Federal Court of Appeals reinstates Blackwater murder trials.

From the Blog of the Legal Times:

A federal appeals court today reinstated the prosecution of a group of Blackwater security guards charged in Washington with manslaughter and weapons violations for their alleged roles in a shooting in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen civilians. 

In December 2009, Judge Ricardo Urbina of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the Justice Department prosecution of five guards, saying the prosecution was tainted through the improper use of compelled statements the defendants made to investigators following the shooting in September 2007. DOJ appealed the ruling. 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously reversed Urbina’s decision, sending the case back to the trial court for further hearings. The appeals court’s 17-page redacted opinion is here. (The court simultaneously filed a confidential opinion under seal. The court heard oral argument in a closed session in February.)

Eat shit, you worthless fuckers..I hope you lose and pay the price for killing unarmed civilians, once and for all. This case has been going on for-fucking-ever. Click the Blackwater label or start here for this blog's coverage of the fuckery. 

For $36 you can read Rumsfelds lies and excuses.

Lawrence O’Donnell, in the video below, gives us a few examples of the various lies and obfuscations between the covers of Donald Rumsfeld’s new book, Known and Unknown. Before we get to the video, I would like to take a few shots, from a past writeup, at the man who’s hold on the truth was tenuous at best and at times..well, stunningly non-existent:

In 1984 Donald Rumsfeld hugged Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and with a big toothy grin, shook his hand vigorously. 19 years later, on Rumsfeld’s watch, Saddam was pulled from a hole in Tikrit and arrested. The Donald’s legacy will be forever tied to Saddam Hussein in one way or another.

President Bush said the following about Donald Rumsfeld the day he ‘retired’ as Sec. of Defense: “This man knows how to lead, and he did. The country’s better off for it,” The president called Rumsfeld “one of America’s most skilled, energetic and dedicated public servants.”

Excuse me if I don’t buy what the President was selling. Rumsfeld was the main architect of the occupation of Iraq, also known as the Iraq War. I will not be the one to judge Bush’s Secretary of Defense. History and his God will do that. The President tried to paint a rosy picture today of Rumsfeld’s role in the Iraq war.  Rumsfeld virtually had no plan after the invasion of Iraq, and our troops payed a heavy price for his lack of foresight. Rumsfeld was asked what the worst day of his time in office under Bush43 was. His response: the day he saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. Not the hundreds of deaths of American soldiers, that the exposure of torture, that he was aware of, finally saw the ugly light of day.

Up to the bitter end of his reign, Rumsfeld was still chirping about the importance of ‘winning” in Iraq. Speaking to a gathering of employees 10 days before he left office, Rumsfeld defended his record on Iraq and Afghanistan and warned of “dire consequences were we to fail” in the war.

Yet, he still thinks the press didn’t give him his due, give him a fair shake. He shed a tear or two today at his final public appearance. There are still millions of tears to be shed by mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands and wives of soldiers who will be forced to clean up Donald’s mess and deal with his inadequacies as the top military leader, our Secretary of Offense, as it were. Perhaps his God will deal with Rummy on a different level. I do not see that happening here on terra firma. Here, his legacy is nothing to be proud of..not now, and not in the near future.

Robert McNamara came to grips with his legacy, years after the Vietnam War was over. He wrote a book about his involvement with sending over 58,000 American soldiers to their deaths. He was interviewed for the documentary “Fog of War” and spilled his guts, even insinuating he could be a “war criminal”. Some how, I just don’t see Donald Rumsfeld ever coming clean like that. I think he will go to his grave denying he did anything wrong with regard to the Iraq War.

I hope I am wrong, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

I knew the day would come when this delusional, arrogant man’s book would hit the shelves. I will not read it as I am sure it will give me nightmare’s of the Iraq war, the outright lies that led us into that war and that we lost over 4,400 soldiers for nothing but those lies,  all over again.

