US general says 'spectacular' Qaeda attacks rise in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A US commander on Wednesday said the number of "spectacular" assaults by Al-Qaeda in Iraq has increased although the overall number of attacks was down and 20 key militants have been killed or caught.

Major General Mark Hertling, commanding general of coalition forces in northern Iraq, gave no specific examples of what he termed "spectacular" attacks, referring only to big car bombs and to suicide attacks.

"These spectacular events and intimidation are designed to incite fear in the population," Hertling told a news conference in Baghdad.

Suicide bombers have continued to carry out bloody attacks in recent weeks, with one killing 25 people and wounding 85 on Christmas Day, when he slammed his vehicle into a truck carrying gas cylinders at a checkpoint in the northern oil town of Baiji.

The same month, a woman suicide bomber killed 16 people in the offices of a local anti-Qaeda front in Muqdadiyah, in Diyala province, while another bomber killed 13 people inside a cafe near the Diyala provincial capital Baquba.

None of the recent attacks, however, has brought the sort of death tolls seen in 2006 and earlier in 2007 when the numbers killed could exceed 100, and the general's definition of spectacular was unclear.

Several members or leaders of "Awakening" groups -- local men paid by the US to fight Al-Qaeda -- have also been killed recently.

Hertling was speaking a day after US and Iraqi forces launched a fresh assault against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, codenamed Operation Phantom Phoenix, which the general said was taking place in four central and northern provinces.

The general declined to disclose how many troops were involved in Phantom Phoenix but said a total of 24,000 US soldiers were deployed in Diyala, Salaheddin, Nineveh and Tamim provinces.

He said "20 to 30" Al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters had been killed since the launch in Diyala province of Operation Iron Harvest, which forms part of Phantom Phoenix.

"It's about right (20-30 killed), but I dont want to put a body count on it," the general said.

Even before the operation was launched, Hertling claimed, US and Iraqi forces had made a dent in the Al-Qaeda network.

"The intelligence we gathered over the last month allowed coalition forces and Iraqi security forces to capture or kill over 20 Al-Qaeda in Iraq members," Hertling said, without breaking down the numbers.

One of those killed was Haydar al-Afri, a senior Al-Qaeda leader for the northwestern Mosul region, "responsible for organising the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and for operations in Mosul."

A military statement said that Afri was involved "in facilitating resources and planning attacks against Iraqi and coalition forces."

He was killed during operations in the oil city of Mosul, along with eight other suspected militants, on Christmas Day.

"Where we have seen a reduction in the number of attacks in Iraq, and to a lesser degree in northern Iraq, there has been a marked increase of Al-Qaeda activity in Diyala in the form of high profile, spectacular attacks," said Hertling.

"This does not mean an increase in attacks, but it does mean an increase of these kind of high profile events."

New Hampshire District Admits Ron Paul Votes Not Counted

Sutton township reported Congressman had zero votes, actual number was 31

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The head clerk of the New Hampshire town of Sutton has been forced to admit that Ron Paul received 31 votes yet when the final amount was transferred to a summary sheet and sent out to the media, the total was listed as zero. The fiasco throws the entire primary into doubt and could lead to a re-count.

As we reported earlier today, an entire family voted for Ron Paul in Sutton, yet when the voting map on the Politico website was posted, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero.

Vote fraud expert Bev Harris contacted the head clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who was forced to admit that the 31 votes Ron Paul received were completely omitted from the final report sheet, claiming "human error" was responsible for the mistake.

Two or three votes not counted could be a plausible mistake - but 31 votes for one candidate?

"The classic method for rigging a hand count is to write the wrong number on the form," Harris told the Alex Jones Show.

"They are counting everything in public real nice, they fill out a form in public real nice and then they transfer it to another form and they call that a summary sheet and then that is the one they send in," explained Harris.

"What happened is she said they did not transfer the number correctly and put zero instead of 31 - that is unacceptable as an answer."

With 100% of precincts now reporting, the map originally listed zero votes for Ron Paul as you can see below. It has now been updated to reflect the 31 votes Paul actually received.

CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT

The remainder of the 31 people in Sutton who voted for Ron Paul need to go public immediately with the charge of vote fraud and make it known that they were cheated out of their right to vote.

Harris estimates that it could cost the Ron Paul campaign as much as $67,000 dollars for a recount, but such a move could throw the entire primary into doubt, especially in light of the fact that Barack Obama appears to have been cheated out of a win by Hillary Clinton.

Osama and the CIA sponsored “War on Terrorism”: Americans are being killed by American trained Islamists

Peter Chamberlin
Global Research
January 6, 2008

Apparently, Osama bin Laden and former CIA agent Michael Scheuer have a mutual respect for each other’s intellect. In one of bin Laden’s latest videos, he said,

"If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard."

Here is Scheuer’s take on Osama:

"For nearly a decade now, bin Laden demonstrated patience, brilliant planning, managerial expertise, sound strategic and tactical sense, admirable character traits, eloquence, and focused, limited war aims. He has never, to my knowledge, behaved or spoken in a way that could be described as irrational in the extreme."

