Bush Jealous: Malaki And Karzai Warm Up To Iran, Watch Out For Cheney

Bush breaks up Iran-Iraq love-in Correspondents in Washington and Tehran
US President George W. Bush yesterday told Tehran there would “be a price to pay” for meddling in Iraq and warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against cosying up to the leaders of Iran.

Amid what Washington sees as unsettling signs of warming Baghdad-Tehran relations, Mr Bush said he was not surprised at pictures yesterday that showed cordial meetings between Mr Maliki and top Iranian leaders in Tehran, but he said he hoped the Shia leader was delivering a tough message.

“You don’t want the picture to be kind of, you know, ducking it out” when on a diplomatic mission, he said, putting up his fists like a boxer.

“If the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend the Prime Minister because I do not believe they are,” Mr Bush said.
Mr Bush’s comments came just days after he disagreed sharply with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about Iran’s influence after Mr Karzai called Tehran a positive force in combating extremists in his country.
Iraq PM calls emergency summit correspondents in Baghdad | August 13, 2007
PRIME Minister Nuri al-Maliki overnight called on senior leaders in Iraq’s bitterly divided communities to hold crisis talks this week in an effort to save his fraying national unity government.
His latest attempt to bring the leaders of the warring communites under one roof came at a time when the American military declared that five more of its troops battling to bring security to war-torn Iraq had been killed.
“I have invited major political leaders to a meeting to discuss substantial matters,” Mr Maliki said in a televised speech.
“Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow could be the first meeting for these leaders to discuss the political program and important strategic problems,”   the embattled Shiite prime minister said.

The last thing King George and Lord Cheney want is for Iraq’s neighbors to kiss and make up. Watch closely while Cheney’s Blackwater/KBR/CIA goons do something to screw this neighbors night out in the Middle East. Cheney has a plan, whether Bush goes along or not. Can’t have peace breaking out before we are through destroying everything in sight. Got to make good on the promises made to our ‘war profiteers’. We must pay them for contracts never met – we only have a short time left before someone demands accountability. INCENTIVE FOR UNSCRUPULOUS BEHAVIOR is what has kept this ‘A-Bomb-A-Nation’ in office. The clock is counting down. Watch out for the UNSCRUPULOUS terrorist production coming to a city near you.

While Middle East Anticipates Bush Free World, White House Launches Propaganda Storm

Middle East already planning for Bush’s departure

Bush, Congress could collide on Iran By Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Taking military action against Iran could put President Bush on a collision course with Congress, leading Democrats and a Republican lawmaker cautioned Friday following Bush’s threat of unspecified consequences for alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq.

Iraq pullout could create chaos By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — U.S. troops could withdraw from Iraq within months, but if Iraq’s government remains politically deadlocked, it probably would collapse and the nation would descend into chaos … the U.S. Army concluded earlier this month.

I feel disinformation raining down on my head. I feel another ‘marketing ploy’ to confuse important issues, again. BushCo wants to beat Musharraf at the ‘State of Emergency’ game! Watch out Iran … Darth Cheney has his eye on you …

Cheney’s Secret Escalation Plan? By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com
At yesterday’s press conference, President Bush announced that he had put Iran on notice. “One of the main reasons that I asked [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq, was to send the message that there will be consequences for people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] that kill Americans in Iraq.”
Describing Iran as “a very troubling nation right now,” largely because of its nuclear program, Bush warned its leaders that “when we catch you playing a non-constructive role [in Iraq] there will be a price to pay.”
So what price is Bush prepared to exact? Is this saber-rattling a harbinger of war? And perhaps most to the point: What is Vice President Cheney up to?
…..Cheney has long been said to be looking for some way to maneuver Bush into having no choice but to launch a full-scale attack against Iran. Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.     “This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an ‘end run strategy’ around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. . . .  “According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the ‘right decision’ when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President’s hands.’”    Isn’t that called TREASON?