That he tries to rewrite history and cleanse his soul simply boggles my mind..but then I consider the source and it all makes sense, as his ilk never owns their mistakes. They blame others or they just deny, deny, deny.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Biggest Document leak in History and what it means.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), a UK website, has the entire set of Wikileaks Iraq War Logs online, other than Wikileaks itself. The corporate news sites like the NYT, The Guardian and Der Speigel and several others, all give you their interpretations of the thousands of pages, but TBIJ site seems the most comprehensive to me. From their site, the section which tells us what exactly the thousand upon thousands of pages of doc's, (400,000 pages), videos and military logs mean and their accompanying short video below:

Twelve weeks ago the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was given access to the biggest leak of military documents in history.

These documents formed a database of nearly 400,000 military logs recorded over six years of the Iraq war and covering the years 2004 to 2009.

There are over 37 million words used to recount military significant actions that took place across the entire country. This material provides an unrivaled portrait of one of the most controversial wars of the modern age.

For the first time the files reveal just how much the American military detailed the escalating violence in Iraq, and how this contrasts markedly to what the politicians said in public. This is the story behind the pronouncements – the uncensored detail Washington did not want us to know.

PROMO from TBIJ on Vimeo.

First off, the number of unreported civilian deaths just boggles my mind. The Iraq Body Count site estimates that this leak uncovers 15,000 more civilian deaths than our government reported. This of course raises the total level of deaths, regardless of group, country affiliation and including combatants to more than 150,000.Another quote to blow your mind:

Following the release of the US military war logs, the civilian death toll has risen from 107,000 to 122,000, according to Iraq Body Count.

I have been perusing the TBIJ site most of today and it just gets more ugly, grim and nightmarish with each page/story.  The following line, from this page, just took my breath away:

On the same day 123 secret logs, including reports of the murder of 128 civilians, were filed.*

Holy fuckamoly, I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around everything I read there. Bear in mind that all the civilian deaths were not caused by US or Coalition troops. But.... Hundreds of civilians were gunned down in error at checkpoints...their deaths never reported to anyone.

Mutha Fuckas..Our government lied and continues to lie to us about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Why do I say they continue to lie? Well because, for one thing, the Obama administration handed over detainees despite reports of torture by Iraq government authorities. This is a clear violation of international law, drawn up by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the US in 1994, for any government to transfer detainees to a regime at whose hands they face torture or other serious human rights violations.

That last paragraph above should make your friggin day...it sure as fuck made mine. A small price to pay my ass.

Army suicides spike in June..but the Wars go on.

CNN has historically kept the heat on this issue, which I follow as well, specifically in the video I created for the Iraq War Blogswarm in 2008. From CNN's latest on this horrific issue, a short blurb(emphasis mine of course):

More U.S. soldiers killed themselves last month than in recent Army history, according to Army statistics released Thursday, confounding officials trying to reverse the grim trend.

The statistics show that 32 soldiers killed themselves in June, the highest number in a single month since the Vietnam era. Twenty-one of them were on active duty, while 11 were in the National Guard or Army Reserve in an inactive status.

Seven of those soldiers killed themselves while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Army numbers.

        *snip*

 Including the June numbers, 145 soldiers have killed themselves this year, more than half of the total number for all of 2009, according to Army statistics.

In 2009, a record-breaking year for suicides in the service, 245 soldiers killed themselves.

These numbers even beat out the highest recorded number of suicides during the height of the Iraq War.

First, the families have to deal with loved ones being in harm's way in these fucking wars created by the Bush Administration and the boys in the PNAC....then...they get the news that their loved one couldn't take it anymore and ended his or her life.

Second, the numbers of permanently injured both mentally and physically are off the fucking charts...as is the numbers of deaths in action...Holy fuckamoly people, when will this bullshit stop? - That's a rhetorical question as Obama shows no sign of abating this carnage which affects an entire generation of young adults.

Lara Logan goes off the deep end.

I really had a lot of respect for her during her reporting in Iraq the last couple of years. She didn't seem to pull any punches....the operative word is seem.

