Salon.com - War Room

initial reactions from the Left on ScaliaLito from Salon
"Samuel Alito: The reaction from the left
George W. Bush wasted no time in naming a replacement for Harriet Miers, and his nominee isn't wasting any time in making the rounds of the United States Senate. Samuel Alito joined Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist this morning in the Capitol Rotunda, where he paid his respects to the late Rosa Parks, and just sat down for a before-the-cameras event with the Senate Republican leadership.

With Alito at his side, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter brushed away a question about early opposition to the nominee by saying, "Well, this is Washington, D.C." And Frist -- the man who had no trouble telling the White House it was time to yank Harriet Miers' nomination when it was his base that was upset -- said that the Senate has an obligation to "rise above" the political "positioning" on Supreme Court nominees and fulfill its constitutional obligation of "advise and consent and confirmation."

As for Democrats and progressives, the reaction is exactly what you'd expect it to be to a nominee whose views on abortion rights, on race, on the rights of criminal defendants and other issues put him far to the right of the justice he would replace.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: "I am disappointed in this choice for several reasons. First, unlike previous nominations, this one was not the product of consultation with Senate Democrats. . . . Second, this appointment ignores the value of diverse backgrounds and perspectives on the Supreme Court. The president has chosen a man to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, one of only two women on the court. For the third time, he has declined to make history by nominating the first Hispanic to the Court. And he has chosen yet another federal appellate judge to join a court that already has eight justices with that narrow background. President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club."

Sen. Chuck Schumer: "This controversial nominee, who would make the court less diverse and far more conservative, will get very careful scrutiny from the Senate and from the American people."

Sen. Ted Kennedy: "President Bush has picked a nominee whom he hopes will stop the massive hemorrhaging of support on his right wing. This is a nomination based on weakness, not on strength."

Sen. John Kerry: "Has the right wing now forced a weakened president to nominate a divisive justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia? With civil rights, privacy rights, and mainstream American values hanging in the balance, the president’s sagging political position in his own party is no excuse to reopen wounds in America which a president should seek to repair."

People for the American Way President Ralph Neas: "We had hoped President Bush would nominate someone with a commitment to protecting Americans' rights and freedoms. That’s what the American people want, and it's what they deserve. Unfortunately, with Judge Alito, that's not what President Bush has given us. He has chosen to divide Americans with a nominee guaranteed to cause a bitter fight."

National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Eric Stern: "President Bush has nominated a socially conservative judicial activist to appease the socially conservative political activists who control the Republican Party and this White House. Every Supreme Court nominee deserves a fair and thorough investigation into their judicial record. While judgments on this nomination should not be rushed, the giddy salivation of anti-gay activists over their preferred nominee should disturb fair-minded Americans."

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan: "Instead of unifying the country, President Bush has chosen the path of confrontation. Sandra Day O’Connor has been the court’s swing Justice, casting the deciding votes over the years to protect women’s reproductive freedom. Alito’s confirmation could shift the court in a direction that threatens to eviscerate the core protections for women’s freedom guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, or overturn the landmark decision altogether."

While NARAL has already announced its opposition to Alito's nomination, Democrats have generally stopped just short of saying they'll vote against him. But with the notable exception of Sen. Dianne Feinstein -- who said she hoped "both sides would hold their fire" on Alito -- Democrats are making it clear that there is a very fine line between criticizing Alito's nomination and voting against it. Harry Reid said this morning that he's looking forward to meeting Alito -- but only, it seems, to learn "why those who want to pack the court with judicial activists are so much more enthusiastic about him than they were about Harriet Miers."
Tim Grieve"
Salon.com - War Room

Posted by: Douglas at 10/31/2005 10:46:05 AM | Permalink

Democrats Demand Rove's Firing

This weekend there was surprisingly critical Dem response to WMDgate scandals, calls for Rove's resignation, for Bush to pledge that he wasn't going to pardon Libby, for investigations of Cheney and the WMD scandals and so and both ABC and CBS pursued the story in their main news and talk shows....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000348.html
The Alito nomination may knock the story off the news cycle and already there is a backlash with a reprehensible report by Howard Kurtz in the WP attacking the media for "overkill" on the story! really, get a grip Howie the MSM has been totally negligent in failing to criticize the Bush administration and once they start doing what they are supposed to do it is disgusting to call the media's minimal efforts to get at the truth of Iraq and WMD spin and lies "overkill"; a big Thumbs Down for Howie on this one
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

