Friday, July 25, 2003
This is weird and I am not sure what it means, if anything. It could just be suicide, but then again it could be something else, given his proximity to Roswell.
Navy Chief Nominee May Have Killed Self
By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Oilman Colin McMillan, who was awaiting Senate confirmation as Navy secretary, died from a single gunshot wound, and investigators said Friday it might have been self-inflicted.
"All indications are it could be suicide, but we're not going to reach that conclusion until the investigation is over," said District Attorney Scot Key of Alamogordo.
McMillan was nominated as Navy secretary by President Bush (news - web sites) in May. He was 67.
He died around lunch time Thursday and his body was found at his southern New Mexico ranch by two employees, said Roswell Mayor Bill Owen, a family spokesman and longtime McMillan employee. The 55,000-acre Three Rivers ranch is on the edge of the White Sands Missile Range.
McMillan had run Permian Exploration Corp. in Roswell, chaired Bush's New Mexico presidential campaign in 2000 and served as an assistant defense secretary under the first President Bush.
Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record) and Rep. Steve Pearce, both New Mexico Republicans, issued statements mourning McMillan's death.
"America has lost a leader, a patriot and statesman," Pearce said.
Domenici said McMillan was "someone who succeeded at everything he tried and everything he did, and yet he was about as humble as anyone you will ever meet."
President Bush had submitted McMillan's nomination to the Senate in May to fill a post left vacant since January, when Gordon England left to become deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department.
McMillan had run for the U.S. Senate in 1994, losing to incumbent Jeff Bingaman in a bitter and costly campaign. He was a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1971 to 1982.
Besides managing the 2000 Bush campaign in New Mexico, McMillan was state chairman for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.
He served in the Marine Corps from 1957-72 and was an assistant defense secretary in the early 1990s when Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) was the defense secretary.
Owen said he worked for McMillan for about 22 years in the oil and gas industry, at McMillan Production Co. He praised his honesty, ethics and business skill.
"He was involved in numerous types of business, was successful in all those business ventures and did so in a very up-front and honest and straightforward fashion," Owen said.
Navy Chief Nominee May Have Killed Self
By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Oilman Colin McMillan, who was awaiting Senate confirmation as Navy secretary, died from a single gunshot wound, and investigators said Friday it might have been self-inflicted.
"All indications are it could be suicide, but we're not going to reach that conclusion until the investigation is over," said District Attorney Scot Key of Alamogordo.
McMillan was nominated as Navy secretary by President Bush (news - web sites) in May. He was 67.
He died around lunch time Thursday and his body was found at his southern New Mexico ranch by two employees, said Roswell Mayor Bill Owen, a family spokesman and longtime McMillan employee. The 55,000-acre Three Rivers ranch is on the edge of the White Sands Missile Range.
McMillan had run Permian Exploration Corp. in Roswell, chaired Bush's New Mexico presidential campaign in 2000 and served as an assistant defense secretary under the first President Bush.
Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record) and Rep. Steve Pearce, both New Mexico Republicans, issued statements mourning McMillan's death.
"America has lost a leader, a patriot and statesman," Pearce said.
Domenici said McMillan was "someone who succeeded at everything he tried and everything he did, and yet he was about as humble as anyone you will ever meet."
President Bush had submitted McMillan's nomination to the Senate in May to fill a post left vacant since January, when Gordon England left to become deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department.
McMillan had run for the U.S. Senate in 1994, losing to incumbent Jeff Bingaman in a bitter and costly campaign. He was a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1971 to 1982.
Besides managing the 2000 Bush campaign in New Mexico, McMillan was state chairman for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.
He served in the Marine Corps from 1957-72 and was an assistant defense secretary in the early 1990s when Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) was the defense secretary.
Owen said he worked for McMillan for about 22 years in the oil and gas industry, at McMillan Production Co. He praised his honesty, ethics and business skill.
"He was involved in numerous types of business, was successful in all those business ventures and did so in a very up-front and honest and straightforward fashion," Owen said.
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Cracking Windows passwords made easy
(article found at theregister.com)
Cryptographic researchers have outlined techniques to greatly reduce the time it takes to crack alphanumeric Windows passwords.
Brute force attacks on such passwords have always been possible but the techniques outlined in a paper from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) show how such passwords could be broken up to eight or 10 times more quickly than previously possible.
