Qaddafi's American Hit Man?

Name:

..

Message:

Name:

Torture

Message:

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Fight Fire With Compassion By DONALD P. GREGG Published: June 10, 2004 ecent reports indicate that Bush administration lawyers, in their struggles to deal with terrorism, wrote memos in 2003 pushing aside longstanding prohibitions on the use of torture by Americans. These memos cleared the way for the horrors that have been revealed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners. I can think of nothing that can more devastatingly undercut America's standing in the world or, more important, our view of ourselves, than these decisions. Sanctioned abuse is deeply corrosive — just ask the French, who are still seeking to eradicate the stain on their honor that resulted from the deliberate use of torture in Algeria. French soldiers had been tortured in Vietnam, in some cases revealing valuable information to their Vietminh captors. Senior French officers decided that the same tactics might work for them. As Alistair Horne put it in "A Savage War of Peace," use of torture may have won the battle of Algiers for the French, but it cost them Algeria. In 1951, as a young paramilitary officer trainee in the C.I.A., I heard my instructors say that to win the cold war, "fighting fire with fire" would be required. I remember asking, how, if we did that, we could maintain any distinction between what we stood for, and what our communist opponents represented. I was told to sit down and shut up. But the agency, I am gratified to say, took a strong stand against the use of torture in Vietnam. Under William Colby's direction, interrogation centers were set up, under American control, and coercive techniques were forbidden. I learned from my experiences in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972 that by treating prisoners humanely we frequently (though not always) gained valuable intelligence from them. This was particularly true of battered prisoners who had held out against prolonged South Vietnamese torture, but responded to being treated with compassion by Americans.  more...

Name:	Klester Fortune
To:	Individual

In response to:
Reagan: Second-rate actor who fooled the world. (EXCEPT FOR INDIVIDUAL!)

Message:
Gee, Individual, I didn't know that you knew this fellow Reagan personally. How modest of you not to mention it here! Were you in Reagan's Cabinet? When are your memoirs coming out?

Name:

magpie

Message:
Research Shows Dogs Understand Language Jun 10, 7:45 AM (ET)
By RAN E. SCHMID

(AP) Rico, a dog with a "vocabulary" of nearly 200 words, can learn the names of unfamiliar toys after...

WASHINGTON (AP) - As many a dog owner will attest, our furry friends are listening. Now, for the doubters, there is scientific proof they understand much of what they hear.

German researchers have found a border collie named Rico who understands more than 200 words and can learn new ones as quickly as many children.

Patti Strand, an American Kennel Club board member, called the report "good news for those of us who talk to our dogs."

"Like parents of toddlers, we learned long ago the importance of spelling key words like bath, pill or vet when speaking in front of our dogs," Strand said. "Thanks to the researchers who've proven that people who talk to their dogs are cutting-edge communicators, not just a bunch of eccentrics."

Name:	Zeke The Gardener
To:	Merci Moo
Re:	SUVs of the Extraterrestrials

In response to:
Wherefore art thou, O MOO? Navigating the centuries with Nostradamus? Channeling Churchill and Lord Nelson for dinner with Charlemagne? Consulting with Merlin concerning UFOs?

Message:
Please come back, MOO. The grass in your little paddock is getting awfully high!

Name:	A Pack of wild Dogs
Re:	Instinct? Yes, and much more.

In response to:
WASHINGTON (AP) - As many a dog owner will attest, our furry friends are listening. Now, for the doubters, there is scientific proof they understand much of what they hear.

Message:
Only fools think dogs are things.

Name:	Joe Lattabe
To:	Fake Individual
Re:	Puta caballo!

In response to:
Nobody murdered innocent janitors more efficiently than Bill Clinton. Clinton was a mircle!

Message:
No he wasn't. Miracle was that horse in THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD (?) by Mel Brooks.

