R Kelly

Ahh, my first R Kelly post:

A member of rapper Jay Z's entourage released pepper spray at R. Kelly during a joint concert at Madison Square Garden, Kelly's publicist said. The spraying happened about an hour into Friday night's show, when Kelly walked onstage and said he saw two people in the audience waving guns, publicist Allan Mayer said.

Kelly abruptly stopped his set around 9:30 p.m. while MSG security employees searched for weapons.

Finding none, guards told Kelly it was safe to continue performing, Mayer said. But as the singer was making his way back to the stage, a man in Jay Z's entourage apparently miffed that Kelly interrupted the show sprayed him and two of his bodyguards in the face.

That's normal.

Hey, it's better than what R Kelly sprays people with.

Wow

Ray Charles never saw this coming:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official on Friday called the government's grant of multi-billion dollar contracts to oil services giant Halliburton the worst case of contracting abuse she has ever seen.

"It was misconduct, and part of that misconduct was blatant," said Bunny Greenhouse, in an interview on NBC's Nightly News program.

Greenhouse has already demanded an investigation into the contracts that last year were granted to Halliburton, the energy services firm run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000. According to her attorney, the FBI has since asked her for an interview on the matter.

A spokesman for President Bush on Friday said the president expects a full investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in how Iraq-related contracts were awarded to Halliburton.

And a full investigation he'll get. This of course why it's so important they win this election, and will do anything to make it happen.

Just think how far they may have set back the Republican party if there are investigations into their fraudulent practices. 4 more years may actually destroy them forever.

The BOLD stuff

NYTIMES:

Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility.

The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion.

But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.

ho hum.

FBI

They are jumping into the fray:

The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

It's probably because they did nothing wrong.

Eminem

Crazy-ass video.

Hey

I'm in Vermont til tomorrow, so again, posting is light.

Currently I'm at my friend's gallery which is going to be a link. The artwork here is PHENOMENAL. Check out the site.

Anyway, apparently the President is now lying with some new ad? Seriously, who can keep up. But you can see they're getting desperate.

I fear Super Tuesday is going to be a disaster. Is there even a National Guard available?!?!? Still, I'm feeling good as Kerry goes honest and Bush goes negative down the stretch.

But this is the HIGHLIGHT of the week:

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," Bush told supporters Wednesday.

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

Can you repeat that?

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."

Anyway, thanks for checking in.

Typical

Read this:

The latest example concerns "ghost prisoners," suspects captured in Iraq and Afghanistan who are interrogated by the CIA in secret locations, sometimes outside those countries, and whose identities and locations are withheld from relatives, the International Red Cross and even Congress. For all practical purposes, they have "disappeared," like the domestic detainees of some notorious dictatorships. The first official Army investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib called this practice "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law." Yet, according to reporting by The Post's Dana Priest, the CIA subsequently transported as many as a dozen more "ghost detainees" out of Iraq to interrogate them in its secret prisons.

There's more.

See, Republicans in the White House don't believe in United States law, both home and abroad. It's so blatantly obvious between their desire to violate church/state at home, change the Constitution, and of course flaunt every convention during war. They also don't believe Americans have a right to know what they're doing. Paternal, and illegal, that's them.

A primary reason the election is so important is they've done so much illegal stuff they need at least 4 more years to cover it up.

Torn!

Not sure who to believe, NBC or the Unit Commander!!!

White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.

But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.

The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.

Isn't it funny how the Prez and his minions bash the "liberal media" constantly, but as soon as they can use it to their advantage anything the media says is as accurate as the Bible?

No David, it's not funny, it's sad.

Malkmus

I was browsing SM's site today awaiting his new release. Pavement released their new Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain stuff today.

I came across his own ramblings and I feel they are worth posting:

osama bin laden is dead, seattle will hurt the a's, down with the cubs, the complexity of the human eye is not proof of creationism.

bernard levy might be right--iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time. its been horribly mismanaged and poorly plannned. as it stands, the world is a less safe place then it was before the "regime change".

but the only "right time" was to have finished it ten years ago in kuwait --so there is no right time only less wrong times. if you admit that the status quo (sanctions no fly zone, selfish murderous - gas -his -own -people dictator, sons waiting in the wings,eventual shia sunni civil war) was a vicious bomb waiting to explode (which i think it was).

the bush admin lied to us about the grounds for war. that is bullshit and scary (and typical). but passive isolationism and idealism are also scary when the enemy is facists and/or fundamentalist fascists who could care less about om shanti "ideals".

so its a quagmire, it seems to be getting worse and worse, no matter what they say about election. it might not work. but the passive, no intervention alternative arguably would have been worse in the long run.

what's the right answer? we have to wait like emasculated peons and find out.....

caught some tuna off staten island. too bloody to eat. took cheryl crowe's spot. she has cancelled twice on the guy-- hard to wake up at 4:30 is you smoke too much her-o-ana.

fly fishing in the ocean is a different game. birthday baloons litter the ocean. someone told me a japanses tanker carrying nike shoes went down and the shoes floated back to oregon on a current.

ladies if you are uptown west make your man take you to cafe des artistes. shell out for the romance this one time

sm

Israel

AP:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scored a historic victory Tuesday when lawmakers approved his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank next year.

Some perspective here?

My buddy Rack thinks Bush will take some credit for this. I mean, heck, he could be right considering all the other things he has claimed to have done and hasn't.

Lets not forget, during the 4 debates I think Bush brought up Israel a total of ZERO times. And that has pretty much been his engagement policy as well: nothing.

As for the pullout/withdrawal, well this wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't think the purpose was to dig further into the West Bank, and that's obviously the plan. Most Israelis support this withdrawal for different reasons. The only ones against are the hardcore right who never want to give in. This is the beginning of a mess, but considering the election is a week away in the states I'm sure Bush will try to credit himself for having done NOTHING!

As Rack points out, Kerry should do something about this. He's correct, he should. Kerry should point out, not just because he's a presidential candidate, but because the issue is so enormous and important, and he's become a voice of reason, that the Bush did NOTHING. Kerry should offer an alternative, or at least an explanation of how the situation could have been handled better.

The Bush team is so inept at diplomacy that there were not even able to come close to offering an alternative to Arafat, a two state solution, or even just mere engagement from a media level. They did NOTHING, but let Sharon do what he wants.

So with that you have an emboldened Sharon who thinks he can really do anything since Bush Co. has equated their War on Terror with Israels in order to gain Jewish votes. Again, it gets back to these people not giving a crap about the future since they won't be there.

Wait, you can't be saying that Bush Co. has no Israel policy, can you? No, no, I wouldn't say that. They do have a policy, and it's called: IRAQ! Do not forget the Jewfowitz Plan of making Iraq a democracy, and then they'd establish business relationships with Israel. Once other nations saw this model they'd all jump on board. Yes, THIS WAS THE PLAN!!! I know, I KNOW, it sounds RIDICULOUS! It is ridiculous, but that was their plan, hence why you have seen ZERO engagement.

What will become of Bush's policy, if you can even call it that, of allowing Sharon to pull out of Gaza and do as he pleases? I assume that the West Bank will soon explode with more violence as Sharon now thinks he can do whatever he wants with U.S. support. More negativity will come out of the situation, and images will be all over the media in the Arab world, making the plight of Israel even worse.

Not saying Bush could actually have changed the course here, but he could have been a strong longer, advocated for the withdrawal, or at least approved it on some level, but maintained that Israel would not have a free hand to do what it pleases, and that continued building in the West Bank would be a mistake. It also would have been nice if Bush had actually been trying to push Arafat out the last 4 years, or again, at least tried to find a partner in peace for the Israelis.

Sure, no partner has come so far, but I think the Bush Team used that as an excuse to do nothing. And that's exactly what they've done.

As for the American Jew, the one who actually votes for Bush, well, you're just a selfish scumbag, and you should be in Iraq right now with a gun in your hand.

Shameless

Philly.com:

A recent Republican mailing in Bucks County sought to associate Democratic candidate Ginny Schrader with the terrorist group Hezbollah.

"The 'Hate America' crowd has found their candidate," the mailing screamed, charging that Schrader "raised money for her campaign by showing a film filled with propaganda that Hezbollah-related organizations offered to distribute."

