2000TH DEATH
AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN 2 PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS?
I emailed my friend this morning, a comment regarding this article she had sent me...To my friend:
I am on pins and needles waiting for the whole story to BREAK! I heard that possibly tomorrow or Friday... we will then be hearing what is going on in Fitzgerald's head...
Good grief, I hope what he tells the world warrants a ticker tape parade... We need sanity to return to our country but even with its return we can't undo what these B*****ds did to us... that will take years and years to heal...if ever... but the scars will never fade...
Strange, I awoke this morning, with a sort of absurd thought... What if, this whole investigation goes further back than lying to get us into war... maybe 911 was contrived by this bunch of egomaniac ideologists, who would stop at nothing to get their screwy ideas turned into reality... Something you
and I had felt was very possible... HOLY COW, one million times... I still sort of, believe the 911 attack came with a wink and a nod by these fascists... but if they orchestrated it... our government and our way of life NEEDS SOME BIG OVERHAUL... Just rant from semi-paranoid me, Thinking Blue
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HOW SAD IS THIS?
ThinkingBlue
Anti-War Protesters Mark '2000 Soldiers Dead' Milestone
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Go to Original
Bush at Bay: Fitzgerald Looks at Niger Forgeries
By Martin Walker
Monday 24 October 2005
Washington - The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House
aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African
uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence
sources.
This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame
has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way
the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.
Fitzgerald's inquiry is expected to conclude this week and despite
feverish speculation in Washington, there have been no leaks about his
decision whether to issue indictments and against whom and on what
charges.
Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode
well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove,
President George W Bush's senior political aide, not for Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The first is that Fitzgerald last year sought and obtained from the
Justice Department permission to widen his investigation from the leak
itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of
justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of
the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and
politically dangerous than the crime.
The second is that NATO sources have confirmed to United Press
International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and
obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.
Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished
report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which
started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to
show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi
regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made
its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January,
2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later
withdrawn by the White House.
This opens the door to what has always been the most serious
implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could
face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war
against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same
charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's
aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
There can be few more serious charges against a government than
going to war on false pretenses, or having deliberately inflated or
suppressed the evidence that justified the war. (AMEN - jc)
And since no WMD were found in Iraq after the 2003 war, despite the
evidence from the U.N. inspections of the 1990s that demonstrated that
Saddam Hussein had initiated both a nuclear and a biological weapons
program, the strongest plank in the Bush administration's case for war
has crumbled beneath its feet.
The reply of both the Bush and Blair administrations was that they
made their assertions about Iraq's WMD in good faith, and that other
intelligence agencies like the French and German were equally mistaken
in their belief that Iraq retained chemical weapons, along with the
ambition and some of technological basis to restart the nuclear and
biological programs.
It is this central issue of good faith that the CIA leak affair
brings into question. The initial claims Iraq was seeking raw uranium in
the west African state of Niger aroused the interest of vice-president
Cheney, who asked for more investigation. At a meeting of CIA and other
officials, a CIA officer working under cover in the office that dealt
with nuclear proliferation, Valerie Plame, suggested her husband, James
Wilson, a former ambassador to several African states, enjoyed good
contacts in Niger and could make a preliminary inquiry. He did so, and
returned concluding that the claims were untrue. In July 2003, he wrote
an article for The New York Times making his mission - and his disbelief
- public.
But by then Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for the Italian magazine
Panorama (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) had been contacted
by a "security consultant" named Rocco Martoni, offering to sell
documents that "proved" Iraq was obtaining uranium in Niger for $10,000.
Rather than pay the money, Burba's editor passed photocopies of the
documents to the U.S. Embassy, which forwarded them to Washington, where
the forgery was later detected. Signatures were false, and the
government ministers and officials who had signed them were no longer in
office on the dates on which the documents were supposedly written.
Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to
shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the
forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the
forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and
almost certainly criminal. (What are the odds that there was no "link"?
