Lets Fire OUR Emplyees

In OUR government!




Remember the first three words of our Constitution are WE THE PEOPLE!

American Fascism

Is American democracy on the decline and are we turning toward fascism?

You can make up your own mind. ANYONE with the slightest knowledge of history know there are certain aspects of the fascist state.

Here is a list of the characteristics of fascism.

BE AWARE: 14 DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM ARE:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Corporate Power is Protected
9. Labor Power is Suppressed
10. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
11. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
12. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
13. Religion and Government are Intertwined
14. Fraudulent Elections

Do any of these things seem familiar to anyone?

America under the bush administration has developed these characteristics and are moving away from the democracy that we, AS AMERICAN'S, have ONCE held so dear.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, may justly pronounced the very definition of tyranny”

- JAMES MADISON

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is FASCISM: ownership of the government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.”

- FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

“FASCISM should rightly be called CORPORATISM, AS IT IS A MERGER OF
STATE AND CORPORATE POWER"

- BENITO MUSSOLINI

The Rise And Fall Of The American Republic

An Empire Crumbles

All great empires and nations decay from within.

By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance.

This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible.

Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a raw lust for power and few willing to confront it.

The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24 years.

Massive debt, much of it in the hands of the Chinese, keeps piling up as we fund absurd imperial projects and useless foreign wars. Democratic freedoms are diminished in the name of national security. And the erosion of basic services, from education to health care to public housing, has left tens of millions of citizens in despair. The displacement of genuine debate and civil and political discourse with the noise and glitter of public spectacle and entertainment has left us ignorant of the outside world, and blind to how it perceives us. We are fed trivia and celebrity gossip in place of news.

An increasing number of voices, especially within the military, are speaking to this stark deterioration. They describe a political class that no longer knows how to separate personal gain from the common good, a class driving the nation into the ground.

"There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of forces in Iraq, recently told the New York Times, adding that civilian officials have been "derelict in their duties" and guilty of a "lust for power."

The American working class, once the most prosperous on Earth, has been politically disempowered, impoverished and abandoned. Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. State and federal assistance programs have been slashed. The corporations, those that orchestrated the flight of jobs and the abolishment of workers' rights, control every federal agency in Washington, including the Department of Labor. They have dismantled the regulations that had made the country's managed capitalism a success for ordinary men and women. The Democratic and Republican Parties now take corporate money and do the bidding of corporate interests.

Philadelphia is a textbook example. The city has seen a precipitous decline in manufacturing jobs, jobs that allowed households to live comfortably on one salary. The city had 35 percent of its workforce employed in the manufacturing sector in 1950, perhaps the zenith of the American empire. Thirty years later, this had fallen to 20 percent. Today it is 8.8 percent. Commensurate jobs, jobs that offer benefits, health care and most important enough money to provide hope for the future, no longer exist. The former manufacturing centers from Flint, Mich., to Youngstown, Ohio, are open sores, testaments to a growing internal collapse.

The United States has gone from being the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor. As of September 2006, the country was, for the first time in a century, paying out more than it received in investments. Trillions of dollars go into defense while the nation's infrastructure, from levees in New Orleans to highway bridges in Minnesota, collapses. We spend almost as much on military power as the rest of the world combined, while Social Security and Medicare entitlements are jeopardized because of huge deficits. Money is available for war, but not for the simple necessities of daily life.

Nothing makes these diseased priorities more starkly clear than what the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about $471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive than previously imagined, almost $1.5 trillion.

The decision to measure the strength of the state in military terms is fatal. It leads to a growing cynicism among a disenchanted citizenry and a Hobbesian ethic of individual gain at the expense of everyone else. Few want to fight and die for a Halliburton or an Exxon. This is why we do not have a draft. It is why taxes have not been raised and we borrow to fund the war. It is why the state has organized, and spends billions to maintain, a mercenary army in Iraq. We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers. No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later.

It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive population. This permits the bush minions to squander capital and lives. It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of America.

It signals the twilight of our empire.

Buh Bye Denny

They're dropping like flies.

Could this be the end of the political white elephant called the republican party? Or is it a ploy to launch some concerted effort to deceive the American people ONCE AGAIN.

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who made a farewell speech to House colleagues 11 day earlier, made his resignation official Monday with a letter to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Hastert's formal resignation, which was to take effect at 11:59 p.m. EST Monday, came the same day that Mississippi GOP Sen. Trent Lott announced he would retire by year's end after 35 years in Congress.

Hastert had announced in August he wouldn't seek another term and earlier this month confirmed he wouldn't finish his 11th term, but he hadn't said when he would resign his seat.

In his letter, Hastert said he chose Monday because he was advised it would give Blagojevich sufficient time to set a special primary election for Feb. 5 so voters can pick candidates to run for the remainder of his term, which ends in January 2009.

Hastert said Feb. 5 makes sense because that's the day Illinoisans will go to the polls in regular primary elections to cast votes for president and other offices.

"This will minimize inconvenience to the voters and expense to the counties in the 14th Congressional District," Hastert said in his three-paragraph letter.

If Blagojevich calls the special primary for that day, voters in Hastert's northern Illinois district not only will choose candidates to run for his unexpired term, but also cast ballots in a regular primary election to whittle down the candidates who will run to be Hastert's full-time replacement.

Four Republicans and four Democrats filed paperwork to get on the ballot for the chance to replace Hastert, and those already in the race have said they want the chance to finish his term.

Blagojevich has five days to set the election and had not done so as of Monday evening, said his spokeswoman, Abby Ottenhoff.

Hastert also sent a letter Monday to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling her he had tendered his resignation to Blagojevich.

Loose Change: The Final Cut

Unfortunately, Google has censored the shit out of the movie available with them.

Military Suicides vs. Suicide Bombers

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone - and remember, this is just in 45 states - there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.

Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call "accidental noncombat deaths" to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have "personal problems."

Active-duty soldiers, however, are only part of the story. One of the well-known characteristics of post-traumatic stress injuries is that the onset of symptoms is often delayed, sometimes for decades. Veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam are still taking their own lives because new PTSD symptoms have been triggered, or old ones retriggered, by stories and images from these new wars. Their deaths, like the deaths of more recent veterans, are written up in hometown newspapers; they are locally mourned, but officially ignored. The VA doesn't track or count them. It never has. Both the VA and the Pentagon deny that the problem exists and sanctimoniously point to a lack of evidence they have refused to gather.

