September 11, time to buy new school clothes and books and roll out a new campaign to sell the same old product

This is the day that commemorates the venality and criminality of politicians and religious leaders, made manifest.
Wake up. Six years later, wake up.

Or, better yet, lighten up, America.

Dwelling on your injuries make you sound all whiny and maudlin, and you ruin the party! Your makeup starts running with all those tears! You're ruining your botox treatment! Here's an idea from a great leader... Go SHOPPING!

Be your selfish self and get on with it.
You've had electricity and clean water for the past six years, right?
Have you been tortured or ethnically cleansed?
Are the kids insurgents, yet?
Grow up, America.

The boogey men, OBL and Dubya are two peas from the same pod. Front men for the perpetual war machine, propagandists, chosen by the real movers for their supposed religiosity and their stage presence. Both of them are rich sons of richie riches, playing with blocks and dress up costumes like they were buildings and uniforms. What do they know of anything?

But they scared you out of your wits, didn't they.
They're pretty certain of themselves, aren't they.
Their product has been tested on focus groups.

But I think they are both losing their appeal, and I think their planners are thinking of retiring their dog and pony shows to move on to bigger and brighter shiny new products...
like Iran, and then on to the Road to Damascus.
Fall is the time to roll out the new shows, Andy!

Isn't it interesting how predictably Madison Avenue their productions have become?
It's like watching the summer reruns, only they're 6 years along now. More like watching Gilligan's Island reruns.

Dubya's speeches are worse than bad. He can barely deliver them. (or more correctly, catapult them.) And OBL has lost all credibility, showing up in a funny beard and asking us to embrace Islam, indeed. He really doesn't know us, does he.

Both of them need another speech writer, another makeup man, stand-ins, props and better costumes.
Another terrorist attack, another election, and the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down...

Lucky for their sponsors, they have Congress to pick our pockets and post date their checks...

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.

Dear Senator Leahy

Subpena them (the Bush Crime Gang)?

Heck, why wait? Just do what THEY do, snoop.

They data mine their fellow citizens phone, email, snail mail, library records, credit card purchases... what sets them above their fellow citizens?

Time for some fairness.
Equality under law(lessness.)

They don't want to show up to answer questions: how about some extraordinary rendition?
They'd do it to us in a New York minute.


They don't want to swear their testimony?
Waterboards.
It's not torture.

What's good for the goose...

Knitting away, beneath the guillotine...

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.

Dear Senator McCain,

If, as you suggested to Jon Stewart, when we pull out of Iraq the enemy will follow our troops home to attack us here... then won't our high tech Homeland Security watchdogs stop them in their tracks? Maybe we can shoot them with one of those $8 Million dollar per unit armed glider Reapers that hover over our borders sensing warm bodies to shoot just like in video games.
Or we can use that $20 Billion V22 Osprey, when and if ever it finally works.
(Ah, nothing like the military-industrial-complex to keep the economy humming.)

Bringing the rodents out of the swamp will prove that all the taxpayer money you spent on our brand new shiny Office of Homeland Security was justified! After all, if you store the cake under the sink, that's where the rats go, or whatever William Krystol said, and we sure did put a lot of "cake under the sink" (we "lost" about $8 Billion in cash) in Iraq.
And think of the great Stories of Heroism our Office of Civilian Propaganda could craft if we lured the enemy here! It would rouse the citizenry like a good story of a Hometown Football Hero soldier getting killed by enemy fire or a naive blond Little Gal recruit being rescued by our big strong Marines, whatever.
And that would justify all the money Dubya spent on civilian propaganda, too!
See, things do work out in the end for you rich guys, you just have to suffer a little while, while your bank accounts multiply like fishes.

Oh yes... and John, the IED joke wasn't any funnier than the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran song, or the Springtime Carpet Deals in the Baghdad Market! shtick.

Senator McCain, you are whistling in a graveyard on the bones of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of an invasion based on lies. You sound like an ass.

Crafting a new story for the attention deficit nation

Iraq
- q + n= Iran
- n= IRA

The news of the Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq that kill our troops you are being innundated with is just another new BS story.

