Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., April12, 2007: “I have two subject to deal with today. The first is the completely disastrous military situation in Iraq and the second deals with deliberately poisoned food in the United States.  In the first matter, it will soon be public that Bush is going to extend the tours of duty for troops to 15 months or, with some clever interpretation of the rules, to 20 months.

In addition to these draconian measures, be advised that a classified Pentagon report confirms what we already knew: that Bush is ordering all, repeat all, National Guard units activated (in discreet stages) for immediate shipment to Iraq. Legally, Bush can do this, but the political uproar is going to be immense. “National Guard (In Federal Status) And Reserve Mobilized As Of April 11, 2007

This week, the Army, Navy and Air Force announced an increase, while the Marine Corps and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is 1,030 more reservists mobilized than last week.

At any given time, services may mobilize some units and individuals while demobilizing others, making it possible for these figures to either increase or decrease. Total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 63,689; Navy Reserve, 6,404; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 5,079; Marine Corps Reserve, 5,514; and the Coast Guard Reserve, 302. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 80,988, including both units and individual augmentees.”

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=10728

The press is being strongly advised by the White House and the DoD to “play this down” lest it cause “unnecessary political problems.”

Also, there is a plan to reactivate many ex-soldiers who have completed their service within the past five years. This will be guaranteed to create even greater uproar but Bush is determined to do this and in the end, he will have his way regardless of Congress or the opinions of the American public.

The new “surge” troops are not properly armed; have absolutely no body armor, for example, and not is, or will be available, and the casualties are soaring. Bush’s goal of crushing any Iraqi resistance to the American occupation has been doomed from the start but no one dares to advise him of this dismal and growingly obvious fact.

Bush obviously has a death wish but unfortunately, the casualty rates of both American military personnel and the Iraqi civilian population (ca. 600,000 in four years) have absolutely no effect on him.

Another Pentagon report on desertions in addition to a new one under date of April 9, 2007, speak of the exploding rate of desertions and the very strong possibility of mutiny. The Pentagon hopes that such rebellions would be in Iraq where they can be ruthlessly dealt with out of sight of the increasingly enraged American public. Shooting dozens of soldiers would be much easier in the privacy of Baghadad barracks rather then at Ft. Bliss.

Also, it is interesting to note that the highly sophisticated roadside bombs that are inflicting many deaths and terrible injuries were not manufactured in Iran but in Iraq! A bomb-making factory was recently uncovered (a full report will be printed here soon) in Baghdad and both the Pentagon and the White House were fully advised. The American media has been ordered to shut this off because Bush demanded it.

That nastiness having been dealt with, let us now consider the second part of this: the poisoning of the American public. In a recent piece, I mentioned this subject and I understand the response was immediate and volatile. Here is more: melamine is a harmless substance that has never caused kidney failure and has a number of commercial uses.

The Chinese agency responsible for the export of wheat glutin, denies flatly ever selling  this to any pet food company. Wheat glutin is widely used, and has been for a long time, in the food industry and if it contained dangerous chemicals, the death tolls would be enormous. There have been no reported cases of any human being suffering kidney failure or death from ingesting wheat glutin (that is to be found in many commercial products)

The first analysis of the contents of contaminated pet food showed, without any question, that commercial rat poison (which does cause kidney failure) was the culprit. Scientists at the New York State Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell University and at the New York State Food Laboratory tested  cat food samples provided by the manufacturer and found aminopterin in them.

The substance in the many brands of pet food was identified as aminopterin, a cancer drug that once was used to induce abortions in the United States and is still used to kill rats in some other countries, state Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker said.    The recalled food came from two different plants, one in Kansas, one in New Jersey.

Bob Rosenberg, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Pest Management Association, said it would be unusual for the wheat to be tainted.

"It would make no sense to spray a crop itself with rodenticide," Rosenberg said, adding that grain shippers typically put bait stations around the perimeter of their storage facilities.

Because of political implications, however, the government has put out a smokescreen claiming, falsely, that Chinese wheat glutin is the “probable” culprit although this thesis has no foundation in truth.

According to press talking point memos circulating here in the White House, we can confidentially anticipate seeing news stories in all the media with such headlines as: ‘Chinese Admit Their Glutin Might Have Harmful Additives,” or “FDA Scientists Narrow Investigations into Poisoned Glutin.” The press in this country always does what it is ordered to do by corporate and corporate does what Bush wants.

As we have written earlier, there have been a number of highly suspect outbreaks of apparently unrelated E-coli poisonings. Again, as we said before, the prolix early investigations by local and federal health agencies completely ruled out lettuce, onions or other items of produce as the culprit.

None of the fast food restaurants used the same distributors and the idea that E-coli would break out in a number of Taco Bell outlets (which do not use the same food distributors) and an Indianapolis Olive Garden restaurant  in December of 2006 that infected over 300 diners. Indiana health authorities later investigated Olive Garden statements that seven employees had become ill with flu-like symptoms at the same time.

What is significant in all of this is the fact that none of the state or federal health agencies have yet to find a common cause for the outbreaks, have not located the E-coli in any of the various restaurant’s items of food and cannot find any trace of the bacteria in any of the various food outlets plant facilities. Although all of the federal reports have left it unsaid, this bacteria does not just appear in the systems of diners without a traceable source.

And there is the information about ConAgra’s Peter Pan Peanut Butter that was found to be laced with E-coli and caused the recall of tens of thousands of jars of peanut butter and the temporary closing of their Georgia plant

The one common denominator in all of these cases is the fact that the facilities involved to include packing plants, supply houses, food factories for humans and pets and other entities involved is the fact that all of them have considerable numbers of illegal Latino workers.  The conclusions of federal criminal investigative bodies that a constant and steady input of information linking militant illegals with a plan to “punish” random members of the American public for believed highly repressive police actions against their fellows.

The right-wing Republicans demand the immediate arrest and physical deportation of any and all illegals, the great bulk of whom are Mexicans. Recent Immigration raids on an east coast meat packing plant resulted in a significant number of illegals being immediately deported to their native countries. Unfortunately, Federal authorities did have any worries about the children of these ejectees who were in day care centers or schools. This Gestapo-like brutality received only the barest of coverage in the American media and has never been discussed subsequently. However, the DoJ has intercepted many emails and cell phone messages that indicate the outrage felt by Latino action groups.

These are based in Los Angeles and San Diego, in California, Tucson in Arizona, Denver, Colorado, Chicago, Illinois and several population centers on the east coast. All of these indicate that persons involved with these groups have been exhorting other illegals to “take action to show that we will not tolerate the brutalizing of our families…”

This is reflected in the fact that Bush…“and a group of Senate Republicans circulated a list of ‘first principles’ about immigration that amounted to a huge step backward for efforts to fix a broken system in a reasonable, humane way. It proposed new conditions on immigration labor so punitive and extreme that they amounted to a radical rethinking of immigration- not as an expression of the nation’s ideals and in integral source of its vitality and character, but as a strictly contractual phenomenon designed to extract cheap labor from an unwelcome underclass. New immigrant workers and those already here would all be treated as itinerant laborers. They could renew their visas, but only by paying extortionate fees and fines. There would be a path to legal status, but one so costly and long that it is essentially a mirage: by some estimates, a family of five could pay more than $64,000 and wait up to 25 years before any member could even apply for a green card. Other families would be torn apart; new workers and those who legalize themselves would have no right to sponsor relatives to join them. (Editorial, New York Times, April 11, 2007)

It is the fond hope of official Washington that the public will soon find something more exciting that mass food poisonings, past, present and more upsetting, future.  Given the potential inflammability of this subject, it is no wonder that Beltway spin doctors are frantically searching for something exciting, and less dangerous, to promote through their friends in the media.”

The Military Disaster

U.S. suffering higher casualties in Iraq

April 9, 2007

by Rowan Scarborough,

The Examiner

WASHINGTON- Two months into the troop “surge” in Iraq, the U.S. military is suffering an increase in battlefield deaths while Iraqi civilian casualties in greater Baghdad have dropped sharply.

Army officials say the reason is two-fold. Army units have intensified their efforts to defeat the insurgents. And, al-Qaida in Iraq and Iraqi guerrillas are focusing more on American targets to defeat the troop reinforcement plan, which is widely seen as the United States’ last chance to stabilize the country.

"We have become more aggressive,” an Army official at the Pentagon said Monday. “Taking more risks contributes to the higher KIA rate.

A second Army official said, "The enemy knows that the only real metric is U.S . soldier and Marine deaths. The enemy knows that this manipulates our politics, media, and governance." Both Army sources asked to remain anonymous because of possible repercussions.

The first quarter of 2007 marked the first time that 80 or more Americans were killed in action in each of three consecutive months. April, with 35 deaths so far, is on a pace to exceed 100 deaths, which would make it one of the deadliest periods for American troops since the war began four years ago.

January, February and March combined for the deadliest first quarter, with 244 deaths compared with 148 in 2006, 200 in 2005 and 119 in 2004, according casualty counts by the Web site icasualties.org.

Asked at a Pentagon briefing in March, when the troop surge was over a month old, why American casualty rates were not dropping, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero said “al-Qaida in Iraq and their associated forces are determined to continue to take the fight in a variety of ways ... we’re still seeing the attacks on coalition forces and we have not seen a let-up in that."

The command acknowledged last week that the surge has produced more Iraqi security force casualties.

"Some of those have been directly attributed to the fact that they have been stopping some of these car bombers and taken them on and not abandoning their posts," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, command spokesman.

Caldwell said the number of civilian deaths in March in greater Baghdad were down 27 percent from February.

This past weekend exemplified how the insurgents can methodically target and kill Americans. In all, 10 U.S. service members were killed Saturday and Sunday outside of Baghdad, where the security crackdown is concentrated. The deaths brought the war's American military death toll to 3,282.

Patterns of War Shift in Iraq Amid Buildup of U.S. Force

April 9, 2007

by Alissa J. Rubin / Edward Wong

New York Times

BAGHDAD - Nearly two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets each day. And while the overall death rates for all of Iraq have not dropped significantly, largely because of devastating suicide bombings, a few parts of the capital have become calmer as some death squads have decided to lie low.

But there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis.

For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period, though it has stayed roughly the same over all, decreasing in other parts of the country as troops have focused on the capital.

American commanders say it will be months before they can draw conclusions about the campaign to secure Baghdad, and just more than half of the so-called surge of nearly 30,000 additional troops into the country have arrived. But at the same time, political pressure in the United States for quick results and a firm troop pullout date has become more intense than ever.

This snapshot of the early weeks of the operation, which officially began on Feb. 14, is drawn from American and Iraqi casualty data and interviews with military commanders and government officials.

Already in that time, the military and political reality has shifted from what American planners faced when they prepared the Baghdad operation, continuing a pattern of rapid change that has become painfully familiar since the 2003 invasion.

In the northern and western provinces where they hold sway, and even in parts of Baghdad, Sunni Arab insurgents have sharpened their tactics, using more suicide car and vest bombs and carrying out successive chlorine gas attacks.

Even as officials have sought to dampen the insurgency by trying to deal with Sunni Arab factions, those groups have become increasingly fractured. There are now at least a dozen major Sunni insurgent groups - many fighting other Sunnis as well as the Americans and the Shiite-led government. A deal made with any one or two would be unlikely to be acceptable to the others.

While Shiite militias appear to have quieted in Baghdad so far, elements of them have been fighting pitched battles outside the city, sometimes against one another, sometimes against Sunni Arabs. They are pushing Sunnis out of their homes and attacking their mosques.

And in a new tactic, both Shiite and Sunni militants have been burning down homes and shops in the provinces in recent months.

One American private in the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, who was working the overnight shift at a new garrison in western Baghdad, described the Americans’ fight this way: “The insurgents, they see what we’re doing and we see what they’re doing. Then we get ahead, then they figure out what we’ve done and they get ahead.

“It’s like a game of cat and mouse. It’s just a really, really smart mouse.”

A Shift in Deaths

The incoming five brigades as part of the new security plan will bring the total number of American troops in Iraq to about 173,000 when it is complete, more than at any time since the war began.

Many of the new troops are joining long-term garrisons along with Iraqi forces in particularly violent neighborhoods of Baghdad, keeping up frequent patrols and trying to strengthen relations with Iraqis by meeting with local leaders and residents.

That has put the Americans in the middle of sectarian battlegrounds, and their death rate in the city has nearly doubled. The number of Americans killed in combat or other violence rose to 53 in Baghdad in the first seven weeks of the push, from Feb. 14 to April 2. That is up from 29 in the seven weeks before then.

Diyala Province, just northeast of Baghdad, has also been a trouble spot, bitterly contested by Sunni and Shiite militants. The United States military added a battalion in the province, and the fighting has been fierce, with 15 Americans killed there in the seven weeks starting on Feb. 14. The total from the seven weeks before then was 10.

At the same time, though, the rate of American deaths throughout the country has stayed about the same, with 116 killed in hostile incidents, up from 113 in the prior seven weeks.

As the focus has intensified on Baghdad, deaths have fallen in some outlying areas - even in Anbar Province, the heart of the Sunni rebellion where American marines have long faced intense violence. In the seven weeks after the start of the Baghdad operation, 31 Americans were killed in Anbar, down from 46 in the seven weeks beforehand.

While it is difficult to point to any one reason, in recent months Anbar has been at the center of a fissure in the insurgency between tribes who support the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and tribes who reject it because it is seen as inviting foreign fighters.

Roadside bombs were by far the most common means of killing Americans. Deaths in Baghdad and Diyala from such explosions more than doubled. In Baghdad, 83 percent of troop deaths since the plan began have been caused by roadside bombs. In Diyala, all but one of the 15 soldiers who died in the seven-week period were killed by roadside bombs. Just four were killed by the bombs in the preceding seven weeks there.

Violence Against Civilians

The Iraqi government and the American military refuse to release overall civilian casualty numbers; both give numbers only for a few categories of deaths, making it difficult to get an overall picture. One of the last official reports on civilian casualties came in January from the United Nations, which, citing morgue and hospital statistics, said at least 34,452 Iraqis were killed last year, or an average of nearly 100 per day.

Over the past seven weeks, American commanders say that the security push has had some success so far in cutting down the number of sectarian execution-style killings - tracked by counting the number of bodies found with gunshot or knife wounds. Military officials say that such killings have dropped 26 percent nationwide and even more in Baghdad.

But other kinds of attacks, like car bombings, have kept the overall civilian death rate high, and in recent days there are anecdotal reports that sectarian executions may be on the rise again.

“We’ve not seen the overall same significant amount of decline in the overall number of casualties” as in execution killings, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the American military command, said in a news conference last week.

The American military believes that much of the drop in executions has come because of decreased activity by Shiite militias and death squads, especially the powerful Mahdi Army militia that claims allegiance to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Many militia leaders have been detained in raids by the American military, according to the Iraqi government, and despite some major car bomb attacks on Shiite areas, the militias appear to have decided to refrain from carrying out revenge killings.

“The cycle of violence is not as predictable,” a senior American military official said. “Iraqi people are showing restraint, and the ability of death squads to retaliate is being circumscribed.”

However, it appears that not all Shiite cells, Mahdi Army or otherwise, are so patient. American soldiers in sections of western Baghdad, as well as Sunni Arabs living there and in Sunni enclaves south of Baghdad in Babil Province, are reporting that sectarian killings and threats against Sunni Arab families have begun to rise again, after a brief hiatus at the start of the security plan.

“There’s been spray paint on walls: ‘Get out or you’ll pay with your blood,’ ” said Capt. Benjamin Morales, 28, commander of a company of the 82nd Airborne that oversees a Shiite-dominated section of western Baghdad. There were eight Sunni households in the area at the start of March; three had left by its end.

The Iraqi government has been encouraging displaced families to return to their abandoned homes and offering $200 as an incentive. The government said that 2,000 families had returned by mid-March, but there is no way to verify the numbers.

In Fadhil, a Sunni enclave in eastern Baghdad surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods, residents say Shiite militias have been attacking with mortar shells and sniper fire. They accuse the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of taking part, which Iraqi military officials deny.

“The situation was quiet when the militias left the country, but when they came back, the tension returned,” said Wamid Salah Hameed, a community leader in Fadhil. “The military is attacking us and firing at the neighborhood randomly. There is a sectarian feeling among the soldiers in the army.”

Meanwhile, Shiite militias have burned shops in a Sunni enclave of Babil Province, and Sunni militias burned Sunni and Shiite homes in Diyala last month.

Sunni militias have been active in Baghdad, too. The number of bodies of their presumed victims that turn up, tortured and shot, appears to have declined, but not halted, in recent weeks. In the past three weeks in some mostly Sunni neighborhoods of western Baghdad, Shiites bringing supplies to displaced families - even displaced Sunni families - have been kidnapped and killed, their bodies left in corner lots.

“We used to see sometimes eight bodies a day,” said Sgt. Michael Brosch, of the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry. “Sometimes they were all beheaded. Then right at the beginning of the security plan, we didn’t see any. Now we’re seeing them again.”

At the same time, deaths and injuries nationwide from vehicle bombs, which are typically associated with Sunni insurgents, particularly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, have continued at a rapid pace.

January and February were particularly bad months for car bombing deaths; nearly 1,100 were killed in February alone. That number dropped to 783 in March, still high compared with months earlier in the war, according to an American military official. But the overall number of bombings actually increased: there were 108 car bombs that either detonated or were disarmed in March, a record for the war.

Outside of Baghdad, several huge bombings have been responsible for many of the deaths. The worst, last month in Tal Afar, killed 152.

In Anbar, at least six bombings involved a terrifying new weapon: truck bombs that spread chlorine gas, burning victims’ lungs and skin. The deadliest of those attacks, in Ramadi on Friday, killed at least 30 people.

A Fractured Government

Most American and Iraqi officials say that the key to Iraq’s security is a political agreement that gives Sunni Arabs more power in the government. But the near-term prognosis for that looks grim, as the calm necessary to negotiate such a deal remains elusive.

Some Shiite leaders have publicly said they are prepared to reconcile with the minority Sunnis, who generally prospered under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government. But the Shiites are still loath to give Sunnis any additional power and risk returning to the oppressed status they held for centuries.

Meanwhile, the Kurds in the north are pushing policies that will maximize the powers of their autonomous region, including trying to get control of the ethnically mixed oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

The Sunni Arabs seek several changes in the government’s structure. They want Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, to make good on his promise to replace ineffective or corrupt ministers. Mr. Maliki promised the shake-up months ago, but the proposal now appears moribund.

The Sunni Arabs also want the Constitution amended to bring power back to Baghdad and reduce the chance that areas in the oil-rich, Shiite-dominated south will follow the model of Kurdistan and create an autonomous state.

In addition, the Sunni Arabs continue to push for a rollback of purges of Sunni Arabs from government that began after the Shiites came to power in national elections.

But to stop the violence, the ruling Shiites must deal with Sunnis outside the government, in the factionalized insurgency, who can offer few guarantees on any promises to stop bombings against Shiites.

“We talk to people who say they represent the insurgents and they all say the same thing: ‘We oppose the occupation, but we don’t believe in killing civilians, in killing women and children,’ ” a senior adviser to Mr. Maliki said. “But our people are dying in bombs every day. Who is killing them?”

Top US generals reject war tsar role for Iraq and Afghanistan

· Bush struggles to find candidate for new post

·Chaotic approach and Cheney attitude blamed

April 12, 2007

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian

Three retired generals approached by the White House about a new high-profile post overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and reporting directly to the president have rejected the proposed post, leaving the administration struggling to find anyone of stature willing to take it on.

One of the four-star generals said he declined because of the chaotic way the war was being run and because Dick Cheney, the vice-president and the leading hawk in the Bush administration, retained more influence than pragmatists looking for a way out.

The deputy White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, confirmed yesterday that George Bush was considering restructuring the administration to create a new post, dubbed the war tsar by US media. It would involve co-ordinating the work of the defence, state and other departments at what she described as a critical stage in the wars. One of the retired generals approached, Marine General John Sheehan, told the Washington Post: "The very fundamental issue is they don't know where the hell they're going."

The unwillingness of the generals to take the job undermines recent attempts by the Bush administration to put a positive spin on the Iraq war. Mr Bush has claimed repeatedly over the past few weeks that there are signs his strategy of pouring extra US troops into Baghdad and neighbouring Anbar province is working.

The proposal to create the job comes after the departure of Meghan O'Sullivan, the 37-year-old who had the top national security council job on Iraq and Afghanistan. She was responsible for policy but had no power to implement it. The proposed war tsar would have the power to issue orders, and would be answerable directly to the president and his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the national security council, said the White House had sought advice from a number of people about the job but insisted it had not been offered to anyone. "The White House is looking into creating a higher profile position that would have the single, full-time focus on implementing and executing the recently completed strategic reviews for both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Gen Sheehan said Mr Cheney and his allies "are still in the positions of most influence" in spite of two leading pragmatists, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, winning support in the past four months for a diplomatic approach. After two weeks of discussing the job with Mr Hadley, Gen Sheehan rejected it: "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks.'"

Mr Cheney last week reiterated claims of links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in spite of newly released US intelligence assessments saying there had been no evidence. Mr Cheney, unlike Mr Gates and Ms Rice, also favours air strikes against Iran's nuclear sites.

The US continued to put pressure on Iran yesterday. Major-General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, in Baghdad yesterday repeated claims that Tehran was supplying Iraqi insurgents with explosive devices used in ambushes on US and British troops but also claimed Iran was training insurgents to use the explosives. He said the information had been gleaned from interrogation of detainees as recently as this month, some of whom said they had been in Iranian training camps. "We know that they [the explosive devices] are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," he said.

Double the Troops in "Surge"

April 12, 2007

Defensetech

President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 — more than double the number the President initially said.

That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.

Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the President has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additional funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007. Of that, about $3.2 billion was supposed to go to the Army and Marines for their escalated activity.

But that figure appears to have been grossly underestimated. The CBO now believes "that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment." There's a more detailed analysis of the numbers on pages 3 and 4 of the study, which was sent to House Budget Chairman John Spratt today.

“An average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll. Last year, CBO reported that the Department of Defense had reduced the amount of ‘dwell’ time for many troops from two years to one year in order to sustain troop levels. ‘Dwell’ time is the time troops spend in training at bases in the United States while living with their families. CBO questioned whether such a high pace of operations was sustainable over the long term. The President’s proposal will increase this level to above 200,000 troops, and to reach this level, the Pentagon will probably have to relax ‘dwell’ time standards even more.

“CBO’s report concludes that the cost of the President’s plan to ‘surge’ troops will be higher than previously indicated, both in dollar terms and in the burdens it places on our military.”

Gen. George Casey, the nominee for Army chief of staff, "told a Senate panel Thursday that improving security in Baghdad would take fewer than half as many extra troops as President Bush has chosen to commit," the AP is reporting.

Asked by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., why he had not requested the full five extra brigades that Bush is sending, Casey said, "I did not want to bring one more American soldier into Iraq than was necessary to accomplish the mission."

With many in Congress opposing or skeptical of Bush's troop buildup, Casey did not say he opposed the president's decision. He said the full complement of five brigades would give U.S. commanders in Iraq additional, useful flexibility.

"In my mind, the other three brigades should be called forward after an assessment has been made on the ground" about whether they are needed to ensure success in Baghdad, Casey said. later.

Now, Casey has long been skeptical of a troop increase. "It's a tough nut, whether or not bringing in more troops, more US troops will have a significant long term impact on the violence," he said back in October. And just the other day, Casey was arguing that any additional boots on the ground could be removed by the summer. So this feels like we're seeing the edges of an internal squabble between the White House and the Army brass. Or maybe between general and general.

Poisoned Food

Tainted food may have hurt 39,000 pets

April 9, 2007

by Andrew Bridges

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical may have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released Monday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals.

Banfield, The Pet Hospital, said an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs that ate the pet food contaminated with melamine developed kidney failure. There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats in the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The hospital chain saw 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold. It saw 284 extra cases of kidney failure among cats during that period, or a roughly 30 percent increase, when compared with background rates.

"It has meaning, when you see a peak like that. We see so many pets here, and it coincided with the recall period," said veterinarian Hugh Lewis, who oversees the mining of Banfield's database to do clinical studies. The chain continues to share its data with the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA officials previously have said the database compiled by the huge veterinary practice would probably provide the most authoritative picture of the harm done by the tainted cat and dog food.

From its findings, Banfield officials calculated an incidence rate of .03 percent for pets, although there was no discernible uptick among dogs. That suggests the contamination was overwhelming toxic to cats, Lewis said. That is in line with what other experts have said previously.

At least six pet food companies have recalled products made with imported Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical. The recall involved about 1 percent of the overall U.S. pet food supply.

Measuring the tainted food's impact on animal health has proved an elusive goal. Previous estimates have ranged from the FDA's admittedly low tally of roughly 16 confirmed deaths to the more than 3,000 unconfirmed cases logged by one Web site.

Menu Foods CFO sold stock before pet food recall

Apr. 10 2007 7:23 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The chief financial officer of Menu Foods Income Fund says it was a "horrible coincidence" that he sold nearly half his units in the pet food company less than three weeks before a massive product recall.

Insider trading reports confirm that Mark Wiens sold 14,000 units, or 45 per cent of his stock, for $102,900 on Feb. 26 and Feb. 27, reports The Globe and Mail. The shares would be worth $62,440 at current prices.

Wiens still owned 17,193 units and options to purchase 101,812 units after the sale.

"It's a horrible coincidence, yes . . ." Wiens told The Globe.

"I hold myself to the highest ethical and moral standards possible. I wouldn't do anything to imperil the high governance standards that I demand of myself or anybody in the company."

Wiens said the first reports about pet-related illnesses connected to Menu Foods products were made in late February.

However, he said that he did not hear about the issue until early March.

The Streetsville, Ont. company eventually issued a recall for 60 million containers of dog and cat food on March 16.

"In terms of process, during any given year, we get consumer complaints all the time and it becomes matter of course for our technical people, so it's not something that necessarily gets flagged right to the top on an ongoing basis," said Wiens.

Paul Henderson, the president and chief executive of Menu Foods, said his company severed its relationship with its Chinese supplier of wheat gluten on March 6. Melamine in the supplied wheat gluten has been identified as the root of the problem.

Henderson said in a recent press conference that by March 6, it was evident that "something was wrong" with some of the company's products.

Wiens said he has not been contacted by the Ontario Securities Commission or any other regulators since the problems erupted at Menu Foods.

OSC spokesperson Wendy Dey told the Globe that the commission reviews insider trading reports routinely but she said they do not comment on individual cases.

Wiens explained that he sold his shares for financial planning purposes and that he was prohibited from selling until Feb. 16 because of an implemented blackout period.

He said he recognized why questions would arise about his trade.

"Certainly there would be questions when you piece all the timing together. I understand that," he said.

Multiple manufacturers have since recalled their pet foods after using the same supplier.

Official stories that the pet deaths and infections were caused by Chinese wheat glutin are bald faced lies, and that the E-coli infections in the food industry are over and done with and were just  the result of “infected lelttuce, peanuts and onions” are solely designed to avoid an outbreak of public panic .

It has long been official American governmental policy to deny everything, to demand to see the proof and when it is forthcoming, refusal to accept it, as well as to provide a sham excuse for what they believe will satisfy a basically stupid public and then quickly create an artificial media interest in other, less harmful, matters.

The Disappearance of George W. Bush

Even Mormons Jumping Off Bush Bandwagon As War Takes Its Toll

April 4, 2007

by Bill Gallagher

Niagara Falls Reporter

DETROIT -- Iraq is lost militarily and politically. Even the Mormons are now abandoning President George W. Bush's mad war. That's akin to the Swiss Guard deserting and leaving the pope to fend for himself with the Vatican under siege.

Other than his own greedy family members, oil barons and military contractors, no group of Americans has stood so steadfastly behind the Bush administration than the members of the Church of Latter-day Saints.

Voters in Utah, the Mormon theocracy, have supported Bush with loyalty they usually reserve for the Brigham Young football team. In 2004, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's criminal enterprise got 71 percent of the vote in Utah.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a two-year compilation of Gallup polls showed staunch support among Mormons for the war in Iraq and Bush's handling of the violence: "American Mormons, more than any other religious group over that period, believed the United States was right to invade Iraq."

But a recent survey found "just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormons said they backed Bush's war management." Mormon support for the war has plunged 21 percentage points in just five months.

The defection of the Mormons is a seismic political event, and you can bet Bush's political brain, Karl Rove, turns pale when he sees those numbers. The head of the Church of Latter-day Saints is expressing doubts about war, and the mayor of Salt Lake City is leading the charge to impeach Bush.

LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley may have set the stage for the precipitous plunge in Mormon support for the war. Speaking to students at Brigham Young University last fall, Hinckley spoke of "the terrible cost of war."

While not mentioning Iraq or Bush directly, the church leader said of war, "What a fruitless thing it often is," adding, "And what a terrible price it extracts." In the Mormon tradition, the words of the church president are carefully weighed.

Kirk Jowers, the director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, told the Salt Lake Tribune the church leader's remarks "may have been interpreted by the LDS community as an indictment against the world's violence."

Jowers said, "Small phrases by President Hinckley are to the LDS community as Alan Greenspan's words were to the financial community."

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a lapsed Mormon, rejected subtle pronouncements and ambiguity. He said Bush should be impeached for committing "high crimes and misdemeanors." Anderson had the guts to say what every clear-thinking American ought to be shouting from the mountain tops.

Anderson told CNN, "If impeachment were ever justified, this is certainly the time. This president, by engaging in such incredible abuses of power, breaches of trust with both the Congress and the American people, and misleading us into this tragic and unbelievable war, the violation of treaties, other international law, our Constitution, our own domestic laws and then his role in heinous human rights abuse; I think all of that together calls for impeachment."

Whatever Democratic candidate for president will say and embrace similar words of truth has my support. That sure as hell will not be the calculating, triangulating Hillary Clinton. Such crisp honesty escapes her. Other leaders in the Democratic Party are similarity afflicted with the play-it-safe syndrome.

Anderson made his fellow Democrats cringe, saying forthrightly, "The fact that anybody would say that impeachment is off the table when we have a president who has been so egregious in his violation of our Constitution, a president who asserts unitary executive power, that is absolutely chilling."

