The Hollywood Liberal

Blair announces Iraq withdrawal plan

AP
Excerpt
LONDON – Britain will withdraw around 1,600 troops from Iraq in the “coming months,” aiming to cut its force to below 5,000 by late summer if Iraqi forces can secure the southern part of the country, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.

British troops will stay in Iraq until at least 2008 and work to secure the Iran-Iraq border and maintain supply routes to U.S. and coalition troops in central Iraq, Blair told the House of Commons.

“The actual reduction in forces will be from the present 7,100 — itself down from over 9,000 two years ago and 40,000 at the time of the conflict — to roughly 5,500,” Blair said.

H.L.s Take:
Even the poodle knows when its well past time to get out. Denmark is also pulling it’s troops out of Iraq. Of course Blair, and the leader of Denmark aren’t making millions a day in stolen oil being pumped out of ummetered wells, the way Bush and Cheney are so the financial incentive is not as great.

Audit: Anti-terror case data flawed

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.

Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated…..

The errors led Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., to question whether the department had exaggerated the number of terror cases.

“If the Department of Justice can’t even get their own books in order, how are we supposed to have any confidence they are doing the job they should be?” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the department. “Whether this is just an accounting error or an attempt to pad terror prosecution statistics for some other reason, the Department of Justice of all places should be classifying cases for what they are, not what they want us to think them to be.
H.L.s Take
No suprise here, of course the terror stats have to be amped up to keep the people in fear of another attack so they can continue to have the government shove its nose deeper and deeper up every citizens ass, with more surveillance, more cops, more security, more snooping into our private affairs. They can also justify keeping the unending war going on so we can beat a boogeyman that does not exist.

On a side note: I live right next to the Kodak theatre in Hollywood where the Oscars will be held in 5 days. The theatre is located inside a mall, and even though its still almost a week away there is so much security around you would think we were in the middle of the green zone. They are stopping every car that comes in and searching their trunks, they have those long sticks with mirrors attached to the end of that they use to check under every car, like you see when you are crossing the border back into the US. They have half the street blocked off so you can’t get around the line of cars waithing to be inspected, even if you are not going into the mall. They have Hollywood Bd. closed down so traffic is snarled in every driection, and this has been going on for many days already. Not to mention LAPD everywhere with sirens blasting and helicopters hovering overhead at the drop of a hat. All because they are “afraid” that some “terrorist” is going to bomb the Oscars. What a joke. Of course they have to keep up the charade so that all these people can justify thier jobs, while the people in the neighborhood have to put up with all this BS.

Obama, ’08 candidates head to California

AP
Excerpt
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Jennifer Aniston, Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy were just some of Hollywood’s hottest celebrities who forked over campaign dollars at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record).

Presidential candidates have long been attracted to California by the prospect of high dollars and the opportunity to bask in Hollywood glamor. Now there is also another lure for 2008 candidates like Obama — the prospect the state may move up its primary, creating a treasure trove of delegates to be won in the early run-up to the nominations.

Lawmakers and Schwarzenegger are poised to move the state’s primary to Feb. 5 from June.

The level of presidential activity in the state is unusually intense, with roughly a year to go before votes are cast.

H.L.s Take:
And they could be getting even stronger. I am hearing rumours that Al Gore may declare his candidacy from the podium this Sunday night while he is recieving his Oscar for his film An Inconveinient Truth. That would really shake up Hollywood, Gore will berubbing elbows with every bigwig in town at the after parties. If Gore runs he can win, (I mean he already has won, hasn’t he?)
so long as he learns his lessons from his last campaign and fights this time against the lying republicans. The nation is just now starting to come to grips with our biggest problem. Global Warming, which Al has been studying, and advocating against for years.

Wings of Justice

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt

Because of the complicated political strategy unfolding
on Capitol Hill, many states have decided to come to the aid of
our troops
being used as bait by the Bush Administration. Some State Houses
are starting to consider their own resolutions to end U.S. involvement
in the Iraq civil war.

This past week, Vermont became the first state in the Union where
both legislative houses passed resolutions calling for the forthcoming
and orderly withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq. It
shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Vermont "has lost
more soldiers per capita than any other state in the nation."

H.L.s Take
The states are against it, the towns are against it, the congress is against it, the rest of the world is against it, but the only two people who matter are for it, Bush and Cheney, no wonder they stole the election and then were involved in 9/11. How else could they keep the gravy train flowing.

How Do You Know You’ve Lost a War

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt
Is it after you’ve spent more than a quarter-trillion dollars on the war and it only gets worse? Have you lost the war when a large majority of the occupied country wants you to leave? How about when the people being occupied, more than 60 percent, think it is acceptable to kill American soldiers? Maybe the war jig is up when a plurality of your own soldiers lose faith in the mission and their commander-in-chief?
For most reality-based and cognitively viable individuals, any of the above would be a pretty solid indicator that you’ve lost the war. George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans, however; see it all as signs of impending victory.

H.L.s Take
Answers: Yes, yes, yes & yes

Military amputee uninvited from Bush event because the press would see him with no legs

Americablog
Excerpt
May these people fry in hell. (This a portion of a much larger, second part of the expose in the Washington Post on Monday.)
Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed’s image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee….” ‘Are you telling me that I can’t go to the ceremony ’cause I’m an amputee?’ ” David recalled asking. “She said, ‘No, I’m saying you need to wear pants.’ ”

David told the case worker, “I’m not ashamed of what I did, and y’all shouldn’t be neither.” When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Novak: House GOP fired Veterans-friendly committee chair in order to “save money”

Americablog
Excerpt
We now know how the Bush administration got away with years of providing such paltry support to our injured and maimed veterans from the Iraq war and Afghanistan. The Republican congressional leadership forcibly removed the GOP House committee chair in charge of overseeing veterans. Why? He was too vet-friendly, too interested in meeting the growing needs of our war veterans, and the Republicans wanted to save money at the expense of our injured and maimed veterans.

And I quote Robert Novak, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in existence:
[T]he House Republican leadership had removed [GOP] Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

The party’s House leaders purportedly removed Smith, a tireless promoter of spending for veterans, to save money….