Impeach Bush

Dedicated to exposing the lies and impeachable offenses of George W. Bush.

Friday, August 17, 2007

DOD billed $998,798.38 to ship two flat washers that cost $0.19 each

August 16, 2007
DOD billed $998,798.38 to ship two flat washers that cost $0.19 each

Investigators say the fictitious shipping costs ranged into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, despite the fact that the value of the items shipped rarely exceeded $100. In the final transaction before the scheme was discovered, in September 2006, C&D billed the Department of Defense $998,798.38 to ship two flat washers that cost $0.19 each.

Over the course of the conspiracy, court officials say the defendants obtained approximately $20,576,925.00 in fraudulent shipping costs.

The money was used to purchase beach houses, high-end automobiles, boats, jewelry, vacations, and other items.

Officials say Darlene Wooten committed suicide at her Lexington County lake house last October, after being contacted by federal investigators about the fraud.

Labels:

Poll: Iraq War Made U.S. Less Safe

August 15, 2007
Poll: Iraq War Made U.S. Less Safe

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many adults in the United States believe the coalition effort did not bring security at home, according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 49 per cent of respondents think the war with Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism, while 42 per cent say it has made it safer.

In addition, 45 per cent of respondents think the chances of a terrorist attack in the U.S. would be higher if the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq as soon as possible, while 44 per cent disagree.

Labels:

Officers see bleak future for Iraq

August 15, 2007
Officers see bleak future for Iraq

BAGHDAD — Despite U.S. claims that violence is down in the Iraqi capital, U.S. military officers are offering a bleak picture of Iraq's future, saying they've yet to see any signs of reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims despite the drop in violence.

Without reconciliation, the military officers say, any decline in violence will be temporary and bloodshed could return to previous levels as soon as the U.S. military cuts back its campaign against insurgent attacks.

That downbeat assessment comes despite a buildup of U.S. troops that began five months ago Wednesday and has seen U.S. casualties reach the highest sustained levels since the United States invaded Iraq nearly four and a half years ago.

Labels: ,

Marine from Indiana charged in Iraqi soldier's death

August 14, 2007
Marine from Indiana charged in Iraqi soldier's death

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Marine reservist from Indiana has been charged with murdering an Iraqi army soldier in Fallujah, an attorney said Tuesday.

Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes, 21, of Indianapolis, is accused of stabbing Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin to death as the two men stood watch at a security post on Dec. 31, 2006, Holmes' lawyer said.

The struggle began in the pre-dawn darkness after Hassin allegedly opened his cell phone then lit a cigarette at the post, attorney Steve Cook said.

The men were not supposed to display any illuminated objects because of the threat of sniper fire, and Holmes made repeated attempts to make Hassin extinguish the cigarette, Cook said.

"(Holmes) said 'No, no,' but the Iraqi soldier refused to put out the cigarette," Cook said. "Holmes knocked it out of his hands and they started wrestling on the ground."

Holmes thought Hassin was reaching for his loaded AK-47, so the Marine killed him with his bayonet then radioed for help, Cook said.

Labels:

Health care is reason Americans now lag, researcher believes

August 15, 2007
Health care is reason Americans now lag, researcher believes

Pundits often opine that America's stature is declining on the global stage. It turns out that Americans - literally - are not standing as tall, compared with the rest of the world, as they used to.

U.S. adults lost their position as the tallest people on Earth to the Dutch, who average about 2 inches taller than the typical American. In fact, American men now rank ninth and women 15th in average height, having fallen short of many other European nations.

Labels:

U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites

August 15, 2007
U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Labels: ,

Army suicides highest in 26 years

August 16, 2007
Army suicides highest in 26 years

WASHINGTON - Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.

"In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.

Labels: ,

Smithsonian Official Resigns After Records Destroyed

August 8, 2007
Smithsonian Official Resigns After Records Destroyed

A top Smithsonian official has resigned after he destroyed records from a key Smithsonian Board of Regents meeting.

James M. Hobbins, 64, executive assistant to the secretary of the Smithsonian, has acknowledged destroying transcripts from a meeting in January when regents discussed then-Secretary Lawrence M. Small's compensation, housing allowance and travel expenses among other things, according to people who insisted on remaining anonymous because of the sensitivity of the case.

The sources said the documents were destroyed after Smithsonian General Counsel John Huerta sent a memo to employees in March to retain documents. The directive came after the Senate Finance Committee began investigating the Smithsonian in early February and an independent review committee established by the regents later that month specifically requested the minutes and other records from meetings.

Labels: ,

Top general may propose pullbacks

August 12, 2007
Top general may propose pullbacks

WASHINGTON -- Intent on demonstrating progress in Iraq, the top U.S. general there is expected by Bush administration officials to recommend removing American troops soon from several areas where commanders believe security has improved, possibly including Al Anbar province.

According to the officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus is expected to propose the partial pullback in his September status report to Congress, when both the war's critics and supporters plan to reassess its course. Administration officials who support the current troop levels hope Petraeus' recommendations will persuade Congress to reject pressure for a major U.S. withdrawal.

