October 13, 2004

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 20 Days to Go -- They are tearing up voter registrations, Sy Hersh reports anew on autrocities, the Bush abomination is playing politics with US solders lives while Bob Scheiffer plays golf with the _resident

There are 20 days to go until the national referendum
on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the
increasingly unhinged and incredibly shrinking
_resident. Well over one thousand US soldiers have
died already in the Mega-Mogadishu of the Bush
abomination's foolish and unnnecessary military
adventure in Iraq. The unprecendented US federal
budget surplus has been supplanted with an
unprecedented US federal budget deficit because of the
Bush abomination's TWO foolish, unnnecessary tax cuts.
The Bush abomination's pre-9/11 negligence and
post-9/11 inncompetence have made the world much more
dangerous than it was four years ago. It did not have
to be this way...But it is...Because the Bush cabal,
their wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party
stole the US presidential election of 2000 with the
complicity of their full partners in the US
regimestream news media. Now this triad of shared
special interest (e.g., oil, weapons, media,
pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) are going to attempt
to thwart the Electoral Uprising that is coming. They
are freaking out because Nevada, Colorado, Virginia,
New Hampshire, West Virginia and yes, even Ohio,
Fraudida and Misery are slipping away from their grasp
and seceeding from the Neo-Confederacy...BUT remember
that in 2000, in spite of the best (worst) efforts of
the US regimestream news media (more emboldened in its
complicity and cravenness now thah then), the Bush
cabal and their wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party were caught with their hand in the ballot box and had
to rely on Supreme InJustice to install the _resident.
Remember that the Diebolical "Black Box Voting" scheme
has been thwarted in some places and mitigated in
others. Remember, too, that the Deep Fix perpetrated
the US regimestream news media (e.g., the phoney 11
pt. Bush-Cheney "bounce" after the RNC) is NOT taking
hold in the psyche of the Electorate. The craven
*coverage* of the Iraq war has unmasked the US
regimestream news media to many who still clung to its
"objectivity" before, and the Internet-based
Information Rebellion has provided a viable, and
reliable, alternative source for news and commentary.
We are on the verge of a Boston TV party in America.
IF enough of us vote they cannot steal it.
Here are FIVE very important stories. Please read them
and share them with others. Please vote and encourage
others to vote. Please remember that the US
regimestream news media does not want to inform you
about this campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

George Knapp, KLAS-TV: Employees of a private voter
registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps
thousands of voters who may think they are registered
will be rudely surprised on election day. The company
claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in
the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to
vote outside a mall or grocery store or even
government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged
widespread pattern of potential registration fraud
aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a
private registration company called Voters Outreach of
America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the
past few months, registering voters. It employed up to
300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of
registrations per day, but former employees of the
company say that Voters Outreach of America only
wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed
company supervisors rip up and trash registration
forms signed by Democrats.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press: Secretary of
State Bill Bradbury and Attorney General Hardy Myers
plan to investigate allegations that a paid canvasser
might have destroyed voter registration forms.
"There have been allegations made that someone threw
out some voter registration forms that had been
submitted to them," Bradbury told The Associated Press
late Tuesday. "This is a violation of the law and I
will meet with the attorney general in the morning to
talk about what we can do to pursue this, and to make
sure it doesn't happen again."
Bradbury learned of the conduct from KGW-TV, which
interviewed Mike Johnson, 20, a canvasser who said he
was instructed to only accept Republican registration
forms. He told the TV reporter that he "might" destroy
forms turned in by Democrats.
"I have never in my five years as secretary of state
ever seen an allegation like the one that came up
tonight — ever," Bradbury said. "I mean, frankly, it
just totally offends me that someone would take
someone else's registration and throw it out."

Seymour Hersh, www.tinyrevoultion.com: They were a
couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders
came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to
clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the
story, another platoon from his company came and
executed all the guards, as his people were screaming,
stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He
went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's
hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to
the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the
company captain. And the company captain said, "No,
you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six
insurgents."
You read those stories where the Americans, we take a
city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen
insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's
shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...
You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said:
you've complained to the captain. He knows you think
they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow
soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get
through your tour and just shut up. You're going to
get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And
that's where we are with this war.

www.mediamatters.org: With a few noteworthy
exceptions, the media remained largely silent
regarding the Los Angeles Times' revelations, in an
October 11 article, that the Bush administration plans
to delay any major assaults on insurgent strongholds
in Iraq -- where U.S. military casualties could be
highest -- until after the U.S. presidential election
on November 2. The Times also noted: "Any delay in
pacifying Iraq's most troublesome cities, however,
could alter the dynamics of a different election --
the one in January, when Iraqis are to elect members
of a national assembly."
So the Times report amounts to the following:
Notwithstanding the possible harm to Iraq's scheduled
election in January, the administration has decided to
hold off on major combat in Iraq until after November
2 to avoid high casualties that could hurt Bush's
chances for reelection. The Chicago Tribune, The
Boston Globe, and United Press International mentioned
the report. No other major paper, none of the network
news programs, nor the vast majority of primetime news
shows on CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC saw fit to
address it.

www.mediamatters.org: Bob Schieffer, CBS chief
Washington correspondent and host of Face the Nation,
is scheduled to moderate the third and final
presidential debate on October 13...
Schieffer may find it "difficult" due to Bush
friendship. According to an August 20 Mother Jones
article, Schieffer "struck up a golfing friendship
with George W. Bush during the 1990s." In 2003,
Schieffer told Washington Post staff writer and CNN
host Howard Kurtz: "It's always difficult to cover
someone you know personally."
...Schieffer used Republican talking points in place
of facts. As MMFA noted the following day, on the July
18 edition of CBS's Face the Nation, Schieffer echoed
Republican Party talking points in questioning
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry
McAuliffe, falsely asserting that Senator John Kerry
"really has laid out no agenda" on Iraq.
Schieffer cited only one poll and extrapolated Kerry
criticism. As MMFA also documented, given five
recently released national polls that painted two very
different pictures of the presidential race -- three
showed an extremely close race, while two showed a
sizeable Bush lead -- Schieffer cited only a poll
favorable to Bush (the CBS News/New York Times poll)
and concluded on the September 19 edition of Face the
Nation: "George [W.] Bush has now opened a nine-point
lead over John Kerry. You don't have to be an expert
to figure that out. Voters may be less than enamored
with President Bush but they are even more uneasy
about John Kerry, whose plans for the country remain a
mystery to them, according to this poll."

Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe

George Knapp, Investigative Reporter
Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration
company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of
voters who may think they are registered will be
rudely surprised on election day. The company claims
hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the
trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to
vote outside a mall or grocery store or even
government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged
widespread pattern of potential registration fraud
aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a
private registration company called Voters Outreach of
America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the
past few months, registering voters. It employed up to
300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of
registrations per day, but former employees of the
company say that Voters Outreach of America only
wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed
company supervisors rip up and trash registration
forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed
them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in
front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage
and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,"
said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded
paperwork including signed voter registration forms,
all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County
Election Department and confirmed that they had not,
in fact, been filed with the county as required by
law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be
able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We
attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that
its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for
non-payment of rent. Another source said the company
has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again
registering voters. It's unknown how many
registrations may have been tossed out, but another
ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same
suspicions when she worked there.

It's going to take a while to sort all of this out,
but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure
you really are registered.

Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE
orclick here to see if you are registered.

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded,
by the Republican National Committee. Similar
complaints have been received in Reno where the
registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1097647496301300.xml&storylist=orlocal

Bradbury plans to investigate election complaint
10/13/2004, 12:33 a.m. PT
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Secretary of State Bill Bradbury
and Attorney General Hardy Myers plan to investigate
allegations that a paid canvasser might have destroyed
voter registration forms.

"There have been allegations made that someone threw
out some voter registration forms that had been
submitted to them," Bradbury told The Associated Press
late Tuesday. "This is a violation of the law and I
will meet with the attorney general in the morning to
talk about what we can do to pursue this, and to make
sure it doesn't happen again."

Bradbury learned of the conduct from KGW-TV, which
interviewed Mike Johnson, 20, a canvasser who said he
was instructed to only accept Republican registration
forms. He told the TV reporter that he "might" destroy
forms turned in by Democrats.

"I have never in my five years as secretary of state
ever seen an allegation like the one that came up
tonight — ever," Bradbury said. "I mean, frankly, it
just totally offends me that someone would take
someone else's registration and throw it out."

Bradbury said the law requires that groups registering
voters submit forms no later than five days after they
were filled out. He added that canvassers can't turn
away a voter because of his or her party affiliation.

Rory Smith, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party in
Oregon, said the young man interviewed by KGW-TV was
not in their rolls. "We do not condone this type of
behavior," Smith told the Portland-based station.

In Nevada earlier Tuesday, KLAS-TV, a CBS affiliate,
interviewed an employee of a private voter
registration organization who said hundreds — perhaps
thousands — of Democratic registration forms had been
destroyed.

