'Tis to Laugh

Every once in a while something astounding is actually funny. Click on title to watch the video of a very talented dog.

Deja Vu

Why does all of this talk about training the Iraqi forces seem so familiar?

Those of us old enough to remember the War in Vietnam can’t forget the constant talk back then that all we had to do was train up the South Vietnamese and then we could leave. Hahaha! Take a look at the time period on the cover of this book by Brigadier General James Lawton Collins, Jr.

And while we are on the topic, didn’t the Iraqis have a 400,000 man army before the first Gulf War?

British "Deep Throat"?

Apparently, we have to wait for the British “Deep Throat” to reveal the documents that prove Bush lied his way into the Iraq War. Of course we knew that already but more and more proof keeps leaking out of the Brit’s teapot.


The Sunday Times - Britain
June 12, 2005

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’
by Michael Smith

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.

The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.

The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.

The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89 Democratic congressmen asking if it was true — as Dearlove told the July meeting — that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” in Washington.

The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media only last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press conference, forcing the prime minister to insist that “the facts were not fixed in any shape or form at all”.

John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they agreed to “manufacture” the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.

He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.

Bush Main Squeeze Provides 61% of Iraqi Suicide Bombers

"In a paper published in March, Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on terrorism, analyzed the lists of jihadi dead. He found 154 Arabs killed over the previous six months in Iraq, 61 percent of them from Saudi Arabia, with Syrians, Iraqis and Kuwaitis together accounting for another 25 percent. He also found that 70 percent of the suicide bombers named by the Web sites were Saudi. In three cases, Paz found two brothers who carried out suicide attacks. Many of the bombers were married, well educated and in their late twenties, according to postings."

Wasn’t it weird how we knew who perpetuated 9/11 so soon after it happened? 15 of the 19 were Saudis and we flew the “good” Saudis out first? And Oh, I almost forgot, who financed George’s first oil company way back when? And that's just the tip of the oil berg.

Come on people, what is it going to take?

Dying Soldiers Shipped to Germany Not Counted

by Brian Harring, Domestic Intelligence Reporter

U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005.

The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones. Iraqi civilian casualties are never reported but International Red Cross, Red Crescent and UN figures indicate that as of 1 January 2005, the numbers are just under 100,000.

Note: There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq. We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The educated rumor is that the actual death toll is in excess of 7,000. Given the officially acknowledged number of over 15,000 seriously wounded, this elevated death toll is far more realistic than the current 1,400+ now being officially published. When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources.

In addition to the evident falsification of the death rolls, at least 5,500 American military personnel have deserted, most in Ireland but more have escaped to Canada and other European countries, none of whom are inclined to cooperate with vengeful American authorities. (See TBR News of 18 February for full coverage on the mass desertions)

This means that of the 158,000 U.S. military shipped to Iraq, 26,000 either deserted, were killed or seriously wounded. The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 dead, over 16,000 seriously wounded and a large number of suicides, forced hospitalization for ongoing drug usage and sales, murder of Iraqi civilians and fellow soldiers , rapes, courts martial and so on – Brian Harring

War Criminals

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.

What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.

Pot Calls on Kettle

SINGAPORE, Saturday, June 4 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an unusually blunt public critique of China, said Saturday that Beijing's military spending threatened the delicate security balance in Asia and called for an emphasis instead on political freedom and open markets.

What I Think Is Going To Happen

Predicting the future is a fool’s game, and I have often been proven to be a fool, so I feel qualified to give it a whirl.

1. The price of gasoline is going to continue going up, with occasional gaps up and slower declines from time to time. As $3 and then $4 per gallon is approached, consumption will show a small but increasing decline. Conservation will catch on.

2. Commerce will contract during this decline as the cost of doing business for all oil driven enterprises, e.g. farming, transportation and plastics, increases and more companies go under.

3. Increased joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness, suicide rate, and crime, all as natural consequences of the noose tightening on the necks of the workers, with stagnant wage increases, and in many cases, wage decreases, as illegal aliens continue to flood into the US.

