Off Topic · Bush reelected :-( (page 17)

Oh wow, forgot to update. 1,306

Posted by MaTT4281:

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Ok, here's the deal,for my profile on AIM, I have decided "Why Dubya was elected" theme.
Here is what I got,and if anyone has any more, feel free to add.

Reasons we elected "Dubya":
Democracy was getting boring,
Congress wanted the challenge.
To commense the redneck take over of the country.
To get the pretzel industry back in the news.
All the sober Americans missed election day.
The American people needed to feel better about themselves.
Someone innocently suggested, "A monkey could do it!"

Because Americans recognize when someone has the right strategery for this country.

Posted by Marv:

Because Americans recognize when someone has the right strategery for this country.

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Wow, I'm glad to see that the mayority of you don't like Bush. I'm from Spain, but I never have agreed with his plans. BTW, his Spanish "friend" Aznar sucks.

Posted by DarkKnicks:

Wow, I'm glad to see that the mayority of you don't like Bush. I'm from Spain, but I never have agreed with his plans. BTW, his Spanish "friend" Aznar sucks.

Here he is giving his salute to all his friends around the world:

http://www.killsometime.com/Video/video.asp?video=Bush-One-Finger-Salute

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1,299. Big day, we break the 1,300s

That's what I'm talking about.

[URL=http://www.imageshack.us][/URL]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm


Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Friday 15 April 2005

Washington - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several US officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism."

But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year's mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.

"This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report."

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was "categorically untrue."

According to Johnson and US intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004.

That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.

The statistics didn't include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called "a central front in the war on terror."

The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.

Another US official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year's errors.

Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.

The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush's election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.

US officials blamed last year's mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government's primary organization for analyzing and integrating all US government intelligence on terrorism.

The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.

A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.

The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't contain statistical data.

He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center "is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject."

He didn't answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, "We will be consulting (with Congress) ... on who should publish and in what form."

Another US official said Rice's office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year's undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.

But the US intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to "Patterns of Global Terrorism" to read past reports online.
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Posted by Kwazimodal:

[URL=http://www.imageshack.us][/URL]

Man, that's great.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12875384^1702,00.html

BREAKING NEWS


Reports undercut Iraq, al-Qaeda link
From correspondents in Washington
April 16, 2005

A TOP Democratic senator has released formerly classified documents that he says undercut top US officials' pre-Iraq war claims of a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

"These documents are additional compelling evidence that the intelligence community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary," Senator Carl Levin said today.

The declassified documents undermine the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's involvement in training al-Qaeda operatives and the likelihood of a meeting between September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001, Senator Levin said in a statement.

In October 2002, Mr Bush said: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

But a June 2002 CIA report, titled Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, said "the level and extent of this is assistance is not clear".









The report said that there were "many critical gaps" in the knowledge of Iraq-al-Qaeda links due to "limited reporting" and the "questionable reliability of many of our sources", according to excerpts cited by Senator Levin.

The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs said much of the information on Iraqi training and support for al-Qaeda was "second-hand" or from sources of "varying reliability".

And a January 2003 CIA report indicates some of the reports of training were based on "hearsay" while others were "simple declarative accusations of Iraqi-al-Qaeda complicity with no substantiating detail or other information that might help us corroborate them".

In December 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney said Atta's meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague was "pretty well confirmed".

But, according to Senator Levin, a June 2002 CIA report says: "Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta's alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and we have not verified his travels."

And a January 2003 CIA report says "the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility".

Senator Levin requested the documents' declassification in April 2004 as part of his minority inquiry within the Senate Armed Services Committee into Iraq intelligence failures.

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http://motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/05/battlespace_america.html


Battlespace America

The new Pentagon can peruse intelligence on U.S.citizens and send Marines down Main Street.

By Peter Byrne

May/June 2005 Issue


In early 2004, Sahar Aziz, a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, organized a conference called "Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism." The seminar attracted several hundred people. Unbeknownst to Aziz, who is Muslim, in the audience were two Army lawyers in civilian attire. They reported to military intelligence that three Middle Eastern men had asked them "suspicious" questions about their identity during a refreshment break. A few days later, two military intelligence agents materialized on campus, demanding to see a video-tape of the seminar along with a roster of attendees.

