Evidence

Katrina Redux
by Stephen Lendman

Renamed and back, but first a personal note. Post-Katrina, writing about "The New Orleans Aftermath and (its) Ugly Glimpse of the Future" turned this retiree into a writer and radio host.

Now three years later, Gustav threatened and, on August 30, got New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to hype the risk, scare the public, and order a dusk-to-dawn curfew and evacuation of the city's 239,000 residents ahead of what he called "the mother of all storms." Many hundreds of thousands more along the Gulf coast. "Nearly two million people from Texas to Alabama," according to an August 31 New York Times report. Thankfully without cause as "the storm of the century" made landfall as a Category 2, weakened to a tropical depression on September 2, and Louisianans were spared the worst of their fears.

Petraeus: No Major Iraq Troop Drawdown in '08
Jonathan Karl | ABCNews.com

Gen. David Petraeus has recommended against any significant reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq before the end of the year, ABC News has learned.

The only drawdown Petraeus has called for, according to a senior military official familiar with his recommendation, is a modest reduction of two Marine battalions, or about 1,500 Marines, a tiny fraction of the 146,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.

Under Petraeus's plan, the number of combat brigades -- which now stands at 15 -- would remain unchanged until next January at the earliest.

The recommendation is now being considered by top officials at the White House and the Pentagon. A final decision on future force levels is expected to be announced by President Bush early next week.

Biden Rips Bush Administration

As reported by Jonathan Karl of ABCNews.com:

"In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law," Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, his voice at times drowned out by applause. "We will not have a president who doesn't understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president who thinks he's not part of any of the three branches of government."

Biden ripped the Bush administration for wasting a chance to unite the nation in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"George Bush and his administration are going to be judged harshly by history," said the Delaware lawmaker. "Not for the mistakes they made, but for the opportunities to unite America and the world they squandered." ...noting that the next administration might appoint as many as three new justices.

"The single most important domestic decision that a president gets to make on his own or her own is the Supreme Court," he said.

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

Stand Up for Independent Journalism

Amy Goodman and others were released, but the story is not over.

We need you to cosign our public letter demanding that press intimidation cease immediately, and that all charges be dropped. It will be delivered immediately to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, the RNC Host Committee and the local prosecuting attorneys. We need 10,000 signatures in the next 24 hours, so please take action now:

Sign the Letter: Drop All Charges Against Journalists

In addition to these arrests, police with firearms drawn raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness and arrested independent media, bloggers and videomakers. We’re also receiving late-breaking reports of other arrests.

Revolving Door Woes Mount at Federal Minerals Agency
Following Guilty Plea MMS Director Warns Workers to Expect More Shoes to Drop

The criminal conviction of a top agency manager may be just the beginning of revolving door troubles at the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Workers at the agency are being told to expect more scandals to come.

On July 30, 2008, former special assistant to the Associate Director of Minerals Revenue Management, Mineral Management Service (MMS), Jimmy Mayberry, pled guilty before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a felony violation of the conflict of interest law governing post-employment work. Mayberry faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and a fine of $250,000.

During the Democratic National Convention in Denver, a baton-wielding sheriff twice struck 24 year old protestor Alicia Forrest, knocking the hundred pound woman to the ground. She was jailed and bonded out at more than $500.

To the credit of the Denver Sheriff's Department, this incident is currently under investigation by their Internal Affairs Division. Below is one of the responses to an ADS member who protested the brutality.

Judge says gov't must produce waterboarding memos

A federal judge has ruled in New York that the government must either produce memos on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA or explain why they should be kept secret.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein says the memos are "clearly responsive" to a lawsuit filed in 2003 by the ACLU and other civil rights groups seeking records on the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment Wednesday.

The New York Times last year disclosed the existence some of the Justice Department memos. It said they authorized interrogators to use methods like waterboarding, head slapping and exposure to freezing temperatures.

UN Says Has Evidence Air Strikes Killed 90 Afghans, Including 60 Children
by Sayed Salahuddin | CommonDreams.org

The United Nations said on Tuesday it had found convincing evidence that 90 Afghan civilians, most of them children, were killed in air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces in western Afghanistan last week.

