remember when oil was 20 dollars a barrrel?

And Bush's war only cost We the People (the American taxpayers) a billion a week?
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.

Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.

But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.

The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.

Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.

The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.

"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

The 14 NO votes

The 14 N0 votes:
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?

Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

Democrats fold

no meter on the oil pumps

Refresh my memory... do you recall on the evening of "Shock and Awe" when Dubya got on television before the world to talk to the people of soon to be occupied Iraq, and all he said to them was to not disturb the oil?

And after the preemptive invasion, when the museums and government offices were being looted ("stuff happens"), the Ministry of Oil was the only building in Iraq being protected by American troops?

Remember the insider joke ... "Operation Iraqi Liberation"?

Remember the mainstream media echo chamber trumpeting the "oil for food scandal"? At least the children of Iraq were obese under Saddam. Today with the "oil for chaos" scandal that is not being mentioned in the American Idol obsessed press, Iraqi children are facing water borne parasitic disease, dissappeared medical service, and malnutrition.
Mission Accomplished.

Tell me, how much more looting do Bush's and Cheney's cronies deserve? Will they ever have enough? Fu*%ing insatiable wolves, indeed, that's what they are.

Tell me, how much more chaos would there be if American troops left right now? Will the twit Neocons EVER spill enough blood and shoot enough guns to prop up their manhood?

Sounds like PLENTY of chaos right now.
But, refresh my memory... didn't the NeoCon ideologist Michael Ledeen say that chaos was their goal?
Yes he did.

Dear Senator Levin, I heard today that your biggest financial support comes from AIPAC.
How does the Israeli lobby serve the citizens of the state of Michigan?
Is that why you are the flip side of the same coin? Heads we get crony capitalism and corporate welfare and a fascist military industrial economy, tails we get the same thing.
Why DO you rubber stamp the worst administration in history?


How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen? Mystery of the Missing Meters
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
Posted on April 30, 2007(link)The line of ships at the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) stretches south to the horizon, patiently waiting in the searing heat of the Northern Arabian Gulf as four giant supertankers load up. Close by, two more tankers fill up at the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT). Guarding both terminals are dozens of heavily-armed U.S. Navy troops and Iraqi Marines who live on the platforms.

These two offshore terminals, a maze of pipes and precarious metal walkways, deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world. If the southern oil fields are the heart of Iraq's economy, its main arteries are three 40-plus inch pipelines that stretch some 52 miles from Iraq's wells to the ports.

Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT -- has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.

Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. "Iraq is the victim of the biggest robbery of its oil production in modern history," blazed a March 2006 headline in Azzaman, Iraq's most widely read newspaper. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.

"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told the Nation (U.S.) magazine last month. "Emir al-Hakim [the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."

The resource curse

The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses.

Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world.

Economists call this the "resource curse." Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.

Iraq's main revenue source - earnings from the export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas - is currently managed by the Development Fund for Iraq. DFI's May 21, 2003 document, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, assigns this money to benefit the Iraqi people. The resolution replaces the previous United Nations-run Oil-for-Food scheme that lasted from 1997 until the March 2003 invasion.

Almost four years after the DFI was created, officially logged crude sales have generated more than $80 billion. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) managed the DFI from the immediate aftermath of Saddam's removal until June 28, 2004, when the CPA was disbanded. During those 14 months, the CPA spent $19.6 billion of Iraq's DFI funds. The three succeeding governments have been officially in charge of the DFI revenues, although the influence of the U.S. military and political advisors has remained significant throughout. In the 32 months after the CPA left, the three governments spent $47 billion more.

Halliburton & Parsons

U.S. contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)

Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.

These companies have a lot of experience at the terminals where the black market now thrives. Indeed, Halliburton built the ABOT terminal, then known as Mina al-Bakr, in the early1970s. After it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Halliburton repaired the terminal, before it was bombed yet again during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The Khor al-Amaya oil terminal also saw a similar cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Built with Halliburton 's help in 1973, it was heavily damaged by Iranian commandos during the Iran-Iraq war, then again during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and most recently in May 2006 by a major fire that destroyed 70 percent of its facilities. During the sanctions, Ingersoll Dresser Pump Company, a Halliburton subsidiary, had a secret contract to sell Iraq spare parts, compressors, and firefighting equipment for the refurbishment.

( Halliburton also a long history near the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where Iraq sells oil produced at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Halliburton runs the nearby U.S. military base at Incirlik, which was the staging ground for Operation Northern Watch that provided air protection for the Kurds during the 1990s.)

Measuring the oil

With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Haliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals.

The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the probelm has persisted for four years.

After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields. (The northern oil fields in Kirkuk, which supply the Beiji refinery in Iraq and export crude to the Turkish port of Adana, has reliable metering but little oil to measure since insurgent attacks largely shut down the facility.)

Lieutenant Aaron Bergman, the U.S. Navy officer in charge of Mobile Security Squadron 7 at ABOT, says export authorities have "guesstimated" how much is being sold, with a back-of-the-envelope formula: Every centimeter a tanker lowers into the water equals 6,000 barrels of oil cargo.

"So you can imagine," he said earlier this month to Stars & Stripes, a newspaper serving the U.S. military, the numbers could be off, "A couple of inches could equal 180,000 barrels of fuel."

"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told KTVT, a Texas television station.

Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced. One excuse is that the job of calibration requires special devices to assess the current meters and security issues make importing these devises problematic. Yet that and other security-related explanations fall apart given that the oil terminals are under 24 hour high security guard, lie more than 50 miles off-shore, and are accessible only by helicopter or ship.

There are two possible explanations: that the project has been delayed by bureaucracy or that vested interests benefiting from the lack of oil metering (such as smugglers or corrupt officials) have prevented the project from moving forward.

Skyrocketing Costs

The RIO II project, which includes the meter repair work, has come under much criticism, although specific details are scarce.

