Conrad Stepp and Kenneth Stepp mountain hiking near Berea, Kentucky. Picture taken approx. 7 27 07 by Wilma Stepp.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Ken and Conrad Stepp mountain hiking near Berea, Kentucky.
Conrad Stepp and Kenneth Stepp mountain hiking near Berea, Kentucky. Picture taken approx. 7 27 07 by Wilma Stepp.
Wilma, Kenneth, Conrad, and Carson Stepp
Wilma, Kenneth, Conrad, and Carson Stepp relaxing in rural Clay County, Kentucky.
Draft Forgy website blasts "Mitch".
This from the Draft Forgy website:
"Sunday, September 16, 2007
"Does Mitch McConnell Go To Church?
"Our guess is no. He certainly doesn't represent Christian values. But what is most interesting is that nobody in Kentucky seems to know if Mitch McConnell is even a member of a church. Certainly, it would be interesting to hear him discuss his experience and his frequency of attendance on Sundays. Thankfully, the Commonwealth has another candidate who truly represents our values: Larry Forgy.
"Posted by Draft Forgy at 12:15 AM
"Labels: Larry Forgy, Mitch McConnell"
Values? Values? I challenge Larry Forgy to a debate. Kenneth Stepp.
"Sunday, September 16, 2007
"Does Mitch McConnell Go To Church?
"Our guess is no. He certainly doesn't represent Christian values. But what is most interesting is that nobody in Kentucky seems to know if Mitch McConnell is even a member of a church. Certainly, it would be interesting to hear him discuss his experience and his frequency of attendance on Sundays. Thankfully, the Commonwealth has another candidate who truly represents our values: Larry Forgy.
"Posted by Draft Forgy at 12:15 AM
"Labels: Larry Forgy, Mitch McConnell"
Values? Values? I challenge Larry Forgy to a debate. Kenneth Stepp.
Daniel Mongiardo (L) and Kenneth Stepp (R).
Democrats Daniel Mongiardo (L) and Kenneth Stepp (R). In 2004, Daniel Mongiardo carried the Kentucky Fifth District U.S. House District as a Democratic Federal candidate for U.S. Senate, in a statewide race. In 2007, Daniel Mongiardo was elected the Kentucky Lieutenant Governor. A majority of the registered voters in the Kentucky Fifth District for the U.S. House, and in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, are registered as Democrats. If the Democrats vote for their own party's candidates in 2008, the Kentucky Fifth District will have a Democratic U. S. Congressman, and Kentucky will have a Democratic U.S. Senator. Daniel Mongiardo, as a candidate for U.S. Senate, carried the Kentucky Fifth District of the U.S. House in 2004. Maybe the Democrats will vote for Democratic candidates in 2008.
Methodist Bishops slam "Staying the Course" in Iraq.
The following news article is republished here:
"11/16/2007
"Methodist bishops call for end to war
"LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C. - Bishops of the United Methodist Church last week called for the United States and its coalition partners to begin an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq.
"In addition to calling for the immediate safe and full withdrawal of troops and no additional deployment of troops to Iraq, their resolution urges the United States and its partners to:
"n Declare that there will be no permanent military bases in Iraq.
"n Increase support for military veterans of the Iraq war and all wars.
"n Initiate and support a plan for reconstruction in Iraq, giving a high priority to humanitarian, social and educational needs of the Iraqi people."
This blogspot already discussed Mitch McConnell's church affiliation--if any. Leading politicians have liked the Methodist Church. Now, George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton are both members of The United Methodist Church. I remember the paradox of the '60's when Democratic Party leaders George McGovern and George Wallace were both members of the United Methodist Church. So, that makes three Georges involved with the United Methodist Church: George McGovern, George Wallace, George W. Bush, and, oh yes, one Hillary Clinton.
I used to be a United Methodist, also. I was raised in a Methodist home and joined the Methodist Church while a child. Years later, I was a member of a Presbyterian Church. Then I joined another United Methodist Church. Finally, I joined a Southern Baptist Church, and I'm a member of the First Baptist Church of Barbourville, which is a Southern Baptist Church.
Kudos to the United Methodist Bishops for speaking out against the U.S. participation in the Iraqi War. I agree with them, we should pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, quickly, with no additional deployment of troops to Iraq, we should declare that there will be no permanent military bases in Iraq, we should increase support for military veterans of the Iraq war and all wars, and we should initiate and support a plan for reconstruction in Iraq, giving a high priority to humanitarian, social and educational needs of the Iraqi people. Kenneth Stepp.
"11/16/2007
"Methodist bishops call for end to war
"LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C. - Bishops of the United Methodist Church last week called for the United States and its coalition partners to begin an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq.
"In addition to calling for the immediate safe and full withdrawal of troops and no additional deployment of troops to Iraq, their resolution urges the United States and its partners to:
"n Declare that there will be no permanent military bases in Iraq.
"n Increase support for military veterans of the Iraq war and all wars.
"n Initiate and support a plan for reconstruction in Iraq, giving a high priority to humanitarian, social and educational needs of the Iraqi people."
This blogspot already discussed Mitch McConnell's church affiliation--if any. Leading politicians have liked the Methodist Church. Now, George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton are both members of The United Methodist Church. I remember the paradox of the '60's when Democratic Party leaders George McGovern and George Wallace were both members of the United Methodist Church. So, that makes three Georges involved with the United Methodist Church: George McGovern, George Wallace, George W. Bush, and, oh yes, one Hillary Clinton.
I used to be a United Methodist, also. I was raised in a Methodist home and joined the Methodist Church while a child. Years later, I was a member of a Presbyterian Church. Then I joined another United Methodist Church. Finally, I joined a Southern Baptist Church, and I'm a member of the First Baptist Church of Barbourville, which is a Southern Baptist Church.
Kudos to the United Methodist Bishops for speaking out against the U.S. participation in the Iraqi War. I agree with them, we should pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, quickly, with no additional deployment of troops to Iraq, we should declare that there will be no permanent military bases in Iraq, we should increase support for military veterans of the Iraq war and all wars, and we should initiate and support a plan for reconstruction in Iraq, giving a high priority to humanitarian, social and educational needs of the Iraqi people. Kenneth Stepp.
Cumberland Falls, Kentucky Fifth District.
Welcome to the Kentucky Fifth District of the U.S. House. At left are Conrad Stepp, Kenneth Stepp, and Carson Stepp in front of Cumberland Falls, in the Fifth District, the largest waterfall in the Southeast U.S., and the second largest waterfall group in the Eastern U.S. (Niagara is bigger). Picture taken by Wilma Stepp. Surrounding Cumberland Falls are miles of excellent woodland hiking trails.
Hiking in the Kentucky Mountains.
Ken, Carson, and Conrad Stepp, all enjoying hiking together with Wilma Stepp (who took the picture) along Kentucky's Sheltowee Trace woodland hiking trail.
The Scotland Plan.
What is "The Scotland Plan"?
The Economist magazine, November 3rd 2007 edition at page 16 has noted, "Edinburgh [the capital of Scotland] has abolished tuition fees for Scottish university students,. . . ."
That is "The Scotland Plan".
That sounds like a good plan to me.
"The Scotland Plan" should be done right here in Kentucky.
"The Scotland Plan" should be done right here in the good old U.S. of A.
If elected to office I plan to take action to see that "The Scotland Plan" is done in my jurisdiction. Students should attend the University of Kentucky for free. Students should attend Southeastern Community College for free. Students should attend Eastern Kentucky University for free.
"But how can we afford it?" you ask.
Ever since the time of their own Adam Smith, the Scots have been known for being stingy. If they can afford to give their children free college educations and abolish tuition fees for university students, then we can afford to give our children free college educations and abolish tuition fees for university students.
Almost forty years ago, my Labor Economics Professor Billy Ray Skelton commented that free schooling for the first twelve grades is not written in stone, and that the government could extend free public educations beyond high school, if the people desire it. Let's do it. If I'm elected to office, I will introduce legislation to provide that the government will start by paying the tuition fees for freshman (first year) state university students. We can't implement the whole program immediately, but we can extend it to freshmen the first year, and then sophomores the next year.
Contact Mitch McConnell and contact Hal Rogers, and let them know what you think about "The Scotland Plan". If the thrifty people of Scotland can afford "the Scotland Plan", we can afford it too.
The Economist magazine, November 3rd 2007 edition at page 16 has noted, "Edinburgh [the capital of Scotland] has abolished tuition fees for Scottish university students,. . . ."
That is "The Scotland Plan".
That sounds like a good plan to me.
"The Scotland Plan" should be done right here in Kentucky.
"The Scotland Plan" should be done right here in the good old U.S. of A.
If elected to office I plan to take action to see that "The Scotland Plan" is done in my jurisdiction. Students should attend the University of Kentucky for free. Students should attend Southeastern Community College for free. Students should attend Eastern Kentucky University for free.
"But how can we afford it?" you ask.
Ever since the time of their own Adam Smith, the Scots have been known for being stingy. If they can afford to give their children free college educations and abolish tuition fees for university students, then we can afford to give our children free college educations and abolish tuition fees for university students.
Almost forty years ago, my Labor Economics Professor Billy Ray Skelton commented that free schooling for the first twelve grades is not written in stone, and that the government could extend free public educations beyond high school, if the people desire it. Let's do it. If I'm elected to office, I will introduce legislation to provide that the government will start by paying the tuition fees for freshman (first year) state university students. We can't implement the whole program immediately, but we can extend it to freshmen the first year, and then sophomores the next year.
Contact Mitch McConnell and contact Hal Rogers, and let them know what you think about "The Scotland Plan". If the thrifty people of Scotland can afford "the Scotland Plan", we can afford it too.
Mississippi 1926 Supreme Court explains "waterboarding".
Kudos to the blogspot "Is It Legal" for researching "waterboarding":
"November 12, 2007
"If It Was Torture in Mississippi, Then It's Definitely Torture, Right?
"A final word or two on this "waterboarding as torture" issue.
"Waterboarding, known ironically in earlier times as "the water cure", remains -- in the view of this administration and many supporters -- not torture. And if it's not torture, then it's not cruel and unusual punishment or a violation of due process.
"But here's the rub.
"In 1926, the Mississippi Supreme Court called the water cure torture. No qualifiers. No hedging. Just plain, good ol' fashion torture . . . and therefore a forbidden means for securing a confession. These men were hardly a group I'd call *activist* or *liberal* and certainly not bent on subverting our country in the name of coddling criminals.
"In a case called Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), Mississippi's highest court ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer because his confession was secured by a local sheriff's use of the water cure.
"Here's the court:
"The state offered . . . testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. . . [who], after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.
"Fisher relied on a case called White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922), in which the court took -- as I understand history in those parts -- the unusual step of reversing the murder conviction of a young African-American male, charged with killing a white man (it appears), because his confession was secured by *the cure*. The court said:
". . . [T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant's breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed . . .
"If "the cure" was seen as a barbarous form of torture in Mississippi in the 1920's, I guess I'm at a loss to understand exactly how our attitudes about the process have progressed to see it as an acceptable means of interrogation 80 years later.
"I suppose, in light of this administration's position on waterboarding, that both Fisher and White are teetering on irrelevance. Truly amazing.
"Posted by shertaugh at November 12, 2007 3:24 PM"
Kudos to Shertaugh for his research into Mississippi law. It's too bad that Mitch McConnell, Hal Rogers, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney are not as liberal nor progressive as the 1926 all-white Mississippi Supreme Court. It's too bad a majority of the general election voters in the Kentucky Fifth District have voted to "Stay the Course" and accept waterboarding as national policy, and are not as liberal nor progressive as the 1926 all-white Mississippi Supreme Court. Time will tell whether a majority of the Kentucky electorate in 2008 will vote approval of the "waterboarding" candidates "Mitch" McConnell and the Republican nominees to succeed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
"November 12, 2007
"If It Was Torture in Mississippi, Then It's Definitely Torture, Right?
"A final word or two on this "waterboarding as torture" issue.
"Waterboarding, known ironically in earlier times as "the water cure", remains -- in the view of this administration and many supporters -- not torture. And if it's not torture, then it's not cruel and unusual punishment or a violation of due process.
"But here's the rub.
"In 1926, the Mississippi Supreme Court called the water cure torture. No qualifiers. No hedging. Just plain, good ol' fashion torture . . . and therefore a forbidden means for securing a confession. These men were hardly a group I'd call *activist* or *liberal* and certainly not bent on subverting our country in the name of coddling criminals.
"In a case called Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), Mississippi's highest court ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer because his confession was secured by a local sheriff's use of the water cure.
"Here's the court:
"The state offered . . . testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. . . [who], after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.
"Fisher relied on a case called White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922), in which the court took -- as I understand history in those parts -- the unusual step of reversing the murder conviction of a young African-American male, charged with killing a white man (it appears), because his confession was secured by *the cure*. The court said:
". . . [T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant's breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed . . .
"If "the cure" was seen as a barbarous form of torture in Mississippi in the 1920's, I guess I'm at a loss to understand exactly how our attitudes about the process have progressed to see it as an acceptable means of interrogation 80 years later.
"I suppose, in light of this administration's position on waterboarding, that both Fisher and White are teetering on irrelevance. Truly amazing.
"Posted by shertaugh at November 12, 2007 3:24 PM"
Kudos to Shertaugh for his research into Mississippi law. It's too bad that Mitch McConnell, Hal Rogers, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney are not as liberal nor progressive as the 1926 all-white Mississippi Supreme Court. It's too bad a majority of the general election voters in the Kentucky Fifth District have voted to "Stay the Course" and accept waterboarding as national policy, and are not as liberal nor progressive as the 1926 all-white Mississippi Supreme Court. Time will tell whether a majority of the Kentucky electorate in 2008 will vote approval of the "waterboarding" candidates "Mitch" McConnell and the Republican nominees to succeed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
"McConnell loses mind" says The Alaska Report.
The Alaska Report says "McConnell loses mind"!
"McConnell loses mind - says Iraq war "winding down"
"November 8, 2007
"The Senate's Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, actually said Thursday that the Iraq war is "winding down."
"McConnell said this two days after a report came out that this is the deadliest year for the American military in the Iraq war.
"It comes as Democrats are launching another attempt at pulling combat troops out of Iraq.
"The Kentucky senator pointed to recent newspaper reports of lower death tolls and insisted there will be "fewer and fewer troops in Iraq, fewer and fewer casualties, more and more ... return to normalcy."
"He spoke to a handful of reporters on the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a proposal to temporarily fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and set the goal of pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq in a year.
