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The issue has never been to take away guns, The issue has always been to work to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people…
The NRA has worked hard to make that impossible. Using anonymity, fake screens, and everything possible to keep the criminal element intact.
If criminals weren’t subsidizing the NRA, they should start in order to keep it in business.
During the upcoming legislative session, gun laws designed to allow normal people to have all the guns they want, and abnormal people not to get them, should become a priority.
It is especially sad, when a father on one coast tries to get help for his mentally unstable son on another coast, and can’t in time to save an innocent person’s life…
We can do better; creating a law that requires a gun owner to at least have the mental capacity to drive a vehicle… would be a start. If one is deemed to unstable to drive on our public highways, we could probably be safe and rule out the likelihood of them ever owning a gun….
It is no big deal. Or better framed, it is far less a big deal than seeing your son or daughter shot by someone who should have never had a gun in the first place….
The Dow Jones fell 216 points or 1.6%.
Because of no new news on any movement by the Republicans in regards to the sequester.
This is post number 2000.
The only real significance is it is 150 posts more than where Tommywonk stopped exactly one year and fifteen days ago…
If some future historian looks back, I can only guess they may kindly make some note of the quality of thought that underlies these efforts, but my guess, is no one will ever notice…
Irregardless, as long as the urge to put thoughts down for others continues, we will go on. As usual, with no goal, no direction, and no ulterior motive. Probably upon reflection, my biggest surprise, right here, right now … is that I still enjoy it so much, and can’t wait to jot my thoughts down, click the button, and send them off to where ever cyberspace and the vast internet ocean, lets them drift….
For each of you who have become regular over the years, … thank you friend…
You won’t find this on any domestic news services.
Wiki leaks was booted out from Amazon servers at pressure from the US.
Twitters touting Amazon said:
“It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it.”
“Wikileaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free — fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe,”
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”
Wikileaks was briefly hosted by a California-based internet hosting provider called Everydns, and became briefly accessible through a DNS address. But Everydns dumped it saying it could not afford its other 500,000 customers being affected by the intense cyber attacks targeted at Wikileaks.
WikiLeaks later re-emerged on Friday with a Swiss domain, WikiLeaks.ch.
Anyone and everyone is building mirrors. No one is concerned with the content. Everyone is concerned with the freedom of the internet.
Like Robin Hood, the more Uncle Sam chases its founder Julian Assange, the more legendary he becomes…..
Face it: the damage is done. Whatever was in those documents is already out there. A smart leader would acknowledge the carelessness of his subordinates, and work to turn this negative event, somehow into a positive one.
It sure shows Dick Cheney for what he was. That is something positive ….
I was dissappointed in one of your articles‘ attempts to link Obama with Muslim theology.
It was a stretch too far. Too far in fact that it has made this reader question the integrity of the editorial board of the Washington Post itself, again.
Those of us remembering the Nixon years probably have more loyalty to your paper than should be due. However it is apparent to this astute reader that you have chosen to stop reporting on domestic politics and have begun to propagandize instead…..
This is America where you certainly have the right to publish whatever you will. Likewise as with any Lyndon La Rouche pamphlet, I as a reader have a choice not to read it.
This will be my last chance to inform you that you have lost one more reader and to serve notice that you have progressed down a path, one which you can still change…..As for me, I will continue to most certainly read some of those fine articles you continue to publish, but they will first have have to be screened by a system of bloggers and other filters within the media….
Although this is only my feeling, your clout has been reduce to nothing more than one of the many eyewitnesses at a car bombing…..instead of the puzzle solver, you are only one piece of the puzzle itself.
Although this letter is being addressed to you, it is also meant to inform your advertisers so that they too can make a more precise and correct assessment, the next time they choose to invest their hard-won money into one of your ads………..
In a surprising statement, a retired Lt. Col. has asked troops to obey their credo: duty , honor, country if ever asked to fly into Iran and drop weapons.
“I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.” (Dr., Lt. Col. Bob Bowman)
In an open letter to a new generation of military officers, he asks that they remember the last word of their oath:
Our oath of office is to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Since Congress, whom this retired Lt. Col has implored, is as a body, spineless as our representative Mike Castle, and completely incapable of applying the emergency brakes to this runaway train, he has implored the last residual of spine left in America, the boys and girls in uniform. It is still possible that reason will prevail, and this administration will be shut down, once and for all.
