Month: October 2005

MSNBC has  an AP article about how today might be the day we finally know how big–or full of coal–Fitzmas stockings will be.  So, to honor ( or besmirch ) the occasion…

Read More

Light a candle – Liberal Street Fighter

Bigger, Stronger Homemade Bombs Now to Blame for Half of U.S. Deaths

By John Ward Anderson, Steve Fainaru and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 — After 31 months of fighting in Iraq, more than half of all American fatalities are now being caused by powerful roadside bombs that blast fiery, lethal shrapnel into the cabins of armored vehicles, confronting every patrol with an unseen, menacing adversary that is accelerating the U.S. death toll.

U.S. military officials, analysts and militants themselves say insurgents have learned to adapt to U.S. defensive measures by using bigger, more sophisticated and better-concealed bombs known officially as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. They are sometimes made with multiple artillery shells and Iranian TNT, sometimes disguised as bricks, boosted with rocket propellant, and detonated by a cell phone or a garage door opener.

The bombs range from massive explosives capable of destroying five-ton vehicles to precision “shaped charges” that bore softball-size holes through thick armor, the main defense of troops in the field, and they are becoming a key factor in the fast-rising U.S. death toll.

It took about 18 months from the start of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to reach 1,000 U.S. deaths; it took less than 13 months to reach 1,000 more. A major reason for the surge, statistics show, is the insurgency’s embrace of IEDs, together with the military’s inability to detect them.

While the criminal Bush Administration repeats the blunders of the past, it seems an insurgency in Iraq is proving to be a veritable graduate school in the art of inflicting death by explosive. The death toll from IED’s is rising, both of “coalition” troops and Iraqi civilians and officials.

Read More

I just realized the morning is all gone, and I am STILL sitting here reading blogs. Argh. This is because I allowed myself to (once again!) get hooked into the latest “blog battles”, and like a drooling addict, I could not stop imbibing till I got to the absolute bitter end of the comments. (and I wasn’t even participating in this one.)

Read More

Raw Story‘s John Byrne is reporting that “Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.” Byrne’s sources are lawyers close to the investigation.

Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. They said the prosecutor believes that Libby violated a 1982 law that made it illegal to unmask an undercover CIA agent. (Full Raw Story)

Read More

According to some reports on the radio, Morrison switched parties so that he had a better chance of getting to the general election.  It seems that for the primaries only the wing nuts with issues come out for the votes and the moderates wait for the generals.  If you are even half way close to being a moderate and you want to run against a nut like Kline, going dem was a smart thing to do.  Of course, people will be scratching their heads in KS but they have elected a dem gov and at least one dem rep so the fellow has a good shot at making his mark in the election.

However, just as Dkos has become more and more “conservative” it is possible that the dems will likely tinge that way if the overflow of “moderates” comes into our party.  And this country is already so far right it veers into fascism.  What is a progressive to do?

Read More