SEVEN ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE PROTEST AGAINST IRAQ WAR

By Mike Ferner
Washington – Holding a banner that read, “GOD FORGIVE AMERICA,” seven peace activists were arrested yesterday in front of the White House, in a civil disobedience protest against the war in Iraq.
Arrested by U.S. Park Police were Brian Terrell, Ed Bloomer, and Elton Davis, all from Catholic Worker communities in the Des Moines, Iowa area, David Goodner, University of Iowa student, Eileen Hansen, a Catholic Worker from the Winona, Minnesota, Jeff Leys, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV), and Bernie Meyer, a retired social services worker from Olympia, Washington.
The seven were charged with the federal misdemeanor of demonstrating without a permit, fined seventy-five dollars, and released yesterday evening. The action was part of VCNV’s “Winter of our Discontent” demonstratons in the month leading up to the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20.
Terrell organized the group of 15 from Iowa that included students from Loras College, a hospital worker, and a farmer from Missouri who drove 140 miles to Des Moines to join them.
“If not now, when?” Terrell replied when asked why they drove 20 hours overnight to get arrested in the nation’s capital. “Some people consider civil disobedience an extreme measure for extreme times. If these aren’t extreme times I don’t know what are.”
The Maloy, Iowa farmer and Catholic Worker added, “We came here to use two complimentary methods to protest this war. Some of our group are visiting members of Congress, and some are putting our bodies on the line.”
Goodner, the 25 year-old Iowa Hawkeye, said his reason was “a deep concern for the plight of the world. I worry where the world is heading when I think of global warming and war. I believe the capitalist model of globalization is the root cause of the institutional problems facing us, and governments aren’t going to solve those problems, individuals are.”
Bloomer, 58, an Army draftee who served from 1966-68, is also a member of Veterans For Peace. He said he became a Catholic Worker in 1983 when he was active in the Nuclear Freeze movement to stop the spread of atomic weapons, because he agreed with the Worker’s approach. “They say if you see something that ain’t right, fix it. I see half the world starving without a crust of bread while are resources are going to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the right thing to do and it’s good to show your colors.”
The entire group demonstrated on the sidewalk in front of the White House fence, walking slowly with placards and banners for about 30 minutes. The seven who were arrested took their signs to the portion of the fence ruled off-limits to protests where they stood, attracting the attention of Park Police who warned them they risked arrest.
When they refused to move, police called in a large team to make the arrests which included six officers on motorcycles, one on horseback, and over a dozen in patrol cars and unmarked vehicles including several command officers, with four Secret Service officers observing.
After police roped off a large, square area in front of the protesters, a lieutenant, speaking through a patrol car loudspeaker, warned the seven that “You must leave the enclosed portion of the White House sidewalk. All those not leaving will be arrested.” Three warnings later, officers approached the activists and began handcuffing and searching them one at a time. To cheers from supporters and under the eye of dozens of tourists, the arrestees were lead into a large police wagon and taken away. The whole operation took about 90 minutes.
Last night, Leys said they had been processed, fined, and released later in the day around 5:00 pm.
The former union representative from Milwaukee and three others are participating in a 34-day, liquids-only fast and vigil at the Capitol as part of the Winter of Our Discontent. He noted the fasters are observing the period between the February 15, 2003 when millions of people around the world protested the likely U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the date of the invasion, March 20. He added that VCNV plans additional protests in Washington and elsewhere in the country before March 20.
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Ferner is a freelance writer from Ohio.