Logan recently blasted the Rolling Stone reporter, Michael Hastings, who wrote the scathing essay on McChrystal for not 'holding back' some of the more inflammatory comments he printed that cost ole Stanley is job. The money quote from this dirtbag:

"Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has," she told CNN's Howard Kurtz.

WTF woman? What in the blue hell does that have to do with anything when it comes to reporting the truth? Jesus-fucking-Christ...I would hazard a guess that neither has she.

Well, I did find this gem of a video over at Crooks and Liars of Jamie McIntyre and he really rips her a new ass for several of her statements. Mr. McIntyre is a former CNN reporter who covered the Pentagon for 16 years...a damn site longer than old Lara baby.



McIntyre also let it rip against her and Hastings in a blog posting here. He also gives her a ration of shit for the 'serve his country' fuckery too. He does agree with a few of her points, but I take issue with many of them. His money quote:

"In defending herself and her compatriots in the press corps, against charges they are too chummy with the military, Logan wounded them grievously with misaimed friendly fire. She unfortunately reinforced the worst stereotype of reporters who 'embed' with senior military officers but are actually 'in bed' with them,"

So Lara Logan is our douchebag...aka Fuckwit of the week. Evidently she is a proud member of the Corporate Media since she now, because of her statements on the CNN show, gives the appearance that she protects the military leaders that she has covered.

I would like to add that McIntyre's blog Line of Departure is a great read and has very illuminating articles about the press and it's job. I highly suggest it as a regular place to stop during your online journey's for truth, justice and a free and accurate media.

Madoff gets his due and other noteworthy news.

Bernie was sentenced to 150 years this morning. That was the maximum he could be given.

I wonder if that sentence will make his victims feel better, somehow I doubt it. His wife Ruth finally released a statement this morning about her husband's crime. You can read the entire statement here. I really can't muster any sympathy for Ruthie.

Joe Jackson is lower than pond scum. He is already getting his worthless, child-beating ass on the tv as much as possible, showing up at the BET awards show last night and having a daily presser when possible out in front of the families Encino enclave. Al Sharpton is also getting his share of tv time as is Jesse Jackson (no relation but I bet he wishes he was).

The biggest media circus in the last decade will now start. Who gets those three little children that lived in a fairytale bubble? Who gets any money..or rather.. is there any money to hand out? Not waisting any time, Joe and Katherine Jackson have filed a probate order and gotten temporary custody of the three children. It's gonna get real ugly.

Iraq is preparing for our soldiers to start pulling out of their cities tomorrow. This news is scary in that all hell might break loose now that Iraqi police will be in charge. I worry about this, I worry that the innocent will suffer. I worry that our soldiers will be sitting ducks. I just worry period. But I want them all home now..all our soldiers. Don't leave them sitting in fortresses, just bring them home..NOW.

Finally Tricky Dick Nixon has more of his musings released. I have been reading the transcripts over at the NYT and they are a friggin trip. Get this quote from a Philippines head honcho during the time Marcos took control of the government:

ROMULO: You see, democracy, really, American democracy, is for a mature, highly developed, affluent society.

NIXON: Yes.

ROMULO: For a developing society, you need someone with strength.

Affluent society? Give me an effin break dude. Did anyone know there is a website devoted to the Nixon tapes? Yep...check it out here.

11,000 Iraqi's still being held by US Government

From Jurist:

The US-led Multi-National Force in Iraq said Tuesday that it is still holding 11,057 Iraqi prisoners in three separate camps throughout the country. The prisoners currently held in the three US camps, Camp Taji, Camp Cropper, and Camp Bucca, will either be released or transferred to Iraqi authorities as the military works to transfer control of the prisons to the Iraqi government. Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq, is expected to be the first to close when the total prison population drops below 8,000. The other two facilities will close by August 2010, in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that went into effect in January and requires all US troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2001. A fourth US-run prison, Abu Ghraib, was transferred back to Iraqi control in 2006 following the release of photographs depicting prisoner abuse by US military personnel.