For example, the Bush administration issued Halliburton the RIO II order in January 2004 and gave detailed task orders in June. But despite not starting work until November 2004, the company charged the government millions of dollars for engineers who sat idle. Halliburton 's $296 million bill included at least 55 percent overhead. (In an estimate due later this month, SIGIR may predicts even higher overhead costs.)

A Parsons joint venture (with Worley of Australia), was also issued a contract in January 2004, given detailed task orders in June, and started work in July 2004. It has also been accused of charging high overhead costs while idle, although not as much as Halliburton . SIGIR estimate pegs its overhead at 43 percent.

In addition, in a series of scathing internal reports uncovered by Congressman Henry Waxman, supervisors Foster Wheeler criticized Halliburton 's cost. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a "cure" notice on January 29, 2005, ordering Halliburton to do a better job or else. After Halliburton did improve its cost controls, the military turned over the southern oil work to Parsons in mid 2005.

When Parsons took over the contracts, two years after the invasion, it hired a Saudi Arabian sub-contractor, Alaa for Industry, to help repair or replace the meters.

The turbine meters were shipped to Kuwait for repairs but do not appear to have been fixed in a timely manner, although some have been fixed and re-installed earlier this year. Unofficial sources suggest that the Kuwaiti bureaucracy delayed the repair work: "The real reason for the hindrance to work at the ABOT is because Kuwait has a vested interest in minimizing Iraqi oil exports," an anonymous source who worked on the project said. His claim could not be verified.

In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.

Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."

The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.

A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.

Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.

"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."

Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted for this report, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.

Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, said. "If you meaure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."

U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.

Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. Reached for this article, Schorn said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.

Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.

Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor of CorpWatch and the author of 'Iraq Inc.' (Seven Stories Press, September 2004).

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51218/

refresh my memory about Tillman and Lynch

I recall reading that Tillman was becoming disillusioned, and the news was that Pat was planning to meet with his Congressman when his tour was over, just before he was 'killed'.
Coincidentally, the War Party needed a big story for Civilian Propaganda to divert attention from the emerging Abu Grahib story (remember, they had plenty of lead time and released the torture pictures on their own schedule.)

Timing is everything.
It was all fishy to me from Day One.

And...
I recall reading that Jessica was portrayed as a naive young "blond" who "took a wrong turn" and ended up in a nest of Iraqis. I wondered why in the hell she didn't follow her GPS as she was trained to do?

Or if... her GPS directed her to make the wrong-way turn, who could have programmed it to do that? Wasn't that convenient, if you needed her character for a "story"?

I remember reading her Iraqi doctor's story and how she wasn't mistreated at all, and that her "rescuers" had to wait a whole day to get the proper press in to film the rescue.
Coincidentally, the War Party needed a romantic war story that would appeal to the young right, for the Office of Civilian Propaganda to divert attention from the Rachael Corry story that was playing in the foreign press and appealing to the young left. Their brave young girl soldier story would suck all of the air out of the brave young girl peace-nic being bulldozed by the Israelis story.

Timing is everything in war. You do bad things, make contracts, tell lies, steal elections, roll over innocents, let others be killed, make more contracts and then you Move On. Apologies? if necessary. No reparations.

they look like damn nice kids

Living in Hell, brought to them by the U.S. of A.

Follow the link to watch the series.
I am so sorry, I wish my fellow Americans were sorry.
We turned nice college kids into war zone survivors. Go, watch the series.

anything goes in war, that's why we have wars

by Anti-Flag
******************************
The war resisters league has posted their new 2008 pie chart...
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm
******************************
Viscount Lacarte* talking about Vonnegut (link) on NewCritics.com

"I'm a blogger, not a writer..."* Not so, Viscount.

Our culture has seemingly become inured to the horrors of war. Even now as the tide is ever so slowly turning, many people still don’t know what war is. What it does to people.

Funny thing about these conservatives. They decry liberals and intellectuals for being relativists. You know. “The buck has to stop someplace. Everything can’t be ok I’m_ok_you’re_ ok ok. Ok?”

Except when it comes to war. In a war, you can just kill people because that is what war is. War is the ultimate suspension of morality. Everything is ok if it is a war. It’s like hall pass in the school of decency. It’s like a get_out_of_jail_free card in “Monopoly – The Jesus Edition.” Soldiers can break into someone’s house, kill everyone, and then go, “Oops. Wrong house.” And then move on. Let’s go have a beer and talk to the Chaplin.

Or you can bomb an entire non-military target city famous for its delicate artwork and historical architecture, and kill 100,000 people.

WWII. Maybe it could have been avoided, but since it wasn’t we did what we had to do. I don’t know if we had to bomb Dresden or not. I don’t know if we had to drop the second nuke on Japan or not. Doesn’t matter now. That shit happens in war. Which is why us asshole, pussy, un-American, un-patriotic etc. liberals believe it should be the last resort after all other alternatives have been exhausted.

Maybe life is just a collection of moments, and maybe we just have to struggle through the bad ones and enjoy the good ones.

Maybe, just maybe next time we’ll remember this time - and say “no.”

Laura and Dubya on "Sacrifice"

ANN CURRY: Do you know the American people are suffering… watching [Iraq]?

LAURA BUSH: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm’s way.

AC: What do you think the American people need to know…

LB: Well, I hope they do know the burden of worry that’s on his shoulders every single day for our troops. And I think they do. I think if they don’t, they’re not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are.

AC: It must be hard for you to watch him in this.

LB: It’s hard. Of course, it’s absolutely hard.

Olberman again

from Whitehouse.org

You may not recall, but the previous Vietraq meatgrinder image Whitehouse.gov published was chewing up fewer troops.
You tell me - I'd like to know, why did Dubya's new budget propose cutting funds for Veteran's medical care at the same time he was surging more troops into the meatgrinder?

President Bush Spits on Returning Soldiers

...figuratively speaking, of course.
He can't spit on returning soldiers in the Vet's hospitals if he doesn't visit them.

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01


Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.

