Pakistan's 9/11: Huge Truck Bomb Strikes Marriott Hotel In Islamabad

A huge truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 150, the police said.

This according to Carlotta Gall, who reports from Pakistan and Afghanistan for the New York Times:

The blast, one of the worst acts of terrorism in Pakistan’s history, went off just a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s house, where all the leaders of government were dining after the president’s address to Parliament.

... an address which was reported as a broadside against both terrorism and US intervention ...

The toll was expected to grow because of reports that people had been trapped inside the six-story hotel, which has been a favorite meeting spot of both foreigners and well-connected Pakistanis in the heart of the capital. The building was quickly engulfed in flames and continued to burn for hours Saturday night.

The bomb left a vast crater, some 40 feet wide and 25 feet deep, at the security barrier to the hotel. Witnesses said security guards and their gate posts were buried under a mound of rubble. A line of cars across the street from the hotel were mangled and trees on the street were charred. Windows in buildings hundreds of yards away were shattered.

In addition to the speech mentioned above, this attack comes mere days after Pakistan's announcement that its military would fight back if American troops attacked on its soil again, and a few days before a scheduled meeting between the presidents of Pakistan and USA, at which the fight against terrorism is on the agenda -- or is the agenda!

Thus, the timing can hardly be coincidental.

And as you can see quite clearly from the photos posted here, this attack is orders of magnitude beyond the suicide terrorism which occurs in Pakistan on a regular basis. In other words, it appears to be state-sponsored. And you can probably guess which state.

You might think everybody would hate these terrorists. But you'd be wrong.

Some people like them.

For some people, terror is good for business.

The presidential candidates lost no time in pointing fingers -- even though they can have no idea who was behind this atrocity.

Barack Obama brings the required combination of rush to judgment and irrational hype:

Today’s attack demonstrates the grave and urgent threat that al Qaeda and its affiliates pose to the United States, to Pakistan, and to the security of all nations.

John McCain sings the same song, but in a different key:

While no organization has yet taken responsibility for this act, it is well known that Pakistan faces an enduring threat from violent Islamic extremism. We must work with the elected government of Pakistan to find those responsible, hold them accountable, and diminish their ability to threaten us and our allies in the future. It also serves as one more demonstration of the need for the next President to work closely with our partners and allies in order to counter the dangers posed by radical Islamic extremism.

So there you have it: the government was "elected" and the threat is "enduring"; that's all the pretext these guys need for another hundred years of war.

But what the heck? Your kids weren't planning to do anything different with their lives, were they?

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Regarding Technical Difficulties And Good Ideas

I've been hamstrung by technical difficulties lately, and I don't want to spend much time writing about them. But I think I should mention that they have been the only reason for my recent net-silence. I'm not depressed or retiring or anything. I've just been stuck.

I've had one machine that couldn't network, and another that could network but wouldn't let me type. For a while my best option was typing on one machine and moving the files to the other with a flash card, but then my flash card malfunctioned. Or at least that's what one of my computers said. But the other one said the flash card was ok ... and it turned out that there was something else wrong with one of the computers... It's been that kind of week, or two! Arggh.

So my most recent post, "Seven Years Of Bad Luck", was composed rather than written, using the mouse but not the keyboard. I copied and pasted Stevie Wonder's lyric, which I found with no apostrophes in the contractions. So I copied an apostrophe from a different page, and pasted it in between the letters wherever it was needed.

I added the photos with a mouse and I added links that way too. And each line in the lyric was linked to a recent WP story about 9/11 or some aspect of the GWOT, except the final line which was linked to the first piece I ever wrote about 9/11.