Labels:

Rove exit signals 'end of Bush presidency'

August 12, 2007
Rove exit signals 'end of Bush presidency'

"This is the end of the Bush presidency, absolutely," said Wayne Slater co-author of a book on Rove titled "The Architect."

"All lame ducks are lame ducks; this one, with Karl Rove now turning out the lights, is the most lame duck we've seen in a long time."

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who holds a "grudging respect" for Rove and his accomplishments, said she didn't know whether his absence would push Bush "over the edge" into lame-duck status.

"To lose someone with Rove's ability is, I'm sure, very humbling," said Brazile. "There would be no Bush presidency without Karl Rove so it's hard to separate president Bush's legacy from that of Karl Rove."

Labels:

US Comptroller General: Learn from Fall of Rome

August 14, 2007
US Comptroller General: Learn from Fall of Rome

The US government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country's top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country's future in a report that lays out what he called "chilling long-term simulations".

These include "dramatic" tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Labels: , ,

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Prices for key foods are rising sharply

August 14, 2007
Prices for key foods are rising sharply

MIDLAND, Va. — The Labor Department's most recent inflation data showed that U.S. food prices rose by 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending in July, but a deeper look at the numbers reveals that the price of milk, eggs and other essentials in the American diet are actually rising by double digits.

Already stung by a two-year rise in gasoline prices, American consumers now face sharply higher prices for foods they can't do without. This little-known fact may go a long way to explaining why, despite healthy job statistics, Americans remain glum about the economy.

Labels:

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Four suicide bombings kill 175 in Iraq

August 14, 2007
Four suicide bombings kill 175 in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Four suicide bombers struck at communities of a small Kurdish sect in northwestern Iraq with nearly simultaneous attacks Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.

The death toll was the highest in a concerted attack since Nov. 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City. And it was most vicious attack yet against the Yazidis, an ancient religious community in the region whose members are considered infidels by some Muslims.

The bombings came as extremists staged other bold attacks: leveling a key bridge outside Baghdad and abducting five officials from an Oil Ministry compound in the capital in a raid using gunmen dressed as security officers.

Labels:

Iraqi leader alleges 'genocide campaign'

August 12, 2007
Iraqi leader alleges 'genocide campaign'

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's most senior Sunni politician issued a desperate appeal for Arab nations to help stop what he called an "unprecedented genocide campaign" by Shiite militias armed, trained and controlled by Iran.

Also, the U.S. military reported five American soldiers were killed, apparently lured into an al-Qaeda trap.

Adnan al-Dulaimi said "Persians" and "Safawis," Sunni terms for Iranian Shiites, were on the brink of total control in Baghdad and soon would threaten Sunni Arab regimes which predominate in the Mideast.

Labels:

Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq

August 12, 2007
Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.

Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.

Labels:

U.S. supported Iraqi government seeks weapons via the black market

August 12, 2007
U.S. supported Iraqi government seeks weapons via the black market

PERUGIA, Italy - In a hidden corner of Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport, police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something bigger.

Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.

As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

Labels:

British lawmakers: US 'surge' in Iraq 'likely to fail'

August 12, 2007
British lawmakers: US 'surge' in Iraq 'likely to fail'

LONDON (AFP) - The US "surge" of troops in Iraq is likely to fail, a British parliamentary committee said Monday as it delivered a critical report on London's foreign policy in the Middle East.

"It is too early to provide a definitive assessment of the US 'surge' but it does not look likely succeed," the House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee said in a wide-ranging document. The Commons is Britain's lower parliamentary chamber.

"The committee believes that the success of this strategy will ultimately ride on whether Iraq's politicians are able to reach agreement on a number of key issues."

Instead, it called on the government to set out what action it was taking to foster political reconciliation between Sunni and Shia Muslims and Kurds in Iraq. And it called for evidence of Iran's backing for insurgents in the south.

Labels:

Bush on track to become the vacation president

August 9, 2007
Bush on track to become the vacation president

On Thursday, Bush left for a weekend in Kennebunkport, Maine, and his family's summer compound, Walker's Point. On Monday, he heads to his Crawford retreat, where he has spent all or part of 418 days of his presidency, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS News White House correspondent and meticulous record-keeper.

The presidential vacation-time record holder is the late Ronald Reagan, who tallied 436 days in his two terms. At 418 days, and with 17 months to go in his presidency, Bush is going to beat that easily.

Even so, this year's August vacation for Bush is a contrast to previous years such as 2005, when he dragged out vacation in Texas to five weeks. That was also the year Bush remained on vacation immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Labels:

U.S. Pays Millions In Cost Overruns For Security in Iraq

August 12, 2007
U.S. Pays Millions In Cost Overruns For Security in Iraq

The private security industry has surged in Iraq because of troop shortages and growing
violence. After the March 2003 invasion, hundreds of foreign and Iraqi companies, many of them
new, signed contracts with the U.S. and British militaries, the State Department, the Iraqi
government, media and humanitarian organizations and other private companies.