"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."

Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."

This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.

"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."

Along with the government promises, the American public, determined not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.

Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.

Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."

Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members.

Evis Morales's severely wounded son was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Walter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. "They just let me off the bus and said 'Bye-bye,' " recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident.

Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer.

"If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting."

Soldiers, wives, mothers, social workers and the heads of volunteer organizations have complained repeatedly to the military command about what one called "The Handbook No One Gets" that would explain life as an outpatient. Most soldiers polled in the March survey said they got their information from friends. Only 12 percent said any Army literature had been helpful.

"They've been behind from Day One," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. "Even the stuff they've fixed has only been patched."

Among the public, Davis said, "there's vast appreciation for soldiers, but there's a lack of focus on what happens to them" when they return. "It's awful."

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."

Acknowledging the problems with outpatient care, Weightman said Walter Reed has taken steps over the past year to improve conditions for the outpatient army, which at its peak in summer 2005 numbered nearly 900, not to mention the hundreds of family members who come to care for them. One platoon sergeant used to be in charge of 125 patients; now each one manages 30. Platoon sergeants with psychological problems are more carefully screened. And officials have increased the numbers of case managers and patient advocates to help with the complex disability benefit process, which Weightman called "one of the biggest sources of delay."

And to help steer the wounded and their families through the complicated bureaucracy, Weightman said, Walter Reed has recently begun holding twice-weekly informational meetings. "We felt we were pushing information out before, but the reality is, it was overwhelming," he said. "Is it fail-proof? No. But we've put more resources on it."

He said a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq has Walter Reed bracing for "potentially a lot more" casualties.

Bureaucratic Battles

The best known of the Army's medical centers, Walter Reed opened in 1909 with 10 patients. It has treated the wounded from every war since, and nearly one of every four service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The outpatients are assigned to one of five buildings attached to the post, including Building 18, just across from the front gates on Georgia Avenue. To accommodate the overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and apartments. Living conditions range from the disrepair of Building 18 to the relative elegance of Mologne House, a hotel that opened on the post in 1998, when the typical guest was a visiting family member or a retiree on vacation.

The Pentagon has announced plans to close Walter Reed by 2011, but that hasn't stopped the flow of casualties. Three times a week, school buses painted white and fitted with stretchers and blackened windows stream down Georgia Avenue. Sirens blaring, they deliver soldiers groggy from a pain-relief cocktail at the end of their long trip from Iraq via Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Andrews Air Force Base.

Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed's hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.

A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn't even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.

Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division's Ghost Recon Platoon until he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper; "Lone Wolf" was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.

"I thought, 'Shouldn't they contact me?' " he said. "I didn't understand the paperwork. I'd start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: 'I'm your case manager. Where have you been?'

"Well, I've been here! Jeez Louise, people, I'm your hospital patient!"

Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.

One outpatient, a 57-year-old staff sergeant who had a heart attack in Afghanistan, was given 200 rooms to supervise at the end of 2005. He quickly discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would check in by phone. "We called them 'call-in patients,' " said Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from the hospital.

Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases.

The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn't find a record of her service.

Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to replace the bloody one left behind on a medic's stretcher. When he finally tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was mistakenly left off the "GWOT list" -- the list of "Global War on Terrorism" patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.

He brought his Purple Heart to the clerk to prove he was in Iraq.

Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.

The Army has tried to re-create the organization of a typical military unit at Walter Reed. Soldiers are assigned to one of two companies while they are outpatients -- the Medical Holding Company (Medhold) for active-duty soldiers and the Medical Holdover Company for Reserve and National Guard soldiers. The companies are broken into platoons that are led by platoon sergeants, the Army equivalent of a parent.

Under normal circumstances, good sergeants know everything about the soldiers under their charge: vices and talents, moods and bad habits, even family stresses.

At Walter Reed, however, outpatients have been drafted to serve as platoon sergeants and have struggled with their responsibilities. Sgt. David Thomas, a 42-year-old amputee with the Tennessee National Guard, said his platoon sergeant couldn't remember his name. "We wondered if he had mental problems," Thomas said. "Sometimes I'd wear my leg, other times I'd take my wheelchair. He would think I was a different person. We thought, 'My God, has this man lost it?' "

Civilian care coordinators and case managers are supposed to track injured soldiers and help them with appointments, but government investigators and soldiers complain that they are poorly trained and often do not understand the system.

One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said.

Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call. When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, "They don't even know you exist."

"They didn't know who I was or where I was," the soldier said. "And I was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day."

The lack of accountability weighed on Shannon. He hated the isolation of the younger troops. The Army's failure to account for them each day wore on him. When a 19-year-old soldier down the hall died, Shannon knew he had to take action.

The soldier, Cpl. Jeremy Harper, returned from Iraq with PTSD after seeing three buddies die. He kept his room dark, refused his combat medals and always seemed heavily medicated, said people who knew him. According to his mother, Harper was drunkenly wandering the lobby of the Mologne House on New Year's Eve 2004, looking for a ride home to West Virginia. The next morning he was found dead in his room. An autopsy showed alcohol poisoning, she said.

"I can't understand how they could have let kids under the age of 21 have liquor," said Victoria Harper, crying. "He was supposed to be right there at Walter Reed hospital. . . . I feel that they didn't take care of him or watch him as close as they should have."

The Army posthumously awarded Harper a Bronze Star for his actions in Iraq.

Shannon viewed Harper's death as symptomatic of a larger tragedy -- the Army had broken its covenant with its troops. "Somebody didn't take care of him," he would later say. "It makes me want to cry. "

Shannon and another soldier decided to keep tabs on the brain injury ward. "I'm a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, and I take care of people," he said. The two soldiers walked the ward every day with a list of names. If a name dropped off the large white board at the nurses' station, Shannon would hound the nurses to check their files and figure out where the soldier had gone.

