Okay, we're there now. The new page is here: The Indisputable Truth. Thus far the comments have evaporated over there and the site isn't quite finished, but in the next day or so I'll hopefully get everything back together and I'll be writing consistently again. Tags: blogging, web site, server, update

No updates quite yet, folks. Sorry, this is taking up a lot of time.

After Blogger's 18-ish hour crap out that resulted in a few lost articles (which I had thought would be saved), as well as the current display errors, I've made the decision to move away from the Blogspot service. In the next day or so, I'm going to be migrating to my own domain and server, most likely www.indisputabletruth.net, possibly www.indisputable-truth.com although I don't like the hyphen. More updates as they come. Just be prepared for a change of bookmarks and a cosmetic change. I'll hopefully keep it minimal, but as I'm abandoning Blogspot, I'm going to be using a completely different software service. Keep your hats on, folks, things may get a little bumpy. Tags: website, domains, internet, blogging

Well this is awfully comforting. NBC recently did a little investigative journalism and found out that American airline screenings to not detect explosives. The test went through 21 different airports to see if homemade bomb materials could make it onto the plane. Apparently they could, and could do it pretty easily. In all 21 airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one discovered the materials. Isn't that fantastic? In all these years since 9/11, that's the progress we've made. Namely: none at all. We've moved ahead almost five years and we haven't even managed to protect the country from the one thing that would seem almost mandatory. Now, according to the Transportation Security Administration, "detecting explosive materials and IEDs at the checkpoint is TSA's top priority." There are two obvious ways of looking at that response, given the current situation. Either they're completely full of shit, or that may be the most frightening statement about the aviation business I've ever heard. 21 for 21 you can get homemade explosives onto a plane and that's the TOP priority. Hate to see what's considered unimportant. It's times like these that I absolutely do not understand how anyone can claim that the Bush Administration is even remotely good with national security. Our country gets hit by three hijacked airplanes and you can still get explosives onto airplanes? That's simply absurd. It reminds me of a few months ago when the 9/11 commission said we still weren't prepared for an attack. "A lot of the things we need to do really to prevent another 9/11 just simply aren't being done by the president or by the Congress." And now we have solid proof of it. Well done, Bush Clan. $247 billion spent on the Iraq War, thousands upon thousands of NSA wiretaps without court orders, and five years of invoking 9/11 in order to rally support and you haven't even gotten our airlines free of explosives, which shouldn't even require a 9/11 to get done. Tags: nbc, terrorism, 9/11, security, travel, bush, airlines

Okay, I think that makes me two for two on calling bullshit. First I pegged that the IEDs weren't coming from Iran, and now this crops up. I'm a little late with reporting it, I admit, but it's still worth noting. The story of 14 year old Martin Lee Anderson dying at a juvenile boot camp in Florida was hot stuff for a short period of time, and the claim of a medical examiner that the kid died from completely natural causes (sickle cell anemia, specifically) struck me as a little odd at the time, as I wrote here: Because, clearly, things like internal bleeding and hemorrhaging always crop up unexpected. The fact that the kid was tied up and being beaten was entirely unrelated. It's not like that could cause any kind of bleeding. And the bruises on his body? Oh those were from the attempts to resuscitate him. Really. Well, wouldn't you know it, it looks like that's not the case, and Anderson really was beaten to death. The new autopsy was conducted Monday by Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Vernard Adams. Baden said it was clear the teen did not die from sickle cell trait, or from any other natural causes. Yes, it turns out the kid probably didn't have the disease at all, that was just a pure excuse. The fact that it lasted even this long without being uncovered is pretty surprising to me, since I used pure logic to determine that it couldn't have worked like that. This was a 14 year old kid who didn't know he had sickle cell? And it was bad enough that it could kill him after a minor scuffle? Come on now, the kid was in a juvenile boot camp, odds are he's been in at least one fight during his life. If the condition was that bad, it would have reared its head by now. So, unsurprisingly, we find out that nothing sickle-cell related killed this kid and he really was beaten to death. This confuses me a bit, though: No guards have been arrested or fired but the camp has been closed. The fact that none of the guards have been arrested annoys me, to use the term as mildly as possible, but I'm still not sure what it matters that they weren't fired if the camp was closed. I suppose that's telling us that no specific action was taken against just them, but on the same token, the camp closed. No matter what they lost their jobs, action was taken against the whole damn camp. What really does get to me is that in cases like this, no action is ever taken against the guards or anyone responsible for this in a legal sense. If I worked at a convenience store and beat a kid to death because I thought he might have been stealing a candy bar, I'd be in prison. Nine guards beat a 140 pound kid to death and all that happens is the camp closes. Amazing. Tags: boot camp, injustice, cover-up, juvenile, Florida, military, death, youth, human rights

