The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., May 11, 2007: “A number of subjects that ought to be of interest to the public, aside of the fatal crushing to death of our President by the anaconda of public opinion.

The first subject deals with the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. Yesterday, there was a top level phone call between the Israeli Embassy and Vice President Cheney’s office. One of his top staff is a friend. The call dealt with the election of Sarkozy and an actual quote was…’Our man is in and we can now talk!’

It is no secret here that the U.S. contributed heavily to Sarkozy’s political war chest in the recent election.  There are a number of reasons why we, and Israel, supported him so fiercely. The Cheney people hate France because they have dared to oppose us and Israel

As a Hungarian Jew (his mother was Jewish, ergo he is considered a Jew) and a fierce, militant right winger, Sarkozy is in good odor here and in Tel Aviv There are several major issues here. The first one is the idea that Sarkozy will no longer support the Lebanese, will be to Bush what the retiring Blair in England was…a devoted ally. Another factor is the problems France has been having with its huge Muslim population.

The younger ones are rebellious and recently engaged in violent rioting. Sarokzy’s election was a partial public reaction to this carnage. He and his people assure both us and the Isrelis that he will, as soon as he can, foment these malcontents to the point where they will riot again and then will order the forced deportation of all Muslim youth from France between the ages of 18 through 25 and crack down on those remaining.

Also, he has pledged to “utterly crush” the student union UNEF that is the focus of so much domestic violence

.France has always detested Jews and Sarkozy has agreed to reverse this to the best of his ability. Cheney suggested shipping the Muslims to “some Goddam desert somewhere” but no one knows where they will be sent but they will be sent.

Once he has reestablished cordial relations with the French Jewish community, he has promised to let France play a bigger role in NATO operations in Afghanistan. There are now a little over a thousand French troops in that country and he has agreed to move them from relatively static activities to active anti-Taliban combat in southern Afghanistan.

The British, now leading the war there, will be pulled out when Blair leaves and the Brits have warned us about that.

Sarkozy was picked by us as a straw dog because of his Jewish connections, his ferocity in attacking perceived American enemies (anything Muslim) and much, much closer cooperation with the United States, especially in providing troops for Iraq. Many of these will be removed, at the demand of Israel, from Lebanon and Sarkozy will not support the Muslim peoples of that country.

This new dictator of France, so pro-Israel, has a skeleton in his closet: A top level CIA evaluation I read on Saturday says the new President’s father was a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross party and took a prominent part in deporting the Jews of Budapest between May and October of 1944!

The next interesting piece of information is that Bush is going to activate the entire, note the word, entire, U.S. National Guard and ship it off, in increments, to Iraq. He is delusional and in the face of repeated warnings that his idiot “surge” will never work, he is going right ahead as if he heard nothing.

In the FDAs frenzy to put the blame for pet food poisoning, they blamed China and, not content with dissing them for putting a totally harmless chemical in food supplements, started the rumor that the Chinese had been selling the very poisonous dietyhylene glycol as pure glycerine. This, we are told (NYT May 6, 2007 p 1) was shipped to Panama where the local government used it in cough medicine, killing thousands.

What no one here wants to talk about (and are using the Chinese as a blind) is that a very large amount of popular American prescription drugs have been entering the United States that are even more deadly than the Panamanian cough syrup. These counterfeit medications are purported to be made by:Merck, Smith-Klein Glaxo, Pfizer, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb,, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Warner-Lambert, Monsanto, Amgen, BioPort, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. They are not made by these companies but come from several areas outside the United States, to include Lybia, Italy and Israel. Contamininates include, but are not limited to:  Acetonitrile, Ethylene glycol, Methyl ethyl ketone, N,N-dimethylformamide, N-butyl alcohol, Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) Toluene,    Dichloromethane, Methanol, Methyl isobutyl ketone, Naphthalene,  N-Hexane,Pyridine

Many of these adulterated and counterfeit drugs come into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, and Canadian “cheap medicine” fronts. They are deadly and no one ought to even think about buying them, mostly via Internet ads. Is the FDA aware of this? Of course and they have been trying frantically to stop it but in private. It would not do to let the public know this or another pet food panic would ensue. It is better to pay more money and buy from American pharmacies.

Another huge joke is the breathless story about ‘Muslim terrorists’ who are going to attack a U.S. Army base with weapons they do not have.  This is the latest bovine fecal matter, the 'Terrorist Attack on Fort Dix'.

