FROM A GUY NAMED ED
(As seen on a Newsgroup today):

"Congress continues to fail in its role to check the President.

The Republicans continue to sacrifice America and Americans for the benefit
of their evil paymasters.

And the Democrats continue to do the same thing.

Mainstream media continues to fail in its role of keeping the public
informed as its first duty has become to distract the public from the
truth about its evil owners.

More people continue to die so a handful of very immoral, very powerful,
very wealthy individuals can concentrate their power over the people even
more.

Don't buy their B.S. More importantly, don't pay for it, either.

Ed

___________


LISTEN TO ED.

Murkily We Roll Along


Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: murky
Pronunciation: 'm&r-kE
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): murk·i·er; -est
Date: 14th century
1 : characterized by a heavy dimness or obscurity caused by or like that caused by overhanging fog or smoke
2 : characterized by thickness and heaviness of air : FOGGY, MISTY
3 : darkly vague or obscure
- murk·i·ly /-k&-lE/ adverb
- murk·i·ness /-kE-n&s/ noun

Cambridge:

murk noun [U]
darkness or thick cloud, preventing you from seeing clearly:
It was foggy and the sun shone feebly through the murk.

murky adjective
1 dark and dirty or difficult to see through:
The river was brown and murky after the storm.

2 describes a situation that is complicated and unpleasant, and about which many facts are unclear:
He became involved in the murky world of international drug-dealing.
I don't want to get into the murky waters of family arguments.

~~~~~~~~~~

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday defended the invasion of Iraq as an example
of how the United States had to be prepared to act on "murky intelligence" in its war on terrorism...."
~~~~~~~~~~~

What Paul Wolfowitz was actually saying *wink*:

1- The US had no evidence to justify the invasion of
Iraq.

2- The moral question was never a reason to go to this war the way we did.

3- It was never clear that Iraq was a security threat to the US.

4- The Bush administration wanted to invade and occupy Iraq and darn it, they just did it.

5- The WMD threat was just an excuse. ..an excuse all along.

________________

Well, well. Thanks for clearing up the murkiness there, Mr. Wolfy. Don't pull a Dr. Kelly on us, now. They'll be manning the suicide prevention hotlines should you feel guilty or despondent anytime soon about what you've wrought. You know....in case all those dead bodies begin to haunt your dreams.

Thanks to the disastrous, hypocritical, and discombobulated foreign policies of George W Bush, we have lost any positive diplomatic ties to Syria, I'm afraid.

From today's Reuters story:
"This administration is extraordinary. Maybe there have been some similar administrations in the past but not with this high level of violence and foolishness,'' Shara {Syria's Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara} told reporters....."

God....you know, I really hate agreeing with a Syrian Foreign Minister on this.....I mean, it feels almost sleazy...but damn, it's true!

A very recent issue of The New Yorker features an excellent article by Seymour Hersh entitled "The Syrian Bet" (You can read it in its entirety...learn how the Bush administration has burned potentially useful (if not perfect) intelligence-allies. With the status of British and American intelligence today, we need all the friggen help we can get!!

Excerpt:

"... American intelligence and State Department officials have told me that by early 2002 Syria had emerged as one of the C.I.A.'s most effective intelligence allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, providing an outpouring of information that came to an end only with the invasion of Iraq. (A number of the details of the raid and the intelligence relationship were reported by U.P.I. on July 16th.) Tenet had become one of Syria's champions in the interagency debate over how to deal with its government. His antagonists include civilians in the Pentagon who viewed Syria, despite its intelligence help, as part of the problem. "Tenet has prevented all kinds of action against Syria," one diplomat with knowledge of the interagency discussions told me.

Syria is one of seven nations listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism. It has been on the list since 1979, in large part because of its public support for Hezbollah, the radical Islamic party that controls much of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for, among other acts, the 1983 bombing of the American Marine barracks in Beirut, which left two hundred and forty-one Americans dead; it was implicated in the 1984 kidnapping of William Buckley, the C.I.A.'s Beirut station chief, who was tortured and murdered; and it has been linked to bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina. Syria has also allowed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two groups that have staged numerous suicide bombings inside Israel, to maintain offices in Damascus.

Nevertheless, after September 11th the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, initiated the delivery of Syrian intelligence to the United States. The Syrians had compiled hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers on the men who participated-and others who wanted to participate-in the September 11th attacks. Syria also penetrated Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities throughout Europe. That data began flowing to C.I.A. and F.B.I. operatives.
Syria had accumulated much of its information because of Al Qaeda's ties to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic terrorists who have been at war with the secular Syrian government for more than two decades... "

To Our Dearest Bob,



Thanks for the memories.....


"Life is eternal and love is immortal;
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

--Rositer Raymone

Focus For Election 2004--


"It's The Fascism, Stupid!!!!!"


A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy
By Sheldon S. Wolin

Excerpts:

"....Supposedly ours is a government of constitutionally limited powers in which equal citizens can take part in power. But one can no more assume that a superpower welcomes legal limits than believe that an empire finds democratic participation congenial...."

"... The American system is evolving its own form {of fascism}: "inverted totalitarianism." This has no official doctrine of racism or extermination camps but, as described above, it displays similar contempt for restraints......"

".....Americans are now facing a grim situation with no easy solution. Perhaps the just-passed anniversary of the Declaration of Independence might remind us that "whenever any form of Government becomes destructive ..." it must be challenged. "


See recent related article:
A pattern of deception
By WALTER WILLIAMS


Hey--DLC--"It's The Fascism, Stupid!!!"

I am watching the Philadelphia DLC Convention on CSPAN. They are NOT doing much dynamic challenging...it seems they have settled and complied with the new American facism, and are feebly attempting to effect change while being locked in their little Bushbox. Instead of reassuring any of us Democrats that there is still a sense of total respect for democracy out there, I hear them warning theie little choir that the "ideological left" is a THREAT to them.
(See this article----) Excerpt: "...DLC leaders have criticized former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose antiwar rhetoric fueled his rise to prominence in the Democratic presidential race, and today, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the DLC chairman, warned that the party is "at risk of being taken over by the far left." The choice for Democrats, Bayh said, is, "Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?"

**We can and we NEED to have it all, Evan, baby...say it every way we mean it...vent it to the heavens and the earth... show the American public the truth about the very real threat of neo-fascism here in this country. What's wrong? Can't you chew gum and walk at the same time? Vent and govern....where is the great sin, Evan Bayh? We need to look up to someone who is willing to loudly and proudly advocate open government and intelligent (multilateral) foreign policy..and we need to hear that neither of these are presently occurring with the Bush administration.
Don't you and the DLC forget this, Evan Bayh... or the name "LOSER" will be forever tatooed on your wimpy DLC foreheads!**


The DLC leaders are LOST.....LOST.....LOST.

I pray that someone in power begins to genuinely care about American democracy.
There is no Democrat who will win the next Presidential election while not fully accepting, admitting and talking firmly about the damage that has been done to American democracy these past few years..... damage to which Democrats contributed when they gave an ignorant rogue President the authority to make a preemptive strike on Iraq with no plan...no end-game.

In the old days, we were blessed with the knowlege that "it was the economy, stupid"....politics were far simpler before 9-11. The DLC has not come around to the fact that this is not "politics-as-usual" anymore...and never shall be again, I'd imagine.
Today, "it's the fascism, stupid!!!"

Virginia governor Mark Warner was one exception to the dreadful DLC rule in his talk in Philadelphia this morning.
He said: "When Democrats talk about the future, Democrats will win."
The DLC is living in the past and won't get out until they see the totality of the American landscape for the American people who pepper its plains and move about its mountains. Bush has definitely forgotten the people... and the DLC is not convincing me that they will bring about a whole lot of successful change because they aren't showing any of us the all-important contrasts between what has been so wrong about America these past few years and what could be so right about it's democratic future.