REAGAN'S SHAMEFUL LEGACY   Wed Jun 9, 8:05 PM ET Add Op/Ed - Ted Rall to My Yahoo! By Ted Rall Mourn for Us, Not the Proto-Bush   Ted Rall Related Links • Ted Rall's Editorial Cartoons   NEW YORK--For a few weeks, it became routine. I heard them dragging luggage down the hall. They paused in a little lounge near the dormitory elevator to bid farewell to people they'd met during their single semester. Those I knew knocked on my door. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Where are you going to go?" A shrug. They were eighteen years old and their bright futures had evaporated. They had worked hard in junior and senior high school, harder than most, but none of that mattered now. President Reagan, explained the form letters from the Office of Financial Aid, had slashed the federal education budget. Which is why the same grim tableau of shattered hopes and dreams was playing itself out across the country. Colleges and universities were evicting their best and brightest, straight A students, stripping them of scholarships. Some transferred to less-expensive community colleges; others dropped into the low-wage workforce. Now, nearly a quarter century later, they are still less financially secure and less educated than they should have been. Our nation is poorer for having denied them their potential. They were by no means the hardest-hit victims of Reaganism. Reagan's quack economists trashed scholarships and turned welfare recipients into homeless people and refused to do anything about the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic, all so they could fund extravagant tax cuts for a tiny sliver of the ultra rich. Their supply-side sales pitch, that the rich would buy so much stuff from everybody else that the economy would boom and government coffers would fill up, never panned out. The Reagan boom lasted just three years and created only low-wage jobs. When the '80s were over, we were buried in the depths of recession and a trillion bucks in debt. Poverty grew, cities decayed, crime rose. It took over a decade to dig out. Reagan's defenders, people who don't know the facts or choose to ignore them, claim that "everybody" admired Reagan's ebullient personality even if some disagreed with his politics. That, like the Gipper's tall tales about welfare queens and "homeless by choice" urban campers, is a lie. Millions of Americans cringed at Reagan's simplistic rhetoric, were terrified that his anti-Soviet "evil empire" posturing would provoke World War III, and thought that his appeal to selfishness and greed--a bastardized blend of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand--brought out the worst in us. We rolled our eyes when Reagan quipped "There you go again"; what the hell did that mean? Given that he made flying a living hell (by firing the air traffic controllers and regulating the airlines), I'm not the only one who refuses to call Washington National Airport by its new name. His clown-like dyed hair and rouged cheeks disgusted us. We hated him during the dark days he made so hideous, and, with all due respect, we hate him still. Not everybody buys the myth that Reagan won the Cold War by demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this [Berlin] wall" or bankrupting the Soviet Union via the arms race--Zbigniew Brezinski's plot to "draw the Russians into the Afghan trap" by funding the mujahedeen, Chernobyl and covert U.S. schemes to destabilize the ruble had more to do with the end of the USSR. Gangsterism replaced the ossified cult of the state, millions of Russians were reduced to paupers, revived radical Islamism in Central Asia and eliminated our sole major ideological and military rival. That increased our arrogance and insularity, left us in charge of the world and to blame for everything, paving the road to 9/11. (Reagan even armed the attacks' future perpetrators.) Anyway, the Cold War isn't over. In which direction do you think those old ICBMs point today? The lionizers are correct about one thing: Reagan was one of our most influential presidents since FDR, whose New Deal safety net he carefully disassembled. He pioneered policies now being implemented by George W. Bush: trickle down economics, corporate deregulation, radicalizing the courts, slithering around inconvenient laws and international treaties. On the domestic front, he unraveled America's century-old social contract. What the poor needed was a kick in the ass, not a handout, said a president whose wealthy patrons bought him a house and put clothes on his wife Nancy. National parks were to be exploited for timber and oil, not protected. The federal tax code, originally conceived to redistribute wealth from top to bottom, was "reformed" to eradicate social justice. Bush also models his approach to foreign policy on that of the original Teflon President. Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art. In 1983, anxious to look tough after cutting and running from Lebanon, Reagan sent marines to topple the Marxist government of Grenada. His pretext for invading this Caribbean island was the urgent plight of 500 medical students supposedly besieged by rampaging mobs. But when they arrived at the airport in the United States, the quizzical young men and women told reporters they were confused, never having felt endangered or seen any unrest. In a bizarre 1985 effort to free a few American hostages being held in Lebanon, Reagan authorized the sale of 107 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, at the time one of our staunchest enemies, with the proceeds to be used to fund rightist death squads in Nicaragua--something Congress had expressly forbidden him to do. Evidence strongly suggests that Iran-Contra was at least his second dirty deal with Islamic Iran, the first being the October Surprise, which delayed the release of the Iranian embassy hostages until after the 1980 election was over. Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) eventually admitted to "trading arms for hostages," yet avoided prosecution for treason and the death penalty. Reagan, like Bush 43, technically served in the military yet studiously avoided combat. Both men were physically robust, intellectually inadequate, poorly traveled former governors renowned for stabbing friends on the back--Reagan when he named names during McCarthyism. Both appointed former generals as secretaries of state and enemies of the environment to head the Department of the Interior. Both refused to read detailed briefings, worked short hours, behaved erratically in public appearances, ducked questions about sordid pasts, and relied on Christianist (the radical right equivalent of Islamist) depictions of foes as "evil" and America, invariably as embodied by himself and the Republicans, as "good." Based on intelligence as phony as that floated to justify the war against Iraq (news - web sites), Reagan bombed Muslim Libya. source

