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| 5/25 |
| 2007/10/25-29 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/California/Arnold] UID:48449 Activity:nil |
10/25 Fox News blames socal fires on Al Qaida
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_advances_theory_that_CA_fires_1024.html
\_ ... while the spread of the fire is blamed on bureaucracy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wildfires_grounded_aircraft
\_ Randi Rhodes blames Blackwater
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2007/10/26/randi-rhodes-suggests-blackwater-started-california-fires |
| 5/25 |
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| rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_advances_theory_that_CA_fires_1024.html Questionable 4-year-old FBI memo presented as new to stoke terror fears Did al Qaeda start the California wildfires? As more than a million people escaped the flames, Fox News anchors couldn't help speculating about a terrorism link to the blazes ravaging southern California. "I've heard some people talk about this a little bit to me, but have you heard anybody suggest that this could be some form of terrorism," Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked Wednesday morning. deliberately set, and Housley reported that authorities arrested one man who set a hillside on fire. Causes of most other fires are still being investigated, and there has been little speculation beyond Fox News about a terror plot. A review of Housley's blog posts about the fire reveals that his characterization of the terror fears perhaps was inflated. If you are a journalist, then these questions need to be asked and investigated. Your coverage is admirable but the emotional journalism about the loss of peoples homes is not helping to find the causes." Fox & Friends co-host Judge Andrew Napolitano tried to serve as the voice of reason. Later Wednesday, Fox anchors returned to fanning the terror fears, digging up a four-year-old FBI memo and presenting it as new information relating to an al Qaeda link to the fires. detailed an al Qaeda detainee's discussion of a plot to set forest fires around the western United States, although investigators couldn't determine whether the detainee was telling the truth, and his plot did not include setting fires in California. Such small discrepancies in dates and details proved to be no obstacles for Fox anchors, who reported that the memo was from "late June of this year" and "is just popping up this morning." The memo was first reported by the Arizona Republic in July 2003, although a Fox anchor said it was reported "five days ago." That confusion seems to stem from an inability to read the date on an Associated Press account of the memo from the time it was first reported. via USA Today, reported, "The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic." On Fox, that information became, "The June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver offices was reported three days ago, excuse me five days ago, by the Arizona Republic." Further distorting the report, Fox failed to mention a key caveat from the 2003 AP story they appear to have ripped from. "Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn't see a need to act further on it." The following video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on October 23, 2007. via ThinkProgress): # DOOCY: Youre looking live at pictures from San Diego Santiago, CA, where the wildfires continue. We were talking earlier in todays telecast with Adam Housley and apparently police officers in a hovering helicopter saw a guy starting one of these fires. And Allison Allison Camerota, an FBI memo from late in June of this year is popping up this morning and it is ominous. CAMEROTA: This actually has happened for many years in the past as well. An FBI sent out to local law-enforcement said that an al Qaeda detainee had given them some information that the next wave of terrorism could be in the form of setting wild fires. Adam Housley said lots of people on his block were asking him about it. CARLSON: If they have this person in custody it probably wont take long to be able to develop a link if there is one. KILMEADE: A June 25 memo from the FBIs Denver offices reported three days ago, excuse me, five days ago, by the Arizona Republic, that is a newspaper, they have been carrying the story and they continue to expand upon it. DOOCY: Brian, the plot they say, according to this detainee, and they dont know if the detainee is telling the truth. We do know for a fact that a number of the fires in southern California are of a suspicious nature and they are investigating arson. |
| news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wildfires_grounded_aircraft fires burned, copters grounded By AARON C DAVIS and MICHAEL R BLOOD, Associated Press Writers 40 minutes ago LOS ANGELES - As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy. How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California's preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record. It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry "fire spotters" who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly. The National Guard's C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They've yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago. "The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds," Republican US Rep. "When you look at what's happened, it's disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging that's put tens of thousands of people in danger." Rohrabacher and other members of California's congressional delegation are demanding answers about aircraft deployment. And some fire officials have grumbled that a quicker deployment of aircraft could have helped corral many of the wildfires that quickly flared out of control and have so far burned 500,000 acres from Malibu to the Mexican border. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials have defended the state's response, saying the intense winds prevented a more timely air attack. "Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain," Schwarzenegger replied angrily to a question Wednesday. "The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here -- we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government -- and they can't fly because of the wind." Indeed, winds reaching 100 mph helped drive the flames and made it exceedingly dangerous to fly. Still, four state helicopters and two from the Navy were able to take off Monday while nearly two dozen others stayed grounded. Thomas Eversole, executive director of the American Helicopter Services & Aerial Firefighting Association, a Virginia-based nonprofit that serves as a liaison between helicopter contractors and federal agencies, said valuable time was lost. "The basis for the initial attack helicopters is to get there when the fire is still small enough that you can contain it," Eversole said. "If you don't get there in time, you quickly run the risk of these fires getting out of control." The first of the 15 or so fires started around midnight Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, fires were raging in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties. At the request of firefighters on the ground, at 4 pm Sunday the state Office of Emergency Services asked the National Guard to supply four helicopters. Under state rules, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection "spotter" must accompany each military and National Guard helicopter to coordinate water drops. The spotters have 24 hours to report for duty, and it took nearly all that time for them and the National Guard crews to assemble. By the time they were ready to go, the winds had made it unsafe to fly. Mike Padilla, aviation chief for the forestry department, acknowledged the Guard's helicopters were ready to fly before the spotters arrived. "Typically we're waiting for them to get crews," Padilla said. In a conference call with reporters Thursday, state officials rejected the notion they were ill-prepared, noting that more than 20 helicopters and airplanes were stockpiled in Southern California ahead of the wildfires because of the danger of flames erupting. But high winds after the fires began meant "there was very little opportunity" to fly, said the forestry department's director, Ruben Grijalva. "This is not a resource shortage on those days, this is a weather-condition problem," he said. Brian Bilbray said state officials told him Tuesday night. Bilbray, who represents parts of San Diego, and other lawmakers were informed that 19 Navy and Marine helicopters were ready to fly, some as early as Sunday, but didn't take off because there were no state fire spotters to accompany the crews, said Bilbray's spokesman, Kurt Bardella. Alarmed, Bilbray quickly helped broker an agreement to waive the spotter requirement, allowing flights to begin Wednesday. "We told them, 'You don't want the public to be asking why these units weren't flying while we had houses burning,'" Bilbray told the AP. By the time the helicopters got airborne, the area burned had quadrupled to more than 390 square miles, and the number of homes destroyed jumped from 34 to more than 700. Criticism from Bilbray and other lawmakers on the call helped lead Grijalva on Wednesday to abandon the state's long-standing policy to have a spotter aboard each aircraft and instead let one spotter orchestrate drops for a squadron of three helicopters. "I directed them to do whatever was necessary to get those other military assets into operation," Grijalva said. He said he could not explain why more spotters were not deployed before the flames spread to ensure that every aircraft ready to fly could take off. Padilla said state spotters do training exercises with the Navy and National Guard and are used to working with them on fires. That's not the case with the Marines, so when helicopters from that branch were made available, the state was caught off guard and had no spotters available. Regardless, he said, safety -- not availability of spotters -- was the overriding concern in determining when to allow aircraft into the skies. Padilla said he didn't want the Marines to participate because they "would have been a distraction" since they weren't trained. "It's no different from me walking into Baghdad and saying, 'I'm ready to fight the bad guys,'" he said. "They would no more want me in their arenas, not being trained, prepared and equipped, than I would want them if they were not trained, prepared and equipped." More than a decade ago, Congress ordered replacement of the aging removable tanks for the military planes because of safety concerns and worries that they wouldn't fit with new-model aircraft. California's firefighting C-130 unit is one of four the Pentagon has positioned across the country to respond to fire disasters. New tanks were designed, but they failed to fit into the latest C-130s. Elton Gallegly said Congress was assured the new tanks would be ready by 2003. Four years later, the US Forest Service and Air Force have yet to approve the revised design. Paula Kurtz said "technical and design difficulties" have delayed the program. Rohrabacher and Gallegly are angered by the delay, which has left no C-130s capable of fighting fires on the West Coast. The last of the older-model C-130s with an original tank was retired by the California National Guard last year. "It's an absolute tragedy, an unacceptable tragedy," Gallegly said. The situation meant that rather than deploying C-130s from inside the state, Schwarzenegger was forced to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to call in the six remaining older C-130s from other states as far away as North Carolina. None of them began fighting the fires until Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, the state relied mostly on smaller retardant tankers that carry about a third of the C-130's 3,000-gallon capacity. "I have actually flown in one and pressed the button," he said. The fires, in their fourth day, had destroyed 1,500 homes and caused at least a half-million people to flee, the largest evacuation in state history. At least 1,200 of the damaged homes were in San Diego County, and officials believe that number will rise. The information contained i... |
| newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2007/10/26/randi-rhodes-suggests-blackwater-started-california-fires assault in which many suspect the culprit to have been 14 Bloody Marys, Air America radio talk host Randi Rhodes has now wandered into Moonbat conspiracy territory with her suggestion that Blackwater was the the cause of the current wildfires in California. here) of what Randi said on the air on Wednesday: I started just doing Google searches to try and figure out. You know, arson, arson, it was like crazy trying to figure out why is that being downplayed? And you know, every time I look for it what comes up, believe it or not, is that Blackwater wants to move to San Diego and build this giant complex in San Diego right where most of the evacuations are taking place and you know. You just know wherever there is fire, this administration will be out there doing what it does best and that is fanning the flames, you know. It just spooks me, I can't explain to you how creepy this whole thing is that you know, you've got these fires. Some of them are thought to be the work of arsonists and in the same breath you've got a community that's on fire that just recently protested Blackwater West. Just recently said no to Blackwater and apparently you don't do that. You know, nobody is saying Blackwater set the fires, that is nobody that doesn't want their house burned down. Nobody is saying that, but it is all so bizarre that this is America and you have to sort of sit there and wonder ... arson, same place Blackwater West wants to be, people protesting. And then you find out that some of the guys that used to work for Blackwater are now in Schwarzenegger's administration. Perhaps Randi needs to take some time off work and volunteer to douse those Calfornia fires with copious quantities of Bloody Marys while wearing a double layer tinfoil hat to protect her leftwing conspiratorial mind from the heat. message board are now weighing in on the possibility of Blackwater causing the California fires. It appears they agree with their heroine about the guilt, based on no evidence, of Blackwater. Here is a sampling of their conspiratorial rants: I thought blackwater was involved in this. Last night Mike Malloy mentioned that he has a suspicion that these fires were set and he said that sounds conspiratorial but after all the years under bushco, truth is scarce and at a premium these days. Of course Blackwater (or those that have a vested interest in Blackwater) set the fires. How many "convenient coincidences" like this will it take for Americans to finally wake up an realize that it has been an "inside job" before (and including) 911 all along. ArchConservative Does anyone even raise an eyebrow any more in the MSM when these lunatics spout their ignornace and hatred? It's getting to a tipping point where these fanatics on the left have to be dealt with in a very public way and shown to be the nutjobs and dangerous individuals they really are. If 20/20 or NightLine or DateLine were ever EVER to do a two or three night expose (like their stings) on these people at Err America