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Topic: How the Iraq War’s $2 Trillion Cost to US Could Have Been
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Tue 01/22/08 02:02 PM
Brandon I too wish we could have spent the money on poverty.

Its not that way - we still have to police the world or there will be no world to eliminate poverty.

The end to dictators and terroist will come.

Only then can we make this Earth ideal.

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:10 PM
We dont need to police the world! We dont have that right! Policing the world will cause our own to fall! Look what policing the world did for the USSR! We need to take care of our own and and then worry about everything else!

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Tue 01/22/08 02:19 PM
This world has too much evil in it so unless we police the world it will end. Its what the USA has had to do for the last 100years......

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:21 PM
Terriorism, we have terriorist here living in the USA, Here ill name a few: Phizer the pharamsutical company, the Internal Revanue Service, Pat Robertson, Street Gangs, racists, sexists, anyone that choose to inflict pain, judgment or cruelty on anyone else.

Islamic Terriorist are the least of our worries, 9/11 could have been prevented just by Condalezza Rice taking heed to the Memo that was put on her desk that stated "Members of Al-Quada plan to attack the United States using Airplane" Our own government failed us and is trying to distract from that by going into IRAQ! And we were STUPID enough to re-elect this administration but yet we seek to impeach a president just for getting his **** sucked and playing with a cigar tube. Bush has Raped this country atleast Clintons act was concentuous!



BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:24 PM
Poverty is the breeding ground for Evilness. It is just like whats happing to the Endangered Creatures of this world. When they loose there enviroment, they cease to be. When you take away the enviroment of Poverty, Evil Will cease to be!

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Tue 01/22/08 02:25 PM
Edited by crickstergo on Tue 01/22/08 02:26 PM
You can't equate the type of terroism you spoke of in the US to that in Iraq, Iran, Palistan, the west bank, etc

No one could hve stopped 911. It was just beyond belief for a God loving country like the US.

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:30 PM
Which will do more damage to a structure. A blast from the Outside or an explosion from within?

madisonman's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:32 PM

You can't equate the type of terroism you spoke of in the US to that in Iraq, Iran, Palistan, the west bank, etc

No one could hve stopped 911. It was just beyond belief for a God loving country like the US.
Condi Rice, 9/11 and Another Nest of Lies
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 02 October 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have committed perjury in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission in May of 2004. At a minimum, her testimony was a convenient mishmash of half-truths and omissions which served to paint the White House as innocent bystanders as the attacks of 9/11 unfolded. Certainly, her testimony omitted the fact that the two most senior intelligence officials in the nation delivered a stern warning regarding an impending terror attack two full months before 9/11.

Sunday's edition of the Washington Post carried a story titled "Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice." The story described a desperate attempt by CIA chief George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black to draw Rice's attention to the looming threat of an al-Qaeda strike against the United States. Tenet and Black insisted on a meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001. This meeting was first reported by Bob Woodward in his new book, "State of Denial."

"Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts," read the Post story, "and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined 'Bin Laden Threats Are Real.' Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself ... Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment - covert, military, whatever - to thwart bin Laden."

The meeting, according to Tenet and Black, went nowhere. "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies," the Post story reported. "Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place."

"Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated," continued the Post story. "Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Black later said, 'The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.'"

The Post story concluded with a remarkable Editor's Note: "How much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's 'neocons' and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks. Rice responded in an interview that 'what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.'"

This comment suggests the entire Post story was inspired by former President Clinton's remarkable denunciation of the Bush administration's efforts to thwart bin Laden in a recent Fox News interview. The seriousness of this meeting, however, goes far beyond political sniping and gamesmanship.

Peter Rundlet served as counsel to the 9/11 Commission, and has accused the White House of hiding the meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice from the commission. Rundlet practiced at the influential law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and was formerly associate counsel to the president and a White House Fellow, serving in the Office of Chief of Staff to the President, before joining the commission.

