Shrubby, your doing a heck of a job!!!

[97silverlsc]

Terrorism's elusive refuge

Robert Scheer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/18/EDGN8GOBNB1.DTL&hw=scheer&sn=001&sc=1000
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

WHAT'S UP with Osama bin Laden? Remember when capturing him "dead or alive" and eliminating his Afghanistan-based al Qaeda, as President Bush promised, was what the war on terror was all about?

Instead, the president got distracted with his idiotic invasion of Iraq where al Qaeda had been effectively banned by Saddam Hussein, the secular dictator the United States deposed. Now we are left holding the bag in two desperate countries with bleak futures where perpetrators of Sept. 11 are reportedly thriving and guerrilla warfare and terrorist bombings have continued to increase.

"Al Qaeda is quickly changing, and we are not," Timothy J. Roemer, a member of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission appointed by Bush, warned last month. "Al Qaeda is highly dynamic, and we are not. Al Qaeda is highly imaginative, and we are not."

Yet, in his speeches, Bush clings to the notion that the battle against terrorism is going well because, according to his spin, we have been able to eliminate it in Afghanistan and are now destroying the last vestiges of this scourge in Iraq. On his visit to Kabul last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elaborated on this absurdity by declaring bloody, backward Afghanistan as a "model" of progress in the war on terrorism -- even as he was admitting that "Iraq is several years behind."

Rumsfeld's claim of progress was treated as ridiculous by Afghan security officials interviewed by the BBC following the defense secretary's visit. "We are very worried now," one senior police official told the BBC. "The Taliban and al Qaeda are getting more threatening."

Last Sunday, U.S. sources claimed to have targeted Osama's second-in-command with the bombing of a village on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan. But, as is so often the case when applying air power to nonmilitary targets, the corpses left in the debris of a devastated village did not include the intended target. In the aftermath, American flags were once again burning in the region as anti-American protests swept Pakistan.

Meanwhile, next door in Afghanistan, a new rash of suicide bombings -- 25 in four months, according to the Los Angeles Times -- is providing evidence that al Qaeda's old partners in crime, the Taliban, are back with a vengeance. Over the weekend, 20 civilians were killed by a suicide bomber, while a Canadian diplomat was killed in another attack. This month is on pace to be the bloodiest the country has seen since the U.S. invasion.

NATO members, with troops operating out of Kabul, are balking at sending more; at least one, Holland, is considering pulling out altogether of a much-hyped occupation that seems to be accomplishing little.

"What happened to the new roads and irrigation canals, the jobs we were told about?" village elders plaintively inquired of a BBC correspondent.

Indeed, five years of "nation-building" has left Afghanistan a festering wound, with primitive warlords still dominant, an isolated capital with no control of the countryside, no national infrastructure and a once-again booming opium trade the country's only economic bright spot.

"Of course we're growing poppy this year," one district chief told the BBC. "The government, the foreigners -- they promised to help if we stopped. But where is it?"

This occupation is only the latest in centuries of cynical or, at best, ineffective meddling in Afghanistan. From the British to the Soviets to the Republicans, everybody has seen the place as useful to achieve ends that have nothing to do with making it a better place to live. As we once again draw down our annual economic commitment to Afghanistan's rebuilding from $1 billion to $600 million annually, it is clear the Bush team is hoping the country will once again recede from the global stage into unseen anarchy.

After our dramatic initial stab into Afghanistan after Sept. 11, the Bush administration has shown no willingness to do the heavy lifting that would be required to make the country once again the functioning nation it was before Cold War games tore it apart. Rather, as with the rest of its policies, a token effort has merely been a cover for conning the American public into believing Bush is effectively pursuing the war on terrorism.

Since most Americans could not find the country on a map, this deeply cynical approach will continue to work -- at least until the next time a gang of marauders trained in the primitive badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan and funded by our "allies" in Saudi Arabia launch another devastating attack on U.S. soil.

E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com.