and Daily (Lost)Kos, they would crumble. But the sad fact is the MSM aligns itself with these people and will protect them no matter what it takes. It just makes me glad that the conservative movement doesn't have the level of ignorance or the vast numbers of mind-numbed lemmings that the liberals have. Hopefully we are able to turn our anger and outrage into votes and victories. danybhoy I heard this segment on John Gibson's radio show on FoxNewsTalk on XM(he's on Sirius as well, 6-9pm EST). I was cracking up, & I then wondered if she had been schweeling again as well. "1 bourbon,1 scotch,1 beer", & "I drink alone" flooded my head. I also had these same thought when I heard Pete Stark's moronic remarks as well. Johnnye B I was the neo-conservative that mugged Randi Rhodes. I really didn't like it that much but Blackwater told me to do it. They said as soon as I got though they had another job for me to do in California and to make sure I had plenty of matches. What advantages would they have from having all that area burned? I bet I can find a manager of a pretzel factory now working as a paramedic. Does that mean he's cornering the market on choking on pretezels? The amount of gross stupidity evident in these inane statements just makes me wonder how someone got to be where they are able to distribute such stupid things to say. It can't be because of talent, must be Daddy Soros letting anybody and everybody willing to shill for his cause to continuously throw ideas on a wall and see which one sticks. The democrats are right that corporations are buying votes, but it's the democrats that are selling out. "Boats are safe in the harbor, but that's not what they're made for." Gary P Jackson How in heck do you "google" California wildfires and get Blackwater to come up? She needs to lay off what ever she's on, it's makin' her null, and void! Others are gamble-holics, & some people prop up a failed buisiness & watch their money go down the crapper in hopes that it will eventually make money. I know Mark Green thinks he can make money with Error Amerikkka, but he's fooling himself. It does amaze me how insane many of the things said on AAR every hour of every day. Rhodes is nuts, but does'nt come close to Mike Malloy for being disturbed. Sua Sponte 75 to note the people who work for Blackwater have been known to have ten fingers AND toes in addition to two arms AND two legs, have been known to drive in cars, have families, occasionally wear pants, sometimes partaking of orange jello.......... Muuhahahahahahah I think that "mugging" gave her a case of teh stopid.... drillanwr Randi, here's a career changing suggestion ... You MIGHT just make more bucks and be more successful if you quit the radio gig and started writing your goop down in cheap fiction novels. Besides, apparently writers are inspired through their drinking, although it did very little for me. Exactly how in the heck do people like this get to walk around spouting this crap that just forms inside their wooden skulls and roll off their tongues? Hey, Randi, I could probably "google" any number of children related words that you would expect things safe for kids would link to ... and come up with endless porn or child porn sites in the list ... The problem with you, and your ilk, is that you have NO discretion when surfing the web ... You just automatically think everything online is etched in the stone of truth. It was Blackwater that jumped "you" the other day in NYC. He flew the SR-71 Blackbird to the West cost so no one would miss him as he did. He flew low and Darth Vader jumped out with his light saber and started all the fires. William Phelps The media doesn't cover arson because all of the global warming nuts just began their ranting of how these wildfires were caused by climate change. many want to blame Bush for not having the National Guard come in and blow on the fire. What do they expect the Guard to do that wasn't already being done? This is even too far-fetched for Olberman or Matthews at this point. Funny thing is, arson is all I've heard about the wildfires in the last couple of days. They are investigating more into all wildfires, but authorities have confirmed at least two or three arson wildfires. One of the perpetrators ran from police, got cornered, and then was shot to death for attempting to harm an officer. How does she miss a story like that in the news, even liberal news? or maybe the mai-tais are still causing her to think she's being mugged. MikeB Well, there's Randi lying through her tooth again. Why would Blackwater bother doing something that would result in criminal and civil liability on a scale that could bankrupt the corporation several times over, when they could have the owners evicted via the Kelo decision? I swear, if a meteor struck and destroyed the LA Basin, these mental midgets would be spinning some huge conspiracy blaming Blackwater or Halliburton or Bush/Cheney/Rove. bigtimer Looks like Rhodes hasn't learned a darn thing from what ails her, nope, no shame for her latest episode with the alcohol problem, she even looks like she dribbled some all over the front of her shirt... just... |