El Presidente On the March

All Hail the Uniter

Yet Another Cover Up
You wonder how many there could be, don't you? Well, at least one more. It turns out that the 9/11 Commission Report seems to have been whitewashed to protect.. Saudi Arabia.

In January 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet attended regular briefings as Malaysian intelligence conducted surveillance of a “terrorist summit meeting” in Kuala Lumpur. Among the attendees were Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two men who would later allegedly hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon.

A week after the Malaysian summit, al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi traveled to the United States. According to the 9/11 Commission report, they arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15 and “spent about two weeks there before moving to San Diego.” (9/11 Commission report, p. 215, chapter 7). The footnote for this item shows that the Commission relied on a different FBI report, “‘Summary of Pentbom Investigation,’ Feb.29, 2004 (classified version), p.16.”

But the FBI timeline contradicts this claim, placing the alleged hijackers in San Diego with specific details. According to the timeline, the two men resided in Apartment 152 at Parkwood Apartments, San Diego, from Jan. 15 through Feb. 2, 2000.

...

In other words, according to the only public account, both Al-Mihdhar and Hazmi were in San Diego, not Los Angeles, contrary to the Commission’s report.

Why did the Commission use an alternate source for the whereabouts of the two men, when the FBI’s own timeline said they were in San Diego by Jan. 15, the same day as their arrival in the US?

Paul Thompson, author of the The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11--and America's Response, has been wading through the FBI timeline since its release. His preliminary analysis can be found at the website of the History Commons (formerly known as the Center for Cooperative Research).

Thompson believes that the possible motive for the Commission to alter the dates is to obscure official Saudi ties to the hijackers.

He points to the redaction of the name of a person who is a known employee of a Saudi defense contractor, Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived at the same location.

“We know it’s Bayoumi,” said Thompson, “because after 9/11, the Finnish Government mistakenly released a classified FBI list of suspects that showed Bayoumi living in apartment #152 of Parkwood Apartments.” That information is available here.

“But also important is that it strongly suggests that the hijackers already had a support network in Southern California before they arrived,” Thompson continued.

“In the official version of the story now, the hijackers drift around L.A. listlessly for two weeks before chancing to come across Bayoumi in a restaurant [according to Bayoumi’s account],” Thompson added. “Whereupon he's an incredible good Samaritan and takes them down to San Diego, pays their rent, etc.”

”But from the FBI's timeline, we now know the hijackers started staying at Bayoumi's place on Jan. 15 – the very same day they arrived,” Thompson says. “So obviously they must have been met at the airport and taken care of from their very first hours in the US. That's huge because the FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US.”

So basically, the 9/11 Commission ignored FBI evidence of yet more Saudi involvement in the WTC attacks to protect our oil-peddling friends from the Arabian pennisula.

Nauseating, isn't it?

Source: Raw Story

Bloated
According to the ACLU, the list of suspected terrorists employed by the Bush junta today is now 900,000 names long.

More that 900,000 people are currently listed as suspected terrorists on the US government's "do not fly" list, and that number will grow to beyond 1 million by summer, says the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, stated in a press release from the group. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

What Barry fails to realize here is that the Bush people use a different definition of 'terrorist'. To them, anyone who raises questions about their policies, votes Democratic, etc, could well be a terrorist.

Their poll numbers certainly terrify them.

Source: Raw Story

Agriculture Undersecretary
So it appears there might be one way to get a Bush crony to do their job: credibly threaten them with jail.

A federal judge decided Wednesday not to hold a Bush administration official in contempt over court orders requiring a federal environmental study on the effects of a chemical fire retardant.



U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy had threatened to send Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey to jail after the U.S. Forest Service was slow in responding to court orders, suggesting the agency was trying to skirt environmental law.

Although Molloy was critical of the agency, he said it ultimately filed the necessary documents. He added the threat of contempt helped spur the agency into action.

"It would be inappropriate under the circumstances to hold (Undersecretary) Rey or the Forest Service in contempt," Molloy said.