They have managed this smoke and mirrors trick for decades in large part because suicide makes people so uncomfortable. It has often been called "that most secret death" because no one wants to talk about it. Over time, in different parts of the world, attitudes have fluctuated between the belief that the act is a sin, a right, a crime, a romantic gesture, an act of consummate bravery or a symptom of mental illness. It has never, however, been an emotionally neutral issue. In the United States, the rationalism of our legal system has acknowledged for 300 years that the act is almost always symptomatic of a mental illness. For those same 300 years, organized religions have stubbornly maintained that it's a sin. In fact, the very worst sin. The one that is never forgiven because it's too late to say you're sorry.

The contradiction between religious doctrine and secular law has left suicide in some kind of nether space in which the fundamentals of our systems of justice and belief are disrupted. A terrible crime has been committed, a murder, and yet there can be no restitution, no punishment. As sin or as mental illness, the origins of suicide live in the mind, illusive, invisible, associated with the mysterious, the secretive and the undisciplined, a kind of omnipresent Orange Alert. Beware the abnormal. Beware the Other.

For years now, this administration has been blasting us with high-decibel, righteous posturing about suicide bombers, those subhuman dastards who do the unthinkable, using their own bodies as lethal weapons. "Those people, they aren't like us; they don't value life the way we do," runs the familiar xenophobic subtext: And sometimes the text isn't even sub-: "Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington and Pennsylvania," proclaimed W, glibly conflating Sept. 11, the invasion of Iraq, Islam, fanatic fundamentalism and human bombs.

bush has also expressed the opinion that suicide bombers are motivated by despair, neglect and poverty. The demographic statistics on suicide bombers suggest that this isn't the necessarily the case. Most of the Sept. 11 terrorists came from comfortable middle- to upper-middle-class families and were well-educated. Ironically, despair, neglect and poverty may be far more significant factors in the deaths of American soldiers and veterans who are taking their own lives.

Consider the 25 percent of enlistees and the 50 percent of reservists who have come back from the war with serious mental health issues. Despair seems an entirely appropriate response to the realization that the nightmares and flashbacks may never go away, that your ability to function in society and to manage relationships, work schedules or crowds will never be reliable.

There is something so smugly superior in the way we talk about suicide bombers and the cultures that produce them. But here is an unsettling thought. In 2005, 6,256 American veterans took their own lives. That same year, there were about 130 documented deaths of suicide bombers in Iraq.

Do the math. That's a ratio of 50-to-1.

So who is it that is most effectively creating a culture of suicide and martyrdom?

If bush is right, that it is despair, neglect and poverty that drive people to such acts, then isn't it worth pointing out that America is doing a far better job?

Never Coming Home

Fucktard bush on Monday signed a deal setting the foundation for a potential long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq, with details to be negotiated over matters that have defined the war debate at home — how many U.S. forces will stay in the country, and for how long.

The agreement between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirms that the United States and Iraq will hash out an "enduring" relationship in military, economic and political terms. Details of that relationship will be negotiated in 2008, with a completion goal of July, when the U.S. intends to finish withdrawing the five combat brigades sent in 2007 as part of the troop buildup that has helped curb sectarian violence.

"What U.S. troops are doing, how many troops are required to do that, are bases required, which partners will join them — all these things are on the negotiating table," said Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, asshole bush's adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposal underlines how the United States and Iraq are exploring what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence. It comes as a Democratic Congress — unsuccessfully, so far — prods bush to withdraw troops faster than he wants.

bush and al-Maliki signed the new U.S.-Iraq "declaration of principles" during a secure video conference Monday morning.

Al-Maliki, in a televised address, said his government would ask the United Nations to renew the mandate for the multinational force for one final time with its authorization to end in 2008.

The U.S.-Iraq agreement will replace the present U.N. mandate regulating the presence of the U.S.-led forces in Iraq. Al-Maliki said the agreement provides for U.S. support for the "democratic regime in Iraq against domestic and external dangers."

It also would help the Iraqi government thwart any attempt to suspend or repeal a constitution drafted with U.S. help and adopted in a nationwide vote in 2005. That appeared to be a reference to any attempt to remove the government by violence or in a coup.

Al-Maliki said the renewal of the multinational forces' mandate was conditional on the repeal of what he called restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty introduced in 1990 by the U.N. Security Council to punish Iraq for invading neighboring Kuwait.

The new agreement would not signal an end to the U.S. mission here. But it could change the rules under which U.S. soldiers operate and give the Iraqis a greater role in determining their mission.

Two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue say Iraq's government will embrace a long-term U.S. troop presence in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership. The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the subject is sensitive, said U.S. military and diplomatic representatives appeared generally favorable, subject to negotiations on the details, which include preferential treatment for American investments.

Preferential treatment for U.S. investors could provide a huge windfall if Iraq can achieve enough stability to exploit its vast oil resources. Such a deal would also enable the United States to maintain leverage against Iranian expansion at a time of growing fears about Tehran's nuclear aspirations.

The framework bush approved outlines broad principles, such as that both countries will support Iraq's economic institutions, and help its government train Iraqi security forces to provide stability for all Iraqis. Lute said "all major national leaders of the existing Iraqi government" have committed to it.

"The basic message here should be clear: Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own; that's very good news, but it won't have to stand alone," said Lute, who rarely holds televised briefings.

He said it is too soon to tell what the "shape and size" of the U.S. military commitment will look like, including military bases.

The Iraqi officials said that under the proposed formula, Iraq would get full responsibility for internal security and U.S. troops would relocate to bases outside the cities. Iraqi officials foresee a long-term presence of about 50,000 U.S. troops, down from the current figure of more than 160,000.

Iraqi Women

In recent weeks, the bush administration has cited declining violence in Iraq as evidence of the success. Earlier this month, the liar in chief president asshole bush said that Iraqis are slowly “taking back their country.”

But last night, NBC Nightly News aired a segment about a “wave of violence that’s gone largely unreported lately against women in Iraq.” The report noted that Iraqi women, once “the most emancipated in the Arab world,” are increasingly unable to walk around without a hijab, wear cosmetics, or work.

