Corruption

This actually came to me through the DoD Military Medical Digest for Military Health System e-mail updates when new is added to the list, who says change can't happen!!

U.S. Government to Gulf War Vets: DROP DEAD!

Video Clip Part 1 of 6: Click to Watch

Iraq inquiry: Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat

20 July 2010 The invasion of Iraq "substantially" increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has said.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller said the action "radicalised" a generation of young people, including UK citizens.

As a result, she said she was not "surprised" that UK nationals were involved in the 7/7 bombings in London.

She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.

Baroness Manningham-Buller said she had advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited", and she believed that assessment had "turned out to be the right judgement". Continued

And adds to what already has taken place in the previous decade, brought on by the same, to make National Security Much Less Secure!!

Some of the nation's most sensitive duties have been doled out to private contractors, with exploding budgets and little oversight.

In June, a stone carver from Manassas, Va., chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

Horrors of war get reality check

Sgt. Serena Hayden, a public affairs specialist deployed to Iraq from 2006 to 2008, poses with the niece of Diyala province Gov. Ra'ad Hameed Al-Mula Jowad Al-Tamimi during a visit to his house. But Hayden's deployment was hardly idyllic, and she has sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which has been denied so far.

July 14, 2010 The dazzling smile Serena Hayden flashes in photographs masks the horrors of war she witnessed in Iraq.

She was a public affairs specialist, a job that some dismiss as cushy. Done right, however, the job means sharing the risks borne by combat soldiers. After all, you can't document a war if you're not in it.

By Dave Lindorff

If you want to avoid facing a tough prosecution for malfeasance, be a banker, not a biker.

That appears to be the lesson of Saturday’s front page of the Wall Street Journal, where the lead story was about how Bank of America repeatedly hid its massive bad debt holdings from regulators and investors through a creative accounting device called “repurchase agreements,” and the second story, just above the fold, was about how US Food and Drug Administration prosecutors are “Casting a Wider Net” investigating the use of steroids by competitive cyclists.

Britain rushed to invade Iraq

14 Jul 2010 A former British diplomat says government did not tried hard enough to find an alternative to the military action to deal with Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Carne Ross, who served as first secretary at the UK's mission to UN between 1997 and 2002, told the Iraq war inquiry on Monday that Britain's pre-invasion containment policy ruled that the government considers sanctions and other measures before leaping to a military solution.

He said no "significant intelligence" backed up the claims that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction but officials opposing a military campaign there were "very beleaguered".

Sorting through the complexities in Afghanistan

July 13: Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, talks with Rachel Maddow about the history of the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the different Taliban groups active in the region.

Translation: "We will not tolerate wrongdoing by small fry (just forget Bush/Cheney, etc., etc., etc.)."

Six more policemen charged in Katrina killings

5:14pm EDT
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Six more New Orleans police officers have been indicted in connection with the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of four others who were walking on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 27-count indictment that charged three current officers and one former officer with the killing, and subsequent cover-up, of James Brissette, a 17-year-old city resident, and Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man who suffered disabilities and was shot in the back.

Brit War Inquiry EXPLODES with Damning Testimony! Will the Chilcot group take this and remove the somewhat gentlemanly gloves of questioning so far and get tougher, will it also bring about a re-questioning of earlier participants, like Blair and company, who might have thought they were through with their spinning of facts! Will documents not intended for public view suddenly become very public to answer what isn't known but said only behind closed doors!

Tony Blair 'intentionally talked up WMD', Iraq inquiry told

13/07/2010 Tony Blair "intentionally" exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq inquiry heard yesterday.

The excuses for our guilty past "Military Necessity" and yet we condemn others while wondering "why do they hate us so?"!!

Korea bloodbath probe ends; US escapes much blame

a death that won’t be buried

From 1991, Dr David Kelly was one of the chief weapons inspectors with the UN in Iraq. He is seen leaving the House of Commons after giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 2003. His body was found three days later. Johnny Green / PA Archive

July 10. 2010 It was Brock, a cross-border collie working with the civilian Lowland Search Dogs Association, who found the body, shortly after 8am on July 18, 2003. Slumped against a tree, not far from his home in the Oxfordshire countryside, lay one of the most surprising victims of the West’s invasion of Iraq.

cheney and his puppet, Rendition, False Imprisonment, Possible Torture, with No Proof, possible outcome: Created more insurgent fighters as well as possible international criminal terrorist, with the expanding al Qaeda network and others, and not even those held but their countrymen!!