Anderson denounced the "culture of obedience" that has so damaged our nation and weakened the Democratic Party.

Bush will now blame Congress, the Democrats and the Iraqi people for the disaster in Iraq that was doomed from its inception. Those of us who rejected the "culture of obedience" are seeing the horrible tragedy we predicted unfolding every day.

Bush's surge is just another slogan. There is no military solution that will undo the fiasco the invasion and occupation have brought.

Bush only wants to keep the war going long enough to pass the bloody baton to his successor. Then he will fade into ignominious oblivion, hiding out at his ranch in Texas, even more disconnected from the suffering his messianic megalomania and unrivaled incompetence have brought the world.

Last week, 152 people were killed when a truck bomb exploded in Tal Afar, making it the single deadliest bombing attack since the war began. Bush claimed last March that Tal Afar was a great Iraq success story. If Americans knew more about these stories, the White House argued at the time, they would have more confidence in Bush's victory strategy.

On March 23, 2006, Bush told a crowd of supporters in Cleveland he had found the magic bullet in Tal Afar, driving terrorists from what he hailed as a "free city."

Bush gushed about his success in the northern Iraq city, bellowing to the faithful, "The strategy that worked so well in Tal Afar did not emerge overnight -- it came only after much trial and error. It took time to understand and adjust to the brutality of the enemy in Iraq, yet the strategy is working."

The reality in Tal Afar destroys "Bubble Boy" Bush's grand delusions. In revenge attacks, Shiite police rounded up 70 people in a Sunni neighborhood and summarily executed them. Can Bush and his strategists explain for us what brutal enemies are responsible for this bloodshed?

Last week, more than 500 people were killed. The death toll will continue as long as American troops remain in Iraq. Only political reconciliation can salvage the nation, and Iraqis must determine their own destiny. The arrogance and cruelty of western occupation will never bring peace and stability to Iraq.

The extent of the civilian casualties in Iraq will make us despised in the Middle East for decades to come. Bush's war gives the bin Ladens of the world just what they want.

The British, our only significant ally in Iraq, are now confirming that the scientists who concluded more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion were spot-on.

The study done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Al Mustansiriyia University in Baghdad was originally published last October in the British medical journal "The Lancet."

At the time, the U.S. and British governments rejected the death-toll survey. Bush dismissed the report as "unreliable," while failing to offer a scintilla of evidence to support his claim. The toadies in the corporate media let him get away with it.

The chief scientific adviser to the British Ministry of Defense, Roy Anderson, reviewed the methodology used in calculating the Iraq death toll. He told the Independent newspaper the methods were "robust" and "close to best practice." Another official told the paper it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."

Now that our aggression has shattered Iraq, Bush and his neocon Amen Chorus are now blaming the Iraqis for their fate. They just don't appreciate what we've done for them. Sure, there have been a few casualties, but that's the price of freedom, these condescending cowards are saying. We gave them a chance, and those ignorant, unruly desert people are rejecting our gifts.

The other promised benefits from Operation Iraqi Liberation -- OIL -- are just not materializing. A Saddamless Iraq was sure to stabilize and democratize the Middle East, and make Israel safe and secure. Our "moderate" Arab friends would join in our crusade, and peace would spread like wildfire. But somehow Bush's hubris has collided with reality, and his geopolitical fantasies are manifest failures.

Even Bush's hand-holding buddy Saudi King Abdullah has abandoned him. The king cancelled his appearance at a White House dinner planned to honor him next month. This extraordinary diplomatic insult is a measure of the Saudis' anger and the strain on their long friendship with the United States.

The Busheviks have rejected everything the Saudis have tried to do to broker a deal to jump-start talks with the Palestinian government, settle tensions in Lebanon and bring Iran into regional discussions.

King Abdullah now calls the U.S forces in Iraq "an illegal foreign occupation." The Saudis are skeptical of any hope for peace in the region. Like the Mormons, they are bailing out on Bush's war.

Hinckley, the prophet and seer for millions of Mormons around the world, spoke about how fleeting the power of military and political leaders can be in his remarks at Brigham Young.

"They ruled with near omnipotence, and their very words brought terror into the hearts of people," he said. And yet, he added, "they have all passed into the darkness of the grave."

Bush's war in Iraq is lost. Nothing can be done to recover from it. The war and the people who created it have descended into the darkness of the grave.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.

Copyright - www.niagarafallsreporter.com