Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year!!!!





And to ALL Our Troops God Bless You and Happy New Year!!!




Everyone feel free to leave your Resolution's, Prediction's, etc...

State Funeral For President Ford Begins

Ford's Casket Arrives at U.S. Capitol

With the thunder of cannon and the whistle of a bos'n pipe, the nation's capital honored Gerald R. Ford's memory Saturday in funeral ceremonies recalling the touchstones of his life, from combat in the Pacific to a career he cherished in Congress to a presidency he did not seek.
Lights bathed the granite arch of the World War II memorial commemorating the Pacific theater as Ford's nighttime funeral procession, bearing his wife, Betty, and the casket of the 38th president, stopped there in tribute to his years as an ensign and gunnery officer. The other arch, representing the Atlantic theater, stood in darkness.





















Story Here

VP Cheney's Remark's, more Photos

Tribute To President Ford In Pictures
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These picture's are more appropriate than any comment I could make today.

Saddam Executed For Crimes Against Humanity

Saddam Hussein Executed in Iraq

WARNING!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS AND VIDEOS!



State TV has been showing footage of Saddam Hussein's atrocities
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location in Baghdad, for crimes against humanity.
Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT).

The news was confirmed to the BBC by the Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister, Labeed Abawi.

Two co-defendants, Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former Iraqi chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were also executed.

All three were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail.

"Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television announced, as patriotic music and images of national monuments were broadcast.

A scrolling headline read: "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

Iraqi-Americans Celebrate Saddam's Execution In Dearborn, Michigan



No this guy isnt trying to hang the Flag upside down, he was grabbing at the Flag to pull it over his head.


Other Arab TV stations aired live footage of the sunrise over Baghdad's Firdous Square, where US Marines pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein, after he was deposed in April 2003.

'Turning a page'

US troops and Iraqi security forces are on high alert for any violent backlash. The US State Department has urged all its embassies to increase security.

The BBC's Peter Greste in Baghdad says Shias have generally welcomed Saddam Hussein's death and hailed the execution as justice for the suffering endured under his leadership.

But Saddam's own Sunni tribesman were angered by his treatment and they may well protest once more, our correspondent adds.

The White House is expected to issue a written statement, although President Bush is not expected to make an address.

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says the Bush administration will see the act as turning a page in Iraq - a demonstration that Iraq has a sovereign and democratic government.

However, the administration will be keen to portray the execution as a matter purely for the Iraqi government and its court system, our correspondent says.

UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett welcomed the fact Saddam Hussein had been tried by an Iraqi court "for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed" and said "he has now been held to account".

France called on Iraqis to "look towards the future and work towards reconciliation and national unity".

Story Here
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Well the Butcher of Baghdad is DEAD!! Iraqi's are clebrating, and this chapter is closed! Saddam will be buried somewhere in Iraq in an unmarked grave, fitting I think, never to be seen or heard from again. Rot in Hell with Uday and Kusay, Saddam!

UPDATE:

Saddam's Last Words



Of course I'm still waiting for the real execution video, I just thought I would throw this little diddy on here in the meantime :-)
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Happy Iraqi's







UPDATE: GRAPHIC





`
The Execution of Saddam Hussien
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UPDATE:

Partial Video



UPDATE: GRAPHIC:

Iraqi TV show's Picture of DEAD Saddam Hussein


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Saddam Hussein The Fall Of A Tyrant



Dedicated to Danny
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Linked With:

Mike's America

Midnight Blue

Midwest Rightwingers

Pettifog

Sparks From The Anvil
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UPDATE: ***WARNING GRAPHIC*** **UNEDITED**

**Actual Cellphone Video**

Saddam Hussein Hanging





Saddam Hussein Hanging

UPDATE: 1-8-07 NEW VIDEO SURFACES OF SADDAM DEAD **WARNING** **EXTEMELY GRAPHIC**

I dint have a code for this one just click it

SADDAM DEAD

Iraqi's Line Up To Be Saddam's Executioner

Iraqis Line Up to Put Hussein in the Noose

BAGHDAD, IRAQ— One of the most coveted jobs in Iraq does not yet exist: the executioner for Saddam Hussein. The death sentence against Mr. Hussein is still under review by an appeals court, but hundreds of people have already started lobbying the prime minister’s office for the position.



“One of the hardest tasks will be to determine who gets to be the hangman because so many people want revenge for the loss of their loved ones,” said Basam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Mr. Hussein and two of his top associates, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar, were sentenced to “death by hanging” on Nov. 5 for their involvement in the arrest and killings of 148 men and boys after an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982. The nine-judge appeals bench has no time limit to issue its ruling, but if it upholds the death sentence, Mr. Hussein’s execution must be carried out within 30 days.

Iraqi judicial officials said they expected that the appeals process would be completed in a matter of weeks and, if the sentence is upheld, that Mr. Hussein’s hanging would take place between mid-January and mid-March.

The Shiite-led government has argued for a swift execution, saying that as long as Mr. Hussein is alive, he remains a powerful source of motivation for elements of the Sunni Arab insurgency fighting to restore him to power.

There are other critical issues the government will need to decide should the appeals court uphold the death sentence against Mr. Hussein, including where he will be executed.

Officials have considered staging a public hanging in Baghdad’s largest sports arena, Shaab Stadium, and filling the place with tens of thousands of spectators, according to a high-ranking government official involved in the executions process, who agreed to discuss the subject on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it on the record.

But while such a spectacle might satisfy a communal need for closure, the authorities have rejected the idea for security reasons. A target that big, they say, would be highly vulnerable to attack by Sunni insurgents who might try to lob a few mortar shells into the crowd or ambush spectators on their way to and from the event.

Government hangings are now conducted in a prison complex in eastern Baghdad. Mr. Hussein, who is being held at Camp Cropper, an American military prison near Baghdad International Airport, could be transported to those gallows by helicopter. But officials worry that the trip would present an unnecessary opportunity for a rescue attempt by his sympathizers.

Most likely, officials say, Mr. Hussein will be hanged at gallows specially built for him at Camp Cropper.

The death penalty in Iraq, which applies to a range of crimes including terrorism and certain categories of murder, was suspended in 2003 by the American occupation authorities but reinstated in August 2004. Since then, 51 people — men and several women — have been hanged and about 170 are currently on death row awaiting execution or the outcome of their appeal, according to Hashim al-Shibli, Iraq’s justice minister.

Those are the official numbers. The high-ranking government official involved in the executions process said the actual number of hangings was far higher, though fewer than 100, because of three sets of hangings that took place between December 2005 and March 2006 and were never publicized.

..................The Butcher Of Baghdad


Human rights groups have questioned the transparency of the criminal justice system in Iraq and the ability of defendants to get a fair trial. And the United Nations has requested that the Iraqi government commute the sentences of all the prisoners on Iraq’s death row. But Iraqi leaders have rebuffed calls for the abolishment of the death penalty, arguing that it serves as a deterrent to crimes.

“Maliki wants to show decisiveness that people should be punished,” said Mr. Ridha, Mr. Maliki’s adviser. “He is very anxious that these executions take place in a timely manner.” He added, “The number of executions that have taken place is not a great number compared to the number of insurgents in the country.”

Story Here

Saddam's Time Running Out

Saddam Dead By Sunday?

UPDATE:

SADDAM HANDED OVER TO IRAQI CONTROL-WILL BE EXECUTED SATURDAY

Saddam's Execution Imminent

Pentagon: U.S. Forces Ready for Violence

Flashback: Saddam Hussein's Atrocities

Timeline: Lifetime of Murder

UPDATE:
SADDAM TO BE EXECUTED BEFORE 10PM EST TONIGHT
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Where were the "Human Right's Group's" when Saddam was committing GENOCIDE!!? Time to get rid of the Pain in the ass of the Middle East, The Butcher of Baghdad, Let Him Swing!!
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UPDATE:



There is suppose to be some Video from all this, if I can get a code I will post one.

I sure never thought this morning with this post that I would be posting Saddam's excecution tonight! What an up and down day. Finally!

Troops Snub Kerry

If you dont keep you're mouth shut, and support the Troop's, when you go visit them, you get stuck at the dinner table ALONE!!!

Senator John Kerry (D-MA) on his recent trip to the middle east and a stop over to visit our troops. I dont think they were all that thrilled to see him do you?



Give it up goofball, you're Presidential career is History!



Hat tip to Night Rider for the Photo :-)

President Ford Dead At 93

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., 93, who became the 38th president of the United States as a result of some of the most extraordinary events in U.S. history and sought to restore the nation's confidence in the basic institutions of government, has died. His wife, Betty, reported the death in a statement last night.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."



Ford died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday (PST) at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said. No cause of death was given. Ford had battled pneumonia in January and underwent two heart treatments -- including an angioplasty -- in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Funeral services will take place in Washington and Grand Rapids, Mich., his boyhood home, the Associated Press reported, and public viewings will be held in California, Washington and Grand Rapids. Details had not been announced as of this morning.

President Bush was notified of Ford's death shortly before 11 p.m., at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., the White House said. He called Betty Ford to offer his condolences.

"For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most," Bush said this morning. He praised Ford's integrity and "great rectitude" and said the nation will always be grateful for his service.

Vice President Cheney, who served as Ford's chief of staff in the White House, said Ford "embodied the best values of a great generation: decency, integrity, and devotion to duty."

"When he left office, he had restored public trust in the presidency," Cheney said in a statement, "and the nation once again looked to the future with confidence and faith."

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum announced extended lobby hours so people could sign condolence books. Messages of sympathy, and donations to a memorial fund, can also be made online.

Ford was the longest-living ex-president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Former first lady Nancy Reagan remembered him in a statement as "a dear friend and close political ally" of the Reagans, praising him for speaking out "on issues important to us all" and for his early support of stem cell research, the AP said.

Ford was the only occupant of the White House never elected either to the presidency or the vice presidency. A former Republican congressman from Grand Rapids, he always claimed that his highest ambition was to be speaker of the House of Representatives. He had declined opportunities to run for the Senate and for governor of Michigan.

He had become vice president Dec. 6, 1973, two months after Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to a tax evasion charge and resigned from the nation's second-highest office. The former Maryland governor was under investigation for accepting bribes and kickbacks.

Ford was sworn in as president on Aug. 9, 1974, when Richard M. Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal.

"My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over," Ford said in his inaugural address.

"I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our government, but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad."

In the 2 1/2 years of his presidency, Ford ended the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, helped mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Egypt, signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union and traveled to Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East to sign an arms limitation agreement with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president.

Ford also sent the Marines to free the crew of the Mayaguez, a U.S. merchant vessel that was captured by Cambodian communists.

On the domestic front, he faced some of the most difficult economic conditions since the Great Depression, with the inflation rate approaching 12 percent. Chronic energy shortages and price increases produced long lines and angry citizens at gas pumps. In the field of civil rights, the sense of optimism that had characterized the 1960s had been replaced by an increasing sense of alienation, particularly in inner cities. The new president also faced a political landscape in which Democrats held large majorities in both the House and the Senate.



But Ford's overriding priority was ending the constitutional and political crisis known as Watergate. It had begun June 17, 1972, when five operatives of Nixon's reelection campaign were caught breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building.

The White House denied any involvement. But as the situation unfolded, the central question was whether Nixon had tried to obstruct the subsequent investigation. A special prosecutor sought answers on tapes Nixon had made of his Oval Office conversations.

The president resisted turning them over on the ground that this would violate executive privilege, but in July 1974, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled against him. Within days, prosecutors found a tape on which Nixon apparently ordered a coverup. The House judiciary committee approved three articles of impeachment. Faced with the virtual certainty of a trial by the Senate, Nixon resigned.

Ford said he believed that his signal achievement was healing the national divisiveness caused by the "poisonous wounds" of Watergate, as he put it in his inaugural speech. "There is no question that this is the thing I contributed," Ford said 30 years later, in an Aug. 25, 2004, interview with The Washington Post at his summer home in Beaver Creek, Colo.

When he assumed office, Ford immediately made clear his intention to change what historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called "the imperial presidency."

He was "acutely aware," he said in his inaugural address, that he had not been elected to the position he held, and he asked Americans "to confirm me as your president with your prayers." He said he had neither sought the presidency nor made any "secret promises" to attain it.

"In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy at hand. . . .

"Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

"As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate."

A new spirit was soon evident in the nation's leadership. The Oval Office, long a fortress for an embittered president who frequently fled its confines to his homes in San Clemente, Calif., or Key Biscayne, Fla., was thrown open to members of Congress, old friends, public officials and reporters.

The president's approval rating reached 71 percent. He was photographed making his own breakfast. He was freely contradicted by his eldest son, and his aides said what was on their minds without waiting for official clearance. In the press office, he appointed Jerald F. terHorst, a respected Washington correspondent, as his chief spokesman.

This euphoric honeymoon lasted precisely one month.

On Sept. 8, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for all federal crimes he had "committed or may have committed" when he was in the White House. The only acknowledgement he received in return was a six-paragraph statement from Nixon in San Clemente saying that "I can see clearly now . . . that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy."

Ford said the pardon was necessary to bring Watergate to a close, that he would have had to pardon Nixon sometime in any case and that it was easier to do it sooner than later.

The response was a tidal wave of criticism. Every opinion poll showed a large majority of Americans opposed the pardon. It was denounced in Congress, including by members of Ford's own party. Republican officials gloomily and accurately forecast that it had reintroduced the Watergate issue into the 1974 elections, which proved to be a Democratic landslide. TerHorst resigned in protest.

It was widely assumed that Ford had doomed his political career. By January 1975, his approval rating had plummeted to 36 percent. Not even two assassination attempts, both in California in 1975, generated significant popular support.

The consequences included a three-month delay in confirmation of Ford's choice of former governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York as vice president. In congressional hearings, it was disclosed that Rockefeller had made large private gifts to employees on the New York state payroll and that he had played a hidden role in financing a campaign book against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Arthur Goldberg. The disclosures undermined his ability to play an influential role in the Ford administration.

Many conservative Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in opposing Ford's programs. In mid-1975, Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, the darling of the right wing of the GOP, announced his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.

Ford beat back the Reagan challenge, but he narrowly lost the general election in November 1976 to the Democratic candidate, former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Asked in his 2004 interview with The Post whether the pardon had hurt him in the 1976 election, Ford replied, "It probably did. It was a close election, as you know. . . . There is a group of bitter people who never forgave me and probably voted against me, and the net result is that they probably helped that I didn't win."