 

[97silverlsc]

Iraq's Oil Shock
By Robert Bryce
Salon.com

Tuesday 17 January 2006

As the country's energy nightmare continues, US troops are using nearly 40 times more fuel per day than the average, increasingly angry Iraqi.

We know that the Bush administration was flat wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And now, nearly three years after the beginning of the war, it's also clear that top Bush officials were just as delusional about Iraq's energy business and how critical the energy sector would be to achieving security and stability in Iraq. Continuing failure with this vital part of the reconstruction is costing the United States - and the Iraqi people - very dearly.

During the run-up to the war, the Bush administration denied that oil was a factor in its desire to oust Saddam Hussein from power: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during a November 2002 interview with CBS News' Steve Kroft, declared that the approaching U.S. invasion had "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." But four months later, as U.S. troops seized Iraq's oil infrastructure and closed in on Baghdad, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (now the president of the World Bank) made it clear that Iraq's oil was going to save American taxpayers a lot of money. Wolfowitz told Congress on March 27, 2003, that the U.S. was "dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." He added that Iraq's oil revenues could "bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years."

Instead of the energy riches predicted by Wolfowitz, millions of Iraqis are now living in dire energy poverty. In Baghdad, there is little or no electricity, little or no motor fuel, and little or no kerosene for home heating. Moreover, according to energy expert Jim Placke, who has been following Iraq's oil business since 1959 when he worked for the State Department in Baghdad, the situation appears to be getting worse. The insurgents are targeting the energy infrastructure with increasing success, says Placke, who is a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "By doing so, they embarrass the coalition forces and the Iraqi government that they can't keep gas stations supplied with motor fuel. It's very disruptive and it makes the average Iraqi's life that much more difficult."

From the outset, America's game plan in Iraq has depended on the ability to control the flow of energy. Whether for the gargantuan amounts of fuel needed by U.S. troops on the ground, the export of Iraqi crude, or the production of motor fuel at the refineries in Baghdad and Baiji, the U.S., as Wolfowitz suggested, was depending on Iraq's vast oil reserves to keep the Iraqi economy afloat and to sustain the rebuilding process in the post-Saddam era. But despite the $30 billion that U.S. taxpayers have spent to rebuild Iraq and its energy infrastructure, Bush policies have resulted in scant progress. A Government Accountability Office report released last October summarized the situation, saying that yet more reconstruction money will be needed "due to the severely degraded infrastructure, post conflict looting and sabotage, and additional security costs." That same report says that soaring security costs are soaking up much of the money that was originally earmarked for energy infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the insurgents are targeting every part of the energy infrastructure - crude oil, electricity, refined products - and the American military has been able to do little to stop the destruction. And it's killing the Iraqi economy.

On Jan. 4, an Iraqi writer who uses the pseudonym Riverbend and posts on the Baghdad Burning blog, wrote about the plight that she and other Baghdad residents are facing: "How about 6 hours of no electricity for every one hour of electricity? Or ... 6 hours of waiting in line for gasoline that is three times as expensive as it was in 2005?" On Jan. 2, Najma, a 17-year-old student living in the northern city of Mosul who blogs on A Star From Mosul, wrote a post for the New York Times, in which she discussed the frequent electricity outages. As for motor fuel, she wrote that "prices in the black markets dropped to only 12 times the legal price. If someone chooses the hard way, he can wait in the line for up to a day - a line that is not less than three kilometers." In late December, Najma wrote that because of surging gasoline prices, her father was "now paying more than half of his salary on fueling the cars. Students at the universities are on strike now because they can not afford paying for the gasoline."

The surge in fuel prices is due, in part, to the Iraqi government's decision to reduce its fuel subsidies. Last year, Iraqis were paying about 5 cents for a gallon of gasoline. The International Monetary Fund agreed to forgive much of Iraq's debt if the country cut its fuel subsidies. In December, the Iraqi government agreed and raised prices. But the resulting surge in prices has led to widespread anger among Iraqis who are now paying up to 65 cents per gallon. That may sound cheap by U.S. standards, but even the best-paid workers in Iraq make only about $130 a month, and a quarter of the population lives on just $1 per day.

