What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs

Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn't want you to know that.

The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial -- a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones' sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine's burial yesterday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain.

That's a shame, because Hall's story is a moving reminder that the war in Iraq, forgotten by much of the nation, remains real and present for some. Among those unlikely to forget the war: 6-year-old Gladys and 3-year-old Tatianna. The rest of the nation, if it remembers Hall at all, will remember him as the 4,011th American service member to die in Iraq, give or take, and the 419th to be buried at Arlington. Gladys and Tatianna will remember him as Dad.

The two girls were there in Section 60 yesterday beside grave 8,672 -- or at least it appeared that they were from a distance. Journalists were held 50 yards from the service, separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves, and staring into the sun and penned in by a yellow rope. Photographers and reporters pleaded with Arlington officials.

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White House Budget Chief Sees GOP Role in Deficit!

White House budget chief Jim Nussle yesterday said Republicans were partly to blame for the growing budget deficit and deserved to lose control of Congress in 2006 because they did not act aggressively to cut spending when they were in the majority.

In a wide-ranging interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Times, the former Iowa congressman and 2006 gubernatorial candidate also said that the softening economy is hurting corporate tax revenues and overall federal receipts that will likely lead to a higher federal budget deficit.

"The Democrats did not so much win as we lost it. I mean we blew it, [House] Republicans in particular. Some people say we've lost our brand. We lost our way, and now we're paying the price for it," Mr. Nussle said.

"There were many reasons why the deficit went up. Part of it was the Republicans didn't do as good a job as they could have managing the spending side," he said. "Speaking for myself, I think we deserved to lose based on that. You spend a lifetime building up a reputation, and you can lose it overnight. We lost it overnight by the way we handled those things."

But the director of the Office of Management and Budget also delivered a stout defense of the unexpected economic, national security and natural disaster challenges that have faced President Bush throughout his two terms in office that Mr. Nussle said were a major contributing factor behind the meteoric growth in spending that for the first time has surpassed $3 trillion a year.

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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says Secretary Rice "not telling truth" (Lying)

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip.

The State Department has said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, issued the warning before Carter, a veteran of Middle East diplomacy, went on his trip last week.

Rice said in Kuwait on Tuesday: "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas."

"President Carter has the greatest respect for ... Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true," a statement issued by the Carter center in Atlanta said on Wednesday.

"No one in the State Department or any other department of the U.S. government ever asked him (Carter) to refrain from his recent visit to the Middle East or even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas," it said.

It said Carter attempted to call Rice before making the trip and a deputy returned his call since Rice was in Europe.

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Troops Can Fight & Die in Illegal War for 'New Order of the Ages' But Don't Sully Their Honor With Playboy Magazine!

Concerned that the military is selling pornography in exchange stores in spite of a ban, one lawmaker has introduced a bill to clean up the matter.

“Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., unveiling his House bill April 16.

His Military Honor and Decency Act would amend a provision of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act that banned sales of “sexually explicit material” on military bases.

The new language would “close existing loopholes” in regulations to bring the military “into compliance with the intent of the 1997 law,” Broun said.

“Allowing sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes, feeding a base addiction, eroding the family as the primary building block of society, and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad,” Broun said.

Broun said he wants to bring the Defense Department into compliance with the intent of the 1997 law “so that taxpayers will not be footing the costs of distributing pornography.”

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5 Former High-Ranking U.S. Officials Agree Gitmo Should be Closed

By Mick Youther

Five former secretaries of state in Athens, Ga. recently to formulate bipartisan foreign policy suggestions for the next president. All five former secretaries (Powell, Kissinger, Albright, Baker and Christopher) agreed on two important recommendations: The U.S. should open a dialogue with Iran, and the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay should be closed.

The first recommendation is a no-brainer, but it will have to wait for a new president because the only kind of diplomacy the Bush Administration understands is gunboat diplomacy. The second recommendation (closing the prison camp at Gitmo), should begin immediately. Guantanamo prison, and what has transpired there during George Bush’s war of terror, is an embarrassment to America.

“It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally. I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen—even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests—and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate,” said James Baker, secretary of state under George H.W. Bush.

Other nations have suffered terrorist attacks during the years since Sept. 11, 2001. In many cases, they have caught the terrorists, tried them in criminal court, convicted them and put them in prison. The Bush administration has spent those same years trying to invent new ways to withhold the normal protections of our judicial system from the hundreds of prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo.

