Montel Williams recently castigated the hosts of ‘Fox and Friends’ for spending time on their show to discuss the death of acting “icon” (yes, one of them said that) Heath Ledger but, not being able to accurately give the number of troops killed in Iraq last month or the name of a soldier who most recently died in the war. Could this be part of the reason that Fox opted not to renew his contract?

Popularity: 28% [?]

If you’re British, that is.

That’s right, one more in the “coalition of the willing” is saying it’s time to pack it in.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the combat duties of British troops in Basra, Iraq will cease in two weeks. Brown says the troops will switch to training roles and Iraqis will take over defense.

Furthermore, Brown says the 4,500 troops in Iraq will be cut to 2,500 by early 2008. On top of that, he is saying that the remaining troops may all be out of Iraq by March 2008.

However, the most telling detail in all of this is what Brown said in regards to why he feels the troops can leave:

“Since Our Boys withdrew from Basra’s city centre and palace to the airport a few miles away back in September attacks on them have fallen by 90 per cent.”

Did you get that? After they left, the violence went down. In other words, they quit occupying a city and the citys’ residents stopped attacking them. Did you hear that President Bush?

I’m sure this detail will be conveniently ignored in the coverage of Britain’s withdrawl.

So, Britain’s basically out. When are we leaving?

Popularity: 21% [?]

Question: What do these two statements have in common?

On Iraq:
“Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” (George W. Bush, Oct 7, 2002)

On Iran:
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” (George W. Bush, Oct 17, 2007)

Answer: After yesterday, we know that these are, at best, trumped-up charges and, at worst, flat-out lies meant to get us into military conflict with countries that pose(d) no immediate threat to us.

As you are likely aware, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) came out yesterday and had some very telling things to say that stand in stark contrast to Bush Administration’s allegations on Iran.

The NIE is the compilation of the combined views of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies regarding the security issues affecting the U.S. and, like I stated, its findings on Iran were very telling.

According to the NIE, Iran actually halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and, furthermore, states that due to significant technical issues, Iran probably is another 3-8 years away from having enough enriched uranium for a bomb.

However, the most interesting part of the report coming out is its back story. It is believed that the administration, particularly the office of Vice-president Dick Cheney, held up the release of this report for over a year, try to twist arms of intelligence analysts to get them to change the report to match the administration’s rhetoric.

So, in other words, as in Iraq, they went around the world citing Iran as an immediate threat when they clearly knew otherwise.

Of course, the chickenhawk spin-doctors are at work and trying to wipe egg off their faces on this and Republican candidates, no doubt, are going to have to get new material for their stump speeches, as this country has no desire to repeat the Iraq debacle.

We’ll have to see how this all shakes out but, one this is clear. We are certainly being lied to by this administration on Iran.

Popularity: 38% [?]

I don’t know much about Malcolm Nance. For all I know, we may be polar opposites on a lot of issues but, at least, we agree on one issue — torture doesn’t work.

Why should his opinion matter? Well, a quick read of this bio might cause one to pay attention. It reads, in part:

Malcolm W. Nance is a 25-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s Combating Terrorism program. He is a combat veteran who has served as an intelligence collections operator, cryptologist and interrogator. He has spent 17 years deploying on anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in direct support to the Special Operations Command as well as assignments at the principle agencies of the Intelligence Community. In the Global War on Terrorism he served in Afghanistan where he conducted intelligence operations in Nangahar province (Jalalabad-Tora Bora) and 14 months in Iraq as a security director at the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. There he studied the Iraqi resistance and Al Qaeda’s involvement in the insurgency. He is a FOX News analyst on Al Qaeda and the Insurgency.

Additionally, he has authored five books on counter-terrorism, actually instructed aspiring Navy Seals on how to resist torture and served as Director of a D.C.-base counter-terrorism consultants group.

So, needless to say, the brother knows his stuff.

He testified today in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on torture and he, along with Colonel Steve Kleinman (who is also a veteran interrogator), are giving certain Republicans heartburn. TPMMucraker.com has been following this story as it develops and it seems that this has struck a serious blow against the right-wing spin on supporting torture. Nance stated that, as a result of what the U.S. is doing, we have virtually “guaranteed” that our own troops will be tortured. He went on to state that foreign nations now have “a legal standard to subject American soldiers to enhanced interrogations.”

Kleinman went on to deal another blow by saying that “enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture) do not work because they actually impair his ability to read body language and gestures, which help him determine if a suspect is lying, being cooperative or telling him the truth.