While fuel prices are surging, a key concern is supply, which is being hampered by both corruption and insurgent attacks. There are conflicting accounts of a Jan. 4 attack on a fuel tanker convoy that was to replenish service stations in Baghdad. Reuters reported that 20 of the 60 trucks in the convoy were destroyed. Other reports said fewer trucks were destroyed, but whatever the actual number, tanker trucks are now a prime target of the insurgents, who have been attacking them for months. The U.S. military provides armed escorts to the tanker trucks that are importing its fuel from Jordan and Kuwait. Many of the convoys are also escorted by a helicopter gunship. But it is not clear if the U.S. military has diverted any of its resources toward protecting tanker trucks that are delivering fuel for Iraqi civilians.

The U.S. military's energy consumption in Iraq is soaring. According to recent data from the Defense Department, the U.S. military is now using about 3 million gallons of fuel per day in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thus, keeping each of the 153,000 American soldiers on the ground in Iraq requires the consumption of about 19.6 gallons of fuel per soldier per day. That's double the amount in January 2005, when each soldier in Iraq was consuming on average about 10 gallons of fuel per day.

Meanwhile, according to a recent New York Times report, the city of Baghdad is now using about 2.4 million gallons of motor fuel per day, so the average Iraqi among the 5.9 million residents of the war-torn capital is using less than a half-gallon of fuel per day. That means that the average American soldier in Iraq is using nearly 40 times more fuel per day than the average Iraqi. That disparity will only compound resentment of the U.S. presence, says retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Granrud, who served during both the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. If Iraqis are waiting for hours in line to get fuel while the Americans are driving around in their Humvees and other vehicles, Granrud says, "They'll get madder than hell at their government and at U.S. forces."

Iraq's crude oil pipelines are in tatters. The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security reports that Iraq's pipelines have been attacked nearly 300 times since mid-2003. Repeated insurgent attacks are preventing Iraq's oil ministry from exporting any oil from its northern oil fields through the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Instead, all of the country's oil must be exported through two oil terminals (both built by Halliburton in the 1970s) on the Persian Gulf.

The pipeline attacks are preventing Iraq's refineries in Baghdad and Baiji from running at full capacity. According to an Energy Information Administration report written last month, "Iraqi refineries currently are operating at only 50 percent to 75 percent of capacity, forcing the country to import around 200,000 bbl/d [barrels per day] of refined products, at a cost of $200-$250 million per month."

Because of pervasive corruption within the energy sector, much of that refined product is not getting to Iraqi consumers, further exacerbating prices. "The black market is flourishing," a former Iraqi oil ministry official told Salon. The official, who now works for an international oil company and was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said that much of the fuel that is either produced by Iraqi refineries or bought from foreign suppliers "is being re-exported," to neighboring countries. Some of the stolen fuel is also being sold on the domestic black market.

While fuel prices are soaring, Iraq's oil exports are falling. In December, exports were just 1.1 million barrels per day. That's less than half of the 2.8 million barrels per day Iraq was exporting back in 1990, and a far cry from the goal of 6 million barrels per day that Iraqi planners made at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. (According to the former Iraqi oil ministry official, the Iraqis believed that reaching 6 million barrels per day would require investing at least $37 billion. Today, given the sharp increases in the cost of oil-field supplies and equipment, that figure would likely be several times higher.)

According to Placke, Iraq's oil fields need at least $10 billion in immediate investment just to stabilize production from the existing fields, many of which have been damaged by poor maintenance and over-production. But getting that investment is impossible given the ongoing security problems in Iraq. And therein, says Placke, lies the conundrum of Iraq's tremendous oil wealth: "Until there's security they can't develop the oil resources they need to fund their security. And I don't know how that endless cycle stops."

