EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»

They want to force war on us.  They were told before 9/11 that Bin ladin was determined to strike within the U.S. and that terrorists were going to flight school to use our jets as bombs and they did nothing to stop it.  They needed their "pearl harbor" event in order to start a war with a country that has and never could do anything to harm us.  Now they're trying to create another "false flag" operation to start it with Iran.  We have to stop these animals!  please, if you have never heard of a "false flag operation", look it up,  you'll be surprised of what our government is capable of.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

Interviewing Hersh during the journalism conference event, I asked him specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

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Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.

“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”

Transcript:

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.

…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.

Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.

They know they're lying and they just can't stop.

A July 30 WorldNetDaily.com article about author Jerome Corsi's forthcoming book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (Threshold Editions), asserts that the book "points out" that "Barack Obama admitted using drugs in his autobiography but never revealed if or when he stopped." WND quotes Corsi, who is also a WND staff reporter, asking in the book: "Did Obama ever use drugs in his days as a community organizer in Chicago, or when he was a state senator from Illinois? ... How about in the U.S. Senate? If Obama quit using drugs, the public inquiry certain to occur in a general election campaign for the presidency will most certainly aim at the when, how and why questions George W. Bush successfully avoided." But Corsi's reported allegation that Obama "never revealed if or when he stopped" using drugs is false: Obama wrote in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father (Crown, 1995), that he "stopped getting high" shortly after moving to New York City to attend Columbia University as an undergraduate.

From Dreams From My Father (Page 120):

When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he'd expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. Whenever Sadik tried to talk me into hitting a bar, I'd beg off with some tepid excuse, too much work or not enough cash.

Media Matters - First reported allegation in Corsi's Obama attack book is false

Is a cure for cancer lobby the same as propping up the oil lobby?

These lobbyist apologists are so full of shit.  A "cure for cancer" lobbyist is equivalent to an oil lobbyist.  Real public servants those oil lobbyists.

When asked how many lobbyists work at the McCain campaign, Rick Davis told Katie Couric: “we don’t make it a litmus test for employment at the McCain campaign.” But in May, after a series of reports about McCain’s campaign being run by lobbyists, Davis wrote a memo outlining a new campaign policy that said: “No person working for the Campaign may be a registered lobbyist or foreign agent, or receive compensation for any such activity.”  (h/t Sam)

Confused yet?

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What is faux good for? What are conservatives good at?

They lie about the motives of progressives and create fear and anger. That's all they're good for. Fear and anger against progressives. And their mindless listeners believe every lie they tell because they repeat them over and over again. If you tell a lie long enough it becomes true, right? It became true to this idiot believer. Enough that he unloaded on a church full of worshipers during a children's play of "Annie".

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/30/oreilly-hannity-and-savage-preferred-reading-for-jim-d-adkisson/

O’Reilly, Hannity and Savage preferred reading for Jim D. Adkisson

By: John Amato on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 7:00 PM - PDT

Are you surprised that the TN Church shooter’s reading material consisted of our favorite Conservatives?

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”

Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.

I’m sure to Hannity and BillO, the KnoxNews is just spreading liberal propaganda around to smear FOX and Savage because of their conservative views. It has nothing to do with their extreme positions. I’m only surprised the police didn’t find James Dobson and Pat Robertson reading material either, but I guess they haven’t had a chance to go through all of his things yet.

The Republican Propaganda Machine.

What i think of Faux Noise.

The moral party? Gimme a break.

Number of sitting U.S. senators in history who have been indicted: 10
Percent of them who were Republican: 80%
(Source: Fox News--they're finally good for something!)

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

The one who stood up for our rights ended up in prison.

Joe Nacchio is the principled telecom owner who refused to help George Bush spy on Americans.  For his patriotism and loyalty to the constitution and it's Bill of Rights, the Republican "Justice Department", went after him for a made up crime.  Just like they did Don Siegelman.  Both men were falsely convicted and put in prison.  Don Siegelman has been released because the case against him was made up and the prosecution hid evidence that exonerated him.  The same is becoming apparent in the Nacchio case.  I'll be looking forward to seeing what happens in this case.

