DebateGate

my prediction:
Israel will play lead in first attack on Iran to shield President Bush from US Congressional Whackjobs.
Iran will attempt to respond and make the mistake of attacking US Troops/US Warships/US Allies
That will open the door for President Bush to give green light to US aerial bombardment of Iran
and the hard core democrats "crying" in Congress will be greatly weakened/silenced because of
public sentiment over Iran "attacking the US Military".


Olmert sounds alarm: Iran has crossed red line for developing a nuclear weapon.
It's too late for sanctions

October 22, 2007, 2:18 PM (GMT+02:00)

This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to military and intelligence sources.

Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.

Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.

Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.''

Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Iran's nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: "I don't think we're stretched in that regard."

It is worth noting that whereas Olmert's visits are officially tagged as part of Israel's campaign for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.

The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard words exchanged between Putin and Iran's supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct. 16.

According to sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that the latest development in Iran's nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any longer; the clerical regime?s options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else facing tough sanctions, or even military action.

The Russian ruler's private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.

Sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putin's dressing-down of Khamenei followed by his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardliners's abrupt action in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi?s threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.

Military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own. Iran would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.

US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a secret underground location.

[source:e-mail]
 

Deadly infections hit British hospitals

In the latest case, the deaths of at least 90 people are blamed on a bacterial outbreak at three facilities in south-central England.

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2007

LONDON -- British health authorities have blamed the deaths of at least 90 people on a virulent bacterial infection that swept through three hospitals in south-central England, where patients allegedly were forced to defecate in their beds and wait for hours for clean sheets.

In one of the worst of a growing number of hospital infection outbreaks in Europe, an additional 255 deaths were partially linked to Clostridium difficile bacterium, which is resistant to many disinfectants and can become more deadly if patients are treated with the wrong antibiotics.

Britain has been reeling over the last year with reports of more than 6,300 hospital-based "superbug" infections at its government-run National Health Service facilities. Those cases of Staphylococcus, or staph, infections that are resistant to common antibiotics appear to be leveling off, while the number of C. difficile cases rose by 7% in 2006, to 56,000.

An intestinal bacterium capable of causing fatal diarrhea, C. difficile is worrisome because it can form spores that are difficult to eradicate with all but the most stringent cleaning.

Patients who are prescribed broad-based antibiotics by doctors unaware of their exposure to C. difficile often fall victim to rapidly worsening infection because the bacterium flourishes as competing bacteria in the intestines die.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month said Britain's hospitals would be cleaned "a ward at a time: walls, ceilings, fittings and ventilation shafts . . . disinfected and scrubbed clean." This week, the government pledged $280 million to help combat C. difficile and $260 million to screen incoming hospital patients for the drug-resistant staph known as MRSA.

Health investigators and patients said the hospitals in the study were beset by nursing shortages. Beds were jammed within a foot of each other, and the administration was preoccupied with meeting budget targets, patients reported.

The daughter of an 87-year-old war veteran who died after being left with soiled sheets and bedsores said her father told her: "What have I done to deserve a place like this?"

"They were taking three hours to change his sheets," Jackie Nixon, whose complaints helped initiate the commission review, said in a telephone interview.

Hospital officials said they were implementing strict anti-infection procedures, including a $2-million cleaning program and new policies on hygiene and antibiotic use.

"We are very sorry about what happened, and we are determined to continue to reduce levels of the infection locally," Dr. Malcolm Stewart, the hospital's medical director, said in a statement. "Our rates [of infection] have dropped dramatically . . . as the result of hard work by our staff."

Britain's National Health Service last year had a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion and faced the potential of thousands of layoffs across a system that serves 10 million hospital patients a year.

C. difficile has been linked to outbreaks in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland, as well as in North America, but Britain appears to have the largest number of cases, health officials said.

"In most of these [other] countries, they've managed to contain it fairly well, but in the U.K., it seems not to have been recognized early enough," said Ben Duncan, spokesman for the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control in Sweden.

Investigators from the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, which looked at three state-run hospitals in Kent and Sussex between 2004 and 2006, found that inadequate hygiene, improper use of antibiotics and crowded conditions contributed to the fatalities, among the highest on record.

Whereas C. difficile was "definitely or probably the main cause of death" for 90 of the patients surveyed, most of whom died between October 2005 and September 2006, infection from the bacterium was linked to 345 deaths over two years, the study found.

A total of 1,100 patients contracted the bug at the three hospitals in the period examined by the report. Other health studies have found that the bacterium was an underlying cause of death of 2,074 patients in England and Wales in 2005.

Auditors found doctors improperly prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics and that hospital wards were too crowded to isolate infected patients.

Overworked nurses complained they didn't have time to wash their hands or properly clean bedpans or toilets. Patients said they saw "exhausted nurses in despair, with their heads in their hands," the investigators said.

Nixon said she had to plead with nurses to care for her father, who contracted the C. difficile infection after bowel surgery.

"One time at 7 in the morning he had to go [to the bathroom] and they didn't have time to bring him a bedpan. They said, 'Look, you'll just have to do it in the bed.' I said, 'OK, now he needs a linen change.' "

"But at 9:30, they said, 'You must go now, visiting times are over.' I said, 'I'm not going until I know he's been changed, and he's clean.' " But there were no clean sheets yet available, the nurses told her. "They said, 'You'll just have to leave it with us.' "


http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-fg-outbreak12oct12,1,1995131.story?coll=la-health-medicine




   

Being so terribly wrong can change your looks overnight



Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, pauses while making remarks
at a news conference in Washington, on Oct. 16, 2007.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg News

URINE TEST
 
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the
government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.