The technique involves building a large lookup tables that matches the hashed (encoded) versions of passwords stored in Windows with text entered by a user.
By loading such pre-calculated data stored in memory its possible to reduce the time a particular piece of crypto analysis will take. Crypto analysts like Ron Rivest have understood this time-memory trade-off since the 1980s. The Swiss researchers have simply optimised the process, developing a demo programme than can crack Windows passwords more quickly. This demo is available online here.
A paper on this work, Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off, is to be presented by Philippe Oechslin and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne during the Crypto'03 conference next month.
An abstract for the paper explains: "Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the parameters used."
By email, Oechslin told us the researchers have since refined the techniques, bringing down the average time it takes to crack passwords to five seconds.
The research re-invigorates calls for Microsoft, in particular, to improve the cryptographic security of its passwords. Although NTHash is more secure than LANManager (the password scheme used in Win 9x) it's still insufficiently random, as the Swiss researchers have shown.
Meanwhile users shouldn't be too concerned about the issue since lifting password hash files in only possible where an attacker has control of your machine. If that happens, weak NT passwords will be the least of your worries.
(article found at theregister.com)
Cryptographic researchers have outlined techniques to greatly reduce the time it takes to crack alphanumeric Windows passwords.
Brute force attacks on such passwords have always been possible but the techniques outlined in a paper from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) show how such passwords could be broken up to eight or 10 times more quickly than previously possible.
The technique involves building a large lookup tables that matches the hashed (encoded) versions of passwords stored in Windows with text entered by a user.
By loading such pre-calculated data stored in memory its possible to reduce the time a particular piece of crypto analysis will take. Crypto analysts like Ron Rivest have understood this time-memory trade-off since the 1980s. The Swiss researchers have simply optimised the process, developing a demo programme than can crack Windows passwords more quickly. This demo is available online here.
A paper on this work, Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off, is to be presented by Philippe Oechslin and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne during the Crypto'03 conference next month.
An abstract for the paper explains: "Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the parameters used."
By email, Oechslin told us the researchers have since refined the techniques, bringing down the average time it takes to crack passwords to five seconds.
The research re-invigorates calls for Microsoft, in particular, to improve the cryptographic security of its passwords. Although NTHash is more secure than LANManager (the password scheme used in Win 9x) it's still insufficiently random, as the Swiss researchers have shown.
Meanwhile users shouldn't be too concerned about the issue since lifting password hash files in only possible where an attacker has control of your machine. If that happens, weak NT passwords will be the least of your worries.
Microsoft once again proves that big is not beautiful, it's a pain in the ass and flawed:
MS alerts users to Windows DirectX vulnerability
By John Leyden
Posted: 24/07/2003 at 07:40 GMT
Microsoft yesterday warned of security flaws with DirectX's DirectShow component that might be used by an attacker to run hostile code on vulnerable Windows machines.
Redmond has issued a patch - designated as critical - which users are urged to review.
The list of affected software is extensive: Microsoft DirectX 5.2 on Windows 98; MS DirectX 6.1 on Windows 98 SE; DirectX 7.0a and DirectX 9.0a on Windows Me; DirectX and DirectX 9.0a 7.0 on Win 2000; DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.0a on Win XP; DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.0a on Win Server 2003 are all potentially vulnerable.
So too is Windows NT 4.0 with either Windows Media Player 6.4 or IE 6 SP 1 installed and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition with either Windows Media Player 6.4 or IE 6 SP 1 installed.
The DirectX APIs are used by Windows programs for multimedia and games support. Within DirectX, DirectShow performs client-side audio and video sourcing, manipulation, and rendering.
Two buffer overrun flaws in the function used by DirectShow to check parameters in a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) file create a means to inject malicious code into vulnerable machines, hence the alert.
An attacker could seek to exploit this vulnerability by creating a specially crafted MIDI file designed to exploit this vulnerability and then host it on a Web site or on a network share, or send it by using an HTML-based e-mail. Simply visiting a maliciously constructed site might be enough to get infected, Microsoft warns. If the users open a maliciously constructed HTML email the effect will be the same.
Little wonder that Microsoft designates the problem as critical.
MS alerts users to Windows DirectX vulnerability
By John Leyden
Posted: 24/07/2003 at 07:40 GMT
Microsoft yesterday warned of security flaws with DirectX's DirectShow component that might be used by an attacker to run hostile code on vulnerable Windows machines.