"A similar bill passed Congress in May but was vetoed and killed. The latest effort could meet a similar fate as Democrats show no sign that they have gained the votes to override the president's block.
"At the same time, Democrats point out that the war is a continued disaster.
"This is not working, it's a war without end," said Pelosi. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. We must reverse it."
© AlaskaReport News"
Did you know that some members of the Alaska National Guard served a hitch in Iraq, returned home, and the very next week were shipped back to Iraq for another hitch of duty? The Alaska National Guard units have been especially hard hit by the "Staying the Course" of McConnell and Hal Rogers that has cost so many American lives in Iraq. Ditch Mitch. Ditch Hal, too.
Let's Ditch Mitch.
"McConnell loses mind - says Iraq war "winding down"
"November 8, 2007
"The Senate's Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, actually said Thursday that the Iraq war is "winding down."
"McConnell said this two days after a report came out that this is the deadliest year for the American military in the Iraq war.
"It comes as Democrats are launching another attempt at pulling combat troops out of Iraq.
"The Kentucky senator pointed to recent newspaper reports of lower death tolls and insisted there will be "fewer and fewer troops in Iraq, fewer and fewer casualties, more and more ... return to normalcy."
"He spoke to a handful of reporters on the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a proposal to temporarily fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and set the goal of pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq in a year.
"A similar bill passed Congress in May but was vetoed and killed. The latest effort could meet a similar fate as Democrats show no sign that they have gained the votes to override the president's block.
"At the same time, Democrats point out that the war is a continued disaster.
"This is not working, it's a war without end," said Pelosi. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. We must reverse it."
© AlaskaReport News"
Did you know that some members of the Alaska National Guard served a hitch in Iraq, returned home, and the very next week were shipped back to Iraq for another hitch of duty? The Alaska National Guard units have been especially hard hit by the "Staying the Course" of McConnell and Hal Rogers that has cost so many American lives in Iraq. Ditch Mitch. Ditch Hal, too.
Let's Ditch Mitch.
Forty-four percent approve of Mitch McConnell.
This just in from the Kentucky Democrat blogspot:
"Mitch McConnell's approval ratings
"Mitch McConnell's approval ratings came out this week. Forty-four percent approve of him. When Ernie Fletcher heard this news, he smiled."
"Mitch McConnell's approval ratings
"Mitch McConnell's approval ratings came out this week. Forty-four percent approve of him. When Ernie Fletcher heard this news, he smiled."
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Incompetence in the Bush--Cheney--Mitch McConnel--Hal Rogers Administration leading up to 9/11.
The following article appeared in "The New American" magazine:
"Unleashing a Terrorist
"By: William F. Jasper
"November 26, 2007
"FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan, a lead investigator in the bureau’s “bin Laden Unit,” was in Yemen on September 11, 2001 when airliners began crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As soon as he could get a flight, Cloonan flew back to New York. His first order of business upon his return was to go see a very special inmate who was being held in the secret section of a federal prison. The prisoner was Ali Mohamed, who, for at least a decade and a half, had been Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s top spy inside the U.S. government.
Cloonan had reason to believe Ali Mohamed could provide details about the 9/11 terror attacks. “I walked in and I had him pulled out,” Cloonan told Peter Lance, author of Triple Cross, the explosive exposé of Ali Mohamed and the federal agencies and officials who covered up his lethal penetration of our top national security institutions. “I said, ‘How’d they do it?’ and he wrote the whole thing out — the attack, as if he knew every detail of it,” Cloonan recounted.
Ali Mohamed did know every detail of the operation because for many years, in addition to being al-Qaeda’s chief mole in the U.S. military and intelligence circles, he was also al-Qaeda’s chief instructor in terror tactics. Agent Cloonan continued explaining Ali Mohamed’s 9/11 prison admission:
He [had] conducted training for al Qaeda on how to hijack a plane. He ran practical exercises in Pakistan and he said, “This is how you get a box cutter on board. You take the knife, you remove the blade and you wrap it in [word blacked out] and put it in your carry-on luggage.” They’d read the FAA regulations. They knew four inches wouldn’t go through. “This is how you position yourself,” he said. “I taught people how to sit in first class. You sit here and some sit here.” He wrote the whole thing out.
Did Ali Mohamed know each of the hijackers and the precise date, time, and flight numbers of the airliners used in the 9/11 attacks? That is not likely, since he had been in federal custody since September 10, 1998 — almost three years to the day prior to the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, it boggles the mind that the FBI’s bin Laden Unit, the outfit claiming the greatest expertise on the world’s “most wanted terrorist,” could have failed to have asked the talkative and boastful Ali Mohamed the logical leading questions that would have drawn out the hijacking details before they were employed in the 9/11 plot. This failure is all the more mind-boggling when one realizes that U.S. officials had received repeated prior warnings of al-Qaeda plans to use airliners as missiles, and that the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House had been specifically named as targets.
Of course, in the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. officials claimed otherwise. In May 2002, Condoleezza Rice, then President Bush’s national security adviser, uttered the excuse that would be repeated as a mantra by other officials in the weeks and years to come. “I don’t think that anybody could have predicted that these … people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center … that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,” she said.
That assertion was patently false, as Condoleezza Rice and top officials of the FBI, CIA, and Defense and Justice Departments knew full well. First of all, they had in their possession the laptop of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef, who had escaped the United States after the WTC bombing, had left the computer behind in his Manila apartment in 1995 when his bomb-making materials caught on fire, forcing him to flee the Philippines. The entire airliners-as-missiles hijacking scheme was on his laptop, as noted by the Philippines National Police (PNP) when they turned over the computer to U.S. authorities in 1995. And a 1995 FBI memo on Ramzi Yousef notes that Yousef was planning to use airliners in the United States and had asked his associates “to identify possible targets.” The same FBI memo also states that Yousef had asked co-conspirator Abdul Hakim Murad “while he [Murad] was in the U.S. for pilot training, to choose an appropriate site for an attack. Murad chose the WTC building.”
Murad, who had been arrested at the time of the Manila apartment fire, had given up more details of the 9/11 hijacking plot during questioning by PNP Col. Rodolfo Mendoza. Murad, who was a member of al-Qaeda’s Filipino terrorist offshoot group, Abu Sayyef, revealed that in addition to the WTC, Pentagon, CIA, and White House, the plan also targeted the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and a nuclear power plant. Besides Col. Mendoza, other Philippine officials involved with the case, such as Gen. Avelino Razon and Senior Inspector Aida Fariscal, have publicly insisted that they fully informed the FBI and CIA about the hijacking plans and the details Murad had provided about the hijackers taking pilot lessons in the United States.
Inexplicable “Ineptitude”
Those warnings from the Philippines came six years before 9/11. Additionally, U.S. authorities had multiple three-alarm warnings in the days and weeks preceding the September 11, 2001, attacks. The arrest of al-Qaeda’s would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui in August at a Minnesota flight school by alert FBI Special Agent Harry Samit was one of those screamingly obvious clues that could have been used to prevent the impending attacks. FBI officials did everything possible to turn Moussaoui loose, and would have, except for the tenacity of agents Samit and Colleen Rowley.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials not only had the complete airliners-as-missiles plot, as detailed on Yousef’s computer and in Murad’s confession, but they also had both Yousef and Murad in custody. They knew from prison informant Gregory Scarpa, Jr. that Yousef was still obsessed with completing his job of destroying the World Trade Center. And they knew that while in prison Yousef was in contact with his uncle, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who would later become known as the “mastermind” of the 9/11 plot.
But even more important than Ramzi Yousef, the top U.S. officials tasked with protecting our country against terrorist attacks had in their custody Ali Mohamed, the man who tied together the first WTC bombing in 1993 with the 9/11 attacks. It was Ali Mohamed who trained the al-Qaeda terrorists that assisted Ramzi Yousef in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ali Mohamed was a central actor in major terrorist events of the 1980s and ’90s. He is the key to many of the nagging questions about our nation’s repeated, spectacular, inexplicable security lapses with regard to terrorist threats. And for the past several years, the federal government has been going to incredible lengths to cover up all information about Ali Mohamed. Why?
Working Within U.S. Agencies
For more than a decade and half — from the early 1980s to the late 1990s — Ali Abdelsaoud Mohamed served Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as one of their highest (if not the highest) al-Qaeda operatives in the United States. During that same time period, Ali Mohamed traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and other parts of the world to provide al-Qaeda with top-level intelligence, plan terrorist events, set up liaison with the Hezbollah terrorist organization, assist in fundraising, and train al-Qaeda terrorists — including bin Laden’s personal bodyguards and even bin Laden himself. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, prosecutor of some of the biggest terrorist and organized-crime cases, once said of him: “This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”
The most amazing thing about Ali Mohamed’s story is that he carried out his audacious, deadly role as globe-trotting spy master/terrorist while working with, and inside, the very U.S. government organizations that are supposed to be protecting us from the likes of him: the CIA, the U.S. Army Special Forces, the FBI, and the Justice Department. And he carried out this long-running ruse in spite of numerous tip-offs from foreign governments and warnings from alert personnel within our own agencies.
Since his arrest in 1998, Ali Mohamed has been hidden away in a federal “witness protection” program, with most of his court records sealed. As Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times put it, Ali Mohamed has been buried “under a cloak of secrecy rarely seen in the public courts.”
Incredibly, in spite of his central role in a global terror wave that has taken thousands of lives, Mohamed cut a plea deal in 2000 that would possibly set him free on “supervised release” within five years! Quite possibly, he has already been released.
Coming to America
Ali Mohamed first showed up on the radar in 1981 as a 29-year-old Egyptian Army Special Forces officer who was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, training with U.S. Special Forces. He was at Fort Bragg when fellow Egyptian soldiers who were members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) terror group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Mohamed stunned American soldiers by expressing approval of the assassination.
In 1984, Mohamed was discharged from the Egyptian Army for his radical Islamist views. He soon began conducting intelligence operations for EIJ founder Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Zawahiri, who would later join his EIJ to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, tasked Ali Mohamed with trying to infiltrate the CIA. Mohamed offered his services to the CIA’s Cairo office. In spite of warnings from the Egyptian government about his Islamic Jihad ties, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, approved taking him on as an asset to infiltrate a Hezbollah ring in Hamburg, Germany. When it became evident that Ali Mohamed was actually in cahoots with the Hamburg Hezbollah cell and was “playing” the CIA, the agency claimed to have dismissed him. Ali Mohamed also reportedly was put on the State Department’s Watch List at that time to prevent his reentry into the United States.
Nevertheless, the following year, in 1985, Mohamed easily entered the United States on a commercial flight, unhindered by the Watch List status. This was the beginning of what would become a long list of troubling “anomalies” lending support to speculation that Ali Mohamed is a “protected” asset of the CIA or another U.S. intelligence agency. Time and again invisible hands seemed to intervene to allow him to continue his deadly course of penetrating our nation’s vital organs. While many U.S. officials and journalists attribute Ali Mohamed’s incredible successes to audacity, intelligence, and steel nerves on his part, and stunning ineptitude on the part of U.S. intelligence agencies, other observers have rightfully noted that the succession of FBI, CIA, and Defense Department “failures” regarding Mohamed is so extensive and outrageous as to defy probability.
Ali Mohamed did not waste any time. During his 1985 flight into the United States, he charmed his way into the good graces of a passenger, a California woman, whom he soon married, setting him on the road to obtaining U.S. citizenship. In 1986, Mohamed enlisted in the U.S. Army and was transferred to Ft. Bragg’s JFK Special Warfare Center. Over the next several years, he stole many top-secret documents, including weapons manuals and bomb-making manuals. He translated them into Arabic, thus turning America’s most secret Special Forces manuals into deadly handbooks for al-Qaeda. One top-secret document he apparently obtained at Ft. Bragg was a Joint Chiefs of Staff memo containing the locations of all Special Forces and Navy SEAL units worldwide. Now, that is information that obviously would be of great value to Osama bin Laden, and just as obviously of deadly consequence to our commandos who might be hunting him.
In 1988, a telling incident occurred that fortifies suspicions of Ali Mohamed’s protected status. Mohamed arrogantly announced that he was going to Afghanistan to train Islamic Mujahedeen. His commander at Ft. Bragg, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, refused permission and directly ordered him not to go. Defying Army regulations and Lt. Col. Anderson’s direct order, Mohamed went anyway. When he returned from Afghanistan, Mohamed smugly taunted Anderson, who requested that he be court-martialed. “It’s pretty much unthinkable that an American soldier would go unpunished after fighting in a foreign war,” Anderson later said. But even though Anderson tried repeatedly to get action, Mohamed was never prosecuted. This sent an unmistakable signal that Mohamed was operating under protection of higher authorities. Lt. Col. Anderson thinks it was the FBI. “I believe that there was an agent that controlled Ali Mohamed’s actions,” Anderson later said. “I can’t prove that, but I believe it.”
Ali Mohamed’s activities the following year would provide plenty of substantiation for Anderson’s suspicions. In 1989, Mohamed made a series of trips from Ft. Bragg to New York to train the al-Qaeda cell members who would later be convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the foiled Day of Terror Plot later that year to blow up multiple New York City targets. Incredibly, an FBI team was monitoring the training and actually filmed Mohamed’s trainees firing thousands of rounds from illegal AK-47 automatic weapons at a firing range on Long Island. But neither Mohamed nor his trainees were arrested, and no alarm was sounded.
In 1990, another major security failure “coincidence” occurred: Omar Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheik,” was allowed into the United States, despite being on the State Department’s Watch List because of his radical beliefs and terror connections. As in the case of Ali Mohamed, the evidence suggests Sheik Rahman circumvented the Watch List roadblock thanks to a CIA-approved visa. Sheik Rahman’s presence stirred Islamic fundamentalists throughout the country to new levels of fervor, especially at the Alkifah Center in Brooklyn, which Ali Mohamed frequented. In November of 1990, Jewish Rabbi Meier Kahane was assassinated in New York City by El Sayyid Nosair, a disciple of Sheik Rahman and one of Ali Mohamed’s trainees who was filmed by the FBI at the firing range. Dozens of boxes of evidence were confiscated from Nosair’s apartment, including documents that should have led the FBI to Ali Mohamed and his trainees, who would later be convicted along with Ramzi Yousef for the first World Trade Center bombing. Bungling and bureaucratic wrangling between the FBI and the NYPD are usually cited as excuses for the mysterious failure to follow up on the Nosair evidence, an excuse that becomes maddeningly trite through overuse in the Ali Mohamed case.
