Jim

I think I saw this on Fox!

Simple, but not a bad quick history. Be prepared for PP to post the propaganda from some Zionist web site to counter some of this. My simplistic solution: Pull all our $3 billion a year aid until Israel dismantles all settlements and pulls back to the green line. Confirm to UN resolutions 194 and 242. Then help build a functional Palestinian state and defend Israel from the wackos. Please, no revisionist responses of 194 and 242.

A Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, which in 1992 authored a study that concluded it would be good to privatize billions of dollars worth of military work. Of course they said it was a terrific idea. So they helped design the architecture for privatizing a lot of what happens today in the Pentagon when we have military engagements. In 1992, the Department of Defense, under then Secretary of Defense Cheney, commissioned the Halliburton subsidiary to do the study. In 1995, Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton. So why would a defense secretary, former chief of staff to a president and former member of Congress with no business experience become the CEO of a multibillion-dollar oil services company. He was brought in to raise their government contract profile and he did. It's more of the revolving door to privatize government operations and reward political connections. It's not a Rep vs Dem thing, the Reps just are better at it. Halliburton nearly doubled the value of federal contracts it received – from $1.2 to $2.3 billion – during the five years Cheney was its CEO. And yes they got a huge "no bid" contract regarding services for the current Iraq conflict. The current contract is worth $948 million, but it is open ended and the full contract amount is likely to reach $7 billion. A no other US companies got a chance to bid, never mind foreign companies.

Funny how the US isn't banging on the table to enfore UN Resolutions in this conflict.

Red herring Peter. Erik makes no reference to this.

Fear = Adventure, but Fear does not equal Danger. Point taken. I like to think that it's not an adventure unless the outcome is uncertain. Seems to be dumbing down the idea that this is an "adventure".

I like the quote "....for those seeking adventure without danger"

I thought you brought the rope!

Does seem like a lot of arm waving. Bill also includes some pork - like a new FS research center in Prineville, OR.

I hope this get used to thin forests on the urban/wildland interface - and not used as an "end around" current forest regulations to cut in areas away from towns. If so then the restrictions on court cases is problematic. Obviously the bill went through because of the fires in CA - but most of that is due to the chapparel and coastal scrub - not bark beetle/overgrown forests. One person in our San Diego office lost their house, school is still out of session, and the air quality was grim earlier this week. Here's some background, it's not that no noticed the potential: "The Davis administration released an April 16 letter sent to Bush warning that the bark beetle infestation was threatening severe fires in three counties: Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino. Davis warned that 75,000 residents of mountain communities were threatened. He requested $300 million from the U.S. Forest Service and $130 million from a FEMA account of unused money set aside from previous disasters. "This situation is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state,'' Davis said in April, a month after he declared three counties in a state of emergency because of the infestation and the potential for major wildfires fueled by Santa Ana winds. Eight days later, a bipartisan group of California lawmakers pleaded with federal authorities to approve Davis' request, saying "this infestation has created a tinder box of such magnitude that loss of life and resources would be incomprehensible should fire break out." The letter was signed by Boxer, and Republican Reps. Mary Bono of Palm Springs, Jerry Lewis of Redlands (San Bernardino County), Darrell Issa of Vista (San Diego County), David Dreier of San Dimas (Los Angeles County) and Duncan Hunter of Alpine (San Diego County), among others. Hunter's home was destroyed in the recent fire. "

I've been climbing since 1974. The longest I've gone without climbing was just a couple years ago - had to recover from a couple of non-climbing injuries. It was a drag. While I don't climb as much (every week) or as intently as I did 20 years ago, I can still match my highest grade (with a bit more whinning). People's lives change, they get injured, priorities change. Climbing is not just the glossy coved studs on R&I or Climbing - it's what you make it. Ya gotta just get out there and push the envelope a bit - whatever that is for you. Feel the rock, smell the forests, scrape you knuckles and laugh about it with friends later. Just get out there and do something! Life's too short. Climbing makes it better.

