NSA spying on website visitors..

"NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.

These files, known as 'cookies,' disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake....

Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on." read on...

What was that? Another "oops" in the War on Terror where they keep their illegal activities operable only until someone tells on them. Much like the street criminal who continues to steal until he gets caught. Common crooks, they are.

BTW, how come a spy agency, supposedly as technologically sophisticated and ultra-secret as the NSA not know exactly what the cookie would do when they installed it? Are we to beleive that the US's largest intelligence agency is so incompetent that they don't know what's on their own software? The explanation by Mr. Weber doesn't pass the sniff test. IMHO, they knew exactly what they were doing, and that it was illegal.

Eat them up, yum.

Ex Mizzou Great Released From US Custody in Iraq

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, aka: "Mrs. Anthrax;" "Chemical Sally;" "The 39th Most Wanted Iraqi;" "Five of Hearts;" and "MU Tiger(huh?);" was released from US custody in Iraq on December 19.

According to the BushGang, she was head of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons program. Except that there wasn't one. Oops.
US officials claim that she is no longer a security threat and that Iraqi law allows her release.

Why now? In the wake of Iraq’s elections, U.S. officials hope to indicate to hard-line Sunnis and some former Saddam loyalists that they too have a stake in the new Iraq. Sunni insurgents often have demanded prisoner releases as a condition for ending their violent rebellion. A particularly ruthless group of Sunni kidnappers specifically demanded that Iraqi women detainees—Ammash and Taha key among them—be freed last year after Briton Kenneth Bigley was taken hostage. He was killed in September 2004 after the kidnappers’ deadline passed. [...]
The timing of the gestures of leniency also came just a few days after President George W. Bush conceded that 2003 intelligence reports on Iraq’s purported WMD programs were flawed. Now we’re being told by media quoting a former Western arms inspector, that Ammash was cooperative in detention and provided U.S. interrogators with credible evidence that Saddam did not have an active WMD program before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Dr. Ammash has studied and written about the damaging environmental and biological impact of the first Gulf War, so naturally she was an enemy of the Bush Cabal. She also suffers from cancer that may very well have been caused by Gulf War I's resultant "mixture of toxic, radiological, chemical and electromagnetic exposure."

In other Mizzou news...
Mizzou Math Prof Solves 40 Year Old Problem. The humble Dr. Steven Hofmann solves the Kato Conjecture, downplays his acheivement. Congratulations Dr. Hofmann, you pretty much rock.

Friday afternoon, the Mizzou Football Tigers take on the South Carolina Football Gamecocks in the something-or-other bowl. I should have more to say on this topic, being a devoted Mizzou Football fan/alumnus, and having once lived in Columbia, SC where the U of SC is. I don't, really. Spurrier is my most-hated coach, i could care less about Gamecock sports, and i don't care for Mizzou coach Pinkel, either. i think i'll go to Texas, see the Old 97's, hang with my girl and ignore the game all together. But 'go tigers!' anyway. :)

Iraqis support "cut and run"

The headline reads, "Iraqis Want U.S. Out As Soon As Possible." So, in Shrub's black & white, good and evil world of absolutes, this surely means that the Iraqi people support a policy of "cut and run" esposed by evil freedom haters such as Murtha, Pelosi, and Dean, yes?
Bush (November, 2001): "You're either with us or against us in the war on terror." Well, i guess the Iraqi people are now against us and for the terrorists. Congratulations, Mr. Bush, you have managed to create 26 million terrorists. Mission accomplished.

R.I.P.

Vincent Schiavelli 1948 - 2005