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GOP Heavyweights Reportedly Tried to Oust Fitzgerald

In a bombshell disclosure before testimony began this morning in the Antoin "Tony" Rezko trial, a federal prosecutor said a former Rezko confidant was prepared to say that another friend of Rezko was attempting to pull strings with White House political director Karl Rove to fire U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald and kill his investigation into Rezko.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton said Ali Ata would testify to conversations he had with Rezko in 2004 about the power play. The Rezko investigation then was in its early stages.

Ata, a former official in the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, on Tuesday pleaded guilty in connection with Rezko-related corruption, saying that Blagojevich was present in the room when Ata and Rezko discussed swapping a $25,000 campaign contribution for a job in the administration.

Before the jury was brought into the courtroom Wednesday, Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve that Republican National Committeeman Robert Kjellander allegedly was working with Rove "to have Fitzgerald removed."

Kjellander was a sometimes business associate of Stuart Levine, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Rezko to rig state boards for contracts.

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Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

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UN Nuclear Monitoring Agency Announces "Milestone" Agreement with Iran

The UN nuclear monitoring agency on Wednesday announced a "milestone" agreement with Iran that aims to provide answers about allegations Teheran tried to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a peaceful atomic program.

International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming divulged no details in a brief statement about the deal. But IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei called the agreement "a milestone" that - if successful - should signal the end of his organization's years of attempts to probe Teheran's secretive nuclear program.

"An agreement was reached during the meetings in Teheran on a process that aims to clarify the so-called alleged (nuclear weapons) studies during the month of May," Fleming said in a statement from the Vienna-based agency. She was alluding to talks Monday and Tuesday between senior Iranian officials and IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen.

ElBaradei, in Sarajevo before collecting an award from a Bosnian university, said he was hopeful that by the May deadline "we will be in a position to get the explanation and clarification from Iran as to these alleged studies," adding: "This, in my view, is a positive step."

He called the issue "the only remaining topic for us to investigate about past and present Iran nuclear activities" - a statement sure to be challenged by the US and other nations suspicious that Teheran may be hiding an undeclared nuclear program from the agency.

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Bush's Gitmo Justice Creates a Legal Black Hole

On July 18, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read to a joyous crowd in Boston as bells rang and cannons were discharged. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John: "Every vestige of the King [George] was burnt. This ends royal Authority, a way of living, a way of thinking."

Abigail didn't anticipate that another King George, presiding over America almost 250 years later, would have so expanded his authority that he could designate persons—including American citizens—as "enemy combatants" to be held in military prisons without due process. (Ironically, though, Abigail's husband John, during his own presidency, would assume king-like powers thanks to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished criticisms of himself or Congress.)

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and insistent protector of international human rights, said this past March that the reputation of the United States has so deteriorated all over the globe that "the magic is over."

Adding to the world's disillusionment is the far-from-unique story of Murat Kurnaz. A German citizen, Kurnaz was turned over to the U.S. by Pakistani authorities as a suspected terrorist, brutally tortured in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, and then sent to Guantánamo in 2002 for more of what the president routinely calls "enhancement interrogation." It wasn't until two years later that Kurnaz had a shot at getting a lawyer. In Rasul et al. v. Bush, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the majority opinion, ruled that these "detainees," held indefinitely without charges, had a right to a hearing in our court system.

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FDA Chastised for Lack of Foreign Inspections

House members chastised the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday for not stepping up inspections of foreign drug manufacturers in the wake of a litany of problems with the blood thinner heparin and other products.

"Last year, this nation's regulatory failures resulted in dead dogs and cats. This year, it has tragically led to the deaths of people," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. "If we don't make some rapid progress on fixing the foreign drug inspection program, the next melamine or heparin tragedy will soon be upon us."

FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told a House subcommittee that he has asked the administration for more money to conduct inspections, but he did not specify how much. He agreed that more inspections are needed, but not to the lengths Democrats suggested, which is to inspect every foreign firm every two to three years.

"I don't believe that's the solution to the problem," von Eschenbach said. "It's much more complex, and the solution needs to be much more comprehensive than simply inspecting a facility."

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he's tired of hearing from FDA commissioners about conducting business in new, innovative ways in place of additional financial resources. He said commissioners have talked about the need for the agency to be leaner and meaner. But, it's turned out that it's leaner, weaker and less capable of doing its job, Dingell said.