In November, Iraqi human rights activists said they were concerned about the treatment of detainees due to be transferred from US military custody to Iraqi authorities under the then-proposed SOFA. In August, the US military said that it has released more than 10,000 Iraqi detainees over the past year. In November 2007, US military forces in Iraq released 500 detainees at a joint ceremony with the Iraqi government at Camp Victory outside Baghdad.

The Iraq government isn't known for it's judicial system. Of course our methods, via the military tribunals, were horrific as well. The prisoners will most likely be dealt with according to whether they are Shiite or Sunni. This doesn't bode well for any Sunni prisoners.

Would you buy this SOFA? Should the Iraqi people?

Next year, thanks to Iraq President Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi’s will get to actually vote on the Status of Forces Agreement that was ratified by their government and finally their Presidential Council Thursday. All our troops must be out of Iraq by 2011.The Iraqi’s will supposedly vote on the agreement next year.

I say supposed to vote because we are now propping up one of the most corrupt regimes in the world, right behind Myanmar and Somalia, according to Transparency International. The irony is thick indeed, isn’t it? We took out Saddam and put in an entire government of Saddam’s.

The Iraqi’s could vote to reject the agreement. What that would mean is unclear at this point. Whether a vote will actually happen is the larger question. One thing is clear, the violence still continues with bombings this week that killed and injured scores of Iraqi’s. Two American Soldiers will also be coming home in boxes.

In addition to the official deadlines for troop withdraw, it gives Iraqi courts limited jurisdiction over American military personnel and eliminates immunity for US defense contractors working within Iraq. What does this mean for Americans? From a Jurist OpEd on the subject:

Earlier this week the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a report that is highly critical of the absence of due process in Iraq’s criminal justice system. The UN Report notes that “many detainees have been deprived of their liberty for months or even years, often under precarious physical conditions, without access to defence counsel, or without being formally charged with a crime or produced before a judge. Continuing allegations of widespread torture and ill-treatment of inmates are of particular concern.” The report is particularly timely, given that as of January 1, 2009, U.S. citizens who are contractors in Iraq will be subject to the jurisdiction of Iraqi criminal and civil courts, according to the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement signed on November 17, 2009.

Nothing in this newly-signed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq guarantees that a U.S. citizen contractor arrested in Iraq will get even the most basic due process protections. The SOFA doesn’t even permit the U.S. Government to detain U.S. citizen contractors who are awaiting trial in Iraqi courts. The SOFA requires that U.S. soldiers and government employees arrested by the Iraqi police will be handed over to U.S. authorities within 24 hours of detention or arrest. However, if the detained American citizen is a contractor, he or she is left entirely to the disposition of the Iraqi system, and will be left to sit in the Iraqi jail awaiting Iraqi justice.

In other words contractors, like the employees of Blackwater, will be treated similar to our prisoners in Guantanamo, perhaps even worse. Irony, thy name is SOFA…

Crossposted at UnCapitalist Journal.

Iraqi government wants a timetable..nothing less.

oh yeah..how is BushCo going to deal with this? He said it yesterday..another Iraqi official said the same damn thing today. The top Iraqi security adviser said the same fucking thing today:

Iraq will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government's national security adviser said on Tuesday.

McCain is scrambling for a response to this..seriously..the old bag of batshit had this to say today:

McCain was silent on the comments Monday. But today, his top foreign policy adviser declined to criticize Maliki or distance McCain from him. And they sought to portray Maliki's comments as consistent with the Republican nominee's long-standing position.

"Senator McCain has always said that conditions on the ground -- including the security threats posed by extremists and terrorists, and the ability of Iraqi forces to meet those threats -- would be key determinants in U.S. force levels," said adviser Randy Scheunemann, who criticized Sen. Barack Obama's "constantly shifting positions" on Iraq.

More bullshit and bravado from the reichwing nutjobs people..sick bastards.

"Joseph never came home."

