Corruption

Detective who found weapons expert David Kelly's body raises questions over his death

Key evidence: DC Graham Coe has spoken for the first time about finding the body of Dr David Kelly

9th August 2010 - The mystery surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly deepened yesterday after the detective who found his body claimed he didn't see 'much blood'.

The revelation by Detective Constable Graham Coe casts further doubt on the Hutton Report's verdict that the Ministry of Defence scientist died of blood loss after slitting his wrist.

In his first interview, Mr Coe, now retired, also said that police searched Dr Kelly's home the day after his death for papers 'of a sensitive nature' about Iraq.

Yesterday, 7 August 2010, I posted the latest report about the growing story of the political slush fund called the "U.S. Navy Veterans Association". While that ones been growing another questionable organization has come to light and started hitting the news which also needs elected politicians to gain the supposed goals it's set up and being sold on. I posted an earlier report, from this week, about this questionable group and it's founder. Well there's been an updated report with more slightly more information on this group called "The United States Fallen Heroes Foundation" out of Texas.

Increasingly Bizarre U.S. Navy Veterans Association Saga: Political Slush Fund

This story seems to have no end as States have started investigating since the St. Petersburg Times first broke it near the beginning of the year.

Navy Vets story gets even stranger

August 06, 2010 - We’re working on an editorial for next week discussing the latest turn in the increasingly bizarre U.S. Navy Veterans Association saga. Ohio authorities say that Bobby Thompson, the only one of 85 officers listed on the charity’s website that a Florida newspaper could actually locate, isn’t actually Bobby Thompson, but the perpetrator of an ID theft.

Snip

By Dave Lindorff

Wall Street lobbyists may have successfully managed to emasculate most of the important parts of the financial reform bill just passed by Congress last month, but one part of that 2000-page act, which establishes as bounty for whistleblowers who expose corporate financial wrongdoing to the Securities and Exchange System, managed to slip through unscathed.

If this surprisingly strong measure is supported by strong enabling regulations at the SEC, which has until next April to draw them up and approve them, some legal experts, including at law firms that specialize in representing corporate clients, say it could have a profound effect on the behavior of American companies.

The language being used by some of these attorneys is actually pretty apocalyptic, and entertaining to read.

Here’s a comment by the corporate law firm of Seyfarth Shaw on the new whistleblower provision’s significance:

The 'Agent Orange' of these occupations, that's literally as some of these soldiers are suffering from exactly the same extreme physical ailments of the same chemicals, and more, of the defoliants only this time they were sucking in smoke and air from these burn pits, as are the citizens occupied and especially downwind and the ground contamination left from the burns!

Ailing vets sue over smoke from trash fires in Iraq, Afghanistan

'You'd cough up black stuff, and you couldn't seem to catch your breath'

U.S. Army soldiers from the 23rd Infantry Regiment burn garbage at K-wal combat outpost in the village of Shakarat, in Diyala province, in this Dec. 24, 2007.

Thank You Rachel for bringing this to more faces. More of what went on during our failed policy occupation of Vietnam and during the nixon administration, where the Real 'Spitting' on soldiers was orchestrated by that administration and their supporters and was Verbal and Political to mask the failures of those leaders, in and out of Government!!

Nixon troubled by scapegoating general

Aug. 5, 2010: Following President Obama's petition to restore the good name of General John Levelle, Rachel Maddow consults the Nixon tapes to look back at the remorse President Nixon felt for scapegoating General Levelle.

 

Huge executive compensation, write off corporate perks and of course to the delight of the wall street investors!

Fallen soldiers allegedly prove profitable for insurance companies

August 4, 2010 The Missouri and Kansas insurance departments said Tuesday that they were checking for complaints over a practice in which life insurance companies were reportedly profiting from the deaths of U.S. soldiers.

First revealed last week by Bloomberg News, the practice involves life insurers that reportedly earn millions in additional profits by holding a portion of the benefits from such policies and paying them out over time.

Beyond the Military By Lt. Col. Barry Wingard
Aug 3rd, 2010

The U.S. government routinely uses the term “War on Terror” to describe its military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But how do we really define this “War on Terror”? After all, terrorism dates back to at least the 14th century, and individuals, groups and even nations have employed it ever since.

It’s hard to argue that the deployment of a bigger gun or faster tank can actually alter the outcome of either the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, let alone defeat terrorism. The U.S. armed forces have undeniably defeated the organized militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the question now is whether the military can obliterate the ideas and policies that drive the growing use of terrorism.

The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing to examine the reasons and evidence used to add these three conditions to the list of presumptive diseases related to Agent Orange exposure.

Jul-31-2010 The President signed the War Supplemental yesterday. In that bill is the $13.4 billion in funding for the three newly designated presumptive diseases related to Agent Orange exposure.

What does this mean for veterans who have already filed and those waiting to file on these conditions? The money is now in place and the authorization to spend it needs to be completed. The House overwhelmingly passed the VA/Military Construction Authorization bill earlier this week and now the Senate must do the same. The House version authorizes the money for these new conditions.

