Miya Shay | ABC 13.com

MASSIMO CALABRESI | Time.com

Which is closer to dying: Osama bin Laden or the CIA’s effort to catch him? Nothing has characterized the fruitlessness of the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader so much as the recurrent — and mostly inaccurate — reports that he is seriously ailing, or even at death’s door. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us anymore.” Since then, of course, bin Laden has appeared on multiple videos looking healthier than ever.

Now the CIA has produced a report saying that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. The agency ostensibly managed to get the names of some of the medications bin Laden is taking. One U.S. official familiar with the report, which came out between six and nine months ago, says it concluded, “Based on his current pharmaceutical intake, [we] would expect that he has no more than six to 18 months to live and impending kidney failure.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Pentagon Would Use Special Forces to Nab Bin Laden in Pakistan, New York Times Says

MARTHA RADDATZ |ABCNews.com

The Pentagon has drafted a secret plan that would send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but the White House has balked at giving the mission a green light, The New York Times reported today.

The Bush administration, which has seven months left in its term, gave the go-ahead for the military to draw up the plan to take the war on terror across the Afghan border and into the mountains of Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to the newspaper.

Intelligence reports have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps, and the number of recruits in those camps has risen to as many as 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.

Although the special forces attack plan was devised six months ago, infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies and among White House offices have blocked it from being implemented, the Times reported.

The Bush team would like to leave office next January having put bin Laden, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks, behind bars or in his grave.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.

Seymour Hersh | NewYorker.com

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Froomkin | WashingtonPost.com

The two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability.

In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” He called the abuse “systemic and illegal.” And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement.

Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of former detainees, Taguba adds an epilogue to his own investigation.

The new report, he writes, “tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Introduces 35 articles of impeachment against the President.
Article 33 - Failure to respond to high level warnings about the attacks.
Article 34 - Obstruction of Justice into the Investigation into the 9/11 Attacks.
Article 35 - Willfully endangering the help of 9/11 first responders.

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) -
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich defied his party leadership on Monday by calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush for launching the Iraq war — but his move was not expected to go anywhere.

The Ohio representative outlined his intention to propose more than two dozen charges against Bush on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, accused Bush executing a “calculated and wide-ranging strategy” to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she opposes trying to remove the Republican president who leaves office next January because such an attempt would be divisive and most likely unsuccessful.

Kucinich, an outspoken Iraq war critic who has consistently voted against funding the war and led anti-war efforts in Congress, offered a resolution to impeach Vice president Dick Cheney in April 2007. That also failed to move forward.

Many Democrats and civil liberties groups have accused the Bush administration of providing misleading information before the 2003 Iraq invasion as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens with its warrantless surveillance program. The White House denies the charges.

AP | MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush’s former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a US House of Representatives’ committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity.

McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House’s role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.

In his new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” McClellan said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the leak. McClellan has said publicly that Bush and Cheney “directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby.”
Read the rest of this entry »

The Financier Has Been Indicted For His Alleged Role in a Scandal Costing US Taxpayers $1.7 billion

GRETCHEN PETERS | ABCNews.com

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush’s first business venture, Arbusto Energy.
Read the rest of this entry »

Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush

CorbettReport.com

The first video, regarding the whereabouts of Donald Rumsfeld on the morning of 9/11, reveals that Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon as the largest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor unfolded. In a startling admission on which he was never pressed, however, he states he was ‘out of the loop’ that morning and unaware of Flight 77—the hijacked jet streaking towards the heart of the American capital—until it actually hit the very building he was sitting in. In his well-researched article Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11: An Enemy Within Matthew Everett makes it clear how this startling revelation from the second in command of the U.S. Armed Forces goes well beyond mere incompetence. Rumsfeld’s inability to be contacted by his own staff during that crucial half hour as Flight 77 bore down on the Pentagon directly affected the Air Force’s ability to respond to that or any other threat that morning. As the video reveals, the protocol dealing with the very events which unfolded that day—namely, those dealing with the authorization to shootdown hijacked civilian aircraft—had been mysteriously revised mere weeks before 9/11. Nor can ‘Rummy’ claim ignorance of the high terror threat level in the U.S. at that time. In fact, as he revealed to Larry King in December of 2001, he was actually briefing members of Congress in a startlingly prescient talk on the likelihood of a large terror attack that would transform America in the very near future which began just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

Read the rest of this entry »

L.A.Times.com WASHINGTON — In a long-delayed report, the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday rebuked President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for making prewar claims — particularly that Iraq had close ties to Al Qaeda — that were not supported by available intelligence.The report, which was opposed by most Republicans on the panel, says the president and other members of his administration repeatedly exaggerated evidence of an Al Qaeda connection to take advantage of the charged climate after Sept. 11. It is the most pointed reproach to date of the Bush administration’s use of intelligence to build the case for the Iraq war. But the document stops short of calling for any follow-up investigation or sanction.”In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when, in reality, it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the intelligence panel. “Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.” Read the rest of this entry »

Former White House Aide’s Revelations Make Out Case for Obstruction of Justice by Rove and Libby in Valerie Plame Case

Demand accountability, email your reps today:
House Reps

Senators
Wexler.House.gov
(Washington, DC) Today Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) called for former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify under oath regarding the devastating revelations made in his new book on the Bush Administration’s deliberate efforts to mislead the American people into the Iraq War.