Ford closed strongly against Carter after trailing by as much as 30 points in the polls but was damaged by asserting during a debate that Poland was not under Soviet domination. Against the advice of aides who told him this was a blunder, Ford stubbornly waited several days before correcting himself. The impression of bumbling was exacerbated by reports of his purported clumsiness. During a trip to Austria, he tripped and fell while leaving Air Force One, and there were several photographs of him falling while skiing.

But Carter began his own term with a graceful tribute that stands as the general assessment of the Ford presidency: "For myself and for our nation," he said in his inaugural address, "I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land."

Throughout his years in Washington, Ford had a reputation for hard work, patience and self-confidence. These qualities gained him a place in the inner circles of the Congress. He was also helped by the fact that politically he was a man of the center. He was an internationalist in foreign affairs, a moderate on civil rights and social questions and a conservative on fiscal matters.



His standing in the government was evident in 1963 when President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to the commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1965, he was elected minority leader of the House, the top Republican position in a Congress controlled by Democrats. He held that post until he became vice president.

When he left the White House, Ford wrote his memoirs, established his presidential library at the University of Michigan, served on the boards of various corporations, gave hundreds of speeches, played golf and divided his time between homes in Rancho Mirage and Beaver Creek.

He apparently had no second thoughts about his career. "Once I determine to move, I seldom, if ever, fret," he wrote in his memoirs. It was one of the most notable aspects of his character, and he never wavered from it.

In 1983, he told The Post that losing to Carter "truly hurt" but that he had been "doing as good a job as possible under very difficult circumstances" and that he was not going to "sit around and cry about it."

Instead of complaining, Ford pitched in to help his party. In 1980 he campaigned hard for his old foe, Reagan, who decisively defeated Carter. "I'm a political realist," Ford told The Post in 2004 in looking back on that election. "You win some and you lose some, and you have to accept the responsibility to do what you think in the bigger perspective. I sure didn't want Jimmy Carter to be president again in 1980 because I was very sour on his performance as president."

In the late 1970s, the Ford family received expressions of respect and sympathy from all over the country when former first lady Betty Ford described her successful struggle with addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs and how her husband and children had convinced her that she needed help. The Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage was named in her honor and became one of the nation's leading centers for the treatment of substance abuse.

In 1981, at the request of President Reagan, Ford joined Nixon and Carter in representing the United States at the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The three former chief executives flew to Cairo aboard Air Force One. Ford and Carter began a warm friendship during the flight.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton conferred on Ford the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He also received the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 2000, when he was hospitalized after suffering minor strokes during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, there was an enormous outpouring of public affection and concern.

In "Years of Renewal," the third volume of his memoirs, which was published in 1999, Henry Kissinger, Ford's secretary of state, offered this assessment of the former president:

"With Ford, what one saw was what one got. Providence smiled on Americans when -- seemingly by happenstance -- it brought forward a president who embodied our nation's deepest and simplest values."

In a passage on present-day politics, Kissinger drew an implicit distinction between Ford and subsequent White House occupants.

"The modern politician is less interested in being a hero than a superstar," he wrote. "Heroes walk alone; stars derive their status from approbation. Heroes are defined by inner values, stars by consensus. When a candidate's views are forged in focus groups and ratified by television anchorpersons, insecurity and superficiality become congenital. Radicalism replaces liberalism, and populism masquerades as conservatism."

In Kissinger's view, Ford was a leader in the heroic mold.

Born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, the future president was the offspring of a brief, failed marriage between Leslie King, a wealthy Wyoming wool merchant, and Dorothy Gardner King. The Kings divorced the following January, and she returned to her parents' home in Grand Rapids.

Soon thereafter, Dorothy King married Gerald R. Ford, a young paint salesman she had met at an Episcopal church social. He formally adopted her child, who was renamed Gerald R. Ford Jr. The Fords subsequently had three other boys.

Both Grand Rapids and Gerald Ford's paint-selling business prospered in the first years of the marriage. TerHorst, the former press secretary turned biographer, recounts that Gerald Ford Sr. "owned a touring car and there was enough money to take Mrs. Ford and young Jerry to Florida for vacations."

Ford was athletic, outgoing and happy in his youth. He became an adequate student, an outstanding football player and an Eagle Scout. Later, when his father's business declined during the Depression, he tried to help by taking a $2-a-week lunch counter job.

In the custom of those years, he had not been told that he was an adopted child. He found out abruptly when his well-to-do father, on the way to Detroit to pick up a new Lincoln, dropped by the lunch counter where his son worked and told him.

Leslie King invited his son to spend the summer with him in Wyoming after he graduated from high school. Ford turned him down, but he was shocked by the discovery of his adoption.

As terHorst recounted in "Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency": "Inside Jerry Ford, the hurt was deep." He quoted Ford as saying: "I thought, 'Here I was, earning $2 a week and trying to get through school, my stepfather was having difficult times. Yet here was my real father, obviously doing quite well if he could pick up a new Lincoln.' "

This incident occurred in 1930, the year Ford turned 17 and was a senior at South High School in Grand Rapids. He was an all-city center on the South High football team, which won the state championship that year.

Ford's football prowess opened a window to college, and his coach and some alumni from the University of Michigan provided him with a scholarship and a job waiting tables. He was a benchwarmer behind an all-American center for two years, while Michigan won back-to-back Big Ten football championships.

Not until 1934, in his senior year, did Ford win a starting place on Michigan's football team. Then he was voted the most valuable player on a team that lost seven of eight games and was offered professional football contracts with the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears. But Ford said in his autobiography that he thought the law would be a better career.

Ford graduated from the university in 1935 with a B average. He accepted a $2,400-a-year offer to serve as boxing coach and assistant football coach at Yale University, meanwhile applying to Yale Law School. The law school turned him down in the belief that he would not be able to do well in his studies while coaching.

Ford was accepted on a trial basis in 1938 and did well enough in a couple of courses to be allowed to enroll full time. He graduated in 1941 in the upper third of his class with his best work in a course on legal ethics.

Returning to Grand Rapids, he founded a law practice with Philip A. Buchen, a fellow Michigan graduate who had been partly crippled by polio in childhood.

Already Ford was drawn to politics. He had become active in Grand Rapids the previous summer in the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, who went down under Franklin Roosevelt's third-term candidacy, but who carried Michigan. Ford's interest in Willkie revealed a consistent internationalist bent that was evident in all of his succeeding political conflicts.

The Willkie campaign also drew Ford into local Republican affairs, where he sided with a reform group known as the Home Front, which was seeking to break the power of an entrenched Republican boss.

Ford's budding political interests were interrupted by World War II. He joined the Navy and spent 47 months on active duty, two years of this time on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Monterey, where he was once nearly swept over the side during a typhoon. He left the Navy in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.

He resumed his legal career in Grand Rapids and became active in a variety of community projects, culminating in 1949 when the national Junior Chamber of Commerce selected him as one of the nation's "10 most outstanding young men."

The year of 1948, when President Harry S. Truman was confounding pollsters by winning an upset victory over Thomas Dewey, was a time of decision for Ford. He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in what seemed to be a hopeless battle against the entrenched Republican conservative, Bartel J. Jonkman, of western Michigan's 5th congressional district.

