caseyjones38's Blog - Just a Good Ol` Boy

IS THIS THE SAME COUNTRY THAT CRIED " TEAR DOWN THIS WALL ! "
Court rejects case on fast track for border fence










Jun 23, 3:21 PM (ET)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN (AP) In a Tuesday, April 1, 2008 file photo, the U.S.-Mexico border fence is seen from the outskirts of...
Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.

As of June, 13, 331 miles of fencing have been constructed in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

(AP) In a Tuesday, April 1, 2008 file photo, the new U.S.-Mexico border fence, right, stands near the...
Full Image"I am
extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."

Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats - including six other committee chairs - filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.

Russ Knock, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said, "The American people expect this department to enforce the rule of law at the border. He added that the department is happy with the court's decision.

"As fence construction proceeds," Knocke said, "the department will continue to be a good steward of the environment, and consult with appropriate state, local, and tribal officials."

The concept of a border fence took on new life after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which revived the heated immigration debate. Intelligence officials have said the holes along the southwest border could provide places for terrorists to enter the country.

Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform when it had the chance in 2007.

Thompson said, "Without a comprehensive plan, this fence is just another quick fix."

Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers - which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws - will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.

Environmentalists have said the fence puts already endangered species such as two types of wild cats - the ocelot and the jaguarundi - in even more danger. The fence would prevent them from swimming across the Rio Grande to mate.

IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ex-spokesman faults Bush for withholding facts

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago

Former presidential spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday said President Bush has lost the public's trust by failing to open up about his administration's mistakes and backtracking on a promise to tell all about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

"This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it. And they have refused to," McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee. "And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains."

The former White House press secretary suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his credibility on the Plame matter and his reasons for going to war in Iraq if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle."

"This is a very secretive White House," McClellan said. "There's some things that they would prefer not to be talked about."

The White House was dismissive of the event and McClellan himself. Presidential spokesman Tony Fratto disputed McClellan's assertion that that Plame matter concluded with the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, citing an ongoing lawsuit by Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, against current and former administration officials.

"The White House has the consistent position that we would refrain from comment while there was ongoing litigation," Fratto said. "Scott must have forgotten the policy he repeatedly stated from the podium."

McClellan cites other examples of Bush's lack of candor, including what he called the "packaging" of intelligence to justify the Iraq war and the president's handling of allegations that many years ago he used cocaine.

In his recently released book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan recounts overhearing Bush on the telephone telling a supporter that "I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not."

McClellan called that kind of response to sensitive questions by Bush and other politicians "essentially evasion."

"That (approach) later transferred over to issues of policy," McClellan said. "It tells something about his character."

Bush's spokesman from 2003-2006, McClellan said that former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card told him that the president and vice president wanted him to publicly say that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff at the time, was not involved in the leak.

"I was reluctant to do it," McClellan said. "I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he assured me in unequivocal terms that he was not."

In fact, both Libby and former presidential adviser Karl Rove had discussed Plame's identity with reporters. Libby resigned from office the day he was indicted on charges of covering up the leak. Rove remained, eventually leaving office in August 2007. Rove has never been charged in the case.

Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters as retribution for criticism from her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, of Bush's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time. "It was special treatment," McClellan said of the commutation.

McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know if a crime was committed and does not believe that Bush knew about or directed the leak. When asked about Cheney, he replied: "I do not know. There's a lot of suspicion there."

Bush backtracked on his promise of accountability in the Plame matter, McClellan said.

The White House had said in 2003 that anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed. Bush reiterated that promise in June 2004.

By July 2005, Bush qualified his position, saying he would fire anyone for leaking classified information if that person had "committed a crime." He then commuted Libby's sentence.

McClellan said the White House helped the Justice Department investigate the leak, but he knew of no internal White House probe to ferret out and fire the leaker.

"I certainly think that the president should have stuck by his word on the matter, and I certainly view the commutation as it was special treatment," McClellan said. "It does undermine our system of justice."

Republicans cast his testimony as old news. Ranking Republican Lamar Smith of Texas questioned the impartiality of McClellan's publisher and said that whatever McClellan had been instructed to say about the Plame affair was typical work of the White House press office.

"It should be of no surprise that there was spin in the White House Press Office," said Smith. "What White House has not had a communications operation that advocates for its policies? Any recent administration that did not try to promote its priorities should be cited for dereliction of duty."

WHEN TRUTH ? COMES FROM THE LEAST SUSPECTED SOURCE

Market full of oil, price trend "fake": Ahmadinejad

By Hashem KalentariTue Jun 17, 2:59 AM ET

The market is full of oil and the rising price trend is "fake and imposed," Iran's president said on Tuesday, partly blaming a weak U.S. dollar which he said was being pushed lower on purpose.

"At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is completely fake and imposed," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech.

"It is very clear that visible and invisible hands are controlling prices in a fake way with political and economic aims," he said when opening a meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development in the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, has repeatedly said the market is well-supplied with crude and blames rising prices on speculation, a weak U.S. currency and geopolitical factors.

"As you know the decrease in the dollar's value and the increase in energy prices are two sides of the same coin which are being introduced as factors behind the recent instability," Ahmadinejad said.

Oil steadied on Tuesday after touching a record near $140 the previous day, with traders caught between a weaker dollar and expectations that top exporter Saudi Arabia will ramp up output to its highest rate in decades.

