extreme left that regularly derides all founding fathers and the U.S.A. constitution as being totally out of touch with the realities of the world today! NOW they want to seize Washington as a model for B.Hussein.O (aka Alibama)!

    Well, how about when Washington penned this ALSO in his farewell address;

    All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

    Wow, is he talking about progressive extremists like aka Alibama?

    Posted by RedRiver_. at 07/18/2008 @ 3:12pm

28. Posted by JOMAMMA at 07/18/2008 @ 1:13pm

    Even if the MSM is behind BO, you have nobody to blame but you and yours.

    Personal accountability, and all that.

    Posted by madlib at 07/18/2008 @ 4:26pm

29. Not to mention I have never heard a single asshole in here explain how the MSM is anybody's corner other than the corner that benefits them most financially.

    You try to act like there's an army of hotshot leftist/rightist reporters working for CNN or NBC, when in reality all they are is talking heads spewing infotainment over the airwaves.

    Once again, if you knew ANYTHING about journalism it is NOT the reporters that make decisions on what is printed or shown on air. Those decisions are left up to the people in charge.

    Also, if your only source of information is the MSM, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

    Posted by madlib at 07/18/2008 @ 4:30pm

30. Posted by RedRiver_. at 07/18/2008 @ 3:12pm

    LOL! Leave it to the internet to get even the dumbest pieces of shit to crawl out from under their rocks.

    Posted by madlib at 07/18/2008 @ 4:33pm

31. b_kool_66 -

    How about if you post elsewhere and summarize with links here? I promise I will read and comment. But it is not fair to take over a thread here and totally change the conversation.

    Posted by ramara at 07/18/2008 @ 4:42pm

32. Mask, where are you MASK,

    Hiding out in some dark place, guzzling the kool-aid? Where art thou, MASK?

    Friday, July 18, 2008 McCAIN CLAIMS VICTORY IN IRAQ-- Let the Gnashing of Teeth Begin

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:04pm

33. George Bush, and the real America that supports him, wins!

    Terrorists and the kool aid drinking left! Loses! Again! They should be used to it by now!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:17pm

34. Victory declared in Iraq! Terrorists lose! The Left! Loses! Again! The left takes the biggest ass-whuppin' since Ronald Reagan!

    Ever wonder why you folks keep losing?

    Hint: It's because you're losers!

    ahahahahahahahahah!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:28pm

35. I think that now, that Bush has succeeded in Iraq, we should all pull together again as Americans. We, on the right, are magnanimously and charitably ready to welcome to take back our leftist brethren into the fold, recognizing that though they may be both intellectually and morally retarded, we are all still Americans, in one Great Nation. Yea, brothers, we are more than willing to teach you The Way, and wean you from the influence of that evil Kool Aid under which influence you have fallen!

    Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:34pm

36. Posted by pontificus at 07/18/2008 @ 11:34pm Nobody wants you on the cruise, pint. No amount of veiled pleading will change that. Your innermost desire remains unfulfilled. Sorry. Maybe 2ha will take you to a strip club & some haggard meth freak will bring out your best. Good luck.

    Posted by Sorelish at 07/19/2008 @ 12:09am

37. Falss Flags and Fascism 's rampant in this country!

    See the coments at:

    http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/337380

    Spies are cashing in

    Posted by Rese at 07/19/2008 @ 10:04am

38. Even if the MSM is behind BO, you have nobody to blame but you and yours.

    Personal accountability, and all that.

    Posted by madlib at 07/18/2008 @ 4:26pm |

    I blame the school system for indoctrination instead of teaching...but that is another thread..

    Posted by JOMAMMA at 07/19/2008 @ 11:48am

39. LOL you people, no matter how book smart you are, or how much money you can weasel out of the system, still can not even attempt to get away from the partisan bullshit.

    That is truly what is wrong with this country.

    Posted by madlib at 07/19/2008 @ 12:10pm

40. Wow, is he talking about progressive extremists like aka Alibama?

    Posted by RedRiver_. at 07/18/2008 @ 3:12pm

    Nope, although it DOES directly apply to the current administration.

    Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 1:22pm

41. Boy, it sure is gloomy today in the musty old halls of the left. America must have won another great victory, I guess. Gee, that's too bad for you folks. Cheer up, maybe there'll be another Al Quaida-sponsored suicide bombing tomorrow, with dozens of innocent people killed. That ought to raise your spirits!

    And if things weren't bad enough, even Obama seems to be calling for a 'responsible' withdrawal from Iraq, in complete apposition to the immediate retreat and defeat the left demands. You do have at least one consolation, though: it's almost certain that Obama doesn't mean it, he's just saying what he thinks most of America wants to hear (and he's right), but he'll turn tail and run just like any other gutless Defeatocrat if Al Quaida makes any kind of comeback. How's THAT for the audacity of hope?

    Posted by pontificus at 07/19/2008 @ 3:53pm

42. How do you reconcile the above post with the fact that Bush is now talking about a timetable for withdrawal?

    Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 4:56pm

43. Posted by Balrog at 07/19/2008 @ 4:56pm

    "How do you reconcile the above post with the fact that Bush is now talking about a timetable for withdrawal?"

    I don't seen anything to reconcile. Bush always said we'd withdraw after we won. We've won, now we withdraw. In a responsible fashion that is. Which part of this scenario are you having difficulty with?

    Posted by pontificus at 07/19/2008 @ 5:23pm