--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl --AZ-01: Rick Renzi --AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth --CA-04: John Doolittle --CA-11: Richard Pombo --CA-50: Brian Bilbray --CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave --CO-05: Doug Lamborn --CO-07: Rick O'Donnell --CT-04: Christopher Shays --FL-13: Vernon Buchanan --FL-16: Joe Negron --FL-22: Clay Shaw --ID-01: Bill Sali --IL-06: Peter Roskam --IL-10: Mark Kirk --IL-14: Dennis Hastert --IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler --IA-01: Mike Whalen --KS-02: Jim Ryun --KY-03: Anne Northup --KY-04: Geoff Davis --MD-Sen: Michael Steele --MN-01: Gil Gutknecht --MN-06: Michele Bachmann --MO-Sen: Jim Talent --MT-Sen: Conrad Burns --NV-03: Jon Porter --NH-02: Charlie Bass --NJ-07: Mike Ferguson --NM-01: Heather Wilson --NY-03: Peter King --NY-20: John Sweeney --NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl --NC-08: Robin Hayes --NC-11: Charles Taylor --OH-01: Steve Chabot --OH-02: Jean Schmidt --OH-15: Deborah Pryce --OH-18: Joy Padgett --PA-04: Melissa Hart --PA-07: Curt Weldon --PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick --PA-10: Don Sherwood --RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee --TN-Sen: Bob Corker --VA-Sen: George Allen --VA-10: Frank Wolf --WA-Sen: Mike McGavick --WA-08: Dave Reichert

The New York Times U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: October 30, 2006

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general's office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up - and whether some have been used against American soldiers - were not examined in the report...

Continue Reading This Article...

Update :: This post has been picked up by memeorandum, so I want to thank the folks there for this honor.   They are my first and last stop everyday for the latest in MSM and blog news just for the political junkie.   Thanks again guys...   - fc

Quoth the Dark Wraith

by: Dark Wraith

There are two principal problems with forgiving those who trespass against you. First, forgiveness is sometimes nothing more than another name for fear, a false means by which the call to just retribution can be set aside. Second, forgiving a monster assures that it will harm others after you, thereby making you guilty of enabling it to do so.

Even the best of people can be afraid of incurring a monster's wrath; but fear is just an emotion, and as such it can be overcome.

Guilt, on the other hand, is not an emotion; it is a fact, and as such it cannot be overcome. Not within a good person's heart, anyway.

Choose, then, both wisely and sparingly those whom you forgive that you will not be forced later to beg forgiveness from those who suffered because you had forgiven a raging monster.

Dark Wraith Forums

What I see in the Dark Wraith's words is simple.   The longer Bush is left unchecked without being forced to respond to the reality of the harm he has done, the more the Rivers of the Mesopotamian Valley will run red with blood.   The longer this nation must be ashamed of where it has been led to.

The time of fogiveness of the lies, corruption and incompetence are at an end.

It is time for retribution in the only form available to us...
Nov 7

As we have seen from the very beginning, the reasons for going to war were adjusted as each reason evaporated.   Mushroom Clouds, WMD, biological weapons, ties to al-Queada.   All have fallen by the wayside.   At various times here lately Bush has exclaimed that if we leave Iraq it will allow islamic extremists to control the oil.

This is a more telling statement than people realise because it comes from the Denier In Chief because he and his followers have claimed that invading Iraq was never about the oil.   If it was never about the oil then why do they use it as a tool of fear to scare us into voting Republican...?   If it was not about the oil then why was their original plan to privitize Iraqi oil - selling the Iraqi Oil Companies to American Companies...?   If not for the owners of our oil companies refusing to buy into that idea, the NeoCons would surely have tried to make that happen.

Only now are we learning the rest of the story after more of our people have been killed there than were killed on 9/11, not to forget the thousands of Iraqi's killed and the 20,000 plus Americans wounded.   There drastic need to control the Middle East was never because of terrorism, nor about protecting Israel, nor any other NeoCon talking point they may wish to put forward.   It was always about the oil.   Pure and simple...

truthdig
After Pat's Birthday
Posted on Oct 19, 2006
By Kevin Tillman

It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.


Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,