The issue of civilian casualties has driven a rift between the Afghan government and its NATO backers, with President Hamid Karzai saying earlier this month that air strikes had achieved nothing and had only succeeded in killing ordinary Afghans.

"Investigations by UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men," U.N. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide said in a statement.

The U.S. military has launched an investigation into the incident, after first saying it was unaware of any civilian casualties in what it said was an air strike on a known Taliban commander that killed 30 militants.

Woodward's 'secret history' of Bush admin. to debut Sept. 8
RawStory.com

The suspense didn't quite compare to the identity of "Deep Throat," but we now know the name of Bob Woodward's fourth investigative work on the Bush administration, just three weeks before the book's release.

"The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008" will be published Sept. 8 by Simon & Schuster with an announced first printing of 900,000 copies. Simon & Schuster is keeping the book under strict embargo — although such embargoes are often broken — and had even held back the title.

"There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers," Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday in a statement. "This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."

According to Simon & Schuster, Woodward's book "takes readers deep inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq.

Scott Horton Interviews Joe Lauria
Anti-War.com

Investigative reporter Joe Lauria discusses the series he co-wrote for the London Times about the Sibel Edmonds case, including the 30 year Washington connection to the A.Q. Kahn nuclear black-market operation, the difficulty in corroborating stories about such a secretive subject, the inability of American mainstream media to diverge from the status quo, how the Tinner family fits into the story and the history of the military-industrial-congressional complex as told in the new book he’s co-authored with former senator Mike Gravel, A Political Odyssey.

MP3 here. (50:50)

Joe Lauria is a New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News. Joe’s articles have additionally appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Montreal Gazette, The Johannesburg Star, The Washington Times, New York Magazine, ARTnews

Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC
By Marjorie Cohn

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the /Minneapolis City Pages /ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

US-Iraqi Agreement: Leaked
By Raed Jarrar | Raed Jarrar's Blog

I read about a leaked copy of the US-Iraqi agreement a few days ago when a radio station in Iraq mentioned some of its details, then it was mentioned in some Arab newspapers like Al-Qabas and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. A couple of days ago, one Iraqi website (linked to an Iraqi armed resistance group) published the leaked draft on their web page for less than a couple of days before their website went offline. (Thankfully, I downloaded the 21 pages agreement and saved them before their server went down)

The Depleted Uranium Threat
by Thomas D. Williams

"The DoD, the nation's biggest polluter, is now cleaning up 29,500 currently or formerly contaminated sites in every state and territory. California alone has 3,912 contaminated sites on 441 current and former DoD installations. Many of DoD's facilities have already contaminated groundwater sources of drinking water.... The cost to clean up toxic munitions contamination and unexploded ordnance at active and former military installations around the country may reach $200 billion." - The National Resources Defense Council, April 21, 2004.

"The Defense Department is refusing to comply with orders or sign contracts to clean up 11 hazardous waste sites, including one in Hawaii, and has asked the White House and Justice Department to intervene on its behalf." - The Associated Press, July 1, 2008

NY Times does it again: More 'Judy Miller' tapdancing (Pt2)
Luke Ryland | LetSibolEdmondsSpeak.com

In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals" in Monday's New York Times by David Sanger and William Broad details the destruction of evidence by the US government in a case involving the nuclear black market.

The article highlights again that the New York Times continues to engage in 'Judy Miller reporting' by warmongering and acting as a mouthpiece for the government.

'Stealing America': Voting-fraud documentary
Michael Ordoña | SFGate.com

The numbers don't add up.

$3.8 billion: The initial Help America Vote Act allocation that California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen said "pushed many counties into buying electronic systems that ... were not properly reviewed or tested."
Images
A scene from the documentary "Stealing America: Vote by V...Dorothy Fadiman, director of the documentary "Stealing Am... View Larger Images

18,000: Votes that did not register in a 2006 Sarasota County, Fla., local election using touch-screen machines, in a Democratic stronghold that the Republican challenger won by 368 votes.

Negative 16,022: Votes counted for Al Gore on a Diebold tabulator in Volusia County, Fla., in 2000.

Zero: The number of proven instances of election fraud involving electronic voting machines, according to industry spokespeople.