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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (14076)	1/18/2007 12:32:13 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 22250

> the US is bleeding economically by over two billion dollars a day -- and despite the Fed's printing, this will have to be addressed. And what will they do? They'll squeeze the old and the sick. news.yahoo.com >> Bernanke: Fiscal action needed as America ages Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned the U.S. Congress on Thursday that failure to take action soon to deal with the budgetary strains posed by an aging U.S. population could lead to serious economic harm. "Unfortunately, economic growth alone is unlikely to solve the nation's impending fiscal problems," Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee. Bernanke acknowledged that official projections suggest the U.S. budget deficit could stabilize or shrink in the next few years, but cautioned: "We are experiencing what seems likely to be the calm before the storm." Left unchecked, the costs of so-called entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, are set to soar as increasing numbers of the baby boom generation retire. "Dealing with the resulting fiscal strains will pose difficult choices for the Congress, the administration, and the American people," Bernanke said. "However, if early and meaningful action is not taken, the U.S. economy could be seriously weakened, with future generations bearing much of the cost," he added. Bernanke cited projections by the Congressional Budget Office that showed spending on entitlement program would reach about 15 percent of U.S. gross domestic product by 2030. He said a worrisome implication of such projections would be the much larger national debt and related higher payments to bondholders. "Thus, a vicious cycle may develop in which large deficits lead to rapid growth in debt and interest payments, which in turn adds to subsequent deficits," Bernanke said.<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (14076)	1/18/2007 1:08:27 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

'Freedom Fries' Congressman calls for halt on Iran strike by Michael Roston The Raw Story \| Jan. 18, 2007 rawstory.com The North Carolina Republican who coined the term "freedom fries" will lead a press conference today on a bill to put the brakes on any US military strike against Iran, RAW STORY has learned. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has proposed legislation requiring the president to consult and receive authorization from Congress before initiating a military attack on Iran. The measure will be presented at an 11:30 am press conference tomorrow with co-sponsors Ron Paul (R-TX), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Richard Neal (D-MA), Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) and Marty Meehan (D-MA). Jones became prominent in 2003 when he pushed Congress to require that cafeterias in the House of Representative office buildings change the name of french fries to "freedom fries." In the time since this act, Jones has become a critic of the Iraq War. This change of heart appears to inform Jones' current policy. "One of the many lessons from our involvement in Iraq is that Congress needs to ask the right questions prior to exercising its Constitutional authority to approve the use of military force," Jones said in a Jan. 12 statement sent to RAW STORY. The North Carolina Republican added that the possibility that "some U.S. officials are contemplating military action against Iran" required the legislative branch to make it "crystal clear that no previous resolution passed by Congress authorizes such use of force." Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who once ran for president as a Libertarian, explained to RAW STORY via a spokesman that he was "opposed to any escalation of the Middle East conflict in Iran, in whatever form that may take." He warned in his weekly "Texas Straight Talk" column that "the administration intends to move the US closer to a dangerous and ill-advised conflict with Iran." He specifically feared that "a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran," referring to the engagement between the US and Vietnam that was used by President Lyndon Johnson to justify an escalation of America's military intervention in Vietnam. At the same time, it was not clear whether the scenario outlined by Paul could be used to override Jones' resolution. It reads that the president could not take action in Iran "Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran." Jones' office did not answer a request from RAW STORY for clarification of the meaning of the legislation. [End quote] For further reference: Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk: house.gov

To: sea_urchin who wrote (14076)	1/18/2007 1:33:34 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

> Bush and his warmongers will not be able to do what they like in future -- and that's even with another "false flag" operation, like 9/11. prisonplanet.com >>Claim: Bin Laden Told Hamza Al-Qaeda Not Behind 9/11 Statement dovetails with Osama's previous attempts to distance himself from attack responsibility Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Thursday, January 18, 2007 A claim attributed to a friend of one of the six men accused of plotting to detonate bombs on London's underground tube system on July 21 2005, suggests that Osama bin Laden personally told hook handed cleric Abu Hamza that Al-Qaeda was not behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. The London Independent today reports that Steven Bentley, a school friend of accused would-be suicide bomber Yassin Omar, was told by Omar that he did not think Bin Laden was behind 9/11. Omar based his conclusion on what he was told by extremist London cleric Abu Hamza, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, who had personally met Bin Laden. Bin Laden's apparent attempt to distance himself from involvement in 9/11 dovetails with statements made shortly after the event in which he told a Pakistani newspaper that he was not involved in the attacks. "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States," Bin Laden told Ummat, "As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle." The supposed Osama "confession video" in which the terrorist leader discusses how the attacks were carried out has been widely debunked as a hoax. On closer analysis, the individual in the tape is clearly not Bin Laden and he makes statements completely inconsistent with Bin Laden's previous public comments. Other so-called Al-Qaeda tapes have been directly traced back to the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld. Though the information provided by Bentley is third or fourth hand, it makes interesting reading nonetheless when compared with previous statements from individuals with close ties to Bin Laden The White House regularly intones that critics of President Bush are in some way aiding the enemy but it was not until recently that the media picked up on a similar tack in trying to smear anyone who questions the official version of 9/11 as being sympathetic with Al-Qaeda or even a recruiting aid for terrorists.<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (14076)	1/18/2007 6:35:49 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

> Maybe Iran is getting stronger, but it can't match US power when it is in place. An article about US airpower which may come as a surprise. spacewar.com >>The Death Of US Air Power Now that America has an Islamo-centric security posture, any danger that doesn't fit within the counter-fundamentalist framework tends to be ignored. That's sort of ironic, since the biggest military threats to democracy in the last century came from atheists. Five years into the "global war on terror," the evidence suggests that Islamic radicals are real good at blowing each other up, but not so good at projecting power abroad. As long as western nations maintain halfway decent domestic security arrangements, the fundamentalists seem to be hobbled in repeating their one major success of Sept. 11, 2001. Given that fact -- five years and counting without a second big terrorist attack in America -- maybe we ought to be paying more attention to the kinds of state-based challenges that roiled the world so much in the past. But we aren't. No one gives much thought to Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, which could still obliterate America in a few hours, even though that nation is reverting to authoritarian rule. Nobody seems to care about China's buildup of naval forces, its development of long-range missiles, or its new fighter. And nothing decisive has been done to prevent North Korea's march towards an indigenous nuclear arsenal. Each of these countries wields far more destructive power than the handful of nuts scattered across Arabia that we call al-Qaida. But because al-Qaida is a current irritant and other concerns seem less pressing, the capacity of U.S. forces to cope with state-based challenges is allowed to atrophy. The decay is most pronounced in the U.S. Air Force, the service that would have to take the lead in coping with urgent threats posed by Russia, China and other industrialized countries. After 20 years of neglect, the Air Force's fleet of combat aircraft is older than the Navy's fleet of warships. During his four-year stint as defense secretary, current Vice President Dick Cheney killed the service's cold-war fighter programs, terminated the next-generation B-2 bomber at a mere 20 planes, slashed the future C-17 cargo plane program, and decimated every other facet of U.S. air power. Clinton's defense secretaries added back some planes that Cheney had cut, but delayed and decreased the next-generation F-22 fighter that was the centerpiece of plans for future air dominance. Then President Bush's long-serving Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld launched the entire U.S. Department of Defense on a leap-ahead trajectory to military transformation that ignored air power for another six years. The end result is that the U.S. Air Force now flies 45-year-old aerial refueling tankers using a plane retired by commercial airlines a quarter-century ago; its F-22 fighter program has been cut 75 percent even though the aging fighters it would replace are so old they operate under flight restriction; its production lines for C-130 and C-17 transport planes are scheduled for closure despite lack of adequate airlift; and the service has canceled its planned family of aircraft for replacing cold-war radar and reconnaissance planes. The only bright spot on the horizon is the tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but Navy efforts to slash funding for JSF suggest the Air Force can't even count on that program coming to fruition. Air Force pilots have a favorite story they tell that captures the meltdown of American air power over the past 20 years. Brig. Gen. David Deptula was flying his F-15 over northern Iraq in 1999 when cockpit gauges went haywire and the fuel reading plummeted to zero. It turned out insulation on the plane's wiring had rotted away with age, shorting out the electrical system. The punch-line of the story was that Gen. Deptula was flying the same F-15 he had flown 20 years earlier as a young captain. But most of the people who tell the story don't know it has a new punch-line: Gen. Deptula's son, a first lieutenant, is now flying the same plane in the Pacific -- nearly 30 years after it was built. Maybe it's time the Air Force finally gets some new planes, before a real threat comes along.<<