Friday, February 29, 2008

Amazing Baby Survival Story


I was at Yahoo News, and saw this amazing "cool" survival story from Thursday:

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

"My delivery was so sudden," said the Bhuri Kalbi, the mother of the infant, born two months prematurely. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet." Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman from a village in Rajasthan, fainted on the toilet seat after the birth for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family.

As you follow the link to the Yahoo story, you will see a photo of the baby girl to the left of the story. What a wild story she will have to tell as she grows up. Truly a "Miracle"?! I haven't done a "Cool" Person story for awhile, but she definitely has the "Coolest" story of anyone I have read about for some time!!


Amazing Baby Survival Story

Stocks Fall Sharply


This end of the day story continues to indicate that our economy is weakening, and the fears are leading to a selfulfiling prophesy:

Stocks fell sharply Friday after a series of depressing economic and corporate reports and high oil prices stoked concerns about the health of economy. The major stock indexes fell more than 2.5 percent and the Dow Jones industrials lost 315 points.

Investors were unnerved by disappointing quarterly results from American International Group Inc. and Dell Inc. And an index of regional business activity that Wall Street regards as a good indicator of a broader report set to arrive next week had its weakest showing in more than six years.
Oil prices continued to stir concern about inflation after pushing past $103 per barrel for the first time.

While stocks made sharp gains in the first three days this week even amid somewhat lackluster economic readings, the litany of concerns investors succumbed to Friday reflected the undercurrent of uncertainty that has kept Wall Street on edge for months.

"We really had to face a plethora of negative news," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co. in Boston. Hogan said while stocks had managed big gains for much of the week, Fridays have been difficult days for Wall Street in the past year or so since cracks began to appear in the credit markets and as concerns have emerged about the economy. Investors worry that unwelcome news might break on the weekends, and that has caused selling pressure in the week's final session.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow fell 315.79, or 2.51 percent, to 12,266.39. The decline more than erased the week's 200 point gain and sent stocks lower for February, the fourth straight month of declines. Broader stock indicators also tumbled. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 37.05, or 2.71 percent, to 1,330.63, and the Nasdaq composite index declined 60.09, or 2.58 percent, to 2,271.48.

Bond prices rose sharply as stocks lost ground. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.52 percent from 3.67 percent late Thursday. The Chicago Board Options Exchange's volatility index, known as the VIX, and often referred to as the "fear index," jumped 12.5 percent.

Will the "stimulus" package arrive in time to forestall a deep recession, or is it already too late, and it will just be like a bucket of water on a five alarm fire?!

Clinton, Obama And The Belief In The Magic Power Of Words


The previous post was from the Hillary side of the fence, so below is one from the Obama side. It is titled:
Clinton, Obama And The Belief In The Magic Power Of Words
By Arianna Huffington, Tribune Media Services, being brought to you by Arcamax Publishing, and she writes:


Along with her "ready to lead on Day One" mantra, Hillary Clinton's favored line of attack against Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Walter Mondale's 1984 "Where's the beef?" attack on Gary Hart. In Clinton's version, Obama is little more than a shallow speechifier who believes that words are all you need to lead.

She made it explicit in a speech in Providence, R.I., on Sunday: "I could stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open! The light will come down! Celestial choirs will be singing! And everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!' Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear!"
Last week it was: "Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills."

And her chief strategist, Mark Penn, summed up the "just words" meme this way: "She is in the solutions business while Obama is in the promises business."

Now, I agree with Clinton that it's important to look at how each of the Democratic candidates uses words and how rhetoric fits into how they've run their respective campaigns. And if you do, you'll see that one candidate does believe that words are like a magic wand: You utter them and reality changes. But it's not Barack Obama -- it's Hillary Clinton.
Clinton's use of words is disturbingly reminiscent of the way the Bush administration has used words: Just saying something is true is magically supposed to make it true. Call it Presto-change-o Politics.

The examples from the Bush era are so notorious they hardly bear repeating: "mission accomplished," "heckuva job," "last throes," the endless "turning the corner" in Iraq. They were all said with the arrogant belief that merely saying these words was all that was needed: Reality would literally change to fit the rhetoric.

Now let's look at Hillary Clinton's rhetoric and what is says about the campaign she's run. It started with her absurd claim that her vote for the war was really a vote to send inspectors back in. The name of the bill? "The Joint Resolution To Authorize The Use Of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq." Saying it was about sending inspectors back in doesn't mean that was about sending inspectors back in.

And then how about the endless spinning trying to diminish Obama victory after Obama victory? Here was Penn: "Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama." Mark Penn calling Virginia, Georgia, Missouri and Colorado, among others, not "significant" does not make them insignificant.

Or Clinton's "35 years of experience." She has had a distinguished record of public service, but it's not in any way 35 years of government experience, unless you want to include her time at Yale Law school, or going door to door for George McGovern in Texas, or working at the Rose law firm in Arkansas, as government experience. But her campaign seemed convinced that by repeating "35 years of experience" at every stop she would magically acquire those 35 years of experience.

But as the Bush administration has shown, believing your own words and not being able to see things as they are is not a good thing -- either for a country or a campaign. The New York Times described some Clinton aides as "baffled that a candidate who had been in the United States Senate for only three years and was a state lawmaker in Illinois before that was now outpacing a seasoned figure like Mrs. Clinton."

As Matthew Yglesias says: "Whether or not you think the more 'seasoned' candidate ought to win presidential elections, it seems to me that any campaign staffer who could be genuinely 'baffled' by experience not proving to be a winning issue is demonstrating a scary ignorance of how things work. Is her staff baffled that Joe Biden didn't win the nomination?"

Or how about the Clinton campaign's abracadabra rhetoric, designed to make the reality of what they agreed to about Florida and Michigan -- poof! -- go away. They even set up a Web site (delegatehub.com) that attempts to pull a rabbit out of the electoral hat. The site list several "facts": "FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats' 50-state strategy." As Ezra Klein noted: "It's almost as if they thought putting it after . . . the word 'FACT,' would be like a Jedi mind trick."
Meanwhile, as the Clinton campaign was busy trying to use words to push the idea that losing is actually winning (you know, just like in Iraq), the Obama campaign was actually winning votes. To the extent that anything in a campaign is real, it doesn't get any more real than actual votes.

And, no, he wasn't winning them just because of his "words." He backed up his words with action: old-fashioned grassroots organizing. For instance, as was widely noted in the blogosphere, the Clinton campaign apparently found out only in February that the March 4 primary/caucus in Texas was sort of complicated: "Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are worried that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her among Hispanic voters there, creating a new obstacle for her in the must-win presidential primary contest."

As one blogger, publius at Obsidian Wings, put it: "While they were busy 'discovering' the rules, however, the Obama campaign had people on the ground in Texas explaining the system, organizing precincts, and making PowerPoints. I know because I went to one of these meetings a week ago. I should have invited Mark Penn I suppose."

Repeat that kind of organizing throughout 23 "insignificant" states, and it turns out you get a pretty healthy delegate lead.

So let's look at how Obama uses words. Contrary to Clinton's charges, Obama never claims his words will somehow magically create change. Instead, he uses his words to ask the American people to demand change. Very little change for the better happens in Washington unless it is demanded by the people. It's instructive that, back in New Hampshire, Clinton discounted the work Martin Luther King did in creating the political atmosphere that allowed LBJ to push though the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Which is why Obama's constant invocation is "Yes we can" -- not "Yes I can." Obama uses words to persuade, to mobilize and to get people to imagine that reality can be changed. And based on how his campaign has been run, on the ground, in state after state, it's clear that he knows that changing reality is not done through magic -- it's done through hard work.

It is Clinton who uses words to deny reality, and expects them to magically change it. Haven't we had enough of that over the last seven years?

Again, May you Have A Great Weekend!! :)

SNL's Take On Election Is Better Than Most News Media


I found this interesting little story in my email this afternoon, from Alternet, and written by Carol Jenkins, of the Women's Media Center, and is about the way the news media has been handling Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, and whether they have been unfair to Hillary!

She writes, "It was perhaps surprising to hear a presidential candidate reference the irreverent comedy workhorse, Saturday Night Live, in a nationally televised debate -- but for those who've been tracking Hillary Clinton's sometimes rough handling by the media, it made sense for her to bring it up in Tuesday's debate."

This past Saturday's SNL show (blessedly back, thanks to the end of the writers' strike) had a couple of hilarious skits: one portraying swooning CNN correspondents in the last debate asking Barack Obama a tough question: Was he comfortable? Did he need a pillow? -- while attacking Clinton. The other, a "Women's News" segment with guest host Tina Fey using the "B" word liberally and proudly, in defense of Clinton, closing with the shout that "B ... is the new black!" -- or totally chic.

The show recognized what many observers had come to feel: that the media has conducted itself poorly and are worthy of parody. And watching Tim Russert, parodying himself in Tuesday night's debate, scowling eyebrows, raised voice, blustery manner and slightly weird questions -- encapsulated what's wrong with the media. Tim seemed to have the mistaken belief that he was the third debater, an impression only heightened after the debate when Chris Matthews repeatedly lauded Russert on "reeling in" Hillary Clinton with a question on her war vote. Increasingly the media has become the story -- and not such a complimentary one. While the "serious" reporters and pundits were this morning condescending of Clinton's mention of the comedy show, SNL's take on the coverage seems at least as informative as what shows up on nightly cable shows.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters believe she has been unfairly covered. Howard Wolfson, Clinton's press secretary complained bitterly this week: "I think it is true, that every time the Obama campaign in this campaign has attacked Senator Clinton in the worst kind of personal ways, attacked her veracity, attacked her credibility, said that she would say or do anything to get elected, the press has largely applauded him."

This past weekend, the drumbeat of reporters who began to agree with them, if only slightly, grew louder. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, on his weekly CNN show Reliable Sources, tackled the subject and concluded that Clinton had grounds to complain, that there was indeed at least the impression of a "pro-Obama press corp." He was not alone: "There is a gathering sense in the media that Obama has gotten something of a free ride," Howard Fineman of Newsweek and MSNBC conceded, then went on: "But, fair or not, it is still up to the Clinton campaign to slow that train's momentum before it is too late, which it almost is."

Yet recognizing that a bias exists does little to correct the problem. Interestingly, NBC, the network that carried the debate on its cable outlet MSNBC Tuesday night, is a media petrie dish worthy of years of scientific study. The Women's Media Center has commended NBC for its groundbreaking weeklong coverage of African American women on Nightly News. NBC is also the home of Saturday Night Live, of course.

But MSNBC is also the home of Chris Matthews, David Shuster, and formerly Don Imus, the infamous bad boys of television who have all had to apologize for sexist remarks: Matthews for asserting Clinton's political career was made possible only because her husband cheated on her; Shuster for claiming Clinton was "pimping out" her daughter by using her in the campaign. In fact, it was Shuster's comments that briefly jeopardized last night's debate. Clinton threatened to boycott. Shuster took a two- week suspension and was back on the air last night to report on the debate. The relationship between the Clinton camp and MSNBC talent is described as "a grudge match."

In the run-up to the Tuesday debate, we watched Chris, Tucker, Keith, and Chris again, then Tim with Brian Williams (the only one of the evening, by the way, to come off looking journalistic.) What was wrong with this picture? As the Women's Media Center has pointed out before, and to NBC executives personally, we believe the absence of women in this prime time line-up does a disservice to viewers -- and to the information process. And knowing the history of line-crossing, it's hard not to read disdain on their faces as they describe Hillary Clinton.

The Women's Media Center submitted a series of questions to both NBC and CNN for the last two debates, including one about stemming the epidemic of violence against women. A little less personal grandstanding, and more thoughtfulness, might have allowed an opening for at least one new question for both candidates to answer.

But the media's problems are not confined to NBC, nor are they purely of sexism, or even the absence of women. The news profession is suffering from a more fundamental sickness that needs an immediate cure. The media needs to step back into its role of gathering the facts, doing the exhaustive research, and reporting to the citizens of this country what they need to know.

Have A Great Weekend!!

Turkish Troops Leave Iraq


This story on Yahoo News indicates that Turkey's military said Friday it has ended a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in Iraq, but said that foreign influence did not play a role in its decision.

At least 200 trucks carrying Turkish troops were seen leaving the Iraqi border area and heading into Turkey's interior. The move came a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Turkish leaders during a visit in Ankara that they should end the offensive as soon as possible. In Washington, President Bush made a similar point Thursday, saying Turkey needed to move quickly and get out.

"Both the start and end dates of the operation were decided by us solely based on military reasoning and necessities," the military said in a statement. "Any influence, either foreign on domestic, on this decision by the Turkish Armed Forces is out of question."

Turkey launched the incursion into northern Iraq more than a week ago against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a group fighting for the autonomy of predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey. The rebels have carried out attacks in Turkey from bases in Kurdish Iraq.

It was the first major, confirmed incursion in Iraq by Turkey in almost a decade.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Friday that "it was a targeted and relatively short operation."

"But I would certainly expect that in the future, that unless the PKK gives up terrorism, that we're going to have to continue to work with the Turks and the Iraqis to go after them," Johndroe said.
Iraqi authorities have said they do not support the PKK but objected to Turkey's military action. On Friday, Iraq's foreign minister said he welcomed the troops' departure.

"The timing is good. I think the military carried out its promises" to remove Turkish troops after finishing the operations, Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Zebari credited the U.S. with playing an "instrumental" role in pressing Turkey to leave.

"The U.S. played a very important role on all fronts to remind Turkey of the seriousness of the situation," Zebari said.
The Turkish military said in a statement that the operation targeted some 300 rebels in Iraq's Zap region, and 240 of them were killed. Turkish losses stood at 27.
"Without a doubt, it is impossible to render the entire terrorist organization ineffective with an operation in only one region. However, it is shown to the group that Iraq's north is not a safe area for terrorists," the military said.
The military said it would not allow northern Iraq to be used as a springboard for attacks against Turkey.

"Terrorist activities in Iraq's north will be observed in the future and no threat against Turkey from this region will be allowed," the military said.
At least 200 military and civilian trucks ferried Turkish troops from the border with Iraq and through the Turkish town of Cukurca on Friday, bound for barracks in Turkey's interior. Some soldiers in the trucks gave thumbs-up signs as they returned. Some had camouflage paint on their faces and held machine guns.
PKK spokesman Ahmad Danas confirmed Turkey's withdrawal, and speculated that American pressure had forced Turkey to pull out.

The PKK took up arms against Turkey in 1984. The fighting has killed up to 40,000 people.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Zawarhi Vows Revenge For Libi Killing


There has been a video posting on the Web by Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri vowed revenge for the killing of a top group commander in a suspected U.S. attack in Pakistan, speaking in a video posted on the Internet on Wednesday. No chief of ours had died of a natural death, nor has our blood been spilled without a response," Zawahri said in the video posted on an Islamist Web site, referring to the killing of Abu Laith al-Libi.

Libi, considered as one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Afghanistan, was killed in a suspected U.S. missile strike that killed up to 13 foreign militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan border area in late January. "If one of our chiefs passes, another arises in his place," Zawahri said, without making a specific threat. Zawahri, wearing a black turban, spoke as he sat next to an assault rifle in front of shelves full of Islamic books.

"So seek help O Americans and agents of Americans ... from those seeking a way out ... They will be of no help to you," he said, referring to Muslim clerics who have criticized jihadist militants. Al Qaeda condemns as sell-outs Muslim clerics, including renowned scholars, who have said its jihadist ideology is un-Islamic. The video was produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab and carried English subtitles. Libi's prominence in al Qaeda was highlighted last year by his appearance in a video with Zawahri. He was the first spokesman to announce bin Laden had survived the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

U.S. media have said the Libyan-born militant was believed to be behind a suicide bombing in February 2007 that killed 23 people outside the main U.S. Bagram base in Afghanistan during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. In October the U.S. military in Afghanistan named Libi among several "mid-level" al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and offered a $200,000 bounty for him, U.S. media reported. Some Western anti-terrorism analysts said past killings of leading al Qaeda figures had shown there were usually others ready to fill the gap in the organization's ranks. But other said Libi's killing was a significant U.S. success.

So it would appear that al-Qaeda doesn't like us killing them. Wouldn't it be interesting if they actually incorporated being killed in their future plans, and Oh! maybe turn their energies toward assisting their people, instead of more death and destruction, and maybe then we would "play nice" as well. Okay, that is probably not true, but they really haven't tried that tactic yet, have they!!

New Poll Has Obama Ahead


In a new poll being released today, Barack Obama moved ahead of Hillary Clinton in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is in a dead heat in a general-election fight against Republican John McCain, who enjoys an advantage on national- security issues

A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times survey shows Obama is preferred by Democratic primary voters 48 percent to 42 percent, the first time he has overtaken Clinton in a Bloomberg/Times poll. In a general-election match-up among registered voters, McCain is 2 points ahead of Obama, within the margin of error; he beats Clinton by 6 points.

So all you Obamaniacs, it looks like your guy is going to be the Democratic Presidential Candidate, so the next question is "Who will he pick as a running mate?" Please drop me a comment if you have any guesses or informed suspicions of who that person will be!! Thanks and Have A Great Day!!


new poll has obama ahead of hillary

William F. Buckley Jr. Dead At 82


There is a story just coming across Yahoo news, that author, and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. She says he had been ill with emphysema and was found dead by his cook.

Buckley became famous for his intellectual political writings in his magazine, the National Review, and his frequent television appearances, including on his own long-running "Firing Line."

Even though I am much less conservative than I used to be, I always found Mr. Buckley interesting to listen to, with his "superior" attitude always coming through in his words, and mannerisms. He was very informed, and provided great entertainment for someone like me, who watches nearly all of the "talking heads" political shows!!

Condolences to the Buckley family and friends, and may he Rest In Peace!! There is a link to the wikipedia biography for anyone who wants to know more about Mr. Buckley~~!!


William F. Buckley Jr. Dead At 82

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Shocking Tales From The Afghan War & More


I was just reading this very good story on AlterNet and hope you find it as informative as I did. It is Titled: "Afghanistan: The Brutal and Unnecessary War The Media Aren't Telling You About" by Joshua Holland, and has at its' core and interview with Andy Worthington, whose book The Guantanamo Files, offers a different view of the Afghan War.

They say journalists provide the first draft of history. With the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, that draft led to an almost universal consensus, at least among Americans, that the attack was a justifiable act of self-defense. The Afghanistan action is commonly viewed as a "clean" conflict as well -- a war prosecuted with minimal loss of life, and one that didn't bring the kind of international opprobrium onto the United States that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a year later.

Those views are also held by many Americans who are critical of the excesses of the Bush administration's "War on Terror." But there's a disconnect there. Everything that followed -- secret detentions, torture, the invasion of Iraq, the assault on domestic dissent -- flowed inevitably from the failure to challenge Bush's claim that an act of terror required a military response. The United States has a rich history of abandoning its purported liberal values during times of war, and it was our acceptance of Bush's war narrative that led to the abuses that have shattered America's moral standing before the world.

In his book, The Guantanamo Files, historian and journalist Andy Worthington offers a much-needed corrective to the draft of the Afghanistan conflict that most Americans saw on their nightly newscasts. Worthington is the first to detail the histories of all 774 prisoners who have passed through the Bush administration's "legal black hole" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But his history starts in Afghanistan, and makes it abundantly clear that the road to Guantánamo -- not to mention Abu Ghraib -- began in places like Kandahar.

AlterNet recently asked Worthington what that road looked like at its point of origin.

Joshua Holland: I think most Americans believe that we went into Afghanistan to rout anti-American or anti-Western "jihadi," but your book captures the fact that the U.S. entered on one side of a long-standing civil war that had nothing to do with any sort of "clash of civilizations" between East and West. Can you give us some sense of what that conflict was about?

Andy Worthington: Sure, it's a very good question, actually. Briefly, the roots of the conflict lie in the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, when the United States, via Pakistani intermediaries, and the Saudis vied to fund the mujahideen -- Afghan warlords and their soldiers, backed up by a rather smaller number of Arab recruits.

At the end of the 1980s, when the Soviet Union withdrew, the country was plunged into a civil war, as the various warlords, pumped up with billions of dollars of U.S. and Saudi aid, fought each other to gain control of the country. Tens of thousands of civilians died, and crime and human rights abuses were rife.

Largely in response to this lawlessness, the Taliban -- initially a group of ultraorthodox religious students from the south of the country -- rose up to cleanse the country by creating a pure Islamic state. Their project, too, was soon derailed by brutality and by a religious fundamentalism that shocked the West, but it was the struggle between the Taliban and the warlords of the Northern Alliance that attracted thousands of foreign foot soldiers to Afghanistan in the 1990s, summoned by fatwas issued by radical sheikhs in their homelands, which required them to help the Taliban in their struggle against the Northern Alliance.

Osama Bin Laden, who had been living in Saudi Arabia and Sudan in the post-Soviet period, returned to Afghanistan in 1996 and became involved in funding military training camps and building up his plans for a global, anti-American jihad, but -- although there was some overlap between Al Qaeda and parts of the Taliban leadership -- the vast majority of the recruits, as I've indicated, were involved not in a grand "clash of civilizations" but in a provincial inter-Muslim civil war.

Holland: That's an important point. There's a common belief that a seamless integration existed between the Taliban and Bin Laden's group, and that integration justified our attacking Afghanistan, a nation-state, in "self-defense." But in reality, the Taliban was busy fighting this inter-Muslim civil war and had little or no role in Al Qaeda. Let's go a bit further: just how much overlap was there?

Worthington: According to a senior intelligence official interviewed by the journalist David Rose in 2004, the overlap was very small. Rose was told, "In 1996 it was nonexistent, and by 2001, no more than 50 people." Now this official was referring to an overlap of fairly high-level people in both organizations, and certain commentators have pointed out that Al Qaeda's "Arab Brigade" of around 500 soldiers contributed to the Taliban's military strength, but, to return to what we discussed before, this was in the context of an inter-Muslim civil war, and not a war against the United States.

There were certainly major divisions within the Taliban leadership regarding Bin Laden, and even Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, was apparently unimpressed by Bin Laden in the years after his return to Afghanistan. In 1998, Omar had even been planning to betray Bin Laden to the Saudis, but when Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the U.S. retaliated by launching cruise missile attacks on training camps in Afghanistan, Omar drew closer to Bin laden. Even so, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin laden after 9/11 if proof was offered of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Holland: They were so close in 1998 -- the deal had been done, and two jets carrying Saudi Prince Turki and a group of Saudi commandos had actually landed in Afghanistan and were waiting to pick up Bin Laden when the deal soured.

Worthington: That's right. And another clear sign of the lies involved in the "seamless integration" you refer to happened on Oct. 7, 2001, the first night of "Operation Enduring Freedom," when the U.S. military announced that it had bombed 23 Al Qaeda training camps. As I mention in the book, of the dozens of training camps established in Afghanistan from the 1980s onwards, most were funded by Pakistan and wealthy donors in the Gulf countries. Some were run by Afghan warlords, others by Pakistani groups and others by militant groups from other countries. Although bin Laden had a few camps of his own, it was inappropriate to describe all the training camps in Afghanistan as "Al Qaeda camps."

Holland: OK, let me go back briefly to an earlier point. Supporters of Bush's global network of "black" prisons say that those who ended up in them were "unlawful combatants." And you said that a lot of people from around the Muslim world were drawn to serve as foot soldiers in Afghanistan's civil war, but in the book, you also make it clear that many were not even foot soldiers -- not combatants at all -- but religious students, aid workers and other adventurous young people, and many of them would later get caught up in the chaos that followed the invasion and ended up at Gitmo.

Worthington: Yes, that's right. I'd say that between 70 and 100 of the foreign -- non-Afghan -- detainees had traveled to Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghan people, to teach or study the Koran, as economic migrants, or even because they were curious about the "pure Islamic state" that, in some quarters, the Taliban was alleged to have established. A similar number were captured in Pakistan. Charity workers were captured near the border, where they had traveled to provide assistance at refugee camps, and others -- including missionaries, entrepreneurs, economic migrants, refugees and students -- were actually captured elsewhere in Pakistan, in towns and cities far from the "battlefields" of Afghanistan.

And then, of course, there are the Afghan detainees, who made up over a quarter of Guantánamo's total population. Many of these were unwilling conscripts, who were forced to serve the Taliban, and most of the rest were picked up either on the basis of false intelligence -- because the U.S. forces did not know who to trust -- or were handed over by their rivals, in business or in politics, who told false stories to the Americans.

Holland: And what was the process by which the U.S. military sorted out one from the other -- how did they distinguish between "enemy combatants" and the poor suckers that were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Worthington: There was no process. In all previous wars, the U.S. military has followed the Geneva Conventions, and, in accordance with Article 5 of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, has held battlefield tribunals to separate the wheat from the chaff -- or the fighters from the farmers. In the first Gulf War, for example, the military held 1,196 battlefield tribunals, and nearly three-quarters of the prisoners were subsequently released.

In Afghanistan, however, not only were there no battlefield tribunals, but Chris Mackey, who worked as a senior interrogator in the prisons at the airbases in Kandahar and Bagram, where the Guantánamo prisoners were processed, noted in his book The Interrogators that every single Arab who ended up in U.S. custody was sent to Guantánamo on the orders of senior figures in the military and the intelligence services, who received the lists of prisoners at their base in Kuwait.

Although only Afghans with "considerable intelligence value" were supposed to be sent to Guantánamo, Mackey also made it clear that it was not until June 2002, when around 600 detainees were already in Guantánamo, that those in charge on the ground in Afghanistan came up with a category of temporary prisoner -- "persons under U.S. control" -- who could be held for 14 days without being assigned a number that entered the system overseen by military officials in Kuwait. It was the only way that they could deal with at least some of the many innocent Afghans who ended up in their custody.

Holland: A few of the stories you tell in the book really drive these points home, so I'd like to just ask you to briefly tell us the stories of a couple of detainees. According to the U.S. military, there were three juveniles under 16 years of age who were held at Guantánamo. Choose any of the three, and tell us how he ended up at Gitmo.

Worthington: Well, first of all, there were actually far more than three detainees who were under 16 years of age, and all of these detainees should have counted as juveniles -- and been treated accordingly -- in any civilized society.

The three you're talking about, however, are three Afghan boys who were aged 12, 13 and 14 at the time of their capture. Two were captured in a raid on the compound of a minor Afghan warlord named Samoud, whose many enemies seem to have included the Taliban, and the other -- 14-year-old Mohammed Ismael Agha -- was actually delivered to U.S. forces by the Taliban. He'd been looking for work with a friend and had been obliged to spend the night at a Taliban outpost. In the morning, the Taliban soldiers asked them to join them, and when they refused, they were delivered to the nearest U.S. base.

Holland: The military says that efforts were made to provide "for their special physical and emotional care," that they were housed "in a separate detention facility modified to meet the special needs of juveniles" and "were not restricted in the same manner as adult detainees." Is that what you found?

Worthington: Up to a point, yes. These three were, at some point, housed separately in a block called Camp Iguana, and they were released in January 2004, although they should have been released much earlier. They were the lucky ones, however. To give just one example, Agha's companion, Abdul Qudus, who was also 14 years old, was not released until 2005 or 2006, and there is no evidence that he -- or any of the other juveniles -- was held separately from the rest of the adult population, or, for that matter, treated any differently.

The most notorious case of a juvenile in Guantánamo is, of course, the Canadian Omar Khdar, who was 15 years old when he was captured after a firefight in July 2002, in which he allegedly killed a U.S. soldier. Khadr was treated appallingly in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, and is currently on trial in one of the administration's contentious military commissions, in which it has recently been revealed that he might not even have been responsible for the death of the U.S. soldier in the first place.

Holland: Who is Mohammed Sadiq?

Worthington: Mohammed Sadiq was Guantánamo's oldest prisoner. 88 years old at the time of his capture, Sadiq was apparently seized because his nephew had worked for the Taliban. U.S. forces bombed his house, took all his belongings and delivered him to the prison at Kandahar airbase. He was one of the first detainees to be released, in October 2002, but the fact that he was sent to Guantánamo at all was a disgrace, and it was reported, after his release, that he was unable to come to terms with what had happened to him.

Holland: And, finally, tell me who Abdul Razeq was?

Worthington: Abdul Razeq was a severely disturbed schizophrenic who was kept isolated in Kandahar, because, amongst other things, he had a tendency to eat his own excrement. In a dehumanizing touch, the soldiers referred to all the detainees as "Bob," and Razeq was known as "Crazy Bob." He too was sent to Guantánamo, but was flown back to Afghanistan in May 2002. Chris Mackey noted that he arrived "strapped down in the center of the plane like Hannibal Lecter." He was then placed in a maximum-security cell in a hospital, where a journalist interviewed him. He was so disturbed that he described the prison at Kandahar as a "hotel" and said that the Americans had taken him to Guantánamo "to treat my mental problems."

Holland: And the U.S. thought these people were …

Worthington: "Enemy combatants." That's how it worked. Everyone who ended up in U.S. custody was an "enemy combatant." Essentially, when you look at the lack of screening in Afghanistan and the failures of the tribunal process that took place in Guantánamo from 2004 onwards -- which Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who worked on them, described in an explosive statement last year as reliant upon generalized and often generic "evidence" that had nothing to do with the detainees in question, and was designed merely to rubber-stamp their designation as "enemy combatants" -- you realize that, in connection with the "War on Terror," the presumption of innocence has been done away with completely.

For the first four and a half years after 9/11, every prisoner was effectively regarded as guilty until proved guilty. After the tribunals, 38 detainees were cleared for release -- although the administration, denying the concepts of innocence and wrongful arrest, referred to them as "no longer enemy combatants" -- and many more have been cleared in the review boards that have taken place every year since then, but for the 281 detainees who remain, it's apparent that the "evidence" against them has never really been tested at all.

Holland: As I was reading the book, it struck me that not only did the American public -- not to mention the military and intelligence establishments -- have a totally false view of who the "enemy" was, but also that there was a widespread belief that the Northern Alliance were the "good guys." I didn't really sense any "good guys" in your book -- who were we allying ourselves with?

Worthington: The short answer is that, in an attempt not to get bogged down like the Soviet Union did, the U.S. invasion involved just a few hundred Special Forces operatives who hooked up with various Northern Alliance leaders in northern Afghanistan and supported them with money, arms and air power.

There were some principled military commanders in the Northern Alliance -- not least Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Alliance's charismatic leader, who was killed by Al Qaeda assassins just two days before 9/11 -- but even Massoud's men had been accused of atrocities over the years, and what we should perhaps consider is that, at the base of everything, Afghanistan is a disproportionately well-armed country that has been psychologically brutalized by what is now nearly 30 years of war.

Nevertheless, the invasion led to some horrific events, in which the U.S. military was at least partly complicit. In November 2001, after the surrender of the city of Kunduz, Gen. Rashid Dostum, one of the Alliance leaders, slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands of native and foreign Taliban fighters by suffocating them in container trucks en route to his prison at Sheberghan (death by container being a fairly recent innovation that was practiced by both sides). There appears to be evidence that U.S. forces were not unduly put out by this turn of events, and that, moreover, they were involved in the particularly brutal treatment of some of the survivors at Dostum's prison.

In one sense, of course, all of this could be regarded as part and parcel of the horrific reality of warfare, but the U.S. record is no better in the south of the country, where, in an attempt to foster support in the Taliban's Pashtun heartlands, U.S. forces entered into numerous dubious deals with various untrustworthy warlords, which, in turn, led to many innocent Afghans being sent to Guantánamo.

Holland: Now, in the book you describe a scene of total chaos in the aftermath of the invasion, and one of the common claims among so many of the detainees who would end up at Gitmo was that they had been sold to U.S. troops by these same allies -- or tribal leaders or Taliban units or whoever encountered them -- for as much as $5,000 per head. Essentially, there were real financial incentives for claiming that some unlucky foot soldier or Koranic student was a high-level Al Qaeda operative.

Worthington: Oh, absolutely. The military's psyops teams came up with over a hundred different leaflets and dropped millions of them all over Afghanistan. Most of them fruitlessly offered rewards of $25 million for the capture of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, but one in particular featured the following message: "You can receive millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch Al Qaeda and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life -- pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

And in Pakistan, the situation was arguably even more corrupt. In his 2006 autobiography, In the Line of Fire, President Musharraf boasted that, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects (including many transferred to Guantánamo), "We have earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars."

Holland: And those that were turned over to the U.S. by various factions weren't lucky. I think most people would be shocked at how abusive and violent U.S. troops were towards the prisoners they held in Afghanistan.

Worthington: I think you're right to raise that point, because Kandahar and Bagram were really the front line in the "War on Terror," where conditions were, I think it would be fair to say, primitive, brutal and terrifying. In the early months, prisoners were beaten, humiliated and prevented from speaking to one another. The worst abuses, however, happened in Bagram from July 2002 onwards. That was when at least two prisoners were murdered -- including one, an innocent taxi driver named Dilawar, who is featured in my book and is also the focus of Alex Gibney's excellent documentary Taxi to The Darkside.

And there were even worse prisons in Afghanistan -- a number of secret, CIA-run prisons (to this day no one knows exactly how many), including two near Kabul. The "Dark Prison" was like a medieval torture dungeon, but with 24-hour music and noise, and the other was the "Salt Pit." Dozens of Guantánamo detainees passed through these facilities, as well as other "ghost prisoners" who have subsequently disappeared.

Holland: And that was a model that was then taken to Abu Ghraib, as well as Gitmo?

Worthington: Sadly, yes. The team responsible for the worst violence at Bagram -- at the time of the murders -- was actually transferred to Abu Ghraib, and much of the institutionalized violence at Guantánamo was inspired by the Afghan prisons. It's also worth noting, however, what happened at Guantánamo in the fall of 2002. The administration was disappointed by the quality of the intelligence obtained from the detainees and decided that it was because they had been trained by Al Qaeda to resist interrogation, whereas in fact they were mostly innocent men or foot soldiers and had no worthwhile intelligence to give. In an attempt to "break" the detainees, the Pentagon authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," including prolonged solitary confinement, forced nudity, the use of extreme heat and cold, sexual humiliation and the prolonged use of painful stress positions. The commander at the time was Geoffrey Miller, and he was later sent to Abu Ghraib to "Gitmo-ize" the Iraqi operations, with the results that horrified the world when the scandal broke in April 2004.

Holland: Let me shift gears here for a moment. Bush's apologists often excuse the kinds of abuses you describe by claiming that the prisoners held in Gitmo were "captured on the field of battle." Was that always the case?

Worthington: No, not at all. The overwhelming majority were not captured on any kind of battlefield at all and, as an analysis of Pentagon documents by the Seton Hall Law School showed, were not even captured by U.S. forces. Eighty-six percent were captured by the Americans' allies, who then handed them over, or sold them, as discussed above. It's also worth noting that several dozen detainees were captured in 17 other countries, including Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Egypt, the Gambia, Georgia, Indonesia, Iran, Mauritania, Thailand and Zambia.

After 9/11, many countries were willing to cooperate with the U.S. in an attempt to track down potential terrorists, but it's also important to understand that the administration put enormous pressure on these countries. For example, this is what happened to the six Algerian-born Bosnians who are still in Guantánamo. The U.S. government accused them of planning to blow up the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. The Bosnians then imprisoned them and investigated them for three months but found no incriminating evidence whatsoever. As soon as they were released, however, they were seized by U.S. agents and taken to Guantánamo. The Bosnians were powerless to prevent it.

Holland: I think we've come to the heart of your book. The administration says that those housed in Gitmo are "the worst of the worst." But you claim that of the nearly 800 human beings who the U.S. captured or purchased, held incognito without any legal rights, regularly beat and on a few occasions allegedly murdered, only about 40 were die-hard anti-U.S. terrorists. How do you arrive at that? Wouldn't real terrorists claim that they were just innocents caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Worthington: My claim is based firstly on statements made by dozens of high-level military and intelligence sources cited by the New York Times in June 2004, when 749 detainees had been held at Guantánamo. These officials said that none of the prisoners "ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda," and "only a relative handful -- some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen -- were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings."

Ten more detainees were transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2004 -- although I have no doubt that they were not all terrorists -- and another 14 "high-value" detainees -- including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of the other men charged recently in connection with the 9/11 attacks -- were transferred in September 2006.

Forty might therefore be too low a figure, but I'm confident that it's no more than 50. As a percentage of Guantánamo's total population, that's just 6 percent, which, as a success rate, is both disappointing and disgraceful.

Holland: Finally, you argue that all of these policies were dictated at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Can you explain briefly what makes you think that?

Worthington: Sure. Dick Cheney and his advisors -- especially David Addington, his legal counsel (and now chief of staff) -- came up with the military order in November 2001 that authorized the president to capture anyone he regarded as a terrorist anywhere in the world, declare them an "enemy combatant" and hold them without charge or trial. That same document also established the military commissions. Then Cheney and his cabal persuaded the president to accept that the prisoners were not protected by the Geneva Conventions and in August 2002's "Torture Memo" sought to establish that interrogations constituted torture only if the pain endured was "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This in turn encouraged the widespread use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," which, at Guantánamo, were explicitly approved by Donald Rumsfeld.

There are many fine, principled Americans who attempted to resist these innovations, or spoke out against them, but the most insightful quote I found about the implications of these policies came from Milton Bearden, a former CIA bureau chief, who told David Rose, "It doesn't matter what distribution that memo had or how tightly it was controlled. That kind of thinking will permeate the system by word of mouth. Anyone who suggests that this and other official memos on this subject didn't have an impact doesn't know how these things work on the ground."

Khmer Rouge torture chief weeps at "Killing Fields"


I just finished a very powerful story about the Cambodian Infamous "Killing Fields" and the preparation for the trial of one of it's torturer's, and what happened as he was taken to one of the "fields".

The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims.

Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979. "I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reporters after the four-hour tour. "He cried and apologized to the victims" in the former rice fields outside Phnom Penh, he said.

Some of the victims were from the regime's S-21 prison at the former Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh run by Duch, now 66. About 14,000 people, including a few foreigners accused of being CIA spies, went into the jail to be tortured into confessing to working against a regime deemed responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people. Only a handful emerged alive.

Stacks of excavated skulls mark the area, is how this area is described in the story. This should be an "interesting" trial to "watch", and we will update if further stories are published about it!!


killing fields

Which Hillary Will Show Up For Tonight's Debate


As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama prepare to square off tonight in what could be their last debate, one of the key questions is which Clinton will show up.
Will it be the conciliatory Clinton, who said at a debate last Thursday that she was "honored" just to be on the stage with Obama?
I was just reading a story which pretty much sums up the stakes for Hillary Clinton in tonight's denate with Barack Obama.

Will it be the scolding Clinton, who on Saturday charged that her opponent's campaign literature was misleading, waved it in the air and said, "Shame on you, Barack Obama"?

Or will it be the sarcastic Clinton, who on Sunday ridiculed Obama's speeches and rallies, which draw thousands, likening them to the empty promise of a huckster evangelist: "The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing"?

The answer is crucial and the stakes are enormous as Clinton, a New York senator, strives to hold her lead in Ohio and shore up her standing in Texas, two states that she must win in order to have any chance of slowing the Illinois senator's momentum.

As the March 4th Super Important Tuesday Primaries in Texas, and Ohio, draw near, this last debate will be Hillary's last chance to convince voters why they should vote for her and not Obama. The fact is that Obama, just needs to not make any major mistakes or gaffes, and he may be nearing having the nomination sewn up by next week. Perhaps not in delegates, but definitely in momentum!! Should be a Fun Debate (8:00 to 9:30 CST, on MSNBC & NBC affiliates in Ohio), so grab a drink, and some snacks, and settle in as it will may be a "Showtime Event, with a little Ready To Rumble, thrown in" Tonight!!


debate

Monday, February 25, 2008

CLINTON-OBAMA BATTLE GETS ROUGHER


I was just reading how White House contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Monday hurled barbs over foreign policy and fought over an alleged anti-Obama smear, heading into do-or-die contests for the former first lady.

A day before a crucial debate in Ohio, Clinton used a speech here to portray her Democratic rival as a risky choice on foreign affairs, implying Obama would need a beginners' guide to the world's hot-spots if elected president. Before the speech, an Obama aide had already said sound judgment was the most important presidential attribute, highlighting Clinton's Senate vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war.

The policy sparring came as a photograph emerged of Obama in African dress, at the start of the candidates' final week of campaigning before primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4 that are must-win nominating contests for Clinton.

So tomorrow is the Big day for both Clinton and Obama, though for Hillary it is All important that she win, and win big!! It shall be an exciting Tuesday!!


TUESDAY

Democrats Accuse Bush Of Scare Tactics On Surveillance Law



In a story I was just reading. President Bush is lobbying again for an intelligence law allowing government eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails, as the tone of the dispute between the White House and Congress over terrorist surveillance grew increasingly sharp.

"To put it bluntly, if the enemy is calling into America, we really need to know what they're saying, and we need to know what they're thinking, and we need to know who they're talking to," Bush said at the start of his annual meeting with the nation's governors at the White House.


The law in question targets foreign terrorist threats and allows eavesdropping on communications involving people in the U.S., so long as those people are not the intended focus or target of the surveillance. The latest version of the legislation expired on Feb. 16. Bush and Congress are at odds over whether to give legal immunity to companies that in the past helped the government spy on customers without court warrants

Bush wants the House to act on legislation the Senate has passed. That bill provides retroactive protection for telecommunications companies that wiretapped U.S. phone and computer lines at the government's request after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, without court permission.The House version does not provide such immunity.

The Justice Department and Office of National Intelligence said Saturday that telecommunication companies are now complying with existing surveillance warrants. The agencies also said that new surveillance activities under existing warrants will resume "for now," but that the delay "impaired our ability to cover foreign intelligence targets, which resulted in missed intelligence information."


It appears that there is not going to be any resolution to this situation anytime soon, as both sides have laid out their positions, and seem unwilling to compromise!!




surveillance law

Turkish Troops Kill 41 More Rebels


The news out of northern Iraq indicates that the Turkish Troops are continuing with their incursion to hunt and kill PKK Rebels.

Turkey's military said Monday it had killed 41 more separatist Kurdish rebels in clashes in northern Iraq, raising the reported guerrilla death toll in a cross-border operation to 153. A statement posted on the military's Web site also said two more soldiers were killed in fighting, but gave no details. The deaths would drive the total Turkish military fatalities since the start of the incursion Thursday to 17. It said the military had hit some 30 targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK in the last 24 hours.

Turkey said its troops fired dozens of salvos of artillery shells at suspected rebel hideouts Monday and clashed with the rebels in four parts of northern Iraq. It did not specify the locations. It said troops were destroying rebel shelters, logistic centers and ammunition. Retreating rebels were setting booby traps under the corpses of dead comrades or planting mines on escape routes, the military said.

The Iraqi government began asking the Turkish Troops to leave yesterday, but as of today it would seem that they have no intention of leaving yet!!



kill

Recent Late Night Quips


I received these recent quotes in my email this morning and I thought a smile might be the best way to start this Monday off, as we in the Midwest prepare for ice and snow today and tomorrow.

"Actually, political experts say that Mitt Romney has the No. 1 thing John McCain is looking for in a vice presidential candidate - an organ donor card." --Jay Leno

"President Bush says if John McCain is the Republican nominee, he will campaign for him. Well, you can't do better than that." --David Letterman

"Former President George H.W. Bush will endorse Senator John McCain for president. They have been close friends since the Civil War and the former president says that John McCain is the only candidate who has the strength, the leadership and the vision to dig America out of this giant hole his son has put us in." --Jimmy Kimmel

"Did you see Roger Clemens testifying this week before Congress? One congressman named Elijah Cummings called Clemens, "One of my heroes," and then called him a liar. So, I guess that's what makes you a hero to a congressman pretty much." --Jay Leno

"This week in Sacramento, Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke to California lawmakers. And out of force of habit, they gave him a driver's license." --Jay Leno

"On Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox, Bill O'Reilly does a segment he calls 'Pinhead or Patriot.' And today President Bush said, 'Well, why can't you be both?'" --Jay Leno

Well, they just announced that the schools will be closing 2 hours early, as the Iowa City weather deteriorates!! Have A Good Day!!:)

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Frank Coyle's Draft Risers And Fallers


Hey it is getting to be later afternoon on Sunday, and I just found some football news, for those of us who are already anxious for the new season, even though it is many months away. So enjoy the link to find out who did themselves proud, and who did not at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis!!


NFL FOOTBALL

Violent Day In Iraq


Sunday has turned into a very bloody day in Iraq, as attacks across the country injured, or killed many civilians, as well as, killing a U.S. soldier, and injuring three of his comrades.

A suicide bomber struck Shiite pilgrims as they were resting Sunday during a days-long walk to a Shiite shrine, killing at least 40 people and wounding 60. The attack in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, was the second of the day against pilgrims traveling to the holy city of Karbala. The pilgrimage marks Arbaeen, the 40th day following the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, one of two revered Shiite figures buried there. The suicide bomber detonated at a tent where pilgrims stop to eat and drink, police said.

Earlier, extremists attacked another group of pilgrims with guns and grenades in the predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, killing three and wounding 36, police said. The attacks heightened tension around Arbaeen, when millions of pilgrims descend on Karbala, about 50 miles south of the capital.

Elsewhere, extremists targeted U.S. patrols in two separate attacks in northern Baghdad, one of which killed a soldier and wounded three other troops and a civilian, the military said, without naming the victims. The second bombing wounded three soldiers, the military said.

An explosion also struck a minibus carrying electricity department workers in the northwestern city of Mosul on Sunday, killing two and wounding three, police said.

In Hawija, about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk, a parked car bomb went off Sunday morning next to a patrol of Sunni tribesmen who aligned with U.S. forces to fight al-Qaida in Iraq, police said. One civilian bystander was killed and 10 people were wounded, including seven tribesmen, police Brig. Sarhad Qadir said.

Sadly as noted the other day after the Green Zone was attacked, we mentioned that perhaps we are seeing a resurgence of violence, as we reached the pinnacle of non-activity, and now the terrorist/insurgents have regrouped, and are going to be hitting back with a vengeance!! Today has done nothing to alleviate that concern!!


violence

Campaign Vows Face Reality Check


As shown in this next story by Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press, by way of Yahoo News, there are a lot of promises being made to spend "OUR" money, by the Presidential Candidates!!

Costly campaign vows face reality check


Barack Obama promises $4,000 credits to help pay college tuition. Hillary Rodham Clinton backs $25 billion for home heating subsidies. And John McCain wants to not only extend President Bush's tax cuts, but eliminate the alternative minimum tax at a cost of about $2 trillion over 10 years.

Then there's reality.
These campaign pledges — and dozens more in the manifestos of the leading presidential candidates — face a collision with the real world come January.

That's when the new president will start putting together a real budget and economic plan, one drafted against the backdrop of record federal deficits exceeding $400 billion. Even more challenging is the growth of the Medicare and Social Security retirement programs, which budget experts say could require wrenching benefit cuts, politically difficult tax hikes or both to handle the retirement of the baby boom generation.

In that environment, promises to effectively rebate the first $500 of Social Security payroll taxes (Obama), provide $1,000 tax credits for retirement savings (Clinton) or cut the corporate income tax by 10 percentage points (McCain) may turn out to be campaign fantasies.

"They're operating in Never Never Land.... None of them are honestly addressing the real challenges that they're going to be facing if they're elected," said Leon Panetta, former budget director and chief of staff for President Clinton. "We're facing a deficit bubble that is getting increasingly worse and at some point is going to explode on us."

Democrats Obama and Clinton face a situation eerily familiar to 1992, when Bill Clinton ran a campaign promising middle-class tax cuts and universal health care. Instead, worsening deficit predictions led him to push through Congress a tax-heavy deficit reduction plan that helped Republicans take over Congress in 1994.

For Republican McCain, the parallel is to the one-term presidency of George H.W. Bush, who inherited a budget crisis — and a Congress controlled by Democrats — that ultimately led him to break his "read my lips" pledge not to raise taxes.

For now, however, the campaigns are sticking with policy papers that don't add up but cater to political constituencies. Obama's "Keeping America's Promise" manifesto is full of costly prescriptions for the economy. Obama proposes tax cuts for senior citizens and college students, and $500 for every wage-earner, totaling $80 billion-$85 billion a year. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by closing loopholes and closing offshore tax havens, but those steps would fall far short of fully offsetting their costs. Both Obama and Clinton would keep in place many of the Bush tax cuts, including rate cuts for most taxpayers and the $1,000 per child tax credit. Both would let rate cuts for upper-income taxpayers expire, and use the savings to help pay for their health care promises.

To address looming shortfalls in Social Security, Obama supports raising the cap that limits the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax to the first $102,000 of income. Almost in an aside, the Obama campaign document says he supports closing the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare drug benefit — the gap created at the point when beneficiaries have to pick up all of their drug costs before catastrophic drug coverage kicks it. Closing it would roughly double the cost of the Medicare prescription drug program, however, and Obama offers no way to pay for it. Obama also promises a $60 billion investment in infrastructure and an $18 billion per year boost in education spending. The Illinois senator says his plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq will generate savings to help pay for these items, but that doesn't qualify as an offset under budget rules because the Iraq spending is an emergency expense, not a permanent part of the budget.

For his part, McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts as tilted too much in favor of the wealthy. He has since changed his mind. Now, with most budget experts forecasting deep deficits for the future, McCain wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of 2010. The price tag for McCain's plan would soon exceed $300 billion a year after government borrowing costs are factored in. McCain also wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, which would add more than $2 trillion in accumulated deficits to the federal ledger from 2010-2020. The AMT was enacted in 1969 to make sure the wealthy paid at least some tax, but now also threatens about 20 million additional taxpayers with levies averaging $2,000 if annual fixes aren't renewed.


Clinton's campaign generally succeeds more than the others at providing offsets — revenue increases or spending cuts — to finance programs such as her plan to provide health care for all. But even if the next president "pays for" new initiatives, they will still be left with an underlying budget deficit exceeding $400 billion and the looming crises in Social Security, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled. Even so, Clinton campaign literature promises a "return to fiscal responsibility. After six and a half years of Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, Hillary wants America to regain control of its destiny. She will move back toward a balanced budget and surpluses."

Just how Clinton — or any of her rivals — might miraculously produce a budget surplus is not answered. "They face a collision with reality," said Bob Greenstein, who heads the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. "None of the three candidates is coming to grips with budget realities."

Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer, who directed the Congressional Budget Office during landmark budget debates of 1990 and 1993, says there's only so much any incoming president can hope to accomplish. Already, Reischauer says, the agenda includes bruising battles over renewing the Bush tax cuts, as well as reforming the AMT and preventing Medicare payments to doctors from being cut . "There's a certain amount of political capital and energy that new administrations have and because the plate is already full, it's going to be very hard for them to push forward on new initiatives," Reischauer said.

Please Keep Your Hands Out Of "OUR" Pockets!!

Ralphie Nader: A Spoiler?


The race for the White House just got more interesting as Ralph Nader has decided to play the spoiler again.
Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will "shift the power from the few to the many."

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

Nader also ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and 2004, and many Democrats still accuse him of costing Al Gore the 2000 election.

So the bottom line is if you want a Republican for President, Ralph has just made it more likely to occur, and if you want a Democrat, your chances just got more slim!! Way To Go Ralphie!!


spoiler

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Incredible $1 Bet


Here is a fun "wouldn't that be nice" story, as Saturday draws to a close:

A lucky gambler has made 1 million pounds, or about $1.97 million, from a 50 pence ($1) bet, British bookmaker William Hill said Saturday.The man, who William Hill has not identified, correctly guessed the outcome of eight horse races Friday, beating odds of two-million-to-one.

He walked into a William Hill branch in the north England town of Thirsk and placed wagers on eight horses in eight different contests in a so-called “accumulator bet,” the company said.His first win came when a horse called “Isn’t That Lucky” won the 2:55 p.m. race at the Sandown track, southwest of London. By the time “A Dream Come True” crossed the finish line at the Wolverhampton racecourse in central England later that evening, the man had won 1 million pounds.


As our own Powerball advertisements say " You can't win, if you don't play"!! :) Good Night!!

betting

Turkey-Kurds: A Timeline


Here is a story with the timeline leading up to the Incursion by Turkish Troops on Feb. 21st, with a look at recent major events in the fight between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels:

It began Oct. 7, 2007 — A clash between Turkish troops and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, resulted in the deaths of 13 Turkish troops, the deadliest Kurdish rebel attack against the Turkish army in years.


And culminates on Feb. 21, 2008 — Turkey sends troops into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels.
With the Link filling in the rest of the timeline.

As news just coming in indicates that some 35 PKK rebels and 2 Turkish soldiers were killed in fighting today!!


timeline

Hillary Calls Out Obama On Misleading Mailers


Hillary is getting tough with Barack Obama, as Tuesday draws near, and the "must" win states Texas, and Ohio are up for grabs.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that a pair of mailings sent to voters by rival Barack Obama's campaign criticizing her health care plan and trade views are false, misleading and a betrayal of his pledge to practice a new style of politics

"Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public, that's what I expect from you," Clinton said angrily, waving the mailings in the air. "Meet me in Ohio, and let's have a debate about your tactics," she added.


But the New York senator saved her toughest words for Obama's mailings, saying she refused to see the campaign "polluted" by such tactics. "Enough about the speeches, and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of (former Bush political adviser) Karl Rove's playbook. This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged," Clinton said.


Clinton's advisers have repeatedly criticized the Obama campaign's health care mailing, which says her plan for universal coverage would "force" everyone to purchase insurance even if they can't afford it. Her plan requires everyone to be covered, but it offers tax credits and other subsidies to make insurance more affordable.

I think Hillary may have waited too long to bring out her big guns, but she is a Clinton, and they have a way of "winning" elections! This week looks to be one of "fighting" words, and we the spectators get to enjoy the "show"!!


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Do Voting Problems Threaten Our Democracy




When things go awry at the voting booth, as they have several times in this hectic primary season, much of the blame often falls on ill-trained poll workers who are paid a pittance.

And there have been some head-scratching moments: While folks in Washington were waiting hours to vote under record turnout Feb. 12, poll workers hid electronic voting machines because they didn't like the touch-screen devices. On Super Tuesday in Chicago, poll workers passed out pens meant for e-voting machines. When those instruments made no mark on paper ballots, election workers said they were full of invisible ink, an explanation that was upheld by onsite precinct judges.

While some of these snafus defy logic, many can be pinned on poor training, experts say. We're running the most important part of our democracy on the backs of untrained, poorly paid volunteers," said Lloyd Leonard, who has helped research poll worker issues for the League of Women Voters. "It's not their fault. Funding is not a priority. They aren't paid much. They try real hard. We should all volunteer and help them out."

Some of the examples in this story are amusing, but the bottom line is that these things can threaten the very democracy, that our "voting rights" are supposed to insure. As a Nation we need to take these issues seriously, and make sure that they are addressed, so we do not have a replay of 2000, or 2004, when many voters "believe" that they did Not have their votes counted, and that the "choice" for who our President would be, was not correctly tabulated!!



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Turkish Troops Enter Iraq Update


Here is an update of the story concerning the Turkish Invasion of Northern Iraq, to hunt down PKK Rebels in the mountains.

Turkish troops pressed a major ground offensive against Kurdish rebels in neighbouring Iraq for a third day Saturday as Ankara said dozens of rebels and at least five soldiers had been killed.

While the Turkish military claimed the operation had sown panic amongst the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the rebel group raised the stakes by threatening to retaliate with attacks in city centres.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan sought to soothe Iraqi protests and Western misgivings over what was the most significant ground incursion into Iraq by Turkey for a number of years.A successful operation is under way," he told reporters. "The only target... is the PKK terrorist organisation. Turkey is the strongest supporter of Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity."

The incursion is expected to continue into next week!



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Green Zone Attacked


This story coming out of Baghdad, indicates that even with al-Sadr's extension of the ceasefire, that there are terrorists who can get close enough to launch rockets or mortars into the "famous, safe" Green Zone.

Rockets or mortars hit the U.S.-protected Green Zone early Saturday, just a day after powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army militia to extend its cease-fire by another six months.

Nearly 10 blasts could be heard in the sprawling area along the Tigris River that houses the U.S. and British embassies, the Iraqi government headquarters and thousands of American troops. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties. Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed the Green Zone was hit by indirect fire, the military's term for a rocket or mortar attack, but could not provide more details.

The flurry of attacks followed a substantial lull in such violence as security has increased in the capital over the last half-year. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military blamed Iranian-backed Shiite militias that have broken away from al-Sadr's block for the rocket attacks. Iran denies that it sponsors extremists in Iraq.

Is this new uptick in violence and indication that the gains made by the Surge, are at their pinnacle, and we are now going to see a descent back into the violence before the Surge! For our Troops, and the Iraqi civilians, I hope this is not the case, but as of today, it does not look good for them!


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Friday, February 22, 2008

Turkish Troops Enter Iraq


There is a disturbing, but expected story coming out of Iraq, as Turkish troops crossed the border today.

Supported by air power, Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq on Friday in their first major ground incursion against Kurdish rebel bases in nearly a decade. But Turkey sought to avoid confrontation with U.S.-backed Iraq, saying the guerrillas were its only target.

The offensive, which started late Thursday after aircraft and artillery blasted suspected rebel targets, marked a dramatic escalation in Turkey's fight with the PKK rebel group even though Turkish officials described the operation as limited.

Sky-Turk television said about 2,000 Turkish soldiers were in Iraq, operating against rebel camps about two miles in from the border. NTV television said a total of 10,000 soldiers were inside Iraq in an operation that had extended six miles past the frontier. The activity was reportedly occurring about 60 miles east of Cizre, a major city near the border with Iraq.

There should be a concerted effort to root the PKK from the Iraqi side of the border, so the conflict will not widen, and become an all out war. There is already enough fighting in Iraq, and throwing the PKK and Turks into the mix, will not help anyone stabilize this country!!


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U.S. Orders Some Diplomats To Leave Serbia


In a precautionary move the State Department on Friday ordered nonessential diplomats and the families of all American personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade to leave Serbia, following an attack on the compound.


The move, made at the request of U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter, came as U.S. diplomats across the Balkans went on alert, girding for more anti-American violence after Serb rioters stormed and torched the Belgrade embassy Thursday, causing as-yet undetermined damage and drawing fierce condemnation from Washington.

For once our government is being proactive, and actually taking care of a problem, before someone gets killed!! Good call on Ambassador Munter's part!!


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Ephemeral Polar Water Ice Discovered On Mars


Here is a "cool" story from our Red planetary sibling Mars:

After decades of studying the climate conditions of Mars, scientists have recently made a breakthrough observation. At the last conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, Dr. Adrian Brown reported on the latest results of the instrument that led his team to find water on Mars. Brown, a research scientist at the SETI Institute who studies climate similarities between Mars and Earth, says that finding water on Mars makes the potential for past or even future life on Mars much better.


Brown's team found a substantial amount of ephemeral (short lived) water ice in the polar regions of Mars. Early models of the s easonal caps of Mars suggested the polar caps would be pure carbon dioxide (CO2), and indeed, we now know that Mars' seasonal polar caps are 99% CO2 ice. Later thinking on the subject predicted that enough water existed in the Martian atmosphere to form a band, or "annulus," of water ice around the polar caps as they receded during springtime. This was subsequently confirmed in the northern hemisphere, but water ice in the southern hemisphere remained elusive and difficult to find until now.

So the chance to have water available for future Mars explorer's looks increasingly good! Perhaps this will spur us to go directly to Mars, instead of detouring through the Moon, as many want to do!! The Moon? Been there, done that, Let's Go To Mars Direct!! Have A Great Weekend!! Sunshine and 21 degrees, it must be Spring time in Iowa!! :)


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Al-Sadr Extends Ceasefire


Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced Friday that he has extended a cease-fire order to his Shiite Mahdi Army by another six months, giving Iraq a chance to continue its fragile recovery from brutal sectarian violence. That is the good news, the bad news is that he is still a powerful force in Iraq.

This story takes a look at Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia:
MUQTADA AL-SADR: The radical Shiite cleric commands influence as both a political force and leader of the Mahdi Army, a network of militiamen and other factions involved in community services. Based in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, al-Sadr is the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, one of the most powerful Shiite clerics in Iraq in the late 1990s. He was killed in a 1999 ambush that his followers blame on the regime of Saddam Hussein.

We shall keep updating this story as more information becomes available, but as least for today our troops can breath a little easier, knowing that they will not be fighting the Mahdi Army for awhile!


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Thursday, February 21, 2008

U.S. Embassy Set On Fire


As evidenced by this next story, the United States recognition of Kosovo's independence has led to violence directed at our embassy in Belgrade:

BELGRADE, Serbia - Serb rioters set fire to an office inside the U.S. Embassy Thursday and police clashed with protesters outside other embassy buildings after a large demonstration against Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Masked attackers broke into the U.S. compound, which has been closed this week, and tried to throw furniture from an office. They set fire to the office and flames shot up the side of the building. It took police about 45 minutes to appear at the scene, and firefighters arrived about the same time and put out the blaze. Police secured the U.S. Embassy and surrounding area, blocking off all access.

This is probably just the beginning of attacks against "American" assets overseas, and it will probably spill over onto the European Union countries, that also recognize an independent Kosovo!


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Blu-ray Wins


Well it seems that HD DVD has lost the battle, just as Beta, lost to VHS, Years ago. Blu-ray is the winner of the format contest, and will reap the rewards for years to come.

Want a refund from Toshiba now that it's pulled the plug on its own format? Good luck. Also: HD DVD prices plummet, Universal and Amazon go Blu-ray, and more.

Toshiba nixes refunds: So, HD DVD early adopters - think you deserve a refund now that Toshiba has killed the format? Think again. Valleywag reports that the company (and big-time HD DVD backer) won't be accepting refund requests (although it will continue to support existing HD DVD players). Here's the quote: "There is nothing wrong with the products so we aren't accepting returns from customers ... [Customers] understood that there were two competing formats and understood that one of them would probably prevail ..." Good point, actually. In my case, I bought the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive knowing full well that I was taking a gamble. I lost. End of story.

And no, Betaphiles, Beta is not going to make a comeback someday :), Have a Great Day!!


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Navy Scores Direct Hit

The missile fired by the Navy hit the satellite, this making it less dangerous to those of us ont he ground, and it sent a signal to North Korea, China, Iran, Russia, et al, that we have the capability to knock "their" satellites down if need be.

Debris from an obliterated U.S. spy satellite is being tracked over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans but appears to be too small to cause damage on Earth, a senior military officer said Thursday, just hours after a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the failing spacecraft.

Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an expert on military space technologies, told a Pentagon news conference that officials have a "high degree of confidence" that the missile launched from a Navy cruiser Wednesday night hit exactly where intended.It was an unprecedented mission for the Navy, so extraordinary that the final go-ahead to launch the missile Wednesday was reserved for Defense Secretary Robert Gates rather than a military commander.

This was an excellent day for the Navy, and for those who wanted to send a Not too subtle signal to our potential enemies of our capabilities. This may not have been the main motivation for the shoot down, but it was a pretty convenient timing to show what our missiles can do!!


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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is Bipolar Disorder A Celebrity Fad


This is an article I was just reading from AlterNet, and was written by Robert Westhead, of The Independent UK, and recounts his fight with bipolar disorder, as well as whether it is a celebrity fad, or real disease for people like Britney Spears. It is a good article, and provides insights that people who have not suffered mental illness may find eye opening, in this three page article.

He writes:
I became more prone to occasional mood swings, which I think were the early signs of illness. I remember becoming tearful for no obvious reason and starting to withdraw when I was in the sixth form. Before university I went travelling for a year, which is when I became seriously ill. Suddenly I started having regular and increasingly severe mood swings.

The scariest thing was that I had no idea what was happening. At the age of 19 most people have never even heard of bipolar disorder -- I certainly hadn't. When I was up I'd be enjoying the delicious euphoria, then when I crashed I would rack my brains trying to understand why I was so unhappy. I kept thinking I must have had some terrible childhood experience to make me so miserable, but could never come up with anything. I had no clue that I had a psychiatric illness.

Eventually, in one of the down phases, I gathered the wherewithal to get myself home. By the time I boarded the flight home from Bangkok I was very high. I arrived at Heathrow airport to be collected by my parents. I was talking 10 to the dozen and telling them I didn't need any sleep -- when you're really high you really can go without sleep. In a manic week I'd only sleep for an hour or so a night. My family just didn't know what to make of me.

The instances of mental illness may seem on the increase, but it also may be that it can be diagnosed much better now, and that is why it seems like "everyone" has a mental illness they are being treated for. So, is it Real or Is it another Fad, like Celebrity Rehab?!!


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Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths


I received a very interesting and informatie article in my email from AlterNet, and it is an article about Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense Of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It is a six page article, but it is a quick read, and I think you shall find much important information.

The human digestive tract has about the same number of neurons as the spinal column. What are they there for? The final word isn't in yet, but Michael Pollan thinks their existence suggests that digestion may be more than the rather mundane process of breaking down food into chemicals. And, keeping those numerous digestive neurons in mind, Pollan's new book In Defense Of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, entreaties us to follow our knowledgeable guts when it comes to figuring out what to eat.


Nutrition science and the food industry have been changing their minds about what Americans should eat for years. Low fat, no fat, low carb, high protein. In In Defense Of Food, Pollan argues that all of these fixations amount to a uniquely American disease: orthorexia -- an unhealthy obsession with eating. And as statistics on diabetes and obesity can attest, obsessing doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere. Pollan takes the reader on a journey through the science of food and reveals how it is that we've ignored our guts and followed the ever-changing tune of food science. At once a scathing indictment of the food industry, and a call for a return to real food, Pollan's latest book reveals how Americans have been dangerously misled into adopting "low fat" as a fundamental food mantra, and how most of the products on our supermarket shelves should be called "imitation."

A large issue in reporting on food, is that the very nature of journalism and the nature of food don't make a good fit. Food is a really old story. The foods that we do best on are the ones we evolved eating over many thousands of years. But journalism needs a new story every week, and so we tend to play up novelty and surprise. The classic methods are to eat more fruits and vegetables. How are you going to interest an editor in that story? But in fact, that is the story. Nutritionists haven't changed their points of view nearly as much as you would gather from reading the journalism about them.

This article will definitely have you looking at what you eat, and why, in a different light. Enjoy and Have a Great Evening.

**Remember tonight at 9:01 p.m. Central Standard Time, we will have the last, Full Lunar Eclipse until 2010, and hopefully, it will not be cloudy, so we can all get a good look at it!! Take Care!!


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