Libs Are calling BUsh a liar.
Your Liberal representatives have spent the last two years saying nothing BUT George Bush is a liar and purposely mislead us.
Every single night your Liberal respresentatives bash Bush just like they did for the last four years. Yet NONE have produced any evidence. NONE.
I am not trying to flame anyone. I am just so feed up with the outrageous lies that you liberals repeat day in and day out.
Where are the facts to back up your claims? I have yet to see any! Not just you here, but on TV as well.
One of the biggest lies that Liberals are telling day after day is about the Iraqi army. The daily drone is deafening. The Liberal chant is "The Iraqi Army has one battalion ready to fight". Why are there not more ready to fight. The Iraqis should be fighting this war not AMericans.
The real truth is that 80 (EIGHTY) Iraqi Battalions are currently fighting and dying in Iraq. EIGHTY! THe fact is that only one Battalion can operate totally independent for the US army is never, EVER mentioned by you LIBS. NEVER! But you mislead everyone that only one BAttaion is ready to fight.
I am not ready to flame anyone. But I am ready to point out all the BS lies that all of you continue to push day in and day out.
Gerry Nadler was on Hanity and Combs tonight droning "We have to have a full blown investigation into the Bush administration because the latest facts, i.e. Wilsons clowns, shows that BUSH lied.
When asked for his proof, all he did was double talk.
I rest my case agin.
Even more proof of media bias in attacking and demoninzing Black Republican candidates.
Funny how this shows up the same time the Condi Rice demon photo shows up in USA TODAy
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/10/simple-sambo-wants-to-move-to-big.html
YEt another Liberalattack website demonizing another up and coming Black Republican, Lt Gov Steele of Maryland.
You pelple take the cake!
Se Ya
It's really good cake, you should try some with a dish of vanilla ice cream.
...and don't forget to take your banjo when you go - I think you left it over by the hog pen.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 21, 2005
U.S. general: Iraqi army needs more time
LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - It will take up to two years for the Iraqi army to have the military leadership and supplies it needs to operate on its own, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Friday.
Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., told Pentagon reporters that the Iraqi security forces are continuing to grow, but their major need is for support systems, such as fuel and replacement parts.
"If we're talking about an army that can pick up and move and go out to the borders to defend the country and be able to sustain operations out in the open for a long period of time, it's probably going to be a year and a half, two years before that system is mature enough to operate on its own," Webster said from Baghdad.
Webster did not specify what impact his assessment would have on U.S. hopes for beginning a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
Earlier this year, U.S. military officials said they thought they could begin fairly substantial troop withdrawals next spring. But amid ongoing questions about the Iraqi army's training, they have since scaled back that prediction, saying some troop reductions are possible in 2006 but that any withdrawal will be based on conditions in Iraq.
"It's hard to pick a date for sending everybody home because the enemy gets a vote as to when that occurs," said Webster. "We have got to make sure the Iraqi government is capable of standing on its own and that the Iraqi security forces are capable of defending that new constitution."
Webster said the Iraqi government must provide systems for supplying its army, and the U.S. is working with them on that. In addition, he said the U.S. is helping the Iraqi army train front line supervisors on leadership and discipline.
He said that while there is a long way to go to get the rest of the Iraqi security forces able to work on their own, they have about 18 battalions now operating in Baghdad with some U.S. support, compared to one battalion in the oldest portion of the city last January.
Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq raised some eyebrows in Congress recently when he disclosed that only one Iraqi army battalion was ready to go into combat without U.S. support.
A few months ago, three battalions were thought to have that capability. Casey said he was not certain why the number fell from three to one but it might be linked to a shake up in battalion leaders.
There are now about 159,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Violence escalated just before the recent elections on the constitution, but has dropped off again, Webster said.
washingtonpost.com
Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable
Project in North Reveals Deep Divide Between U.S. and Iraqi Forces
By Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 10, 2005; A01
BAIJI, Iraq -- An hour before dawn, the sky still clouded by a dust storm, the soldiers of the Iraqi army's Charlie Company began their mission with a ballad to ousted president Saddam Hussein. "We have lived in humiliation since you left," one sang in Arabic, out of earshot of his U.S. counterparts. "We had hoped to spend our life with you."
But the Iraqi soldiers had no clue where they were going. They shrugged their shoulders when asked what they would do. The U.S. military had billed the mission as pivotal in the Iraqis' progress as a fighting force but had kept the destination and objectives secret out of fear the Iraqis would leak the information to insurgents.
"We can't tell these guys about a lot of this stuff, because we're not really sure who's good and who isn't," said Rick McGovern, a tough-talking 37-year-old platoon sergeant from Hershey, Pa., who heads the military training for Charlie Company.
