A day of death and horror in Iraq.

Saboteurs blew up one of two main oil pipelines from Basra. Baghdad saw more rocket attacks on the Green Zone, killing one and wounding more. The "secure" area of the capital, Karrada, is under curfew.

From Anti-War.com -

At least 163 Iraqis were killed and 214 were wounded in the latest reports of violence. These figures included updated numbers from the Mahdi Army battles taking place since Tuesday. Fighting appears to be subsiding in Baghdad, but the Mahdi Army has expanded its control in Basra. One American soldier has died after an IED attack south of Baghdad today. Meanwhile U.S. forces were dragged deeper into the fighting across Iraq. British troops have remained uninvolved, even in Basra where they are stationed. Also, the situation for civilians in Basra and Sadr City is becoming desperate as food and water supplies dwindle.

So what does our mini-cowboy leader have to say?

"Prime Minister Maliki's bold decision, and it was a bold decision, to go after the illegal groups in Basra shows his leadership and his commitment to enforce the law in an even-handed manner," Mr Bush said. "It also shows the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge."

See the surge is working. More dead and displaced Iraqis means it is working. Eventually all the Iraqis will be dead or gone and then there will be peace in Iraq. Bush is so smart. More violence means the troops have to stay to secure Iraq. Less violence means troops have to stay to make sure violence doesn't break out. A civil war means the surge is working and troops must stay because the puppet government might need help killing their fellow citizens.

Bush logic is amazing.

STOP THE WAR NOW! WE CANNOT WAIT IT MUST END NOW!

Today marks the anniversary of the devastating and tragic arrogance of George W. Bush. This country and most others will never be the same. We often hear of the monetary losses involved in this crime but it is the immeasurable state of America's status in the world that very well may never be recovered. And even more critical and irreplaceable is the obscene number of dead, wounded and displaced Iraqis. Too many of us sat idly by while our rights were chipped away at and our country was stolen. Complacency is the primary enemy and we all must work actively to defeat it and bring an end to the criminal activities the U.S. is involved in, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but throughout the world.
Start today by joining in the (http://march19-blogswarm.blogspot.com/) blogswarm effort to bring the war to the forefront in the media, public dialog and the Internet.

Here is the price of war.

Welcomed as liberators?

What will this child remember about the Americans? Liberation or a living nightmare.

We are fueling the resentment that produced the terrorist attacks on 911.

What is the lives of these children worth? We know there was no connection between Saddam and AQ and there were no WMD's. These children and babies are suffering and dieing to increase the coffers of American corporations. They are being sacrificed on the altar of capitalism.

Join the blogswarm and do everything in your power to end America's continuing crime against humanity.

Warrantless wiretaping by telcos, back door access to a unnamed cellular network and warrantless surveillance of first class mail all done by the lords of fear in the Bush world. What will be next? Maybe a door to door search of every citizen of what used to be America. How many of the articles of the Bill of Rights will Congress allow to be usurped?

Babak Pasdar revealed the back door access to a wireless carrier that he hasn't named. Pasdar stated in an interview with Wired.

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

"What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that."

Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

Pasdar has executed a seven-page affidavit for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington, which on Tuesday began circulating the document (.pdf), along with talking points (.doc), to congressional staffers hashing out a Republican proposal to grant retroactive legal immunity to phone companies who cooperated in the warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

Our friendly neighborhood spies didn't forget about the old fashioned ways of communication either. According to a Raw Story article the US Postal Service has been enabling the covert surveillance of our mail as well.

Since 1998, the inspector has approved more than 97% of requests during criminal inquiries, new documents show. According to USA Today, which filed the request, "In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the most recent year provided, officials granted at least 99.5% of requests."

"The idea of the government tracking that amount of mail is quite alarming," Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project Jameel Jaffer told the paper. "When you realize that (the figure) does not include national security matters, the numbers are even more alarming."

I don't know who to trust but I damn sure know who I don't trust. Imagine how much we will never know if the House passes a retroactive immunity PAA. We have got to continue to pressure our Reps to leave out any immunity or secret FISA court reviews. I for one want to know how much was done and how deeply we were abused.