Over the next several years, Ali Mohamed moved ever higher into al-Qaeda’s inner circle, repeatedly setting off alarms that drew the concern of alert intelligence agents, but which were inexplicably disregarded by top U.S. officials. The following are but a few examples:
1991-92: While working as an FBI informant, Ali Mohamed made many trips abroad, including to Afghanistan, where he personally handled security for bin Laden and his top-level al-Qaeda entourage as they made a dangerous move to Sudan.
1993: With the help of Ali Mohamed’s trainees, master bomb-maker Ramzi Yousef carried out the first attack on the World Trade Center, killing five and injuring more than 1,000. Months later, Ali Mohamed was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while trying to bring al-Qaeda terrorist Essam Marzouk into Canada. Mohamed had the RCMP call FBI Supervisor John Zent, who secured his release. Mohamed went on to broker a historic meeting in Sudan between bin Laden and Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyah, thus helping establish an historic Sunni-Shia terror alliance. Jihadists trained by Mohamed and sent to Somalia by bin Laden were among the enemy forces in the “Black Hawk Down” incident that resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos.
1994: Ali Mohamed went to Nairobi, Kenya, to plan the deadly U.S. embassy bombing that took place four years later. He personally delivered surveillance photographs of the embassy to bin Laden. He also brought EIJ-al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri into the United States on a fake passport and escorted him on a fundraising tour of mosques from California to North Carolina. Mohamed was named in a sealed indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Day of Terror trial, and defense attorneys attempted to find and subpoena him to testify. U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy and FBI Special Agent Harlan Bell secretly met Mohamed in an apparent move to help him elude the subpoena.
1995: Ali Mohamed obtained a copy of the sealed list of 172 unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial, which included himself and Osama bin Laden. Some suspect that Andrew McCarthy gave him the list. Mohamed passed the list on to bin Laden, alerting him and the others named that they were being sought. Mohamed smuggled al-Zawahiri into the United States for a second terror fundraising tour.
1997: The FBI raided the New York home of Wadi El-Hage, Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. They found contact information for Ali Mohamed, who had been closely associated with El-Hage for years and stayed at El-Hage’s home. El-Hage was arrested but was unexplainably released. Months later he helped execute the al-Qaeda terror bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Mohamed brazenly told the FBI he knew who did the bombing and how. (He knew because he planned it for bin Laden.) Unbelievably, the FBI still did not arrest him or search his house.
2000: Operation Able Danger, a secret high-powered computer data mining operation for the Department of Defense, identified a bonanza of al-Qaeda operatives (including many of the future 9/11 hijackers) with links to Ali Mohamed, al-Zawahiri, and bin Laden. If followed up by the FBI, this information could have averted the 9/11 plot. The Able Danger data was ordered destroyed in April 2000. A massive coverup ensued to deny that the data identified the 9/11 hijackers.*
One of the more extraordinary incidents to come to light is the October 1997 “dinner date” between Ali Mohamed, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan at a swanky restaurant in Sacramento, California. The two feds met with Mohamed in an alleged effort to get him to confess to his terrorist activities. Instead, Mohamed was defiant and arrogantly told them that he could disappear any time he wanted to and that they would never be able to find him. Fitzgerald told Cloonan that Mohamed “is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. We cannot let this man out on the street,” despite his known connections to al-Qaeda and terrorism, including the information assembled in this article. But, incredibly, they did precisely that: Mohamed was allowed to remain free for nearly a year, until after the deadly U.S. embassy bombings.
Exposure and High Anxiety
Since the 9/11 terror spree, a steady trickle of revelations by an array of independent journalists and researchers has been forcing some very explosive evidence to the surface concerning Ali Mohamed’s function in planning the 9/11 terrorist attacks and earlier terrorist events. Court records, interviews with inside players, and government documents obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) have been filling in many of the gaps in Mohamed’s mysterious vita. This, no doubt, is causing great anxiety in high government circles. Well-known figures and top agency officials spanning the administrations of George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush stand to face not only public embarrassment but potential criminal indictment, if their actions (and failures to act) regarding Ali Mohamed become widely known.
The information uncovered by Peter Lance, John M. Berger’s Intelwire.com, and other independent researchers has unveiled shocking actions and inaction by government officials that permitted terrorists repeatedly to attack America. The information also indicts many officials who engaged in a series of massive coverups to thwart disclosure of their culpability. More importantly, the evidence now available in the case of Ali Mohamed confirms an alarming truth that has emerged from many other troubling cases. It shows that far from being safer from terrorist attacks since the supposed “reforms” enacted after 9/11, the American people are more in danger than ever. The officials who should have been held accountable — not only for their failures on 9/11, but for similar failures regarding earlier terrorist attacks that led up to it — not only have gotten off scot-free, but actually have been promoted (in the case of some individuals, more than once) to positions where they can cause even greater harm to our national security.
If widespread exposure of the Ali Mohamed travesty is headed off, do not be surprised to find out at some future date that the master terrorist is again on the loose. In an interview with the National Geographic Channel, Ali Mohamed’s defense attorney makes a very chilling prophecy. “I think the most likely thing that will happen,” says attorney David Ruhnke, “is he’ll be released and he’ll be given a new name, a new identity, and he’ll pick up a life some place.”
The basis for that opinion can be seen in the court transcript of Ali Mohamed’s plea hearing, in which he pled guilty to “conspiracy to kill nationals of the United States, conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim.” Judge Leonard B. Sand asked Mohamed if he understood that pleading guilty could subject him to life imprisonment plus a term of supervised release of five years. “Yes, your honor,” Mohamed answered.
Of course, a “life” sentence is a cruel joke; it can be whittled down to time served, if the government declares that Ali Mohamed’s “cooperation” is sufficiently valuable. That appears to be in the works. In fact, there is no publicly available information from the court record to show that Ali Mohamed was ever sentenced. Although he has been held in a prison, he has been in the witness protection section.
“Mohamed has made some kind of deal with the government, that will surely have him out of prison on some date certain that he knows about,” says attorney David Ruhnke. That would surely be an atrocious crime against justice — and a sure promise of more terror to come from one who has already proven himself to be the master terrorist. However, a massive public outcry can cause the guilty to be exposed and swept from power, and can ensure that Ali Mohamed never again will have the opportunity to harm another soul."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Exposing the Facts About Ali Mohamed
"Certainly, one of the exposé salvos most feared by those in officialdom with something to hide in this matter is the October release of the new, updated edition of Triple Cross, the best-seller by five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance. [According to the author, the book will now be rereleased in January — ed.] The full title of the book is Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI — and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him.
The first edition of Lance’s 600-page Triple Cross, published in September 2006, was the first full-treatment exposé of the incredible story of Osama bin Laden’s top operative in the United States, Ali Mohamed. With brilliant detective work, cogent analysis, and masterful storytelling, Lance presented a page-turner of shocking and previously unpublished documents, interviews, and information detailing Ali Mohamed’s penetration of our top military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies and the Egyptian’s key roles in: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the 1993 New York “Day of Terror” plot involving blind Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman; the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, Somalia; the foiled 1994 Bojinka plot to blow up 11 airliners; the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and the 2001 9/11 attacks.
Although Lance’s book broke ground with important new information, its larger value lay in his assimilation and presentation in a single coherent volume, of a daunting myriad of facts and data that had previously been scattered over numerous articles and Internet research sites.
While information, misinformation, and disinformation on Ali Mohamed has been coming into the public domain over the past several years, Peter Lance has performed yeoman service in painstakingly sorting, vetting and collating it. A former correspondent for ABC News, Mr. Lance is also the author of two additional blockbuster books on terrorism and the 9/11 attacks: CoverUp and 1,000 Years for Revenge. His books and his Internet website, www.peterlance.com, have been indispensable sources for anyone seeking to make sense of the indefensible chain of intelligence failures that allowed al-Qaeda to strike a series of massive deadly blows against America.
J.M. Berger’s Intelwire.com website is also a treasure trove of information on Ali Mohamed and other related intelligence matters concerning 9/11. Through Freedom of Information Act requests and other means, Mr. Berger has acquired an enormous collection of crucial government documents that are now available on his website. In addition, he publishes source books that are invaluable for walking serious researchers through the otherwise bewildering morass of data and explaining the significance of various documents, quotes, facts, and factoids. Another vital resource in unraveling the Ali Mohamed enigma is the work of Paul Thompson and the folks at cooperativeresearch.org, whose mammoth research project, the “Complete 9/11 Timeline,” provides online access to a wealth of critically important public source documents, articles, photos, analysis, and perspective."
Let's Ditch Mitch, Hal, Cheney, and Bush--all four.
"Unleashing a Terrorist
"By: William F. Jasper
"November 26, 2007
"FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan, a lead investigator in the bureau’s “bin Laden Unit,” was in Yemen on September 11, 2001 when airliners began crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As soon as he could get a flight, Cloonan flew back to New York. His first order of business upon his return was to go see a very special inmate who was being held in the secret section of a federal prison. The prisoner was Ali Mohamed, who, for at least a decade and a half, had been Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s top spy inside the U.S. government.
Cloonan had reason to believe Ali Mohamed could provide details about the 9/11 terror attacks. “I walked in and I had him pulled out,” Cloonan told Peter Lance, author of Triple Cross, the explosive exposé of Ali Mohamed and the federal agencies and officials who covered up his lethal penetration of our top national security institutions. “I said, ‘How’d they do it?’ and he wrote the whole thing out — the attack, as if he knew every detail of it,” Cloonan recounted.
Ali Mohamed did know every detail of the operation because for many years, in addition to being al-Qaeda’s chief mole in the U.S. military and intelligence circles, he was also al-Qaeda’s chief instructor in terror tactics. Agent Cloonan continued explaining Ali Mohamed’s 9/11 prison admission:
He [had] conducted training for al Qaeda on how to hijack a plane. He ran practical exercises in Pakistan and he said, “This is how you get a box cutter on board. You take the knife, you remove the blade and you wrap it in [word blacked out] and put it in your carry-on luggage.” They’d read the FAA regulations. They knew four inches wouldn’t go through. “This is how you position yourself,” he said. “I taught people how to sit in first class. You sit here and some sit here.” He wrote the whole thing out.
Did Ali Mohamed know each of the hijackers and the precise date, time, and flight numbers of the airliners used in the 9/11 attacks? That is not likely, since he had been in federal custody since September 10, 1998 — almost three years to the day prior to the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, it boggles the mind that the FBI’s bin Laden Unit, the outfit claiming the greatest expertise on the world’s “most wanted terrorist,” could have failed to have asked the talkative and boastful Ali Mohamed the logical leading questions that would have drawn out the hijacking details before they were employed in the 9/11 plot. This failure is all the more mind-boggling when one realizes that U.S. officials had received repeated prior warnings of al-Qaeda plans to use airliners as missiles, and that the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House had been specifically named as targets.
Of course, in the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. officials claimed otherwise. In May 2002, Condoleezza Rice, then President Bush’s national security adviser, uttered the excuse that would be repeated as a mantra by other officials in the weeks and years to come. “I don’t think that anybody could have predicted that these … people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center … that they would try to use an airplane as a missile,” she said.
That assertion was patently false, as Condoleezza Rice and top officials of the FBI, CIA, and Defense and Justice Departments knew full well. First of all, they had in their possession the laptop of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef, who had escaped the United States after the WTC bombing, had left the computer behind in his Manila apartment in 1995 when his bomb-making materials caught on fire, forcing him to flee the Philippines. The entire airliners-as-missiles hijacking scheme was on his laptop, as noted by the Philippines National Police (PNP) when they turned over the computer to U.S. authorities in 1995. And a 1995 FBI memo on Ramzi Yousef notes that Yousef was planning to use airliners in the United States and had asked his associates “to identify possible targets.” The same FBI memo also states that Yousef had asked co-conspirator Abdul Hakim Murad “while he [Murad] was in the U.S. for pilot training, to choose an appropriate site for an attack. Murad chose the WTC building.”
Murad, who had been arrested at the time of the Manila apartment fire, had given up more details of the 9/11 hijacking plot during questioning by PNP Col. Rodolfo Mendoza. Murad, who was a member of al-Qaeda’s Filipino terrorist offshoot group, Abu Sayyef, revealed that in addition to the WTC, Pentagon, CIA, and White House, the plan also targeted the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and a nuclear power plant. Besides Col. Mendoza, other Philippine officials involved with the case, such as Gen. Avelino Razon and Senior Inspector Aida Fariscal, have publicly insisted that they fully informed the FBI and CIA about the hijacking plans and the details Murad had provided about the hijackers taking pilot lessons in the United States.
Inexplicable “Ineptitude”
Those warnings from the Philippines came six years before 9/11. Additionally, U.S. authorities had multiple three-alarm warnings in the days and weeks preceding the September 11, 2001, attacks. The arrest of al-Qaeda’s would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui in August at a Minnesota flight school by alert FBI Special Agent Harry Samit was one of those screamingly obvious clues that could have been used to prevent the impending attacks. FBI officials did everything possible to turn Moussaoui loose, and would have, except for the tenacity of agents Samit and Colleen Rowley.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials not only had the complete airliners-as-missiles plot, as detailed on Yousef’s computer and in Murad’s confession, but they also had both Yousef and Murad in custody. They knew from prison informant Gregory Scarpa, Jr. that Yousef was still obsessed with completing his job of destroying the World Trade Center. And they knew that while in prison Yousef was in contact with his uncle, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who would later become known as the “mastermind” of the 9/11 plot.
But even more important than Ramzi Yousef, the top U.S. officials tasked with protecting our country against terrorist attacks had in their custody Ali Mohamed, the man who tied together the first WTC bombing in 1993 with the 9/11 attacks. It was Ali Mohamed who trained the al-Qaeda terrorists that assisted Ramzi Yousef in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ali Mohamed was a central actor in major terrorist events of the 1980s and ’90s. He is the key to many of the nagging questions about our nation’s repeated, spectacular, inexplicable security lapses with regard to terrorist threats. And for the past several years, the federal government has been going to incredible lengths to cover up all information about Ali Mohamed. Why?
Working Within U.S. Agencies
For more than a decade and half — from the early 1980s to the late 1990s — Ali Abdelsaoud Mohamed served Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as one of their highest (if not the highest) al-Qaeda operatives in the United States. During that same time period, Ali Mohamed traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and other parts of the world to provide al-Qaeda with top-level intelligence, plan terrorist events, set up liaison with the Hezbollah terrorist organization, assist in fundraising, and train al-Qaeda terrorists — including bin Laden’s personal bodyguards and even bin Laden himself. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, prosecutor of some of the biggest terrorist and organized-crime cases, once said of him: “This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”
The most amazing thing about Ali Mohamed’s story is that he carried out his audacious, deadly role as globe-trotting spy master/terrorist while working with, and inside, the very U.S. government organizations that are supposed to be protecting us from the likes of him: the CIA, the U.S. Army Special Forces, the FBI, and the Justice Department. And he carried out this long-running ruse in spite of numerous tip-offs from foreign governments and warnings from alert personnel within our own agencies.