I think this is a good idea at night. Have at it. Also, I'm going to be fiddling with putting Technorati tags on the site now. I may or may not do the whole backlog (that could take hours), but I'll be doing it to the more recent ones. Go ahead and click on the tags if one of the topics interests you, see what others are saying. Tags: politics, liberal, progressive

File another one under the "who says it's all about terrorists?" heading. While all of the discourse during the NSA scandal has generally been about whether or not what the president did was patently illegal (which is where it should be, I believe), another fairly important thing to at least look at is who is getting spied on. Here we have The Thomas Merton Center, an anti-war activist group named after a Vietnam protestor, whom the ACLU has discovered was being spied on by the FBI in 2002. And it's a good thing, too. We can't be having these dangerous anti-war radicals running around with their "free speech" spreading their hate. The memo says that among other things, they advocate "pacifism". I'll tell you, I feel a lot safer knowing that these crazies are being looked at closely. And that's not all! The same memo notes that one of the leaflet distributors "appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent" but that no other participants appeared to be from the Middle East. Look out! They've got a Middle Eastern looking guy! Is this where we've gotten to in this country? The FBI is going to start eyeing anti-war groups? I know, I know, this one's special because there was a guy handing out leaflets who may or may not have been Middle Eastern, so this is totally different. That seems to be the excuse the FBI is hiding behind, that they were looking for a "person of interest", but unfortunately the documents don't say anything that effect. The ACLU reports on the incident in detail. The documents come to the ACLU as a result of a national campaign to expose domestic spying by the FBI and other government agencies. The ACLU has filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 20 states on behalf of more than 150 organizations and individuals. In response to these requests, the government has released documents that reveal monitoring and infiltration by the FBI and local law enforcement, targeting political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. This is going beyond simple checking up on someone who may be a criminal. It's hard to argue with that, no one has immunity from the law simply because they're a group advocating whatever. If there's someone who may be a terrorist in the group, I'm pretty sure the rest of the group would like him outta there. That's not what this is. This is the FBI watching an anti-war group simply for being anti-war. I'd like to know what's so conservative about anything the Bush Administration is doing these days. This is shaping become the biggest Big Brother style government in the US's history. The Patriot Act lets the government find out what books you read and search your house without your permission (or even awareness of it), the NSA is allowed to spy on you any time Bush feels like it, and now the FBI will watch you protest. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Or else." Tags: spying, anti-war, FBI, ACLU, terrorism, activism

Hope you're proud of yourself Carla J. Martin. After her idiotic misconduct in Moussaoui's trial caused a judge to throw out a large portion of testimony, the prosecutor of the case has said there's no point to the trial now. The barred testimony "is one of the two essential and interconnected components of our case," the prosecutors wrote in a motion submitted to [Judge] Brinkema. Excluding the witnesses, the prosecutors wrote, make it "impossible for us to present our theory of the case to the jury." Now, one of the easiest responses would be "so what? It's a terrorist, who cares if there was a little misconduct." In fact that's what a few of the prosecutors are saying, that the misconduct of just one attorney shouldn't screw up the whole case. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the best idea in this case. Aside from the fact that Moussaoui, if the death penalty is thrown out, get off with "only" life in prison with no parole, to overlook such a ridiculous instance of misconduct in the courts simply for the severity of the case is opening up a pretty dangerous door. As much as I'd love to hit Moussaoui to the fullest extent of the law, the key note there is the "fullest extent of the law". One of the things we pride ourselves here in the United States, at least I do, is that for better or worse everyone is offered the exact same rights under the letter of the law. It's one of those nifty little things that makes sure no one can be oppressed by the government in the court (you can tell how well that's worked). However, it offers a fair amount of protection, and unless we accept that now and again it's going to result in something like this, we could easily lose what we do get. The real problem isn't the judge's ruling, it's the prosecutor's idiocy. I've said it already that this wasn't a hard case to prosecute, he admitted to conspiracy for terrorist attacks. This is another one of those cases where someone broke the law, and we can't play Bush here and start deciding which laws aren't important just because it may get us a result we want. Can you imagine a scenario when improper court procedure was considered unimportant just because of who the defendant was? I know a lot of people out there want the country to shift to a totalitarian "we can do whatever we want as long as its under the guise of stopping terrorism" state, but not me. Freedom isn't free, and that doesn't mean we have to give up freedoms. It means we have to give freedoms to people we probably wouldn't like to if we want them ourselves. The lesson to glean from this isn't "terrorists get off scot free if someone messes up a little", it's "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT SCREW AROUND WHEN PROSECUTING A TERRORIST". Tags: Moussaoui, 9/11, terrorism, al Qaeda