Here we have a "former" CIA man, claiming to be an opponent of administration war policies, speaking as a foremost expert on bin Laden, because of his position on the "bin Laden unit." He validates the latest bin Laden videos with his expertise, without ever acknowledging facts about al Qaida and their leader – the nature of the real threat vs. the created perception, the death of bin Laden, al Qaida the database, the builders and instructors of the Pakistani/Afghani insurgent training camps. In his book Imperial Hubris, written under the penname "Anonymous," Scheuer paints a shocking portrait of camps that he claims were built by bin Laden, when, in truth, he knows that these are all CIA built facilities, including the notorious Tora Bora (where bin Laden is allegedly buried), the camps in the Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan, the scene of ongoing confrontations and under the watchful eyes of a new American super base which is under construction near there.

Scheuer’s book had to be cleared by the company before he could publish it, meaning that there is nothing in his book that the CIA does not want to become public knowledge. His information on the insurgent training camps comes from an article from the New York Times, entitled "Turning Out Guerrillas and Terrorists to Wage a Holy War," detailing the training that was provided by American instructors to Afghan insurgents (although both attributed the training to al Qaida).

"C.J. Chivers and David Rohde explained that ‘American tactics and training became integral parts of the [al Qaeda] schools,’ that instruction was standardized so ‘courses taught in different languages and hundreds of miles apart . . . were identical,’ They all have the same basic skills. . . and received funds from Gulf donors to cover costs" (never mentioning that the Gulf donors were matching US funds).

Like Scheuer, the Times ignored the fact that al Qaida did not exist before 1999, according to experts like director of Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, Yossef Bodansky. Scheuer quotes from the Times:

"The main function of the camps was and is to produce quality and uniform religious and paramilitary — or insurgent —training to young Muslims…Since the mid- 1980s, the camps have produced large numbers of skilled fighters — who then return home to fight and train others — not swarms of Terrorists. The terrorists trained in the camps are more accurately viewed as al Qaeda’s urban warfare arm, or special forces. The camps’ dual-production capability has been obvious for nearly thirty years, but this was little noticed in a West fixated on the small number of terrorists these camps produced. That the camps were producing far larger numbers of well-trained insurgents did not receive a serious think-through — and still has not — and, meanwhile, the trainees learned, according to documents captured in Afghanistan, how to use: AK-47s, Stinger missiles, GPS systems, advanced land navigation, RPGs, map reading, demolition techniques, celestial navigation, hand-to-hand combat techniques, trench digging, weapons deployments, escape and evasion techniques, first aid, scientific calculations to plot artillery fire, first aid, secure communications, et cetera, et cetera."

The "et cetera," part that Scheuer left out from the New York Times referred to the training that the mujahedeen had received from a United States Army Special Forces manual which showed

”methods for fabricating explosives, detonators, propellants shaped charges, [you know, the ones that only Iran is capable of constructing], small arms, mortars, incendiaries, delays, switches and similar items from indigenous materials.”

The training included detailed knowledge for advanced terrorism, like manufacturing explosives from common household items and the conversion of basic electronic items like watches, toy remote controllers, and other items into sophisticated triggering systems - the knowledge that has spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond, has served as the basis for traps that have killed American troops, even shaped charges. The camps trained paramilitary soldiers and hi-tech "super terrorists."

The Times article notes the excellence of the military training for a

"ragged band of fanatics, had achieved a level of competence that American military officials say was on par with the world’s best guerrilla forces…One senior military instructor noticed a familiar streak of professionalism ‘Wherever they got this, it was modeled after somebody’s program. It was not made by some guys on some goat farm outside of Kabul.”’

Scheuer promotes the vision of the camps that the CIA wants us to believe, that of Islamic camps producing assassins and suicide bombers, while the virtuous American government and CIA did nothing about it. The army of non- Afghan Muslims and hundreds of paramilitary trainers who came out of these camps is blamed on Islamists who were brought together by us, but the CIA, as usual, tries to maintain "plausible deniability" in relation to the Afghan/Soviet war and the "Islamic threat" we created, which grew out of it. The former head of the CIA’s "Bin Laden Unit" wants us to believe in the tortured claims of Shaykh al-Libi (that had been proven false by the time he wrote his book) "the camps housed WMD experts who were building weapons and training others to do so or to use them," even after it had become common knowledge within the US intelligence community that the charge was false.

Newsweek confirmed that a copy of the DIA report "would have been sent" to the Bush administration’s National Security Council. The CIA also produced a document containing similar conclusions about al-Libi in January 2003, Hubris came out in 2004.

As the most widely recognized expert on bin Laden, Scheuer validates each new "bin Laden tape." Do you think that the evil bastard appearing in the upper pictures is the same guy in the lower photos, taken from the latest "bin Laden" videos?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_newfake.html

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/fake-to-real.gif

Here is Scheuer’s latest defense of his hero:

"Analysis of Osama bin Laden’s" By Michael Scheuer

"The September 7 release of a new video statement by Osama bin Laden puts to rest, at least for now, widespread speculation that he is dead, retired, or has been pushed aside by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With a newly trimmed and dyed beard, comfortable robes rather than a camouflage jacket, and a clear and patient speaking style, bin Laden achieved a major purpose of his speech before he said a word: he clearly showed Muslims and Americans that he was still alive, that he was healthy and not at death’s door, that he spoke from secure surroundings unthreatened by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, and that he, al-Qaeda and their allies were ready to continue the war. As usual, this message was wrapped in an as-Sahab Productions video displaying high level production values."

In the same article, Scheuer attempts to extend his power to validate terrorist videos that comes from his experience with bin Laden, to that of the Israeli/al Qaida spokesman, Adam Pearlman (a.k.a. Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki) and Ayman al-Zawahiri (alleged to be a CIA/MI6 asset). While Scheuer was attempting to vouch for both bin Laden and Pearlman, his former associates still at the bureau were denouncing the latest tape as a hoax:

"American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s broadcast… A former senior US intelligence official said: "It has Adam Gadahn written all over it." Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the tape left bin Laden with "the title of biggest gas bag in the terrorist world".

Despite this, CIA officials claimed that voice analysis of the tape proved it was definitely bin Laden’s voice, even though they failed to point out evidence of why this could not be, or the gaps in the video and audio segments, as well as the obvious editing errors which were uncovered.

Jumping back to Imperial Hubris, we watch Scheuer dance around the issue of the problems created for us, by the camps that we did not build, and the insurgents that we did not train in advanced terror tactics:

"Completing the picture, we have learned since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan that camps also were dedicated to training Tajiks, Uzbeks, Chechens. and Uighurs. In Afghanistan, then, camps training Islamist insurgents numbered many more than those belonging to al Qaeda and the Taleban, and together they built a store of trouble for the United rotes and the West by preparing men to fight in current insurgencies and ones not yet begun. Many observers, however, still have trouble absorbing the fact that there is a huge cadre of camp-trained Islamist insurgents available around the world—a veteran force in being, if you will, ready to deploy whenever and wherever the opportunity arises."

(The database of that huge cadre is called "al Qaida." )

George Crile’s expose, was released at the same time as Hubris , it confirmed that the camps in question were CIA/ISI (Pakistani secret service). The deadly training that Scheuer described in his book was carried on from American programs, such as the infamous CIA jihadi textbooks, produced at the University of Nebraska, which remained the curriculum there, even after the Taliban were evicted. Textbooks for children that were a combination of indoctrination in radical Islam and weapons training are at the core of America’s problems with radical Islam in Pakistan.

In their article "From the USA, the ABCs of jihad," in the Washington Post, Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway describe the Jihadi textbooks made in the American Bible/corn belt:

"Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID [Agency for International Development] grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994…Under this Jihadism project, the images and talk of resistance to occupation were craftily intermingled with regular education:

Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited US interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders…One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin [sic], who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.

The United States’ Jihadism successfully transformed Afghan children into true freedom fighters…"

Then we have secretive American government figures, like Congressman Charlie Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski (the self-proclaimed father of the anti-Soviet jihad) traveling to secret camps in Pakistan to cheer the Afghans and, telling them "God is on your side," as seen in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/v/WaiJtLrEwVU&rel=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/WaiJtLrEwVU&rel=1

Another important piece of investigative journalism, Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, reveals some of the little-known CIA al Qaida connections, in particular, that of Ali Mohamed:

" In the years leading to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than a former Egyptian army captain turned CIA operative, Special Forces advisor, and FBI informant named Ali Mohamed [a.k.a. Ali Amiriki, or "Ali the American"]. Spying first for the Central Intelligence Agency and later the FBI, Mohamed even succeeded in penetrating the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg—while simultaneously training the cell that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 [taught Ramsey Yousef, cousin of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of 9/11]. He lived the quiet life of a Silicon Valley computer executive while slipping off to Afghanistan and the Sudan to train some of al Qaeda’s most lethal terrorists in bomb-making and assassination tradecraft—much of that time maintaining his status as an FBI informant who worked his Bureau control agent like a mole…A deep-penetration al Qaeda sleeper, he succeeded as a triple agent, gaining access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. counter-terrorism arsenal." - Peter Lance

There you have it, Ali, a CIA double-agent, was key to bringing the camps run by bin Laden up to American standards for paramilitary training. He also gave bin Laden’s agents access to top secret intelligence which he had access to in the Army, while in the employ of the FBI, he was also working for the CIA to improve the lethality of al Qaida. The hidden hand of the CIA is becoming visible in every step that America has taken over the years to create a believable new enemy for us, in the form of international Islamist extremism, to replace the Soviet bogeyman that the damned mujahedeen we trained so well took from us.

Thanks to the CIA’s hard efforts to create a potential enemy out of a peaceful religion, and especially to the efforts of loyal "retired" spooks, like Michael Scheuer, we are about to witness what the fascist neoconservatives like Michael Ledeen meant when they urged ";total war" on us, as the path to victory in the war on terror. In this, Scheuer and the neocons are in complete agreement. Instead of acknowledging what has taken place in the past and trying to correct the mistakes, Scheuer joins those extremists calling for us to wage total war upon Islam, as a necessary evil, to preserve our gluttonous American way of life:

"America is in a war for survival. Not survival in terms of protecting territory, but in terms of keeping the ability to live as we want, not as we must."

The hellish scenario described in the following passage should give sane people nightmares:

"We will have to use military force in the way Americans used it… from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large ambers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills—all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America’s only option so long as s he stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world."

We are seeing the first steps in that desired war escalation in the recent announcement that large numbers of Special Forces were moving into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, to train paramilitary forces and more Islamic militias to fight the other Islamists that we had previously trained.

The CIA plot to create a credible enemy that would fight against US Army and Marine troops has started to bear fruit. Their plan is working,

Americans are being killed by American-trained Islamists all over the place. If Congress allows it to go forward (both Democrats and Republicans will support the plan enthusiastically), this may prove to be the elusive path to world war III that Cheney and the neocons have been frantically searching for. At least that’s what New Delhi news analyst Aijaz Ahmad foresees as Pakistan’s fate, if it fails to "disengage from the US war on terrorism."

http://www.youtube.com/v/7F1oRcsEJEc&rel=1&border=1
http://www.youtube.com/v/7F1oRcsEJEc&rel=1&border=1

Ahmad spells-out the obvious conclusion about reviving the original CIA program to train and radicalize Islamists and to wage war in Pakistan

"There is no military solution in Pakistan, just as there was no military solution in Iraq, Afghanistan, or on the nuclear issue with Iran."

Bush Kills Second Amendment for Veterans

Richard Simon
Los Angeles Times
January 8, 2008

A rare piece of gun legislation finds the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on the same side, and President Bush signed such a bill Tuesday.

The measure, Congress’ response to last year’s Virginia Tech shootings, is the first significant federal legislation in years aimed at tightening gun laws. It seeks to expand the federal database used to screen gun buyers to include the estimated 2 million-plus people, including felons and mentally ill individuals, who are ineligible to buy firearms.

“It’s the first gun-control legislation of any sort that Congress has passed in over 12 years,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign.

But the measure has created an unusual rift among gun-control groups.

Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, said there was “far more bad in this bill than good,” expressing concern about a provision that could restore gun-owning privileges to some people now prohibited from purchasing firearms.

“It’s certainly not this huge victory that the Brady Campaign is making it out to be,” said Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

The bill represents a shift from the last major gun measure, which shielded gun makers and sellers from lawsuits arising from misuse of their weapons. It was passed in 2005 by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush. The year before, Congress allowed the 10-year-old ban on assault weapons to expire.

The legislation signed Tuesday, designed to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, was the first gun measure to emerge since Democrats took over the House and the Senate a year ago. It was passed last month, in the waning hours of the 2007 legislative session.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., one of the bill’s sponsors, said it would “close the wide gaps in our nation’s firearm background-check system to ensure violent criminals and the mentally ill no longer slip through the cracks and gain access to dangerous weapons.”

Said White House spokesman Tony Fratto: “We saw with the terrible shootings at Virginia Tech last year that an incomplete system can have tragic consequences.”

Even with the bill’s enactment, the gun issue is unlikely to gain more prominence on Capitol Hill this year.

Democrats have shied away from the issue since the 2000 election, believing that their presidential candidate, Al Gore, lost support in rural states because he supported gun control.

The issue also doesn’t fall strictly along party lines; eight Democratic senators recently joined 39 Republican senators in calling for repeal of a ban on carrying loaded firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges, saying the restriction “infringes on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

Efforts to strengthen the background-check system have been debated for years, but the movement gained momentum after Seung-hui Cho killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech before taking his own life April 16 in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. He had been ordered by a court to undergo outpatient mental-health treatment and should have been barred from buying the two handguns he used in the rampage, but his name was never entered into the background-check system.

A White House-ordered review of the Virginia Tech shootings found that “accurate and complete information on individuals prohibited from possessing firearms is essential to keep guns out of the wrong hands.”

Currently, 17 states provide no mental health records to the background-check system, according to the Justice Department.

The new law takes a carrot-and-stick approach to get states to report people ineligible to buy guns. It authorizes up to $250 million a year for five years to states to help pay the cost of providing the records and then threatens to withhold federal anti-crime funds if the states fail to act.

In addition to the support the bill received from the NRA and the Brady Campaign, it was sponsored by the unlikely pair of McCarthy, a leading gun-control advocate whose husband was killed and son wounded by a gunman on a Long Island train in 1993, and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a staunch NRA ally who has helped thwart gun-control legislation in the past.

“While most would say we are an odd pair when it comes to this particular issue, I would suggest we are just two legislators trying to fix a legitimate problem,” Dingell said.

But some gun-control groups aren’t celebrating.

The Violence Policy Center and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence contend that the Brady Campaign, eager for a victory, conceded too much to the gun lobby.

“This program is just a disaster in the making,” Rand said, arguing that the new law could put guns back in the hands of dangerous people. She said the legislation allows veterans judged to be mentally incompetent to seek to get their gun privileges restored if they can show they are unlikely to endanger public safety or have received treatment and recovered.

Rand also said she was skeptical that Congress would follow through on providing the promised funding for states to enter the records of prohibited gun purchasers. “Frankly, we just don’t trust that the NRA will lift a finger to see that the grant portion of the bill is fully funded,” she said. Some states still might not provide mental health records because of their own privacy laws, she added.

Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign, described groups like Rand’s as “friends of ours,” adding: “We’re stunned and exasperated that they opposed this legislation.”