Iran has often said it sees no need for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output.

"EVER-INCREASING DECREASE"

Ahmadinejad reiterated his view that oil should be sold in a basket of currencies rather than U.S. dollars, an idea which has failed to win over other OPEC members, except Venezuela.

"The ever-increasing decrease in the dollar's value is one of the world's major problems," he said.

"A combination of the world's valid currencies should become a basis for oil transactions or (OPEC) member countries should determine a new currency for oil transactions," he said.

Iran, embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, has for more than two years been increasing its sales of oil for currencies other than the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.

Ahmadinejad, who in the past has called the dollar a "worthless piece of paper," suggested "some big powers" were driving it lower on purpose:

"The planners for some big powers are acting to decrease the dollar's value," he said. "For years they imposed inflation and their own economic problems to other nations by injecting the dollar without any support to the global economy."

Foes since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran's disputed nuclear activities as well as over policy in Iraq. Iran says its atomic work is peaceful.

(Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by William Hardy)

  THE WORLD GETS WISE TO INCOMPETENCE AND TRUST
                   

Bush, Musharraf, Ahmadinejad least trusted leaders

Mon Jun 16, 4:07 PM ET

U.S. President George W. Bush is ranked only slightly above the rulers of Pakistan and Iran as one of the least-trusted leaders in the world, a survey released on Monday showed.

The survey, carried out by WorldPublicOpinion.org in 20 countries around the world, found that no national leaders inspired wide confidence outside their own countries. But Bush, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ranked at the bottom, the polling showed.

Only 23 percent of people outside the United States had "a lot or some" confidence in Bush, compared to 22 percent for Ahmadinejad and 18 percent for Musharraf.

The leaders of other countries fared little better. Only 26 percent had confidence in French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 28 percent in Chinese President Hu Jintao, 30 percent in British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and 32 percent in Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has since become prime minister.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had the highest confidence levels, at 35 percent.

"While the worldwide mistrust of George Bush has created a global leadership vacuum, no alternative leader has stepped into the breach," said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org. "Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin are popular among some nations, but more mistrust them than trust them."

WorldPublicOpinion.org is a project involving research centers around the world and is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

The group polled 19,751 people in nations that represent 60 percent of the world's population. The survey was conducted between January 10 and May 6, with margins of error of plus or minus 2 to 4 percent

     OH, DON`T YOU JUST KNOW IT !!!!!!!!!

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE - RIP OFF THE TAXPAYER ?

More unfunny comedy from the US Government

ABC NEWS -

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

A spokesman for the FBI said Pharaon was not wanted in connection with the French report, but confirmed he was still sought by the US Justice Department.

This is sad. We are giving government contracts to a company owned by a wanted US fugitive. Is the entire Bush Administration sleeping again? Where is the outrage from the Law and Order people? I am sure that there is a law that says that you cannot deal with companies that are headed by US fugitives. Oh wait, maybe that is more executive privilege because he knows the President. I forget, that if you know the President, you can claim executive privilege anytime you want.

EVERY DAY , MORE MANIPULATION IS REVEALED !!!!!! Bush misused Iraq intelligence: Senate report

By Randall Mikkelsen1 hour, 7 minutes ago

President George W. Bush and his top policymakers exaggerated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made their case for war, a Senate committee reported on Thursday.

The Senate intelligence committee said in a study that major Bush administration statements that Iraq had a partnership with al Qaeda and provided it with weapons training were unsupported by intelligence, and sometimes contradicted it.

It also said statements on Iraq's weapons before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion were substantiated in most cases by available U.S. intelligence, but that they failed to reflect internal debate over those findings.

The long-delayed Senate study supported previous reports and findings that the administration's main case for war -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction -- was inaccurate and deeply flawed.

"The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11, 2001) attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein," intelligence committee Chairman John Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report.

"Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false pretenses."

The report also cited at least one statement -- by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that the Iraqi government operated underground weapons of mass destruction facilities -- that was not backed up by intelligence information.

REPUBLICAN DISSENT

The committee voted 10-5 to approve the report, with two Republican lawmakers supporting it. Sen. Christopher Bond and three other Republican panel members denounced the study in an attached dissent as a "partisan exercise."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino cited Republican objections to the report, but said the issue of inaccurate intelligence had been previously aired.

"We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it," Perino said.

U.S. public opinion, supportive of the war at the start, has soured on the war in the last few years, contributing to a dive in Bush's popularity.

The conflict is likely to be a key issue in the November presidential election between Republican John McCain, who supports the war, and Democrat Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the start and says he would aim to pull U.S. troops out within 16 months of taking office in January 2009.

Rockefeller has previously announced his support for Obama.

A second report by the committee faulted the administration's handling of December 2001 Rome meetings between defense officials and Iranian informants, which dealt with the Iranian issue and not Iraq.

It said Department of Defense officials collected potentially useful intelligence information at the meeting that they failed to share with other intelligence agencies.

Rockefeller said the committee's report on the defense department "paints a disturbing picture of Pentagon policy officials" who gathered intelligence on their own and kept others in the dark.

He said the department "demonstrated a fundamental disdain for the intelligence community's role in vetting sensitive sources."

