I am sure that by Monday morning everyone will have heard about or seen Stephen Colbert's extraordinary and hilarious "speech" at the White House Press Corps dinner. Engaging his great talent of irony and black humor, Colbert excoriated Bush, the White House Press Corps, and other Bush Administration officials. Bush was present at the event and neither him nor Laura was smiling at the end. In fact, they more or less huffed out immediately afterwards. You have to hand to Colbert. He had the courage to lambaste Bush right in front of his face. Below are links to the "speech." You will both jump with joy and scream with laughter.
STEPHEN COLBERT PART I
STEPHEN COLBERT PART II
In case you cannot access the links for one reason or another, below is the written transcript posted on Editor and Publisher.com Also, the event can be viewed on CSPAN. They rebroadcast events for a limited time. Enjoy!
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER ON COLBERT HERE
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM
So appropriately stated by Al Franken in his recent book...
ROVE IS IN FITZGERALD'S CROSSHAIRS AGAIN
According to Jason Leopold who wrote an article for Truthout.org today entitled "Target Letter Drives Rove Back to Grand Jury," Rove received a letter from Fitzgerald stating that he is a target in the Plame case. However, a spokesman for Rove vehemently denied that Rove is a target of the investigation.
"TARGET LETTER DRIVES ROVE BACK TO GRAND JURY"
ALAS, ROVE’S ATTORNEY DENIES ROVE IS TARGET OF THE INVESTIGATION.
From the Washington Post via RAW STORY.COM. I suppose it all comes down to what you mean by is, where Luskin is concerned. Give it up Luskin. Throw in the towel before you lose professional and personal credibility and your reputation becomes intertwined with the Bush, Inc. sleaze. You are defending a party of pathological liars. Let one of their own twisted ilk defend them. LS
Excerpt:
In a statement issued upon the conclusion of Rove's testimony at the federal courthouse in Washington, attorney Robert D. Luskin said the special counsel in the case, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had advised Rove that he was "not a target of the investigation." However, Luskin said Fitzgerald has not made any decision about charges.
By William Branigin and Jim VandeHei of The Washington Post.com
ROVE TESTIFIES FOR 5TH TIME IN CIA LEAK
OUTED AGENT PLAME WAS WORKING ON IRAN
The Bush liars really screwed up big time. This is what happens when politics, power and money mean more to you than our national security.
Great work by Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story.com
OUTED AGENT PLAME WAS WORKING ON IRAN
ANOTHER GOP LEAKS SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE
Murray Waas of The National Journal wrote a piece about Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and how he disclosed sensitive intelligence that impaired the capture of Saddam. Mr. Waas's sources are former senior intelligence officials. The former officials assert that, on a scale of 1 to 10, the information (on U.S. sanctioned torture prisons in Eastern Europe) leaked to the press by Mary McCarthy is a 6 or 7 while Robert's is an 11. Roberts, however, has not been held accountable in any way, shape or form. So, it’s OK for elected officials to leak information, but not government officials, even when they know elected officials are not only lying, but they are actually committing hard time crimes? LS
"IS THERE A DOUBLE STANDARD ON LEAK PROBES?"
BUSH IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS
If Past Is Prologue, George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President
By JOHN W. DEAN
Findlaw
JOHN DEAN ON BUSH IS BECOMING AN INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS PRESIDENT
----
Friday, Apr. 21, 2006
President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding. In a mid-2004 column, I argued that, at that point, Bush had already demonstrated that he possessed the least attractive and most troubling traits among those that political scientist James Dave Barber has cataloged in his study of Presidents' personality types.
Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the public of confidence in its President, and for which he is directly responsible. This Administration goes through scandals like a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another.
Currently, President Bush is busy reshuffling his staff to reinvigorate his presidency. But if Dr. Barber's work holds true for this president -- as it has for others - the hiring and firing of subordinates will not touch the core problems that have plagued Bush's tenure.
That is because the problems belong to the President - not his staff. And they are problems that go to character, not to strategy.
Barber's Analysis of Presidential Character
As I discussed in my prior column, Barber, after analyzing all the presidents through Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, found repeating patterns of common elements relating to character, worldview, style, approach to dealing with power, and expectations. Based on these findings, Barber concluded that presidents fell into clusters of characteristics.
He also found in this data Presidential work patterns which he described as "active" or "passive." For example, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were highly active; Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan were highly passive.
Barber further analyzed the emotional relationship of presidents toward their work - dividing them into presidents who found their work an emotionally satisfying experience, and thus "positive," and those who found the job emotionally taxing, and thus "negative." Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan, for example, were presidents who enjoyed their work; Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon had "negative" feeling toward it.
From these measurements, Barber developed four repeating categories into which he was able to place all presidents: those like FDR who actively pursued their work and had positive feelings about their efforts (active/positives); those like Nixon who actively pursued the job but had negative feelings about it (active/negatives); those like Reagan who were passive about the job but enjoyed it (passive/positives); and, finally, those who followed the pattern of Thomas Jefferson -- who both was passive and did not enjoy the work (passive/negatives).
Column continues below ?
Interestingly, the category of presidents who proved troublesome under Barber's analysis is that of those who turned out to be active/negatives. Barber placed Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in this class.
In my prior column, I found that the evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush is another active/negative president, and the past two years, since making that initial finding, have only further confirmed my conclusion.
Because active/negative presidencies do not end well, it is instructive to look at where Bush's may be heading.
Bush's "Active/Negative" Presidency
Recent events provide an especially good illustration of Bush's fateful - perhaps fatal - approach. Six generals who have served under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have called for his resignation - making a strong substantive case as to why he should resign. And they are not alone: Editorialists have also persuasively attacked Rumsfeld on the merits.
Yet Bush's defense of Rumsfeld was entirely substance-free. Bush simply told reporters in the Rose Garden that Rumsfeld would stay because "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." He sounded much like a parent telling children how things would be: "I'm the Daddy, that's why."
This, indeed, is how Bush sees the presidency, and it is a point of view that will cause him trouble.
Bush has never understood what presidential scholar Richard Neustadt discovered many years ago: In a democracy, the only real power the presidency commands is the power to persuade. Presidents have their bully pulpit, and the full attention of the news media, 24/7. In addition, they are given the benefit of the doubt when they go to the American people to ask for their support. But as effective as this power can be, it can be equally devastating when it languishes unused - or when a president pretends not to need to use it, as Bush has done.
Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.
Bush is following the classic mistaken pattern of active/negative presidents: As Barber explained, they issue order after order, without public support, until they eventually dissipate the real powers they have -- until "nothing [is] left but the shell of the office." Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all followed this pattern.
Active/negative presidents are risk-takers. (Consider the colossal risk Bush took with the Iraq invasion). And once they have taken a position, they lock on to failed courses of action and insist on rigidly holding steady, even when new facts indicate that flexibility is required.
The source of their rigidity is that they've become emotionally attached to their own positions; to change them, in their minds, would be to change their personal identity, their very essence. That, they are not willing to do at any cost.
Wilson rode his unpopular League of Nations proposal to his ruin; Hoover refused to let the federal government intervene to prevent or lessen a fiscal depression; Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam while misleading Americans (thereby making himself unelectable); and Nixon went down with his bogus defense of Watergate.
George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.
Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.
And this may be his only option: With Bush's limited rhetorical skills, it would be all but impossible for him to persuade any others than his most loyal supporters of his positions. His single salient virtue - as a campaigner - was the ability to stay on-message. He effectively (though inaccurately) portrayed both Al Gore and John Kerry as wafflers, whereas he found consistency in (over)simplifying the issues. But now, he cannot absorb the fact that his message is not one Americans want to hear - that he is being questioned, severely, and that staying on-message will be his downfall.
Other Presidents - other leaders, generally - have been able to listen to critics relatively impassively, believing that there is nothing personal about a debate about how best to achieve shared goals. Some have even turned detractors into supporters - something it's virtually impossible to imagine Bush doing. But not active/negative presidents. And not likely Bush.
The Danger of the "Active/Negative" President Facing A Congressional Rout
Active/negative presidents -- Barber tells us, and history shows -- are driven, persistent, and emphatic. Barber says their pervasive feeling is "I must."
Barber's collective portrait of Wilson, Hoover, Johnson and Nixon now fits George W. Bush too: "He sees himself as having begun with a high purpose, but as being continually forced to compromise in order to achieve the end state he vaguely envisions," Barber writes. He continues, "Battered from all sides . . . he begins to feel his integrity slipping away from him . . . [and] after enduring all this for longer than any mortal should, he rebels and stands his ground. Masking his decision in whatever rhetoric is necessary, he rides the tiger to the end."
Bush's policies have incorporated risk from the outset. A few examples make that clear.
He took the risk that he could capture Osama bin Laden with a small group of CIA operatives and U.S. Army Special forces - and he failed. He took the risk that he could invade Iraq and control the country with fewer troops and less planning than the generals and State Department told him would be possible - and he failed. He took the risk that he could ignore the criminal laws prohibiting torture and the warrantless wiretapping of Americans without being caught - he failed. And he's taken the risk that he can cut the taxes for the rich and run up huge financial deficits without hurting the economy. This, too, will fail, though the consequences will likely fall on future presidents and generations who must repay Bush's debts.
What We Can Expect From Bush in the Future, Based on Barber's Model
As the 2006 midterm elections approach, this active/negative president can be expected to take further risks. If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.
What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.
How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.
One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.
The immensely popular Rudy Giuliani seems the most likely pick, if Giuliani is willing. (A better option for Giuliani might be to hold off, and tacitly position himself as the Republican anti-Bush in 2008.) But Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Bill Frist, and more are possibilities.
Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.
But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.
If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.
There is, however, the possibility of another terrorist attack, and if one occurred, Americans would again rally around the president - wrongly so, since this is a presidency that lives on fear-mongering about terror, but does little to truly address it. The possibility that we might both suffer an attack, and see a boost to Bush come from it, is truly a terrifying thought.
ROVE IS IN FITZGERALD'S CROSSHAIRS AGAIN
According to Jason Leopold who wrote an article for Truthout.org today entitled "Target Letter Drives Rove Back to Grand Jury," Rove received a letter from Fitzgerald stating that he is a target in the Plame case. However, a spokesman for Rove vehemently denied that Rove is a target of the investigation.
"TARGET LETTER DRIVES ROVE BACK TO GRAND JURY"
ALAS, ROVE’S ATTORNEY DENIES ROVE IS TARGET OF THE INVESTIGATION.
From the Washington Post via RAW STORY.COM. I suppose it all comes down to what you mean by is, where Luskin is concerned. Give it up Luskin. Throw in the towel before you lose professional and personal credibility and your reputation becomes intertwined with the Bush, Inc. sleaze. You are defending a party of pathological liars. Let one of their own twisted ilk defend them. LS
Excerpt:
In a statement issued upon the conclusion of Rove's testimony at the federal courthouse in Washington, attorney Robert D. Luskin said the special counsel in the case, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had advised Rove that he was "not a target of the investigation." However, Luskin said Fitzgerald has not made any decision about charges.
By William Branigin and Jim VandeHei of The Washington Post.com
ROVE TESTIFIES FOR 5TH TIME IN CIA LEAK
OUTED AGENT PLAME WAS WORKING ON IRAN
The Bush liars really screwed up big time. This is what happens when politics, power and money mean more to you than our national security.
Great work by Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story.com
OUTED AGENT PLAME WAS WORKING ON IRAN
ANOTHER GOP LEAKS SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE
Murray Waas of The National Journal wrote a piece about Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and how he disclosed sensitive intelligence that impaired the capture of Saddam. Mr. Waas's sources are former senior intelligence officials. The former officials assert that, on a scale of 1 to 10, the information (on U.S. sanctioned torture prisons in Eastern Europe) leaked to the press by Mary McCarthy is a 6 or 7 while Robert's is an 11. Roberts, however, has not been held accountable in any way, shape or form. So, it’s OK for elected officials to leak information, but not government officials, even when they know elected officials are not only lying, but they are actually committing hard time crimes? LS
"IS THERE A DOUBLE STANDARD ON LEAK PROBES?"
BUSH IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS
If Past Is Prologue, George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President
By JOHN W. DEAN
Findlaw
JOHN DEAN ON BUSH IS BECOMING AN INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS PRESIDENT
----
Friday, Apr. 21, 2006
President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding. In a mid-2004 column, I argued that, at that point, Bush had already demonstrated that he possessed the least attractive and most troubling traits among those that political scientist James Dave Barber has cataloged in his study of Presidents' personality types.
Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the public of confidence in its President, and for which he is directly responsible. This Administration goes through scandals like a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another.
