Civilian National Security Force...

"We cannot rely only on our military for our national security, we need to have a Civilian National Security force that is just as strong, just as well funded."

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This is about section 899A (3), developing home grown terrorists in our own land (civil defense).

McCain Lobbyist Scandal Continues: Government Warned Senator That Campaign Manager Was Undermining National Interests

The lobbying firm of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis acted in direct opposition to American foreign interests, which prompted a warning to McCain's Senate office from the United States government, according to a recent New York Times article.

Much has been reported about Rick Davis, top McCain adviser and lobbyist whose company, Davis Manafort, made its fortune in part by accepting jobs that didn't require employees to register as lobbyists. Davis has been in particular hot water for his company's work with pro-Russian Ukranian political candidates; Davis arranged for one of Putin's allies to meet with McCain during the time.

However, the New York Times has managed to take that already embarrassing story and make it even worse:

Mr. McCain may have first become aware of Davis Manafort's activities in Ukraine as far back as 2005. At that time, a staff member at the National Security Council called Mr. McCain's Senate office to complain that Mr. Davis's lobbying firm was undercutting American foreign policy in Ukraine, said a person with direct knowledge of the phone call who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A campaign spokesman, when asked whether such a call had occurred, referred a reporter to Mr. McCain's office. The spokesman there, Robert Fischer, did not respond to repeated inquiries.

Such a call might mean that Mr. McCain has been long aware of Mr. Davis's foreign clients. Mr. Davis took a leave from his firm at the end of 2006.

This isn't the only time when Davis' business interests have appeared counter to those of the United States: Davis' Ukranian contacts shared several business ties with Iran.

McCain suffered from a perception problem last month when the extent of his lobbying connection caused his campaign to fire several key staffers, as well as institute a new conflict-of-interest policy. The McCain camp has said that Davis is unaffected by the policy, as its implementation is not retroactive. Davis is no longer registered as a lobbyist.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/12/mccain-lobbyist-scandal-c_n_106832.html

We just posted where these facilities are and what is going on, but hey....don't worry....no national security risk. OMG! What a bunch of flipping morons!!!

U.S. and British forces bombed Dresden, Germany with the death of approximately 225,000 civilians, and it was intended as a purely civilian bombing.

From a history publication (with references to LeMay also made by Robert McNamara in The Fog of War):

When news concerning the bombing of Dresden got out, it led to an uproar that had to be quieted by cynical denials that this was U.S. or British policy. But it was, and it continued, now against Japan. In March 1945, more than 100,000 Japanese were killed in a firebombing raid on Tokyo as �canals boiled, metal melted, and buildings and human beings burst spontaneously into flames� (John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War [Pantheon Books, 1986]). By August 1945, 58 Japanese cities had been firebombed and the bomber commander, General Curtis LeMay, had to curtail his raids because he had run out of incendiary bombs. After the war, Le May remarked �I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.� Instead he was promoted, eventually heading the Strategic Air Command, where he advocated a pre-emptive nuclear �first strike� against the Soviets. During the Vietnam War, Le May notoriously called to �bomb them [the North Vietnamese] back into the Stone Age.�

to convert to my religion. I don't kill in the name of my God. I am nothing like the Jihad extremists and for you to say that is just absolute BS and you know it. What you people seem to forget is that we are at war here. A war were people want me and you dead. I don't want to torture them for revenge but if we can get other names of people or any plot information to save American lives.....I'm all for it....including saving your atheist behind in the process. Doesn't quite sound like I'm a Jihad extremists or I'd say something like blow your butt up too since you won't convert to my religion but I don't see me saying that. So don't you EVER compare me to a terrorist.

Keep believing all the hype and the lies. That's your choice, but don't insult me because I can tell the difference.

capable of making nuclear bomb. I have been reading about Israel and Iran every day and looks like one of these days we are going to hear a special report that Israel is attacking Iran. My question is if the US is going to help? I read Iran would attack the US if US tries to help Israel. I also read Iran has missels pointed in our direction to hit our oil refineries and power plants in the gulf coast states.

With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.

As the devastation threatened to overwhelm state resources, federal authorities called on the Pentagon to mobilize active-duty aircraft, ships and troops and set up an unprecedented task force to coordinate a wider military response, said officials from the Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense.

National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.

More than 6,000 Guard members were mobilized in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida when the storm struck on Monday, with the number rising to 8,000 yesterday and hundreds more expected to be called to active duty, National Guard officials said yesterday.

Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people, said Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.

Mississippi has about 40 percent of its Guard force deployed or preparing to deploy and has called up all remaining Guard units for hurricane relief, Thaggard said. Those include the Army band based in Jackson, Miss. They are mustering transportation to move them south, he said. Soldiers who have lost their homes are exempt, he said.

Mississippi has requested troops and aircraft from about eight other states -- including military police and engineers from Alabama, helicopters and crews from Arkansas and Georgia, and aircraft-maintenance experts from Connecticut, who are filling in for a Mississippi maintenance unit that is heading to the Middle East.

