Kucinich the Just - A Tireless Warrior for Impeachment

We can dream, can't we? Or has that been outlawed?

Kucinich, Kucinich, Kucinich....I just love that man. Who else has the balls to take over four and a half hours to read 35 articles of impeachment on the floor of the House? Although I have yet to see the story on TV, including C-Span, where last night they aired Dennis reading all 35 articles of impeachment starting at 7:30pm yesterday ending around midnight. It is one of the most popular stories on Yahoo news today. Whoever wrote the article, called his efforts basically a waste of time:

Rep. Kucinich calls for Bush impeachment

By JoAnne AllenMon Jun 9, 10:13 PM ET

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich defied his party leadership on Monday by calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush for launching the Iraq war -- but his move was not expected to go anywhere.

The Ohio representative outlined his intention to propose more than two dozen charges against Bush on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, accused Bush executing a "calculated and wide-ranging strategy" to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she opposes trying to remove the Republican president who leaves office next January because such an attempt would be divisive and most likely unsuccessful.

Kucinich, an outspoken Iraq war critic who has consistently voted against funding the war and led anti-war efforts in Congress, offered a resolution to impeach Vice president Dick Cheney in April 2007. That also failed to move forward.

Many Democrats and civil liberties groups have accused the Bush administration of providing misleading information before the 2003 Iraq invasion as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens with its warrantless surveillance program. The White House denies the charges.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)

I'm not sure why such a short article would need editing including listing the name of the editor. This is not the norm. Additionally the article was written before he even finished reading the articles of impeachment.
As one person wrote on Op-Ed News, the story cannot be found on the mainstream media. They are more concerned with the election and whatever sensational murder has occurred. But there is an even more sensational murder taking place in Washington, the demise of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus. Why is this not news?
Next step, a trial for war crimes.
The 35 articles included masking global warming, lying about Iraq, 9/11 quasi-investigation, and 32 others. At least we have one Warrior for Justice in the house. I believe they ask every Representative to turn in their spine when they are elected.
Thanks Dennis, for keeping your spine.

Bush's Brain Involved in 9/11 Comission Report

NYT's Reporter Claims Rove Influenced 9/11 Commission Report
By Max Holland
Washington Decoded
Wednesday 30 January 2008

In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel's executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in "surreptitious" communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission's 20 - month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
Shenon, who led The New York Times' coverage of the 9/11 panel, reveals the Zelikow - Rove connection in a new book entitled The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, to be published next month by TWELVE books. The Commission is under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version from a New York bookstore.
In what's termed an "investigation of the investigation," Shenon purports to tell the story of the commission from start to finish. The book's critical revelations, however, revolve almost entirely around the figure of Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs prior to his service as the commission's executive director. Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow's role and leadership, and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing Zelikow in the first place - and then allowing him to stay on after his myriad conflicts - of - interest were revealed under oath.
Shenon's narrative is built from extensive interviews with staff members and several, if not all, the commissioners. He depicts Zelikow as exploiting his central position to negate or neutralize criticism of the Bush administration so that the White House would not bear, in November 2004, the political burden of failing to prevent the attacks.
The Commission includes these specific revelations:

* Kean and Hamilton appreciated that Zelikow was a friend and former colleague of then - national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, one of the principal officials whose conduct would be scrutinized. Zelikow had served with her on the National Security Council (NSC) during the presidency of Bush's father, and they had written a book together about German reunification. The commission co-chairmen also knew of Zelikow's October 2001 appointment to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. According to Shenon, however, Zelikow failed to disclose several additional and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that he had been a member of Rice's NSC transition team in 2000-01. In that capacity, Zelikow had been the "architect" responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow "had laid the groundwork for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?"
* Karen Heitkotter, the commission's executive secretary, was taken aback on June 23, 2003 when she answered the telephone for Zelikow at 4:40 PM and heard a voice intone, "This is Karl Rove. I'm looking for Philip." Heitkotter knew that Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all contact with senior officials in the Bush administration. Nonetheless, she gave Zelikow's cell phone number to Rove. The next day there was another call from Rove at 11:35 AM. Subsequently, Zelikow would claim that these calls pertained to his "old job" at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
* The full extent of Zelikow's involvement with the incumbent administration administration only became evident within the commission on October 8, 2003, almost halfway into the panel's term. Determined to blunt the Jersey Girls' call for his resignation or recusal, Zelikow proposed that he be questioned under oath about his activities. General counsel Daniel Marcus, who conducted the sworn interview, brought a copy of the resume Zelikow had provided to Kean and Hamilton. None of the activities Zelikow now detailed - his role on Rice's transition team, his instrumental role in Clarke's demotion, his authorship of a post - 9/11 pre-emptive attack doctrine - were mentioned in the resume. Zelikow blandly asserted to Marcus that he did not see "any of this as a major conflict of interest." Marcus's conclusion was that Zelikow "should never have been hired" as executive director. But the only upshot from these shocking disclosures was that Zelikow was involuntarily recused from that part of the investigation which involved the presidential transition, and barred from participating in subsequent interviews of senior Bush administration officials.
* Some two months later, as Bob Kerrey replaced disgruntled ex-Senator Max Cleland on the panel, the former Nebraska senator became astounded once he understood Zelikow's obvious conflicts-of-interest and his very limited recusal. Kerrey could not understand how Kean and Hamilton had ever agreed to put Zelikow in charge. "Look Tom," Kerrey told Kean, "either he goes or I go." But Kean persuaded Kerrey to drop his ultimatum.
* In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed, Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her to ignore Zelikow's order and continue to keep a log of his telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them.
* Although Shenon could not obtain from the GAO an unredacted record of Zelikow's cell phone use - and Zelikow used his cell phone for most of his outgoing calls - the Times reporter was able to establish that Zelikow made numerous calls to "456" numbers in the 202 area code, which is the exclusive prefix of the White House.
* Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of "Team 3," the task force responsible for the most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism policy. This brief encompassed the White House, which meant investigating the conduct of Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke during the months prior to 9/11. Team 3 staffers would come to believe that Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report that would have depicted Rice's performance as "amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it."

In Without Precedent, Kean and Hamilton's 2006 account of the 9/11 panel, the two co-chairmen wrote that Zelikow was a controversial choice
. . . [but] we had full confidence in Zelikow's independence and ability - and frankly, we wanted somebody who was unafraid to roil the waters from time to time. He recused himself from anything involving his work on the NSC transition. He made clear his determination to conduct an aggressive investigation. And he was above all a historian dedicated to a full airing of the facts. It was clear from people who knew and worked with him that Zelikow would not lead a staff inquiry that did anything less than uncover the most detailed and accurate history of 9/11.
Shenon's radically different account of the commission's inner workings promises to achieve what none of the crackpot conspiracy theorists have managed to do so far: put the 9/11 Commission in disrepute.
The Commission will be reviewed in the February issue of Washington DeCoded.

Attention Students!!

If Bush Told You to Jump Off a Cliff, Would You Do That Too?

Since 9/11 the propaganda machine has been running overtime. I can't even count how many times 9/11 has been invoked by our presidential candidates. It is because of that, that we are in Iraq, right? Oh wait, there was no connection from 9/11 to Iraq. Whatever the lie will be this week is yet to be told. I found an interesting article on AlterNet about the propaganda machine:

The Maga-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda

By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet. Posted September 27, 2007

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and they were set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001. That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my earlier work, for example.)

Invading a sovereign nation unprovoked, however, directly violates the charter of the United Nations. It is an international crime. Before the Bush administration could attack either Afghanistan or Iraq, it would need a politically and diplomatically credible reason for doing so.

The terrorist violence of Sept. 11, 2001, provided a spectacular opportunity. In the cacophony of outrage and confusion, the administration could conceal its intentions, disguise the true nature of its premeditated wars, and launch them. The opportunity was exploited in a heartbeat.

Within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared the United States "… would take the fight directly to the terrorists," and "… he announced to the world the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that harbor them." Thus the "War on Terror" was born.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed in the pattern of subsequent facts:

• In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorist. Offers by the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden were ignored, and he remains at large to this day.
• In Iraq, when the United States invaded, there were no al Qaeda terrorists at all.
• Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.
• The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21 multistory buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats, staff and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in the world, but we have yet to be told why.
• A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated, not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11. If the "War on Terror" is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.
• Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves. They cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known as the "hydrocarbon framework law."
• The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies were crafted by the Bush administration State Department in 2002, a year before the invasion.
• Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of a number of major oil companies. The law was written in English and translated into Arabic only when it was due for Iraqi approval.
• President Bush made passage of the hydrocarbon law a mandatory "benchmark" when he announced the troop surge in January of 2007.

When it took office, the Bush administration brushed aside warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Their anxiety to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq was based on other factors.

Iraq

The Iraqi war was conceived in 1992, during the first Bush administration, in a 46-page document entitled Draft Defense Planning Guidance.

The document advocated the concept of preemptive war to assure the military and diplomatic dominance of the world by the United States. It asserted the need for "… access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil." It warned of "… proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." And it spoke of "… threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism." It was the template for today's war in Iraq.

The Draft Defense Planning Guidance was signed by the secretary of defense, Richard Cheney. It was prepared by three top staffers: Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad-all of whom would fill high-level positions in the administration of George W. Bush, nine years in the future.

In proposing global dominance and preemptive war, it was a radical departure from the traditional U.S. policy of multilateral realism, and it was an early statement of the emerging ideology of "neoconservatism."

The document was too extreme. President George H.W. Bush publicly denounced it and immediately retracted it. Many in his administration referred to its authors as "the crazies."

But the ideology survived. Five years later William Kristol and Robert Kagan created a neoconservative organization to advocate preemptive war and U.S. global dominion to achieve, in their words, a "benevolent global hegemony." It was called the Project for the New American Century, quickly abbreviated as PNAC. Among the founding members were Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush.

In a letter to President Clinton on Jan. 26, 1998, the Project for the New American Century once more urged the military overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.

President Clinton ignored the letter, apparently viewing this iteration of the proposal as no less crazy than the original.

As the presidential campaign of 2000 drew to a close, the PNAC produced yet another proposal for U.S. world dominion, preemptive war and the invasion of Iraq. It was a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources For a New Century" (PDF).

Weeks later, in January of 2001, 29 members of the Project for the New American Century joined the administration of George W. Bush. Their ideology of world dominion and preemptive war would dominate the Bush administration's foreign and defense policies.

Within 10 days of his inauguration, President Bush convened his National Security Council. The PNAC people triumphed when the invasion of Iraq was placed at the top of the agenda for Mideast foreign policy. Reconciling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long the top priority, was dropped from consideration.

The neoconservative dream of invading Iraq was a tragic anachronism, an ideological fantasy of retrograde imperialism. A related and far more pragmatic reason for the invasion, however, would surface soon.

No administration in memory had been more closely aligned with the oil industry. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were intimately tied to it, and so was National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. So were eight cabinet secretaries and 32 other high-level appointees.

By early February, Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was at work. Federal agency people were joined by executives and lobbyists from the Enron, Exxon-Mobil, Conoco-Phillips, Shell and BP America corporations.

Soon the task force was poring over detailed maps of the Iraqi oil fields, pipelines, tanker terminals, refineries and the undeveloped oil exploration blocks. It studied two pages of "foreign suitors for Iraqi oil field contracts" -- foreign companies negotiating with Saddam Hussein's regime, none of which was a major American or British oil company.

The intent to invade Iraq and the keen interest in Iraqi oil would soon converge in a top secret memo of Feb. 3, 2001, from a "high level National Security Council official." The memo: "… directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies toward rogue states' such as Iraq and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"

As early as Feb. 3, 2001, the Bush administration was committed to invading Iraq, with the oil fields clearly in mind.

The terrorist attacks on Washington and New York were still seven months in the future.

Afghanistan

The issue in Afghanistan was the strategically valuable location for a pipeline to connect the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin to the richest markets. Whoever built the pipeline would control the Basin, and in the 1990s the contest to build it was spirited.

American interests in the region were promoted by an organization called the Foreign Oil Companies Group. Among its most active members were Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state but now an advisor to the Unocal Corp.; Alexander Haig, another former secretary of state but now a lobbyist for Turkmenistan; and Richard Cheney, a former secretary of defense, but now the CEO of the Halliburton Corp.

Late in 1996, however, the Bridas Corp. of Argentina finally signed contracts with the Taliban and with Gen. Dostum of the Northern Alliance to build the pipeline.

One American company in particular, Unocal, found that intolerable and fought back vigorously, hiring a number of consultants in addition to Kissinger: Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and Zalmay Khalilzad. (Armitage and Khalilzad would join the George W. Bush administration in 2001.)

Unocal wooed Taliban officials at its headquarters in Texas and in Washington, D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided, but the Taliban refused. Finally, in February of 1998, John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president, asked in a congressional hearing to have the Taliban replaced by a more stable regime.

The Clinton administration, having recently refused the PNAC request to invade Iraq, was not any more interested in a military overthrow of the Taliban. President Clinton did, however, shoot a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan, after the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa. And he issued an executive order forbidding further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Maresca was thus twice disappointed: The Taliban would not be replaced very soon, and Unocal would have to cease its pleadings with the regime.

Unocal's prospects rocketed when George W. Bush entered the White House, and the Project for the New American Century ideology of global dominance took hold.

The Bush administration itself took up active negotiations with the Taliban in January of 2001, seeking secure access to the Caspian Basin for American companies. The Enron Corp. also was eyeing a pipeline to feed its proposed power plant in India.) The administration offered a package of foreign aid as an inducement, and the parties met in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. The Bridas contract might still be voided.

But the Taliban would not yield.

Anticipating this in the spring of 2001, the State Department had sought and gained the concurrence of India and Pakistan to take military action if necessary. The PNAC people were not timid about using force.

At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." With the futility of negotiations apparent, "President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October."

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

Sept. 11, 2001

A tectonic groundswell of skepticism, doubt and suspicion has emerged about the Bush administration's official explanation of 9/11. Some claim the administration orchestrated the attacks. Others see complicity. Still others find criminal negligence. The cases they make are neither extreme nor trivial.

Whatever the truth about 9/11, the Bush administration now had a fortuitous, spectacular opportunity to proceed with its premeditated attacks.

The administration would have to play its hand skillfully, however.

Other nations have suffered criminal acts of terrorism, but there is no precedent for conflating the terrorists with the states that harbor them, declaring a "war" and seeking with military force to overthrow a sovereign government. Victimized nations have always relied successfully on international law enforcement and police action to bring terrorists to justice.

But the Bush administration needed more than this. War plans were in the files. They needed to justify invasions. Only by targeting the "harboring states," as well as the terrorists, did they stand a chance of doing so.

The administration played its hand brilliantly. It compared the terrorist attacks immediately to Pearl Harbor, and in the smoke and rage of 9/11 the comparison was superficially attractive. But Pearl Harbor was the violent expression of hostile intent by a formidably armed nation, and it introduced four years of full-scale land, sea and airborne combat. 9/11 was al Qaeda's violent expression of hostility: 19 fanatics armed with box cutters. Yes, extraordinary destruction and loss of life, but the physical security of our entire nation was simply not at stake.

Though the comparison was specious, the "War on Terror" was born, and it has proven to be an exquisite smokescreen. But labeling the preplanned invasions as a "War on Terror" was the mega-lie, dwarfing all the untruths that followed. The mega-lie would be the centerpiece of a masterful propaganda blitz that continues to this day.

The wars

On Oct. 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan.

Soon, with the Taliban overthrown, the Bush administration installed Hamid Karzai as head of an interim government. Karzai had been a Unocal consultant.

The first ambassador to Karzai's government was John J. Maresca, a vice president of Unocal.

The next ambassador to Afghanistan was Zalmay Khalilzad, another Unocal consultant.

Four months after the carpet of bombs, President Karzai and President Musharraf of Pakistan signed an agreement for a new pipeline. The Bridas contract was moot. The way was open for Unocal.

In February of 2003 an oil industry trade journal reported the Bush administration was ready to finance the pipeline across Afghanistan and to protect it with a permanent military presence. Osama bin Laden remained at large.

The mega-lie, the fabricated "War on Terror" was an easy sell in the Afghanistan adventure. The shock of 9/11 was immense, Osama bin Laden was operating from Afghanistan and the "state," the Taliban, was at least sympathetic to his organization. And the signature secrecy of the Bush Administration had kept from public view its eight months of negotiating with the Taliban. The first premeditated war was largely unopposed.

Selling the Iraq invasion to the American people and to the Congress would be far more difficult.

With the Trade Towers and the Pentagon still smoldering, President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ordered their staffs to find Saddam Hussein's complicity in the attacks. Of course they could not, so there would need to be a sustained and persuasive selling job -- a professionally orchestrated campaign of propaganda.

Soon after 9/11, fear-mongering propagandizing became the modus operandi of the Bush Administration. It began in earnest with the president's "axis of evil" State of the Union address in 2002, full of terrorism and fear. "The United States of America," the president said, "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

No regime anywhere was in fact threatening anyone with anything, but Bush appointed a 10-person "White House Iraq Group" in August of 2002. Chaired by Karl Rove, its members were trusted partisans and communications experts skilled in perception management. Their role was explicitly to market the need to invade Iraq. The group operated in strict secrecy, sifting intelligence, writing position papers and speeches, creating "talking points," planning strategy and timing, and feeding information to the media. This was the nerve center, where the campaign of propaganda was orchestrated and promulgated.

The group chose to trumpet nearly exclusively the most frightening threat-nuclear weapons. Rice soon introduced the litany of the smoking gun and the mushroom cloud, Cheney said hundreds of thousands of Americans might die, and Bush claimed Saddam was "six months away from developing a weapon."

In the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush uttered the infamous "sixteen words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was typical of White House Iraq Group work: The CIA knew and had said the information was bogus.

The propaganda campaign was ultimately successful, not least because of the axiomatic trust American people extend to their presidents: Nobody could have anticipated the range, intensity and magnitude of the expertly crafted deception. And the campaign was aided by a compliant mainstream press that swallowed and regurgitated the talking points.

The Congress was persuaded sufficiently to authorize the use of military force. The American people were persuaded sufficiently to accept the war and to send Mr. Bush to the White House for a second term. But no other war in the country's history had to be so consciously and comprehensively sold.

Much of the deception, distortion and lies was eventually exposed. The link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the weapons of mass destruction, the aluminum tubes, the mobile laboratories, the yellowcake from Niger: none of it true. Only the mega-lie, the "War on Terror," survives.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the Security Council, waving the vial of simulated anthrax and claiming "there is no doubt in my mind" Saddam Hussein was working to produce nuclear weapons.

But the Security Council, not so easily propagandized, refused to authorize American force.

On March 14, 2003, President Bush met in the Azores with Prime Ministers Blair of the United Kingdom and Aznar of Spain. They abandoned the effort for U.N. authorization, claimed the right to proceed without it and a week later launched the war.

Four years of violence. Nearly 4,000 young Americans dead. Seven times that many maimed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. Millions fleeing as refugees, their economy and infrastructure in ruins. A raging civil war. Half a trillion dollars and counting.

Stopping the madness

And for what? Neither face of the war has come remotely close to success. The "War on Terrorism" has not suppressed terrorism but has encouraged it instead. The premeditated war -- for ideological dreams of world dominion and the pragmatic capture of hydrocarbon assets -- is a colossus of failure.

The Afghan pipeline is a dead issue. As the warlords and the poppy growers in Afghanistan thrive, and as the Taliban regroups and regains dominance, the country tilts ominously into chaos once more.

The Iraqi hydrocarbon law -- the clever disguise for capturing the oil fields -- is fatally wounded, its true purpose becoming more widely known. Organized resistance is growing quickly, both in Iraq and in the United States. And the factions who need to agree on the law are otherwise engaged in killing each other.

The Iraqi war has not resulted, either, in the global dominance sought by the Project for the New American Century people, but in global repugnance for what their pathetic ideology has wrought.

Clearly the involvement of the U.S. military in the Mideast must cease. Pouring more lives and dollars into the quagmire may keep alive the warped dreams of the Bush administration, but those dreams are illegitimate, indeed criminal.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney reject any alteration in their course. They ask instead for more time, more money and even -- in threatening Iran -- for more targets.

There is no apparent way to the stop madness, to end the hemorrhaging of blood and treasure, but to impeach these men and, if found guilty, to remove them from office.

The integrity of the Constitution and the rule of law are at stake as well, but the Congress continues its indifference to impeachment, effectively condoning the administration's behavior. Should this continue, thinking Americans will discard the last crumbs of respect for the incumbent legislature -- polling shows there's not much left -- and punish its members, Republican and Democrat alike, in next year's election.

Impeachment will expose the fraudulence of the "War on Terror" and liberate us from the pall of fear the Bush administration has deliberately cast upon the country. Both political parties will be free to speak the truth: Terrorism is real and a cause for concern, but it is not a reason for abject fear.

We need only compare the hazard of al Qaeda to the threat posed by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. On the one hand is a wretched group of sad fanatics -- perhaps 50,000 in all -- clever enough to commandeer airliners with box cutters. On the other was a nation of 140 million people, a powerful economy, a standing army of hundreds of divisions, a formidable navy and air force and thousands of nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles pre-aimed at American targets.

We were a vigilant but poised and confident people then, not a nation commanded to cower in fear. We can and must regain that strength and self-assurance.

Ending the nightmare will take far less courage than the Bush people exhibited in beginning it. Taking a nation to war on distortion, deception and lies is enormously risky in many respects: in lives and in treasure, certainly, but also in a nation's prestige abroad and in the trust and support of its people. The Bush administration risked all this and more, and it has lost.

We risk far less by embracing the truth and acting on it. Our nation cherishes honesty: the fraudulence must end. But Bush and Cheney have shown themselves incapable of honesty, and we also cherish justice. They must be impeached.

This propaganda machine is most effective if a major tragedy happens like 9/11. Naomei Klein has written a terrific book called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Alfonso Cuarón, director of "Children of Men", made a short film about it. If you have not seen it, here it is:

Corporate Media's History of 9/11

There is a show on the History channel that I have caught a couple of times. It is about September 11th and the various theories that abound. I thought, "This will be interesting, seeing all the investigation into the truth", well, I was wrong. It continually painted those that question the White House's tale of that day as "Conspiracy Theorists", as many in corporate media do. The amusing thing about this show was that their "experts" were editors and writers for Popular Mechanics. Is that the best "experts" they could muster? They even changed the music when the "conspiracy theorists" spoke...dunnnnn, dunnnnn. If you really want a peek at this trash, I found a clip on Youtube:

How old is their key expert, 25? Come on History Channel! Does Rupert own your soul too?

9/11 = US Invasion

This September 11th....(what has that phrase come to mean, anyway) I plan on acting out and speaking up, but what to say? Stop the War?...no...too simple, this pain I feel is much deeper...Impeach Now? ...Yeah, like our lap dogs in DC would actually listen to the American people. I know, if I could only fit this on a sign...End the Occupation, REALLY Help the Iraqis, Stay out of IRAN, Try Out Leaders for Crimes Against Humanity, Treason and War Profiteering, Save Our Soldiers, National Health Care Now, Global Warming IS Real and WE Need to do SOMETHING, Stop Deciding what Country to Aid or Invade Depending on What's in it for US, Keep the Internet Open for ALL, and He's a DIVIDER not a Decider. I guess I may have to pick an issue.
Getting back to what 9/11 means. It is an approval stamp for illegal invasion and the erosion of our civil liberties. It is a mating call for the "compassionate conservative". It is a time for Bush to try to increase his approval ratings. Oh, it is a time to remember the tragedy of 2001.

We have a new tragedy in the world, the murder of over one million Iraqis. The current estimate on Iraqi deaths is 1,035,964. Each Iraqi blog I have read talks about over one million dead and over four million displaced either inside Iraq or forced out. Some blogs talk about politics, most talk about the occupation and some read like the Diary of Ann Frank.

One blog in particular, I will discus today. She is a 15 year old Iraqi girl nicknamed "Sunshine".

This week my friend Marwa visited me, she lives in my neighborhood, and I find her really nice person, they were forced to leave their home in Baghdad and come to Mosul, she felt like a stranger but not for long time, because we made a party in school for the girls who came from Baghdad and allocated money, and bought new clothes and stuff they need (I participated in that and wrote a post about that event).
Marwa's house was in my aunt Rose's neighborhood, the situation there is not good and Marwa saw many dead people thrown in front of her house, she talked to me about that, she even witnessed murders in front of her eyes. It is really hard to see a person murder and you can't do anything to stop that. It is not strange here, many teenagers witnessed murders and saw horrible views, even the kids.

Once you start looking at Iraqi blogs, it is hard to stop. The horrors they face every day makes me cry. This next quote is from her mother's blog:

I can't bear more anxiety, fear, and sadness. Counting our losses every day. Yesterday we lost our dear family senior; he is my father's uncle. He was shot to death by the American soldiers in his parent's in-law neighborhood. He is 78 years old. He was such a great man, educated, warm, and faithful to his wife who died with cancer, he raised his three children by himself to up bring a doctor, an engineer and an accountant. He remained without marriage for twenty years. Then he got married again. He was an ex-officer in the army….We all loved and honored him…we used to gather in his house every Eid; I will miss his kiss over my forehead as he used to, when we kiss him.My uncles and of course my dad considered him their best friend. They had very nice memories together; he was definitely their model…He will be missed by his friends and family, he is that kind of person that leaves emptiness.I couldn't sleep last night, neither my parent's, my husband nor my father in law. I wonder if the soldier who shot him and left him in his car ,asked himself about that old man , did he wondered if he was alive or died immediately?.. Did he sleep as a lamb?! Probably he forgot all about it, and had nice dreams….….The soldiers left him dead in his car after they shot him BY MISTAKE , then Iraqi policemen found him , used his cell phone to call one of the his family members.........
more details about the accident ......

We need help to stop the violence, and the disrespect of the humanity. I am giving some of the details about my relative's accident to seek for help, and investigation. On Wednesday afternoon about 5 pm. My dear grand uncle was shot by many American bullets from the right side while he was driving his car (Dark brown" Opel\vectra", model 1991.), in a residential neighborhood, "Al Tairan ". The report of the forensic doctor mentioned that the victim was turning his head toward the left, when he got the first bullet on his neck (that one caused immediate death), the other was in his upper right side of his chest, and the third bullet was on his upper part of his right arm.Such accidents, I mean shooting innocent people, had been repeated to a large extent that turned the appreciation of the Iraqis toward the American liberation from Saddams' regimen to hate or violence or at least suspicious about the intentions of the Americans' coexistence in Iraq …I doubt, there is any Iraqi still trust the Americans' being in their homeland, even the most peaceful optimistic……..
more about my daily life events....l
on the second day after the accident,I left my bed in the morning to find a sandy storm; I asked Sunshine to stay home to avoid asthma attack. But she refused (self-willed girl)…After an hour, she phoned; as soon as I heard her voice I expected she had asthma attack. But I was wrong; she phoned to tell me that she was in najma's house because a rocket or a bomb exploded to leave some damages in her school, with two injured girls, and 900 terrified girls….
Mama....

What are we REALLY doing over there?

I will end this post with a quote by our Liar in Chief:

Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
September 20, 2001