Aziz didn't respond and instead helped arrange a press conference. When the Wall Street Journal highlighted the episode in a story about domestic intelligence gathering by the military, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command acknowledged that the agents "exceeded their authority" and introduced "refresher training" on the limits of the military's jurisdiction.

As it turns out, though, it may be the public that needs a refresher course on the role of its military forces. In 2002, the Defense Department updated its Unified Command Plan, which made the already blurry lines between civilian and military even less legible. Since then, all over America, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been making information about the public available to a Pentagon power center most people have never heard about: U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Hidden deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, more than 100 intelligence analysts sift through streams of data collected by federal agents and local law en- forcers–continually updating a virtual picture of what the command calls the North American "battlespace," which includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as 500 miles out to sea. If they find something amiss, they have resources to deploy in response that no law enforcement agency could dream of. They've got an army, a navy, an air force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard.

The creation of NORTHCOM, as part of the "unified plan" in the wake of 9/11, established the military's first domestic combatant command center. This precedent departs from a long-standing tradition of distinguishing between the responsibilities of the military and those of law enforcement. Since 1878, when Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in response to interference in elections by federal troops, an underlying assumption of U.S. democracy has been that soldiers should not act as police officers on American soil. While the Chinese army might send tanks to Tiananmen Square and the Liberian military might man checkpoints in the capital, the presence of National Guardsmen, carrying firearms and dressed in camouflage, patrolling American territory in the weeks after 9/11 was a striking anomaly.

The new NORTHCOM is designed to take command of every National Guard unit in the country, as well as regular troops, and wield them as a unified force. It has a variety of jobs, including fighting the war on drugs and supporting civilian authorities in cases of natural disaster, civil disorder, or terrorist attack. But it also has the less straightforward task of locating terrorists before they strike, which means, first and foremost, coordinating intelligence work. To this end, the command has been forging a national surveillance system directly linking military intelligence operations to local law enforcement intelligence operations and private security and information companies. These partnerships allow the military to skirt federal privacy laws that restrict its ability to maintain files on ordinary people–prohibitions that apply to the Pentagon but not to private data miners, such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis Group, or state and local police departments. In addition, personal data is culled from public records, confidential sources, and other repositories routinely cultivated by more than 50 government agencies. For example, NORTHCOM taps into one law enforcement intelligence-sharing network into which local, state, and federal law enforcement can upload information on individuals they've surveilled.

Because most of its activity takes place in secret, and because the Pentagon has still not fully clarified its mandate, very little is known about exactly what kind of information NORTHCOM is gathering, and on whom. A review of documents and interviews with military and civil liberties experts makes clear, however, that the command's domestic intelligence ambitions are more far-reaching than anything the U.S. military has undertaken in the past and that the hope is to "fuse" disparate government databases so they can be readily accessed by NORTHCOM's leadership.

Not surprisingly, all of this worries civil liberties advocates. "There is no explicit prohibition in any law to the effect that the Pentagon may not engage in domestic intelligence," says Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. To place a wiretap or to search a home of a suspected terrorist without their knowledge, Martin notes, officials need a secret warrant from an intelligence court–but other than that, they have a great deal of leeway. "The military can follow you around," she notes. "It can use giant, secret databases of linked networks to gather a picture of the activities of millions of Americans, mapping all of their associations, and the only restriction is that such surveillance be done for purposes of foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, the drug war, or force protection."

Indeed, to beef up protection of its "battlespace," the new command also includes "influence operations specialist[s]," who work on psy-ops "themes" and "deception plans," as first reported in Congressional Quarterly last year. Although the category of "enemy combatant" muddies old definitions of foreign and domestic subjects, NORTHCOM spokesman Sean Kelly assured Mother Jones in an email that the command draws "distinctions between domestic operations and operations conducted outside of U.S. territory.... The idea that the American public would ever be the target of psychological operations or deception by NORTHCOM is completely inconsistent with U.S. law and our mission."

Critics of NORTHCOM say they recognize the need to protect America from terrorist attack, but argue that the delicate task of domestic intelligence gathering should be left to law enforcement. Military affairs expert William Arkin–who recently broke the news that NORTHCOM had established a set of domestic commando teams who were, among other things, deployed at President Bush's inaugural–observes that "once you cross the threshold of believing that databases are going to reveal illegal behavior, it is only steps away from getting into the business of domestic intelligence…and supplanting the role of the National Guard, which has traditionally been in charge of domestic security."

Concern about NORTHCOM's expanding powers is not limited to civil liberties watchdogs. Former CIA lawyer Suzanne Spaulding was the executive director of the National Commission on Terrorism under L. Paul Bremer III in 2000 and now works as a national security consultant. She worries that military intelligence services won't always distinguish between people who are fair game–such as foreign terrorists–and ordinary people who are going about their lives with an expectation of privacy. "People will say, 'Hey, wait a minute, you can't do that!'" she says. "And the military may say, 'This is not law enforcement, this is a military operation against a group of enemy combatants.'" She points out that constitutional safeguards against surveillance of individuals by law enforcement may apply differently to defense activities under NORTHCOM. "This issue needs discussion and debate," she says, "and the public ought to know about it."

More troubling than being watched, though, is what might happen after the spying is over. NORTHCOM is still prohibited from doing much of the work police departments and the FBI do, but it could end up doing work that its parallel commands do overseas. Joseph Onek of the Constitution Project in Washington, D.C., a bipartisan nonprofit focused on civil liberties during wartime, puts it this way: "We're worried that some hotshot military intelligence guy gets back from the Middle East and goes to work with NORTHCOM, using some of the same interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."

Some more encouraging news for a change....


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/220318_patrioted.asp

USA Patriot Act: Restoring liberty

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

It could be morning in America for civil liberties.

Conservatives and liberals united recently to introduce a bill repealing some of the worst parts of the USA Patriot Act. Rolling back the excessive powers granted to federal authorities will be a difficult fight.

But perhaps for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, it is now possible to see real hope for revisions.

Sen. Larry Craig, a conservative Republican from Idaho, and Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin have introduced their Security and Freedom Enhancement Act to make what they call "narrowly targeted" adjustments to the Patriot Act's powers. Craig and Durbin offered a similar bill during the last session of Congress. Since some of the Patriot Act's provisions are set to expire at the end of the year, their timing seems better this year.

The Bush administration has pushed hard for extending the act. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seems willing to continue the administration's pattern of overestimating the act's value and downplaying the problems. But at least he is showing respect for congressional concerns. And he has let it be known he would be willing to accept at least some "technical" changes.

The Patriot Act needs more than technical changes. To be sure, much of the legislation makes sense, such as its provisions for more sharing of information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But the administration likely wouldn't offer any ground in the absence of bipartisan concern about the law's excesses.

And Gonzales, to his credit, is handling the issue far differently from his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft, ever would have. Last week, Gonzales sat down to discuss the Patriot Act with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Afterward, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero issued a realistic assessment: "It's a positive step to have an attorney general willing to engage the ACLU in a frank discussion of this controversial, problematic legislation. However, the real proof of whether we have a different Justice Department will be in what changes to the Patriot Act they are willing to offer and accept."

Craig's and Durbin's proposals would address some of the critical problems under the Patriot Act. Their bill would severely limit the frighteningly broad authority for secret searches. It would ensure that legitimate political civil disobedience isn't prosecuted as terrorism. And it would put in place new protections if librarians and others are told to turn over private records.

It's not surprising that Congress and the administration went too far with the Patriot Act. That's happened in other wartime situations, such as the odious World War II internment of Japanese Americans.

The United States' struggle with terrorism will be a long one. As the ACLU's Romero said, "We look forward to working with the attorney general -- and with the growing list of Republicans and conservative organizations that call for Patriot Act reforms -- to bring the legislation in line with the Constitution." Adhering to the civil liberties embodied in the Constitution will strengthen the freedom of Americans and the nation's ability to hold itself up as a beacon of liberty.

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