Asshole bush has largely ignored the deteriorating plight of Iraqi women, choosing instead to cite signs of “progress.” Yet earlier in the war, he and other administration officials repeatedly claimed that the rights of Iraqi women were “inseparable” to success




“The advance of women’s rights and the advance of liberty are ultimately inseparable.”
- president bush, 3/14/04

“president bush has made the advance of women’s human rights a global policy priority. … We all have an obligation to speak for women who are denied their rights to learn, to vote or to live in freedom.”
- laura the cunt bush, 3/8/05

“The commitment of this administration to women’s rights in Iraq is unshakable.” - Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, 3/9/04

“There can be no compromise on the principle that Iraqis can each have an equal role in the building of their country’s future without regard to their ethnic or religious background or gender.”
- Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, 8/8/05

Many Iraqi women who have fled to Syria are increasingly forced to turn to prostitution, as they struggle to support their children after their husbands were killed in Iraq’s violence.

I'm sure these Iraqi's LOVE the newfound freedoms that bushies democracy has given them.

Can I See Your Papers

At large, the American people are still unaware of the issuance of the Real ID card forthcoming in May of 2008.

In a vote that largely divided along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Republican-backed measure that would compel states to force citizens to comply with a national ID by 2008 This new national ID card, with its tracking chip and its interactivity with national/international databases, can access our medical, financial, driving, Social Security, license(s), firearms registrations, and political status inside its high tech/little nano brain.

In essence, it holds our private lives on a swipe-able card that is then privy to any organization, retailer, or person requesting our identification or our money. In other words, our life histories accessible upon command from one 2X3 inch card.

Having no choice but to comply, most American people will accept their new national ID card. Without the card, we will be denied bank accounts in the United States, a driver's license, and the right to fly on airplanes unless we have been issued a Real ID card. One might imagine that retailers might require the Real ID to purchase food and gasoline.
One cannot help but to almost laugh when it comes to considering how directly global intentions rest beneath our noses. So easy to see, yet so blindly the public goes about its merry and dull way.

On that note, the Real ID card will ultimately seal your fate.

You will be a compliant and completely identifiable slave to the New World Order, or you will be its enemy – remember bush saying that you’re with him in his declaration of war or you’re with the terrorists rhetoric - and your Real ID will determine which global creature you shall be.
The public acceptance of the Real ID in May of 2008 seals the deal.

The U.S. State Department has already began issuing passports with radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips embedded in them, and Virginia has become the first state to glue RFID tags into all its driver's licenses.

It will be more than interesting to see which of our friends, neighbors, and family members will willingly sign onto their fate as new “citizens” of the global police state. Are we going to continue to allow our “elected representatives” to march off with this nation and our Constitutional freedom, or are we going to unite and reclaim OUR nation?

Voter apathy must end. Ignorance is never bliss. It is abject slavery, and this time, the enslavement is backed by a system far greater than concepts or perceived notions of freedom.
It's time to do more than wave flags, wear patriotic tee shirts, hats, and pins. It's time to serve through action and duty to this nation.

Become a Fed Up American, if you aren’t already.

Today Is Buy Nothing Day

Today, in addition to being the biggest consumer debt orgy of the year, is Buy Nothing Day.

Now in its 15th year, the popular Buy Nothing Day is celebrated every November by environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens in as many as 65 countries.

Timed to coincide with Black Friday (this year on Friday, November 23) in the United States, where the cheerful dead wander around malls, marveling at the blank, comatose expressions on the faces of shoppers, and the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season internationally (on Saturday, November 24), the festival takes many shapes, from relaxed family outings, to free, non-commercial street parties, to politically charged public protests.

Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending.

Buy Nothing Christmas is not really about refusing to spend a dime over the holiday season. It’s about taking a deep breath and deciding to opt out of the hype‚ the overcrowded malls‚ and the stressful to–do lists. It’s about reminding ourselves to really think about what we are buying‚ why we are buying it‚ and whether we really need it at all.

Retailers around the globe are pushing consumers to spend, spend and spend some more in their efforts to salvage what has been deemed as the worst shopping year in decades. You would think the churches would condemn the efforts of the retailers because the real meaning of Christmas is rarely addressed at the malls.

Perhaps we should all wait until tomorrow, then, to buy a ticket to What Would Jesus Buy, a documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me!” fame.

It’s billed as “the movie Santa doesn’t want you to see!”

Going Down As The Worst EVER

Its not just MY opinion.

It seems that there are a LOT of Fed Up Americans out there.




A respected business leader like Donald Trump is a Fed Up American.
What else does he say about bush?



But what do others think of bush?



What about other presidents? Even a religious nut like Carter has become Fed Up.The fact that Carter calls bush a deeply religious man says a LOT about bushies mental afflictions. As witnessed by the following hard driving (sarcasm) Fox News interview.



These are just a few of other Fed Up American’s out there. bush is NO DOUBT the ABSOLUTE WORST president in HISTORY. His very legacy will be his demise.

On This Thanksgiving

In a time where we, as Americans, ponder what we are thankful for, I have several this year but one thing sticks out in my life that I'm sure many Fed Up Americans share.

I am THANKFUL that America only has one more year to endure the biggest assclown in history as its president. This fucking idiot can't even wish us a "Happy Thanksgiving" without turning it into a staged event.

You might think that a presidential speech on Thanksgiving would be open to all comers. But no, even when bush is talking about something as uncontroversial as the essential goodness of our country, he wants his audience prescreened.

bush traveled to the historic Berkeley Plantation in southeastern Virginia yesterday for an event carefully calibrated to emphasize his compassionate side. In his remarks, he encouraged “all Americans to show their thanks by giving back.”

But, as usual, he wasn’t talking to all Americans. At least not in person. Admission to the event was tightly controlled by White House and Republican party officials.

So AS USUAL bubble boy cowers in his ever shrinking delusional world, riding out the last year of his dictatorship. The legacy he leaves behind will NO DOUBT be showing him as the absolute worst president America and THE WORLD has ever seen. His two controversial terms in office will be his demise. His epitaph will read: Here lies the worst president ever. History will prove that FACT.

The bumbling. The stumbling. The outright idiocy of his tenure as president will show that he has destroyed what America once stood for. His deliberate destruction of our democracy and freedoms have hurt us. His policies have knocked America down and has attempted to enslave us.