U.S. has now lost 75 percent of Guantanamo habeas cases

9 July 2010 A federal judge has ordered the release of another Yemeni captive at Guantanamo, the 37th time a war on terror captive in southeast Cuba has won his unlawful detention suit against the U.S. government.

Judge Paul Friedman's order in the case of Hussein Almerfedi at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., instructs the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate the release of petitioner forthwith.''

Doesn't bring National Security, now frankly destroyed with the extreme rise of hatreds towards us and other so called Western Powers after the previous decade!!

And not to leave out the huge amount of graft, corruption and political crony-ism embedded with the budgets of each contract!

By Dave Lindorff

Looking at the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, where impact of the greed of corporate executives at British Petroleum, TransOcean and Halliburton, not to mention the greed of paid-off regulators in the Minerals Management Service and the members of the House and Senate who took dirty money to water down drilling regulations is evident, I was reminded of a prominent business leader in New York, recently deceased.

Told by his sister of a young woman she knew who had posted a sign on her wall saying, “Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have,” this executive, who had held a top position in the media, sniffed, “Ugh! That’s terrible. If people thought like that, no one would strive to do anything.”

Gee ya think! that's why we the Brits and others condemn other countries for their Human Rights and much more, then we joined that same gutter thrash and expect to be justified, because well we're the righteous!!

A humane nation is a safer nation

7 July 2010 William Hague is right to put human rights at the heart of the UK's foreign policy – for practical as well as ethical reasons

The foreign secretary William Hague said last week that human rights should be the "irreducible core" of the UK's foreign policy. But he did not spell out why, or what that would mean in practice.

Torture inquiry head to be scrutinised after Omagh

7 July 2010 David Cameron says there will be an "authoritative" inquiry, led by a judge, to settle once and for all whether MI5 and MI6 were complicit in the torture of terror suspects.

The inquiry is intended to resolve this vexed question, which, the prime minister said, had "overshadowed" the reputation of the security services for the past few years.

I can think of really only two occasions in the past 30 years when the authorities have allowed the failings and misdemeanours of the British intelligence services to be held up to the public light - warts and all.

Snip

In the year before the Iraq war, he concluded that two thirds of MI6's intelligence in Iraq had been coming from just two main sources. Continued

By James Ridgeway

The way the Washington Post reported the story, Congress has finally pushed through “tougher” off-shore drilling regulations for oil companies. 

Two key Senate committees approved legislation before the July 4 holiday that purport to change the way the federal government regulates offshore oil drilling and that penalize companies for oil spills. Both measures passed on bipartisan voice votes. One approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee would raise the civil and criminal penalties for a spill, require more safety equipment redundancies, boost the number of federal safety inspectors and demand additional precautions for deep-water drilling. The other, passed by the Environment and Public Works Committee, would remove a $75 million limit on oil company liability and would retroactively remove the liability cap for BP and the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Families of British soldiers killed in Iraq 'let down'

6 July 2010 The government "let down" the families of British troops killed in Iraq over the support given to them, ex-Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth has said.

 

Britain's dirty torture secrets to be laid bare: Huge payouts for victims as PM orders inquiry into security services

7th July 2010

* Tony Blair and David Miliband could face public grilling

* Inquiry could strain relationship with U.S. to 'breaking point'

* Probe will focus on detention of UK nationals at Guantanamo Bay

Britain faces paying out millions to detainees who claim they were tortured with the complicity of the security services.

Compensation settlements may be made with up to a dozen former terror suspects ahead of an independent inquiry announced yesterday by David Cameron to help ‘restore Britain’s moral leadership in the world’.

British High Court challenge for Iraq 'mistreatment' inquiry

July 06, 2010 A British High Court battle was launched today for a wide-ranging public inquiry into the alleged mistreatment of more than 100 Iraqis detained by British troops.

Judges heard accusations that the detainees were the victims of "systemic" inhuman and degrading treatment in British-controlled detention facilities in Iraq in the aftermath of the war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Snip

The QC said other investigations have already been set up. They include an ongoing inquiry into how Baha Mousa met his death at the hands of British troops in Basra.

A second looked at allegations that British forces murdered and tortured a number of Iraqis at Majar-al-Kabir in May 2004.

