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Watch the movie "The Fog of War" for the inside look at the Kennedy/Johnson/McNamara/Viet Nam scene.
Why shouldn't he stay the course. Unfortunately the course is going badly and BACKWARDS!!!!!
Baghdad's Mayor Bemoans Crumbling Capital
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Jun 30, 5:48 PM (ET)
By FRANK GRIFFITHS
(AP) An Iraqi boy walks past stagnant water in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, Iraq in this March 23,...
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The War in Iraq - The New York Times reports on the latest developments in the Iraq War
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Baghdad's mayor decried the capital's crumbling infrastructure and its inability to supply enough clean water to residents, threatening Thursday to resign if the government won't provide more money.
The statement from Mayor Alaa Mahmoud al-Timimi was an indication of the daily misery that Baghdad's 6.45 million people still endure more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion. They are wracked not only by unrelenting bombings and kidnappings, but by serious shortages in water, electricity and fuel.
"It's useless for any official to stay in office without the means to accomplish his job," al-Timimi told reporters.
Al-Timimi is seeking $1.5 billion for Baghdad in 2005 but so far has received only $85 million, said his spokesman, Ameer Ali Hasson.
(AP) U.S. Marines follow an Iraqi man past his sunflower garden to his house, where they searched for...
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Efforts to expand Baghdad's water projects were set back earlier this month when insurgents sabotaged a pipeline near Baghdad. Now, some complain the water they do get smells bad, and Hasson acknowledged in some areas, the water gets mixed with sewage.
"The problem is escalating," said al-Timimi, a Shiite who took office in May 2004.
The pipeline has been repaired and water levels are expected to return to normal in the coming days, the mayor told reporters. But that won't help with shortages that existed before the sabotage, he said.
"I am part of the government and aware of the problems the country is facing," al-Timimi said. "But I need to have technical support from the concerned parties at the government. The people are blaming me and the Baghdad municipality."
According to City Hall, Baghdad produces about 544 million gallons of water per day, some 370 million gallons short of its required amount. Some 55 percent of the water is lost through leakage in the pipes.
(AP) A U.S. Marine talks to an Iraqi man in his house in Hit, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of...
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Iraqis also complain of shortages of power and fuel.
Electrical shortfalls were common during the Saddam Hussein era and attributed to a poor distribution network, but the situation has worsened due to sabotage and lack of maintenance.
Before the U.S.-led invasion, Baghdad residents had about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they get about 10, usually broken into two-hour chunks.
In addition, Iraq is not able to refine enough oil, so must import gasoline. Convoys carrying fuel are often attacked by insurgents and the ensuing shortage has led to a black market in Baghdad.
Meanwhile Thursday, the U.S. military claimed some success over Baghdad's other major problem - car bombs and suicide attackers. A spokesman said a recent security operation had worked.
(AP) A U.S. Marine helicopter circles over the town of Hit, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Baghdad,...
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"We had a measurable success," said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston, a spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq. He did not offer specifics.
In western Anbar province, U.S.-led forces also have detained more than a dozen suspected militants in a counterinsurgency sweep aimed at disrupting the flow of foreign militants into Iraq, the military said.
More than 1,000 members of the Iraqi security services had died since the transfer of sovereignty one year ago, the U.S. military said without giving an exact figure.
At least 1,743 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,341 died as a result of hostile action. Of those, 75 were killed in June, one of the deadlier months.
Three militant groups on Thursday vowed to target former Cabinet member Ayham al-Samarie, a Sunni Arab politician who has formed a group to bring Iraqi militants into the political process, according to a statement on an Islamic Web site.
(AP) Iraqis clean up debris in the parking lot of the Babil Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, June 30,...
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"We announce that it's allowed to spill the blood of Ayham al-Samarie. We have been too patient with his lies," the statement said that claimed to be issued by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Mujahedeen. Its authenticity could not be verified.
More than 1,370 people have been killed by a Sunni-fueled insurgency since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-led government April 28.
In other developments Thursday, Knight Ridder identified an Iraqi journalist who was shot and killed in the capital last week when his car approached an U.S.-Iraqi military patrol as one of its special correspondents.