Kinda odd. The Coast Guard station at Port Clarence needs 25 folks to keep it running - a sewage treatment plan, water treatment, a fuel farm for diesel for the generators, keeping the runway clear all year as there are no roads. All for keeping the LORAN signal going from the 1,350 ft tower there (it's big). So if they move it to outside Nome they can get an electrical line out to it, use solid state, and have only a few guys to keep it up - thus saving $1.5 million a year. So we were trying to help them find the best place for it, and from our perspective the site with the least environmental issues. So it's a big alternative siting study. One Coastie told me he climbed the tower and tossed off a balsa wood airplane. It took him 3 hrs to climb it (all the clip-ins). His buddies on ATVs with radios gave up tracking the plane after an hour. It would dive 200 ft then swoop back up. It was headed across the bay at 1,000 ft when last seen.

Followed my mountain bike buddies up 12 mi of FS road uphill. Followed them down Devil's Gulch, endo-ed twice. Couldn't keep the downhill crazy pace w/o thinking this is going to end badly. Lived. Ended the day with beer and bratwust at Gustav's

I spent 10 days working in Alaska a couple weeks ago and got to see some great country. Big country! Started in Juneau with a day of meetings but I was able to get in ealy and meet some friends and scramble up a peak adjacent to the Mendenhall Glacier. What a monster to have right in your backyard. Saw some goats, got back to town and had dinner with an interesting group. Business on Monday then flew to Nome on Monday afternoon. Now there's a frontier town. Reminds me a lot of some small towns in southern Patagonia. Windswept, by the sea, dogs, ATVs, and a bit of bailing wire to keep things together. And no trees for 100 miles! Meet with staff of the Alaska Fish and Game in the morning - they had some great muskox skulls and bear hides. The to talk to the Sinasauk tribe; we were going to conduct some plant and wildlife surveys some of their paracels the next day. First thing that Pat - our tribal contact asks is "Did you guys bring you guns?" (Hey Greg - help). We said no - with raised eyebrows and she says - "that's ok, Melvin always carrys his and he'll come tomorrow - bears y'know". Next day at dawn (9:30) we hop on our ATVs and tear outta town. It's hard to keep up with these folks ripping about 45 mph on the dirt road leading east along the Bearing Sea. It's about 40 deg with a slight drizzle. We get to a faint track along a drainge and head north, but stop soon to warm our hands, and so Pat and Melvin can have a smoke. The weather starts to clear and the low clear light gives a great warm color to the tundra expanse. Only in the draws or along major rivers do any shrubs get higher than your waist, in most of the tundra shrubs are no higher than your ankle, but the diversity of lichens, moss, herbs, and low shubs is stunning for such a harsh place. We hop on the quads and head 6 miles north on a bearing for Army Peak. It's late in the season so most of the birds are gone but we get some great looks at several golden eagles and one almost tame gyrfalcon - a white phase one that is beautiful - the largest NA falcon. A small herd of reindeer tromp by, seeminly oblivious to us. Pat and Melvin are drinking some coffee, I have a bit, and then go on my way collecting plant species. I'm focused on a square meter of ground when I hear Melvin yell "Bear!!". I stand up and there he is, lumbering up out of a narrow drainge about 75 yrds away, my camera dangles from my neck but I forget it's there. Melvin nods to stay put, and the bear moves on. Melvin immediately goes back to drinking coffee and talking to Pat, I warily go back to my task. After a day of checking out various sites we head back and decide to take a more direct route back to the coast road. The tundra is a varied terrain, sometimes very flat but often tussocked with peat mounds, frost heaves and wedges, and a lot of it wet. We get stuck a couple of times, which requires some rocking of the ATV while you're off it and giving it the throttle, and then running beside it to get it to higher ground. My arms had a workout by the end of the day. Next day while surveying some river bottom I ran across two muskox. We had seen them earlier in the week but they were across a big river I couldn't cross. This time I got within 25 feet, just on one side of a braided channel. Got some great photos (office slide scanner is down - new one on order - I'll post later). These critters look prehistoric. They're kinda clumsy, dragging they short legs around, and don't handle deep snow well. So they climb atop the wind-blown ridges in the winter, face into the wind, and kinda hang out in the -30 deg weather. Apparently they don't view humans as predators and if you're quiet you can get quite close. Later in the week we flew to Port Clarence, about 80 mi NW of Nome, just below the Bearing Strait. It's a spit of land with a small coast guard station. Found a great walrus skull I took home in a 5 gal bucket, and it barely fit. When the pack ice solidifies the natives from across the bay travel via snow machine to the station and their kids use the small swimming pool in the station. The natives try and sell their carvings and hunt seal and walrus around the spit. We stopped in the village of Brevig Mission on the way back to Nome, very isolated, no roads, winter gives them more travel options with the sea ice and snow on the land. Back in Nome at the end of the week we had a free day to bop around a bit. There's 3 roads out of Nome, each about 75 miles long that dead end. Saw more moose, muskox, reindeer, a couple of bears far away, and some interesting raptors. Walked a couple of ridgelines and got up on some 3,000 ft peaks for the view, which is a long way up there. Not much climbing up there but you could do some interesting wilderness walks and some cool ridge walks. There's some scattered stone pinacles on the ridges, I think they call them Toks. If you ever get up there the place to stay in Nome is the Aurora Inn, though we were on per diem and it's pricey. But everything is up there. It's a cool place to explore and if you're into birding the spring is supposed to be amazing, with quite a few asian migrants. Ask around Nome for local ivory carvers and avoid the tourist shops. We stopped by one native carver's house and had a wonderful conversation with him and bought a couple of nice pieces. Go for the eggs and reindeer sausage for breakfast at Fat Freddies. Very cool work trip.

Notice that the cited article doesn't actually refute any facts. The author just doesn't seem to like the conclusions. More of the same "sit down and shut up" mantra.

I was up in Alaska doing some fieldwork when these two got chomped. We say several bears but had no desire to pet them. The locals just roll their eyes about this guy. Did get some cool pics, but not of grizzlies, got a little nervous when they were around.

I love the Cliff Notes version. Lots o' landslides I bet.

OK I know you are a family of scientists but are you sure of your calculation. Your wife starts work at 7:30pm leaves school at 7:30pm gets home at say 8:pm eats dinner with you (1 hr) then works from 9:00pm to 11:pm M-F? Does anyone else think this is a bit of an exageration? PP Seriously PP - no bullshitting. I would say the average day she gets to school by 7:15 and leaves by 6:30. I generally cook during the week, we eat, and she does a couple of hours of work. This past weekend she worked 3 hours on Saturday, and then went into school for 4 hours Sun afternoon in preparation for the parents open house on Thur this week. I'm just telling you like it is. I'd say 75% of the teachers at her school have a similar schedule. They're very dedicated. If you're kid has them as a teacher, they're lucky.

The support your troops mantra and the "don't critisize now" mantra a two variations on the same theme: Shut up and get in line. Democracy is a bit messy, but this is not how it works. There should be a critical analysis of the events leading uup to this - the lies, the desire to go it alone, the economic calculations. I would have disagreed, but would have more respect for the admin if they said this: Look we think Saddam is a potential future threat, he is not now but will be. We're going to go in with a strong coalition of nations, let the UN take over the administration, and work with them to build a government and get the infrastructure back up, with a fair division of contracts amongst the major nations. This will require some sacrafice so I'm RAISING taxes for a few years to pay for this endeavor. Blah, blah, blah.