Did you click on any of the links? Did you even realize there were links? It seemed like a good idea to mention them, because they didn't stand out the way links usually do when they're embedded in normal text. So I wanted to tell you about them, but I couldn't do it without copying and pasting one letter at a time. And that didn't seem like a very good idea at all.

~~~

Even though I haven't been able to blog lately, I have been able to read, and based on my recent reading, the following idea seems very good indeed:

Go to the bank and tell the manager you've made some bad investments lately, possibly a bad decision or two along the way, and you need some help. It's not for you, understand: it's for the people who depend on your company's continued existence -- if not its actual success in the "free" market. You're willing to lose everything, as you'll explain, but you're deeply concerned about all the people who depend on your company.

Tell the bank manager about some of them. He'll probably sympathize. He's made a few investments too -- and some of them no doubt were wiser than others. So focus his attention on your investors, and get him on their side.

When he asks you how much money you need, smile and say "just $85 billion". He'll tell you the bank doesn't have that kind of money.

And that's when you say, "It's ok. I didn't come to you for money. I came to you for help."

"We can get the money from the government."

~~~

We seem to have the technical difficulties solved, and aside from being two weeks behind in my work, I'm not doing all that badly. So I hope to resume blogging shortly.

That seems like a good idea too.

Seven Years of Bad Luck

Very superstitious

writings on the wall

Very superstitious
ladders 'bout to fall


Thirteen month old baby
broke the lookin' glass


Seven years of bad luck
the good things in your past


When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way


Very superstitious
wash your face and hands


Rid me of the problem
do all that you can


Keep me in a daydream
keep me goin' strong


You don't wanna save me
sad is my song


When you believe in things
that you don't understand
then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way


Very superstitious
nothin' more to say


Very superstitious
the devil's on his way


Thirteen month old baby
broke the lookin' glass


Seven years of bad luck
good things in your past


When you believe in things
that you don't understand


then you suffer


Superstition ain't the way
no, no, no, no, no

Stevie Wonder:

More Screwed Now Than Ever Before

My rusty old steed has finally gone to CPU heaven; rather than changing careers, I decided to get a new computer. I do not like the new keyboard at all, nor do I care much for the new OS. And they don't seem to like me, either. So we're having a big battle and not much else is getting done. All my blogs have been dormant.

But I've been reading as much as possible ... and I can't shake the feeling that we're more screwed now than ever before, though it seems hardly anyone agrees with me.

Perhaps that's why I don't agree with them.

I thought Mark Morford was making sense in his newest -- Greetings from "the angry left" -- until the end of his column:

But don't you worry, because there's an even bigger secret looming that the right wing can't really mention right now. See, much as they want to sling "angry left" around and hope it sticks, there's simply no getting over the fact that, despite how it will take the Obama administration many years to repair the incredible damage Hurricane Bush hath wrought, most of us on the left are actually feeling pretty damn good these days. Happy, even.

See, we know the tide has turned. The Bush Dark Days are nearly over. The Obama groundswell is historic, extraordinary, unstoppable. The GOP had its turn, was handed six years of unprecedented, unchecked power, and very nearly destroyed the country. Even Republican leaders now openly admit their party is a mess, shattered and gutted by Bush, will take years and decades to restore to something resembling dignity. And McCain/Palin? An aberration, one of the most disquieting quasi-conservative tickets to ever give a nation the creeps.

So then, trust me when I say, try as they might, "the angry left" won't stick. As anyone with the slightest sense of history and poetic justice knows, such a jab is merely the final, desperate wailings of the bankrupt, the shameful, and the doomed.

It's too bad how he's got it all twisted around there. It's America that's bankrupt and doomed, not the Republican party. As for shameful, I would use that word to describe Barack Obama and the people who still support him.

But Mark Morford thinks the Obama administration is going to reverse the depredations of the Bush administration and that's why The Left is not Angry. Uh-huh. Sure, Mark.

The only problem with this analysis in my opinion is that there isn't a shred of evidence that Obama wants to do anything of the kind, and plenty of evidence to the contrary; in the meantime Obama is showing himself to be utterly shameless with respect to a massive war crime as well as the betrayal of the vast majority of American voters. In other words, he is ready to be Commander-in-Chief.

And Mark Morford may speak for The Left but he certainly doesn't speak for me. Oh well.

At At-Largely, Jeff Huber slays a pack of stupid little lies in his newest -- They Lied with Their Boots On -- but along the way he sips from the Magical Chalice containing the Big Lie. As usual.