The Iraq soldier in the photo to the right died of a drug overdose last week. In 2003 that picture was splashed across the MSM, his name was Joseph Patrick Dwyer. From the Editor and Publisher article:

Dwyer served with the 3rd Squadron of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of Fort Stewart, Ga. He earned the Combat Medical Badge and other military awards.

His mother said the military could have done more to help with post-traumatic stress. "He just couldn't get over the war," Maureen Dwyer said. "He just couldn't do it. Just wasn't Joseph. Joseph never came home."

More soldiers are going to die not from physical wounds but from the emotional and psychological wounds they received from multiple tours of duty and just the carnage of war in general. Again from the E&P writeup:

The day he died, Dwyer apparently took pills and inhaled the fumes of an aerosol can in an act known as “huffing.” Thomas said Dwyer then called a taxi company for a ride to the hospital...

When he returned from war after three months in Iraq, he developed the classic, treatable symptoms of PTSD. like so many other combat vets, he didn’t seek help. In restaurants, he sat with his back to the wall. He avoided crowds. He stayed away from friends. He abused inhalants, he told Newsday. In 2005, he and his family talked with Newsday to try to help other service members who might need help. He talked with the paper from a psychiatric ward at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was committed after his first run-in with the police.

There are more invisibly wounded soldiers than dead soldiers right fucking now m'dear reader. And their numbers will only increase as this madness known as the Iraq War continues. PTSD is a silent killer. I dealt with my former husbands PTSD for almost 20 years. He never received proper treatment for it as a Vietnam Veteran. Last I knew, he was living homeless in AZ. He fiinally walked away from life and our family never to return.

I want these Iraq War Vets to get the treatment and help they deserve. I demand it of our government.

All of us should.

Motorcade of Iraq's First Lady bombed..

She was going to a cultural event when her motorcade was nailed. She was unhurt, but four of her body guards were injured.

Meanwhile, in the slums of Sadr City, two children were killed along with eight adults. 2.5 million Iraqis live in that squalor. Cultural events are something they don't think about, at least I would hazard a guess on that one.

And four more American Soldiers were killed too.

But the asshole "military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll told reporters on Saturday that attacks carried out by al-Qaida declined last month after increasing earlier this year.

He said there was "no place for al-Qaida" to hide in Iraq and U.S. troops were continuing to hunt them down in Diyala province and the city of Mosul, where many are believed to have fled north from Baghdad."

Right pal..whatever you say, you lying bag of batshit.

We could of gotten here by doing NOTHING.

It's funny, but then..its not.

Doug and his Feith-based bullshit.

Douglas Feith is a tool, among other things. Last night on Sixty Minutes he attempted to spin a yarn so big, I thought the interviewer, Steve Kroft, was going to piss down both legs as he stared at Feith in amazement.

Feith attempted to spin the War in Iraq as a preemptive strike. No, I am not kidding..its in the link above either in the transcript or the video of the show. From Feith's own piehole:

"What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack." (emphasis mine)

Incredulous at this point, Kroft says Feith's logic stinks to high heaven and could be used to attack Iran, North Korea, Syria and countless other countries that talk a good game but haven't done anything to us on US soil. Then Feith drops this little turd:

"In an era where WMDs can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm,” he tells Kroft, “the old of idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn't make a lot of sense."

I guess it's safe to say at this point that Doug isn't a big fan of diplomacy and talking it out. Kroft then lets Doug know that the Idiot-in-Chief and others said the reason we were attacking Iraq was because of an imminent threat that they were going to use their WMD's on the U.S.

Feith actually has the nads to say at this point that he believes no one in the administration actually said that. Kroft, fully loaded with ammo at this point, starts ticking off various members of the BushCo cartel that parroted that line of thought: Rummy, Powell, and Bush himself.

Feith is promoting his new book; War and Decision. Kroft prefaces the interview by saying Feith defends much and apologizes for very little about the war in his book. That would be an understatement m'dear reader.