UK names judge to lead inquiry into torture claims

6 July 2010 Britain will hold a judge-led inquiry into allegations that its spies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects held by the U.S. and other allies.

The government also announced Tuesday it will pay compensation to detainees found to have been mistreated in the global pursuit of terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The probe, by a three-member panel headed by retired judge Peter Gibson, could complicate intelligence-sharing with Washington.

It follows civil cases brought against the government by 12 ex-detainees who claim British intelligence agents colluded in their mistreatment in Pakistan, Morocco and elsewhere. Continued

The wars {occupations} physical and mental tolls!

Thousands of Soldiers Unfit for War Duty

6 July 2010 More than 13,000 active-duty Army soldiers -- the equivalent of four combat brigades -- are sidelined as unfit for war because of injury, illness, or mental stress.
In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after nine years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can.

Did Blair know it was wrong to invade Iraq?

4th July, 2010 EIGHTY years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding towards the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called "The Treason of the Clerks" "clerks" in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their high calling chose to serve the State rather than Truth.

They were the ones who provided the justification for the wars and made them possible.

Curiously, nobody has ever written a book called "The Treason of the Lawyers." Nobody has ever accused Lord Goldsmith of being an intellectual, either. But while the Law is not exactly the same as the Truth, it is certainly possible to betray it in the service of the State. That is what Goldsmith did, and it ended in a war.

One of the many parts of the start to the countries present day situations on many fronts!

From United States v. Oliver L. North, Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC) Papers, National Archives & Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.Former National Security Council aide Oliver North received a $150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part in the Iran-Contra scandal. The scandal was a secret arrangement directed from the Reagan White House that provided funds to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels (despite specific congressional prohibition) from profits gained by selling arms to Iran (at war with Iraq at the time) in hopes of their releasing hostages, despite Pres. Reagan’s claim that he would never negotiate with hostage-takers.

Grist to the conspiracy mill

4 Jul 2010 Many of Blair’s former intimates would rather it were not any sort of deal. Each of the men bidding to become Labour’s next leader has discovered – just in time – that the Iraq war was a bit of a mistake and yet, somehow, nothing to do with them. David Miliband, for one, has urged that we all “move on”.

This is the same Miliband who, as Foreign Secretary, rose in the Commons to state categorically (and indignantly) that MI5 had not, and would never, involve itself in the torture of prisoners. He had better hope that the forthcoming Government inquiry into the issue is also happy to “move on”.

Wells Fargo, Wachovia Involved in Numerous Mexican Drug Laundering Schemes
By Mike Shedlock | Favstocks

If you or I was involved in drug laundering of as little as 2 dollars and fifty cents we would be in prison.

Wachovia bank, now part of Wells Fargo via a merger, has laundered countless sums of Mexican cartel drug money and will get off with a slap of the wrist. The reason...Wells Fargo is too big to fail.

Please consider Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else. Read more.

By Missy Comley Beattie

My mother has an opera-quality voice. No training. Two of my siblings can sing. I can’t. At all.

I positioned the karaoke machine near the television set and plugged the auxiliary cables into the back of the TV for a wider word screen. I rarely watch television, except when “researching” the inadequacies of “mainstream” mediocrity for an article. Every now and then, when I read something important on the Internet, I turn on the tube to see if anyone is addressing the issue. Usually, the answer is either an “Update” sentence beneath the blathering blahblah blahers or a no.

So, largely, the TV monitor will be an accessory for the karaoke machine that is my scream therapy. “Sing, sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong.”

The Powell doctrine perverted

1 July 2010 The Goldsmith documents released by Chilcot reveal dubious assurances made by Blair's team in the runup to the Iraq war

Former US general Colin Powell argued that war should only be considered after all 'political, economic, and diplomatic means' had been exhausted. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Snip

But Bush was determined to extract a quid pro quo, as he made clear when speaking to David Aaronovitch for the BBC2 programme Blair at War in 2007:

This will remind more about the workings of the bush administration, and should, but as the article below points out Gen McChrystal won't feel comfortable about it nor should many in the Army leadership as well as the Pentagon at the time. This shouldn't only remind people of just the Tillman tragic incident and fabrication of what took place, but the others already known about as well, in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the cover ups, fabrications and lies! DeJa-Vu of us older vets time!

The Tillman Story