Huber rips into David Petraeus for saying things he can't prove, writing:

It's the eye-watering lies of the neoconservative oligarchy that everyone remembers, but I've come to believe the little lies they tell reveal more about their malignant nature, and I'm particularly interested when these venial mendacities get dropped not by our politicians, but by our ever growing phalanx of political generals.
...

[Petraus] said that senior Al Qaeda leaders "might be" diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area. He also said that Al Qaeda "might be" reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front. What made him say this "might be" happening is "some intelligence that has picked this up.” In case you're wondering what "some intelligence" might consist of, Petraeus explained that, "It's not solid gold intelligence." And "not solid gold intelligence" means what, exactly, General?

“There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," Petraeus finally told AP, which means in point of fact that the entire story about al Qaeda in Iraq transferring itself to the Bananastans is total f***ing bulls***; but that didn't keep Petraeus from telling it or the Associated Press from running it.

And that's quite legitimate, but on the other hand consider this nonchalant reference to an even bigger lie, portrayed here as truth:

... you can smuggle dribs and drabs of martyrdom interns from Baghdad to Islamabad or wherever. You'd do that with key leadership personnel, or with special task operatives like the carload of out-of-towners who pulled off the 9/11 attacks. But it's not like the Petraeuses of this world would have you believe ...

The problem, of course, is that IF a cartload of out-of-towners had pulled off the 9/11 attacks, the entire terror war might be somewhat justified and the fact that Petraeus is exaggerating wildly now would be of minor import.

In order to believe the big lie, you also have to believe that a 47-story skyscraper that wasn't hit by a plane disintegrated in seven seconds, due to thermal expansion -- the first and only building to do so in the history of the world.

Yeah, right!

The NIST report by its own admission is utter horse manure, but Barack Obama buys the 9/11 Myth just as fully as John McCain does ... and while guys like Huber and Morford drink from the poisoned chalice, shake their bloody pom-poms and dream their pipe dreams, the biggest lies of all are still standing, and growing, and being reinforced in hundreds of millions of ways.

The foul and bloody chimera erected seven years ago is becoming more solid all the time.

Meanwhile, Robert Parry has been both Too Bad and As Usual lately as well, as prior trends have continued, and the former Consortium News has now become Cheering For Obama.

Recently, Parry has been writing about McCain and Palin and how phony they are; nothing of the sort about Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They're the good guys in an ever-evolving tale of news and politics, from one of the formerly great investigative journalists of his bygone era. Very sad and getting worse.

Why, among all the chumps writing today, do I pick on these three? Some sort of moral deficiency on my part, I suppose.

I used to think these three writers were excellent. I used to read them all the time.

Now I can't break the habit, even though they make me so sad and/or angry so often.

Sometimes I think that by sidestepping the big questions and/or supporting the big lie and/or ignoring the words and sponsors of their chosen candidate, they're insulting my intelligence.

Other times I think I'm insulting my own intelligence by continuing to read them ... but what else is there to read?

Plenty.

Gandhi is all the way in Australia but he can see what Obama is up to.

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama said the surge of American forces in Iraq has ``succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,'' though Iraqis still haven't done enough to take responsibility for their country.

``The surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,'' Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in a recorded interview broadcast tonight on Fox News's ``The O'Reilly Factor'' program.

Gandhi asks:

Is it time to vote Green yet?

Yes!

John Caruso was paying attention and his post at A Distant Ocean bears the perfect title: "Obama and O'Reilly share a sip from the blood cup":

Just in case you missed it, here's another lovely nugget (or see the video here) to share with your Democrat friends:

Sen. Barack Obama: “Bill, what I’ve said is—I’ve already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Bill O’Reilly: “Right! So why can’t you just say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?"

Sen. Obama: “Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence…”

O’Reilly: “Yeah?”

Sen. Obama: “...but the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility! And we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 [billion] to $12 billion a month.”

O’Reilly: “And I hope, if you’re president, you can get them to kick in and pay us back.”

Sen. Obama: “They’ve got $79 billion in New York!”

O’Reilly: “And I’ll go with you!”

Sen. Obama: “Let’s go!”