4. The price of gold will continue to try to go up, but will be held back by bullion banks and their cohorts at all nations’ central banks. To say that the gold market is rigged is to understate the case. Of course it’s rigged, that’s why they call it the central bank.

5. Eventually these banks will be unable to offset the rising demand. Gold will gap up in an eye-popping fashion. Silver will do the same, and eventually outpace gold in terms of percentage gain. The silver demand growth is much greater than that of gold and will continue to grow.

6. Electrical brown-outs and then rolling blackouts will increase, and become the norm in the US.

7. Housing prices will continue their slow slide down, foreclosures will jump (46% of mortgage holders have some form of Adjustable Rate Mortgage), and homes will be boarded up.

8. Eventually Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the Federal Pension Insurance Program will go under. Huge accounting “frauds” will be unearthed.

9. An event will occur which will be the tipping point of a major currency, financial and stock market crash; NASDAQ 800, DOW 4000. Even the hyper-hedgefunds will stop buying Treasuries.

10. This event will probably involve the global oil distribution network. Gasoline will gap up to $8 to $10 per gallon.

11. As petrochemical fertilizer becomes too expensive to use, The Great American Breadbasket will return to its original condition as The Great American Desert.

12. Global delivery of goods to the fat American consumer will cease. Wal-Mart will collapse as Chinese goods become very expensive, especially when the remimbi is un-pegged from the dollar. (Are the Chinese waiting to unpeg as the coup de gras to the crashing dollar?

13. The dollar decline will have continued throughout this unfolding, and inflation will have jumped up at some point, prompting the Fed to jump interest rates to 1980’s levels, and higher.
World-wide recession, and then depression, will set in.

14. Today’s third-world countries will suffer less shock, as they are less dependent upon oil.

15. Regional wars will continue and increase.

16. The “Only Superpower in the World” will be stretched so thin it will collapse, as long supply lines become untenable. Long before this, however, the draft will have been reinstated and the people will take to the streets.

17. As food disappears from the grocery store shelves, riots break out in the cities, police attempt but are unable to quell, and there is no National Guard to call in as they are all abroad fighting the Oil Wars.

18. People begin to flee the cities as the store of resources is used up.

19. Those currently living the furthest from the high-rise high-tech centers will fare the best. Communities currently off the grid will thrive.

20. The human and domestic animal die-off will begin. Corporate enterprise will cease.

21. High level organization will cease and power will descend to the tribal level. Warlords with gangs will roam freely.

22. Those currently living with the land and off the grid will have to organize to protect their holdings. Trespassers will be shot.

23. Those with survival skills will survive. Self-sufficiency will be key.

24. All solar panels will wear out.

25. Centralized electricity generation and distribution will cease.

26. Globalization will cease.

27. The 100-year Fossil Fuel Frenzy will come to an end.

28. Global warming will continue, sea levels will rise up to 19 feet, but the natural balance will out. This will take hundreds of years, but life on earth will continue and thrive.

29. Off the grid will be the norm, as the grid will devolve.

30. Humans who band together in tribes will rediscover their humanity. The extended family will form the basis for the tribes.

31. All knowledge will not be lost, and we will not all live in caves.

32. Barter and trade will be the standard, but gold and silver money will still be currency. US dollars will be tinder.

33. Just as all other civilizations have failed, so will ours. What evolves to replace it will be interesting, but the Fossil Fuel Frenzy civilization was a one-off phenomenon, and will not reoccur.

34. As 90% of the humans die, peace and tranquility will eventual come to the planet. The human cancer with its uncontrolled growth will be defeated. Humans will again be part of nature. Tribal war will become ceremonial, and the coup stick will be popular.

34. It's all good...except for one thing. Depleted uranium. The entire globe will suffer "gulf war syndrome" due to the 2000 tons of atomized uranium placed in the atmosphere by the US during this war.

35. Cancer rates will climb to 50% by 2020.

36. Most babies born will die from their deformities. Those that do not may have evolved immunity.

We can only hope.

Note: These are not my original ideas. Original sources are contained in past blogs.