Redmond has issued a patch - designated as critical - which users are urged to review.
The list of affected software is extensive: Microsoft DirectX 5.2 on Windows 98; MS DirectX 6.1 on Windows 98 SE; DirectX 7.0a and DirectX 9.0a on Windows Me; DirectX and DirectX 9.0a 7.0 on Win 2000; DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.0a on Win XP; DirectX 8.1 and DirectX 9.0a on Win Server 2003 are all potentially vulnerable.
So too is Windows NT 4.0 with either Windows Media Player 6.4 or IE 6 SP 1 installed and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition with either Windows Media Player 6.4 or IE 6 SP 1 installed.
The DirectX APIs are used by Windows programs for multimedia and games support. Within DirectX, DirectShow performs client-side audio and video sourcing, manipulation, and rendering.
Two buffer overrun flaws in the function used by DirectShow to check parameters in a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) file create a means to inject malicious code into vulnerable machines, hence the alert.
An attacker could seek to exploit this vulnerability by creating a specially crafted MIDI file designed to exploit this vulnerability and then host it on a Web site or on a network share, or send it by using an HTML-based e-mail. Simply visiting a maliciously constructed site might be enough to get infected, Microsoft warns. If the users open a maliciously constructed HTML email the effect will be the same.
Little wonder that Microsoft designates the problem as critical.
Here is a report from the English website the register:
UK workers talk favourite revenge tactics
By John Leyden
Posted: 24/07/2003 at 15:18 GMT
More than half of UK workers would take revenge against a former employer if they were unhappy about losing their job.
Badmouthing the company (31 per cent), taking customer leads (38 per cent), signing their ex-boss up to an X-rated mailing list (10 per cent) and sending nasty emails (10 per cent) were identified as key revenge tactics by UK workers in a survey commissioned by Novell.
Novell argues that a recent spate mismanaged redundancy announcements, including reports of workers being informed of their job loss by text message or voicemail, make the issue all the more pressing. As well damaging a company's reputation, ex-workers could cost their former employers "millions" by continuing to use company resources and benefits that have not been stopped when they leave.
The research reveals that 58 per cent of employees would continue to use company mobile phones, at a potential cost to UK industry of more than £1m per week. More than half of those questioned would carry on accessing the corporate IT network, and continue to take advantage of their season ticket, company car, laptop and gym membership if they were able to get away with it.
Research by the Department of Trade and Industry suggests that only 27 per cent of UK companies have the necessary documented security policies in place to ensure that access to company resources are stopped when an employee leaves.
According to Government Statistics Office research an average 1.67 per cent of the workforce (465,930 people) part from their employment for various reasons each month.
"Losing your job is upsetting whatever the circumstances and it is vital that employers handle the situation with professionalism and sensitivity," commented Steve Brown, UK MD of Novell. "What concerns me most about this survey is the impact that former employees could have on the remaining staff. The costs will be felt throughout an organisation and could impact on pay, bonuses and benefits. Many organisations are like leaky buckets and companies need to start plugging the holes in their organisations to ensure that they are water tight when an employee leaves."
Having being told they had lost their job, 67 per cent would take information that would help them with their next job and examples of their best work. Four in five (79 per cent) of the survey's respondents confessed that if requested, they would forward company sensitive information to a former colleague, even if they were now working for a rival firm.
Slack security procedures make it easier for ex-employees to take revenge, Novell concludes. The company is calling on firms to invest in access management technology as part of more comprehensive attempts to improve an enterprise's overall security policy.
But that only treats the disease rather than prevents it in the first place. TLC (tender loving care) of soon-to-be ex-employees rather than technology is far more important in preventing the urge for revenge, which is bound to find some outlet. Having said that, putting technology in place to revoke network credentials is a sensible step, not least because such spare credentials are frequently misused by third party crackers.
The survey, conducted by TNS in June 2003, involved quizzing a representative sample of 1174 adults in full and part time work in the UK on their attitudes towards revenge against former employers. ®
UK workers talk favourite revenge tactics
By John Leyden
Posted: 24/07/2003 at 15:18 GMT
More than half of UK workers would take revenge against a former employer if they were unhappy about losing their job.