As that quagmire deepens, Iran is exerting more influence on Iraq's energy affairs. Two decades ago, during the bloody Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis bombed one of Iran's main oil export terminals, Kharg Island. But last July, the two countries agreed to a deal that will allow the Iraqis to export crude oil from Kharg Island. The swap agreement allows the Iraqis to ship crude from their oil fields near Basra to Iran's Abadan refinery. In exchange, the Iranians will ship a similar amount of their crude from Kharg.

It's not yet clear how this new Iraq-Iran energy deal will affect the global flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, but the alliance appears to be deepening. On Jan. 9, Iran's MEHR news agency reported that Iran is building new power transmission lines into Iraq. Although the initial lines will carry only 230 kilowatts of power, the agency predicts that Iran could eventually export 1,000 megawatts of power to Iraq.

Right now Iraq needs the Iranian power, because its own electrical system is a disaster. In this area, the U.S. has mismanaged and squandered much of a $4 billion project to restore Iraqi electricity, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. The October GAO report pointed out that by July 2005, about 30 percent of the money that was budgeted for electricity projects a year earlier had instead been diverted into security spending. Inefficiency and waste have been pervasive in other ways: "Due to limited access to natural gas, some Iraqi power plants are using low-grade oil to fuel their natural gas combustion engines," the report said. "The use of oil-based fuels, without adequate equipment modification and fuel treatment, decreases the power output of the turbines by up to 50 percent, requires three times more maintenance, and could result in equipment failure and damage that significantly reduces the life of the equipment."

America and Iraq are "coming to a crucial point" with Iraq's energy situation, according to Phebe Marr, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a leading historian on modern Iraq. "When the new government gets established, it must decide what it will do with its oil resources: Who will control it? Will it be centrally controlled? I predict it's going to be very difficult." Marr says she is "not totally pessimistic" about the situation in Iraq today. But right now the country "is failing," she says, "and it could keep going down."

 

[Vitas]

Robert Scheer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/18/EDGN8GOBNB1.DTL&hw=scheer&sn=001&sc=1000
.....
E-mail Robert Scheer at rscheer@truthdig.com.

Scheer Deception: The Lies and Jargon of Robert Scheer
By Ben Fritz (ben@spinsanity.org)
October 8, 2001


Many pundits sling jargon or make blithely irrational arguments. Some, however, seem to specialize in twisting the facts to fit their ideology, continually making assertions that are at best unsupported and at worst blatantly false until they--and presumably their readers--come to accept these false tropes as truth. Robert Scheer, a nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has established himself as the leader of this breed, with some of his worst spin coming since the September 11 attack. Sadly, this is only the latest iteration of a trend that can be seen in Scheer's columns throughout the year.

A brief history
Scheer has had an interesting career in journalism. He started at the radical left publication Ramparts in the 60s, then become a national correspondent for the L.A. Times for 17 years. For the past eight, he has been a columnist whose work appears weekly in the Times and papers across the country. He also co-hosts a radio show on an affiliate of National Public Radio in Los Angeles and writes for publications like The Nation. Throughout his career, Scheer has been one of America's leading liberal pundits, reliably bashing Republicans and many conservative Democrats.

Dissemble, spin, repeat
An overview of Scheer's writing reveals that one of his favorite tactics is to create a politically potent trope and repeat it over and over until it seems true. When faced with criticism, Scheer simply dismisses his critics without addressing their arguments and continues to repeat his idea, as if the more he says it, the truer it becomes.

An excellent example of this tactic can be found in what my co-editor Brendan Nyhan has labeled the "Taliban aid trope." Scheer created this trope in May, when he attacked a "gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan," saying it "makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that 'rogue regime' for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God."

Drawing on work by Bryan Carnell of Leftwatch, Brendan pointed out that the $43 million was not aid to the Taliban government. Instead, the money was a gift of wheat, food commodities, and food security programs distributed to the Afghan people by agencies of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Secretary of State Colin Powell specifically stated, in fact, that the aid "bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it."