Posted by: Douglas at 10/31/2005 10:43:00 AM | Permalink

Reid Calls for Rove to Resign

whoah! are the Dems finally getting backbone! it appears so from Kerry, Reid, and other comments. Its finally open season on all the Bush crooks and cons and in the mainstream media....
Reid Calls for Rove to Resign

Posted by: Douglas at 10/30/2005 09:49:31 AM | Permalink

White House Ethics, Honesty Questioned

the other very positive development in fallup from Fitzgerald investigation is declining public confidence in Bush as his poll numbers continue to head south....
White House Ethics, Honesty Questioned

Posted by: Douglas at 10/30/2005 09:47:50 AM | Permalink

A Leak, Then a Deluge

Gellman's very detailed story ties Libby to Cheney and NeoCon disinformation about Iraqi WMD, including the Italian connection, although not with the detail or edge of the Repubblica stories that I provided link to yesterday. Still, its good that the media in the US is investigating the issue; Fitzgerald's indictment legitimates and may inspire investigative reporting into the whole Iraq morass...
A Leak, Then a Deluge

Posted by: Douglas at 10/30/2005 09:46:29 AM | Permalink

In Indictment's Wake, a Focus on Cheney's Powerful Role - New York Times

While Fitzgerald's mandate was narrow, his indictment of Libby opens the door for the media, Dems, and public to go after Cheney, Rove and other purveyors of lies about Iraq in the Bush administration. The weekend news reports were doing precisely this as did the NYT story listed here, as well as Times OpEd pieces (no long available for free!). It's up to us to keep the story alive and expand the heat....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30cheney.html?hp&ex=1130734800&en=e0bf76a2584ac179&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Posted by: Douglas at 10/30/2005 09:43:32 AM | Permalink

calendarlive.com: In blame game, take a number

good summary by Tim Rutten of how major US print media have to take responsibility for buying into NeoCon WMD con:
" The leading American newspapers bear a special responsibility in this matter because they all swallowed the administration's argument hook, line and sinker.

The Los Angeles Times, for example, worried editorially that the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq gave Bush too much power but stated unequivocally: "It is well established that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

The New York Times flatly told its readers that "no further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build unconventional weapons ... threatens the Middle East and beyond."

The Washington Post editorially declared that Congress was "right" to pass the resolution and singled out Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) for praise because he "acknowledged [that Hussein's] 'pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated.' " The Wall Street Journal's editorial similarly singled out the House and Senate Democrats who publicly accepted the reality of Iraq's nuclear and biological weapon programs.

Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" remains the best basic introduction on the administration's march to war. It outlines an extreme preoccupation with Iraq initially shared only by Cheney and a circle of ideologically neoconservatives on his staff and around then-Deputy Secretary of State Paul D. Wolfowitz. Then, there was a murky progress in the intelligence used to intensify that preoccupation into a national security imperative. In 2000, according to Woodward, "[t]he CIA had never declared categorically that it believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction."

Two years later, Cheney had told a group, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Shortly afterward, the National Intelligence Council began resifting intelligence on the matter and, according to Woodward, concluded that "the real and best answer was that [Hussein] probably had WMD, but that there was no proof and the case was circumstantial." One year later, on the eve of war, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet sat in the Oval Office and told President Bush that the case for Hussein's possession of nuclear and biological weapons was "a slam dunk."

The American people need to know how that progression occurred because that knowledge is key to the responsible exercise of citizenship in the upcoming midterm elections and beyond. In an address to the Online News Assn. on Friday, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the New York Times' publisher, said that his paper had been far too slow to correct its prewar news reports that Hussein, in fact, had weapons of mass destruction. "It was an institutional failure. We didn't own up to it quickly enough," he said.

