Bury Me Broken: May 2005

Monday, May 30, 2005

Through the Storm

We have made it through the storm. Storms will come again soon but we are through this one.
I am my intentions ... I am not your responses.

A Memorial on Memorial Day

All set to hang out with Eddie George, he talking about going over to Titans Coach Jeff Fisher's house for the celebration and best friend Geno calls to say Ronimo's mom died in her sleep this morning. Ronimo keeps saying she gone called.

I prayed to the Lord for strength wishing that I had prayed as fervently yesterday for the blessings I have. But I did pray. I prayed this morning giving thanks. I prayed yesterday morning giving thanks. But in tragedy, it just doesn't seem like enough.

Pray for us.

Memorial Day Celebration

Celebrating Memorial Day

I am glad that I spent the morning hours, both late yesterday night and early this morning, commemorating Memorial Day. I read Blacks in America's Wars by Robert W. Mullen and The Double V Campaign, African Americans in World War II by Michael L. Cooper.

That being said, it is time for the barbecue and the music. Gonna head over NFL running back Eddie George's spot for a while and probably make it back in front of my computer by tonight.

Happy Memorial Day everyone.

Happy Memorial Day

I would first like to express my appreciation and thanks to the men and women in uniform currently serving to protect this country, in Afghanistan and Iraq, throughout the entire Middle East, in Europe and Asia and at home in the United States. We have no other career in the United States that requires the dedication, the risk of life and whose success is the only way in which this country can continue to be a blessing to its millions of citizens through its continued existence.

Many people can take this holiday to be with family and loved ones. Those that serve the public may have to work for a portion of the day as well as those that work in critical capacities such as police officers, firemen, doctors and nurses. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of servicemen across the globe that will only hear from family and loved ones by phone, that can only pray for the safety and security of their family while standing guard to secure it far from home. Their dedication is to be lauded today as we shoot fireworks and eat barbecue; it is they that make this day possible.

I would also like to express my personal gratitude to the men and women that have served in wars past. I salute the veterans of foreign wars that are commemorated on this day. I hope that their hearts are bursting with the displays of fireworks, watching children at play and seeing Old Glory wave in the wind, a symbol of their sacrifice to keep this nation protected.

To those who have exited this plane for another, I also express personal gratitude. Men began this country with a concept of freedom and we strive toward this ideal daily. Many men answered the call and served in militia in order for this nation to assert its independence from Great Britain. There are thousands of heroes, millions of men and women that donned uniforms and fought in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the World Wars as well as recently in the Korean War, war in Vietnam, the Gulf War and our interventions in Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Somalia, Bosnia and presently Afghanistan and Iraq.

I also give thanks to my father. My earliest recollections of him in uniform and stories of standing out in blizzard weather in Newfoundland guarding jets in the Air Force inspired me to do my best which included a short stint in the Army Reserve.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Genocide in Darfur Continues

Updating the Darfur genocide playing out before our very eyes from Think Progress:

It has been nearly eight months since then-Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that genocide is occurring in Darfur. But on a recent trip to the region, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick backed away from that conclusion and attempted to downplay the number of victims. The latest estimates place the number of dead at 400,000 - dying at a rate of nearly 15,000 a month - with an additional 2 million Darfuris in refugee camps. Since Secretary Powell’s statement, an estimated 120,000 have been killed by the government-backed Janjaweed militia. Obviously, simply calling it genocide is no substitute for action. In the absence of presidential leadership, Congress has taken the lead - Senators Corzine and Brownback introduced the Darfur Accountability Act, which calls for an expansion of the current African Union mission to include the protection of civilians; a no-fly zone; and meaningful sanctions against the perpetrators. Decisive American action can put an end to the worst humanitarian crisis since the Rwandan genocide eleven years ago.

Unbelievable.

Bush rewards analysts behind faulty Iraq war intel

[via AmericaBlog]

The bigger the screw up, the bigger the reward. Had they only gotten us into a SECOND war based on a lie and killed a FEW more innocent soldiers and civilians they could have gotten a cabinet post:

Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq — the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were probably meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets — have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.

This is in keeping with Bush Administration Major Theme #1: "In order to advance in the Bush administration, you must do something illegal, immoral or at the least, highly questionable."

Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun? [Daily Kos]

[via Daily Kos, this is the contribution of a diary from Rep. John Conyers, (D, MI)]

[Kos commentary] This diary from the esteemed Congressman is based upon the following story:

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown. The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive. The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make “regime change” in Iraq legal. Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that “the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”. The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did. ... Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admittedthis operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war. It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting — the same document that revealed the prime minister’s agreement during a summit with President George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime change — laid out the American war plans. ... The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which said that the allied aircraft were only “entitled to use force in self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems”.

[Kos commentary]These are revelations of not only systematic efforts to bring a war against Iraq in most of 2002, it appears to be evidence that war was BEING CONDUCTED against Iraq in 2002. Representative Conyers provides us some new information on the question he has presented to Secretaryof Defense Rumsfled and an action item.

This morning I read the new revelations, again the London Times, that British and U.S. aircraft had substantially stepped up their bombing activity in the summer of 2002 in an effort to "goad Saddam into War." If true, we would seem to have the "smoking bullet" to the "smoking gun" of the Downing Street Memo.

I have prepared a letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld detailing these new charges and asking for his response (see extended entry). Since the House is out of session next week, I plan to submit it by myself on Tuesday.
Of course, this new disclosure makes my letter asking 100,000 citizens to write to President Bush, located at www.johnconyers.com, all the more important As my back-office administrator is closed for the holiday, I do not expect to have specific numbers of signatures until Tuesday, however needless to say, the response has been overwhelming from everything I can gage thus far.

This is the most critical issue presently on the global horizon. At stake is the credibility, trustworthiness and aims of the United States government and America as well. Most people for or against the war ceded certain stipulations that the Bush administration made. If it turns out that the U.S. and Great Britain offensively provoked war, the entire landscape changes.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Bush Arming Dictators + Human Rights Abusers

by Paul Rosenberg at MyDD

We knew it all along, but now we know it in organized detail.
"Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to 'end tyranny in our world' than the United States' role as the world's leading arms exporting nation," according to a new report from the World Policy Institute.
"20 of the top 25 U.S. arms clients in the developing world in 2003-- a full 80%-- were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses," according to the report, U.S. WEAPONS AT WAR 2005: PROMOTING FREEDOM OR FUELING CONFLICT? U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers Since September 11.
"All too often, U.S. arms transfers end up fueling conflict, arming human rights abusers, or falling into the hands of U.S. adversaries," the report notes.

This is beyond tragic. Americans, we must have the attention spans of unritalined, pure cane sugar consuming kindergarteners. It seems like only yesterday that the U.S. was allied with Saddam Hussein and allowing American companies to sell him weapons, including biological and chemical to use on Iranians and the Kurds in Iraq while other American companies sold weapons to Iran. So the good ole days are back again as we sell F-16s to Pakistan (supporters of the Afghanistan Taliban) as well as weapons to their border and long time rival Pakistan.

Where is the moral outrage? Where's Dobson? Where's Robertson? Where are all the made up organizations that consist of one person with a website and a catchy, officially sounding title?

Violence In Iraq Continues heavily

[via Atrios]

The latest attacks raised the total number of Iraqis killed this month to about 650, in addition to at least 63 American troops who have been killed, the highest American toll since January.

I don't even feel this is newsworthy anymore. We (some of us) have grown numb to the deaths of our soldiers and never cared about the number of Iraqi dead.

DeLay's response was filled with irony

House Majority leader Tom DeLay responded to a quip on NBC's Law and Order in which a character said concerning the killing of two federal judges that maybe we should look for someone with a Tom DeLay t-shirt:

This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse.

He actually had the guts to talk about judicial security after getting up in the sacred hall of the House and uttering these words:

The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.

Let me get this straight. You will stand up before Congress and say that a judge will pay and yet you want to talk about judicial security based on a quip on a TV show.

The 'this' he was referring to was the judges and their rulings that allowed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed and stay removed even after Congress in an unprecedented final hour attempt pushed through a bill that the president signed to have the case go to federal court. The Supreme Court refused to hear it for a sixth and final time.

So for him to stand up and wax on about judicial security when he was the one that showed reckless disregard with his statement about judges in the first place is irony, sad and deep.

Rep. Conyers and the Downing Street Memo

[from the post by Rep. John Conyers (D, MI) on Daily Kos]

The Downing Street Memo is a record of the minutes taken during a meeting of British PM Tony Blair and his top officials in July of 2002 concerning America's position in Iraq. "During this meeting, Blair and his advisers reveal details about conversations with their American counterparts." The details cast doubt on the honesty of the Bush administration concerning the intelligence and the date of the decision to go to war.

First, the memo appears to directly contradict the Administration's assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the Administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.
Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere "failure" or the result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were being "fixed" around the decision to go to war.

The entire post on Daily Kos can be viewed here. The letter that Rep. Conyers has written to the president and is requesting the signatures of 100,000 citizens can be viewed here.

Friday, May 27, 2005

NBC Exec Dick Wolf Uppercuts Tom DeLay

Seems House Majority leader Tom DeLay is in a huff because on the NBC popular show Law & Order, a quip was made concerning the shooting of a federal judge that maybe they should out an APB on a guy in a Tom DeLay t-shirt.

According to an AP article, DeLay called the remark a slur. NBC Executive Producer Dick Wolf's beautiful and effortless response:

"But I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a television show."

Maybe Howard Dean needs him to volunteer for Democrat talking points.

President Vicente Fox on Sunday defended his commitment to minorities and human rights on a U.S. radio program, in his first public response to his controversial comment that Mexicans take the U.S. jobs that "not even" blacks want according to an AP article by Morgan Lee.

This one is quite interesting. I watched Rev. Sharpton on Faux News last night and Oliver North standing in for Hannity acted as if he didn't get it. The man said that Mexicans are taking jobs that "not even Blacks want." Use of the word 'even' automatically put Blacks in a lower category than the rest of Americans.
I don't know how I feel about boycotting Mexico; they are already broke in the first place. President Fox acts as if just because he supports minority rights that he didn't make a statement that was racist and disparaging. If Mexicans, who come over here and get treated like crap, have a president talking bad about Blacks, how far down in the muck and mire are we.
Think now. He is saying that Mexicans are so honorable, hard-working and eager to demonstrate the American dream that they will take jobs that too good Americans or even them lazy Blacks won't take. Jeez.

Annan Urges More Relief in Sudan: What is a Life Worth

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the world that we are in a race against time for relief in Sudan in a Reuters article by Tsegaye Tadesse:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged donors on Thursday to fund a bigger African force to help end bloodshed in Darfur, where experts say hundreds are still dying daily nine months after the mission first deployed.

"We are running a race against time. The rainy season and the 'hunger gap' are approaching fast, making our relief operations more difficult," Annan said in a speech at African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa.

What is a life worth one might ask? It depends on the life. The death of 3,000 Americans resulting in an effort in Afghanistan and Iraq to root out the Taliban, Al Qaeda and terrorism. The cost thus far in Iraq alone: $172,544,320,764 and that changed as I was trying to write down the figure.
On the other hand, the African Union is requesting half a billion. How many dead thus far: 180,000. But of course, their skin is brown and they aren't Americans.

Friedman in NYT - "Shut Down Gitmo Prison"

Thomas Friedman in a New York Times editorial [via Truthout] had this to say:

It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down.

If you want to appreciate how corrosive Guantánamo has become for America's standing abroad, don't read the Arab press. Don't read the Pakistani press. Don't read the Afghan press. Hop over here to London or go online and just read the British press! See what our closest allies are saying about Gitmo. And when you get done with that, read the Australian press and the Canadian press and the German press.

Tell me, how is it that over 100 detainees have died in US custody so far? Heart attacks? This is not just deeply immoral, it is strategically dangerous.

This has been the rationale for so many of us for so long. The President is misinformed if he truly believes that "they hate us for our freedom." I am not saying that the hatred and violence against America and Americans including soldiers is in any way justified. I am saying that there are real stimuli to which violence is the response.
The United States hasn't seen an inkling of the civilian deaths, the wailing mothers carrying dead babies, the wailing husbands carrying dead wives and brothers in Afghanistan or in Iraq. The U.S. hasn't seen the destroyed homes, neighborhoods, bodies lined in the street for removal but the world has.
The Newsweek typhoon is nothing in comparison to the eyewitness testimonies of ex-detainees telling stories of what we considered torture when it was done to our prisoners of war in WWII. The next generation of terrorists are training right now, fueled by a diet of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Americans, many of which are not soldiers, but private contractors from Halliburton and the like.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Moyers defends PBS, takes aim at `radical right'

From the St. Louis Dispatch:

Bill Moyers denounced on Sunday the right wing and top officials at the
White House, saying they are trying to silence their critics by controlling the news media.
He also took aim at reporters who become little more than willing government "stenographers." And he said the public increasingly is content with just enough news to confirm its own biases.
Moyers said those in power - government officials and their allies in the media - mean to stay there by punishing journalists "who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable."

Moyers described those officials as "obsessed with control" of the media. He said they are using the government "to threaten and intimidate."

Moyers answered for the first time recent charges that public television in general and he in particular have become too liberal.

Hats off to Moyers for telling it like it is. We are currently innundated with Newsweek apologizing for inaccuracies and the fake moral outrage and indignance. There is no outrage for the number of times Republican pundits on cable news stations lie daily concerning the use of the "nuclear option."

Bury Me Broken