DAVENPORT, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that President Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, asserting it would be ``the height of irresponsibility'' to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

``This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy,'' the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/01/29/a3.nat.clinton.0129.p1.php?section=nation_world

[B] Bottom line ---------- she say: ``I believe that a lot in my background and a lot in my public life shows the character and toughness that is required to be president,'' Clinton said. ``It also shows that I want to get back to bringing the world around to support us again.''

Ya right Hilarious, you didn’t have the guts to say NO to bush’s whacky war-ring and now you are afraid to tell him to get outta Iraq while the getting is good an you ain’t got the guts to tell yer husband to toe the line ------------ nope you a wanna-be pres but u ain’t a gonna-be. [B]

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Nukes all over--------------

It wasn't Kim Jong Il or the ayatollahs of Iran who put it there. America did it.

For a time, in a misguided Cold War program called Atoms for Peace, the U.S. actually supplied this material--highly enriched uranium, a key component of nuclear weapons. The Soviets followed suit.

The threat still posed by these stockpiles, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is so dire that the keepers of the Doomsday Clock cited the issue as among their chief concerns this month when they moved the iconic measure of global security closer to midnight.

Yet decades of fitful commitment by the U.S. government to retrieve bomb-grade uranium have left the world no safer, a Tribune investigation has found. Today, roughly 40 tons of the material remains out of U.S. control--enough to make more than 1,400 nuclear weapons.

[B] YIKES the USA is the main feed for any nut who wants to blow US up! What the hell has dubwa been a doing?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061209atoms-day1-story,0,2034260.htmlstory

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Dictatorship anyone?

Will we elect the next Dictator of the USA ? Or will it be an “appointment (again)?

Only a Dictator could have the following power!

"The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the President,,,"

This cheery note was included in a newspaper article written by John Lumpkin of the Associated Press. The article goes on to say that the CIA will only kill us if they think we are members of Al Qaeda.

01/29/07 "ICHBlog" -- - Just what the hell is a "secret finding?" Sounds like George was hunting for Easter eggs in the Rose Garden and found an authorization to kill American citizens under a birdbath.

I don't want to be an alarmist but you realize what this means right? It means that you or I or any citizen of this country can be snuffed out like a birthday candle on the say so of the CIA, or the FBI, or I presume anyone who can convince the President that someone is a member of Al Qaeda. Wow, if Nixon had thought of this one his enemies list could have been a lot shorter.

http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/192/52/

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Time to get serious about Israel

[Bruce] Israel – time to pull in their horns, bombs, nukes and tell them to stop the oppression of Palestine. It is time Israel be required to use diplomacy, and include the UN, all Nations of the United Nations to accomplish it.

The USA must STOP the Israel oppression of Palestine (and other Nations), by whatever means necessary including the USA immediately stop supporting Israel WAR-RING unilaterally.  Sanctions and what ever is necessary to get compliance, including Israel’s relationship with Iran. The people of the UK are demanding this. Certainly the people of the USA should also. The bush whacking WAR-RING and usurpation of our United States Government must stop, NOW!. [B]

Information Clearing House Blog

Time to get serious about Israel    

Thursday, 01 February 2007

By John Hilary

A multi-party committee of MPs is pressing for sanctions over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

01/31/07 "The Guardian" -- -- You know that things are serious when a parliamentary select committee puts out a call for sanctions against another sovereign state. Doubly so when that state is supposed to be one of Britain's key allies in the Middle East. Yet today the House of Commons international development committee is calling on the Labour government to press for sanctions against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinian people. Things must be pretty bad.

Things are indeed bad, says the committee's new report. As a result of Israeli occupation and the accompanying restrictions on movement, the Palestinian economy is in freefall. Fully 70% of Palestinians are now living in poverty, according to UN calculations, a figure which rises to 80% in Gaza. Over half of all Palestinians are now unable to cover their families' daily food needs without relying on external aid - a scandal in such a rich and fertile land.

As a first step in putting pressure on the Israeli government to end this oppression, the UK should now urge its fellow members in the EU to consider suspending the EU-Israel association agreement, the cross-party committee says.

That agreement gives Israeli exports preferential access to the markets of the European Union. Europe accounts for two-thirds of Israeli exports, and suspending the preferences those exports currently enjoy would send the first proper message to Israel that its oppression of the Palestinian people is unacceptable.