The New York Times clearly wasn't the only journalistic institution that failed, and the duty to set the public record straight about how this mistake was made is a shared one. There will be shame enough for all if the media as a whole fail to accept this obligation."
href="http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/rutten/cl-et-rutten29oct29,0,1803270,print.column?coll=cl-home-more-channels">calendarlive.com: In blame game, take a number

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 12:41:30 PM | Permalink

Rove Is Spared -- for Now - Los Angeles Times

LAT has good definition of Turdblossum: " for now, Rove appeared to live up to the nickname bestowed upon him by Bush: "Turdblossom," a moniker that spoke to the strategist's uncanny pattern of surviving unpleasant situations, and sometimes seeming to thrive on them."
Rove Is Spared -- for Now - Los Angeles Times

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 12:38:13 PM | Permalink

Nur al-Cubicle: 10/01/2005 - 10/31/2005

here's a blog that argues that the while CIA-Gate was result of war between the CIA and Cheney's group that Cheney appears to have won; I would say, however, that the war is still going on and that there are significant factions of the establishment arrayed against the Cheneyites....
Then, there are translations of some Italian Republicca articles that document how Italian intelligence fabricated and disseminated the bogus Niger uranium story, plus the tubes for nuclear weapons stories that the Bush-Cheney-Neocon crowd used to sell Iraq-- through Judith Miller and compliant media. This is quite a story and there are ongoing investigations of the Italian-NeoCon fake WMD connections that could be explosive....
Nur al-Cubicle: 10/01/2005 - 10/31/2005

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 12:35:06 PM | Permalink

After Upheavals, President Seeks to Steady Course - New York Times

Same Old, Same old for Bush-Cheney-Rove
After Upheavals, President Seeks to Steady Course - New York Times

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 11:01:12 AM | Permalink

Salon.com - War Room

Upon further reflection, it is now clear that Libby, Cheney, Rove, and Novak, for starters, outed Valerie Plame. If Rove is Official X, then he is centrally involved in the outing. The fact that Rove wasn't indicted seems to imply that Fitzgerald decided not to go after the CIA-outing issue and settled instead for perjury and lies. Here's latest on Rove from Salon's Tim Grieve:
"Official A" and the mystery of Karl Rove
Is Karl Rove"Official A"? Sources tell the New York Times and the Associated Press that he is.

Patrick Fitzgerald alleged Friday that Scooter Libby spoke on July 10 or 11, 2003, with a "senior official in the White House" identified only as "Official A." "Official A" allegedly told Libby of of a conversation earlier in the week in which Joseph Wilson's wife -- Valerie Plame -- was "discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip" to Niger. "Official A" also allegedly told Libby that Novak was going to be writing about Wilson's wife in his column.

Asked yesterday to say more about "Official A," Fitzgerald refused: "I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home with the TV thinking, 'I want to jump through the TV, grab him by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they figured out over the last two years,'" he said. "We just can't do that. It's not because we enjoy holding back information from you; that's the law."

Fitzgerald still isn't talking, but "people briefed on the case" tell the Times and "three people close to the investigation" tell the AP that "Official A" is Rove. It's not exactly a blockbuster revelation: Fitzgerald isn't alleging necessarily that "Official A" was the first to leak Plame's identity to Novak, as we suggested in the rush of things yesterday, and we've known for months now that Rove was at least one of those who leaked to Novak.

If "Official A" is really Rove, the more intriguing question may be this: Why won't Fitzgerald just say so? Coming from a man who says he doesn't do "tea leaves," this sure seems like some kind of tea leaf suggesting Rove is still a subject of some interest for the special prosecutor. Maybe he is.

That said, a report in this morning's Los Angeles Times suggests that Rove may be close to clear. The Times says that "new information, reevaluation of older evidence and negotiations with Rove's lawyers" persuaded Fitzgerald not to indict Rove, at least not now. Among the evidence: An email exchange between Rove and former White House communications aide Adam Levine. The emails apparently came just after Rove leaked Plame's identity to Time's Matthew Cooper, and Rove's team is arguing that the fact that the emails don't mention the Plame leak are a sign that it wasn't particularly important to Rove and was therefore something he could have forgotten, innocently, when he was first asked about it by federal investigators.