Who REALLY Won The Election? - Camp Casey and Germany

Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote
By Brian Skoloff / Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.
Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida — and its 27 electoral votes — by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.
BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.
Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.
"I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added. "But with that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to."
Palm Beach County and other parts of the country switched to electronic equipment after the turbulent 2000 presidential election, when the county's butterfly ballot confused some voters and led them to cast their votes for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The Supreme Court halted a recount after 36 days and handed a 537-vote victory to Bush.
Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper procedures.
"Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor. "All of these circumstances are valid reasons for concern, but they do not on face value substantiate that the machines are not reliable."
Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the company's machines worked properly. Sequoia's machines are used in five Florida counties and in 21 states.
"There was a fine election in November 2004," Shafer said.
She said many of the errors in the computer logs could have resulted from voters improperly inserting their user cards into the machines. The remaining errors would not affect the vote results because each unit has a backup system, she said.
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections, said she was not aware of the report and had no comment.
Harris said one machine showed that 112 votes were cast on Oct. 16, two days before the start of early voting, a possible sign of tampering. She said the group found evidence of tampering on more than 30 machines in the county.
However, Harris said it was impossible to determine what information was altered or if votes were shifted among candidates. ******************************************************************************* Camp Casey and Germany
By Cindy Sheehan
I have been invited to speak to the European Union Parliament in March in Strasberg, Germany . My message will be one of peace and non-violent unity against the out of control murderous and disastrous policies of the Bush Administration. I wrote extensively about meeting with other world leaders in my article, "Friends don't let Friends Commit War Crimes."
My message to the EU will focus on "we the people" forcing the leaders of all countries to work diplomatically and peacefully to solve problems. It is time we reach across artificial borders of lines drawn on a map to forge bonds of love and friendship with all members of humanity no matter what color, religion, language group or nationality that other person is. Killing other members of the human race is barbaric and abhorrent and should never be used to solve conflicts. This is so important with the current beating of the war drums against Iran, and we must not let off the President of Iran for his inflammatory and non-peaceful statements. The wonderful and innocent citizens of Iran don't deserve the fate that the undeserving citizens of Iraq received and are receiving on a daily basis still.
In the frenzy and excitement of my trip to Germany, some well meaning pacifists in the area have scheduled me to set up a Camp Casey outside of Landstuhl, Germany, in front of the military hospital. I won't agree to do that.
The Camp Casey movement is pro-peace and pro-soldier. We love our troops so much that we want them to come home alive from the fiasco in the Middle East.
Camp Caseys have been set up all over the USA and the world and they are set up in front of the seats of power. The politicians and the war machine got us into this war, our soldiers are trying to protect each other and do the best that they can do under horrifically difficult circumstances.
The Camp Casey in Germany could be moved to a place where people with decision making power can see it. The soldiers have very little to say in their fates after they enlist (which is an entirely different subject) but especially the ones who have already been wounded in the service of their country...no matter how evil and greed-serving the phony mission is.
Let's set up Camp Caseys in front of recruiter's offices to stop our children from even enlisting to wear a uniform for the war profiteers. Let's set up Camp Caseys in front of the Pentagon...Congress...Congressional offices...embassies...the White House...propaganda media centers...war profiteers...President's vacation homes...Karl Rove's DC home...the list for valid protest locations is endless...but not in front of our troops.
Our struggle is with the industrial military complex and the people who put our soldiers in harm's way in the first place for no valid reason and who are keeping them in harm's way despite all evidence that this war is a nightmare and a mistake.
Let's leave our soldiers out of our protests. They have been put through so much by their commander in chief and his callous cronies already.