Name:	Patriot
To:	ET

In response to:
All Democrat lies. We were very nice to the prisoners. We were models of compassion and integrity.

Democrats are evil liars.

Message:
This sounds like both an inaccurate representation of the facts as well as an ad hominym attack against all democrats.

I would never say we were nice to the prisoners who are killers, nor would I say we should be nice to them. I think you are wrong on this one.

I also disagree with your statement saying we were models of compassion and integrity. I didn't know we sent models to Iraq, I thought we sent soldiers to fight a war. Compassion is given to those who deserve compassion, not terrorists, not ex sadaam men who killed and tortured thousands of innocents, and certainly not to thugs who kill and injure American Soldiers. Integrity is a personal trait and god knows I know enough people who do not possess this trait. But again I disagree with your stance on this one.

My opinion is a little different then yours I think, I don't let false visions in my head run rampant. I think the American soldier is a cross section of the American people in all of thier good and bad ways. I think that I can go out on the street and find people who would help a stranger at his own costs, and I can find people who would kill you in a second if they could get away with it.

My position is simple allow the military to investigate and prosecute the people who have violated the rules of conduct established by thier country and international treaties which we are signatory to .

Name:	Spindizzy
To:	ET
Re:	KENNEDY BURNS BHUDDIST MONKS ON SAIGON SIDEWALKS

In response to:
All Democrat lies. We were very nice to the prisoners. We were models of compassion and integrity.

Message:
John F. Kennedy ordered My Lai, you know...

Name:	Pizza Delivery
To:	Rush Limbaugh Robot
Re:	We must get Kerry in there no matter what!

In response to:
My position is simple allow the military to investigate and prosecute the people who have violated the rules of conduct established by thier country and international treaties which we are signatory to .

Message:
We simply don't have time for that! Besides, we might not be able to properly manage a military investigation. The election is only 5 months away, and the damned economy is improving. We will just have to amplify and extend this incident for all we are worth. We'll get this Reagan nonsense out of the way, and then we'll get back on track!

Name:	ET
To:	Patriot, say what? et al...

Message:
I am using reverse sarcasm on you guys -- isn't that obvious? Geeezzz...

Name:	Radio Ear
Re:	The one and only of a very fine kind is gone.

In response to:
Ray Charles is dead.

Message:
Ray Charles is dead. Like Johnny Cash, Ray Charles has no successor, nor will he ever have a successor.

Name:	Patriot
To:	ET

In response to:
I am using reverse sarcasm on you guys -- isn't that obvious? Geeezzz...

Message:
Sorry, I told you before I am not real smart, I was really confused there for a minute. Cheer up we all still love you!

Name:	Patriot
To:	ET

Message:
TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND

Scholar: Quran says Israel belongs to Jews

Contends Islam's book decrees land is for people of Moses

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: June 10, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A contrarian Muslim professor claims the Quran actually teaches Israel belongs to the Jews.

Khaleel Mohammed, assistant professor of religious studies at San Diego State University, said in an interview with Frontpage Magazine the person most mentioned in Islam's holy book is Moses, the great Old Testament prophet and leader of the Israelites.

Mohammed says the Quran presents Moses "as God's revolutionary" who "leads a people despised and tormented for no other reason than that they worshipped God, out of the land of bondage to the Promised Holy Land."

The professor quotes from Chapter 5: 20-21, which says Moses declared, "O my people! Remember the bounty of God upon you when He bestowed prophets upon you, and made you kings and gave you that which had not been given to anyone before you amongst the nations. O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God has written for you, and do not turn tail, otherwise you will be losers."

Mohammed points specifically to the reference to the Holy Land as a place God has "written" for the Israelites, a term that conveys, in Jewish and Islamic understandings, a "meaning of finality, decisiveness and immutability."

"So the simple fact is then," he says, "from a faith-based point of view: If God has 'written' Israel for the people of Moses, who can change this?"

The professor describes himself as a scholar "interested in a moderate Islam, one that is inclusive and is concerned about all human rights."

"My mission is to help reclaim the beauty that once was practiced in Islam, a message not currently in fashion amongst more traditional or fundamentalist Muslims," he told Frontpage.

Mohammed said while Muslims may argue the present state of Israel was "not created in the most peaceful means, and that many were displaced," this, for him, is not the issue.

"The issue," says Mohammed, "is that when the Muslims entered that land in the 7th century, they were well aware of its rightful owners, and when they failed to act according to divine mandate (at least as perceived by followers of all Abrahamic faiths), they aided and abetted in a crime. And the present situation shows the fruits of that action -- wherein innocent Palestinians and Israelis are being killed on a daily basis."

He says medieval scholars, "without any exception known to me," interpreted the Quran to recognize Israel as belonging to the Jews.

According to Mohammed, the idea that Israel does not belong to the Jews is a modern one, "probably based on the Mideast rejection of European colonialism, etc., but certainly not having anything to do with the Quran."

Most Muslims, he laments, do not read the Quran for themselves and instead rely on imams and preachers to do the reading and interpreting for them.

Name:	Pepe'
To:	U.K.,
Re:	I don't drink - but, I went and bought a bottle of Beef-Eater,

Message:
LONDON - Morrissey, outspoken lead singer of '80s rockers The Smiths, has sparked an Internet storm with reported comments about President George W. Bush (news - web sites).

AP Photo

The Manchester Evening News said Thursday it had received a record number of hits after reporting on its Web site that Morrissey, 45, had interrupted a Dublin concert Saturday with news of former President Reagan's death, adding that he wished Bush had died instead.

Morrissey's record company, Sanctuary Records, could not confirm the remarks.

"We do not have a recording of the gig, but as far as we can tell, Morrissey was just ing the audience to the fact that Ronald Reagan (news) had died," the newspaper quoted the company as saying. "He then simply followed that up with his comment about George Bush, which was his own opinion. He is no stranger to controversy."

A newspaper spokeswoman said thousands of people, 90 percent from the United States, had contacted the site to complain. A few expressed support for the remarks.

Formed in Manchester in the early 1980s, The Smiths had a series of British hits and a large cult following around the world, with songs including "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and "Shoplifters of the World Unite."

A longtime proponent of celibacy and vegetarianism who once wrote a song titled "Bigmouth Strikes Again," Morrissey drew criticism in the early 1990s when he appeared to flirt with right-wing British nationalism.

He now lives in Los Angeles and is touring Europe for the first time in a decade to promote his latest solo album, "You Are the Quarry."

Name:

Slimmerson 2M's

Message:
Reagan said, you can go to Japan but you will never be Japanese

You can go to France but you will never be French

and so on

But you can come to America and be an American.

Did you ever think of the importance of this message?

Name:

Last Visible Dog

Message:

Ray Charles 1930-2004

Heaven's lounge will be jimpin' tonight. Hey Ray, say hi to Ronny for us.

Name:

The Cold Hard Facts

Message:

RANK	NAME	MEAN
GREAT
1	George Washington	4.92
2	Abraham Lincoln	4.87
3	Franklin Roosevelt	4.67
NEAR GREAT
4	Thomas Jefferson	4.25
5	Theodore Roosevelt	4.22
6	Andrew Jackson	3.99
7	Harry Truman	3.95
8	Ronald Reagan	3.81
9	Dwight Eisenhower	3.71
10	James Polk	3.70
11	Woodrow Wilson	3.68
ABOVE AVERAGE
12	Grover Cleveland	3.36
13	John Adams	3.36
14	William McKinley	3.33
15	James Madison	3.29
16	James Monroe	3.27
17	Lyndon Johnson	3.21
18	John Kennedy	3.17
AVERAGE
19	William Taft	3.00
20	John Quincy Adams	2.93
21	George Bush	2.92
22	Rutherford Hayes	2.79
23	Martin Van Buren	2.77
24	William Clinton	2.77
25	Calvin Coolidge	2.71
26	Chester Arthur	2.71
BELOW AVERAGE
27	Benjamin Harrison	2.62
28	Gerald Ford	2.59
29	Herbert Hoover	2.53
30	Jimmy Carter	2.47
31	Zachary Taylor	2.40
32	Ulysses Grant	2.28
33	Richard Nixon	2.22
34	John Tyler	2.03
35	Millard Fillmore	1.91
FAILURE
36	Andrew Johnson	1.65
37	Franklin Pierce	1.58
38	Warren Harding	1.58
39	James Buchanan	1.33
The number listed above is the mean score of all the scholars' rating of each president. On this scale, five is the highest possible score.