Yasser Salihee, 30, was killed while driving alone in Baghdad on June 24, his day off. A single bullet pierced his windshield and struck him in the head. It appeared that a U.S. sniper shot him, but Iraqi soldiers in the area at the time also may have been shooting, the California-based newspaper company said.
Knight Ridder Inc. (KRI), which publishes 31 dailies in the United States and is the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, hadn't reported on Salihee's death until now because his family feared reprisals from insurgents, who often target Iraqis working for foreign media organizations.
The U.S. Army was investigating the incident. Two other journalists were killed in similar incidents a few days later.
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Associated Press writers Mariam Fam, Sinan Salaheddin and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report from Baghdad.
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A different prediction about price of oil..
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6848617
Sideways was my favorite movie last year. Just goes to show you that different people have different reactions. Viva la difference. razal
Bush getting lucky again.
Iraqi Deadlock Ends as Sunnis Accept Deal on Charter Panel
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 16 - Iraqi political leaders broke weeks of deadlock today, as Sunni Arabs accepted a compromise made by senior members of a Shiite-led
parliamentary committee to include Sunnis in the drafting of Iraq's new constitution.
The agreement marked a turnaround in Iraqi politics and opened a way for the Iraqi National Assembly to meet its Aug. 15 deadline for drafting the document.
Legislators had been haggling with Sunni Arabs for weeks over the number of seats the Sunnis would be given on the 55-member Constitutional Committee.
The compromise offer to Sunnis - 15 additional seats and 10 adviser positions - was made last week, but at the time it was rejected by many Sunnis, who said they
wanted more seats with full voting powers. Since then, Shiite committee members offered a sweetener, saying the committee would approve the new constitution by
consensus and not by vote, making the precise number of seats less important.
The offer was final, said a senior member of the Shiite-led committee, Bahaa al-Aaraji.
"We told them, if you are late it's not good for you, because we start to work and we won't wait for you," he said in a telephone interview this evening.
So on Tuesday night, a team of Sunni Arab negotiators met in one negotiator's house to discuss the offer. They decided, some with reservation, that it was one they must
accept. Turning it down, they said, would mean permanent isolation from the political process. Today, they made their agreement public.
"We've been squeezed, we had to agree," said Saleh Mutlak, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni Arab group that has pressed for a greater Sunni role in
politics. "There was no other alternative. Either we'd be in the political process or we'd be out of it."
In many ways, today's agreement marked a new political beginning for Sunni Arabs, who make up about a fifth of this country's population. The Sunni Arabs had grown
increasingly isolated in recent months since a majority of them refused to vote in national elections in January. Shiites, who account for about 60 percent of all Iraqis,
swept to power in those elections and Sunni Arabs, the former ruling class, have chafed under that new rule.
That tension was most stark in discussions on the makeup of the constitutional committee, with Sunni Arabs contending that they represented more than a fifth of the
population and that they should be given more seats than Shiites were willing to offer.
The argument threatened to further disrupt the political process, as Iraqi political leaders face tight deadlines for writing the constitution by Aug. 15, holding a nationwide
referendum to approve it by October and staging new elections in December.
Meanwhile, the violence ground on in Iraq today, with at least six policemen killed and 27 injured in a suicide bomb attack on their convoy on Baghdad's dangerous
airport road.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, a suicide bomber drove his Volkswagen sedan into an army convoy, wounding four soldiers and four civilians, including a 6-year-old boy.
In another attempt by insurgents to intimidate Iraq's judges, a senior judge was shot dead in his car in the northern city of Mosul, Reuters reported. The judge, Salem
Mahmoud al-Haj Ali, was the chief judge in one of the city's courthouses. His driver was also killed.
Some 35 miles northeast of the capital, in Baquba, a roadside bomb killed three people, including two children, and wounded two others, the official said.
On Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed five marines near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the American military said today. Last week, five other marines died just
outside the same western Iraq city in a similar blast.
A sailor assigned to the marines' expeditionary force also died in Ramadi on Wednesday, the military said today, as American forces came under increasing insurgent
attacks.