But AS AMERICANS, we WILL heal. We The People WILL get back up again. We The People WILL restore this country to its former greatness and HOPEFULLY We The People will NEVER see a president cut from his cloth again.

And today, THIS is what I'm thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all.

McClellan Spills The Beans

I can just hear bush's Homer Simpson-like DOH! when news of Scott McClellans upcoming book release reached "the decider's" ears.

They're all jumping ship. Leaving bush and Cheney to ride it down to the end of the most corrupt administration that America has ever seen.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says top administration officials -- including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- were involved in his unknowingly passing along false information about the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

In October 2003, as controversy grew about the leak of Valerie Plame's name, McClellan stood at the White House podium and said that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and I. Lewis Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April.

The excerpt -- three paragraphs from a 400-page book -- reads in full:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff, and the president himself."

McClellan has not given any specifics about how he believes Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rove and then Chief of Staff Andrew Card were involved in the dissemination of false information.

Asked about the released excerpt, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "The president has not misled his spokespeople, nor would he."

McClellan, who was White House press secretary from July 2003 until April 2006, said he's still writing the book and that his publisher had highlighted the excerpt to build interest.

Plame, who has filed a civil suit against Cheney, Libby and Rove over the leak, issued a statement saying she was "outraged to learn" that McClellan had confirmed "he was sent out to lie to the press corps and the American public."

"McClellan's revelations provide important support for our civil suit against those who violated our national security and maliciously destroyed my career," she said. (A federal judge dismissed the lawsui in July, but the case has been appealed.)

Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, said Wednesday the excerpt shows Bush is "out of touch or an accessory of obstruction of justice before the fact and after the fact."
Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador who accused the Bush administration of misrepresenting intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, called for a new congressional investigation.

"I think it would be helpful to have congressional hearings on this matter," Wilson said. "This is a betrayal of the national security of the country."

In March, Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to investigators and a federal grand jury about his contacts with reporters concerning Plame.

Just before Libby was to report to a federal prison in July to serve 30 months behind bars, Bush commuted his sentence, although the president stopped short of a full pardon and Libby still had to pay a $250,000 fine.

Rove, who left the White House staff at the end of August, was not charged in the case. His attorney has acknowledged he was one of two sources cited by syndicated columnist Bob Novak, who first disclosed in July 2003 that Plame worked for the CIA shortly after Wilson wrote a critical op-ed piece for The New York Times.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has since acknowledged he was Novak's original source for the information that Plame worked at the CIA, although he said the disclosure was not deliberate and he did not know at the time she was a covert agent.
Because deliberately leaking a CIA operative's name can be a federal crime, a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed to investigate the case.

No one was charged in connection with the leak itself; Libby's charges resulted from statements he made during the investigation.

Scotty's Tell All?

Keith Olbermann talked to MSNBC’s David Shuster about revelations from former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, that President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were directly involved in deceiving the American people about their roles in outing covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. Anyone paying attention knew these allegations to be true all along.

K.O. also spoke with John Dean about the resurrected scandal and brought up some more than interesting points.

The Plame leak investigation is still ongoing, Patrick Fitzgerald never formally closed it. Dean suggests that there is a real possibility that these allegations open the door to a possible conspiracy to defraud the government charge and if Fitzgerald found enough evidence to proceed with his investigation, he could do so at any time.

We can only hope,

Jesus Sweatshop

A labor rights group alleged Tuesday that crucifixes sold in religious gift shops in the U.S. are produced under "horrific" conditions in a Chinese factory with more than 15-hour work days and inadequate food.

"It's a throwback to the worst of the garment sweatshops 10, 20 years ago," said Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee.

Kernaghan held a news conference in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral to call attention to conditions at a factory in Dongguan, a southern Chinese city near Hong Kong, where he said crosses sold at the historic church and elsewhere are made.

Spokespeople for St. Patrick's and another New York landmark, the Episcopal Trinity Church at Wall Street, said the churches had removed dozens of crucifixes from their shops while they investigate the claims.

"I don't think they have a clue where these crucifixes were made — in horrific work conditions," Kernaghan said.

Kernaghan said the factory's mostly young, female employees work from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. seven days a week and are paid 26 cents an hour with no sick days or vacation. Workers live in filthy dormitories and are fed a watery "slop."

Kernaghan said factory workers took photos and smuggled out documents detailing practices there. While none of the crucifixes sold in New York were identified as made in China, they bore serial numbers matching products made at the factory in question, Kernaghan said.

Joe Zwilling, a spokesman for St. Patrick's, said church officials had not heard about the issue before Tuesday. Trinity spokeswoman Diane Reed said her church had been "under the impression that these were mass-produced in Italy."

St. Patrick's and Trinity bought the crosses from the Singer Co., a religious goods company based in suburban Mount Vernon. Co-owner Gerald Singer said the religious objects were made in China and purchased through a Chinese manufacturer called Full Start.

"Whether they came out of a sweatshop, we do not know," Singer said. "We asked Full Start to sign off that there are no sweatshop conditions involved, and no children and that they abide by Chinese law. This is a black eye for us."

An after-hours call to a U.S. office of Full Start Ltd. in East Providence, R.I., was not immediately returned Tuesday.

A man at the Full Start factory in Dongguan said the allegations were "totally incorrect."

The working conditions at the factory were "fine," said the man, who refused to give his name. The 200-plus employees work from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day, with an hour and a half break for lunch, he said.

The employees were rarely asked to work overtime, but were compensated when they did, he said. When pressed for more details, the man said he wasn't in charge of those issues and hung up the phone.

Kernaghan said the crosses were exhibited at an annual trade show organized by the Association for Christian Retail, a Colorado-based trade association that works with thousands of religious stores across the country.

Bill Anderson, president and chief executive of the Christian trade association, issued a statement saying: "While we occasionally hear this issue raised, and believe there are factories in China where human rights are violated, we believe claims that products sold through CBA member stores are made in these shops are irresponsible and unfounded."

Dongguan lies at the center of China's export manufacturing industry, which relies heavily on low wages to remain competitive. Factories there have been accused in the past of labor abuses, including those making products for McDonald's, Disney, Mattel and the Beijing Olympics.

Bush Quitters

During his time doing criminal acts for the bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying:

"And while some argue for tossing in the towel, the enemy is waiting and hoping for us to do just that. Early on, I learned from my dad — a veteran of World War II — that if you start quitting things, pretty soon you’ve become a quitter.”


