Saddam Hussein had accepted US demands before the invasion???

Oh, my, oh, my. Saddam Accepted the American Ultimatum Before the US Invasion, According to Rights and Freedom International discusses a claim by Hossam Shaltout, a Canadian aerospace engineer, former American pilot, and founder of the peace organization Rights and Freedom International (http://www.rightsandfreedom.com) that Saddam Hussein had agreed to all the Bush Administration demands before the invasion of Iraq, but that the Bush Administration took several steps that hindered that agreement from being broadcast. He was in Amman Jordan and his flight was changed based on Bush Administration orders, causing him to miss the flight. Then he took a car by road to Baghdad, tried to get a statement broadcast on CNN, but the CNN Baghdad office was closed, and he went to al Jazeera instead but halfway through that broadcast the transmission was cut by US forces.

His web site is here: http://www.rightsandfreedom.com/

But the web site doesn't have any documentation of this story. The article linked above is a Press Release through PR Newswire, so it hasn't gone through journalistic scrutiny.

If true this is really astonishing and totally changes the picture of this war. The war is illegal anyway (Kofi Annan himself said so), but to think that the Bush Administration actively prevented a settlement which would have avoided the war is unconscionable.

IMPEACH BUSH NOW!!!

U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group)

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U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group)

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The state PIRGs created U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) in 1983 to act as watchdog for the public interest in our nation's capital, much as PIRGs have worked to safeguard the public interest in state capitals since 1971. Our organization's roots at the state level, and U.S. PIRG members across the country, give us a unique "outside the beltway" perspective and provide the grassroots power necessary to influence the national policy debate.

U.S. PIRG is an advocate for the public interest. When consumers are cheated, or our natural environment is threatened, or the voices of ordinary citizens are drowned out by special interest lobbyists, U.S. PIRG speaks up and takes action. We uncover threats to public health and well-being and fight to end them, using the time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposés, grassroots organizing, advocacy and litigation. U.S. PIRG's mission is to deliver persistent, result-oriented public interest activism that protects our environment, encourages a fair, sustainable economy, and fosters responsive, democratic government.

Olbermann Exclusive: Dissecting new Book: Tempting Faith

Olbermann Exclusive: Dissecting new Book: Tempting Faith

"We have written a blank check on drawn our liberties"

This is Olbermann commenting on the recent law, the Military Commissions Act, which suspended Habeas Corpus. George W Bush and others lied to us a string of claims, lies, that led to the recent signing of this law which suspends Habeas Corpus and other guarantees. It was sold to us as a way to protect freedoms, but are we free if the government can just lock us up with no just cause, not required to show proof of our existence, etc? This has happened in the past, in the United States, when Habeas Corpus was suspended. At times Newspaper journalists and editors have been imprisoned, by the government, for the things they wrote in their newspapers. And more famously during World War II the Japanese descendants living in the U.S. were imprisoned, not because of anything they did, but because they were Japanese. We have entered a new era where the government is now free to do this again.

Here's another video talking about what Habeas Corpus is. It's pointed out the U.S. says, about Habeas Corpus, that it cannot be suspended unless the country finds itself in grave danger such as invasion or rebellion. Now, is the U.S. in actual danger of any invasion?

Ours is not to question, ours is to do or die

A few days ago the lead General of the UK's army said that "we" weren't invited into Iraq, that "our" presence in Iraq was making the situation worse, as an uninvited presence in Iraq "we" are the ones responsible for it being worse, and "we" should withdraw. He was talking about the UK's military forces but I think his comments apply to the U.S. and other foreign armies as well.

Since those statements the General in question has done a little backpedaling, and on Prime Minister Tony Blair's part he has stated complete agreement with the backpedaled statements.

In a Times (of London) opinion piece titled I agree with every word that Dannatt said. But he has got to be sacked Matthew Paris invokes a precedent from American History. After World War II general MacArthur saw an opening in the power structure of the Pacific region and ...

MacArthur’s desire was to press the military advantage, take up arms alongside Taiwan, and attack Communist China with nuclear weapons. President Truman disagreed. MacArthur started issuing statements to the press. Truman relieved him of his command. And that was the end of General MacArthur.

