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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (211814)	11/16/2004 1:22:17 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1573494

'This one's faking he's dead' 'He's dead now' Fallujah: Video shows US soldier killing wounded insurgent in cold blood By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 16 November 2004 The US Marine Corps launched an investigation into possible war crimes last night after video footage taken inside a mosque in Fallujah apparently showed a Marine shooting dead an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who had been taken prisoner. The footage showed several Marines with a group of prisoners who were either lying on the floor or propped against a wall of the bombed-out building. One Marine can be heard declaring that one of the prisoners was faking his injuries. "He's fucking faking he's dead. He faking he's fucking dead," says the Marine. At that point a clatter of gunfire can be heard as one of the Marines shoots the prisoner. Another voice can then be heard saying: "He's dead now." The footage was obtained by a team from the American NBC network that was embedded with the Marine Corps during last week's seven-day battle to capture the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which military commanders say has been a focus of Iraqi resistance. The film was then pooled and made available to other media. On the footage that was broadcast last night, NBC correspondent Kevin Sites said that the five wounded Iraqi fighters had been left in the mosque after Marines had fought their way into that part of the city on Friday and Saturday. Ten other Iraqis had been killed in the battle for the mosque. Instead of being passed to the rear lines for treatment the wounded Iraqis were left in the mosque until a second group of Marines entered the building on Saturday, following reports that the building may have been reoccupied. Sites said that at this point one of the five Iraqis was dead and that three of the others appeared to be close to death. In his report accompanying the images, Sites said that one of the Marines noticed that one of the wounded men was still breathing before shouting that he was "faking it". "The Marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. The pictures are too graphic for us to broadcast," said Sites. He added: "The prisoner did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way". Major Doug Powell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps in Washington, told The Independent: "It's being investigated - I can't say much more than that. It's being investigated for possible law of war violations. A naval criminal investigation team is looking into it." The footage - some of the first to show the situation inside Fallujah and the bloody nature of the street-by-street battle that has taken place there - is the latest to emerge from Iraq to contain possible evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the US military. Other footage has shown troops shooting wounded fighters lying in open ground as well as attacks on Iraqis - some said to be civilians - by US aircraft and helicopters. This latest footage is among the most shocking given that it apparently shows without obstruction the Marine shooting the prisoner in the head at close range. Kathy Kelly, a spokeswoman for the peace group Voices in the Wilderness, said last night that such images would "recruit more terrorists faster than they are being killed". "I don't think the US is paying much attention to the Geneva Conventions any more - that is the problem. This must be investigated," she said. NBC said in its report that the Marine who had shot the insurgent had apparently been shot in the face the day before and that one of his comrades had been killed the previous day by a booby-trap bomb that had been placed on the body of a dead insurgent. He has been withdrawn from the field and his unit removed from the front lines, officials said. Military experts said last night that rules of engagement prevented US troops from shooting an enemy where there was no threat being posed. Yesterday, the Marines said they had taken more than 1,000 prisoners in the battle for Fallujah. Colonel Michael Regner, operations officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Fallujah, said at least 1,052 prisoners had been captured in the battle. No more than about two dozen of them were "foreign fighters", he said. news.independent.co.uk

To: Road Walker who wrote (211814)	11/16/2004 1:24:52 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573494

Cost of making Bush tax cuts permanent is three times the Social Security shortfall: This is an absurd statement. JF, I know you're not totally stupid. Go do some homework.

To: Road Walker who wrote (211814)	11/16/2004 1:38:17 PM
From: Alighieri	Respond to of 1573494

Cost of making Bush tax cuts permanent is three times the Social Security shortfall: One other comparison bears noting. If the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent as the Administration has proposed, their cost over 75 years will be about $11 trillion —three times the Social Security shortfall and nearly the same size as the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance shortfalls combined. Over an infinite horizon, the cost of the tax cuts is more than 1½ times the Social Security shortfall. DR will not like your post...any data that bursts his hatred of SS will not pass muster. He is soon to begin to call you names like stupid or such like...oh wait, he's already done it. That's what he does when he can't argue with facts. Al

To: Road Walker who wrote (211814)	11/16/2004 5:39:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573494

If Medicare Part B is an “unfunded liability,” so is the Pentagon and most of government: The $18 trillion figure is a distorted figure that the Bush White House has been pushing for some time. It includes as an “unfunded liability” the projected costs over the next 75 years in the Medicare physicians’ insurance program (Medicare Part B). It is an unfunded liability not because of what pool the money comes from (general revenue or some dedicated revenue stream) but because it is a promise that has been made to spend enormous amounts of resources in the future. Military spending (to show another example) is current spending. If we spend hundreds of millions on a warship that hundreds of millions is all spent within a few years. If we spend billions fighting in Iraq, those billions are gone. In both cases the amount spent gets reflected in the budget. Entitlement programs are taking in money now in exchange for the promise to give back money later. The money that we will spend on social security and medicate (including part B) in the future is as real as the money we spend today on a cruiser but it isn't accounted for in the governments budget. Social Security officially has a surplus, but as long as you can get people to believe you (or you can force them to participate) its easy to have a "surplus" by taking in money now in exchange for handing back a lot more later. Imagine if AMD took billions to build Fab36 from someone with the promise that they would give back a larger amount of money later. Imagine also that the money currently coming in is more than is being spent in the current year on Fab construction. Now imagine that AMD refused to consider this money a debt and in fact called the difference between current spending and the money from this source a "surplus" or profit. How do you think investors and regulators would respond? Tim