O’Reilly: “We’ll get some of that money back.”

As a friend said: let's make them pay for the whip we're using to beat them!

Exactly. Why not? Iraqis have to take responsibility for their own country now; this is an ownership society! And as the "Angry Left" used to say, we don't own Iraq.

Instead Iraq is the scene of an enormous and ongoing crime -- a war crime, a crime against humanity, the most serious offense against the most serious legal strictures ever passed -- and nobody -- left, right, or center -- will say anything about it, other than a few madmen on the net.

Chris Floyd must be the maddest of all the internet madmen; his four most recent posts combine to tell an awesome tale:

Surge Protectors: Obama Embraces Bush-McCain Spin on Iraq

Both parties support a heinous lie, a brutal crime against innocent people which is hailed as a success. Meanwhile ...

Work of Evil: Beyond the Worst-Case Scenario in Somalia

... yet another country is being destroyed as part of the Terror War, by proxy and for gas and oil, and without the knowledge or consent (or, apparently, much concern) of the American people.

Rebel Yell: Resistance and Renaissance in the Age of Terror

What's a self-respecting human to do? Submit to the craziness, or fight back in defense of life and dignity?

Fight back against what? The root of all evil?

Gobblers on Parade: Portrait of a Highly Successful System

Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie...

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The Biggest Lie Of All

I happened to be walking through the living room while my wife was watching Laura Bush address the Republican National Convention, and I actually heard the First Lady say this:

George is using America's influence to lift up lives around the world. Millions of children are protected from malaria by mosquito nets the American people provide. In Afghanistan and Iraq, 50 million people are now living in freedom. And let's not forget President Bush has kept the American people safe.

Four simple clear sentences punctuated by lots of applause. Let's look more closely, shall we?

George is using America's influence to lift up lives around the world.

Indeed he is! Thanks to America's influence, George has lifted up more than a million people in Iraq and tens of thousands of others in Afghanistan -- and he has lifted them all straight up to heaven!

Millions of children are protected from malaria by mosquito nets the American people provide.

The generosity of the American people is astounding. Who'd a thunk we could spare all this mosquito netting? It's a testament to the goodness of America -- the world's greatest democracy. And George Bush's greatest foreign policy achievement, unless you count the GWOT:

In Afghanistan and Iraq, 50 million people are now living in freedom.

And they're loving every minute of it, too.

Let me tell you something about the freedom 50 million people are enjoying in Iraq and Afghanistan: It's a freedom most of my readers have never known, and the lucky ones never will.

I call it "Freedom from Worrying about the Future".

The Americans and their depleted uranium munitions have made Afghanistan and Iraq uninhabitable. This is most unfortunate for the people who are now living there.

But it won't bother them for very long, and once they're gone it won't bother anybody anymore.

And in the meantime, since they have no future, they have nothing to worry about.

They are free to develop radiation poisoning, suffer and die at their own convenience.

And let's not forget President Bush has kept the American people safe.

Right.

Above all, let's not forget -- let's never forget -- who was President of the United States on September 11, 2001.

Let us never forget about all the warnings he was given before the attacks of that day -- not one of which he heeded.

The White House's top counter-terrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, has testified that from the beginning of George W. Bush's presidency until September 11, 2001, Clarke attempted unsuccessfully to persuade President Bush to take steps to protect the nation against terrorism. Clarke sent a memorandum to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on January 24, 2001, "urgently" but unsuccessfully requesting "a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack."

In April 2001, Clarke was finally granted a meeting, but only with second-in-command department representatives, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who made light of Clarke's concerns.

Clarke confirms that in June, July, and August, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the president in daily briefings of unprecedented indications that a major al Qaeda attack was going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. Yet, Clarke was still unable to convene a cabinet-level meeting to address the issue.

Condoleezza Rice has testified that George Tenet met with the president 40 times to warn him that a major al-Qaeda attack was going to take place, and that in response the president did not convene any meetings of top officials. At such meetings, the FBI could have shared information on possible terrorists enrolled at flight schools. Among the many preventive steps that could have been taken, the Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, and airports might have been put on full alert.