Jonkman was of Dutch descent, and the Dutch were the largest single ethnic group in the district. He was considered an isolationist who opposed American involvement overseas in general and aid to Europe as proposed by President Truman under the European Recovery Plan in particular.

In retrospect, Ford seems to have been in tune with the changing times. American involvement in World War II had dissipated isolationist sentiment in the nation's heartland. The internationalist Willkie had done well in Michigan as early as 1940, and Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had dramatically shifted from an isolationist to an internationalist position during the war.

Vandenberg was a political opponent of Jonkman, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and he encouraged Ford's seemingly hopeless candidacy. Jonkman also was considered by some local Republicans to be spending too little time in his home district. Ford waged a vigorous handshaking campaign, aided by members of the reform group he sided with before the war. He had the support of the largest daily newspaper in the district, the pro-Vandenberg and anti-isolationist Grand Rapids Press.

In the September primary, Ford defeated Jonkman, 23,632 votes to 14,341. He won the general election with more than 60 percent of the votes, a feat he repeated in each of the following 12 elections.

Ford had proposed marriage in February 1948, to Elizabeth Bloomer Warren, a dancer and former model, and she had accepted. But the couple kept their plans secret out of concern that her background as a dancer and a divorced woman would have an adverse effect in the Republican primary among Dutch Calvinist voters in the district.

They were married Oct. 15, 1948, in Grace Episcopal Church, which Ford attended. They had four children, Michael Gerald Ford, John Gardner Ford, Steven Meigs Ford and Susan Ford Vance.

In Washington, Ford occupied an office in what is now the Cannon House Office Building. Next door was a Democrat from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. Ford also formed a friendship with Richard Nixon, then a second-term House member from California.

Ford quickly established himself as a district-service congressman who answered every letter and made himself available to visitors from his state. He staffed a trailer with aides who traveled from town to town in his district. He won political points by taking stands that struck responsive chords among his constituents, such as a 1953 appeal that the United States admit 50,000 Dutch immigrants after disastrous floods in the Netherlands.

Constituent service also was the watchword of Vandenberg, whom Ford admired almost reverentially and who in turn considered the new congressman something of a protege. When Vandenberg died in 1952, Ford briefly considered running for his seat but decided to stay in the House.

Ford became as popular among his House colleagues as he had been in Grand Rapids. He found time to golf, swim and ski, and he was accepted into the Chowder and Marching Society, a group of House members that has always welcomed former athletes.

The new congressman was named to the assignment of his choice, the politically helpful House Public Works Committee, in his first term. In his second term, in 1951, he was appointed to the influential House Appropriations Committee.

On foreign policy, Ford remained true to the issues he had espoused in his first campaign. He supported President Truman's "Point Four" program for aiding underdeveloped countries, and he consistently favored foreign military aid. His internationalism displayed itself again in candidate preferences, and he supported the nomination of Dwight D. Eisenhower at a time when Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio was favored by most Midwestern Republicans in Congress.

On domestic issues, Ford was an orthodox Republican. He voted against public housing, against the minimum wage and against repeal of the "right-to-work law" provision of the Taft-Hartley Act.

On civil rights issues, he was considered a Republican moderate during most of his career. He voted against the poll tax, a device to keep the poor -- especially blacks -- from voting, and he voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But he also opposed school busing to achieve racial integration, a position that disappointed members of the Congressional Black Caucus, all of them Democrats estranged from the policies of the Nixon administration. Only one member of the caucus, Rep. Andrew J. Young of Georgia, voted to confirm Ford as vice president.

Republican colleagues in the House considered him progressive on making the House a more responsive institution.

His first vote in Congress was in favor of changing House rules to make it easier to bring a bill up on the floor without clearance from the House Rules Committee.

During the two Eisenhower administrations, Ford gradually advanced toward House leadership. He held a senior position on the Appropriations Committee and played a growing role in GOP strategy councils. In a 1960 poll of Washington correspondents, Newsweek rated him second among the ablest members of Congress.

Ford's breakthrough into a major position of leadership occurred in 1963 when he was the candidate of a group of younger Republicans, slightly to their party's left of center, to challenge 67-year-old Charles B. Hoeven of Iowa for chairmanship of the House Republican Conference.

One of the public highlights of the Ford minority leadership was a weekly news conference with Sen. Everett M. Dirksen (R-Ill.), which quickly became know as the "Ev and Jerry Show." Ford lacked Dirksen's oratorical talents, and he sometimes found himself on the losing end of exchanges with the Illinois senator.

It was during this period of his career that Ford was on the receiving end of two well-publicized gibes from President Johnson. The president once suggested that Ford couldn't "chew gum and walk at the same time" and also commented that "there's nothing wrong with Gerald Ford except he played football too long without a helmet."

Ford incorporated the latter remark into some of his own speeches, correctly giving the original authorship to former Detroit Mayor Gerald Cavanaugh.

However, House colleagues on both sides of the aisle disputed the idea that Ford was less than bright. They pointed to his shrewd, effective leadership in the House and his mastery of such complexities as the defense budget.

Ford's accomplishments as a House leader were based not upon his public pronouncements but upon a talent for friendly persuasion attested to by many members on both sides of the aisle.

"It's the damnedest thing," said Rep. Joe Waggonner (D-La.). "Jerry just puts his arm around a colleague or looks him in the eye, says, 'I need your vote,' and gets it."



Most of Ford's public declarations in the mid-1960s were orthodox, oppositionist rhetoric, peppered with football expressions of "end runs" and "team play." He said the Johnson administration was taking the country into "frustration and failure, bafflement and boredom." Once he said, "If Lincoln were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave."

Occasionally, however, Ford was capable of defining his own political moderation in words that set him apart from the Nixon administration, which he was soon to defend.

In a speech at Southern Methodist University on Nov. 8, 1968, he said: "The higher ground of moderation with unselfish unity is not only common horse sense for a political party, it is also representative of the people and in keeping with the underlying genius of the American political system."

In 1970, Ford was accused of abandoning the high ground of American politics when he launched an effort to impeach William O. Douglas, the liberal associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the course of the incident, he offered a definition -- much quoted during the Clinton years -- of what constitutes an impeachable offense.

Ostensibly, it was Ford's idea to impeach Douglas because of the appearance of excerpts of a book by the jurist in the Evergreen Review alongside material that Ford said was pornographic. However, after he became president, Ford admitted he had been helped by John N. Mitchell, the attorney general in the first Nixon administration, who was angry about Senate rejection of two of Nixon's Supreme Court nominees.

The charges presented by Ford were primarily political and made numerous references to Douglas's alleged "liberal" or "leftist" beliefs. Responding to congressional critics who said that these charges had nothing whatever to do with judicial misconduct, Ford said on April 15, 1970:

"What, then, is an impeachable offense? The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

The impeachment resolution was shunted to a House Judiciary subcommittee, which found no grounds for taking action.

Ford's consistent advocacy of military preparedness and his internationalism made him an early supporter of the Vietnam War. When President Johnson sent a half-million troops to Vietnam in 1965, Ford emerged as a partisan critic who said the United States should take sterner measures, such as the bombing of North Vietnam and a naval blockade, in an effort to end the conflict.

"It is President Johnson's war, because the president plays everything close to the vest," Ford said on June 18, 1966. "He has an unhealthy passion for secrecy."

The use of the phrase "Johnson's war" brought Ford a rebuke from some Republicans, among them his fellow minority leader, Sen. Dirksen.

Ford served as permanent chairman of the 1968 Republican Convention, which nominated Nixon for president. When Nixon became president, Ford loyally supported his Vietnam policy, including the incursions into Laos and Cambodia and the bombing of North Vietnam. He later gave Nixon full credit for withdrawing U.S. troops from the war.

The new Nixon administration changed Ford's role from leader of the usually loyal opposition to outspoken advocate of the Republican president.

Ford's loyalty was rewarded after Agnew's resignation when Nixon nominated him for the vice presidency. Ford was the second choice after former secretary of the treasury John B. Connally, but Nixon was persuaded by various Republicans that Congress would not confirm Connally, a former Democrat.

Ford's nomination was the first made under the 25th Amendment, and it touched off a detailed inquiry into Ford's background and financial affairs by the two congressional judiciary committees.

He was confirmed by a 92-to-3 vote in the Senate and by a 387-to-35 vote in the House. Ford spent the better part of the next 10 months trying to defend Nixon on the Watergate issue, while at the same time condemning the practices of political espionage, lying and obstruction of justice uncovered in the Watergate scandal.

While he never criticized Nixon personally, he tried on several occasions to distance himself from the Nixon White House, most noticeably on March 31, 1974, when he told a Midwestern Republican conference in Chicago that the party must "learn the lessons of Watergate."

But it was not until the weekend before Nixon's resignation that Ford stopped proclaiming belief in Nixon's personal innocence. And it was not until the day before Nixon bade farewell to his high office in a nationally televised speech that Ford actually assembled a transition team.

In the aftermath of the pardon, Ford's political vulnerability was evident in his efforts to deal with Vietnam and its legacy.

He surprised many Americans by unveiling, in a speech to a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, a conditional-amnesty plan for Vietnam-era draft evaders and deserters. The proposal drew a swarm of critics. Veterans groups opposed any amnesty program at all, while organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union called for unconditional amnesty. Of the estimated 100,000 draft evaders, only about 20,000 took advantage of the program. Although U.S. combat troops had been withdrawn by the time Ford took office, the president proposed an increase in aid for the South Vietnamese government to help it resist what was expected to be a major effort by the North Vietnamese communists to drive it out of the country.

There was little support for this in the new Congress. Early in 1975, it rejected Ford's proposals, turning a deaf ear to arguments that Washington had to stand by its beleaguered ally to maintain its credibility in world affairs.

The communist offensive began in April 1975, and Ford ordered the small remaining contingent of U.S. embassy and security personnel to leave. The final evacuation produced painful pictures of Americans in retreat -- officials scrambling to get aboard helicopters while Marines held back crowds of Vietnamese who had loyally supported the United States.

On April 23, 1975, in a speech at Tulane University, Ford announced that the war in Vietnam was "finished as far as America is concerned."

A week later, Saigon fell to the communists and the long war was over.

Ford later came to the view that U.S. policy in Vietnam was mistaken. He blamed this on an unthinking inheritance of French colonial policy. "The French had the wrong policy, and we inherited it, and our State Department was not smart enough to realize that we should have been more objective about our policy in Vietnam," Ford said in the 2004 interview with The Post. Asked if the United States should have withdrawn sooner than it did, he said: "Absolutely, in retrospect. Now, I wasn't strong enough to make that decision while I was in the White House but in reflection, there is no question."

Ford continued the Nixon policy of using Kissinger as a mediator between Israel and the Arab states in the Middle East. An agreement signed in September 1975, halted fighting between Israel and Egypt.



In the previous month, Ford had traveled to Helsinki to sign an accord that recognized the existing frontiers between states, including the border between East and West Germany. This implicitly recognized Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. In return, Moscow agreed to respect basic human rights and to ease restrictions on the free exchange of information and on emigration and travel within the Soviet Union.

Ford was criticized for signing the Helsinki Accords at a time when the press was reporting numerous human rights violations in the Soviet Union. But the president said in his autobiography, "A Time to Heal" (1979), he regarded the agreement as "a real victory for our foreign policy" because the Soviets had conceded that national borders could be changed by peaceful means.

But it was the domestic economy that proved the touchstone of Ford's presidency. The problems included inflation, rising unemployment -- it passed 9 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression -- and skyrocketing energy costs.

Soon after taking office, Ford said inflation was "public enemy No. 1." To fight it, he vetoed more than 50 spending bills. He also announced a 32-point program for fighting it, which he called "WIN," an acronym for "Whip Inflation Now."

Congress declined to enact most of Ford's anti-inflation proposals, however, and the WIN program was overtaken by the events of deepening recession. In January 1975, the president all but declared a ceasefire in his war on inflation and turned his attention to growing unemployment and sinking productivity.

In one of the most candid State of the Union messages ever presented to Congress, Ford in 1975 said:

"I must say to you that the state of the union is not good. Millions of Americans are out of work. Recession and inflation are eroding the money of millions more. Prices are too high and sales are too slow."

Ford followed this message with a budget proposal that predicted long-term unemployment and massive deficits. His essential answer to what he conceived as the twin problems of the economy and the energy crisis was a quick tax rebate to stimulate the economy and oil tariff increases to lessen American dependence on foreign oil.

Despite the seriousness and the variety of the problems that confronted him, Ford maintained his even-tempered composure and his optimism. He met frequently with a wide range of legislators, businessmen, labor officials, heads of state, reporters and other visitors.

He knew that his chances of winning a full term in 1976 were not good, but he approached it in the spirit of Harry S. Truman, whose bust he placed next to his desk in the Oval Office.

Truman, Ford used to say, "had guts, he was plain-talking, he had no illusions about being a great intellectual, but he seemed to make the right decisions."

Many would say the same of Gerald Rudolph Ford.



Officials Prepare for Ford's Body to Lie in State, Funeral Services

President Ford, Presidential Museum And Library
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This came as no surprise but it's still a shock when we lose one of our President's, especially one of this caliber. What a great man. President Ford will be greatly missed. I'm sure President Reagan is sharing his jelly beans with him now :-)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

And Feliz Navidad, Happy Hannuka, Quanza, and whatever Holiday's I have forgotten or know nothing about!!

PROOF! AMERICAN SOLDIERS TORTURING IRAQI CHILDREN

New Atrocities Uncovered in Iraq



!!WARNING!!


!!Very Graphic!!

American Media will not publish these because they are too graphic, but also they are from untrusted sources and are probably doctored, or as they like to say "photoshopped."


Typical media headlines are included to demonstrate what would be printed as a story line. Sometimes we need to see more of what does not get reported.








Air Force Chief Master Sgt. John Gebhardt, of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group at Balad, Iraq , cradles a young girl as they both sleep in the hospital. The girl's entire family was executed by insurgents; the killers shot her in the head as well. The girl received treatment at the U.S. military hospital in Balad, but cries and moans often. According to nurses at the facility, Gebhardt is the only one who can calm down the girl, so he has spent the last several nights holding her while they both sleep in a chair.








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OK! Enough with these Graphic Photos, one can only stomach so much Torture!



Ollie North recently went to Iraq AGAIN! This is like his 8th or 9th visit. And he is sponsoring an organization Supporting Our Troops and thier Families this Christmas..FREEDOM ALLIANCE..