Man, I'm pretty sure I called this one earlier this month. Despite all of the yelling on the part of Rummy and Bush, there is no evidence that IEDs in Iraq came from Iran, according to Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. President George W. Bush said on Monday components from Iran were being used in powerful roadside bombs used in Iraq, and Rumsfeld said last week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been inside Iraq to stir up trouble. Asked whether the United States has proof that Iran's government was behind these developments, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing, "I do not, sir." I had previously expressed some skepticism about the US's setting the stage for an Iran War, feeling that it was fairly convenient shifting of responsibility for violence. Much like the war in Afghanistan was moved to Iraq, the war in Iraq is being moved to Iran. Now it seems I may have been onto something with that. Of course, simply admitting that there was a hasty conclusion drawn is too uncharacteristic of this administration, so it's time to make a few excuses instead. "As to equipment, unless you physically see it coming in agovernment-sponsored vehicle or with government-sponsored troops, you can't know it," Rumsfeld said. "All you know is that you find equipment, weapons, explosives, whatever, in a country that came from the neighboring country." Well, it is a neighboring country, after all. It's next door and there are almost certainly people in there who don't like the United States. That doesn't mean jack. Now if stuff was coming from India, then that might be serious cause for alarm and an indication that the government might be involved. You can't suddenly make the leap that because some weapons came in from Mexico that are being used in gang violence that the Mexican government is responsible for fighting in the United States. In this case, it's not even full weapons, just components. What components? Well, we don't know, because we haven't even been told where the information came from. I have this image of wires and red buttons being pointed at as proof of something. Rummy then goes on to say that you can't even tell if people are involved from the government because Iranians make a pilgrimage to sites in Iraq (I wonder if that Golden Mosque was on the Shiite's list...). So now all we've got is some people who are from Iran who may not be involved in anything and a few weapons and that's adequate evidence to start up a war with Iran. Honestly, though, that's more than we ever had to go into Iraq. Tags: Iran, Iraq, Bush, Rumsfeld, IEDs, war, military, terrorism

The republicans call Vietnam War veterans Murtha and Kerry "cowards", the Bush Clan has smeared those two men as well as McCain (another Nam vet) on numerous instances. Meanwhile, the right flocks behind Bush as a brave man of war, behind a man who saw as much combat during Vietnam as I did. Discuss.