Name:

John Kerry

Message:

I'm going to be beaten like a rented mule!

Name:

.Individual

Message:
Ray Charles was not blind in 1999. Clinton had restored his sight. Clinton was a miracle!

Name:

Nacho

In response to:
JUUlie surfaces in Alaska!

Message:
WHITEHORSE, Yukon - Conservation officer Dave Bakica is convinced that whatever two men saw early last Sunday morning, it shook them up. Marion Sheldon and Gus Jules were traveling out of town along the Alaska Highway on an all-terrain vehicle between 1 and 2 a.m. when they passed what resembled a person standing on the side of the highway.

Thinking it was a person from their small community who might be in need of a ride, they turned around.

As the two lifelong Teslin residents and members of the Teslin Tlingit Council approached to within 20 feet, they noticed the figure was covered in hair, but standing upright the entire time.

Though natural light was dusky, Jules saw what he believed to be flesh tones hidden beneath the mat of hair, he told Bakica.

Sasquatch? Big Foot?

Hardly! It is none other than JUUlie UUlie, who has escaped Ashcroft's clutches at last!

"I have no doubt they saw something, and are convinced it was not a bear or anything in the ordinary," Bakica said. "They are convinced this was something out of the ordinary ... And they are pretty shook up over it."

Jules is an experienced hunter. Jules described the figure as standing about 7 feet tall, but hunched over. They could see it was not a person.

As the two parties went their separate ways, the dark-haired figure crossed the highway in two or three steps, scattering milk-cans as it went.

Bakica said ground conditions mixed with rainfall made it impossible to pick up definitive tracks and there was no hair on branches or other vegetation. Also, by the time he went to the scene Monday morning, half the town had been out to the site, he said.

Jules has launched a search for evidence that could document his experience.

"I have no doubt in my mind that they believe what they saw was a Sasquatch," said Bakica. "Whether it was or not, I do not know.

"Just because you can't prove something was there, does not mean it was not there."

Sheldon and Jules could not be reached for comment by the Whitehorse Star.

Teslin is about 90 miles southeast of Whitehorse.

It would not be the first suspected Yukon sighting of the folklore beast.

In April 1991, three Pelly Crossing residents reported seeing a Sasquatch while driving between Pelly and Stewart Crossing.

The creature fled back into the woods as the vehicle passed. The residents took a photo of what they claim were footprints measuring 15 inches long in the melting snow and a laptop computer battery.

Name:	OOOoooUUlie
To:	Hik_Nyuk_JuJu_CumPooterKlub
Re:	Peyote Buttons

In response to:
Sasquatch? Big Foot?

Message:
The Armenian mob has my feet dangling from the rearview mirror in their Streeetch Yug-Limo

Name:

Civil Bagdasarian

Message:

Rapture Ready Rapture Ready Home Nearing Midnight Rapture Ready Bulletin Board Left Behind Left Behind Letters

