US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

You misquoted me a while ago, greviously.

And apologized for it.

Remember?

Cycloptichorn

I recall that one time! What I don't recall is misquoting you a second time.

Again, getting back on subject!
MEASURABLE PROGRESS

The Bush administration's solution is the seven-step course they specified in 2003. It is the course they have stayed and are staying and have repeatedly declared they will stay. Their solution is to establish a democracy in Iraq secured by the Iraqis themselves. They have completed five of the seven steps in their solution:
(1) Select an initial Iraq government to hold a first election.
(2) Establish and begin training an Iraq self-defense military.
(3) Hold a democratic election of an interim government whose primary function is to write a proposed constitution for a new Iraq democratic government.
(4) Submit that proposed constitution to Iraq voters for approval or disapproval.
(5) After approval by Iraq voters of an Iraq democratic government constitution, hold under that constitution a first election of the members of that government.
(6) Help train, as specified by the new Iraq government, an Iraq military to secure that Iraq government.
(7) Remove our military from Iraq in a phased withdrawal.

Is their progress toward their solution fast enough? NO!
Have they committed many blunders along the way? YES!
Are they making measurable progress toward their solution? YES!
Is an increase in Iraqi voter turnout of more than two-million measurable progress? YES!

Not bad for government work! Who in government would have done a better job?

Not I, but another.

Also, I would ask you again to refrain from posting the same thing over and over again to spam up the thread; we're well aware of what your position is, you don't have to post it on every single page in the exact same text.

Cycloptichorn

It is not "the exact same text" each time. Although, I admit that when I do repeat a previous post, my changes are usually minor.

That aside, I will continue to repeat my posts when I think that appropriate. I generally will think that appropriate when urging getting back on topic or when responding to a repeated allegation (however reworded) of some other poster.

In otherwords, if you do not want me to repeat, don't you repeat and do stay on topic.

I'm sure Ican would refrain from posting the same facts again and again if people would just stop putting the same misinformation out there again and again. It is only when somebody puts out some pretty grevious misinformation that Ican dutifully pulls out the facts.

I think it is reasonable to counter misinformation with facts.

How Troops in Iraq View Reporters
How Troops in Iraq View Reporters
By Dennis Anderson
E & P
December 17, 2005

American reporters in Iraq often don't have the trust of the troops, according to this two-time embed--and father of an Iraq veteran--and here's why. But when "there's a good one on the ground, the word gets around."

Not that reporters are particularly trusted anyway, but as a class of people having a high and visible participation in the war in Iraq, dozens of GIs and Marines I've spoken with allow as how they just don't trust reporters.

There was Staff Sgt. Cory Blackwell of Lancaster, recently headed for his second tour in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Ivy Division" and "The Regulars."

Blackwell, 27, is a professional soldier. He holds the customary glum view of professional news gatherers in the Iraq war.

"We tried to stay away from them," he said. "You had the feeling that whatever you might be doing, they wanted to catch you at something on tape. That would make their career."

Blackwell related that when the camera crews showed up, some helpful GI in his squad would give directions ?- directing the crew to the location of a nearby unit. "We'd just say, ?'Hey, go down the street there with second squad ... it's gonna be awesome.' "

When the news crew scurried off on the decoy tip, they were out of the high and tight hair of the unit that sent them packing.

Funny with reporters: If there's a good one on the ground, the word gets around. It's similar to how it goes with your congressional representative. People may believe Congress is doing a lousy job, but they like their own congressman who they keep sending back, time after time.

That, in a way, is how it is with the embedded corps of reporters.

My news daddy and mentor, Joe Galloway, helped get me hired into United Press International a quarter century ago. Now he prowls the E-Ring at the Pentagon as chief military correspondent for Knight Ridder, and we carry his column in the Valley Press.

Galloway, a civilian, was decorated with the Bronze Star with Valor device for rescuing wounded at the battle of Ia Drang. His accounts of the battle form the basis of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," co-written with retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. Moore was portrayed by Mel Gibson in "We Were Soldiers" and Barry Pepper played Galloway.

With his accumulation of more than 40 years of war reporting, and abundance of combat time, Galloway believes the Bush administration is so far off course in running the Iraq war that a global positioning satellite fix couldn't get them steered right.

Our mutual views do not fall in strict agreement on all matters related to the war, but Galloway's experience and integrity give his views such weight that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently hosted Galloway at lunch. Rumsfeld makes no moves without calculating, and the lunch wasn't social. He intended to bust Galloway's chops and "turn" Galloway to seeing the Rumsfeld view of the world.

