After the this week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a change in his policy of tolerance with the Kurds in Northern Iraq. For some time, the Turkish military had been with the Prime Minister for not wanting to battle the Iraqi Kurds across the border. Now it seems the terror attack has increased the chances of a :
“At this point, it is impossible for us to be in conflict with oursecurity forces, with our military,†Mr. Erdogan said, according to thestate-run Anatolian News Agency. “Whatever is necessary to be done,inside or cross borders, our communications are already established forwhen the time comes.â€
This is obviously not the kind of news General Patraeus wanted to hear, as the U.S. might soon be dealing with another front in Iraq. Interestingly enough, the United States is bound by its NATO treaty obligations to help Turkey, even though the Turkish military would be fighting against some of the very same entities that helped Bush depose Saddam Hussein.
This news comes as were killed in Iraq over the last 24 hours.
The Bush machine threw in some new "recently declassified" information today to convince us that the war in Iraq is justified and necessary. This intelligence goes into vague details about Bin Laden sending his people into Iraq to plan for an al Qaeda settlement. Speaking at a commencement address (what any of this has to do with a college graduation I have no idea) at the Coast Guard Academy today, about the war and his newly unveiled intelligence:
"There's a reason bin Laden sent one of his most experiencedparamilitary leaders to Iraq," Bush said. "He believes that if al Qaedacan drive us out, they can establish Iraq as a new terrorist sanctuary."
The president acknowledged that critics "question whether the fight in Iraq is part of the war on terror."
He said "the best way to protect our people is to take the fight to the enemy ... so we do not have to face them at home."
Thepresident also made a comparison between Iraq and the Vietnam War,saying, "There are many differences between the two conflicts, but onestands out above all. The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent northe capability to strike our homeland. ... The enemy in Iraq does."
The article, posted Wednesday afternoon at about 2:15pm EST at , details more about the Bin Laden connection to the new Iraq.
I think as politicians, the Republican party is making their best efforts at diverting the topic from logic or they're absolutely failing at putting 2 and 2 together. The reason terrorists are flocking to Iraq isn't because we invaded one of their terrorist states, it's because we created a new terrorist state. The President's intelligence about Bin Laden setting up shop in Iraq doesn't rationalize the good we could still do, it illustrates the harm we've already done.
“There’s no way I’m going to put myself through and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for theircountry . . . That may sound very patriotic but it’s true.â€
AndI was taken back a little when General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of theBritish army, that it would be too dangerous for the prince to bedeployed to Iraq was "final", the MoD said the situation could stillbe reviewed.
Too dangerous for a Prince that may want a career in the Army notto go to war? Well it made more sense as soon as it was brought to light thedanger would increase for his squad. , and they would focus on him and the soldiers he wasresponsible for. I do not believe that soldiers should receive special treatmentbecause of who they are, however I do not think that soldiers should get"extra targeted" treatment either (when it can be helped).
Idon't have the answer of how the "special ones" should serve, I justfigure the "regular ones" have enough to worry about.
Picnic baskets, fried chicken, face painting and a day of fun filled family activities! Sack races, egg toss, 3 legged races? ... nope, Machine Guns!
I am not an anti-gun advocate, and I do believe in the second amendment. The right to bear arms was very important back when bears were running through your backyard or outlaws could just "pop over" for a cup of coffee then rob you (or whatever). Educating family members in the use of firearms isn't a bad thing, and perhaps even a good thing. Learning the do's and don't's as well as respect of firearms isn't evil or necessarily a bad thing. However, I'm not quite sold on the need for an 8 year old girl to familiarize herself on a 50 cal. machine gun. Whatever happened to Malibu Barbie?
A video to warm the cockles of your heart. Que up to 2:25 to see the child rip a few rounds off.
Now onto the more disturbing issue at hand, the thinking of the (National Rifle Association)
to conduct a criminal background checkand deny sales if a gun purchaser falls under a specified prohibition,including a felony conviction, domestic abuse conviction or illegalimmigration. There is no legal basis to deny a sale if a purchaser ison a terror watch list.
A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of44 firearm purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known orsuspected terrorists were approved by the federal law enforcementofficials.
The NRA has a large conservative base, and these are the same people that are responsible for attempting to instill fear into everyone that the terrorist are on their way to America to take us out. So why do they feel its ok for the "potential" terrorists to get their hands on guns? I just don't understand.
A State Department report due for release next week will show that worldwide terror incidents went up 29% in 2006. Here is the raw data:
: 11,111 attacks, and 14,500 noncombatants killed.
: 14,338 attacks, and 45% of the attacks took place in Iraq.
Unlike the that the Bush Administration is using for public relations purposes, these numbers do include car bombings.
Could it be that the war in Iraq has played into the hands of terrorist recruiters throughout the world? The American public is beginning to see through the media spin that Republicans are strong on national security. A new shows that only 26.5% of Americans give Bush an "excellent" rating on keeping the U.S. safe from terrorism.
In my younger years I considered myself a Republican, I wasn't sure why, butit probably had something to do with my traditional points of view, even though my ways ofthinking were liberal. I suppose the bottom line was Ihad no clue. As I grew older I learned how to understand my views and combine andmold them into what turned out to be mainstream liberal. I'm not easilyconvinced or swayed about everything left, I need to see it, hear it andunderstand it before I hop on any band wagons. That's why when I saw the title , I was taken back a bit and thought another (nutty) conspiracytheory. Then I read it.
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there arecertain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutionalfreedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to betaking them all
I knew Bush did some evil things, andshould be impeached (and flogged), but how are they going to equate Bush toHitler?
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the couptook a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list.In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down:the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residentialareas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press,tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
NowI had to keep reading, I had to see how this British paper was going to tie U.S.policy to that of a military coup in Thailand.
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy -After we were hiton September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weekslater, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that hadlittle chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Wewere told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "globalwar" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe outcivilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the USaccepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincolndeclared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands ofJapanese-American citizens were interned.
2. Create a gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next stepis to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wantedthe American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal"outer space") - where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste - Thugs in America? Groups of angry youngRepublican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workerscounting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you canimagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the nextelection day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a pollingstation "to restore public order".
4. Set up an internal surveillance system - In 2005 and 2006, whenJames Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret stateprogramme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and followinternational financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans thatthey, too, could be under state scrutiny.
5. Harass citizens' groups - The fifth thing you do is related to stepfour - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a churchin Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, founditself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches thatgot Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, havebeen left alone.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - In 2004, America'sTransportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list ofpassengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried tofly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peaceactivists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member ofVenezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; andthousands of ordinary US citizens.
7. Target key individuals - Bush supporters in state legislatures inseveral states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fireacademics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants,the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spokeup for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publiclyintimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening tocall for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modernAmerica - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and SidneyBlumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false informationthat is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth fromuntruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying.When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands foraccountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason - Cast dissent as "treason" andcriticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as itelaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expandthe definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, thepublisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush calledthe Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", whileRepublicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, andrightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason"drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that onepenalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution
.10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense AuthorizationAct of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This meansthat in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers todeclare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that hehas declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and itscitizens.
Special Thanks to granny for pointing us to this information.
My thought's quickly changed. These steps are much more detailedin the article and can be .
2 other far left conspiracy theories that after seeing the information I was (conservatively) 65% convinced were true. Alex Jones's '' (w/ VIDEO), and Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale: ''.
I wonder what take would be on the latest violence in the capital?He did say he would have gone into the market without an escort.
marketplace today killing 160 (so far) andwounding 137. This came at a time when the administration (and I am sure FOXnews) was about to do the happy dance for the hand-off of Maysan province fromthe British to the Iraqis.
The blasts overshadowed a key development for Iraq in which the country'sforces took over the security control of an oil-rich southern province from theBritish forces.
The British military, as part of its plan to withdraw its forces from Iraq,yesterday handed over the security control of the southern Maysan province at a colorfuloutdoor ceremony and military parade.
The spokespeople mustcringe when they speak, or at least when they are around friends and family andare asked "do you really believe that crap you said today?"
We've seen both inspiring progress and too much evidence we still face manygrave challenges," US military spokesman William Caldwell said last night."We've always said securing Baghdad would not be easy."
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that failure in Iraq would unleashsectarian strife and extremism and would be felt across the Middle East.
Speaking to a US Chamber of Commerce lunch in Cairo on the third day of hisMiddle East tour, Mr Gates urged Arab countries to use their influence tocounter the insurgency and encourage political reconciliation.
"Whatever disagreements we might have over how we got to this point inIraq, the consequences of a failed state in Iraq - of chaos there - willadversely impact the security and prosperity of every nation in the Middle Eastand Gulf region," he said. Mr Gates warned that while some who disagreedwith the war might be cheering for US failure in Iraq, "these sentimentsare dangerously shortsighted and self-destructive".
The initial effects of failure in the Iraq conflict, he said, would first befelt in Middle East capitals and communities "well before they are felt inWashington or New York".
Is Gates telling us that if welose, it would be because of the people cheering for a US loss? ( I'll assumethe democrats and liberals are in that mix) I think the administration knowsthey are in quite a jam and are positioning themselves to start tossing theblame around. Let them know while pointing a finger at someone, there are threepointing back
With the twisted thinking of this administration, I wouldn't be surprised if they say "we've got 'em right where we want 'em"
famously predicted that technology and information would lead us to what he called a revolution of technology that would inevitably unite us and give us the ability to communicate to anyone in the world at anytime with just about any means.
I am a senior in and in three weeks I'll graduate with degrees in Advertising and Public Relations. One of my morning classes deals with : how to handle tough situations, having a plan in place, communicating facts and answering questions appropriately, etc. My morning class today, Persuasive Communication taught by Dr. Robin Meyers (author of the famous speech, and author of ,) took a detour from the syllabus - about Marshall McLuhan - to just talk. It's difficult to gauge how you're feeling as readers, but as a student I find myself not needing to see political banter or politics for a few hours, at least a few minutes, and rather find myself just wanting to talk.
As a student in , I felt the building shake as I sat in my fourth grade classroom at 9:02AM on April 19, 1995, the morning of the . I drove through the torrential rains and heard my mother scream as the phone disconnected the night she was buried underneath her own house by the - May 3, 1999. I sat in my 11th grade Government class and watched as the second plane crashed into the . Yesterday, I sat in an empty room, the living room where I'll soon occupy in my new home, and listened to the cries of a university, a city, a state, a country, about the horrors of what transpired at .
My life and the technology within it has allowed me to step out from a small suburban classroom, from a city-wide terrorist attack, from a statewide natural disaster, into what was the first of, unfortunately, many global tragedies. The global village has its ups and downs, and the down is that we must all experience the devastation of tragedy without ever feeling the ground shake or hearing the shots fired.
At the time of this publication, we have learned and and have begun to piece together the history of the individual: , , . We've watched a university stumble in crisis from , , and We've watched media outlets frantically interview second- and third- and fourth-hand witnesses and provoke emotional reactions. We've watched Fox News tell you how this will impact the stock market and the war on terror and the security and sanctity of our schools. Unfortunately, until now, we have yet to just talk.
McLuhan says, In this place, the home of inclusion and open-mindedness and intelligent dialogue, I hope the message can resonate from those values. I needed to engage the global village, to speak back to it instead of merely observing it. I hope you'll do the same.
If there's anything you'd like to share - comments, critiques,condolences, thoughts in general - please use the comments section todiscuss.
An insight into the violence and chaos in Darfur has been provided through anew project in which the public can use online satellite imagery to viewdestroyed villages and obtain information about refugee camps and otherhumanitarian efforts.
The project is a joint effort undertaken by the internet search giant Googleand the US Holocaust Memorial Museum located in Washington DC. It utilizes theGoogle Earth service which allows users to view high resolution satellite imagesby moving their computer mouse.
Watch how quickly the governmentmakes Darfur a "more important" issue now as it will probably become viral.
As I watched the news channels and listened to journalists, strategists andretired military commentators remark about the way the British prisonershandled themselves, it made me shake my head in disbelief. It was beingspeculated that they weren't behaving as prisoners should behave. They seemed to becooperating with the enemy.
Some Britons have questioned the behavior of the 15 service personnel duringtheir detention,
Carman said that Turney, whose interviews and letters apologizing to theIranian people were widely aired in Iran and around the world, in particularpaid a high price.
I understand that when captured you are only to give "Your name, rankand serial number". Unless you were there, you don't know how you wouldbehave, or what you would or wouldn't do. For the last few years we have allwatched beheadings and torture victims on the news and internet.
has more about their capture and how they were treated here
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