Badmouthing the company (31 per cent), taking customer leads (38 per cent), signing their ex-boss up to an X-rated mailing list (10 per cent) and sending nasty emails (10 per cent) were identified as key revenge tactics by UK workers in a survey commissioned by Novell.
Novell argues that a recent spate mismanaged redundancy announcements, including reports of workers being informed of their job loss by text message or voicemail, make the issue all the more pressing. As well damaging a company's reputation, ex-workers could cost their former employers "millions" by continuing to use company resources and benefits that have not been stopped when they leave.
The research reveals that 58 per cent of employees would continue to use company mobile phones, at a potential cost to UK industry of more than £1m per week. More than half of those questioned would carry on accessing the corporate IT network, and continue to take advantage of their season ticket, company car, laptop and gym membership if they were able to get away with it.
Research by the Department of Trade and Industry suggests that only 27 per cent of UK companies have the necessary documented security policies in place to ensure that access to company resources are stopped when an employee leaves.
According to Government Statistics Office research an average 1.67 per cent of the workforce (465,930 people) part from their employment for various reasons each month.
"Losing your job is upsetting whatever the circumstances and it is vital that employers handle the situation with professionalism and sensitivity," commented Steve Brown, UK MD of Novell. "What concerns me most about this survey is the impact that former employees could have on the remaining staff. The costs will be felt throughout an organisation and could impact on pay, bonuses and benefits. Many organisations are like leaky buckets and companies need to start plugging the holes in their organisations to ensure that they are water tight when an employee leaves."
Having being told they had lost their job, 67 per cent would take information that would help them with their next job and examples of their best work. Four in five (79 per cent) of the survey's respondents confessed that if requested, they would forward company sensitive information to a former colleague, even if they were now working for a rival firm.
Slack security procedures make it easier for ex-employees to take revenge, Novell concludes. The company is calling on firms to invest in access management technology as part of more comprehensive attempts to improve an enterprise's overall security policy.
But that only treats the disease rather than prevents it in the first place. TLC (tender loving care) of soon-to-be ex-employees rather than technology is far more important in preventing the urge for revenge, which is bound to find some outlet. Having said that, putting technology in place to revoke network credentials is a sensible step, not least because such spare credentials are frequently misused by third party crackers.
The survey, conducted by TNS in June 2003, involved quizzing a representative sample of 1174 adults in full and part time work in the UK on their attitudes towards revenge against former employers. ®
When will these fools simply decide to disappear and accept that theior fifteen minutes of fame was a complete waste of time, money and psychic energy:
WASHINGTON - A federal judge refused to release Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) from a lawsuit by Gennifer Flowers which accuses the senator of masterminding a campaign to discredit Flowers' claim of an affair with Bill Clinton (news - web sites).
U.S. District Judge Philip Pro dismissed Flowers' defamation claim against Mrs. Clinton, but allowed a conspiracy allegation to proceed. Former presidential aide George Stephanopoulos and campaign strategist James Carville also are being sued.
Judicial Watch, a conservative group representing Flowers, said Wednesday it will seek the senator's testimony in the case.
In 1992, a supermarket tabloid wrote that Bill Clinton and Flowers had an affair while he was Arkansas governor. When the presidential candidate denied it, Flowers held a news conference to play audio tapes she said were of secretly recorded intimate phone calls between them.
Carville, now on CNN's "Crossfire," and Stephanopoulos, now an anchor on ABC's Sunday morning program "This Week," said that Flowers had doctored the tapes. Stephanopoulos repeated that allegation in a book.
WASHINGTON - A federal judge refused to release Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) from a lawsuit by Gennifer Flowers which accuses the senator of masterminding a campaign to discredit Flowers' claim of an affair with Bill Clinton (news - web sites).
U.S. District Judge Philip Pro dismissed Flowers' defamation claim against Mrs. Clinton, but allowed a conspiracy allegation to proceed. Former presidential aide George Stephanopoulos and campaign strategist James Carville also are being sued.
Judicial Watch, a conservative group representing Flowers, said Wednesday it will seek the senator's testimony in the case.
In 1992, a supermarket tabloid wrote that Bill Clinton and Flowers had an affair while he was Arkansas governor. When the presidential candidate denied it, Flowers held a news conference to play audio tapes she said were of secretly recorded intimate phone calls between them.