If you cant contribute to Freedom Alliance, on the left sidebar of this blog there are Military Link's that you might want to consider for our Troops this year! Just say THANK YOU with a card even!! They would do it for you :-)

Iraq has an Economy! AND IT'S BOOMING! I can hardly contain myself! Over at "The Liberal Lie The Conservative Truth There is a story all about this! Unreal!!

Iran Says It's Achieved Nuclear Power

You know if Iran want's Nuke's So Bad, Let's give 'em to 'em!



Ahmadineajd: Iran now nuclear power

Ahmadinejad: Britain, Israel, US to 'vanish like the pharaohs'

Yellowcake galore: Iran claims 1,400 uranium mines
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Piss Off Nutjob!!!

Al Franken Pondering Senate Run

After Bankruptcy Filing, Recriminations Fly at Air America

In its search for a new chief executive this past summer, Air America Radio interviewed seasoned media executives in an effort to revive the faltering network. One interview took a bizarre turn, however, when the executive got into a political argument with Randi Rhodes, one of the network’s on-air hosts.

“I laughed and said, ‘You sound like Republican talking points,’ ” Ms. Rhodes recalled.

At Air America, business and politics always mixed, and that was the problem, critics contend. Begun with an onslaught of publicity in spring 2004 as an alternative to right-wing talk radio, the network is given some of the credit by its supporters for having helped achieve the Democrats’ Congressional election victory in November.



Detractors label the liberal network’s programming as combative, one-note and emotional. At least its business dealings seem to fit that last description. Even before Air America and its corporate parent, Piquant L.L.C., sought bankruptcy protection on Oct. 13, its management was engulfed in a series of financial crises. The search for new investors and managers has been marred by infighting among those who want the network to succeed, according to people in the organization.

In recent weeks, Air America, which has its headquarters in New York and reaches about 2.4 million listeners weekly, has suffered the defection of a handful of its more than 80 affiliated stations and soon faces the likely departure of its most visible host, Al Franken, even as it cobbles together a plan to emerge from Chapter 11.

A possible solution surfaced on Friday. Douglas Kreeger, an initial investor and former chief executive who stabilized the network in its early months, said in a telephone interview that there is “a signed letter of intent” for a new group to take over the network and that he is “likely” to be a part. The lead equity position would be taken by Terence F. Kelly, of Madison, Wis., also an Air America investor from the beginning and a former board chairman.

Mr. Kelly said in a separate interview that the investor group included a new strategic media partner he declined to name, and both men would not predict when a deal might come to fruition.

“Any number of things can happen,” Mr. Kreeger said.

This is only the latest twist in the short but contentious history of Air America. At the root of its problems, some critics and competitors say, has been an inability to negotiate a middle path between its political mission and its business.

“It’s my feeling that they really put this together without broadcasters,” said Stuart Krane, a former ABC Radio executive who is the president of Product First, which owns the program of a liberal talk-show host, Ed Schultz. “If you have a healthy business, then your agenda will be put forth.”



Air America ran into financial trouble within days of its appearance on March 31, 2004, when it turned out that its original chairman, Evan Cohen, did not have the backing he said he did. Weeks later, Mr. Kelly, a former owner of Midwest radio and television stations, stepped in to take charge of the board. At the end of 2004, he ceded the chairmanship to a new investor, Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks.

Some people at Air America assert that, under Mr. Glaser and the team he put in place, the network was top-heavy with management, inept at selling ads, unwilling to make program compromises that veered from the liberal message and overstaffed with more than 100 employees when two dozen would have sufficed.

“What they did for $45 million they could have done for $10 million,” said Sheldon Drobny, an investor with a contentious relationship with the network. Mr. Drobny and his wife, Anita, longtime Democratic activists, are credited with the idea for Air America.

The network has run through a stream of operational executives. Danny Goldberg, a music executive who served as chief for about a year before leaving in April 2006, said the problem was “a big gap between the ambitions of the company and the funding available to accomplish those ambitions.”

“There was no way to manage around that gap,” he said. “Either lower your expectations or raise more money. No one wanted to change the ambitions.”

Faced with constant money woes, the board considered a takeover by the Democracy Alliance, a loose group of moneyed progressives, including George Soros, who had pooled resources to support projects they considered worthy. But the group ultimately rejected the appeal, because “Air America needed to do certain things to make it a more attractive business,” Mr. Kreeger said.

Mr. Kelly said he was disappointed that rich Democrats did not step up to support the network’s political goals. On fund-raising calls, he said, he was often turned down because the business plan was too risky.

He agreed that the network over-spent, “out of enthusiasm for what we were doing.” But he said it also “inherited so many difficulties not of our own making.”

Saying that Air America reaches millions of listeners and “clearly had an impact on the 2006 elections,” Mr Kelly added, “I think with a relatively small amount of money, we have succeeded wildly.”

Story Here
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

JOHN KERRY..COMMITTING TREASON ONCE AGAIN!!

Gold Star Mom Blasts Sen. Kerry’s Middle East Trip

A Gold Star Mother is urging American troops to snub Sen. John Kerry during his visit to Iraq. “I’m asking our men and women in Iraq to not allow themselves to be forced to pose with Kerry during his photo ops,” said Debra Bastian, who lost her son in Iraq in 2005.

“This man is a disgrace. He should be shunned by those serving in Iraq. He is not their friend. They [the soldiers] should not be forced to pose for pictures with Kerry the way they did when Sen. Hillary Clinton visited Iraq,” she said.

The Massachusets senator is in the Middle East reportedly to meet with the presidents of Iran and Syria. While visiting Egypt, he also took a number of swipes at President Bush and his Middle East policy.

While in Egypt, critics say Kerry pandered to hatred for Israel in order to score points with the Egyptians.

“Kerry hasn’t changed from his days as a anti-war protester who spouted lies against his fellow soldiers,” said the angry Bastian.

While Kerry’s office says he fulfilling his constitutional duty to actively participate in foreign policy, many in Washington believe his trip is meant to hurt the Bush Administration and to increase his sagging poll numbers in another bid for the Democrat Party presidential nomination. To some observers, Kerry Middle East trip is reminiscent of his trip to meet with North Vietnamese officials in Paris in the midst of the Vietnam War.

“Kerry knows he’s being ignored with all the buzz about [Sen. Barack] Obama and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton. The last poll showed him garning only 7 percent of likely Democrat voters,” said political analyst Mike Baker.



“Add Kerry’s propensity for denigrating his country during time of war and you have the John Kerry portrayed by the Swift Boat Vets for Truth during his failed presidential campaign,” he said.

“My son is a true war hero. Kerry claims he’s a war hero because of a broken fingernail for which he got a Purple Heart,” said Bastian.

Bastian and other Gold Star Mothers recently visited Iraq to show their support for US troops. However, the news media ignored their trip and none were interviewed by reporters.

“The American people are shown a skewed picture of the situation in Iraq day after day by the international news media. We felt it was time to allow the families of US troops who died in Iraq to come see the progress being made in Iraq and report it back to the American people,” said Melanie Morgan, Chairman of Move America Forward, an organization that helps and supports families of fallen soldiers.

The trip also occured following statements by Senator John Kerry, who suggested U.S. Troops serving in Iraq lack intelligence and are “stuck” there because of their limited abilities.

“I am spitting mad at John Kerry for insulting our troops. Duck and run was his specialty in Viet Nam,” said Gold Star Mother Deborah Argel.

National Review’s Michael Rubin said, “John Kerry is in Egypt, and is praising Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s wisdom. What Kerry is not doing is speaking up for imprisoned dissidents victimized by Mubarak’s crackdown.”

“What does he think Egyptians feel when they hear Kerry saying that Bush should have listened more to Mubarak, whose domestic popularity make Bush look like Mr. Universe? Kerry stood up for Mubarak’s 2002 support for Saddam,” said Rubin.

Story Here

Kerry Takes Pot Shot At Bush
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JOHN KERRY!! YOU ARE "NOT" THE PRESIDENT!! You shouldnt even be over there discussing President Bush's Policy's and taking swipes at our President on foreign soil!! You pathetic sh**head! Taking pot shot's at our President on foreign soil amount's to TREASON! I hope the Troops get YOU stuck in Iraq!! Where the heck are the Swift Boat Vet's?

Rummy Get's Full Military Send Off

There just isnt enough that can be said about Rummy! He was the best Secretary Of Defense We Ever Had. He served two terms as Secretary Of Defense. He is a True Patriot. He rescued victim's from the Pentagon on 9-11, He is a True Hero! He served his Country masterfully. He will be missed.

Rummy's accomplishment's over the last 6 Years:

I. WAR ON TERROR

Overall: A multinational coalition has liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with formation of representative governments and security forces.
Liberated 31 million Afghans from Taliban control and destroyed Al-Qaeda sanctuary – conquering elements that successfully fought off the Soviet Union for over nine years – and stood up a Loya Jurga governing council eight months after operations began.
Liberated 26.7 million Iraqis from a brutal dictatorship and turned over sovereignty of the country to an Iraqi government in 16 months.
Recruited, Organized, Trained, and Equipped Iraqi and Afghan Security Forces:
129,000 for Iraqi Ministry of Defense
165,100 for Iraqi Ministry of Interior
33,000 for Afghan National Army
37,000 for Afghan National Police
Conducted safe and secure elections in Afghanistan and Iraq:
Elections in Iraq
January 30, 2005 election—55 percent turnout
October 15, 2005 constitutional ratification—63 percent turnout
December 15, 2005 election—78 percent turnout
March 16, 2006—permanent Iraqi Government seated
Elections in Afghanistan
October 9, 2005 election—roughly 80 percent of voters turnout
December 7, 2005—Afghan President inaugurated
Senior leadership of America’s enemies have been captured, killed, or made to run:
Khalid Sheik Mohammad, Al-Qaeda’s Director of Operations—captured March 1, 2003
Saddam Hussein’s sons—killed July 22, 2003
Saddam Hussein—captured December 13, 2003
Ali Hassan Mahmud al-Tikriti, AKA Chemical Ali—captured August 21, 2003
Al Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq—killed June 7, 2006
Forty-five of fifty-five of Saddam’s top regime—the deck of cards—have been killed or captured
Conducted hundreds of intelligence and tactical operations—many with partner nations—throughout the world against terrorist organizations directly or loosely affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
NATO has expanded its reach in Afghanistan—the first time the Alliance has acted outside of its traditional boundaries.
Suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have revealed information that has helped thwart attacks against our troops, the American people and our allies.

II. SHAPING THE JOINT FORCE FOR ASYMETRIC WARFARE

Army
Most significant reorganization in a generation, from a division-based structure to 70 modular brigade combat teams.
$21 billion invested in the National Guard for equipment and modernization so that, for the first time, the Guard will be fully manned, equipped, and funded.
Shift of thousands of troops from Institutional Army “tail” to Operational Army “tooth.”
Development of Future Combat System.
Ended Cold War legacy programs, such as the Crusader artillery and Comanche helicopter programs.
Navy
New Fleet Response Plan doubles the number of Carrier Strike Groups that can be deployed at short notice.
“Sea swaps” of crews allow longer deployment of ships.
Started the development of the new Littoral Combat Ship designed to satisfy the urgent requirement for shallow draft vessels to operate in coastal waters.
Conversion of Trident ballistic missile submarines to vessels that can carry Special Forces and launch UAVs.
Marines
Created expeditionary strike groups with U.S. Marine Corps with many capabilities optimized for GWOT operations.
Created Marine Corps Special Operations Command.
Air Force
Created Air Expeditionary Groups for better efficiency and flexibility.
Increased Unmanned Aerial Vehicles from 130 to over 3,000.
More than 100 satellites and nearly 100 aircraft are controlled and flown daily by 26,000 Airmen to provide valuable intelligence, warning, and precision navigation to forces around the globe.
Provide the joint / coalition force with global networking and space-based communications, navigation, weather, and surveillance information.
Irregular Warfare
107 percent budget increase in Special Forces.
New technologies and tactics to counter IED threat.
Foreign-language skills and area expertise increased throughout the force.
Increased focus on stability operations.
New counterinsurgency manual and doctrine issued.
Missile Defense—Limited operating capability implemented:
Emplaced 11 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and 2 in California to address long-range threats (ICBMs with range of approximately 10,000 miles).
The first operational patrol of Aegis BMD long-range surveillance and tracking equipped destroyers was in the Sea of Japan in September 2004; today, 10 Aegis BMD Destroyers are Long-Range Surveillance and Track capable; one Aegis BMD Destroyer is Engagement capable and two Aegis BMD Cruisers are Engagement capable.
Since 2001, 22 hit-to-kill intercept tests have destroyed their targets.
On September 1, 2006, the last test of the ground-based interceptors exceeded its objectives by destroying a mock ballistic missile in space.
The BMDS transitioned from developmental to operational status.
Nuclear Triad: New structure of offensive weapons, defensive weapons bound together by an enhanced command and control, and intelligence systems.
Humanitarian Operations & Disaster Relief
Hurricane Katrina/Rita
More than 2 million pounds of food, 34,000 MREs, and almost 180,000 bottles of water were distributed.
Military forces peaked at nearly 72,000--50,000 National Guardsmen and 22,000 active-duty personnel—a total deployment for Katrina more than twice the size of the military response to Hurricane Andrew.
DoD military personnel evacuated more than 80,000 Gulf Coast residents and rescued another 15,000.
Military forces provided significant medical assistance, including 10,000 medical evacuations by ground and air and the delivery of medical treatment to more than 5,000 sick and injured people.
Asian Tsunami
More than 24 million pounds of supplies delivered since the disaster.
USNS Mercy cared for more than 60,000 patients and performed more than 1,000 surgeries.
Pakistan Earthquake: Delivered more than 7,000 tons of medical supplies, food, shelter material, blankets, and rescue equipment. Delivered more than 4.5 million kilograms of relief supplies to the disaster area and transported more than 15,000 people, including over 4,300 people needing medical attention.
Evacuated nearly 15,000 American citizens from Lebanon.

III. MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION

Transformed Unified Command Plan
Northern Command for homeland defense and domestic emergencies.
Joint Forces Command to focus on Transformation.
Strategic Command replaces Space Command—missions include ballistic missile defense and WMD.
Finalizing plan for new combatant command for Africa.
Developing mechanisms for Combatant Commanders to have dual-responsibilities in key countries, e.g. Mexico.
Reorganized Department Leadership
Created an Undersecretary for Intelligence.
Created an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense.
Created an Assistant Secretary for Network Information Integration/Chief Information Officer.
Budget:Consolidated the program/budget process into a 2-year cycle.
National Security Personnel System (NSPS): About 10,000 civilian employees incorporated into a system that allows for greater flexibility in hiring, promotion, and assignment.
Military to Civilian Conversion: About 20,000 positions previously held by uniformed military personnel are now performed by civilians, freeing up troops for military tasks and assignments.
Business Processes:Created the Business Transformation Agency to improve DoD’s business processes, systems, and investment governance
Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC): Implemented largest BRAC round in history, saving taxpayers $5.5 million per year.
Transportation: Established TRANSCOM as owner of the distribution process from factory to foxhole, as opposed to from port to port.
Defense Logistics Agency: Established as sole entity for supply chain.
Senior Level Review Group: Established to improve civilian-military interaction.
Headquarters Staff: Decreased by 10 percent to reduce unnecessary overhead and duplication

IV. ALLIANCES AND PARTNERSHIPS

Global Posture
Cold War arrangements overseas being updated to reflect new threats and circumstances.
Thousands of troops and families being moved from Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
NATO
Stood up new NATO Response Force.
Created Allied Transformation Command.
Deployment of ISAF to Afghanistan and training mission to Iraq.
Headquarters and overhead reduced.
Proliferation Security Initiative: Implemented a 60-nation partnership to interdict dangerous weapons and materials.
New Security Partnerships: Developed in the Pacific, Central and South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and South America.
Georgian Train and Equip Program.
Restructure Defense Attaché program to align with new Security Cooperation Guidance.
Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative

V. PEOPLE

Medical
Military Amputee Training Center.
State-of-the-art medical care for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Smallpox Vaccination Program.
Quality of Life: Longer tours at home bases to provide less disruption to family life.
Housing: Privatized several housing programs and built thousands of military housing units.
Active Component / Reserve Component: “Rebalanced” thousands of personnel spaces both within and between the components to reduce stress on the forces.
Targeted Pay Raises: Aimed to attract most talented skilled people in high demand.












Video Of Full Military Send Off For Rummy...Click On The Right Column

Defense Link.Mil

Pentagon TV
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TROOPS IN IRAQ EXPRESS FRUSTRATION WITH "MEDIA" TO SEAN HANNITY

Troops in Iraq Express Frustration with
the Media to Hannity

The bravest and most patriotic of Americans, those who see first hand what goes on in Iraq, can see the liberal bias in the media. On Monday's Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity recounted from his recent trip to Iraq how many in uniform there feel the media paint a grimmer picture than the reality on the ground. Hannity first offered this comment when talking with Oliver North reporting from Ramadi, Iraq and later in the program FNC showed video of a soldier in Mosul who complained: "The bottom line is that from we hear what is being said in the media back home, but we're here and we see a totally different side of what's happening."

To North, Hannity recalled what he observed on his trip with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld: "You know Colonel, one of the things without fail, wherever the Secretary went, he was greeted like a rock star. I mean, the troops love him. And the one theme that kept coming back to me, and they watched TV regularly, they've had Fox News on almost everywhere I went, is that the media was not portraying this accurately, and they did mentioned, quite often, the disdain and the disgust at the portrayal of, of their efforts and the politics that's going on behind here in America. I assume that, this now your eighth trip to Iraq, you're hearing a lot of the same thing."



Later in the show, Hannity played his taped discussions with U.S. troops in Mosul. There, one soldier spoke up on the media portrayal of the situation in Iraq.

U.S. soldier: "The bottom line is that from we hear what is being said in the media back home, but we're here and we see a totally different side of what's happening."

Hannity: "Explain that. What's the difference between what people hear at home and what's happening here?"

U.S. soldier: "A good example: This past Tuesday we went out to the city to deliver school supplies to children."

Hannity: "And we're in Mosul just so people know.

U.S. soldier: "And the Iraqi Army actually provided our security for us. We didn't have any problems. The locals, they were, you know, they were a little bit shy and nervous but, you know, absolutely-"

Hannity: "So that sort of transition is happening successfully."

Soldier: "Oh yeah, oh yeah."

Story Here


Hannity In Mosul, Iraq.. With The Troops..THIS VIDEO IS A MUST SEE!!


Hannity In Saddam's Palace....Video

Hannity's Interview with Sec Def Rumsfeld....Video

Military Meet's And Exceeds Recruiting Goal AGAIN!!
Story Here
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WAKE UP PEOPLE! The news media is NOT portraying the reality of what is really going on in Iraq. This is who I want to hear from the Soldiers themselves. Now someone like Nutjob Arianna Huffington would have everyone believe this was all propaganda, but she cant BECAUSE THIS CAME STRAIGHT FROM THE TROOPS MOUTHS! Watch the videos of the Troops with Hannity and see what the Troops are saying! The Media want's us to lose this war and are trying everything they can to make sure that happens. It is up to US to stop them! We OWE it to the Troops!
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CJ over at A Soldiers Perspective Declares "We Have Lost The War"!

Wonder What On Earth This Is All About?
Click Here

Isnt This Friggen Dandy?/Silvestre Reyes Incoming House Intel Chair Fails Basic Intel Quiz

Incoming House intelligence chief botches easy intel quiz

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped to head the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats take over in January, failed a quiz of basic questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah, two of the key terrorist organizations the intelligence community has focused on since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

When asked by CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein whether al Qaeda is one or the other of the two major branches of Islam -- Sunni or Shiite -- Reyes answered "they are probably both," then ventured "Predominantly -- probably Shiite."

That is wrong. Al Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden as a Sunni organization and views Shiites as heretics.

Reyes could also not answer questions put by Stein about Hezbollah, a Shiite group on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations that is based in Southern Lebanon.

Stein's column about Reyes' answers was published on CQ's Web site Friday evening.

In an interview with CNN, Stein said he was "amazed" by Reyes' lack of what he considers basic information about two of the major terrorists organizations.



"If you're the baseball commissioner and you don't know the difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox, you don't know baseball," Stein said. "You're not going to have the respect of the people you work with."

While Stein said Reyes is "not a stupid guy," his lack of knowledge said it could hamper Reyes' ability to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community, Stein believes.

"If you don't have the basics, how do you effectively question the administration?" he asked. "You don't know who is on first."

Stein said Reyes is not the only member of the House Intelligence Committee that he has interviewed that lacked what he considered basic knowledge about terrorist organizations.

"It kind of disgusts you, because these guys are supposed to be tending your knitting," Stein said. "Most people are rightfully appalled."

Pelosi picked Reyes over fellow Californian Rep. Jane Harman, who had been the Intelligence Committee's ranking member, and Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, who had been impeached as a federal judge after being accused of taking a bribe.

Calls from CNN to Reyes' office asking for reaction to Stein's column have not been returned.

Story Here

Michelle Malkin Remind's Us of Reyes' crony scandal involving a no-bid contract for a broken U.S.-Canadian border camera system run by a firm that employed Reyes' daughter as vice president of government contracts.
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That's pretty bad when we the American People or at least those of us who pay attention know more about Al-Qaeda than the New House Intel Chair! Everybody had enough of this crap yet?

Thing's have gotten pretty bad if CNN is disgusted!