Wednesday, September 19, 2007

State Department Inspector General target of congressional probe




According to seven current and former officials, State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, pictured to the right, has repeatedly interfered with on-going investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-CA wrote a letter to Mr. Krongard describing the allegations and asking for his cooperation in the Committee’s investigation. According to the letter:

"Since your testimony at the Committee’s hearing on July 26, 2007, current and former employees of the Office of Inspector General have contacted my staff with allegations that you interfered with on-going investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment...

The allegations made by these officials are not limited to a single unit or project within your office. Instead, they span all three major divisions of the Office of Inspector General — investigations, audits, and inspections. The allegations were made by employees of varied rank, ranging from line staff to upper management..."

Some of the specific allegations include the following (from oversight.house.gov):

- Although the State Department has expended over $3.6 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, you refused to send any investigators to those countries to pursue investigations into wasteful spending or procurement fraud and have concluded no fraud investigations relating to the contracts.
- You prevented your investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse relating to the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq and followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.
- You prevented your investigators from seizing evidence that they believed would have implicated a large State Department contractor in procurement fraud in Afghanistan.
- You impeded efforts by your investigators to cooperate with a Justice Department probe into allegations that a large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into Iraq.
- You interfered with an on-going investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.
- You censored portions of inspection reports on embassies so that critical information on security vulnerabilities was dropped from classified annexes and not disclosed to Congress.
- You rejected audits of the State Department’s financial statements that documented accounting concerns and refused to publish them until points critical of the Department had been removed.


more here...
and here...



peAce...
topbop!

Monday, September 17, 2007

To Those Who Seek a Greater Understanding...


...of what shameful blunders were committed in the execution of the catastrophic blunder that was the invasion of Iraq, I offer these words from "Iraq : The rise of the resistance", by Anne Alexander and Simon Assaf: "In early November 2004 US troops destroyed the city of Fallujah. Countless civilians and an untold number of resistance fighters perished in the assault. The city of mosques lay in ruins, but the rubble also buried US and British plans for a stable occupation. On the eve of the attack on Fallujah the military told the soldiers that they were facing their biggest battle since the assault on the Vietnamese city of Hue in 1968. Iraq had become America’s new Vietnam."


peAce...is most always a better first choice...
topbop!

Video: Sally Fields UNCENSORED Speech, not FOX News!!!

Sally Field Censored At EMMYS by FOX News... Here is the vidoe of Canadian broadcaster CTV who did not censor Sally Fields. What is so offensive in the words Sally said that FOX News deemed something was not suitable to broadcast...? And why did they want to cut out the expression of a pro-peAce point of view? Wake up America?peAce...topbop!

read more | digg story

Sally Field Censored At EMMYS by FOX News...



Above is the uncensored video. What is so offensive in the words Sally said that FOX News deemed something was not suitable to broadcast...? And why did they want to cut out the expression of a pro-peAce point of view? Wake up America...!



...and here is the version that FOX News "sanitized" in the service of their objectives...


peAce...
topbop!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Martial Law: 190 Arrested at D.C. Protest



"We're occupying a people who do not want us there..."



"The protesters gathered earlier Saturday near the White House in Lafayette Park with signs saying "End the war now" and calling for President Bush's impeachment."



"Members of the Answer Coalition, the umbrella organization of activist groups behind the demonstration, are demanding an immediate troop withdrawal. Some of the protesters called for Mr. Bush’s impeachment. Speakers at the rally included familiar political and antiwar activists, among them Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader and Ramsey Clark.

Brian Becker, a national coordinator for the coalition, said in a statement: “What Bush really intends is to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for years or decades to come. He plans to move forward with a policy that will continue to kill thousands of U.S. service members and hundreds of the thousands of Iraqis.”

Several marchers said they were demonstrating against what they called the Bush administration’s false assertions about Iraq. Kim Druist, 39, a nurse from Plainsboro, N.J., who wore a camouflage shirt to represent solidarity with American troops, said she intended to be arrested to protest the testimony by Gen. David H. Petraeus earlier in the week in which he said there had been progress in Iraq. Ms. Druist referred to the statement as propaganda."

read story here...
more here...
and here.


let's give...
peAce...a chance!

topbop!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State

Well all I can say about this fire-hose of information is...you be the judge...is Alex Jones the quintessential investigative reporter? ...or a whacko? ...you be the judge...



AEJ Productions
2 hr 35 min 42 sec - Feb 14, 2006
www.infowars.com

Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State was filmed primarily during the Republican Party's 2004 national convention in New York City. The Republican Party's choice to hold the event there drew both strong praise and strong criticism. Alex Jones' clear intent was that the people who were truly guilty of planning and carrying out the events of September 11, 2001 were coming back to the scene of the crime. In the film, Jones shows what he believes are signs of a growing police state: constant surveillance, a defined military presence, a militarized civilian police force, mass roundups and arrests of protesters, detention in a makeshift facility laden with asbestos which one interviewee called a "concentration camp", and threats of arrest for constitutionally legal activities. Many different views are presented, including one semi-humorous confrontation with a group of American communists.

This video is copyrighted, but Alex Jones has permitted and encourged the distribution of these videos for non-profit, educational purposes. If you would like to help Alex Jones and/or have a hard copy, buy one from him by going through his website. It can be done online or through his office.


peAce...out...
topbop!