This is the biggest disaster we've ever had, so we're going to need more aircraft than we've got, said Col. Bradly S. MacNealy, the Mississippi Army National Guard's aviation officer. Mississippi has had to borrow from Arkansas UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fitted with hoists, using them together with the Coast Guard to pluck to safety several dozen people stranded by floodwaters, he said.

Chinook helicopters from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are flying the equivalent of 18 large truckloads of critical supplies -- including ice, water, food and chain saws for road-clearing crews -- to Mississippi's coast, he said.

In Alabama, all the major Guard units activated for the disaster have already served in Iraq, and some still have contingents there, said Alabama Guard spokesman Norman Arnold.

Capt. Richard Locke of the Guard's 1st Battalion 167th Infantry headed toward Mobile yesterday with a force of 400 soldiers cobbled together from four units because the rest of the battalion is in Iraq.

Carrying M-16 rifles and 9mm pistols, the soldiers are assigned to control traffic at unlighted intersections, and patrol in Humvees and on foot to prevent looting.

Recruiting and retention problems are worsening the strain on Guard forces in hurricane-ravaged states. Alabama's Army National Guard has a strength of 11,000 troops -- or 78 percent of the authorized number. We're just losing too many out the back door, Arnold said.

British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal.

The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country. Tony Blair hopes that, despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003.

Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.

The increasingly rapid pace of planning for British military disengagement has been revealed on the eve of the Labour Party conference, which will see renewed demands for a deadline for withdrawal. It is hoped that a clearer strategy on Iraq will quieten critics who say that the government will not be able to 'move on' until Blair quits. Yesterday, about 10,000 people demonstrated against the army's continued presence in the country.

Speaking to The Observer this weekend, the Defence Secretary, John Reid, insisted that the agreement being drawn up with Iraqi officials was contingent on the continuing political process, although he said he was still optimistic British troops would begin returning home by early summer.

'The two things I want to insist about the timetable is that it is not an event but a process, and that it will be a process that takes place at different speeds in different parts of the country. I have said before that I believe that it could begin in some parts of the country as early as next July. It is not a deadline, but it is where we might be and I honestly still believe we could have the conditions to begin handover. I don't see any reason to change my view.

'But if circumstances change I have no shame in revising my estimates.'

The disclosures follow rising demands for the government to establish a clearer strategy for bringing troops home following the kidnapping of two British SAS troopers in Basra and the scenes of violence that surrounded their rescue. Last week Blair's own envoy to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that Britain could be forced out if Iraq descends so far into chaos that 'we don't have any reasonable prospect of holding it together'.

Continued tension between the Iraqi police force, the Iraqi administration and British troops was revealed again yesterday when an Iraqi magistrate called for the arrest of the two British special forces soldiers. who were on a surveillance mission when they were taken into custody by Iraqi police and allegedly handed on to a militia.

For Blair, the question of withdrawal is one of the most difficult he is facing. The Prime Minister has abandoned plans, announced last February, to publish his own exit strategy setting out the milestones which would have to be met before quitting: instead, the plans are now being negotiated between a commission representing the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, and senior US and UK diplomats and military commanders in Baghdad.

Senior military sources have told The Observer that the document will lay out a point-by-point 'road map' for military disengagement by multinational forces, the first steps of which could be put in place soon after December's nationwide elections.

Each stage of the withdrawal would be locally judged on regional improvements in stability, with units being withdrawn as Iraqi units are deemed capable of taking over. Officials familiar with the negotiations said that conditions for withdrawal would not demand a complete cessation of insurgent violence, or the end of al-Qaeda atrocities.

According to the agreement under negotiation, each phase would be triggered when key security, stability and political targets have been reached. The phased withdrawal strategy - the British side of which is expected to take at least 12 months to complete - would see UK troops hand over command responsibility for security to senior Iraqi officers, while remaining in support as a reserve force.

In the second phase British Warriors and other armoured vehicles would be removed from daily patrols, before a complete withdrawal of British forces to barracks.

The final phase - departure of units - would follow a period of months where Iraqi units had demonstrated their ability to deal with violence in their areas of operation.

Blair will tackle his critics over Iraq in his conference speech, aides said this weekend, but would decline to give a public deadline for withdrawing troops. He is expected to make several major interventions on the war in the coming weeks, before a vote on the new constitution in mid-October, explaining how Iraq could be steered towards a sufficiently stable situation to allow troops to come home.

'What we are not going to set out is a timetable: what we are going to set out is a process of developing that security capability,' said a Downing Street source. 'We don't want to be there any longer than we have to be, the Iraqis don't want us to be there any longer than we have to be, but the Iraqi Prime Minister has made it very clear that our presence there is one that is necessary.'

It was revealed yesterday that an Iraqi judge issued the warrants for the arrest of the two rescued soldiers, accusing them of killing one policeman and wounding another, carrying unlicensed weapons and holding false identification.

The continuing preparations for a military withdrawal come, however, as officials are bracing themselves for a new political crisis in Iraq next month, with what many regard as the inevitable rejection of a new constitution by a two-thirds majority in three provinces, sufficient to kill the document and trigger new elections.

The same officials believe that a failure of the controversial constitution - which Sunnis say favours the Shia majority - would require at least another year of political negotiations, threatening any plans to disengage.

Civilian National Security Force...

Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs