LOL Politicians: Rejected New Yorker Cover Art

In the X-rated version, they’d have McSame calling Cindy a cunt.

Source: 2 Political Junkies.

Air force sought anti-terror funds so generals could fly in comfort

Must be nice! I’ll bet it makes the enlisted glad they’re fighting in this comfort-less war.

Source: Agence France Presse.

The US Air Force has sought millions of dollars in “war on terror” funds for “comfort capsules” so that the military brass can fly first class to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, a spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

The capsules, which are loaded into the bay of a military transport plane, come with a sofa, work space, two leather seats, a flat-screen TV, ports for a satellite phone and a separate module with two bunk beds and closets, the air force spokeswoman said.

Air force generals added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the costs with upgrades to leather, carpet and wood choices, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a non-profit watchdog group that obtained internal emails about the program.

One email alluded to concerns of General Robert MacMahon, an air force deputy chief of staff, that the capsules be designed for the highest standards of luxury travel, POGO said.

“General MacMahon’s concern is so significant that we need assurance by the end of the week from AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory) that the SLICC will be ‘World class’ inside,” the e-mail is quoted as saying.

“While we know the requirements document says ‘business class’, we all know there are levels of that,” it said.

The first of the capsules is already in production at a cost of 2.7 million dollars, and is scheduled for delivery in five months, said air force spokeswoman Vicky Stein.

Stein said the new capsules were needed to keep pace with a growing demand for VIP travel to war zones.

“There are growing demands for senior leader transportation across the globe, especially into Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters,” she said.

“The diverts were aimed at responding as quickly as possible to growing requirements.”

Although the capsule came out of the US Air Force base budget, the service asked to use funds dedicated for the war on terrorism to fund the purchase of two more at 1.9 million dollars each. The request was denied, said Stein.

“We started with the idea of getting 10 capsules but we scaled it down to three, based on what it looked like we needed at the time,” she said. “We’re looking for other funding for the two.”

The air force also has acquired four pallets with four first class seats each as part of the effort to give VIPs comfortable seating on their way to war zones.

The air force calls them “the slick and the slip,” taken from acronyms for their official names: the senior leader conference capsule and the senior leader in-transit pallet.

The Washington Post, which first reported on the “comfort capsules,” as they were originally called by the air force, said at least four generals were involved in design decisions.

A request that the color of the leather seats be changed from brown to air force blue, and that seat pockets be added alone cost more than 68,000 dollars, the Post said.

It said the air force decided last year to take 331,000 dollars from war on terror funds to pay for a cost overrun resulting in part from the changes.

In a letter to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, POGO called it “an egregious failure of leadership … that involves breathtaking extravagance when every dollar needs to be wisely spent in a time of war.”

Kucinich Says Unidentified Foreign Official Wants to Speak at Impeachment Talks

By Molly K. Hooper, CQ Today.

An unidentified government official of a U.S. ally wants to participate if and when Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich makes his case to impeach President Bush before the House Judiciary Committee, according to the Ohio Democrat.

The House voted, 238-180, on Tuesday to send Kucinich’s latest impeachment effort (H Res 1345) to the Judiciary Committee.

Chairman John Conyers Jr. said he will hold a broad hearing on the general topic of abuses of power by the Bush administration.

“There’s never been one [hearing] that accumulated all the things that constitute an imperial presidency,” Conyers said, explaining that the anticipated hearing would review more than a year of committee inquiry into such matters as the firing of U.S. attorneys, the leak of the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and the information provided to Congress in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Kucinich contends that President Bush ought to be impeached for allegedly lying to Congress in order to get approval to invade Iraq.

Conyers does not intend to specifically debate or hold a committee vote on Kucinich’s article of impeachment, though issues important to Kucinich would get a public airing.

A ‘New Angle’

No matter how the eventual hearing is framed, Kucinich said he would like to be joined at the witness table by a foreign official he would not name.

“I’ve been contacted by representatives of a U.S. ally who are seeking an opportunity to appear before the Judiciary Committee,” he said in an interview.

“Legislative leaders of a foreign capital” have a “new angle that I haven’t thought of before but is relevant,” he said. “This interest in whether we’ve been told the truth has extended to other countries.”

Kucinich would not provide further detail.

And in any event, the power to control the witness list of any congressional hearing rests with the committee chairman — in this case, Conyers.

The article of impeachment that was referred to committee on Tuesday was the fourth introduced by Kucinich.

He also introduced a broader version against Bush (H Res 1258) and two against Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res 333, H Res 799).

Propaganda Alert: An untold story of 9/11

This story stinks to high heaven:

So, the official story is that a terrorist intent on killing himself on his flight bothered to pack a suitcase, and even though he never expected to unpack it and expected it to be incinerated, instead of just throwing some clothes into that suitcase he took the time to load up that suitcase with all kinds of incriminating evidence pointing the finger of blame to Middle East Arab Muslims (i.e. Israel’s enemies). Then, miracle of miracles, this suitcase, which should have vaporized with the rest of the airplane, together with its load of incriminating evidence “somehow” was left OFF the plane, ready to be found by investigators!

And if you believe that one, I have a variable rate mortgage to sell you!

Michael Rivero, WhatReallyHappened.com

BY MICHAEL DORMAN, Newsday.

Former federal terrorism investigators say a piece of luggage hastily checked in at the Portland, Maine, airport by a World Trade Center hijacker on the morning of Sept. 11 provided the Rosetta stone enabling FBI agents to swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them.