We KNOW better! jc)
The letterheads and official seals that appeared to authenticate the
documents apparently came from a burglary at the Niger Embassy in Rome
in 2001. At this point, the facts start dribbling away into conspiracy
theories that involve membership of shadowy Masonic lodges, Iranian
go-betweens, right-wing cabals inside Italian Intelligence and so on. It
is not yet known how far Fitzgerald, in his two years of inquiries, has
fished in these murky waters. (OH, WOW! jc)
There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that
Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim
that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with
some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001.
Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified
information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel
Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain
with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and
Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.
Where all this leads will not be clear until Fitzgerald breaks his
silence, widely expected to occur this week when the term of his grand
jury expires. (I'm dying here of anticipation! jc)
If Fitzgerald issues indictments, then the hounds that are currently
baying across the blogosphere will leap into the mainstream media and
whole affair, Iranian go-betweens and Rome burglaries included, will
come into the mainstream of the mass media and network news where Mr.
and Mrs. America can see it. (Wooo-hooo! IMAGINE THAT! All these folks
that have kept their heads in the sand watching coverage of dead blonds
and hurricanes!)
If Fitzgerald issues no indictments, the matter will not simply die
away, in part because the press is now hotly engaged, after the new
embarrassment of the Times over the imprisonment of the paper's Judith
Miller. There is also an uncomfortable sense that the press had given
the Bush administration too easy a ride after 9/11. And the Bush team is
now on the ropes and its internal discipline breaking down, making it an
easier target.
Then there is a separate Senate Select Intelligence Committee
inquiry under way, and while the Republican chairman Pat Roberts of
Kansas seems to be dragging his feet, the ranking Democrat, Jay
Rockefeller of West Virginia, is now under growing Democratic Party
pressure to pursue this question of falsifying the case for war.
And last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (MY MAN! jc), D-Ohio,
introduced a resolution to require the president and secretary of state
to furnish to Congress documents relating to the so-called White House
Iraq Group. Chief of staff Andrew Card formed the WHIG task force in
August 2002 - seven months before the invasion of Iraq, and Kucinich
claims they were charged "with the mission of marketing a war in Iraq."
The group included: Rove, Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes,
Mary Matalin and Stephen Hadley (now Bush's national security adviser)
and produced white papers that put into dramatic form the intelligence
on Iraq's supposed nuclear threat. WHIG launched its media blitz in
September 2002, six months before the war. Rice memorably spoke of the
prospect of "a mushroom cloud," and Card revealingly explained why he
chose September, saying "From a marketing point of view, you don't
introduce new products in August."
The marketing is over but the war goes on. The press is baying and
the law closes in. The team of Bush loyalists in the White House is
demoralized and braced for disaster.
-------
They Are Not Numbers
By Cindy Sheehan
Saturday 22 October 2005
I received this email the other day. I have removed the names:
Dear Ms. Sheehan
I wasn't sure how else to contact you, so am sending this thru the
gsfp website. I just want to thank you for posting your essay entitled
"A Peaceful Day," dated October 17th on the commondreams.org website,
a site I visit every weekday.My cousin, "brave soldier," 30, originally of Indiana, was one of
the five US soldiers killed on Saturday, October 15th - Iraq's
"peaceful day." He is survived by his wife, his two children, his
parents, his sister, our grandma, his aunt, his two uncles and his two
cousins. We are currently awaiting confirmation per DNA
identification.I thank you for taking notice. The loss of his life and that of his
comrades does not make for a peaceful day - may their souls will rest
in peace.Thank you for your efforts.
I received this email today from a distraught Gold Star Mother:
How?
I have so many questions ... How I do I stop the vulgar pain in my
chest? How do I do this? How I do I continue to breathe but cannot
live? How do I do this? How do I keep my soul in my body? How do I do
this? How do I close my eyes wondering if sleep should come but yet
knowing if I sleep I will awaken to know this is not a nightmare but
my life? How do I do this? How do I love someone with my very being
but cannot ever hold him again? How do I do this? How do I go on
without that sweet face that brought more joy to my life than I ever
deserve - never to be seen by my eyes again? How do I do this? How do
I stop the scream that no one hears but me? How do I do this? PLEASE
TELL ME ... how do I live without my child, my son, my heart, my soul,
my joy, my validation to my life ... Please tell me ... how do I do
this? How does the world go on without Steven ... how do I do this?