The size of this force and its cost have never been documented. The Pentagon has said that
about 20,000 security contractors operate in Iraq, although some estimates are considerably
higher. Private security contractors have been used in previous wars, but not on this scale,
according to military experts. Several lawmakers have recently sought to regulate the private
security industry and account for billions of dollars spent on outsourcing military and
intelligence tasks that once were handled exclusively by the government.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee who was briefed by Aegis and the Corps of Engineers during a February visit to Iraq, said lawmakers are only now realizing the scope of private security there. "We're in the wake of this speedboat. We
can't even catch up to the contracts," said Kaptur, who opposes the use of private forces and
initiated an audit of Aegis by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the second
the agency has conducted.

Labels: ,

Superpower that can't tie its shoes

August 11, 2007
Superpower that can't tie its shoes

In a 2005 report, the Federal Highway Administration rated 77,000 U.S. bridges, about an eighth of the total, as "structurally deficient." While we'll learn more about the specific causes of the collapse in coming weeks, it has been clear for a while that our aging national infrastructure network - bridges, roads, dams, levees - isn't standing up well to intensifying levels of stress.

But the bridge disaster also reflects a broader and more troubling problem. The United States seems to have become the superpower that can't tie its own shoelaces. America is a nation of vast ingenuity and technological capabilities. Its bridges shouldn't fall down.

And it's not just bridges. Has there ever been a period in our history when so many American plans and projects have, literally or figuratively, collapsed? In both grand and humble endeavors, the United States can no longer be relied upon to succeed or even muddle through. We can't remake the Middle East. We can't protect one of our own cities from a natural disaster or, it seems, rebuild after one. We can't rescue our citizens when they're on TV begging for help. We can't even give our wounded veterans decent medical care.

Labels:

GAO: Army deployment data flawed

August 10, 2007
GAO: Army deployment data flawed

The Marine Corps and Army lack proper tools for tracking the number of days troops are deployed, an oversight that could affect deploying members' pay or operational tempo, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

A July 17 report said that while the Defense Department has submitted personnel tempo data to Congress since 2001, the Corps and Army don't have the ability to identify faulty data, and they lack quality-control procedures for ensuring accuracy of the data.

Such information is used to determine a Marine's eligibility for extra leave days if he is deployed or mobilized beyond Pentagon goals. It also would be used to pin down eligibility for high-tempo deployment pay, if such compensation was reinstated by the Defense Department.

Labels: ,

"Intentional Manipulation Of The Facts" To Get Surveillance Act Passed

August 11, 2007
"Intentional Manipulation Of The Facts" To Get Surveillance Act Passed

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

"There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through," said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.

"There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through," said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.


Labels: , ,

US Life Expectancy Drops to 42

August 12, 2007
US Life Expectancy Drops to 42

WASHINGTON -- Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."

Labels:

GOP Leaders Leaking State Secrets

August 10, 2007
GOP Leaders Leaking State Secrets

In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased -- the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons.

"The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs," Hoekstra wrote in the piece, in which he also criticized "leaks to the news media."

Secrets are apparently hard to keep these days. On July 31, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, allegedly disclosed a secret court ruling during a television interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto.

Labels: , ,

Bush's Speechwriter Accused of Taking Credit for Speeches That Weren't His

August 11, 2007
Bush's Speechwriter Accused of Taking Credit for Speeches That Weren't His

Scully's blistering portrait of one of the president's most prominent former advisers in the new issue of the Atlantic touched off an intense pushback by the White House yesterday as top Bush aides jumped to defend Gerson as the victim of a jealous associate. But the internecine feuding may signal something broader than pride of authorship. Scully's 10-page indictment represents the sort of classic Washington tell-all once rare in an administration known for discipline and loyalty.

"The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of extravagant falsehood," Scully writes. "He has been held up for us in six years' worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike's conduct is just the most familiar and depressing of Washington stories -- a history of self-seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being cast in such lofty terms."

Labels: ,

How a "Good War" in Afghanistan Went Bad

August 12, 2007
How a "Good War" in Afghanistan Went Bad

Statements from the White House, including from the president, in support of Afghanistan were resolute, but behind them was a halting, sometimes reluctant commitment to solving Afghanistan's myriad problems, according to dozens of interviews in the United States, at NATO headquarters in Brussels and in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

At critical moments in the fight for Afghanistan, the Bush administration diverted scarce intelligence and reconstruction resources to Iraq, including elite C.I.A. teams and Special Forces units involved in the search for terrorists. As sophisticated Predator drone spy planes rolled off assembly lines in the United States, they were shipped to Iraq, undercutting the search for Taliban and terrorist leaders, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

Labels:

Iraq contractors avoid legal restraints

August 11, 2007
Iraq contractors avoid legal restraints

There are now nearly as many private contractors in Iraq as there are U.S. soldiers — and about half of them are private security guards equipped with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bullet-proof trucks.

They operate with little or no supervision, accountable only to the firms employing them. And as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war, this private army has been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys.

Not one has faced charges or prosecution.

Labels: ,