Feith is considered one of the architects of the Iraq war, along with Paul Wolfowitz. He was also the guy that was in charge of Iraq's military prisons, which means he was the head honcho for Abu-Ghraib. He has so much disdain for the Geneva Conventions that this Slate article quotes the following:

It was Feith who devised the legal solution for getting around the Geneva Conventions' prohibition on physically or psychologically coercing prisoners of war into talking. As a Pentagon official in the 1980s, Feith had laid out the argument that terrorists didn't deserve protection under the Geneva Conventions. Once the war on terrorism started, all he had to do was implement it. And even more damning than his legal rule-making is Feith's reported reaction to complaints by military Judge Advocate General lawyers about the new, looser interrogation rules. "They said he had a dismissive, if not derisive, attitude toward the Geneva Conventions," Scott Horton, a lawyer who was approached by six outraged JAG officers last year, told the Chicago Tribune. "One of them said he calls it 'law in the service of terror.' "

Oh my, the GC isn't worth the paper it's printed on Doug? Lets move on..shall we? Doug was also in charge of the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Unit:

The group issued a report about connections between Iraq and al-Qaida that Rumsfeld had Feith deliver to CIA Director George Tenet in August 2002. This was reportedly the same report that Vice President Cheney recently called "your best source of information" on the links between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Of course that report has been debunked to hell and back. Feith also denies taking part in the decision-making process that led to Bremer dismantling the Iraq Army. Bremer..to paraphrase, says Feith is full of shit on that point too. I would tend to think if your the head of the department tasked with rebuilding the post-war Iraq..you really would have a say in any and everything done in that regard.

The 60 Minutes interview will most likely cause you to clinch your teeth when Doug Feith is finished covering his ass and doing quite a bad job of it I might add. Kroft corrects him on quite a few points. If your a big enough sucker to buy his book to read his excuses for why the Iraq war went to shit..head on over to your nearest bookstore. I personally find Dougie Feith a liar and a warmongering fuckwit that ignored common sense issues and helped trash our Constitution while having a primo job in the Bush administration. To close, I think this quote from a recent HuffPo writeup sums it up best for me:

What's incredible is that only in the field of foreign policy can someone have so disastrous a record and be showered with medals, endowed chairs at prestigious think tanks, and even a professorship at Georgetown University's esteemed Walsh School of Foreign Service. It boggles the mind.

Yes, it surely does boggle my mind. The man should be tried under those very same Geneva Conventions.

Tags: Doug Feith

Today's Iraq death count..in the Green Zone.

From MSNBC:

A rocket attack on the U.S.-protected Green Zone on Sunday killed three American soldiers and wounded at least 31 people, a military official said. The strike came after heavy fighting in a Baghdad neighborhood that left 20 dead and more than 50 wounded in the worst violence here since a cease-fire was declared a week ago.

At least two rockets struck the sprawling Green Zone in central Baghdad, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to release the information. A separate strike happened in southeastern Baghdad.

As I said earlier however..its just a blip on the screen. stay tuned for more fluff about Obama, Hillary and every other issue that doesn't mean shit in the grand scheme of things. Can't wait to hear Petraeus spin this shit when he hits the hill. And we wonder why one in four soldiers is suffering from anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers' mental health. From the WaPo writeup:

The Army study of mental health showed that 27 percent of noncommissioned officers - a critically important group - on their third or fourth tour exhibited symptoms commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders. That figure is far higher than the roughly 12 percent who exhibit those symptoms after one tour and the 18.5 percent who develop the disorders after a second deployment, according to the study, which was conducted by the Army surgeon general's Mental Health Advisory Team.

The Army and the rest of the service chiefs have endorsed General Petraeus's recommendations for continued high troop levels in Iraq. But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and their top deputies also have warned that the war in Iraq should not be permitted to inflict an unacceptable toll on the military as a whole. "Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it," Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, said in stark comments delivered to Congress last week. "Lengthy and repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time have placed incredible stress on our soldiers and our families, testing the resolve of our all-volunteer force like never before."

Artwork by the highly-talented Worried Shrimp.

The American Media-Bought and paid for?

There was a time in our history when America's so-called mainstream media kept us informed on important issues and events. We have to look no farther than the recent past, a little more than thirty years ago, to give them a few well-deserved kudos. I refer specifically to the Pentagon Papers and Nixon's Waterloo that came to be known as Watergate. Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers was a global as well as national turning point in the Vietnam War. The investigative work of the Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward began the unraveling of Nixon's White House. Both events transpired in the early 1970's and ended with President Nixon's resignation from office on August 9, 1974. Both of these watershed moments in our history could not have happened in this decade, I would bet my last devalued dollar on that.

This morning, as I perused my emails, I focused on Salon's Glen Greenwald's piece entitled; The US establishment media in a nutshell. Glen has his panties in a wad about how little our MSM gives us on the Iraq War and how much baloney it does manage to slop we the hogs, with. With a simple NEXUS inquiry based on a 30 day news cycle, Mr. Greenwald provides us with the following big ticket items:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

Now, I am sure you notice right off that the most written about subjects are the worthless and totally inane Presidential campaign fluff bs. Topics which do not have a tinkers damn thing to do with the programs and ideas that either of the Democratic nominees for that office are espousing.

This set my jaw in a very uncomfortable position so early in the AM. To be more precise, it jacked the hell right out of my jaw, and I hadn't even had a friggin cup of coffee yet. Although most of the lesser articles are regarding events and issues in the Iraq War, nothing even has those two words in it.

What this tell us is that the MSM has “taken a powder” on reporting any of the events of the Iraq War within the last thirty days. Our media has expended little ink on addressing the events that have been unfolding in Basra or the daily shelling of the American compound in the Green Zone—two things which are important events with regard to how the war is going for BushCo.

If you want to stay abreast of the happenings in Iraq, you have to read either the European media or alternative media here in the United States. That is complete and utter bat guano my dear reader.

Unless of course your just regular folks, as Greenwald notes in his article. Regular folks, according to the MSM just want the fluff, the happy news. I find this unbelievable until I pause and consider how little the majority of American's have invested in the Iraq Occupation. Our money is invested heavily of course, but it isn't like we have to shell it out of our own pockets daily. Perhaps if we did that, we would find the majority of Americans highly pissed off—but I am not holding my breath on that either. The American blood being shed is also a very small cross section of our country.

As long as American's continue to show very little emotion or disgust with regard to the travesty of mythic stature in Iraq, our mainstream media will continue to provide us with nothing substantial. The bottom line is that it's our fault really, not theirs. We eat the pablum they shovel in our pieholes and ask for nothing more.

Where are the Daniel Ellsberg's, Carl Bernstein's and Bob Woodwards? They aren't out there and even if they were—would they take it all the way to our current Supreme Court in an effort to get the truth out to the world? I doubt it because the Supreme Court is bought and paid for too. Just ask the folks languishing in Guantanamo and awaiting their military tribunals. Ask the ACLU about how those warrant-less wiretapping cases are going and how many of them have been dismissed because of that disgusting phrase: State Secrets Privilege.

For BushCo it is game, set and match. And they skunked us bad folks. They fucked us and didn't even kiss us first.

Crossposted at UnCapitalist Journal

Another KBR rape case reported

From CommonDreams.org:

It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Lisa Smith*, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. "Right then my whole life was turned upside down," she says.

What follows is the story she told me in a lengthy, painful on-the-record interview, conducted in a lawyer's office in Houston, Texas, while she was back from Iraq on a brief leave.

I find it very difficult to comment on this story, being a woman and a former advocate for rape victims. To read the entire write-up, click the link at the top.

Tags: KBR, KBR female rape victim

What we should all get Bush for the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War

I don't want to blow the surprise..so go here and look at what we all should be sending that bag of batshit. Peter always has a way with words and pictures..and this one is the best of all.

He also has a beautiful post up about the death of Dith Pran. If you don't know who that is..you friggin should damn it.

Peter thank you, kind sir, for being part of my blogging life. I heart you so much.

Soldiers killed in Iraq hits the 4000 mark.

Perhaps it shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but I cried when I saw it in my news alert this evening:

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000
Grim milestone reached when IED kills 4 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad

Grim doesn't even begin to cover it folks. We should never of been there. Our soldiers should be home with their families watching their children hunt for Easter eggs, or spending time with loved ones.

I have no more words to describe my pain and my anger.

The Cost of the War in Iraq

Support our Troops by bringing them home NOW!

Its not too late to join an action/protest near you..over 660 planned across these United States, with people from 36 freaking states making the trek to DC for todays actions. Last year I participated..sadly, my back doesnt' allow me that luxury these days :(

Tags: Iraq War Blogswarm, Five years of War, Cost of Iraq War

What does the war in Iraq cost American$?

First..a list of all of the Blogswarm Participants can be found here..but bring your lunch..its a grand list :)

In dollars and cents the United States has spent roughly $522 Billion, with at least $70 Billion allocated for the beginning of this year alone.

As an aside, what could all that money buy us as taxpayers? What else could we of spent that money on here in America that we desperately need? Try these numbers on for size:

With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.

Another use for Iraq War money could be to pay down the federal deficit. The federal deficit in 2007 (the year, not the budget year) was $244 billion. If we ended the Iraq War and used the fiscal savings to cut that horrendous deficit we could reduce it by 57 percent. But we know that will not happen until 2009 at the earliest, so the deficit keeps moving ever upwards, but I digress.

The War Profiteers are getting fat and happy off federal government contracts, but here in the United States, we are looking a recession straight in the eye. In fact, the total dollar value of all federal government contracts, with regard to Iraq, handed out since the war began is staggering. Just look at these numbers starting in late 2006:

Value of ALL Contracts Since Tracking Began on October 30, 2006: $306,196,099,735

Yes, my dear reader, that is in billions. MilitaryIndustrialComplex.com has recorded a total of 4,046 publicly-reported defense contracts, just since October 2006. To date, that is an average of $1,008 for every member of the US citizenry. And the key word there is publicly-reported. Another factor to consider is that not all that money stays in the United States. Not all contractors are corporations on American soil.

Another troubling fact regarding federal contracts is the method in which they are awarded:

Most of the Iraq reconstruction contracts have been awarded through a particular type of troubled contracting vehicle, the Orwellian-sounding "Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity" (IDIQ). IDIQs allow the government to award an unspecified amount of future work to approved contractors. Once companies get on this list of approved contractors, they do not have to compete for work, nor is that future work ever publicly announced.

Not only are these IDIQ contracts never publicly announced, their dollar value is usually hidden from the public and Congress:

An IDIQ contract, which is made up of task and delivery orders, does not define a firm quantity of services or goods that the government needs. It is not until goods or services are required that the government places an order. The General Accounting Office stated that those types of contracts "were not attaining the level of competition Congress had initially envisioned." For example, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and Bechtel have received task and deliver orders worth billions. Those task and delivery orders fall below the procurement radar screen and are not open for bidding or available to Congress or the public.

Our government also continues to award contracts to companies that violate federal laws and regulations during the course of fulfilling their contracts. What this means is they cheat us, as an example, by over-billing or providing shoddy equipment among other things. A short list of these contractors:

Iraq reconstruction contracts that have been awarded to contractors with problematic contracting track records, include:

Lockheed (84 incidences of misconduct);

Northrop Grumman (36 incidences of misconduct);

Fluor (15 incidences of misconduct);

Computer Sciences Corporation/DynCorp (9 incidences of misconduct),

Bechtel (6 incidences of misconduct);

SAIC (5 incidences of misconduct)

By continuing to award contracts to unethical companies, the government is rendering its own laws, established for the protection of the taxpayers, toothless. See .POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database.

The citizens of the United States are worse off since George Bush took office and the war in Iraq began. But the Corporations are much better off. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy my dear reader?

I didn't think so..

Crossposted at UnCapitalist Journal