Carville, now on CNN's "Crossfire," and Stephanopoulos, now an anchor on ABC's Sunday morning program "This Week," said that Flowers had doctored the tapes. Stephanopoulos repeated that allegation in a book.
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
This is a ripe one, it turns out that Boyden Gray, who was intimately involved in trying to subvert the law right at the start of the Whitewater scandal, by getting the FBI to announce it was investigating, then presidential candiodate Bill Clinton for ethical improprieties, is now weighing in on judicial appointments, claiming the democrats are anti-catholic:
Ads run in Maine and Rhode Island newspapers last weekend show a sign hanging from closed doors under the words "Judicial Chambers." The sign reads: "Catholics need not apply."
The ads -- probably the toughest so far in the Senate's battle over President Bush's judicial nominations -- accuse "some in the U.S. Senate," apparently meaning Democrats, of opposing the appeals court nomination of Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. because he is a devout Catholic.
The ads are being run by the Committee for Justice -- founded by C. Boyden Gray, a White House counsel in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, to help rally support for judicial nominees -- and the Ave Maria List, an organization of lay Catholics that works for the election of antiabortion candidates to Congress.
Ads run in Maine and Rhode Island newspapers last weekend show a sign hanging from closed doors under the words "Judicial Chambers." The sign reads: "Catholics need not apply."
The ads -- probably the toughest so far in the Senate's battle over President Bush's judicial nominations -- accuse "some in the U.S. Senate," apparently meaning Democrats, of opposing the appeals court nomination of Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. because he is a devout Catholic.
The ads are being run by the Committee for Justice -- founded by C. Boyden Gray, a White House counsel in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, to help rally support for judicial nominees -- and the Ave Maria List, an organization of lay Catholics that works for the election of antiabortion candidates to Congress.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
It's nice to know that King Ethelred's courtiers do not believe in freedom of speech and ideas. For example a TV station in Madison got the following from the Republican National Committee:
Dear Station Manager:
It has come to our attention that your station will begin airing false and misleading advertisements on July 21, 2003, paid for by the Democratic National Committee. The advertisement in question misrepresents President George W. Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address. The advertisement states that President Bush said, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
In fact, President Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." By selectively quoting President Bush, the advertisement is deliberately false and misleading. Furthermore, the British government continues to stand by its intelligence and asserts that it believes the intelligence is genuine.
The Democratic National Committee certainly has a legitimate First Amendment right to participate in political debate, but it has no right to willfully spread false information in a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people. These advertisements will not be run by legally qualified candidates; therefore, your station is under no legal obligation to air them. On the contrary, as an FCC licensee you have the responsibility to exercise independent editorial judgment to not only oversee and protect the American marketplace of ideas, essential for the health of our democracy, but also to avoid deliberate misrepresentations of the facts. Such obligations must be taken seriously.
This letter puts you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement.
Respectfully,
Caroline C. Hunter
Counsel
Republican National Committee
Dear Station Manager:
It has come to our attention that your station will begin airing false and misleading advertisements on July 21, 2003, paid for by the Democratic National Committee. The advertisement in question misrepresents President George W. Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address. The advertisement states that President Bush said, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
In fact, President Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." By selectively quoting President Bush, the advertisement is deliberately false and misleading. Furthermore, the British government continues to stand by its intelligence and asserts that it believes the intelligence is genuine.
The Democratic National Committee certainly has a legitimate First Amendment right to participate in political debate, but it has no right to willfully spread false information in a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people. These advertisements will not be run by legally qualified candidates; therefore, your station is under no legal obligation to air them. On the contrary, as an FCC licensee you have the responsibility to exercise independent editorial judgment to not only oversee and protect the American marketplace of ideas, essential for the health of our democracy, but also to avoid deliberate misrepresentations of the facts. Such obligations must be taken seriously.
This letter puts you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement.
Respectfully,
Caroline C. Hunter
Counsel
Republican National Committee
Monday, July 21, 2003
Apologies to Moja at Turning Tables, but I thought the following post was interesting enough to reproduce:
the cursor...it blinks...as it waits...for something prolific...so you type...something heroic maybe...a story of valor...or the mundane...and as soon as you stop...it's blinking again...
i feel like that cursor...in an automatic mode...doing things with out thought...because they have become a part of me and my day...each day...off into the unending infinity of everything...blinking...
still waiting...it hangs on my every word...literally...
i get out of the rack only when i have to...i would be content to sleep the day away...but lately i get up...to go find a story...an event...something to write about...i have to search out something interesting because absolutely nothing of interest happens to me...but i'm not complaining...if i'm bored then i'm safe...my family knows this...my women knows this...i know this...
but i try to pay attention...because there is always something to see...something of note...like today...they called in iraqi vendors to hold a bazaar in our 'moral building'...they call it 'THE CHILLVILLE'...it's equipped with some huge a/c's and a flat screen t.v. pumping in the cnn or foxnews...we watch bootleg copies of the latest movies burned off the internet...it's a good place for the troops...
the vendors like that 'money money'...who doesn't...they bring in persian rugs...jewelry...copper pieces...leather shoes and jackets...video games...oil paintings that i think were recreations of famous iraqi art...and knock off electronics with names like 'SUNY' and 'MAGNAVOK'...we eat it up...because we've got more money then we know what to do with...hazardous fire pay will burn a hole through a flak jacket when a soldier is bored out of his kevlar'd mind...
the vendors aren't dim...in kuwait...at the bazaars...they will research MTV...and they will be up on the latest lingo to grab your attention..."very BLING BLING"..."makes you look dope yo"..."this is how we do it"..."the honies will love it playa"...it's hard to say no to these guys...with their middle eastern accents...they put you in a good mood...because you realize that they probably have absolutely no idea what the hell they are saying...they just know that you think it's funny...
there was a table...in the back...with the rugs...that had some very interesting pieces...either they were very old or they were very ill made...i hope they were old because i liked many of them...amber bracelets and silver necklaces...there was so much to see...i used to love buying souvenirs of my travels...i had always dreamed of a home with walls of shelves filled with tokens and trinkets...glass ware and platters...from my rotations around our earth...but since afghanistan...i just don't care any more...maybe because i'm not enjoying myself...like i did in venice...or san fransisco...or thailand...or amsterdam(where i really enjoyed myself)...
i usually shop for gifts...i'm a gift giver...even if it's small...i know people will cherish it because i lugged all the way around this stinking planet to deliver it to their hand...and most people respect stuff like that...even if its a little MRE tabasco bottle of dirt from afghanistan...they will treasure it always...
the cursor...it blinks...as it waits...for something prolific...so you type...something heroic maybe...a story of valor...or the mundane...and as soon as you stop...it's blinking again...
i feel like that cursor...in an automatic mode...doing things with out thought...because they have become a part of me and my day...each day...off into the unending infinity of everything...blinking...
still waiting...it hangs on my every word...literally...
i get out of the rack only when i have to...i would be content to sleep the day away...but lately i get up...to go find a story...an event...something to write about...i have to search out something interesting because absolutely nothing of interest happens to me...but i'm not complaining...if i'm bored then i'm safe...my family knows this...my women knows this...i know this...
but i try to pay attention...because there is always something to see...something of note...like today...they called in iraqi vendors to hold a bazaar in our 'moral building'...they call it 'THE CHILLVILLE'...it's equipped with some huge a/c's and a flat screen t.v. pumping in the cnn or foxnews...we watch bootleg copies of the latest movies burned off the internet...it's a good place for the troops...
the vendors like that 'money money'...who doesn't...they bring in persian rugs...jewelry...copper pieces...leather shoes and jackets...video games...oil paintings that i think were recreations of famous iraqi art...and knock off electronics with names like 'SUNY' and 'MAGNAVOK'...we eat it up...because we've got more money then we know what to do with...hazardous fire pay will burn a hole through a flak jacket when a soldier is bored out of his kevlar'd mind...
the vendors aren't dim...in kuwait...at the bazaars...they will research MTV...and they will be up on the latest lingo to grab your attention..."very BLING BLING"..."makes you look dope yo"..."this is how we do it"..."the honies will love it playa"...it's hard to say no to these guys...with their middle eastern accents...they put you in a good mood...because you realize that they probably have absolutely no idea what the hell they are saying...they just know that you think it's funny...
there was a table...in the back...with the rugs...that had some very interesting pieces...either they were very old or they were very ill made...i hope they were old because i liked many of them...amber bracelets and silver necklaces...there was so much to see...i used to love buying souvenirs of my travels...i had always dreamed of a home with walls of shelves filled with tokens and trinkets...glass ware and platters...from my rotations around our earth...but since afghanistan...i just don't care any more...maybe because i'm not enjoying myself...like i did in venice...or san fransisco...or thailand...or amsterdam(where i really enjoyed myself)...
i usually shop for gifts...i'm a gift giver...even if it's small...i know people will cherish it because i lugged all the way around this stinking planet to deliver it to their hand...and most people respect stuff like that...even if its a little MRE tabasco bottle of dirt from afghanistan...they will treasure it always...
Ah, once again them commies accross the water have nailed the bastards:
The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.
How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are revealed, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.
The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.
The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said there was nothing unusual about that.
Rick Tyler, Mr Gingrich's spokesman, said: "If he was at the CIA he was there to listen and learn, not to persuade or influence."
Mr Gingrich visited Langley three times before the war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.
Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP.
In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.
William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.
The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.
There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.
"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.
As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".
"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."
In fact, the OSP's activities were a com plete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.
"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."
The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."
Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.
The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.
A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by a rival organisation.
As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.
The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.
How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are revealed, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.
The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.
The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said there was nothing unusual about that.
Rick Tyler, Mr Gingrich's spokesman, said: "If he was at the CIA he was there to listen and learn, not to persuade or influence."
Mr Gingrich visited Langley three times before the war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.
Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP.
In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.
William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.
The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.
There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.
"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.
As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".
"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."
In fact, the OSP's activities were a com plete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.
"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."
The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."
Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.
The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.
A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by a rival organisation.
As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.
Found this at King Ethelred's web portal:
The danger is grave and growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding facilities to make more. It could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb -- and, with fissile material, could build one within a year.
Iraq's regime has longstanding and continuing ties to terrorist groups -- there are al-Qaida terrorists inside Iraq. The regime also practices the rape of women and the torture of dissenters and their children as methods of intimidation.
Hey Ethelred can you spell the word liar, we can GEORGE BUSH
The danger is grave and growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding facilities to make more. It could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb -- and, with fissile material, could build one within a year.
Iraq's regime has longstanding and continuing ties to terrorist groups -- there are al-Qaida terrorists inside Iraq. The regime also practices the rape of women and the torture of dissenters and their children as methods of intimidation.
Hey Ethelred can you spell the word liar, we can GEORGE BUSH
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Thank youy Ms Dowd. Once again the estimable columnist has nailed Ethelred and his annoying court of dishonor.
What we are witnessing is how ugly it can get when control freaks start losing control.
Beset by problems, the Bush team responds by attacking those who point out the problems. These linear, Manichaean managers are flailing in an ever-more-chaotic environment. They are spending $3.9 billion a month trying to keep the lid on a festering mess in Iraq, even as Afghanistan simmers.
The more Bush officials try to explain how the president made the bogus uranium claim in his State of the Union address, despite the C.I.A. red flags and the State Department warning that it was "highly dubious," the more inexplicable it seems. The list of evils the administration has not unearthed keeps getting longer — Osama, Saddam, W.M.D., the anthrax terrorist — as the deficit gets bigger ($455 billion, going to $475 billion).
After 9/11, this administration had everything going for it. Republicans ruled Congress. The president had enormously high approval ratings. Yet it overreached while trying to justify the reasons for going to war.
Even when conservatives have all the marbles, they still act as if they're under siege. Now that they are under siege, it is no time for them to act as if they're losing their marbles.
What we are witnessing is how ugly it can get when control freaks start losing control.
Beset by problems, the Bush team responds by attacking those who point out the problems. These linear, Manichaean managers are flailing in an ever-more-chaotic environment. They are spending $3.9 billion a month trying to keep the lid on a festering mess in Iraq, even as Afghanistan simmers.
The more Bush officials try to explain how the president made the bogus uranium claim in his State of the Union address, despite the C.I.A. red flags and the State Department warning that it was "highly dubious," the more inexplicable it seems. The list of evils the administration has not unearthed keeps getting longer — Osama, Saddam, W.M.D., the anthrax terrorist — as the deficit gets bigger ($455 billion, going to $475 billion).
After 9/11, this administration had everything going for it. Republicans ruled Congress. The president had enormously high approval ratings. Yet it overreached while trying to justify the reasons for going to war.
Even when conservatives have all the marbles, they still act as if they're under siege. Now that they are under siege, it is no time for them to act as if they're losing their marbles.
