“The usually vivacious Hugo Chavez, 56, confirmed in a stern speech on Thursday night he had surgery in Cuba to remove a cancerous tumor and was receiving more treatment.” — Reuters
President Hugo Chavez is an iconic figure like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, millions are breathing a sigh of relief that he isn’t on his death bed. Although Chavez has cancer, hopefully he will be around for many more years.
Chavez may be reviled by the political elite in the United States, but he is beloved by the poor in Venezuela and America. While George W. Bush had nothing but platitudes for the poor who couldn’t afford heating oil in the winter of 2008, Chavez delivered free heating oil to needy American families.
Hugo Chavez hasn’t forgotten his working class roots, he has greatly improved the lives of the poor in Venezuela. Chavez hasn’t used Venezuela’s oil wealth to enrich himself, he has put it to good use improving the standard of living for millions of Venezuelans.
Chavez has fought American hegemony in South America, he is a valiant underdog fighting the imperial United States.
The President of Venezuela spoke for only 15 minutes when he admitted he was fighting cancer, hopefully he will soon be making hour-long speeches railing against Americana imperialism.
Get well amigo, you have many supporters in the United States.
Columnist – John Sammon Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
You little sawed-off dwarf, you can’t even pick up a rifle.
CIA director under war criminals George Bush and torture dungeon Dick Cheney, and now mis-advising Obama as defense secretary, Gates blasted European NATO allies last week for being reluctant to go to war. He said the NATO countries, allies to the U.S. for 60 years, could face a dismal future because of their “penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat.”
Gates must also have distaste for front-line combat because he’s never had any himself. If a fire cracker went off, he’d probably hide under the dinner table. It’s doubtful that if he fought his wife in a fistfight he would win, the little paper-pusher.
Remember when Cheney insulted our European friends by calling them “Old Europe,” because being more intelligent, these countries were reluctant to squander their economies and the lives of their soldiers in needless, unwinnable, disastrous military adventures.
You see, the United States under men like Gates is a hierarchical system in which those on top like Gates dictate to other countries much like a schoolyard bully, making a mockery of any pretensions smaller countries may have to independence or sovereignty. Unlike Dwight Eisenhower, who as overall commander of D-Day knew how to work together with allied countries using tact and diplomacy, never talking down to them, Gates and his ilk are the opposite. They always lecture and insult. They’re bombastic, arrogant. They don’t work with other people. They dictate.
They create ill will.
All except for England, which like a good dependant boot-licking lackey, parrots whatever the U.S. wants.
Since the European countries banded together under the “Euro” dollar, they collectively have more clout, but they are still smaller economically, with smaller populations. They don’t have the money and lives to squander like the colossus, techo-corporate, all-powerful, world-ruling U.S. They also don’t view war as Gates does, a useful instrument of foreign policy rather than as a purely defensive measure.
Why don’t you go F… yourself Bob. To use a line from the movie City Slickers, “I crap bigger than you.”
Gee Bob. Have you ever fought in a front line Bob? I don’t mean visiting troops in Iraq and posing with them for souvenir pictures, the troops towering over your little five-foot-something frame.
Gee Bob. You’ve never risked anything. You’ve never had to smell the smoke, hear the screams, see with your own eyes the entrails on the ground that represents war. You love to promote war, but all you’ve ever been for most of your life is a schemer. Too often, old men who plan wars never have to fight them.
Gates wraps himself in the flag.
Straight A’s in school, the classic dysfunctional driven overachiever, Bob was created and nurtured in the corporate boardroom, where his ruthless dishonesty secured advancement. He was involved in the Iran-Contra fiasco during the administration of the amnesiac Ronald Reagan, who couldn’t remember under oath how it all happened. During his tenure in the CIA under William Casey, Gates helped corrupt the spy organization to a low point from which it has not fully recovered to this day (Leon Panetta is trying to repair the damage).
A former Eagle Scout, Gates was accused of spreading false information and ignoring realities in the CIA, the perfect attributes for him to promote under false pretenses the invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. Gee Bob. Government is one of those strange places where the truth is whatever you say it is, and where you can demonstrate a consistent record of failure and still be promoted.
I’ll tell you what Bob. Maybe I’m wrong about you, maybe I have the wrong idea. Maybe you’re not just a little flag-waving runt who loves to plot wars you’ve never had the guts to fight.
If you’ll get out of your limousine and hang up your gold embossed cuff links and skip your servant-delivered Eggs Benedict for a moment and meet me in Afghanistan, we can go on patrol. The sight of two older men will amuse the troops.
Put on a flak vest. We can both walk point. That means at the front of the patrol Bob.
Don’t worry Bob. I’m twice as tall as you are, better looking, and have a better build. They’ll shoot me, not you. If you do this, just once in your life risk something, I promise, I’ll abandon the contempt I currently feel for you.
On May 2, a mere few hours after bin-Laden was assassinated in Pakistan, and then again on May 4, I published in Global Politician and the Chronicle Media Group detailed articles regarding the raid, its background, and its unfolding (the entire texts of these 2 articles are appended below). On May 5, I reiterated my claims in an exclusive interview I granted to the Macedonian weekly Publika and in a televised investigative journalism show (“Vo Centar” with Vasko Eftov).
My articles contained numerous bits of information that were confirmed only days later. Here is a partial list:
I was the first journalist to expose the fact the Obama and other senior figures in the administration watched the raid unfold in a live feed. I even identified the ultra-secret and sophisticated equipment involved (helmet-cams with small, mobile drop-down transmitters). A day later, BBC confirmed that indeed this may well have been the materiel used in the operation.
I wrote that bin-Laden and his family moved into the compound in late 2005 and early 2006. This was confirmed on May 7 by Amal, his young Yemenite widow. Moreover, on May 5 and 6, the CNN made public utility bills (connection to the gas network, for instance) which prove that the building complex was not in full use prior to April 2006.
I further asserted on May 2 that both the ISI and the CIA knew about bin-Laden’s whereabouts and were involved in procuring the land, constructing the structure and transferring him and his family there. On May 5 and 6, the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence service) insisted in a series of press releases that it had corresponded in 2009 with the CIA and sought their input regarding the fate of bin-Laden’s brood, mentioning the compound specifically and repeatedly. On May 4, the CIA admitted that they have been watching the compound for months prior to the raid. Such prolonged presence in a sensitive militarized border town would, of course, have been impossible without the close collaboration of the ISI.
Moreover: in an interview the aforementioned talkative bin-Laden widow gave to the Daily Mail, she astoundingly made the statement that, back in 2001, after the invasion of Afghanistan, her infamous husband and she crossed the border and entrusted themselves to the “Pakistani government” (presumably the ISI). Bin-Laden, she averred, was stashed among friendly tribesmen in villages (exactly as is set out in my articles) until 2006. This was further confirmed by Reuters on May 7.
In my articles I said that 3 men and 1 woman died in the raid and that bin-Laden was unarmed. This was later confirmed by everyone involved, including the Pakistani authorities. The 3 men were bin-Laden’s son and 2 couriers who were mistakenly (and intentionally) misidentified as 2 Pakistani brothers (actually, they were not brothers and they were not Pakistani). The woman was one of bin-Laden’s entourage, possibly one of his wives.
Finally, all manner of “experts” explained why bin-Laden didn’t have weapons, bodyguards, escape tunnels, and hidden rooms behind double walls in his compound: he didn’t want to stand out, they said. But, in the lawless and crime-ridden border areas of Pakistan everybody who is anybody has bodyguards and is armed to the teeth. Indeed, bin-Laden provoked the intense curiosity of locals and the CIA alike precisely BECAUSE he did NOT have any of these amenities. Thus isolated, he was forced to rely on couriers and one of them allegedly led the investigators to his doorstep.
