Fake Plastic News

New evidence is emerging that the top Democrat on the Senate committee currently investigating Jack Abramoff got political money arranged by the lobbyist back in 2002 shortly after the lawmaker took action favorable to Abramoff's tribal clients.

A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians told The Associated Press that Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan's political group just three weeks after the North Dakota Democrat urged fellow senators to fund a tribal school program Abramoff's clients wanted to use

Duckworth is part of a new breed of macho Democrats, joining eight Iraq veterans who have already announced themselves as candidates in next year's congressional elections. (The party is also reaching out to veterans of wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Vietnam, as well as former CIA officers and FBI agents.) These Democrats don't offer a unified strategy on how to leave Iraq. But they represent the most visible sign of the sea change in politics over the past year. The GOP has long held an advantage on questions of national security, but that lead has steadily eroded, offering Democrats a rare opening since 9/11. Recent polls show Democrats running neck and neck with Republicans on terrorism and comfortably ahead on Iraq. For all the lack of alternatives, Democrats have gained ground as public opinion has turned against the war. With relatively few competitive seats across the country, as well as a bigger campaign war chest, the GOP is still favored to retain control of the House. But Democrats believe they have found candidates who personify what voters want: real Americans (not politicians) who represent community, service and, of course, security. The vets also represent the Democrats' best hope of burying their GOP-crafted caricature as the Mommy party of John Kerry—unable to defend the country from terrorists or themselves from political attack. "A macho Democrat is someone who isn't afraid to stand up for what they believe in, to tell their story, to fight back when they're unfairly attacked," says John Lapp, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

When our military punches out a constant stream of breathless ham-handed missives about "trusted lieutenants" and "executive secretaries" while our casualties mount and conditions on the ground deteriorate, what does that say about the gap between reality and spin, and what does it imply for our ultimate success or failure in Iraq? And when a Thesaurus determines the content of a short press release about a single individual no one's ever heard of, what does that betray about the military's own confidence in how things are going?

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."

Al-Zarqawi insisted that the striking of the wedding party at the Radisson SAS hotel was a "lie" and a "forgery" by Jordanian security officials.

The Radisson bomber struck a hall where Israeli intelligence officials were meeting at the time, al-Zarqawi claimed. But part of the roof fell in on the wedding hall, either from the blast or even — he said — from a separate bomb placed in the roof, though not by al-Qaida.

"We didn't target them. Our target was halls being used by Zionist intelligence who were meeting there at the time," he said. "Our brothers knew their targets with great precision."

"God knows we chose these hotels only after more than two months of close observation (that proved) that these hotels had become headquarters for the Israeli and American intelligence," he said.

Al-Zarqawi accused the Jordanian government of hiding casualties among Israeli agents. "I defy the renegade government to show us the losses among the Jews," he said.

The Radisson was selected, according to our sources, because a Palestinian wedding party there was the opportunity for a mass-casualty strike on similar lines to the Passover Seder massacre of 17 Israelis at Netanya’s Park Hotel in March 2002. The attack on the Grand Hyatt struck the lobby where a group of senior Palestinian, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence officers were communing secretly and wiped out the entire group. Riyadh and Amman have not identified their officers. The Palestinians were Maj-General Bashir Nafeh, head of Palestinian military intelligence on the West Bank and Abed A-Lon a senior facilitator between the PA and Western intelligence. Palestinians were also hit at the Days Inn hotel.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better be running.

Musharraf seized power in a coup, six years ago, and at the time he described the Army as the “last institution of stability left in Pakistan”—the only body disciplined enough to fix the country’s ills. Since then, he has expanded the military’s influence in national life, yet, when the earthquake hit, the Army appeared neither efficient nor consumed by any sense of urgency. The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, a coalition of opposition parties, demanded an official investigation into what its spokesman called “the failure of the Army high command.” The United Nations warned that thousands of earthquake survivors could die from exposure if relief did not reach them before winter, yet, ten days after the earthquake struck, Musharraf’s government signed a billion-dollar contract for Swedish military surveillance aircraft, a bewildering priority. The Friday Times, one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers, suggested in a front-page editorial that Musharraf’s insistence on heavy defense spending might explain the slow pace of donations to the U.N. for earthquake relief: “If you were a Westerner asked to provide humanitarian financial assistance to a country led by a military government obsessed with the regional ‘military balance,’ what would you think?” A week later, Musharraf announced that he would postpone buying American-made F-16 fighter jets, at least until the financial pressures of earthquake relief had eased.

At a news conference, he dismissed criticism of his government’s performance as irresponsible harping by media skeptics and discredited politicians. “Panic and alarm in the face of a calamity are signs of weakness and defeat—let’s come out of that,” he said. He vowed to “prove the cynics wrong” by rallying the troops and attracting support from Western military allies. Adding to his difficulties was the fact that many of the hardest-hit villages were in Kashmir, whose land and people are at the center of Pakistan’s most emotional national cause—the fifty-eight-year conflict with India over its political destiny. He said that the Army was moving into Kashmir, and that aid would reach the region’s stranded victims by winter. The Army’s sluggish reaction may be explained, in part, by its own heavy losses in the area where the quake hit. According to an Army spokesman, four hundred and fifty officers and soldiers died on the first day, and seven hundred and eleven were injured. To judge by the damage I saw in Army camps in Kashmir, the actual toll may be higher; scores of Army wives and children also perished as cantonments and schools collapsed.

Musharraf has said that as long as the jihadi groups concentrate on peaceful social work, he is prepared to tolerate them; at the same time, he says that he intends to keep a close watch on them. The earthquake-relief effort in Muzaffarabad has made plain Musharraf’s dilemma, and has drawn together the two sides of his ungainly balancing act: his coöperation with the United States in fighting terrorism and his attempt to appease, or at least manage, Pakistani groups that the United States has identified as terrorists. Less than a mile from the main Jamaat ud-Dawa camp in the Azad Kashmir capital, the U.S. Army has erected a field hospital. American Humvees on break from chasing remnant Al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan were sharing Muzaffarabad’s streets with ambulances from the Al Rashid Trust, a Pakistani charity whose funds were blocked by the Bush Administration in 2001 because of accusations that it aided Al Qaeda. Musharraf’s political position has been perilous ever since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, when he supported the United States; members of one group that Musharraf has singled out, Jaish e-Mohammed, attempted to assassinate him in December, 2003. The success of jihadi groups in providing earthquake relief have only strengthened their claims to legitimacy in Pakistan.

At Musharraf’s invitation, soldiers and relief workers from European and NATO countries have also come to Azad Kashmir. Two months earlier, the region was a closed security zone, to which foreigners typically could not travel without an escort and a special permit. Now small crowds of local men gathered to watch with apparent admiration as female European soldiers shopped in their food stalls. Pakistan has unsuccessfully sought to turn the conflict into an international matter, with the United States and European powers directly involved, and helping to push for a settlement; at least temporarily, the outside world, thanks to the earthquake, has finally come to Kashmir.

I've obviously missed something. When did it become appropriate for the Commander-in-Chief to go onto a military installation before a military crowd and denounce the opposition party? I cannot remember a time in my 21-year career when anything remotely like this happened. Is it just me or are we embarked on something very dark and dangerous for our democracy?

This is coming out in Jordan’s advancing probe of the bombing attacks on three Amman hotels last Wednesday. The inquiry received a huge boost with the capture of the failed woman bomber.

Altogether 27 Palestinians were reported killed out of the 57, 17 from the same West Bank village of Silet al-Daher east of Tulkarm.

The Radisson was selected, according to our sources, because a Palestinian wedding party there was the opportunity for a mass-casualty strike on similar lines to the Passover Seder massacre of 17 Israelis at Netanya’s Park Hotel in March 2002. The attack on the Grand Hyatt struck the lobby where a group of senior Palestinian, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence officers were communing secretly and wiped out the entire group. Riyadh and Amman have not identified their officers. The Palestinians were Maj-General Bashir Nafeh, head of Palestinian military intelligence on the West Bank and Abed A-Lon a senior facilitator between the PA and Western intelligence. Palestinians were also hit at the Days Inn hotel.

The arrest of Sajid Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, whose confession to being the fourth bomber was aired by Jordanian TV Sunday night, presents the Jordanian inquiry with a chance to find out how the clandestine intelligence meeting reached al Qaeda’s ears.

Fox has cut back its episode order on one of TV's most critically praised shows to just 13 segs, down from 22. SkeinSkein, from 20th Century Fox TV and creator Mitch Hurwitz, has also been pulled from the schedule for the rest of the month, another sign that the network may have finally given up on trying to bring an audience to the show.

Afghanistan used to be the place to go for terrorist training, funding and real-world experience in battle. Not anymore. Iraq has become, in President George W. Bush's words, "the central front" in the war on terror. And compared with distant Afghanistan, Iraq has more fighting, more people, more money and a far better strategic position in the heart of the Middle East. If Afghanistan under the Taliban was a backwoods school for terrorism, Iraq is an urban university. "Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in the leadership's safe haven in Afghanistan," says a senior Taliban official who uses the nom de guerre Abu Zabihullah. "But Iraq is where the fierce encounters take place, where we recruit and dispatch fighters and where jihad's spirit thrives."

"The whole record thing is on table -- after we get this cleaned up, we can look at that," said Selig, who continues to lobby the players union for a stricter steroid-testing program - and emphasized again that he will support Congressional legislation in lieu of an agreement with the players. "I'm not saying we will do anything because there doesn't seem to be a practical way of doing anything about it."

The former ambassador says a delay from March to autumn 2003 could have made a significant difference: "Even if the most optimistic predictions are finally realised for Iraq, the question will still be asked: why did the Americans and British make it so hard for themselves and even harder for Iraqis? The US and the UK would have stood a better chance of going to war in good order, and of doing the aftermath right, had they planned on an autumn, not a spring, campaign."

He reveals that Karl Rove, the political adviser to the president, told him there would have been no problem for Mr Bush in waiting until the end of 2003 or even early 2004 and this would not have risked entanglement in the US presidential campaign.blockquote>

# posted by Brian Rodgers @ 9:59 AM