Wikileaks: The Pakistan connection Pt.1, visit link for Part 1.

"Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story"

Second in the list of Op-Ed observations.

July 31, 2010 Slowly the lies are stripped away. A full-dress British inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war is revealing what some of us suspected pretty much from the beginning: that attacking Saddam Hussein was an act of bottomless folly, driven by the hubris of George W. Bush and the American neo-cons, and supported unquestioningly by that self-righteous prig Tony Blair. To which list of shame we can add the name John Howard. The inquiry has had little coverage here, crowded out by the election campaign. More's the pity. A killer blow was delivered last week by the Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, who sounds like a character from an Agatha Christie whodunit but who was, in fact, the head of the British counter-intelligence service MI5 from 2002 to 2007.

President 43 will be 49 on August 4 and Mrs. 43 has e-mailed with a request. I’m sure many of you received the appeal.

Michelle says: “Every year, our family tries to come up with a fun way to wish Barack a happy birthday.”

The hostess of the White House continues with: “This has been a big—and hectic—year for him.” Duh.

Here’s some of the penciling on Barack Obama’s dance card.

A surge of militarism.

A surge in Afghanistan.

A surge in troop deaths.

A surge in suicide among veterans.

A surge in WikiLeak-ing of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A surge of droning in Pakistan.

A surge in civilian slaughter.

A surge of hatred.

A surge of mercenaries.

A surge in the insurgency.

A surge in war spending.

A surge of warmongering greed.

A surge of rhetoric to attack Iran.

A surge of wink wink to Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

A surge of uninsured.

A surge of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

And all along we thought the bush was hired as the president, as history will even record, wink, wink! They chose the right stooge to be the face of and to take their hits for the rest of time!

"former US vice-president Dick Cheney believed Iraq was "unfinished business" and was determined to press ahead with the invasion come what may. "You can't convince him of anything," Prescott said of Cheney."

Lord Prescott admits intelligence doubts prior to Iraq war

Lord Prescott arrives at the QE2 conference centre in London to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

30 July 2010 Former deputy PM tells Chilcot inquiry he dismissed some intelligence about Iraq threat as 'tittle-tattle'

Possibly Thousands Of Mishandled Arlington Graves

July 29, 2010 Washington…The estimate of possibly mishandled graves at Arlington National Cemetery soared into the thousands Thursday, and ousted cemetery officials conceded that they knew about problems at least five years ago.

A Senate report released Thursday said that 4,900 to 6,600 graves among the 330,000 veterans and others buried at Arlington may be unmarked, improperly marked, or mislabeled on cemetery maps.

 

Gates Says Pentagon to Help Death-Benefits Inquiry

29 July 2010 Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged to help the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs probe how insurers reap profits from death benefits retained for the families of deceased military personnel.

“I will be very interested in the outcome of the VA investigation,” Gates told a Pentagon press briefing. “We will do everything we can to help.”

Earlier today, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began a fraud probe into the life insurance industry and subpoenaed MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. for information about profits on the retained death benefits.

The Chilcot Inquiry, Aggression and the International Criminal Court

29 July 2010 The 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq was a crime--a profound and catastrophic violation of international law.

The crime was aggression: the waging of unprovoked war on a sovereign state.

A growing international consensus says that not only was the invasion illegal, but in the future such crimes will result in direct and severe personal consequences for leaders who organize the killing and give the orders to start.

Why aren't conservatives blasting military industry welfare?

July 29, 2010 A most peculiar thing happened last week: The Washington Post ripped a federal welfare boondoggle to shreds, exposing tens of billions of dollars of waste, duplication and bureaucratic excess . . . and conservatives didn't erupt in astonishment and praise. In fact, they didn't raise a peep.

That's because the welfare queens ripping off taxpayer dollars in this case aren't poverty pimps waving the bloody flag of race and class, but military-industrial hustlers exploiting the war on terrorism to build themselves opulent and powerful fiefdoms.

Oversight of war zone subcontractors is lacking, panel finds

July 26, 2010 Prime contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are not managing their subcontractors' performance and fees consistently, the Defense Department's top auditing official told the Commission on Wartime Contracting on Monday.

A Defense Contract Audit Agency review of prime contractors' billing and cost records identified several situations in which they failed to award fixed-price subcontracts based on fair and reasonable prices, often leading to unreasonable or unallowable costs.

Apparently what started out as some thinking this might be a better way to help and handle the Death Benefits of Soldiers, and possibly others, didn't stay that way as Corporate Greed stepped in and like everything else rules were developed, over the past decade, and not explained properly or just left unexplained to those who were receiving the Death Insurance Policies Payouts!

Veterans Affairs to Investigate Fallen Soldiers' Death Benefits

And remember, these Extremist War Profiteers, making their comfortable livings on Blood Money of War, not only garner huge wealth, legal or illegally, but they don't even pay a fair share of that wealth for taxes, huge tax cuts, which would help cover the monies needed for the Veterans of our Wars and Occupations of Choice in fulfilling the contracts with the Country for their service in these Wars generating that Wealth, but hey neither does much of the Country want to pony up, they don't even pay attention to the Wars nor the Veterans of!

Body armour boss looted $185m to pay for prostitutes and parties, court hears

David H. Brooks and co-defendant Sandra Hatfield

Hexavalent chromium case: Iraq contractor cut deal for lawsuit immunity

July 13, 2010 American taxpayers -- and not KBR-- will likely pay if the war contractor is found to have harmed Oregon Army National Guard veterans who say they were exposed to cancer-causing chemicals in Iraq. The startling details emerged in documents related to a U.S. District Court hearing Monday that illuminate the secretive world of defense contracting.

Documents show that within days of the 2003 Iraq invasion, Kellogg, Brown and Root delivered an ultimatum to the Pentagon:

Either the Army cover the potential cost of any soldier or civilian killed or harmed on a KBR project – or the defense contractor would not carry out its no-bid contract restoring Iraqi oil.

Allies used 'poor' intelligence ahead of Iraq invasion

Hans Blix, the former head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission in Iraq. Photograph: Seppo Sirkka/EPA

27 July 2010 Former head of UN weapons inspectors tells Chilcot inquiry 'alarm bells' should have rung when his staff failed to find evidence of WMD

Britain and the US relied on dubious intelligence sources ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors said today.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Hans Blix said it should have set alarm bells ringing in London and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam Hussein still had active weapons of mass destruction programmes.

By now most have heard about the Afghanistan Docs, some 92,000, that were released by Wikileaks and with coordinated release at roughly the same time by three News Media outlets:

The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

New York Times: An archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished view of the war in Afghanistan

Der Spiegel: The Afghanistan Protocol; Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

Whoever hasn't will as it's become the main News Story today hitting every level and the links above give you the main outlets of the reports on the documents released and more.

Chilcot inquiry: Iraq expert Carne Ross claims civil servants are withholding vital documents

25 July 2010 Britain's 'deep state' of secretive bureaucrats is denying witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry crucial files.

Carne Ross, the UK’s Iraq expert at the UN from 1997-2002, says all the invasion documents should now be made public. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

I testified last week to the Chilcot inquiry. My experience demonstrates an emerging and dangerous problem with the process. This is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with the government bureaucracy – Britain's own "deep state" – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents.

Government Contractors, Defense Employee's, the Past Decade, While Under The cheney/bush Regime and Republican Congresses, charged with Oversite and Investigation, while invading two countries and conducting an extremely failed policy of the so called 'war on terror'!

Pentagon, Spy Child Porn Viewers Called Idiots

July 24, 2010 Major Federal Probe Finds Dozens of Gov't. Employees, Contractors Accused or Suspected of Downloading Child Pornography

A major federal investigation has found that dozens of military officials and defense contractors, including some with top-level security clearances, allegedly bought and downloaded child pornography on private or government computers.

Mike Papantonio, host of Ring of Fire Radio, joined us once again on GRITtv to tell us about the BP Damage Fund -- will it really compensate victims of the oil spill?

There have been a number of important testimonies coming out of the Brit Iraq War Inquiry in these months they've been in session as well as archiving the important information and documents. Many of the Brit media outlets have also done same especially their breakdowns on the testimony, with backlinks to, given by many of the participants testifying even as to what was happening here in the United States as to working with the different counterparts, especially the civilian government officials. Some stretches, when in session, have been sort of bland but still important but at many times testimony of explosive nature would be thus placed into the public record and archived, raising even more questions but also answering many.

I think not, but speaking truth to reality. Let the international court indictments begin, starting with this country, the U.S., and the cabal in and around the previous administration and that congress!

Nick Clegg's 'illegal' Iraq war gaffe prompts legal warning

21 July 2010 Coalition in confusion as deputy prime minister pronounces invasion 'illegal' at dispatch box

 

The millions of "rank amateurs" have yet, sadly, to be proven wrong in anything said before and through all these years of two destructive occupations, From the abandonment of Afghanistan in their much needed help to rebuild after decades of others trying to control them by focussing all attention on an innocent country and people in Iraq and reeking destructive terror on same, to today!

Manningham-Buller was right about the Iraq war

22 July 2010 Tony Blair ignored the MI5 boss's advice, as he did the public's protests, but history has proved her fears to be uncannily accurate

Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

N.H. investigates Navy veterans association

July 21, 2010 New Hampshire says it has started an investigation into the state chapter of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, after attorneys general in four other states shut theirs down.

The New Hampshire chapter, based in Tampa, Fla. and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit, charitable organization registered with state attorney general's office. Continued

‘Fraudulent’ vets charity raised big money in Minnesota

No evidence that funds supported state military veterans