Currently, President Bush is busy reshuffling his staff to reinvigorate his presidency. But if Dr. Barber's work holds true for this president -- as it has for others - the hiring and firing of subordinates will not touch the core problems that have plagued Bush's tenure.
That is because the problems belong to the President - not his staff. And they are problems that go to character, not to strategy.
Barber's Analysis of Presidential Character
As I discussed in my prior column, Barber, after analyzing all the presidents through Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, found repeating patterns of common elements relating to character, worldview, style, approach to dealing with power, and expectations. Based on these findings, Barber concluded that presidents fell into clusters of characteristics.
He also found in this data Presidential work patterns which he described as "active" or "passive." For example, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were highly active; Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan were highly passive.
Barber further analyzed the emotional relationship of presidents toward their work - dividing them into presidents who found their work an emotionally satisfying experience, and thus "positive," and those who found the job emotionally taxing, and thus "negative." Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan, for example, were presidents who enjoyed their work; Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon had "negative" feeling toward it.
From these measurements, Barber developed four repeating categories into which he was able to place all presidents: those like FDR who actively pursued their work and had positive feelings about their efforts (active/positives); those like Nixon who actively pursued the job but had negative feelings about it (active/negatives); those like Reagan who were passive about the job but enjoyed it (passive/positives); and, finally, those who followed the pattern of Thomas Jefferson -- who both was passive and did not enjoy the work (passive/negatives).
Column continues below ?
Interestingly, the category of presidents who proved troublesome under Barber's analysis is that of those who turned out to be active/negatives. Barber placed Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in this class.
In my prior column, I found that the evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush is another active/negative president, and the past two years, since making that initial finding, have only further confirmed my conclusion.
Because active/negative presidencies do not end well, it is instructive to look at where Bush's may be heading.
Bush's "Active/Negative" Presidency
Recent events provide an especially good illustration of Bush's fateful - perhaps fatal - approach. Six generals who have served under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have called for his resignation - making a strong substantive case as to why he should resign. And they are not alone: Editorialists have also persuasively attacked Rumsfeld on the merits.
Yet Bush's defense of Rumsfeld was entirely substance-free. Bush simply told reporters in the Rose Garden that Rumsfeld would stay because "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." He sounded much like a parent telling children how things would be: "I'm the Daddy, that's why."
This, indeed, is how Bush sees the presidency, and it is a point of view that will cause him trouble.
Bush has never understood what presidential scholar Richard Neustadt discovered many years ago: In a democracy, the only real power the presidency commands is the power to persuade. Presidents have their bully pulpit, and the full attention of the news media, 24/7. In addition, they are given the benefit of the doubt when they go to the American people to ask for their support. But as effective as this power can be, it can be equally devastating when it languishes unused - or when a president pretends not to need to use it, as Bush has done.
Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.
Bush is following the classic mistaken pattern of active/negative presidents: As Barber explained, they issue order after order, without public support, until they eventually dissipate the real powers they have -- until "nothing [is] left but the shell of the office." Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all followed this pattern.
Active/negative presidents are risk-takers. (Consider the colossal risk Bush took with the Iraq invasion). And once they have taken a position, they lock on to failed courses of action and insist on rigidly holding steady, even when new facts indicate that flexibility is required.
The source of their rigidity is that they've become emotionally attached to their own positions; to change them, in their minds, would be to change their personal identity, their very essence. That, they are not willing to do at any cost.
Wilson rode his unpopular League of Nations proposal to his ruin; Hoover refused to let the federal government intervene to prevent or lessen a fiscal depression; Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam while misleading Americans (thereby making himself unelectable); and Nixon went down with his bogus defense of Watergate.
George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.
Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.
And this may be his only option: With Bush's limited rhetorical skills, it would be all but impossible for him to persuade any others than his most loyal supporters of his positions. His single salient virtue - as a campaigner - was the ability to stay on-message. He effectively (though inaccurately) portrayed both Al Gore and John Kerry as wafflers, whereas he found consistency in (over)simplifying the issues. But now, he cannot absorb the fact that his message is not one Americans want to hear - that he is being questioned, severely, and that staying on-message will be his downfall.
Other Presidents - other leaders, generally - have been able to listen to critics relatively impassively, believing that there is nothing personal about a debate about how best to achieve shared goals. Some have even turned detractors into supporters - something it's virtually impossible to imagine Bush doing. But not active/negative presidents. And not likely Bush.
The Danger of the "Active/Negative" President Facing A Congressional Rout
Active/negative presidents -- Barber tells us, and history shows -- are driven, persistent, and emphatic. Barber says their pervasive feeling is "I must."
Barber's collective portrait of Wilson, Hoover, Johnson and Nixon now fits George W. Bush too: "He sees himself as having begun with a high purpose, but as being continually forced to compromise in order to achieve the end state he vaguely envisions," Barber writes. He continues, "Battered from all sides . . . he begins to feel his integrity slipping away from him . . . [and] after enduring all this for longer than any mortal should, he rebels and stands his ground. Masking his decision in whatever rhetoric is necessary, he rides the tiger to the end."
Bush's policies have incorporated risk from the outset. A few examples make that clear.
He took the risk that he could capture Osama bin Laden with a small group of CIA operatives and U.S. Army Special forces - and he failed. He took the risk that he could invade Iraq and control the country with fewer troops and less planning than the generals and State Department told him would be possible - and he failed. He took the risk that he could ignore the criminal laws prohibiting torture and the warrantless wiretapping of Americans without being caught - he failed. And he's taken the risk that he can cut the taxes for the rich and run up huge financial deficits without hurting the economy. This, too, will fail, though the consequences will likely fall on future presidents and generations who must repay Bush's debts.
What We Can Expect From Bush in the Future, Based on Barber's Model
As the 2006 midterm elections approach, this active/negative president can be expected to take further risks. If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.
What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.
How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.
One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.
The immensely popular Rudy Giuliani seems the most likely pick, if Giuliani is willing. (A better option for Giuliani might be to hold off, and tacitly position himself as the Republican anti-Bush in 2008.) But Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Bill Frist, and more are possibilities.
Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.
But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.
If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.
There is, however, the possibility of another terrorist attack, and if one occurred, Americans would again rally around the president - wrongly so, since this is a presidency that lives on fear-mongering about terror, but does little to truly address it. The possibility that we might both suffer an attack, and see a boost to Bush come from it, is truly a terrifying thought.
Monday, April 24, 2006
BUSH'S PRESIDENCY OF MASS DESTRUCTION
STUNNING: FIRED CIA OFFICER SAID SHE IS NOT THE SOURCE OF THE LEAK ON TORTURE PRISONS IN EASTERN EUROPE
I found this piece on Newsweek.com via Raw Story.com
Excerpt:
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who got into a dispute with McCarthy in the late l980s when she was his supervisor and remains critical of her management style, nonetheless says that he “never saw her allow her political [views] to cloud her analytical judgment.” Johnson maintains the Bush White House is “really damaging the intelligence community” by sending a message to career officials that “unless you are a partisan of the party in power, you cannot be trusted.” This message, Johnson says, is destroying the intelligence community’s “professional ethos.”
FIRED CIA OFFICER DENIES SHE IS THE SOURCE OF THE LEAK
ROVE'S REAL JOB
Want to know the real reason behind Rove's reassignment - try the survival of the Bush Administration. Ken sent this awesome piece by Mr. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post.com.
Excerpt:
As one outside adviser to the administration said, the danger of a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress looms large and would carry huge penalties for Bush. The administration fears "investigations of everything" by congressional committees, this adviser said, and the "possibility of a forced withdrawal from Iraq" through legislative action.
"I don't think they see much chance of accomplishing anything this year," said this Republican strategist, who preferred not to be quoted by name. "The bulk of their agenda, let's say, has been put on hold."
Rove never stopped being political, even when he had formal responsibility for policy. What's intriguing about the shift in the direction of Rove's energies is that it marks a turn from the high politics of a partisan realignment driven by ideas and policies to the more mundane politics of eking out votes, seat by seat and state by state. Most of Rove's grander dreams have died as the president's poll numbers have come crashing down.
"ROVE'S NEW MISSION: SURVIVAL"
ANOTHER GOP CORRUPTION SCANDAL INCHING TOWARD THE WHITE HOUSE
The GOP phone jamming incident in New Hampshire incident three years ago have the makings of Water Gate II. I found this piece on Bloomberg.com via The Huffington Post.
SENATE VOTE WIDENS AS DEMOCRATS PROBE WHITE HOUSE LINK
BUSH TOLD BY CIA, PRIOR TO THE INVASION OF IRAQ, THAT THERE WAS NOTHING TO THE NIGER URANIUM ASSERTIONS.
I am sure many of us saw 60 Minutes last night, or at least heard about the interview with the retired CIA officer. Josh Marshal of Talking Points Memo.com makes some very interesting observations.
JOSH MARSHALL PIECE ON 60 MINUTE INTERVIEW WITH CIA OFFICER
POSSIBLE BOMBSHELL FROM ILLINOIS: STATE LEGISLATURE IS PREPARING TO UTILIZE LITTLE KNOWN RULE OF HOUSE TO BRING BUSH IMPEACHMENT CHARGES
Ken sent this mind blowing piece from OP ED NEWS.COM
April 22, 2006
Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges
by Steven Leser
http://www.opednews.com
The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.
Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is linked below at the end of this article. One of the interesting points is that one of the items, the one specified as a felony, that the NSA was directed by the President to spy on American citizens without warrant, is not in dispute. That fact should prove an interesting dilemma for a Republican controlled US House that clearly is not only loathe to initiate impeachment proceedings, but does not even want to thoroughly investigate any of the five items brought up by the Illinois Assembly as high crimes and/or misdemeanors. Should HJR0125 be passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the US House will be forced by House Rules to take up the issue of impeachment as a privileged bill, meaning it will take precedence over other House business.
The Illinois General Assembly joins a growing chorus of voices calling for censure or impeachment of President Bush including Democratic state committees in Vermont, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina as well as the residents themselves of seven towns in Vermont, seventy Vermont state legislators and Congressman John Conyers. The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation. If and when Illinois HJR0125 hits the capitol and the individual charges are publicly investigated, that number is likely to grow rapidly. Combined with the very real likelihood that Rove is about to be indicted in the LeakGate investigation, and Bush is in real trouble beyond his plummeting poll numbers. His cronies in the Republican dominated congress will probably save him from the embarassment of an impeachment conviction, for now, but his Presidency will be all but finished.
The text of the Illinois bill and information on its status are available here:
http://tinyurl.com/nhs3r
I found this piece on Newsweek.com via Raw Story.com
Excerpt:
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who got into a dispute with McCarthy in the late l980s when she was his supervisor and remains critical of her management style, nonetheless says that he “never saw her allow her political [views] to cloud her analytical judgment.” Johnson maintains the Bush White House is “really damaging the intelligence community” by sending a message to career officials that “unless you are a partisan of the party in power, you cannot be trusted.” This message, Johnson says, is destroying the intelligence community’s “professional ethos.”
FIRED CIA OFFICER DENIES SHE IS THE SOURCE OF THE LEAK
ROVE'S REAL JOB
Want to know the real reason behind Rove's reassignment - try the survival of the Bush Administration. Ken sent this awesome piece by Mr. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post.com.
Excerpt:
As one outside adviser to the administration said, the danger of a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress looms large and would carry huge penalties for Bush. The administration fears "investigations of everything" by congressional committees, this adviser said, and the "possibility of a forced withdrawal from Iraq" through legislative action.
"I don't think they see much chance of accomplishing anything this year," said this Republican strategist, who preferred not to be quoted by name. "The bulk of their agenda, let's say, has been put on hold."
Rove never stopped being political, even when he had formal responsibility for policy. What's intriguing about the shift in the direction of Rove's energies is that it marks a turn from the high politics of a partisan realignment driven by ideas and policies to the more mundane politics of eking out votes, seat by seat and state by state. Most of Rove's grander dreams have died as the president's poll numbers have come crashing down.
"ROVE'S NEW MISSION: SURVIVAL"
ANOTHER GOP CORRUPTION SCANDAL INCHING TOWARD THE WHITE HOUSE
The GOP phone jamming incident in New Hampshire incident three years ago have the makings of Water Gate II. I found this piece on Bloomberg.com via The Huffington Post.
SENATE VOTE WIDENS AS DEMOCRATS PROBE WHITE HOUSE LINK
BUSH TOLD BY CIA, PRIOR TO THE INVASION OF IRAQ, THAT THERE WAS NOTHING TO THE NIGER URANIUM ASSERTIONS.
I am sure many of us saw 60 Minutes last night, or at least heard about the interview with the retired CIA officer. Josh Marshal of Talking Points Memo.com makes some very interesting observations.