According to Condoleezza Rice, the first and only cabinet-level meeting prior to 9/11 to discuss the threat of terrorist attacks took place on September 4, 2001, one week before the attacks in New York and Washington.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush was presented a President's Daily Brief (PDB) article titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The lead sentence of that PDB article indicated that Bin Laden and his followers wanted to "follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'” The article warned: "Al-Qa'ida members--including some who are US citizens--have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks."

The article cited a "more sensational threat reporting that Bin Laden wanted to hijack a US aircraft," but indicated that the CIA had not been able to corroborate such reporting. The PDB item included information from the FBI indicating "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” The article also noted that the CIA and FBI were investigating "a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

The president spent the rest of August 6, and almost all the rest of August 2001 on vacation. There is no evidence that he called any meetings of his advisers to discuss this alarming report. When the title and substance of this PDB article were later reported in the press, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice began a sustained campaign to play down its significance, until the actual text was eventually released by the White House.

New York Times writer Douglas Jehl put it this way: "In a single 17-sentence document, the intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush in August 2001 spells out the who, hints at the what and points towards the where of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that followed 36 days later."

Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the joint congressional committee investigating the performance of the US intelligence community before September 11, 2001, reported in mid-September 2002 that intelligence reports a year earlier "reiterated a consistent and constant theme: Osama bin Laden's intent to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States."

That joint inquiry revealed that just two months before September 11, an intelligence briefing for "senior government officials" predicted a terrorist attack with these words: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

Given the White House's insistence on secrecy with regard to what intelligence was given to President Bush, the joint-inquiry report does not divulge whether he took part in that briefing. Even if he did not, it strains credulity to suppose that those "senior government officials" would have kept its alarming substance from the president.

Again, there is no evidence that the president held any meetings or took any action to deal with the threats of such attacks.

Let us never forget how diligently he obstructed the investigation into those attacks.

Following September 11, 2001, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took strong steps to thwart any and all proposals that the circumstances of the attack be addressed. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to renege on his public promise on September 23 that a "White Paper" would be issued to explain the circumstances. Less than two weeks after that promise, Powell apologized for his "unfortunate choice of words," and explained that Americans would have to rely on "information coming out in the press and in other ways."

On Sept. 26, 2001, President Bush drove to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia, stood with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and said: "My report to the nation is, we've got the best intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the C.I.A." George Tenet subsequently and falsely claimed not to have visited the president personally between the start of Bush's long Crawford vacation and September 11, 2001.

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission on April 14, 2004, Tenet answered a question from Commission member Timothy Roemer by referring to the president's vacation (July 29-August 30) in Crawford and insisting that he did not see the president at all in August 2001. "You never talked with him?" Roemer asked. "No," Tenet replied, explaining that for much of August he too was "on leave." An Agency spokesman called reporters that same evening to say Tenet had misspoken, and that Tenet had briefed Bush on August 17 and 31. The spokesman explained that the second briefing took place after the president had returned to Washington, and played down the first one, in Crawford, as uneventful.

In his book, At the Center of the Storm, (2007) Tenet, refers to what is almost certainly his August 17 visit to Crawford as a follow-up to the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" article in the CIA-prepared President's Daily Brief of August 6. That briefing was immortalized in a Time Magazine photo capturing Harriet Myers holding the PDB open for the president, as two CIA officers sit by. It is the same briefing to which the president reportedly reacted by telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now." (Ron Suskind, The One-Percent Doctrine, p. 2, 2006). In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to Crawford to make sure that the president stayed current on events."

A White House press release suggests Tenet was also there a week later, on August 24. According to the August 25, 2001, release, President Bush, addressing a group of visitors to Crawford on August 25, told them: "George Tenet and I, yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon."