Retirees cheer Nacchio decision - The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_10048833
Qwest retirees rejoiced over Wednesday's decision that a full panel of appellate judges will reconsider former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio's insider-trading conviction. "We were very pessimistic that this was going to happen, so we're delighted," said Mimi Hull, president of the Association of U S West Retirees. "We were very upset when the appeals court ordered a new trial and felt that they (the judges who ruled) really did not represent the views of the full appeals court." Nacchio served as Qwest's CEO from 1997 until he was ousted in June 2002. Under his watch, Qwest acquired U S West in June 2000, and the combined company nearly crumbled into bankruptcy two years later.

Why we hate them.

We must rid ourselves of corrupted legislators.  All of them.  Democrat and Republican.  Keep an eye on your representatives and let them know when they cross the line.  Stop putting up with these criminals.  It's our government if we work for it.

In Congress, no anti-corruption legislation in sight - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-giftban31-2008jul31,0,5638546.story
Congress has been awash in corruption scandals, the latest being the indictment of long-serving Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, but prospects for legislation to make questionable practices like Stevens' alleged acceptance of gifts illegal in their own right appear grim. A year after a bipartisan group of senators proposed giving the Justice Department important new clout in pursuing official misconduct, the Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act is apparently blocked in Congress. The legislation is aimed at stanching the stream of perks that lobbyists and companies give to members of Congress that fall short of outright bribes by making it a felony for lawmakers to accept gifts valued above those permitted by Senate rules and that are given to them because of their official status and access to power. It would appear to cover the sort of gifts that Stevens stands accused of getting from a powerful oil industry figure in Alaska -- more than $250,000 in improvements to his home near Anchorage and gifts including a Viking gas grill and a Land Rover, according to an indictment handed down Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington. Stevens is scheduled to make his first appearance in the case today in federal court in Washington.

War is very profitable for the oil industry. DRILL DRILL DRILL at $140 a barrel...

Why does the oil industry want every inch of american land and sea leased to them even though they've already got 80% of land and 30% of the sea leased and they're not drilling on it already? They don't want to drill to lower prices at the pump, they want to drill at $140 a barrel or more and republicans are toting their water for them by not signing onto the one bill that will lower the price of oil today, the anti speculation bill. Why would they support a bill that would reduce these profits for the oil industry, their sugar daddies? i ask you all to call your senators and tell them to move and vote yes on the anti speculation bill before their 6 week august break. Tell them not to leave us with these high prices while they run off to collect more money from their rich contributors before the election in november. that toll free number is 1-800-828-0498.
Rising Oil Prices Swell Profits at Exxon and Shell - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/01oil.html?ref=business
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported on Thursday that second-quarter income rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, the highest-ever for an American company. Net income of $2.22 a share compared with $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, in the quarter a year ago. Revenue rose 40 percent, to $138.1 billion, from $98.4 billion in the quarter a year ago. Excluding an after-tax charge of $290 million tied to an Exxon Valdez court settlement, earnings were $11.97 billion, or $2.27 a share. Excluding one-time charges, analysts had expected Exxon Mobil to earn $2.52 a share on revenue of $144 billion, according to Thomson Financial. With this quarter's result, Exxon topped its own record of $11.66 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

Another Bush Administration Liar.

After meeting with his cabinet today, President Bush renewed his call for “Congress to lift the legislative ban that prevents offshore exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf.” Bush has previously claimed that such offshore drilling can be done in a manner that will “ensure that our environment is protected.”

In order to support Bush’s message, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman went on Fox News today to push the claim that offshore drilling is safe for the environment. But in the midst of his interview, Bodman repeated the right-wing lie that no oil spilled in 2005 during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

JARRETT: Has technology improved so dramatically that drilling can now be done in a way that protects the environment?