Which is stunning because those that are responsible for creating the travesty that is Iraq have quit their positions under bush and most are considered to be criminals in the eyes of the world.


Here is a partial list of prominent Bush administration resignations since the 2006 midterm elections, all of which occurred in conjunction with some sort of major scandal in their relevant field:

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, November 8, 2006
John Bolton, Ambassador to the United Nations, December 4, 2006
Harriet Miers, White House Consul and former Supreme Court nominee, January 4, 2007
Francis Harvey, Army Secretary, March 2, 2007
Monica Goodling, Justice Department White House liaison, April 6
Peter McNutly, Deputy Attorney General, May 14, 2007
Sara Taylor, White House Political Director and microtargeting guru, May 27, 2007
White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, June 1, 2007
Gen. Peter Pace, Joint Chiefs of Staffs Chairman, June 8, 2007
Rob Portman, White House Budget Director, June 19, 2007
William Mercer, Acting Associate Attorney General, June 23, 2007
Jim Nicholson, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, July 17, 2007
Karl Rove, Senior Political Advisor and Deputy White House chief of staff, August 13, 2007
Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, August 27, 2007


By my count thats 14 quitters in less than a year. AND this is just a PARTIAL list!

With this obvious exceptions of Bush and Cheney themselves, virtually every major Bush administration figure involved in the decision to INVADE Iraq has quit.

They "cut and run" leaving the military to clean up the mess they have made.

How does that make all you military personel feel?

Being abandoned by YOUR leaders.

A Criminal On The Loose

Gonzo’s first speaking engagement didn’t go quite the way he would have liked, but it’s not surprising that students protested the man who gave the President (his pal) a blank check when it comes to our civil liberties while also installing “torture” as an approved method of interrogation.

Alberto is getting paid a boatload of cash (40K) to speak after disgracing his post as AG. Being a “movement conservative” is always a very profitable venture. And he took no questions from the audience.

In his first appearance at a university since resigning in August, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was met at UF on Monday with a mixture of cheers, boos and scattered interruptions by protesters, two of whom were arrested.

Gonzales, who resigned from his position after a controversial tenure, spoke to more than 800 people at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. During his prepared speech, Gonzales largely avoided discussing the controversies he faced in office, including his dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

Instead, he focused on encouraging students to consider a career in public service while describing his own experiences in that field.—Later, he ignored scattered jeers from the crowd to answer questions about his dismissal of the attorneys, the Geneva Convention and torture.

Fucking douche-nozzle coward.

Just ANOTHER quitter of the bush administration.

A Soldiers Story

James Circello sat on the edge of his bed staring at the floral pattern on a generic hotel comforter, contemplating what life would be like in prison.

It was early August, and his parents had given him a one-way bus ticket to Lawton, Okla., and told him he was welcome home once he got his life together. U.S. Army Sergeant Circello had been AWOL since April, and with just a few dollars left in his wallet and a dying cell phone battery, he saw two options: turn himself in to military authorities at Ft. Sill, or get the next bus out of town and join hundreds of anti-war veterans convening in St. Louis, Mo.

James was a patriot, and after Sept. 11, joined the Army to defend his country. By 2002 James was in Italy, assigned to the 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade. The 173rd deployed to Iraq between March 2003 and 2004. Facing redeployment last April, this time to Afghanistan, James asked himself if he could tolerate replicating the disaster he'd been part of in Iraq. When he answered no, a friend drove him to the airport, he flew to the United States and has been AWOL ever since.

Contemplating life in his Oklahoma hotel room, James realized he didn't go AWOL to avoid a second tour of duty. He wanted to help stop the war, and how better to do that than join with the hundreds of other veterans now opposing the Iraq war? So James grabbed his Army-issued green duffle bag and headed for the Greyhound station. He boarded a bus to take him south to the banks of the Mississippi River and joined an international community of veterans working to put an end to war.

James joins a growing number of disillusioned and newly politicized Iraq War veterans. According to an Associated Press report released last week, the number of AWOL Army soldiers has increased 80 percent since March of 2003. The Army says 4,698 soldiers deserted their posts in fiscal year 2007 - an increase of over 2,000 soldiers from the year before. GI rights advocates say the number is far higher. Soldiers go AWOL for many reasons, and the majority of them don't denounce the Iraq war. However, an increasing number publicly oppose the war, even though this could mean harsh punishments or jail time.

What turns a patriot like James Circello, who volunteered for military service, into someone critical of the United States occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan? What experiences turn someone willing to fight and die for his country into someone who, in a recent interview, said quietly: "It's disturbing when you see humanity fail."

Fighting the War on Terror

"I remember the day kids started throwing rocks," James said. Initially, Iraqis did welcome them, served them tea and called them liberators. But gradually, James says they grew hostile. "Not without reason, in my opinion," he says.

James can still hear the helicopters beating the air above the city and see U.S. troops on every street corner in Kirkuk. The city was locked down, the traffic going nowhere and soldiers were herding families into corrals like sheep. That was the day smiles dancing on the faces of Iraqi boys hardened. Boys used to run through the streets of Kirkuk, chasing Jeeps loaded with American soldiers. They would run barefoot through garbage and didn't seem to care when the streets became muddy with sewage. "They were smiling," James said. "That was the weird part. As they'd chase after our Jeeps, they were smiling." Sgt. Circello lost his belief in American liberation at the same time these boys lost theirs.

Even humanitarian aid was distributed with brutality and chauvinism, James says. When the chain of command learned there was a shortage of petroleum - and without oil to cook, people were starving - the Army set up distribution centers where women were cordoned into lines made from razor wires. The wait was endless, and there was never enough cooking oil.

"It was hectic and maddening," James said. "U.S. soldiers would put their hands on the women in line, forcing them to move, trying to get them to be quiet and stand still. They'd stick guns in their faces trying to threaten or humiliate them. I did it myself ... once."

In those early days, James didn't live on an Army base. His unit lived in a house in Kirkuk. They didn't need hum-vees, because when something happened in the city, they looked out the window. Soldiers roamed the streets on motorcycles, and at first, security wasn't such a problem.

