The Year in Review by Tom Tomorrow

Pentagon Still Can't Account for $2.6 TRILLION

Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee: Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Budget Request As Given by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, and Comptroller Dov Zakheim, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, Monday, July 16, 2001.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Mr. Congressman, thank you very much. Your question is, of course, right at the heart of an enormously important issue for the Department of Defense. We have a panel in the Quadrennial Defense Review on this subject. We have met with it twice in the last two weeks. We're obviously going to have to meet with it again. It is a big, broad, complicated subject.

As you know, the Department of Defense really is not in charge of its civilian workforce, in a certain sense. It's the OPM, or Office of Personnel management, I guess. There are all kinds of long- standing rules and regulations about what you can do and what you can't do. I know Dr. Zakheim's been trying to hire CPAs because the financial systems of the department are so snarled up that we can't account for some $2.6 trillion in transactions that exist, if that's believable. And yet we're told that we can't hire CPAs to help untangle it in many respects.

Click Here to see the full testimony

I am constantly amazed at my friends and relatives that can't seem to look past their "West Wing" television / National Public Radio- generated sugar-coated version of reality to realize they are getting ripped off to the tune of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!! Don't you think if the same group of inter-generatrional criminals who have been ripping you off for decades to the tune of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS were smart the first thing they would do would be to buy up the media to ensure that you never found out about it??



The American People are such TOOLS...

More on the missing TRILLIONS Here: http://www.whereisthemoney.org/

More on Media Consolidation Here: http://www.corporations.org/media/

The Christmas Truce of World War I

http://www.rense.com/general69/truce.htm

On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first year of World War I, German, British, and French soldiers disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas." "You no shoot, we no shoot."

Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs.

Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.

A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight.

Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial.

By March, 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million would be slaughtered.

Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. Military leaders have not gone out of their way to publicize it.

On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played "Christmas in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce(MP3 Here), several times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations.

"Even more startling than the number of requests I get is the reaction to the ballad afterward by callers who hadn't heard it before," said the radiohost. "They telephone me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, `What the hell did I just hear?'"

I think I know why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened once." It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really could be different.

So why were we fighting World War I in the first place? For the same REAL reason that we fought World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War I, and why we are now in Iraq: So they same group of intergenerational financial criminals can continue to make trillions of dollars at the expense of our dead sons and fathers by arming and controlling both sides of every conflict.

Reflect on the words of Marine Corp Major General Smedley Butler, winner of TWO Congressional Medals of Honor for the capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914 and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in US History, and author of War is a Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Here is Major General Smedley Butler naming names in 1935:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

So where are the Smedley Butlers of today? Where are the senior officers in the military and intelligence agencies with GUTS to step forward and tell the American people that there is no Al-CIA-duh?

Find the short and very readable War is a Racket Here: http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

More on the Christmas Truce Here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance27.html

Let's all raise a pint for Major General Smedley Butler this Christmas, remember the the soldiers that set down their weapons on the western front of World War I and embraced each other as the BROTHERS that we all are. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Good Kwanza, and Happy Festivus and peace in 2006!! - Etienne

88% Believe That Bush should Be Impeached

Survey Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904#survey

I know that a survey on the Internet is essentially a self-selected group of voters but I have a hard time believing that an Internet survey is any less accurate that the polls commissioned by the MainStreamMedia that seem to show support for the Bush regime no matter how egregious their conduct.

43,308 is a significant number of responses. My own belief is that ~30% of the US is functionally illiterate and easily swayed by the lies and propaganda of the MainStreamMedia which makes these results all the more significant.

Even the Retards are starting to see through the BullShit. - Etienne

George W. Bush... The Worst President Ever... On the US Constitution

From the December 9th Blog of Doug Thompson, the Founder and Publisher of Capitol Hill Blue found Here: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

Doug Thompson revisited the topic on December 11th when some questioned the anonymity of the congressional sources Here: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7787.shtml

We put our reputation on the line every time we publish a story that depends on information from anonymous sources. Sometimes we get burned and when we do we admit it publicly, take our well-deserved lumps, and move on.

In 2003, we published reports that intelligence professionals had raised doubts about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and questioned claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Our detractors claimed we made the whole thing up. Two years later, we were proven right.

Last year, when we published reports on the President’s increasing temper tantrums, the doubters again claimed the reports were fantasy. Yet mainstream media outlets reported the same thing this year. We were right…and we got it first.

We were the first news outlet to identify the names of women who claimed sexual abuse by Bill Clinton when he was attorney general and later governor of Arkansas. We were the first news outlet to report on the ethical problems of many members of Congress in our series: America’s Criminal Class: The Congress of the United States. And we were the first to report on the abuse of underage girls on teen model web sites. Links to all of these award-winning stories can be found on our home page.

That doesn’t mean you should take everything we print as gospel. Never do that with us or any other news source. Do your own research and reach your own conclusions. And consider the record of the sources you use for news and information. We’ve published more than 25,000 stories since going online on October 1, 1994, and we’ve had to retract two of them. That’s a record I’m willing to stand on.

So the next time somebody calls Capitol Hill Blue a “garbage site” or claims I’m a clown, ask them for their qualifications and background. Did they get their information from credible sources or some anonymous poster on a partisan bulletin board or a blogger with a political ax to grind?

My bio can be found on this link. I put my name on everything I write. And I stand behind what I write. I’m an arrogant, stubborn, driven bastard who takes no prisoners and backs down from no one.