The Bush administration has been steadily trumpeting this Fright Night crap about once a year and have cried 'wolf' so many times that the public no longer listens to their fictions.

What next? Duct tape redux?

Can we anticipate a planned devilish attack by pre-teen troops of the very dead bin Laden against a Colorado day care center for autistic children? A plan by dimwitted "Muslim terrorist" 15-year-olds on Steinhart Aquarium and the dynamiting of fish tanks?

I firmly believe the terrorists could buy a 16-wheeler, load it with explosives or tins of anthrax, paint bin Ladin's picture on the sides along with multi-lingual death threats against America and drive it, unmolested, through an entry port like Blaine, Washington or Windsor, Ontario, waved on by smiling DHS people who were happily busy beating and strip searching an 86-year old Alzheimer's victim in a frenzied search for Comp-4!

And the final piece of news you will not see on CNN nor read in the New York Times concerns the frantic anger of the Israelis and other Zionist entitles here concerning the coming trial of the AIPAC spies. Jews are howling about this AIPAC trial and demanding the pardoning of Larry Franklin. To them, it is not only permitted but a necessity for Jews to spy for Israel who, in their eyes, transcends loyalty to America. The Pentagon brass wants these people shot as spies but this will never, never happen. Bush is being pressured to send them all, including Pollard, to Israel for “punishment,” which will consist of not being allowed to go to the beach during the weekend.

Bush is nuttier than a fruitcake and if he doesn’t show some flexibility and at least appear to be listening to something other than the weird voice in his head, that head will surely end up on a pike, being paraded up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of cheering crowds.”

Here We Go Again! Get Out the Duct Tape, Kids! (Proverbs 26:11)

Jihad DVD find foiled ‘terror plot,’ says FBI

May 9, 2007

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian

A plot by alleged radical Islamists against a military base in the US was foiled when they took a DVD of them firing assault weapons to a shop in New Jersey for copying, the US authorities said yesterday.

The five men, originally from the Balkans, Turkey and Jordan, were arrested on Monday night at Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and charged yesterday with conspiracy to murder US soldiers. It is alleged that one boasted they would kill "at least 100 soldiers". The US authorities said the group had serious intent but were not thought to have any link with al-Qaida or any other international terrorist organisation.

A sixth man has been charged with aiding and abetting the illegal possession of weapons, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail. The arrests, made when the group was allegedly trying to buy seven rifles, will reopen debate about the threat posed by would-be terrorists in the US and immigration. Three of the six were said to be illegal immigrants.

The FBI said the men took a video of themselves firing weapons and shouting "jihad" to the shop in January last year. A worker became suspicious when he viewed the DVD and told the FBI, who described him as an "unsung hero". The FBI kept them under surveillance and infiltrated two informers into the group. It said they had trained with guns in the woods of the Poconos mountains, Pennsylvania.

The attorney's office in New Jersey said the group had looked at targets including a naval base in Philadelphia and a football match, but decided on Fort Dix, the main mobilisation point on the east coast. The attorney's office said one of them had delivered pizzas to the base and claimed he knew it like the back of his hand, identifying a spot that would cut off the electricity supply. They are alleged to have been planning to use rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. In a secret recording, one of the men is alleged to have said: "My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers. You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place [up] and retreat completely without any losses."

Jody Weiss, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, said: "Today we dodged a bullet. And looking at the weapons they were trying to obtain, we dodged a lot of bullets. We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons."

The three illegal immigrants are Dritan Duka, 28, an ethnic Albanian from the former Yugoslavia, and his brothers, Eljvir, 23, and Shain Duka, 26. The others are Serdar Tatar, 23, from Turkey, and Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, from Jordan. Agron Abdullahu, 24, an ethnic Albanian from the former Yugoslavia, is charged with aiding and abetting.

FBI arrests 7 in alleged ‘terror plot’

Investigators claim men conspired to attack Sears Tower, federal building

June 22, 2006

NBC News and news services

MIAMI - Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago’s Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., federal law-enforcement sources told NBC News.

FBI agents swarmed over a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off its metal door. Neighbors said the suspects said they were Muslim and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic.

The men — part of a radical Black Muslim group — were planning terror acts in Miami and Chicago, officials say.