BODMAN: I believe that it can. When we had Katrina and Rita, the two worst hurricanes in — at least in recent memory, in ‘05, some three years ago, there was not one case where we had a situation with oil or gas being spilled in the environment.

Watch it:

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As ThinkProgress has previously noted, the clear satellite evidence of major spills was borne out by final reports. In May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) published their offshore damage assessment: “113 platforms totally destroyed, and 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10 inches or larger diameter.”

In all, the two hurricanes caused 124 offshore spills for a total of 743,700 gallons, including six spills of 42,000 gallons or greater.

It’s one thing for right-wing hacks like the Wall Street Journal editorial page to push these lies, but America’s highest-ranking energy official should know better.

As long as he's OUR murdering inhumane tyrant, he can do what he wants.

   President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a refreshingly old-fashioned despot. He favours one-party rule, a police state based on fear, secret surveillance, summary arrest and interrogation of anyone too religious, rubber truncheons, electroshock treatment, needles under the fingernails, and, at least once, the boiling alive of a recalcitrant witness. Meanwhile, he makes long speeches to his parliament about how all opposition is treason and his enemies must be dismembered: "I'm prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic; if my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head."

    His megalomania is worthy of Tamerlane, the 14th-century Central Asian conqueror, statues of whom he has erected across Uzbekistan.

    Since 2002, Mr. Karimov has been an ally of the U.S. in the "war on terror." His website shows him in the company of George W. Bush and leading members of the Bush administration. Ever since he gave the U.S. control of his Khanbad military base in March, 2002, money, generals and congressmen have all poured in.

full story:

t r u t h o u t | Terrifying Ally Against Terror

The corporate party doesn't care if the poor, disabled and elderly die of cold and heat.

    Washington - Republicans on Saturday blocked the Senate from considering a bill next week that would nearly double federal aid to help the poor pay heating and air-conditioning bills.

    Although a dozen Senate Republicans support the measure, most voted with GOP leaders who would rather spend the time trumpeting their call to expand offshore oil drilling before Congress takes six weeks off for vacation and the presidential nominating conventions.

    "The American resources on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts contain 14 billion barrels at a minimum ... more than we have imported from the Persian Gulf in the last 15 years," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

    Democrats needed 60 votes to substitute the measure on heating and air-conditioning aid in place of the debate on an expansion of offshore drilling championed by President Bush and GOP presidential candidate John McCain. They got 50 votes Saturday, with 35 Republicans voting against changing the topic.

    "Do we vote to keep the old, the sick and kids alive when the weather gets cold or very, very hot, or do we spend money on people who make huge campaign contributions? That is part of what this debate is about," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

    The government is devoting $2.6 billion in subsidies for helping people with low incomes pay heating and air-conditioning bills this year. Sanders' bill would nearly double that to $5.1 billion.

    While Senate Democrats said they hoped to pass it next week, Democrats in the House were looking at the popular subsidies for anchoring a second economic aid bill they want to push in September, closer to the November election.

    Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is vehemently against letting the House vote on offshore drilling. She and Democratic leaders in the Senate also have shut down normal summer work on spending bills to prevent offshore drilling from getting a legislative footing in the appropriations committees.

t r u t h o u t | Senate Republicans Block Heating Aid Bill

t r u t h o u t | Unequal America

Causes and consequences of the wide-and growing-gap between rich and poor.

    When Majid Ezzati thinks about declining life expectancy, he says, "I think of an epidemic like HIV, or I think of the collapse of a social system, like in the former Soviet Union." But such a decline is happening right now in some parts of the United States. Between 1983 and 1999, men's life expectancy decreased in more than 50 U.S. counties, according to a recent study by Ezzati, associate professor of international health at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and colleagues. For women, the news was even worse: life expectancy decreased in more than 900 counties-more than a quarter of the total. This means 4 percent of American men and 19 percent of American women can expect their lives to be shorter than or, at best, the same length as those of people in their home counties two decades ago.