-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com - War Room

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 09:34:50 AM | Permalink

With Vice President, He Shaped Iraq Policy

Its clear after the dramatic events of the Fitzgerald indictment that Cheney and his men were running US foreign policy and that they were an exceptionally rotten lot, as the article I posted yesterday by Juan Cole documents.
"http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/28/vice_president/print.html

The WP article from today linked here confirms that Cheney-Libby were the center of the Iraq fiasco and that Libby going down is a big hit for Cheney and the neocons. BUT there is speculation that Libby deliberately lied and took the hit to deflect attention from Cheney and others involved in WMD lies and fiercely attacking critics like Joe Wilson. The question now, of course, is whether the investigation will end with Libby or expand. If the former, Libby could plea bargain, take a quick indictment-- and get pardoned by Bush. If the latter, Cheney, Rove and others are still in play.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802139.html

A disgusting NYT story by Anna Kornblut is almost gleeful that Karl Rove has returned to the center of Bush White House and business as usual. The question is whether Rove is now under extreme heat and has his hands tied, will get hit with an indictment, or go back to his slimy, corrupt business as usual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/politics/29rove.html

The MSM, as usual, keeps focused on the small issues. In fact, the Fitzgerald investigation uncovered aspects of the whole Bush administration conspiracy to cook up false WMD info, fiercely attack critics, and coverup any evidence of their infamity. It also shows the complicity of the MSM, especially Judith Miller but also all of the hacks from Tim Russert to Matt Cooper who regularly talked with Cheney and Rove and fed their lies and agendas to the public as "news."
It looks like the Fitzgerald inquiry is too limited to uncover the whole conspiracy, pretty well outlined in the case, that involves Cheney, Libby, a house full of Neocons, and Rove, for starters, so only continued Congressional or media investigations are going to uncover more indictable crimes, like the Bush-Cheney cabal lying to Congress, producing false information, and the like. Unless, Fitzgerald knows something that the MSM and Bush critics don't yet know or has some smoking guns that will smoke out the bad guys. Here's a reasonable summary of what to expect and what not to:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=23388

Posted by: Douglas at 10/29/2005 08:44:13 AM | Permalink

Salon.com - War Room

here's the latest buzz from Salon. The Big Mystery is how did Rove wiggle out of the indictment? is he in the clear or does Fitz have a trap for him? Finally, Libby's indictment at least creates possibility of watergate effect or it could be contained with Scooter scapegoated? But how could anyone imagine Libby doing anything this big that was directed by or with full knowledge and assent of Cheney?
"What comes next for Karl Rove?
So what will become of Karl Rove? At the press conference that just ended, reporters tried every way imaginable to get Patrick Fitzgerald to explain his plans for the president's chief political advisor. Fitzgerald gave them virtually nothing. He said reporters were trying to read "tea leaves" he wasn't giving, and he reminded them that they're not "supposed" to know what's going on with a grand jury.

Here's what we know, or at least what we think we know. Over the course of the last week, the New York Times reported repeatedly that Rove had been advised that he "may be in serious legal jeopardy." The Washington Post reported that one of Fitzgerald's prosecutors was still asking a former White House aide about Rove as late as this week. And Roll Call reported that Fitzgerald met personally with Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, on Tuesday.

So what happened? Fitzgerald won't say. He wouldn't say today if he expected more indictments; he wouldn't say today if anyone other than Libby is still in legal jeopardy; he wouldn't say today if he would enlist the assistance of another grand jury; and he wouldn't say today whether the grand jury whose term expired today had declined to issue any indictments that he sought.

Luskin issued a statement today, but it was both careful and cryptic. He said that Fitzgerald hasn't made a decision and that Rove's "status" hasn't changed, meaning -- if the Times had its story straight -- that Rove still may be in "serious legal jeopardy." But if that's the case, wouldn't Fitzgerald have wanted to keep his grand jury alive just in case he decides to seek an indictment? Probably, but there's another purely speculative possibility to consider: In return for an agreement not to indict him today, Rove could have signed an agreement waiving his right to have charges brought by way of indictment. With such an agreement in hand, Fitzgerald could take the time he needs to make a decision and then charge Rove -- if he decides to charge him -- by way of a criminal complaint issued by the prosecutor himself.