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Former EPA Chief Not Liable for Saying 9/11 Air was Safe

Former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman cannot be held liable for telling residents near the World Trade Center site that the air was safe to breathe after the 2001 terrorist attacks, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Whitman apparently made comments reassuring people about the safety around the site based on conflicting information and reassurances by the White House.

The appeals court said legal remedies are not always available for every instance of arguably deficient governmental performance.

A Department of Justice lawyer had argued late last year that holding the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency liable would set a dangerous precedent in future disasters because public officials would fear making public statements.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous dust and debris from the fallen twin towers after Sept. 11.

They said Whitman, who also is a former New Jersey governor, should be forced to pay damages to properly clean homes, schools and businesses.

A lower court judge had earlier refused to dismiss Whitman as a defendant, saying her actions were "conscience-shocking."

NATO Looks to Exit Afghanistan Whether U.S. Approves or Not

When NATO meets in Paris in June for a summit on Afghanistan, there could be a secret deal on the table that will offer a way out of a war in which the U.S. and its allies have become increasingly bogged down!

Much to the dismay of Washington war planners, there has been a growing weariness in Europe with the Afghan conflict and reluctance by NATO members to expand troop commitments. This past year, Pentagon chiefs have consistently complained that European allies have not been pulling their weight at a time when it is vital to throw more troops into the fight against a resurgent Taliban, and a re-formed al Qaeda, whose leadership is based somewhere in the tribal lands between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Talk of a secret deal emerged during the recent NATO summit in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, when member nations were given a classified dossier outlining a German-inspired strategy for a reduction in troop levels leading to a phased withdrawal. The proposal conflicted strongly with the views of Pentagon military chiefs who have long argued that a resolution of the conflict could take decades. They believe that, like Iraq, Afghanistan might require a U.S.-NATO presence without a time limit.

For some observers, the shifting German position on Afghanistan was predictable because the German public has consistently made it clear it is opposed to a long-term military commitment.

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DOD Data: More Forced to Stay in Army

The Army has accelerated its policy of involuntary extensions of duty to bolster its troop levels, despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates' order last year to limit it, Pentagon records show.

Gates directed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service secretaries to minimize mandatory tour extensions, known as "stop loss," in January 2007. By May, the number of soldiers affected by the policy had dropped to a three-year low of 8,540.

Since then, the number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army rose 43% to 12,235 in March. The reliance on stop loss has increased as the military has sent more troops to Iraq and extended tours to 15 months to support an escalation in U.S. forces ordered by President Bush. The increase last month was driven by the need to send more National Guard soldiers to Iraq.

Soldiers affected by stop loss now serve, on average, an extra 6.6 months, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. Key leaders at the small-unit level — sergeants through sergeants first class — make up 45% of those soldiers. Soldiers typically enlist for four-year stints.

"Secretary Gates understands the hardship stop loss poses to our troops and their families, but he also understands the need to maintain cohesive units on the battlefield throughout deployment," Morrell said. "Troops who have trained together and fought together should remain together."

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VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides, Email Shows

Top officials at the Veterans Administration tried to conceal information from the public about the sudden increase of attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously undisclosed internal VA email indicates.

The email was disclosed Tuesday in a federal trial at a courthouse in Northern California, where two veterans advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the VA alleging that a systematic breakdown at the VA has led to an epidemic of suicides among war veterans. These groups claim the VA has turned away veterans who have sought help for posttraumatic stress disorder and were suicidal. Some of the veterans, the lawsuit claims, later took their own lives.

The organizations who filed the lawsuit, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, want a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to force the VA to immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk of suicide and overhaul internal system that handles benefits claims. PTSD is said to be the most prevalent mental disorder arising from combat.

The Feb. 13., 2008, email, disclosed in federal court Tuesday, was sent to Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, by Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director.

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GAO Says: Bush Administration Broke the Law

The Bush administration has no immediate plans to rescind controversial guidelines restricting enrollment in a popular children's health-care program, despite a recent legal finding that they were administered illegally.

The administration's position could leave the issue to the courts, where several states have already sued the White House over their right to expand coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. It could also lead to a showdown with Congress, though legislative efforts to expand SCHIP were twice vetoed by President George W. Bush last year.

The long-running debate over SCHIP highlights the sharp differences between the White House and a Democratic Congress over Washington's role in providing health care. With medical costs skyrocketing and employers dropping more and more coverage benefits, many lawmakers are pushing to expand that role into higher income brackets. The Bush administration has fought that push, claiming such expansions nibble away at private insurance markets.