Speak for Yourself - On the Brink in Iraq

Speak for Yourself
...a message from Cindy Sheehan
While we were camping out in hot and humid Crawford, Texas last August, trying to meet with George Bush and trying to end the war, a right-wing organization called Move America Forward (to oblivion?) started a bus tour called: Cindy, You Don't Speak for Me.
Move America Forward does some nice things, like sending coffee to our troops. It is unfortunate for the families of the almost 2,300 killed troops that the organization doesn't send non-defective body armor, GPS devices, or IED jammers to save the lives of the troops that have been put in harm's way for the politicians' lies and cowardice and corporate greed. I think these things would be a little more useful than coffee.
Move America Forward has every right to exist and to express their views. However, the organization claims to be "...a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization committed to supporting America's efforts to defeat terrorism and supporting the brave men and women of our Armed Forces." When in all actuality MAF supports George Bush's war of terror against the world and against America. And if Move America Forward is non-partisan, then I am the darling of the White House.
I truly don't believe that sending coffee to our troops and putting yellow "Support our Troops" magnets on cars is supporting the troops.
Coffee is good, I love coffee myself. I just don't understand how sending our young and brave people off to die in a war that has been proven over and over again to be based on lies is supporting the troops. I don't understand how cutting the VA budget and closing VA hospitals is supporting our veterans. I don't understand how exposing our brave young people to depleted uranium, white phosphorous and enhanced napalm is supporting them. I don't understand how forcing our troops to use WMD's (and also conventional weapons) against innocent fellow members of the human race is supporting our troops.
Deborah Johns is a member of Move America Forward and as a mom who has a son in the Marines, is a vocal critic of mine and has been telling everyone that I don't speak for her for months. She, in fact, is planning a new "Cindy doesn't speak for me" event in San Diego where I will be speaking on February 27th at the Thomas Jefferson Law School.
I have news for Deborah and for the rest of America and the world: I never said I spoke for Deborah, or anyone else.
I speak for Cindy Sheehan. Only Cindy Sheehan.
I expect everyone else to speak for themselves. That is each and every one of our duties and responsibilities as Americans and human beings. I wish someone would show me anywhere that I said I ever spoke for anyone but myself.
Whether Deborah likes it or not, I don't want her son to die in this illegal and immoral war. With all my heart and soul, I do not want her to become a Gold Star Mom: Whether one supports the murder and mayhem (on both sides), or not, it is not a good thing. As a matter of fact, it is an indescribably awful and disordered thing to bury a child. I don't want anymore Gold Star Moms to be made by and for the chickenhawks who cower behind their desks and send other people's children off to fight their imaginary battles.
Deborah Johns blames "al Qaeda" for our military deaths (including Casey Sheehan's) in Iraq! http://www.tjslgop.org/ Please, trust me, if I did speak for Ms. Johns her opinions would be more informed.
Casey was killed on April 04, 2004 by Shi'ite militia loyal to Moqtada al Sadr in Sadr City, Baghdad. Even George Bush says that most of the killing in Iraq is done by "Saddamists and rejectionists" and the terrorists are the "smallest" group: (Speech given by George Bush in December, 2005 in Philadelphia). There was no al-Qaeda operating in Iraq before the 2003 invasion by American forces. Saddam had no ties to al-Qaeda. As a matter of fact, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose somewhere.
However, Moqtada al-Sadr is another story. He fomented the rebellions in Fallujah and Baghdad in April of 2004 that killed many of our troops, including Casey and 11 others on the 4th. He is a Shi'a cleric who is an Iraqi by birth and citizenship. He is the leader of the Mahdi Army who killed Casey and so many other American soldiers. He is one of the 82% of Iraqi citizens who want the US out of Iraq and apparently one of the 49% who think that it is okay to kill Americans (Recent British Military poll). I don't think it is okay to kill Americans, for God's sake, Casey was killed. But I also don't think that it's okay to kill Iraqis, either. The killing is continuing because George Bush and his band of criminals invaded a country that was no threat to the United States of America. Now the war profiteering, warmongers are forcing our children to occupy a country that is now (thanks to BushCo) in the middle of a very bloody civil war. When is it going to stop?
I believe, along with thousands of members of such organizations as Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Gold Star Families for Peace, that supporting the troops means bringing them out of this mess alive, whole and healthy.
We peace groups are struggling so hard and so tirelessly so that our brave young men and women walk off of the airplanes bringing them home to their families and not be unloaded from the cargo area in a cardboard box as Casey and so many others have been. Our brave troops that have been killed meaninglessly and senselessly were human beings who deserved to have wonderful, long, and productive lives: not baggage, or cannon fodder for our homicidal, out of control, misleaders.
Accusing the members of our peace organizations of not supporting the troops is patently manipulative and ridiculously false: we are the troops; we have children, spouses, and other relatives that are troops. We love the troops. We support them as we are calling for their immediate and safe withdrawal.
I encourage Deborah Johns and the others who have their own opinions and their own voices to speak for themselves...and not advertise who doesn't speak for them. I could list thousands...even millions of people who don't speak for me, and whom I don't speak for, but that is counter-productive.
Please speak for yourselves.
In these days of the stealing of our freedoms while telling us it keeps us safe, please speak for yourself. In this dark hour of the suppression of our civil rights, please speak for yourself. In these inconceivable and horrifying times of our leaders committing crimes against humanity and inhumane torture, please speak for yourself.
If you speak for peace and justice, please speak louder and more often.