An official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

‘No imminent threat’

An FBI informant infiltrated the group, the sources say, neutralizing the threat. They say it is not clear how much damage the group would have done on its own. They were making plans to purchase bomb-making materials, the officials add.

Indictments against the men will be unsealed Friday for charges including an attempt to "maliciously damage or destroy" property "by means of an explosive," a source added. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to hold a news conference Friday to discuss the raid. A simultaneous news conference will be held in Miami.

U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement that more details about the ongoing operation would be released then.

Local media reported that agents were raiding a warehouse in Miami's traditionally poor Liberty City section. CNN reported that no weapons or bomb-making materials were found.

"There is no imminent threat to Miami or any other area because of these operations," said Richard Kolko, spokesman for FBI headquarters in Washington. He declined further comment.

‘They seemed brainwashed’

Residents near the warehouse said FBI agents spent several hours in the neighborhood showing photos of the suspects and seeking information. They said the men had lived in the area about a year.

Residents said the men taken into custody described themselves as Mulims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group, which seemed militaristic.

"They slept there" in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of them about a month ago. "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given there lives to Allah," Rose said.

She said they tried to recruit her younger brother and nephew for a karate class but it never happened.

"It was weird," Rose said.

Benjamin Williams, 17, said the group had young children with them sometimes.

"We were under the assumption that they were opening up a garage business," he said, adding that they wore normal clothes "but sometimes they would cover their faces. Sometimes they would wear things on their heads, like turbans."

A man calling himself Brother Corey and claiming to be a member of the group told CNN that the individuals who worship at the building call themselves the “Seas of David.”

He dismissed any suggestion that the men were contemplating violence. “We are peaceful,” he said. He added that the group studies the Bible and has “soldiers” in Chicago, but is not a terrorist organization.

Bush briefed

Gov. Jeb Bush was briefed on the situation Thursday, according to his spokeswoman, Alia Faraj. "We have great confidence in the federal, state and local law enforcement agencies who are committed to keeping our country safe," Faraj said.

She added that there has been greater communication between state and federal agencies since the 2001 terrorism attacks.

The 110-floor Sears Tower is the nation's tallest building, at 1,450 feet. Its skydeck was closed for about a month and a half after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Managers of tower said in a statement that they speak regularly with the FBI and local law enforcement about terror threats and that Thursday “was no exception.”

“Law enforcement continues to tell us that they have never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions,” the statement said.

Florida terror ties

South Florida has been linked to several terrorism investigations in the past. Several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived and trained in the area, including ringleader Mohamed Atta and several plots by Cuban-Americans against the government of Fidel Castro have also been based in Miami.

Jose Padilla, a former resident once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb in the country, is charged in Miami with being part of a North American terror support cell to al-Qaida and other violent Islamic extremist organizations. He has been in federal custody since 2002 and is scheduled for trial in September.

Padilla was originally designated an "enemy combatant" and held for three years without charge by the Bush administration shortly after his May 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

NBC News’ Pete Williams, Jim Popkin, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report

AIPAC on Trial

The lobby argues that good Americans spy for Israel.

May 7, 2007 Issue

by Justin Raimondo

The American Conservative

Is there a First Amendment right to engage in espionage? Dorothy Rabinowitz seems to think so. Describing the actions of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former top officials of AIPAC, the premier Israel lobbying group, who passed purloined intelligence to Israeli government officials, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist characterized them as “activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment.” If what Rabinowitz says is true—if passing classified information to foreign officials is routine in the nation’s capital—then we are all in big trouble.

On Aug. 4, 2005, Rosen, Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with violating provisions of the Espionage Act that forbid divulging national defense information to persons not authorized to receive it. The indictment traces the treasonous trio’s circuitous path as they met in the shadows—in empty restaurants, at Union Station in Washington, on street corners. Rosen and Weissman sought out and cultivated Franklin, milking him for information that they dutifully transmitted to their Israeli handlers. According to Rabinowitz, however, they were merely “doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs”—which is true, assuming they understood their jobs to be spying for Israel.

The trial is scheduled to begin June 7. As the day of reckoning approaches, the Israel lobby is ratcheting up the rhetoric. So, too, is the defense: in a duet of hysterical accusations and frenzied rationalizations, the accused spies’ defenders have described the proceedings as a frame-up, the result of an intra-bureaucratic struggle within the government, and a plot by anti-Semites in Bush’s Justice Department to carry out a Washington pogrom. None of these flights of imagination are any more convincing than the Dream Team’s defense of O.J. Simpson. Yet the noise level continues to rise, as if sheer volume, instead of logical arguments, could overwhelm the copious evidence of the defendants’ guilt.