I predict is another Jessica Lynch- Pat Tillman Potemkin type propaganda story, crafted to rouse the Attention Deficit Nation.
Don't trust anything the War Party says on the War Media.
Don't you remember, the story has been hinted around for months now.
I recall hearing it mentioned briefly by the ABC writer- embedded reporter on Diane Rheme's show last week.

But the REAL story is that it is another covert provication to war on Iran.

Dubya is spending millions on propaganda aimed at you and me. Are you awake enough to catch it?

Just Google it for yourself... IRA and IED. These are the same bombs that covert Brit and US spooks taught the IRA to use in their violence, as reported in the Guardian newspaper.

How to talk to a Reptilublican

by Bill Maher

Dear Journalists on NPR and AP

Sins of omission, sins of comission.
Sometimes it's what you don't tell.

So I'm hearing and reading this morning about this testimony by Kahlid Sheik Mohammed whose job it is to resurrect the images of 9-11.
He's a TALKER, isn't he?
Not in public of course.
And he might have been tortured in the past.
But that doesn't affect what he (reportedly) says today.
[cough]

And you lovingly to repeat his tales, his plans for other of our famous landmarks, certain words repeated, your (NPR) focus on child killing, images resurrected that recall the embedded horror in the back of the mind of every soccer mom as she drops her kids at the corner to catch the schoolbus.

But, just a snag in the back of my mind... why isn't it ever being said or printed:
what country does this guy come from?
Is he Yemeni? Is he Pakistani? Is he a Saudi? Is he a KUWAITI?
But but but those are our allies.

And we invaded Iraq, killing 600,000 people to fight the terrorists... where?
IRAQ!!! Someone buy the Pentagon a map!

AP, you mention the nationalities of his cohorts, but not his.
I'm just saying highly paid professionals should be better editors, or portray themselves more rightly, as editorialists.

And speaking of your editorializing, why did you chose the hypothetical targets you chose to reveal? The British newspapers have a much more complete and JUICY list.

Hey, did I say WE KILLED 600,000 recently in a country our President invaded by mistake (because it COULDn't have been by deceit)? And did you give a figure on KSM's body count?
WHO is the BIGGER TERRORIST?

earth and the mercy seat

by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn’t explode of itself," said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air.
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

mercy seat by nick cave and the bad seed

Remember, in the days ahead, an eye for an eye leaves us all blind.

google: zbigniew pretext Iran

Zbigniew Brzezinski Says Bush Seeks Pretext to Attack Iran

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski arrives
to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill
in Washington February 1, 2007.
(REUTERS/Jim Young)
By Barry Grey
www.wsgs.org
February 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.

Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in Iraq by characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.”Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a “mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war.”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience in the top echelons of the US foreign policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US Senate has immense and grave significance.

Brzezinski knows whereof he speaks, having authored provocations of his own while serving as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. In that capacity, as he has since acknowledged in published writings, he drew up the covert plan at the end of the 1970s to mobilize Islamic fundamentalist mujaheddin to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and draw the Soviet Union into a ruinous war in that country.

Following his opening remarks, in response to questions from the senators, Brzezinski reiterated his warning of a provocation.

He called the senators’ attention to a March 27, 2006 report in the New York Times on “a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister Blair, two months before the war, based on a memorandum prepared by the British official present at this meeting.” In the article, Brzezinski said, “the president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.”

He continued: “I’ll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation.’

“He described the several ways in which this could be done. I won’t go into that… the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them.

“If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise.”

At another point Brzezinski remarked on the conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration and all but described it as a cabal. “I am perplexed,” he said, “by the fact that major strategic decisions seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war, and used the original justifications to go to war.”

None of the senators in attendance addressed themselves to the stark warning from Brzezinski. The Democrats in particular, flaccid, complacent and complicit in the war conspiracies of the Bush administration, said nothing about the danger of a provocation spelled out by the witness.

Following the hearing, this reporter asked Brzezinski directly if he was suggesting that the source of a possible provocation might be the US government itself. The former national security adviser was evasive.

The following exchange took place:

Q: Dr. Brzezinski, who do you think would be carrying out this possible provocation?

A: I have no idea. As I said, these things can never be predicted. It can be spontaneous.

Q: Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could originate within the US government itself?

A: I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very difficult to trace.

Keith-O