Cindy Sheehan is the proud mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was 24 when he was KIA in Sadr City, Iraq on 04/04/04. She is also the author of Not One More Mother's Child available at http://www.koabooks.com/. Cindy is the founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace. Cindy is above all the very proud mother of Carly, Andy, and Janey Sheehan who hold down the fort in California.
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On the Brink in Iraq By Robert Dreyfuss TomPaine.com
Friday 24 February 2006
With Iraq perched at the very precipice of an ethnic and sectarian holocaust, the utter failure of the Bush administration's policy is revealed with starkest clarity. Iraq may or may not fall into the abyss in the next few days and weeks, but what is no longer in doubt is who is to blame: If Iraq is engulfed in civil war then Americans, Iraqis and the international community must hold President Bush and Vice President Cheney responsible for the destruction of Iraq.
The CIA, the State Department, members of Congress and countless Middle East experts warned Bush and Cheney - to no avail - that toppling Saddam could unleash the demons of civil war. They said so before the war, during it and in the aftermath, and each time the warnings were dismissed. Those warnings came from people like Paul Pillar, the CIA veteran who served as the US intelligence community's chief Middle East analyst, from Wayne White, the State Department's chief intelligence analyst on Iraq and from two CIA Baghdad station chiefs who were purged for their analysis. Pillar, who wrote this month in Foreign Affairs that pre-war intelligence on Iraq was distorted by the Bush-Cheney team, is being excoriated by the right.
For the most radical-right neoconservative Jacobins amongst the Bush-Cheney team, the possibility that Iraq might fall apart wasn't even alarming: they just didn't care, and in their obsessive zeal to overthrow Saddam Hussein they were more than willing to take the risk. David Wurmser, who migrated from the Israeli-connected Washington Institute on Near East Policy to the American Enterprise Institute to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans to John Bolton's arms control shop at the State Department to Dick Cheney's shadow National Security Council in the Office of the Vice President from 2001 to 2006, wrote during the 1990s that Iraq after Saddam was likely to descend into violent tribal, ethnic and sectarian war.
In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous "Clean Break" paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : "The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state." After Saddam, Iraq would "be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families," he wrote. "Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq's] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition." Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to "expedite" such a collapse. "The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance."
Such black neoconservative fantasies - which view the Middle East as a chessboard on which they can move the pieces at will - have now come home to roost. For the many hundreds of thousands who might die in an Iraqi civil war, the consequences are all too real.
The bankruptcy of the Bush-Cheney Iraq policy is revealed in the fact that the United States has succeeded in pitting itself now against two major "resistance" groups in Iraq. The first is the Sunni-led, mostly Baathist and military resistance, which has battled US forces in Baghdad and the so-called Sunni triangle to the north and west. The second, which is growing in the ferocity of its anti-Americanism, is the Shiite religious forces led by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army, and their allies, who have begun routinely to denounce the United States for its opposition to their plans to create a Shiite-dominated, Iranian-allied Islamic Republic of Iraq. Abdel Aziz Al Hakim, SCIRI's chieftain and former commander of its Badr Brigade paramilitary force, has all but declared war on the United States, blaming Ambassador Khalilzad for giving a "green light" to the bombers by insisting that Shiite militias be disarmed. Proclaimed Hakim:
"For sure, the statements made by the ambassador were not made in a responsible way and he did not behave like an ambassador. These statements were the reason for more pressure and gave green lights to terrorist groups. And, therefore, he shares in part of the responsibility."
And even the oracle-like Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose supposedly nonpolitical stance looks more and more like a cover for shrewd and calculating political ambition, overtly threatened this week to order the unleashing of Shiite militias in a civil war mode.
But the escalating political rhetoric is built on a foundation of escalating inter-communal violence. Ethnic cleansing is proceeding apace. The bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra ought not to be seen as a conspiratorial effort to provoke civil war, but merely as a symptom of that incipient war. As a Sunni city north of Baghdad, it is likely that ethnic cleansers planned the attack as a means of terrifying Shiites in that part of Iraq to flee southward to the Shiite enclaves. Scores of Iraqi cities, towns, and neighborhoods are undergoing a similar pattern of terrorism and death squads aimed at ethnic cleansing.
What is especially scary to Shiites is that the destruction of the Golden Dome follows an historic pattern first laid down by the Wahhabi conquerors of the Arabian peninsula in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the Wahhabi Arab army made demolition of Shiite mosque domes its signature and launched a crusade against alleged idolatry by Shiites, who were disparaged by the Wahhabis as heretics. The Kurds, too, standing back from the Sunni-Shiite battles, are engaging in their own, anti-Arab ethnic cleansing in and around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which President Jalal Talabani of Iraq, a Kurd, has called "the Jerusalem of Kurdistan."
It is all ugly and likely to get much uglier. So far, hundreds of Iraqis on all sides have died since Tuesday, scores and perhaps hundreds of mosques attacked, execution-style slayings proliferated, and ordinary Iraqis driven into hiding or into exile. A weekend curfew has Iraq on the knife's edge.
Like the Sarajevo assassination that precipitated World War I, the attack on the mosque may trigger a war, but it won't be the cause. The cause is far more deep-rooted, embedded in the chaos and bitterness that followed the US invasion of Iraq and America's deliberate efforts to stress sectarian differences in creating the Iraqi Governing Council and subsequent government institutions. If the current crisis doesn't spark a civil war, be patient. The next one will.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website: http://www.robertdreyfuss.com/.