Since the US began focusing on the Taliban for harboring Osama Bin Laden, whose Al-Qaeda network is the primary suspect in the September 11 attacks, Scheer has repeated this false assertion about U.S. aid to Afghanistan, and in fact twisted it even further. In a September 17 column, he says that the aid was a tacit endorsement of Bin Laden:


This is typical of the mixed signals we've been sending. Call it what you will, even humanitarian aid, and funnel it through the United Nations, but the effect is the same: to send to the Taliban a signal that its support of Bin Laden has been somehow acceptable.
Note how Scheer takes note of his critics' points by prefacing them with "Call it what you will," as if these points were arbitrary labels and not facts. They are facts, however, and Scheer is simply trying to avoid them.

Scheer wasn't done spreading this trope, or with his irrational dismissal of critics, however. Two weeks later, on October 1, he spun humanitarian aid for the Afghan people as some sort of a fairy tale:


Believe that [the Taliban convinced farmers to stop growing opium through religious appeals rather than by force], and you can believe that the $43 million in aid that Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that same week--to help the Afghans, "including those farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome"--was simply humanitarian aid and not really a reward to the Taliban for helping the U.S. in its drug war.
Again, Scheer does not explain to readers how humanitarian aid funneled through the U.N and NGOs can be considered a gift to a government that never receives funds or controls any food aid. Notice also how he selectively quotes Powell, avoiding the statement mentioned earlier in which Powell explicitly notes that the aid will bypass the Taliban. Even more disturbing, however, is a fact brought to our attention by Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix in an email: Powell's statement was made in response to a question about future aid and had nothing to do with the $43 million aid already provided. Once again, Scheer is twisting the truth to fit his argument.

Although Scheer's use of the Taliban aid trope has been the most disturbing this year, it is not the only falsity he has repeated. In another instance, Scheer has twice tried to frame the current economic slump as a recession caused by President Bush and Congressional Republicans. This started in July, when Scheer argued that Al Gore should criticize the Bush Administration and Republicans for economic policy:

The job market was never better than under Bill Clinton and it's not too much to expect Gore to hold the Republicans, who have controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, responsible for the loss of 300,000 jobs in the last three months alone.
The truth that Scheer is avoiding here, however, is that the current downturn began while Bill Clinton was still President. Furthermore, in the three months prior to July, Bush's economic policy had barely begun to take effect. There is no logical reason to hold the economic policy of Bush and Republicans in Congress responsible for a downturn that began before Bush's inauguration.

Earlier in that column, Scheer also dissembles when he refers to a "recession" that at the time had not been established (although it is now quite likely that we are in one). Blaming Bush for the weak economy, regardless of the facts, is a favorite tactic of Scheer's, however. He did so again just a month later, as my co-editor Brendan Nyhan pointed out, when he succinctly referred to "a recession [Bush] helped create." At this point, however, there was still no evidence that the U.S. was in a recession, nor was there evidence that the slow economy was caused by President Bush.

Such facts seem to matter little to Scheer as he creates his false tropes. The truth is merely an obstacle to be illogically dismissed.

Labels and frames
Another favored tactic of Scheer's, and one that can be seen in his false tropes as well, is to bash President Bush and other Republicans whenever possible. There is nothing wrong, of course, with criticizing political opponents. What is troublesome, however, is that Scheer often does so not with reasoned criticism, but irrational broadsides and unsupported allegations.

When it comes to President Bush, Scheer seems to have two insights that he repeats endlessly: the President is rich and he is dumb. From global warming to economic policy, Scheer seems to always find a way to return to these two points.