Eric Russell, a former Voters Outreach of America
employee, told the TV station he had personally
witnessed his supervisor take out Democratic
registration forms from the pile and shred them.

The company has been largely funded by the Republican
National Committee, the station reported.

A spokesman for the Las Vegas bureau of the FBI said
he did not know if an investigation had been
initiated.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000172.html#more

October 12, 2004
Uh Oh
Seymour Hersh spoke at Berkeley last Friday, October
8th. He told a story about recently receiving a call
from an American lieutenant in Iraq who'd just
witnessed other American soldiers massacring Iraqis.

I typed up what he said from the Real Video file here.
The story begins at about 41:45.

HERSH: I got a call last week from a soldier -- it's
different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers.
He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway
between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place
where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out
the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First
lieutenant, ROTC guy.
It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing
outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was
an agricultural area, and there was a granary around.
And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that
owned the granary... It was an area that the
insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it
was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the
mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the
guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is
from his language, I wasn't explicit -- we're talking
not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any
kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were
guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they
were stationed there, they got to know everybody...

They were a couple weeks together, they knew each
other. So orders came down from the generals in
Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in
Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon
from his company came and executed all the guards, as
his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just
shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers
went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally
hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a
lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the
company captain said, "No, you don't understand.
That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents."

You read those stories where the Americans, we take a
city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen
insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's
shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...

You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said:
you've complained to the captain. He knows you think
they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow
soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get
through your tour and just shut up. You're going to
get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And
that's where we are with this war.


Posted by Jonathan Schwarz at October 12, 2004 11:12
AM | TrackBack

http://mediamatters.org/items/200410120007

Media largely ignored LA Times report of Bush
administration plans to delay major Iraq combat until
after presidential election
With a few noteworthy exceptions, the media remained
largely silent regarding the Los Angeles Times'
revelations, in an October 11 article, that the Bush
administration plans to delay any major assaults on
insurgent strongholds in Iraq -- where U.S. military
casualties could be highest -- until after the U.S.
presidential election on November 2. The Times also
noted: "Any delay in pacifying Iraq's most troublesome
cities, however, could alter the dynamics of a
different election -- the one in January, when Iraqis
are to elect members of a national assembly."

So the Times report amounts to the following:
Notwithstanding the possible harm to Iraq's scheduled
election in January, the administration has decided to
hold off on major combat in Iraq until after November
2 to avoid high casualties that could hurt Bush's
chances for reelection. The Chicago Tribune, The
Boston Globe, and United Press International mentioned
the report. No other major paper, none of the network
news programs, nor the vast majority of primetime news
shows on CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC saw fit to
address it.

From an October 12 Boston Globe article:

Admiral William Crowe, a former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff who spoke to reporters on Kerry's
behalf, blasted Bush over the troop request and a
separate report, in the Los Angeles Times yesterday,
that the administration plans to delay major attacks
on Iraqi insurgent strongholds until after Election
Day. Crowe said that plan, if true, would be
"dangerous" and "unethical," and added, "Senator Kerry
will not make a distinction between casualties before
an election and casualties after an election."

From an October 11 United Press International report:

The Bush administration is avoiding major assaults on
rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections
in November, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
White House spokesmen, however, said the story was not
true. There are almost daily battles with the
resistance in Iraq and nightly attacks on Fallujah and
several other rebel strongholds. Administration and
Pentagon officials told the newspaper they would not
launch major ground offensives in Fallujah or Ramadi
until after Nov. 2, when Americans vote in one of the
closest presidential races in history.

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and FOX News Channel
co-host Alan Colmes did call attention to the
importance of the Los Angeles Times report, with
Colmes raising the question: "Do you really think that
military planning and strategy should be based on a
presidential election or what's the best way to
prosecute a war based on what's safe for our troops?"
FOX News Channel host and FOX News Radio host Tony
Snow and his guest, conservative author Richard
Miniter, downplayed it.