Since his arrest in 1998, Ali Mohamed has been hidden away in a federal “witness protection” program, with most of his court records sealed. As Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times put it, Ali Mohamed has been buried “under a cloak of secrecy rarely seen in the public courts.”
Incredibly, in spite of his central role in a global terror wave that has taken thousands of lives, Mohamed cut a plea deal in 2000 that would possibly set him free on “supervised release” within five years! Quite possibly, he has already been released.
Coming to America
Ali Mohamed first showed up on the radar in 1981 as a 29-year-old Egyptian Army Special Forces officer who was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, training with U.S. Special Forces. He was at Fort Bragg when fellow Egyptian soldiers who were members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) terror group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Mohamed stunned American soldiers by expressing approval of the assassination.
In 1984, Mohamed was discharged from the Egyptian Army for his radical Islamist views. He soon began conducting intelligence operations for EIJ founder Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Zawahiri, who would later join his EIJ to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, tasked Ali Mohamed with trying to infiltrate the CIA. Mohamed offered his services to the CIA’s Cairo office. In spite of warnings from the Egyptian government about his Islamic Jihad ties, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, approved taking him on as an asset to infiltrate a Hezbollah ring in Hamburg, Germany. When it became evident that Ali Mohamed was actually in cahoots with the Hamburg Hezbollah cell and was “playing” the CIA, the agency claimed to have dismissed him. Ali Mohamed also reportedly was put on the State Department’s Watch List at that time to prevent his reentry into the United States.
Nevertheless, the following year, in 1985, Mohamed easily entered the United States on a commercial flight, unhindered by the Watch List status. This was the beginning of what would become a long list of troubling “anomalies” lending support to speculation that Ali Mohamed is a “protected” asset of the CIA or another U.S. intelligence agency. Time and again invisible hands seemed to intervene to allow him to continue his deadly course of penetrating our nation’s vital organs. While many U.S. officials and journalists attribute Ali Mohamed’s incredible successes to audacity, intelligence, and steel nerves on his part, and stunning ineptitude on the part of U.S. intelligence agencies, other observers have rightfully noted that the succession of FBI, CIA, and Defense Department “failures” regarding Mohamed is so extensive and outrageous as to defy probability.
Ali Mohamed did not waste any time. During his 1985 flight into the United States, he charmed his way into the good graces of a passenger, a California woman, whom he soon married, setting him on the road to obtaining U.S. citizenship. In 1986, Mohamed enlisted in the U.S. Army and was transferred to Ft. Bragg’s JFK Special Warfare Center. Over the next several years, he stole many top-secret documents, including weapons manuals and bomb-making manuals. He translated them into Arabic, thus turning America’s most secret Special Forces manuals into deadly handbooks for al-Qaeda. One top-secret document he apparently obtained at Ft. Bragg was a Joint Chiefs of Staff memo containing the locations of all Special Forces and Navy SEAL units worldwide. Now, that is information that obviously would be of great value to Osama bin Laden, and just as obviously of deadly consequence to our commandos who might be hunting him.
In 1988, a telling incident occurred that fortifies suspicions of Ali Mohamed’s protected status. Mohamed arrogantly announced that he was going to Afghanistan to train Islamic Mujahedeen. His commander at Ft. Bragg, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, refused permission and directly ordered him not to go. Defying Army regulations and Lt. Col. Anderson’s direct order, Mohamed went anyway. When he returned from Afghanistan, Mohamed smugly taunted Anderson, who requested that he be court-martialed. “It’s pretty much unthinkable that an American soldier would go unpunished after fighting in a foreign war,” Anderson later said. But even though Anderson tried repeatedly to get action, Mohamed was never prosecuted. This sent an unmistakable signal that Mohamed was operating under protection of higher authorities. Lt. Col. Anderson thinks it was the FBI. “I believe that there was an agent that controlled Ali Mohamed’s actions,” Anderson later said. “I can’t prove that, but I believe it.”
Ali Mohamed’s activities the following year would provide plenty of substantiation for Anderson’s suspicions. In 1989, Mohamed made a series of trips from Ft. Bragg to New York to train the al-Qaeda cell members who would later be convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the foiled Day of Terror Plot later that year to blow up multiple New York City targets. Incredibly, an FBI team was monitoring the training and actually filmed Mohamed’s trainees firing thousands of rounds from illegal AK-47 automatic weapons at a firing range on Long Island. But neither Mohamed nor his trainees were arrested, and no alarm was sounded.
In 1990, another major security failure “coincidence” occurred: Omar Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheik,” was allowed into the United States, despite being on the State Department’s Watch List because of his radical beliefs and terror connections. As in the case of Ali Mohamed, the evidence suggests Sheik Rahman circumvented the Watch List roadblock thanks to a CIA-approved visa. Sheik Rahman’s presence stirred Islamic fundamentalists throughout the country to new levels of fervor, especially at the Alkifah Center in Brooklyn, which Ali Mohamed frequented. In November of 1990, Jewish Rabbi Meier Kahane was assassinated in New York City by El Sayyid Nosair, a disciple of Sheik Rahman and one of Ali Mohamed’s trainees who was filmed by the FBI at the firing range. Dozens of boxes of evidence were confiscated from Nosair’s apartment, including documents that should have led the FBI to Ali Mohamed and his trainees, who would later be convicted along with Ramzi Yousef for the first World Trade Center bombing. Bungling and bureaucratic wrangling between the FBI and the NYPD are usually cited as excuses for the mysterious failure to follow up on the Nosair evidence, an excuse that becomes maddeningly trite through overuse in the Ali Mohamed case.
Over the next several years, Ali Mohamed moved ever higher into al-Qaeda’s inner circle, repeatedly setting off alarms that drew the concern of alert intelligence agents, but which were inexplicably disregarded by top U.S. officials. The following are but a few examples:
1991-92: While working as an FBI informant, Ali Mohamed made many trips abroad, including to Afghanistan, where he personally handled security for bin Laden and his top-level al-Qaeda entourage as they made a dangerous move to Sudan.
1993: With the help of Ali Mohamed’s trainees, master bomb-maker Ramzi Yousef carried out the first attack on the World Trade Center, killing five and injuring more than 1,000. Months later, Ali Mohamed was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while trying to bring al-Qaeda terrorist Essam Marzouk into Canada. Mohamed had the RCMP call FBI Supervisor John Zent, who secured his release. Mohamed went on to broker a historic meeting in Sudan between bin Laden and Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyah, thus helping establish an historic Sunni-Shia terror alliance. Jihadists trained by Mohamed and sent to Somalia by bin Laden were among the enemy forces in the “Black Hawk Down” incident that resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos.
1994: Ali Mohamed went to Nairobi, Kenya, to plan the deadly U.S. embassy bombing that took place four years later. He personally delivered surveillance photographs of the embassy to bin Laden. He also brought EIJ-al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri into the United States on a fake passport and escorted him on a fundraising tour of mosques from California to North Carolina. Mohamed was named in a sealed indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Day of Terror trial, and defense attorneys attempted to find and subpoena him to testify. U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy and FBI Special Agent Harlan Bell secretly met Mohamed in an apparent move to help him elude the subpoena.
1995: Ali Mohamed obtained a copy of the sealed list of 172 unindicted co-conspirators in the Day of Terror trial, which included himself and Osama bin Laden. Some suspect that Andrew McCarthy gave him the list. Mohamed passed the list on to bin Laden, alerting him and the others named that they were being sought. Mohamed smuggled al-Zawahiri into the United States for a second terror fundraising tour.
1997: The FBI raided the New York home of Wadi El-Hage, Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. They found contact information for Ali Mohamed, who had been closely associated with El-Hage for years and stayed at El-Hage’s home. El-Hage was arrested but was unexplainably released. Months later he helped execute the al-Qaeda terror bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Mohamed brazenly told the FBI he knew who did the bombing and how. (He knew because he planned it for bin Laden.) Unbelievably, the FBI still did not arrest him or search his house.
2000: Operation Able Danger, a secret high-powered computer data mining operation for the Department of Defense, identified a bonanza of al-Qaeda operatives (including many of the future 9/11 hijackers) with links to Ali Mohamed, al-Zawahiri, and bin Laden. If followed up by the FBI, this information could have averted the 9/11 plot. The Able Danger data was ordered destroyed in April 2000. A massive coverup ensued to deny that the data identified the 9/11 hijackers.*
One of the more extraordinary incidents to come to light is the October 1997 “dinner date” between Ali Mohamed, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan at a swanky restaurant in Sacramento, California. The two feds met with Mohamed in an alleged effort to get him to confess to his terrorist activities. Instead, Mohamed was defiant and arrogantly told them that he could disappear any time he wanted to and that they would never be able to find him. Fitzgerald told Cloonan that Mohamed “is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. We cannot let this man out on the street,” despite his known connections to al-Qaeda and terrorism, including the information assembled in this article. But, incredibly, they did precisely that: Mohamed was allowed to remain free for nearly a year, until after the deadly U.S. embassy bombings.
Exposure and High Anxiety
Since the 9/11 terror spree, a steady trickle of revelations by an array of independent journalists and researchers has been forcing some very explosive evidence to the surface concerning Ali Mohamed’s function in planning the 9/11 terrorist attacks and earlier terrorist events. Court records, interviews with inside players, and government documents obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) have been filling in many of the gaps in Mohamed’s mysterious vita. This, no doubt, is causing great anxiety in high government circles. Well-known figures and top agency officials spanning the administrations of George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush stand to face not only public embarrassment but potential criminal indictment, if their actions (and failures to act) regarding Ali Mohamed become widely known.
The information uncovered by Peter Lance, John M. Berger’s Intelwire.com, and other independent researchers has unveiled shocking actions and inaction by government officials that permitted terrorists repeatedly to attack America. The information also indicts many officials who engaged in a series of massive coverups to thwart disclosure of their culpability. More importantly, the evidence now available in the case of Ali Mohamed confirms an alarming truth that has emerged from many other troubling cases. It shows that far from being safer from terrorist attacks since the supposed “reforms” enacted after 9/11, the American people are more in danger than ever. The officials who should have been held accountable — not only for their failures on 9/11, but for similar failures regarding earlier terrorist attacks that led up to it — not only have gotten off scot-free, but actually have been promoted (in the case of some individuals, more than once) to positions where they can cause even greater harm to our national security.
If widespread exposure of the Ali Mohamed travesty is headed off, do not be surprised to find out at some future date that the master terrorist is again on the loose. In an interview with the National Geographic Channel, Ali Mohamed’s defense attorney makes a very chilling prophecy. “I think the most likely thing that will happen,” says attorney David Ruhnke, “is he’ll be released and he’ll be given a new name, a new identity, and he’ll pick up a life some place.”
The basis for that opinion can be seen in the court transcript of Ali Mohamed’s plea hearing, in which he pled guilty to “conspiracy to kill nationals of the United States, conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim.” Judge Leonard B. Sand asked Mohamed if he understood that pleading guilty could subject him to life imprisonment plus a term of supervised release of five years. “Yes, your honor,” Mohamed answered.
Of course, a “life” sentence is a cruel joke; it can be whittled down to time served, if the government declares that Ali Mohamed’s “cooperation” is sufficiently valuable. That appears to be in the works. In fact, there is no publicly available information from the court record to show that Ali Mohamed was ever sentenced. Although he has been held in a prison, he has been in the witness protection section.
“Mohamed has made some kind of deal with the government, that will surely have him out of prison on some date certain that he knows about,” says attorney David Ruhnke. That would surely be an atrocious crime against justice — and a sure promise of more terror to come from one who has already proven himself to be the master terrorist. However, a massive public outcry can cause the guilty to be exposed and swept from power, and can ensure that Ali Mohamed never again will have the opportunity to harm another soul."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Exposing the Facts About Ali Mohamed
"Certainly, one of the exposé salvos most feared by those in officialdom with something to hide in this matter is the October release of the new, updated edition of Triple Cross, the best-seller by five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance. [According to the author, the book will now be rereleased in January — ed.] The full title of the book is Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI — and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him.
The first edition of Lance’s 600-page Triple Cross, published in September 2006, was the first full-treatment exposé of the incredible story of Osama bin Laden’s top operative in the United States, Ali Mohamed. With brilliant detective work, cogent analysis, and masterful storytelling, Lance presented a page-turner of shocking and previously unpublished documents, interviews, and information detailing Ali Mohamed’s penetration of our top military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies and the Egyptian’s key roles in: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the 1993 New York “Day of Terror” plot involving blind Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman; the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, Somalia; the foiled 1994 Bojinka plot to blow up 11 airliners; the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and the 2001 9/11 attacks.
Although Lance’s book broke ground with important new information, its larger value lay in his assimilation and presentation in a single coherent volume, of a daunting myriad of facts and data that had previously been scattered over numerous articles and Internet research sites.
While information, misinformation, and disinformation on Ali Mohamed has been coming into the public domain over the past several years, Peter Lance has performed yeoman service in painstakingly sorting, vetting and collating it. A former correspondent for ABC News, Mr. Lance is also the author of two additional blockbuster books on terrorism and the 9/11 attacks: CoverUp and 1,000 Years for Revenge. His books and his Internet website, www.peterlance.com, have been indispensable sources for anyone seeking to make sense of the indefensible chain of intelligence failures that allowed al-Qaeda to strike a series of massive deadly blows against America.
J.M. Berger’s Intelwire.com website is also a treasure trove of information on Ali Mohamed and other related intelligence matters concerning 9/11. Through Freedom of Information Act requests and other means, Mr. Berger has acquired an enormous collection of crucial government documents that are now available on his website. In addition, he publishes source books that are invaluable for walking serious researchers through the otherwise bewildering morass of data and explaining the significance of various documents, quotes, facts, and factoids. Another vital resource in unraveling the Ali Mohamed enigma is the work of Paul Thompson and the folks at cooperativeresearch.org, whose mammoth research project, the “Complete 9/11 Timeline,” provides online access to a wealth of critically important public source documents, articles, photos, analysis, and perspective."
Let's Ditch Mitch, Hal, Cheney, and Bush--all four.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
"Neoconned" speech by Rep. Ron Paul.
November 22, 2007
"Neo-conned" speech by Rep. Ron Paul.