JOSH MARSHALL PIECE ON 60 MINUTE INTERVIEW WITH CIA OFFICER
POSSIBLE BOMBSHELL FROM ILLINOIS: STATE LEGISLATURE IS PREPARING TO UTILIZE LITTLE KNOWN RULE OF HOUSE TO BRING BUSH IMPEACHMENT CHARGES
Ken sent this mind blowing piece from OP ED NEWS.COM
April 22, 2006
Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges
by Steven Leser
http://www.opednews.com
The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.
Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is linked below at the end of this article. One of the interesting points is that one of the items, the one specified as a felony, that the NSA was directed by the President to spy on American citizens without warrant, is not in dispute. That fact should prove an interesting dilemma for a Republican controlled US House that clearly is not only loathe to initiate impeachment proceedings, but does not even want to thoroughly investigate any of the five items brought up by the Illinois Assembly as high crimes and/or misdemeanors. Should HJR0125 be passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the US House will be forced by House Rules to take up the issue of impeachment as a privileged bill, meaning it will take precedence over other House business.
The Illinois General Assembly joins a growing chorus of voices calling for censure or impeachment of President Bush including Democratic state committees in Vermont, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina as well as the residents themselves of seven towns in Vermont, seventy Vermont state legislators and Congressman John Conyers. The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation. If and when Illinois HJR0125 hits the capitol and the individual charges are publicly investigated, that number is likely to grow rapidly. Combined with the very real likelihood that Rove is about to be indicted in the LeakGate investigation, and Bush is in real trouble beyond his plummeting poll numbers. His cronies in the Republican dominated congress will probably save him from the embarassment of an impeachment conviction, for now, but his Presidency will be all but finished.
The text of the Illinois bill and information on its status are available here:
http://tinyurl.com/nhs3r
Thursday, April 20, 2006
AMERICA: WE SEEM TO BE IN A CRISIS MODE
Sorry folks...due to job related responsibilities, I have been out of pocket of late. LS
Moving on, no one seems to like W. anymore, including certain officials in the CIA. I found this incredible piece on a Harper's blog.
"The CIA 'Wehrmacht'" by Ken Silverstein
Excerpt:
This former senior officer said there “seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people” at the agency to avoid involvement in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially “renditions”—the practice whereby the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the CIA: “There's an SS group within the agency that's willing to do anything and there's a Wehrmacht group that is saying, 'I'm not gonna touch this stuff'.”
THE CIA WEHRMACHT
EVEN BUSH LOVING FOX NEWS IS REPORTING HIS MOST RECENT PLUNGE IN APPROVAL RATING
How are O'Reilly and Hannity dealing? Not to mention Bill Hemmer who fairly recently bailed CNN for FOX. Now even the neonuts cannot deny that something is terribly wrong in Washington. LS
"FOX NEWS POLL: GLOOMY ECONOMIC VIEWS; BUSH APPROVAL AT NEW LOW"
FOX NEWS ON BUSH'S ALL TIME LOW APPROVAL RATING
MEET THE PRESS HOST TIM RUSSERT SAYS BUSH CAN'T FIRE RUMSFELD BECAUSE IT WOULD BE LIKE FIRING HIMSELF
Ken sent this article from ThinkProgress.org.
TIM RUSSERT ON WHY BUSH CAN'T FIRE RUMSFELD
WHITE HOUSE SHIFTS INTO SURVIVAL MODE
Another great find from Ken who found the piece on the Washington Post.com today. Many Republicans are suggesting that Rove has been reassigned to elections and politics, only, in order to salvage the party's chances in the forthcoming 2006 midterm elections. Insiders told ABC News today, however, that Rove was demoted because Fitzgerald is" fixing to" indict him. We shall see how this plays out. LS
WH SHIFTS INTO SURVIVAL MODE
GRAND JURY HEARS EVIDENCE AGAINST ROVE
TRUTHOUT.ORG PIECE ON EVIDENCE AGAINST ROVE
CHENEY IS UP TO HIS EVIL TRICKS AGAIN. HE HIRED A FORMER CONTRA/IRAN ARMS DEALER TO SURVEIL DISCUSSIONS WITH IRAN
Now we know for certain that we are in a whole world of hurt to come. LS
Excerpt:
As reported by RAW STORY last Thursday, the Defense Department has created a special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran. According to current and former intelligence officials, the latest revelations of Ghorbanifar’s involvement again illustrate that Cheney and the Pentagon continue to work on the periphery of protocol in order to bypass US intelligence agencies and resources.
RAW STORY.COM ON CHENEY, THE ARMS DEALER AND IRAN
THIS IS REALLY BAD NEWS..... AS IF IT COULD GET WORSE. BUT WE ARE IN DARK TIMES UNDER BUSH AND CHENEY SO ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
FROM TRUTHOUT ORG. "BUSH, A CRISIS ALMOST WITHOUT EQUAL"
This is breath taking. LS
Written by Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher
"BUSH, A CRISIS ALMOST WITHOUT EQUAL
Moving on, no one seems to like W. anymore, including certain officials in the CIA. I found this incredible piece on a Harper's blog.
"The CIA 'Wehrmacht'" by Ken Silverstein
Excerpt:
This former senior officer said there “seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people” at the agency to avoid involvement in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially “renditions”—the practice whereby the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the CIA: “There's an SS group within the agency that's willing to do anything and there's a Wehrmacht group that is saying, 'I'm not gonna touch this stuff'.”
THE CIA WEHRMACHT
EVEN BUSH LOVING FOX NEWS IS REPORTING HIS MOST RECENT PLUNGE IN APPROVAL RATING
How are O'Reilly and Hannity dealing? Not to mention Bill Hemmer who fairly recently bailed CNN for FOX. Now even the neonuts cannot deny that something is terribly wrong in Washington. LS
"FOX NEWS POLL: GLOOMY ECONOMIC VIEWS; BUSH APPROVAL AT NEW LOW"
FOX NEWS ON BUSH'S ALL TIME LOW APPROVAL RATING
MEET THE PRESS HOST TIM RUSSERT SAYS BUSH CAN'T FIRE RUMSFELD BECAUSE IT WOULD BE LIKE FIRING HIMSELF
Ken sent this article from ThinkProgress.org.
TIM RUSSERT ON WHY BUSH CAN'T FIRE RUMSFELD
WHITE HOUSE SHIFTS INTO SURVIVAL MODE
Another great find from Ken who found the piece on the Washington Post.com today. Many Republicans are suggesting that Rove has been reassigned to elections and politics, only, in order to salvage the party's chances in the forthcoming 2006 midterm elections. Insiders told ABC News today, however, that Rove was demoted because Fitzgerald is" fixing to" indict him. We shall see how this plays out. LS
WH SHIFTS INTO SURVIVAL MODE
GRAND JURY HEARS EVIDENCE AGAINST ROVE
TRUTHOUT.ORG PIECE ON EVIDENCE AGAINST ROVE
CHENEY IS UP TO HIS EVIL TRICKS AGAIN. HE HIRED A FORMER CONTRA/IRAN ARMS DEALER TO SURVEIL DISCUSSIONS WITH IRAN
Now we know for certain that we are in a whole world of hurt to come. LS
Excerpt:
As reported by RAW STORY last Thursday, the Defense Department has created a special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran. According to current and former intelligence officials, the latest revelations of Ghorbanifar’s involvement again illustrate that Cheney and the Pentagon continue to work on the periphery of protocol in order to bypass US intelligence agencies and resources.
RAW STORY.COM ON CHENEY, THE ARMS DEALER AND IRAN
THIS IS REALLY BAD NEWS..... AS IF IT COULD GET WORSE. BUT WE ARE IN DARK TIMES UNDER BUSH AND CHENEY SO ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
FROM TRUTHOUT ORG. "BUSH, A CRISIS ALMOST WITHOUT EQUAL"
This is breath taking. LS
Written by Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher
"BUSH, A CRISIS ALMOST WITHOUT EQUAL
Friday, April 14, 2006
UNRAVELING BUSH'S LIES
Bush and Co. has taught us a hard and fast lesson about ourselves. On the one hand, we allowed ourselves to be bought and sold by Bush’s twisted metaphors and hallowed promises that we were too uninformed, lazy or complacent to realize. And then there were the outright and countless lies coupled with empty if not self-defeating promises (thanks to the likes of evil doer types like Cheney and Rove) that we all too willingly embraced. As I have ranted and raved about in previous posts, we have been oh so duped. In all fairness to everything, the evildoer types counted on our complacency to realize their goals. And we let them get away with it. Shame on them. Shame on us.
The Bush handlers, immediately after 9/11, seized upon a devastating occasion to hold our nation hostage to their ideology. Prior to 9/11 Bush’s presidency was more or less mired in nothingness. (Oh to return to nothingness.) When the horrific 9/11 event hit us, Bush fled from reading My Pet Goat to elementary school students in Florida to a national bunker in somewhere in nowheresville USA, while the puppet master Cheney, who is quite obviously running the country, holed up in a White House bunker with his wife and other neocon extremists. Perhaps it was in the WH bunker that the magic bullet to save the Bush administration was conceived. This group very cynically and willfully confiscated the catastrophe of 9/11 to advance their ultimate goal to finish the unfinished business (thanks to Bush 1 in their minds) of domination of Iraq and to foment grief and mayhem in the Middle East. Divide, conquer, subjugate, and dominate. Motivation? Do I have to tell you? I think you get it.
Now that the mainstream media has finally awakened to the reality that we are going economically, ethically, and geopolitically straight to hell, where do we go from here?
IS THERE ANY ETHICAL LEADER LEFT AMONG US? Who is that person of character and quality who has the stamina and moral strength to bring us back from the abyss of hell? Who, at this point can possibly right the wrongs and clean up the domestic and geopolitical carnage wreaked by the GOP? Hello? Is anyone out there? LS
IF YOU WANT TO HOLD BUSH AND THE GOP ACCOUNTABLE, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS AND FOLLOW THE MONEY. (Ignore the Bush/GOP numbers - you know now that they are make believe - find the real numbers.) LS
WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION BY MR. PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NYT
April 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Weapons of Math Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Now it can be told: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney based their re-election campaign on lies, damned lies and statistics.
The lies included Mr. Cheney's assertion, more than three months after intelligence analysts determined that the famous Iraqi trailers weren't bioweapons labs, that we were in possession of two "mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox."
The damned lies included Mr. Bush's declaration, in his "Mission Accomplished" speech, that "we have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
The statistics included Mr. Bush's claim, during his debates with John Kerry, that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans."
Compared with the deceptions that led us to war, deceptions about taxes can seem like a minor issue. But it's all of a piece. In fact, my early sense that we were being misled into war came mainly from the resemblance between the administration's sales pitch for the Iraq war ˜ with its evasions, innuendo and constantly changing rationale ˜ and the selling of the Bush tax cuts.
Moreover, the hysterical attacks the administration and its defenders launch against anyone who tries to do the math on tax cuts suggest that this is a very sensitive topic. For example, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa once compared people who say that 40 percent of the Bush tax cuts will go to the richest 1 percent of the population to, yes, Adolf Hitler.
And just as administration officials continued to insist that the trailers were weapons labs long after their own intelligence analysts had concluded otherwise, officials continue to claim that most of the tax cuts went to the middle class even though their own tax analysts know better.
How do I know what the administration's tax analysts know? The facts are there, if you know how to look for them, hidden in one of the administration's propaganda releases.
The Treasury Department has put out an exercise in spin called the "Tax Relief Kit," which tries to create the impression that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income families. Conspicuously missing from the document are any actual numbers about how the tax cuts were distributed among different income classes. Yet Treasury analysts have calculated those numbers, and there's enough information in the "kit" to figure out what they discovered.
An explanation of how to extract the administration's estimates of the distribution of tax cuts from the "Tax Relief Kit" is here. Here's the bottom line: about 32 percent of the tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people whose income this year will be at least $341,773. About 53 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population. Remember, these are the administration's own numbers numbers that it refuses to release to the public.
I'm sure that this column will provoke a furious counterattack from the administration, an all-out attempt to discredit my math. Yet if I'm wrong, there's an easy way to prove it: just release the raw data used to construct the table titled "Projected Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income in 2006." Memo to reporters: if the administration doesn't release those numbers, that's in effect a confession of guilt, an implicit admission that the data contradict the administration's spin.
And what about the people Senator Grassley compared to Hitler, those who say that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans will receive 40 percent of the tax cuts? Although the "Tax Relief Kit" asserts that "nearly all of the tax cut provisions" are already in effect, that's not true: one crucial piece of the Bush tax cuts, elimination of the estate tax, hasn't taken effect yet. Since only estates bigger than $2 million, or $4 million for a married couple, face taxation, the great bulk of the gains from estate tax repeal will go to the wealthiest 1 percent. This will raise their share of the overall tax cuts to, you guessed it, about 40 percent.