Writing for the online news magazine Think Progress, Rundlet stated, "Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation, questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the commission been told about this significant meeting. Suspiciously, the commissioners and the staff investigating the administration's actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting. As Commissioner Jamie Gorelick pointed out, 'We didn't know about the meeting itself. I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.'"

This is a remarkable revelation in and of itself. The head of CIA and the head of CIA's counterterrorism branch delivered a warning in the strongest possible terms to Ms. Rice two months before the attack, yet this meeting was not revealed to the 9/11 Commission. It may well have remained a historical non-event had Woodward not written about it.

Which brings us to Ms. Rice's sworn testimony in May 2004 before the commission.

At one point in this hearing, Commission Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton directly asked Rice about the so-called intelligence failures leading up to 9/11: "At the end of the day, of course, we were unable to protect our people. And you suggest in your statement - and I want you to elaborate on this, if you want to - that in hindsight it would have been - better information about the threats would have been the single - the single most important thing for us to have done, from your point of view, prior to 9/11, would have been better intelligence, better information about the threats. Is that right? Are there other things that you think stand out?"

Rice responded, "Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack."

Not only did Rice fail to mention the dramatic warnings given to her by Tenet and Black, she goes on to flatly state that neither she nor the administration had a clue that an attack was coming. Further, she claims that "no single thing could have prevented that attack."

"The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks," read the Post report on Sunday, "but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda."

Combined with the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing delivered to Bush, which explicitly stated that bin Laden intended to attack the United States, the revelation of this meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice indicates that the Bush White House should have and could have made a far greater effort at thwarting the 9/11 attacks. Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on the matter may rise to the level of perjury. At a minimum, it exposes yet another nest of lies delivered by a member of this administration.

"A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me," wrote Peter Rundlet in his Think Progress article, "when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward's new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001. If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know."

Indeed.



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William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

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http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/65/22884

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Tue 01/22/08 02:35 PM
We currently have a lot of the stuff that would cause a blast from the inside under control but we have very little of the stuff that would cause a blast from the outside under control. And we are Americans so sooner or later we will get the inside stuff straightened out without a total blast but I can't feel comfortable saying that about the blast from the outside!!!

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Tue 01/22/08 02:39 PM
Edited by crickstergo on Tue 01/22/08 02:40 PM
We could stop all murders in the US too under your premise. Usually all of them have signs but no one sees them until its too late!!! But once you have a murder in a family you are looking for signs I tell you that. Maybe we are now stopping the murdering. Where are the atacks???

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:50 PM
we as Americans dont have Poverty under control. We cant worry about what might happen, 9/11 shouldnt have happened, we had the oppritunity to prevent it and we had the man power to prevent it and we had the knowledge that something was going to happen. We were failed and shouldnt have been.


Our enternal infrasture is so weak, our own people lack proper Health Care, we have to deal with a court system full of errors, We have Homless Veterens for crying out loud! Racism, sexism and hate still reins supreme in so many American Hearts. Children are abused, abandend, and neglected ever day. We have a government in place that takes rights from it own people, just from some temporary Security.

The American Society is a TV Dinner socity, aslong as they have there 90 second dinner and the remote control they ok with what ever.

At this rate, We have a worse fate than the Roman Empire!!!

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:54 PM
When Everyone sees another as there Brother or Sister, without Hate, without selfeshness, and Love is implanted in everyones heart, Yes Murders will not exist.


Thats the Power of LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Tue 01/22/08 02:56 PM
Edited by crickstergo on Tue 01/22/08 02:57 PM
Wish you were more optimistic and not sinical. That's not an attack on you Brandon just my opinion of some of your statements. I'm off to take my nephews to basketball practice and I'm confident everything will be OK because I know of no other place that is safer or presents as many opportunitoes for me to attain happiness. God bless everybody.

BrandonJItaliano's photo
Tue 01/22/08 02:59 PM
Im not Synical at all.

I just belive in the power of Love



God bless you 2



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