In early February, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney warned then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle that if Congress went ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up to testify. As pressure grew for an investigation, the president and vice president agreed to the establishment of a congressional joint committee to conduct a "Joint Inquiry." Eleanor Hill, Executive Director of the Inquiry, opened the Joint Inquiry's final public hearing in mid-September 2002 with the following disclaimer: "I need to report that, according to the White House and the Director of Central Intelligence, the president's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this inquiry remains classified, even when the substance of the intelligence information has been declassified."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was created on November 27, 2002, following the passage of congressional legislation signed into law by President Bush. The President was asked to testify before the Commission. He refused to testify except for one hour in private with only two Commission members, with no oath administered, with no recording or note taking, and with the Vice President at his side. Commission Co-Chair Lee Hamilton has written that he believes the commission was set up to fail, was underfunded, was rushed, and did not receive proper cooperation and access to information.

A December 2007 review of classified documents by former members of the Commission found that the commission had made repeated and detailed requests to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and had been told falsely by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested.

Let us never forget how heroically his administration protected the rescue and recovery workers by claiming the air in NYC was safe to breathe when it really wasn't.

The Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) August 21, 2003, report numbered 2003-P-00012 and entitled "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement," includes the following findings:

"[W]hen EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

"As a result of the White House CEQ's influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information about the potential health effects from WTC debris were not included in EPA- issued press releases. In addition, based on CEQ's influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and cautionary information was deleted from EPA's draft version of that press release. . . . The White House's role in EPA's public communications about WTC environmental conditions was described in a September 12, 2001, e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator's Chief of Staff to senior EPA officials:

"'All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council] before they are released.'

"According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one particular CEQ official was designated to work with EPA to ensure that clearance was obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator for the EPA Office of Communications, Education, and Media Relations (OCEMR) said that no press release could be issued for a 3- to 4-week period after September 11 without approval from the CEQ contact."

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House has said in an interview that the White House played a coordinating role. The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said: "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."

In the cleanup of the Pentagon following September 11, 2001, Occupational Safety and Health Administration laws were enforced, and no workers became ill. At the World Trade Center site, the same laws were not enforced.

In the years since the release of the EPA Inspector General's above-cited report, the Bush Administration has still not affected a clean-up of the indoor air in apartments and workspaces near the site.

Screenings conducted at the Mount Sinai Medical Center and released in the September 10, 2004, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), produced the following results:

"Both upper and lower respiratory problems and mental health difficulties are widespread among rescue and recovery workers who dug through the ruins of the World Trade Center in the days following its destruction in the attack of September 11, 2001.

"An analysis of the screenings of 1,138 workers and volunteers who responded to the World Trade Center disaster found that nearly three-quarters of them experienced new or worsened upper respiratory problems at some point while working at Ground Zero. And half of those examined had upper and/or lower respiratory symptoms that persisted up to the time of their examinations, an average of eight months after their WTC efforts ended."

A larger study released in 2006 found that roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers tested at Mount Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems while or after working at ground zero. This study showed that many of the respiratory ailments, including sinusitis and asthma, and gastrointestinal problems related to them, initially reported by ground zero workers persisted or grew worse over time. Most of the ground zero workers in the study who reported trouble breathing while working there were still having those problems two and a half years later, an indication of chronic illness unlikely to improve over time.

Why were the authorities in such a hurry to dismantle the wreckage and get it out of there?

Was destroying the evidence so important that they had to sacrifice the health of thousands of Americans to do it?

Absolutely! The evidence had to be destroyed so the "investigation" could begin!

How else could they fix the intelligence around the policy?

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Updates: Amy Goodman Charged And Released / DN! Producers Face Felony Charges / Russians Protest Yevloyev Murder

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and her two detained colleagues have been released from police custody in Minnesota, but their "legal" troubles are only beginning.

Goodman has been charged with obstruction of a "legal process" and interference with a "peace officer".

And her two colleagues, DN! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, face felony rioting charges!

Kouddous and Salazar were detained while covering a street protest; Goodman was arrested when she sought their release.

There's a bit more at DN! (and, they say, much more coming soon).

The folks at DN! note that

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.

OpEdNews has a huge piece from Mark Crispin Miller and Rady Ananda called "Thugs with Badges: Crackdown in Minneapolis" which describes what else has been happening there.