Again, the point isn't merely that the Bush administration has squandered the budget surplus it inherited on tax cuts for the wealthy. It's the fact that the administration has spent its entire term in office lying about the nature of those tax cuts. And all the world now knows what I suspected from the start: an administration that lies about taxes will also lie about other, graver matters.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/opinion/14krugman.html
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE FOLKS: THE GOP STUPENDOUS LIE
Ken sent this humdinger today. Do your homework and look up the Sensenbrenner Bill in the Library of Congress. It takes a lot of time, patience and work BUT DO IT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD if you want to know the truth and be able to make informed decisions, dudes and dudettes. LS
This blows my mind: The GOPs introduced a bill in congress turning illegal immigration from a civil offense to a felony. The Democrats fought tooth and nail against this, almost unanimously.
This has turned out to be a bad political move for the GOPs, so guess what they're doing? They're running Spanish language ads saying the Democrats are trying to turn illegal immigration into a felony. I think this will explode in their faces. -K (Me too! LS)
More on the RNC's Immigration Bamboozle
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000381.php
By Justin Rood - April 14, 2006, 4:39 PM
As Josh has mentioned, the GOP is claiming that Democrats have voted to make illegal immigration a felony crime. Exactly the opposite is the case. Ken Mehlman's RNC is even running ads based on this lie.
Here's what happened: Late last year GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wrote and sponsored a bill that makes illegal immigration a felony. It's currently a civil offense.
After he got the bill out of committee, it caused such a hue and cry that Sensenbrenner tried to backpedal, and offered an amendment to soften his language, and make illegal immigration just a misdemeanor crime. (That's still worse than a civil offense.)
Over 190 Democrats joined 65 Republicans in voting against that amendment because they didn't think it should be criminalized at all.
The bill went to the floor with the felony language included; it passed on overwhelming Republican support.
The RNC wouldn't return my calls, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) office was closed. When I reached a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), he told me that the GOP claim was based on the committee's vote on the amendment: "It was based on the 191 dems voting on the Sensenbrenner amendment to change it from a felony to a misdemeanor."
So while a GOP Chairman came up with the idea of making immigration a felony, introduced a bill to make it a felony, and pushed it through the House on Republican votes, the Democrats' refusal even to make it a misdemeanor means they're the ones who want to make it a felony.
The Bush handlers, immediately after 9/11, seized upon a devastating occasion to hold our nation hostage to their ideology. Prior to 9/11 Bush’s presidency was more or less mired in nothingness. (Oh to return to nothingness.) When the horrific 9/11 event hit us, Bush fled from reading My Pet Goat to elementary school students in Florida to a national bunker in somewhere in nowheresville USA, while the puppet master Cheney, who is quite obviously running the country, holed up in a White House bunker with his wife and other neocon extremists. Perhaps it was in the WH bunker that the magic bullet to save the Bush administration was conceived. This group very cynically and willfully confiscated the catastrophe of 9/11 to advance their ultimate goal to finish the unfinished business (thanks to Bush 1 in their minds) of domination of Iraq and to foment grief and mayhem in the Middle East. Divide, conquer, subjugate, and dominate. Motivation? Do I have to tell you? I think you get it.
Now that the mainstream media has finally awakened to the reality that we are going economically, ethically, and geopolitically straight to hell, where do we go from here?
IS THERE ANY ETHICAL LEADER LEFT AMONG US? Who is that person of character and quality who has the stamina and moral strength to bring us back from the abyss of hell? Who, at this point can possibly right the wrongs and clean up the domestic and geopolitical carnage wreaked by the GOP? Hello? Is anyone out there? LS
IF YOU WANT TO HOLD BUSH AND THE GOP ACCOUNTABLE, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS AND FOLLOW THE MONEY. (Ignore the Bush/GOP numbers - you know now that they are make believe - find the real numbers.) LS
WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION BY MR. PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NYT
April 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Weapons of Math Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Now it can be told: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney based their re-election campaign on lies, damned lies and statistics.
The lies included Mr. Cheney's assertion, more than three months after intelligence analysts determined that the famous Iraqi trailers weren't bioweapons labs, that we were in possession of two "mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox."
The damned lies included Mr. Bush's declaration, in his "Mission Accomplished" speech, that "we have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
The statistics included Mr. Bush's claim, during his debates with John Kerry, that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans."
Compared with the deceptions that led us to war, deceptions about taxes can seem like a minor issue. But it's all of a piece. In fact, my early sense that we were being misled into war came mainly from the resemblance between the administration's sales pitch for the Iraq war ˜ with its evasions, innuendo and constantly changing rationale ˜ and the selling of the Bush tax cuts.
Moreover, the hysterical attacks the administration and its defenders launch against anyone who tries to do the math on tax cuts suggest that this is a very sensitive topic. For example, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa once compared people who say that 40 percent of the Bush tax cuts will go to the richest 1 percent of the population to, yes, Adolf Hitler.
And just as administration officials continued to insist that the trailers were weapons labs long after their own intelligence analysts had concluded otherwise, officials continue to claim that most of the tax cuts went to the middle class even though their own tax analysts know better.
How do I know what the administration's tax analysts know? The facts are there, if you know how to look for them, hidden in one of the administration's propaganda releases.
The Treasury Department has put out an exercise in spin called the "Tax Relief Kit," which tries to create the impression that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income families. Conspicuously missing from the document are any actual numbers about how the tax cuts were distributed among different income classes. Yet Treasury analysts have calculated those numbers, and there's enough information in the "kit" to figure out what they discovered.
An explanation of how to extract the administration's estimates of the distribution of tax cuts from the "Tax Relief Kit" is here. Here's the bottom line: about 32 percent of the tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people whose income this year will be at least $341,773. About 53 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population. Remember, these are the administration's own numbers numbers that it refuses to release to the public.
I'm sure that this column will provoke a furious counterattack from the administration, an all-out attempt to discredit my math. Yet if I'm wrong, there's an easy way to prove it: just release the raw data used to construct the table titled "Projected Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income in 2006." Memo to reporters: if the administration doesn't release those numbers, that's in effect a confession of guilt, an implicit admission that the data contradict the administration's spin.
And what about the people Senator Grassley compared to Hitler, those who say that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans will receive 40 percent of the tax cuts? Although the "Tax Relief Kit" asserts that "nearly all of the tax cut provisions" are already in effect, that's not true: one crucial piece of the Bush tax cuts, elimination of the estate tax, hasn't taken effect yet. Since only estates bigger than $2 million, or $4 million for a married couple, face taxation, the great bulk of the gains from estate tax repeal will go to the wealthiest 1 percent. This will raise their share of the overall tax cuts to, you guessed it, about 40 percent.
Again, the point isn't merely that the Bush administration has squandered the budget surplus it inherited on tax cuts for the wealthy. It's the fact that the administration has spent its entire term in office lying about the nature of those tax cuts. And all the world now knows what I suspected from the start: an administration that lies about taxes will also lie about other, graver matters.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/opinion/14krugman.html
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE FOLKS: THE GOP STUPENDOUS LIE
Ken sent this humdinger today. Do your homework and look up the Sensenbrenner Bill in the Library of Congress. It takes a lot of time, patience and work BUT DO IT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD if you want to know the truth and be able to make informed decisions, dudes and dudettes. LS
This blows my mind: The GOPs introduced a bill in congress turning illegal immigration from a civil offense to a felony. The Democrats fought tooth and nail against this, almost unanimously.
This has turned out to be a bad political move for the GOPs, so guess what they're doing? They're running Spanish language ads saying the Democrats are trying to turn illegal immigration into a felony. I think this will explode in their faces. -K (Me too! LS)
More on the RNC's Immigration Bamboozle
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000381.php
By Justin Rood - April 14, 2006, 4:39 PM
As Josh has mentioned, the GOP is claiming that Democrats have voted to make illegal immigration a felony crime. Exactly the opposite is the case. Ken Mehlman's RNC is even running ads based on this lie.
Here's what happened: Late last year GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wrote and sponsored a bill that makes illegal immigration a felony. It's currently a civil offense.
After he got the bill out of committee, it caused such a hue and cry that Sensenbrenner tried to backpedal, and offered an amendment to soften his language, and make illegal immigration just a misdemeanor crime. (That's still worse than a civil offense.)
Over 190 Democrats joined 65 Republicans in voting against that amendment because they didn't think it should be criminalized at all.
The bill went to the floor with the felony language included; it passed on overwhelming Republican support.
The RNC wouldn't return my calls, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) office was closed. When I reached a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), he told me that the GOP claim was based on the committee's vote on the amendment: "It was based on the 191 dems voting on the Sensenbrenner amendment to change it from a felony to a misdemeanor."
So while a GOP Chairman came up with the idea of making immigration a felony, introduced a bill to make it a felony, and pushed it through the House on Republican votes, the Democrats' refusal even to make it a misdemeanor means they're the ones who want to make it a felony.
THE GOP: AN ETHOS OF PERVASIVE AND INSIDIOUS CORRUPTION
"MEET MR. REPUBLICAN: JACK ABRAMOFF"
Ken sent this astounding and well researched piece on Abramoff's insatiable greed and corruption and how his poisoned tentacles reached far within our government. Abramoff bought lawmakers, journalists and used charities and non-profits to hide money. Mr. Matt Taibbi wrote this article for Rolling Stone Magazine on 3/24/06. LS
Excerpt:
Once Congress was conquered, Abramoff, Norquist, et al., apparently discovered a means for turning it into a pure engine for profit. The game they may have discovered worked like this: One lobbyist (Abramoff, say) represents one group of interests -- for example, the Malaysian government. Then, a lobbyist friend of Abramoff's (say, Norquist) represents an antagonist to Abramoff's client, in this case, let's say dissident leader Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim asks Norquist to press his case against the Malaysian state in Washington; Norquist complies and uses his contacts to raise a stink on the Hill. Abramoff's client, unnerved, turns to Abramoff to make the problem go away. Abramoff dutifully goes to the same friends Norquist applied to in the first place, and the problem does indeed go away. In the end, everyone is happy and both lobbyists have performed and gotten paid. Abramoff apparently pulled this kind of double-dealing scheme more than once, as he and Ralph Reed appear to have run a similar con on the Coushatta and Tigua Indian tribes, who were on opposite sides of a gaming dispute.
Everyone sold themselves on the cheap. They apparently got Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and many others in the House, to lie back and open their legs all the way for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions. In the Third World, corrupt politicians at least get something for selling out the people -- boats, mansions, villas in the south of France. If you offered the lowest, most drunken ex-mobster in the Russian Duma $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in soft money for his vote, he would laugh in your face; he might even be insulted enough to shoot you. But Jack Abramoff apparently got any number of congressmen to play ball for the same kind of money.
They paid journalists to change their opinions; as it turns out, the right to free speech is worth about $2,000 a column to America's journalists like Doug Bandow of Copley News Service. And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004.
They targeted Congress, the courts, the integrity of elections, and the free press, and in every corner they found willing partners who could be had for a few bucks and a package of golf tees. That doesn't mean Jack Abramoff was so very smart. No, what that says is that America is no longer trying very hard. And when Jack Abramoff hears his sentence, ours will certainly be made plain soon after. Jack Abramoff was the Patient Zero of Washington corruption. He's the girl at school that everyone got a piece of, including two janitors in their forties. It strains all credulity to think that he's been talking to the Department of Justice for months and yet prosecutors still have to "encircle" a lone congressman, Bob Ney, as has been reported. If Ney is the big target the government made a deal with Abramoff for, we'll know we've been had again.
"If you're venal and cunning enough, like him, you can do it," says Slaughter, when asked if the American system has become easy to beat. "But he had a lot of help."
MEET MR. REPUBLICAN: JACK ABRAMOFF
BUSH: LIAR-IN-CHIEF
"THE SLOW MOTION TRAP"
This is a wonderful and insightful article written by Sidney Blumenthal on Salon.com
He writes that Bush's presidency, built upon secrecy and now we know, mired in lies, is doomed. The more Bush tries to free himself the more his past deceptions bind him, according to Mr. Blumenthal. How so very true! LS
SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL'S "THE SLOW MOTION TRAP"
"WHITE HOUSE WHOPPER BECOMES AN INSTANT CLASSIC"
Very witty and wonderful article written by one of my favorite Texans, Molly Ivins for Truthout.org. about the non existent mobile bio weapons trailers.
