Halliburton Truck Driver Catches Ambush in Iraq. Marked as: Mature,

Halliburton does not arm its civilian truck drivers, who in Iraq are often the target of insurgent attacks. In one case, on September 20, 2005, a Halliburton convoy of four trucks was ambushed north of Baghdad. All four trucks were struck by IEDs and were disabled. Their US National Guard escort was thought to have abandoned the disabled vehicles, leaving the unarmed truck drivers defenseless. Three of the four truck drivers were executed by the insurgents while the surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, caught the event on video. It was 45 minutes before the US military arrived again at the scene. However, in a statement by senior military officials in Iraq, an investigation revealed that troops did not abandon the civilians and were “exiting the kill zone” during the ambush.

This video speaks completely for itself. All questions as to why diplomats, dignitaries, and journalists don’t leave the green zone are answered in this video taken by the survivor of the Halliburton convoy.

Jeez, the prez (Bush) of the U.S. has surrounded himself with some pretty sorry bastards. Makes me wonder about him. He and his cronies are skanky-like-skunks.

Lizz Winstead, in a Huffington Post blog (“Have a Little Feith in Him”), brings to our attention the fact that the intel we used to sell ourselves on the Iraq (Civil) War was skewed by the Pentagon.

Read the Washington Post Story for yourselves: Official’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted

Douglas J. Feith is one of the culprits in this horrendous scandal of lies:

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general.

Feith’s office “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith’s activities as “an alternative intelligence assessment process.”

and:

At the time of Feith’s reporting, the CIA had concluded only that there was an “evolving” association, “based on sources of varying reliability.”

In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general’s conclusion that his actions, described in the report as “inappropriate,” were not unlawful. “This was not ‘alternative intelligence assessment,’ ” he said. “It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance.

Feith, who was defense policy chief before leaving the government in 2005, was one of the key contributors to the administration’s rationale for war. His intelligence activities, authorized by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and coordinated with Vice President Cheney’s office, stemmed from an administration belief that the CIA was underplaying evidence of then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s ties with al-Qaeda.

This is the most evil, baldfaced lying and CYB (cover your bahookie) that America has ever witnessed. Here is my response to Lizz Winstead’s blog on Huffington Post:

“This was not ‘alternative intelligence assessment,’ ” he said. “It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance.”

Oh my God! Appropriate words of comment on this statement are simply eluding me. I’m almost speechless upon reading that one short statement from Feith. I suppose the thing for me to do is to cut loose and go feral, in my best native West Texan:

“What a chickenshit son-of-a-bitch!” [my words] I believe this is the lying-est administration in the history of America.

This is how Feith simultaneously admits that he lied about intel, and got us into a stupid war turned civil war, got 3000 US troops killed, bankrupted our country, killed 650,000 Iraqis, forced 3.4 million (3,400,000) Iraqis to flee their homes or country, and is unhinging the entire Middle Eastern region of the world.

I am truly sickened by these disgusting sots – these Publicans, as I call them. They are vile, repugnant, amoral, and totally lacking any conscience. In feral West Texas we call them sorry bastards.

Denny – http://abovethefold.wordpress.com

Gen. Tommy Franks, by the way has called Feith, “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

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Lizz Winstead is a terrifically funny writer, author, and comedienne. Take a look at some of her routines on her MySpace site.
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As of this moment HuffPo has not yet posted my comment, but they usually do, sometimes hours later.

Bush slashes aid to poor to boost Iraq war chest!!!!!!!!!! If you read only one article about the Iraq Civil War today, it should be this, from the British paper The Guardian Unlimited.

In the run-up to the invasion in 2003, the Pentagon’s projected estimate of the total cost of the war was $50bn. A White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was fired by President Bush when he suggested that the total cost would be $200bn.

The New York Times noted that the cost of the war would have paid for universal healthcare in the US, nursery education for all three and four-year-olds in the country, immunisation for children round the world against a host of diseases, and still leave about half of the money left over.

The Pentagon has long complained that it is overstretched. Mr Bush wants to raise its budget from $600.3bn to $624.6bn for 2008 – about 20% of the total budget.

You know, one should not post in one’s own blog/forum when one is so angry that they see a red tinge all about them. But I am breaking my own rule. Goddamit, this makes me so mad I could just spit.

At this juncture we are facing about $1.5 trillion in debt for Bush’s totally broken, lost mess in Iraq. This includes the approx $800 Billion already plus the $660 Billion that taking care of the returning veterans will cost us. (Care for U.S. veterans could cost $662 bln: Harvard study)

Question: Just how in the hell does that lying S.O.B., George W. Bush, expect us to believe that that he can balance the budget without raising taxes (on the wealthier classes)? Well, this is how, gentle readers – he is going to protect his wealthy cronies and cut benefits to middle and lower income working people and retirees. This is the “compassionate conservatism” for which Bush was revered by neocons and other conservatives. “Compassionate conservatism” was the first great lie of the Bush reign. Give tax breaks to the wealthy 1% and make the bottom classes pay for it? Why?!! I think this isn’t just merely mean, it’s pathologically sadistic.

Bush promises no tax increases!!!! Oh My, Yes! Let’s just cut expenditures to the poorest classes in America, and borrow the rest so our children’s children can pay for our ongoing nightmare. This is just one of many insane ideas he has had recently. Another example is his contempt for the ideas of the Iraq Study Group Report. He refuses to talk to either Iran or Syria about the mess, and the Syrian President has stated publicly that part of the problem is that Bush will not offer talks.

On top of all this, he went into Iraq with inadequate troops and equipment, and has stood by while the damned thing spun out of control and into a Civil War.

Stop me now, kind Folks. I told you that I shouldn’t post on my own blog when I’m seeing red because of anger. This turkey of a president that we have for the next two years leaves me seeing red, daily.

This is the first legislative attempt, to my knowledge, suggesting that impeachment proceedings should proceed against U.S. President George E. Bush:

SANTA FE (AP) — Two New Mexico lawmakers have introduced a measure calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

State Sens. John Grubesic of Santa Fe and Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque, both Democrats, said the resolution is a serious effort to try to trigger impeachment proceedings.

New Mexico, where lawmakers are meeting until March 17, would be the first state to pass the resolution, they said.

The measure alleges that Bush and Cheney conspired with others to intentionally mislead Congress and the public about the threat posed by Iraq in order to justify the war.

It also cites the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and alleges the torture of prisoners and the denial of constitutional rights to enemy combatants.

READ MORE HERE

While U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has said that “Iimpeachment is off the table,” these two New Mexico Lawmakers, are hoping to change some minds, perhaps Pelosi’s, over time.

After Congress impeached Clinton over his lying about his sex life, shouldn’t we begin to give some thought to doing the same to Bush who has lied about WMD, terrorist connections between Iraq and 9/11, that Congress had the same level of intel that the White House had prior to the Iraq invasion, that nobody could have anticipated that an insurgency could erupt from within Iraq, that the war would cost the U.S. a mere $50 Billion, that the oil revenues in Iraq were adequate to pay us back for the cost of the war, yada yada, ad nauseum, yada yada to as recently as two weeks ago Bush was claiming that the reason for the Iraq War [now Civil War] was that once Iran gets nuclear weapons, Saddam Hussein would have begun to obtain Nuclear weapons, too.

The last lie about Iranian nukes, therefore, Iraqi nukes simply falls flat on its face. Bush should be impeached for this one statement, alone. For this to be a valid reason for the war, we would have to have known about Iranian efforts to obtain nukes before the war. If we had truly known this for a fact at that time, then Iran would have been the natural target for a pre-emptive strike, rather than Iraq.

George W. Bush’s lying has gotten 3,000+ American troops killed, 600,000 Iraqi’s killed, cost the U.S. $800,000,000,000 (800 Billion $$$$$$) (8/10 of one Trillion dollars)!!!!!!! And this is not counting the estimated 1/2 trillion in cost to take care of the returning wounded and disabled U.S. troops over their lifetimes.

Seriously, George W. Bush has lied about some huge things that have had and will have some huge consequences in this, our real world.

If we fail to impeach Bush for his lies then we are saying that it is a hanging offense to lie about one’s private sex life (between consenting adults), but it is okay to cause a civil war, make up shit to get us into wars that will kill U.S. troops and Innocent Iraqi Citizens, and leave our children and grandchildren indebted to pay off our bills for a completely unnecessary war, and leave our military capacity so strained that we wouldn’t be able to fend off a serious attack in any major U.S. city.

Bush hasn’t the guts or the decency to raise taxes on his friends, the real beneficiaries of the war, to avoid draining the country’s wealth, driving us into bankruptcy, and handing our children and grandchildren over into financial slavery to pay for the Bush Follies.

George W. Bush is the liar of largest consequence the U.S. has ever known. We should give serious thought to his coming impeachment.

STATE
OF THE UNION  -  2007   READ FULL TEXT HERE

Okay so it wasn’t quite as funny as it could have been. And, though I
am not a supporter of much of anything that George W. Bush has done
while President, I will admit that his public speaking style has
matured in the last six years.   

But he is still making attempts to tie Iraq to 9/11. Much to his
credit, that was one of the few times that he smirked in this
speech.   It was an okay speech, not great, but okay.