When even our closest ally is telling us that things are going terribly, I'd say that's a minor hint that things are really going terribly. Here we have warnings to Tony Blair that the US was mishandling the war. Now, really, I'm pretty sure none of us needed any reaffirmation of this fact, but it's especially interesting to hear that the country we pretty much point to as proof that there's any kind of meaningful support was rumbling of, basically, incompetence. Describing [retired general Jay] Garner's outfit, he wrote: "No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis." The forthcoming arrival of Paul Bremer, the U.S. diplomat who replaced Garner, was "not a day too soon," he added. I'd say that's a pretty fair way of putting things. Though the real doozie's here: Phase IV [the post-war nation-building stage] "did not work well" because the focus of U.S. planners had been on the invasion, he wrote. "There was a blind faith that Phase IV would work. There was a failure to anticipate the extent of the backlash or mood of Iraqi society." Now I don't know about that part. I can't really think of anyone who would blindly have thought that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. That's a pretty optimistic way of looking at things. Who in the world would have... Oh, right. Forgot about that guy. What's really nice is that while everything coming in from other areas is talking about problems over there, be they potential or realized, American intelligence refuses to acknowledge them. We had Bush telling us Saddam had WMDs and helped al Qaeda with 9/11, Rummy telling us Saddam was an "imminent threat" to the US, our Veep assuring us that we'd be greeted with open arms as liberators, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development Andrew Natsios assuring us that $1.7 billion in taxpayer money for the war was a high estimate, and Gen Casey reminding us that the civil strife was over. Hard to believe how completely wrong everything we were told was. Oh, speaking of the violence in Iraq, it seems that around 87 more bodies were found in the past 24 hours. A few mass graves, some stuffed in buses, that's a body count of around 25% of what the media kept trying to push across as the total count. Interestingly, I mentioned a little while ago that body counts were being suppresed by Shiites, and it didn't seem to get picked up. As I wrote there: It seems now I have my answer: Shiite officials are suppressing execution-style death tolls, so the only "official" numbers are coming in the form of explosions and in-the-street violence. What do you know, almost a week later we find stockpiles of bodies killed in that exact manner. I'd keep an eye on this one, folks, I heavily doubt this is the end of discovering bodies out there. There are more, possibly many more. It's going to really bring to light what's happening with the forming government. I can only imagine how Bush could possibly respond upon finding that the government he's championed putting into the country may be executing people and hiding the bodies. Can his little mind possibly comprehend the elected government hating democracy? I doubt it, myself. Personally, I think we do need to "cut and run" now. Dangerous place, and they need to sort out their own affairs. Like I said, we aren't police, we've made them a non-threat to the United States, time to go.

Is it just me, or does it seem like there's always a new reason to spend another few billion in Iraq and stay there another year? Now we've go the United States spending billions and deploying experts to stop IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, which is a pretty fancy term to mean a bomb that they piece together on the fly and put on the side of the road. The situation is just maddening. Not only because we've got American soldiers being blown up by street bombs planted by insurgents, but for the way it's being looked at by the government. I would think that anyone viewing this situation with an objective eye would see this as some ragtag insurgents planting bombs and that's about the end of the situation. The bombs may be fairly advanced due to using Saddam's old materials, but these aren't war experts. But listening to the military you'd think we're dealing with masterminds. Hoaxes are a peril. "The enemy's very smart," said Capt. Peter Weld, Sisk's commander. "They plant a harmless device that soldiers find and gather around, and then they hit them with a real device nearby." I fail to see how "very smart" the enemy is. It's planting a fake bomb. It's not exactly a carefully planned strategy, I'm pretty sure that's shown up in a number of movies. Our military is getting outsmarted by that? You know, I don't even know why they'd need to use a fake bomb. According to the Captain here, the soldiers all gather around the harmless device. The insurgents could just blow that up and not need to worry about having decoys. Is that what our military is trained to do? Find something that looks like a bomb and huddle around it? No wonder people are calling the attackers so smart. People wonder why I say the war isn't planned and constructed well at all, here you go. Then we've got this kind of comment: Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. "They adapt more quickly than we procure technology," he said of the insurgents. What kind of a state are we in? We're the United States of America, can someone tell me why a bunch of ragtag insurgents are able to stay a step ahead of us? It occurs to me, though. What's going on is we're trying to fight insurgents while protecting the people who live there as peaceful citizens. The military in Iraq is protecting the emerging democracy and those who live in it while detaining and removing the threat of terrorism and insurgency. If this were really a war, we'd blow up the areas like we did at the beginning before we accomplished our mission. Now we're trying to root out the individuals. So what would you call a force that patrols the streets to protect the citizens? An army? I sure wouldn't. I'd call that the police. And that's exactly what our army is doing in Iraq. We haven't done anything remotely for the protection of the United States in as long as we've been there. We forced in a democracy and now we're spending our time and money to make sure it sticks. When did our military become primarily concerned with the well-being of people of another country? But, really, the end result of this is that we've got Sunnis fighting Shiites, with a death toll that's steadily climbing despite officials assuring us the threat is over, and we've got insurgents blowing up Americans. Bush wants to say anyone who opposes us staying there a coward, that we shouldn't want to "cut and run". But really, why are we still there? What benefit are AMERICANs getting? Sure a warm fuzzy feeling from a democratic Iraq is nice, but the cost of this war is just incredible and that's going to hurt us far more than it helps. Some will say "having an ally in the Middle East is what we need". Sure, that'd be nice if we weren't doing it by pissing off other countries and destroying our own military. Our soldiers did not enlist to act as police for Iraqis. They are our protection, and using them for this purpose is simply sickening. Killing them for this purpose is detestable.