U.S. Representative Ron Paul: Neo-conned
Here is one relatively short segment in that long speech which gets to the heart of the matter:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Since the national debt is increasing at a rate greater than a half-trillion dollars per year, the debt limit was recently increased by an astounding $984 billion dollars. Total U.S. government obligations are $43 trillion, while total net worth of U.S. households is just over $40.6 trillion. The country is broke, but no one in Washington seems to notice or care. The philosophic and political commitment for both guns and butter–and especially for expanding the American empire–must be challenged. This is crucial for our survival.
In spite of the floundering economy, the Congress and the administration continue to take on new commitments in foreign aid, education, farming, medicine, multiple efforts at nation building, and preemptive wars around the world. Already we’re entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan, with plans to soon add new trophies to our conquest. War talk abounds as to when Syria, Iran and North Korea will be attacked.
How did all this transpire? Why did the government do it? Why haven’t the people objected? How long will it go on before something is done? Does anyone care?
Will the euphoria of grand military victories–against non-enemies–ever be mellowed? Someday, we as a legislative body must face the reality of the dire situation in which we have allowed ourselves to become enmeshed. Hopefully, it will be soon!
We got here because ideas do have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences, and even the best of intentions have unintended consequences. We need to know exactly what the philosophic ideas were that drove us to this point; then, hopefully, reject them and decide on another set of intellectual parameters.
There is abundant evidence exposing those who drive our foreign policy justifying preemptive war. Those who scheme are proud of the achievements in usurping control over foreign policy. These are the neoconservatives of recent fame. Granted, they are talented and achieved a political victory that all policymakers must admire. But can freedom and the Republic survive this takeover? That question should concern us.
Neoconservatives are obviously in positions of influence and are well-placed throughout our government and the media. An apathetic Congress put up little resistance and abdicated its responsibilities over foreign affairs. The electorate was easily influenced to join in the patriotic fervor supporting the military adventurism advocated by the neoconservatives.
The numbers of those who still hope for truly limited government diminished and had their concerns ignored these past 22 months, during the aftermath of 9-11. Members of Congress were easily influenced to publicly support any domestic policy or foreign military adventure that was supposed to help reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. Believers in limited government were harder to find. Political money, as usual, played a role in pressing Congress into supporting almost any proposal suggested by the neocons. This process–where campaign dollars and lobbying efforts affect policy–is hardly the domain of any single political party, and unfortunately, is the way of life in Washington.
There are many reasons why government continues to grow. It would be naive for anyone to expect otherwise. Since 9-11, protection of privacy, whether medical, personal or financial, has vanished. Free speech and the Fourth Amendment have been under constant attack. Higher welfare expenditures are endorsed by the leadership of both parties. Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)
None of this happened by accident or coincidence. Precise philosophic ideas prompted certain individuals to gain influence to implement these plans. The neoconservatives–a name they gave themselves–diligently worked their way into positions of power and influence. They documented their goals, strategy and moral justification for all they hoped to accomplish. Above all else, they were not and are not conservatives dedicated to limited, constitutional government.
Neo-conservatism has been around for decades and, strangely, has connections to past generations as far back as Machiavelli. Modern-day neo-conservatism was introduced to us in the 1960s. It entails both a detailed strategy as well as a philosophy of government. The ideas of Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly Woodrow Wilson, were quite similar to many of the views of present-day neocons. Neocon spokesman Max Boot brags that what he advocates is “hard Wilsonianism.” In many ways, there’s nothing “neo” about their views, and certainly nothing conservative. Yet they have been able to co-op the conservative movement by advertising themselves as a new or modern form of conservatism.
More recently, the modern-day neocons have come from the far left, a group historically identified as former Trotskyists. Liberal Christopher Hitchins, has recently officially joined the neocons, and it has been reported that he has already been to the White House as an ad hoc consultant. Many neocons now in positions of influence in Washington can trace their status back to Professor Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. One of Strauss’ books was Thoughts on Machiavelli. This book was not a condemnation of Machiavelli’s philosophy. Paul Wolfowitz actually got his PhD under Strauss. Others closely associated with these views are Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan and William Kristol. All are key players in designing our new strategy of preemptive war. Others include: Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute; former CIA Director James Woolsey; Bill Bennett of Book of Virtues fame; Frank Gaffney; Dick Cheney; and Donald Rumsfeld. There are just too many to mention who are philosophically or politically connected to the neocon philosophy in some varying degree.
The godfather of modern-day neo-conservatism is considered to be Irving Kristol, father of Bill Kristol, who set the stage in 1983 with his publication Reflections of a Neoconservative. In this book, Kristol also defends the traditional liberal position on welfare.
More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:
1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means–that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.
5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.
6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and
withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.
11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should
not be limited to the defense of our country.
14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.
Various organizations and publications over the last 30 years have played a significant role in the rise to power of the neoconservatives. It took plenty of money and commitment to produce the intellectual arguments needed to convince the many participants in the movement of its respectability.
…
In addition to publications, multiple think tanks and projects were created to promote their agenda. A product of the Bradley Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) led the neocon charge, but the real push for war came from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) another organization helped by the Bradley Foundation. This occurred in 1998 and was chaired by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Early on, they urged war against Iraq, but were disappointed with the Clinton administration, which never followed through with its periodic bombings. Obviously, these bombings were motivated more by Clinton’s personal and political problems than a belief in the neocon agenda.
The election of 2000 changed all that. …* * * "
Kenneth Stepp agrees with Dennis Kucinick and Ron Paul that we should pull the U.S. troops out of Iraq, now. Mitch McConnell and Hal Rogers say "Stay the Course" in Iraq. Let's Ditch Mitch.
"Neo-conned" speech by Rep. Ron Paul.
U.S. Representative Ron Paul: Neo-conned
Here is one relatively short segment in that long speech which gets to the heart of the matter:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Since the national debt is increasing at a rate greater than a half-trillion dollars per year, the debt limit was recently increased by an astounding $984 billion dollars. Total U.S. government obligations are $43 trillion, while total net worth of U.S. households is just over $40.6 trillion. The country is broke, but no one in Washington seems to notice or care. The philosophic and political commitment for both guns and butter–and especially for expanding the American empire–must be challenged. This is crucial for our survival.
In spite of the floundering economy, the Congress and the administration continue to take on new commitments in foreign aid, education, farming, medicine, multiple efforts at nation building, and preemptive wars around the world. Already we’re entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan, with plans to soon add new trophies to our conquest. War talk abounds as to when Syria, Iran and North Korea will be attacked.
How did all this transpire? Why did the government do it? Why haven’t the people objected? How long will it go on before something is done? Does anyone care?
Will the euphoria of grand military victories–against non-enemies–ever be mellowed? Someday, we as a legislative body must face the reality of the dire situation in which we have allowed ourselves to become enmeshed. Hopefully, it will be soon!
We got here because ideas do have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences, and even the best of intentions have unintended consequences. We need to know exactly what the philosophic ideas were that drove us to this point; then, hopefully, reject them and decide on another set of intellectual parameters.
There is abundant evidence exposing those who drive our foreign policy justifying preemptive war. Those who scheme are proud of the achievements in usurping control over foreign policy. These are the neoconservatives of recent fame. Granted, they are talented and achieved a political victory that all policymakers must admire. But can freedom and the Republic survive this takeover? That question should concern us.
Neoconservatives are obviously in positions of influence and are well-placed throughout our government and the media. An apathetic Congress put up little resistance and abdicated its responsibilities over foreign affairs. The electorate was easily influenced to join in the patriotic fervor supporting the military adventurism advocated by the neoconservatives.
The numbers of those who still hope for truly limited government diminished and had their concerns ignored these past 22 months, during the aftermath of 9-11. Members of Congress were easily influenced to publicly support any domestic policy or foreign military adventure that was supposed to help reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. Believers in limited government were harder to find. Political money, as usual, played a role in pressing Congress into supporting almost any proposal suggested by the neocons. This process–where campaign dollars and lobbying efforts affect policy–is hardly the domain of any single political party, and unfortunately, is the way of life in Washington.
There are many reasons why government continues to grow. It would be naive for anyone to expect otherwise. Since 9-11, protection of privacy, whether medical, personal or financial, has vanished. Free speech and the Fourth Amendment have been under constant attack. Higher welfare expenditures are endorsed by the leadership of both parties. Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)
None of this happened by accident or coincidence. Precise philosophic ideas prompted certain individuals to gain influence to implement these plans. The neoconservatives–a name they gave themselves–diligently worked their way into positions of power and influence. They documented their goals, strategy and moral justification for all they hoped to accomplish. Above all else, they were not and are not conservatives dedicated to limited, constitutional government.
Neo-conservatism has been around for decades and, strangely, has connections to past generations as far back as Machiavelli. Modern-day neo-conservatism was introduced to us in the 1960s. It entails both a detailed strategy as well as a philosophy of government. The ideas of Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly Woodrow Wilson, were quite similar to many of the views of present-day neocons. Neocon spokesman Max Boot brags that what he advocates is “hard Wilsonianism.” In many ways, there’s nothing “neo” about their views, and certainly nothing conservative. Yet they have been able to co-op the conservative movement by advertising themselves as a new or modern form of conservatism.
More recently, the modern-day neocons have come from the far left, a group historically identified as former Trotskyists. Liberal Christopher Hitchins, has recently officially joined the neocons, and it has been reported that he has already been to the White House as an ad hoc consultant. Many neocons now in positions of influence in Washington can trace their status back to Professor Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. One of Strauss’ books was Thoughts on Machiavelli. This book was not a condemnation of Machiavelli’s philosophy. Paul Wolfowitz actually got his PhD under Strauss. Others closely associated with these views are Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan and William Kristol. All are key players in designing our new strategy of preemptive war. Others include: Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute; former CIA Director James Woolsey; Bill Bennett of Book of Virtues fame; Frank Gaffney; Dick Cheney; and Donald Rumsfeld. There are just too many to mention who are philosophically or politically connected to the neocon philosophy in some varying degree.
The godfather of modern-day neo-conservatism is considered to be Irving Kristol, father of Bill Kristol, who set the stage in 1983 with his publication Reflections of a Neoconservative. In this book, Kristol also defends the traditional liberal position on welfare.
More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:
1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means–that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.
5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.
6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and
withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.
11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should
not be limited to the defense of our country.
14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.
Various organizations and publications over the last 30 years have played a significant role in the rise to power of the neoconservatives. It took plenty of money and commitment to produce the intellectual arguments needed to convince the many participants in the movement of its respectability.
…
In addition to publications, multiple think tanks and projects were created to promote their agenda. A product of the Bradley Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) led the neocon charge, but the real push for war came from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) another organization helped by the Bradley Foundation. This occurred in 1998 and was chaired by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Early on, they urged war against Iraq, but were disappointed with the Clinton administration, which never followed through with its periodic bombings. Obviously, these bombings were motivated more by Clinton’s personal and political problems than a belief in the neocon agenda.
The election of 2000 changed all that. …* * * "
Kenneth Stepp agrees with Dennis Kucinick and Ron Paul that we should pull the U.S. troops out of Iraq, now. Mitch McConnell and Hal Rogers say "Stay the Course" in Iraq. Let's Ditch Mitch.
Rep. Ron Paul warns against U.S. invasion of Syria.
"HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 26, 2005
We Have Been Warned
We have been warned. Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, as plans are being laid for the next U.S. led regime change– in Syria. A UN report on the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri elicited this comment from a senior U.S. policy maker: “Out of tragedy comes an extraordinary strategic opportunity.��? This statement reflects the continued neo-conservative, Machiavellian influence on our foreign policy. The “opportunity��? refers to the long-held neo-conservative plan for regime change in Syria, similar to what was carried out in Iraq.
This plan for remaking the Middle East has been around for a long time. Just as 9/11 served the interests of those who longed for changes in Iraq, the sensationalism surrounding Hariri’s death is being used to advance plans to remove Assad.
Congress already has assisted these plans by authorizing the sanctions placed on Syria last year. Harmful sanctions, as applied to Iraq in the 1990s, inevitably represent a major step toward war since they bring havoc to so many innocent people. Syria already has been charged with developing weapons of mass destruction based on no more evidence than was available when Iraq was similarly charged.
Syria has been condemned for not securing its borders, by the same U.S. leaders who cannot secure our own borders. Syria was castigated for placing its troops in Lebanon, a neighboring country, although such action was invited by an elected government and encouraged by the United States. The Syrian occupation of Lebanon elicited no suicide terrorist attacks, as was suffered by Western occupiers.
Condemning Syria for having troops in Lebanon seems strange, considering most of the world sees our 150,000 troops in Iraq as an unwarranted foreign occupation. Syrian troops were far more welcome in Lebanon.
Secretary Rice likewise sees the problems in Syria– that we helped to create– as an opportunity to advance our Middle Eastern agenda. In recent testimony she stated that it was always the administration’s intent to redesign the greater Middle East, and Iraq was only one part of that plan. And once again we have been told that all options are still on the table for dealing with Syria– including war.
The statement that should scare all Americans (and the world) is the assurance by Secretary Rice that the President needs no additional authority from Congress to attack Syria. She argues that authority already has been granted by the resolutions on 9/11 and Iraq. This is not true, but if Congress remains passive to the powers assumed by the executive branch it won’t matter. As the war spreads, the only role for Congress will be to provide funding lest they be criticized for not supporting the troops. In the meantime, the Constitution and our liberties here at home will be further eroded as more Americans die.
This escalation of conflict with Syria comes as a result of the UN report concerning the Hariri death. When we need an excuse for our actions, it’s always nice to rely on the organization that our administration routinely condemns, one that brought us the multi-billion dollar oil-for-food scandal and sexual crimes by UN representatives.
It’s easy to ignore the fact that the report did not implicate Assad, who is targeted for the next regime change. The UN once limited itself to disputes between nations; yet now it’s assumed the UN, like the United States, has a legal and moral right to inject itself into the internal policies of sovereign nations. Yet what is the source of this presumed wisdom? Where is the moral imperative that allows us to become the judge and jury of a domestic murder in a country 6,000 miles from our shores?
Moral, constitutional, and legal arguments for a less aggressive foreign policy receive little attention in Washington. But the law of unintended consequences serves as a thorough teacher for the slow learners and the morally impaired.
Is Iraq not yet enough of a headache for the braggarts of the shock and awe policy?
Are 2,000 lives lost not enough to get their attention?
How many hundreds of billions of dollars must be drained from our economy before it’s noticed?
Is it still plausible that deficits don’t matter?
Is the apparent victory for Iran in the Shiite theocracy we’ve created in Iraq not yet seen as a disturbing consequence of the ill-fated Iraq regime change effort?