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith and Andy Sullivan)

Political Humor

HOW COME EVERYBODY`S GETTING SMART BUT US ?

Australian PM attacks decision to join war in Iraq

By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 2, 11:50 AM ET

CANBERRA, Australia - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accused his predecessor of abusing intelligence information to justify entering the Iraq war, saying Monday that the Australian people were misled.

In remarks to parliament on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which began Sunday, Rudd said the nation must learn from the errors of former Prime Minister John Howard, who sent 2,000 troops to support U.S. and British forces in the 2003 invasion.

"We must learn from Australia's experience in the lead-up to going to war with Iraq and not repeat the same mistakes in the future," Rudd said.

He criticized Howard's government for going to war without accurate information or a full assessment of the consequences.

"Of most concern to this government was the manner in which the decision to go to war was made: the abuse of intelligence information, a failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of that intelligence," Rudd said.

Before the invasion, Howard argued that Saddam Hussein had to be toppled to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The weapons were not discovered and no definite links were established between Saddam and al-Qaida or other terror networks.

Rudd said Howard wrongly believed that Australia's close alliance with the United States left him with no choice but to join the campaign in Iraq.

"This government does not believe that our alliance with the United States mandates automatic compliance with every element of the United States' foreign policy," Rudd told Parliament.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said she had not reviewed Rudd's comments, but said the U.S. invasion was based on intelligence that the entire world had.

"We acted based on a threat that was presented to us," Perino said at the White House. "Since then, we have learned that there was not WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq."

She said the U.S. has since taken steps to strengthen the accuracy of intelligence.

Howard could not be immediately reached for comment after Rudd's address. However, in an interview published Monday in The Sydney Morning Herald, Howard said he was "baffled" by the decision to withdraw troops, adding he would have shifted them into a training roles.

The former prime minister has long denied deliberately misleading the Australian public over the threat posed by Iraq.

A government-commissioned inquiry in 2004 into Australian spy agencies' pre-Iraq war intelligence cleared Howard's government of overstating the case for joining the U.S.-led invasion.

But in his 185-page report, retired diplomat and spy master Philip Flood lamented "the thinness of the intelligence on which analysts were expected to make difficult calls" about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Details about the intelligence and how it was provided were not available.

Rudd campaigned for November's general election vowing to withdraw combat troops by mid-2008.

On Sunday troops lowered the Australian flag that had flown over Camp Terendak in the southern Iraqi city of Talil, marking an end to the service of the 550 soldiers there.

Twenty-seven Australian troops have been wounded in Iraq. None were killed in com

AND WE NOW ARE LEARNING MORE !!!!!!

Source: PERRspectives

McClellan: WH wanted him to stay silent

Mike Allen2 hours, 10 minutes ago

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, speaking out for the first time since publication of his searing memoir, told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday that he erroneously believed what President Bush was saying about the war but now is answering to a higher loyalty: “a loyalty to the truth.”

“The White House would prefer that I not talk openly about my experiences,” he said in a lengthy, at times combative interview with anchor Meredith Vieira. “These words didn’t come to me easy. … I’m disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped they would.”

He added: “I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That's a loyalty to the truth."

A White House official replied: "No one at the White House ever told McClellan not to talk about his experiences."

McClellan said he "believed" what Bush was saying about the war — and the president did, too. “I trusted the president's foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq,” McClellan said. “I believe he believed it was a grave danger, too. He convinced himself of that. When the administration was talking about Iraq, it was talked about as a problem that needed to be addressed. After Sept. 11, it was talked about as a grave danger. You get caught up in the White House bubble, you get caught up in the affection for the man you're serving and defer.”

Asked if he’ll ever talk to the president again, McClellan said: “I don’t know. I certainly don’t expect it any time soon. I know this is a tough book for some people to accept.”

McClellan’s book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” has provoked a furious counterattack from his former colleagues, who call it “sad,” “puzzling” and “pathetic.”

McClellan accused Vice President Cheney of failing his boss. “In a number of ways, he has not served the president well,” McClellan said. “Part of it is the secrecy and compartmentalization … in the White House.”

And McClellan said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when she was White House national security adviser, gave in too often to Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“I felt that too often she was too accommodating … of the other strong personalities on the foreign policy team … and too deferential to those individuals,” he said.

Former presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, following McClellan on “Today,” said McClellan had used “very inflammatory words” like “propaganda,” with “not a lot of evidence.”

“He never communicated to us that he had these personal misgivings,” Bartlett said. “There’s not a lot of specific evidence about the most explosive charges.”

Bartlett said the book is “fundamentally wrong” and says he would not personally have participated in a propaganda effort.

McClellan said that even at the time, he thought that the country was “rushing into” the Iraq war. But McClellan said he was he was caught up in “the post-9/11 mentality” and so accepted what the president was saying.

"I was in doubt, like a lot of Americans," McClellan said. "I felt like we were rushing into this. But because of my position and my affection for the president and my belief and trust in he and his advisers, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Looking back on it, reflecting on it now, I don't think I should have. ... The expectations later came back to haunt us, because they were out of whack.”

McClellan said his mission had been to write “openly and honestly about what I lived and learned.”

“The larger message has been lost in the mix of the original reaction to it,” he said. “I believe it’s important to look back and reflect on my experience and talk to people about what I learned and what we can learn from it.”

McClellan says the book’s “larger message” is the problems with the “permanent campaign culture.” He said that’s the opposite of what he expected when he came to Washington after serving then-Gov. Bush in Texas.

“I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it,” McClellan recalled. “He talked about being a uniter, not a divider. … And then we got to Washington and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it’s played today.”

“These are good and well-intentioned people,” McClellan added.

Asked bluntly if Bush had let him down, McClellan said: “I grew increasingly disillusioned.”

McClellan added: “There’s no one I’m harder on in the book, I don’t think, than myself.” He says he blames himself “for putting myself in the position” of passing on information about the CIA leak case that turned out to be inaccurate.

As part of a sophisticated media counterattack by Bush allies, McClellan’s predecessor Ari Fleischer asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “Which Scott is the real one?”

“This is heartbreaking to me,” Fleischer said. “This makes me wonder if Scott ever believed the things he said from the podium.”

Fleischer said that for McClellan to now “turn tail and say these things … makes you question his convictions … either now, or when he stood at the podium.”

On the question of how much information was available to McClellan in the White House, Fleischer said: “It’s not loop or no loop. It’s whether Scott meant the things he said.”

Asked if McClellan is still his friend, Bartlett said: “He is.”

McClellan is set to appear Thursday night on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert

                                                      
             

NOW, IS THERE ANY DOUBT ?????

Exposing Washington's spinning permanent campaign

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House CorrespondentWed May 28, 5:16 PM ET

In a White House full of Bush loyalists, none was more loyal than Scott McClellan, the bland press secretary who spread the company line for all the government to follow each day. His word, it turns out, was worthless, his confessional memoir a glimpse into Washington's world of spin and even outright deception.

Instead of effective government, Americans were subjected to a "permanent campaign" that was "all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," McClellan writes in a book stunning for its harsh criticism of Bush. "Presidential initiatives from health care programs to foreign invasions are regularly devised, named, timed and launched with one eye (or both eyes) on the electoral calendar."

The spokesman's book is called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

Governing via endless campaigning is not a new phenomenon, but it accelerated markedly during the tumultuous Clinton White House and then the war-shaken years of the Bush administration. Bush strategist Karl Rove had a strong hand in both politics and governing as overseer of key offices, including not only openly political affairs and long-range strategic planning but as liaison for intergovernmental affairs, focusing on state and local officials.

Bush's presidency "wandered and remained so far off course by excessively embracing the permanent campaign and its tactics," McClellan writes. He says Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war.

That's about right, says Brookings Institution political analyst Thomas Mann, co-author of a book entitled "The Permanent Campaign."

"It was such a hyped-up effort to frame the problem and the choices in a way that really didn't do justice to the complexity of the arguments, the intelligence," Mann said in an interview. Though all presidents try to "control the message," he said, "it was really a way of preventing that discussion. It just had enormously harmful consequences. I think they carried it to a level not heretofore seen."

Each day, underscoring the daily blend of politics and government, Bush and his administration make an extraordinary effort to control information and make sure the White House message is spread across the government and beyond. The line for officials to follow is set at early-morning senior staff meetings at the White House, then transmitted in e-mails, conference calls, faxes and meetings. The loop extends to Capitol Hill where lawmakers get the administration talking points. So do friendly interest groups and others.

The aim is to get them all to say the same thing, unwavering from the administration line. Other administrations have tried to do the same thing, but none has been as disciplined as the Bush White House.

It starts at the top.

McClellan recounts how Bush, as governor of Texas, spelled out his approach about the press at their very first meeting in 1998. He said Bush "mentioned some of his expectations for his spokespeople — the importance of staying on message; the need to talk about what you're for, rather than what you are against; how he liked to make the big news on his own time frame and terms without his spokespeople getting out in front of him, and, finally, making sure that public statements were coordinated internally so that everyone is always on the same page and there are few surprises."

In September 2002, Bush's chief economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, ran afoul of the president's rules by saying the cost of a possible war with Iraq could be somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion. Bush was irritated and made sure that Lindsey was told his comments were unacceptable. "Lindsey had violated the first rule of the disciplined, on-message Bush White House: don't make news unless you're authorized to do so," McClellan wrote.

Within four months, Lindsey was gone, resigning as part of a reshaping of Bush's economic team.

While message control has been part of many administrations, Mann said that, "They were just tougher and more disciplined about it than anyone else had been."

As spokesman, McClellan ardently defended Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the conduct of his presidency over the course of nearly 300 briefings in two years and 10 months. Now, two years after leaving the White House and eager to make money on his book, McClellan concludes Bush turned away from candor and honesty and misled the country about the reasons for going to war.

It wasn't about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, McClellan writes. It was Bush's fervor to transform the Middle East through the spread of democracy. "The Iraq war was not necessary," writes McClellan, who never hinted at any doubts or questioned his talking points when he was press secretary.

McClellan writes that Bush and his team sold the Iraq war by means of a "political propaganda campaign" in which contradictory evidence was ignored or discarded, caveats or qualifications to arguments were downplayed or dropped and "a dubious al-Qaida connection to Iraq was played up.

"We were more focused on creating a sense of gravity and urgency about the threat from Saddam Hussein than governing on the basis of the truths of the situation," McClellan wrote.

McClellan is not the first presidential spokesman to write a tell-all book, but his is certainly the harshest, at least in recent memory. He says his words as press secretary were sincere but he has come to realize that "some of them were badly misguided. ... I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured."

White House colleagues were stunned, but not lacking for the day's response. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew," said Dana Perino, the current press secretary who was first hired by McClellan as a deputy.

Later in the day, she relayed the reaction of Bush himself: "He's puzzled, he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years."

DO YOU WONDER WHERE YOUR` MONEY WENT ?


15 bln dlrs in US Iraq spending unaccounted for: reports

2 hours, 12 minutes ago

The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress blasted Friday as a "shocking" accountability failure.

Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the defense department's inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account for more than 7.7 billion dollars.

The lack of accountability of the funds, intended for purchases of weapons, vehicles, construction equipment and security services, amounted to a 95 percent failure rate in basic accounting standards, according to the report.

"We estimated that the army made 1.4 billion dollars in commercial payments that lacked the minimum documentation for a valid payment, such as properly prepared receiving reports, invoices, and certified vouchers," deputy inspector general Mary Ugone told a Congressional committee Thursday.

"We also estimated that the army made an additional 6.3 billion dollars of commercial payments that met the 27 criteria for payments but did not comply with other statutory and regulatory requirements."

The Pentagon also was found to have given away another 1.8 billion in Iraqi assets "with absolutely no accountability," said Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Investigators examined 53 payment vouchers and couldn't find even one that adequately explained where the money went."

Another five billion dollars spent on supporting the Iraqi security forces could not be properly traced, according to a November 2007 inspector general report.

"Taken together, the inspector general found that the defense department did not properly account for almost 15 billion dollars," Waxman said.

The disclosures sparked outrage among legislators and concern that US taxpayers are deeply vulnerable to massive waste and fraud in the Pentagon's contracting system.

"The report has new shocking details of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money unaccounted for and likely wasted, which should be a wake-up call to Congress and the (President George W.) Bush administration that the status quo is unacceptable," Democratic senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

"American taxpayers are picking up the tab for Iraqi ministries, coalition governments, US and foreign contractors, Iraqi security forces, and Blackwater and other US security companies," Waxman said.

"In one remarkable instance, a 320-million-dollar payment in cash was handed over with little more than a signature in exchange."

The Pentagon to date has been appropriated 492 billion dolllars to support Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Ugone.

A Tragedy- GENOCIDE !

    Right here in America !!     

    A long historical campaign of genocide against the Dineh-Navajo: implemented through Senator McCain's use of unethical laws and amendments (PL 93-531 and S.1003) made repeatedly into law by Senator John McCain, an indisputable matter of Congressional Record despite his denials on the subject.  Mr. McCain and John Boyden, Esq. organized a phony puppet “Hopi” tribal council representing no one but Peabody Western Coal Companies mining interests in Arizona, so as to thwart the property rights of the Dineh-Navajo whose lands just happen to sit atop the richest Coal deposits in the US.  Dishonest and unethical, these laws stripped away the Human Rights of the Dineh-Navajo, written by McCain and Peabody so that Peabody Western Coal Group could simply strip mine the Dineh's territories, after dumping them in teeming cities or off on a waste dump in New Mexico: Church's Rock.  The Uranium contamination of the Church's site and Rio Puerco River is so intense, it is actually condemned by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.  But in reprisal for the Navajo's refusal to leave the Black Mesa and Big Mountain in Arizona, to attempt to protect their lands, McCain became homicidal towards them, sending them to live on Uranium Tailings along a contaminated river, so that poisoning, intimidation and the shock of relocation, killed over 7000 of the Navajo Aboriginals in a very short period.  Over 1/4 have died since 1999. Children are born with the highest birth defect rate in the US.
Stunning evidence of McCain's corruption and vicious abuse of the Dineh abounds. The man is considered "the Anti-Christ of the Black Mesa" by many.

http://www.cain2008.org/?gclid=CNj9_4fImJMCFQwRFQodMn5Z
vw

Native Americans: Navajo Indians targeted for brutal genocide,
in Arizona, USA ...by Sen. John McCain & a few greedy Senators

SYNOPSIS: To facilitate his special interests, namely: Peabody Western Coal Company (the largest in the US) and the Mohave Generating Facility in Laughlin (operated by Bechtel) delivering low cost electricity to Las Vegas's Casinos, John McCain (a/k/a "Saddam McCain") introduced and arranged for the enforcement of unethical and Constitutionally unlawful legislations which brutally displaced thousands of Navajo farmers onto a Nuclear Waste Dump to live after brutalizing them for two decades in peaceful resistance. McCain assembled (Navajo Resettlement & Navajo Accommodation Agreement, Navajo Settlement, and amendments to PL 93-531, PL S.1003) illegal and unethical enactments designed to force Native American Navajo of the Dineh Band off their Arizona lands, moving them onto Church's Hill in Nevada, depriving them of lands they've owned since 1500 AD.
Using a phony tribal counsel composed of paid stooges, McCain and Peabody Western Coal Company have been progressively stealing and exploiting their lands for mutual personal gain, brutalizing the natives to leave, bulldozing their sacred sites and sweat lodges, beating their members and abusing their elders to the point of terrorizing them and causing health failure and heart failures. Fake Hopi Rangers (BIA Police) arrest and beat any peaceful resistors on their own lands and sacred sites. Three Presidential runs by McCain have been backed by the Mining, Power company and its Nevada Casino clients. McCain's wife has been granted huge Beer distribution contracts at her liquor company by Nevada gaming interests. The supposed "new lands" at Church's Hill are a Superfund Nuclear Waste Dump landfill site! (Read the evidence by clicking below)