Though there is some truth in all these post it seems like the reaction is over the top. I don't know what the specific problem is between the district and the teachers, but they are one of the highly paid districts in the state. That aside I'd like to comment on some of the above generalizations regarding teachers. My wife is a middle school science and health teacher. She worked for about 17 years as a geologist so brings a great science background to the classroom. Few science teachers have a sciece degree or expeciece in science application. The Seattle school disctric contract says she works 6.5 hours a day. Generally she works 11-12 hours at school, with a couple of hours at home every night. Then at least 10 hours each weekend. Then you add evening presentations, parent meetings, etc. It's quite commiting if you're going to do it well. While they have time off around the holidays my wife grades or plans through these. And over the summer there is about 7 weeks where they do not have to be at school. Give mandatory workshops, class development and planning - it's not much tme off. So I don't think the statements of big vacations is fair. While unions do give teachers some bargining power they don't necessarily help merit promotion. You can be a medicore teacher and stay in the profession a long time. But that does come back to pay - would you be willing to start at $24K with a BA or $31K with a MS in Seattle? Reducing class sizes would greatly improve your kid's education, but there doesn't seem to be money available to address this issue in the current economic and political climate. Most teachers bust their butts for your kids. You should be grateful. IMO.

WTF??

No party has clean hands on this one. One of the big issues is emissions of "light trucks", which believe it or not includes SUVs like the Excursion and Hummer. Orginally meant to give a break to ranchers/farmers in the west that drove over wide areas with working vehicles the lower standards were not anticipated to cover soccer moms bopping around town or outdoor image meisters. Feeble attempts to bring the emisison standards back into the fold of all vehicle emissions have been squashed. But the Bushie agenda is clear - loosen up the regulatory framework such as recent EOs regarding power plant upgrades, air qualty standards in National Parks (including the snow machines in Yellowstone), and a number of subvertive actions regarding NEPA regulations and air quality.

Man, we're getting a bit desperate trying to relate the Iraq invasion with any kind of legimate allied war. Let's see, we went to Iraq for terrorists(oops, not there), WMDs (oops - not yet- though we swore we knew exacty where they were), oh to get Saddam the monster - (oops -not yet - but probably by Nov 04), to stabalize the country (and that's going well). You're grasping for straws pp.