During testimony on delays in preparing the environmental study, Molloy noted the Forest Service took 2 1/2 years to comply with his order. He called it a "systematic disregard of the rule of law."

Testimony found similar studies usually take about 1 1/2 years. Molloy said the agency took a full year just to form a task force to get started on the environmental assessment.

"That's pretty unreasonable, don't you think?" Molloy said. "Nothing happens for a year? That's not complying with the rule of law, is it?"

Well, this is a bit if progress.

If only a bit.

Source: Raw Story

Turkey in Iraq
So Turkey is now involved in an actual invasion in Northern Iraq. A NATO ally is invading Iraq... and we're doing nothing.

Oh well.

Turkey insisted Thursday that its offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq will continue "as long as necessary," while US President George Bush mounted pressure on Ankara to wrap up its incursion quickly.

As US Defence Secretary Robert Gates held talks in Ankara, Turkish warplanes bombed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq and intensive fighting was reported on the ground near a major rebel base.

Seven Kurdish rebels were killed during clashes Wednesday, bringing to 237 the number of separatist fighters killed in a week of fighting, the Turkish army reported Thursday.

In Washington, Bush said the incursion, launched on February 21, should be "limited and... temporary in nature."

He urged the Turkish military "to move quickly, achieve their objective and then get out... as quickly as possible."

That's nice! Keep your invasion brief, would ya, fellas?

So much for that Iraqi Sovereignty thing.

Source: Raw Story

Lashes
Yet more from our good friends in Saudi Arabia.

A married university professor has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in prison for having coffee with a female student.

...

When the man arrived at the meeting place, the girl was alone, and he was arrested for being in a state of khulwa - seclusion - with an unrelated female.

The professor, who has not been named, was reported to be a married man in his late 50s with children.

Contact between unrelated men and women is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, where religious police patrol public places to enforce Islamic law on behalf of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Abdullah al-Sanousi, the professor's lawyer, said his client had upset some of the commission's trainees on a course that a number had failed.

How lovely.

I know I've said this before, and I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but... why the hell are we helping these people? These religious nuts are our NATURAL ENEMY. We should be doing everything reasonable to grind this theocratic nightmare into the dustbin of history.

Source: The Telegraph

Modern Technology, Medieval Politics

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut (In which case, try the Middle East)

Accusing Saudia Arabia of Abusing Liberty? You've Gone Too Far!
So the Saudis have arrested a blogger critical of their lousy, festering, tottering theocratic monarchy.

I'm so shocked I just might have to blink.

No, wait. It passed.

Source: The Washington Post

Highly Speculative Report Says Pakistani Military Offed Bhutto
That's not the part that really interests me about this article though. Anyone can speculate. But take a gander at this:

"It's worrying when half of your lower or mid-level Pak intelligence analysts have bin Laden screen savers on their computers," a former official of the CIA was reported to have commented.

Yeah, that IS troubling. Since when did Osama have a screensaver anyway?

Source: UPI


Man Wraps Car Around Pole, Blames Prehistoric Reptile
Seriously. He blames his car wreck on a giant winged reptile.

Wenatchee police cited the man with first-degree negligent driving. A breathalyzer test showed "a minimal amount of alcohol," said Wenatchee police Sgt. Cherie Smith.

A MINIMAL amount?
Dude, I think it's time you had that breathalyzer checked out. It seems to be reading a bit low.

Source: HeraldNet


Blackwater Kicked Out of Mercenary Club
There's apparently a trade organization for international killers for hire, aka mercenaries. This organization is booting Blackwater for being too savage.

Not making this up.
Source: OpenLeft

Vomit In Your Mouth
Finally, in a story to truly sicken anyone with a conscience or sense of decency of any kind, the last of the Haditha psychos has seen their murder charge dropped. No one will face murder charges for the slaughter of 24 innocent civilians in Iraq.

Not. One. Person.

They killed two dozen people, over several hours, in a rampage of sheer terror, and not one gets a trial for murder.

Not one.

Source: The BBC