MOLLY IVINS: WHITE HOUSE WHOPPER BECOMES INSTANT CLASSIC
MORE ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GOP CRIMINAL PHONE JAMMING SCHEME
From The Washington Post.com
WAPO'S "2002 N.H. SCANDAL SHADOWS GOP ANEW"
BUSH PUTS THE MIDDLE EAST ON BOIL
The source of this piece, firedoglake.com is an extremely informative and well-researched blog.
65,000 Iraqi families have had to flee from their homes to safer parts of the country because of the fighting. They are urged to leave immediately with no belongings except for a few clothes. It is horrible to think we are responsible for this humanitarian cataclysm. I have never been more ashamed of my country. Thank you, GOP, and Democrat lawmakers who allowed Bush to go nuts. Thank you. LS
FIREDOGLAKE: BUSH PUTS MIDDLE EAST ON BOIL
AT LEAST SIX RETIRED GENERALS WANT RUMSFELD TO GO
One has to be retired to speak out against the Bush people. Otherwise they will be instantly fired, their retirement pensions will be shot to hell, their reputations will be smeared unmercifully; they will be accused of committing crimes they did not commit; they will be ostracized on a number of levels: e.g. blackballed from GOP clubs and organizations. In short, the Bush people set out to destroy their critics in any way, shape or form they can. The sick and twisted devils enjoy doing it, too. LS
By Mr. Thom Shanker of The New York Times on 4/13/06.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: "MORE RETIRED GENERALS CALL FOR RUMFELD'S RESIGNATION
ANOTHER OPINION ON RUMMY'S RESIGNATION: "IT'S THE PRESIDENT, STUPID"
Very interesting observation by Mr. Greg Palast on the U.K. Guardian.com
Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship
Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign
The Guardian - Comment
Friday, April 14, 2006
By Greg Palast
Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation.
Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it.
I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight.
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell?
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza?
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?
Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense.
Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.
Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."
Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries." The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation."
But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.
On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired."
Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.
Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it.
For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.
There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.
Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.)
President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo."
When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished."
Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid.
Ken sent this astounding and well researched piece on Abramoff's insatiable greed and corruption and how his poisoned tentacles reached far within our government. Abramoff bought lawmakers, journalists and used charities and non-profits to hide money. Mr. Matt Taibbi wrote this article for Rolling Stone Magazine on 3/24/06. LS
Excerpt:
Once Congress was conquered, Abramoff, Norquist, et al., apparently discovered a means for turning it into a pure engine for profit. The game they may have discovered worked like this: One lobbyist (Abramoff, say) represents one group of interests -- for example, the Malaysian government. Then, a lobbyist friend of Abramoff's (say, Norquist) represents an antagonist to Abramoff's client, in this case, let's say dissident leader Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim asks Norquist to press his case against the Malaysian state in Washington; Norquist complies and uses his contacts to raise a stink on the Hill. Abramoff's client, unnerved, turns to Abramoff to make the problem go away. Abramoff dutifully goes to the same friends Norquist applied to in the first place, and the problem does indeed go away. In the end, everyone is happy and both lobbyists have performed and gotten paid. Abramoff apparently pulled this kind of double-dealing scheme more than once, as he and Ralph Reed appear to have run a similar con on the Coushatta and Tigua Indian tribes, who were on opposite sides of a gaming dispute.
Everyone sold themselves on the cheap. They apparently got Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and many others in the House, to lie back and open their legs all the way for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions. In the Third World, corrupt politicians at least get something for selling out the people -- boats, mansions, villas in the south of France. If you offered the lowest, most drunken ex-mobster in the Russian Duma $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in soft money for his vote, he would laugh in your face; he might even be insulted enough to shoot you. But Jack Abramoff apparently got any number of congressmen to play ball for the same kind of money.
They paid journalists to change their opinions; as it turns out, the right to free speech is worth about $2,000 a column to America's journalists like Doug Bandow of Copley News Service. And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004.
They targeted Congress, the courts, the integrity of elections, and the free press, and in every corner they found willing partners who could be had for a few bucks and a package of golf tees. That doesn't mean Jack Abramoff was so very smart. No, what that says is that America is no longer trying very hard. And when Jack Abramoff hears his sentence, ours will certainly be made plain soon after. Jack Abramoff was the Patient Zero of Washington corruption. He's the girl at school that everyone got a piece of, including two janitors in their forties. It strains all credulity to think that he's been talking to the Department of Justice for months and yet prosecutors still have to "encircle" a lone congressman, Bob Ney, as has been reported. If Ney is the big target the government made a deal with Abramoff for, we'll know we've been had again.
"If you're venal and cunning enough, like him, you can do it," says Slaughter, when asked if the American system has become easy to beat. "But he had a lot of help."
MEET MR. REPUBLICAN: JACK ABRAMOFF
BUSH: LIAR-IN-CHIEF
"THE SLOW MOTION TRAP"
This is a wonderful and insightful article written by Sidney Blumenthal on Salon.com
He writes that Bush's presidency, built upon secrecy and now we know, mired in lies, is doomed. The more Bush tries to free himself the more his past deceptions bind him, according to Mr. Blumenthal. How so very true! LS
SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL'S "THE SLOW MOTION TRAP"
"WHITE HOUSE WHOPPER BECOMES AN INSTANT CLASSIC"
Very witty and wonderful article written by one of my favorite Texans, Molly Ivins for Truthout.org. about the non existent mobile bio weapons trailers.
MOLLY IVINS: WHITE HOUSE WHOPPER BECOMES INSTANT CLASSIC
MORE ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GOP CRIMINAL PHONE JAMMING SCHEME
From The Washington Post.com
WAPO'S "2002 N.H. SCANDAL SHADOWS GOP ANEW"
BUSH PUTS THE MIDDLE EAST ON BOIL
The source of this piece, firedoglake.com is an extremely informative and well-researched blog.
65,000 Iraqi families have had to flee from their homes to safer parts of the country because of the fighting. They are urged to leave immediately with no belongings except for a few clothes. It is horrible to think we are responsible for this humanitarian cataclysm. I have never been more ashamed of my country. Thank you, GOP, and Democrat lawmakers who allowed Bush to go nuts. Thank you. LS
FIREDOGLAKE: BUSH PUTS MIDDLE EAST ON BOIL
AT LEAST SIX RETIRED GENERALS WANT RUMSFELD TO GO
One has to be retired to speak out against the Bush people. Otherwise they will be instantly fired, their retirement pensions will be shot to hell, their reputations will be smeared unmercifully; they will be accused of committing crimes they did not commit; they will be ostracized on a number of levels: e.g. blackballed from GOP clubs and organizations. In short, the Bush people set out to destroy their critics in any way, shape or form they can. The sick and twisted devils enjoy doing it, too. LS
By Mr. Thom Shanker of The New York Times on 4/13/06.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: "MORE RETIRED GENERALS CALL FOR RUMFELD'S RESIGNATION
ANOTHER OPINION ON RUMMY'S RESIGNATION: "IT'S THE PRESIDENT, STUPID"
Very interesting observation by Mr. Greg Palast on the U.K. Guardian.com
Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship
Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign
The Guardian - Comment
Friday, April 14, 2006
By Greg Palast
Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation.
Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it.
I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight.
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell?
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza?
It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney?
Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense.
Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.
Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."
Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries." The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation."
But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.
On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired."
Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.
Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it.
For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.
There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.
Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.)
President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo."
When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished."
Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
CHENEY AND RUMSFELD ARE SECRETLY FOMENTING A WAR IN IRAN
Raw Story.com broke this horrifying story. Rumsfeld, under orders by an increasingly manic and blood thirsty Cheney, hired Iraqi TERRORISTS (some of whom have killed US soldiers and civilians) to stir up trouble in Iran. Saddam himself hired these thugs to kill his enemies and trouble makers when he was in power. Indeed an official at the UN said we are already at war with Iran! According to the report, Condi Rice tried to put the brakes on Cheney/Rumsfeld’s insane scheme but Cheney outfoxed her. Cheney and Rumsfeld are becoming increasingly fanatical and wicked. Will someone please lock these two up and throw away the key! Please! Before they blow up the planet. LS
RAW STORY.COM ON CHENEY/RUMSFELD OUTSOURCING SPECIAL OPS TO IRAQI TERRORISTS
On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say
04/13/2006 @ 11:14 am
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna
The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say.
One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.
One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
“The MEK is run by a brother and sister who were given bases in northern Baghdad by Saddam,” the intelligence official told RAW STORY. “The US army secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion, but they did not secure the MEK and let them basically be because [then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz was thinking ahead to Iran.”
Another former intelligence official added that the US military had detained as many as 3,500 members of MEK at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf since the start of the war, including the highest level ranking MEK leaders. Ashraf is about 60 miles west of the Iranian border.
This intelligence official, wishing to remain anonymous, confirmed the policy tensions and also described them as most departments on one side and the Pentegon on the other.
“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”
Stephen Cambone is the Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office did not return calls for comment.
Recent bomb attacks in Iran have been linked to former Baathist group
Eight killed in Iran bomb attacks
Bomb blasts hit Iran oil cities
Bomb blasts rock Iran
According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.
“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.
“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.
Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.
In a stunning repeat of pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration continues to publicly call for action and pursue diplomatic solutions to allegations that Iran is bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the administration is already well underway and engaged in ground operations in Iran.
The British, however, are less enthused about a strike in Iran. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has called an American strike on Iran “inconceivable,” while Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he’s keeping all his options open. Asked about the MEK, a senior British intelligence official said that the Brits are not yet sure of what the situation on Iran’s southern border is, but vehemently condemned any joint activity with the terrorist organization.
“We don’t know who precisely is carrying out those attacks in the south but we believe it is MEK,” the British official said.
When asked if the US military is running the MEK, the source was careful to indicate that while there is a US unit in Iran gathering information, it’s difficult to say if they are in any way involved with MEK.
“The people who are inside Iran are from a US Special mission unit,” the source explained. “They are called by codenames, but would not be involved in the bomb blasts. They want to get in, get the intelligence and go out with anyone knowing they have been there. But the bomb blasts might be diversions away from the operations by this US special mission unit. The British are definitely not involved in any of this.”
Moreover, the British official expressed that any operations with MEK would violate their own military code and would absolutely not be tolerated.
“We have very strict rules and can’t go consorting with terrorists," the official added. "We did it in Northern Ireland. No more.”
#
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the geographic position of Khuzestan Province. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
RAW STORY.COM ON CHENEY/RUMSFELD OUTSOURCING SPECIAL OPS TO IRAQI TERRORISTS
On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say
04/13/2006 @ 11:14 am
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna
The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say.
One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.
One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
“The MEK is run by a brother and sister who were given bases in northern Baghdad by Saddam,” the intelligence official told RAW STORY. “The US army secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion, but they did not secure the MEK and let them basically be because [then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz was thinking ahead to Iran.”
Another former intelligence official added that the US military had detained as many as 3,500 members of MEK at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf since the start of the war, including the highest level ranking MEK leaders. Ashraf is about 60 miles west of the Iranian border.
This intelligence official, wishing to remain anonymous, confirmed the policy tensions and also described them as most departments on one side and the Pentegon on the other.
“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”
Stephen Cambone is the Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office did not return calls for comment.
Recent bomb attacks in Iran have been linked to former Baathist group
Eight killed in Iran bomb attacks
Bomb blasts hit Iran oil cities
Bomb blasts rock Iran
According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.
“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.
“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.
Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.
In a stunning repeat of pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration continues to publicly call for action and pursue diplomatic solutions to allegations that Iran is bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the administration is already well underway and engaged in ground operations in Iran.
The British, however, are less enthused about a strike in Iran. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has called an American strike on Iran “inconceivable,” while Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he’s keeping all his options open. Asked about the MEK, a senior British intelligence official said that the Brits are not yet sure of what the situation on Iran’s southern border is, but vehemently condemned any joint activity with the terrorist organization.
“We don’t know who precisely is carrying out those attacks in the south but we believe it is MEK,” the British official said.
When asked if the US military is running the MEK, the source was careful to indicate that while there is a US unit in Iran gathering information, it’s difficult to say if they are in any way involved with MEK.
“The people who are inside Iran are from a US Special mission unit,” the source explained. “They are called by codenames, but would not be involved in the bomb blasts. They want to get in, get the intelligence and go out with anyone knowing they have been there. But the bomb blasts might be diversions away from the operations by this US special mission unit. The British are definitely not involved in any of this.”
Moreover, the British official expressed that any operations with MEK would violate their own military code and would absolutely not be tolerated.
“We have very strict rules and can’t go consorting with terrorists," the official added. "We did it in Northern Ireland. No more.”