It didn't work (as he later told E&P's Greg Mitchell for a Pressing Issues column on this site). Galloway is enraged about soldiers shortchanged on armor, sent to battle without the best body armor, sent out on the bad bomb-laden roads in lightly armored vehicles. He's enraged that heavy equipment like tanks and tracked vehicles got left stateside because it's cheaper to run the fuel tab for Humvees than for Abrams tanks, which have high survivability.

If Galloway's wrong, he just wants to be shown where and how. He's enraged that contractors were getting big, fat, dripping war-profiteering profits while the families of GIs and Marines shipped equipment they needed bought from catalogs instead of being issued.

So there was my son, Garrett, during his Iraq deployment. A number of reporters for big name outfits tracked the progress of his Marine grunt outfit during the assault on Fallujah, the fight waged to turn the nastiest center of insurgency into a community with a decent shot for a future. Garrett informed me, "I told my captain, ?'I grew up with reporters. They were in the house, and I grew up in a newsroom. I can tell when you've got a good one, and when you've got a bum,' and there was one guy with us who was a bum. I told the captain, ?'This guy's gonna burn us.' "

So, I'm getting this second-hand, but the way it went was that the reporter held in low esteem by my media-whelped child did the usual small tricks. Handed out cigarettes, joked a lot, generally ingratiated himself. Bonding with the troops, see.

Stuff was blowing up in Fallujah. Pillars of smoke plumed from buildings hit with joint direct attack munition, or JDAM, bombs, and from stuff that caught fire from incendiary ammunition. Oddly, the terrorist insurgent goons who wanted Fallujah to be their Alamo stored a lot of munitions in hide sites. So when you hit a building, it was like hitting an ammo dump ?- because it was an ammo dump.

One of those buildings exploded, and it could have been the bomb, or it could have been whatever ignited all the "bang bang" stuff stored inside the many fortified buildings. But there was one brother Marine that everyone else in the squad referred to as "The Mutant." A bit dim. A bit slow, and only recently attached to the unit. The guy everyone bags on.

So, the building blows up, and "Mutant Marine," as my son affectionately called him, shouts at the top of his lungs, "Burn it down! Burn it all!" What do you suppose made the headline and what our typographers call "the pull quote?"

So, the outfit got investigated for arson, or some other dubious interpretation of the ever-mutating "rules of engagement."

"Arson," my son said, disgusted. "We were in a war zone. Everything was burning. And we're going to be investigated for arson."

So, what about the "good ones?" Galloway related that when you earned the troops' trust, you became "their reporter." They'd kid you, tease you and make free with your booze and smokes if you had them, but they'd put their own lives on the line to protect you.

One such reporter, Gordon Trowbridge of Marine Corps Times, earned such affection and respect from my son's unit. Owned by Gannett, Marine Corps Times publishes entirely independent of the military or the Department of Defense.

"He snored so loud, we really thought we might have to kill him," my son said, jokingly. "Trowbridge snored as bad as you, old man. He was a great reporter. He told it straight."

That's about the highest praise you can get from the troops. And in this war, such praise is rare.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dennis Anderson ([email protected]) editor of Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale, Ca. He was twice embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and has frequently written about the war for E&P.

Good post, BBB. Thanks.

Bush admits he authorised spying

Radio address
President George W Bush has admitted he authorised secret monitoring of communications within the United States in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.
The monitoring was of "people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organisations", he said.

He said the programme was reviewed every 45 days, and insisted he had upheld the law in defending Americans.

In his weekly address, he confirmed a report which appeared in the New York Times on Friday - and attacked it.

Because of the newspaper report, "our enemies have learned information they should not have", he said.

Senators of both Mr Bush's Republican party and the opposition Democrats expressed concerns about the programme on Friday.

'Big Brother'

Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee , said "there is no doubt that this is inappropriate", adding that Senate hearings would be held early next year as "a very, very high priority".

"This is Big Brother run amok," was the reaction of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.

Senator Russell Feingold, another Democrat, called it a "shocking revelation" that "ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American".

But in his address on Saturday, Mr Bush said the programme was "critical to saving American lives".

The president said some of the 11 September hijackers inside the United States had communicated with associates outside the country before the attacks - but that the US had not known that until it was too late.

"The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and our civil liberties," he said.

He said Congressional leaders had been briefed on the programme, which has been renewed more than 30 times.

'Illegal leak'

Mr Bush harshly criticised the leak that had made the programme public a day before his speech.

"Revealing classified information is illegal. It alerts our enemies," he said.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr Bush had signed a secret presidential order following the attacks on 11 September 2001, allowing the National Security Agency to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without referral to the courts.

Previously, surveillance on American soil was generally limited to foreign embassies.

American law usually requires a secret court, known as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to give permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4538286.stm

Published: 2005/12/17 16:14:52 GMT

If Bush is doing what's legal under US laws, why does he do it in secrecy and without the court's authority?

So those being watched don't know it?

That seems rather obvious to me.

McG, It's obvious to you because you know hardly anyhing about the Constititution and the government's checks and balances to keep us safe from intruding into our private lives.

McG, Also doesn't seem to understand what republicanism stands for; one of the GOPs main issues used to be less government intrusion into our lives. On top of that, the GOP also used to mean less government spendng. We're at a point now where 45 percent of government debt is owned by foriegn countries. Once they stop buying these 'bonds' the interest rates on government debt is going to become much more expensive, and interest rates are going to go through the roof!

This should not be ignored (emphasis added by me).



www.m-w.com

The most important function of government is to protect its citizens from harm. I would class the destruction of the WTC and the loss of 3,000 lives as EXTREME HARM.

There is no "rebellion or invasion." No, the most important function of government is to protect our Constitutional rights. That's what they swear to when taking office.

Senator Kyl went on record to say that he fervently hoped there would be no terrorist attack when the Patriot Act was not extant as a shield against such acts.
It is incredible that the left wing in this country is so anti-Bush that they would put the nation at risk. It is evidenct that if the Patriot Act is allowed to expire because of Democrat intrangisence, the shield will be down and the terrorists may operate with impunity. It is my understanding that if the Patriot Act expires, the Jaime Gorlick barrier which prohibits information sharing between various US agencies like the FBI and the CIA then goes into effect.
I would not wish to be a Democrat Congressman if we are in fact attacked in this country while the Patriot Act is not in force.

What would the History books say?

Democrats betray country--Put populace at risk for political advantage.

If we lose our Constitutional rights to win any war, we have lost the war.

Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
Secret database obtained by NBC News tracks ?'suspicious' domestic groups

By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella and the NBC Investigative Unit

Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005


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Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent










WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period.

"This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible," says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.

"This is incredible," adds group member Rich Hersh. "It's an example of paranoia by our government," he says. "We're not doing anything illegal."

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

LINK TO EXCERPTS FROM SECRET DOD DATABASE, EDITED FOR CLARITY




Department of Defense database listing domestic ?'threats'



"I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far," says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.

The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is "properly collected" and involves "protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel." The military has always had a legitimate "force protection" mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.

Four dozen anti-war meetings
The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One "incident" included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald's National Salute to America's Heroes ?- a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: "US group exercising constitutional rights." Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense ?- yet they all remained in the database.

The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.

Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped "secret" concludes: "[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the nternet," but no "significant connection" between incidents, such as "reoccurring instigators at protests" or "vehicle descriptions."

The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.

"It means that they're actually collecting information about who's at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests," says Arkin. "On the domestic level, this is unprecedented," he says. "I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military."

Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.

Make sure they are not just going crazy
"Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale," says Lotz. "I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington," he says, "and I certainly didn't want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn't any threat to the government," he adds.

The military's penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing ?- but familiar ?- to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.

"Some people never learn," he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.

The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens ?- many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.

But Pyle, now a professor at Mt.HolyokeCollege in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.

"The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again," he says.

Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military's expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.

Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program's first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.

CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its "operational and analytical records" include "reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts" by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.

One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed "Person Search," is designed "to provide comprehensive information about people of interest." It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, "The Insider Threat Initiative," intends to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats," as well as the ability to "identify and document normal and abnormal activities and ?'behaviors,'" according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods"to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals."

"The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services," says Pyle. "It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities," he argues.

Lotz agrees.

"The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government's policies," the former DOD intelligence official says.

'Slippery slope'
Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine, says "there is very little that could justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we never want to see again," he says.

Some of the targets of the U.S. military's recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far.

"It's absolute paranoia ?- at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.

"I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House," says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, "and several of us are Quakers."

The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a "threat."

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS???????????????

The Constitution of the United States

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY, PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the blessings for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

What is it about Domestic Tranquility, Common Defense and General Welfare, you don't understand, CI?

I assure you that the destruction of the World Trade Center and the horrible deaths of 3,000 of our countrymen, did not provide for Domestic Tranquility, did not show that we had a good defense and did not promote the general welfare TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE.