Friday, February 24, 2006

Depleted Uranium Kills Indiscriminately

Courtesty of Amercian Free Press:

An alarmingly high percentage of U.S. military personnel who have served in Iraq have been afflicted by a variety of health problems commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Exposure to uranium spread through the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons is thought to be the primary cause of the high rate of chronic ailments and mortality among Gulf War vets.

While initial casualties from the first U.S. invasion of Iraq were light, long-term casualties from the 1991 war ultimately exceeded 30 percent, according to Terrell E. Arnold, former Chairman of the Department of International Studies at the National War College. The long-term casualty rate from the current war in Iraq, Arnold says, is likely to be much higher.

Official statistics of killed and wounded from the 15-year long war against Iraq do not reflect the veterans whose service-related injuries only become apparent after they return from Iraq. The official death rate of those killed and wounded in Iraq does not include these vets, many of whom suffer slow and painful deaths as a direct result of their service. Dustin Brim was one of them.

Lori Brim lost Dustin, her only child, when he died at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington at the age of 22 on Sept. 24, 2004, after a six-month battle with what was eventually diagnosed as Non-Hodgkins Diffuse Large Cell B Type Lymphoma. When Mrs. Brim asked the doctors how her young, healthy, strong son had contracted cancer all they would say was “bad luck.”

Her caseworker and nurses at the hospital were more forthcoming with information. At different times during the six months nurses would take Mrs. Brim aside and urge her off the record to do some research on DU.

Asked whose idea it was for Dustin to join the Army in summer 2002, Mrs. Brim said, “It was mine.”

As a single mother, Mrs. Brim had approached an Army recruiter out of concern for the well-being of her son. She thought the Army would be good for her son by giving him some discipline and direction.

Dustin had not wanted to join the Army, his mother said. But Dustin was never meant to be in a war zone, she added. The U.S. Army recruiter had promised her, that as her only child, he would not be sent to war.

Mechanically inclined, Dustin became an Army mechanic, an E-4 specialist serving in the 1st Maintenance Company under the 541st Maintenance Battalion from Fort Riley, Kan., and was deployed to Iraq in August 2003.

Dustin’s work in Iraq involved working on disabled Army vehicles, including tanks, which his unit repaired and retrieved, or if damaged beyond repair, destroyed with explosives on the spot. Most of these vehicles, having been in the battlefield, would have been heavily laden with DU and other toxins.

Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, said that mechanics like Dustin are not properly prepared or protected to be working on DU contaminated vehicles.

Mrs. Brim said that her son had not even been equipped with a pair of gloves, let alone a mask or protective garb. The Army’s failure to inform and instruct its personnel about the dangers of DU exposure is one of Rokke’s main concerns.

At Christmas 2003, Dustin surprised his parents with a visit home. It was the last time Mrs. Brim would see her son in a healthy condition. A photo of Dustin taken in Iraq in February 2004 shows him smiling and strong.

In early March, however, Dustin began to complain of abdominal pains. He went to the doctors on his base 11 times during the month complaining of severe pain and constipation that lasted for weeks. He was sent back to his job and told to “work it out.”

During the last two weeks of March, he wrote to his mother telling her that his pain was unbearable.

On March 31 he passed out from pain and breathlessness. His sergeant happened to be with him and took him to the doctors who thought he had gall bladder problems and sent him to the hospital in Baghdad. The next day, April 1, was Dustin’s 22nd birthday. After being assessed and heavily drugged, the doctors allowed him to call home to tell his mother that he had cancer.

In Baghdad, the doctors had discovered that Dustin had a huge cancerous tumor on his esophagus, which severely restricted his breathing, a collapsed lung, the loss of a kidney, numerous blood clots and a tumor progressing on his liver. The doctors could not believe that Dustin had been turned away so many times for medical help and still manage to endure as long as he did in his magnitude of pain while carrying an 80-pound pack on his back, his mother said. Dustin was flown to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and then to Walter Reed Hospital.

“The story of Dustin Brim is just one more avoidable tragedy of our insane use of uranium munitions,” Rokke said.

“When I lost Dustin, I lost myself,” Mrs. Brim said. “This is something that should not have happened. There is something going on but no one wants to talk about it on the record. I am sharing my son’s story with you in the hope that perhaps it will make a difference.”

Monday, February 20, 2006

AP Recycles Old Bin Laden Tape For New Propaganda

By Paul Joseph Watson | February 20 2006

Using the justification that it was 'complete' - the Associated Press reported on a month old alleged bin Laden audio tape as if it was a new story. Either it was a quiet weekend or this is another branch of Rumsfeld's black propaganda campaign.

It's a shame that the major disinfo news organs don't have as much zeal to update other fairly important news items. Did the fact that several of the alleged 9/11 hijackers turned up alive weeks after the attack provoke a rash of top of the bill headlines? No, it was picked up by a couple of outlets and it certainly wasn't given any major play.

Some Islamic websites re-posted the old bin Laden tape and the AP thought this deserved major coverage, as did Drudge who put it at the top of his page. If the same websites had re-posted old articles about 9/11 would we be reading 'Twin Towers Attacked' headlines today?

No we would not.

Should it concern us that such websites have very strong US connections?

Should we be alarmed that Rumsfeld held a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday in which he outlined a plan to use weblogs as a tool for US military propaganda?

Last month Rumsfeld also made it clear that 'enemy websites' would be attacked if they harmed the agenda of the US government.

Reporting the bin Laden tape again as if it's new, even aside from proven past fraudulent tapes, simply recycles and re-applies old propaganda like a band aid. Keep the sheeple frightened, reinforce the myth that bin Laden is still even alive and lessen the dissent when the Patriot Act is renewed and when the White House says it will fight tooth and nail to block any NSA spying investigation.

Just like a terror alert that is denounced as 'shit' by twenty three intel experts, the tactics never change. Re-posting a month old hokey bin Laden tape can hardly be called creative but it's the latest lame attempt to lull Americans into a continued state of ambivalence and trance-like subservience.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

What Bush Is Up To

By Charley Reese

I'm going to tell you what the real Bush administration policy is. I have no take-it-to-court proof. No one does, because the administration doesn't tell the truth and is very secretive.

But from conversations I've had with people from the Middle East and from extensive reading, I infer that the Bush administration's policy encompasses three goals:

One of the goals is to replace the present Syrian government with one the administration hopes will be more pliable in its policy toward Israel. Another is to construct four permanent bases in Iraq, and that means the administration has no intention of ever withdrawing all U.S. forces. The third goal is to attack Iran's nuclear facilities from the air. The propaganda campaign to justify this attack is already under way.

The U.S. government has lied a lot about Syria. It has implied that Syria was helping jihadists slip into Iraq. Some of the neoconservatives have claimed that Iraq hid its infamous nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Syria. Now they have joined in accusing the Syrian government of assassinating a Lebanese politician. They've even picked out a successor to the current president of Syria. More recently, they accused Syria of inciting mobs to burn a foreign embassy in Damascus during a riot related to the prophet cartoons.

In fact, Syria's government is Ba'athist – that is to say, it is secular, socialist and nationalistic. It highly disapproves of religious extremists, whether Shi'ites or Sunni. There is no evidence whatsoever that Syria incited the mobs to burn the foreign embassy in Damascus. Professor Juan Cole searched the databases of Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts, which are monitored and translated by the U.S. government and the BBC. Not a peep from the Syrian government in the way of incitement.

The Syrian ambassador to the U.S. told me of another instance of U.S. lying. Our government asked the Syrian government to help it catch an Iraqi who was hiding in a tribal area that extended across the border, partly in Iraq and partly in Syria. The Syrian government agreed and indeed captured the man and 32 of his followers, all of whom were handed over to the U.S. Syria asked the U.S. for only one thing in return: just tell the world we cooperated with you.

Did the U.S. do that? No, it lied and said that the Syrians had harbored the fugitive. As for Saddam Hussein hiding his weapons in Syria, it so happens that the Syrian Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party have famously been at odds for years. People spreading that nonsense seem to have forgotten that Syrian troops fought alongside Americans in Gulf War I against Iraq. You can be sure Saddam did not forget that. He would have no more turned over his nonexistent weapons to Syria than he would have to Israel.

The large American military bases in Iraq already exist and are being improved. These are billion-dollar-plus facilities, and you can bet nobody in the Bush administration intends to hand them over to the Iraqis. Watch carefully the language used when the Bush people, in or out of uniform, talk about "withdrawal." It is always surrounded by conditions. They don't intend to leave Iraq. Now, that doesn't mean that the new Iraqi government might not force them to leave. That remains to be seen.

As for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, we have that capability. There's not much the Iranians could do to stop us. And, yes, it would be a stupid and foolish thing to do, since at present there is no evidence that Iran intends to build a bomb. As we know from the Iraq invasion, this administration is capable of doing stupid and foolish things.

Just because Iran can't stop us from bombing it doesn't mean the Iranians can't retaliate. They very likely have the capability of setting the entire Middle East on fire with a general war that could disrupt the world's oil supply and wreck much of the world's economy. Unfortunately, history shows that those who bet on wise political leadership avoiding war end up losing their shirts and often their lives and their fortunes.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Congresswoman Says America Run By Criminal Syndicate

McKinney: American citizens could be put in forced labor camps

By Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones

Cynthia McKinney, the only House Representative to stand up to the Bush White House crime syndicate, has gone further than ever before in her efforts to warn people about what the Neo-Cons' ultimate goals actually entail for freedom in America.

During a recent radio interview on the Alex Jones Show, McKinney illustrated the nature of a corrupt occupational government, stating that the administration was "stolen in 2000 and stolen again in 2004." McKinney said that it was doing the government a favor to describe them as a "criminal syndicate."

"It appears to me that our country is literally being hollowed out....our economy is being hollowed out," said McKinney.

McKinney shared Alex Jones' fears and those previously voiced by Republican Congressman Ron Paul, that Americans may be arrested and taken to forced labor camps in light of recent developments confirming Kellogg Brown and Root have secured a government contract to build the camps.

Regarding 9/11, McKinney lent credibility to the 9/11 truth scholars who recently came forth with empirical evidence proving that the official story is a fallacy.

"It's clear that something was terribly amiss on that day with our people who were in charge....they didn't even follow standard operating procedure," said McKinney and the Congresswoman agreed that US authorities stood down on 9/11.

Covering the subject of worldwide human trafficking and sex slavery, a practice embraced by Dyncorp and lobbied for by Halliburton subsidiary representatives, McKinney responded by saying, "they steal elections with the same ease that they steal women and little girls."

McKinney made headlines two years ago when she directly confronted Donald Rumsfeld about the US government's collaboration with companies that engage in human trafficking and the four wargames held on September 11.

McKinney highlighted the MK Ultra program as a past example of where the US government had experimented with turning US soldiers into killing machines and expressed her sadness that some troops were apparently under a similar influence in light of the alarming incidents at Fort Bragg.

McKinney is spearheading a movement to have all records pertaining to the death of Martin Luther King released. McKinney said that King was clearly murdered.

"A jury said in 1999 that it was a US government conspiracy, including the highest individuals at the highest levels of the United States government. I have no reason to disbelieve them."

"If they would do that then to Martin Luther King Jnr. at a stage now where we have a law that defines enemy combatants, we all could be enemy combatants just by dissenting from what this administration does and they could do the same thing to us."

McKinney scorned the federal government for their actions following Hurricane Katrina.

"The American people were once again abandoned, they were abandoned by their own government and Secretary Michael Chertoff has gotten off scott free on this."

"They needed food and water and instead they were sent men with guns and Blackwater mercenaries were hired to patrol the streets of New Orleans. This is criminal! How can we have mercenaries patrolling the streets of America?"

"You had an administration that was AWOL and they had the nerve to bring other folks up on criminal charges for even being conscientious objectors."

Friday, February 10, 2006

Spying saved us from another attack

It's not too hard to put two and two together here. The administration is getting massive heat about the NSA domestic spying program, even from their own supporters. So Bush announces that tapping phone calls spying foiled a plot against the the Library Tower in Los Angeles back in 2002. Interesting timing.

Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack
Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002.

Bush Renames West Coast's tallest building -- Oops, nevermind
George Bush revealed in a speech today that a building in downtown Los Angeles was evidently the target of an Al Qaeda plot hatched in 2001. The building he named, "the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles,'' does not exist. There is, however, a building which matches Bush's description of the ``the tallest building on the West Coast.'' It is the Library Tower, not the Liberty Tower.
Liberty tower sounds better for the head games and scare tactics. Maybe next week Bush will rename the Golden Gate bridge to the Freedom bridge. "They're attacking our liberty and freedom".
Only on Fox: Cable channel aired photos of aliens attacking Library Tower
This is hilarious, yet sad. Bush announces the "Liberty tower" was saved from an attack, and Fox has footage ready to go, literally minutes later (like someone told them ahead of time) of the building being destroyed by aliens in the movie Independence Day. Talk about a psychological effect on the American people (that watch Fox anyway).
Twenty-Three Intel Experts Say LA Terror Plot a Sham
Following yesterday's highly suspiciously timed announcement that the US government had foiled a 2002 terror plot against the Los Angeles Library Tower, intelligence experts and White House reporters have uniformly debunked the story.

L.A. Mayor blindsided by Bush Announcement
He didn't get the memo.
Bush faces Republican revolt over spying
Congressional Republicans are threatening to force a legal showdown with President George W. Bush over his claim that he has the constitutional power to order domestic surveillance of Americans in the name of national security.
But lying to start a war is still cool, apparently.

Domestic Surveillance: It's the Local Calls, Stupid!
Yesterday I posted on Bob Herbert’s column that concluded Bush’s NSA spy program was both illegal and ineffective. The Bush administration has had multiple opportunities to take whatever steps they felt necessary to legalize Bush’s surveillance program and each time chose to keep it outside of the law. Despite its extra-judicial status, the program has failed to produce anything more than a handful of terror suspects and no known arrests or stopped terror plots. I find it hard to believe that the Bush administration would be hiding any success stories from this program and I refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt about this program’s success.
The whole purpose of the domestic spying program is to scare YOU into not talking with friends and neighbors about what you think is going on. The one thing Bush is most afraid of right now is Americans suddenly realizing that there is no 30% who still supports Bush, that nearly 100% of Americans (ignoring those who sell their souls for a government paycheck) know that they were lied into a war of conquest against an innocent people. Bush is afraid that what happened in Romania will happen here; that a minor spark will trigger a massive uprising against him.

Want to know who is terrorizing the American people? The American government! They used terror to trick you into a war and now they are using terror to keep you from complaining about it.

Don't be afraid. They cannot watch everyone at the same time. and the fact that we have elections in this country, rigged though they may be, is tacit approval to hold opposing viewpoints.

Watch Loose Change Second Edition

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The Iran snowball continues to roll

ISRAEL: Iran is world's most serious threat since WWII
Israel's Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon said on Tuesday morning that Iran is the biggest problem facing the world since World War II.
"So, you should go kill them for us!"

Iran and the jaws of a trap
Judging from the rather frantic behind-the-scenes efforts of Russia and China in Iran, they seem to appreciate that the Iranian leadership is in for a big and probably deadly surprise. The Bush administration has not only handled its Iran dossier much more skillfully than Iraq, but also managed to set up Iran for a war it can neither win nor fight to a draw.


U.S. - IRAN SANCTIONS WITHOUT UN BACKING WOULD BE LEGITIMAGE
Looks as though what ever the UN does on Iran, the U. S. is going to ignore it unless it capitulates completely to Washington's posture.
Hawks have warplanes ready if nuclear diplomacy fails

USreal: "Iran must suspend its nookular weapons program!"

Iran: "We don't HAVE a weapons program. We're building a power station. And it's pronounced 'nuclear'."

USreal: "This total lack of cooperation is why diplomacy is failing!"

Iran: "We're cooperating! Your guys been all over our power station looking at everything. They agree with us; it's a power station! Look here. Switch goes up, light goes on! Switch goes down, light goes off. See?"

USreal: "Iran must suspend its nookular weapons program!"

Iran: "'Nuclear. Nuclear. New, like brand new, like our power station. Clear, like glass, like the clear glass we have on the wall of the power station so your boys can look in while we generate electricity. New-clear. Nuclear. Use Mr. Tongue AND Mr. Lips!"

USReal: "This kind of attitude does not help!"

Iran: "Well, you're looking like such an idiot, we thought maybe ..."

USreal: 'ATTACK! ATTACK! BOMB! KILL! NUKE THE RAGHEADS AND STEAL THEIR OIL FOR JESUS!"

Juggernaut Gathering Momentum, Headed For Iran
What President George W. Bush, FOX news, and the Washington Times were saying about Iraq three years ago they are now saying about Iran. After Saturday's vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran's suspicious nuclear activities to the UN Security Council, the president wasted no time in warning, "The world will not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons."
The hidden stakes in the Iran crisis
At the same time, Iran is preparing « a world without Israel and the USA ». Tehran is optimistic about putting in place an oil spot market which doesn’t accept dollars. This is already working at an experimental stage. If no nation has officially announced its participation, many are encouraging participation through private companies acting as intermediaries. Now, the dollar is an overvalued currency whose value is maintained essentially by its role as a petro-currency. Such a spot market, once really up and running, would provoke a collapse of the dollar, comparable to hat of 1939, even if its transactions only amounted to a tenth of the world turnover. US power would be undermined by the falling dollar and, in time, Israel would also find itself bankrupt.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Bush/Blair War Provocation Memo Sends Warning To Iran

By Paul Joseph Watson/ February 3 2006

Today's revelations that Tony Blair and George W. Bush debated staging an act of provocation to goad Saddam Hussein into war sends a very clear warning as to how a pretext for a conflict with Iran could be manufactured.

It was reported today that Bush and Blair's 31 January White House meeting was a rubber stamp on the decision to go to war, irrespective of whether the United Nations had passed a new resolution authorizing the use of force. However, this isn't the story. As far back as 1999, before he was even elected, George W. Bush told his biographer that he thought it was his political destiny to invade Iraq.

The real story here is that Bush proposed flying a U2 spy plane over Iraq and painting it in UN colors, therefore goading Saddam to order the aircraft to be fired upon and resulting in a widespread UN mandate for the war.

It is important to pause and underline the fact that when we talk about Bush, we are really talking about the puppet masters behind Bush. A man who has to ask permission to use the little boys room isn't about to craft any kind of war strategy.

To re-iterate, the US government considered staging an act of provocation that would fool the world into supporting an unpopular war.

This tactic is by no means new. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats, an incident that kicked off US involvement in the Vietnam war, was a staged event that never actually took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes discuss how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes and the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost.

Operation Northwoods, Pearl Harbor and the attack on the USS Liberty are other historical examples where the same method of staged provocation was either considered or directly used in an attempt to start a conflict.

In a more modern context, the Pentagon's P2OG program was aimed at launching "secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to "quick-response" attacks by US forces. "

Others would argue that the worldwide torture program is another indirect method of provocation whereby radical Muslims would be angered into increasing their attacks on US interests.

Judging by the history of attempts to provoke enemies into appearing to strike first, we should be all the more wary that this could be the pretext used to justify a war on Iran.

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show, British Member of Parliament George Galloway was asked whether he saw the possibility of the military-industrial complex staging a terror attack to be blamed on Iran. Galloway responded by saying that he thought it was "a very real danger."

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and CIA analyst Ray McGovern have also expressed their fears that a staged attack is possible.

Russian Governor and former nuclear power plant manager Pavel Ipatov today stated that Iran was incapable of building a nuclear weapon. Such an assertion was even backed up by National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who stated that Iran simply does not have the material to produce nuclear bombs.

Even the CIA's own national intelligence estimate concluded that Iran was at least ten years away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors say there is no evidence of a weapons program.

But they removed the seals! What about the seals!

Removing the seals was portrayed by the media as an act of defiance, without considering for a moment that Iran voluntarily put the seals on in the first place! Removing the seals doesn't mean that Iran is going to produce a bomb five minutes later but the willful ignorance surrounding this issue has artificially escalated tensions without recourse.

There is no evidence that Iran is producing a nuclear weapon. They don't have the material to do so and even if they did, their every action is under constant scrutiny. It would be like you or I trying to manufacture a wristwatch with a piece of cloth while not being able to use our arms or legs.

But Ahmadinejad said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map!

There's no debating the fact that Ahmadinejad is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. However, such a comment needs to be taken in context.

Firstly, there is no possible way Iran could invade Israel. There are four routes to Israel, three are fortified with US troops and the other by Turkish troops under US control.

Secondly, Iran invading Israel would be like Barney the purple dinosaur waking up King Kong. The wrath of the US and Israel's nuclear might would immediately rain down on Iran and turn it into a giant car park.

Ahmadinejad's comments were a crude political points scoring gimmick just like President Bush's "bring it on" quip to Iraqi insurgents.

The warhawks and the media seem to be less concerned about the fact that top Chinese general's like Zhu Chenghu are threatening to nuke American cities.

Kim Jong-il, on an almost annual basis, threatens to "destroy the earth." Most analysts agree that North Korea already has nuclear weapons but it goes unnoticed, even as North Korea fires dummy missiles that hit Alaska.

The end justifies the means. Iran has been targeted for elimination and the bloodthirsty salivating PNAC crowd are going to do everything they can to engineer a war, by fair means or foul.

The rivers of history and the alarm bells of today should remind us all that a staged incident remains an omnipotent danger as we accelerate further into 2006.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Why We Fight Trailer



Why We Fight

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Cindy Sheehan arrested at State of the Union



Cindy Sheehan | What Really Happened
As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union address last night. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press (shocker). So this is what really happened.

Police remove Sheehan from Bush speech
Cindy Sheehan finally got her invitation to see President Bush again, but before she set eyes on him at the State of the Union address, Capitol Police removed her from the gallery overlooking the House chamber.

The offense: her shirt, bearing an anti-war message and other "unlawful conduct," police said.