I don’t think he sold us on much of anything.  And there was
nothing new.  Health Care? Hey, didn’t Hillary Clinton try to do
something 15 years ago?  And didn’t she get beaten-up by
the conservatives and the right wingnut talk radio guys.  And
didn’t she accumulate a huge amount of  animosity from nearly
anyone whose idea was to not have any health care reform?  Oh,
well, better late than never for Bush I suppose.

There was one point at which I laughed out loud.  It was the
President, with  the National Debt at just under 9 Trillion
Dollars, proclaiming wildly, We’ll balance the Federal Budget and we
won’t raise taxes!!!  That’s pure trash talk from the
President.  Merely balancing the federal budget is not
enough.  That will only stop the borrowing, capping the national
debt.  It won’t pay off the debt or stop the interest payments.
And  we’re going to do this without raising taxes. Please, Mr
President, please pull my other leg!

The Democratic Response was delivered by the newly elected Senator Jim Webb from Virginia who reminded the President that we have watched him mismanage the Iraq War for four years.

—————————————————————–

And in some other interesting news, today E.
Howard Hunt, the CIA employee
who organized the Watergate Burglary during the Nixon Years 
passed away today.

The Scooter Libby trial is underway this week, with jury selection
complete, and opening statements have begun. 

Lawyers
paint Libby as sacrificial lamb

Denny {:~)

Chill the beer and break out the popcorn. It’s that time of year again. I’m not referring to Martin Luther King Day, nope. President’s Day, nope. Ground Hog Day, nope. Nope, It’s time for our Dope’s annual State of the Union Address to Congress. Tuesday night. Be sure to tune in for the hilarity as MSNBC is doing all day coverage on Tuesday, pre, present, and post State of the Union Address!!!

You almost have to feel sorry for someone like Bush, who is so defeated, delusional, and in charge of a walking disaster in Iraq. He can’t, with honesty, say much of anything positive about his administration. Bush is our Dope, and we are stuck with him and his idiot cronies for another two years. You could feel pity for him in all of his mess, except that he is so willfully belligerent in his wrongness. He is in desperate need of good, accurate diplomatic advice, but he has only this carnival-esque coterie of an Administration to advise him now.

The Repub. Party has mucked-up the hunt for Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq Civil War, the national debt, the trade deficit, energy policy – done nothing here, global warming, New Orleans, relations with every country in the world, threatening any country they feel like insulting on a particular day, ignoring the Iraq Study Group Report.

This State of the Union Address of 2007 will be fun to watch if only to glean more ammunition with which to embarrass Mr. Bush. If we are lucky we may hear a sentence or two that ring true, but not many. Politically, Bush cannot afford to be honest about anything for the sake of his Repub. party. He’s a salesman, for sure, and he’ll give it his best effort, but he won’t sell many of us. We’ve heard all of the lines and lies, been insulted when we disagreed or called his hand, and we’re sick of his unnecessary militarism.

I will throw myself on the floor laughing hysterically if he tries to tie Iraq to 9/11 one more time.

Bush is a Dope, but he’s our Dope, and we are stuck with him – as off he goes, wallowing around the world muddying all he touches for the next two years.

This may be the last good laugh this nation gets to enjoy for a long time to come, as we try to untangle Bush’s grotesque national and international messes.

So chill the beer and break out the popcorn.

The chemical giant DuPont, the bulldozer company Caterpillar, the aluminium producer Alcoa and the US subsidiary of BP, will all join with environmental groups next week to pressure the Bush Administration to get serious about global warming. STORY HERE OR HERE

The age of global warming denial, meanwhile, also appears to be drawing to a close. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, has cut its funding to groups who argue global warming is a hoax, and is now working to develop strategies it can accept for emissions reduction.

It’s about time. Hell, even the religious fundamentalist dinosaurs know global warming is upon us. “It’s time for us to become good stewards of the earth,” as one of my very best friends, a religious liberal, told me two days ago. “God would want us to do that – protect our earth that he created.”

Actually, it would help change the dialogue if we changed the “global warming” label to “global climate change.” There’s always a small handfull of pesky oil company employees who troll around the blogosphere, posting about how the winters are colder than they can ever remember in Houston, and about lost orange crops in southern California. I could play their game and remind them that I’ve seen much colder winters here in Texas, those of 1983, when the temps didn’t get above freezing for 12 days, or that of 1987 when ice storms brought down 38 steel communications towers in West Texas and wreaked havoc with electricity and telephones for hundreds of towns. (Hello, Mick and “Ethanol.”) This winter is not fun, but it’ s not as bad as others I’ve had to work through.

“Rapid global climate change” would be a better nomenclature for what greenhouse gases are doing. The north and south poles are melting. Bears are not hibernating in Siberia anymore. Birds are returning to the New England states earlier every year, as are blossoming fruit trees.