Anger follows fear! Fear that the hijackers of this country are getting closer to taking a fatal step toward the Armageddon they so desperately want. Anger that I must sit here and watch worthless caucuses decide who our leader will not be. Yes, Iraq will need a babysitter. No, we do not have to threaten Iran with ‘mass destruction’ to pour water on the fire we set. As soon as America can demonstrate that religion of oil (the new Christianity) is not the solution, the middle east may be more negotiable. The last thing Americans should endorse is sending Christian Missionaries … shades of the Catholic Missionaries annihilating the natives of the New World who did not convert quick enough. When someone invades your country and shouts that you must renounce the faith of your fathers and embrace Jesus as their Savior, all hell will break loose! This is what Jihadists see. This is what they are called to die for, even thought politics and economics is still the bottom line. The convert or die mentality is the spark for an Armageddon conflagration! I am very angry at Bush for stirring up Christian Dominionists in this country to endorse a theocratic national agenda. Our soldiers are not evangelists! Keep religion out of politics! If the truth hurts, get out before you start a civil war in this country. We know you are watching and listening to our anger … bring it on!

Soldiers Are Collapsing Where They Stand

The truth about the health and well being of our troops never seems to get covered by the main stream media. However, the truth about the U.S. troops seems to smack the British media right in the face.

While Bush will stand up there and continue to lie to us and Petraeus will present a bogus report in September, our soldiers are collapsing where they stand. All is not well in the real world of the Iraq war. As you read the article you will see that the soldiers are not allowed to tell the media what’s really going on. Shocking that Bush would be deceiving the American public.

Here’s alittle tidbit that’s at the end of the article “America’s ‘war tsar’ has called for the nation’s political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.

Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.

The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan – a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad – hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.

Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad’s international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.

Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas – bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda – these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. ‘The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,’ says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the ‘surge’ in Baghdad began.

They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: ‘We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it’s like we’ve become no more than numbers now.’

The first soldier starts in again. ‘My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He’s home now and has serious issues adapting. But I’m not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I’d have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.’

A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. ‘We’re plodding through this,’ he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. ‘I don’t know how much more plodding we’ve got left in us.’

When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain’s assistant who has come to bless a patrol. ‘Why don’t you tell the truth? Why don’t you journalists write that this army is exhausted?’

CHENEY – The New Dr. Death, Wants To Strike Iran

Cheney urging strikes on Iran

By Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn’t specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president’s top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran’s support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

Cheney, who’s long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran’s complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly about internal government deliberations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opposes this idea, the officials said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stated publicly that “we think we can handle this inside the borders of Iraq.”

Lea Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman, said only that “the vice president is right where the president is” on Iran policy.

Bush left no doubt at his news conference that he intended to get tough with Iran.

“My message to the Iranian people is, you can do better than this current government,” he said. “You don’t have to be isolated. You don’t have to be in a position where you can’t realize your full economic potential.”

The Bush administration has launched what appears to be a coordinated campaign to pin more of Iraq’s security troubles on Iran. Until now, some hawks within the administration – including Cheney – are said to have favored military strikes to stop Iran from furthering its suspected ambitions for nuclear weapons.

Patrick Clawson, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said a strike on the Quds camps in Iran could make the nuclear diplomacy more difficult.

Before launching such a strike, “We better be prepared to go public with very detailed and very convincing intelligence,” Clawson said.

What the hell is this guy thinking? Expanding his war to Iran is a solution to his sinking ship? Mayday, Mayday! We must do something to stop this insanity. Lieberman, Tancredo and Darth Cheney are trying to assure a lifetime of war – no winners! Is this the ploy the Bush A-bomb-a-nation will perpetrate to declare the ‘state of emergency’ required to insure calling off elections? Can you spell ‘civil war’ in America between the ‘lemmings’ and the enlightened? We cannot allow any more world atrocities committed in the name of America! We either evacuate or fight. Pick your poison. I personally don’t want to abandon this great experiment to the awful corruption we have been prisoner to for the last eight years. I prefer to stay and fight. Is anyone with me? We are not subjects to a despotic dictator, we are Americans. We are supposed to have a voice, which means we a have a responsible for protecting our freedom!

