Balta1701

AP: White House had secret deal with UAE company.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 04:51 PM) Rick Santorum on Hardball (in a few minutes) discussing this with Chris Matthews. Let us know if he answers any questions, or is asked any questions, about the mortgage he got on his house.

Good ol' Fox.

America for Sale: the cost of Republican Corruption. 130 page report on the ways Republicans have hurt this country in efforts to enrich their campaign contributors/friends/cronies, etc. From the same group that a few months ago released a report detailing all of the Republican abuses of procedural rules in the House.

So is there any way this could actually help the Knicks this season? Cause I would really like that #1 draft pick.

Wire reports are saying 75 Sunni Mosques were attacked in response today. 27 in Baghdad. Ayatollah Sistani, in what is reportedly a rare moved, called for street protests, but asked that they be "peaceful". Iran is also pretty angry. Both Iran and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of SCIRI, one of the main political parties in Iraq, have blamed the U.S. for not protecting the Shrine. al-Hakim is specifically citing comments by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq made last week which suggested that the Iraqis should try to avoid "Sectarian" influence in the government...a code word for saying the Shia should be more willing to accept Sunni influence in the government. USA Today.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 02:56 PM) Harry Reid has also said that he wouldn't vote to illegalize abortion. That doesn't mean he would be willing to support a filibuster of said bill, which if it ever comes up would have its biggest fight be over cloture if the Senate remained closely divided.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 03:31 PM) Yes they are. They actually hate us even though our country has saved their asses a number of times. And lots of people here hate them despite that whole American Revolution thing.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 03:13 PM) I love the word "anti-choice" in here. Just a question of complete curiosity, did you think about it when using that word, or did it just come out? Not bashing or anything, just curious. Sometimes, I like looking at the words that are used when this type of thing is discussed. Actually I did give that some thought...it wasn't just a knee-jerk thing. I think there's a big difference between being pro-choice and pro-abortion. There's also a big difference between being anti-choice and being anti-abortion.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 01:14 PM) My own 2 eyes will suffice. When I was in Iraq we found literally tons of brand new weapons and othe military hardware stamped "Made in France" and the waybills had origin points in France. Thats pretty compelling evidence if you ask me and it got swept under the rug. Well, the question to put to you in reply should be...can you prove that this equipment not only came from France, but that the French government knew about it? Link with tons of Duelfer report data here...none of which seems to allege that the French government was actively helping any more than the U.S. government was.

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 01:05 PM) It's simple--either you believe the White Houes and UAE, or French Intelligence. If ANYTHING occured, a CIA agent just happened to be at the same Dubai hospital on the same day as UBL. If that somehow happened and Bin Laden lived through it...something would be very very wrong.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 12:51 PM) This was a transaction between the UAE company and the main British firm who held the company. The US was a minor party - and I'm not sure that they were suspect to the same laws. It shouldn't matter. An investigation and approval by the U.S. government should have been required in this matter according to the law in question. That investigation which should have been required according to the letter of the law wasn't done, and thus far there's been no explanation as to why. I can't see any rational way to get around that provision.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 12:51 PM) If you find a reputable report that the French GOVERNMENT sold weapons to Saddam in violation of the UN sanctions, I will concede the point. Even if that were the case, which I think it may very well have been (not necessarily the government doing it, but the government offering tacit approval or at least looking the other way, much in the same way as our government looked the other way about oil-for-food), that doesn't mean that France's intel on Al Qaeda is necessarily incorrect. As with any sort of intelligence thing, you have to take each and every thing and evaluate the source, their hard intel, what is being said, etc. If you just say "This source is always trustworthy because they agree with us politically", you wind up with forged documents coming into your hands from Italian intelligence services and wind up using those forged documents to justify a case for war. Or if you say "We can't trust what this nation says"...they might be giving you a warning 3 days before an attack that you would be foolish to ignore. At least on principle, this doesn't pass the smell test, which given that I have no access to classified French information, makes me view it as highly suspect. But if the French were to tomorrow produce pictures of Bin Laden entering the facility, and flight records of some CIA person going to Dubai and then walking into that same hospital...then all of a sudden they've built a very strong case. But as of right now, we just have what I can tell is a claim which appears in 1 news source which is purported to come from French Intelligence but which appears there anonymously...Which is basically what was used to sell the idea that Iraq had WMD on the front page of the NYT...which to me means that you shouldn't buy a word of it until you hear more evidence.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 12:14 PM) Transactions like this go on all the time. So no, he probably didn't. And no one else would have noticed, normally. This isn't exactly 'normal' but in a way it is in that as I just stated, these type of transactions, WITH Middle East countries, happen quite frequently. However, as I showed a little bit earlier...normal procedures for approval, as required by law since 1993, weren't followed in this case. So while Bush almost certainly didn't know about it before it became an issue, somehow it was allowed to sidestep the approval procedures outlined in the law, and the President is still willing to defend it with a veto threat. So there is certainly something odd going on.

