Jill Carroll and “Negotiating with Terrorists”

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Not to lean on Katic Couric this morning, but she deserves this one, too… She had a story this morning on Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Iraq by insurgents. She interviewed a fellow journalist (a pretty level-headed guy) about her, and he spoke well of Jill and her style of reporting. And she had an FBI analyst on to talk about Jill’s prospects for freedom. What made me do a spit-take was Katie’s statement to the FBI guy —
“how likely is it that Jill will be freed, since America has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists?”
What? Um, Katie. You’re getting real life mixed up with the movies again. That was Harrison Ford, not George Bush. We negotiate with terrorists ALL THE TIME. That “missing” 8.8 Billion dollars was passed out as cash payments to insurgents, Katie, to pay them to clear a green zone in Baghdad. America traded prisoners from Abu Graib for kidnapped contract mercenaries — paid killers — at more than one time. America traded for guns, money, oil, roads, towns, Halliburton. America paid the insurgents not to attack before both of the elections, Katie. George Bush is a whore who’s slept with every criminal in Iraq. The only dirty, filthy thing that George won’t do is negotiate for an actual American citizen. Because they’re expendable.

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Illegal wiretaps gained no successful information at all

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According to the New York Times, today:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 – In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.

“We’d chase a number, find it’s a school teacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism – case closed,” said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. “After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.”

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips “would always say that we had information whose source we can’t share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative.” He said, “I would always wonder, what does ‘suspected’ mean?”

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Are we in more danger today than our founding fathers were?

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Al Gore makes a damned good point in his recent speech… our founding fathers were tough enough to fight for our country without compromising freedom, so why are we doing it now?

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”
The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.
Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.
Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march–when our fathers fought and won two World Wars?
It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

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Bite me, George

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“I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq… people can help by making sure the tone of this debate is respectful and is mindful about what messages out of the country can do for morale of our troops… One way people can help as we’re coming down the pike in the 2006 elections is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm’s way and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.” – George W. Bush today

What? “I expect”? Who the hell asked you, buddy? We’ll have whatever debate we want to have about Iraq, and if you have problem with that, go fuck yourself, dumbass. Since when is George Bush my parent? Ego much? Sheesh.

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Secret Pentagon study says body armor could have saved 80% of troops

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The New York Times is reporting that a secret pentagon study shows 1,700 troops wouldn’t be dead if they had been given the body armor that they’ve been asking for.

Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows
By MICHAEL MOSS
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s unit that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops have died solely from torso wounds.
Military officials said they had originally decided against using the extra plates because they were concerned they added too much weight to the vests or constricted the movement of soldiers. Marine Corps officials said the findings of the Pentagon study caused field commanders to override those concerns in the interest of greater protection.

The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army personnel, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.
Military officials and defense contractors said the Pentagon’s procurement troubles have stemmed in part from miscalculations that underestimated the strength of the insurgency, and from years of cost-cutting that left some armoring firms on the brink of collapse as they waited for new orders.

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The Truth Comes Out: NSA spying on Christiane Amanpour

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Reporters are starting to ask the question… have they been spied in these illegal wiretaps that were done without warrants or judicial oversite. And specifically, one journalist’s name has come up as having been monitored — CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Americablog.com examines what the ramifications of that might be.
NBC confirms that they’re investigating whether Amanpour was being spied upon by the NSA.
And then there’s the speculation that Amanpour’s husband, James Rubin, might have been the real target of the wiretaps.

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Bloggers publishing leaked torture memos

Bloggers around the world are reprinting and publishing leaked memos from former UK ambassador Craig Murray, who divulged information on secret torture programs in Uzbekistan the benefit the United States and the UK.
Boing Boing has a complete post on the subject, including links to the leaked memos, and information on a woman who was jailed for demanding information about her son, who was tortured and died after being immersed in boiling water.

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how much brush is on that ranch, anyway?

From three recent White Houlse press briefings:

December 27
Good morning. Let me update you on the President’s schedule. Yesterday, after arriving, he went out and did some cutting and clearing brush, and then was at his home on the ranch.
December 28
The President had his normal intelligence and daily briefings this morning, and was out clearing brush. And that’s what I have on his schedule.
December 30
He then did some brush clearing and just completed a bike ride before I came out. This afternoon he’s scheduled to sign several pieces of legislation…

Seriously, is there really that much brush? He’s been clearing it for five years now, shouldn’t it be done? How can Trent Duffy go out and say this every day with a straight face?

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blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches?

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Really? When did this happen?

In Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the holidays, his spokesman, Trent Duffy, defended what he called a “limited program.”
“This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner,” he told reporters. “These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches.”

I don’t remember any churches or weddings getting blown up around here? Do you? If they are doing this, why are we just spying on them? Why aren’t we arresting them?
And the real question: why not get a warrant? Warrants to eavesdrop are really easy to get, and they’re even allowed to get them after the fact, so why not get warrants if people are blowing up weddings? Why break the law and avoid the warrants? Possibly because he’s not spying on terrorists at all?
I call bullshit.
The only terrorists in the US are the right-wing terrorists who sent anthrax and blow up gay bars and planned parenthood clinics. Osama bin Laden is not hiding under your bed. No one is out there trying to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, or the Golden Gate Bridge, or Wall Drugs in South Dakota. You have more to fear from the price of natural gas than from Muslims. The War on Terror is just as fake as the made-up War on Christmas. It’s all about scaring you into giving up your freedom.

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