In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have
no problem. What I Do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who
Don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare
check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?

Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I Do, on the
other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their BUTT, doing drugs, while I work.

Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
 
Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't.

Hope you all will pass it along, though . . .something has to change in this country -- and soon!

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Government finally admits: Immigration IS placing huge strain on Britain
By JAMES SLACK


 
17th October 2007

Immigrants are placing a huge strain on public services, Labour finally admitted.

Crime is up, schools are struggling to cope with Eastern European children, community tensions are rising, health services
are coming under enormous pressure and house prices are being driven up, the Government said.

The findings, based on a survey of public sector workers, are the first published by ministers after ten years of an 'open door' immigration policy.

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said it was clear communities were 'unsettled' - and a 'new balance' should be struck between the needs of the economy and society in general.

Those questioned for the survey said busy A&E departments in the East of England, North Lincolnshire and Southampton were being used in place of doctors' surgeries. HIV and TB were singled out as diseases specifically linked to immigration.

Workers in the North West, South West and Scotland all warned of increased 'community tensions' in areas unused to large- scale immigration.

Critics have accused the Government of giving no thought to the strain being placed on schools and hospitals, as ministers focussed solely on boosting the economy with cheap workers from overseas.

Movre recently, they have been afraid to gauge the scale of the problem after woefully underestimating the number of arrivals from Eastern Europe.

Now, after finally carrying out the research, the scale of social impact has been revealed - albeit in what ministers admit is 'patchy' detail.


The report, to be presented to the Government's new Migration Impacts Forum today, fails to put figure on the full cost to society of mass immigration - which is increasing the population by 200,000 every year.

A Home Office study found that migrants helped to grow the economy by ?6billion last year. But experts said this did not mean they had boosted GDP per head, a crucial measure.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the report 'confirms what everyone knows but what Labour have been in denial about - that immigration has a real impact on the housing and public service infrastructure'.

Mr Byrne said: 'The pace of change, particularly in communities that do not have a history of absorbing migrants, has been unsettling and has created challenges for public services.

'This new approach will help us take migration decisions in a new way, starting with our policy towards Romania and Bulgaria.'

Citizens of the two former Communist countries had restrictions imposed when they joined the EU in January this year, limiting the number of work permits to 20,000.

These are due to be reviewed by the end of this year and Mr Byrne said this would be the first decision in which the Government would seek to strike a 'new balance'.

He appears certain to say the restrictions should remain in place. The final decision will be taken by Cabinet in the next few weeks.

Mr Byrne said the impact on public services would also be taken into account when ministers decide how many work permits to give to migrants from outside the EU, when a new points-based system is introduced next year.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'This report clearly shows that immigration is having a massive impact on public services at a local level.

'Ministers are finally admitting that, in certain areas, immigration is causing higher crime, poorer educational provision and overstretched healthcare.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=488005&in_page_id=1770

i sware i am not president bush
after some of my posts and predictions just yesterday
and then watching the president's press conference today
i can see how someone might think i am president bush 


Bush warns of World War III if Iran goes nuclear 
 
Oct 17 11:45 AM US/Eastern
 





US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he had warned world leaders they must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons "if you're interested in avoiding World War III."

"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," Bush said at a White House press conference after Russia cautioned against military action against Tehran's supect atomic program.

"So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071017154505.rci3xjja&show_article=1

which is it?
is hillary lying or would she attack iran?



Clinton would use violence against Tehran

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday October 15, 2007

Hillary Clinton today moved to secure her position as the most hawkish Democrat in the 2008 presidential race, saying she would consider the use of force to compel Iran to abandon its nuclear programme.

In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine intended as a blueprint for the foreign policy of a future Clinton White House, the Democratic frontrunner argues that Iran poses a long term strategic challenge to American and its allies, and that it must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons."If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table," Ms Clinton said.

Elsewhere, Ms Clinton took the edge off her steely posture by saying she would abandon the Bush administration's policy of isolating its enemies, and would deploy diplomacy.

"True statesmanship requires that we engage with our adversaries, not for the sake of talking but because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims."

She says she would even consider offering incentives to Iran in return for a pledge to disarm. However, she sets out a series of stringent conditions that are virtually identical to current White House policy.

"If Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons programme, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilising Iraq, the United States should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives," Ms Clinton wrote.

The article, the latest in a series of position papers from the leading Democratic and Republican contenders for the White House, offers a glimpse at Ms Clinton's efforts to appeal to Democrats seeking a repudiation of the current regime's world view when they begin voting in primaries next January, as well as to the broader electorate that will vote in November 2008.

It arrives only days after Ms Clinton was severely criticised by her Democratic rivals for backing a Senate resolution calling on the US government to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the elite division of Tehran's military, a terrorist entity.

The measure has been argued strenuously by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and other neocons, but such a sweeping designation does not appear to have the support of the state department.

Ms Clinton was the only Democratic candidate to support the resolution, and her rivals said her vote could help the Bush administration make a future case for war against Iran.

Unlike the five other candidates to sketch out their vision of foreign policy to date, Ms Clinton gave little indication of her comprehensive world view.

However, she pledged to avoid the "ideologically blinkered" policies of the current presidency. "Avoid false choices driven by ideology," she wrote.

On Iraq, Ms Clinton offered a small variation on her promises on the campaign trail, saying she would instruct her Pentagon chief and other military leaders to draw up a withdrawal plan within 60 days of her inauguration. However, she would consider leaving behind a residual force in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/hillaryclinton/story/0,,2191830,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront