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POPSCheney Caught in Plame Game? 72 Times "Can't Recall" Liar with selective memory--Remember this was about the vindictive and illegal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame for Ambassador (and her husband) Joe Wilson's NY Times editorial article contradicting the lies of "yellow cake" uranium from Niger to Saddam Hussein to "prove" WMD and launch a war. Among the most basic questions for Cheney in the Plame probe: How did Libby find out that the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA? Libby's own handwritten notes suggest Libby found out from Cheney. When Libby discovered Cheney's reference to Plame and the CIA in his notes - notes that Libby knew he would soon have to turn over to the FBI - the chief of staff went to the vice president Transcripts plus more from CREW's lawsuit here.
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POPSGaffney Tells Reagan "Your Father Would Be Ashamed Of You" (VIDEO) In June, Gaffney wrote a column insisting that President Obama might really be a Muslim. In March, Gaffney argued that "evidence" exists connecting Saddam Hussein to 9/11, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Last September, Gaffney argued that Sarah Palin has learned foreign policy through "osmosis," by living in Alaska. He's argued that U.S. forces really did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the media covered it up. He's used made-up quotes and recommended "hanging" Democratic officials critical of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. He even believes there's "evidence" to support the "Birthers," and once recommended a military strike on Al Jazeera headquarters. ------ In other words a man with no shame invokes the specter of another man dead father to attack him. Classy!
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POPSObama rarely talks to His Military Commander "If Afghanistan is his “top priority” and “a war that we have to win,” wouldn’t Obama have carved out a little time in his schedule to meet with the man tasked with winning it more than once since appointing him in June? It may have forced him to skip a Wagyu beef dinner and perhaps a night on the town in New York City, but those are the sacrifices that a CinC has to make from time to time."
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POPSHere We Go Again--Iran Is a Threat (but Not Nuclear Israel), blah, blah The propaganda machine about the "threat" of Iran has kicked into high gear, again, driven (as was the Iraq war) by not just the White House and both coerced parties in Congress (via AIPAC), but US Media, singing in complete unison. Who is really playing the aggressor? Who is threatening to attack whom , ....and based upon what ? The drum beat is identical to that about Iraq and Saddam Hussein, which we know was a lie, and part of the neocon agenda for a "new middle east". The morale of that story is do not trust the government when it comes to starting (or provoking) wars and conflicts, which always begins with sanctions , and gaining the UN Gang's support, rather easily swayed. They seek to overcome any resistance by incessant REPETITION of the same propaganda message as with Iraq.
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POPSU.S. Forces Didn't Really Hurt Anyone in Iraq: Reuters rewrites history What's more, Iraqis, according to Reuters, don't have a beef with our decision to invade their country, or the fact that we dropped more munitions on them than the allied totals for World War I. It was, you know, Abu Ghraib ... While many Iraqis were grateful Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted, some dark chapters in the U.S. occupation, such as the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, fueled broad resentment. Take-away: this never happened. This stuff is ubiquitous in our reporting, and will help make the next senseless war possible with minimal dissent.
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POPSExposed: GOP Congressman Who Yelled "You Lie" at Obama Speech Received $240,000 from Health Care Ind It was not the first time Wilson — attorney, U.S. Army vet and former aide to U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond — has raised eyebrows by shouting at political opponents. Seven years ago this month, the then-freshman Wilson appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” with five-term Congressman Bob Filner (D-Calif.) to discuss whether to go to war in Iraq, action that Filner opposed but Wilson supported. In the course of the discussion, Filner noted that the U.S. supplied weapons to Saddam Hussein’s regime during the Iran-Iraq War — a fact revealed by the investigation into the Iran-Contra Affair, which discovered the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, then under an arms embargo, to win support for freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon and to fund the Nicaraguan contras, a counterrevolutionary rebel force that was fighting the country’s government.
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POPSIsrael Leads the Lies About Iran Nukes
Israel and USA neocons led the way lying about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and for the past few years are spreading the same lies about Iran. And our corrosive and toxic media prints this negative gossip as if it was news. Then generals and politicians quote the false non-news gossip. All the while (like in Iraq) the actual facts and info from the IAEA has to be ignored. It's quite a trick but how dumb could we be to get fooled by it again. Of course, it's not like most people are fooled but the warmongers need to come up with some reason for invasion so this gives 'em something to babble while their war plans move forward. The extra "irony," is Israel is the nation with the hundreds of illegal nuke weapons. So, it looks like the pressure of another war for the sake of Israel and Oil remains the Master Plan. Israel is probably also the most racist nation in the world and accusing everyone else of racism seems to cover this fact up. Don't ge
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POPSThe Renaturation of the Iraqi Marshlands In the years 2003, 2004 and 2006, Ikhlas Abbis traveled through the marshlands of southern Iraq. He took photographs of the process of development taking place in the swamps, which were drained under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and reflooded after his overthrow.