The measure’s benefits outweighed its risks, he said, noting that his group is concerned about the millions of mental health records that are not in the database.

The measure also divided gun-rights groups.

SWAT Goons Dispatched On Homeschoolers in Colorado

Truth News | January 8, 2008
Kurt Nimmo

In Garfield County, Colorado, not only will the state determine if you should take your child to a doctor after a mishap, but if you don't comply with their on-high directives, they will dispatch a SWAT team to ensure compliance.

According to Tom Shiflett, a Vietnam vet, his son was injured during horseplay, WorldNetDaily reports. Shiflett's son, John, "was grabbing the door handle of a car as his sister was starting to drive away slowly. He slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head�. There were no broken bones, no dilated eyes, or any other noticeable problems."

After a neighbor called an ambulance, paramedics "were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation anyway. Fearing the hospital's bills, the family refused to allow that."

According to friends of the family, Tom Shiflett, who has 10 children including six still at home, and served with paramedics in Vietnam, was monitoring his son's condition himself.

The paramedic and magistrate, however, ruled that that wasn't adequate, and dispatched the officers to take the boy, John, to a hospital, where a doctor evaluated him and released him immediately.

But this was not sufficient for the sheriff's office and social services. "Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team" were subsequently unleashed in response, "punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy� accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak."

It appears Shiflett and his family were made an example, as in part they "live by faith and homeschool," social behavior anathema to the NWO and its minions in Colorado government and so-called social services and various control commissariats, conversely known as child kidnapping services.

"While people can debate whether or not the father should have brought his son to the ER � it seems like this was not the kind of emergency that warrants this kind of outrageous conduct by government officials," a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association told WND.

During the SWAT raid for non-compliance, the "boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed� all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves."

Of course, caring for your own is unacceptable, same as it was in the Soviet Union. Mr. Shiflett and his family learned first-hand that all of us are serfs and when the state barks "jump," our only response should be "how high, sir?" Our children are property of the state and we will not be allowed to care for them � or for that matter, school them at home � and government intervention will be mandatory, otherwise SWAT goons will be dispatched to kick in the door and act like what they are, Gestapo goons revisited.

Bush Calls Iran's Confrontation With US Navy Vessels a Provocative Act

Scott Stearns
VOA
Tuesday January 9, 2008

President Bush says Iran should not confront U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, dealing with Iran is part of the president's agenda for a trip he begins today to the Middle East.

President Bush says he does not know what Iran was thinking when five small boats confronted U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz Sunday.

The boats, apparently operated by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, veered away from the three U.S. ships after dropping boxes in their path. President Bush says it was a provocative act that should not be repeated.

"It is a dangerous situation, and they should not have done it. Pure and simple," he said.

Iran says the confrontation was ordinary and suggests it may have been a case of mistaken identity.

President Bush spoke to reporters in the Rose Garden before leaving for the Middle East where he is expected to discuss the U.S. posture toward Iran with Arab allies also worried about Tehran's desire for greater regional power.

Mr. Bush wants another round of U.N. sanctions because he says Iran is enriching uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

While U.S. intelligence agencies reported late last year that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program four years ago, Mr. Bush says Tehran is still a threat.

"Iran was a threat. Iran is a threat," he said. "And Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uraniumfor further sanctions against Iran during stops in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

But he begins his eight-day trip in Israel and the West Bank in separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr. Bush is hoping to further encourage talks toward a separate Palestinian state that began less than two months ago in Annapolis, Maryland. The president says an outline for a separate Palestinian state is crucial for political moderates who are battling forces of extremism.

"They need to have a vision that is clearly defined that competes with the terrorists and the killers who murder the innocent people to stop the advance of democracy," he said.

During his trip, the president will meet with U.S. military and political leaders from Iraq, speak with women's groups in Kuwait, and visit Israel's Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

TTC Maps Detail Infrastructure Dismissed as "Conspiracy Theory"

Aaron Dykes / JonesReport.com | January 9, 2008

WACO, TEXAS - In the larger story of land seizure and subjugation to an unpopular super-highway toll road system, a particularly stinging case of displacement has surfaced in central Texas.

A newly uncovered conceptual map reveals plans to pave a stretch of TTC-35 outside Waco over the rebuilt church of the Branch Davidians who were raided by ATF and FBI agents in 1993, killing many church members.

The TTC plan would add insult to injury for the infamous Davidian group that has already been more than wronged by governing forces. Traffic lanes would, according to the map, over-run almost half of the entire Branch Davidian property.

But the map conceptualizing future developments in Waco also reveals details about several coal plants the TxU energy giant was planning to build only a short distance south of the Davidian 'compound' as well as a new railway system to serve the infrastructure.

On the left, the proposed TTC-35 route, coursing over the Branch Davidian property off of Double EE Ranch road. In the center, proposed locations for coal plants and a serving railway.

Those coal plants have been put on hold, amidst contention over concerns about the impact such plants would have on environmental designations for the Waco area. Rep. Chet Edwards, of Waco, and other officials fear that the coal could hurt the area by giving it a federal nonattainment status.

However, Edwards is ready to support the plants if they prove to have minimal impact on environmental ratings.

