Ollie North, the 'true hero' - whatever....

• Dear Car Czar.....sm - ms
  • Oliver North......................................sm - ms
    • Ollie North, the 'true hero' - whatever.... - orangeorange
    • Yes, a true hero (sm) - a conservative voice in the wilderness
  • Very well stated. LOL. I have always like Ollie North. nm - MT and worn out
    • Ummm....what about that whole Iran-Contra Scandal...LOL (nm) - Just the big bad
      • Ollie North - orangeorange
      • Well yes, there is that LOL, but he is still a very entertaining speaker/writer. nm - MT and worn out

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I didn't say I was pro N. Korea.  You obviously need to hone your psychic skills.  What I am saying is that yes, I am anti nukes.  I am also anti "let's jes kill 'em all" mentality that we've had to put up with for the previous 8 years. 

Another thing you might want to consider is that N. Korea is not completely without allies.  Unless we're willing to catch one of those nukes, I would think it best if we didn't start playing hot pototoe with them. 

xx

Rush Limbaugh said Bill-O is the Ted Baxter of Fox news.  Falafa, falafa, falafa.

How does spending time in a prisoner of war camp make you a hero?  You would really rather have had a man who is a "post-traumatic stress disorder" attack waiting to happen, with his hand on the big red button?

If being a POW is heroic, Guantanamo is the LAND OF HEROES.

I was surfing a bit this morning and found this news article from N. Korea. I doubt things will cool off for a long time, if ever. The article headlines state: "Lee Myung-Bak's Group Military Provocations Blasted. From there, it calls him a puppet war monger and states how Myung-Bak outbursts "over the non-existant provocation (my emphasis) by the North."

http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

I finally had time to sit down and watch the movie No End in Sight.  Finally!  The truth is coming out.  I encourage everyone to watch it, and considering I read a recent poll that 40% of Americans think that Sadam was behind 911 and that is why we invaded Iraq, tell everyone you know to watch it too.

Like Whorn, I was riveted.  It angers me.  President Bush, his administration, and Congress should be held accountable for allowing this nightmare to happen and to continue.  President Bush in particular is complicit in destroying Iraq and should be brought out to answer a few questions to say the least.  This is all at his feet due to ineptness to lead and putting the wrong people in charge of things they had no business being in charge of and not listening to the advice of those who knew best simply because he didn't want to hear it.  I am rather surprised that there are not more protests marching on Washington.  I think there may be before he exits the White House. 

The most important thing for me is it solidified my belief that we need to pull out of Iraq posthaste.  I was on the fence about pulling our troops out.  I am no longer on that fence. 

I could go on and on, it's a passionate subject.  It is predicted that this venture will cost 1.5 trillion dollars.  That should shoot the conservatives right up the wazoo. How could anyone possibly justify that?  Who the heck is going to pay for it?  Think our taxes will go up?  I'd bet on it.  Oh, probably not, they'll budget cut to cover the blunder and leave more of our children poorly educated. Over 3000 Americans dead, well over a half a million dead Iraqi's, the government won't disclose how many Iraqi are currently being detained.  I could scream.

You've got to watch it.

U.S. and Russia to Enter Civilian Nuclear Pact
Bush Reverses Long-Standing Policy, Allows Agreement That May Provide Leverage on Iran

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 8, 2006; A01

President Bush has decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, administration officials said yesterday, reversing decades of bipartisan policy in a move that would be worth billions of dollars to Moscow but could provoke an uproar in Congress.

Bush resisted such a move for years, insisting that Russia first stop building a nuclear power station for Iran near the Persian Gulf. But U.S. officials have shifted their view of Russia's collaboration with Iran and concluded that President Vladimir Putin has become a more constructive partner in trying to pressure Tehran to give up any aspirations for nuclear weapons.

The president plans to announce his decision at a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg next Saturday before the annual summit of leaders from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, officials said. The statement to be released by the two presidents would agree to start negotiations for the formal agreement required under U.S. law before the United States can engage in civilian nuclear cooperation.

In the administration's view, both sides would benefit. A nuclear cooperation agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world, a lucrative business so far blocked by Washington. It could be used as an incentive to win more Russian cooperation on Iran. And it would be critical to Bush's plan to spread civilian nuclear energy to power-hungry countries because Russia would provide a place to send the used radioactive material.

At the same time, it could draw significant opposition from across the ideological spectrum, according to analysts who follow the issue. Critics wary of Putin's authoritarian course view it as rewarding Russia even though Moscow refuses to support sanctions against Iran. Others fearful of Russia's record of handling nuclear material see it as a reckless move that endangers the environment.

You will have all the anti-Russian right against it, you will have all the anti-nuclear left against it, and you will have the Russian democracy center concerned about it too, said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear specialist at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Since Russia is already a nuclear state, such an agreement, once drafted, presumably would conform to the Atomic Energy Act and therefore would not require congressional approval. Congress could reject it only with majority votes by both houses within 90 legislative days.

Administration officials confirmed the president's decision yesterday only after it was first learned from outside nuclear experts privy to the situation. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the agreement before the summit.

The prospect, however, has been hinted at during public speeches in recent days. We certainly will be talking about nuclear energy, Assistant Energy Secretary Karen A. Harbert told a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event Thursday. We need alternatives to hydrocarbons.

Some specialists said Bush's decision marks a milestone in U.S.-Russian relations, despite tension over Moscow's retreat from democracy and pressure on neighbors. It signals that there's a sea change in the attitude toward Russia, that they're someone we can try to work with on Iran, said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy Department official in the Clinton administration who now directs the Carnegie Moscow Center. It bespeaks a certain level of confidence in the Russians by this administration that hasn't been there before.

But others said the deal seems one-sided. Just what exactly are we getting? That's the real mystery, said Henry D. Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Until now, he noted, the United States has insisted on specific actions by Russia to prevent Iran from developing bombs. We're not getting any of that. We're getting an opportunity to give them money.

Environmentalists have denounced Russia's plans to transform itself into the world's nuclear dump. The country has a history of nuclear accidents and contamination. Its transportation network is antiquated and inadequate for moving vast quantities of radioactive material, critics say. And the country, they add, has not fully secured the nuclear facilities it already has against theft or accidents.

The United States has civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with the European atomic energy agency, along with China, Japan, Taiwan and 20 other countries. Bush recently sealed an agreement with India, which does require congressional approval because of that nation's unsanctioned weapons program.

Russia has sought such an agreement with the United States since the 1990s, when it began thinking about using its vast land mass to store much of the world's spent nuclear fuel. Estimating that it could make as much as $20 billion, Russia enacted a law in 2001 permitting the import, temporary storage and reprocessing of foreign nuclear fuel, despite 90 percent opposition in public opinion polls.

But the plan went nowhere. The United States controls spent fuel from nuclear material it provides, even in foreign countries, and Bunn estimates that as much as 95 percent of the potential world market for Russia was under U.S. jurisdiction. Without a cooperation agreement, none of the material could be sent to Russia, even though allies such as South Korea and Taiwan are eager to ship spent fuel there.

Like President Bill Clinton before him, Bush refused to consider it as long as Russia was helping Iran with its nuclear program. In the summer of 2002, according to Bunn, Bush sent Putin a letter saying an agreement could be reached only if the central problem of assistance to Iran's missile, nuclear and advanced conventional weapons programs was solved.

The concern over the nuclear reactor under construction at Bushehr, however, has faded. Russia agreed to provide all fuel to the facility and take it back once used, meaning it could not be turned into material for nuclear bombs. U.S. officials who once suspected that Russian scientists were secretly behind Iran's weapons program learned that critical assistance to Tehran came from Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.

The 2002 disclosure that Iran had secret nuclear sites separate from Bushehr shocked both the U.S. and Russian governments and seemed to harden Putin's stance toward Iran. He eventually agreed to refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council and signed on to a package of incentives and penalties recently sent to Tehran. At the same time, he has consistently opposed economic sanctions, military action or even tougher diplomatic language by the council, much to the frustration of U.S. officials.

Opening negotiations for a formal nuclear cooperation agreement could be used as a lever to move Putin further. Talks will inevitably take months, and the review in Congress will extend the process. If during that time Putin resists stronger measures against Iran, analysts said, the deal could unravel or critics on Capitol Hill could try to muster enough opposition to block it. If Putin proves cooperative on Iran, they said, it could ease the way toward final approval.

