The Des Moines Register reported an FBI informant and undercover police officer infiltrated a peace organization at the University of Iowa prior to the RNC convention in August 2008. It is reported that that surveillence began as early as the fall of 2007.
Confidential FBI documents obtained by The Des Moines Register show an FBI informant was planted among a group described as an “anarchist collective” that met regularly last year in Iowa City. One of the group’s goals was to organize street blockades to disrupt the Republican convention, held Sept. 1-4, 2008, where U.S. Sen. John McCain was nominated for president.
The undercover Minnesota deputy who traveled to Iowa City was from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department, which infiltrated a group known as the “RNC Welcoming Committee” that was coordinating convention protest activities in St. Paul.
The undercover officer accompanied two activists from the Twin Cities who attended the University of Iowa in April 2008 for a Midwest campus anti-war conference.
The Iowa City Police Department was not aware that an FBI informant was monitoring local anti-war activists last year, Police Chief Samuel Hargadine said. But he confirmed to the Register that he was notified by Ramsey County authorities last year that they were sending an undercover officer to Iowa City.
It is pretty amazing national security resources would go to monitor a peace group in Iowa. As one of the people in Iowa said, “There are not a lot of bomb throwers in Iowa City.”
Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times this morning is a must read.
To paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions. …
There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. …
[Robert] Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy. …
I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.
Choi, 28, who majored in Arabic language at West Point, announced he is gay during an appearance March 19 on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Soon after, the army made plans to fire him, saying he had “negatively affected good order and discipline in the New York Army National Guard.”
Choi said he was disappointed and angry, and it took him only 30 minutes after receiving the letter to decide: “I’m fighting this.”
Marc Ambinder writes that the AP is reporting that President Obama is going to announce he is going to be bringing troops out of Iraq in 18 months.
President Obama plans to announce later this week that he will order all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010, roughly three months later than the timetable he proposed during the campaign, but, come to think of it, not all that different. A residual force of between 30,000 to 50,000 would remain in the country indefinitely.
If you attended any political events leading up to the Iowa Caucuses you know about Iowans for Sensible Priorities. They are the ones that handed out the pens with the pull out charts, had the pie chart car, and passed out cookies with pie charts on them. There goals were to…
Increase funding to meet the needs of our children and children around the world (at no additional taxpayer expense) by reducing money spent on the Pentagon for Cold War weapons systems no longer needed to protect America.
Withdrawing from Iraq, and cutting $300 billion in other defense spending, would wipe out the increases in military spending under the Bush administration. It would even reduce military spending to a smaller percentage of the federal budget than it was during the Clinton administration.
It is great to have a President with sensible priorities.
Studying satellite imagery of night light in Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by Sunni residents, they came up with an alternative conclusion: The Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims had largely stopped killing each other by the time the “surge” of U.S. troops arrived in 2007.
In other words, the remaining Sunnis, defeated, turned out the lights and left. And then the U.S. troops came in.
Alan Grayson, who ran this great campaign ad in July, won the Democratic primary in Florida’s 8th district yesterday. Grayson now faces Republican incumbent Rick Keller, who barely held on against a primary challenge himself.
Grayson has fought against fraud by private contractors throughout the past 15-20 years. He is running for Congress to make sure taxpayer money isn’t wasted by private contractors and our troops get the equipment they need to do their job.
Grayson has another outstanding ad about the fraud by private contractors in Iraq…
Vote Vets ran this ad against in 2006 against George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Rick Santorum for voting against supplying the proper body armor to our troops serving in Iraq.
Becky Greenwald is running against Tom Latham and has been endorsed by General Wesley Clark.
“I’m endorsing Becky for Congress because her experience with the American Red Cross assisting wounded veterans returning home from the Vietnam War has shaped her strong commitment to our nation’s veterans,” said General Wesley Clark.
Tom Latham has voted to cut billions from Veterans programs in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. (HCR 95, Vote #78, 3/20/03)
“George Bush and Tom Latham have for too long cut funding for our troops returning from Iraq, and we need Becky in Congress to be a voice for our soldiers,” said General Clark.
Allen, Burns, and Santorum all lost in 2006. Latham will be running in 2008 and say that he supports the troops, but we all know better. All you have to do is look at his voting history against our troops.
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