You know, there are times when you almost want to feel bad for the guy, until you remember how many people he's killed and all the civil liberties he took a crap on. Many were complaining about the CBS poll showing Bush's rating at 34%, saying that the polling group was more democrats and independents than republicans. Well, now we've got another one to work with, the USAToday/CNN/Gallup poll that's got him at 36%, the lowest they've seen yet. Now, I could obviously question what everyone's problem is about who gets polled, because these same polls had Bush at nearly 90 after 9/11, and in the 70s after the "Mission Accomplished" banner happened. Actually I'm going to do just that, and I'm going to attack the problem from three different heads. First off, as I mentioned, Bush's ratings were around 90 after 9/11. Unless these people complaining think that the poll targeted a different demographic back in '01, we all agree the same people said that 90% that are saying the 36%. So either the republicans are bitching and moaning about a very small percentage difference between what the recent polls are saying and what they really are, since it's the same people, then they're apparently of the belief that after 9/11 over 100% of the country liked him. I don't think I'm alone in saying that's pretty bloody unlikely. Secondly, trends are more important than straight numbers, and the trends make Bush look even worse. If his approval was low after all of the events that should typically spike approval (tragedies, the "victory" in a war), then it'd be pretty easy to accuse polling bias of keeping him down. But he went from the highest approval of any president to the third lowest. His approval dropped by almost two-thirds from that huge 9/11 bump to now. Since I'm still going off the assumption that these polls (if they're so biased) aren't going to have ever skewed numbers to make him look BETTER, he's still the president with the worst approval rating drop in history. Thirdly, how do people think these polls happen? Aside from not having seen any proof of party bias in the polls, do these people think 4,000 people are selected, and then after the poll is conducted 1,100 of them are used? A thousand or so people are selected at random, and then the party affiliations are revealed after it's over. So it's still a random sampling. I'd question if there are simply more democrats or independents. now thanks to him. Of course, then we find ourselves noting that the party affiliation isn't necessarily a great indicator of things, as we see in Susa's 50 state poll of whether people thought Bush broke the law with wiretaps. Now, yes, it's true that the red states are more inclined to saying he obeyed the law and the blue states more inclined that he broke it, but what are our (unweighted) averages? RED STATES Obeyed the law: 35% Broke the law: 36% BLUE STATES Obeyed the law: 28% Broke the law: 43.5% So we're talking a 7% difference between the republicans and democrats on the issue, roughly. I ignored the undecideds because they were fairly even between the two groups. Now, if it's true that bias is given to one group over the other, let's say a nice pro-blue bias (three dems for every one republican), let's see how that stacks up to normal: NO BIAS (50/50) Obeyed the law: 31.5% Broke the law: 40% BIAS TOWARD DEMOCRATS (75/25) Obeyed the law: 29.75% Broke the law: 41.5% Wow. What a change even an enormous bias for democrats gives to that poll. Republicans, you're going to have to stop crying about every little poll that comes out. Like it or not, the country is not behind Bush, and all of the moaning about liberal bias in the media isn't going to change that. At least not in any significant way. And then there's this, which totally slays me. Nearly half of those polled said they believe Democrats would do a better job of managing the war -- even though only a quarter of them said the opposition party has a clear plan for resolving the situation. That's right. Only half of the people who think dems would do a better job actually have any idea what they would do. There is a significant portion of the population who is basically saying "anyone can do a better job than Bush"