Oh you're bailing a sinking ship if you're going to try and defend FOX. At least try a slightly harder target. Flat out lies should be confronted ~ Bill O'Reilly; Fox News Channel; May 22, 2003 Since the Iraq conflict began on March 20, Fox News has been on a mission to legitimize it. One problem for Fox's protracted apologia is that despite promises of evidence of current weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by the Bush Administration, the evidence has been ambiguous at best. Unfortunately for the network, I’ve been keeping a scratch diary of their reports since the war began. Keep in mind that in the first three weeks of March, before the bombs started officially dropping, Fox was spreading all sorts of Pentagon propaganda. Iraq had "drones" that it could quickly dispatch to major U.S. metropolitan areas to spread biological agents. Saddam was handing out chemical weapons to the Republican guard to use against coalition troops in a last-ditch red-zone ring around Baghdad. Given what we now know about Iraq, these reports seem to be laughable fantasies, but they were effective in securing public backing for the war. The following is a short chronicle of lies, propagation of lies, exaggerations, distortions, spin, and conjecture presented as fact. My comments are in brackets [ ]s. March 14: On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith reports that Saddam is planning to use flood water as a weapon by blowing up dams and causing severe flood damage. March 19: Fox anchor Shepard Smith reports that Iraqis are planning to detonate large stores of napalm buried deep below the earth to scorch coalition forces. Fox Military Analyst Major Bob Bevelacqua states that coalition forces will drop a MOAB on Saddam's bunker [!!] and give him the "Mother of All Sunburns." March 23: The network begins 2 days of unequivocal assertions that a 100-acre facility discovered by coalition forces at An Najaf is a chemical weapons plant. Much is made about the fact that it was booby trapped. A former UN weapons inspector interviewed on camera over the phone downplays the WMD allegations and says that booby-trapping is common. His points are ignored as unequivocal charges of a chemical weapons facility are made on Fox for yet another day (March 24). Only weeks later is it briefly conceded that the chemicals definitively detected at the facility were pesticides. [Jennifer Eccleston has to be the worst reporter employed by any network. She began one segment with a "Hi there!" – in no response to any segue from the relaying anchor at Fox headquarters in New York. Her bangs are long and constantly blowing in her face in the wind. Her head wobbles from side to side with her nose tracing out a figure 8 all the while arbitrarily syncopating a monotone voice with overemphasis on the last syllables of different words (e.g., Bagh-DAD’). The old, white-haired flag-waving yahoos like her not for her professionalism – she has none – but because of her innocent Britney Spearsesque beauty; i.e., she's a typical young piece of meat which dirty old men with too much time on their hands fantasize about.] March 24: Oliver North reports that the staff at the French embassy in Baghdad are destroying documents. [How could he know this?] March 24: Fox and Friends. Anchor Juliet Huddy asks Colonel David hunt why coalition forces don't "blow up" Al Jazeera TV. [The context of the discussion makes it clear that she doesn't know the difference between Al Jazeera and Iraqi TV!!!! Juliet Huddy is a beautiful woman but not very bright.] March 28: Repeated assertions by Fox News anchors of a red ring around Baghdad in which Republican Guard forces were planning to use chemical weapons on coalition forces. A Fox "Breaking News" flash reports that Iraqi soldiers were seen by coalition forces moving 55-gallon drums almost certainly containing chemical agents. April 7: Fox, echoing NPR, reports that U.S. forces near Baghdad have discovered a weapons cache of 20 medium-range missiles containing sarin and mustard gas. Initial tests show that the deadly chemicals are not "trace elements." [in the coming weeks, this embarrassing non-discovery is quickly stomped down the Memory Hole. The missiles were never mentioned again.] April 9: The crowd around coalition troops toppling the Saddam statue in Baghdad looks strangely sparse despite the network's assertions to the contrary. The perspective is always in close and even then there is no mob storming the statue to hit it with their shoes. Just a handful of people. It's constantly asserted that there's a huge crowd. [i'm perplexed. Where's the huge crowd?!] April 10: Fox "Breaking News" report of weapons-grade plutonium found at Al Tuwaitha. [in the coming weeks this "discovery" was expeditiously shoved down the Memory Hole as well.] April 10 (2:59 EDT): A report noting with surprise "how little" the Iraqis were celebrating the coalition invasion. [An interesting contradiction of the allegations of widespread celebration just the day before with the toppling of the Saddam statue.] April 10 (3 p.m. EDT: Reporter Rick Leventhal) Fox "Breaking News" report: A mobile bioweapons lab is found. Video of a tiny tan truck—about the size of the smallest truck that U-Haul rents – which had its cargo bed and fuel tank shot up with bullets after a looter tried to drive it away. Repeated assertions that this is most definitely a "bioweapons" lab. A graphic sequence is shown of a large Winnebago-type vehicle that is massive compared to the tiny truck found. The irony of this escapes the Fox newscasters and defense "experts." [This was the first "bioweapons lab" found, not the larger one later found in Mosul. A week later it is briefly conceded that the tiny truck was probably never a bio weapons lab, but promises that real ones will pour forth from the landscape continue. The second phantom lab, a large tractor-trailer truck was discovered around May 2 by Kurdish fighters.] April 10: To show that France is in bed with Saddam Hussein, Fox begins running old footage of Saddam Hussein's September 1975 trip to Paris to meet with Jacques Chirac and tour a nuclear power plant. [because Fox strives so hard to be "Fair and Balanced," it's all the more