The indictment lists numerous acts of espionage, dating back to 1999, in which Rosen and/or Weissman acted as conduits for classified information flowing from Washington to Tel Aviv. The feds had been watching for a long time: the indictment makes clear that Rosen and Weissman didn’t make a move without the FBI’s counterintelligence unit knowing about it. This surveillance is how they happened on Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst, who walked in on a luncheon meeting in Arlington, Virginia, attended by Rosen, Weissman, and Naor Gilon, chief of the political-affairs section at the Israeli Embassy. The feds were listening in as Franklin—referring to a document dated June 25 and marked “top secret”—announced he had secrets to tell.

Tell not sell: unlike the majority of post-Cold War spies, the AIPAC-Franklin espionage ring wasn’t centered around financial gain but ideology. Franklin is a dedicated neoconservative, a minor yet key player in the neocon network, who served in the military attache’s office in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1990s and was a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with expertise in Iranian affairs working in Douglas Feith’s policy shop.

The counter-intelligence unit was hot on Franklin’s trail, and they watched his every move—his wholesale transfer of top-secret information on Iran, al-Qaeda, and other intelligence of interest to Israel to Rosen and Weissman, who funneled it to their contacts in the Israeli Embassy. The FBI gave Franklin enough rope to hang himself, and then moved in, showing up at his door and confronting him with his treachery. A search of his home and office turned up a veritable lending library of classified documents dating back years, all of which had doubtless been made available to the Israelis. Faced with the probability of a long prison stretch, Franklin agreed to wear a wire to his subsequent meetings with Rosen and Weissman. In the months that followed, the FBI built its case, recording conversations and following the AIPAC duo.

And they did a good job, apparently, because the government is making an unusual request: that some testimony and evidence be shielded from the public due to its highly sensitive nature. This wasn’t just a case of pilfering a few innocuous memoranda. It looks like team AIPAC made off with the family jewels and maybe even the deed to the house. Why else would the Justice Department risk having a conviction thrown out on appeal on account of such a rarely invoked legal mechanism?

The defense has protested proposed security procedures—magnetometers at the courtroom door, security sweeps of the courtroom itself, an officer of the court monitoring electronic surveillance while the trial is in session—on the grounds they would prejudice the jury against the defendants. They compare this to dragging Rosen and Weissman before the jury in prisoners’ uniforms and shackles. Yet these security measures point to the seriousness of the matter before the court, the depth to which the Rosen-Weissman-Franklin spy ring penetrated the government, and the ongoing breach they have opened in America’s national-security firewall.

While most of the more cautious elements in the Jewish community are staying well away from this case, the radicals, such as Rabbi Avi Weiss and his AMCHA-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, who have previously devoted their efforts to freeing Jonathan Pollard, have now turned their attention to Rosen and Weissman. Steven Lieberman and Anne Sterba, lawyers for the group, wrote in an amicus brief: “Trying these two men for disclosing critical ‘national defense information’ to foreign officials, without letting the public know what the alleged information was, will allow enemies of the Jewish people to exaggerate the significance of that evidence and will leave the press and the public to subsist only on rumors and speculation.”

The Weiss group likens the prosecution of Rosen and Weissman to the Dreyfus case—in effect positing the existence of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Not exactly a credible contention, offered, as it is, without evidence, but the defenders of Rosen and Weissman are getting more frantic as the trial date approaches. As a writer for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it, “Does this trial really carry any resemblance to the Dreyfus trial? It’s a different era, a different country, a different system, a different accusation. Making this comparison demands some imagination, much ambition, and maybe a speck of chutzpah too.”

A recently unsealed defense memorandum details a Feb. 16, 2005 colloquy between Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, and Nathan Lewin, AIPAC’s legal counsel, in which the latter reveals that Paul McNulty—then the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and chief prosecutor in the case—“would like to end it with minimal damage to AIPAC.” Lewin told Lowell, “He is fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it.” This is hardly the behavior one would expect of contemporary anti-Dreyfusards in the Justice Department plotting to scapegoat AIPAC and the Jews.

Clearly the Rosen-Weissman defense team is involved in a bit of “greymail,” that is, forcing the government to disclose as much classified information as possible during the discovery phase of this case and hoping to derail the prosecution entirely as it weighs the effects of disclosure against the benefits of a possible conviction. As we go to press, Judge T.S. Ellis has ruled against the prosecution's proposal to shield sensitive testimony and evidence behind a veil of pseudonyms and euphemism, which could delay the begining of the trial.

Efforts to embarrass the administration go beyond accusing DOJ and extend to prominent figures such as Condoleezza Rice, who is accused by Abbe Lowell of leaking national defense information to AIPAC as Franklin did. Gen. Anthony Zinni is being targeted in a similar manner. Both have been subpoenaed, along with David Satterfield, deputy chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq, and William Burns, U.S. ambassador to Russia, to testify. If Rosen and Weissman are going down, the Israel lobby seems to be saying, then so are a lot of prominent people—some of whom, like Zinni, just happen to be their enemies.

This isn’t greymail, it’s blackmail. It was Zinni, after all, who said of the Israel lobby and the neoconservatives: “I think it’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. Everybody—everybody I talk to in Washington—has known and fully knows what their agenda was [during the run up to the Iraq War] and what they were trying to do.”

The intrigue thickened last October as word leaked that a proposed deal was dangled in front of Rep. Jane Harman: AIPAC would back her to become head of the House Intelligence Committee if she would urge the government to treat Rosen, Weissman—and AIPAC itself—with kid gloves. The Forward reported, “Several congressional sources confirmed that major donors to the Democratic Party have been lobbying Pelosi on behalf of Harman’s nomination to head the intelligence committee and that these attempts were not welcomed by the House Democratic leader.” Time named Haim Saban, the billionaire Hollywood producer and major AIPAC moneybags, as one of the supplicants. Pelosi didn’t fall for it, and Harman was rebuffed. Perhaps this was in the background when the speaker was booed as she addressed the subsequent AIPAC national conference, although Pelosi got back in the Israel lobby’s good graces after she stripped a provision from the military appropriations bill that would have required the president to go to Congress for permission to attack Iran.

The defense has fought to get the case against Rosen and Weissman thrown out on any number of grounds: the Espionage Act is unconstitutional, it doesn’t apply to their clients but only to government officials, and, last but not least, it’s a violation of the Israel lobby’s First Amendment “right” to betray classified information to its masters in Tel Aviv. Twisting and turning, threatening and spitting, delaying as best it can, the defense has tried to wriggle out of it every which way, to no avail. The trial is going forward, and the public spectacle of the biggest espionage scandal involving Israel since the prosecution of Pollard could deliver a body blow to the Israel lobby at a time when it has come in for public scrutiny and criticism as never before.

But that hasn’t prevented the lobby from brazenly defending the accused spies, in spite of the preponderance of evidence, and even hailing them as patriots. Writing in The Forward, Michael Berenbaum avers, “Instead of being grounds for prosecution, perhaps the influence Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman were trying to exert—making officials and the public aware of the danger from Iran—should be heralded.” And why should we hail espionage as laudable in this instance? Well, you see, because the AIPAC defendants were ahead of their time in citing the danger from Iran: “In Washington, as Rosen and Weissman are learning the hard way, the ‘crime’ is often not being wrong, but rather being right too early or at the wrong time, or being out of sync with the conventional wisdom, or pushing an inconvenient truth.”

In light of Judge Ellis’s recent ruling that in this trial the Espionage Act is going to be interpreted narrowly and that the burden is on the prosecution to show that the defendants knowingly harmed U.S. national security interests, the defense might be expected to make a pitch similar to Berenbaum’s—that, instead of prosecuting Rosen and Weissman, we ought to be pinning medals on their chests.

The AIPAC defendants weren’t spies, they were merely ahead of the curve, anticipating the day when a distinction is no longer being made between American and Israeli interests. That is the line we are hearing, as the curtain goes up on te trial of Rosen and Weissman. Whether the jury or the public falls for it remains to be seen.

___________________________________________

Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com.

Comment: Let’s be fair and democratic about this treason. First, we give them a fair, public trial and, second, we take them out at dawn and shoot them both.  BH

Kansas disaster renews National Guard debate

May 8, 2007

by Carey Gillam

Reuters

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (Reuters) - Critics of the Iraq war said on Tuesday the Bush administration's failure to replenish vital National Guard equipment sent to Iraq caused Kansas to fall short in responding to last week's tornado disaster, and other states were equally vulnerable.

The White House and the Pentagon rebuffed the criticism, saying Kansas and other states had adequate resources that they could share in event of disasters like the Kansas tornado that leveled one small town on Friday and killed 10 in the area.

The debate was ignited by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, who said on Monday the federal government had failed to replace state National Guard equipment deployed to Iraq and the lack of equipment was hindering rescue and recovery efforts after a weekend of violent weather in the Midwestern state.

Tornadoes on Friday and Saturday were followed by widespread flooding, exacerbating the need for National Guard resources, according to the governor.

Groups opposed to the Iraq war added their voices to the debate in a news conference on Tuesday, saying diminished domestic capabilities of the National Guard, whose 460,000 citizen-soldiers have a dual mandate to protect the nation at home and abroad, is hurting states like Kansas.

"That tornado occurred on Friday and here it is Tuesday and they're still doing search and rescue because they've had to bring in resources from out of state," Jane Bullock, a former chief of staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the news conference called by the National Security Network and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

Kansas emergency management spokeswoman Sharon Watson confirmed on Tuesday that the state was bringing in private contractors to help move several tons of debris from the town of Greensburg, where 95 percent of the buildings were estimated damaged or destroyed.

Watson said Kansas also was borrowing personnel and resources from Nebraska

Sebelius has said that Kansas lacked about half the large equipment needed for recovery efforts and debris removal. She said more than 20 percent of the state's Humvees and 15 of 19 helicopters were sent to Iraq.

She was due to discuss the matter with President George W. Bush when he tours the area on Wednesday.

WHITE HOUSE WEIGHS IN

White House spokesman Tony Snow said he was aware Sebelius was complaining about a lack of National Guard resources in Kansas and linking it to the Iraq war but he said she had told federal officials she had enough resources to respond to the crisis.

Snow did say, however, that Sebelius had requested a mobile command center, an urban search-and-rescue task force, a mobile office building, 42 radios and helicopters.

"Those are the things that the state has requested that FEMA has provided," Snow said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman also said resources were adequate. According to Whitman there are more than 83,000 Guard personnel available in Kansas and nearby states as well as hundreds of pieces of heavy equipment.

Sebelius is among a group of governors that has been asking for more than a year for the federal government to repair or replace millions of dollars worth of National Guard equipment sent to Iraq.

David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors Association, said that across the country, governors saw re-equipping the National Guard as "vital."

A report by the Government Accountability Office issued in 2005 in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster along the Gulf Coast said the extensive use of Guard equipment overseas has "significantly reduced the amount of equipment available to state governors for domestic needs."

Maj. Gen. Melvyn Montano, former adjutant general of the New Mexico National Guard, said at Tuesday's news conference that in addition to Kansas, equipment shortfalls were significant in Michigan, Oklahoma, Florida, Oregon, New Mexico, and Colorado.

(Additional reporting by Kristin Roberts)

Gates rejects emergency command proposal

May 9, 2007

by Lolita C. Baldor  ,

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rejected a proposal to let governors command active duty troops responding to disasters, officials said Wednesday, though the Pentagon will grant National Guard leaders more authority to coordinate with other military and homeland security agencies.

Gates told Congress Wednesday he had approved 20 of the 23 changes recommended recently by an independent commission in an effort to improve Guard funding, equipment and coordination in emergencies.

His comments came just days after tornadoes in Kansas highlighted deficiencies with Guard equipment and gaps in planning that were exposed by the Gulf hurricanes more than 18 months ago.

Gates did not reveal which recommendations from the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves that he rejected. But two defense officials familiar with the matter told The Associated Press he didn't agree with the panel's suggestion that governors be allowed to direct active duty troops responding to emergencies in their states.

The officials requested anonymity because Gates' decisions on the commission report have not yet been made public.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, chairwoman of the National Governors Association, had no immediate comment on the development, spokesman Jeanine L'Ecuyer said.

In previous situations such as Hurricane Katrina, military leaders have worked side by side with governors but have maintained command of their active duty troops.

The governors have authority over their own National Guard troops during state disasters, but the U.S. military takes command if the Guard is federalized by the president, such as in major crises such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The governors cannot command regular, active-duty forces.