Enter the "Am I my Brother's Keeper?" site. View all the evidence, play the film: VANISHING PRAYER, the video and read the tragic story... a film is worth a million words.
Coming Soon: Find out how Presidential Candidate Senator John McCain's energy and casino lobbyists are attacking this story on the Internet using fraud and false/backwards misinformation campaigns on blogs, etc... find out what kind of typical, "Standard Oil" defamation campaigns people working for McCain are working anonymously to hold off the Truth...

PLEDGE whatever you can afford to help us make a difference to the Navajo.

To quote the United Nations' website (http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/mgroups/wedo.htm#dineh<
/a>) :
"The Black Mesa region in Arizona, USA is home to the indigenous communities of the Dineh (Navajo) and Hopi peoples. This region also contains major deposits of coal which are being extracted by North America's largest strip mining operation. The coal mines have had a major impact on families in the region. Local water sources have been poisoned, resulting in the death of livestock. Homes near the mines suffer from blasting damage. The coal dust is pervasive, as well as smoke from frequent fires in the stockpiles. Not coincidentally, the people in the area have an unusually high incidence of kidney and respiratory disease. "
"The Dineh (otherwise known as Navajo) were stripped of all land title and forced to relocate. Their land was turned over to the coal companies without making any provisions to protect the burial or sacred sites that would be destroyed by the mines. People whose lives were based in their deep spiritual and life-giving relationship with the land were relocated into cities, often without compensation, forbidden to return to the land that their families had occupied for generations. People became homeless with significant increases in alcoholism, suicide, family break up, emotional abuse and death. "
-- Marsha Monestersky for the UN Commission on Human Rights and Women Enacting Change at the UN

A video about Senator McCain's Personal Holocaust against the Human Rights
& Religious Freedom of the Dineh-Navajo in AZ. At a cost of $400 million to the
US Taxpayer. And the man claims he's "against Pork Barrel spending" ??
(MEDIA PLAYER : Recommended) VANISHING PRAYER - Part 1 VANISHING PRAYER - Part 2

Dial Up Users: PLAY "VANISHING PRAYER" (PLAY it in Real Player low res >)

The Navajo Resettlement has led to the deaths of thousands of elders and mass radiation based deformities among newborn Navajo children and youngsters who are forced to play on land littered with Uranium Tailings. The accompanying thuggery and theft of property, fencing out of rangelands, cattle seizures, water well cappings and beatings and other indignity has led to the death of thousands of elder grandfathers and mothers of the Navajo Di'neh Nation, a birth defect rate twice the national average has led to UN & EU condemnations! Navajo are full US citizens!

The environmental devastation around the mines, through brutal strip mining operations, open explosives runs, and "grim reaper" steam shovels has transformed the magnificent territories of the Dineh into a Hell-like scar on earth, the water level in the region is reduced by 4 feet per year as the not-lawful steam slurry pipes pipe powdered coal and steam hundreds of miles to Mohave, just to "light up the strip" in Las Vegas and Reno, where energy wastefulness abounds: leaving leakage and residue in the environment poisoning the lands and people in their vicinity. Coal dust blasted from the mines as well. A Video, "VANISHING PRAYER", provides a more vivid view of the plight of the Di'neh-Navaho. Click one of these links (ABOVE) for a version that plays in media player!
Senator McCain has brutally pursued continuous victimization of the Navajo for decades. Read this 2006 article where he vigorously moved to interdict efforts by the Dineh-Navajo to protect families effected tragically by the forcible resettlement, trying to freeze out their own relief efforts. He frequently resorts to legal trickery before the Senate by bringing a tiny, falsely registered "Hopi" tribal council to testify at Senate hearings who repeatedly give perjures testimony in efforts to fraudulently seize land rights away from their rightful Indian landholders, lands atop the intended Coal thefts. The Dineh have never been given a full hearing, and their identities have been forged by Senate and BIA Attorneys so as to enable their forcible removal.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, signed into UN Human Rights Policy and agreed to by the United States (but being intentionally violated by legal deceptions, fraud and trickery conceived by Senator John McCain and his cronies), defines the basis upon which 200 organizations at the UN simultaneously issued a written condemnation of the mistreatment of the Dineh-Navjo, at Article 10:

[The above exhibit is directly copied from the source documents at the United Nations, from proceedings of the current Commission on Human Rights, Mission Group on Indigenous Peoples.]

Sewage from the mining has inundated the waters once pristine and inhabited by fish, frogs, turtles, water fowl - all dead or fled. Resistors who keep living, are abused by local Peabody thugs, there have been beatings and there have been murders of Dineh for keeping their farms.

Navajo resister Rena Babbit-Lane, a weaver who lives at Big Mountain, expressed her people's struggle: "There's a lot of pollution from Peabody Coal Mine and a lot of the people are sick from it. It's our land on this Mesa - they don't need to bother us. They cannot impound anymore. What they are doing to us is making us sick. There has been destruction of grave sites. They're crushing cement foundations of people's homes that have been abandoned because of relocation. They are taking. It shows you how they are greedy. They're erasing all the evidence of genocide. Two burials of our family were destroyed. They were torn down and taken somewhere."

