American Gulag Redux

Dogs once urged for use at Abu Ghraib prison

Maj. David Dinenna testified at the end of a preliminary hearing for two Army dog handlers accused of abusing Iraqi detainees. Dinenna said at a September 2003 meeting, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the Guantanamo Bay commander, talked about the effectiveness of using the dogs.

"We understood that he was sent over by the secretary of defense," Dinenna testified.
He said teams of trainers were sent to Abu Ghraib "to take these interrogation techniques, other techniques they learned at Guantanamo Bay and try to incorporate them in Iraq."

The statements bolstered defense claims that the use of dogs to terrify inmates were sanctioned high up the chain of command and were not the actions of a few rogue soldiers, as the government claims.

Amidst all the noise of the msm, little bits of scary truth slip thorugh.

Returning Iraq troops said stressed

Military medical officials, however, cautioned against people reading their data as suggesting the war had driven so many soldiers over the edge. Instead, they characterized the anxiety and stress as normal reactions to combat, seeing dead and mutilated bodies, and feeling helpless to stop a violent situation.

Ritchie said mental health cases ebb and flow during a war, and suggested they are sometimes connected to a soldier's sense of success of the larger war effort. During the Korean War, cases increased when U.S. forces were losing ground but decreased as the situation improved, she said.

So here we have the foot soliers for the empire, not getting the billions in corporate welfare that their puppetmasters are, but it really is just a perception management problem, an issue of spin; just make the poor slobs believe that their genocidal mission is a success, and they will not end up homicidal and homeless back here in amurika.

House energy bill: Billions to big oil, little to curb use

"This bill is going to go through lickety-split," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., though he denounced it as a collection of giveaways to cash-rich energy companies that would fail to curb the nation's thirst for imported oil.

"This bill is packed with royalty relief, tax breaks, loan guarantees for the wealthiest energy companies in America even as they are reporting the largest quarterly profits of any corporation in the history of the United States," complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass

A provision that had passed the Senate to require the president to find ways to reduce U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a year by 2025 was abandoned because of strong opposition from House Republicans and the administration.

OPEN LETTER TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE:
$1.5 Billion Boondoggle for Oil Industry Was Sneaked into Energy Conference Report

So nice to see the congresscritters all making nice and cooperating to help out the poor mutlinational oil companies with heaps of corporate welfare; it could possibly get tough on them in the next decade or so as we use more and more oil to fight wars to gain control of whatever oil is left.

Santorum

Click on the above link to see what comes up first on google when you search for "santorum." These people know how to work the google algorithm, and it couldn't happen to a more appropriate creepy guy. For example, check out this story from the Washington Post:

In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.

Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass. (Full Article)

Baghdad Burger King

This isn't new, but i stumbled across it today and i wanted to share this image of empire. Also, some fun facts about Burger King

Plane Violates Camp David airspace

On Wednesday, the White House briefly went to red alert when another plane entered restricted airspace around Washington. President Bush was hurried from his residence to a safer location and lawmakers were ordered to evacuate the Capitol. Two fighters intercepted the twin-engine, propeller-driven plane eight miles northeast of the Capitol and escorted it to Winchester, Va. Full Article

The Secret Service is charged with protecting the President's life. There was the possibility of a threat to the President, so they took action and moved him. Now think back a few years to a morning in autumn when there were an unknown number of "hijacked" planes flying around, some of which had already crashed into buildings, yet the President sat in a Florida elementary school, reading about goats during a publicly scheduled visit, with no "hurried" effort to remove him to a "safer location."