CNN news 2010-07-29
With tens of thousands of secret Afghan war documents posted online by a whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks is raising blood pressure once again. This isn't an information leak, folk. It's a gush of battle details from the frontlines - from a reported assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai to raids gone wrong. We are talking six years, 92,000 documents, a blow by blow picture of what our troops are up against on the ground in Afghanistan. And here's more, The New York Times reports suspicions that Pakistan's military spy service is helping the Taliban. The Taliban is using portable heat-seeking missiles against U.S. aircraft. Secret commando units are working off a capture/kill list of about 70 insurgent commanders. WikiLeaks' editor Julian Assange is defending the move.
This material doesn't just reveal occasional abuses by U.S. military. Of course, it has U.S. military reporting on all sorts of abuses by the Taliban, suicide bombers, IEDs going off, and so on. So it does describe the abuses by both sides in this war, and it's how people can really understand what is actually going on and whether they choose to support it or not.
Well, it looks like the wheels are coming off the gravy train in Bell, California, more now on the jaw-dropper of a government abuse story that we first exposed and it just keeps on giving. Let me set the outrageous scene once again. Bell, one of Los Angeles County's poorest places, median income, about 40,000 dollars, a place where the city manager was making nearly 800 grand a year; yes, that's more than President Obama. Keep in mind, we're talking about a state where the pink slip has become the state flower, where they are laying off teachers and cops, raising tuition and charging people for some emergency calls. But it was good to be Robert Rizzo. He doesn't even live in Bell, he doesn't even live in L.A. County and he's got a sweet 900,000-dollar place in Huntington Beach. Look at that, could be a candidate for cribs.
His picture, by the way, a mug shot from his arrest last spring. Police said he was legally drunk times three. Then there's Rizzo's assistant who was making nearly 400,000 dollars and the police chief who was making more than 450 grand. They've all resigned but the people of Bell who've been fired up since this story first broke want more resignations. They want the mayor and three city council members to quit, too. It seems some of those council members are making about 100 grand for their part-time jobs. It should be one hell of a city council meeting tonight. But even if they all quit and Bell starts over this story is far from over.