Sometimes the patients had been transferred to another hospital. If they had been released to one of the residences on post, Shannon and his buddy would pester the front desk managers to make sure the new charges were indeed there. "But two out of 10, when I asked where they were, they'd just say, 'They're gone,' " Shannon said.

Even after Weightman and his commanders instituted new measures to keep better track of soldiers, two young men left post one night in November and died in a high-speed car crash in Virginia. The driver was supposed to be restricted to Walter Reed because he had tested positive for illegal drugs, Weightman said.

Part of the tension at Walter Reed comes from a setting that is both military and medical. Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, the squad leader who lost one leg and the use of his other in a grenade attack, said his recovery was made more difficult by a Marine liaison officer who had never seen combat but dogged him about having his mother in his room on post. The rules allowed her to be there, but the officer said she was taking up valuable bed space.

"When you join the Marine Corps, they tell you, you can forget about your mama. 'You have no mama. We are your mama,' " Groves said. "That training works in combat. It doesn't work when you are wounded."

Frustration at Every Turn

The frustrations of an outpatient's day begin before dawn. On a dark, rain-soaked morning this winter, Sgt. Archie Benware, 53, hobbled over to his National Guard platoon office at Walter Reed. Benware had done two tours in Iraq. His head had been crushed between two 2,100-pound concrete barriers in Ramadi, and now it was dented like a tin can. His legs were stiff from knee surgery. But here he was, trying to take care of business.

At the platoon office, he scanned the white board on the wall. Six soldiers were listed as AWOL. The platoon sergeant was nowhere to be found, leaving several soldiers stranded with their requests.

Benware walked around the corner to arrange a dental appointment -- his teeth were knocked out in the accident. He was told by a case manager that another case worker, not his doctor, would have to approve the procedure.

"Goddamn it, that's unbelievable!" snapped his wife, Barb, who accompanied him because he can no longer remember all of his appointments.

Not as unbelievable as the time he received a manila envelope containing the gynecological report of a young female soldier.

Next came 7 a.m. formation, one way Walter Reed tries to keep track of hundreds of wounded. Formation is also held to maintain some discipline. Soldiers limp to the old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow. Army regulations say they can't use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.

"Fall in!" a platoon sergeant shouted at Friday formation. The noisy room of soldiers turned silent.

An Army chaplain opened with a verse from the Bible. "Why are we here?" she asked. She talked about heroes and service to country. "We were injured in many ways."

Someone announced free tickets to hockey games, a Ravens game, a movie screening, a dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, all compliments of local businesses.

Every formation includes a safety briefing. Usually it is a warning about mixing alcohol with meds, or driving too fast, or domestic abuse. "Do not beat your spouse or children. Do not let your spouse or children beat you," a sergeant said, to laughter. This morning's briefing included a warning about black ice, a particular menace to the amputees.

Dress warm, the sergeant said. "I see some guys rolling around in their wheelchairs in 30 degrees in T-shirts."

Soldiers hate formation for its petty condescension. They gutted out a year in the desert, and now they are being treated like children.

"I'm trying to think outside the box here, maybe moving formation to Wagner Gym," the commander said, addressing concerns that formation was too far from soldiers' quarters in the cold weather. "But guess what? Those are nice wood floors. They have to be covered by a tarp. There's a tarp that's got to be rolled out over the wooden floors. Then it has to be cleaned, with 400 soldiers stepping all over it. Then it's got to be rolled up."

"Now, who thinks Wagner Gym is a good idea?"

Explaining this strange world to family members is not easy. At an orientation for new arrivals, a staff sergeant walked them through the idiosyncrasies of Army financing. He said one relative could receive a 15-day advance on the $64 per diem either in cash or as an electronic transfer: "I highly recommend that you take the cash," he said. "There's no guarantee the transfer will get to your bank." The audience yawned.

Actually, he went on, relatives can collect only 80 percent of this advance, which comes to $51.20 a day. "The cashier has no change, so we drop to $50. We give you the rest" -- the $1.20 a day -- "when you leave."

The crowd was anxious, exhausted. A child crawled on the floor. The sergeant plowed on. "You need to figure out how long your loved one is going to be an inpatient," he said, something even the doctors can't accurately predict from day to day. "Because if you sign up for the lodging advance," which is $150 a day, "and they get out the next day, you owe the government the advance back of $150 a day."

A case manager took the floor to remind everyone that soldiers are required to be in uniform most of the time, though some of the wounded are amputees or their legs are pinned together by bulky braces. "We have break-away clothing with Velcro!" she announced with a smile. "Welcome to Walter Reed!"

A Bleak Life in Building 18

"Building 18! There is a rodent infestation issue!" bellowed the commander to his troops one morning at formation. "It doesn't help when you live like a rodent! I can't believe people live like that! I was appalled by some of your rooms!"

Life in Building 18 is the bleakest homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care in return for their sacrifices.

One case manager was so disgusted, she bought roach bombs for the rooms. Mouse traps are handed out. It doesn't help that soldiers there subsist on carry-out food because the hospital cafeteria is such a hike on cold nights. They make do with microwaves and hot plates.

Army officials say they "started an aggressive campaign to deal with the mice infestation" last October and that the problem is now at a "manageable level." They also say they will "review all outstanding work orders" in the next 30 days.

Soldiers discharged from the psychiatric ward are often assigned to Building 18. Buses and ambulances blare all night. While injured soldiers pull guard duty in the foyer, a broken garage door allows unmonitored entry from the rear. Struggling with schizophrenia, PTSD, paranoid delusional disorder and traumatic brain injury, soldiers feel especially vulnerable in that setting, just outside the post gates, on a street where drug dealers work the corner at night.

"I've been close to mortars. I've held my own pretty good," said Spec. George Romero, 25, who came back from Iraq with a psychological disorder. "But here . . . I think it has affected my ability to get over it . . . dealing with potential threats every day."