#
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the geographic position of Khuzestan Province. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
THE LIAR-IN-CHIEF; HIS ENABLERS AND ACCOMPLICES
Of course they are all members of the GOP. LS
POWELL SAYS HE AND STATE DEPT. EXPERTS NEVER BELIEVED IRAQ POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE U.S. SAID BUSH BLEW OFF THE STATE DEPT. EXPERTS AND WENT INSTEAD WITH CHENEY'S NEOCON AND INSANE PLOT TO DOMINATE THE PLANET.
I found this rather surprising revelation written by Mr. Robert Scheer on Alternet.com. It is quite interesting that former State Dept. and Pentagon officials are suddenly coming out of their sealed lips closets. LS
NOW HE TELLS US BY ROBERT SCHEER
BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS SAID TO HAVE EXAGERATED AL-QAEDA’S ROLE IN THE BOMBING IN LONDON AND THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ.
This is so totally mind blowing that I can’t totally comprehend it right now. Talk about psychic numbing… I am getting there at this point. Read below and decide for yourself.
In case you might think a psycho or a traitor wrote the article, Mr. Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist and author who was formerly with the BBC and the British Foreign Office. Why do we have to learn this kind of information from the Brits first? It will take 6-10 months before the same will appear in The Washington Post or New York Times. LS
Excerpt:
This is not to say that Al Qaeda is not dangerous. It is a serious security challenge. It may even one day be a strategic threat, especially if it gets hold of some WMD. But it is not the threat Bush and Blair tell us it is.
From Tom Paine.com by Tom Porteous
"THE AL-QAEDA MYTH"
THE ONGOING GOP CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION AND CONSPIRACY
An aide to DeLay paid a conservative think tank to advance Washington lobbying efforts. The Profiteers? Abramoff found a way to hide money and purchase influence through so-called conservative nonprofits; Rudy (DeLay's former aide) got kickbacks for setting up the deals to hide the money; and DeLay both pimped and hammered his legislative influence through Congress for golf trips. Bet he'll say he did nothing wrong. Another stand up GOP dude. LS
RAW STORY.COM PIECE ON RUDY ET AL. HERE
ABRAMOFF USED DONATIONS TO ELICIT HELP FROM THE GOP
And, GOP members were more than happy to accommodate Abramoff in exchange for the donations. A marriage made in hell, me thinks... LS
From USA Today via Raw Story. LS
Excerpt
A former federal prosecutor who specialized in fundraising cases said the e-mails are "circumstantial evidence that the money may have a relationship to certain legislative action" and would be useful in criminal prosecution if bolstered by other evidence.
"It memorializes what a lot of people suspect: that money buys access," said Charles La Bella, who oversaw a 1990s investigation into Clinton-era fundraising. "Politicians, because of the way the system is set up, need money. And money is used as a carrot and a stick by lobbyists to encourage or discourage legislative action."
ABRAMOFF AND BRIBERY
POWELL SAYS HE AND STATE DEPT. EXPERTS NEVER BELIEVED IRAQ POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE U.S. SAID BUSH BLEW OFF THE STATE DEPT. EXPERTS AND WENT INSTEAD WITH CHENEY'S NEOCON AND INSANE PLOT TO DOMINATE THE PLANET.
I found this rather surprising revelation written by Mr. Robert Scheer on Alternet.com. It is quite interesting that former State Dept. and Pentagon officials are suddenly coming out of their sealed lips closets. LS
NOW HE TELLS US BY ROBERT SCHEER
BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS SAID TO HAVE EXAGERATED AL-QAEDA’S ROLE IN THE BOMBING IN LONDON AND THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ.
This is so totally mind blowing that I can’t totally comprehend it right now. Talk about psychic numbing… I am getting there at this point. Read below and decide for yourself.
In case you might think a psycho or a traitor wrote the article, Mr. Tom Porteous is a syndicated columnist and author who was formerly with the BBC and the British Foreign Office. Why do we have to learn this kind of information from the Brits first? It will take 6-10 months before the same will appear in The Washington Post or New York Times. LS
Excerpt:
This is not to say that Al Qaeda is not dangerous. It is a serious security challenge. It may even one day be a strategic threat, especially if it gets hold of some WMD. But it is not the threat Bush and Blair tell us it is.
From Tom Paine.com by Tom Porteous
"THE AL-QAEDA MYTH"
THE ONGOING GOP CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION AND CONSPIRACY
An aide to DeLay paid a conservative think tank to advance Washington lobbying efforts. The Profiteers? Abramoff found a way to hide money and purchase influence through so-called conservative nonprofits; Rudy (DeLay's former aide) got kickbacks for setting up the deals to hide the money; and DeLay both pimped and hammered his legislative influence through Congress for golf trips. Bet he'll say he did nothing wrong. Another stand up GOP dude. LS
RAW STORY.COM PIECE ON RUDY ET AL. HERE
ABRAMOFF USED DONATIONS TO ELICIT HELP FROM THE GOP
And, GOP members were more than happy to accommodate Abramoff in exchange for the donations. A marriage made in hell, me thinks... LS
From USA Today via Raw Story. LS
Excerpt
A former federal prosecutor who specialized in fundraising cases said the e-mails are "circumstantial evidence that the money may have a relationship to certain legislative action" and would be useful in criminal prosecution if bolstered by other evidence.
"It memorializes what a lot of people suspect: that money buys access," said Charles La Bella, who oversaw a 1990s investigation into Clinton-era fundraising. "Politicians, because of the way the system is set up, need money. And money is used as a carrot and a stick by lobbyists to encourage or discourage legislative action."
ABRAMOFF AND BRIBERY
LIAR-IN-CHIEF
I found this piece by Joby Warrick on the Washington Post.com via THE HUFFINGTON POST
BUSH ADMINISTRATION PUSHED IRAQI WMD NOTION DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY
Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
Primary Piece of Evidence
The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers -- along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was claimed to be a nuclear weapons program -- were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.
Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team's reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration's public views about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.
Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004 -- 15 months after the technical report was written -- said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.
"Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say," said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington -- May 28, 2003 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group's first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.
Kay, in an interview, said senior CIA officials had advised him upon accepting the survey group's leadership in June 2003 that some experts in the DIA were "backsliding" on whether the trailers were weapons labs. But Kay said he was not apprised of the technical team's findings until late 2003, near the end of his time as the group's leader.
"If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq," Kay said, "I would certainly have given their findings more weight."
A Defector's Tales
Even before the trailers were seized in spring 2003, the mobile labs had achieved mythic stature. As early as the mid-1990s, weapons inspectors from the United Nations chased phantom mobile labs that were said to be mounted on trucks or rail cars, churning out tons of anthrax by night and moving to new locations each day. No such labs were found, but many officials believed the stories, thanks in large part to elaborate tales told by Iraqi defectors.
The CIA's star informant, an Iraqi with the code name Curveball, was a self-proclaimed chemical engineer who defected to Germany in 1999 and requested asylum. For four years, the Baghdad native passed secrets about alleged Iraqi banned weapons to the CIA indirectly, through Germany's intelligence service. Curveball provided descriptions of mobile labs and said he had supervised work in one of them. He even described a catastrophic 1998 accident in one lab that left 12 Iraqis dead.
Curveball's detailed descriptions -- which were officially discredited in 2004 -- helped CIA artists create color diagrams of the labs, which Powell later used to argue the case for military intervention in Iraq before the U.N. Security Council.
"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said in the Feb. 5, 2003, speech. Thanks to those descriptions, he said, "We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like."
The trailers discovered in the Iraqi desert resembled the drawings well enough, at least from a distance. One of them, a flatbed trailer covered by tarps, was found in April by Kurdish fighters near the northern city of Irbil. The second was captured by U.S. forces near Mosul. Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.
Photos of the trailers were quickly circulated, and many weapons experts were convinced that the long-sought mobile labs had been found.
Yet reaction from Iraqi sources was troublingly inconsistent. Curveball, shown photos of the trailers, confirmed they were mobile labs and even pointed out key features. But other Iraqi informants in internal reports disputed Curveball's story and claimed the trailers had a benign purpose: producing hydrogen for weather balloons.
Back at the Pentagon, DIA officials attempted a quick resolution of the dispute. The task fell to the "Jefferson Project," a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats. Project leaders put together a team of volunteers, eight Americans and a Briton, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production. All were nongovernment employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department's national labs.
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."
News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.
But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Key Components Lacking
Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team's findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group's nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.
That report said the trailers were "impractical for biological agent production," lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were "almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen," the survey group reported.
The group's report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.
"It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket," said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group.
The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," on its Web site.
After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?
In the end, the final report -- 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix -- remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.
"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.
Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.
"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it."
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION PUSHED IRAQI WMD NOTION DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY
Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; A01
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."
Primary Piece of Evidence
The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers -- along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was claimed to be a nuclear weapons program -- were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.
Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team's reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration's public views about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.
Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004 -- 15 months after the technical report was written -- said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.
"Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say," said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington -- May 28, 2003 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply "mobile biological laboratories" in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be "mobile biological facilities," and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group's first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was "no consensus" among intelligence officials, the trailers "could be made to work" as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.
Kay, in an interview, said senior CIA officials had advised him upon accepting the survey group's leadership in June 2003 that some experts in the DIA were "backsliding" on whether the trailers were weapons labs. But Kay said he was not apprised of the technical team's findings until late 2003, near the end of his time as the group's leader.
"If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq," Kay said, "I would certainly have given their findings more weight."
A Defector's Tales
Even before the trailers were seized in spring 2003, the mobile labs had achieved mythic stature. As early as the mid-1990s, weapons inspectors from the United Nations chased phantom mobile labs that were said to be mounted on trucks or rail cars, churning out tons of anthrax by night and moving to new locations each day. No such labs were found, but many officials believed the stories, thanks in large part to elaborate tales told by Iraqi defectors.
The CIA's star informant, an Iraqi with the code name Curveball, was a self-proclaimed chemical engineer who defected to Germany in 1999 and requested asylum. For four years, the Baghdad native passed secrets about alleged Iraqi banned weapons to the CIA indirectly, through Germany's intelligence service. Curveball provided descriptions of mobile labs and said he had supervised work in one of them. He even described a catastrophic 1998 accident in one lab that left 12 Iraqis dead.
Curveball's detailed descriptions -- which were officially discredited in 2004 -- helped CIA artists create color diagrams of the labs, which Powell later used to argue the case for military intervention in Iraq before the U.N. Security Council.
"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said in the Feb. 5, 2003, speech. Thanks to those descriptions, he said, "We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like."
The trailers discovered in the Iraqi desert resembled the drawings well enough, at least from a distance. One of them, a flatbed trailer covered by tarps, was found in April by Kurdish fighters near the northern city of Irbil. The second was captured by U.S. forces near Mosul. Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.
Photos of the trailers were quickly circulated, and many weapons experts were convinced that the long-sought mobile labs had been found.
Yet reaction from Iraqi sources was troublingly inconsistent. Curveball, shown photos of the trailers, confirmed they were mobile labs and even pointed out key features. But other Iraqi informants in internal reports disputed Curveball's story and claimed the trailers had a benign purpose: producing hydrogen for weather balloons.
Back at the Pentagon, DIA officials attempted a quick resolution of the dispute. The task fell to the "Jefferson Project," a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats. Project leaders put together a team of volunteers, eight Americans and a Briton, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production. All were nongovernment employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department's national labs.
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."
News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.
But the technical team's preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Key Components Lacking
Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team's findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group's nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.
That report said the trailers were "impractical for biological agent production," lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were "almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen," the survey group reported.
The group's report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.
"It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket," said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group.
The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, "Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants," on its Web site.
After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report's conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?
In the end, the final report -- 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix -- remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.
"It was very assertive," said one weapons expert familiar with the report's contents.
Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.
"I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member recalled. "It never happened. And I just had to live with it."
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
BUSH IS FIXIN' TO LAUNCH WAR NUMERO THREE
"Naturally the common people don't want war....
All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country."
--Reichsmarschall Herman Goering--
IRAN TRIED TO NEGOTIATE WITH BUSH IN 2003 BUT NEOCON CABAL PREFER DESTABLIZATION AND REGIME CHANGE TO DIPLOMACY AND PEACE.
I found this piece by Mr. Gareth Porter via The Randi Rhodes Show.com
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005."
NEOCON CABAL BLOCKED 2003 TALKS WITH IRAN
ACCORDING TO SEYMOUR HERSH, BUSH PLANS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON IRAN
As many of us know, Mr. Hersh is a renowned investigative reporter with long-term relationships with officials at the Pentagon. His article is sobering and very frightening. LS
From The New Yorker Magazine courtesy of TRUTHOUT.ORG
Excerpts:
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?' "
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?' "
SEYMOUR HERSH ON IRAN
PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ON BUSH AND NUKING IRAN
"OH YES HE WOULD"
PAUL KRUGMAN: "OH YES HE WOULD"
HOW CRAZY ARE THEY? Will Rivers Pitt follows up on the Hersh and Krugman articles on Bush and Iran. Another great find on TRUTHOUT.ORG
HOW CRAZY ARE THEY BY WILL RIVERS PITT
GETTING BACK TO LIFE AS USUAL IN BUSH'S WORLD OF HURT AND MAYHEM: UPDATED TIME LINE ON PLAME GATE
By Mr. Larry Johnson of Truthout.org
LARRY JOHNSON ON PLAME GATE TIME LINE
ON GOP TRAILER TRASH AND ITS ROUTINE LOW LIFE BEHAVIOR: PHONE JAMMING STUNT IN NEW HAMPSHIRE POINTS TO WHITE HOUSE
Found on Raw Story.com
GOP PHONE JAMMING STUNT POINTS TO WHITE HOUSE
All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country."
--Reichsmarschall Herman Goering--
IRAN TRIED TO NEGOTIATE WITH BUSH IN 2003 BUT NEOCON CABAL PREFER DESTABLIZATION AND REGIME CHANGE TO DIPLOMACY AND PEACE.
I found this piece by Mr. Gareth Porter via The Randi Rhodes Show.com
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005."
NEOCON CABAL BLOCKED 2003 TALKS WITH IRAN
ACCORDING TO SEYMOUR HERSH, BUSH PLANS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON IRAN
As many of us know, Mr. Hersh is a renowned investigative reporter with long-term relationships with officials at the Pentagon. His article is sobering and very frightening. LS
From The New Yorker Magazine courtesy of TRUTHOUT.ORG
Excerpts:
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?' "
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?' "
SEYMOUR HERSH ON IRAN
PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ON BUSH AND NUKING IRAN
"OH YES HE WOULD"
PAUL KRUGMAN: "OH YES HE WOULD"
HOW CRAZY ARE THEY? Will Rivers Pitt follows up on the Hersh and Krugman articles on Bush and Iran. Another great find on TRUTHOUT.ORG
HOW CRAZY ARE THEY BY WILL RIVERS PITT
GETTING BACK TO LIFE AS USUAL IN BUSH'S WORLD OF HURT AND MAYHEM: UPDATED TIME LINE ON PLAME GATE
By Mr. Larry Johnson of Truthout.org
LARRY JOHNSON ON PLAME GATE TIME LINE
ON GOP TRAILER TRASH AND ITS ROUTINE LOW LIFE BEHAVIOR: PHONE JAMMING STUNT IN NEW HAMPSHIRE POINTS TO WHITE HOUSE
Found on Raw Story.com
GOP PHONE JAMMING STUNT POINTS TO WHITE HOUSE
Monday, April 10, 2006
"BLOWING CHENEY'S COVER"
This is an extraordinary article written by Mr. Ray McGovern on TOM PAINE.COM
Blowing Cheney's Cover
Ray McGovern
April 10, 2006
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A 27-year veteran of the CIA, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
When you invest so much effort into tangling the web—in this case, corrupting intelligence analysis in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq—it becomes hard to know when to stop. Vice President Dick Cheney went to inordinate lengths, including 10 visits to CIA headquarters, to ensure that that crucial NIE on weapons of mass destruction was alarmist enough to scare Congress into authorizing war. And when the evidence turned out to be flimsy, Cheney had a back-up plan: The CIA made me do it.
Ever since their exaggerated claims about Iraq’s possession of WMD turned out to be baseless, the Bush administration’s defense has rested on blaming the government’s intelligence analysts. But one of the great revelations from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s court filing last week is more evidence that the White House—not the CIA—distorted intelligence on Iraq. It was then-chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, acting on orders from Cheney, who presented evidence of Iraq seeking nuclear weapons material to reporters as a “key judgment” from the NIE, when in fact it was a subject of debate in the intelligence community.
The White House plan to scapegoat the intelligence community about Iraq—aided by eager-to-please CIA Director George Tenet—worked beautifully. But only for a while. The plan faltered once it became clear there were no WMD and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson blew the whistle on the centerpiece report used to deceive Congress and conjure up the specter of a mushroom cloud. That report conveyed the cockamamie story about Iraq seeking uranium in the African country of Niger, in which Cheney took uncommon interest.
Cockamamie? Easy to say in retrospect, you say. No, it was easy to say from the outset. And that is why CIA analysts in early 2002 threw it into the circular file, where it deserved to be—for several good reasons. For starters, the government of Niger does not control the uranium mined there. Rather, it is tightly controlled and monitored by an international consortium led by the French. CIA analysts all agreed that the notion that Baghdad could somehow siphon off some of that uranium and spirit it back to Iraq was preposterous.
The Pentagon’s own intelligence-gathering unit—the Defense Intelligence Agency —however, immediately recognized the report for its huge potential to please Vice President Cheney, not to mention its direct boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and wrote it up in a DIA publication. The various investigations of intelligence performance on Iraq show that Cheney took a real shine to the report. Never mind its dubious provenance, or that it could be shown to be false on its face; it served his goal of portraying Iraq as a threat.
The DIA report was on Cheney’s desk one morning in February 2002, when the CIA briefer arrived with the the president’s Daily Brief. I’ll bet Cheney rues that day, for he made the mistake of asking the briefer to find out what CIA analysts thought of the Iraq-Niger report. CIA managers decided to send Joe Wilson to Niger to seek more information on the report. Who better? Wilson, fluent in French, had served in Niger, and had been our last acting ambassador in Baghdad. And he had been asked by the CIA to perform similar special assignments since his retirement from the Department of State.
Wilson went to Niger, found the story baseless—as had previous investigations by the U.S. embassy in Niger and a U.S. general dispatched from Heidelberg—and reported this promptly to the CIA officials who had sent him, who in turn advised the office of the vice president.
No matter. Cheney and Libby put the report on life support and eventually insisted that it be included in the (in)famous NIE prepared in the fall of 2002. The malleable Tenet acquiesced to leaving the DIA-crafted language in the NIE that he signed and released on October 1, 2002. Yet, a day or two later, Tenet seems to have had a pang of conscience; he successfully pleaded with the White House to excise the Iraq-Niger story from a key presidential speech—but the train had left the station. On October 7, President Bush warned the nation that the first sign that Iraq has a nuclear weapon “could come in the form of a mushroom cloud”—a formula repeated by Condoleezza Rice on October 8 and then-Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clark on October 9. On October 10 and 11, the Senate and House voted for war.
Fast forward to January 2003, when President Bush’s State of the Union address pulled out all stops in beating the drums for war. As Joe Wilson watched the speech, he found it puzzling to hear the president repeat the story about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa. There must be new intelligence on this, thought Wilson, but he quickly learned it was the same sorry story. He quietly sought to persuade the White House to issue a correction, but was given the brush off. Wilson persisted, and in the end warned then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that, as a matter of conscience, he would be forced to tell the American people that the uranium story was bogus. The reply, through a Rice intermediary: “Go ahead! Who will believe you?”
Six months later, in early July 2003—more than three months into the war in Iraq—the administration’s claims of “Mission Accomplished” proved to be premature. And, worse still, no WMD were anywhere to be found. Even the domesticated U.S. press that led the cheerleading for war seemed a bit unnerved at the discovery that there were no discoveries. (This was before outrage fatigue set in.) Things at the White House were growing very tense.
It is now abundantly clear—thanks to the release of Fitzgerald’s court papers—how the White House chose to counter Wilson’s charge that the administration had “twisted” intelligence to justify war. Adding insult to injury, not only did Wilson author the July 6 New York Times op-ed titled “What I Did Not Find in Africa;” he also chose to forgo diplomatic parlance in telling Washington Post reporters, “This begs the question regarding what else they are lying about.” Wilson had thrown down the gauntlet.
In something of a panic, Cheney picked it up. First, he and Libby tried to get the CIA to support the story about Iraq and Niger. The answer was no. So the administration conceded publicly on July 7 that the information should not have been included in the State Of The Union address. On July 8 Cheney’s counteroffensive began. According to Libby, he was dispatched to Bush administration darling Judy Miller of The New York Times to explain why Wilson’s charges were wrong. The White House did not twist the intelligence to justify invading Iran: “The CIA made us do it.”
Toward this end, Libby claims he was given permission by Cheney and Bush to release information from the NIE, which, as noted above, had already been cooked to Cheney’s recipe. The passage chosen for highlighting? A paragraph buried on page 24 of the 90-page NIE:
“Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake…A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of ‘pure uranium’ (probably yellowcake) to Iraq.”
I can safely assume that Libby did not tell Miller of the official position of state department intelligence analysts that the uranium allegation was “highly dubious.” For once, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell listened to them and faced down Libby. Indeed, Powell deliberately excluded this particular canard in preparing his February 5, 2003 UN speech, into which he threw everything else but the kitchen sink. That’s how bad it was.
With the help of this “declassified” passage, Libby could show Judy Miller that the White House had been badly misled. The blame was placed on the intelligence gatherers, not on the White House. In mid-February 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency was given the documents upon which the Iraq-Niger story was based, they were immediately found to be forgeries. Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote a blistering letter to President Bush before the attack on Iraq, claiming that he had been deceived into voting for war on the basis of forged documents. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, refused to ask the FBI to investigate who was responsible.
Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, however, has an independent bent—plus the authority to look these aspects of the litany of leaks. I’ll be he has a good idea of who orchestrated the forgery. Indeed, I will not be surprised if the operation is eventually be traced back to the office of the vice president.
Blowing Cheney's Cover
Ray McGovern
April 10, 2006
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A 27-year veteran of the CIA, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
When you invest so much effort into tangling the web—in this case, corrupting intelligence analysis in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq—it becomes hard to know when to stop. Vice President Dick Cheney went to inordinate lengths, including 10 visits to CIA headquarters, to ensure that that crucial NIE on weapons of mass destruction was alarmist enough to scare Congress into authorizing war. And when the evidence turned out to be flimsy, Cheney had a back-up plan: The CIA made me do it.
Ever since their exaggerated claims about Iraq’s possession of WMD turned out to be baseless, the Bush administration’s defense has rested on blaming the government’s intelligence analysts. But one of the great revelations from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s court filing last week is more evidence that the White House—not the CIA—distorted intelligence on Iraq. It was then-chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, acting on orders from Cheney, who presented evidence of Iraq seeking nuclear weapons material to reporters as a “key judgment” from the NIE, when in fact it was a subject of debate in the intelligence community.
The White House plan to scapegoat the intelligence community about Iraq—aided by eager-to-please CIA Director George Tenet—worked beautifully. But only for a while. The plan faltered once it became clear there were no WMD and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson blew the whistle on the centerpiece report used to deceive Congress and conjure up the specter of a mushroom cloud. That report conveyed the cockamamie story about Iraq seeking uranium in the African country of Niger, in which Cheney took uncommon interest.
Cockamamie? Easy to say in retrospect, you say. No, it was easy to say from the outset. And that is why CIA analysts in early 2002 threw it into the circular file, where it deserved to be—for several good reasons. For starters, the government of Niger does not control the uranium mined there. Rather, it is tightly controlled and monitored by an international consortium led by the French. CIA analysts all agreed that the notion that Baghdad could somehow siphon off some of that uranium and spirit it back to Iraq was preposterous.
The Pentagon’s own intelligence-gathering unit—the Defense Intelligence Agency —however, immediately recognized the report for its huge potential to please Vice President Cheney, not to mention its direct boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and wrote it up in a DIA publication. The various investigations of intelligence performance on Iraq show that Cheney took a real shine to the report. Never mind its dubious provenance, or that it could be shown to be false on its face; it served his goal of portraying Iraq as a threat.
The DIA report was on Cheney’s desk one morning in February 2002, when the CIA briefer arrived with the the president’s Daily Brief. I’ll bet Cheney rues that day, for he made the mistake of asking the briefer to find out what CIA analysts thought of the Iraq-Niger report. CIA managers decided to send Joe Wilson to Niger to seek more information on the report. Who better? Wilson, fluent in French, had served in Niger, and had been our last acting ambassador in Baghdad. And he had been asked by the CIA to perform similar special assignments since his retirement from the Department of State.
Wilson went to Niger, found the story baseless—as had previous investigations by the U.S. embassy in Niger and a U.S. general dispatched from Heidelberg—and reported this promptly to the CIA officials who had sent him, who in turn advised the office of the vice president.
