AlpineK

I didn't ever meet Rodchester, but he came across as a decent guy who knew a thing or two about climbing...sad news

I don't know what your problem was Klenke; I got the video and the sound. The sound was kind of crappy, but you can't expect too much from the internet. Anyway Peter Video Now let me put you in your political place....bla, bla, bla... Oh yeah, I've done the lower pitches leading up to the presure chamber (we bailed onto Iconoclast) the rock is shite.

The US death toll in Iraq has now past 1000. So 1000 US soldiers have died because Bush lied about the reasons to go into Iraq. Even if Kerry lied about his action in Viet Nam nobody died as a result of it.

Here's a blow by blow list of Bush lies...nicely formatted too. press

I shudder at the thought of somebody actually having to put new slings on a rap anchor let alone back up or, gasp, create their own rap anchor...oh the horror

Greg and RobBob are portraying typical republican tactics. They want to avoid the real issues of the day because the current president is a spineless fratboy who ran three businesses into the ground and is now in the process of running the USA into the ground.

All that Swiftwater crap is just obfuscation from the real issues of the day. The folks doing the obfuscating are all republican hacks trying to cover for the fact that Bush has hurt the economy, hurt our international standing, fucked the environment, and moved the country towards the christian version of a Taliban regime.

So you want a long post about what a lying sack of shit Bush is...here ya go. WE DELIVER HEADLINES! BUSH WATCH stories... issues... bushreport... comedy... site map... contact... Bush Iraq Evidence Lies The Ethics of Persuasion: Some Guidelines by Edward L. Bernays 1. Do Not Use False Evidence 2. Do Not Use Illogical, Unsupported Reasoning 3. Do Not Falsely Represent Yourself 4. Do Not Conceal Your Purpose or Interest 5. Do Not Cover Up Consequences 6. Do Not Use Baseless Emotional Appeals 7. Do Not Oversimplify Complex Situations 8. Do Not Pretend Certainty 9. Do Not Advocate What You Don't Believe Yourself -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- POWELL'S UN CHARGES AGAINST IRAQ (And Some Plausible Explanations) Recorded conversations - Iraqi officers discussing removal of a "modified vehicle" and deleting references to nerve gas from documents. If genuine, and not spliced, these radio intercepts suggest Iraq may have been hiding some biowarfare arms, or was racing to eliminate any residues or evidence of its 1980s weapons program in advance of UN inspections. (Considering the U.S. military loses tens of millions worth of weapons and supplies each year, and the Los Alamos centre has misplaced large amounts of nuclear materials, it's not implausible that Iraq has bits and pieces of chemical arms scattered about, such as the empty 122-mm rockets recently discovered in a bunker, that escaped its UN-mandated inventory.) Satellite imagery - ammo storage bunkers which Powell claimed were used for chemical weapons that were moved out prior to inspection. (UN inspectors examined them and found nothing suspicious. "Sniffers" used by inspectors can detect the past presence of chemical and biological weapons.) The infamous mobile biological weapons labs mounted on trucks - a.k.a. "Saddam's vans of death." Powell claimed defectors reported there were 18 of these cruising around Iraq. (Defector information is always suspect. UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix said his men had examined some of the "death trucks" and found they were, in fact, mobile food-testing labs.) Some 100-400 tons of chemical agents, including four tons of VX nerve gas, and some biological weapons, originally supplied in the 1980s by the U.S. and secretly developed by British technicians, were still unaccounted for. (This remains a major question. Iraq says it destroyed them, but lacks proper documentation. They may be hidden. But most were made in the 1980s, and may be degraded or inert from age. Nerve gas and germs are weapons of mass destruction. Mustard gas, the bulk of Iraq's chemical weaponry, is not, being no more lethal than napalm or the fuel-air explosives the U.S. and Russia are using in Afghanistan and Chechnya.) Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. (UN nuclear inspectors have repeatedly contradicted U.S. claims. They concluded the notorious aluminum tubes Powell said were for uranium-enrichment centrifuges were actually conventional 122-mm rocket artillery casings.) According to UN Resolution 687 after the Gulf war, Iraq is permitted missiles with a range of 150 km. The U.S. charges Iraq is testing missiles that have flown 14-20 km farther. (This is nothing unusual when testing a new propellant system. Powell also accused Iraq of developing a 1,200-km missile that could reach Israel, based on photos of an enlarged test stand. Iraq may have a dozen or so old Scud missiles hidden away.) Iraq is dragging its feet on private interviews of its nuclear scientists. (True. Hawks in the Bush administration and Israel say the only way to ensure Iraq never builds strategic weapons is to jail all of its 10,000 military scientists and technicians - who also face the wrath of Saddam if they appear to turn over incriminating evidence.) Powell claimed he had proof positive Iraq was linked to al-Qaida through Ansar al-Islam, a small, 600-man Islamist group in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq (not under Saddam's control), and through a "deadly terrorist network" led by one Abu Musa al-Zarqawi. (The first charge was immediately dismissed by Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar, a longtime, bitter foe of Saddam. And al-Zarqawi turned out to be an unknown nobody, not on any FBI wanted list. His name came from suspects being tortured in Jordan. Many reputable experts on terrorism scoffed at Powell's overblown charges.) Sitting silently behind Powell was Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet. His agency has contradicted White House claims that Iraq had nuclear capability and posed an imminent threat to the U.S. or anyone else. In a recent article, former CIA Iraq desk chief Stephen Pelletiere cast doubt on the charge, repeated by Bush and Powell, that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish citizens in the town of Halabja. Faked intelligence Note: America's two most recent major wars - Vietnam and the Gulf - began with release of faked "intelligence" information: the non-existent Gulf of Tonkin attack in 1964, and doctored photos of a non-existent Iraqi invasion buildup on the Saudi border in 1990. A more neutral observer might have concluded the U.S. was exaggerating scraps of uncorroborated information, while Iraq was trying to appear co-operative while still hiding some of its most sensitive military secrets. Polls show most people around the globe remain skeptical of Powell's charges. Starting a war that could kill tens of thousands on the basis of vague audio intercepts, photos of empty buildings and defectors' tales makes no sense. Further inspections, not war, is the right answer. --Eric Margolis, 02.09.02 *** BLAIR-POWELL "DECEPTION CAN ONLY CORRODE PUBLIC TRUST" "The Government has grudgingly admitted a failure to acknowledge sources - while insisting that the information remains valid. This misses the point. Plagiarism is not the main issue. The central issue is that of public trust. At best, this episode demonstrates incompetence and the failure to oversee the most important claims which the Government puts into the public domain. At worst, a deliberate attempt to hoodwink and mislead the public will undermine trust in anything the Government says about the Iraqi threat at this vital time." 02.09.03 guardian ed |related stories INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENT POWELL PRAISED AS EVIDENCE CUT AND PASTED BY SECRETARY OF BLAIR'S SPIN DOCTOR AND GOFERS FROM PUBLIC SOURCES, MAJOR ONE 12 YEARS OLD "Late last Tuesday night, a three-page email started circulating among a select group of friends concerned about the impact of sanctions on Iraq... Full of academic outrage, it explained how the so-called 'secret spy dossier' published last week by the Government as a crucial plank in the argument for why the West should go to war was largely cribbed from an American postgraduate's doctoral thesis - grammatical mistakes and all - based on evidence 12 years out of date... And, to cap it all, the finished document appeared to have been cobbled together not by Middle East experts, but by the secretary of Alastair Campbell, the Government's chief spin doctor, and some gofers...One crumb of comfort is that with Blair's reputation for trustworthiness on the war already dented - a poll last week found that, while 81 per cent of Britons believe UN inspector Hans Blix, only 43 per cent trust Blair to tell the truth over the war and only 22 per cent trust Bush - the dossier debacle is unlikely to make it any worse." 02.09.03 guardian |related stories Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq, Cited by Powell As Reason For War, Came From Magazines With Obsolete Data "The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.... The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday. It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts to force it to disarm. But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review, two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002. In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles — or of summaries posted on the Internet — were paraphrased in the report. In other cases, they were plagiarized — to the extent that even spelling and punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced.... But critics of the government said that not only did the document appear to have been largely cut and pasted together, but also that the articles it relied on were based on information that is, by now, obsolete.... Critics of the British and American policy toward Iraq said the report showed how little concrete evidence the two governments actually have against Iraq, as well as how poor their intelligence sources were. " 02.08.03 nyt |related stories POWELL'S CLAIMS OF IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION NOT CREDIBLE "The Bush administration creates the impression that the US is still as wounded and ready to lash out as it was in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Centre. I am not sure that this is true of the majority of Americans, but the country's moribund political structure and the Democrats' horror of appearing unpatriotic combine to make effective opposition very difficult. The President may take comfort from the thought that Tony Blair's Gladstonian vision lends him some moral authority, but it does not wash over here. If the world has become a more dangerous place since 11 September 2001, it is not solely because of the activities of a bunch of Islamic terrorists. " 02.09.03 smith |related stories POWELL'S "TERRORIST FACTORY" TURNS OUT TO BE RUINS, BAKERY "If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.' Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking." " 02.09.03 hardy |related stories *** "MUCH U.S. EVIDENCE MUST BE ACCEPTED ON TRUST" "This is the heart of the matter. Much of the US evidence must be accepted, if it is accepted at all, on trust. Mr Powell's sources were mostly anonymous defectors, detainees, third country spooks and US intelligence. His overall case was undercut by the recycling of old tales about al-Qaida "poison plotters" in Baghdad. He refused to accept the IAEA's conclusions on Iraqi nuclear bomb-making. His evidential interpretations were often harsher than those of Hans Blix. Mr Powell certainly did the UN a service in finally opening his Iraq dossier to public view. But the way forward must now be expanded, intensified inspections equipped with this new evidence, as France proposes. Iraq must disarm. The US and Britain must not jump the gun." 02.06.03 guardian ed |related stories BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CONTRADICTS POWELL. NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA, THEY SAY "There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News. The classified document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past. But it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies. That conclusion flatly contradicts one of the main charges laid against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain - that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the 11 September attacks. The report emerges even as Washington was calling Saddam a liar for denying, in a television interview with former Labour MP and minister Tony Benn, that he had any links to al-Qaeda. " 02.06.03 bbc |related stories IRAQI TERRORIST GROUP POWELL IDENTIFIES AS LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL QAEDA RULES KURDISH TERRORITY NOT CONTROLLED BY SADDAM AND TARGETS SADDAM AS THEIR ENEMY "As part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council today, he said there was a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network" — the nexus being a small, little known terrorist group called Ansar al-Islam, which is now at the center of the U.S. case. Powell showed a satellite photograph of what he said was a chemical weapons training center in Northern Iraq, used by al Qaeda and protected by Ansar al-Islam. "Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq," said Powell. The group, whose name means "Supporters of Islam," rules a remote portion of the autonomous northern Kurdish territories in Iraq near the Iran border, which is not controlled by Saddam Hussein. In fact, their leaders say they seek to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his government...In an interview with ABCNEWS, the man considered the leader of Ansar al-Islam, Majamuddin Fraraj Ahmad, who is also known as Mullah Krekar, denied all allegations that he is in any way linked to al Qaeda. "They are our enemy," he said, adding that his group opposes Saddam Hussein because, unlike Osama bin Laden, Saddam is not a good Muslim." 