Many Events leading to One Result MONEY

Osama, Saddam and the Ports By Paul Krugman The New York Times
Friday 24 February 2006
The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new - the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.
So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.
Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.
But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.
The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers.Osama, Saddam - what's the difference?
Now comes the port deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
The administration also tells us not to worry about having Arabs control port operations. "I want those who are questioning it," Mr. Bush said, "to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."
He was being evasive, of course. This isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's a company controlled by the monarchy in Dubai, which is part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan.
But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs."
Finally, the ports affair plays in a subliminal way into the public's awareness - vague but widespread - that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed deliverer of democracy to the Middle East, and his family have close personal and financial ties to Middle Eastern rulers. Mr. Bush was photographed holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (now King Abdullah), not the emir of Dubai. But an administration that has spent years ridiculing people who try to make such distinctions isn't going to have an easy time explaining the difference.
Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination (which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be O.K. Instead, Mr. Bush should have lost his credibility long ago over his diversion of U.S. resources away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda and into an unnecessary war in Iraq, his bungling of that war, and his adoption of a wrongful imprisonment and torture policy that has blackened America's reputation.
But there is, nonetheless, a kind of rough justice inMr. Bush's current predicament. After 9/11, the American people granted him a degree of trust rarely, if ever, bestowed on our leaders. He abused that trust, and now he is facing a storm of skepticism about his actions - a storm that sweeps up everything, things related and not.
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White House 'Discovers' 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t Report
Friday 24 February 2006
The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.
Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.
Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003, or early January 2004, and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.
Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.
However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.
Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the start of the war in March 2003.
According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Last month, Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney’s office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.
“In an abundance of caution,” Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, “we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”
Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.
Attorneys representing Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, were in court Friday arguing that Fitzgerald should be required to turn over classified material, including highly sensitive Presidential Daily Briefs, to Libby’s defense team.
The defense hopes that the classified materials will establish that Libby was dealing with more pressing matters facing the White House and that he simply did not intend to mislead the grand jury when he testified that he did not disclose Plame Wilson’s name to reporters.
In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.
Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration who is cooperating with the probe.

My Poems

March 2004
My Thoughts Drift Away.....
It's a beautiful day,The lawn fills with smiling faces.
The sounds of years past delight my ears.
Dancing and singing and enjoying the day.
I look to the sky, my thoughts drift away.
How many will die today?

