Monday, December 07, 2009

...California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and she made no attenmpt to hide what she described as her disappointment...


..."I don't get it. It just doesn't work for me," Waters said ruefully.
"Are you going to attempt to stop what he is going to do?" Olbermann asked, mining for a more specific answer from this influential member of the Black Congressional Caucus.
"We will not support it," she said.
"You will have to vote against it?" Olbermann asked, again trying for absolute clarity on what Waters was saying.
"Yes, I will have to vote against it," she said firmly, citing budget issues and her desire to have the president address what she sees as a far more pressing "domestic agenda."...

The body court to date!

American Deaths in Iraq, since war began (3/19/03): 4367

Coalition Forces dead in Afghanistan by Year (click here) - Total 1536

HAPPY HOLIDAYS !!!!

16,000 U.S. troops receive orders to Afghanistan (click here)
December 7, 1:22 PM
About 16,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines have already received word over the past few days that they'll be part of the first wave of troops sent to Afghanistan under the upcoming surge, the Pentagon has announced....

Evidently President Obama not only gave the Liar Secretary Gates the right to send more troops then he stated to the nation, he also allowed flexibility in the length of the engagement.

Surge force of 30,000 going to Afghanistan will grow to 33,000, Defense Secretary Gates says (Click title to entry - thank you)

BY Richard Sisk DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, December 4th 2009

...Gates said President Obama had given him the "flexibility" to boost the surge force, in the same sense that Obama has made the "target date" of July 2011 to start withdrawing the surge forces flexible....



A Pakistani firefighter worked to extinguish a fire at the bomb blast site in Lahore on Monday. (click here)
Lahore: Two synchronised, remote-controlled bombs ripped through a market popular with women in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Mondayday, killing at least 36 people and igniting a massive fire, authorities said.
Another attack by a suicide bomber killed 10 in the northwestern city of Peshawar, part of a wave of terrorist strikes in Pakistan as the army presses an offensive against a Taliban stronghold in the northwest.
About 100 people were wounded in the attacks in Lahore, which were apparently timed to take place when the Moon Market was at its busiest. The bombs exploded within 30 seconds of each other, leaving dozens of cars and shops ablaze.
Women and children, including a two-year-old were among those killed, a police officer said. Many of the injured were removed to Shaikh Zayed Hospital, which is nearest to the site of the attacks.
Firefighters battled the blaze and rescue workers struggled in the darkness that enveloped the area as power to the market was cut off as a result of the explosions....



October 11th, 2006 1:20 AM
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 (click here)
By David Brown / Washington Post
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial....


Students among dead in school blast (click here)
(UKPA) – 3 hours ago
An explosion outside an elementary school in a Shiite district of Baghdad has killed at least eight people.
The blast occurred in the Shiite district of Sadr City, where large-scale attacks have been infrequent because of tight security by US and Iraqi forces as a well as the neighbourhood's own guards.
Police and witnesses gave conflicting information about whether the blast was caused by a bomb, a rocket or an exploding weapons cache.
Among the dead were six children between the ages of six and 12, and 41 people were wounded, said officials from the police and Interior Ministry. Twenty-five children were among the wounded, two hospital officials said.
The blast partially toppled a brick wall in front of the school, leaving a crater that quickly filled with muddy water, apparently from a broken water line.
Inside at least one classroom, windows were blasted out and shards of glass were strewn over desks. Blood stained the wooden desks and books. Many backpacks were tossed about the room.
Sadr City is home to an estimated 2.5 million Shiites and is a stronghold of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
In 2008, Shiite militants there poured rocket fire onto the Green Zone during the last major fighting in the city. Al-Sadr's order to his militia fighters to cease fire has been cited by the US military as a key factor in a steep drop in violence nationwide, along with a US troop buildup and a Sunni revolt against al Qaida in Iraq.
Iraqi and US military officials have expressed concern about a possible new rise in attacks.



UK soldier becomes 100th to die in Afghanistan in 2009 (click here)

20:28 GMT, Monday, 7 December 2009

A British soldier has been shot dead in Afghanistan, taking the total number killed there this year to 100.
The soldier from 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment died after an incident in central Helmand Province on Monday. Next of kin have been informed.
The total number of UK troops killed since the start of operations in Afghanistan in October 2001 has now reached 237....


I am finished with this mess. The liars and the press are at it again. The World Courts need to convene.

Next thing will be they returned priority to killing people in Iraq. The troops need to return to the borders of the USA now before the war in Mexico spills over. Evidently, Mr. Gates hasn't heard of allies and Interpol. It is time to him to resign.

We must withdraw from Afghanistan, refocus attention (click title to entry - thank you)
November 16, 2009 by Samuel Powers
Adjusting war strategy important to save lives, defeat Taliban
The war in Afghanstan has reached its eight-year mark and progress in the stagnant nation has been grueling.
The Afghan people have remained largely disillusioned since American and NATO troops entered the country and many view the forces as occupiers and invasive.
Establishing a genuine democracy in the country was, and to an extent still is, viewed as one of the central purposes of our military.
But as the years drag on and the tepid support of Afghanstan’s people becomes emphasized, the uncertainty of that outcome increases.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s openly fraudulent reelection this fall is at the brunt of bitter derision and he has been encouraged to clean up his tainted government. These admonishments will likely have no effect, as Karzai himself is at the center of that corruption.
Still, Karzai will serve another five years overseeing the country while also turning a blind eye to its pervasive opium enterprise, of which his brother is a putative leader.
Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent toward the operation in Afghanstan – the price tag and current state of the war have begun to alienate supporters....


The USA military practices LIAR'S POKER, the 'chances' are the people will believe anything they are told.

