Oh, your “surge” is so not working anymore, if it ever did:

Iraqi Crackdown on Shiite Forces Sets Off Fighting

BAGHDAD — Heavy fighting broke out Tuesday in two of Iraq’s largest cities, as Iraqi ground forces and helicopters mounted a huge operation to break the grip of the Shiite militias controlling Basra, and Iraqi forces clashed with militias in Baghdad. The fighting threatened to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old Iraq war.

The battles, along with indications in recent weeks that militia and insurgent attacks had already been creeping up, raised fears across Iraq that Moktada al-Sadr, the renegade Shiite cleric, could pull out of a cease-fire he declared last summer. If his Mahdi Army militia does step up attacks, that could in turn slow American troop withdrawals.

Cheney: staying in Iraq is like pardoning Nixon

Recently, in an interview with ABC News, Vice President Cheney defended his administration’s refusal to heed the public’s desire to get out of Iraq. “I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls,” he said. The Washington Post notes that in a follow-up interview yesterday, Cheney compared decision-making on the Iraq war to President Gerald Ford’s unpopular decision to pardon Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal:

And I have the same strong conviction the issues we’re dealing with today — the global war on terror, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq – that all of the tough calls the president has had to make, that 30 years from now it will be clear that he made the right decisions, and that the effort we mounted was the right one, and that if we had listened to the polls, we would have gotten it wrong.

Now its bad enough we’ve had to endure your wheezing war pimping all these years, watched you stuff our tax dollars into your “blind trust”, and have both our economy and security get driven to new lows, but really Dick, its cruel and unusual punishment to have to be subjected to your revisionist history.

For the record, a few facts:

The pardoning of Richard Nixon was a travesty of justice that let our nation off the hook from dealing with the real issue of Watergate- namely, that an out of control above the law tyrant was our President. By not dealing with his ilk then, we are dealing with them now. Only now, they have learned the lessons of Watergate and upped the stakes, and may ruin all of us before they are done. And only slimeballs like you, you Dick, “recognize” that the country “is better off”. It’s better off for you, because you treat it like a giant ATM, you treasonous bastard.

And no one- NO ONE- is going to look back on the ruins of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East in 30 years and go “Hey, that decision to invade a sovereign nation that never threatened you really worked out well…”. Nope. Never gonna happen. Most likely the worst foreign policy action by a president, ever.

Dick Cheney, you burn in effigy around the world now, and will rot in hell when you die. Your place in the tyrants hall of fame is assured, they’re moving the portraits of Idi Amin and Goebbels around so you’ll have a place to hang.

Alas, only a metaphor.

“Fifth Beatle” Neil Aspinall Dies In New York

NEW YORK — Neil Aspinall, a longtime friend of the Beatles who managed their business enterprises and helped make the group a moneymaking phenomenon decades after they split up, has died. He was 66.

Aspinall and the late Mal Evans were the Beatles’ roadies. Aspinall would drive them to gigs in his van before they became famous, and never left the band’s tight-knit circle. He took over the management of Apple Corps in 1968, and continued to oversee the group’s business affairs in the decades after they broke up in 1970.

We know for a fact that the Bush regime created false evidence, lied, and deceived in order to attack Iraq. All the reasons given for the US invasion have proven to be false. The real agenda has never been declared. Yet, five years later the traitors in high office who deceived Americans into a war in behalf of a hidden agenda have not been held accountable. As Agatha Christie said, getting away with one murder makes it easy to commit another.

There is so much that Americans do not know about secret schemes serving undeclared agendas. Those who have attempted to clue in fellow citizens are invariably frustrated, because Americans have been trained to dismiss the messenger who brings news of “false flag” events as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Continue with Paul Craig Roberts’ A Little Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down America’s Next 9/11

Nightmare at Guantanamo

One year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. Army Chaplain James Yee — a converted Muslim, born and raised in America — was sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility with the assignment of a lifetime. His job: to minister to the prisoners there, in service to the United States.

“We say that the war on terror is not a war against Islam, but that’s not how it felt most days at Guantánamo,” Yee writes in “For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire,” his 2006 memoir. The environment at Guantánamo “excused, if not encouraged, open hostility toward Islam.”

I imagine this is in the top five reasons why they hate us, in case anyone at this late date needs a reminder.

US death toll in Iraq war hits 4,000

To find out who they were, where they came from, and how they died, go here.

Rep. Frank says he’ll file bill to legalize marijuana

BOSTON—Rep. Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize “small amounts” of marijuana.Frank announced his plans late Friday on the HBO show “Real Time,” hosted by Bill Maher.

Kudos to you sir.

Who’s Spying in Your Neighborhood?

Fusion Centers collect and share information with local, state and federal law enforcement, and increasingly, with the military and the private sector. Although information sharing is legitimate and often necessary for law enforcement, the Fusion Centers are operating with little oversight at a time when new technology, government powers and zeal in the “war on terrorism” are combining to threaten our privacy at an unprecedented level and turn America into a surveillance society.

Hagee, in ‘NYT’ This Sunday, Says McCain Sought His Endorsement

NEW YORK In an interview that will appear in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, controversial televangelist Rev. John Hagee declares, “It’s true that [John] McCain’s campaign sought my endorsement.”McCain has attempted to distance himself from some of Hagee’s views, much as Barack Obama is doing in relation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But unlike McCain, Obama has not stood on stage with Wright and accepted his accolades this year.

This entire “Oooh lawdy dat colored man he crazy!” Obama preacher bullshit continues to be spun by a SSC media, while they virtually ignore the comments of McBushCain endorsers such as crazed bigot John Hagee. Double standard, anyone?

And oh yeah, Hillary? When your last ditch effort to scare the super delegates into thwarting the will of the people and giving you the nomination means you kicking this story around, you might wanna make sure there aren’t any pictures out there of your husband smoozing Rev. Wright:

Oh, snap.

FBI posts fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.