No matter. Cheney and Libby put the report on life support and eventually insisted that it be included in the (in)famous NIE prepared in the fall of 2002. The malleable Tenet acquiesced to leaving the DIA-crafted language in the NIE that he signed and released on October 1, 2002. Yet, a day or two later, Tenet seems to have had a pang of conscience; he successfully pleaded with the White House to excise the Iraq-Niger story from a key presidential speech—but the train had left the station. On October 7, President Bush warned the nation that the first sign that Iraq has a nuclear weapon “could come in the form of a mushroom cloud”—a formula repeated by Condoleezza Rice on October 8 and then-Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clark on October 9. On October 10 and 11, the Senate and House voted for war.
Fast forward to January 2003, when President Bush’s State of the Union address pulled out all stops in beating the drums for war. As Joe Wilson watched the speech, he found it puzzling to hear the president repeat the story about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa. There must be new intelligence on this, thought Wilson, but he quickly learned it was the same sorry story. He quietly sought to persuade the White House to issue a correction, but was given the brush off. Wilson persisted, and in the end warned then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that, as a matter of conscience, he would be forced to tell the American people that the uranium story was bogus. The reply, through a Rice intermediary: “Go ahead! Who will believe you?”
Six months later, in early July 2003—more than three months into the war in Iraq—the administration’s claims of “Mission Accomplished” proved to be premature. And, worse still, no WMD were anywhere to be found. Even the domesticated U.S. press that led the cheerleading for war seemed a bit unnerved at the discovery that there were no discoveries. (This was before outrage fatigue set in.) Things at the White House were growing very tense.
It is now abundantly clear—thanks to the release of Fitzgerald’s court papers—how the White House chose to counter Wilson’s charge that the administration had “twisted” intelligence to justify war. Adding insult to injury, not only did Wilson author the July 6 New York Times op-ed titled “What I Did Not Find in Africa;” he also chose to forgo diplomatic parlance in telling Washington Post reporters, “This begs the question regarding what else they are lying about.” Wilson had thrown down the gauntlet.
In something of a panic, Cheney picked it up. First, he and Libby tried to get the CIA to support the story about Iraq and Niger. The answer was no. So the administration conceded publicly on July 7 that the information should not have been included in the State Of The Union address. On July 8 Cheney’s counteroffensive began. According to Libby, he was dispatched to Bush administration darling Judy Miller of The New York Times to explain why Wilson’s charges were wrong. The White House did not twist the intelligence to justify invading Iran: “The CIA made us do it.”
Toward this end, Libby claims he was given permission by Cheney and Bush to release information from the NIE, which, as noted above, had already been cooked to Cheney’s recipe. The passage chosen for highlighting? A paragraph buried on page 24 of the 90-page NIE:
“Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake…A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of ‘pure uranium’ (probably yellowcake) to Iraq.”
I can safely assume that Libby did not tell Miller of the official position of state department intelligence analysts that the uranium allegation was “highly dubious.” For once, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell listened to them and faced down Libby. Indeed, Powell deliberately excluded this particular canard in preparing his February 5, 2003 UN speech, into which he threw everything else but the kitchen sink. That’s how bad it was.
With the help of this “declassified” passage, Libby could show Judy Miller that the White House had been badly misled. The blame was placed on the intelligence gatherers, not on the White House. In mid-February 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency was given the documents upon which the Iraq-Niger story was based, they were immediately found to be forgeries. Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote a blistering letter to President Bush before the attack on Iraq, claiming that he had been deceived into voting for war on the basis of forged documents. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, refused to ask the FBI to investigate who was responsible.
Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, however, has an independent bent—plus the authority to look these aspects of the litany of leaks. I’ll be he has a good idea of who orchestrated the forgery. Indeed, I will not be surprised if the operation is eventually be traced back to the office of the vice president.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
BUSH: THE LEAKER IN CHIEF
Fortunately, the mainstream media are covering the Leaker-in-Chief story, but unfortunately and predictably, they are narrowly fixated on whether or not Bush broke one law concerning the presidential right to declassify intelligence. The media, as usual is slow on the uptake and misses several very crucial points. To name a few: Bush has consistently lied to the American people on many issues. The leak story is glaring proof of this administration's disingenuousness and willingness to do run rough shod over the Constitution to accomplish their political and ideological agenda. Bush has routinely misled both the Congress and Americans on Iraq, beginning with the phony rationale for going to war in the first place, to our being greeted as "liberators" to "mission accomplished," and you know the rest. Finally, according to a former federal investigator, Bush and Cheney did indeed break the law, the Rico law, (see post below on Mr. Greg Palast), by withholding crucial information from a grand jury investigation. I guess the mainstream media are still too fearful or in awe of the Bush people to do their jobs. Or maybe it is simply too difficult for the media to overcome 5 years of both complicit and tacit Bush cheerleading.
That being said, below are a few very interesting stories on the leak, Bush's fleeting power and Iraq. LS
THE LEAKER IN CHIEF
Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas of Newsweek have written a great article for the April 17 edition entitled "The Leaker in Chief?" LS
NEWSWEEK ON "THE LEAKER IN CHIEF"
AN ADMINISTRATION OF STAGGERING FAILURE AND INCOMPETENCE
From the New York Times courtesy of THE HUFFINGTON POST
THE NYT: POWER IS FLEETING
TOP GOP OFFICIAL ARLEN SPECTER TELLS BUSH TO COME CLEAN WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ON THE LEAK
(Don't hold your breath, Senator. LS)
SPECTER PUSHES BUSH FOR A LEAK EXPLANATION
NIGER EMBASSY IN ROME SAID TO HAVE FORGED DOCUMENTS ON IRAQ'S ACQUISTION OF URANIUM
I found this story via Raw Story.com. These forged documents were used by the Bush Administration to make a case for going to war with Iraq. When Wilson smelled a rat and went public with his first hand knowledge that Niger had not shipped uranium to Iraq, Bush authorized Libby to leak the fake intel to the press to both discredit Wilson and to mislead the American people. What a stand up guy our President is. LS
LONDON SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS NIGER EMBASSY IN ROME FORGED IRAQ WAR DOCUMENTS
WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS WERE DISPUTING VALIDITY OF INTELLIGENCE LEAKED BY BUSH
And, while Bush was busy authorizing Libby to leak exaggerated if not completely inaccurate information to the press, sources within the White House were disputing the validity of the intelligence among themselves. What a great group of leaders. Ken sent this great article from the New York Times today. LS
THE NEW YORK TIMES ON DISPUTED AND INFLATED INFORMATION ON IRAQ
BUSH - THE CRIMINAL IN CHIEF
This is a great article written by Mr. Greg Palast, a former investigator for the federal government, on Buzz Flash.com.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: LEAKY PRESIDENT RUNS AFOUL OF RICO LAW
It’s a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual, 'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President. Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you.
OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a bigger crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse. Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail.
Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.
On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."
Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.
If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.
Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.)
Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe:
"Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts."
Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."
Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase. Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise."
So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights.
After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war. I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home.
And if justice is to be done we will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. Subscribe to our new podcast of these columns at GREGPALASTMEDIA.RSS
That being said, below are a few very interesting stories on the leak, Bush's fleeting power and Iraq. LS
THE LEAKER IN CHIEF
Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas of Newsweek have written a great article for the April 17 edition entitled "The Leaker in Chief?" LS
NEWSWEEK ON "THE LEAKER IN CHIEF"
AN ADMINISTRATION OF STAGGERING FAILURE AND INCOMPETENCE
From the New York Times courtesy of THE HUFFINGTON POST
THE NYT: POWER IS FLEETING
TOP GOP OFFICIAL ARLEN SPECTER TELLS BUSH TO COME CLEAN WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ON THE LEAK
(Don't hold your breath, Senator. LS)
SPECTER PUSHES BUSH FOR A LEAK EXPLANATION
NIGER EMBASSY IN ROME SAID TO HAVE FORGED DOCUMENTS ON IRAQ'S ACQUISTION OF URANIUM
I found this story via Raw Story.com. These forged documents were used by the Bush Administration to make a case for going to war with Iraq. When Wilson smelled a rat and went public with his first hand knowledge that Niger had not shipped uranium to Iraq, Bush authorized Libby to leak the fake intel to the press to both discredit Wilson and to mislead the American people. What a stand up guy our President is. LS
LONDON SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS NIGER EMBASSY IN ROME FORGED IRAQ WAR DOCUMENTS
WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS WERE DISPUTING VALIDITY OF INTELLIGENCE LEAKED BY BUSH
And, while Bush was busy authorizing Libby to leak exaggerated if not completely inaccurate information to the press, sources within the White House were disputing the validity of the intelligence among themselves. What a great group of leaders. Ken sent this great article from the New York Times today. LS
THE NEW YORK TIMES ON DISPUTED AND INFLATED INFORMATION ON IRAQ
BUSH - THE CRIMINAL IN CHIEF
This is a great article written by Mr. Greg Palast, a former investigator for the federal government, on Buzz Flash.com.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: LEAKY PRESIDENT RUNS AFOUL OF RICO LAW
It’s a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual, 'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President. Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you.
OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a bigger crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse. Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail.
Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.
On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."
Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.
If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.
Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.)
Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe:
"Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts."
Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."
Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase. Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise."
So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights.
After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war. I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home.
And if justice is to be done we will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. Subscribe to our new podcast of these columns at GREGPALASTMEDIA.RSS
ON KING GEORGE W.
..Written by one of my favorite journalists - Ms. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. LS
April 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Divine Right of Bushes
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information.
Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him to the Romans, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence.
"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times.
Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.
When other officials leak top-secret stuff - even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts - they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.
After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."
Really, W. should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody. Since the Bush administration is basically a monarchy, he should pass the crown to Jenna. She couldn't do worse than this bunch of airheads and bullies.
Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers indicating that Scooter testified that in 2003, when the White House was getting rattled by the failure to find W.M.D. and by criticism from a former diplomat on the margins of the war scheme, the president authorized Dick Cheney to authorize Scooter to make a one-sided dump of classified information about Saddam's arsenal to The Times's Judy Miller.
Scooter was so concerned about the propriety of the deal that he checked with the vice president's lawyer, David Addington, before he spilled. Addington, whose politics are to the right of Louis XVI, said, go right ahead. Now Black Adder has Scooter's job. Coincidence?
The Bushies once more showed incompetence by creating this elaborate daisy-chain leak and giving it to the one person in journalism who had been roped off from writing about the prewar intelligence, while her editors sorted out problems with her past W.M.D. coverage. Judy never authored an article about what Scooter gave her, either that intelligence or the identity of the woman whom she wrote down in her notebook as "Valerie Flame." (Stripper or spy?)
W. subscribes to the Nixonian theory that when a president does it, it's not illegal - or maybe it's the divine right of kings. God has been pretty active in Republican politics lately: Tom DeLay said God told him to drop out of his re-election race.
If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't they have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?
Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter.
"The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," Scott McClellan said. "And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction." And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction. Democrats who don't, he sniffed, are guilty of "crass politics."
If W. wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If W. doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi.
That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it.
The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess.
April 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Divine Right of Bushes
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information.
Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him to the Romans, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence.
"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times.
Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.
When other officials leak top-secret stuff - even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts - they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.
After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."
Really, W. should fire himself. He swore to look high and low for the scurrilous leaker and, lo and behold, he has himself in custody. Since the Bush administration is basically a monarchy, he should pass the crown to Jenna. She couldn't do worse than this bunch of airheads and bullies.
Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers indicating that Scooter testified that in 2003, when the White House was getting rattled by the failure to find W.M.D. and by criticism from a former diplomat on the margins of the war scheme, the president authorized Dick Cheney to authorize Scooter to make a one-sided dump of classified information about Saddam's arsenal to The Times's Judy Miller.
Scooter was so concerned about the propriety of the deal that he checked with the vice president's lawyer, David Addington, before he spilled. Addington, whose politics are to the right of Louis XVI, said, go right ahead. Now Black Adder has Scooter's job. Coincidence?
The Bushies once more showed incompetence by creating this elaborate daisy-chain leak and giving it to the one person in journalism who had been roped off from writing about the prewar intelligence, while her editors sorted out problems with her past W.M.D. coverage. Judy never authored an article about what Scooter gave her, either that intelligence or the identity of the woman whom she wrote down in her notebook as "Valerie Flame." (Stripper or spy?)
W. subscribes to the Nixonian theory that when a president does it, it's not illegal - or maybe it's the divine right of kings. God has been pretty active in Republican politics lately: Tom DeLay said God told him to drop out of his re-election race.
If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't they have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?
Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter.
"The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," Scott McClellan said. "And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction." And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction. Democrats who don't, he sniffed, are guilty of "crass politics."
If W. wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If W. doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi.
That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it.
The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess.
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