20051231
Can you imagine the shit storm that is coming? Attack Iran? Whew, this is going to be fun. Where are the truck bombs we were promised? Do you think there will be Martial Law during the nookular Dubya Dubya Three? Fuck these American Idiots!
US Prepares Iran Strike
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051230-112208-8968r
The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year.
At the beginning of the year we saw Bush sworn in for his second term, delivering an inauguration speech that emphasized democratizing foreign nations by force as the new defining characteristic of U.S. foreign policy. Apparently unaware of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the invasions of Grenada and Panama, the military actions in Lebanon, Iraq and Somalia, the bombings of Libya, Afghanistan, Serbia and Sudan, and dozens of other U.S. interventions in other countries over the last 50 years, Bush claimed, “For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders.” But now, after 9/11, U.S. foreign policy would have to recognize that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
http://www.nwmeridian.com/content/051229_04_p1.php
The new Iraqi government looks increasingly like a Shi'ite theocracy with close ties to the "axis of evil" regime in Iran. Most Americans now believe they were deliberately misled into the war, that it was a big mistake, and that it is getting time to leave.
Bush's approval ratings have been gloriously low.
Then there was the catastrophic aftermath of Katrina. What could have been a troubling but relatively contained natural disaster was exacerbated first by public management of the levees, which broke, allowing the flooding of New Orleans, and then by the way the feds handled the crisis. They finally responded to the calamity by keeping private charity out, forcing people into makeshift concentration camps such as the Superdome, confiscating firearms and turning the city over to the vagaries of martial law.
It was a year when the United States achieved all of its political goals in Iraq and made major progress in developing the new Iraqi military forces?
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051230-011242-2666r
Yet as the year ended, America's future prospects there were more clouded and problematic than ever?
U.S. death toll in Iraq for '05 nears '04 level
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10636018/
841 soldiers killed this year
Parents to Pentagon: Stop Flying Dead GIs as Commercial Air Freight
White House will continue to track Net
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/tech/D8EQPR8G3.htm
The White House said Friday its Web site will keep using Internet tracking technologies, deciding that they aren't prohibited after all under 2003 federal privacy guidelines.
White House Denies Calling for Probe
Covert CIA Programs: Renditions, Violate Intl. Treaties, Secret Prisons, Eavesdroping…
In the world of national security, 2005 has been the year of the spy: revelations about government snooping without court warrants, controversial CIA interrogation practices, "renditions" of suspected terrorists into secret prisons and, of course, the continuing investigation into the CIA leak.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10651208/
With each successive disclosure, Americans have had to confront fundamental questions about how much privacy they are willing to sacrifice in a post-9/11 world.
British, US Spying Draws Us Closer to Orwell's Big Brother
It's not that I'm unpatriotic. The founders of our country did not trust any government -- either that of George III or an uncontrolled democracy. That's why we have the Bill of Rights to protect American citizens from their own government -- by demanding, for example, that ``Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech.''
Our property is also protected from illegal search and seizure, and we are not to be put in jail without knowing the charges against us or having the right to confront our accusers in a public trial. Secret courts are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, the defining document of American freedom.
What's the worst thing that Al-Qaida can do to America? We have probably already seen it. Of course, the government can talk about bigger things, like the use of weapons of mass destruction, to justify its use of totalitarian tactics.
I would much rather live as a free man under the highly improbable threat of another significant Al-Qaida attack than I would as a serf, spied on by an oppressive government that can jail me secretly, without charges. If the Patriot Act defines the term ``patriot,'' then I am certainly not one.
By far, our own government is a bigger threat to our freedom than any possible menace posed by Al-Qaida.
"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html
-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11. ¶ 31.12.05