curious how it fails to inform its audience about another trip four years later, this one to Baghdad on December 19, 1983 made by Reagan envoy and then former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (see pic below). The network again, because it's so very "Fair and Balanced," also inexplicably forgot to tell its audience about another trip by Rummy to Baghdad, this time on March 24, 1984, the very same day that a U.N. team found that Iraqi forces had used mustard gas laced with a nerve agent on Iranian soldiers. Rummy obviously wasn't too concerned about the charges of gassing, as in 1986 when he was considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination of 1988, he listed his restoration of diplomatic relations with WMD-using Iraq as one of his proudest achievements. But all that's an eternity ago for Imperial Conservatives with a 20-second attention span. The Fox newscasters rename Jacques Chirac "Jacques Iraq"(yuk, yuk, yuk – what a side splitter!) and keep going.] April 7: Repeated ominous footage of barrels buried in a below-ground shed near Karbala. The implication is that the Iraqi landscape is replete with these types of shelters, all of them brimming with evidence of chemical weapons. [These were revealed to be agricultural chemicals as well.] April 13: Fox Graphic: "Bush: Syria Harboring Chemical Weapons." [My favorite Fox war commentator is definitely Colonel David Hunt. From my canvassing of all the cable network war coverage, it's hard to find an analyst who is more dogmatic. When coalition forces weren’t greeted with hugs and kisses like he predicted and instead encountered stiff resistance from Iraqi forces in Basra and other places, Davey was all denial. Everything’s going perfect. Rummy is God, hallelujah and praise Dubya! There's not a problem in Iraq that can't be solved by blowing some Iraqi's brains out.] April 15: Fox analyst Mansoor Ijaz claims that the top 55 Iraqi leaders (along with the whole stash of chemical and biological WMDs they have taken with them) are now living it up in Latakia, Syria. [This is the same 55 that appeared on the deck of cards and is still being captured – far from all living it up in Syria.] On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith completely breaks with any pretense of objectivity and openly mocks actor Tim Robbins after playing an excerpt of Robbins' speech to the National Press Club. "Oh, that was so powerful!" Smith mocked. [impressive objectivity there, Mr. Smith.] April 16: Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume blames the looting of the Iraqi National Museum on the museum staff. [Right now there are so many claims and counterclaims about the looting it's hard to tell what happened. In a Fox segment on May 19 a coalition official asserted that 170,000 items were definitely not missing. Of course he refused to give a ballpark estimate of what was missing, which he'd surely have in order to plausibly deny that the original estimate was wrong.] April 18: Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqis "ungrateful." April 21: Bill O'Reilly opens his show calling Iraqi Shiites "ungrateful SOBs" and "fanatics." He concludes that "[we] can't tolerate a fundamentalist state" in Iraq. [Whoa, O'Reilly. I thought we promised the Iraqis that we were going to implement democracy, not democracy that gives the U.S. the election results it wants. That's not democracy, now, is it? By now it's quite clear that despite the spinning on The No Spin Zone, Iraq is descending into chaos.] April 22: Lt. Colonel Robert Maginnis states on The O'Reilly Factor that the probability of finding WMDs is a 10 out of 10. [This is the same Robert Maginnis who predicted a double-ring defense of Baghdad in the Washington Times on January 7.] O'Reilly states that if no WMDs are found within a month from today, then that spells big trouble. O'Reilly promises to explore the issue a month later. [Cool, let's hold his feet to the fire on that promise. On an earlier show he said that U.S. credibility would be "shot" if no WMDs were found. ] May 8: Fox News Military Analyst Major General Paul Vallely states on The O’Reilly Factor that "Middle East agents" have told him that Iraq’s WMDs along with 17 mobile weapons labs (1 of which was captured around May 2) are now buried in the Bakaa Valley in Syria 30 meters underground. He also claims that France helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers [a charge that even the Pentagon later denies although it's apparent that's where Vallely got his information]. May 11: On The Fox Report with Rick Folbaum it is conceded that the nefarious captured trailer contains not a shred of evidence of WMDs, but Folbaum hints that what’s important is that the trailer could have been used to make them. [Hmmm. I thought we went to war for actual WMDs, not for the ability to make WMDs.] May 16: Special Report with Brit Hume. Muslims, citing Islam's ban of alcohol, are torching liquor stores and threatening their Christian owners. Under Saddam's secular regime, Christian names were banned and schools were nationalized, but guns and alcohol were freely available; there was tolerance for Iraq's 1 million Catholic and Protestant Christians. In New and Improved Neocon Iraq, there's a letter circulating in Baghdad threatening violence to even the families of women who refuse to wear the traditional Muslim head covering. [The report is yet another interesting and reluctant concession of unintended consequences.] May 19: O'Reilly discusses a number of inflammatory and bogus charges that were floated in the U.S. media about France (e.g., France supplied Iraq with precision switches used in nuclear weapons, French companies sold spare parts to Iraq for military planes and helicopters, France possessed illegal strains of smallpox, France helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers). Recall this last charge was made by Major General Paul Vallely on May 8 on The O'Reilly Factor. Again, the Pentagon denies all such charges although much of the Beltway thinks it's obvious that the Pentagon is the source of them. O'Reilly claims that Vallely is only irresponsible if the charges don't turn out to be true. O'Reilly refers to