Over the past decade, McCain's illegal conspiracy with paid stooges and Peabody in brutalizing the gentle Dineh-Navajo, a deeply spiritual, agrarian peoples, the stripping away of their rights and forced march to Nevada has led to the issuance of the very first UN Human Rights condemnation of the USA in history: an official condemnation from the Human Rights Commission on Indigenous Peoples (Hon. A. Amor) that held John McCain and his peers responsible for spearheading this illegal land seizure, coal seizure without payment of licensing rights, and rape of the land. A very hypocritical group of Senators, Reed, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Kerry and others along with Bill Clinton were also investigated. However, McCain was cited as the principal spearhead as author of the laws responsible for the Human Rights Violations! A paid media blackout followed that prevented coverage of the events that displaced and killed the Dineh-Navajo by the US Press! Americans have not been made aware of McCain's activities. Even today, Press Distributors refuse releases on this subject. We must keep this story alive! We must try to keep the surviving Dineh Navajo alive!

"The forcible relocation of over 10,000 (Dineh) Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations."

"I feel that in relocating these elderly people, we are as bad as the Nazis that ran the concentration camps in World War II."

"I believe that the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi people that followed from the passage in 1974 of Public Law 93-531 is a major violation of these people's human rights. Indeed this forced relocation of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past 40 years."

-- statements made by two past Navajo Resettlement Commissioners who abruptly resigned from their Senate appointments, refusing to continue, and a California Institute of Technology Professor involved with the UN Investigation.

We need to Support a Constitutional Initiative to limit the rights of certain persons of wealth to acquire and service energy distribution, resource exploitation and mining/well digging without responsibility for the ecological consequences or human rights and property rights of the owners of these precious national resources! Their ability to buy and control a John McCain to help enhance their investments in Las Vegas, is an example of the problem - Make the Rockefellers' Monopoly pay to replace the lost resources that are leading to global warming and which are causing international unrest and terrorism! Where others have died at their hands during wars like WWII where they covertly backed Adolph Hitler and helped orchestrate the Nazi Holocaust, and after, find them guilty of the mass murders they've instigated: prosecute them for crimes against Humanity.

Hold them accountable for buying Lyndon Johnson into falsifying evidence leading us into the Vietnam war, just to sequester natural gas deposits in the Gulf of Tonkin, or backing Fidel Castro for likewise sequestration off the coast of Cuba. Why did David Rockefeller sell his part of the World Trade Center just 9 months before 9/11? Look what they and a single Senator: John McCain, perpetrated against an entire people, the Dineh-Navajo, or just look at their alleged orchestration of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in the last century from offices at 120 Broadway in NYC. They've virtually destroyed the 500 year old culture of the Dineh-Navajo in only the past two decades! A Native Indian Holocaust! Horrifying and Tragic! Now, for the third time, McCain is the "Man who would be President!" Consider the consequences of a Man who has no regard for First Americans' lives. What will he do with yours or mine?

International energy politics has given the Rockefellers a belief that they are above accountability, that they can cause any dispute at any cost, even that which leads to world wars or nuclear holocaust. Working for them, here we have a case of stealing the resources by victimizing an entire Native community for power for Casinos, one Arizona Senator's covert agenda to steal the coal away from a gentle People, a true Holocaust. For the past 20-25 years he sponsored unfair laws that violated the Navajo's Human Rights... laws that stole their lands, fenced their farms from the range, capped and poisoned their wells, strip mined the land right out from under them, Bills signed into law casually by three past Presidents.

Forged agreements, forced relocation onto a Nuclear Spill site, billions in embezzled license fees, and corporate and public corruption, native children born with birth defects at an unprecedented rate. The relocations have been condemned by the UN for Human Rights Violations. The death of 25% of the relocated Navajo population are on McCain's hands. He gained power in energy policy circles & fattened his presidential campaigns with Nevada "street name" campaign fund contributions with each new predatory act of Holocaust. It is imperative that we immediately protect the Di'neh (Navajo) from Senator John McCain's RAPE of the Navajo's Lands... all for Campaign Donations to McCain, and his peers!!

ARTICLE SPOTLIGHT: Dineh Peoples in Arizona Undermined by a Senate Coal Mining Interests' Steamroller >
Black Mesa in northeastern Arizona, USA is home to the indigenous native American communities of the Dineh (Navajo) and Hopi people. This region is now a Holocaust zone, thanks to John McCain, Presidential Candidate John Kerry, Former President Bill Clinton, Senator Jay Rockefeller and others, the site of North America's largest coal strip mine, which operates the only slurry line in the U.S. I uses 1.4 billion gallons of water from the sole freshwater source, lowering the water table and drying up local wells, followed by Holocaust. Native American women have succeeded in gaining international attention to what is both a human rights and environmental disaster.

This site was created and maintained by the Canaanite Independent Political Committee (CIPC),
a Political Party organized to bring to the public attention the depraved enactments of Senator
John McCain against the Arizona Dineh-Navajo, by individuals with a conscience,
so that those who died at his hand will not be forgotten.

Dedicated to the memory of our spiritual grandmother Roberta Blackgoat...

TRUTH, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE  FOR ALL ?

By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 32 minutes ago

An Al-Jazeera cameraman was released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and returned home to Sudan early Friday after six years of imprisonment that drew worldwide protests.

Sami al-Haj, who had been on a hunger strike for 16 months, grimaced as he was carried off a U.S. military plane by American personnel in Sudan's capital, Khartoum. He was put on a stretcher and taken straight to a hospital.

Al-Jazeera showed footage of al-Haj being carried into the hospital, looking feeble and with his eyes closed, but smiling. Some of the men surrounding his stretcher were kissing him on the cheek.

"Thank God ... for being free again," he told Al-Jazeera from his hospital bed. "Our eyes have the right to shed tears after we have spent all those years in prison. ... But our joy is not going to be complete until our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are freed," he added.

"The situation is very bad and getting worse day after day," he said of conditions in Guantanamo. He claimed guards prevent Muslims from practicing their religion and reading the Quran.

"Some of our brothers live without clothing," he said.

The U.S. military says it goes to great lengths to respect the religion of detainees, issuing them Qurans, enforcing quiet among guard staff during prayer calls throughout the day. All cells in Guantanamo have an arrow that points toward the holy city of Mecca.

Al-Haj was released along with two other Sudanese from Guantanamo Thursday. He was the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo and many of his supporters saw his detention as punishment for a network whose broadcasts angered U.S. officials.

The military alleged he was a courier for a militant Muslim organization, an allegation his lawyers denied.

Al-Haj said he believed he was arrested because of U.S. hostility toward Al-Jazeera and because the media was reporting on U.S. rights violations in Afghanistan.

Al-Haj was detained in December 2001 by Pakistani authorities as he tried to enter Afghanistan to cover the U.S.-led invasion. He was turned over to the U.S. military and taken in January 2002 to Guantanamo Bay, where the United States holds some 275 men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, most of them without charges.

Reprieve, the British human rights group that represents 35 Guantanamo prisoners including al-Haj, said Pakistani forces apparently seized al-Haj at the behest of the U.S. authorities who suspected he had interviewed Osama bin Laden.

But that "supposed intelligence" turned out to be false, Reprieve said in a news release.

"This is wonderful news, and long overdue," said Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's director, who has represented al-Haj since 2005. "The U.S. administration has never had any reason for holding Mr. Al Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his employers at Al-Jazeera."

Sudanese officials said al-Haj would not face any charges.

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum issued a brief statement confirming the detainee transfer with Sudan and saying it appreciated Sudan's cooperation.

Al-Haj's lawyers said the 38-year-old has been on hunger strike since January 2007 to protest conditions and indefinite confinement at the prison.

Attorney Zachary Katznelson of Reprieve, who met al-Haj at Guantanamo on April 11, said he was "emaciated" because of his hunger strike. and had recently been having problems with his liver and kidneys and had blood in his urine.

"Sami is a poster child for everything that is wrong about Guantanamo Bay: No charges, no trial, constantly shifting allegations, brutal treatment, no visits with family, not even a phone call home," Katznelson said Thursday.

"Sami was never alleged to have hurt a soul, and was never proven to have committed any crimes. Yet, he had fewer rights than convicted mass murderers or rapists. What has happened to American justice?"

Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar and is funded by the royal family of the Persian Gulf nation. Its Arabic channel has been excoriated by the Bush administration as a mouthpiece for terrorists including Osama bin Laden.

Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, said of al-Haj's release: "We are overwhelmed with joy."

Al-Haj was never prosecuted at Guantanamo so the U.S did not make public its full allegations against him. But in a hearing that determined that he was an enemy combatant, U.S. officials alleged that in the 1990s, al-Haj was an executive assistant at a Qatar-based beverage company that provided support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.

The U.S. claimed he also traveled to Azerbaijan at least eight times to carry money on behalf of his employer to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now defunct charity that U.S. authorities say funded militant groups.

The officials said during this period that he met Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a senior lieutenant to Osama bin Laden who was arrested in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States. Officials did not provide details.

Reprieve identified the two other Sudanese Guantanamo detainees who were released as Amir Yacoub Al Amir and Walid Ali.

Reprieve also said Moroccan detainee Said Boujaadia, 39, was also released. He was flown home on the same plane as al-Haj, which made a stop in Morocco. The group said he was taken into custody in Morocco.

White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner

Email this Story

Apr 30, 10:47 PM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT (AP) In this May 1, 2003, file photo, President Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq as he...
Full Image if (NAV_NS&&NAV_VER"); else document.write("
");

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.

Thursday is the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," Bush said at the time. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on." The "Mission Accomplished" banner was prominently displayed above him - a move the White House came to regret as the display was mocked and became a source of controversy.

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq. Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

She said what is important now is "how the president would describe the fight today. It's been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy."

At least 49 U.S. troops died in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month since September when 65 U.S. troops died.

Now in its sixth year, the war in Iraq has claimed the lives of at least 4,061 members of the U.S. military. Only the Vietnam War (August 1964 to January 1973), the war in Afghanistan (October 2001 to present) and the Revolutionary War (July 1776 to April 1783) have engaged America longer.

Bush, in a speech earlier this month, said that "while this war is difficult, it is not endless.

Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meet

By ANNE D'INNOCENZ