In limbo are tens-of-thousands of kids whose health coverage hinges on their eligibility for the state-federal program. At issue are controversial eligibility guidelines -- issued directly to state health officials in an Aug. 17 letter -- that prohibit states from using federal SCHIP funds to cover children in families earning more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or $53,000 for a family of four, until they have covered 95 percent of kids living under 200 percent of poverty, or $42,400. Supporters in and outside of the White House say the rules ensure that SCHIP dollars go to the lowest income kids.

But on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office challenged the guidelines, charging that the administration broke the law when it bypassed Congress in issuing them.

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Guantanamo Bay Detainees Given Injections With 'Mind-Altering Substances'

Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle.

"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.' "

Nusairi, now free in Saudi Arabia, was unable to learn what drugs were injected before his interrogations. He is not alone in wondering: At least two dozen other former and current detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere say they were given drugs against their will or witnessed other inmates being drugged, based on interviews and court documents.

Like Nusairi, other detainees believed the injections were intended to coerce confessions.

The Defense Department and the CIA, the two agencies responsible for detaining terrorism suspects, both deny using drugs as an enhancement for interrogations, and suggest that the stories from Nusairi and others like him are either fabrications or mistaken interpretations of routine medical treatment.

Yet the allegations have resurfaced because of the release this month of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees.

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Report: Number of Recruits With Felonies Jumps

Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions.

Data released by a congressional committee shows the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350.

Those numbers represent a fraction of the more than 180,000 recruits brought in by the active duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines during fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007. But they highlight a trend that has raised concerns both within the military and on Capitol Hill.

The bulk of the crimes involved were burglaries, other thefts, and drug offenses, but nine involved sex crimes and six involved manslaughter or vehicular homicide convictions. Several dozen Army and Marine recruits had aggravated assault or robbery convictions, including incidents involving weapons.

Both the Army and Marine Corps have been struggling to increase their numbers as part of a broader effort to meet the combat needs of a military fighting wars on two fronts. As a result, the number of recruits needing waivers for crimes or other bad conduct has grown in recent years, as well as those needing medical or aptitude waivers.

But he added, “Concerns have been raised that the significant increase in the recruitment of persons with criminal records is a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq war and may be undermining military readiness.”

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U.S. Army Increases Use of Moral Waivers to Meet Demand for Troops

The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the stress of the Iraq war, allowing convicted sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats and child abusers into the military, according to new records released today.

The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year, relaxing its recruiting standards in order to admit them. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the high demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.

The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-marijuana drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and 9 sex offenders.

The new data was released by the oversight committee of the House of Representatives, which also noted that "poor record-keeping and maintenance" prevented the military from tracking how many convicted criminals had received moral waivers before 2006.

Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight panel, wrote to Pentagon personnel chief David Chu to seek more details on how directly the rise in waivers stems from Iraq-related recruiting needs.

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Food Rationing Confronts U.S.

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

"Where's the rice?" an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. "You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous."

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

"You can't eat this every day. It's too heavy," a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. "We only need one bag but I'm getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it," the elder man said.

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9/11: UNITED 93 DATA PROVIDED BY US GOVERNMENT DOES NOT SUPPORT OBSERVED EVENTS

By Robert Balsamo / contact: pilots@pilotsfor911truth.org

Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) via the Freedom of Information Act to obtain United Flight 93 Flight Data Recorder information consisting of a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file and Flight Path Animation, allegedly derived from Flight 93 Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The data provided by the NTSB contradict observed events in several significant ways:

1. The NTSB Flight Path Animation approach path and altitude does not support observations.
2. All Altitude data on the northern approach contradicts witnesses published by the New York Times.
3. Witness observations of approach path contradict northern approach as described by Popular Mechanics and the US Govt. Several witnesses observed the aircraft approaching from southeast over Indian Lake and from the south prior to witnessing explosion. Parts found in New Baltimore, 8 miles southeast of the crater is a direct contradiction to the northern approach claimed by the US Govt.
4. Environmental Protection Agency reports no soil contamination of jet fuel after testing 5,000-6,000 yards of earth including 3 ground wells. Smoke plume photographed by a witness does not suggest a jet fuel rich explosion.  
5. Impact angle according to Flight Data Recorder does not support an almost vertical impact as the govt story and crater suggests.

In May 2007, members of Pilots for 9/11 Truth received these documents from the NTSB and began a close analysis of the data they contain.

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