BUT, some places around the globe will see colder winters. Canada, for one, as the polar ice caps melt and let arctic winds blow across open sea waters instead of ice with its insulating properties. England and the northern European countries will see colder winters because the Atlantic Gulf Stream water currents won’t carry as much tropical warming that far north anymore. And Houston, Texas may get more freaky ice storms?

Global Warming, Rapid Global Climate Change, call it what you want, just don’t call it a hoax. It is here upon us. A few dinosaurs and employees of oil companies will continue to troll and whine, and to be scorned by all thoughtful, intelligent people.

If you haven’t looked at THE HUFFINGTON POST lately, you absolutely must do so. Arianna Huffington has put together a first rate newspaper. I read the site very often during the day. And occasionally I post a comment or two.

Today on Huffington Post, one of their posts pointed to an article in the NYTIMES: Leading Senator Assails Bush Over Iran Stance

The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who took control of the committee this month, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.

“To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

I agree 100% with Rockefeller on this point. As of 2003 Iran was completely willing to help us stabilize Iraq, but the Bush Cabal turned them down, flat-out cold. And now Bush wants to invade Iran!!! Ya, right, we can see how well that has worked for us in Iraq.

My Huffington Post comment to the Rockefeller story went:

If the President so much as looks at Iran cross-eyed, then i believe we should put impeachment back on the table and start the proceedings immediately.

Quite a bit off topic, but on my mind lately, If we had put the trillion dollars that the iraq war will cost us into research on alternative energies, we wouldn’t have to think about the middle east in terms of “national interest” anymore. We could be oil independant of the entire middle east, and probably completely energy self sufficient in a few years.

Denny

If the White House Cabal keeps this up, we’ll be wishing for a coup by the U.S. military, as the impeachment process will move too slowly to avert the ensuing world war that will erupt as the major powers of the world converge on the middle east to protect their own national interests from usurption by the U.S. Iran knows that we haven’t the necessary troops to adequately do the job, and they are laughing at our saber-rattling.

The White House cabal is talking pure trash. It’s time for the U.S. to take some serious steps to move us away from our middle east oil dependancy. If we had not offered such huge tax cuts to the wealthy, and had not obligated ourselves to the tune of a trillion dollars in Iraq, we could have made some major strides in the realm of alternative fuels.

I suggest that we keep the impeachment tool very close at hand. These guys’ entire foreign policy seems to revolve around oil profiteering, at the expense of all and anyone else. There’s no telling what they’ll try to pull in the next two years.

UPDATE: Schweitzer Hammers Bush on Iraq in Nat’l Dem Radio Address

David Sirota has an excellent blog posted on the Huffington Post about Brian Schweitzer, the Governor of Montana, delivering this week’s Democratic Radio Address. Gov. Schweitzer covers some of the same topics I’m covering in today’s blog. He agrees on the topic of alternative fuels. They are doing it in Montana, the Big Sky Country. Huffington Post has the text of his address.

We are doing it here in Texas also, to a limited amount, solar, wind and methane recovery. BUT, our own Repub. Governor is trying to fast track the permits to let the utility companies build 11 new coal-power plants USING THE OLD DIRTY COAL TECHNOLOGY!!! Repubs all need to have their heads examined. At the very least we should schedule them for MRI’s to see if they test positive for brain cells. This is absolutely brainless (or corrupt) on Perry’s part.

The Washington Post published a response on Jan 6, 2006 to Bush’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece (proclaiming how his tax cuts had bolstered the economy.) While I have called the President a pathological liar on this subject, the Post editorial is not so strident, but extremely unflattering to Bush, nonetheless:

…The claim about fueling record revenue is flat wrong, and it is shocking that the president should persist in making such errors. After all, tax cuts are the central plank of his domestic policy. How can he fail to understand the basic facts about them?

The Post editorial is spot on and I love their last paragraph, it’s so true:

Mr. Bush’s op-ed included nice statements about bipartisan cooperation. But the Democrats would be more likely to cooperate with the president if he stopped making things up.

They all but called Bush a liar – close enough for me.

In other news, albeit local, I had a terrific conservation today with a local media personality who is the brother of Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, whom I think is a great guy. I had no idea that there were only two degrees of separation between the governor and myself – small world these days. See ya, Rudy!! {;~)
Denny

From the NCTIMES.COM
or from the NYTIMES.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Wesley Autrey faced a harrowing choice as he tried to rescue a teenager who fell off a platform onto a subway track in front of an approaching train: Struggle to hoist him back up to the platform in time, or take a chance on finding safety under the train.

This was a genuinely selfless act on the part of a person who recognized that another person was in grave danger, and who then made some split second decisions of life and death, saved a life, and became a hero and minor celebrity in an instant. I first saw the story on CNN(?) this morning and Mr Autrey’s winsome personality just brought a smile to my face.

Thank you Mr Wesley Autrey, for saving a life, and for bringing us such a wonderful story to begin the new year.