When we have our way with the next election in Lebanon and Hezbollah wins, what do we do?
If our effort to destabilize Syria is no more successful than our efforts in Iraq, then what?
If destabilizing Syria leads to the same in Iran, what are our options?
If we can’t leave now, we’ll surely not leave then– we’ll be told we must stay to honor the fallen to prove the cause was just.
We should remember Ronald Reagan’s admonition regarding this area of the world. Ronald Reagan reflected on Lebanon in his memoirs, describing the Middle East as a jungle and Middle East politics as irrational. It forced him to rethink his policy in the region. It’s time we do some rethinking as well."
Let's Ditch Mitch.
BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 26, 2005
We Have Been Warned
We have been warned. Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, as plans are being laid for the next U.S. led regime change– in Syria. A UN report on the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri elicited this comment from a senior U.S. policy maker: “Out of tragedy comes an extraordinary strategic opportunity.��? This statement reflects the continued neo-conservative, Machiavellian influence on our foreign policy. The “opportunity��? refers to the long-held neo-conservative plan for regime change in Syria, similar to what was carried out in Iraq.
This plan for remaking the Middle East has been around for a long time. Just as 9/11 served the interests of those who longed for changes in Iraq, the sensationalism surrounding Hariri’s death is being used to advance plans to remove Assad.
Congress already has assisted these plans by authorizing the sanctions placed on Syria last year. Harmful sanctions, as applied to Iraq in the 1990s, inevitably represent a major step toward war since they bring havoc to so many innocent people. Syria already has been charged with developing weapons of mass destruction based on no more evidence than was available when Iraq was similarly charged.
Syria has been condemned for not securing its borders, by the same U.S. leaders who cannot secure our own borders. Syria was castigated for placing its troops in Lebanon, a neighboring country, although such action was invited by an elected government and encouraged by the United States. The Syrian occupation of Lebanon elicited no suicide terrorist attacks, as was suffered by Western occupiers.
Condemning Syria for having troops in Lebanon seems strange, considering most of the world sees our 150,000 troops in Iraq as an unwarranted foreign occupation. Syrian troops were far more welcome in Lebanon.
Secretary Rice likewise sees the problems in Syria– that we helped to create– as an opportunity to advance our Middle Eastern agenda. In recent testimony she stated that it was always the administration’s intent to redesign the greater Middle East, and Iraq was only one part of that plan. And once again we have been told that all options are still on the table for dealing with Syria– including war.
The statement that should scare all Americans (and the world) is the assurance by Secretary Rice that the President needs no additional authority from Congress to attack Syria. She argues that authority already has been granted by the resolutions on 9/11 and Iraq. This is not true, but if Congress remains passive to the powers assumed by the executive branch it won’t matter. As the war spreads, the only role for Congress will be to provide funding lest they be criticized for not supporting the troops. In the meantime, the Constitution and our liberties here at home will be further eroded as more Americans die.
This escalation of conflict with Syria comes as a result of the UN report concerning the Hariri death. When we need an excuse for our actions, it’s always nice to rely on the organization that our administration routinely condemns, one that brought us the multi-billion dollar oil-for-food scandal and sexual crimes by UN representatives.
It’s easy to ignore the fact that the report did not implicate Assad, who is targeted for the next regime change. The UN once limited itself to disputes between nations; yet now it’s assumed the UN, like the United States, has a legal and moral right to inject itself into the internal policies of sovereign nations. Yet what is the source of this presumed wisdom? Where is the moral imperative that allows us to become the judge and jury of a domestic murder in a country 6,000 miles from our shores?
Moral, constitutional, and legal arguments for a less aggressive foreign policy receive little attention in Washington. But the law of unintended consequences serves as a thorough teacher for the slow learners and the morally impaired.
Is Iraq not yet enough of a headache for the braggarts of the shock and awe policy?
Are 2,000 lives lost not enough to get their attention?
How many hundreds of billions of dollars must be drained from our economy before it’s noticed?
Is it still plausible that deficits don’t matter?
Is the apparent victory for Iran in the Shiite theocracy we’ve created in Iraq not yet seen as a disturbing consequence of the ill-fated Iraq regime change effort?
When we have our way with the next election in Lebanon and Hezbollah wins, what do we do?
If our effort to destabilize Syria is no more successful than our efforts in Iraq, then what?
If destabilizing Syria leads to the same in Iran, what are our options?
If we can’t leave now, we’ll surely not leave then– we’ll be told we must stay to honor the fallen to prove the cause was just.
We should remember Ronald Reagan’s admonition regarding this area of the world. Ronald Reagan reflected on Lebanon in his memoirs, describing the Middle East as a jungle and Middle East politics as irrational. It forced him to rethink his policy in the region. It’s time we do some rethinking as well."
Let's Ditch Mitch.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
William F. Buckley comments on Iraq war.
E-mail Author
Author Archive
Send to a Friend
Print Version
February 24, 2006, 2:51 p.m.
It Didn’t Work
"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.
The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats.
A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.
One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.
The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.
This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail — in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.
Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.
He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.
Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.
(c) 2006 Universal Press Syndicate
Author Archive
Send to a Friend
Print Version
February 24, 2006, 2:51 p.m.
It Didn’t Work
"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.
The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats.
A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.
One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.
The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.
This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail — in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.
Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.
He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.
Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.
(c) 2006 Universal Press Syndicate
Daily Kos blogspot comments on Mitch McConnell.
"In 31 months of SurveyUSA tracking, United States Senator from Kentucky Mitch McConnell has had job approval ratings ranging from a low of 48% to a high of 56%. His Net Job Approval, determined by subtracting disapproval from approval, ranged from Plus 4 last month to Plus 24 in June of 2005.
"This month, for the first time, McConnell has a negative Net Job Approval — Minus 3. His approval rating is at 44%, the lowest since tracking began in May of 2005, and his disapproval is at an all-time high of 47%.
"So what's dragging him down? Is it his endemic corruption? Or is it his leadership of the hated GOP Senate caucus? Perhaps it's his inexplicable war on SCHIP. Or could it be his cheerleading for the failed war in Iraq? Maybe it's his local electoral failures -- first, in seeing his handpicked candidate go down in flames in the GOP gubernatorial primary, or maybe seeing him cozy up to the hated, unpopular, and ultimately ousted for Republican governor Ernie Fletcher.
"Whatever the reasons, McConnell is headed south, and things won't be getting any easer anytime soon. And he doesn't even quite understand what's about to hit him:
"I'm a bigger target, but I'm a pretty big boy," McConnell said. "And I'll tell you this, as I've said before, they throw a pebble at me, I'm going to throw a boulder back."
"Pebbles"? He thinks people will be throwing pebbles at him? If so, he's in for a rude awakening.
"On the web:
"Draft Crit Luallen
"Race tracker wiki: KY-Sen
::Tags: KY-Sen, Kentucky, Senate, 2008, Mitch McConnell (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions Permalink | 94 comments
" Comments:
Daily Kos Help
Murtha put the nail in McConell's coffin today.
"Sometimes I wish I could change my nickname" Me
by givemhellHarryR on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:03:51 PM PST
If I didn't know better... (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Odysseus, gogol, hilltopper, Wary, homoaffectional
I would say that the Dems actually understand politics and are getting a twofer here. The first part is that they give the American people what they desire and the base some red-meat: a way out of the war. The second part is that they get to put the MINORITY Leader of the Opposition Party in his place and push him into more vulnerable electorial territory. Unfortunately, I know better.
"Frankly, you epitomize weak. Your every pore exudes feebleness. You *are* surrender monkeys." - Meteor Blades to Capitulation Dems
by RichM on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:36:52 PM PST
[ Parent ]
You can contribute now! (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RDemocrat
Contribute now to the KY-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
Contributions to the KY-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008 will be sent to the eventual Democratic nominee after the primary.
by Wynonie Harris on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:25:26 PM PST
[ Parent ]
It's Graeme Frost (20+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, glitterscale, Andrew C White, emilymv, Miss Blue, MadEye, Phil S 33, ivorybill, hilltopper, Ky DEM, Wary, JML9999, Lobsters, beltane, Greasy Grant, OrdinaryGal, pickandshovel, Chrispy67, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
Who could have imagined a downside in trashing a 12 year old?
by Downpuppy on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:04:30 PM PST
Maybe Mitch meant to say (16+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, gogol, glitterscale, AdmiralNaismith, MadEye, ivorybill, hilltopper, karateexplosions, Wary, Downpuppy, JML9999, homoaffectional, beltane, OrdinaryGal, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
"If they throw a pebble at me, I'm going to throw a boulder at a small, injured child."
"She was very young,he thought,...she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing." -1984
by aggressiveprogressive on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:15:26 PM PST
[ Parent ]
His voice trailed off after Boulder (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:aggressiveprogressive, Wary, RDemocrat
and said the rest under his breath
Be careful what you shoot at, most things in here don't react well to bullets-Sean Connery .... Captain Marko Ramius -Hunt For Red October
by JML9999 on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:24:47 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Trashing opponents has always worked so well (7+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Odysseus, glitterscale, hilltopper, Wary, Downpuppy, JML9999, RDemocrat
the GOP no longer has a sense of boundaries. They have shockingly little awareness of that tipping point where hardball politics suddenly looks like bullying. Frist fell after he tried to diagnose a brain-dead woman and McConnell might well fall for beating up on a 12 year old.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ...Thomas Jefferson
by ivorybill on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:16:11 PM PST
[ Parent ]
ALL ditch mitch has left (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RDemocrat
Is $10 MILLION in campaign contributions and 'Trashing' his oppenants--
KY is MOVING ON!!!
That won't do it any longer!
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:17:39 PM PST
[ Parent ]
It's more than SCHIP (1+ / 0-)
ecommended by:RDemocrat
itch Mitch is totally absent from our state!
He got old Ernie Fletcher in as gov. then he got old Annie Northup to run against him and he left them all high and dry--
he's out for old MITCH and no one else, and that's becoming apparent to everyone, EVEN his GRIM OLD PARTY machine he helped to build but is doing NOTHING to help them out!
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:15:42 PM PST
[ Parent ]
I Suppose... (9+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Miss Blue, Phil S 33, Ky DEM, Wary, JML9999, vet, Lobsters, Greasy Grant, RDemocrat
this isn't helping him much.
Sucks to be a water carrier for a president three quarters of Americans hate.
The revolution will not be televised, but we'll analyze it to death at The Next Hurrah.
by DHinMI on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:04:40 PM PST
Nobody is forcing Mitch to be Bush's &@tch (7+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, Wary, JML9999, vet, homoaffectional, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
He made that decision all on his own.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you" ~ Pericles
by Chrispy67 on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:13:56 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Mitch is 'willing' to be (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:homoaffectional, RDemocrat
Joined at the hip of Bush--
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:19:17 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Didn't Howard Baker, Bob Dole and Trent Lott... (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Wary, Lobsters, homoaffectional, pickandshovel, RDemocrat
always get re-elected easily in their home states when they were Senate Republican leaders? Things have changed tremendously in GOoPer-land.
"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'I need to quit drinking!'" - Greasy Grant
by Greasy Grant on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:05:29 PM PST
I don't know about Lott (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:rlochow, Phil S 33, Wary, Greasy Grant
But Howard Baker is/was very like and respected by everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike. He always played fair and square.
by RandySF on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:20:13 PM PST
[ Parent ]
But Tom Daschle went down... (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:ivorybill, Wary, homoaffectional, beltane, Greasy Grant, RDemocrat
...when he was the Dem Maj/Min Leader.
Time we turn the tables on the Rethugs - send Harry Reid into Kentucky to campaign for McConnell's opponent. Fair is fair.
9-11 changed everything? Well, Katrina changed it back.
by varro on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:34:09 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Mitch not 'respected' by even his own (2+ / 0-)"
Let's Ditch Mitch.
"This month, for the first time, McConnell has a negative Net Job Approval — Minus 3. His approval rating is at 44%, the lowest since tracking began in May of 2005, and his disapproval is at an all-time high of 47%.
"So what's dragging him down? Is it his endemic corruption? Or is it his leadership of the hated GOP Senate caucus? Perhaps it's his inexplicable war on SCHIP. Or could it be his cheerleading for the failed war in Iraq? Maybe it's his local electoral failures -- first, in seeing his handpicked candidate go down in flames in the GOP gubernatorial primary, or maybe seeing him cozy up to the hated, unpopular, and ultimately ousted for Republican governor Ernie Fletcher.
"Whatever the reasons, McConnell is headed south, and things won't be getting any easer anytime soon. And he doesn't even quite understand what's about to hit him:
"I'm a bigger target, but I'm a pretty big boy," McConnell said. "And I'll tell you this, as I've said before, they throw a pebble at me, I'm going to throw a boulder back."
"Pebbles"? He thinks people will be throwing pebbles at him? If so, he's in for a rude awakening.
"On the web:
"Draft Crit Luallen
"Race tracker wiki: KY-Sen
::Tags: KY-Sen, Kentucky, Senate, 2008, Mitch McConnell (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions Permalink | 94 comments
" Comments:
Daily Kos Help
Murtha put the nail in McConell's coffin today.
"Sometimes I wish I could change my nickname" Me
by givemhellHarryR on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:03:51 PM PST
If I didn't know better... (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Odysseus, gogol, hilltopper, Wary, homoaffectional
I would say that the Dems actually understand politics and are getting a twofer here. The first part is that they give the American people what they desire and the base some red-meat: a way out of the war. The second part is that they get to put the MINORITY Leader of the Opposition Party in his place and push him into more vulnerable electorial territory. Unfortunately, I know better.
"Frankly, you epitomize weak. Your every pore exudes feebleness. You *are* surrender monkeys." - Meteor Blades to Capitulation Dems
by RichM on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:36:52 PM PST
[ Parent ]
You can contribute now! (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RDemocrat
Contribute now to the KY-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008
Contributions to the KY-Sen Democratic Nominee Fund 2008 will be sent to the eventual Democratic nominee after the primary.
by Wynonie Harris on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:25:26 PM PST
[ Parent ]
It's Graeme Frost (20+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, glitterscale, Andrew C White, emilymv, Miss Blue, MadEye, Phil S 33, ivorybill, hilltopper, Ky DEM, Wary, JML9999, Lobsters, beltane, Greasy Grant, OrdinaryGal, pickandshovel, Chrispy67, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
Who could have imagined a downside in trashing a 12 year old?
by Downpuppy on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:04:30 PM PST
Maybe Mitch meant to say (16+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, gogol, glitterscale, AdmiralNaismith, MadEye, ivorybill, hilltopper, karateexplosions, Wary, Downpuppy, JML9999, homoaffectional, beltane, OrdinaryGal, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
"If they throw a pebble at me, I'm going to throw a boulder at a small, injured child."