I think of all those who live in fear,
as I listen to the music and enjoy my beer.
Enjoying the day with all the smiling faces.
Do they know how many will die today?
While they partake the sounds of the past.
I look at their faces and realize they do not.
I mention to a friend my thoughts.

With tears running down, I look at the ground.
I pray for the souls that will be set free.
I pray for the mothers and fathers.
I pray for the brothers and sisters,
for the husbands and wives,
and for the daughters and sons.
All will have to live without their loved ones.

I try to enjoy the moment once more, but I cannot.
My soul cry's for all the death we have caused.
I pray for peace in all humans that we can enjoy our moments.
Precious moments we choose to blow away, forever.

*************************************************************************
9/11/04

What I feel in my Heart

I see what I see every day,
All kinds of people acting different ways.
They say we are not for the Red, White and Blue,
It's all because we don't think like you.

I hear in the background the whispers of others,
They think we are doing good for all our brothers.
I fear the hate that they breed,
in my children's future they will bleed.

What happened to the peaceful souls?
Have we forgotten how peace grows?
It's not with the killing of other humans,
But with love all around, looming.

They come and take what is ours away,
And they say it is all OK.
Our jobs, our health care, our freedom are going
While we sit in Iraq and do more killing.

They fight the terror that happened this day
But I do not see it their way.
It is not the ones we kill in this war
it is others that will come back and give us more.

I feel in my heart that we will see the light
Just a question of doing wrong from right.
We all are humans, we all live here together
Just let your love shine and we will be here forever.

OUT OF IRAQ NOW!

REM lead singer Michael Stipe appears at a party during Fashion Week Feb. 5, 2006, in New York. A stellar line-up including Stipe, Rufus Wainwright, and Bright Eyes will join leading peace activist Cindy Sheehan for a New York City concert marking the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 20, concert organizers announced Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. They'll headline the 'Bring 'Em Home Now!' concert. (AP Photo/Stuart Ramson)
Iraqis react at the ruins of a Shrine in Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. A large explosion Wednesday heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite religious shrines, sending protesters pouring into the streets. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets in as many days. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Angry Iraqi Shiites demonstrate in Baghdad's poor neighborhood of Sadr City to protest against the bombing of the holy shrine of al-Hadi in the Iraqi northern city of Samarra. A bomb attack destroyed the dome of one of the world's holiest Shiite shrines, prompting reprisal attacks against 27 Sunni mosques in Baghdad that left six people dead(AFP/Sabah Arar) Iraqi women take part in a protest against the bombing of Samarra's al-Hadi Shi'ite shrine, in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad February 22, 2006. A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, sparking protests, some of them violent, and forcing an urgent government appeal to avoid sectarian reprisals. REUTERS/Muhtaq Muhammad An Iraqi child holds a weapon as Shi'ites take to the streets during a protest in Baghdad's Sad'r city February 22, 2006. A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, sparking street protests and forcing the government to issue an urgent appeal to avert sectarian reprisals. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn United States and Israeli flags to condemn the bombing on the Golden Mosque, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites in the Iraqi city of Samarra, at a rally in Karachi, Pakistan on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

South Florida Peace Movement Events

TO MY FRIENDS IN THE MOVEMENT FOR PEACE & JUSTICE:

I would ask that each of you please take the time to
read this. I have no other way to convey the
importance of this appeal other than by being somewhat
"personal" here despite my use of the very impersonal
tool of a mass mailing on large email lists.

We have some extremely important events and campaigns
coming up that can truly have an impact
nationally--and even internationally—but the success
of this work is in no way guaranteed ahead of time.

Before I get to describe what I’m talking about, for
those of you who prefer to cut to the chase, let me
get right away to what I'm asking. Bluntly put: we
need your participation and your money. If you can’t
participate, we need your money. Here’s what’s going
on.

This Monday, February 27, at Cinema Paradiso in Fort
Lauderdale at 7:30pm, we’re hosting a fundraiser
featuring three amazing and well-known leaders of Iraq
Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace: Stan
Goff, Camilo Mejia, and Kelly Dougherty. We’re also
premiering an incredibly inspiring and moving
half-hour film entitled "Soldiers Speak Out." I had
the privilege of previewing it last night and it is a
MUST SEE, an excellent organizing tool in its own
right, and together with our three speakers, this
event Monday night is one that you don’t want to miss.
This is the program you really want to get your
friends, co-workers, and family to. The ones you
can’t get to go to a protest, or maybe even the ones
who are still on the fence about the war. The cost is
just $10 to get in. There’s a similar event the next
night, Tuesday the 28th at Tap Tap Haitian Restaurant
in Miami Beach (819 5th St.) & starting at 7:00pm,
asking $20 for a buffet or donate what you can. More
info on these events at the end of this message.

If you want to skip to “where do I send the check?”
and forget reading the rest, I’ll make it easy for
you. Here’s what to do. Make checks payable to
Veterans for Peace and send directly to Camilo who has
laid out a lot of money himself to make these events a
success:


Camilo E. Mejia
201 178th Dr. #323
Sunny Isles Beach, FL 33160

We know that Miami’s own Camilo Mejia put himself on
the frontline for the movement by spending eight
months in military prison for his refusal to kill in
Iraq. We can’t make that time up for him, but please
help make sure that our treasured comrade and friend
at least doesn’t lose any money! But beyond making up
expenses (which I am genuinely concerned about),
Camilo and several of us have laid out a lot of money
including money for renting the theater. But beyond
NOT losing money, we really need to raise a TON of
money for the historic March to New Orleans next month
that many of you are aware and which I’ll explain
below. The expenses for that could exceed $100,000.
Please give generously by making out a check to
“Veterans for Peace” and Camilo has asked if folks can
mail it directly to him at the above address.

Please do this one thing and if you could, let me know
with a quick note to me (Paul Lefrak) at
ftlpaul@yahoo.com.

For those who haven’t heard about it, there will be a
historic March next month along the Gulf Coast
composed of veterans and Katrina survivors calling for
justice and an end to the war. Declaring that “every
bomb dropped in Iraq explodes over New Orleans” this
event, “Marching to New Orleans: Veterans and
Survivors March for Peace and Justice” begins Tuesday,
March 14, 2006 in Mobile, Alabama and ends Sunday,
March 19, 2006 with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana.


For more info, please go to: http://vetgulfmarch.org
or to http://ivaw.net.

Making stops along the way to directly aid Gulf Coast,
this March—in the spirit of previous historic Southern
marches like the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March--will
draw national and international attention to the
connections that need to be made. Connections between
the never-ending slaughter of war and occupation in
Iraq, the obscene Pentagon budget, and the racist and
classist disregard for the lives of people before,
during, and continuing NOW after Katrina. We’re
seeing how survivors--especially if they’re poor and
Black--are being treated as essentially a domestic
enemy, a threat. And of course, that gets to the
question of who else the government and military
consider to be a domestic enemy or a threat. As we
know from recent disclosures--undoubtedly just the tip
of the iceberg--the Pentagon and the entire “national
security” apparatus considers people like us opposing
the insane slaughter in Iraq or Afghanistan to be the
real threat.

But maybe they’re right. In one sense, we need to be
the “threat” that they’re worried about. After Iraq
and Katrina, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib—the list goes on
and on—all the world can see how their power is
corrupt, wrong, and in fact, illegitimate. I’m sorry,
but I just can’t accept that any group or “special
interest” has any right to jeopardize the continued
existence of all humanity and life on this planet. I
believe strongly that we’re at a real historic
juncture here, at this very time and place here in the
belly of the beast in 2006. I think we need to be a
threat to those who hold the real reins of political
and economic power; those who are getting filthy rich
from their endless wars for oil and empire. Those
interests who are profiting from the continued
devastation in their “rebuilding” i.e., their ethnic
cleansing USA-style taking place right now in New
Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast—and in
neighborhoods throughout the U.S. And forcing people
to choose between prescription medicine and food is
nothing less than a form of violence and domestic
terrorism against poor people and all working people.


There are the two Achille’s Heels for those in power:
the wars abroad and the wars at home. That’s
exemplified so clearly before the entire world by Iraq
(and soon, Iran?) and Katrina. Making these
connections is VITAL if the antiwar movement is to
broaden and gain the active support of much broader
layers of working people, particularly people of
color, that this movement needs in order to make real
advances. Connecting the “gulf” between the
devastation taking place in both Gulfs: the Persian
and the U.S. Gulf Coast. Only by doing so, can we
make real advances in our struggles for peace and for
economic, social, and political justice here and
abroad.

I thank you for taking the time to read this (and
forwarding to others who might be interested), AND for
giving as generously as you possibly can to help with
this with your attendance and your financial help.
Below I will append the detailed info on the events
next week to support the March.


In solidarity,
Paul Lefrak
Broward AntiWar Coalition, South Florida Peace &
Justice Network

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


From the Producers of “The Panama Deception” &
“Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair”...

"SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT"

Please join our three Special Guests, all featured

in the film:

***Stan Goff – Activist writer, Veterans For Peace

***Kelly Dougherty – Leading female GI antiwar

voice,
Iraq Veterans Against the War

***Camilo Mejia – Former Amnesty International
Prisoner of Conscience, Iraq Veterans Against the War

Monday, February 27th:
7:30 PM doors & refreshment stand open.
8:00 PM screening followed by discussion with

Special Guests.

Cinema Paradiso
503 SE 6th Street
Fort Lauderdale

For a Fundraiser and Release Screening of Empowerment
Project’s new documentary.

"This powerful film serves a loudspeaker to the
courageous anti-war and anti-occupation movement
within the military and their families. This half-hour
documentary will serve as a counter-recruitment and
organizing tool for activists, schools, and
organizations. It provides a sober view of the war in
Iraq and an important counterpoint to the
‘stay-the-course’ rhetoric of the Bush
administration."

Cinema Paradiso is located just east of the Broward
County Courthouse and 1 block west of Federal
Hwy/US-1, downtown Ft. Laud, south of the New River.
I-95: between Davie Blvd. & Broward Blvd. exits, head
East. Call 954-525-3456 for more directions.

Tickets $10 - All donations will support the "Marching
to New Orleans: Veterans and Survivors
March to New Orleans" taking place March 14-19, 2006.

Miami Veterans For Peace March Activities

Dear Friends,
The following are some antiwar activities that Veterans For Peace (Chapter 032) will be involved in during the month of March.

1. Sunday, March 5th -"And Then She Moved the Chairs" 2pm at the Publick Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, a play about domestic violence in the military, followed by a "talk-back" where the audience talks with the actors, producers and Veterans For Peace.

2. Tuesday, March 7th - "Sir, No Sir", a film about the GI resistance in Vietnam, shows at 5:30 pm, followed by a panel discussion with Garrett Reppenhagen (DC) who is a former sniper and current member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Patrick McCann (VFP) chapter president. Playing at Cosford Hall (U. Miami); part of the Miami Film Festival (http://www.miamifilmfestival.com/)

3. Saturday, March 11th - VFP monthly meeting at American Legion Post #29 (6445 NE 7th Street, Miami) 1-3pm

4. Sunday, March 12th (1 - 8 pm) - Antiwar Film Festival at the Wallflower Gallery (10 NE 3rd Street, Miami) to kick off South Florida protests around the 3rd anniversary of the war in Iraq.

5. Monday, March 20th (6 - 10 pm) - Also at the Wallflower Gallery. Report from the Veterans March from Mobile to New Orleans. This will be a chance to sum-up our week of antiwar activities, plan new initiatives, and say goodbye to Patrick, who is moving back to Maryland

Moving my blog from AOL

I've been thinking about it for a long time. I've been a member with AOL for 9 years. It's hard to believe I have been giving them money for this long. It is time to move all my belongings out of AOL space and dump their ass.

FIRST REASON: They gave all of our information up to the government without a fight. All of my emails and websites visited have been handed over, just like that.
SECOND REASON: AOL wants to charge MoveOn.org to send me an email. AOL is one corporation I no longer want to be associated with.

I need to figure all of this out, when I have time.

Until then visit my journal/blog on AOL. I try and post everyday

DIVIDED WE STAND What happened to our country?