During a discussion of the importance of Social Security and Medicare, for instance, Scheer sees fit to state that many benefit from these programs, "nless your family happens to be super rich like the president's." In a column on global warming, Scheer again takes an unnecessary swipe at the Bush family's wealth, making ridiculous generalizations about young people in the process:

Here's a guy born with credit cards in his cradle, enough to take him anywhere in the world, first class, who nevertheless pointedly refused to go. Even kids without any money manage to scrape up a few bucks and go see the world, but not young George, who satiated his curiosity about foreign lands with a few beer busts down in Mexico.
Scheer's ostensible point here is that Bush "never seemed to think that there was a world out there worth visiting, let alone saving," as if a vacation in Europe would necessarily make him more competent in foreign policy. Notice also the irrelevant assertion that Bush went on "beer busts down in Mexico," which is, again, hardly relevant to his current foreign policy. Also notable here is Scheer revealing his own class bias, as he absurdly asserts that even the poorest of young people manage to travel around the world.

The broadsides don't stop there, though. Another one of Scheer's insights into Bush's foreign policy is that it "can more charitably be viewed as the confused performance of a struggling C student." In the same column, Scheer's conclusion about the Bush's administration's rejection of many foreign treaties is, again, that the President is dumb: "t is therefore unfair for critics to hold his proposals to too high a standard of logic and sophistication," he writes. "After all, this is George W. Bush we're talking about."

Scheer also plays on a common and again unsupported liberal trope: that Bush is merely a front man and Vice-President Cheney is running the country. "It's a sad measure of the president's need for adult supervision," Scheer wrote in July, "that Cheney has become the first vice president in modern U.S. history to seize control of the White House and render the president himself a public relations front man sent around the country to do photo ops." Once again, Scheer presents no evidence to support his attack, simply asserting that "[e]veryone knows that Cheney, not Bush, runs the show."

To be fair, however, Scheer doesn't exclusively pick on President Bush. Vice President Cheney himself came under attack in a column on environmental policy that labels him "an oil-guzzling, intellectually irresponsible, anti-environmental oaf."

Best of breed
At a time when all too many pundits engage in their share of lies, spin, and jargon, Robert Scheer stands out in a class by himself. In column after column, his favored tactics have been irrational criticism, distortion, and spin. At his worst, Scheer's false tropes spread and become part of the commonly accepted discourse. Since September 11, for instance, as Dan Kennedy noted in the Boston Phoenix, the Taliban aid trope has been repeated in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Denver Post and Salon. For those concerned about the rise of irrational discourse in American politics, Robert Scheer stands out as one of the worst offenders.


Related links:
-Scheer propaganda on a claimed recession (Brendan Nyhan, 8/28)
-Scheer propaganda (Brendan Nyhan, 6/12)


http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20011008.html

 

[MonsterMark]

Osama is dead. Kidney failure. End of story.

 

[TheDude]

Osama is dead. Kidney failure. End of story.

Is there proof to back this? Last I heard in here, he was presumed dead from an earthquake.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Scheer Deception:

Typical GOP response, can't refute the issue, so you attempt to discredit the source.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Is there proof to back this? Last I heard in here, he was presumed dead from an earthquake.

Regardless, the BuSh administration is presuming Osama is a non-issue. Just like they presumed they were "swatting flies" prior to 9/11, and they presumed Iraq would be a walk in the park, and they presumed Iraq's oil would pay for rebuilding Iraq .................

 

[barry2952]

I think the proper word would be ass-umed, not presumed.

 

[RB3]

Typical GOP response, can't refute the issue, so you attempt to discredit the source.

Wrong. If this were a news story (the Scheer piece), that might be a valid response. But this is an opinion piece, and Scheer is an opinion columnist. That then makes it fair to examine how accurate his opinions have been. And the answer is: not very accurate. In fact, Scheer was recently fired from the Los Angeles Times; the scuttlebut being they were tired of all the retractions they'd had to print to cover his bald faced lies. Of course, the firing is being reported in the Left-wing hate press as another Bush conspiracy.