A mix-up in Boston prevented the luggage from connecting with the plane that hijackers crashed into the north tower of the trade center. Seized by FBI agents at Boston’s Logan Airport, investigators said, it contained Arab-language papers revealing the identities of all 19 hijackers involved in the four hijackings, as well as information on their plans, backgrounds and motives.

The luggage saga represents what the former federal authorities describe as an untold story of 9/11 — offering explanations for questions long unanswered about the investigation of the tragedy, such as how authorities were able to identify the hijackers so soon after the attacks.

The former federal investigators said information found in the bag was passed on to Justice Department lawyers, who prosecuted Zacarias Moussaoui on charges growing out of the suicide attacks. A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said: “Under the judge’s order, we’re not going to comment on anything relating to the case.”

Mohamed Atta, a chief coordinator of the hijackings, and conspirator Abdulaziz AlAlomari spent the night before the attacks in room 232 of a Comfort Inn south of Portland. They checked out at 5:33 a.m. on Sept. 11. Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood said they drove in a rented blue Nissan Altima — eventually seized by the FBI — to Portland International Jetport.

Records show the Altima was parked in an airport lot around 5:45, allowing Atta and Alomari only a few minutes to catch a 6 a.m. commuter flight to Boston’s Logan Airport. Although they planned to hijack an American Airlines jet that would take off from Logan later that morning, investigators said they might have gone through Portland in the belief that airport security would be less stringent there.

Once the commuter flight landed at Logan, Atta and Alomari boarded American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles — which they would crash into the trade center.

‘A number of telling items’

A staff report to the 9/11 Commission later concluded: “The Portland detour almost prevented Atta and Alomari from making Flight 11 out of Boston. In fact, the luggage they checked in Portland failed to make it onto the plane. Seized after the Sept. 11 crashes, Atta and Alomari’s luggage turned out to contain a number of telling items, including correspondence from the university Atta attended in Egypt; Alomari’s international driver’s license and passport; a videocassette for a Boeing 757 flight simulator; and folding knife and pepper spray, presumably extra weapons the conspirators decided they didn’t need.”

The report did not say how many bags were checked in Portland, nor did it differentiate them by their contents. But three commission staff members who helped prepare the report said there were two pieces. Two staff members, John Raidt and R. William Johnstone, said it was clear both bags belonged to Atta. “He plopped both of them down on the luggage rack,” Raidt said. “Alomari just stood by.”

An affidavit filed by FBI agent James K. Lechner in federal district court in Portland reported that two bags checked by Atta were recovered at Logan Airport Sept. 11. They were never placed on Flight 11 before it departed from Boston, Lechner said, but there was no explanation of why they had not been loaded. Lechner described them as “a green Travel Gear bag” and “a black Travelpro bag.”

A former FBI agent and a former federal prosecutor who helped direct the New England investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks told Newsday that one bag found in Boston contained far more than what the commission report cited, including the names of the hijackers, their assignments and their al-Qaida connections.

“It had all these Arab-language papers that amounted to the Rosetta stone of the investigation,” former FBI agent Warren Flagg said. The former federal prosecutor, who declined to be identified publicly, supported Flagg’s account.

Hijacker IDs

“How do you think the government was able to identify all 19 hijackers almost immediately after the attacks?” Flagg asked. “They were identified through those papers in the luggage. And that’s how it was known so soon that al-Qaida was behind the hijackings.

The former prosecutor agreed that papers from the luggage helped identify suspects. “I can’t speak on the record about that evidence,” he said. “This evidence was gathered under grand jury subpoenas and I can’t discuss grand jury matters.”

The papers discovered in the hijackers’ luggage were bolstered by other evidence gathered against the conspirators by the FBI, the former federal prosecutor said. “These guys left behind a paper trail,” he said. “They had bank accounts. They rented cars. They had to show what they were doing in the United States. We investigated 9/11 from day one on the assumption that there might be a criminal prosecution.”

But when it seemed clear that all 19 hijackers had been killed in the attacks, jurisdiction transferred from various federal prosecutors’ offices around the country to Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

Flagg, an FBI agent for 22 years, worked on terrorism cases, among others. Now president of Flaggman Inc., a Manhattan-based investigative firm, he was retired by Sept. 11 but stayed in close touch with former FBI colleagues and prosecutors.

He said he first heard the account of the luggage’s significance in the investigation on Sept. 28, 2001, after attending the funeral for John O’Neill, a former top FBI antiterrorism official who died helping others to safety Sept. 11 in his new job as director of security at the World Trade Center.

After the funeral, he said, he fell into conversation with a young FBI agent he had helped train in the New York office. The agent, working on the Sept. 11 investigation, told him about the luggage. The agent said the New England prosecutor helping direct the investigation — whom Flagg also knew — was familiar with the evidence. Flagg said he telephoned the prosecutor that same day and received confirmation of the agent’s account.

“I was devastated because word had already leaked out of the hijackers’ identities,” Flagg said. “But I was also excited that the FBI had so much evidence so quickly.”

The young FBI agent, who has since left the agency, works in private industry and is reportedly in Dubai. He could not be reached for comment.

News reports published in late September and early October 2001 described a piece of luggage apparently belonging to Atta that had been discovered at Logan Airport after the attacks.

That piece of luggage was said to contain Arab-language papers amounting to Atta’s last will and testament, along with instructions to the other hijackers to prepare themselves physically and spiritually for death. The papers also admonished them: “Check all of your items — your bag, your clothes, knives, your will, your IDs, your passport, your papers. … Make sure that nobody is following you.” Similar papers were also found in the wreckage of another crashed airliner.

Flagg and the former prosecutor, however, said it was the second bag that identified all 19 hijackers.

“That was the one that became the Rosetta stone,” Flagg said.