Uh-Oh.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 10:06 AM) The article I read today about this very bombing said it was most likely done by foreigners connected to Al Qaeda. There are thousands of foreign arabs in Iraq with the sole purpose of killing innocent people to incite a civil war. As a matter of a fact the porus borders allowing these very people into the country has been one of the many rips against Bush in this very war. The Washington Based "Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS)" issued a report last fall estimating that only about 4-10% of the insurgents in Iraq are actually foreigners. The other 90-96% are Iraqi nationals. Link. They have been particularly emphasized in significant part because the U.S. doesn't want to admit that the insurgency is home-grown...the U.S. wants to make people think the insurgency is being imposed on Iraq from outside the nation by Al Qaeda, thus giving us a reason to stay there instead of a reason to consider departing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (Zarqawi's group) that did this attack. But what I think it does mean is that you have to take it with a gigantic piece of Halite when the U.S. says that an attack seems like it was done by "al Qaeda in Iraq" or by Zarqawi's group, given that they're a major minority within the guerrilla movement, and there are dozens of different groups which could have different motivations for such a strike. Beyond that, I'm not sure we yet have a good idea fo the makeup of Zarqawi's group itself...given the makeup of the insurgency, it's entirely possible that he has plenty of recruits from Iraq itself. If your family member was killed by a Shi'a militia's death squad...that's the sort of action you might take in reply.

QUOTE(samclemens @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 11:04 AM) i dont have any impirical evidence to back up southsider2k5, but it is widely known over in Iraq that many insurgents are not iraqis anymore. iran and syria are substantial contributors, along with most other arab nations. again, i cant find anything to back it up, but i remember reading about how when an insurgent enters Iraq, their passport is taken so that they cannot leave the country and they have to stay and keep fighting even if they want to leave. I find it utterly impossible to believe that the Sunni insurgents which are fighting the U.S. and government forces come in any significant numbers at all from Iran...who's people are overwhelmingly Shi'a and who's nation stands to benefit extraordinarily from the presence of a Shia dominated friendly state right next door.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:47 AM) The "conflicts" are almost completely manufactured by terrorists. For the most part this isn't Iraqis killing Iraqis, this is other arabs killing Iraqis, in trying to get Iraqis to kill other Iraqis to cause a civil war. It flies in the face of everything that the Isalmic religion stands for, yet they have no problem doing it. Could you give me the evidence that this is not Iraqis killing iraqis? We've had dozens of reports of Shi'a militia run death squads targeting Sunnis in Iraq, and we've had dozens of reports of Iraqi resistance units targeting the Shi'a.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:52 AM) You are right about the lack of container inspection, but at least for the one dock at the NY/NJ port that is going to ba taken over by Dubai Ports World, the numbers are not quite as bad as you or I had heeard. A very good NPR piece this morning on that dock stated that all of the containers go through nuclear inspectors, and if they get a hit they run a second scan with a different set of equipment. They said that almost 10% of the containers also get further spot check inspections, beter than the I wouldn't be surprised at all if the inspection numbers at the NY/NJ ports are the highest in the country. I believe there's a much higher volume of container traffic flowing through places on the West Coast which receive the goods produced in Asia...i.e. the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, or the port of New Orleans (before Katrina, I have no idea of its numbers now). L.A. and Long Beach are about #7 and #8 in the world in terms of numbers of containers, and New Orleans was #3 in the world in terms of volume going through it before Katrina. Houston was #6 on that list.Link

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:49 AM) That would never happen. If GWB were to submit the defense budget actually necesary to cover every vulnerability in the USA, we would never hear the end of the screaming about the budget deficits. Even with a 7% increase in defense, not including the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, I keep hearing about how much money is being spent there. Can you imagine the outrage on the hill if we tacked on another 20% or so to fix all of these holes? Yet, despite all the screaming about deficits...the option of calling for a couple percent across the board tax increase to cover things like upgrading port and power plant security isn't even considered.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:42 AM) Our port system right now, for lack of a better description is a joke. Last I remember reading, less than 1% of cargo is really inspected, and many ports lack the capability to check for things such as nuclear, biological, or bomb materials within the cargo. I believe it's higher than 1% based on readings since this controversy erupted, but it's definately less than 5%. Kerry tried to make port security an issue in 2004, but it didn't really gain traction.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:44 AM) I doubt it would make it through. There are too many pro choice GOP. There are also anti-choice Dems. Harry Reid...for example...a fact which could seriously derail any attempt to organize a firm resistance or filibuster in the Senate.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:35 AM) I'm solely opposed to this because its a foreign government owned company. The more I think about it...the more it troubles me not only that we're selling the job to a foreign-government-owned company...but that private companies are contracted with handling the jobs in the first place. Decent commentary from "The Nation":

Prior is apparantely not throwing off of a mound right now. Also...Dusty Baker had an amusing quote yesterday:

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 22, 2006 -> 09:19 AM) All of the major companies in the Middle East and China are state owned. So, by extension, that means we can never have any of those interests in our country? That's indeed 'profiling'. Again, maybe we need to 'profile'. Or maybe not. As far as I know...we don't allow companies run by foreign powers to do a lot of things in this country...I believe they're not allowed to buy TV stations for example.