Among other things, Scheer falsely claimed that Bush had been warned that Al Qaeda planned to hijack airliners and use them as suicide weapons, an outrageous lie. As further evidence of his dishonest reporting, Scheer's online collection of columns fails to include any of the dozens of corrections that the Times has printed over the years. He simply lets his false statements stand without letting on his own employer has retracted them.

 

[FreeFaller]

You know...it almost seems like the "Anti-Bush" crowd is either too stupid or too ignorant to realize what a hard time we had building this country or they just choose to ignore it altogether. They must believe that after 1783 the whole country lived in peace and happiness. No injustice or hardships due to the creation of a wholly unheard of type of government. No the whole nation sang songs around a campfire and we lived happilly ever after. No one died and there was no conflict until President Bush showed up...well, except for...

The Quasi War
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
The Whiskey Rebellion
The First Barbary War
The War of 1812
The Seminole wars
The second Barbary War
The Texas Revolution
The Mexican American War
The Cortina Troubles
The American Civil War
The Indian Wars
The Spanish American War
The Phillipine American War
The Banana Wars

You want me to keep going. Those were just major conflicts...there were countless spurts of violence throughout the country. Countless tests on the hard road travelled to reach today. So why don't you people give the Iraqi's and the Afgani's a little freakin credit for once.

 

[FreeFaller]

Actually I should edit myself there...I misplaced my intent by saying "Anti-Bush"... I am not here to defend the President. I could care less if you like or dislike the President. I am here to defend the ideals and intentions of the United States. I am here to defend the fact the this country is good and just. I am here to defend that we are not the vile, despicable country controlled by shadowy figures that so many here would like to believe. I am here to defend that fact that we have done so much good around the world to include the conflicts in Afganistan and Iraq. I am here to defend that fact that we have much work to do and it will take some time to complete. The United States is not perfect...but we, along with our allies are doing the best we can...

...and it's working.

 

[cww102174]

Osama is dead. Kidney failure. End of story.

Just happened to run across this today. Not saying he is dead or alive, but just would like to know what you guys thought about this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/al_qaida_bin_laden

Bin Laden Warns of Attacks, Offers Truce

1 minute ago

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Jazeera aired an audiotape purportedly from
Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce to rebuild
Iraq and
Afghanistan. The voice on the tape said heightened security measures in the United States are not the reason there have been no attacks there since the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here

Instead, the reason is "because there are operations that need preparations, and you will see them," he said.

"Based on what I have said, it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land," he said. "We do not mind offering you a truce that is fair and long-term. ... So we can build Iraq and Afghanistan ... there is no shame in this solution because it prevents wasting of billions of dollars ... to merchants of war."

The speaker did not give conditions for a truce in the excerpts aired by the Arab broadcaster.

 

[fossten]

Just happened to run across this today. Not saying he is dead or alive, but just would like to know what you guys thought about this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/al_qaida_bin_laden

Bin Laden Warns of Attacks, Offers Truce

1 minute ago

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Jazeera aired an audiotape purportedly from
Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce to rebuild
Iraq and
Afghanistan. The voice on the tape said heightened security measures in the United States are not the reason there have been no attacks there since the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here

Instead, the reason is "because there are operations that need preparations, and you will see them," he said.

"Based on what I have said, it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land," he said. "We do not mind offering you a truce that is fair and long-term. ... So we can build Iraq and Afghanistan ... there is no shame in this solution because it prevents wasting of billions of dollars ... to merchants of war."

The speaker did not give conditions for a truce in the excerpts aired by the Arab broadcaster.

Wow. Ever heard Shakespeare? "Methinks the terrorist doth protest too much..."

This guy is trying to convince us that there's no shame in asking for mercy? hahahahaha! Don't make me laugh. These guys are cowards through and through. I say pour it on, keep hitting them where it counts. It's obviously working.

Oh, btw, notice the not-so-well-hidden request not to fight them on their own land? I refer you all to this:

http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showthread.php?t=17547

Way to go Bush! Keep up the good work, you're doing a heckuva job!