"I was appalled," said Schrader, whose daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. "Disgusting is the mildest word I could use for this." Schrader walked out of a debate yesterday after demanding an apology from her GOP opponent, Mike Fitzpatrick.

The mailing was the work of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, which is working on behalf of Fitzpatrick but is legally barred by campaign finance laws from coordinating with his campaign.

I could see myself assaulting a Republican for no reason other than they all deserve it.

Americuhhh, FUCK YEAH!

As Mars put it, "I guess it was just a matter of time."

It turns out there was a price tag on the storied rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan.

SBC Communications has agreed to pay $1.06 million for the naming rights to the Ohio State-Michigan football game for the next two years.

When the two teams meet for the 101st time on Nov. 20 in Columbus, the matchup will be called the SBC Michigan-Ohio State Classic. The order of the two school names will be switched for next year's game in Ann Arbor.

A logo featuring SBC's name will be displayed on the scoreboard and on signs around Ohio Stadium, but not on the field or players' uniforms.

Each university will receive $530,000 from SBC for the two-year deal.

Ok, as gross as it is, on many levels it's actually good.

Universities consistently use cash from other areas to pay for their sports programs, so if you can get this money to off-set the use of student fees that shouldn't go towards sports, but do, it's a good thing. However, Michigan and OSU are in the minority as being part of the handful of schools that actually make money from their sports programs.

How's the Weather?

NYTIMES:

A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a senior administration official told him last year not to discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures.

Conservatives can't be concerned with something that doesn't offer an immediate benefit.

Riiight

SacBee:

Attempting to boost Republican Party prospects, the owner of a chain of Central Valley television and radio stations has donated $325,000 in airtime for GOP candidates in many of the state's hottest legislative elections.

The contribution by Harry J. Pappas comes in the final days of campaigning, and those involved in the campaigns couldn't recall another instance in which a California media mogul donated time on public airwaves for advertisements to benefit one party over another...

Rather than give away free airtime, which is illegal under federal law, Pappas Telecasting Cos. essentially is footing the bill for broadcasting minutes it is setting aside for GOP candidates, Angelos said.

"We're not denying (Democrats) any opportunity," he said. "They have the opportunity to purchase an equivalent amount of airtime."

"I suppose there's always going to be someone somewhere claiming it's unfair," Angelos said. "But I think Mr. Pappas has the right to express his political opinions as much as anyone else."

Nice country, right?

Maybe It's Me

Sinclair CEO David Smith denies politics had any role in their airing of "Stolen Honor." He did have this to say:

"People describe me as a right-wing loony-tune conservative," Smith said. "The news on the [Sinclair] Sacramento CBS affiliate could be the most liberal left-wing loony-tune ever invented, but I couldn't tell you. . . . I don't watch my Sacramento news. The fact that we're in control supposedly of all the TV stations -- I'm not in control of anything. That news organization has 100 people in it and they've all got their own view."

So, he doesn't watch TV, but knows it's "loony-tune." He really is a Bush guy.

Comedy

Check out the Asbury Park Press's endorsement of Bush, the only Jersey paper to endorse him, and of course, owned by Gannett, home of USATODAY.

Paragraph 1:

Our decision on which presidential candidate to support Nov. 2 was not nearly as easy as it was four years ago when we opted for George W. Bush over Al Gore. But we're endorsing Bush again because we believe he would do a better job than Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry on the two issues that matter most -- winning the war on terrorism and strengthening the economy.

Paragraph 3:

Bush has been a disappointment in many ways. His decision to go to war in Iraq before all nonmilitary means had been exhausted was a mistake, and his administration mishandled the war after the troops entered Baghdad. He also has failed to control spending in Washington and hasn't been as sensitive as we would like in preserving civil liberties.

That's great.

Shorter version by me, for them:

We have a lot of wealthy white people living in our area, and many of them send their kids to parochial and private schools. Anything we can do to choose the candidate that will ultimately offer them more money is the candidate we stand firmly behind regardless of the track record.

In addition, there are many areas surrounding us, like the town in which this paper is located, that are very poor, and whose kids don't goto school with the kids of the people we want buying our papers. We need to show our alliance with the group of people mentioned in the first paragraph, and not the second group, who we really don't care about.

Therefore, we endorse President George W. Bush.

Bated Breath

Straight talker:

The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as "one of the great blunders of Iraq" and said President Bush's "incredible incompetence" had put American troops at risk.

Mr. Bush never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism. Instead, evoking images of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and traveling with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at his side, Mr. Bush made an impassioned appeal to voters to let him "finish the work we have started." But he also charged that his opponent had abandoned the defense principles of Democrats like John F. Kennedy...

In several sessions with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, alternately insisted that Mr. Bush "wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this" and tried to distance the president from knowledge of the issue, saying Mr. Bush was informed of the disappearance only within the last 10 days. White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the international agency in May 2003 about the stockpile's vulnerability to looting never resulted in action. At one point, Mr. McClellan pointed out that "there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

I LOVE how the "President wasn't aware" is an excuse!

Seriously...

My buddy is an "independent." You know, one of those people who actually worked on a Republican's campaign, but now thinks it's better to call yourself "independent" to avoid the heat. Yeah, you know.

Anyway, I love the guy, bigtime, but his latest rationale is just flat out absurd, and Agent Hynd and I have basically formulated the response to these people.

My friend isn't voting because he doesn't vote "against people" but "for people." Lately he's been asking me to convince him about John Kerry, as if he can't find out for himself. I mean, he's one of those people that reads a ton of shit, yet he, like Rudy Giuliani, just CAN'T FIND OUT!!! GO FIGURE!!!!!!!!???????

So I asked him how it's possible that he voted for Bush the first time! I mean, at the time, independents must have been confused! The world was so bad!!! Only Bush could fix it! But seriously, for all these people who need convincing, Bush's record was there! He didn't have terror credentials. He had cocaine, drunk driving, failed businesses, being a deserter in the military, cheating on his finances, running oil companies into the ground, last in the nation in education, highest death penalty total, the MAN HAD IT ALL!

But that never stopped these "independents" from voting for him. In addition, all these things they want to know, but can't find out about Kerry, they didn't seem to care that much about Bush's past in 2000. Go figure.

So, it gets back to one of my original points about "independents": they don't care about anything except winning, and their own cash. Oh, did I say "independents?" I must be confusing them with Republicans.

This Guy

Does he stop lying?

Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 -- (laughter) --and that our military had a chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is an unjustified and harsh criticism of our military commanders in the field. This is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking. (Applause.) And it is what we've come to expect from Senator Kerry.

In fact, our Commander in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks -- (applause) -- recently wrote, "The Senator's understanding of events do not square with reality."

I think he's right, I really do, but it's too bad he thinks he's wrong:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

George, are you flipping or flopping?

Thanks to Josh Marshall for this.

Derka, Derka?

DERKA, DERKA, DERKA!!!

DERKA, DERKA!!!

Uhhh, derka, derka...derka, Muhammad Jihad!

Ahhh, derka, derka. Derka, Derka.

Thoughts

Some guy said to me in Atlantic City, a Republican, "You know what, I voted for Bush, and it didn't work. I just want something different! We tried that, it didn't work!"

Yeah, simply put, that's going to be why he loses.

Anyway, all the "weigher-inners" know full well that I can easily talk about a Kerry record, or squash their points, but I'm sorta done with that. For crying out loud, I was on the fucking radio! Do you think I brought a gun without ammo? Sheesh. I mean, especially if you heard the shows! I know, I know, Republicans are sorta dumb about things, like Giuliani, who just can't figure out where John Kerry stands! I mean, Kerry has made points over and over, but for the life of Uber-hack Rudy, he just can't figure it out! I guess he's just a fucking moron. That's my guess, yours?

But seriously, there are posts every day on this blog (well, almost). On the bottom of the page today is the story about how we failed to protect the ammo that was already labeled by the IAEA, and now it's probably being used against us.

For the tools that read this page and like to get excited about issues, how come you never have the balls, or the knowledge, to refute those stories? I mean, they pop up almost daily, and they sail on by. Fall back on Clinton! Seriously, BLAME CLINTON IF YOU MUST, but please, do something!

You'll be real quick on the draw when it comes to my stories about restaurants, or when I leave something open ended. Another great one is when you completely ignore my point and follow up with something else, i.e., the Tommy Franks Challenge. But seriously, how come you can never comment on the stories that point out what a disaster Bush Co. has actually been?