The marines were killed after the bomb exploded as their vehicle passed by, the military said. The sailor died after being hit by gunfire.
The deaths raised Wednesday's toll of troops and civilians to 58.
At least 1,705 members of the American military have died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to a count by The Associated Press.
Terence Neilan contributed reporting from New York for this article.
All trades will be cancelled. There is no other workable solution. No one has the kind of money that would be involved if trading were started again without someone being deceived. Only my opinion based on no economic training.
Got to you, didn't I. I can tell by the epithets you are slinging.
More from the NY Times about the undermining of our countries values by the religious right supported by our President. Truly outrageous. It's like a spreading malignancy.
June 11, 2005
Zealots at the Air Force Academy
In an overdue burst of candor, the superintendent of the Air Force Academy has acknowledged that his campus is so permeated with evangelical proselytizing that it will take years to rid the institution of religious intolerance. Lt. Gen. John Rosa Jr. said he finds the problem of cadets unfairly pressured to adopt Christian beliefs and practices occurring throughout "my whole organization," with offenders among faculty, staff and students.
"Perception is reality," the general apologetically declared of numerous complaints that cadets' constitutional rights have been violated by militant evangelists wielding peer pressure with the blessing of authority figures in the chain of command.
In a meeting with concerned Jewish civilians, General Rosa said recently that the problem is "something that keeps me awake at nights," and that he even had to reprimand his second in command, a born-again Christian, for fervidly pressuring cadets. One campus chaplain went so far as to warn hundreds of cadets that those "not born again" would "burn in the fires of hell," according to campus interviews by the Yale Divinity School. In an authorized study, Yale investigators concluded the problem was rife.
Yet the superintendent's admission was the Air Force's most honest acknowledgment of how bedeviled the campus is. "If everything goes well, it's probably going to take six years to fix it," General Rosa estimated. The problem, however, is that all is not going well. Reforms were promised last year, but were compromised by heavy-handed editing from the Air Force's chief chaplain. When Capt. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain, dared to complain of cadets being abused by "systemic and pervasive" proselytizing, the Air Force transferred her to Asia. General Rosa should bring the major back if he is serious about the cleanup.
An inspector general's report is promised soon from the Air Force. But it will take much more prodding, especially civilian pressure from President Bush, Congress and taxpayers, to undo the damage and restore the separation of church and state as a showcase principle at the academy.
Even the Dallas Morning News is starting to wonder about the war and came out directly about closing Gitmo. Amazing that it is happening in Bush country.
Not the Enron CEO. He was Bush's man.
Who bankrolled the Swift Boat bullies?
Downing Street Memo is Bush's Watergate. Is it OK for any President and VP to lie to Congress and the American people? Let's see where your values are.
"First lady Laura Bush would defeat U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton if the two were to face each other in the 2008 presidential contest, Vice President Dick Cheney said on May 30 2005."
Is this the same guy who said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Some expert.
If Bush was a 'great' President, as some claim, he would give Mark Felt the Presidential Medal of Freedom for acts so courageous, that they are beyond imagination.
There is a simple conclusion from all of this. If there is no money, we will not get paid. I am unrealistically hopefull as many of you are.
Asking for cash--Anybody done this successfully?
I don't know if anyone has reported form Schwab, but here is their response to my inquiry about not having GVRP Split adjusted shares in my account:
"I have received your email regarding your GVRP shares.
I regret that we have not yet received the new shares or cash payout from GVRP.
When we receive the shares or cash from them, we will promptly credit it to your
account. I appreciate your patience in the interim.
Sincerely,
Cory Dawson
Investment Specialist"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html
The Post article on our kidnapping Swedish detained terrorists is fascinating. The testosterone driven part of me says--"Damn our CIA is quite good,(and quite practiced--less than 10 minute strip searach and re-dressing and hooding and non-descript jets ready to go anywhere in the world at a moments notice without notice.) contrary to recent evidence. However, then I start thinking about our principles of Democracy and the items in the recently posted Patriot II act. Dangerous as shiessen to Freedom and being an American. Important to think about and debate this Post article very carefullly IMHP. Not something to slam-dunk in the conservatives face as Patriot II will affect them deeply, on many levels, as well.
By strutting rather than correctly assessing the situation and getting our troups proper equipment and more manpower, he allowed the situation to get more out of control=more deaths; American and Iraqi. He finally said yesterday, after the Pentagon announced that things are not going well in Iraq, that there is a bit of a problem but he is optomistic. Did he use his oft repeated phrase yesterday, that we are making "good progress"? I hope not
What about the deaths 'caused' by W struttin on the AF carrier and declaring victory in Iraq.
"Disagree."
Also Judith Miller of the NYTimes with egg on her face for supporting the WMD and the other war claims.
"do jihadists ever lie?"
but of course. As often or more than we do. It goes with the territory. But why pretend to be so righteous and simon-pure?
Definitions from Websters New Collegiate Dictionary (2nd edition, 1956) to help you understand my meaning:
the: That (person or thing) in particular
military: of or pertaining to soldiers, arms or war.
always: on every occasion--I would change this for accuracy to 'frequently': on many occasions.
lies: falsehoods
What's not to understand?
I was surely taken in by the scam of scams. Keep educating.
lovely. Great fun.
So, do I understand that if I bought shares today, I would not qualify on GVRP?
The military always lies for both strategic and cya reasons. I say that on good authority as a non-combat veteran and medal winner. Wake up and smell the roses or the sheissen (http://www.ibrattleboro.com/article.php?story=20050221124408895) as is more anatomically pertinent.
You took the words right out of my mouth. More truthfully, your elegant words clarified and expanded what I said. Thank you.
Hasn't the military been lying? Not just during this administration but let's recall General Stanley Larsen blowing the whistle on the U.S. forces in Cambodia prior to the Viet Nam war. What happened to him? He was demoted to being the General in charge of the Presidio in San Francisco. Later he left the Army and became Mayor Alliota's Executive Asst. in SF. He was an admirable man who had been a WWII hero and a man who really believed in truth, honesty and patriotism. The first two are missing in this administration as well as in many before it.
CLBEE--Did everyone sell this one or are there still holders? Why the silence on this issue?
Go Barry!!!!
My understanding of His gift of forgiveness is that there are some strings attached. You have to accept Him as your savior or you go to hell when judgement day comes. Doesn't sound so 'Christian' and loving to me. It still has the flavor of the Old Testament God of righteousness and wrath. Please explain this contradiction to me.
"but the Bible teaches that at some point in the future you will meet Him face to face, in judgement -- but then it will be too late and your eternal future will already be decided.'
And those of your ilk believe this and consider those who have not faced God doomed. This is mental terrorism of the 3rd degree. So in that sense, Christianity and any Orthodox Religion are not charitable, kind, and forgiving. One Way or it's hell and/or death. Because your Bible you believe literally as God's words, whomever that is, and not written on parchment by a man or woman who either had an epileptic seizure or were meditating on their version of God and, as the MRI studies have shown, the tissue in the brain that seperates it from outer parts of the skull get thinner and people have an epipheny like experience of oneness of a diety. It happens with people of any religion, believing in a variety of God's characteristics. Very interesting. So you might say that man is programed to believe in a God but not your God.
when you analyse it.--it falls apart. What can't happen, didn't!!!! Believe in God and jump from the Empire State Building and you will flatten like a pancake. Any God--there is no TRUE God--only variations of several peoples beliefs and they are welcome to them as long as they don't impose on others as inferior. Whatever gives people purpose is fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. When you start imposing your beliefs on others then you start resembling terrorists.
Who created God? Where was he(she) before the big bang? And for how long was he(she) around before the bang? And doing what?
CLBEE. Do you think this has stem cell life left in it after the addition of the E?
Does anyone have a copy of this they want to sell?
Collier's Historic Special Issue: Preview of the War We Do Not Want - Russia's Defeat and Occupation October 27, 1951
Some people in 'drag' wear diamonds. It's as simple as that. <g>
thanks.