December 29-30, 2006
Dec 29 17:14 URGENT!!! URGENT!!! Dec 29 16:47 Damn Capitalists Dec 29 22:38 Saddam Hanged Dec 30 07:18 "I Saw Fear" Dec 30 13:07 Saturday's Must Reading Dec 30 18:23 Check Out This Great Blog (If You Haven't Already)!!!
URGENT!!! URGENT!!!
I just got an email from a close friend who has been digging into the Pendleton 8 scandal. Tim will be appearing on Kit Jarrell's show Friday night. I strongly recommend everyone tune it in. Here's what's going on:
BREAKING: Radio Interview about the Pendleton 8Knowing Tim like I do, I strongly recommend everyone tune into Friday night's show. Tim's one of those guys with immediate command of the facts. Lots of facts pertinent to these cases.
This information was just posted on Free Republic. This is a 'heads up' so you can make plans to listen and alert others to listen.........
Don O'Nesky
Radio Interview about the Pendleton 8.
December 29: Coverups and Corruption
Written by Kit Jarrell 23 December 2006
Listen at 10 PM on Friday, 12-29-06.......
http://blogtalkradio.com/kitjarrell
It's my first show on BlogTalkRadio, and it'll be absolute, MUST-listen radio! If you've followed the saga of the Pendleton 8 cover-up at Euphoric Reality, then you're well aware of the lengths that certain folks have gone to in order to keep their dirty little secrets buried. But no more. We're hitting the public.
The story we're telling is beyond important, because it goes to the heart of the problem in the War on Terror: Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are being offered as sacrificial lambs for the political gain of those in power.
Do I agree with the War on Terror? Absolutely. I support the mission. However, the military justice system is broken. Instead of being a system for justice and integrity, a place where the innocent are exonerated and the guilty punished, it has become a place where the end is known before the first witness is called; the winners are the generals and admirals and attorneys.
The losers are the men who go out day after day and hold their fire when they're shot at for fear that they will be charged with murder. Just in case you still don't think what I'm talking about is really happening, allow me to tell you a story.
In 1990, the executive officer of the USS Mars was court-martialed and convicted of dereliction of duty. It was just another court-martial, another win to chalk up for military prosecutors who have a 97% conviction rate. But this case was different. Even the prosecutor is on sworn record as saying there was not enough evidence for conviction.
We have hard copy proof of the following: The admiral who started the investigation against the XO not only ignored all evidence proving the XO innocent, but he actively engaged in unethical conduct throughout the investigation, Article 32, and trial.
In fact, this admiral named himself as the convening authority for the case and handpicked the jury from his own staff. The admiral's Staff Judge Advocate, contrary to ethics and military law, continued to advise the admiral in secret throughout the case, even though he was the accuser against the XO. In one memo, he assures the admiral that "there is no copy of this memo" on his computer or in his office.
The Staff Judge Advocate also complained about the prosecutor on the case, claiming that he didn't want to "win" bad enough. The defense attorney forged the XO's name to an official Response to the Letter of Reprimand after the court-martial. The XO never even knew this document existed for years after, and yet the Navy maintains that the XO's signature is real and that the document is a true and legal one. A handwriting expert, however, says that's not true.
The NCIS is involved, as well, doing the bidding of those who stand to be embarrassed by the information coming out. Last year four NCIS agents showed up at the XO's residence. The armed agents told him to leave the situation alone, to stop making waves or they'd have him arrested by the county sheriff. In the last few weeks, the Department of Homeland Security have been to the XO's residence six times.
What does all this have to do with cases like the Pendleton 8? I'll give you a hint. The head NCIS agent outside the XO's home that day last year just happens to be the same man in charge of the investigation of the Pendleton 8.
This story has it all: lies, betrayal, treachery, and dishonor. I'll be talking about it on the 29th, live. I will have Tim Harrington from the Warrior Fund with me, going over the piles of evidence implicating everyone from the former head of Combat Logistics Group One, all the way to members of the current Congress. And, we'll be taking your calls.
This is not a show you can afford to miss,but if you do, the archive will be available both as streaming and download on BlogTalkRadio and at Euphoric Reality.
Stay tuned,this is about to be a hell of a ride.
Listen at 10PM on 12-29-06.......
http://blogtalkradio.com/kitjarrell
If you care about justice, then this is a radio program that you must tune in.
UPDATE: I just got an update from Kit Jarrell on how to participate in the program, which I strongly recommend. Here's the relevant portion of Kit's email:
Go to and click the huge listen live button that shows up while I'm on the air. This is the easiest. No registration needed, that I'm aware of.
If listeners would like to call in, the number is 646-915-9926 , and I will let folks know when we're taking calls. If listeners would like to email me a question or comment, the email address is kit.jarrell@gmail.com .
After the show, the podcast version will be available for streaming or download for free, also with no registration. They can stream it at:
http://frontline.euphoricreality.com/?page_id=12
which will automatically begin playing the latest show. They can download the podcast by visiting Euphoric Reality or by going to blogtalkradio.
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 9:32 PM
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Damn Capitalists
That's just one of the multitude of laments in Nick Coleman's latest collection of whinings, otherwise known as his column. Here's the segment that I'm referring to:
Here is some of what is going away: the Star Tribune Foundation, which has funded nonprofit groups in the Twin Cities for decades; and the Washington bureau and foreign correspondents, including those in Iraq. They'll still be working, but not for the Star Tribune. Also disappearing: the pooled financial resources a chain can use to gather news and resist the fickle winds of market forces .Poor Nicky Coleman. If he chooses to stay, he'll be forced to work at a newspaper that actually has to produce a quality product. He'll be forced to work at a newspaper that actually checks its facts. He'll be forced to work at a newspaper that tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The poor dear. He might even have to work for an editor who will actually hold him accountable for the things he writes. The injustice of it all. What is this world coming to?
If you think that's the extent of Little Nicky's whining, then you obviously don't know him. Here's another whiny rant:
McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt did not bother to come to Minneapolis on Tuesday to say he surreptitiously had sold the paper and to kiss us goodbye. But McClatchy brass gave us some nice parting gifts from afar, complaining that the Star Tribune had lost value (and proving it in a secret auction at fire-sale prices), calling the flagship a drag on profits and saying McClatchy would have shown a one-percent increase in ad sales if the Star Tribune weren't included. One percent! Huzzah! Sound the trumpets!The truth is that McClatchy dumped a newspaper at a big loss. Here's what one article said about the sale:
The newspaper industry has long been fighting circulation declines. More recently, classified advertising, a pillar of the newspaper business model, has come under attack by cheap or free Internet ads for jobs, cars, and homes. The Star Tribune has been no exception.TRANSLATION: Newspapers are DYING, partially because blogs and the alternative media are drying up newspapers' advertising revenue streams, partially because they're producing a lousy product. They're dinosaurs that likely will be dead within a generation.
"Certainly in straight financial terms, based on what's been happening to circulation, ad revenue and earnings, it's a much tougher business than it was eight years ago," said Rick Edmonds, Media Business Analyst at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
McClatchy got out while the assets were still worth something. McClatchy operated from a 'Better late than never' perspective. Whether they knew it or not, the reality is that they just dumped a newspaper that isn't in touch with mainstream readers and that doesn't care about anyone to the right of center politically. That isn't a way to make money. That's a guaranteed way of losing ground annually.
But McClatchy brass gave us some nice parting gifts from afar, complaining that the Star Tribune had lost value (and proving it in a secret auction at fire-sale prices), calling the flagship a drag on profits and saying McClatchy would have shown a one-percent increase in ad sales if the Star Tribune weren't included. One percent! Huzzah! Sound the trumpets!Pruitt sold it before more people noticed how biased Coleman's employer was. Pruitt sold it before people noticed the poor underlying condition the paper was in. Profit margins notwithstanding, the truth is that the profits weren't the result of growing circulation; they were the result of ever-shrinking expenditures. It wasn't that ad sales were growing. In short, though the profit margins looked good, the underlying trend was that of deterioration.
There's the market for you: The Star Tribune held down ad sales one percent. So One-Percent Pruitt axed his best newspaper. Brilliant.
If that's what Coleman wants to think that the Strib is still a great newspaper, that's his right but he's kidding himself. Coleman should read some of Powerline's articles that simply excoriated the Strib's product. Coleman would get the real picture by reading some of Mitch Berg's commentaries on the Strib, too.
The telltale signs aren't difficult to find. The truth is that they're abundant if you don't have your head buried in sand like an ostrich. Sadly, that isn't the Strib's strength.
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 4:49 PM
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Saddam Hanged
Saddam was hanged just minutes ago according to this article:
U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.Good riddance.
The former Iraqi president ousted in April 2003 by a U.S.- led invasion was convicted in November of crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ite villagers from Dujail after a failed assassination bid in 1982.
An appeals court upheld the death penalty on Tuesday. Iraq's government has kept details of its plans to conduct the execution completely secret amid concerns it could spark a violent backlash from his former supporters.
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 10:40 PM
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"I Saw Fear"
That's the official videographer's account of Saddam moments before the "Butcher of Baghdad's" demise.
Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator's execution at dawn on Saturday. "I saw fear, he was afraid," Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator's last moments. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists," he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, "Saddam said, 'Iraq without me is nothing.'"As I said moments after the news broke, Good riddance!!! I agree with Captain Ed that this will be a big thing inside Iraq because it eliminates any illogical hope that the Ba'athists had of regaining control. This will also give a little morale boost to the Coalition forces but it's unlikely that it'll be more than temporary.
What's striking to me is that Saddam went out with a wimper, not with the roar of a lion. For all his bluster over the years, images of his capture and his execution will portray him as a little man when removed from the mechanisms of destructions that he fashioned to bully people. Remember how timid he looked coming out of the spider hole. Here's what Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld said about Saddam's capture:
"Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn't very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it and certainly did not put up any fight at all," Rumsfeld said. "In the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave," he said.Based on the videographer's quotes, I'd say that those quotes would fit Saddam's execution perfectly. At the time of his capture, he seemed anything but the Supreme Iraqi ruler. He looked more like a man who wanted his mommie. I have a hunch that that's how Uday and Qusay felt when they realized that they were trapped and about to die. Let's hope that that image is played throughout the region. Let's hope that the image of a powerless Saddam gives the region the same type of boost as the raised purple finger did 2 years ago. What a great New Year's gift that would be.
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 7:19 AM
Comment 1 by King at 31-Dec-06 02:56 PM
No doubt the man was a tyrant, but your "I saw fear" heading meant for the brainwashed is misinformation. Thanks to the second video. The length to which you guys would go to misrepresent facts is unbelievable.
Comment 2 by King at 31-Dec-06 02:56 PM
No doubt the man was a tyrant, but your "I saw fear" heading meant for the brainwashed is misinformation. Thanks to the second video. The length to which you guys would go to misrepresent facts is unbelievable.
Saturday's Must Reading
Readers who've visited LFR for any amount of time know that I'm a big fan of Ralph Peters. After reading his NY Post op-ed on Saddam's execution, I can proudly recommend that you read his entire op-ed. Here's two of my favorite paragraphs:
Everything changed in 2003. For all of its later errors in Iraq, the Bush administration altered the course of history for the better.Ralph Peters isn't a Bush apologist but he's an honest man who calls things as he sees them. He's right that President Bush put us on the morally right side of history by vanquishing a tyrant like Saddam. That's why I believe history will regard George W. Bush's accomplishments as historic. I'd doubt that they'll consider him a great president on a par with Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR & Reagan but I'll guarantee that they won't be able to ignore his liberating 50 million Afghani and Iraqi people within months of each other.
It may be hard to discern the deeper meaning of our march to Baghdad amid the chaos afflicting Iraq today, but President Bush got a great thing right: He recognized that the age of dictators was ending, that the era of the popular will had arrived. He and his advisers may have underestimated the difficulties involved and misread the nature of that popular will, but they put us back on the moral side of history.
They won't be able to ignore the thugs that those wars uprooted and killed. They won't be able to ignore the images that those wars produced, the ink-stained fingers of the first legitimate Iraqi elections held just 23 months ago to the day of Saddam's execution. They won't be able to ignore the video of a Saddam being lifted out of that infamous spiderhole north of Tikrit that made him look little. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said:
"Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn't very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it and certainly did not put up any fight at all," Rumsfeld said. "In the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave," he said.They won't be able to ignore the fear the attack on Iraq had on Qaddafi, either, even though John Kerry tried trivializing it.
Here's another great section of Col. Peter's op-ed:
Supported by other English-speaking democracies, Bush acted. Breaking Europe's cynical rules, our forces invaded a dictatorship to liberate its population. And suddenly, the world was no longer safe for tyrants. No matter the policy failures in the wake of Baghdad's fall, the destruction of Saddam's regime remains a historical turning point. When our troops later dragged the dictator out of a fetid hole, every other president-for-life shivered at the image.What wonderful, vivid imagery Col. Peters evokes with his writing. Unfortunately, not all "presidents-for-life" learn from other's lessons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows no signs of worrying about meeting the same fate that Saddam met this morning. How sweet it would be to see Old Mahmoud meet the same fate as Saddam.
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 1:08 PM
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Check Out This Great Blog (If You Haven't Already)!!!
From time to time, I check my usage details to see who's reading my blog and to find out who's referring people to LFR. First, let me offer a little background. One of the regular blogs that refers people is Tailrank.com. They pick out the top stories of the day, then accumulate different bloggers posts on the top stories.
The hands down winner of today's top story is the Saddam execution to nobody's surprise. One of the blogs listed was The Wide Awake Cafe. I'd heard of Wide Awake before but I hadn't checked them out before. My mistake. After scrolling through Wide Awake's posts, I realize that I need to make them part of my daily blog reading list and I strongly recommend them to LFR's readers. Based on what I read, I'm certain that you won't be disappointed for checking them out.
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 6:23 PM
Comment 1 by Laura Lee Donoho at 30-Dec-06 11:17 PM
Thank you so much for your very nice comments! I appreciate it so much!
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 31-Dec-06 01:29 AM
Laura, You're very welcome. You've earned those "nice comments" the old-fashioned way: by doing some really good writing.