    The United States no longer boasts anywhere near the world's longest life expectancy. It doesn't even make the top 40. In this and many other ways, the richest nation on earth is not the healthiest. Ezzati's finding is unsettling on its face, but scholars find further cause for concern in the pattern of health disparities. Poor health is not distributed evenly across the population, but concentrated among the disadvantaged.

    Disparities in health tend to fall along income lines everywhere: the poor generally get sicker and die sooner than the rich. But in the United States, the gap between the rich and the poor is far wider than in most other developed democracies, and it is getting wider. That is true both before and after taxes: the United States also does less than most other rich democracies to redistribute income from the rich to the poor.

    Americans, on average, have a higher tolerance for income inequality than their European counterparts. American attitudes focus on equality of opportunity, while Europeans tend to see fairness in equal outcomes. Among Americans, differences of opinion about inequality can easily degenerate into partisan disputes over whether poor people deserve help and sympathy or should instead pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The study of inequality attempts to test inequality's effects on society, and it is delivering findings that command both sides' attention.

For the whole story:

t r u t h o u t | Unequal America

Daily Kos: House Judiciary Committee cites Karl Rove for contempt

The House Judiciary Committee just voted along strict party lines, 20-14, to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress for his failure to appear in response to the duly authorized subpoenas seeking his testimony in the matter of the US Attorney firings and the allegations of his interference in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

The resolution now goes to the full House, where a straight majority vote will be necessary for formally and officially locking in the contempt citation.

It's at that stage that the decision of which procedure to utilize -- statutory contempt which gets referred for prosecution to the US Attorney, or inherent contempt which is prosecuted by the House itself in a trial before the body -- is made.

The House's earlier contempt citations against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers were referred under the statutory contempt procedure to the US Attorney who, at the instruction of the White House and the Department of Justice, declined to prosecute the cases. An ironic situation, given that the contempt citations arose in the context of an investigation into whether or not the DOJ and the White House were improperly directing prosecutorial decisions of the US Attorneys.

The House Judiciary Committee subsequently filed suit in federal court, seeking an order compelling the US Attorney to proceed with the prosecution, and somehow -- magically! -- the case was assigned to former Whitewater Deputy Independent Counsel John D. Bates, the federal judge who dismissed the Plame lawsuit, dismissed the Cheney Energy Task Force lawsuit, upheld the validity of Bush's signature on an a bill not properly passed in the same form by both houses of Congress, and dismissed the DNC's lawsuit seeking to force the FEC to rule on John McCain's attempt to withdraw from his presidential campaign's public financing commitments.

I don't know about you, but I'm not really feeling the fear with respect to the statutory contempt thing.

One other possibility: Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) testified in last Friday's non-impeachment hearing before the Judiciary Committee regarding his legislation that would grant Congress the authority to petition the courts to appoint a special prosecutor in cases where the DOJ refused to take up referrals of contempt of Congress. That bill, H.R. 6508, now sits before the Judiciary Committee awaiting action, albeit with powerful cosponsors including Chairman Conyers, and subcommittee chairs Linda Sanchez and Jerry Nadler.

Probably time to get moving on that.

Daily Kos: House Judiciary Committee cites Karl Rove for contempt

You can't have a "war" on a tactic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902041.html
The Bush administration's terrorism-fighting strategy has not significantly undermined al-Qaeda's capabilities, according to a major new study that argues the struggle against terrorism is better waged by law enforcement agencies than by armies. The study by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. also contends that the administration committed a fundamental error in portraying the conflict with al-Qaeda as a "war on terrorism." The phrase falsely suggests that there can be a battlefield solution to terrorism, and symbolically conveys warrior status on terrorists, it said. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors," authors Seth Jones and Martin Libicki write in "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda," a 200-page volume released yesterday. But the authors contend that al-Qaeda has sabotaged itself by creating ever greater numbers of enemies while not broadening its base of support. "Al-Qaeda's probability of success in actually overthrowing any government is close to zero," the report states.