documents that prove that the French government was briefing Saddam right until the war started. [briefed on what?] May 20: O'Reilly concedes that the Private Jessica Lynch rescue story could be a fraud, as asserted by the BBC and Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer. "Somebody is lying," he states. He says that if the U.S. military has concocted a fraud, then it will be a terrible scandal but if the BBC and Scheer are wrong, nothing will happen to them. He says he is skeptical of the BBC and Scheer. To prove his point he brings on no other than Colonel David Hunt. [Geez. Transcript here.] Over and over, Hunt calls the allegations of staged rescue an "assail on the finest soldiers in the world." He claims that the ambulance with Lynch in it that drove up to a Marine checkpoint was never shot at, its drivers demanded $10,000 for information on Jessica, Saddam Hospital was guarded by uniformed Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen, Jessica's life was saved, and coalition forces didn't trash the hospital. What were his sources for this information? The special ops members on the raid, some of whom are his friends and former colleagues. Over and over Hunt kept saying, "They're the best soldiers in the world, they're the best in the world. Why would they make this up?" [What followed next was an exchange that's priceless and one of many that goes by far too un-analyzed on Fox every day:] Hunt: In my opinion it's an assault, an effrontery to the finest men and women in our service, it's an assault on Jessica, it's an assault on these great guys, these great special operations guys ... at a minimum we should no longer buy the L.A. Times, no longer buy the Toronto Free Press, and shut the BBC off. It's a government to government issue...this is calling into question the veracity of the finest soldiers in the world and it's uncalled for, it's absolutely unbelievable." O'Reilly: If you [Hunt] turn out to be right, nothing will happen to Scheer...he'll just go along blithely printing his lies and living his life and getting paid for it. [To the Colonel: U.S. special ops soldiers may be the best in the world at what they do, but how does it logically follow from that assessment that particular actions taken during the raid were not excessive and unjustified? How is the BBC's story an assault on Jessica?! What do you mean when you mention a "government to government issue" given that the U.S. government now controls Iraq?! Is the Pentagon the most effective check on its own possible misdeeds? How convenient if you're suggesting that it is. Who is your source that Iraqi doctors were trying to ransom Jessica? Why hasn't this allegation made its way into any other news reports?] [To O'Reilly: If the raid does turn out to be mostly staged, there'll be no terrible scandal precisely because you, Fox News, and the Pentagon will assert just the opposite and allow yet another embarrassment to slide into the Memory Hole. This is exactly why your demand for accountability from the BBC and L.A. Times is so hollow and hypocritical. Instead of plumbing the U.S. military to investigate itself, why don't you interview Iraqi doctor Harith al-Houssona as the London Times did on April 16 (where the story was first broken, not by the BBC or Robert Scheer) who actually saved Lynch's life instead of the U.S. special ops who could have jeopardized it? The doctor testifies that all Iraqi forces left the day before the raid and that Jessica was delivered by an ambulance that had to return to the hospital because it was shot at by Marines. Why would he lie? You say you automatically trust the Pentagon. Why, when tales of Lynch's heroics in fighting off 500 Iraqi soldiers with one hand while severely wounded and tales that she had amnesia have already been proven bogus?] May 22 (5:54 a.m. CDT): Richard King, a military doctor, appears on Fox and Friends with promises by the show's hosts that he will verify that the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't staged. King doesn't prove anything. He states that he arrived at Saddam Hospital the day after the rescue, concedes damage and mal-treatment of doctors at the hospital, and that he "was told " that the hospital was guarded by hostile forces but doesn't specify who told him. [The testimony of the hospital staff contradicts this last hearsay.] May 22: O'Reilly fails to live up to his promise to make a big stink if no WMDs are found by today. In his Talking Points Memo he wonders why the U.S. has caught such informed Iraqis as Dr. Germ and Ms. Anthrax and has gotten no leads. He states that more time is needed [contradicting what he said more than a month ago, when he said that if no WMDs were found after 2 months U.S. credibility would be "shot" and there would be big trouble]. He ends his Memo saying Bush must candidly address the situation soon. June 2: [unfortunately for O'Reilly, Bush isn't candidly explaining anything.] A video clip on Fox and Friends is shown with Bush in Poland claiming that "[w]e found" weapons of mass destruction. His evidence? Two trailers found near Mosul that were supposedly used as mobile bioweapons labs. [A June 7 article by the Times' Judith Miller reports serious doubts by some analysts that the two trailers were used as mobile bioweapons labs. Said one senior analyst about the initial CIA report, it "was a rushed job and looks political." Yes, they violated U.N. resolutions but this is another red herring to suggest WMDs.] June 4: O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: [surreal.] O'Reilly says that the WMD issue has now been politicized [!!]. The war was a just war because there's now great progress between Palestinians and Israelis and that alone made the war worthwhile [?!!]. Also the mass graves and other horrors discovered add to the case for war. The intelligence was either wrong or more time is needed to find the WMDs. [Again contradicting what he said on and before April 22.] June 11: Fox reports a bus blast in Jerusalem caused by Hamas, killing 15 and wounding at least 100. [Looks like the real reason for war according to O'Reilly (Israeli-Palestinian peace) has also disintegrated, but don't expect O'Reilly to admit it.]