I have been hearing all this Reagan talk lately. Death does not forgive you of your misuse of power or your inability to effectively lead.

I remember the Iran-Contra mess. I could not believe that Ollie North et al was not put in jail for life and that Reagan was not removed from office. I remember the "trickle down" bullshit. I remember a completely disastrous mission in Lebanon.

Reagan was a much better speaker than W but he too was a liar. He too was there to benefit the same group that all Republicans represent.

Reagan was no different than the Bush family. The big difference was that Reagan had to deal with Republicans in Congress that were not totally corrupted and still had a semblance of respect for their constituents and the Constitution. George W. Bush has not had that worry. On the contrary, W has had the help of many fake Democrats.

It took a Democrat eight years in between Republicans to eliminate the national debt. It took very damn little time for the subsequent Republican to send it to dizzying new heights.

Jeff Sessions loves him some torture.

In some simple questions from Sen. Carl Levin in today's hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, with Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the simple answers didn't seem to please hang-em high Sessions.

Carl Levin asked the General, "General, do you believe that waterboarding is consistent with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions?"

General Maples replied, "No, sir, I don't."

Sen. Levin then asked, "Do you think it is humane?"

To which Maples replied, "No, sir, I think it would go beyond that bound."

Questioning goes on to reveal that General Maples feels that the Army Field Manual, which prohibits waterboarding, gives him and field operatives all the tools they need to gather intelligence.

Then good ol' boy and Alabama shame Jeff Sessions pulled his head out of the great Bush ass and once again defended torture. Sessions was quick to note that the CIA had waterboarded only three times, and of course that was before the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convnetion applied. When the hell did the Geneva Convention not apply. Who the hell needs the Supreme Court to tell them that water boarding is torture and it is illegal and immoral. Apparently, Jeff Sessions does.

FISA Facts from the ACLU-

As the House of Representatives takes the time it needs to negotiate a bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the White House has launched a public assault on the legislative body. The administration claims that the House has endangered the country by letting the Protect America Act (PAA) expire and should pass the bill already approved by the Senate. The Senate bill, however, is unconstitutional and contains immunity for the telecommunications companies that aided the president’s warrantless wiretapping program. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is urging the House to continue to stand strong for the Constitution.

In a February 22nd letter to the House Permanent Select Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell made several misleading claims. A corrective statement was released by the Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding the cooperation of “private partners” the following day. Here, the ACLU refutes some of the administration’s arguments.

The Administration claims that:

• FISA's requirements, unlike those of the Protect America Act and the bipartisan Senate bill, impair our ability to collect information on foreign intelligence targets located overseas.

• …"because of the hurdles under FISA's emergency authorization provisions and the requirement to go to the FISA Court within 72 hours, our resource constraints limit our use of emergency authorizations to certain high-priority circumstances and cannot simply be employed for every foreign intelligence target” and that "our intelligence professionals need to be able to obtain foreign intelligence from foreign targets with speed and agility."

The Facts:

• The NSA and CIA have unfettered authority to wiretap at will outside the United States. FISA only regulates domestic spying. No matter what, in an emergency situation, the government can begin a wiretap immediately. Probable cause is a very low evidentiary threshold, so if the government does not have enough of a justification to obtain a judge’s approval (within 72 hours) there is probably not a very good reason for them to believe there’s an emergency in the first place.

• Let’s not forget that this push to amend FISA started because the administration claimed that there was a simple “foreign to foreign” fix needed. There is substantial agreement that a FISA warrant should not be needed to intercept communications between foreigners in foreign countries. Since July, the administration and DNI have consistently asked for a mile under the guise of an inch. If the foreign to foreign fix is all that is needed, it would easily pass with overwhelming bipartisan and bicameral cooperation. The fact is the administration wants Congress to legalize the warrantless domestic wiretapping program that was disclosed over two years ago (to the outrage of many in Congress, it should be noted) and to make sure the phone companies emerge from their role in the program without a scratch.