Mixed Signals and Doublespeak

Gates Says Troop Drawdown Possible

WASHINGTON -  Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged Sunday that political stability in Iraq won’t likely happen before the Bush administration makes its critical September assessment on whether its war strategy is working. But Gates declined to predict that a drawdown of U.S. military forces in such a scenario would happen by year’s end.

Gates is almost good at ‘doublespeak‘. More references to Orwellian moments.

“It’s a possibility,” Gates hedged, when asked if he considered a troop drawdown this year a “strong possibility” or would bet on it.

“We’re doing contingency planning on a lot of different possibilities,” Gates said.

“Circumstances changed in a different way,” Gates said. “That’s the process we hope will evolve over time.”

Gates cannot keep his optimism afloat. Speculation about what US “drawdown” capabilities will be when Petraeus reads his script in September, is a marketing exercise. Why can’t Gates keep his story straight? Because, he has no clue what script will handed to him, he is not the only Hollywood production in the works.

US may start Iraq pull-out this year, says Gates
Gates: U.S. underestimated Iraq ‘mistrust’
Gates says Iraq politics disappointing

Gates says political stability in Iraq unlikely before September

Then, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says on Fox Noise,
Security “has improved some” because of U.S. and Iraqi cooperation, she said Sunday.

“Clearly, too, we have a lot of work to do on the political side,” she said. But, she added, “I would not underestimate the importance of the continuing work of the leaders of these very powerful parties in Iraq.” A majority vote would get the law passed “but it would not have the force of all of the groups that wanted to do this,” she said. “They don’t want a 51-49 on constitutional reform.”

Condi is expert at ‘doublespeak‘. No one can pin her down on anything.

When They Come Home Will Gangs Be Worse

Gangs Spreading In The Military

CBS Story

Evidence of gang culture and gang activity in the military is increasing so much an FBI report calls it “a threat to law enforcement and national security.” The signs are chilling: Marines in gang attire on Paris Island; paratroopers flashing gang hand signs at a nightclub near Ft. Bragg; infantrymen showing-off gang tattoos at Ft. Hood.

“It’s obvious that many of these people do not give up their gang affiliations,” said Hunter Glass, a retired police detective in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home of Ft. Bragg and the 82nd Airborne. He monitors gang activity at the base and across the military.

“If we weren’t in the middle of fighting a war, yes, I think the military would have a lot more control over this issue,” Glass said. “But with a war going on, I think it’s very difficult to do.”

Gang activity clues are appearing in Iraq and Afghanistan, too. Gang graffiti is sprayed on blast walls – even on Humvees. Kilroy – the doodle made famous by U.S. soldiers in World War II – is here, but so is the star emblem of the Gangster Disciples.

Gangs Using Military For Training, Experts Say

“When individuals go into the military, they are taught how to use weapons, defensive tactics, and the use of a lot of sophisticated techniques,” said LaRae Quy, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “They take that back on the streets with them. This is a legitimate concern for law enforcement.”

The rise in gang activity coincides with the increase in recruits with records. Since 2003, 125,000 recruits with criminal histories have been granted what are known as “moral waivers” for felonies including robbery and assault.

Sub-cultures abound within larger societies. The military, prisons, cities, neighborhoods spawn small groups who survive with the tools available to them. Gangs are the natural tribal inclinations for humans who feel threatened and angry at the wealth and respect outside their reach. Yes, the military will rehabilitate a great number of gang members, but those who have really bad experiences will take their training back to their gangs. They will continue to prey upon the same citizens, but this time with military, leadership, battlefield experience and blood on their hands. Gangs are our domestic terrorists, and our recruiting wavers allow us to train them better ways to kill.

