They Hate Us For Our Brontosauri

Tampa Tribune:

The mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs are probably not very high on the list of terrorist targets. Neither is the Styrofoam and fiberglass stegosaurus at Dinosaur World in Plant City.

Yet both facilities were on a list of sites the federal government wanted "hardened" under the $90 million Buffer Zone Protection Program, granted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to help state and local governments secure "critical infrastructure" against attack.

2000

Lifted directly from Billmon's Whiskey Bar.

Editorials

From the Marysville-Yuba City (Calif.) Appeal-Democrat:

One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.

From the Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily News:

One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.

From the Kinston (N.C.) Free Press:

One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.

Amazing! More here.

The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal

From Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2001-2005:

[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardisations, and perturbations in the national-security [policy-making] process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. ...

You’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defence and the vice president. And then you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations -- and not too much interested in them either. ...

If you’re not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.

Billmon has a lot more.

Now What?

Since The Move, I've been wondering what to do with this blog. Now that I'm living in Canada, I've been focusing less on US news. It hasn't been a conscious decision, but it's happening just the same. I still check out the Latest Breaking News page at DU several times a day, but I do not give the daily flow of events (such as the soon-to-be-announced Plame indictments (22 of them?!)) the same attention I did before.

Maybe with the Red Sox season over, I'll soon focus on some items. I honestly don't know. I'm submit a (music-related) book proposal in November, so I may be occupied with that project this winter.

In the meantime, the links at the right are where I get most of my stuff. Cursor should be daily reading, and Cannonfire often links to other investigative blogs.

Here's an excellent piece about Bush's staged chat with US troops the other day, the revelation that one of the main troops interviewed (Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo) is actually a military media spokeswoman, the Pentagon's propaganda TV channel, the astounding indifference of the major media to this manipulation, and how everything ties together.

Fuzzy Math

In which the Cheney administration believes that 100 = 1.

Molly Ivins:

Liar of the week: George W. Bush said on his Saturday radio address a week and a half ago that Iraq has 100 battalions of battle-ready soldiers. By the time he got to his television address on Thursday, it was 80 battalions. (I guess it's worse to lie if they're taking pictures of you.) Unfortunately, the next day Gen. George Casey, who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said of those 80, the number of Iraqi battalions fit to fight independently of U.S. support had slipped from three to one. One, three, 80, 100 -- if this is Tuesday, it must be ...

Profit

In the past year, Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have gone up in value 3,281%. ... Yeah, you read that right.

As Xymphora has written:

The Cheney-Halliburton connection has to be the largest and most blatant example of corruption in modern American history. Cheney is the effective President of the United States, and is clearly behind the awarding of massive contracts to a corporation that continues to pay him. If this were happening in Nigeria we'd sneer at the corruption, but in the American context it is beyond belief.

What Will It Take?

Washington Post, October 9, 2005:

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the government changed a contract to hire federal airline passengers screeners in a way that cost taxpayers an additional $343 million. More than three years later, officials cannot explain exactly why.

Homeland security officials say they have no memos, e-mails or other paperwork to document the reason for the change, as required by federal contracting regulations. They have also offered accounts of the decision that conflict with internal government documents obtained by The Washington Post. ...

Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, said in a recent interview that the agency does not have paperwork to back up its account and that he cannot recall the details surrounding the decision.

"Honestly, I have no memory of it," said Jackson, who said he was ultimately responsible for the contract as second-in-command at the Transportation Department in 2002.

Hey, but don't worry, US taxpayer.

The contract is now the subject of an investigation by the homeland security department's inspector general.

Besides recalling OJ's on-going search for the "real killers", this robbery story reminds me of a recent Get Your War On panel:

Projection

The PNAC Puppet:

The civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history -- from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot -- consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.

Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

Also checkout Laura's post on terror and fear.

Bill Bennett Dreams Of Genocide

Former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, September 28, 2005:

I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

Let's look at Bennett's thought process:

Hey, genocide would work!

... Uh, but that would be so, so wrong.

... but still, it would be a solution, if you were so inclined.

Thanks to Empire Burlesque and Media Matters.

Pat Tillman

From an extraordinary article on the former NFL star who was killed by US troops in Afghanistan (and the cover-up of how he died):

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author. ...

[A] friend of Pat's even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan -— a meeting prevented by his death. [Tillman's mother] said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, "Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war." ...

Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.

Tillman subscribed to the Economist magazine, and a fellow soldier said Tillman created a makeshift base library of classic novels so his platoon mates would have literature to read in their down time. ...

An anti-Bush fan of Chomsky who believed the Iraq war was "so fucking illegal"?

I wonder what the mouthbreathers would say about Tillman if they knew that. ... Of course, they've probably forgot all about him by now.