After Spec. Jeremy Duncan, 30, got out of the hospital and was assigned to Building 18, he had to navigate across the traffic of Georgia Avenue for appointments. Even after knee surgery, he had to limp back and forth on crutches and in pain. Over time, black mold invaded his room.

But Duncan would rather suffer with the mold than move to another room and share his convalescence in tight quarters with a wounded stranger. "I have mold on the walls, a hole in the shower ceiling, but . . . I don't want someone waking me up coming in."

Wilson, the clinical social worker at Walter Reed, was part of a staff team that recognized Building 18's toll on the wounded. He mapped out a plan and, in September, was given a $30,000 grant from the Commander's Initiative Account for improvements. He ordered some equipment, including a pool table and air hockey table, which have not yet arrived. A Psychiatry Department functionary held up the rest of the money because she feared that buying a lot of recreational equipment close to Christmas would trigger an audit, Wilson said.

In January, Wilson was told that the funds were no longer available and that he would have to submit a new request. "It's absurd," he said. "Seven months of work down the drain. I have nothing to show for this project. It's a great example of what we're up against."

A pool table and two flat-screen TVs were eventually donated from elsewhere.

But Wilson had had enough. Three weeks ago he turned in his resignation. "It's too difficult to get anything done with this broken-down bureaucracy," he said.

At town hall meetings, the soldiers of Building 18 keep pushing commanders to improve conditions. But some things have gotten worse. In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.

"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report

Dubya plans to have a whole lotta collateral damage in Iran

This weekend Iran called for the Mideast to become a nuclear-free region. All of its neighbors have missiles. Israel has hundreds of nukes. Two countries on its borders have Imperial American Armies poised to strike. There are three battle groups waiting in the gulf. There are over 700 targets selected, something like 50 of them will include bunker busters, and only God and his son Dubya know what else.

The pretext for war has been catapulted over and over.
Even if the MSM doesn't believe it, they repeat it repeat it repeat it as if it had merit. A false pretext become part of the context.

Mercury is in retrograde.

The full moon is on March 3.

The Blond has been sacrificed. (Did anyone else notice how much dead Princess Diana is in the news again?)

The God is propitiated. (Why do I associate Superbowl ads with Viagra? The subliminal imagery of the yearly family viewing spectacular Superbowl gets us rockin' for SOMETHIN', doesn't it...)
Bread and circuses.

Please don't passively watch the Iranian fireworks on television if offered the chance. it's not the 4th of July over Disneyworld. The rocket's red glare doesn't make us right. That red is blood. Join me in boycotting the Bush Dynasty's newest conquest.

Seriously, the questions we should be debating:
Is Iran a sovereign nation?
Does any nation other than America and Israel have the right to defend itself from predation, invasion, incursion?
Why don't the multi-national corporations pay the going rate for protection, instead of forcing the American taxpayers to subsidize their profits with our life blood and the vitality of our economy? Or is our militarism all we have left to support our economy?

US 'Iran attack plans' revealed
BBC

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.
The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.
The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.
But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.
That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.

Two triggers
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran. (Editorial Note: Which Can Be Arranged, wink wink nod nod)

Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.
The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians.
Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says.

Deadline
Earlier this month US officers in Iraq said they had evidence Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi Shia militias. However the most senior US military officer later cast doubt on this, saying that they only had proof that weapons "made in Iran" were being used in Iraq.
Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said he did not know that the Iranian government "clearly knows or is complicit" in this.
At the time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the accusations were "excuses to prolong the stay" of US forces in Iraq.
Middle East analysts have recently voiced their fears of catastrophic consequences for any such US attack on Iran.
Britain's previous ambassador to Tehran, Sir Richard Dalton, told the BBC it would backfire badly by probably encouraging the Iranian government to develop a nuclear weapon in the long term.
Last year Iran resumed uranium enrichment - a process that can make fuel for power stations or, if greatly enriched, material for a nuclear bomb.
Tehran insists its programme is for civil use only, but Western countries suspect Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons.
The UN Security Council has called on Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium by 21 February.
If it does not, and if the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms this, the resolution says that further economic sanctions will be considered.

Food for Thought

Major investment bank issues warning on strike against Iran
01/15/2007
by Michael Roston
Raw Story

Bank sees February or March timeline if Israel strikes

After a month of its being on the web I should be able to post this with no problem. Follow the link to read the original.
We march triumphant over the blood and bones of others and plan our investments, and meanwhile Congress, the only stop to the flood, argues about Nancy Pelosi's airplane priveleges.

Warning that investors might be "in for a shock," a major investment bank has told the financial community that a preemptive strike by Israel with American backing could hit Iran's nuclear program, RAW STORY has learned.

The banking division of ING Group released a memo on Jan. 9 entitled "Attacking Iran: The market impact of a surprise Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities."

ING is a global financial services company of Dutch origin that includes banking, insurance, and other divisions. The report was authored by Charles Robertson, the Chief Economist for Emerging Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He also authored an update in ING's daily update, Prophet, that further underscored the bank's perception of the risks of an attack.

ING's Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not an option for such a geographically small country....So if Israel is convinced Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, it must presumably act at some point."

Sketching out the time line for an attack, Robertson says that "we can be fairly sure that if Israel is going to act, it will be keen to do so while Bush and Cheney are in the White House."

Robertson suggests a February-March 2007 timeframe for several reasons. First, there is a comparable situation to Israel's strike on Iraq's nuclear program in 1981, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political troubles within Israel. Second, late February will see Iran's deadline to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1737, and Israel could use a failure of Iran and the UN to follow through as justification for a strike. Finally, greater US military presence in the region at that time could be seen by Israel as the protection from retaliation that it needs.

In his Jan. 15 update, Robertson points to a political reason that could make the assault more likely – personnel changes in the Bush administration may have sidelined opponents of attacking Iran.

Preisdent Bush recently removed General John Abizaid as commander of US forces in the Middle East and John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence, both of whom have said attacking Iran is not a priority or the right move at this time. The deployment of Patriot missile batteries, highlighted in President Bush's recent White House speech on America's Iraq policy, also pointed to a need to defend against Iranian missiles.

