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Whitehouse release the legislation

The site he mentioned is biased in several ways. It is more of a balanced bias because they post flaming stories form both sides but not necessarily about the same issues. This means you will get the extreme of what ever the story is talking about most of the time.

Here is more about the directive. Exactly what it says and everything. Note that the directive they are complaining about specifically makes reference to each branch of government making their own preparations to continue operating in case of such emergencies. The president didn't dictate anything directly to them.

Now, If the president does declare a national emergency and become a dictator, Congress has the ability to remove the national emergency by a simple joint resolution. This is enshrined in law under section 1622 of sub chapter 2 of chapter 34 in US code title 50.

Further more, The NSPD states as one of it's objectives to maintain a constitutional government. Becoming a dictator for life or suspending the constitution doesn't seem entirely possible with this in mind. This directive is more or less so something can be done while waiting for other branches of government to ready themselves. Under the same US code, the president has to declare a national emergency and renew that declaration 90 days before one year has lapsed or it disappears too. But something that is interesting is that it seems that when a national emergency is declared, congress is supposed to consider termination or the validity of it every 6 months. And if it is pulled out of commity or brought to the floor, the law says they have to dedicate all their time until it is resolved. So one member not in agreement can stall anything else from happening like going home or adjourning for the day.

People are making way too much out of this. Every president in recent history has had plans just like this. They all depended on the same laws and the also had provisions for congress to remove their power. I got down moded but the fact is, the last four presidents that I know of have had the same conspiracy theory stuff thrown down. Clinton was supposed to sign a executive order giving control of the US to the UN. Bush Senior was going to give it to the military because he lsot to clinton. Reagan was going to stay in office forever. And it all had to do with the same plans as NSPD51. Which BTW, changes, each president makes their own plans up, this is probably why the conspiracies reform for each president. I am showing my age when I can only go back to Reagan, it could be further back too.

It seems nsd51 and nsPd51 are two separate animals. One describes sending programing into hostile territories. The other describes martial law in case of national emergency.

It doesn't matter though, congress can end it with a joint resolution. The president doesn't even have to sign a resolution to make it binding. The likely hood of that not happening is very low if it is used as people are claiming it could be. Congress can even pass a law saying the president needs to ask them first. But it is unlikely that they would need to. Bush cannot take over the country, it just isn't possible.

Yeah, 'trillians' of $$$...

Oh wait, no. Department budgets for 2007:

• Department of Defence: ~$500 billion
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration: ~$17 billion

Sort your fucking country out. Just a thought.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20 020912-1.html

Based on the UN's own data, and own resolutions, the Security Council voted to authorize the conclusion of the Gulf War (the 12 years between were supposed to be a cease-fire).

How the hell is this strange. This is the Bush administration.
They put oil executives in charge of the EPA
they put antitrust defence lawyers in the Justice Dept.
They put drug company executives in charge of the FDA

I mean really now. Take a look here. http://www.iraqtimeline.com/bushcab.html

1. Bush has issued signing statements indicating that he can take full and absolute control over *any* and *all* branches of government in the time of catastrophe. What a catastrophe is, is not defined - this JFK episode could be defined by him as a catastrophe and he can take absolute control.
   
   http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20 070509-12.html
   
   Read through the document carefully - you can see that there is not a *single* mention of any role for congress or any elected representative except the President and the Vice President. Also note that the person second in command in times of "catastrophe" would be the head of the HLS. A scary thought.
   
   You may claim that this can be fought on the ground by rallying the support of the people. Bush and his henchmen have already thought of this - which is why they have secret prisons, illegal wiretapping (to dig up dirt), private armies (to deal with dissenters) etc.
2. The government can send you to G Bay or any of the other secret prisons around the world without even *informing* law enforcement, your family or the judiciary. You have no recourse to any legal options. So if you are the one who is going to be trying to rally up the people to go against the government:
   • They can try and destroy you because I am guessing that you may have something in your past which you don't want to be publicised.. and the intelligence community can find that information and use it against you.
   • If you cannot be silenced like that, they can try the same technique against your family members / friends etc.
   • If you still won't shut up, you can be moved to any of the secret prisons on a trumped up charge of terrorism. Actually, they don't need to charge you at all.
   • Or they can arrange an accident.
3. You may claim that even if the people by themselves are unable to stop it, the law enforcement .. and perhaps the armed forces can stop the designs of Bush and his henchmen. However, Bush already has a very large private army (Blackwater being one part of this). Their numbers are not made public, but all we know is that they are very heavily armed, are authorized to use plain clothes, can use arms not available to the general public and they operate across the continental US (and other parts of the world). They were already used in the New Orleans in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.
   
   NOTE: Read this link below from the Blackwater website. It is an eye opener to realize where Blackwater sees itself in the scheme of things.
   
   http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2005/archive/09050 5btw.html
   
   Blackwater is not under *any* congressional review or supervision. They can be used against you and there is very little that you can do against it.
   
   In New Orleans, Blackwater could enter in while the Red Cross couldn't:
   http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/09/katrina_autho rities_.html/
4. If by some freak accident, they do allow you to rally up the kind of support you would need to take this on, and if you get to the point where an inquiry is ordered into the allegations raise by you and your friends, they can se

Well don't include this report in your study. The whitehouse quoted numbers from a study dealing with combustible fuels only and it contained the same data from Europe as well as America. The report linked in the submision uses data from two separate sources that account for Co2 as in any way humans come into contact with it including manufactured for soda drinks or by products of farm life and there is no way to tell if the data sets are comparative to each other.

And when I say comparative, I mean do they collect the same information on everything they report or that is reporting specific to the region in the same ways our crime data is different? I think the most troubling is that it addresses this in no way and attempts to discredit something said by the whitehouse by doing so. and in case your wondering, the whithouse said According to the International Energy Agency, from 2000-2004, as our population increased and our economy grew by nearly 10%, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions increased by only 1.7%. During the same period, European Union carbon dioxide emissions grew by 5%, with lower economic growth. You can look all you want but that report doesn't use a single pice of data from the IEA

As you can see, I am horribly bored this evening, but I am doing a test:

I'm running the linux OS you see in the Screenshots link below on a SanDisk 2 GB Cruzer Micro, partitioned like this:
SDA1 700 MB for Knoppix (the CD itself)
SDA5 700 MB for Persistent Home Directory
SDA6 400 MB for GIMP and K3B swap, additional storage also.
SDA7 150 MB linux swap.

Here is the output from TOP:
Tasks: 42 total, 1 running, 41 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.5% user, 3.9% system, 0.0% nice, 90.6% idle
Mem: 385800k total, 218864k used, 166936k free, 6456k buffers
Swap: 155192k total, 0k used, 155192k free, 130392k cached
(Uptime not shown, is 2:05)

This PC is a HP Pavilion 8250, Celeron 267 MHZ.
To get the USB drive booted up, I use a small HDD with MSDOS 6.21, and these files.
The small "boot" drive only runs for about 20 seconds, the Menu comes up, you make a choice, then the Linux OS runs entirely from the USB drive. The necessary "loadlin" command line is:
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix xmodule=s3virge fromhd=/dev/sda1 home=/dev/sda5

Browser is Firefox 2.0.0.4

Thanks for listening...

Rapidweather

"Tyrants almost always disguise their lust for power as sympathy for the persecuted and downtrodden .."

Who did the following George Dubya or Chavez.

Pass a law giving him total authority over the entire federal government.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20 070509-12.html

Plotted to steal an election through a rigged electronic voting machine, targeting ethnecally unsound voters. Eg blacks and Hispanics and overseas members of the armed forces who were also black or Hispanic.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/1725601 2.htm

Invaded a country and steal the oil and sell it back to them.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052607Z.shtml

Revoke the US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, something that was implimented by the US in the aftermath of the nazi excesses of WW2.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Cheney_criticizes_Ge neva_Convention_in_Military_0526.html

Dispense with the right to a fair trial

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001409.html

Announce you are planning to cancel the nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Russian Federation and put missiles in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001409.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6708459.st m

Enthuse the police to shoot anti globalization protestors

http://youtube.com/watch?v=G63FEamhpA0&mode=relate d&search=

Yes, because in no way are Iraqi insurgents confounding our troops right now in this century.

Be realistic. I'm no proponent of militias as they exist in Bumfuck, Montana, but in some ways, I'm a bit thankful that they do exist. Our love of guns is a good and bad thing, but it is STILL a deterrent for out-of-hand governments like the one we have in place today from just declaring marshal law and throwing people they don't like into camps. You don't need tinfoil to know that in the past month, Bush has taken liberties with presidential orders which did not make the front page of CNN.com

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20 070509-12.html

Read that and tell me you aren't glad we have crazies all about who are looking for a machine to rage against. All they need is a little moral justification and it's on like Donkey Kong. Also, in a state of civil unrest, unless you are Chuck Norris, you are going to want a great equalizer on your side.

Rural America is home to one-fifth of the Nation's population. The needs of this population are as diverse as those of the populations in large towns and cities. Communities in rural America rely upon many of the same things as urban areas, including good paying jobs, access to critical services like education, healthcare, and technology, and strong and safe communities. One specific utility that many growing businesses are relying on for further growth is broadband, which allows high-speed data transmission.

[...]

In 2004, President Bush announced an initiative to make access to broadband technology available to every American by 2007. While broadband has begun to penetrate rural America, rural areas still lag behind urban centers. The Rural Utilities Service delivers one of the Department's programs designed to increase access to broadband for rural residents and businesses. This program provides loans to companies that are willing to provide broadband in rural communities. Since the beginning of this program in February 2003, USDA has approved over $658 million in loans. The 2006 President's Budget provides funding that will support an additional $359 million in loans.

You want so badly for the story to be true you completely ignore the known fraudulent source.

And you seem to want so badly for my post to be wrong that you miss its point entirely. Good job, Anonymous Coward.

I remember back in the 80's when people first noticed that the FCC was serving the interests of companies more than the populace. Everything else that has followed since from fighting for the rights of large media companies to merge to seeking to suppress internet content at the behest of AOL Time Warner started then with Regan's appointees. Now the FCC openly behaves as a tool of the conglomerates. Or in the case of the illegal wiretapping, a tool of the NSA.

A similar lack of complaint was heard when the food and drug administration reevaluated aspertame for the third time and declared it safe despite their own warnings to the contrary see here. Thanks again Donald Rumsfeld.

Then the Food and Drug administration recently was accused of stepping down enforcement of many complaints and 'streamlining' the process of approval for the drug companies.

Now this. Realistically speaking I would hope that sooner or later events like this, you know large companies committing fraud and spying on people for money, lying, etc. and being given only a slap on the wrist, would say piss people off so much that they would Write their Congressional Representative, and Their U.S. Senator, and even The President. A few e-mails saying, either this is a government of by and for the people or we'll vote for someone else. A few e-mails saying, I pay my taxes why are they being spent to harm me? A few e-mails just reminding them that we are paying attention. Lacking that they can do whatever they want and we're no longer the greatest nation on earth.

Read it and weep:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20 050615-2.html

Seriously, if that's the level of scientific understanding in the Whitehouse then we're all doomed.

There are no rogue sites on .gov domain names

I beg to differ.

I'd put it in *marquee* and *blink*, and you still wouldn't get it. Katrina hit louisiana on august 29th. The president of the united states declared a state of emergency on the 26th (that's 3 days before), (see the official press release here on the whitehouse press site http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html . Quoting that article The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . Note the "coordinate all disaster relief efforts" bit. Louisiana declared a state of emergency on the 26th as well. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&t mp=detail&catID=1&articleID=776&navID=3.

I don't think you understand. A state of emergency doesn't allow FEMA or the federal government to arbitrarily take over and do something when dealing with a civilian population. All the state of emergency does in make additional resources available but they still need to be asked for.

That national response plan which is limited by the insurrection act and the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act specifically state that the governor has to ask for help when it is clear that they state and local efforts aren't good enough.

When State resources and capabilities are
overwhelmed, Governors may request Federal assistance
under a Presidential disaster or emergency declaration.
Summarized below are the responsibilities of the
Governor, Local Chief Executive Officer, and Tribal
Chief Executive Officer.
and
As a State's chief executive, the Governor is responsible
for the public safety and welfare of the people of that
State or territory. The Governor:
Requests Federal assistance when it becomes clear
that State or tribal capabilities will be insufficient or
have been exceeded or exhausted.

The feds cannot just walk in and take over any situation unless there is already federal jurisdiction. A state of emergency doesn't give that jurisdiction. It only set the framework so the local government can request the feds to come in. Anyone who told you differently is either lying to you, misleading you, or you are assuming something you saw in a movie is fact when it isn't. On rare occasions, the feds can step in but that requires an invasion which an act of terror might qualify.

Now, both the state and the feds declared a state of emergency 3 days before the storm, and thre days after when the city was flooded, the governor still didn't follow through with the paperwork/request for assistance and nothing could be done legally. And everyone including congress knows this because those quotes came directly out of the NRP that is current for today and was accurate from 2006. The changes in this section aren't anything significant and congress hasn't amened any of the laws limiting the powers of the federal government. The changes were mostly in how FEMA offices interact with each other and give the secretary (of state? It just say secretary) some power to combine overlapping efforts.

No, I couldn't put anyone else as head of FEMA - do i look like the president of the united states? If i was, however, I'd pick someone who knew something about crisis management, someone who had lead an organisation approaching the 2600 that FEMA is.

If you were president, I would hope you knew a little more about how federal response is actually handled. Read the laws, read the NRP, it is all public accessible, And it wouldn't matter who you had in charge, when the local governments broke down and the governor didn't request the help officially like it is required by law, they wouldn't have done much if any better. It isn't a matter of someon

I just said that he local and state governments were incompetant, yet you keep repeating this: If you ignore the hindsight of knowing the local governments were useless by decisions they made instead of capacity to respond, the exact same thing would happen today without regard to who is in power.

I'd put it in *marquee* and *blink*, and you still wouldn't get it. Katrina hit louisiana on august 29th. The president of the united states declared a state of emergency on the 26th (that's 3 days before), (see the official press release here on the whitehouse press site http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html . Quoting that article The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . Note the "coordinate all disaster relief efforts" bit. Louisiana declared a state of emergency on the 26th as well. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&t mp=detail&catID=1&articleID=776&navID=3.

Again: If the local situation is screwed, FEMA is there to step in and take control and call the shots. Not http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/03/national /main1009209.shtml worry about wether his sleeves are rolled up or not, "feel trapped", stating that he's a "fashion god".

No, I wouldn't do any better than brown. Then again, I don't accept positions for which i'm incredibly under qualified for.

No, I couldn't put anyone else as head of FEMA - do i look like the president of the united states? If i was, however, I'd pick someone who knew something about crisis management, someone who had lead an organisation approaching the 2600 that FEMA is.

And as for having to reasses the situation - what planet are you on? There was wall to wall coverage on every news station on how everything was flooded, how a significant proportion of the populace hadn't left, how law and order had broken down into chaos. The united states has satellites in orbit than can view every square meter of the earth, and yet FEMA was supposedly unable to know what was going on. The only reason the national guard wasn't sent in division size is that they were pretty much all over in iraq.

The fact that every other state managed to have it's act together doesn't excuse the fact that FEMA was unable to get a handle on the chaos, even with the resources of the federal government, along with a very large contingent of volunteers and supplies coming from every other state.

Beware -- any time you see "..which would allow the United States to drastically reduce its dependence on foreign oil and the production of harmful exhaust emissions," it is marketing language designed to appease ignorant masses, investors, and assure loyal Republican investors that "they are with the program".

And this program is the US energy policy.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/National-Energy-P olicy.pdf

In case you are lazy, the economic numbers behind these 170 pages say basically:

- we're expanding our "energy" supply; ie volume of foreign oil fields
- we've secured iraqi fields for better exploitation
- we're converting our military to a more mobile fighting platform to secure remote oil
- we ain't reducin' nothin' as far as consumption and conservation goes
- anwr holds only a few drops in the vast sea of petroleum - it's a pawn of environmentalogists (as opposed to environmentalists)

Reduction of dependence on foreign oil? We passed escaping that point more than a decade ago (50% imported vs domestic). Ask yourselves why president Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House the moment he moved in. Our energy policy means we're going to take foreign oil and god help those who stand in our way.

Fascism is an authoritarian, dictatorial system of government, which while it might control industry by mandate, is not usually associated with government-owned industry. The stronger association with the term fascism is using nationalism and xenophobia to achieve popularity - see here for more details. (Yeah, I had to go there.)

Government 'entwined with' corporations sounds more like socialism, although you could also argue that given big corporations' lobbying power, it looks like US democracy.


But you're right, "neo-libertarian" made almost no sense there.

I'm not blaming, just reporting. President Bush, in a White House press release, defined what he calls the "ownership society", one in which individuals are responsible for providing for their own health care, retirement, and other needs. That's simply the Bush Administration's stated philosophy of the role of government in America. Whether we agree or disagree with that philosophy is a separate matter, but wasn't my central point here.

Well, that's a sneaky point to make. Eventually the revenue goes up, yeah. It's just a question of how long it will take for the economy to grow to that point. Bush cut taxes in 2001, and it took until 2005 for the total federal receitps to reach their 2000 level. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/pdf/hi st.pdf Check out page 26.

This is not some crackpot theory that I came up with in isolation.

And I certainly didn't mean to insinuate otherwise. Yet, that doesn't make it one bit more logically, legally, or morally correct.

After 12 years, Iraq was in violation of this mandate, and with that the basis for the cease-fire was destroyed.

Unfortunately for people who use this argument, that was a decision for the Security Council to make.

I can't believe that you don't see the straw-man here. The UN has already authorized the presence of the multinational force in Iraq because of this standard.

No. The Security Council authorized this force because it was already there, lead by and composed almost entirely of US forces. Given that international peace and security are worse and show no immediate prospect of improving, I again ask at what point the Security Council must take action to correct it.

It fascinates me that you seem so intent on these types of semantic games. I refer to it as the "multinational force" because that is what both the Security Council (in 1546) and the Iraqi government call it. I guess I can't stop you if you want to read more into it than that.

I can't speak to you personally, but supporters of your position refer to them as "multinational" forces because of the propaganda effect - it gives the US actions the appearance of world support and international legitimacy. What is the standard for "multinational"? Does one representative from any other government satisfy this word or does it actually require the active involvement and cooperation of multiple nations?

The Security Council has made it clear that our presence there is "essential to the well-being of the people of Iraq". This is based on their recognition of what would most likely happen if troops were withdrawn prematurely.

The relevant text actually says:

Recognizing that international support for security and stability is essential to the well-being of the people of Iraq as well as the ability of all concerned, including the United Nations, to carry out their work on behalf of the people of Iraq...

Where in that statement does it say that US military occupation is necessary? I see nothing about the need for 14 permanent military bases. I noticed nothing calling for the largest US embassy in the world.

Your language is betraying you. The current government is legitimate in every sense of the word, and was installed by over 12 million Iraqis in a popular vote.

And Saddam garnered 100% of the popular vote in 2002, up from 99.96% in 1995.

I also note that you ignored the rest of that paragraph to nitpick my use of one word in one sentence.

The Bush Administrations refusal to agree to an artificial timetable is based on the hard realities of warfare rather than the political ambitions of President Bush's opponents. How would an artificial timetable bring us any closer to a victory in Iraq? Answer- it wouldn't. In fact, it pretty much guarantees defeat

Would you mind sharing your definitions of victory and defeat? What "hard realities of warfare" do you refer to? When are the American soldiers allowed to go home? As I've said, the refusal to set any milestones (not the mm/dd/yyyy straw-man you love to toss out) coupled with the massive construction projects demonstrate no plan to leave.

We are not going to lose militarily unless we give up.

But you already won.

The real battle has always been right here in the United States, and I am sad to say that we are losing on that front. How are the Iraqi people to take any promise of continued support by the Americans seriously when the Senate Majority leader is on TV claiming that war is already "lost" while he sponsors legislation to force us to leave?

When

Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be. Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter.

Oh noes!! Bring religious and being in the "religious right's" pocket are two different things. I don't think Carter is going around telling people that God came down to the White House and told him 'no more booze'.

Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!

Give it time.

Inflation was through the roof (12%).

Strong Fed has been keeping it low. Yay.

Unemployment was high (7%).

Unemployment is measured differently now than then. It's possible that unemployment now using the same measurements would be the same or higher.

Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).

What is it now? Oh right $521 Billion. And that's after having balanced the budget in the late '90s. So going from 0 to $521B is a bit more impressive.

Devaluation of the dollar.

$2 gets you a pound

Gas shortages.

Not sure why this hasn't happened yet. But $4/gal gas, here we come!

Iranian hostage crisis.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.

Funny how that ended just as Reagan took office. And how a later scandal was called Iran/Contra. Huh.

Demoralization and dismantling of the US military

Yea, the day after Bush blames Democrats for keeping the troops in Iraq longer than they should, Gates says all tours get extended from 12 months to 15 months.

Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)

We still beat the Russians, right?

Need I go on?

Oh, please do. I don't see anything about Carter tortuing American citizens, or spying on their telephone or banking records. The Internets wasn't quite the same now as then, so I'll give Bush a pass on spying on that, at least in comparing to Carter. Maybe Carter is to blame for Walter Reed, or K Street, or leaking Wilson's name, or any of the collection of other scandals we've seen in the past 6 years that makes losing money on a failed land deal look almost..innocent.

But you go on.

I supported going into Iraq for several reasons outside the WMDs. Well not to mention we have several former Iraqi generals claiing the WMDs they had were shuttled to Syria in small aircraft and trucks and there is radar confirming some activity in the area at the supposed times it happened.

George Bush:...the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't...
---Press Conference by the President August 21, 2006

Still, knowing who sponsored the bills would be useful (yea, I could look it up myself, but I'm a complainer, not a doer).

When you say that the Bush administration is "on record" about applying torture, of course you really mean that an anonymous CIA source alleged this. It has been the policy of the United States long before President Bush was in office to not give details about our interrogation methods, and on record they have only stated that they do NOT torture. The most controversial of these alleged methods is waterboarding, but there is little outside of this anonymous CIA source that suggests that we do this.

I remember a radio interview a while back with Vice President Cheney where he said that he thought it was okay to "dunk" people in water, and some people immediately pounced on that as an admission of waterboarding, but the White House immediately clarified that he was not talking about waterboarding.

In fact, let me look up exactly what the Vice President said:
Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.

Thats hardly an "on-record" endorsement of torture.

On item (2), I guess some other UN country will need to invade again and kick the US out, unless you are willing to claim that international peace and security to the area has improved. Surely that's not a limb you're willing to crawl out on.

The United States current presence in Iraq is at the request of the Iraqi government and under a clear mandate from the Security Council (first from resolution 1546, and most recently from resolution 1723. See Annex 1 in resolution 1723 for the letter from Prime Minister al-Maliki requesting the multinational force to stay).

And, while I said I wouldn't repeat myself, I feel I must again point out the fallacy in your overall argument here. Resolution 687 declared a cease-fire and reserved the right for the Security Council to take further measures as necessary. Therefore, 660, 678, and 687 are pointless in this argument. Further, Resolution 1441 does not authorize force.

That is an accurate summary of how opponents of the invasion interpret the relevant international law. Suffice it to say that not only do I disagree with that interpretation, but so do the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, former Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, and the governments of countries like the UK, Australia, Japan, and Italy (to name a few). When it comes to matters of international law, there is no final arbiter on how the laws are interpreted (like the Supreme Court does for domestic law). I hope you can appreciate this.

More recently, the '98 bombings by the US and UK were roundly condemned in the international community.

I don't think that is a fair characterization. Some nations, most notably Russia and China as you pointed out, condemned the attacks. Others, like Japan and Sweden, gave strong endorsements of the US and UK position. The rest of the members of the Security Council, including countries like France and Costa Rica, expressed sorrow at the situation without taking a strong position either way about the legality of the actions. See S/PV.3955 for the minutes of the relevant discussion in the Security Council.

And, it is worth noting that the US didn't use 660, 678, or 687 to justify those attacks. This was about the no-fly zones that were setup from the Safwan Accords and often linked to Resolution 688.

This is completely false. Here is a quote from US Ambassador to the UN Peter Burleigh from the minutes I linked to above:

Following Iraq's repeated, flagrant and material breaches of its obligations under resolutions 687 (1991), 707 (1991), 715 (1991), 1154 (1998), 1194 (1998), 1205 (1998) and others, in addition to its failure to fulfil its own commitments, the coalition today exercised the authority given by Security Council resolution 678 (1990) for Member States to employ all necessary means to secure Iraqi compliance with the Council's resolutions and restore international peace and security in the area. Any Iraqi attempt to attack coalition forces or to initiate aggressive action against a neighbouring State will be met with a swift response by the coalition.

The reasoning he gave here should sound a little familiar by now, and it had nothing to do with the no-fly zones.

Then why weren't those facts used to support the war?

Of course they were! Allow me to quote from the 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq:

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability,

So you're upset that people call him a liar without support, but then find support lies to seem petty? And, that wasn't all I came up with. That list accounted for a good deal of my post and was but a drop in the bucket. If you aren't aware of the many blatant lies and don't care to go read the wealth of documented lists, then I guess your head can stay in the sand.

Well, first, this doesn't upset me. Why should it?

Maybe it is positional bias, but I just didn't see the examples that you gave as compelling evidence of dishonesty. There are a lot of ways to interpret "Stay the course", for example. You can stay the course by not giving up and withdrawing from Iraq, but at the same time your tactics and strategies on the ground in Iraq can change. In context, I think it is clear that this was what the President was saying. It just seems juvenile to me to try to attribute this to dishonesty. Similarly, it seems juvenile to treat the President's comments at the campaign fundraiser as a direct quote. He was giving his interpretation of what it meant to vote against the bill. You are free to disagree with his interpretation, but that doesn't make it a lie. The President's list of disrupted plots was in fact a list of terrorist plots that had in fact been disrupted (you were a little off on one of the 3 plots, btw). You can disagree on what disrupted the plots, but that doesn't make it a lie.

I could have GWB standing in front of you saying that the moon is made of green cheese and you would deny that he lied.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

It is amazing how that worked out. Nevermind that the Deulfer and ISG reports indicate that Saddam had little to no interest in attacking the US - he was preoccupied primarily with Iran.

Can you clarify which part of the report you are referring to? The Duelfer report (which is the same thing as the ISG report, by the way) didn't conclude anything like what you describe, and that wasn't the focus of the report anyway.

Meanwhile we have North Korea and Iran openly threatening the US without any repercussions.

What do you mean without repercussions? Both of these nations have face significant international opposition and sanctions for their actions.

And when the Security Council does not agree with the US's interpretation of previous resolutions and refuses to unambiguously authorize the use of force, the US is empowered to act for the full Security Council?

The Security Council unambiguously authorized the used of force in 678, and reaffirmed that authorization over a dozen times between 1991 and 2003. Like I said before, there are several precedents from the Security Council on how they terminate an authorization to use force, none of which apply to 678.

Article 39 of the UN Charter says that, "[t]he Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security."

The Security Council did determine such a threat in Iraq and it's WMD programs- 17 times. The authorization to use military force was applied multiple times throughout the 1990s based on this threat.

Your choice of wording is intentionally misleading (and factually inaccurate). The UN explicitly gave authorization for member nations to work with the government of Kuwait to push Iraq back to their previous borders.

How am I trying to mislead? I quoted directly from Resolution 678. The UN explicitly gave the authorization for two things:

1. Implementing 660 and all subsequent rele

All politicians are liars. Bush just seems to be a particularly bad one.

I'm going to be honest- I found this list of alleged lies to be rather petty. I don't know- maybe they are lies, but for the most part, they seem more like examples of President Bush's political incompetence than of willful dishonesty. He is a terrible politician. He's never figured out how to play the Washington game. Considering the constant drumbeat of "Bush Lied" I am a little surprised that this was all you came up with.

I could go on about the Niger Yellow Cake lies, the domestic spying program lies, the Iraq-9/11 connection lies, etc, but you get the point

I don't think you could go on about those. Everything he said about Niger yellowcake is 100% true, I don't know what lies about domestic spying you are referring to (the President never denied the existence of the program), and nobody in the administration has claimed that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 (on the contrary, the President has publicly stated multiple times that Iraq was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Example).

1. Iraq posed a direct threat to the United States.

Can you explain please?

Sure. Iraq was one of the most active sponsors of international terrorism in the world. We have known this ever since Iraq was first placed on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism way back in 1979. After the first Gulf War, Saddam shifted his primary focus of terrorism to the West (and the United States in particular). During this time, he recruited the work of notorious terrorists like Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal to lead attacks against the US, he tried to assassinate President Bush Sr, he tortured and executed any Iraqis that cooperated with the UN weapons inspectors (including his own brother-in-law), and he attempted to bomb the US-run Radio Free Europe facilities in Prague. As if this wasn't enough, our allies started to warn us in 2001-2002 that Saddam was planning more attacks against us (both inside and outside of the United States). It is pretty hard to deny that this constitutes a serious threat against us, and we had just learned a pretty vivid lesson on September 11 about what happens when you ignore these kinds of threats.

When was the US elected world enforcer?

Well, when the US joined the United Nations and agreed to it's charter, it (like all members of the UN) agreed in Chapter VII to enforce the mandates of the Security Council.

The UN refused to give the US authority for the Iraq invasion but we did it anyway.

I disagree- the UN explicitly gave the authorization to use military force to enforce the cease-fire defined in resolution 687, and backed that authorization up over a dozen times in subsequent years. This is the same authorization that was used to justify air strikes against Iraqi anti-aircraft installations in 1993 and for Operation Desert Fox in 1998. It was valid then and it was still valid in 2003.

Don't forget that Israel has been the target of at least twice as many UN resolutions as Iraq and has defied world opinion for over half a century, yet the US rewards them with billions of dollars each year.

The UN Security Council has never passed any resolutions against Israel under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. All of the resolutions with regards to Israel were passed either by the General Assembly, or they were passed by the Security Council under Chapter VI. Neither of these are binding or enforceable in any context. It's apples to oranges.

Resolution 678 did not "cl

Now, there may be other valid reasons for blocking access to Wikipedia, but the reliability and credibility one is, from my perspective, pretty stupid.

figured I'd post a link to the report.
I have to believe any report that gives only 5000 systems (wtf is a system? a box, a subnet?) as being owned by the DoD to be of dubious credibility
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/reports/2006 _fisma_report.pdf

Why do you (and many others) blame Bush for this?
Do you have any facts? Or is this just generic outrage?

From what I understand, the RNC, Rove, 'White House Staffers' and Gonzalez have been tied into this. AFAIK, nothing has been reported that ties the 43rd President into all these shenanigans.

Being an ethical leader requires focusing an organization's attention on ethical issues and standards. Your employees will look to you as a role model for public integrity. In addition, as a leader in your agency, you are responsible for the ethical compliance of your employees.

I dunno, if some of the worst of the current political trends continue, we'll end up being the Vorlons instead.

Vorlons? More like Vogons. You know, the fat, bureaucratic bullies who write horrible emo poetry and eventually demolished the Earth in order to build a useless bypass.

This bill does many of the things that we in the /. community have argued for for some time now including open code inspection, reliable voting systems, and yes, reliable recounts and audits. Now is the time for the /. community to act on our endless snarky comments and help to move real change forward.

The Bill's text and record are available at Thomas. While there you can peruse the list of 200 Cosponsors to see if your house rep is among them (and should be given a cookie for that) or not (and should be corrected).

If you both support the bill and are a U.S. Citizen or Resident, you can go to the U.S. House of Representatives Website at www.house.gov, and Write your rep or contact them via their website (Recommended) to urge them to support the bill or thank them for already cosponsoring it.

With time to spare you can head over to the Senate and urge your senators to back the forthcoming companion bill in the senate. Following that a stop off to contact The Executive Branch (va a aqui para Espanol) to urge signing of the bill wouldn't hurt.

If you believe in any of the things this bill does then a few minutes on the phone or sending a polite e-mail shouldn't be too much. As cynical as we all can be about the influence of money on elections a groundswell is too costly to be overrun.

This bill does many of the things that we in the /. community have argued for for some time now including open code inspection, reliable voting systems, and yes, reliable recounts and audits. Now is the time for the /. community to act on our endless snarky comments and help to move real change forward.

The Bill's text and record are available at Thomas. While there you can peruse the list of 200 Cosponsors to see if your house rep is among them (and should be given a cookie for that) or not (and should be corrected).

If you both support the bill and are a U.S. Citizen or Resident, you can go to the U.S. House of Representatives Website at www.house.gov, and Write your rep or contact them via their website (Recommended) to urge them to support the bill or thank them for already cosponsoring it.

With time to spare you can head over to the Senate and urge your senators to back the forthcoming companion bill in the senate. Following that a stop off to contact The Executive Branch (va a aqui para Espanol) to urge signing of the bill wouldn't hurt.

If you believe in any of the things this bill does then a few minutes on the phone or sending a polite e-mail shouldn't be too much. As cynical as we all can be about the influence of money on elections a groundswell is too costly to be overrun.

*sigh*. This one has been so thouroughly debunked that I wonder why you mention it.

• Claiming that we justified the war because Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa is patently absurd. Here are the three major public speeches that were given right before the war explaining the reasons for it. You will notice that none of them even mention Iraq's attempts to procure uranium: 1, 2, 3.
• The conclusion that Iraq was trying to buy Uranium in Niger had nothing to do with the forgeries found in Italy. In fact, multiple sources had already confirmed Iraq's uranium efforts in Africa before the forgeries even existed (again, I refer you to the Butler report).
• Saddam's attempts to buy uranium in Africa are documented fact, confirmed by multiple sources including Joe Wilson himself. I don't know how you can claim that it has been "debunked".

Yeah, world leaders spouted lies - some unknowingly.

Do you understand how it is different from zoning laws?

• "they authorize the president to fire US Attorneys"- The President has been authorized to fire US Attorneys since 1789 when the position was created. 28 USC 541(c): US Attorneys are "subject to removal" by the President.
• "secretly arrest citizens" - Pure fiction. Just what section do you think authorizes this? The closest I can think of is section 412 that mandates the arrest and detainment of non-citizens that are engaging in terrorism, with an explicit right to petition for habeas corpus and continued judicial review (in other words, nothing like what you said).
• "secretly try them in a secret jail with secret evidence for secret crimes" - Again, this is pure fantasy. The PATRIOT act authorizes nothing like that. Not even close.

This is an outright lie. To wit:

If they're spending their time investigating quakers, who are they missing?

The real terrorists.

The actual OMB memo (pdf, sorry) can be found at URL:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy2007/m07 -11.pdf

The text follows:

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT
March 22, 2007

M-07-11 / MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

FROM: Clay Johnson / Deputy Director for Management

SUBJECT: Implementation of Commonly Accepted Security Configurations for Windows Operating Systems

To improve information security and reduce overall IT operating costs, agencies who have Windows XP TM deployed and plan to upgrade to the VistaTM operating system, are directed to adopt the security configurations developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The recent release of the VistaTM operating system provides a unique opportunity for agencies to deploy secure configurations for the first time when an operating system is released. Therefore, it is critical for all Federal agencies to put in place the proper governance structure with appropriate policies to ensure a very small number of secure configurations are allowed to be used.

DoD has worked with NIST and DHS to reach a consensus agreement on secure configurations of the VistaTM operating system, and to deploy standard secure desk tops for Windows XPTM. Information is more secure, overall network performance is improved, and overall operating costs are lower.

Agencies with these operating systems and/or plans to upgrade to these operating systems must adopt these standard security configurations by February 1, 2008. Agencies are requested to submit their draft implementation plans by May 1, 2007 at fisma@omb.eop.gov. With your endorsement we will work with your CIOs on this effort to improve our security for government information. If you have questions about this requirement, please contact Karen Evans, Administrator, E-Government and Information Technology at (202)395-1181 or at fisma@omb.eop.gov.

I liked your post, and it got me thinking and googling a bit. I think you're roughly, essentially correct, though of course one can debate the minutia of these things endlessly. Here are some added observations:

Roughly 50% electricity in the US is from coal, 20% nuclear, 15% natural gas, 15% hydro and what not. (One reference.) Natural gas produce around 60% of coal's CO2, and nuclear and others are negligible in comparison (there are emissions from mining ore and uranium refinement, but they're around 2% of coal's). So overall your CO2 emissions for electricity are overstated for the average American by nearly a factor of two.

CO2 emmissions from gasoline are roughly 80% of its total emissions, if you factor in pumping, refining, and transporting the oil and gasoline. (NYTimes reference), so your vehicle emissions are understated. (There will be some CO2 emissions related to electric plant production as well, but I think considerably less.) That's an unusually power-hungry computer, and if your office's computers aren't configured to go into a sleep mode after some period of inactivity, they really should be. Hard drives should power down, energy-star monitors should idle, etc., and the remaining power consumption should be greatly reduced.

If your office is running A/C, the A/C has to continuously cool that 140W used by your computer, considerably adding to its overall energy consumption. (Similarly, the computer would help reduce heating expenses).

In general though, yeah, an average American, driving a Prius 15,000 miles a year, might save CO2 emissions equivalent to running a 200 watt lightbulb continuously for that year. It's not a big chunk of most people's total carbon footprint (heating and cooling a McMansion dwarf these numbers), but it is something. Personally, I think it's still a good choice, if the Prius otherwise fits most of your transit needs, just like you should turn off power hungry computers and 200 watt lightbulbs when you won't use them for days. But all of these things are a drop in the bucket, considering the big picture.

After all Paul Bremer was awarded one after having only lost $12 Billion

Stupidity in the extreme coming along later in life. Has to be genetic.

Give them a break, they already pay for plenty of Americans.

Vice President and Mrs. Cheney filed their federal income tax return for 2004 today. The income tax return shows that the Cheneys owe federal taxes for 2004 of $393,518 on taxable income of $1,328,678. During the course of 2004 the Cheneys paid $290,855 in taxes through withholding and estimated tax payments. The Cheneys paid $102,663 upon filing their tax return.

The wage and salary income reported on the tax return includes the Vice President's $203,000 government salary. In addition, the tax return reports the payment of deferred compensation from Halliburton Company in the amount of $194,852. In December 1998, the Vice President elected to defer compensation earned in calendar year 1999 for his services as chief executive officer of Halliburton. This amount was required be paid in fixed annual installments (with interest) in the five years after the Vice President's retirement from Halliburton.

We have four time zones in the continental USA, and we all know that the Sun does not "jump" from one to the other, it appears to move across the sky evenly. Dawn and Sunset times are not fixed to the zones, so we have people who live in the "western edge of the Eastern Time Zone", and during the summer, the Sun does not set until after 9 PM or so. Ask the people in Highlands, N.C. about this. The answer is not more zones, but perhaps to keep the same time all year long. At least, they would get used to the Sun rising and setting at a certain time, rather than changing with DST.
Russia, for instance, has many more "time zones" than we have, so the people at the eastern edge, and western edge of any time zone there have odd Sunrise and Sunset times to contend with. They really don't do the time zone thing differently than we do, it's just that Russia covers a greater east-west part of the globe than does the USA and needs more zones.
I say keep the time the same all year around, and if it's energy savings you want, that's going to have to come from technology.
Here is a link to the White House site on Energy Security, one can see some of what's going on in the field of energy savings.

Anyway, relating this to Nazi-ism, what kind of person throws people into the oven? I believe the same attitude of the person who makes sure that the trains run on time,

Actually, Adolf Eichmann was the one who made sure that the trains were on time in Nazi-Germany. Thus, he made sure that the "enemies" (jews, gypsies, and people not endorsing the Nazis) of the Third Reich were transported to concentration camps, where they were locked up, tortured, and killed without proper trial.

However, most of the Germans that did throw people into the oven are dead now, many of them have been punished thanks to Simon Wiesenthal.
There's nothing that comes even close to that, nowadays, even though locking up and torturing people without trial, as well as the death penalty (with trial), is still common in some countries.