Bad Deeds for 2-29-2008

Two 9/11 Hijackers Lived With Saudi Aviation Contractor in San Diego, in Contradiction with 9/11 Commission Report – Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar allegedly hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon. According to the 9/11 Commission report, they arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15 and “spent about two weeks there before moving to San Diego.” (9/11 Commission report, p. 215, chapter 7). But, according to the FBI timeline, the two men resided in Apartment 152 at Parkwood Apartments, San Diego, from Jan. 15 through Feb. 2, 2000. Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi defense contractor, lived at the same location. This strongly suggests that the hijackers already had a support network in Southern California before they arrived. The FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US. Much has been reported about Omar al-Bayoumi and his alleged relationship with the government of Saudi Arabia.

“Bayoumi seemed clearly to be working for some part of the Saudi government,” Phillip Shenon wrote on page 52 of his book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. “He entered the United States as a business student and had lived San Diego since 1996. He was on the payroll of an aviation contractor to the Saudi government, paid about $2,800 a month, but apparently did no work for the company.” Newsweek points to another connection between Bayoumi and Bandar: “About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi’s wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier’s checks, purchased from Washington’s Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family.

According to Shenon, several staff members working under 9/11 Commission Senior Counsel Dieter Snell, “felt strongly that they had demonstrated a close Saudi government connection,” based on “explosive material” on al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, a “shadowy Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles.” Shenon recounts how Snell, in preparing his team’s account of the plot, purged almost all of the most serious allegations against the Saudi government and moved the “explosive” supporting evidence to the small print of the report’s footnotes. (The Commission, pp. 398-399).

Republican Congresswoman Labels Puerto Ricans as Foreign Citizens – Republican Florida Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite recently labeled Puerto Ricans as “foreign citizens,” and said they should not be eligible for tax rebates, even though they are Americans by law. That was just the beginning, her controversial remarks continued when she issued a press release suggesting that Puerto Ricans “cool off” by visiting the Weeki Wachi water park.

Chief Justice John Roberts Is Concerned That ExxonMobil Might Have to Pay Three Weeks’ Worth of Profits for Valdez Oil Spill – Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on how much money ExxonMobil should be forced to pay as damages for its Exxon Valdez oil spill 19 years ago. What bothered Chief Justice John Roberts was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion — roughly three weeks’ worth of profits — for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history. “So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?” Roberts asked in court. The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. “Well,” he said, “it can hire fit and competent people.”

Military Citizenship Fast Track Now a Slow Lane – Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the U.S. military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting. Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments and other problems.

Troops Die While Bureaucrats Blunder – Overall, at least 2,000 veterans across the country are struggling to correct mistakes on their military records – mistakes that have cost some of them their jobs and their health care coverage. The wait to correct these errors can stretch for as long as three years. In the meantime, the veteran is not eligible for any of the services or benefits to which they are entitled.

Decline in Bloodshed in Iraq is Not Because of the Surge – The drop in violence has nothing to do with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops. “The dramatic decline in bloodshed in Iraq… is largely due to Muqtada al-Sadr’s August 2007 unilateral ceasefire,” according to a new International Crisis Group report. The so-called “Sunni Awakening” is also a sham. We are, in effect, arming and bribing Sunnis to kill al-Qaeda in Iraq forces, not us or the Shiites. “The strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight,” writes Nir Rosen in Rolling Stone. In so doing, he adds, “the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war.”

Sunnis Have Stopped Fighting al-Qaeda – U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support. Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province’s Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met. In Babil province, south of Baghdad, fighters have refused to man their checkpoints after U.S. soldiers killed several comrades in mid-February in circumstances that remain in dispute. “Now, there is no cooperation with the Americans,” said Haider Mustafa al-Kaisy, an Awakening commander in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, an insurgent stronghold that U.S. and Iraqi forces are still struggling to control. “We have stopped fighting al-Qaeda.”

Shoddy Kevlar in Troop Helmets – A company that allegedly produced sub-standard kevlar for battle helmets used by US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to receive lucrative government contracts, and Congressional oversight committees need to investigate if the company endangered servicemen and women, veterans’ and government ethics activists said Thursday.

Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline – What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them? Covers details from 8/1/90 to 6/21/03.

Republican on Fox News Says He Has the Right to Smash His Dog’s Head Against a Brick Wall Because Animals Don’t Have Rights – On Fox News, Republican Jonathan Hoenig says about his dog Snacky, “Snacky dog is property. If I want to take Snacky’s head and smash it against a brick wall (I’d never do that to you) it’s my right to do it!”

 

 

Internal Revenue Service Investigating Church For Having Obama Speak About His Spiritual Journey – The Internal Revenue Service is investigating the United Church of Christ, saying the denomination may have threatened its tax-free status by allowing Sen. Barack Obama to speak before thousands of members at a church conference in June. A lawyer for the church denied that the denomination, or Sen. Obama, who is a member of the church, engaged in any political activity when he and others spoke before an audience of 10,000 at the church’s 50th anniversary celebration in Hartford, Conn. A spokesman for the Obama campaign, Tommy Vietor, said the candidate “spoke to his church’s convention about his personal spiritual journey…. This was not a campaign event.”

While investigations of individual congregations are not uncommon, for the IRS to go after an entire 1.2 million-member denomination is rather extraordinary. Did Obama use his appearance as a campaign event? No. Did UCC officials use the opportunity to endorse his campaign? No. Did anything happen at the conference that amounted to “intervention” in a political campaign? Not as far as I can tell. If the IRS is prepared to argue that the UCC may have violated the law simply by giving Obama a platform for a non-partisan speech, should we also assume, then, that the agency will investigate the Southern Baptist Convention for inviting George W. Bush to give a non-partisan speech?

Regards,

Jim