Phone calls to check on the status of the maps were deflected from the McLennan County (Waco) office to TxDot. Ken Roberts, of the TxDot Waco district office, commented that it was "unusual" for the TTC and TxU projects to be mapped out together as, he stated, TxDot has no involvement whatsoever with the TxU proposals, though it does with the TTC.

The McLennan County map office, whose name is on the map, admits they drew up the map, but said it was based on plans submitted to County Commissioner Lester Gibson's office by Donald Montgomery of TxU.

Montgomery confirmed that the plans had been hatched at TxU, but quickly referenced that the projects were put on hold (though they are likely to be revived). Montgomery dismissed the notion that any relationship existed between the proposed highway infrastructure and the proposed energy & rail infrastructure, calling it another "conspiracy theory." He further dismissed the concerns expressed by Roberts of TxDot.

Though both Montgomery and the McClennan County office agreed that Montgomery himself had submitted the proposal for a map that outlines 1) a 'TTC-35 Route' used for cost estimating purposes and 2) 'TxU Proposed Rail Routes,' it is clear that Montgomery at least considered the TTC relevant to his TxU proposal-- otherwise, it wouldn't be prominently featured and mapped out.

It is true that the two projects are not directly related nor are they mutually dependent on the other's viability. However, it is clear that both the TTC and TxU projects are under the management and interests of global firms looking to control assets in Texas.

It is worth noting that TxU was bought out over the past year for a record $32 billion by Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts (KKR) and two other globalist firms who are all represented annually at Bilderberg Meetings.

The TTC was conceived in a brokered-deal with a number of multi-national firms including the Spanish-owned Cintra and the Australia-based Macquerie.

Both the TTC and TxU project proposals were widely unpopular yet enjoyed unlimited political support from Gov. Rick Perry, who stood defiant against a 2-year moratorium passed by the legislature in the case of the TTC and who passed an executive order to fast track permits in the case of TxU.

Additionally, both the TTC and TxU were represented by the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm, based in Houston.

For the TTC, Bracewell & Giuliani facilitated Cintra in its ambition to build the first ever private toll road in Texas. Bracewell & Giuliani are credited dubiously as the 'guiding' law firm on the privatization of Texas State Highway 121. Cintra is further partnered with the Australian company Macquarie, who "previously acquired the business and assets of an investment bank known as Giuliani Capital Advisors," according to Cliff Kincaid.

For TxU, Bracewell & Giuliani handled environmental and state regulatory issues. Later, when the TxU leveraged-buyout resulted in insider-trading charges against high-level Pakistani bankers who worked for Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston, both involved in the deal, Bracewell & Giuliani represented the cases. In fact, Marc Mukasey, the son of the current U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, personally represented Hafiz Naseem, then a Credit Suisse investor now charged with multiple counts of white-collar crime.

In the on-going battles for both of the highly-contentious infrastructure proposals, it is interesting to note what an unwavering ally Rick Perry has been.

Yet, Perry met with the Bilderberg group in 2007, a secretive meeting among the elite echelon of the global financial architecture. Amongst the select attendees were King Juan Carlos of Spain, who is the primary shareholder for Cintra, as well as Henry Kravis, the principal for KKR-- who led the TxU buyout. Also at the exclusive meeting were heads from Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston and other top investment firms.

One connection is certain between the TTC and TxU-- both represent the interests of the global elite.

NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama

Brad Blog
Tuesday January 9, 2008

Other Pre-Election Numbers, For Republicans and Rest of Dems, Nearly Dead on the Money...

[UPDATED several times at end of article, and still developing with new updates...]

I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight.

What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.

Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy. See the previous report, as I recommend, which also includes a video of that hack, and footage of the guy who runs LHS Associates.

That said, the the pre-election pollster's numbers (NOTE: that's not Exit Polls, but Pre-Election Polls!) were dead-on, for the most part, on the Republican side, as well as on the Democratic side. Except in the do-or-die (for Hillary) Clinton v. Obama race. I'm watching MSNBC right now, and they all seem to agree that the results, for the moment, defy explanation.

Here's a screenshot of a round up of all of the latest polls from RealClearPolitics.com tonight, and more, to get an idea of the serious concerns here...

They were all not just wrong, but wildly wrong. But only for the Clinton/Obama race.

For a closer look, here's Zogby's predicted numbers, for both the Republicans and Democrats:

And here are the latest numbers from the MSNBC website (the numbers seem to be identical over at CNN and elsewhere):

As you'll note, the numbers in Zogby's latest polls, for all but Clinton and Obama, seem to have been dead-on the money for both the Republicans and Democrats. Edwards, for example, was polled at 17% in Zogby's poll, and he received exactly 17% in the MSNBC numbers, with 63% of precincts reporting. So are we to believe that only those voters who preferred Obama previously, decided to change to Hillary at the last minute? I suppose so.

This election was regarded as do-or-die for Clinton, after most in the media had already written her off after her "thumpin'" in Iowa. But Tim Russert just agreed with Brokaw and Matthews that "this was the most stunning upset in the history of politics."