I received this email yesterday from a mom who doesn't "qualify"
to be a Gold Star Mother (from the other org., she does belong to GSFP)
because her son committed suicide. He suffered horribly from PTSD.
Hi, He (Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Ma) was asked about his five boys, and his
answer was that they were grown, with families, and they made their
own choices. He then reminded everyone that our children chose to
enlist. Aggressively recruited would be a better phrase. And then not
told the truth, only to discover like my son that he had made a big
mistake. He went on to say that he had attended all the funerals.
Kevin said simple, no you haven't ... Both Kevin and Debbie felt that
the wall was up and that no change of attitude would be forthcoming
from our Bush "yes" man. On the positive side, his chief of staff
spoke to Kevin privately about veteran affairs and that they would
like to improve the system.I find that I can't get Jeffrey out of my mind. I can see him at
11-12 years old jumping in the car, when I'd pick him up at a friends.
It's so real ... it's almost like you can reach out and touch him.
What a world of hell this administration has put us in. One we will
live in all the rest of our days ...
The 2000th tragically appalling death of American troops is,
unfortunately, coming up rapidly in Iraq.
The official death count today from the War Department's Casualty
site is 1992. The toll could reach 2000 within a couple of days.
Of the 1992, 13 are pending notification. I have written about
"pending notification" before. 13 families are going through their
normal lives today not even knowing that the other shoe is about to
drop. They have been worrying about their loved one for days, weeks, or
even months. Some of them may know that 11 of our children have been
killed in the last 2 days, and they may be anxiously awaiting news. Will
it be their lives destroyed today? Or is it another family who was
randomly picked by the universe to suffer this violent assault on their
homes?
There are so many people in our country today who are happily
certain that their lives are not about to be turned upside down because
their darling child will be killed in a meaningless war. This would
include every member of this criminal administration and Congress and
every person who puts headphones on and spews right-wing hate from their
mouths. Not one of these people who mostly support the war, either out-spokenly,
or tacitly by their silence in not calling for an end to the occupation
of Iraq, have any idea of the horror of lying awake at night worried
about your wonderful child, or walking around all day with an icy-cold
stomach because you heard that soldiers were killed in Iraq today.
We know that George Bush and his supporters, who are crumbling
like 3-day-old sugar cookies, care not one whit about the people they
have sent to die and kill innocent people in Iraq. We know that George,
Dick, Condi (who I believe is the Deputy Secretary of War ... she never
thinks of the Diplomatic solution), Donny (in charge of the killing
department), and the rest will never admit that they made a mistake,
because guess what, folks? Things are going just as they have planned in
Iraq! They are happy as clams in their shells that things are in chaos
and turmoil in the Middle East. That means that they and their partners
in crime can rake in more money, rape Iraq of its resources and empty
our treasury of money and our communities of future leaders.
The little vignettes of pain that I have shared with you are just
3 stories out of millions. Out of the tens of thousands of mothers in
Iraq who have had their children killed, how many of them remember their
baby boy or pre-teen child with their innocent eyes reflected with the
mom's hopes and dreams of their future?
Casey had such a bright future ahead of him. Someone asked me the
other day what I miss about him the most. I just miss him. I miss
everything about him. I miss his presence on this planet. I miss his
naïve joy and heartbreaking hope for the future. I miss his future and I
remember his past with love and pain.
On the sorrowful day of the 2000th soldier killed, I am sure
there will be candlelight vigils all over the country to honor the ones
who have been killed. That is nice, but that doesn't help bring our
other troops home or insure the safety of the Iraqi people.