Sources (note the dates, days after in have published my articles):
The United States shared with the Israelis the two-way wireless and satelite video feeds (provided by the raiding party’s helmet-cams and drop-down transmitters) of the assault on bin-Laden’s compound. At a certain point an officer is heard asking for instructions “from the Commander (in Chief Obama – SV)”. Obama then ordered him to “terminate target” (i.e, to kill bin-Laden) although this is not captured on tape. Obama gave the lethal command from an underground situation room, flanked by Panetta, Clinton, Gates, and other senior officials.
In 2001, shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA whisked bin-Laden and his family to a safe haven in Pakistan, among friendly tribesmen who served as guides and supplier for American special forces on the ground. The CIA, in cahoots with Pakistan’s ISI, then embarked on the construction of the compound that was stormed on May 1, 2011. In 2005-6, bin-Laden and his family were transferred there and virtually imprisoned. Bin-Laden was not allowed to carry weapons and he had no bodyguards. The entire fortress-like edifice was locked from the outside. The CIA allowed only couriers to come and go with censored mail and minimal money orders. One of the couriers was a Tunisian and the other Jordanian. They both collaborated with the Mossad and with the CIA on multiple assignments.
The decision to assassinate bin-Laden was adopted after he was repeatedly heard threatening to expose what he knew about various covert operations in the USA and elsewhere should he not be allowed free movement.
WRITTEN MAY 2, 2011 at 10 AM CET
On May 1, 2011 Osama bin-Laden was allegedly shot in the head by Navy Seals during an operation in Pakistan. The order came directly from US President Obama and he also monitored the firefight from the White House Situation Room as it unfolded.
Bin-Laden’s body was first whisked away to Afghanistan where DNA samples were taken and an autospy was performed. The cadaver was then returned to Pakistan and buried at sea. Thus, we have only the word of the United States administration – not known for its veracity – that he is no longer with us.
But, even if true, why wasn’t bin-Laden taken alive? Presumably, had he been abducted, he would have proven to be an invaluable source of intel on crucial national security issues facing the United States. A shot to the head, execution-style, indicates orders to shoot to kill (as was later confirmed by the CIA and the military – SV). Why give up such a cornucopia of information that cannot be obtained in any other way? To shut him up, of course. A live bin-Laden would have had to be debriefed, interrogated, and then judged in a court of law or military tribunal. To prevent multiple embarrassments and a myriad incriminating revelations involving multiple administrations, he had to be disposed of summarily.
All powers are self-interested – but America is narcissistic. It is bent on exploiting and, having exploited, on discarding. It is a global Dr. Frankenstein, spawning mutated monsters in its wake. Its “drain and dump” policies consistently boomerang to haunt it.
Both Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega – two acknowledged monsters – were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. America had to invade Panama to depose the latter and to molest Iraq for the second time in order to force the removal of the former.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked a civil war in Macedonia till 2001. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, restored to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the material it so generously bestowed on him in his anti-Russian days.
Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American’s alliances and allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya were transmuted from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghan campaign. Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabid foe in days.
This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America’s sincerity – and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty, its short term thinking, truncated attention span, soundbite mentality, and dangerous, “black and white”, simplism.
In its heartland, America is isolationist. Its denizens erroneously believe that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is an economically self-sufficient and self-contained continent. Yet, it is not what Americans trust or wish that matters to others. It is what they do. And what they do is meddle, often unilaterally, always ignorantly, sometimes forcefully.
Elsewhere, inevitable unilateralism is mitigated by inclusive cosmopolitanism. It is exacerbated by provincialism – and American decision-makers are mostly provincials, popularly elected by provincials. As opposed to Rome, or Great Britain, America is ill-suited and ill-equipped to micromanage the world.
It is too puerile, too abrasive, too arrogant and it has a lot to learn. Its refusal to acknowledge its shortcomings, its confusion of brain with brawn (i.e., money or bombs), its legalistic-litigious character, its culture of instant gratification and one-dimensional over-simplification, its heartless lack of empathy, and bloated sense of entitlement are detrimental to world peace and stability.
America is often called by others to intervene. Many initiate conflicts or prolong them with the express purpose of dragging America into the quagmire. It then is either castigated for not having responded to such calls – or reprimanded for having responded. It seems that it cannot win. Abstention and involvement alike garner it only ill-will.
But people call upon America to get involved because they know it rises to the challenge. America should make it unequivocally and unambiguously clear that – with the exception of the Americas – its sole interests rest in commerce. It should make it equally known that it will protect its citizens and defend its assets, if need be by force.
Indeed, America’s – and the world’s – best bet are a reversion to the Monroe and (technologically updated) Mahan doctrines. Wilson’s Fourteen Points brought the USA nothing but two World Wars and a Cold War thereafter. It is time to disengage.
[ By: William Rivers Pitt ] A quick confession that might not sit well with many readers: I was, on a personal level, quite ambivalent about the loss of Keith Olbermann’s show, “Countdown,” when he announced his exit last week. If “Meh” can sum up an emotion, then that’s how I felt when I heard the deal went down.
Don’t get me wrong here: I was, and remain, a great and devoted fan of Keith Olbermann and the work he did at MSNBC. I have been a devotee of Mr. Olbermann since his old-school moustache days anchoring the ESPN show “Sportscenter” during the golden age of that program. But I have spent the last several years experiencing his “Countdown” work in text form, i.e. reading instead of watching, and in ten-minute online video snippets, because I avoid all cable “news” programming the way cats avoid water. All of it, even the stuff I tend to agree with.
When “Countdown” first began in 2003, I watched it almost every night – the only cable “news” show I consistently tuned in to – but quickly soured on the whole experience. I just can’t stand it, any of it. I can’t stand the emotional manipulation that comes with all forms of televised “news,” and have for many times many a day now refused to let them in my head. I also never saw the point in getting all riled up at eight o’clock at night. What was I supposed to do with all that rage after nine? Punch the walls and kick the cat, maybe indulge in a little firebombing? Didn’t seem prudent.
The production of “Countdown” – the flashes, the music, the jump cuts – made me feel like I had rocks rolling around in my head. This was not solely an Olbermann problem for me; all cable “news” programming leaves me feeling the same way, which is why I swore it off years ago. If CNN or MSNBC played footage of puppies playing with baby pandas next to a pile of bunnies and kittens, it would still give me a headache. It wasn’t Keith’s fault. I’m just allergic to the medium itself, and have largely avoided it for more than a decade.
All that aside, there is no doubt that Mr. Olbermann’s “Countdown” was something very special. In a polluted sea of corrupted corporate “news” brainwashing, his was a voice of loud, angry reason. He paved the way for the excellence of Rachel Maddow to make its own impressive mark on the TV “news” landscape. He spoke a great deal of truth that had not been heard on the airwaves for far too long. By modeling himself and his show after Edward R. Murrow, even going so far as to use Murrow’s iconic “Good night, and good luck” sign-off at the end of every broadcast, he gave us a daily reminder that the “news” was not always like it is today, and that it can – nay, must – improve for the good of the republic.
His very existence became a thorn in the side of the corporation that owns his network, and the corporations behind all the other networks. He kicked some cash to a few Democratic candidates – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords being one – and it turned into a nine-day wonder of a debate about broadcasting standards and the hypocrisy of MSNBC’s upper management. It still cracks me up when I think about it: here were these corporate network owners who scream bloody murder about money equaling speech, but when Olbermann exercised his constitutional right to participate in the political process by way of that particular brand of “speech,” he got a two-day rip and a public scolding. The whole charade shamed his bosses deeply and publicly, and probably had more than a bit to do with his eventual departure from the network he pretty much single-handedly put on the map.
To me and so many others, he was a beacon of sanity during the bleak darkness of the Bush years. Remember the timeline here: the 2000 election catastrophe was followed by a ceaseless cable “news” refrain of, “This is an orderly transition of power, nothing to see here, go back to bed,” which infuriated everyone who knew that particular game had been fixed. This was followed by the push for war in Iraq ballyhooed by every cable network – “Navy SEALS rock!” – until the bullets started flying and the IED’s started going off. All throughout, the myriad scandals and crimes of the Bush administration went largely ignored and unreported…until Keith came along, reminding us that, “Today is the 521st day since the declaration of ‘Mission Accomplished’ in Iraq.”
Mr. Olbermann was one of the only voices in broadcasting who openly discussed the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by the Bush administration.
When the 2004 election results in Ohio were corrupted by brazen manipulation and vote fraud, it was Olbermann who raised the loudest televised cry. It was Olbermann who, day after day, hammered the awful truth about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it was Olbermann who pounded home the fact that the Bush administration was little more than a deranged criminal enterprise that threatened the very fabric of the nation.
For me, Mr. Olbermann delivered his most memorable, impassioned and important “Special Comment” in 2006, in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s press conference in the Rose Garden, in which Bush played the Nazi card and essentially implied that anyone who disagreed with him and his policies was an ally of al Qaeda. That night, Mount Olbermann erupted:
It is to our deep national shame – and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret – that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies – or even question their effectiveness or execution – to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.
Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 – without ever actually saying so – the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”
Make no mistake here – the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”
The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.
Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle: the attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word – “media” – the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of al-Qaeda propaganda.
That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.
Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.
We will not drink again.
And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.
“In the 1920′s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”
Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.
More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek – a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.
It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.
And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
The manner of Mr. Olbermann’s departure remains shrouded in mystery; the man himself has made no comment on the matter, which may have something to do with the deal that was cut to end his contract two years early. Many have opined ? correctly, in all likelihood – that the looming Comcast takeover of NBC Universal played a large role. As Buzzflash Editor Mark Karlin wrote over the weekend:
According to James Wolcott of Vanity Fair, the chairman of Comcast Spectacor, Ed Snider, is funding a right-wing cable channel/Internet site called “RightNetwork.” Wolcott sniffs at “RightNetwork” as a “pseudo-populist operation” starring an array of right-wing freaks.
Ominously, Wolcott notes “that it was Snider who invited Sarah Palin to drop the hockey puck at the Flyers’ season opener in 2008, and Palin’s been dropping pucks ever since.”
There’s little reason to doubt that Olbermann’s abrupt exit from MSNBC was the first puck to drop as Comcast slap shots MSNBC away from being a progressive beachhead.
In one man we find the confluence of so many pressing issues. Mr. Olbermann stands at the center of the dire need for ? and dire lack of ? progressive voices within “mainstream news” broadcasting; he threw his shoulder against the wall of corporate hypocrisy; he stood and bellowed against the misdeeds of those in political power; and, ultimately, he stands today as the likely victim of the continued right-wing domination of the “news” media.
People are understandably outraged and disturbed over his abrupt and ill-defined departure from MSNBC?so how, in the face of all this, can I justify my “Meh” reaction?
Well, I already explained the first reason.
The second reason is simple: Keith Olbermann is not dead. He was not beamed to Neptune, never to be seen or heard from again.
Write it down, carve it in stone, make a note, and bet the farm:
Olbermann will be back.
Somewhere, somehow, some day, in one form or another, Mr. Olbermann will be with us again. We will hear or read his own words on the matter of his departure, and then we will hear him again, and again, and again. Giants do not fall easily, and this particular era of political commentary is not over by a long chalk. Edward R. Murrow had his own troubles with management in the darkness of the McCarthy days, and it did not keep him down or silent one iota. So shall it be with Mr. Olbermann in these dark days of corporate hegemony.
About The Author: William Rivers Pitt — had been writing about politics off and on for several years, but became devoted to the practice during the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton. Since President George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, Pitt has worked to fight what he describes as “the rising tide of conservative fundamentalism in American government”.
In 2002, Pitt wrote the book “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know” — which consisted of an in-depth interview with former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In it, Pitt and Ritter examine the Bush administration’s justifications for war with Iraq and call for a diplomatic solution instead of war. In reviewing this book, The Guardian called it “the most comprehensive independent analysis of the state of knowledge about Iraq’s weapons programmes until the new team of inspectors went back.”
Pitt has worked as the managing editor at the liberal commentary website truthout.org.
Apparently, the government of the United States has not learned from the evil, criminal deeds of this mercenary company. Blackwater was part of a secret program to find and assassinate top Al Qaeda operatives in 2004, and in the process morphed into a civilian mass-slaughter machine. Blackwater has long evaded accountability, and repeatedly taken the law into its own hands, writes Lara Marlowe [ READ MORE ]
Despite all that, the State Department last Friday, awarded Blackwater a $120 million contract for work in Afghanistan — to provide “protective security services” at new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. This comes only four months after the Iraqi government expelled Blackwater/Xe. Individuals from the firm are being prosecuted by the Justice Department for allegedly shooting unarmed civilians in Baghdad. [ READ MORE ]
The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army: On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad’s Nisour Square leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday,” was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide.
This is the explosive story of a company that rose a decade ago from Moyock, North Carolina, to become one of the most powerful players in the “War on Terror.” In his gripping bestseller, award winning journalist Jeremy Scahill takes us from the bloodied streets of Iraq to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to the chambers of power in Washington, to expose Blackwater as the frightening new face of the U.S. war machine.
Editorial Review – Publishers Weekly: Scahill, a regular contributor to the Nation, offers a hard-left perspective on Blackwater USA, the self-described private military contractor and security firm. It owes its existence, he shows, to the post?Cold War draw down of U.S. armed forces, its prosperity to the post-9/11 over extension of those forces and its notoriety to a growing reputation as a mercenary outfit, willing to break the constraints on military systems responsible to state authority. Scahill describes Blackwater’s expansion, from an early emphasis on administrative and training functions to what amounts to a combat role as an internal security force in Iraq.
He cites company representatives who say Blackwater’s capacities can readily be expanded to supplying brigade-sized forces for humanitarian purposes, peacekeeping and low-level conflict. While emphasizing the possibility of an “adventurous President” employing Blackwater’s mercenaries covertly, Scahill underestimates the effect of publicity on the deniability he sees as central to such scenarios. Arguably, he also dismisses too lightly Blackwater’s growing self-image as the respectable heir to a long and honorable tradition of contract soldiering. Ultimately, Blackwater and its less familiar counterparts thrive not because of a neoconservative conspiracy against democracy, as Scahill claims, but because they provide relatively low-cost alternatives in high-budget environments and flexibility at a time when war is increasingly protean. [ READ MORE ]
President Hugo Chavez is an iconic figure like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, millions are breathing a sigh of relief that he isn’t on his death bed. Although Chavez has cancer, hopefully he will be around for many more years. 
The production of “Countdown” – the flashes, the music, the jump cuts – made me feel like I had rocks rolling around in my head. This was not solely an Olbermann problem for me; all cable “news” programming leaves me feeling the same way, which is why I swore it off years ago. If CNN or MSNBC played footage of puppies playing with baby pandas next to a pile of bunnies and kittens, it would still give me a headache. It wasn’t Keith’s fault. I’m just allergic to the medium itself, and have largely avoided it for more than a decade.
” — which consisted of an in-depth interview with former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In it, Pitt and Ritter examine the Bush administration’s justifications for war with Iraq and call for a diplomatic solution instead of war. In reviewing this book, The Guardian called it “the most comprehensive independent analysis of the state of knowledge about Iraq’s weapons programmes until the new team of inspectors went back.”