The ING memo was first sent to RAW STORY as an anonymous tip and confirmed Monday by staff in the bank's emerging markets office, who passed along the Jan. 15 update. The full PDF documents can be downloaded at (the Raw Story link) for the Jan. 9 report, and follow (the Raw Stroy link) for the Jan. 15 update. A screenshot of the first page is provided (on the Raw Story Link).

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Al-Arabiya that while his country would hold talks with the United States "under appropriate conditions," the Jerusalem Post reported, but that it "would never conduct similar discussions with Israel, since it didn't recognize the Jewish state's existence."

crony military contractor has six degrees of separation from Michigan

Anyone who hasn't heard the mothers of hirelings of military contractors killed in Iraq had a chance today to hear their testimony before Congress.
How their sons were under equipped and left in harm's way. How does this jibe with no bid and cost plus? PROFIT is JOB ONE!
(Jebsus would be Soo Proud of his little Christian Coalition military profiteers.)


Remember the vision of the burned dragged corpses hanging from the bridge?
Those mothers saw those images too.

Blackwater has a particular reputation that we should note. But Blackwater doesn't only contract in Iraq.
Remember N.O. LA after Katrina? The stadium, the guarded bridges out, the shooting at black "looters" (as opposed to white survivors) carrying loaves of old bread from flooded stores? Blackwater had that lucrative FEMA security contract.

And now Blackwater is contracting outsourcing "police" work in these United States as public police agencies are downsized underfunded and squeezed by Reaganomic politics.

Blackwater should also be of special interest to Michiganders who just voted down Dick DeVos' bid for governorship in 2006, a message in times when the downsizing of Michigan's manufacturing base has caused a crisis.
And Dick sunk a personal fortune into one of the richest races in history for any governorship.
Well, you ask, what is Blackwater's relationship to Michigan? Dick DeVos' wife Betsy, who once ran the Republican Party in Michigan, is Betsy Prince DeVos, her brother Eric Prince is the founder and CEO of Blackwater.

NOTE: I live by coincidence... I just Googled "CEO Eric Prince" to verify my memory, and right on top was this:

Erik Prince, Blackwater War Profiteer, Attacks Iraq for Sale
By Robert Greenwald on the Huffington Post


"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" tells the story of Erik Prince and Blackwater, and their consistent profiting from the war. As the film is seen across the United States, it is having a powerful effect on audiences. People are responding strongly to the emotional and gut wrenching story of Prince choosing profit over patriotism as he cuts corners at Blackwater in his relentless pursuit of money.

The film tells the story of two young men who are killed as a result of Blackwater focusing on profits, and their grieving and enraged mothers. These mothers are taking the fight to Blackwater and when they see the film, audiences are also activated to take steps to stop Blackwater.

Sadly, rather than working to help and heal the mothers who have suffered this loss, Prince and his profiteering co-horts, have gone into attack mode. And in this case, ironically so with a company who sent out an email after the '04 election saying, "Bush Wins Four More Years!! Hooyah!" attacking Iraq for Sale for being "election year left wing politics."

This from the man who after interning in the Bush Sr. Whitehouse said, "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills." This from a man whose car says "Bush: "Let's Roll" Kerry: "Let's Roll Over." This from a man who, together with his family have given over 2 million dollars to Republican candidates and use their political access to protect Blackwater from scrutiny.

We at Brave New Films are proud to be helping raise the issue of profiteering as the election approaches; it should be an issue we judge our candidates by. Are they protecting us? Are they protecting our tax dollars? The fact that Prince has hired a disrespected PR flack, Mark Corallo, whose claim to fame was defending the disgraced Bob Livingston for cheating on his wife, speaks to the issue of Prince's morality.

Profiteering during a time of war is indeed a serious and important issue. I invite Erik Prince to see the film, to meet with our researchers and to have a full and open discussion about the way he is profiteering.

And for those who would like to see the Prince story and the mansion, purchased from his profiteering, check out this video...