But things started going badly pretty quickly. When soldiers set up roadblocks, if the driver couldn't prove ownership of his vehicle, it was impounded. Unfortunately, the soldiers relied on a very American way to prove ownership: They checked for papers. But the ubiquitous orange and white taxis often existed in families for generations, and no one had papers anymore. When they were stopped, American teenagers would wrest the sole source of income for several generations of a family from the hands of the family patriarch.

Coming Home

When James went home to Lima, Ohio, his family didn't ask him about Iraq or about being AWOL. They did offer to listen, but there was a schism between James and his parents, who still believed in the mission of the Iraq war. They didn't want to hear that their son had deserted and was now living illegally in his childhood bedroom.

James is frustrated by how little many Americans appear to have thought about the war, or even know that it continues. Even today, with the war massively unpopular, James thinks politics is still defining the terms of the debate, and people still seem uncomfortable challenging the Bush administration about the war. "People say we have to stay because 4,000 soldiers will have died in vain if we leave," James says. "But what gives their death meaning if we stay?"

Even though he has struggled with how to turn himself in for the better part of the summer, James says he's not afraid to go to prison. His goal is to raise awareness in the United States about the war about the thousands of soldiers who oppose it and somehow to make amends to the Iraqi people. He's terrified he'll go to prison before he can do that.

Struggling to communicate this message, James traveled from New York to Ohio, Oklahoma to Missouri, Louisiana to Pennsylvania and many places in between. He did this without renting a car or boarding an airplane, because using his credit card would give away his location. James got a job building houses in New Orleans, where he was paid under the table, but most AWOL soldiers can't find work because they're wanted by the U.S. government. James doesn't appear to mind sleeping on the couches of people he just met, which is good because with the United States on the brink of a recession, his precarious legal status also makes it difficult to find housing.

As the Iraq War nears its fifth anniversary, more and more soldiers oppose the war, and many more are AWOL. Soldiers opposing their own government and the wars they've been ordered to fight have never been popular. Dating back to the Revolutionary War, U.S. soldiers have questioned the morality of war, and when they've acted on these questions, they have been maligned by the civilian population and punished by their government. Technically, the penalty for deserting during wartime is death. Today, many, mostly younger veterans, are calling for support of war resisters and trying to eliminate the stigma of cowardice associated with deserters.

Supporting the Troops

"Right now we're in the middle of two foreign occupations, and a lot of people don't understand the sacrifice people in the military are making or the reasons we've been asked to make it," says Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Dougherty says it's difficult to return from military service, only to realize many Americans don't seem to know there's a war going on at all.

That frustration is compounded when veterans have trouble obtaining everything from mental and physical health care to disability compensation, according to Paul Sullivan, executive director at Veterans For Common Sense. He says the Veterans Administration (VA) is struggling to provide for the quarter million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans it already treats, and this is already having disastrous consequences for returning GIs.

Recent Army studies found nearly one in five Iraq veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD,) and almost half demonstrate combat-related trauma of some sort. According to a CBS News investigation, more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have committed suicide than have been killed in combat. What's more, Sullivan says the average wait for the VA to consider disability claims from injured veterans is about six months, and this helps explain the 15,000 recent veterans who are homeless today.

That veteran services have fallen into such disrepair indicates how poorly planned the Iraq war has been, according to Camilo Mejia, chairperson of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who, himself, spent nearly a year in prison rather than return to Iraq. He says failing services are just the latest example of how the government elects to wrap itself in yellow ribbons and hollow rhetoric rather than meaningfully care for veterans.

"How do we honor veterans and then send them to fight in an illegal war?" Mejia asked this week as the country celebrated Veterans Day. "How do we honor the veterans and then not speak out about their service? We don't want to hear their analysis or their questions, and we don't want to hear how their "service" in Iraq has changed them. How can we go on waving the flag and talking about supporting the troops, when we ignore the thousands of veterans opposing this war?"

Finding Peace

As the country celebrated Veterans Day last week, James was again contemplating life behind bars. He spent this week traveling from Baton Rouge, La., to Washington, D.C., and then west to Kentucky, where he says he will turn himself in at Ft. Knox. He says he's grateful to the community of veterans - from every state in the country - who have supported him and soldiers like him.

Just like everybody else in the country, it's clear James desperately wants his service in the Army to be meaningful. The difference is that, for him, serving meaningfully means changing the nature of the U.S. debate about the war and somehow making amends to the Iraqi people.

On the phone from somewhere in the middle of the country, James says he's ready to resolve his conflict with the U.S. military so he can more effectively accomplish his goals. You get the sense that maybe he wishes going to prison could resolve the rest of the conflicts he experiences as well. Last week, James turned himself in to the military at Ft. Knox, in Tennessee. Rather than going to prison as he had feared, James was simply discharged with an other than honorable discharge, which prevents him from accessing healthcare or the GI Bill, but at least for now, James seems OK with that.

Now he says he's ready to start the rest of his life, much of which is likely to be shaped by his time in Iraq and his experiences as an AWOL soldier opposing the war.

Is bush An Idiot?

Is this really the best America has to offer the world?

Another One Bites The Dust

Fran Townsend, the leading White House-based terrorism adviser who gave public updates on the extent of the threat to U.S. security, is stepping down after 4 1/2 years.

President Bush said in a statement Monday morning that Townsend, 45, "has ably guided the Homeland Security Council. (Heck of a job Brownie FEMA) "She has played an integral role in the formation of the key strategies and policies my administration has used to combat terror and protect Americans."

Her departure continues an exodus of key Bush aides and confidants, with his two-term presidency in the final 15 months. They're running like fucking Rats off a sinking ship. The list includes: Top aide Karl Rove, along with press secretary Tony Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior presidential adviser Dan Bartlett, have already left.

The list is endless. My most avid listener and rabid fan Sue Cauler brought up an interesting point. Most of the people who played key roles in the decision to invade Iraq have since quit. With the exception of our military that is. They keep pushing forward until "mission accomplished." No matter what the cost. No matter if no one really knows what "mission accomplished" even means anymore.

So any military personnel has that same right as those above them to just break their service contract and say; Fuck it I quit too.

The politicians have "cut and run" on the kids in the military.

Freddy Gets A Friend

Holy shit there’s actually someone out there that thinks Fred Thompson will make a good choice for President.

Who in the world would back such a nut case?

One would have to be a nut case themselves, right?

And the answer states just that.

Fred Thompson, the biggest doofus in the Republican party and we’re talking about a party that Alan Keyes is part of, has won the presidential endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee.