Late Tuesday night, at 2:00 a.m. on August 27th, Minneapolis police arrested members of the Glassbead Collective, and searched their rooms, as a pre-emptive measure against protest at the Republican National Convention. Glassbead is a New York City group that documents police misconduct and First Amendment activity around the United States.

Vlad Teichberg, a journalist from Glassbead, reports being detained at 2 am in Minneapolis on August 27th. Notes, computers, cameras, cell phones, clothing, and money were confiscated by police.

Democracy Now! stresses that the arrests of Goodman and the two producers were "unlawful". But that's a horribly quaint and outmoded concept in the post-9/11 world.

This is the GWOT, remember? The Global War on the Rule of Law.

The OpEdNews piece quotes Vlad Teichberg:

... police are manufacturing accusations. This particular problem can undermine the very essence of our democracy. It is fundamentally un-American and threatens the very fabric of our existence, because if the people who are told to enforce the laws are free to violate those laws, there can be no rule of law. And what do we have? We have a society run by a bunch of thugs with badges.

I must respectfully disagree with Vlad Teichberg.

The very essence of our democracy is electoral integrity, and that is already gone. There is nothing left to undermine. Both major parties and the mainstream media are complicit in a vast array of crimes, and they have sufficient power, especially over the echo chamber and the election machinery, to make sure we can't vote one war criminal out of office without voting another one in.

This police action is fundamentally American. It defines the very fabric of our existence. The people who are told to enforce the laws are indeed free to violate those laws. They do it as a matter of course in the name of protecting us. And their so-called supervisors won't even risk perjuring themselves by telling Congress otherwise.

The rule of law is a thing of the past. The law is now nothing more than a political weapon. If you think it's there to protect you ...

~~~

Here's a follow-up on the "accidental" murder-by-police of the dissident Russian journalist and website owner Magomed Yevloyev, from Reuters in the International Herald Tribune via Larisa:

1,000 protest killing of journalist in Ingushetia

More than 1,000 people gathered in Russia's troubled Ingushetia region Monday to protest the death of Magomed Yevloyev, a leading journalist and opposition leader who was shot over the weekend while in police custody.

Yevloyev, owner of the opposition Internet site www.ingushetiya.ru, was the most high-profile Russian journalist to be killed since the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya was shot outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

The police said he had been shot by accident when he tried to grab an officer's gun.

His supporters and human rights groups said they did not believe that version of events.

Yevloyev had often clashed with Ingushetia's Kremlin-backed leader, Murat Zyazikov, and officials had tried to close down his Internet site.

Protesters gathered Monday in a central square of Nazran, Ingushetia's biggest city, around a truck that was carrying Yevloyev's coffin.

"They killed our colleague in a dastardly and open way," Magomed Khazbiyev, a protest organizer, told the crowd. "If the federal authorities do not intervene in what is happening, we have the right to demand Ingushetia's secession from Russia."

The protesters responded with loud shouts of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great." About half of them left when Yevloyev's body was taken for burial. About 500 people remained and said they would not leave until Zyazikov had left his post.

It's kind of funny, isn't it? -- how Reuters and the IHT will give us detailed reports about a grievous offense against freedom of the press in Russia, but none of the major media have anything to say about what's been happening in Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Denver before that!

Not funny-haha, you understand. Funny-treasonous.

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Amy Goodman And Two Democracy Now! Producers Arrested At RNC

Journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! was arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota, this afternoon, apparently for seeking the release of two of her DN! colleagues who had been detained earlier.

Video of Amy Goodman's arrest is embedded below. More details from DN! follow.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. [...]

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being [unlawfully] detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County [Sheriff] Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First [Amendment] rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which [Kouddous and Salazar] were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar is a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists from the nation’s leading independent news outlet.

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

How much police state do you feel like tolerating?

If you've had enough and you feel like doing something about it, you might want to call Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0), and politely but firmly demand the immediate release of the journalists Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar.

If that prospect doesn't thrill you, it could be because the USA has turned into a militarized police state and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it anymore. And in this case you might want to prepare yourself for the inevitable by reading "The Gulag Archipelago".

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