Bush Punishes Frilly Michigan

State winces with Bush budget plan
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
By Sarah Kellogg
WASHINGTON -- Michigan's budget woes may be getting worse.
We Didn't elect DeVos!
President Bush's proposed 2008 federal budget, which was released Monday, would siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from key state-federal programs, ranging from Medicaid to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
KILL the POOR!
That leaves Michigan officials scrambling, trying to figure out where to plug holes in the state budget and hoping that a Democratic Congress won't adopt the Republican president's $2.9 trillion spending plan for 2008 without major changes.
And the Flint Journal STILL publishes those damn Flushing rightwingnut opinions that this is all the fault of the Dems~
"Michigan's got a lot of critical issues we're facing, especially in the coming weeks," said Dan Beattie, a spokesman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm. "The federal budget is clearly not going to advance state citizens' interests in a whole variety of programs."
Gotta get us some LOCKHEED-MARTIN Factories!
Michigan faces a $1 billion state budget shortfall this year, and it could be looking at even more in 2008. The governor will release her 2008 budget on Thursday. The state and federal budget years start Oct. 1.
Why oh why would anyone want to govern Michigan?
Bush administration officials were quick to point out that efforts to balance the budget by 2012 while paying for the war in Iraq leave little room for frills.
Michigan = A Frill
"Getting balanced requires keeping the economy strong, and sensible and realistic spending restraint," said Rob Portman, director of the Office of Management and Budget. "The president's budget is able to achieve both of these goals while funding critical priorities."
Fact: Historically Michigan Is A DONOR State. We are not the Entitlement Pigs, the WELFARE QUEENS of these 50 states, Oh, no, we pay more to the Federal system and get less back.
Bush's budget would eliminate or reduce 141 government programs, saving about $12 billion over five years. It also would reduce farm subsidies by $18 billion over five years. The biggest savings -- $100 billion over five years -- would come in Medicare.
KILL The POOR!
Tell me, my Fundie Friends, what was it your Lord and Savior said about the sick and suffering?
"We owe it to the American taxpayer to balance our books," said Michigan U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland. "The president's budget would provide surpluses in 2012 without raising taxes. Clearly Congress needs to closely examine the details of this budget and make our own policy, but Congress should balance the budget without raising taxes."
A Faith Based Budget. All the poor, homeless, and sick should be dead by then?
Keeping spending in check comes at a cost, though.
But not to Richie Rich guys. Thanks to Bush, The Middle Class Worker pays a higher rate of income tax than a Lazy Capitalist who lives off of investment income.
The president's budget would reduce Michigan funding in 2008 by $100 million for Medicaid, $40 million for Community Development Block Grants, $17 million for Social Services Block Grants and $27 million for LIHEAP.
KILL the POOR!
"The budget should be a reflection of our national priorities, (KILL the POOR!) but once again President Bush has shown he is out of step with the majority of Americans," said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, in a written statement. "The president's budget sends billions of dollars in new reconstruction funds to Iraq while cutting vital domestic programs."
KILL the POOR, BLAME the WAR, but don't STOP the WAR, Debbie!
More than 78,000 of Michigan's poor seniors and some mothers and their children would lose access to the federal Commodity Supplemental Food Program, under the Bush budget. The program, which provides monthly food packets to eligible participants, would lose its entire $108 million national budget.
Bombs not food.
Advocates for the poor say proposals to freeze funding at 2007 levels can be just as devastating as cutting spending, since the cost of doing business continues to grow.
The middle class who run programs won't give up the annual raise.
The Bush administration has proposed flat funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health care for poor children, along with Headstart and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
LET THEM EAT CAKE!
"The essential flat-funding of child health care and Medicaid is really a big concern," said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, a spokeswoman for the Michigan League for Human Services, a research and advocacy group based in Lansing. "We're already losing (health care) providers because we pay such low rates....These freezes are being absorbed financially by providers and parents, and in a real way by kids."
KILL THE POOR'S KIDS! Hey It's Their Fault they were born to poor parents! JEBSUS WILL LOVE 'EM.
A bright spot in the budget was funding for Great Lakes programs. The Great Lakes Legacy Act would receive $35 million to fund toxic sediment cleanups and another $7.65 million would be made available to construct a barrier across the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to block Asian carp from coming into Lake Michigan.
OOOH a Bright Spot.
Who dumped the toxics?
Are they living la vida loca somewhere, sending their kid to Yale?
Why do taxpayers get the bill?
Why is sludge in landfill better than sludge in riverbottoms?
Who got the contract to dredge and store?
Who got the contract for the fish fence?
A program to keep ALIEN fish from invading EL NORTE Lake Michigan.
Scientists don't even agree it'll work!
And maybe we should have a program phamphleting Chinese restaurants to educate the folk that it really ain't lucky to dump any ole good luck fish into bodies of water.
But the president's budget would eliminate nearly $200 million for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which helps finance improvements in city sewer systems. The 2008 budget recommendation is $687.5 million.
Faith Based Sanitation.
"The president's budget is a mixed bag (A flaming bag-o-shit on the front porch) for the Great Lakes," said Jordan Lubetkin, a spokesman for the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation, an environmental group. "Playing seesaw with Great Lakes programs, some going up and some going down, is not going to comprehensively restore the Great Lakes."
Hey Global Warming and Global Ballast and "Ice Mountain" Nestle and those aforementioned sewers and the soon to be re-proposed drilling are going to kill the the Great Lakes just fine. We got Armegeddon coming soon (the bible and George W.tells me so) and who cares anyway?
Several federal programs that have helped Michigan manufacturers and their employers are slated for cuts, although there are no exact numbers on how Michigan would be impacted. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which helps train small manufacturers, would lose almost $60 million, and the Advanced Technology Program, which helps manufacturers develop new technologies, would lose $67 million.
KILL the MIDDLE CLASS, TOO! After all, we got a WAR MACHINE in the Backyard that WANTS Feedin'!
Original unmarked-up copy from Booth Newspapers.

An Opportunity for Flint, Michigan

Dubya can't find a location that wants his library.

Pshaw, we have lots of spare room he could move his favorite mementos and secret files into- vacant lots, vacant stores, vacant factories... it'd be perfect to illustrate in concrete terms the apotheosis of global free market capitalism.

The people of Flint are spunky survivors. But 35 years of a slow-moving corporate Katrina have left them on the ropes.
New Orleans and Baghdad ain't got nothin' on Flint!

Dear. Senator Kerry

Wake Up.
Someone who operates in the shadows, who is making a bundle of cash off of this war...
Someone doesn't want another Winter Soldier.
Black American SUVs, American uniforms, speaking English well enough to pass through three checkpoints, American identity cards, American-style M-4 rifles, stun grenades of a kind used only by American forces.
Someone killed Captain Brian Freeman... oddly, coincidentally, (yeah, right) of all the hundred thousand soldiers in Iraq... then kidnapped and killed three American soldiers.

What are three more spent? A mere bagatelle. To cover the silencing.

I recall when I heard that the El salvador option was being considered, that I figured it was already employed.
All of those drilled tortured corpses confirmed it.
SOA training.

Now they have taken Captain Brian Freeman out of the potential picture.

You, Winter Soldier, of all Senators should act now.

Your vaunted "powder is still dry". Will you ever use it, or are you just keeping it for a memento?

Winter Soldier Trailer

Quote from Senator Dodd:
About a month ago, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and I were in the Middle East, and at sundown on an evening in Baghdad, as we landed in our helicopter in the Green Zone, a young man walked up to Senator Kerry and me. I could hardly see him. He was about 6 feet 2 inches, 6 feet 3 inches, a captain, and a West Point graduate. He talked to us about his concerns and what was going on in Iraq. This was back in the mid part of December before the Christmas holidays. His name was Brian Freeman.