Print a text version of this article How Big Brother Is Watching, Listening and Misusing Information About You Submitted By:Jack Click for Source Article You’re on your way to work in the morning and place a call on your wireless phone. As your call is relayed by the wireless tower, it is also relayed by another series of towers to a microwave antenna on top of Mount Weather between Leesburg and Winchester, Virginia and then beamed to another antenna on top of an office building in Arlington where it is recorded on a computer hard drive. The computer also records you phone digital serial number, which is used to identify you through your wireless company phone bill that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency already has on record as part of your permanent file. A series of sophisticated computer programs listens to your phone conversation and looks for “keywords” that suggest suspicious activity. If it picks up those words, an investigative file is opened and sent to the Department of Homeland Security. Congratulations. Big Brother has just identified you as a potential threat to the security of the United States because you might have used words like “take out” (as in taking someone out when you were in fact talking about ordering takeout for lunch) or “D-Day” (as in deadline for some nefarious activity when you were talking about going to the new World War II Memorial to recognize the 60th anniversary of D-Day). If you are lucky, an investigator at DHS will look at the entire conversation in context and delete the file. Or he or she may keep the file open even if they realize the use of words was innocent. Or they may decide you are, indeed, a threat and set up more investigation, including a wiretap on your home and office phones, around-the-clock surveillance and much closer looks at your life. Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice. Although Congress cut off funding for TIA last year, the Bush Administration ordered the program moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” budget, which is neither authorized nor reviewed by the Hill. DARPA also increased the use of private contractors to get around privacy laws that would restrict activities by federal employees. Six months of interviews with security consultants, former DARPA employees, privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering – in real time – vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans. Going on a trip? TIA knows where you are going because your train, plane or hotel reservations are forwarded automatically to the DARPA computers. Driving? Every time you use a credit card to purchase gas, a record of that transaction is sent to TIA which can track your movements across town or across the country. Use a computerized transmitter to pay tolls? TIA is notified every time that transmitter passes through a toll booth. Likewise, that lunch you paid for with your VISA becomes part of your permanent file, along with your credit report, medical records, driving record and even your TV viewing habits. Subscribers to the DirecTV satellite TV service should know – but probably don’t – that every pay-per-view movie they order is reported to TIA as is any program they record using a TIVO recording system. If they order an adult film from any of DirecTV’s three SpiceTV channels, that information goes to TIA and is, as a matter of policy, forwarded to the Department of Justice’s special task force on pornography. “We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984,” says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. “The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government.” Paul Hawken, owner of the data information mining company Groxis, agrees, saying the government is spending more time watching ordinary Americans than chasing terrorists and the bad news is that they aren’t very good at it. “It’s the Three Stooges go to data mining school,” says Hawken. “Even worse, DARPA is depending on second-rate companies to provide them with the technology, which only increases the chances for errors.” One such company is Torch Concepts. DARPA provided the company with flight information on five million passengers who flew Jet Blue Airlines in 2002 and 2003. Torch then matched that information with social security numbers, credit and other personal information in the TIA databases to build a prototype passenger profiling system. Jet Blue executives were livid when they learned how their passenger information, which they must provide the government under the USA Patriot Act, was used and when it was presented at a technology conference with the title: Homeland Security – Airline Passenger Risk Assessment. Privacy Expert Bill Scannell didn’t buy Jet Blue’s anger. “JetBlue has assaulted the privacy of 5 million of its customers,” said Scannell. “Anyone who flew should be aware and very scared that there is a dossier on them.” But information from TIA will be used the DHS as a major part of the proposed CAPSII airline passenger monitoring system. That system, when fully in place, will determine whether or not any American is allowed to get on an airplane for a flight. JetBlue requested the report be destroyed and the passenger data be purged from the TIA computers but TIA refuses to disclose the status of either the report or the data. Although exact statistics are classified, security experts say the U.S. Government has paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements to Americans who have been wrongly accused, illegally detained or harassed because of mistakes made by TIA. Those who accept settlements also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and won’t discuss their cases. Hawken refused to do business with DARPA, saying TIA was both unethical and illegal. "We got a lot of e-mails from companies – even conservative ones – saying, ‘Thank you. Finally someone won’t do something for money,’" he adds. Those who refuse to work with TIA include specialists from the super-secret National Security Agency in Fort Meade, MD. TIA uses NSA’s technology to listen in on wireless phone calls as well as the agency’s list of key words and phrases to identify potential terrorist activity. “I know NSA employees who have quit rather than cooperate with DARPA,” Hawken says. “NSA’s mandate is to track the activities of foreign enemies of this nation, not Americans.”

Name:	HRH Hurlbutt I
To:	Pepe

In response to:
YOUS IS A STRONG AND POWERFUL MANN; YOU READ n' SPEAK GOOD ENGLISH; YOUS IS JEWISH, right? New York : "ON : 2!"

Message:
We are the Frankish King! Our equipment is massive! Our fecundity is legendary! Take care that you do not displease us, lest you find yourself fallen pregnant!