On the day of the 2000th, I will be in DC. I will go to the White
House. Our house. I will sit on the sidewalk again and demand that the
war criminals who live and work in there bring our troops home. I
suggest, instead of candlelight vigils and singing "Give Peace a
Chance," every person who cares about ending the immorality of the
occupation of Iraq take signs and their presence to their Congressional
offices near them and demand that each and every Congress person do
everything in his/her power to bring our precious lifeblood home from
the nightmare. It is time to get peacefully radical.
The day of the wrought-with-voting-fraud constitutional
referendum in Iraq, George said:
"Democracies are peaceful countries."
Let's hold him and our other elected officials accountable for
that hypocritical statement. If George won't make it so, we must!
Our young people aren't numbers. Our young people are confined to
early graves because of criminals who should be confined to prison, who
are profiting handsomely from the undeclared mess in Iraq. The Iraqi
people are less than numbers. If they are counted or thought of at all,
they are very often wrongly counted as "insurgents," when they are
children and women.
If mere numbers will wake America up, think of Dr. and Mrs. Death
(Donny and Condi) when they say that this occupation could last at least
a dozen or more years.
What number are you comfortable with? One was too much for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
C.D. in D.C.
A message from Cindy Sheehan
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes
lawless and corrupt. Mahatma Gandhi
Unfortunately the 2000th American death in Iraq is tragically coming
up too soon. In addition to the wasted young lives in Iraq, 246 of our
brave men and women have been killed in Afghanistan. Our troops and the
war in Afghanistan get even less attention than Iraq, if possible.
I am in Washington, DC now and along with a coalition of peace groups
and local activists, we will be holding vigils at the White House for
the rest of the week from 12 noon to 8 PM.
Each day we will be passing out black wrist bands and we will have
each person who picks one up write a KIA troops' name and number on it.
Each wrist band will also stand for 50 innocent Iraqis killed. Everyday
at 6 PM we will have a "die-in." We will ask everyone who is present at
6 PM to lie down and represent a dead soldier. At that point, the park
police will give us 3 warnings before they arrest us. We are not
encouraging people; to get arrested is a very personal decision. I am
planning to not get up on the day after the 2000th soldier is killed. I
may be arrested. Then when they let me out, I will go back and lie back
down. We in America have let this criminal administration get away with
murder for too long. Enough is enough. It's time to start practicing
non-violent civil disobedience (C.D.) on a large scale.
On Tuesday the 25th we will be fasting for the length of the vigil in
solidarity with the hardships that Americans and Iraqis are enduring on
a daily basis. We are asking America to fast in solidarity with us.
On Wednesday the 26th at 10:30 AM, we will be going to Arlington
Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then to the
White House for our vigil.
On Thursday the 27th at 10:30 AM we will be delivering a wreath and
signed sympathy cards to the Iraqi Embassy. We are asking people who
come out to our vigil on the Lafayette Park side to bring sympathy
cards. Then to the White House for our vigil.
On Friday the 28th at 10:30 AM we will be delivering flowers and get
well wishes to Walter Reed Hospital and we are asking people to bring
get well cards to our vigil. Then off to the White House for our vigil.
Tomorrow I will be calling on President Bush to answer my original
question: "What Noble Cause?" There is absolutely no noble cause. Our
children and the Iraqi people are dying and suffering for no cause
except for power and money greedy criminals.
The numbers are staggering. More American soldiers have been KIA in
the first 32 months of Iraq so far then in the first 4 years of Vietnam.
This isn't another Vietnam people, this is worse.
We cannot allow the people who are running our country to keep on
running it into the ground.
It is time to exercise our sacred duty as human beings.
Let's get peacefully radical.
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by cleveland imc Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005 at 1:02 AM
U.S. Service member to perish in the current Iraqi war. Groups prepare vigils and actions that illustrate the size of the death toll.If the trend continues, October 25th (give or take a day) will mark
the 2000th
Medbh Sings ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WHO IS THE 2000TH
VICTIM TO DIE IN THE ILLEGAL IRAQI WAR?
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THINKINGBLUE LINKS
posted by thinkingblue at 11:25 AM
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