That message is long overdue. The EU-Israel agreement should have been suspended years ago, as its own text states that it is conditional upon respect for human rights. In this regard Israel has already violated the agreement many times over. The UN's own special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, among many others, has pointed out that the agreement should already have been suspended under its own terms.

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Botched cases force US to reassess capital punishment

by Fanny Carrier Wed Jan 31, 3:47 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - In the face of a slate of erroneous convictions and the horror of mishandled executions, capital punishment in the United States is undergoing a reassessment.

[B] We sure do not want capitol punishment in WISCONSIN! It is not humane, and actually dam expensive. (the BAR association wants it, to employ Lawyers from their BAR UNION. That is right; the BAR is nothing but a UNION of Lawyers.) The “State Bar” should not be making any rules, procedures, laws for Wisconsin, we elect people for that. [B]

The number of criminals being added to death rows each year has declined with juries less willing to sentence them to death. And now a dozen states have suspended carrying out death sentences as questions about fair trials and the lethal injection process of executions are raised.

In Texas, Christopher Swift, a man who murdered his wife and mother-in-law, became the fourth person put to death this year when he was executed late Tuesday.

But he was one of nine people who had been slated to be executed in January, and their fates exemplify the trend: four are dead -- three of them executed in Texas -- while five obtained stays, each one for a different reason that illustrates the new obstacles placed on the path to the executioner across the country.

Each of the 50 states sets its own rules on capital punishment, but all are facing similar challenges.

In Indiana, a convicted man who suffers from schizophrenia obtained a stay because of a Supreme Court decision blocking the execution of anyone who cannot understand what is happening to them.

In Ohio, new governor Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist who opposes the death penalty, suspended a condemned prisoner's execution for two months while he studies the case.

In Texas, where 24 of last year's 53 executions nationwide took place, a death row prisoner was able to stop his execution in order to present new evidence in his case that might exculpate him.

A second Texas prisoner gained a stay after the Supreme Court pronounced on a case similar to his in which the jury which condemned him had been given incorrect instructions before deliberating.

And in North Carolina, a fifth man's execution was stopped due to the ongoing debate over the use of lethal injection, which has come under fire as possibly violating the constitutional ban on punishments that are "cruel and unusual."

Meanwhile an independent commission in New Jersey recommended abolishing the death penalty altogether on the basis of "increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency".

"There's a lot happening out there, and basically, it's further evidence that our national death penalty experiment has failed,” said David Elliot, spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The group is hopeful the new debate over lethal injection will bolster their case.

Conceived to inflict a speedy, painless, and bloodless death, the lethal injection process involves the administration of three drugs: the first to make the condemned person unconscious, the second to paralyze them and the third to stop their heart.

If given correctly, the execution goes as planned. But if the first drug is administered badly, the other two become extremely painful to the person being executed.

In one botched lethal injection process in December, prisoner Angel Diaz grimaced in pain and gasped for breath for 34 minutes before dying because the needles were pushed in too far and the drugs were injected into his muscles.

That led to the Florida government forming a commission to reassess the process.

And in California a federal judge ordered executions halted until prison authorities could provide assurances that the method of execution will be applied in a manner conforming to the US constitution's "cruel and unusual" clause.

Behind this challenge, too, is the growing refusal of medical professionals and their associations to take part in executions.

"It's going to be difficult for them to fix the procedure without a doctor in the execution chamber,' said Elliot.

The sum effect of the trend is clear: last year's 53 executions carried out was the lowest number in ten years. And only 114 people were sentenced to death last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, the lowest level since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976.

That represents the increasing unwillingness of juries to sentence convicts to death, in the wake of a sharp rise during the 1990s of revelations of judicial errors in death penalty cases.

Despite the trend in courts, however, polls suggest that capital punishment still retains the support of two-thirds of Americans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070131/wl_afp/usjusticeexecutionrights_070131083823

[B] Kill an innocent person? The many, many findings where the court has “error-ed” finding innocent people guilty does not provide justice. End the death sentence, than an innocent has the opportunity to prove it. If a person is guilty, better to let them suffer in solitary confinement the rest of their life rather than kill them and relieve their pain anyhow. [B]

--
Bruce Eggum
Gresham Wisconsin, USA
Urge to Surge
http://tinyurl.com/yndynn

http://www.doinggovernment.com/

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