02.06.03 abc | related stories *** SMOLDERING GUN OF IRAQ'S NUKE PROGRAM LEFT IRAQ IN '95 FOR U.S. "In the summer of 1998, when Hamza first went public with his story about Saddam's relentless desire for the Bomb, much of the press ignored him. The country was transfixed by the saga of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But in March 2001, the scientist found himself sitting next to an influential Republican named Richard Perle at a seminar at George Washington University. He briefed Perle, one of the earliest and most vehement proponents of regime change in Iraq, about his past. "I came away very impressed, thinking this is a sensible, sober fellow," says Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board. Hamza said he'd been debriefed only by low-level "civil servants" in the Clinton years. Perle soon introduced the defector to the top tier of the Bush administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. " 02.06.03 wp |related stories IRAQI NUKE SCIENTIST LIVING IN CANADA SINCE '98 CONTRADICTS HAMZA "Given its history, US intelligence should come with a health warning " "We know from experience that politicians about to go to war are not above manipulating information to heat up public opinion. They have manufactured international incidents - the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin "clash", for example, which President Johnson used to deceive the Senate into giving him a declaration of war against North Vietnam. They can be the simple peddling of "evil Hun" stories, as with the discredited accounts of Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators. History has revealed the truth about such episodes, but too late. On the few occasions we are allowed sufficient facts to form an independent assessment, the intelligence on offer is rarely persuasive. " 02.06.03 bennett+perman |related stories QUESTIONED PENATGON CLASSIFIED PHOTOS USED PRIOR TO FIRST GULF WAR REMAIN CLASSIFIED "The photographs, which are still classified in the US (for security reasons, according to Brent Scowcroft, President Bush senior's national security advisor), purportedly showed more than a quarter of a million Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi border poised to pounce. Except, when a resourceful Florida-based reporter at the St Petersburg Times persuaded her newspaper to buy the same independently commissioned satellite photos from a commercial satellite to verify the Pentagon's line, she saw no sign of a quarter of a million troops or their tanks." 02.06.03 o'kane |related stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US claim dismissed by Blix The chief UN weapons inspector yesterday dismissed what has been billed as a central claim of the speech the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, will make today to the UN security council. Hans Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived. In a series of leaks or previews, the state department has said Mr Powell will allege that Iraq moved mobile biological weapons laboratories ahead of an inspection. Dr Blix said he had already inspected two alleged mobile labs and found nothing: "Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found." Dr Blix said that the problem of bio-weapons laboratories on trucks had been around for a while and that he had received tips from the US that led him to inspect trucks in Iraq. The Iraqis claimed that the trucks were used to inspect the quality of food production. He also contested the theory that the Iraqis knew in advance what sites were to be inspected. He added that they expected to be bugged "by several nations" and took great care not to say anything Iraqis could overhear. --The Guardian, 02.05.03 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUSH SPEECH "SKIMMED ALONG EDGES OF REALITY," PARTICULARLY RE SADDAM AND AL QUEDA "As far as the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq is concerned, one of the most prominent authorities on the deadly terrorist group remains unimpressed by the evidence offered up to date - including Bush’s stab at connecting those dots in the State of the Union, during which he insisted that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda." Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. (Free Press, 2001) and a fellow at the New America Foundation, told me after the speech that the Saddam/Osama connection "is really [the administration’s] default mode, isn’t it?" Bergen pointed me to his December article in the Nation, in which he pooh-poohs the Iraq/Al Qaeda link as "somewhere between tenuous and nonexistent." "Al Qaeda members live in 60 countries around the globe," Bergen wrote in the Nation, "so by the law of averages a few of them will show up in Iraq. Indeed, intelligence estimates suggest there are some 100 Al Qaeda members at large in the United States, although that is not an argument to start bombing Washington." " 02.03.03 byrne | related stories U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENTS PUZZLED BY BUSH, POWELL CLAIMS OF SADDAM-AL QUEDA CONNECTION "Intelligence officials said they are puzzled by the administration's new push. "To my knowledge, there's nothing new," said a senior U.S. intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The expectation within the CIA regarding Powell's speech, the source said, "is that it's going to be more comprehensive than bombastic and new." Intelligence officials have discounted if not dismissed other information believed to point to possible links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The CIA said it can find no evidence supporting post-Sept. 11 reports that Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers in the attacks, met with an Iraqi agent in the Czech capital, Prague, in 2001. Similarly, intelligence officials described reports that Hussein is funding an Al Qaeda-connected extremist group in northern Iraq as "wildly overstated." There is no evidence so far to confirm that Iraq is arming, financing or controlling the group, known as Ansar al-Islam, one official said. "There isn't a factual basis for such assertions," the official said. " 02.03.03 lat | related stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evidence For Iraq Attack Found...In U.S. At a moment when Americans were hungry for reassurance that the monomaniacal focus on Iraq makes sense when the economy is sputtering, Mr. Bush offered a rousing closing argument for war, but no convincing bill of particulars. Republican senators tried to back up the president. While admitting that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction yet, John Warner told reporters that an attack was justified "if you put together all the bits and pieces that are out there right now." Americans will never understand the Bush rationale for war if they simply look at the bits and pieces of physical evidence. They will understand the Bush rationale for war only if they look at the metaphysical evidence, the perfect storm of imperial schemes and ideological stratagems driving the desire to topple Saddam. --Maureen Dowd, 01.29.03 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "LAST NIGHT BUSH LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE" --Katrina vanden Heuvel Bush is going to get a visit from the 20 mule team soon.