They are already grasping for reasons that this happened: the crying; she found her voice; the women turned out; oldline Dems showed up, etc. All reminiscent, if you ask me, of "the evangelicals who turned out at the very last minute to vote for Bush in 2004" as the Exit Poll apologists wrote in what would become conventional wisdom at the time. (Where did they get that info? The Exit Polls, they'll tell you. The same ones that they will also tell you were wildly wrong on every other count, apparently.)

Olbermann just called it "a titanic upset victory" for Clinton.

So, with another nod to the third section of the article I posted earlier here tonight, what's going on here?

While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.

I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates. As Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, says, LHS is the "chain of custody" in New Hampshire elections.

Other folks that I've spoken to, who follow this sort of thing, share my concern at this hour. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.

If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour.

I'm trying to get in touch with his campaign, to let them know of these concerns. I hope you'll feel free to let them know as well, if any of you happen to be in touch with them, or a part of the campaign. I will, of course, be happy to discuss these concerns with them if they wish to call.

As mentioned, the numbers referred to above are not Exit Polls. They are Pre-Election Polls which are far less reliable than Exit Polls. So, if anybody knows where any decent Exit Polling data is, we'd appreciate it if you linked it in comments below...

---

UPDATE 9:18pm PT: This AP report includes information, said to be based on data from the Exit Polls. It indicates that the independents in NH, who may vote in either the R or D primary, voted mostly D, and were breaking for Obama. AP claims, however, that the same data show that Clinton's strength with women "offset that"...

Early exit poll data indicated six in 10 independents opted for the Democratic contest and Obama led among them, but Clinton's advantage among women offset that.
...
The results are from exit polls Tuesday in 50 precincts around New Hampshire for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The Democratic primary survey interviewed 1,800 voters, the Republican primary poll 1,301. The sampling error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each exit poll.

Note: the Exit Pollsters used here were Mitofsky/Edison, the same ones who ran the infamous Exits in 2004 showing that, in state after state, Kerry should have won. They also later said their own polling was completely wrong (which is disputed strongly by statistics experts such as U. of Pennsylvania Prof. Steven F. Freeman Ph.D.) So, it's lovely that AP and the TV nets hired them again...

UPDATE 9:40pm PT: While the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened here on MSNBC, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, while paging through a stack of papers said to be Exit Poll data, just said: "Of those who made up their mind in the last three days, there was a slight favoring for Obama. If there was a huge difference in a move to Hillary, in the last three days, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the Exit Polling."

UPDATE 9:48pm PT: Olbermann repeated what Russert had said earlier, that Obama's internal polls showed him winning by 14%, Clinton's internal polls had Obama winning by 11%.

The effect of Obama being an African-American, the so-called "Bradley Effect", is now being discussed as the newest "reason" to explain the numbers. Though it's noted that it didn't effect Harold Ford in TN in '06, or even Obama in Iowa just five days ago.

(ADDED: Josh Holland from Alternet points out via email, correctly, concerning my point about the "Bradley Effect" not coming into play in Iowa: "The 'Bradley effect' would not work in an open caucus, where everyone can see whom everyone else is supporting. The theory requires the privacy of a voting booth." He's correct. Thanks for pointing that out! --- BF)

UPDATE 11:06pm PT: As we know, the presumption is always that the polls were wrong. Never the results. Despite how much less transparent the system used to count votes is than the system used to collect polling data. With that in mind, Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, makes the following point, in a post headlined "How Wrong Were the Polls?", suggesting that the only numbers that changed here were Clinton's. She surged. Everyone else, even Obama who just had an historic victory in Iowa five days ago, did not...

Commenter Brian makes an observation "No one is talking about how the polls actually nailed Obama's number. Obama didn't lose this election. He stayed steady and Hillary surged ahead." That seems to be true. Here's a chart comparing the actual results to the most recent Pollster.com current standard estimate polling average.

Just as Brian says, the difference between the Obama poll level and the Obama vote total level seems to just be your basic statistical variance. The pollsters underestimated Clinton's level of support. People who were undecided as of the last round of polling seem to have gone overwhelmingly in her direction.

So where did her votes come from, if Exit Polling data showed, as mentioned by MSNBC above, that last minute deciders broke evenly, and even a bit more for Obama??

UPDATE 1/9/08, 12:49am PT: Bev Harris offers this very useful information in comments below. Worth elevating the key points up here to the original post:

New Hampshire, for the Democrats, was the exact opposite of Iowa. They used one of the worst voting systems in America and then handed programming of every memory card in New Hampshire over to a private outfit run by John Silvestro.

First order of business needs to be examining the published precinct results and comparing the hand count locations to the optical scam locations.

The results web site does not make this easy. You have to hover your mouse over each one of about 250 municipalities and then take a screen grab and then type it into a spreadsheet.

So far, no one I know has completed that task.

Here is the site with the municipality results:
http://www.politico.com/...imaries/nhmap-popup.html

Here is a comma delimited data file I created with the municipalities and whether they are hand counted or opscam:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/N...-08-votingsystems-NH.txt

I took the information from the NH Sec State site. A few of the locations do not have the voting system specified; if they have a low population, they are probably hand count.

Whoever gets the handcount vs opscam spreadsheet done gets two points. The tools are in the two links above.

