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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (215287)	1/18/2005 2:15:35 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574439

Looks like the Muslims are starting to import their evil ways and bankrupt culture into our country. A month or two ago, it was the Netherlands. Now Muslims feel it is ok to kill whomever they like for the slightest of perceived insults. How long should Americans remain politically correct, before they decide enough is enough A Bush supporter was very condemning of my comments that were critical of Bush. Eventually, he tried to find out where I lived. What do you think he had up his sleeve? ted

To: RetiredNow who wrote (215287)	1/18/2005 7:25:24 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574439

That Magic Moment By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: January 18, 2005 A charming man courts a woman, telling her that he's a wealthy independent businessman. Just after the wedding, however, she learns that he has been cooking the books, several employees have accused him of sexual harassment and his company is about to file for bankruptcy. She accuses him of deception. "The accountability moment is behind us," he replies. Last week President Bush declared that the election was the "accountability moment" for the war in Iraq - the voters saw it his way, and that's that. But Mr. Bush didn't level with the voters during the campaign and doesn't deserve anyone's future trust. I won't belabor the W.M.D. issue, except to point out that the Bush administration, without exactly lying, managed to keep most voters confused. According to a Pew poll, on the eve of the election the great majority of voters, of both parties, believed that the Bush administration had asserted that it found either W.M.D. or an active W.M.D. program in Iraq. Mr. Bush also systematically misrepresented how the war was going. Remember last September when Ayad Allawi came to Washington? Mr. Allawi, acting as a de facto member of the Bush campaign - a former official close to the campaign suggested phrases and helped him rehearse his speech to Congress - declared that 14 or 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were "completely safe," and that the interim government had 100,000 trained troops. None of it was true. Now that the election is over, we learn that the search for W.M.D. has been abandoned. Meanwhile, military officials have admitted that even as Mr. Bush kept asserting that we were making "good progress," the insurgency was growing in numbers and effectiveness, that the Army Reserve is "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," and oh, by the way, we'll need to spend at least another $100 billion to pay for war expenses and replace damaged equipment. But the accountability moment, says Mr. Bush, is behind us. Maybe we can't hold Mr. Bush directly to account for misleading the public about Iraq. But Mr. Bush still has a domestic agenda, for which the lessons of Iraq are totally relevant. White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact. Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security. But there's another parallel, which I haven't seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it's happening again. Last week Andrew Biggs, the associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration, appeared with Mr. Bush at a campaign-style event to promote privatization. There was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate for a civil servant to play such a blatantly political role. But then there was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate to appoint a professional advocate like Mr. Biggs, the former assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization, to such a position in the first place. Sure enough, The New York Times reports that under Mr. Biggs's direction, employees of the Social Security Administration are being forced to disseminate dire warnings about the system's finances - warnings that the employees say are exaggerated. Still, there are two reasons why the selling of Social Security privatization shouldn't be another slam dunk. One is that we're not talking about secret intelligence; the media, if they do their job, can check out the numbers and see that they don't match what Mr. Bush is saying. (A good starting point is Roger Lowenstein's superb survey in The Times Magazine last Sunday.) The other is that we've been here before. Fool me once ...

To: RetiredNow who wrote (215287)	1/18/2005 7:32:12 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 1574439

Saddam henchman: Iran funding resistance Head of 'Army of Muhammad' talks of help from Tehran, Syria Posted: January 18, 2005 5:00 p.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com The man who led Saddam Hussein's "Army of Muhammad" during 2004 has confessed that Iran is the primary source of funding for his jihadists battling U.S. forces in Iraq. Col. Muayed Al-Nasseri made the comments on a taped interrogation that was broadcast on an Iraqi television station operating from the United Arab Emirates, Al-Fayhaa TV. The tape was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI-TV. A video clip of the interrogation is available on MEMRI's website. Al-Nasseri says the Army of Muhammad was founded by Saddam Hussein after the fall of his regime in April 2003. He claims he is the third commander of the 800-man operation. "We carried out many armed operations against the coalition forces in all the districts," Al-Nasseri says on the tape. "The operations included bombarding their military posts, their camps and their bases, fighting these forces and planting explosive devices against their patrols and convoys." He says after the fall of the regime, Hussein put out the word for loyalists to join the Army of Muhammad. "Saddam Hussein distributed a communique via the [Baath Party], back then, instructing all his supporters or whoever wants to fight the jihad for the sake of Allah to join the Army of Muhammad because it is the army of the leadership," Al-Nasseri said. The suspect then fingers Iran as the main funding source of the resistance. "Many factions of the resistance are receiving aid from the neighboring countries," Al-Nasseri said. "We in the Army of Muhammad – the fighting has been going on for almost two years now, and there must be aid, and this aid came from the neighboring countries. We got aid primarily from Iran. The truth is that Iran has played a significant role in supporting the Army of Muhammad and many factions of the resistance. I have some units, especially in southern Iraq, which receive Iranian aid in the form of arms and equipment." He says another resistance group actually traveled to Iran to pick up arms and cash and to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: "As for other factions of the resistance, I have reliable information regarding the National Islamic resistance, which is one of the factions of resistance, led by Colonel 'Asi Al Hadithi. He sent a delegation to Iran from among the people of the faction, including General Halaf and General Khdayyer. They were sent to Iran in April or May and met with Iranian intelligence and with a number of Iranian leaders and even with Khamenei." Al-Nasseri says they picked up "$1 million dollars and two cars full of weapons. They still have a very close relationship with Iran. They receive money, cars, weapons and many things. According to my information, they even got car bombs." The suspect then talks about links to Syria. "Cooperation with Syria began in October 2003," he said, "when a Syrian intelligence officer contacted me. S'ad Hamad Hisham and later Saddam Hussein himself authorized me to go to Syria. So I was sent to Syria. I crossed the border illegally. Then I went to Damascus and met with an intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel 'Abu Naji', through a mediator called 'Abu Saud.'" On the videotape, Al-Nasseri says the Syrian government authorized him to meet with a Baath Party member, Fawzi Al-Rawi, "who is a member of the national leadership and an important figure in Syria." Al-Nasseri says Al-Rawi informed him that "the Army of Muhammad would receive material aid in the form of goods, given to us for free or for a very low price, for us to sell in Iraq, in order to support the Army of Muhammad. This was done this way due to Syria's current circumstances, international pressure and accusations of supporting the terrorism and resistance in Iraq."