The conversation did not last very long. It was not one of those long conversations. It may have lasted 15, 20 minutes, at best. I do not even have a clear picture in my mind of what he looked like because it was dark, as the conversation went on for 15 or 20 minutes. But it is one of those meetings all of us have had in our lives, where you do not forget a person, an individual. For whatever reason, he was compelling, he was sincere. He sought us out. He wanted us to know how he felt about what was happening in Iraq.

I mentioned him on 'Meet the Press' a few weeks later in talking about Iraq. I did not mention his name. I did not wish to put him in that position. But I talked about this young Army captain, a West Point graduate, whom I met. He apparently saw the program in Baghdad and e-mailed me, and we began this conversation between my office and himself over the last month or so, in which we talked about the surge, and he talked about the problems associated with it, the jobs he was being asked to do.

He said to me -- I am quoting him now --

"Senator, it's nuts over here. Soldiers are being asked to do work we're not trained to do. I'm doing work that the State Department people are far more prepared to do in fostering democracy, but they're not allowed to come off the bases because it's too dangerous here. It doesn't make any sense."

Captain Brian Freeman, a West Point graduate, was killed in Iraq last Saturday.

The reptiles who work in the shadows didn't need another Winter Soldier.

Good Luck to All the Fine Demonstrators this weekend

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

War may come sooner than you think, enjoy your cheap gas

Thom Hartmann said something ironic and chilling on his program a few days ago.
Remember how in the form of gallows humor we used to say, 'well, at least we still have the third amendment, we still are safe from having to keep British soldiers in our homes...'?
Not so funny any more... Dubya's Baghdad Clear and Hold plan involves billeting soldiers in Iraqi homes to facilitate clearing the neighborhoods. No joke.
We continue with the Freedom Agenda.

I think they're setting up the playing pieces. They've moved a third battle group into the theatre, they're building those 14 permanent bases as fast as they can (maybe that 9 billion didn't vanish into thin air?), they're playing word games with Israel like they did with Saddam in 91, they're setting up Iran with provocations like kidnapping their diplomats, drones invading sovereign Iranian airspace, the propaganda about nuclear war is flying fast and furious in the corporate media. When they drop the bunker busters on those undetectible unknown unknowns as a Presidential perogative to preemptive invasions we'll all breathe a sigh of relief that "at least it wasn't radioactive weaponry." I hope. Killing a million people in a week from nuclear fallout is a heavy sin to commit and bear, just because we want our oil.
We've been in Iraq for a few years and it took us that long to kill over 600,000 of their citizens, to spread democracy.

The third monster MLK identified, militarism, is keeping us from our rightful future

There will be a day of protest against the war on January 27 in D.C.

From Dr. King, a Reminder on Iraq
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, January 13, 2007

Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom the nation will honor on Monday, took to the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City at a meeting organized by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The date was April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination in Memphis.
King said he was in New York because his conscience had left him no choice. In his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," King declared: "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

King acknowledged the reluctance of some people to speak out on Vietnam -- the same hesitation some Americans may have today over voicing their concerns about Iraq. People, he explained, "do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war."
But King concluded that too much was at stake. He and the other religious and lay leaders were moved by what the conflict in Vietnam was doing to the United States. Vietnam, King said, was consuming American troops and money like "some demonic, destructive suction tube" even as that war was laying waste to the Vietnamese people and to America's standing in the world.

And on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in 2007?
More than 3,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq, while 22,000 others have been wounded. Billions of dollars that could have been invested here at home have been spent there, a lot of it wasted, some of it stolen, plenty of it unaccounted for. And Iraqis in Baghdad, who cowered for decades under a brutal dictator, have been living in the midst of violence almost continuously since Saddam Hussein was deposed.
"We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them" read a bumper sticker in Washington this week.

Now enter George W. Bush -- the president who got America into this debacle through a series of misjudgments that would make Alfred E. Neuman look brilliant. This week Bush announced plans to plop down thousands of additional troops in the middle of a sectarian war and to shell out billions of additional dollars to pacify a war-weary Iraqi population that, truth be told, wants America gone.

Why trust this administration?
Contrary to what Bush and his allies said:

· There were no weapons of mass destruction poised to strike America and her allies.

· A quick defeat of Hussein did not lead to chocolates and flowers in the streets of Baghdad.

· An American invasion did not produce a unified, nonsectarian and Western-oriented Iraq or spark a desire for U.S.-style governance throughout the Arab world.

· De-Baathification and the imposition of a market economy at gunpoint did not usher in a period of tranquility or the flowering of capitalism.

The Bush administration struck first because it had the power to strike and the arrogance to think, foolishly, that it could win and dominate the conquered on the cheap.

King spoke in '67 about "the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them." Witness the Bush team in Iraq.
Today they have a bloodbath on their hands to show for their labors, and Iran is on the verge of getting an Iraqi neighbor beyond its wildest dreams.

Yet even now, neoconservatives inside and outside of government are counseling Bush to remain in Iraq for years to prevent the Shiite-dominated regime from collapsing. They also are encouraging him to prepare for battle with Iran and Syria if those countries start meddling in Iraq -- as if they aren't now.

With what exactly and for how long we are supposed to do battle with Tehran and Damascus, the militaristic neocon noncombatants in Washington don't say. But then again, they have a tolerance for risk and cost that exceeds that of those who actually do the fighting and dying.

Forty years ago at Riverside Church, people of conscience declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." They went beyond using their voices and votes when they agreed to break their silence. They responded, as King had urged, by matching their words with actions. "We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest," King preached that day.

Yes, this is a different time and a different world. Global terrorism is a sobering reality. And America is on the right side in that war. To not fight back is tantamount to indulging a death wish.
But the first blow in Iraq, which was not a battleground for terrorism, was struck by Bush. He now, stubbornly and in the face of legitimate opposition, proposes to make matters worse.
Remember King and the words: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."