Additionally, BeeSting then makes our night, with a pointer to this Ron Paul website, which lists all of the precinct results, and how each one of them was counted (by hand, or by Diebold/LHS Associaties/John Silverstro).

Thank you BeeSting and Bev both! Looks like we'll have lots to learn in the morning...

UPDATE 1/9/08 1:40am PT: Last update for the night. I hope. A quick note on all of this.

Over at Daily Kos, diarist "AHiddenSaint" has written a post quoting, and linking over to this one, by way of sharing his/her concerns about the NH results.

The result: an embarrassing thread of comments, smashing up AHiddenSaint for posting something that the dKos commenters feel is little more than "conspiracy theory". Foolishly (for them), they have taken a sentence from the original post, in which I noted that I "have no evidence at this time --- of chicanery," to wonder why I would therefore write such a post at all. Their claim: that I am some how charging that Clinton stole the election.

I have made no such claim. In fact, if there was skullduggery here, there are plenty of reasons to believe it could have been committed by any number of interested parties, who have nothing to do with the Clinton campaign.

Daily Kos, of course, is a Clinton-centric website, which, more disturbingly, purged diaries and diarists after the 2004 Ohio election, if they were judged to be questioning what went on there. I spoke to Markos (the site's founder) about that, when we were at a conference together in Vegas last Summer. He stills stands by his decision to purge those folks. That, despite so much that has come out since '04 to show that what happened was a travesty of democracy. As I told him then, he owes his readers an apology. He did add, however, that he has someone ("Georgia10") who now cover issues of Election Integrity on their front page.

The result of his purge, is the mindset of the commenters now seen over there. It seems to me they are are begging for a world of hurt, someday, when their candidate doesn't win, under questionable circumstances. They will, of course, have cornered themselves such that they won't be able to ask questions themselvses. In the bargain, they are now fostering a culture of fear. Fear of asking questions. Fear of insisting that our democracy be transparent, of the people, by the people and for the people. If it were only themselves they were hurting by fostering that culture, I wouldn't give a damn. But rest assured, their comments, actions and attitudes will be leveraged, as we move forward, to hurt all of us.

For the record, I am neither a Clinton supporter nor an Obama supporter (nor a supporter of anyone else in the race at this time, in any party.) I am a supporter of the VOTERS. Period. It's they --- us --- who could really use some support right about now. I intend to do exactly that. All damned year. No matter how many "tin foil hats" the shortsighted, self-destructive Kossack types, who are behaving like the worst of the Republicans, try to throw at me.

That's a promise. 'Night.

Ron Paul Votes Not Counted In New Hampshire District

Vote fraud confirmed, Clinton reversed mammoth pre-polling deficit to beat Obama, Diebold machines aid Giuliani, Romney

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Major allegations of vote fraud in New Hampshire are circulating after Hillary Clinton reversed a mammoth pre-polling deficit to defeat Barack Obama with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines, while confirmed votes for Ron Paul in the Sutton district were not even counted.

According to a voter in Sutton, New Hampshire, three of her family members voted for Ron Paul, yet when she checked the voting map on the Politico website, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero.

With 100% of precincts now reporting, the map still says zero votes for Ron Paul as you can see below.

CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT

It's not as if Sutton had a handful of voters like some other districts - a total of 386 people voted yet we are led to believe that not one voted for Ron Paul? Judging by the Iowa results, around 10% of residents would be expected to vote for the Congressman, returning a total of around 38 votes in this district. Let's be ultra-conservative and say just 5% support Paul - he'd still get 19 votes - but he got absolutely none whatsoever. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Greenville also tallied 144 votes yet not one for Congressman Paul.

Anyone else in Sutton who voted for Ron Paul needs to go public immediately with the charge of vote fraud and make it known that they were cheated out of their right to vote.

Diebold voting machines also did Congressman Paul no favors last night - compared to hand counted ballots Giuliani gained just short of 0.5% from electronic voting whereas Paul lost over 2%, which was the difference between finishing 4th and 5th, as this graph documents.

Mitt Romney profited the most from the Diebold swing, he received 7% more votes compared to hand counted ballots.

In the Democratic race the Diebold voting machines clearly swung the primary in Hillary Clinton's favor at the expense of Barack Obama, who had a commanding lead over the New York Senator going into the contest.

Zogby polling numbers had Obama leading Clinton by a whopping 42/29 per cent, yet Clinton eventually took the primary by three per cent.

"If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly," writes The Brad Blog. "I'm not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour."

"While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process."

Clinton would not have beat Obama without the aid of Diebold voting machines. In precincts where electronic voting machines were used, Clinton got a 7% swing over Obama, having gained 5% in comparison to hand-counted ballots and Obama losing 2%.

As we reported yesterday, the contract for programming all of New Hampshire's Diebold voting machines, which combined counted 81 per cent of the vote yesterday, is owned by LHS Associates, whose owner John Silvestro has gone to great lengths to deflect accusations that the machines can easily be rigged.

After purchasing a Diebold 1.94w machine, the same system used in New Hampshire, a computer repair shop employee picked at random by Black Box Voting was able to zero in on the system's vulnerable memory card within just ten minutes. Hacking expert Harri Hursti testified in front of the New Hampshire legislature that the machines were wide open to fraud.