When I’m wrong, I admit it. Thankfully, I haven’t had to do that very often.

When I’m right I don’t give a damn who doesn’t like it or what they say about it.

An editor who taught me a lot once said: “If you piss off both sides you’re doing your job.”

That’s good enough for me.

Doug Thompson - Founder and Publisher of Capital Hill Blue

I believe Doug Thompson - Etienne

Follow the Money...

The chart is from The Washington Post who has been ignoring the important aspects of the Abramoff / Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandals, namely: Which companies benefited from what these congressman were doing BESIDES the indians (who just got shook down for protection) Who is doing the best reporting on which Totally Fake Defense Contractors have been getting all that Homeland Security $$$$$????

Mad Cow Morning News: http://www.madcowprod.com/

Top Ten Things You Never Knew About Jack Abramoff: http://www.madcowprod.com/10272005.html

Cunningham Stripped $700 MM from US Defense: http://www.madcowprod.com/11302005.html

911 Truth Movement Finally Covered with Journalistic Integrity

WTC7 Collapsing Perfectly & Symetrically into its own Footprint

On Thursday, December 1st the Fox News affilitate WICZ 40 in Binghamton, New York became the first network affiliate in the United States to air a legitimate journalistic evaluation of the evidence of government and intelligence agency complicity into 911. WICZ Anchor Racquel Asa introduced a story by reporter Doug Kolk which actually gave a fair and balanced overview of the documentary, Loose Change 2, on the unanswered questions of the government and MainStreamMedia's "official story" concerning what actually happened on 911.

In over 4 years of extensive research into 911 I believe this is the first fair & balanced treatment of the discrepencies in the official version as well as the first time that the most powerful existing video evidence of the case for controlled demolition has been presented over the corporately controlled airwaves. The powerful video evidence presented in the WICZ's story included:

* Video footage of World Trade Center 7, which was over 300 feet away and was not hit by an airplane that day, collapsing perfectly and symetrically into its own footprint in an obvious controlled demolition.

* Video footage of explosions proceeding systematically down WTC 1 & 2 directly proceding and evidently causing each building's collapses which is characteristic of the technique of controlled demolition.

* Video footage of New York City firefighters that were on the scene describing distinctly hearing a series of explosions proceeding the collapse and describing the collapse as resembling a contolled demolition in their opinion.

* An examination of the roll played by Larry Silverstein who signed a 3.2 billion dollar 99 year lease 6 weeks before 9/11 and then promptly took out a 3.5 billion dollar insurance policy specifically covering acts of terrorism.

The segment cover's Silverstein's famous quote so long neglected by the MainStreamMedia that a decision was made on the day of 911 to "Pull" the building for safety reasons. Using a term specific to controlled demolition implies that in the immediate hours after the 911 attacks during the most intensive search and rescue operations of the day, with transportation in the city shut down, limited or no cell phones or conventional telephony, Larry Silverstein and other unnamed were able to bring in the sophisticted equipment and personnel required to implode a building into its own footprint and design, wire, test, and execute a flawless controlled demolition of a 47 story skyscraper. One would have thought other "journalists" might have asked some follow up quesitons of Mr. Silverstein and examined the evidence prior to the WCIZ story.

WICZ's groundbreaking report and the footage described above can be found Here:

http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=282



WICZ followed up the following evening with Part2 of their report which focused on the glaring inconsitencies of the official version of the alleged crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Again the WICZ news team makes history by becoming the first corporate news organization to bring the following facts to light:

* Photos of the small 16ft hole in the Pentagon PRIOR to the collapse of the facade revealing a damage pattern wholely inconsistent with the crash of a 155 ft long Boeing 757 with a 124ft wingspan.

* Video of CNN's initial report from the scene of the Pentagon where the CNN reporter describes "No evidence of a plane crashing anywhere near the Pentagon" and the only pieces of wreckage visible being "small enough that you could pick up in your hand"

* Photos of other airliner crashes illustrating the wreckage consistently found after real crashes and accurately pointing out the official version of the Pentagon crash would be the first time in all of recorded aviation history where an airliner vaporized on impact leaving no trace.

* Photos of a cruise missle strike in Belgrade that displayed more similarities with the actual damage of the Pentagon and other evidence implicating a cruise missle.

* Video of the Osama Bin Ladin "Confession Video" released by the Intelligence Agencies shortly after 911 and a presentation on the obvious inconsistencies with Osama in the "Confession Video" and all previous known photos and videos of Osama Bin Ladin

Part 2 of WICZ's story on Loose Change 2 and the video and photos described above can be found Here:

http://www.wicz.com/news2005/viewarticle.asp?a=291


The entire WICZ News organization should be commended for having the courage to bring this story to the public airwaves and strongly encouraged to continue their investigation into 911. I would encourage everyone that supports a open inquiry into the discrepencies of the official story to communicate with the WICZ news team to both thank them for their courage, salute their journalistic integrity, and confirm that there exists an INTERNATIONAL market for honest journalists that is TAKING NOTE OF WHO CAN BE TRUSTED AND WHO CAN NOT.



Contact information for the WICZ News Organization can be found Here:

Anchorwoman Racquel Asa's email is: racquel.asa@gmail.com

Senior Producer Amy Henry's email is: fox40amy@wicz.com

To Advertise with WICZ Contact the station @ (607) 770-4040

More information on the Loose Change 2 Documentary can be found at: www.LooseChange911.com

Please post widely to give these honest journalists the support they so richly deserve! Well Done WICZ News!! - Etienne