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POPSUNESCO: US Seriously Damaged Historic Babylon
Allen said the 2003 war bought the restoration project some time because it prevented premature, ill-supervised development of the site. But looters rampaged through Babylon after the U.S.-led invasion, and U.S. forces stuffed sandbags with dirt that contained ancient pottery and brick fragments, the UNESCO assessment said. It said U.S. forces and the contractors they employed, mainly KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary, "caused major damage to the city by digging, cutting, scraping, and leveling." The U.S. military did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but in the past it has said looting would have been worse had its troops not been there. The report said steel stakes were driven into ancient walls, which included fragments with inscriptions from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled 2 1/2 millennia ago and is credited with building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - one of the Seven Wonders of the World. A helicopter pad, roads and parking lots were bu
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POPSEager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up. Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refiner
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POPSNational Sovereignty Day For such a historic day, the scribblers seem to be ignoring a lot of history. It’s like no one wants to talk about it anymore. Too bad. A great accomplishment, at tremendous sacrifice by both Americans, Iraqis and their British, Australian, European and Asian allies. Congratulations, Iraq. All yours now. Until and unless you need a little more help. Hopefully we’ll have an American president who is willing to help.
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POPSBig Oil poised for return to Iraq The winners of the War in Iraq? Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Repsol, China National Petroleum & Chemical Company and Russia’s Lukoil. Just as was planned all along.
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POPSThe axis of weevils No weevil doing in Iran, Iraq (under Saddam), and definitely nothing evil about North Korea planning to nuke Hawaii. A country can be against America and bad.
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POPSNew Memo: Bush-Blair Conspired to Start Iraq War Without WMD Motive Hard proof that WMD was not Bush's or Blair's real reason to start war with Iraq. Not mentioned behind the Bush-Blair Anglo-American conspiracy to invade Iraq, is that neoconservative and Israeli elements who fomented the plan based upon their convenient "catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" (from their blueprint written in Sept. 2000, one year before 9/11). Yes, it still matters now, because of those who say that "Bush did not lie, he was mistaken about WMD", which this hard evidence entirely destroys.
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POPSConfidential memo reveals US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq Proof of immoral leadership? Documents like this raise issues of national embarrassment, not national security. The restoration of public confidence requires this new inquiry to be transparent. Contentious matters should not be kept out of the public domain, even in the run-up to an election Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."
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POPSCheney tied to cash theft and possible murder in Iraq The case against Dick Cheney just keeps getting better. One of the biggest threats to American freedoms is now being tied to a ‘spoils of war’ cache and a murder. This is the only place I have heard this charge, so the source is a bit suspect. But given the state of ‘fairness’ of our main stream media I am not surprised that this is the only source. On November 14, 2005, “In one of the worst intelligence fiascoes carried out by the neocon administration of Iraq under Paul “Jerry’ Bremer, Saddam Hussein’s chief money mover and financial adviser was beaten to death by US interrogators in Tikrit after the U.S. invasion. After Samara was occupied by US forces, it was discovered that Abu Seger lived in a home on the Tigris River just 200 yards from the main U.S. military position in the city. It did not take long for U.S. troops to break down Seger’s door and haul him off to a detention center.”
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POPSObama Needs to Brush Up on Middle East History Saddam Hussein" and that the government of Iraq is "democratically elected." But he still has some history left to learn. "No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." But that's what the United States did in Germany and Japan, and in Iraq, as well. As one of the Democratic senators who insisted that the Iraqis meet benchmarks, Obama was a micromanager in that process himself. "We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity" into Afghanistan. And as for his claim that "Islam has always been a part of America's story," that's a stretch, and one that requires airbrushing out the war against the Barbary pirates. Most disturbingly, Obama seems to have gotten the history of the Israel-Palestine issue wrong. The plight of the Palestinians since 1948 or 1967 is not the moral equivalent of the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust, as Obama's "on the other hand" segue suggested. Michael Barone
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POPSRumsfeld: Mixing God with Intelligence and Bush???!!!! OMG One of the images was from March 31, 2003, showing a US tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the US invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Over the image was printed a verse from Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." The report by Robert Draper, who wrote a well-received book about Bush called "Dead Certain," also detailed the frustration and occasional fury of former officials who said Rumsfeld constantly undermined the president's goals. Draper said: "Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina."
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POPSCheney sought waterboarding of prisoner to 'uncover' nonexistent Saddam-Al Qaeda link
Quoted in the article: Lawrence Wilkerson essentially confirmed this today. Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida. So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.