Dwayner and all his avatars are sanctimonious anoying sacks of shit. On the other hand he's easy to troll

" What kind of party is this man??!!! Where are all the people?!! This is lame. " -Crack after drinkin all the liquor and helping himself to the goods. Tell it to the judge, bitch.

I'm serious I'm calling the cops right now.

Lots of things are illegal. It should be the polices job to enforce those things that are actually causing a problem. I've seen you do some illegal shit cavey...maybe I should report you.

I'm confused. What if you think Viet Nam and Iraq 2 were stupid fucking wars and Bush needs a visit from. But you also smoke dope and cut down trees. How does that fit into your world view Greg.

Do they...I hope so...please provide details and more importantly pictures.

I think if GGK wants to climb at Back of Beyond Buttress he should just go fucking climbing. Quit wasting our time and your time whining about TRs Bob.

There are a lot of things that I think are fads Breathing air drinking water using toilets. please add to the list

Yes I heard Arnold speak, and now he's on my list of people who need to be visited by the borax 20 mule team.

Well like I said; the US has a long history of caving to terrorists.

Lets try and keep in mind that we have 2 somewhat seperate issues here. France hasn't drawn the ire of Muslims for their stand on Iraq, but they have pissed them off all on their own with the ban on headscarves in french school classrooms. Don't forget that the US has quite a history of running away from terrorists. If you doubt me look up the events around the bombing of the marines in Beruit. Who was president you may ask...that tough macho republican Ronald Reagan.

It seems to me that you are living in the past Ken. How does last year's weather effect this years rope up. Also I don't recall anyone posting what kind of beer we were going to have this year. Like I said I wouldn't want to choose between either event.

Isn't this a rare photo of Dwayner leading.