Sometimes you even fall back on principles, conservative ones, and act as if Bush actually represents those! That's really the best stuff. Gold, if you will.

I mean, Rudy is a moron, but you gals, are you just pussies? What gives?

I will accept "It's Clinton's fault" as a stock answer from here on out, I promise.

Joe's

Well, I was waiting for official news, although the story was known by many:

The final slices are being served this month at a world-renowned pizza place in the West Village.

Joe's Pizza, on the corner of Bleecker and Carmine streets, is closing its doors after making pies in the neighborhood for nearly 30 years. The owners say they are shutting down because they can't keep up with a huge rent hike.

For 29 years, they say they've paid $900 a month in rent. Now it's jumping to $16,000 a month.

“As I say, I'm hoping the landlord change his mind and comes up with a reasonable rent,” said Joe’s owner Giuseppe Vitale. “I mean, it’s a lot of money. Sixteen-thousand dollars, it's a lot of money.”

“You’re going to come down here, it’s not going to be here anymore, and it’s going to be a crime,” said one neighborhood resident. “And if they put a Starbucks here it’s going to be the worst thing that could ever happen to the village.”

At least the other Joe's will still be there, but that is no saving grace.

Bye 

Sooo

Last night I was having a bite to eat at Jersey City's best restaurant, Madame Claude Cafe, when I heard people next to me saying things like, "I don't like Kerry either, but...Kerry isn't much better, but..." You know the drill.

So, I decided it was time to call them out, this table of four, or should i say faux?

(not word for word)

I finished reading my paper and strolled over and asked, "So you don't like John Kerry either?" This was directed at the guy who is voting libertarian.

"Not really. I don't like either of them."

I reply, "Well, it's pretty easy not to like Bush, but what is it exactly about John Kerry that you don't like?"

Rescued he was by the young lady at the table who said, "He wants everything both ways."

I respond, "Wow, you really do watch a lot of TV. Before you go announcing that Kerry is Bush-lite, you may want to look at his record in the Senate. Find out where he led as opposed to being led around."

First guy, "What does it matter to you that you need to come over and make comments?"

"Well, frankly, I'm pretty sick of people saying that about Kerry and not having a clue what his politics are. All these people watch CNN and FOX News and then apply the stigma to Kerry that the pundits do, and it's embarrassing. So when I hear people like yourself saying 'I'm voting libertarian' as if they've made the situation better, or people not having a clue who Kerry is, it bothers me because that's exactly what the Republicans hoped for when they started their campaign against him. Kerry is a good person, has a real record, and all these Bush haters don't really know, or care. All they care about is how bad Bush is. Maybe if people spent time researching what Kerry has done and talked about that people who had a better view of him. And trust me, I hate Bush as much as I've ever hated anyone, but that's not why I find it annoying."

At this point I was asked to sit and join them for desert.

I declined. I did tell them this was the third time in one day I heard this conversation and I was reaching the tipping point.

It's Pat!!!

The American Conservative endorses Kerry.

If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past—and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.

George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies—a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies—temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election—are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.

Long story short: Bush is so not a conservative, so we're so not supporting him.

Ted? What's your thought here?

Air

Bush:

"Yes, because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once," Bush said. He said the nation is safer from terrorism, but "whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up — you know, up in the air."

Bush's spokesman followed up with:

White House communications director Dan Bartlett dismissed Kerry's criticism of Bush's "up in the air" comment. "This is a debate we are more than happy to have. The president said we can win the war on terror and we will win the war on terror," Bartlett said.

As if the prior comment never really happened.

Issue

NYTIMES:

The top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program."

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.

Just another case of a black woman trying to keep the white man down.

Bad

More of the same "fucking up", and putting the troops in harm's way, from thie Bush squad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Saturday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people...

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. "This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country...

One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives HMX and RDX were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. In the chaos that followed the invasion, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

Bush, strong on terror.

Is anyone even surprised?

Josh Marshall has the details of this story.

Hey Now

I'm back, and here's the first installment, thanks to the young Dan Que.

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

Why doesn't Kerry start asking for the report publicly?