Up until now, Republicans have tried to silence torture critics by impugning their credibility on the issue but, when you have two experts, with long resumes and an impressive body of knowledge of and experience in counter-terrorism and interrogation, it wasn’t possible for Republicans to shoot holes in their testimony. Of course, it could also be a tinge of fear on their part about being aired out publicly by at least one of these experts.

Malcolm Nance warned would be “swiftboaters” on attacking him:

“You will see a spectacle on C-Span. I’ll impugn [my attacker's] credibility in public. Let’s see him give 20 years in the military, give up his family life, and then he can come talk. If not, shut the hell up.”

So, the hearing ending with expressions of respect for their perspective.

At least for today, Malcolm Nance is my hero.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Sometimes, it’s hard to wrap one’s brain around the amount of money being spent in on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, a while back, Xinjo.com published some illustrations to give some idea about what this looks like. I’d suggest visiting the site for the full listing but, here’s a quick and dirty excerpt of what they offer in this piece.

The first photo shows what $9 million might look like with the following caption:

Nine Million dollars … The pile is 5 feet tall, 10 feet long, and 6¼ feet wide. A single stack of dollar bills in this amount would be 3,000 feet high.

This horde is comparable in size to a single compact car. You could buy 489 of them for the amount, though, with enough cash left over to fill up the gas tanks of 162 of them.

But this amount of money is more than four times what you can expect to earn in your entire life, if you are an American with a college degree.

But, wait, there’s more… Read More… »

Popularity: 32% [?]

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961

So, what happens when the war profiteers take over? You get this current mess in Iraq and the drumbeats to war with Iran. War is good money. Ask once-struggling Halliburton or Blackwater how good the “war business” is. It almost seems that good common sense has been abandoned by people who embrace the logic that spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars so their friends can make tens of billions is fiscally-sound policy.

It is against this backdrop that an interesting piece of legislation has been introduced. The House passed a bill, by a vote of 375-3, calling for a prohibition of war profiteering. The bill calls for stiff penalties for companies and individuals who knowingly defraud the government. Individuals can face sentences of up to 20 years in prison for fraud and companies can face fines ranging from $1 million to double the gross profits of the contracts, whichever is greater.

Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, took exception to the bill, worrying that “mere overpricing” would be criminalized. However, to that I respond with what the same refrain I constantly hear from the “conservative” side of the aisle, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

I, for one, hope that this legislation become law. War is supposed to be a last resort, not a business decision.

Popularity: 33% [?]

A few days back, I was watching the Democratic Presidential debates, which happened to fall on the same day that the Senate voted on the Kyl-Liebermann amendment. In a non-binding resolution, the Senate voted in favor of the amendment, which labeled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Hillary Clinton voted in favor of this amendment (Obama, somehow, couldn’t make it in to vote that day) and tried to justify her vote by saying that she was not voting in favor of war with Iran but, in favor of pursuing diplomatic measures with Iran. Senate leader Harry Reid also voted in favor of this measure.

Well, guess what, now the White House is dropping concerns about the nuclear ambitions of Iran as a rationale to go after them. You want to guess its rationale, now? Yes, you figured it out — Bush seems intent on marching us into yet another war using the notion that it will need to fight terrorism in Iran so, it will need to target Iran’s Republican Guard. How much would you bet that the Kyl-Liebermann amendment will be used to tell the public that the Congress agrees with this action? Joe Liebermann, as Bush’s Democratic lapdog (he call’s himself an independent, now), has been drooling over the notion of attacking Iran. It appears he will get his wish soon.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has exposed some chilling details on what appears to be in the works. It looks like the march to the war in Iraq all over again.

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002″—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Here we go again. So, Nancy Pelosi, is impeachment still off the table?

Popularity: 31% [?]

By now, there is a good chance that you have heard of Bunnatine “Bunny” Greeenhouse. She is a 20-year employee of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and, until 2005, was their highest-ranking civilian contracting officer. Then, she came across something that she should have reported…and did. When her superiors did nothing, she testified before Congress about it. What was it she saw? Multibillion-dollar reconstruction contracts awarded to Halliburton and its subisidiary KBR that were wrought with fraud.

Now, one would think that this would have spurred to Army Corps to get to the bottom of this fraud, right? Wrong. Instead, Ms. Greenhouse was demoted and now is riding out the rest of her career in a small cubicle.

Why do I bring up this “old” story again? Well, sadly, Ms. Greenhouse’s case is not unique but, is instead a longer narrative about what happens to those who have blown the whistle on corrupt business practices in regards to the Iraq War.

Donald Vance worked for the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security Co. and what he saw there shocked him enough to contact the FBI. Vance saw weapons being sold for cash to anyone who would buy them. The weapons were things like guns, land mines and rocket launchers. The clientele included Iraqi insurgents.

Now, if someone is selling weapons that could, in turn, be used to kill U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians, you would think the government would want to stop that, right? Wrong. For is diligence, Vance was detained for over three months in the same facility that was once used to incarcerate Saddam Hussein. According to Vance, he was “subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics ‘reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.’”

This article contains more stories that are shocking, as well. However, a common thread runs through all of these. Our government is not only sitting on its hands while taxpayers are defrauded and, in the case of Donald Vance, might also have allowed weapons sales to insurgents to continue, but it is also punishing those stepping forward to call what is wrong, “wrong.”

One of my favorite talk show hosts, Randi Rhodes, says it best when she states that they want chaos because, in chaos, they can steal. Well, America, we’re getting stuck up to the tune of billions.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I often use this phrase to describe the price at which some black folks will sell you down the river. Today, I saw something that made me wonder how good the money must have been for Creflo Dollar to totally lose his mind. To be honest, I never trusted the dude. Really, how can you trust a minister whose last name is “Dollar”? But, seriously, what I saw displayed a new low for evangelical ministers, in my eyes, and should clearly indicate how people are being propagandized by this government and its appointed mouthpieces. Just look at a recent letter from Creflo Dollar to his followers, titled “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”.

When a nation is on the brink of war, the worst thing its citizens can do is allow themselves to become divided. The Bible says that there is a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes 3:8). In fact, Jesus said that in the last days there would be wars and rumors of wars (Matthew 24:6). When this country was attacked on September 11, 2001, there was a fierce public outcry. America wanted her enemies to pay. Now, two years later, those same Americans are protesting the war against terrorism.

President Bush is worthy of your prayers and support. He is a man who rises early every morning to seek God and His wisdom through prayer and the study of the Word. This is not the time for Christians to picket, carry protest signs or throw their opinions around. The election is over, and the man in the Oval Office is the one we, as Americans, voted in. Numbers 32:7-13 makes it clear how God feels about a nation divided during a time of war.

This country needs unity, and it begins with the church. It is your responsibility as a believer to pray for the president, others in leadership, this nation, the men and women serving in the Armed Forces and our enemies–whoever they may be. Forget about your political affiliation or preference. You are first and foremost a Christian.

Begin by making these confessions:.

• In the name of Jesus, I declare that I will not allow any corrupt communication to proceed out of my mouth concerning President Bush or others in leadership (Ephesians 4:29).
• I declare that he is a man of wisdom, and he is strengthened and guided by the Holy Spirit. I wholeheartedly support the decisions he makes for this country (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
• I lift up every man and woman serving in the Armed Forces. I declare that they walk in favor, wisdom and safety and that their lives are redeemed from destruction (Psalm 91:7; Psalm 103:1-6).

If you have taken part in any protests or have allowed any corrupt communication to flow out of your mouth concerning the president, repent and begin to show your support for him by calling his name out before God. Pray for wisdom and wise counsel regarding the decisions he must make for this nation. Obey what the Word says in 1 Timothy 1-2 and 1 Peter 2:13 and: 1) continue to pray for those in authority over you; and 2) submit to that established authority. In doing so, you honor God, our president and thousands of service members. When the temptation comes to murmur or complain, rejoice that there is a man in the White House who walks and talks with God daily. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall (Matthew 12:25)!

—Dr. Creflo A. Dollar

Did you catch this part — “Obey what the Word says in 1 Timothy 1-2 and 1 Peter 2:13 and: 1) continue to pray for those in authority over you; and 2) submit to that established authority. In doing so, you honor God, our president and thousands of service members.”

Creflo Dollar is equating following George Bush with following God? The saddest part about this is that there are some sheep people who will be dumb enough to fall for this foolishness.

Creflo Dollar, TD Jakes and others have shown me that they are truly the masters of multitasking — they are both full-time pimps and full-time hoes. So, they get their money on both ends (pun intended). However, what we are seeing is not just something to shake your head about, it is a reason to be really concerned. Anytime a so-called “man of God” instructs you to stop using the brain God gave you, it is time to walk…no, run away from that man.

Popularity: 42% [?]

A while back, I had a post about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson.

Her family has diligently and publicly pursued justice for a daughter they feel was murdered in Iraq.  In speaking at an event  during the Veterans For Peace annual convention, her father, Dr. Lynn Johnson, shared how he believes his daughter died and spoke on his families dogged pursuit to have her case reopened.  In the video, Dr. Johnson gives strong indication that he believes his daughter was sexually assaulted and murdered.

Obviously, something is amiss and the Army is hiding something about this case.  I urge you to sign the petition on behalf of the Johnson family to help them get justice for their daughter.

Popularity: 15% [?]