Update:  I just had to borrow this cartoon from BrainsandEggs, it fits my point!

Civilians In Combat Risk All For A Few Dollars More

Service Civilians and the Wounds of War

Many Fill Vital Roles in Iraq, but Medical Care Can Be Spotty

By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer

Traveling through Sunni insurgent territory north of Baghdad, the U.S. military convoy was nearing a base when a roadside bomb ripped into the lead Humvee, leaving its gunner, Mike Helms, bleeding and swaying from a strap in the open back.

Helms, 31, a civilian counterintelligence expert with the Army’s 902nd Military Intelligence Group, had been sent to Iraq in 2004 to help fill a critical intelligence gap in the area known as the Sunni Triangle. While in Iraq, he lived with soldiers and ate military rations, took fire from mortar rounds and small arms, and clocked hundreds of miles manning a machine gun on the back of a Humvee.

Nevertheless, his status as an Army civilian would leave him stranded in the aftermath of the June 16, 2004, attack, when the bomb hit his Humvee so hard it blew his M-60 off its turret.

In the months that followed, Helms recalled, he was denied vital care for his wounds — ranging from shrapnel in his left arm to traumatic brain injury. Forced to rely on federal workers’ compensation and turned away from regular care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals, Helms has faced years of frustration grappling with bureaucracies unprepared to help a government civilian wounded in combat.

‘Izzy? . . . Bring Your Daughter Here’
U.S. Officer, Wanting to Save Interpreter’s Wounded Child, Faces a Snag (By David Finkel, The Washington Post)

 

There are thousands upon thousands of these stories developing every day. No one can convince me that these facts are unknown to Bush and Company. No one can convince me that Congress is not aware – these casualties come from their political districts, too. Whether they are soldiers or hired support or local collaborators, how we treat those who risk it all will determine our future. These casualties will determine whether we even have a future. Because, the mental and physical health care we offer will determine our own quality of life. Bush and Company cannot be allowed to downplay their responsibility to everyone they have put in harms way, including the American public!

Dole-Shalala Commission Issues Final Report

Hopefully these recommendations will not sit on a shelf like the 9/11 Commission report.

From Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

WASHINGTON (AP) – A presidential commission on Wednesday urged broad changes to veterans’ care that would boost benefits for family members helping the wounded, establish an easy-to-use Web site for medical records and overhaul the way disability pay is awarded.

The nine-member panel, led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and Donna Shalala, health and human services secretary during the Clinton administration, also recommended stronger partnerships between the Pentagon and the private sector to boost treatment for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Gone will be the days of injured soldiers telling the same information to doctors over and over again,” said Shalala, who said the proposals seek to provide more customized, personalized care to injured Iraq war veterans.

She called the report a set of recommendations that could be implemented right away. About six of the 35 proposals require legislation, while the rest call for action primarily by the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Among the recommendations was an indirect rebuke of the VA – a call for Congress to “enable all veterans who have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq who need post-traumatic stress disorder care to receive it from the VA.”

Only recently, the VA has taken steps to add mental health counselors and 24-hour suicide prevention services at all facilities, following high-profile incidents of suicides involving veterans. In the past, the VA had failed to use all the money for mental health that was allotted to it.

Here are some of the recommendations:

• Boost staff and money for Walter Reed until it closes in the coming years. Also urges Pentagon to work with the VA to create “integrated care teams” of doctors and nurses to see injured troops through their recovery.

• Restructure the disability pay systems to give the VA more responsibility for awarding benefits.

• Require comprehensive training programs in post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries for military leaders, VA and Pentagon personnel.

• Create a “My eBenefits” Web site, developed jointly by the VA and Pentagon, that would allow service members and doctors to access private medical information as the injured move from facility to facility to receive treatment.

• Provide better family support, because one-third of injured Iraq war veterans reported that a family member or close friend had to relocate to care for them. It calls for training and counseling for families of service members who require long-term care and improved family leave and insurance benefits for family members

Injured Iraq War Veterans Sue VA

Veterans denied health care, is an absolute disgrace! To me there is no excuse that the VA can possibly give to defend their complete lack of incompetence and responsibility to veterans.

This administration and the GOP could give a rat’s ass about the soldiers. They will send them into harms way and them turn their backs on them. There is no follow through, no caring, no responsibility for the damage that they’ve done or continue to do.

• Frustrated by delays in health care, a coalition of injured Iraq war veterans is accusing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.

• The class-action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad change in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that VA has failed warriors on several fronts — from providing prompt disability benefits, to adding staff to reduce wait times for medical care to boosting services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

• The lawsuit also accuses VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying out benefits.

Pre-existing, are you freaking kidding me. Do you thing that might backfire on the VA and the Pentagon? If you know someone has PTSD before you send them into war, why in the hell would you send them to war. The logic of this government is beyond explanation. It’s all about the almighty dollar.

• “Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families, and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system,” the complaint states.

• Today, the VA’s backlog of disability payments is now between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.

Studying the problem; how long does it take to know that the VA doesn’t work? It hasn’t work for years. Viet Nam vets are still fighting them, just ask any vet living on the street. The Dole- Shalala committee seems to be dragging their feet. Remember the committee that Bush created to get to the bottom of the VA problems. Bush is very good at creating shit and then doing nothing about it. Hell, why don’t we just have a VA Czar, Bush loves having those around. We seem to have more Czar than Russia ever did.

• “While steps can and will be taken in the political arena, responsibility for action lies with the agency itself,” said Melissa W. Kasnitz, managing attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, in a telephone interview. Her group is teaming up with a major law firm, Morrison & Foerster, to represent the veterans.

• “We don’t believe the problems will be fixed by the VA if we wait for them,” she said. “In the meantime, it is veterans who risk their lives for our country who are suffering the consequences.”

• The lawsuit cites violations of the Constitution and federal law, which mandates at least two years of health care to injured veterans.

This administration will go down in history as being the worst violators of the U.S. Constitution. At least you have to give them credit for being consistent in the destruction of this country on more than one front.

Of course when the discussion of bringing the troops home comes up again, Bush, the GOP and all their blind supporters will say they support the troops. To steal Mitch McConnell’s line “it’s political theater”. If they truly supported the troops we would not see class-action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.  

Military Contributions Supports Ron Paul

It’s interesting that the GOP continues to tell us that the withdrawal from Iraq is a slap in the face of the troops. Surprise the military isn’t contributing to the hawks.

In the recent 2nd Quarter report, Ron Paul, the staunchly anti-war GOP candidate is getting the most contributions from employees of the military. Spin that Bush.

H/T to The Spin Factor for digging through the reports to pull out this jewel.

NAME: TOTAL [ARMY] [NAVY] [AIRFORCE] [VETERAN] [USMC**]

RON PAUL: 24,965 [6,975] [6,765] [4,650] [5,075] [1,500]
McCain: 17,475 [6925] [6305] [1795] [800] [1600]
Romney: 3,551 [2,051] [0] [1500] [0]
Giuliani: 2,320 [1,450] [370] [250] [250]
Hunter: 1000 [0] [1000] [0]
Huckabee: 750 [250] [0] [500]
Tancredo: 350 [350] [0] [0]
Brownback: 71 [71] [0] [0]
Thompson: 0 [0] [0] [0]

Units are contributions in dollars by employees of the respective military organizations.

Source: Finance Reports for the 2007 July Quarterly.

Percentages**:

49.5% Ron Paul
34.6% McCain
7.0% Romney
4.6% Giuliani
2.0% Hunter
2.3% Others

*Note: These statistics include the contributions of employees who recorded or indicated their military branch. Contributions where no employer was specified were naturally not included.

**Edit: McCain and Ron Paul have USMC contributions which were overlooked. Their totals have been corrected. (6/17/07)