This was one of the few areas where there was big money involved that you could hold over the Russians, said George Perkovich, an arms-control specialist and vice president of the Carnegie Endowment. It's a handy stick, a handy thing to hold over the Russians.

Bush has an interest in taking the agreement all the way as well. His new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership envisions promoting civilian nuclear power around the world and eventually finding a way to reprocess spent fuel without the danger of leaving behind material that could be used for bombs. Until such technology is developed, Bush needs someplace to store the spent fuel from overseas, and Russia is the only volunteer.

The Russians could make a lot of money importing foreign spent fuel, some of our allies would desperately like to be able to send their fuel to Russia, and maybe we could use the leverage to get other things done, such as getting the Russians to be more forward-leaning on Iran, Bunn said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701588.html?sub=new

A little bit of history on North Korea and the dilemma. Read the rest of the article from the link below.

"So it's another step backwards again with North Korea.

In defiance of a Security Council resolution (1718) passed after its first nuclear test in 2006, it has now announced a second. It has also implied that it has solved some at least of the problems it encountered in the first.

The actual technical achievement remains to be examined. But the test itself represents a continued belligerency whose destination is unknown. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8066719.stm

He was on The View and he stated he lives in Mexico 9 months out of the year. He loves Mexico. He's against waterboarding and his answers to questions they asked him were way out there as if he hates the country.

He's a real patriot, isn't he...NOT!

White House plays chicken with a war hero

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  November 19, 2005

THE WHITE House is so deluded, it actually believes it can turn a soaring hawk into a scrounging chicken. Stung by the call by US Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania to pull out of Iraq, Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, said this week, ''It is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Talk about playing the chicken-hawk card. A White House where most of the architects of war avoided combat in their own lives dared to associate two people who are worlds apart in world views. Moore made the anti-Bush ''Fahrenheit 9/11, which infuriated the right wing by breaking box office records for a documentary film. Moore was booed at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Murtha is the 73-year-old recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for combat duty in Vietnam. He is a Democrat whose three decades in office are marked by support of President Reagan's policies in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Murtha was a top Democratic supporter of the 1991 Gulf War. He wants a constitutional ban on burning the American flag.

In a 2002 press briefing, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz termed the support of politicians like Murtha for the Pentagon as ''wonderful. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, incumbent Dick Cheney said, ''One of my strongest allies in Congress when I was secretary of defense was Jack Murtha.

For all those shows of patriotism, Murtha was skeptical about the rush to invade Iraq in 2003 of Iraq even though he voted to give President Bush the authorization to go to war. He publicly said Bush beat the war drums before building an international coalition. Murtha said he had not seen anything in intelligence reports that indicated an imminent threat. Murtha said Bush ''has put the country in such a box. He can say, 'You'll undercut me if you don't vote for this resolution.'

One month after the invasion, when no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found, Murtha warned that American credibility was at risk. By the September, the absence of weapons of mass destruction made him join the much more liberal House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, in calling for Bush to fire the planners of the invasion. Despite the proclamation that ''we achieved a marvelous military victory, Murtha became increasingly frustrated with the chaos of the occupation. This summer, Murtha said administration officials were ''not honest in their assessment that they were winning the ongoing battle.

Finally, this week, Murtha unleased a scathing attack on Bush's Iraq policy. He called it ''a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. He said he believed military officials when he visited Kuwait just before the war and they showed him where American forces would be attacked by weapons of mass destruction when they approach Baghdad. But now, with no end to the killing in sight, he said, ''The US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home. . .They have become the enemy.

Murtha talked about soldier after soldier he has visited in hospitals, wounded and maimed by the invasion. Yet, there's more terrorism now than there ever was and it's because of what? Is it because of our policy? I would say it's a big part.

In perhaps the most humble admission of his press conference, Murtha said, ''The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.

This came the day after Cheney threw mud in the direction of critics who gave Bush his war authorization. Cheney accused them of making ''irresponsible comments. He accused them issuing ''cynical and pernicious falsehoods to make ''a play for political advantage.

He said, ''The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory -- or their backbone.

This was the same Cheney who gave us some of the greatest falsehoods of this generation with ''There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction . . . We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons, and that we would be ''welcomed as liberators.

Murtha clobbered Cheney's words the next day, saying, ''I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.

This hawk still soars, above the scrounging chicken hawks.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.  

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