Pathetic

New York Times:

... Bush was supposed to land here [San Antonio] on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government's preparations for Hurricane Rita's landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.

It was too sunny.

Just minutes before Mr. Bush was scheduled to leave the White House, his aides in Washington scrubbed the stop in San Antonio. ... Another White House official involved in preparing Mr. Bush's way noted that with the sun shining so brightly in San Antonio, the images of Mr. Bush from here might not have made it clear to viewers that he was dealing with an approaching storm.

9/11 Coverup Continues

Why would the Pentagon refuse to allow

a group of military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified military intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks?

Also (my emphasis):

Two military officers - an active-duty Navy captain and a reservist Army lieutenant colonel - have said publicly in recent weeks that they were involved with Able Danger and that the program's analysts identified Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, by name as a potential terrorist by early 2000.

They said they attempted to share the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the summer of 2000, more than a year before the terrorist attacks, but were blocked by Defense Department lawyers. F.B.I. officials, who answer to the jurisdiction of Senator Specter's committee, have confirmed that Defense Department abruptly canceled meetings in 2000 between the bureau's Washington field office and representatives of the Able Danger team.

The Pentagon has said that it has interviewed three other people who were involved with Able Danger and who said that they, too, recalled the identification of Mr. Atta as a terrorist suspect. But Defense Department investigators said they could find no documentary evidence to back up the assertion; they acknowledged that much of the information might have been routinely destroyed.

topdog04 (at Kos) has more, with a lot of background:

First the Pentagon had never heard of Able Danger, then it was "merely" a planning effort that ran it's course in early 2001, now it is so top secret and vital to national security - more than four years after 9/11 - that no one can testify about it to Congress. ...

[Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said it was] "Not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in an open public forum?" The Pentagon HELD A PRESS CONFERENCE ON IT two weeks ago. The only thing not possible is for the truth to get out about the mistakes of this administration and their culpability in 9/11.

Damn The Blind Eyes

We have long had reason to suspect imperial instigation to Iraq's sectarian violence, but here, as clearly as we've ever seen it, is the provocateur state revealed: two British "undercover soldiers" in Arab dress, caught firing upon police from a car laden with explosives. And the British government all but admitting its culpability by breaking them out of prison. ...

I wonder what will be made of this story by those who think escalating bloodshed in Iraq is a measure of the failure of US policy, and not its success ...

Rigorous Intuition

Incompetence And Intent

John Doe II has compiled a jaw-droppingly exhaustive list of mainstream media stories showing how FEMA, Homeland Security and other federal agencies bungled the Katrina rescue and relief effort.

It's one of the more mind-boggling collection of articles I've seen on the internets. What follows is a short sample:

"Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared."

"Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck."

Another list of sources on that action plan -- and how it has been fine-tuned -- is here.

The Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war. ... Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans City Business.

"Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer for a large ambulance company, recounted how on Tuesday, unable to find out when helicopters would land to pick up critically ill patients at the Superdome, he walked outside and discovered that two helicopters, donated by an oil services company, had been waiting in the parking lot."

"Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck."

A navy "ship rode out Katrina in the Gulf and was available with amphibious vehicles, hospital beds, and sailors who could come ashore to help. Waiting for orders that have yet to arrive."

The U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.

"Shortly before they were set to leave for Hurricane Katrina-battered states, a group of about 100 law enforcement officers from across Nevada was told to stay put by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA officials put the contingent on hold on Sunday afternoon for between one and three days ..."

"Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush's visit to New Orleans, officials said."

Mary Landrieu, the Democratic US senator from Louisiana: "I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims - far more efficiently than buses - FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency."

"A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck."

Airboaters stand ready to go help hurricane victims but have not been allowed to do so.

"When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away ... Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said."

Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food.

A group of firefighter from Houston, some with special expertise in oil rig repairs, and plenty of post-hurricane clean-up experience were stopped by FEMA from entering New Orleans and not allowed to go anywhere else, either.

Canadian plane and search and rescue teams stopped by Dept. of Homeland Security.

Various aid from Russia, Canada, Cuba, Sweden, Germany, and more than 20 European countries was all refused.

Looking at the wealth of evidence -- and the mindset of the people in charge -- these actions have to be deliberate.

Might As Well Jump

MSNBC's Brian Williams:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

Bad News

Evan Thomas, Newsweek:

It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private ...

The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington.

The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed. ...

Four Years

There are so many questions.

It's time for the truth.

DeLay to Children Left Homeless By Katrina: "Isn't This Kind Of Fun?"

He also compared it to being on camping trip and told the young boys they were becoming famous all over the world.

Culture Of Life

Republican Representative Richard Baker of Baton Rouge:

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did.