"She was very young,he thought,...she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing." -1984
by aggressiveprogressive on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:15:26 PM PST
[ Parent ]
His voice trailed off after Boulder (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:aggressiveprogressive, Wary, RDemocrat
and said the rest under his breath
Be careful what you shoot at, most things in here don't react well to bullets-Sean Connery .... Captain Marko Ramius -Hunt For Red October
by JML9999 on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:24:47 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Trashing opponents has always worked so well (7+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Odysseus, glitterscale, hilltopper, Wary, Downpuppy, JML9999, RDemocrat
the GOP no longer has a sense of boundaries. They have shockingly little awareness of that tipping point where hardball politics suddenly looks like bullying. Frist fell after he tried to diagnose a brain-dead woman and McConnell might well fall for beating up on a 12 year old.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ...Thomas Jefferson
by ivorybill on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:16:11 PM PST
[ Parent ]
ALL ditch mitch has left (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RDemocrat
Is $10 MILLION in campaign contributions and 'Trashing' his oppenants--
KY is MOVING ON!!!
That won't do it any longer!
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:17:39 PM PST
[ Parent ]
It's more than SCHIP (1+ / 0-)
ecommended by:RDemocrat
itch Mitch is totally absent from our state!
He got old Ernie Fletcher in as gov. then he got old Annie Northup to run against him and he left them all high and dry--
he's out for old MITCH and no one else, and that's becoming apparent to everyone, EVEN his GRIM OLD PARTY machine he helped to build but is doing NOTHING to help them out!
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:15:42 PM PST
[ Parent ]
I Suppose... (9+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Miss Blue, Phil S 33, Ky DEM, Wary, JML9999, vet, Lobsters, Greasy Grant, RDemocrat
this isn't helping him much.
Sucks to be a water carrier for a president three quarters of Americans hate.
The revolution will not be televised, but we'll analyze it to death at The Next Hurrah.
by DHinMI on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:04:40 PM PST
Nobody is forcing Mitch to be Bush's &@tch (7+ / 0-)
Recommended by:RichM, Wary, JML9999, vet, homoaffectional, RDemocrat, MantisOahu
He made that decision all on his own.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you" ~ Pericles
by Chrispy67 on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:13:56 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Mitch is 'willing' to be (2+ / 0-)
Recommended by:homoaffectional, RDemocrat
Joined at the hip of Bush--
Ditch Mitch McConnell-do the country a favor http://www.ditchmitchky.com/
by Wary on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 02:19:17 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Didn't Howard Baker, Bob Dole and Trent Lott... (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Wary, Lobsters, homoaffectional, pickandshovel, RDemocrat
always get re-elected easily in their home states when they were Senate Republican leaders? Things have changed tremendously in GOoPer-land.
"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'I need to quit drinking!'" - Greasy Grant
by Greasy Grant on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:05:29 PM PST
I don't know about Lott (5+ / 0-)
Recommended by:rlochow, Phil S 33, Wary, Greasy Grant
But Howard Baker is/was very like and respected by everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike. He always played fair and square.
by RandySF on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:20:13 PM PST
[ Parent ]
But Tom Daschle went down... (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:ivorybill, Wary, homoaffectional, beltane, Greasy Grant, RDemocrat
...when he was the Dem Maj/Min Leader.
Time we turn the tables on the Rethugs - send Harry Reid into Kentucky to campaign for McConnell's opponent. Fair is fair.
9-11 changed everything? Well, Katrina changed it back.
by varro on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 01:34:09 PM PST
[ Parent ]
Mitch not 'respected' by even his own (2+ / 0-)"
Let's Ditch Mitch.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Bush's support among Kentucky men collapses.
"Approval ratings take big plunge in Kentucky in November
"November 14th, 2007 Matt Gunterman
"The Survey USA approval/disapproval numbers for Pres. George W. Bush (R) took a significant turn for the worse [from the perspective of Bush loyalists like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R)] in November in Kentucky and are approaching their respective historical extremes. From 41/57 in October, Bush’s present approval/disapproval standing is 35/62. The president’s worst showing in SUSA’s numbers in Kentucky came in May 2006, when he stood at 34/64.
"You can find the numbers here. Trends of note are:
"1. An utter collapse in support among Kentucky men. Bush went from 51/47 in October to 39/58 in November. The numbers among women stayed relatively stable: 30/66 in October and 32/65 in November.
"2. The president’s approval among Conservatives dipped noticeably and remained deplorable among Moderates and Liberals.
"3. His approval among Democrats and Independents worsened significantly, and his numbers among Republicans stayed near historic lows.
"4. His approval fell in every geographic region of the state.
"Boy, oh, boy. McConnell surely is a political genius, isn’t he? Why show leadership for Kentucky when he can show lemmingship with George W. Bush?
"3 Responses to “Pres. George W. Bush’s approval ratings take big plunge in Kentucky in November”
"C. Wash Says:
"November 14th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
"Blogs For Bush ditches Bush.
"The right-wing website Blogs For Bush is no more as of this week. The site has announced that it is changing its name to Blogs For Victory. A possible explanation for the name change? “Falling ratings that seem to coincide with their President’s popularity.”
"Dave M. Says:
"November 15th, 2007 at 9:10 am
"Make that into a bumper sticker with Mitch’s face on it and I could be tempted to buy one!
"Heck it’s such a good comment (imho) that you should forward it to the organizations running ads against mitch.
"Kenneth Stepp Says:
"November 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
"Fletcher, Bush, and McConnell, what a combo of losers!
Leave a Reply or a Comment.
"November 14th, 2007 Matt Gunterman
"The Survey USA approval/disapproval numbers for Pres. George W. Bush (R) took a significant turn for the worse [from the perspective of Bush loyalists like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R)] in November in Kentucky and are approaching their respective historical extremes. From 41/57 in October, Bush’s present approval/disapproval standing is 35/62. The president’s worst showing in SUSA’s numbers in Kentucky came in May 2006, when he stood at 34/64.
"You can find the numbers here. Trends of note are:
"1. An utter collapse in support among Kentucky men. Bush went from 51/47 in October to 39/58 in November. The numbers among women stayed relatively stable: 30/66 in October and 32/65 in November.
"2. The president’s approval among Conservatives dipped noticeably and remained deplorable among Moderates and Liberals.
"3. His approval among Democrats and Independents worsened significantly, and his numbers among Republicans stayed near historic lows.
"4. His approval fell in every geographic region of the state.
"Boy, oh, boy. McConnell surely is a political genius, isn’t he? Why show leadership for Kentucky when he can show lemmingship with George W. Bush?
"3 Responses to “Pres. George W. Bush’s approval ratings take big plunge in Kentucky in November”
"C. Wash Says:
"November 14th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
"Blogs For Bush ditches Bush.
"The right-wing website Blogs For Bush is no more as of this week. The site has announced that it is changing its name to Blogs For Victory. A possible explanation for the name change? “Falling ratings that seem to coincide with their President’s popularity.”
"Dave M. Says:
"November 15th, 2007 at 9:10 am
"Make that into a bumper sticker with Mitch’s face on it and I could be tempted to buy one!
"Heck it’s such a good comment (imho) that you should forward it to the organizations running ads against mitch.
"Kenneth Stepp Says:
"November 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
"Fletcher, Bush, and McConnell, what a combo of losers!
Leave a Reply or a Comment.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
$1.5 Trillion to "stay the course" says Daily Kos.
The Daily Kos says:
"$1.5 Trillion
"by BarbinMD
"Mon Nov 12, 2007 at 11:53:23 PM PST
"When writing about the monetary cost of the war in Iraq in recent months, typing out, "$500 billion," always boggled the mind. Who knew that that wasn't the half of it...so to speak:
"The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
"That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled "The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War," estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.
"And as you take a few moments to let that sink in, remember this from 2003, when then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz:
"...spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.
"Well, you know what happens when we assume."
Hal Rogers says "Stay the Course". Mitch McConnell says "Stay the Course". The cost is almost 4000 U.S. war dead in Iraq, plus $1.5 Trillion of the U.S. taxpayers' money, or, more specifically, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far costed the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. You could have sent your kid to college with your $20,000, but, instead, Hal Rogers, Mitch McConnell, Cheney, and Bush have blown your $20,000 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How is it going? How does it feel to "Stay the Course"? How does it feel to know that your son will have to take a job in the mines instead of going to college because you always vote for Hal and Mitch and Cheney and Bush so you can "Stay the Course"? How does it feel to know that there are 80,000 Iraqi war dead because you always vote to "Stay the Course" with the U.S. war and military occupation in Iraq? Are you going to keep on with "Stay the Course" and vote for Mitch and Hal again next time? Sure, a lot of patriots have died because you keep voting to "Stay the Course", but is that is worth it? [because Mitch and Hal bring big government subsidy checks and government earmark checks to your small town and your rural county, don't they]. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to "Stay the Course"? Of course not. Take the peace pledge, now. Let Hal and Mitch know that you are through with them. Let them know that they are both going to be ditched by the voters with the rising Democratic tide that swept Fletcher out of office this year, and will sweep them out of office next year.
"$1.5 Trillion
"by BarbinMD
"Mon Nov 12, 2007 at 11:53:23 PM PST
"When writing about the monetary cost of the war in Iraq in recent months, typing out, "$500 billion," always boggled the mind. Who knew that that wasn't the half of it...so to speak:
"The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
"That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled "The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War," estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.
"And as you take a few moments to let that sink in, remember this from 2003, when then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz:
"...spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.
"Well, you know what happens when we assume."
Hal Rogers says "Stay the Course". Mitch McConnell says "Stay the Course". The cost is almost 4000 U.S. war dead in Iraq, plus $1.5 Trillion of the U.S. taxpayers' money, or, more specifically, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far costed the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. You could have sent your kid to college with your $20,000, but, instead, Hal Rogers, Mitch McConnell, Cheney, and Bush have blown your $20,000 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How is it going? How does it feel to "Stay the Course"? How does it feel to know that your son will have to take a job in the mines instead of going to college because you always vote for Hal and Mitch and Cheney and Bush so you can "Stay the Course"? How does it feel to know that there are 80,000 Iraqi war dead because you always vote to "Stay the Course" with the U.S. war and military occupation in Iraq? Are you going to keep on with "Stay the Course" and vote for Mitch and Hal again next time? Sure, a lot of patriots have died because you keep voting to "Stay the Course", but is that is worth it? [because Mitch and Hal bring big government subsidy checks and government earmark checks to your small town and your rural county, don't they]. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to "Stay the Course"? Of course not. Take the peace pledge, now. Let Hal and Mitch know that you are through with them. Let them know that they are both going to be ditched by the voters with the rising Democratic tide that swept Fletcher out of office this year, and will sweep them out of office next year.
Friday, November 09, 2007
"Mitch" McConnell's Civil Rights voting record.
Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
(Back to top)
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State 0 percent in 2006.
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now 0 percent in 2006.
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 4 percent in 2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 25 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Iranian American Political Action Committee 100 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 7 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 0 percent in 2005.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 5 percent in 2005.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Council of La Raza 0 percent in 2005.
2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 0 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 4 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 17 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 9 percent in 2003-2004.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 6 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 7 percent in 2003.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 20 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 19 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 21 percent in 2001-2002.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 25 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 27 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 18 percent in 2001.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 29 percent in 2000.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 13 percent in 2000.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 2000.
1999-2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1999-2000.
1999-2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 13 percent in 1999-2000.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 17 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda 0 percent in 1999.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 17 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 20 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 10 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda 18 percent in 1997-1998.
1997 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 33 percent in 1997.
1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 22 percent in 1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 22 percent in 1995-1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 20 percent in 1995-1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 1995-1996.
(Back to top)
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State 0 percent in 2006.
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now 0 percent in 2006.
2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 4 percent in 2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 25 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Iranian American Political Action Committee 100 percent in 2005-2006.
2005-2006 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 7 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 0 percent in 2005.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 5 percent in 2005.
2005 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Council of La Raza 0 percent in 2005.
2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 0 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 4 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 17 percent in 2003-2004.
2003-2004 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 9 percent in 2003-2004.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 6 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 7 percent in 2003.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 20 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Arab American Institute 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 19 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 21 percent in 2001-2002.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 25 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 27 percent in 2001.
2001 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 18 percent in 2001.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 29 percent in 2000.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the League of United Latin American Citizens 13 percent in 2000.
2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 2000.
1999-2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1999-2000.
1999-2000 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 13 percent in 1999-2000.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 17 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 1999.
1999 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda 0 percent in 1999.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 17 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 0 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 20 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 10 percent in 1997-1998.
1997-1998 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda 18 percent in 1997-1998.
1997 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 33 percent in 1997.
1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 22 percent in 1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Human Rights Campaign 22 percent in 1995-1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 20 percent in 1995-1996.
1995-1996 Senator McConnell supported the interests of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 20 percent in 1995-1996.
Alaska Report opines Mitch MoConnell has lost his mind.
"McConnell loses mind - says Iraq war "winding down"
"November 8, 2007
"The Senate's Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, actually said Thursday that the Iraq war is "winding down."
"McConnell said this two days after a report came out that this is the deadliest year for the American military in the Iraq war.
"It comes as Democrats are launching another attempt at pulling combat troops out of Iraq.
"The Kentucky senator pointed to recent newspaper reports of lower death tolls and insisted there will be "fewer and fewer troops in Iraq, fewer and fewer casualties, more and more ... return to normalcy."
"He spoke to a handful of reporters on the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a proposal to temporarily fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and set the goal of pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq in a year.
"A similar bill passed Congress in May but was vetoed and killed. The latest effort could meet a similar fate as Democrats show no sign that they have gained the votes to override the president's block.
"At the same time, Democrats point out that the war is a continued disaster.
"This is not working, it's a war without end," said Pelosi. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. We must reverse it."
© AlaskaReport News"
Did you know that some members of the Alaska National Guard served a hitch in Iraq, returned home, and the very next week were shipped back to Iraq for another hitch of duty? The Alaska National Guard units have been especially hard hit by the "Staying the Course" of McConnell and Hal Rogers that has cost so many American lives in Iraq. Ditch Mitch. Ditch Hal, too.
"November 8, 2007
"The Senate's Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, actually said Thursday that the Iraq war is "winding down."
"McConnell said this two days after a report came out that this is the deadliest year for the American military in the Iraq war.
"It comes as Democrats are launching another attempt at pulling combat troops out of Iraq.
"The Kentucky senator pointed to recent newspaper reports of lower death tolls and insisted there will be "fewer and fewer troops in Iraq, fewer and fewer casualties, more and more ... return to normalcy."
"He spoke to a handful of reporters on the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a proposal to temporarily fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and set the goal of pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq in a year.
"A similar bill passed Congress in May but was vetoed and killed. The latest effort could meet a similar fate as Democrats show no sign that they have gained the votes to override the president's block.
"At the same time, Democrats point out that the war is a continued disaster.
"This is not working, it's a war without end," said Pelosi. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. We must reverse it."
© AlaskaReport News"
Did you know that some members of the Alaska National Guard served a hitch in Iraq, returned home, and the very next week were shipped back to Iraq for another hitch of duty? The Alaska National Guard units have been especially hard hit by the "Staying the Course" of McConnell and Hal Rogers that has cost so many American lives in Iraq. Ditch Mitch. Ditch Hal, too.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Hiking on the Sheltowee Trace in Kentucky.
Here am I hiking along the Sheltowee Trace in Appalachian Kentucky. Kentucky has, probably, the best mountain woodland hiking trails, anywhere. They say the best things in life are free. You can hike all over the woodland trails of Kentucky for free on most trails. The Sheltowee Trace runs near the Cumberland Falls, near London, and near McKee, heading northeast.
Christmas/Chanakah Card List.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post
"Christmas/Chanakah Card List.":
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, or ANY military
hospital will NOT accept these. Read the official
statement here:
http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/Lists/WRNews/DispForm.aspx?Id=25&
"Christmas/Chanakah Card List.":
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, or ANY military
hospital will NOT accept these. Read the official
statement here:
http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/Lists/WRNews/DispForm.aspx?Id=25&
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Elections glance.
The election trends look good for the Democrats of Kentucky. It looks like Trey Grayson and Richie Farmer have weathered the Democratic storm. Currently Beshear is leading Fletcher by 20 per cent. Down the ticket, it looks like the Democrats will hold onto the Auditor's office, the Treasurer's office, and the Attorney General's office. Locally, for Burning Springs, it looks like Oscar Gayle House will be the new Circuit Judge, and Michael Caperton will be the new Court of Appeals Judge. My congratulations to the winners and condolences to the losers.
"Stay the Course" results in two more Kentucky war dead in Iraq.
"Flags flown in honor of Fort Campbell soldiers killed in Iraq
"STAFF, WIRE REPORTS
"Flags at state buildings will remain at half-staff in honor of a Fort Campbell soldier killed in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near her vehicle.
"The flags will be flown in 2nd Lt. Tracy L. Alger's honor until after her funeral; arrangements are incomplete. Alger was a quartermaster officer assigned to the Forward Support Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team for the 101st Airborne Division.
"The Army confirmed Monday that Alger, 30, of New Auburn, Wis., died Thursday from wounds suffered in the explosion, the Army said.
"Alger's mother, Pauline Knutson, says family and friends put up a memorial Saturday in Wisconsin that included a flag pole.
"Knutson says her daughter began considering serving in the Army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Alger grew up in New Auburn and studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-River Fall.
"Flags are also currently being flown at half-staff in recognition of another Fort Campbell soldier whose funeral arrangements are not yet set. Sgt. Louis A. Griese, 30, of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., died Oct. 31 in Tikrit, Iraq, of injuries he received when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division."
Hal Rogers said "Stay the Course". Mitch said "Stay the Course". How many patriots must we bury to satisfy the Republican desire to "Stay the Course" in the failed war in Iraq. We can bury a Ft. Campbell, Kentucky lady-lieutenant and bury a Ft. Campbtee, Kentucky Sergeant, and for what? Soon there will be four thousand American war dead in the neverending war in Iraq. I am proud to have stood up against Hal Rogers and to have given the Fifth District voters a choice of whether to "Stay the Course" in Iraq, or whether to save our children's lives and bring them home from that Sunni vs.Shiite Muslim Civil War. No, the Sunni Muslims are not grateful for the American war dead in Iraq. No, the Shiite Muslims are not grateful for the American war dead in Iraq. The neocons want to have an empire with Iraq as a province in some giant empire controlled by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Mitch and Hal are a part of those plans also. Let's Ditch Mitch. It's time to elect more Democrats to all offices.
"STAFF, WIRE REPORTS
"Flags at state buildings will remain at half-staff in honor of a Fort Campbell soldier killed in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near her vehicle.
"The flags will be flown in 2nd Lt. Tracy L. Alger's honor until after her funeral; arrangements are incomplete. Alger was a quartermaster officer assigned to the Forward Support Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team for the 101st Airborne Division.
"The Army confirmed Monday that Alger, 30, of New Auburn, Wis., died Thursday from wounds suffered in the explosion, the Army said.
"Alger's mother, Pauline Knutson, says family and friends put up a memorial Saturday in Wisconsin that included a flag pole.
"Knutson says her daughter began considering serving in the Army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Alger grew up in New Auburn and studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-River Fall.
"Flags are also currently being flown at half-staff in recognition of another Fort Campbell soldier whose funeral arrangements are not yet set. Sgt. Louis A. Griese, 30, of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., died Oct. 31 in Tikrit, Iraq, of injuries he received when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division."
Hal Rogers said "Stay the Course". Mitch said "Stay the Course". How many patriots must we bury to satisfy the Republican desire to "Stay the Course" in the failed war in Iraq. We can bury a Ft. Campbell, Kentucky lady-lieutenant and bury a Ft. Campbtee, Kentucky Sergeant, and for what? Soon there will be four thousand American war dead in the neverending war in Iraq. I am proud to have stood up against Hal Rogers and to have given the Fifth District voters a choice of whether to "Stay the Course" in Iraq, or whether to save our children's lives and bring them home from that Sunni vs.Shiite Muslim Civil War. No, the Sunni Muslims are not grateful for the American war dead in Iraq. No, the Shiite Muslims are not grateful for the American war dead in Iraq. The neocons want to have an empire with Iraq as a province in some giant empire controlled by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Mitch and Hal are a part of those plans also. Let's Ditch Mitch. It's time to elect more Democrats to all offices.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Vote for Dr. Dan and Steve Beshear!
On the 2006 Campaign trail, Kenneth Stepp is shaking hands with Dr. Dan. Next year it will be Lt. Gov. Dan. Kenneth Stepp endorses Steve Beshear for Governor and Dr. Dan for Lt. Governor, and will vote for Steve Beshear for Governor and for Dr. Dan for Lt. Governor tomorrow, election Tuesday. Remember, vote for the Democrats, the Democrats are your friends. Steve Beshear is your friend. Dr. Dan is your friend. I hope to visit Dr. Dan--excuse me, Lt. Gov. Dan next year in Frankfort.
Mitch targeted by MoveOn organization.
Political Insight and Analysis From The Wall Street Journal’s Capital Bureau September 20, 2007, 11:53 am
MoveOn’s Next Target: Mitch McConnell
Susan Davis reports on the 2008 election.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), up for re-election next year, is the latest target of antiwar group MoveOn.org.
The group is paying $100,000 to broadcast an ad on Kentucky stations and nationally on CNN starting Monday. The ad attacks McConnell and Senate Republicans for voting against a proposal by Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) to give troops more time at home between overseas tours. The proposal failed on a largely party-line vote in the Senate Wednesday, which David Rogers reported on in today’s Wall Street Journal.
The ad is part of the left-wing group’s “Betrayal of Trust” series that targeted Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Here’s the script for the McConnell concludes: “This week, Republicans who brought us this awful war, turned their backs on the men and women who fight it. Mitch McConnell. The Republicans. A betrayal of trust.”
While Democrats would like to see McConnell defeated, he’s a powerhouse in Kentucky politics and any serious campaign to beat him would be bruising and expensive. However, a recent poll by the Lexington Herald Leader showed 55% of Kentucky voters are unhappy with McConnell’s stance on Iraq, while 37% approve. The poll also shows a 47% approval rate and 44% disapproval.
A McConnell spokesman dismissed MoveOn’s efforts. “Seems to me that they’re frustrated that they can’t get their way in the Congress and with the blowback they got for calling Gen. Petraeus a traitor,” said Don Stewart. “Given their position on our commander in the field and other outrageous remarks, it’s the people that they like that need to be nervous, not the people that disagree with them.”
MoveOn’s Next Target: Mitch McConnell
Susan Davis reports on the 2008 election.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), up for re-election next year, is the latest target of antiwar group MoveOn.org.
The group is paying $100,000 to broadcast an ad on Kentucky stations and nationally on CNN starting Monday. The ad attacks McConnell and Senate Republicans for voting against a proposal by Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) to give troops more time at home between overseas tours. The proposal failed on a largely party-line vote in the Senate Wednesday, which David Rogers reported on in today’s Wall Street Journal.
The ad is part of the left-wing group’s “Betrayal of Trust” series that targeted Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Here’s the script for the McConnell concludes: “This week, Republicans who brought us this awful war, turned their backs on the men and women who fight it. Mitch McConnell. The Republicans. A betrayal of trust.”
While Democrats would like to see McConnell defeated, he’s a powerhouse in Kentucky politics and any serious campaign to beat him would be bruising and expensive. However, a recent poll by the Lexington Herald Leader showed 55% of Kentucky voters are unhappy with McConnell’s stance on Iraq, while 37% approve. The poll also shows a 47% approval rate and 44% disapproval.
A McConnell spokesman dismissed MoveOn’s efforts. “Seems to me that they’re frustrated that they can’t get their way in the Congress and with the blowback they got for calling Gen. Petraeus a traitor,” said Don Stewart. “Given their position on our commander in the field and other outrageous remarks, it’s the people that they like that need to be nervous, not the people that disagree with them.”
Vote for the Democrats tomorrow, election Tuesday.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. Vote for the Democrats, tomorrow, election Tuesday. Let's Ditch Mitch.
Editorial from Lexington Herald-Leader
The following editorial appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader last Saturday:
"Another soldier lost
"Master sergeant's dedication, service appreciated
"We salute the service and dedication of Master Sgt. Thomas Bruner, who died of an apparent heart attack Sunday in Kabul, Afghanistan.
"Sergeant Bruner, 50, of Owensboro, served 26 years in the Army Reserve after four years of active duty. He was on his second deployment to Afghanistan.
"He was just a soldier doing his job, and he loved it," Jane Bruner, his wife of 27 years, told the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer this week.
"Those who knew him well described him as a good father and friend to his two stepsons and a strong and caring leader of his troops. He loved his extended family and went all out in celebrating Christmas, even decorating the inside of his garage.
"His flag-draped coffin was returned home Thursday, with funeral services expected in the next few days.
"We mourn his loss and appreciate his years of risking his life to protect this nation."
"Another soldier lost
"Master sergeant's dedication, service appreciated
"We salute the service and dedication of Master Sgt. Thomas Bruner, who died of an apparent heart attack Sunday in Kabul, Afghanistan.
"Sergeant Bruner, 50, of Owensboro, served 26 years in the Army Reserve after four years of active duty. He was on his second deployment to Afghanistan.
"He was just a soldier doing his job, and he loved it," Jane Bruner, his wife of 27 years, told the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer this week.
"Those who knew him well described him as a good father and friend to his two stepsons and a strong and caring leader of his troops. He loved his extended family and went all out in celebrating Christmas, even decorating the inside of his garage.
"His flag-draped coffin was returned home Thursday, with funeral services expected in the next few days.
"We mourn his loss and appreciate his years of risking his life to protect this nation."
Stepp speaks to political rally at Morehead.
After his appearance at the Bill Clinton Democratic Rally in Louisville, Kenneth Stepp spoke to approx. 300 people at the meet-the-candidates rally in Morehead, Kentucky--which was broadcast live on WIVY Radio at 96.3. All candidates on the ballot were invited to attend. Kenneth Stepp is on the left. On the right is the empty chair, where Hal Rogers had been invited to sit and speak. Hal Rogers had declined to appear with Kenneth Stepp at the KET1 candidates debate, and Hal Rogers also declined to appear and defend his policies at the Morehead meet the candidates debate. Although Hal Rogers was not there, Stepp ripped into the policies Rogers had voted for. Stepp reminded the voters that Rogers supports the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, but Stepp is against it. Stepp reminded the live audience and the radio audience that Rogers refused to vote against torture, but Stepp opposes torture. Stepp reminded the voters that Rogers has voted to allow warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government, but Stepp opposes it. Stepp added that Rogers has voted to cut Federal educational spending, but Stepp opposes cuts in Federal educational spending. Kenneth Stepp reminded voters that Kenneth Stepp supports gun owners' rights, the right to life, and the $7.25 minimum wage law. Vote for Kenneth Stepp for the U.S. house.
Kenneth Stepp is there when you need him.
As shown in the picture, when the United States Navy needed a sentry, Kenneth Stepp was there to defend our country. Kenneth Stepp was in the Navy five years, and was proud to serve. The United States needs Congressmen to defend traditional American values, and to uphold the principles of the Democratic Party. That is why you should vote to send Kenneth Stepp to represent the Kentucky Fifth District in the United States House of Representatives. Kenneth Stepp has been in the United States armed forces in the United States, in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, in Haiti, in Canada, in Norway, in Denmark, in West Germany, in France, and in Puerto Rico. It is time for a change in Washington. It is time for the Kentucky Fifth District to elect Democrat Kenneth Stepp to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Kenneth Stepp addresses Family Day audience at Democratic Headquarters, Frankfort, Kentucky 9/24/06.
Kenneth Stepp spoke to the Democrats attending the Second Annual Family Day gathering at the Kentucky Democratic Headquarters in Frankfort, Kentucky on Sunday, September 24, 2006. He reminded Democrats that the Democrats have the best solution to the ongoing military occupation and war in Iraq, where approx. 7,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the past two months. He reminded the Democrats that the Democratic Party is the party against torture, while the Republicans come up with their compromise bill concerning torture. He reminded the Democrats that the Democratic Party is the party against warrantless wiretapping, while the Republicans want to proceed with wiretapping telephone conversations without bothering to get a warrant signed by a judge to O.K. tapping a telephone line. He reminded the Democrats that the Democratic Party is the party of education, giving the working people the best plan for educating their children. He reminded the Democrats that the Democratic Party is the party of the middle class, voting for the biggest cuts of payroll taxes, while the Republicans save their biggest tax cuts for the billionaires and millionaires. Seated behind Kenneth Stepp are former Democratic Governor Paul Patton of Pikeville, former Governor Julian Carroll of Frankfort, and on the right, seated, the Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman. Yes, like the sign says, "Democrats Do It Better!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