Many then thought the President’s policy was wrong and General MacArthur’s right; fewer argued that any general had the right to undermine the authority of a democratically elected president. MacArthur was way out of order, and had to go.

Truman fired MacArthur rather than follow the plan he proposed. Why? Because as Mr. Paris goes on to explain

The Armed Forces are not in charge of government policy; ministers are — democratically elected ministers. The Armed Forces are there to implement policy, not attack it. They can and must offer advice, of course, but the advice that Service chiefs offer ministers must be absolutely private. It is not their job to try to influence public debate by making statements to the news media.

Hmm.... This raises some interesting quandries.

A General, especially the top General, has a position of power. If the General sees something that could be done, perhaps the General should use that power to have that action take place. What Mr. Paris suggests is that General instead only use that power in private conversations with other government leaders.

The flip-side of the General determining government policy is that it can lead to a military dictatorship. We can think of zillions of examples in history where the Generals seized power. The most recent is in Thailand where the Prime Minister was on a state visit to the U.N. and while there the Generals seized power, supposedly with the blessing of the King.

Supposedly the Political leaders are answerable to the people, while the Military leaders are answerable to the Political leaders.

In Ministers say general was out of order - then concede his job is safe it's reported that many in the Military have stepped up to defend this General. In short, this makes it a battle of willpower between the political and military leadership. Is the political branch willing to go against a popular General and defend the political branch priority in determining policy?

You can see here the possibility of a military Coup. Suppose the battle of wills goes further and neither side backs down, one side saying it's ridiculous to stay in Iraq, the other demanding the Military must follow civilian and political Authority. What then?

For the record, here is Time Magazine quoting General Dannatt:

"It's an absolute fact that in some parts of the country, the fact that we are there causes people to attack us, and in that sense, our presence exacerbates violence," he said. The original hope of installing a liberal democratic government is out of reach and might have been "naïve." "We should aim for a lower ambition," he argued — just keeping Iraq a unitary state. He has "much more optimism we can get it right in Afghanistan" than in Iraq. Though the British army "doesn't do surrender," he said he wanted its 7,000 troops out "sometime soon" because "time is not our friend -- we can't be here forever at this level. I have an army to look after, which is going to be successful in current operations, but I want an army in five years' time, ten years' time; I don't want to break it on this one."

The "No Plane timeline"

In the "no plane timeline" the author of oilempire.us examines the claim that there was a conspiracy attached to the September 11, 2001 attack because it seems there was no plane that hit the Pentagon. There's some curious aspects to the Pentagon attack, that's for sure, but I doubt those curiousities indicate that there was no airplane.

These people want us to believe that someone arranged for an airliner to be taken surreptitiously to Cleveland and that instead a missile was fired at the Pentagon.

It is curious that the early pictures of the Pentagon damage show only a small hole in the outer wall. How can a Boeing 757 leave a small hole in a building?

The root of this story comes from French political activist Thierry Meyssan who constructs this theory and it spreads from there. The timeline linked above attempts to show that the spread of this story is based on some misinterpretation of the evidence.

For me the key point countering that theory is ... what happened to the people on that airplane? If they were flown to Cleveland and instead a missile was shot at the Pentagon, then why didn't the people on that airplane return to their families? Were they instead taken elsewhere and killed separately? If so, then why?

This theory seems to violate Occam's Razor by introducing extra complication.

9/11 Debate: Loose Change vs. Popular Mechanics

Loose Change is a documentary depicting some serious questions about the veracity of the claims around the September 11, 2001 attacks. There's huge doubt that the 9/11 Commission came even close to the truth, just as there are huge doubts that the Warren Commission came up with anything close to the truth regarding the Kennedy Assassination. It seems to me that a whole new industry of conspiracists are going to be debating September 11, 2001 for the next 40 years.

On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman hosted the makers of the Loose Change movie in a debate with editors from Popular Mechanics who had written a book debunking many of the claims of September 11, 2001 theorists.