Defense Secretary Gates: No Good Intelligence On Bin Laden (click here)
Monday, Dec 7, 2009 @10:15am CST
(Washington, DC) -- The U.S. still does not know the location of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
During an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said there has been no good intelligence on where the al-Qaeda leader is hiding for "years." He said bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan, an area where the government of that country has not had a presence "in quite some time." Gates said moving into that area is solely up to the Pakistani military, adding the U.S. will help in any way possible.
He said Pakistan has been very impressive in recent months in their offenses against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

This is Bush and Cheney's idea of 'secure nukes.' Anyone believe 'em? I don't !
 
US 'comfortable' with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, says Robert Gates (click here)
Defence secretary reassures Americans that Washington has beefed up security around Islamabad's weapons.

Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 December 2009 19.08 GMT

The US is "comfortable" with the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, in part thanks to American-sponsored safety mechanisms, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said today.
"We've given [the Pakistanis] assistance in improving their security arrangements over the past number of years … Based on the information available to us that gives us the comfort," he told CBS News.
Gates's comments were intended to assuage US concerns about the vulnerability of Pakistan's nuclear stockpile at a time of growing militant violence.
Last week President Barack Obama asserted that "we know that al-Qaida and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them".
Those worries resurfaced after Friday's suicide attack on a mosque near the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, which killed 40 people including six serving officers.
According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service, Pakistan's then president, Pervez Musharraf, moved his country's weapons to six different locations after the 11 September 2001 attacks because of concerns for their safety.
The Bush administration later said it spent $100m in technical and security aid for Pakistan's nuclear programme. Now the warheads and triggers are believed to be stored separately from the missiles designed to deliver them....

The British need to proceed to the World Court. Even after Bush and Cheney were told of their faulty intelligence they continued to escalate the war.

The SURGE was an escalation of an illegal war, after all findings of the Congressional and Executive Branch commissions were in.

Bush and Cheney proceeded with 'The Surge' when their authority 'to war' in the Executive Branch was challenged by Congress and the commissions to investigate Iraq. Is PROOF the Pre-War intelligence 'served their purpose' and 'their egos.' Cheney had to supply Halliburton with income that would reverse his lousy leader as CEO, otherwise, he would have been personally liable to its stockholders. That is why Iraq and some cock-a-mamy reason for oil.


President George W. Bush, with Gen. David Petraeus and Adm. William Fallon, visiting Anbar province in Iraq in September 2007. (Charles Dharapak/associated Press)

TI David Kelly's murder requires inquest that would highlight Iraq WMD myth and UK-US war crimes (click title to entry - thank you)
December 6, 9:29 PM
Deborah Dupre'
Six doctors say that the Oxford-educated microbiologist, weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly was murdered as a Targeted Individual (TI) and that a new inquest is required, a move that if successful, would further expose the Tony Blair government's falsifying information in attempt to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in similar Disinformation modality used in the U.S.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) falsified information was used to sell war in the U.K and the U.S. similar to the September 11, 2001 New York City mass murder months after Cheney's closed door energy meetings were held where Iraq pipelines were discussed and analyzed.
Both Kelly and U.S. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter reported facts that Sadam Hussein posed no threat with WMDs, but both Blair and Bush with ample mainstream media support sold the WMD myth to the public for its support to invade and commit war crimes in Iraq....

The Pakistanis NEW Border Patrol, a Steath Drone with wheel assembly that resembles F15.

The leadership of Pakistan could change overnight, the country is run by it's military, there is no stable partner there except for those that can harness the support of the people. There is no corruption, those are charges fashioned under Musharraf to maintain his dictatorship as President-General.

The nuclear weapons need to be disassembled.

Bush lost the region to violence, corruption and drugs by fighting an illegal war in Iraq.

The USA wants a second chance in the region. It is too late. They wanted a second chance in Vietnam, too.

Janet Napolitano has been 'right on the money' every step of the way. Europe needs a strategy to stop movement from the region into their countries. That is GROSSLY different than war and the fact of the matter is, the war is complicating their security rather than securing it.

Get out of Afghanistan and get out of Iraq, we do not have trustworthy leadership in our military. They are puppets to their mistakes and lie to hide them.

Pakistan court starts hearing case against amnesty (click title to entry - thank you)
December 07, 2009 04:35 EST
ISLAMABAD (AP) -- A suicide bomber has struck the oft-battered city of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, killing at least six people and wounding 49.

The latest attack comes as Pakistan's Supreme Court began hearing a case against an amnesty that had protected President Asif Ali Zardari and many key allies from graft charges.
The court's scrutiny of the amnesty could lead to legal challenges to the Pakistani president's rule just as the Obama administration needs stability in Islamabad to help crack down on those militants.
A Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban near the Afghan border has spurred a wave of retaliatory attacks throughout Pakistan, including in Peshawar, the capital of the northwest.
Today's strike occurred outside a building housing lower level courts where the bomber blew himself up when he was stopped by a security guard and a police officer.

Afghaninstan is the Eighth Poorest Nation in the World - the issue is POVERTY and not the people. The problem is in the Pentagon. They have poor intelligence that results in forever wars among people that have no way to fight back while the Pentagon's excuse is NATION building rather than victory!

No more Wars, Bring the troops home NOW !

1 Timor-Leste South-East Asia
2
Malawi Eastern Africa
3
Somalia Eastern Africa
4
Democratic Republic of the Congo Middle
5
Tanzania Eastern Africa
6 Yemen Middle East
7
Burundi Eastern Africa
8
Afghanistan Central Asia




The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas (click here), officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.
By increasing covert pressure on Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, while ground forces push back the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan, American officials hope to eliminate any haven for militants in the region.