The nod by the prominent anti-abortion group could boost the former Tennessee senator's lackluster campaign. He has seen his poll numbers drop in recent weeks in Iowa and elsewhere as he has failed to become the consensus candidate of restive social conservatives still searching for someone to embrace.

"It speaks for itself," Thompson told reporters while campaigning here -- even as he talked in hypothetical terms and declined to confirm the endorsement. "These are people who supported me in times past. I think it would be a perfectly natural thing to happen. I've had a 100 percent pro-life voting record in the United States Senate. And I think they know that, and that's the way I would govern if I was president."

So a vote in Thompsons direction will strip away more rights. He obviously believes (like bush does) that the Constitution is nothing but a goddamn piece of paper. We will see another mental case in the white house, perhaps – and I know this is hard to see – even someone more delusional, more senile and more mental than the shrub.

Could you imagine a fucking nut case like Rev Don from the Army of God as his running mate?

Fortunately I have faith in America’s people. No doubt Thompson’s 15 minutes of fame will continue a bit longer, but the America that I know and love will see Thompson as a joke. (much like Rev Don) There’s no way in hell that this idiot will get the nod.

Except from Rev Don which is the kiss of death.

So long Fred.

The Ever Shrinking American Dollar

The US dollar is still officially the world's reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen.

Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.Gisele is not alone in her forecast of the dollar's fate. The First Post (UK) reports that Jim Rogers, a former partner of billionaire George Soros, is selling his home and all possessions in order to convert all his wealth into Chinese yuan.

Meanwhile, American economists continue to preach that offshoring is good for the US economy and that Bush's war spending is keeping the economy going. The practitioners of supply and demand have yet to figure out that the dollar's supply is sinking the dollar's price and along with it American power.

The macho super patriot dickheads who support the Bush regime still haven't caught on that US superpower status rests on the dollar being the reserve currency, not on a military unable to occupy Baghdad. If the dollar were not the world currency, the US would have to earn enough foreign currencies to pay for its 737 oversees bases, an impossibility considering America's $800 billion trade deficit.

When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, foreigners will cease to finance the US trade and budget deficits, and the American Empire along with its wars will disappear overnight.

Perhaps Bush will be able to get a World Bank loan, or maybe one from the "Chavez bank," to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.Foreign leaders, observing that offshoring and war are accelerating America's relative economic decline, no longer treat the US with the deference to which Washington is accustomed.

Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, recently refused Washington's demand to renew the lease on the Manta air base in Ecuador. He told Washington that the US could have a base in Ecuador if Ecuador could have a military base in the US.When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez addressed the UN, he crossed himself as he stood at the podium.

Referring to bush, Chavez said, "Yesterday the devil came here, and it smells of sulfur still today." bush, said Chavez, was standing "right here, talking as if he owned the world."In his state of the nation message last year, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that bush's blathering about democracy was nothing but a cloak for the pursuit of American self-interests at the expense of other peoples. "We are aware what is going on in the world. Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, and he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone."

In May 2007, Putin criticized the neocon regime in Washington for "disrespect for human life" and "claims to global exclusiveness, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich."Even America's British allies regard President Bush as a threat to world peace and the second most dangerous man alive. Bush is edged out in polls by Osama bin Laden, but is regarded as more dangerous than Iran's demonized president and North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

bush has achieved his dismal world standing despite spending $1.6 billion of hard-pressed Americans' tax money on public relations between 2003 and 2006.

Clearly, America's leader and America's currency are poorly regarded. Is there a solution?

Perhaps the answer lies in those 737 overseas bases. If those bases were brought home and shared among the 50 states, each state would gain 15 new military bases.Imagine what this would mean: The end of the housing slump. A reduction in the trade deficit.

And the end of the war on terror.Who would dare attack a country with 15 new military bases in every state in addition to the existing ones?

Wherever a terrorist turned, he would find himself surrounded by soldiers.All of the dollars currently spent abroad to support 737 overseas bases would be spent at home. Income for foreigners would become income for Americans, and the trade deficit would shrink.The impact of the 737 military base payrolls on the US economy would end the housing crisis and bring back the 140,000 highly paid financial services jobs, the loss of which this year has cost the US $42 billion in consumer income.

Foreclosures and bankruptcies would plummet.If this isn't enough to turn the dollar around, bush's pledge not to appoint an attorney general if Michael Mukasey is not confirmed offers more promise.

The American empire is being unwound on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. The year is two months from being over, but already in 2007, despite the touted "surge," deaths of US soldiers are the highest of any year of the war.

The Taliban are the ones who are surging. They have taken control of a third district in Western Afghanistan. Turkey and the Kurds are on the verge of turning northern Iraq into a new war zone, another demonstration of American impotence.Bush's wars have endangered America's puppet regimes.

bush's Pakistani puppet, Musharraf, is fighting for his life. By resorting to "emergency rule" and oppressive measures, Musharraf has intensified his opposition. When Musharraf falls, thanks to bush, the Islamists will have nukes.American generals used to say that the wars Bush started in the Middle East would take 10 years to win.

On Oct. 31, General John Abizaid, former commander of US forces in the Middle East, put paid to that optimistic forecast. Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, Gen. Abizaid said it would be 50 years before US troops can leave the Middle East.There is no possibility of the US remaining in the Middle East for a half century. The dollar and US power are already on their last legs, unbeknownst to Democratic leaders Pelosi and Reid who are preparing yet another blank check for bush's latest request for $200 billion in supplementary war funding.

There isn't any money with which to fund Bush's lost war. It will have to be borrowed from China.The Romans brought on their own demise, but it took them centuries. Bush has finished America in a mere seven years.Even as Gisele throws off the dollar's hegemony, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Columbia are declaring independence from the IMF and World Bank, instruments of US financial hegemony, by creating their own development bank, thus bringing to an end US suzerainty over South America.An empire that has lost its backyard is finished.Paul Craig RobertsOnline JournalThursday November 8, 2007

Just One Of Many

The psychotherapist remembers the strapping young soldier, slouched in a chair in her office one morning last month, asking if God could be punishing him because he had once thought it would be exciting to fight in a war.

By then, the soldier, Sgt. Brad Gaskins, had been absent without leave for 14 months from his post at Fort Drum in northern New York State, waging a lonely battle against an enemy inside his head - memories of death and destruction that he said had besieged him since February 2006, when he returned from a second tour of combat in Iraq.

"I asked Sergeant Gaskins whether he thought about death," the psychotherapist, Rosemary Masters, said in an interview on Thursday. "He said that death seemed like a good alternative to the way he was existing."

On Tuesday, Sergeant Gaskins, 25, traveled almost 300 miles from his home here to the Different Drummer Internet Cafe near Fort Drum. He planned to surrender to military authorities, and his lawyer had notified commanders at the base. But before he could turn himself in, two officials from Fort Drum, accompanied by a pair of police officers from Watertown, showed up at the cafe and placed him under arrest.

Sergeant Gaskins has been hospitalized for his psychiatric problems and could be discharged from the Army for medical reasons. He could be court-martialed, which could land him in prison and prevent him from receiving veterans' benefits.

"I just put faith in God that everything is going to work out according to his plan," he said during a telephone interview on Thursday from a veterans' hospital in Syracuse, where he was taken after his arrest. (On Friday, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, said Benjamin Abel, a civilian spokesman at Fort Drum.) Further showing his mental incompitentness.

"I just want it all to go away, and I want to get my life back," Sergeant Gaskins said.

He had always spoken with pride about his military service, his relatives said. He enlisted in the Army at 17, while still a senior at Orange High School, where he was starting quarterback for the Orange Tornadoes. He used to wear his olive-green dress uniform, lock arms with his paternal grandmother, Bernice Murray, and strut inside New Hope Baptist Church in Newark for Sunday services.

"He joined the military because he wanted to improve his life, to have a career," said Mrs. Murray. "He wanted to help his family and to serve his country, and we were all supportive."

No one knows for sure when Sergeant Gaskins's troubles started. He is, by all accounts, tough and reserved, and he said that he was reluctant to share his emotional distress because he feared his superiors would label him as weak - or, worse, as crazy. But after he returned home on leave in August 2006 and decided he would not go back to Fort Drum, his relatives began to notice signs that something was seriously wrong.

He started biting his nails compulsively, a new habit, one of his aunts said. He slept little, and often woke up screaming and drenched in sweat. He became reclusive, locking himself in a darkened room at his grandmother's apartment in Newark whenever her friends stopped by. His legs trembled as he watched images from Iraq on television. He yelled at his 2-year-old son for no apparent reason, his wife, Amber Gaskins, said. And once, she said, he placed a knife at her throat, as if he did not know who she was.

Even before Sergeant Gaskins came home, there were hints of distress. In a letter from Iraq in September 2005 to Sonia Murray, an aunt who helped raise him, Sergeant Gaskins asked, "Will God forgive me for the people I've killed?"

Sergeant Gaskins, who first went to Iraq in 2003, transferred to Fort Drum, home of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, after his second deployment, and he said he sought help at the base for his problems. He stayed for two weeks at a psychiatric ward at Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, and was prescribed a cocktail of drugs - Zoloft and trazodone for depression, and Ambien to help him sleep. But he said he received no psychotherapy or follow-up care.

He was discharged from Samaritan and returned to the base, but he said the nightmares and flashbacks about Iraq would not go away. At Fort Drum, the tanks, marching soldiers and gunfire became too much to bear. So when he came home on a two-week leave in August 2006, he decided not to go back.

Ms. Masters, the Manhattan psychotherapist who evaluated Sergeant Gaskins on Oct. 18, said his symptoms were consistent with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. The sergeant said he did not receive a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder at the Watertown hospital, and the Army would not discuss his medical history.

An Army report released on Tuesday found that soldiers suffer more mental distress in the transition to life at home than they show upon leaving Iraq. The report also estimated that one in five active duty soldiers and as many as 40 percent of reservists are in need of treatment.

The Army has said that it employs about 200 mental health workers in the field. There are 31 mental health workers at Fort Drum, and there are plans to add 17 more, Mr. Abel said. The base is home to 17,000 troops.

For years, researchers have debated the definition and extent of post-traumatic stress. Many of the experts believe that the frequency of the disorder reported among Vietnam veterans has been inflated.

"I don't know what Brad had when he came home," Mrs. Gaskins said. "All I know is that he had changed. I didn't recognize it; nobody recognized it as post-traumatic stress disorder. He just needed help."

Sergeant Gaskins and his wife had been classmates since the seventh grade, she said, but it was not until their senior year in high school, after she asked him to be her date at a Sadie Hawkins dance, that they started dating.

After graduation, she went to college and he joined the military. They married at Fort Stewart, Ga., on May 9, 2002.

Sergeant Gaskins went to Iraq as a member of the Third Infantry Division. At the end of his first tour, he re-enlisted and transferred to Fort Irwin, Calif., where he was deployed again to Iraq, this time with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. His son, Brandon, was just a month old when Sergeant Gaskins left.

"The first time, he was excited," said Mrs. Gaskins, 25. "He'd say, 'I swear, baby, I'm going to fight hard and get a medal.' But when he came back after the second time, I asked him how it was, and he told me he didn't want to ever talk about it, so I didn't ask anymore."

Last year, after Sergeant Gaskins decided not to return to duty, he sought work in construction and at a warehouse, but could not hold jobs for long, Mrs. Gaskins said. One night, she said, she woke up to find her husband holding a kitchen knife against her throat. She soothed him, and eventually he let go of the knife, but she was scared. She said that she called Fort Drum, and that a victim's advocate at the base advised her to contact the police and get a restraining order against her husband. She acted on the advice that same day.

Sergeant Gaskins was arrested and spent almost two weeks in the Essex County jail, until his grandmother cobbled together $3,000 for his bail. He went to live with a cousin and then disappeared for several months.

"He went into hiding," said Sonia Murray, his aunt. "No one really knows where he was or what he did."

In September, Sergeant Gaskins called his aunt and asked her for help. "He reached a breaking point," she said.

Sergeant Gaskins started going to church again, and he also approached Tod Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, a veterans' advocacy group, for advice. Mr. Ensign persuaded him to see Ms. Masters for a psychological evaluation and encouraged him to turn himself in.

"I'm not a deserter. I've served my country, but now I need help," Sergeant Gaskins said on Thursday. "I don't know what the Army is going to do to me. I'm just hoping to get treated, to get better, to be back to who I was before the war."