Bush releases Hijacker Sought by U.S.
Posted By: PK on 2005-12-27
In Reply to: Again, Carla I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings - rr
Hijacker Sought By U.S. Released
Germany Frees Hezbollah Member Who Killed Md. Sailor in '85 Plot
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; A23
BERLIN, Dec. 20 -- The German government disclosed Tuesday that it had freed a Hezbollah member who had been convicted of hijacking a TWA airliner in 1985, allowing him to return to his native Lebanon despite long-standing requests from the United States to hand him over for trial.
Mohammed Ali Hammadi, 41, walked out of a German prison on Thursday after a parole board concluded that he was eligible for early release, German officials said. His parole prompted a protest from the State Department.
Hammadi served nearly 19 years of a life sentence for air piracy, possession of explosives and the murder of Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. sailor from Waldorf, Md. Stethem, a passenger on board TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome, was singled out for brutal treatment by the hijackers because of his military service.
Organized by the radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah, the hijacking was one of the most publicized terrorist attacks on a U.S. target in the 1980s. It lasted for 17 days as the plane, with dozens of hostages aboard, shuttled between airports in the Mediterranean.
The German government said Hammadi's parole had nothing to do with the case of a German hostage in Iraq who was let go by her captors on Sunday. A brother of Hammadi was convicted in the 1980s of kidnapping Westerners in the Middle East in an attempt to pressure German authorities to release him.
The family of the American petty officer, who was beaten and fatally shot by the hijackers, expressed disappointment Tuesday that one of his killers was free. To have commuted his sentence -- it just doesn't make sense, his mother, Patricia Stethem, said in a telephone interview. They're dealing with terrorists. They've released him back to Lebanon. . . . He's back where he can join up with the Hezbollah organization again.
The State Department said Tuesday that the U.S government still wanted to put Hammadi on trial, based on a 1985 indictment. Three other Lebanese men named in the indictment remain at large and are on the FBI's most wanted list of terrorist suspects, with $5 million rewards for their capture.
Current and former American officials said they had pushed for two decades to gain custody of Hammadi and try him in a U.S. courtroom, but they ran into political and legal resistance from Germany. U.S. prosecutors originally sought Hammadi's extradition after he was arrested at the Frankfurt airport in 1987, but Germany denied the request and put him on trial locally instead.
We were certainly disappointed at the time that we didn't get our hands on him then, and we are disappointed now that he has been released before the end of his full sentence, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. We have demonstrated over the years that when we believe an individual is responsible for the murder of innocent American civilians, that we will track them down and that we will bring them to justice in the United States.
A spokeswoman for the German Justice Ministry said there were no pending requests for Hammadi's extradition at the time of his release. McCormack turned aside questions about that, saying he was not a lawyer. He said the State Department was notified of Hammadi's release before he reached Lebanon, but the spokesman did not specify when.
Legal experts said it was doubtful that Germany could have transferred him to U.S. custody. Under German law, defendants cannot be retried for crimes for which they have already been convicted, even if they are prosecuted in another country.
Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. McCormack was asked if the United States would seek to obtain custody of Hammadi through a process known as rendition, in which the CIA apprehends suspects and flies them out of the country without judicial procedures. He replied that he could not answer the question from this podium.
Court officials in Frankfurt said Hammadi was freed after a regularly scheduled review of his case by parole officials. They would not say why they waited until after he had returned to Lebanon to make the decision public.
The German hostage freed in Iraq on Sunday was Susanne Osthoff, an Arabic-speaking archaeologist who had lived there for years. There is no connection between these two cases, said Martin Jaeger, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry. The identity of Osthoff's kidnappers remains unclear, and German officials have not divulged any details about her time in captivity.
Hammadi is a member of an influential Lebanese family that is active in Hezbollah, which was blamed for a wave of kidnappings in the 1980s, including those of several Germans.
Hammadi's brother, Abbas, was arrested in Germany in 1987 and charged with helping to kidnap two German businessmen in a bid to use them as bargaining chips for Mohammed Hammadi's freedom. Abbas Hammadi was released in 1993 after serving half of his sentence.
At the time, German news media reported that he was let go as part of a deal between the German government and Hezbollah to release two other Germans held hostage in Lebanon. German officials denied that assertion.
Mohammed Hammadi was charged with being one of two hijackers who seized the TWA plane in Athens. He escaped after the hijacking but was arrested at the Frankfurt airport on Jan. 13, 1987, after security agents discovered liquid explosives in his luggage.
In his trial, witnesses testified that after the hijackers discovered that Stethem was a U.S. sailor, Hammadi and an accomplice beat him until he collapsed. Hammadi was seen carrying the handgun that was used to fatally shoot the 23-year-old American. Prosecutors said they never established who pulled the trigger.
A panel of German judges sentenced Hammadi to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 15 years.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who oversaw efforts to extradite Hammadi in 1987, said German authorities threw obstacles in the way of U.S. prosecutors at that time and only reluctantly cooperated.
They were not open at all, she recalled. We knew he would be released early, way back then.
Staff writers John Burgess and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001615_pf.html
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mini-Maverick sought
federal earmarks to fund research on halibut and baby seals. (Maybe to determine correct size of club?)
S/l you've been reading BMW press releases....
I was being facetious ...
Sure it would be great for emissions if the world drove hydrogen vehicles - but have you checked the cost of maintaining the hydrogen vehicle? The cost of replacing a fuel cell battery?
Where does hydrogen come from? Water, natural gas, plants, coal, other fossil fuels are big sources - all expensive and coveted, and potentially in short supply. To produce no pollution it must be pure hydrogen - and you must have enough electricity to separate the hydrogen from say water, without using fossil fuels. The electrical generating capacity in the country will have to double in order to take on the demands of transportation, and then it will all have to convert from fossil fuels to renewable sources.
A lot of sacrifice of comfort and convenience will have to take place - I'm willing do it, how about the rest of the world?
The DOE is funding a billion to produce a hydrogen car - but it will be years away and the expense out of reach for most folks. Recently Obama's cut hydrogen fuel cell funding in the 2010 budget. Such vehicles for now anyway will remain the toys of celebrities and folks who can afford one to run around the neighborhood.
Also, factor in the cost of extracting and producing hydrogen, and the fact that the rest of the car from tires to dashboard, and almost everything we touch in the modern world, is produced from oil - a hydrogen car will do little to reduce pollution. The main problem with hydrogen-powered fuel cells involves the storage and distribution of hydrogen - which no one has answered yet, not on the scale of the masses. And who will build the refueling stations if there are no customers? Who will buy the vehicle if there is no where to refuel? Or if you can plug your care in your garage - is that coal firing the electric plant?
Have you seen the Mini Cooper? It is 5-1/2 feet wide and 4-1/2 feet in height. There's a reason it's called mini.
The best way to stop pollution is curb consumption - and that doesn't seem to be on the political agenda in any nation.
What the heck? U.S. releases secret list
GOD!! LET'S JUST HAND OVER OUR COUNTRY NOW AND GET IT OVER WITH.
U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites by Accident
Document that gives detailed information about civilian nuclear sites and programs, marked "highly confidential," was accidentally made public by the federal government.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of government and civilian nuclear facilities and their activities in the United States, but a U.S. official said Wednesday the posting included no information that compromised national security.
The 266-page document was published on May 6 as a transmission from President Barack Obama to Congress. According to the document, the list was required by law and will be provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Some of the pages are marked "highly confidential safeguards sensitive."
Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the document had been reviewed by a number of U.S. agencies and that disclosure of the information did not jeopardize national security. He said the document is part of an agreement on nuclear material inspection under the IAEA's nuclear nonproliferation effort.
"While we would have preferred it not be released, the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Commerce and the NRC all thoroughly reviewed it to ensure that no information of direct national security significance would be compromised," LaVera said in a statement.
An Energy Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly, said none of the sites on the list are directly part of the government's nuclear weapons infrastructure.
Included in the report, however, are details on a storage facility for highly enriched uranium at the Y-12 complex at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and some sites at the Energy Department's Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, this official acknowledged.
The publication of the list was first reported in an online secrecy newsletter Monday. The document had been posted on the Government Printing Office Web site, but has since been removed from that site.
The document includes both government and civilian nuclear facilities, all of which have various levels of security, including details and location of nation's 103 commercial nuclear power reactors, information readily available from various sources.
The document details the location of the nuclear sites and what is being done there.
For instance, there are nuclear reactors at the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, Pa. This facility is currently working on research into what happens when there are accidents with the nuclear reactors. The project started in 2006 and is expected to end in 2012, according to the document.
There are "zero" national security implications to the publication of this document, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Government's Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood found the document on the GPO Web site and highlighted it in his online bulletin.
"I regret that some people are painting it as a roadmap for terrorists because that's not what it is," Aftergood said.
"This is not a disclosure of sensitive nuclear technologies or of facility security procedures. It is simply a listing of the numerous nuclear research sites and the programs that are under way," Aftergood said. "And so it poses no security threat whatsoever."
To play "devil's advocate," she sought the limelight media attention with all she had and w
Mr. McCain and to try to grab up all the female votes they could, which they thought were going to flock to them from the Hillary camp. The problem was that once she began to open her mouth in interviews, showed her ignorance of current events, foreign policies, and many general knowledge subjects, she showed how dreadfully inexperienced, unprepared, and uneducated in very very vital topics she was.....if we were concerned for our country, fearing that someone very inexperienced and unprepared to be president was about to be in the #2 position, right behind an aging McCain, this certainly should have been discussed, reported, debated, whatever....I do not believe in personal attacks at her family, but the previous poster is right, her family was used as props at every rally, her darling baby, the other children, and her husband "first dude." I do think it went too far and became cruel, but she was in over her head whether she was Republican, Democrat, or Independent.
The White House releases pieces of the speeches
nm
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Yeah right. Served under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II
x
Stop bringing up Bush - this post was not about Bush
I even said we have had some good presidents and some bad ones, but this post was not about Bush. It was about Obama. Yes Bush was one of the worst presidents I'm not arguing with you on that one, but everytime anyone brings up something about our current president they are shot back with Bush this or Bush that and on things that have nothing to do with what the current topic is about. Again, this was not about Bush. It was about Obama.
Oh, more "blame Bush" - except Bush didn't send these out, now did he?
Here's a news flash for you since you apparently haven't heard: BUSH IS NOT IN OFFICE and just today Gallup did a poll showing that THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS THINK OBAMA SHOULD START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS ON HIS WATCH.
G E T A C L U E.
Bush is gone, YEA!!! and yeah, it could darn well be Bush! LOL.
Chimp boy!! But, the cartoon is NOT about Bush, now is it? Give me a break.
George Bush HIMSELF makes it so easy to make fun of George Bush!!!! oh where would I start, so litt
nm
Yes, Bush and Bush alone did this whole mess all my himself
Your speaking as though nobody else had a hand in this, just Bush nobody else. Last I knew we had a democratic congress and they are the ones who got us into this mess. Time to put fault where it belongs - congress. Bush is only a talking head.
Bush....they will still blame Bush.
nm
Corporation owned media does not bash Bush, they bash those that bash Bush.sm
Google Bush and vote fraud and there is tons of information about how many Americans 'voted' for Bush. Poor us and poor troops.
bush says....
bush says we are safer cause of our Iraq war..No way..we have created a culture of American haters.a culture of terrorists against America due to this so wrong war..hopefully the Downing Street Memo and the people now realizing we have sacrified too much will be the downfall for the warmonger in the White House..
Bush
He is shrub, chimp boy and many other names I cant post here but which I call him at home and among friends..oh yeah, dufus, jerk, imbecile...
As soon as Bush went from
"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.
I guess time will tell if justice truly does prevail.
Bush makes Nixon look like a choir boy.
Bush's oil? sm
Well, you all have blamed Bush for everything except original sin. I guess that is next. Thank the environmentalists partly for the mess we are in with oil. And stop deifying Chavez. He is not a good person.
No, Bush, you certainly are no FDR!
No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Wednesday 31 August 2005
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
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A New Orleans resident waded through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded downtown area on Tuesday, August 30, 2005. |
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Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.
My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.
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Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
Bush's war
We are going to deal with the homecoming veterans of Iraq, their mental and physical troubles, for decades to come. I remember when I was a teenager, there was a man who lived down the street from my best friend where we all hung out..He would sit on his stoop. We would go up to the fence and ask him questions..He was spaced out, shaking, stared into space..We, as punky kids, thought it was funny..Later I found out, he was suffering from *shell shock*, post traumatic stress disorder..FROM WWII..He had never recovered..This was in the 1960's and he still was suffering..OMG..I also have a friend who was in Vietnam and he has never been the same after he came home in 1969..These returning vets are gonna experience hell on earth and we along with them..This war did not have to happen..this was an unnecessary war..a war of convenience, of profit and we will pay the price..Not Bush or his cronies, they will be insulated, locked away in their gated communities counting their money..We the working and caring American people, both democrat and republican, will pay the price..The only difference is democrats will admit it, republicans will still try to make excuses for Bushs war.
What? Not Bush?
Nobel Peace Prize 2005: Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez makes the final list
VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: The
Nobel Commission for the Peace Prize has received 199
nominations including Colin Powell, the U2 singer Bono
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
It's Bush's
I wonder how much Bush (i.e. you and
me as TAXPAYERS) pays Faux News for its' *fair and balanced* reporting.
Ya gotta laugh at the morons who actually BELIEVE this nitwit, though!
Bush
Is he president Bush or dictator Bush? How can he expect to form a democracy in Iraq when at the very same time tear ours apart? What message is his administration trying to send to the terrorist now? We must make sure this does not slide by and be forgiven, not this time, Mr. Bush has gotten away with so many lies and then said I made a mistake. He is like the boy who cried wolf. When we let him get away with this illegal spying, and not even in the least way seeking a legal solution for doing it over 4 years! This is not acceptable, this is the highest disgrace of all of his disgraces done to our country. This is one nation under God, not George Bush. My new name for him is King George because his mindset is that of a dictator not a president. We need to clean up our own democracy before go around setting examples for other countries to do the same.
Bush
We should all be thankful that Bush was re-elected, I cannot imagine Kerry as President of the U. S. and now it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to run for President. If anyone votes for her they would have to be nuts. Cannot imagine getting Billy living back in the White House. If Hillary cannot control her own husband, how is she going to run the U.S.???????
Bush is doing no different
He's not targeting people paying off J.C. Penny Bills, Sears Cards etc. That's just ridiculous. Your argument about Bin Laden would work if he was the only terrorist in the world. You can't Monday morning quarterback in the War on Terror. Bush is not the first person to do this, and he won't be the last. This whole issue is just bizarre, and people who seem to be pro-terrorist are more bizarre.
Bush is not above the law...sm
Glad to see some of his fellow republicans are bringing this to the light for him.
Bush would never be a
Democrat. There is no money in it and he couldn't fake the compassion required.
But...I think that the Bush Adm.
is not the only president adm. this happens or will happen under.
The other ones will not bring back the American worker when China will make something for 10-cents and we make it for 10-dollars. All this outsourcing is here to stay. Sad to say.
SO DID BUSH!!!!!
x
if only Bush had
succeeded in passing his privitization of Social Security. Then we would be seeing all you gung-ho True Believer Repubs freaking out at the devastation of your retirement money. You would have to walk the walk instead of pontificating endlessly on your favorite subjects - scarey terrorists, Ayers, socialism, Salinsky, yak, yak, yak. It would serve ya all right.
Just saw this on TV and it's thanks to Bush sm
4 million more people this year from last year are on food stamps... twice as many people as 2005 are on food stamps.... say what you want but this is UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF G W BUSH and McCain voted with him 90 percent of the time. Not only that but McCain admitted during the run for candidacy that he knows nothing about the economy. I saw and heard it with my own senses. He said he doesn't know much about the economy.
People get $101 a month in food stamps and that only covers food, no toothpaste or toilet paper. You repubs act like it's moochers but these are newly impoverished people who had jobs last year and the year before. Wake up is all I can say.
Stop hating and pay attention.
oh get over bush would ya?
is out the door. as much as i dislike bush, he did not create all of this mess and i would rather have another 8 years of him in office and would feel way safer at night than i would with obama. you all can go on and on about how mccain s like bush, blah blah blah.... i disagree. i didn't vote for bush but i would vote for him over obama that is how strongly i feel that obama is so full of hot air. i just cannot believe how many people have their blinders on.
Never said I liked Bush but as other
posters have said, "He is our president and we should respect him" (in response to posts about O.
I disagreed with a lot of Bush's policies, but at least he stood up for the country for 911 (and let's not get into an argument over that). It's all been hashed over and over and over.
There's no winning any argument, just opinions on this board and that's mine.
One More WSJ about Bush
Maybe this will open some eyes, but I doubt it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html
Sorry, but Bush kept us from
Not many other presidents went through as much as Bush did in office. The 9/11, Katrina, Rita. Stopping a war on our own land, etc. I can't imagine what Kerry would have done after 9/11.
Way to go Bush! (sm)
You can now add another 9500 people (from DHL) to your list of unemployed citizens. You just keep sitting up there doing nothing while the country crashes around you. Awesome!
Go Bush!
Don't let those old ugly homeless people get in the way of your master plan. You sit there and stand firm for what you believe in--help thyself. And if those pesky reporters aren't on the straight talk express with ya, well you can just send them to Gitmo.
you mean...Go away, Bush.....nm
nm
That's Bush for ya!
Remember, OBAMA IS NOT PRESIDENT YET. You can't begin to blame anything on him until AFTER he takes the oath of office.
Everything that has happened in the last eight years happened and is continuing to happen under the BUSH ADMINISTRATION and a REPUBLICAN SENATE that still holds fillibuster control, and a lot of things Bush "signs into law" are later secretly amended to include "signing statements" that really mean "only if I decide I want to." Hopefully, Obama will be able to find all of Bush's abuses and undo the damage, but it would probably take eight years of just doing THAT to find them all.
The "myth" of the Democrats being totally in charge hopefully is slowly moving more toward a reality, but it isn't there yet.
By the way, as an example of how gracious and kind Obama is, after all the terrible things Lieberman said about him, he still wants to include him in the Democratic Party. Obama and his beautiful family are definitely a class act!
This is because Bush & Co.
ONLY care about the richest of the rich and have always only cared about them. They simply don't care about the average American and have practically eliminated the middle class over the last eight years.
Obama knows this and wants to help the middle class survive.
Bush believes in that old "trickle down" theory. That obviously hasn't worked because of all the greed at the top.
Obama believes in the "bottom up" theory, which, to me makes perfect sense. Create the market by the consumers, and then, in good old capitalism style, the market will bear what the consumers can afford.
Bush has been the socialist (actually, more in line with fascism after buying banks and all the corporate welfare), so if we're going to continue to have "socialism" that instead helps the average American who is working two or three jobs to survive, am I in favor of that? You betcha! 
Hopefully Bush will be next....(sm)
 A friend of mine said some time ago during the election: *Bush and Cheney are looking for another 4 years in office, but if we're lucky they'll get 10 to 20.*
All Bush needs....(sm)
is for congress to declare war.
Lately, it seems that we back whatever government is in agreement (profitable would probably be a better word) with us, bomb the ones who don't agree with us if they are small enough, and for the ones we don't agree with who are too big to tackle (North Korea for example)---we'll just complain about those. I don't think it has anything to do with the regular people who live there at all (Afghanistan for example). However, when it comes to Israel, we always hear a different tune.
I don't think that Bush would
bother with a little formality like declaring WAR, especially if his ultimate aim is martial law, plus he never cared much for the "rules" of the US as it regards the Constitution, etc.
I agree with your points about Israel. I think we need to be objective.
I'm no Bush fan for sure
These past six years have been the worst since Clinton was in office. The first two years of Bush wasn't too bad. They were'nt the greatest (and I'm not saying they were), but for some reason the past six years have been really bad. I don't blame it on Clinton. Bush really made of muck of things since he's been in. But that's not saying that the Clinton years were a barrell full of monkey's. I think both Presidents have disgraced themselves and the office they sat in, but I don't link the two together. They were both at fault for a lot of things they did completely on their own. It seems like both republicans and democrats seem to make a mess of the whole thing, so why can't we give an independent a chance at the office or even someone from the Constitution party. Why has American come down to only a democrat or republican will ever be the president. Neither party seems to be doing a good job at it. I say it's time to clean house - fire everyone (and I mean EVERYONE), and start the slate clean. Do away with the two parties because all they seem to be good for is dividing people. Each side always blames the other side and I am truly sick of it all. There are many indenpendents and free thinkers quite capable of doing the job properly. It is so hard to have any kind of trust in anyone in the government anymore.
Bush Sr. Bush Jr and now Jeb.
No American dynasties? Yeah, right.
So what was Bush doing 09/10, or
any of the days and months BEFORE 9/11? MIA me thinks. He had been briefed in these matters of terrorists wanting to do America harm, and he did nothing, very sadly, for the US. He just ran rickshaw over the Constitution with anti-American policies which ruined our national moral credibility and doubled our national debt. America would have been better off without a president these last 8 years, sadly. A thousand times NO THANKS, MR. BUSH.
Bush was
sitting in a Florida classroom when informed of the attacks
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