The reconstruction of Iraq's security forces is the prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq. But as the Bush administration extols the continuing progress of the new Iraqi army, the project in Baiji, a desolate oil town at a strategic crossroads in northern Iraq, demonstrates the immense challenges of building an army from scratch in the middle of a bloody insurgency.
Charlie Company disintegrated once after its commander was killed by a car bomb in December. And members of the unit were threatening to quit en masse this week over complaints that ranged from dismal living conditions to insurgent threats. Across a vast cultural divide, language is just one impediment. Young Iraqi soldiers, ill-equipped and drawn from a disenchanted Sunni Arab minority, say they are not even sure what they are fighting for. They complain bitterly that their American mentors don't respect them.
In fact, the Americans don't: Frustrated U.S. soldiers question the Iraqis' courage, discipline and dedication and wonder whether they will ever be able to fight on their own, much less reach the U.S. military's goal of operating independently by the fall.
"I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period," said 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato, 34, of Long Island, N.Y., the executive officer of McGovern's company, who sold his share in a database firm to join the military full time after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won't be ready before I leave. And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don't think they'll be ready then."
"We don't want to take responsibility; we don't want it," said Amar Mana, 27, an Iraqi private whose forehead was grazed by a bullet during an insurgent attack in November. "Here, no way. The way the situation is, we wouldn't be ready to take responsibility for a thousand years."
Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, commander of the 42nd Infantry Division, which oversees an area of north-central Iraq that includes Baiji and is the size of West Virginia, called the Iraqi forces "improved and improving." He acknowledged that the Iraqis suffered from a lack of equipment and manpower but predicted that, at least in his area of operation, the U.S. military would meet its goal of having battalion-level units operating independently by the fall.
"I can tell you, making assessments, I think we're on target," he said in an interview.
U.S. officers said the Iraqis had been particularly instrumental in obtaining intelligence that led to the detention of several suspected insurgent leaders in the region. They said it was unfair to evaluate the Iraqi forces by U.S. standards.
"We're not trying to make the 82nd Airborne here," Taluto said.
Overall, the number of Iraqi military and police trained and equipped is more than 169,000, according to the U.S. military, which has also said there are 107 operational military and special police battalions. As of last month, however, U.S. and Iraqi commanders had rated only three battalions capable of operating independently.
Two Washington Post reporters spent three days traveling with the Americans and the Iraqis, respectively. The unit was selected by the U.S. military. The journey revealed fundamental, perhaps irreconcilable differences over everything from the reluctance of Muslim soldiers to search mosques and homes to basic questions of lifestyle. Earlier this year, for instance, the Americans imported Western-style portable toilets that the Iraqis, accustomed to another style, found objectionable. In an attempt to bridge the difference, the U.S. military installed diagrams depicting proper use of the "port-a-johns."
The differences clash across a landscape that has grown increasingly violent since Iraq's Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, when U.S. commanders made the training of the Iraqi forces their top priority. In Taluto's region, insurgents set off five car bombs in February; there were 35 in May. Over that period, 1,150 roadside bombs were planted, according to division statistics.
Last week, U.S soldiers from 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, and Iraqis from 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, clambered into their vehicles to patrol the streets of Baiji. The Americans drove fully enclosed armored Humvees, the Iraqis open-backed Humvees with benches, the sides of which were protected by plating the equivalent of a flak jacket. The Americans were part of 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor Regiment of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
As an American reporter climbed in with the Iraqis, the U.S. soldiers watched in bemused horror.
"You might be riding home alone," one soldier said to the other reporter.
"Is he riding in the back of that?" asked another. "I'll be over here praying."
'Preschoolers With Guns'
The Iraqi soldiers were a grim lot, patrolling streets where they lived and mosques where they worshiped. As they entered their neighborhoods, some of them donned black balaclavas and green scarves to mask their identities. They passed graffiti on walls that, like the town, were colored in shades of brown. "Yes to the leader Saddam," one slogan read. "Long live the mujaheddin," said another. Nearly all the men had received leaflets warning them to quit; the houses of several had been attacked by insurgents.
"Don't you dare move!" shouted Cpl. Ahmed Zwayid, 26, pointing his gun at an approaching car.
The men spoke of the insurgents with a hint of awe, saying the fighters were willing to die and outgunned them with rocket-propelled grenades and, more fearsome, car bombs. Zwayid, a father of three, looked in disgust at his own AK-47 assault rifle, with a green shoelace for a strap.
"We fire 10 bullets and it falls apart," he said. Zwayid patted a heavy machine gun mounted in the bed of the Humvee. "This jams," he said. "Are these the weapons worthy of a soldier?" He and others said it was a sign of the Americans' lack of confidence in them.
"We trust the Americans. We go everywhere with them, we do what they ask," he said. "But they don't trust us."
Up ahead, McGovern conducted his own tour of Baiji's panorama of violence. He pointed out "dead man's grove," a stand of trees the Americans recently bulldozed because it was used to conceal bombs, and "dead man's road," a dangerous stretch of highway. A nearby lot was strewn with jagged pieces of car bomb.
"Honestly, I don't think people in America understand how touchy the situation really is right now," McGovern said. "We have the military power, the military might, but we're handling everything with kid gloves because we're hoping the Iraqis are going to step up and start taking things on themselves. But they don't have a clue how to do it."
Asked when he thought the Iraqi soldiers might be ready to operate independently, McGovern said: "Honestly, there's part of me that says never. There's some cultural issues that I don't think they'll ever get through."
McGovern added that the Iraqis had "come a long way in a very short period of time" and predicted they would ultimately succeed. But he said the effort was still in its infancy.
"We like to refer to the Iraqi army as preschoolers with guns," he said.
An hour later, the men returned to Forward Operating Base Summerall, a sandy expanse behind concrete barricades and concertina wire a few miles outside town. They followed U.S. military protocol: Each soldier dismounted from the vehicle and cleared his weapon. Zwayid stayed in the truck, handed his gun to a friend and asked him to clear it.
"Get down and clear your own weapon!" Cpl. William Kozlowski shouted to Zwayid in English.
Zwayid answered in Arabic. "That's my weapon," he explained, pointing to his friend.
"Corporal, you're a leader!" Kozlowski shouted back. "Take charge!"
Zwayid smiled at him. "What's he saying to me?" he whispered.
Yellow cake is made from bananas. Yes, we have no bananas, we only have vanilla.
Cicerone - don't waste the server space, this guy is not going to read (or believe) anything you post. He apparently lives in Neverland.
Listen, what is it with these continual attacks on lemmings??? I've just about had enough of it. They DON'T commit mass suicide. That was yet another Disney fit-up. The world is going to have to find another word to describe a bunch of leaderless, brainless, inept, stupid, moronic rodents. You can't keep using the word "lemmings" to describe them.
And "Republicans" has been taken already. So look for another word.
From a friend in Australia:
Steven,
I write to you as both my former federal representative and one who, I am aware, at least has a conscience and the decency to listen to his constituents.
This week in Iraq, we reached a heart-breaking milestone: the 2,000th American soldier died in combat, fighting what we now know was always a war of choice and ideological preference.
For those who opposed the invasion, it's a moment to mourn our impotence: millions of us around the world did our best to stop this bloody disaster before it started, but we failed.
The real human cost, of course, is far greater than 2,000. It includes the 198 members of the "coalition of the willing" who have died, almost 300 private contractors, 73 journalists, the 15,220 Americans who have been wounded, and the invisible dead from what the Guardian's Julian Borger called the "extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media."
And then there's the sad fact that those deceased Americans and allies are a fraction of the number of Iraqi dead.
Extrapolating from a study of post-traumatic stress disorder published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 41,000 U.S. marines and army troops reported that they believed they had killed at least one Iraqi civilian in the 15 months following the 2003 invasion.
Estimates of Iraqi troops killed during the invasion range from 5,000 to as many as 45,000 projected by the Guardian. General Tommy Franks guessed it was 30,000.
While we're supposed to consider these "bad guys" and ignore their deaths, the majority were young men trying to escape poverty in a country with an unemployment rate as high as 70 percent during the sanctions regime.
The real human toll includes, too, the estimated 3,450 Iraqi police and security forces who have been killed in what is already a low-grade civil war. And according to Iraq Body Count, a website that gathers media accounts of civilian deaths, between 26,000 and 30,000 Iraqi civilians have died from coalition actions through Monday.
But even those totals are dwarfed by the number of dead -- by some estimates over a million -- caused by the U.N sanctions that started with Bush I, and continued under President Bill Clinton, whose Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, once described the effects of the sanctions on Iraq's children as "worth it."
And even when we include all of those lives lost, we still don't begin to scratch the surface of the real human costs of this war -- the permanent emotional scars that war inevitably leaves on all of its participants, victims and victors alike.
Public support for this war has been sustained by a willful ignorance of the damage being done. On some level, Americans need a sanitized view of conflicts like Iraq to keep their dream of America's righteousness alive. Sure, the newspapers, the White House and the Pentagon have refined their techniques of repressing the numbers of the dead in Iraq, but the truth is there's a public appetite for the version of events they offer.
It is the perception that we are prosecuting a war that is less than righteous -- far more than recurring images of flag-draped coffins -- that will sap public support. The dead U.S. soldiers, dead children, dead Iraqi civilians are all the result of the same thing: 14 years of remorseless and cynical policy conducted by an unaccountable government and abetted by a citizenry that will stay loyal so long as the real human cost remains hidden.*
In Australia, meanwhile, the federal government has managed to escape the consequences of this disaster largely unscathed. Australians have forgotten the lies spread by this government in its mindless march to war; they've forgotten the "weapons of mass destruction"; and they remain massively disinterested in the damage done to western democracy by a scheming cabal of right wing nutters in Washington, London and Australia.
It is no thanks to ministers and MPs -- including the leader of the federal opposition -- who wrap themselves in the Australian flag and try to outdo each other in being "tough on terrorism", that the Australian continent has so far escaped a terrorist attack. In fact, the real "war against terrorism" is now all but lost, with the enactment of laws that threaten our long-established rights and liberties far more than any terrorist outrage.
Thanks to a few small talents in powerful positions -- Bush, Howard and Blair, to name a prominent few -- what we have today is a clash, not of civilisations but of ignorance. Let's pray that the human race and western civilisation can survive this ideological madness.
The Washington Post, 26 October 2005; A18
Editorial: Vice President for Torture
Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.
His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.
It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.
The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501388.html
Fortunately, for America's sake, there are a great many good Americans who oppose evil men like Bush and Cheney. In the face of the maniacal rantings of the mad Right, the commitment of these good Americans to decency and true democratic values provides the only hope for the future of the United States. Amongst the best and most active is the group Human Rights Watch, who yesterday sent out the following bulletin:
License to Abuse Would Put CIA Above the Law
(New York, October 26, 2005) The Bush administration is now the only government in the world to claim a legal justification for mistreating prisoners during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said today.
The administration recently approached members of the U.S. Congress to seek a waiver that would allow the CIA to use cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment on detainees in U.S. custody outside the United States.
While many other governments practice torture and other forms of mistreatment and have records of abuse far worse than the United States, no other government currently claims that such abuse is legally permissible, Human Rights Watch said.
View this document in full on the Human Rights Watch web site,
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/10/26/usdom11922.htm
Where is you facts?
All you have down is post news articles from left leaning media outlets. The AP article never mentioned the total number of Iraqi Battalions fighting and dying in Iraq. They only mentioned the total in Bagdad.
No mention of the 88 Battalions.
All you have done is cast dispersions at me. I guess you have an inferiority complex.
You have no ideas on how to solve Americas problems. Thats why Liberalism is on its way out!
It must really suck to be in control of NONE of the three branches of Government!
Se YA
Quote:It is no thanks to ministers and MPs -- including the leader of the federal opposition -- who wrap themselves in the Australian flag and try to outdo each other in being "tough on terrorism", that the Australian continent has so far escaped a terrorist attack. In fact, the real "war against terrorism" is now all but lost, with the enactment of laws that threaten our long-established rights and liberties far more than any terrorist outrage.
This is so true, sadly. We're teetering on the brink of an abyss. Our politicians have frightened us, we are a nation of scaredy-cats. We're scared of terrorists who haven't struck here yet and we're scared of what our politicians are proposing to do to us. Already people are calling into talk shows on radio and asking if their right to speak up will still exist or will they be arrested and detained in contravention of the principles enshrined in habeas corpus (which looks like going the way of the dodo) and be held incommunicado and when they are released (if they are released) will they be locked up again if they dare to tell their spouse where they have been for the past month.
But the big question here right now is "will Makybe Diva run in the Melbourne Cup?"
Osso's solution is much of italy's post medieval towns' --- 90 second races and jousts and orange throwing. Not as a joke but as a serious ritual at heart re different parts of town. But after that cheating exploitative ridiculous flagrantly enthusiastic ritual, it's over.
I don't know at all that italian festivals are any model at all.
but review of their history couldn't hurt.
Siena comes immediately to mind.
Yeh. There was an article in the nyer in '87 that I saved for quite a while and suppose I could get links for... one of those twenty pager type articles, by Elizabeth something, as I remember. (I have links, they're packed).
It was a really good explanation of the inter-macchinations.
It explicated all the skulduggery. Described all the pagentry,.
fantastic article.
And somewhere in there she mentioned there hadn't been murder in Siena in x amount of years (let me guess, 35).
Now pageantry doesn't shut off murder or other themes like that, but it does seem that the rivalry of the town divisions being aimed at a horse race, however entirely crooked, but still unknowable because of various factors...
works out in the long run.
Interesting osso - looks like a good research question there for a smart young PhD candidate
I did watch a documentary about the horse race in Siena (can't think of the name in Italian now) and it seemed to me that it was actually invented to coalesce the intra-city rivalry around something less lethal than chopping each other up with swords. Must have worked.
SLOPACQuote:It must really suck to be in control of NONE of the three branches of Government!
Se YA
You are the one that started the thread about Libs want POWER.
"When they say it aint about the money, its about the money"
Just wanna remind you , its 2:30, time for Mr Prozac