Name:	Rainman
To:	The Cold Hard Facts

Message:
Interesting graphic. Why Jimmy Carter wasn't graded as a "failure" is beyond me. No doubt a good, decent and moral person but as president he was lousy and I'm being generous in saying that.

Name:

magpie

In response to:
In Solidarity
The Polish people, hungry for justice, preferred "cowboys" over Communists.

BY LECH WALESA
Friday, June 11, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Message:
GDANSK, Poland--When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.

I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let's remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.

I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them.

The 1980s were a curious time--a time of realization that a new age was upon us. Communism was coming to an end. It had used up its means and possibilities. The ground was set for change. But this change needed the cooperation, or unspoken understanding, of different political players. Now, from the perspective of our time, it is obvious that like the pieces of a global chain of events, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about this new age in Europe. We at Solidarity like to claim more than a little credit, too, for bringing about the end of the Cold War.

In the Europe of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan presented a vision. For us in Central and Eastern Europe, that meant freedom from the Soviets. Mr. Reagan was no ostrich who hoped that problems might just go away. He thought that problems are there to be faced. This is exactly what he did.

Every time I met President Reagan, at his private estate in California or at the Lenin shipyard here in Gdansk, I was amazed by his modesty and even temper. He didn't fit the stereotype of the world leader that he was. Privately, we were like opposite sides of a magnet: He was always composed; I was a raging tower of emotions eager to act. We were so different yet we never had a problem with understanding one another. I respected his honesty and good humor. It gave me confidence in his policies and his resolve. He supported my struggle, but what unified us, unmistakably, were our similar values and shared goals.

I have often been asked in the United States to sign the poster that many Americans consider very significant. Prepared for the first almost-free parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the poster shows Gary Cooper as the lonely sheriff in the American Western, "High Noon." Under the headline "At High Noon" runs the red Solidarity banner and the date--June 4, 1989--of the poll. It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S. But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.

As I say repeatedly, we owe so much to all those who supported us. Perhaps in the early years, we didn't express enough gratitude. We were so busy introducing all the necessary economic and political reforms in our reborn country. Yet President Ronald Reagan must have realized what remarkable changes he brought to Poland, and indeed the rest of the world. And I hope he felt gratified. He should have.

Name:	Ledgerman
To:	Rainman

In response to:
Interesting graphic. Why Jimmy Carter wasn't graded as a "failure" is beyond me. No doubt a good, decent and moral person but as president he was lousy and I'm being generous in saying that.

Message:
At least President Carter wasn't deceitful and corrupt. He was, and is, a man of principle who attempts to act in good faith.

Name:	Thaddeus Kosciusko
To:	Ronald Reagan

Message:
Well done, President Reagan. Bravo!

Name:

Individual

In response to:
UPBEAT TERRORISM REPORT OFF THE MARK. By Barry Schweid, The Associated Press. Washington, June 11, 2004. The State Department acknowledged Thursday it was wrong in reporting terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding used to boost one of President Bush’s chief foreign policy claims–success in countering terror. Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based “on facts that we had were wrong” department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Message:
According to the polls, the war on terrorism is the only positive for Bush. I think the above information will go a long way toward correcting the public's misperception. When the actual data are released, the lies of this administration will be brought to light.

Name:	Gamera
To:	Individual

In response to:
According to the polls, the war on terrorism is the only positive for Bush. I think the above information will go a long way toward correcting the public's misperception. When the actual data are released, the lies of this administration will be brought to light

Message:
Very interesting. The public are such fools, you know. Let's get them straightened out right now, shall we? Please present the entire article, Individual. It's time the public knew the truth. Thank you.

Name:

The American Public

In response to:
The Horror!

Message:
We've been bombed, and we didn't even know it!

Name:

Individual

In response to:
Ray Charles was not blind in 1999. Clinton had restored his sight. Clinton was a miracle!

Message:
The only reason that I keep saying that Clinton was a miracle is that the comments by some economists were that it would be a miracle if we got a budget surplus and it would be a miracle if we got unemployment under 4% and it would be a miracle if we could project that the national debt would be wiped out by 2012.

Name:

Individual

In response to:
Please present the entire article, Individual. It's time the public knew the truth. Thank you.

Message:
The State Department is in the process of getting the "real" data. When these data are presented, I will post them--you can be sure.