The commission in its March 1 report, concluded that states and governors are not adequately considered in decisions relating to the Guard. Gates concurred with the panel's other proposals to have the governors work more closely with the Pentagon.

He told the Senate Defense Appropriations panel Wednesday that the department is "trying to deal with some of these Guard problems. And we will be more than happy to work with you all, with the governors association, with the adjutants general to get at this problem."

Specifically, he said, he approved making the chief of the National Guard a four-star general, rather than a three-star.

According to the officials, Gates also agreed that the head of the National Guard — currently Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum — should be made an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top military commanders.

In its March report, the commission concluded that the National Guard and Reserves don't get enough money or equipment and are left out of important planning for national emergencies. The panel found a significant lack of communication between reserve officials and other military leaders, the Homeland Security Department and U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for the military's defense of the U.S.

Many of the 23 recommended changes are largely administrative, aimed at improving coordination between the various federal agencies.

Gates also rejected a proposal that would require that at all times either the commander or deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command be a Guard or Reserve officer, and a change that would elevate the Guard to a joint military command.

During the Senate hearing, lawmakers expressed repeated concerns about whether Guard units in the states are adequately prepared and have all the needed equipment to respond to disasters.

"These Guard and Reserve have answered the call when they've been sent abroad. But we also need them to answer the call at home if they're needed," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Gates said there is nearly $22 billion in the budget for the Army Guard between 2008-2013.

Putin puts the boot in

Russia's mighty resurgence on the world stage is turning out to have a destabilising influence on its former Soviet neighbours.

May 8, 2007

by Simon Tisdall

Guardian

Tomorrows military parade in Red Square marking Russia's 1945 victory in the great patriotic war may carry more than a whiff of Soviet-era domineering. General Vladimir Bakin, the commander of Moscow region, says missiles, tanks and other symbols of Russian power, mostly absent from the celebrations since the collapse of communism, could go on display again.

No offence intended, of course - but the point is made. Such a show of might is wholly consistent with President Vladimir Putin's relentless, multi-faceted drive to re-establish Russia, in proud word and deed, as a global player whose interests are a key factor in every strategic equation.

Mr Putin's freeze on cooperation with Nato over conventional forces in Europe, and his vigorous opposition to US missile defence plans in Poland and the Czech Republic, are all one with an ostentatious, Brezhnev-style show of force in Red Square. So, too, is his ruthless clampdown on liberal opposition parties - indeed, on anybody who seriously challenges the "new oligarchs" of the Kremlin ahead of coming elections.

How Russia conducts itself is ultimately Russia's business, but the disruptive impact of its example and actions on neighbours in the former Soviet sphere is increasingly plain. As a British Moscow watcher put it, if Mr Putin were subject to the juvenile courts, an Asbo would have been slapped on him long ago.

In Serbia, without a government since inconclusive elections last January, ultra-nationalists are returning to the fore, emboldened by the strengthening anti-western rhetoric of Russian leaders and Moscow's sympathy for Serb hostility to Kosovo's independence.

Today's election as parliamentary speaker of Tomislav Nikolic of the far-right Serbian Radical party, with the turncoat support of outgoing prime minister Vojislav Kostunica's conservatives, was deplored by one pro-western opposition leader in Belgrade as "a step back to the darks days of [former president Slobodan] Milosevic's reign".

Mr Nikolic, now Serbia's second most powerful official, backs closer ties with Russia, not EU membership. He has also advocated military intervention to prevent Kosovan independence. The pledge at a weekend rally in Krusevac of a new paramilitary force - modelled on the notorious Serb militias of the Bosnian war - to "save Kosovo" is seen as another troubling regression.

Such developments have led some commentators to resurrect questions about US and British-backed efforts to force through supervised Kosovan statehood at the UN. In theory at least, partitioning Kosovo by leaving Serbia in control of ethnic Serb-dominated territories north of the Ibar river might be wiser, said Tihomir Loza of Transitions Online - even though that would not resolve the problems of Serb communities further south.

"As one couldn't hope to encourage the emergence of a peaceful, forward-looking Serbia by totally humiliating it, leaving it in possession of something in Kosovo would make a lot of sense," Mr Loza said. "The north will in reality be Serb in an independent Kosovo, as now, just as the rest of Kosovo was always going to be Albanian."

The further muddying of already murky pools by Mr Putin's ever more chippy, nationalistic Russia was also in evidence in its furiously overblown reaction to Estonia's decision to relocate a Soviet war memorial away from Tallinn city centre.

Ethnic Russian rioting and similarly ugly protests aimed at European diplomats in Moscow served a broader Kremlin agenda. The furore was all to do with old-style Soviet era intimidation of the Baltic republics, now sheltering under an EU and Nato shield. Supposed "blasphemous" treatment of war heroes was never the issue.

"The Serbian nationalists and Estonia's Russians have both been emboldened by the support of a strong external sponsor, namely Russia. Otherwise they probably wouldn't bother because they know they would lose," a leading regional expert said. "There is a link between rising Russian nationalism and rising Serbian nationalism. In Estonia, Moscow saw the memorial row as an opportunity to drive a wedge between the Baltic states and the rest of Europe and they took it."

Similar Russia pot-stirring continues with varying degrees of intensity in Georgia, where Estonia's visiting president sought moral support this week, among separatists in Moldova and in Ukraine - although analysts say the latest crisis in Kiev had more to do with internal power struggles than external meddling.

All of which adds up to a formidable agenda for Condoleezza Rice during her hastily arranged visit to Moscow next week. Resolving the missile defence row is said to top the US secretary of state's to-do list. But of all the instances of Russian antisocial behaviour and rising neighbourhood tensions, Kosovo and the drift towards violence in Serbia is the most imminently explosive.

Blessed Prozac Moments!

The rapture: When all the believers in Jesus Christ, who have been born again, are

taken up to heaven.

After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have

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We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven.

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If you wish to do something now that will help your unbelieving friends and family after the rapture, you need to add those persons email address to our database. Their names will be stored indefinitely and a letter will be sent out to each of them on the first Friday after the rapture. Then they will receive another letter every friday after that.

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If you would like to see one of the letters which will be sent after the rapture, click here.

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Thank you and God Bless You!

Comment: Why not Underwear for the Deaf?  BH

Green Zone Follies

Baghdad, 10 May 07: “I have said it before, many times, that the Resistance here is kicking our ass, big surge or not. The death and injury tolls are rising and from what I can see of the official postings, not shown. We guess Bush wants to go out a winner and to hell with the dead and wounded. The “safe” Green Zone is certainly not. They shell us at least once a day, snipe our people out in the open and are blowing up almost any vehicle that comes and goes. GIs are getting their legs blown off on a daily basis and a major U.S. military orthopedic surgeon had a nervous breakdown and had to be flown out of the theater because of all the work he couldn’t keep up with. Iron censorship has descended here. Mail, incoming and outgoing, is censorerd and no one here can send or receive an email or join a blog without being scrutinized and, if negative material is detected, the GI is threatened with court martial or, far worse, being shipped to an outpost where the average life span is ten days.  One of the very top brass said at a meeting today that they were going to ship another 35,000 over hear in small groups. Where will be put them? Nowhere is safe any more, the trucks and vehicles are in the shops in Texas because the sand ruins the engines, ammo is short and forget the armor vests. The new troops end up in rubber bags and the crazy president babbles on and on like the Energizer Bunny. Maybe someone should take out his batteries before he gets our entire military totally destroyed.”

US Embassy: wear flak jackets, helmets

May 9, 2007

by Robert H. Reid

Associated Press

BAGHDAD - The U.S. Embassy has ordered its staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings following an increase in mortar and rocket attacks against the heavily protected Green Zone.

The order, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, was issued last week after four Asian contract workers were killed during a barrage into the Green Zone, a 3.5-square mile area along the west bank of the Tigris River in the center of Baghdad. The area contains the U.S. and British embassies and many key Iraqi government offices.

U.S. government employees who work outside of a "hardened structure" such as the current embassy building or travel "a substantial distance outdoors" must wear "personal protective equipment," meaning flak jackets and helmets, the order said.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman confirmed the order was in effect until further notice. But he refused to say more, citing security, and would not allow his name to be published, citing embassy regulations.

Mortar and rocket attacks have occurred from time to time since the early months of the U.S. presence in Iraq. But the recent attacks have raised new concern since they are occurring despite the U.S.-led crackdown, which has put thousands more American soldiers on the streets in attempts to restore order.

It's not clear what groups have been responsible for the recent attacks on the Green Zone. Some barrages have been launched from Shiite-dominated areas, but the Green Zone is also within range of Sunni militant strongholds.