Bob Edwards: This is Morning Edition from NPR news. I’m Bob Edwards. ****Seems straight-forward. Increasingly it seems the Bush Administration’s foreign policy is running into trouble. ****Does anyone think it's going smoothly? The post-war picture in Iraq and Afghanistan is highly unstable. ****Simple fact The road map to peace in the Middle East is in tatters. ****No question here. There’s growing unease over the possibility that North Korea and Iran are pursuing nuclear weapons. ***True Friends of the United States are not supportive. *****Very True Overall, the policies of the United States are still very unpopular around the world. *****Except with our "coalition" of states such as Israel, micronesia, and that powerhouse of Costa Rica Overall, the policies of the United States are still very unpopular around the world. The Bush Doctrine, a preference for unilateral military action and a disdain for multinational diplomacy, is under scrutiny more than ever *****Hard to argue with that. Seems like if you just report the facts w/o the usual spin you get a bit uncomfortable PP. The US media is bascially divided into the far-right such as the Murdock new agecies - Washington Times, FOX; the mild middle that feels the obligation to have balanced opinions - NY Times, NPR, Washington Post, LA Times ect. There is no easily accessible left media in the US. Even Israel has a greater diversity of TV, radio, and newspaper. You're stretching PP. If you haven't traveled much or subscribe to those rightwing screwball newsletters you have a narrow view. Maybe it was just the drugs that were talking to Rush, eh?