OLBERMANN: As to the current battles in Iraq -- what
current battles in Iraq? The Los Angeles Times today
quoting unidentified senior [Bush] administration
officials who say that major assaults on Iraqi cities
held by insurgents will be delayed until after the
election here for domestic political reasons. Quote:
"Once you're past the election," said the individual,
identified only as being involved in strategic
planning, "it changes the political ramifications of
hitting Fallujah or Ramadi. We're not on hold right
now, we're just not as aggresive." The same official
telling the Los Angeles Times the administration is
doing a balancing act. There are those other elections
to consider as well, the ones scheduled in Iraq in
January. [MSNBC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann,
10/11/04]


COLMES: [O]ne other thing I wanted to bring up,
because there was a report over the weekend that the
Bush administration is planning to delay major
assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after the
U.S. elections. And the reason they're giving is they
don't want to get involved in this while there is an
election going on. Do you really think that military
planning and strategy should be based on a
presidential election or what's the best way to
prosecute a war based on what's safe for our troops?
[FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, 10/11/04]

On the October 11 edition of FOX News Channel's The
O'Reilly Factor, substitute host Snow mused about "the
psychological impact [of the report] on our enemies"
and questioned whether this is "the sort of thing that
actually helps us." His guest Miniter responded, "I
don't really believe that George [W.] Bush is going to
play politics with the war."

SNOW: The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Bush
administration says it is not going to have any major
attacks, perhaps on Fallujah, it doesn't quite
specify, but within Iraq until after the election. Now
somebody who is studying not only the war on terror,
but the psychological impact on our enemies, whether
they be Al Qaeda, Iran, or otherwise, is that the sort
of thing that actually helps us?

MINITER: Well, I don't really believe that George [W.]
Bush is going to play politics with the war, because
if he was going to play politics with the war, he
would be trumpeting many of the successes that I talk
about in my book, Shadow War.

Miniter is the author of Shadow War and Losing Bin
Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global
Terror, both published by conservative Regnery
Publishing, Inc., the publisher of the discredited
anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans
Speak Out Against John Kerry.

— N.C.

Posted to the web on Tuesday October 12, 2004 at 4:40
PM EST

http://mediamatters.org/items/200410120011

Schieffer's statements raise questions about
objectivity

Bob Schieffer, CBS chief Washington correspondent and
host of Face the Nation, is scheduled to moderate the
third and final presidential debate on October 13. As
moderator, Schieffer will be responsible for
formulating the debate questions and following up
after the candidates respond. However, Schieffer has
described in the past his "golfing friendship" with
President George W. Bush "during the 1990s" and has
said, "It's always difficult to cover someone you know
personally." These and other past statements by
Schieffer raise the very question that Schieffer
himself suggested: Can he perform the role of
objective moderator given the "difficult[y]" of
"cover[ing] someone you know personally"?

Schieffer may find it "difficult" due to Bush
friendship. According to an August 20 Mother Jones
article, Schieffer "struck up a golfing friendship
with George W. Bush during the 1990s." In 2003,
Schieffer told Washington Post staff writer and CNN
host Howard Kurtz: "It's always difficult to cover
someone you know personally."
Schieffer on Kerry: "[B]efore the first debate, I
think John Kerry was about to go off a cliff." On the
October 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris
Matthews, Schieffer stated: "I'm not an expert on
polling, but I think this is a race that could go
either way. I think, frankly, before the first debate,
I think John Kerry was about to go off a cliff. I
think he got himself back in the game."
Schieffer opined in favor of Bush after he debated
Gore in 2000. As Media Matters for America previously
documented, Schieffer joined the chorus of pundits
that lowered the bar for Bush and raised it for former
Vice President Al Gore in 2000. During CBS News
presidential debate coverage on October 3, 2000,
Schieffer stated: "Well, I think, clearly tonight, if
anyone gained from this debate, it was George Bush
because he showed that people will argue back and
forth over the positions they took, but, clearly, he
seemed to have as much of a grasp of the issues as --
as Al Gore did tonight. So in that sense, I think Bush
gained a lot."
Schieffer used Republican talking points in place of
facts. As MMFA noted the following day, on the July 18
edition of CBS's Face the Nation, Schieffer echoed
Republican Party talking points in questioning
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry
McAuliffe, falsely asserting that Senator John Kerry
"really has laid out no agenda" on Iraq.
Schieffer cited only one poll and extrapolated Kerry
criticism. As MMFA also documented, given five
recently released national polls that painted two very
different pictures of the presidential race -- three
showed an extremely close race, while two showed a
sizeable Bush lead -- Schieffer cited only a poll
favorable to Bush (the CBS News/New York Times poll)
and concluded on the September 19 edition of Face the
Nation: "George [W.] Bush has now opened a nine-point
lead over John Kerry. You don't have to be an expert
to figure that out. Voters may be less than enamored
with President Bush but they are even more uneasy
about John Kerry, whose plans for the country remain a
mystery to them, according to this poll."
— N.C.

Posted to the web on Tuesday October 12, 2004 at 6:31
PM EST

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Posted by richard at October 13, 2004 10:32 AM