“The admissions made by Scott McClellan in his new book are earth-shattering and allege facts to establish that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby – and possibly Vice President Cheney - conspired to obstruct justice by lying about their role in the Plame Wilson matter and that the Bush Administration deliberately lied to the American people in order to take us to war in Iraq. Scott McClellan must now appear before the House Judiciary Committee under oath to tell Congress and the American people how President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and White House officials deliberately orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people.”
Read the rest of this entry »

WeAreChange.org
He can’t help himself. Because he is a pathological liar. He lied about weapons of mass destruction, so why not lie about golf? Kudos to Keith Olbermann, who dug up the video at the left. On May 13, Politico reported:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

By Ryan Singel | wired.com 

The Bush administration has failed to nominate any candidates to a newly empowered privacy and civil-liberties commission. This leaves the board without any members, even as Congress prepares to give the Bush administration extraordinary powers to wiretap without warrants inside the United States.

The failure rankles Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), respectively chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.

“I urge the president to move swiftly to nominate members to the new board to preserve the public’s faith in our promise to protect their privacy and civil liberties as we work to protect the country against terrorism,” Lieberman said.

“The White House’s failure to move forward with appointing the new board is unacceptable, and I call on the administration to do so as quickly as possible to prevent a gap in this vital mission,” Collins said.

In a 2007 measure implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations, Congress reconfigured the oversight committee, known as the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board. The intent was to make the board more independent of the White House, require it to be bipartisan and make it more accountable to the public.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Joshua Frank | antiwar.com

According to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, there is a vast black market for nukes, and certain U.S. officials have been supplying sensitive nuclear technology information to Turkish and Israeli interests through its conduits. It’s a scathing allegation which was first published by the London Times two weeks ago, and Edmonds’ charge seems to be on the verge of vindication.

In likely reaction to the London Times report, the Bush Administration quietly announced on January 22 that the president would like Congress to approve the sale of nuclear secrets to Turkey. As with most stories of this magnitude, the U.S. media has put on blinders, opting to not report either Edmonds’ story or Bush’s recent announcement.

Read the rest of this entry »

FOLLOWING 9/11, PRESIDENT BUSH AND SEVEN TOP OFFICIALS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION WAGED A CAREFULLY ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGN OF MISINFORMATION ABOUT THE THREAT POSED BY SADDAM HUSSEIN’S IRAQ.

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith | publicintegrity.org

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both.

This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Wednesday, December 5, 2007

When the Bush administration began enforcing a controversial policy banning photographs of military caskets returning from Iraq, the move provoked outrage — and now, a film — from actor John Cusack, who calls the media ban “one of the most cowardly political acts” of his lifetime.

Appearing on PBS with host Tavis Smiley, Cusack explained that his new movie, Grace is Gone, is the result of a storytelling interest largely inspired by the Bush photo policy.

“The screenwriter, James Strouse, had approached my company and I had been looking for a story, a human drama to tell about the Iraq conflict,” said Cusack. “It stemmed from a place of outrage for me when the Bush administration banned the photos of the dead coming home.” That directive, ordered in 2003 at Dover Air Force Base, was technically on the books prior to Bush’s presidency, but was seldom enforced.
Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently, according to this congressman, it is to avoid pushing King George into attacking Iran, declaring martial law within the U.S.A. and preventing the 2008 elections from occurring.

Ralph Nader (the man some people, who are somewhat narrow-minded, blame for Bush’s appointment as the first King of the U.S.A.) reads a quote from a letter response from faux (aren’t they all at this point?) Congressman John Olver (D-Mass.) to his constituents whose several towns councils have passed resolutions demanding the impeachments of King George and Viceroy Dick.

Important quote from the video:

“Made fully aware of the overwhelming majority of his constituency resolved for impeachment, Congressman Olver vehemently refused. Rather, he expressed his opinion that the current autocratic executive (meaning the White House), would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, institute martial law, and call off the 2008 elections were the Democrats to initiate impeachment.”

Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (AFP) / Yahoo News
US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he had warned world leaders they must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III.”

Read the rest of this entry »