Fmr. Homeland Security Chief Ridge Slams Cheney For Saying Lamont's Victory Would Encourage "Al Qaeda Types"... | The Huffington Post

Fmr. Homeland Security Chief Ridge Slams Cheney For Saying Lamont's Victory Would Encourage "Al Qaeda Types"... The Huffington Post:

As Americans stood in newly long lines at airports, wondering if they would ever again be able to carry a tube of toothpaste or hair gel in their carry-on bags, there was a feeling of helplessness, a return of the persistent low-grade anxiety that had lingered for months and years after 9/11. Bush tried to reassure Americans that they are safer than they were before the attacks. At the same time, his vice president, Dick Cheney, darkly warned that the Connecticut primary victory of antiwar candidate Ned Lamont over Sen. Joseph Lieberman would only encourage "Al Qaeda types." (Interviewed by NEWSWEEK, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge bridled at his former colleague's remark: "That may be the way the vice president sees it," he said, "but I don't see it that way, and I don't think most Americans see it that way.") More>>>

Spike Lee's 'Requiem' for New Orleans - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com

Spike Lee's 'Requiem' for New Orleans - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com:

By Allison Samuels
Newsweek
Aug. 21-28, 2006 issue - Spike Lee is a proud New Yorker—he lives for the Yankees, dies for the Knicks and bleeds for all things Brooklyn—but for the past year, his heart has been in New Orleans. To make his new four-hour HBO documentary about Hurricane Katrina, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," the 49-year-old director visited the Gulf Coast region nine times and interviewed more than 100 people, including the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, Sean Penn, Soledad O'Brien, Kanye West, engineers, historians, journalists, radio DJs—even the guy who spotted the vice president during a post-Katrina photo-op and told him, "Go f--- yourself, Mr. Cheney." But the voice you'll remember best belongs to a 42-year-old woman named Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, a survivor from the city's obliterated Lower Ninth Ward and one of the rawest specimens of classic Nawlins spitfire you'll ever find.

In Lee's devastating film, LeBlanc is a frequent, and frequently hilarious, presence, a fuming Greek chorus of one who still can't believe that, for nearly a week, her country left her and her neighbors for dead. "There were two things I asked Spike when we first met," says LeBlanc, sitting in a lawn chair outside her government-issued trailer home in New Orleans—the one she finally received four months after applying for it. "First I asked him, 'Are you going to tell the whole story and make it clear that all black people aren't poor, ignorant looters?' And then I asked if I could cuss." She laughs. "When he said yes to both, I said, 'Hot damn, we've got a deal!'" More>>>

NBC: Disagreement over timing of arrests - British Wanted to Continue Surveillance on Terror Suspects

NBC: Disagreement over timing of arrests - British Wanted to Continue Surveillance on Terror Suspects:

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

More>>>

Lieberman, on the Offensive, Links Terror Threat and Iraq - New York Times

Lieberman, on the Offensive, Links Terror Threat and Iraq - New York Times - Apparently Lieberman will stop at nothing to score political points against his opponent Ned Lamont:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut seized on the reports of a terror plot yesterday to attack Ned Lamont, his Democratic opponent for re-election, saying that Mr. Lamont’s goal of withdrawing American troops from Iraq by a fixed date would constitute a “victory” for extremists.

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,” Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.” More>>>>>

War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution

The Washington Post - War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution - Bushco is taking no chances I see. They want to cover all bases. When you read this article in the Washington Post, your outrage will be justified:

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture. MORE>>>>

The Raw Story | Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam

The Raw Story: Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam

This should come as no suprise, given the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. However, one must wonder: "what color is the sky on Bush's planet?"

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!” MORE>>>

The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum - Re-Post

Note: I posted this late last year. Given the current events developing between the Isreali/Lebanon "conflict", the Senate hearings regarding the status of the occupation in Iraq and its civil war, the faux pas made by the President on a constant basis and Cheney talking about the 'dark side', I felt this article needed to be resurrected:

George Bush has change over the last year. He went from being a Texas Governor Jerk who said if he lost the election, "life goes on," to a dogmatic, closed-minded man who apparently believes God has chosen him to bring the deluded dream of "democracy" to the Middle East. People have suggested to me that Bush is either insane or a psychopath (i.e., he has no conscience). Perhaps, there IS another answer: Maybe Bush and Company are suffering from what the Greeks noticed thousands of years ago: Koros (stability...or the appearance thereof) to Hubris (arrogance, moral blindness) to Ate (a kind of "madness") to Nemesis (destruction). One of the problems of the afflicted is that they never know what is happening to them. Sounds like Bush and Company most certainly have this affliction. The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum!!!! Prominent Conservative Leader: Government in Hands of Psychopaths: May stage terror attacks By Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson.

Former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts expressed his dire warning that the US government has fallen into the hands of psychopaths and that the Neo-Cons in the Bush administration may be set to stage another terror attack in the US as part of a black operation to demolish growing dissent and coerce the public to rally behind the government once again. More...