Finally found the original source on this. However there has been an update.
“It was originally reported that five nuclear warheads were transported, but officers who tipped Military Times to the incident who have asked to remain anonymous since they are not authorized to discuss the incident, have since updated that number to six.”
So it was indeed officers who tipped off the Military Times, as was speculated here. But wait! I am confused……which officers? For in the original story posted back on September 5th, we were told that Minot did not even realize nuclear warheads were missing, until they were confirmed as having landed at Barksdale, and once there, they sat unnoticed on the tarmac for ten hours until the Military Times verified they were indeed there. So by default, it was 1) neither officers at Minot, nor 2) the officers at Barksdale who were responsible for alerting the Military Times. And from what we understand, none of the officers aboard the plane knew they were flying “hot”.
The obvious implication from that one statement is that “somewhere out there” were other officers, privy to this transgression which violated nuclear weapons parameters, and were horrified enough to blow the whistle. Whether these warheads were sanctioned for removal by someone in the White House for official business, or were being smuggled out by an unscrupulous arms dealer for profit, it is obvious that all established protocol had been ignored in their transference.
“That’s perhaps what is most worrisome about this particular incident — that apparently an individual who had command authority about moving these weapons around decided to do so,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
“It’s a command and control issue and it’s one that calls into question the system, because if one individual can do that who knows what can happen,” he said. According to the Military Times:
“ Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said a host of security checks and warning signs must have been passed over, or completely ignored, for the warheads to have been unknowingly loaded onto the B-52…..“It’s not like they had nuclear ACMs and conventional ACMs right next to each other and they just happened to load one with a nuclear warhead,” Kristensen said……The Defense Department uses a computerized tracking program to keep tabs on each one of its nuclear warheads, he said. For the six warheads to make it onto the B-52, each one would have had to be signed out of its storage bunker and transported to the bomber. Diligent safety protocols would then have had to been ignored to load the warheads onto the plane, Kristensen said……All ACMs loaded with a nuclear warhead have distinct red signs distinguishing them from ACMs without a nuclear yield, he said. ACMs with nuclear warheads also weigh significantly more than missiles without them………
Even though some officers knew that the plane was flying “hot”, the plane was allowed to fly SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). “The main risk would have been the way the Air Force responded to any problems with the flight because they would have handled it much differently if they would have known nuclear warheads were on board,” Steve Fetter, a former Defense Department official who worked on nuclear weapons policy in 1993-94, said.
The Air Force has disciplined those involved. Along with the 5th Munitions Squadron commander, the munitions crews involved in mistakenly loading the nuclear warheads at Minot have been temporarily decertified from performing their duties involving munitions, pending corrective actions or additional training,
It is quite possible that it was a simple mistake; someone did not know exactly what they were doing. (This error ironically comes after the Air Force announced last March, that the 5th Bomb Wing won two service wide safety awards during fiscal year 2006.)
Were it truly a mistake then it would be the first time in 39 years, since 1968, that it has been public that a nuclear warhead has flown on a US bomber. Nuclear weapons are normally transferred on special cargo planes, carefully constructed to contain radioactivity in the event of a crash; never on the wings of bombers.
According to Kristensen, the error could not have come from confusing the Advanced Cruise Missile with a conventional weapons since no conventional form exists. The munitions Airmen should have been easily able to spot the mistake. Other routine procedures were violated which awkwardly suggests a rather obvious explanation for the error. The military munitions personnel were acting under direct orders, though not under those passed down through the regular chain of military command.
The quick reaction of the Air Force, the issuing of a public statement describing the seriousness of the issue, and the launch of an immediate investigation, all suggest that whatever occurred, was outside the regular chain of military command extending from Gates downward.
If the regular chain of command was indeed bypassed, then we have no choice but to inquire as to whether the B-52 incident was part of a covert project, whose classification level exceeded those held by the very officers in charge of nuclear weapons at Minot. Some traits point out, that this was indeed a secret transference of nuclear warheads, known only to a select few within the military service. For 1) in this case, protocol was violated at Minot in not signing out the nuclear warheads, 2) was violated by installing “the red caps” under the B52, and 3) was violated by flying unrestricted between the airbases. Quite possibly, solely because of the tip provided by patriotic and non-corrupt officers, someone’s attempt to garnish 6 nuclear warheads was foiled.
After taking a hard look, all other explanations make little sense. Based on what we learned today, we do know this. Decommissioned nuclear warheads, as we were told these were, are to be taken to Kirtland AFB, where according to Kristensen, ” the warheads are separated from the rest of the weapon and shipped to the Energy Department’s Pantex dismantlement facility near Amarillo, Texas”
Instead, the plane flew to Barksdale, which just happens to be a major embarkation point for the Middle East. The speculation most in line with the current events happening today……… is that these advanced cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads, were on their way to the Middle East, to be used, if necessary, against the underground nuclear labs of Iran…..
So what does it boil down to? Three officers may have stopped nuclear weapons going to the Middle East, by alerting the Military Times to some discrepancies in an otherwise routine landing of another B52 in Barksdale.
Cheney allowed civilian wiretaps before 9/11. What? Wasn’t that illegal? Apparently that was overridden by the Vice President.
Wait a minute. Didn’t the NSA have apparatus that listened for various words such as “Jihad” or “terrorist”? Yes, it did, but as soon as that was discovered to be coming from an American, the tap was dropped and the name of the person was expunged. The NSA was following the letter of the law…….
In fact, as the Bush administration was coming in, the Clinton administration, in their freshman orientation guide for incoming republicans, said in their packet Transition 2001. “Warning to the incoming administration: the agency in its quest to compete on a technological level with terrorists who have access to state-of-the-art equipment, some American citizens would get caught up in the NSA’s surveillance activities. However, in those instances, the identities of the Americans who made telephone calls overseas would be “minimized,” one former NSA official said, in order to conceal the identity of the American citizen picked up on a wiretap.”
Or so was the intent. “What we were supposed to do, was delete the name of the person,” says a former NSA encryption analyst. “Even during the Clinton years, the computers would accidentally pick up some of the key words said by Americans.” The analyst deleted those name in the reports he sent the senior analysts.
That changed in 2001. Under orders by Cheney the names were included. Furthermore, Cheney sent back orders that those persons were to continue to be surveilled 24/7. What disturbed this analyst was that some or most of these terrorists he was ordered to listen to, worked in the White House or State Department.
In a revealing statement, another analyst says: “There was a real feeling or paranoia emanating from the Vice President’s Office, and I don’t think it had to do with anything with the threat of terrorism……”
According to James Bamford, author of the best selling books The Puzzle Palace and The Body of Secrets, before 9/11 the agency was not poking as hard among regular citizens as it does now. That all changed after 9/11. However a strong case for selective spying on government officials, seems to be the focus of the Vice President during the summer before 9/11.
If you remember it was that summer(2001) that the NSA took the unprecedented step or opening its doors to reporters. The director even said on Nightline : ”
“We’re a foreign intelligence agency. We try to collect information that is of value to American decision-makers, to protect American values, America–and American lives.”
American values? Isn’t that one of the code words used by the neo-cons? American values such as the destruction of the social net, establishment of an untouchable rich caste, and the wearing down of our Armed Services through unnecessary deployments?
But in answer to that question: he continues:
“We aren’t off the leash, so to speak, guarding ourselves. We have a body of oversight within the executive branch, in the Department of Defense, in the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is comprised of both government and nongovernmental officials. You’ve got both houses of Congress with–with very active–in some cases, aggressive–intelligence oversight committees with staff members who have an access badge to NSA just like mine.”
(Hasn’t that all changed, as of August 11th?)
Today that spokesperson is head of the CIA.
So while the official voice who I believe is still today trustworthy and genuine, was speaking still on the Clinton platform of government within the law, his superior. the VP, was going behind his back to wiretap illegally.
Final thought: remember when Paul O’Neil left the administration fuming and 24 hour later 180’d and clammed up? Inner beltway speculation was that they got to him somehow.
We now know how…………………
Bottom line, before there was a war……there was an illegal act instigated by the Vice President…….Are we safer than we were under Clinton?
“I see nothing…….nothing!….”
kavips 