-- Tim Grieve

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The president speaks, then leaves
George W. Bush just offered the briefest possible statement on the indictment of Scooter Libby. He said that he has accepted Libby's resignation, that he believes that Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation is "serious," and that he's got a job to do for the American people. The president said he'll be nominating "somebody" to serve on the Supreme Court soon, then he headed for Marine One, which will take him to Camp David for the weekend. Joining Bush on the helicopter: Chief of Staff Andy Card and White House Counsel -- and former Supreme Court nominee -- Harriet Miers.

-- Tim Grieve

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Fitzgerald's press conference: Many questions, few answers
Patrick Fitzgerald is taking questions from the press, but he isn't answering many of them. What will become of Karl Rove? He can't comment. Who's the mysterious "Official A" who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Robert Novak? He won't say. Did Dick Cheney encourage Scooter Libby to leak Plame's name or to lie about the leak afterward? He won't discuss anyone who hasn't been charged with a crime. Did he seek any criminal charges that the grand jury wouldn't give him? Fitzgerald looked to an aide before saying that he couldn't say.

What Fitzgerald will say: The fact that Plame worked for the CIA was classified and not widely known when it was leaked -- and that Libby was the first one to leak it. "Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003," Fitzgerald said, in a reference to the July 14, 2003, column in which Novak outed Plame, but, he also said, Novak wasn't the first reporter to get the leak of Plame's identity. That reporter was the New York Times' Judy Miller, and Libby was the one who leaked to her.

"Mr. Libby is presumed innocent," Fitzgerald said. "But if what we allege in the indictment is true, then what is charged is a very, very serious crime." When a reporter asked Fitzgerald about GOP criticism suggesting that he shouldn't have sought an indictment if he couldn't charge someone for the leak itself, he said: "That talking point won't fly. It it's proven that the chief of staff of the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied repeatedly and fabricated a story ... that's a very, very serious matter."

Asked whether he thought it was worthwhile to keep Miller in jail for 85 days, Fitzgerald defended himself by explaining that he was obliged to follow up on Libby's claims that he hadn't leaked information about Plame's job to reporters. Confronted with the possibility that the vice president's chief of staff had committed perjury, Fitzgerald said he couldn't simply "fold up" his "tent" and "walk away."

Is Fitzgerald "walking away" with respect to Karl Rove? That's not at all clear. While Rove's lawyer said earlier today that his client's "status" has not changed, Fitzgerald said that his grand jury's term expires today and won't be extended. However, he added that prosecutors in long investigations like this one generally "have available a new grand jury" to which they can return if they have the need to do so. What does that mean for Rove or anyone else under investigation? Fitzgerald was asked again and again to explain, but he declined to do so. "We're not quite done, but I don't want to add to a feverish pitch," he said. "It's very very routine that you keep a grand jury available."

Could more indictments come? Fitzgerald wouldn't say.

-- Tim Grieve

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Was Libby obsessed with Wilson? Fitzgerald seems to think so
It has been reported previously that Scooter Libby was so obsessed with Joseph Wilson that other White House aides found themselves "puzzled" by it. The press release issued today by Patrick Fitzgerald certainly seems to confirm as much:

May 6, 2003: The New York Times publishes a Nicholas Kristof column that raises questions about the Iraq-Niger connection set forth in George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address and says that an unnamed former ambassador who had been sent to investigate the claims had reported back that they were wrong.

On or about May 29, 2003: Libby asks an undersecretary of state for information concerning the unnamed ambassador's trip to Niger. The undersecretary investigates and provides Libby periodic oral reports, eventually advising him that Wilson was the former ambassador in question.

On or about June 9, 2003: Libby and "another person in the vice president's office" receives classified documents from the CIA that discuss Wilson's trip but don't identify him by name. Libby writes "Wilson" and "Joe Wilson" on the documents.

On or about June 11 or 12, 2003: Libby is advised by an undersecretary of state that Wilson's wife works for the CIA and that State Department personnel said that Wilson's wife was involved in the organization of his trip to Niger.

On or about June 11, 2003: Libby gets similar information about Wilson's wife from a CIA official.

Prior to June 12, 2003: Libby participates in discussion within the vice president's office about how to respond to an inquiry about Wilson's trip from Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.

On or about June 12, 2003: Dick Cheney tells Libby that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in its Counterproliferation Division.

On or about June 14, 2003: Libby meets with a CIA briefer, complains that CIA officials are making comments critical of the vice president, and discusses both Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, by name.

On or about June 19, 2003: After the New Republic publishes an article titled "The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War," Libby speaks with his principal deputy, who asks whether criticism of Cheney's office could be rebutted by sharing information about Wilson's trip with the press. Libby says there would be trouble with the CIA if the information were leaked -- and that he couldn't discuss the matter further on a nonsecure telephone.

On or about June 23, 2003: Libby tells the New York Times' Judy Miller that Wilson's wife might work at the CIA.

On or about July 7, 2003: A day after Wilson's Op-Ed appears in the New York Times, Libby tells Ari Fleischer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA -- but that the information isn't widely known.

On or about July 8, 2003: Libby talks with Miller again about Wilson and his wife, this time asking that he be identified in print not as a White House official but as a "former Hill staffer." The same day, Libby asks Cheney's counsel about documents that might exist about Wilson's trip to Niger.

Between June 2003 and July 8, 2003: The assistant to the vice president for public affairs tells Libby that he has learned that Wilson's wife works at the CIA.

On July 10 or July 11, 2003: Libby talks with a senior White House official, identified by Fitzgerald only as "Official A," who tells him that he has discussed Wilson's wife with Robert Novak.

On or about July 12, 2003: Libby confirms for Matthew Cooper that Wilson's wife works for the CIA.

On or about July 12, 2003: Libby talks about Wilson and his wife with Miller once again.

-- Tim Grieve

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The indictment: Libby lied to investigators and to the grand jury
The indictment of Scooter Libby is now available online at the Web site of the special prosecutor's office.

The highlights:

Obstruction of justice and false statements: Libby was interviewed by investigators in the Valerie Plame case in October and November of 2003. During those interviews, the indictment says, Libby told investigators (1) that NBC's Tim Russert had told him on July 10 or July 11 that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA; (2) that he had told Time's Matthew Cooper on July 12 that the administration was hearing from reporters that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA but that he didn't know if it was true; and (3) that he hadn't discussed Plame with the New York Times' Judy Miller during a meeting on or about July 8.

The indictment alleges that all of those statements were false: At the time of his conversations with reporters, Libby had already learned -- from an undersecretary of state, from a senior CIA official and from Dick Cheney himself -- that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Moreover, the indictment says, Libby shared that information with Miller and confirmed it for Miller.

Perjury: Libby appeared before Fitzgerald's grand jury at least twice in 2004, and he repeated, under oath, his story about his July 2003 conversation with Russert. Once again, Libby claimed that Russert had told him about Wilson's wife -- and that he did not recall at the time of that conversation whether he knew about Wilson's wife or not. The indictment alleges that this statement is false: that Russert didn't tell Libby about Wilson's wife's employment during that conversation, and that Libby wouldn't have been surprised by the information if he had.

The indictment says that Libby also testified under oath that he told Matthew Cooper and other reporters that the information he had about Plame's employment was information that the administration was hearing from reporters. "I was very clear to say, 'Reporters are telling us that,' because in my mind I didn't know it as fact," he said. "I thought I was -- all I had was this information coming from reporters." Pressed repeatedly if he was certain of this recollection, Libby testified that he was. Again, the indictment says that Libby's testimony was false -- that he had obtained information about Wilson's wife not from reporters but from the State Department, the CIA and the vice president, and that he provided Cooper with "unqualified" confirmation that she worked at the CIA.

-- Tim Grieve

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Libby resigns
Scooter Libby has resigned.

-- Tim Grieve

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Novak's source? Still a mystery
If Patrick Fitzgerald knows who first leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak, he still isn't saying. The indictment filed against Scooter Libby today refers to the "senior administration official" as "Mr. A" -- and says that Libby was aware that "Mr. A" had leaked to Novak.

Correction: The reference to the "senior administration official" who leaked Plame's identity to Novak comes from the press release issued by Fitzgerald's office, not from the indictment, and Fitzgerald identifies the official as "Official A," not "Mr. A."

-- Tim Grieve

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Libby indicted on charges of lying in Plame case
Scooter Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements for allegedly lying about how and when he learned and disclosed then-classified information about Valerie Plame, the office of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has just announced.

The indictment against Libby alleges that he learned of Plame's identity from Cheney. It alleges that Libby discussed Plame's identity with Time's Matthew Cooper, NBC's Tim Russert and the New York Times' Judy Miller -- and that revealing Plame's identity had the potential of putting CIA agents at risk and damaging national security.

The 22-page indictment charges that Libby began looking into Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger in May 2003. That's several months before Robert Novak revealed Valerie Plame's identity but around the same time that Nicholas Kristof wrote a column in the New York Times in which he mentioned -- without using Wilson's name -- Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence. The indictment charges Libby with lying to investigators about what he told reporters -- and lying to reporters about what, and how, he knew about Plame.

Although the indictment does not appear to charge Libby with a crime in connection for the leak itself, Fitzgerald has issued a statement that seems to take issue with the early Republican spin -- articulated over the weekend by Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison -- that charges related to the cover-up rather than to an underlying crime would be "perjury technicalities." Fitzgerald said: "Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens."

-- Tim Grieve

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Indictment news?
Patrick Fitzgerald has entered the courtroom of a federal magistrate, presumably with one or more indictments in his hands. We should know more within minutes. Here's his Web site.

-- Tim Grieve

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Indictments, non-indictments and the fallout for the White House
Assuming that they are what they now seem to be, today's developments in the Valerie Plame case will be spun as a victory for the White House. Dick Cheney won't have been indicted. Karl Rove won't have been indicted. And while Scooter Libby will be facing charges, does anyone other than those who have long since made up their mind about the president even know who he is?

But is this really a victory? Hardly. What the White House wants -- what, on some levels, the White House needs -- is for the Plame case to go away. That's not happening. If Libby is indicted, a criminal case is just beginning. If that case proceeds -- if Libby doesn't cop to a plea or get the charge dismissed or persuade the president to grant him a pardon -- the Plame cloud will linger over the White House for months and years to come, and it will a cast a much more visible shadow than it has so far. The president and the vice president can meet privately with a special prosecutor during the investigation stage of a case; when that investigation becomes a prosecution, people are called to testify in court, and that kind of testimony, as a general matter, becomes a matter of public record: What did the president know, and when did he know it?

As for Rove, it's certainly better for him that he lives to fight another day. Is it better for the White House? Maybe. If Rove had been indicted today, it was widely expected that he would have resigned immediately. Instead, he'll keep showing up for work at the White House even as Fitzgerald continues to investigate. Is he any closer to being off the hook today than he was a day or a week ago? It's hard to read that into the bits and pieces we're seeing. The New York Times has said again and again over the last week that Rove has been warned that he's in serious legal jeopardy. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said today that his client's "status" hasn't changed. While Luskin said that he's "confident" that Fitzgerald will ultimately decide that Rove has "done nothing wrong," that's what lawyers always say; he also acknowledged that Fitzgerald has "made no decision" yet.

That sort of no news isn't good news for the White House. More news wouldn't be, either. We'll know in a few minutes whether Scooter Libby has been indicted. We may also know whether anyone else -- aside from Rove -- is still in Fitzgerald's sights.

-- Tim Grieve

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Fitzgerald will answer questions today. What about Bush?
Whatever happens in the next few hours -- regardless of whether Scooter Libby is the only one who gets indicted, regardless of how the GOP spins away charges as "perjury technicalities," regardless of how quickly George W. Bush hops on Marine One and high-tails it up to Camp David -- it's fair to remember this: Two years ago, when the Valerie Plame investigation and George W. Bush's reelection campaign were just getting started, the White House prejudged the case by announcing pretty unequivocally that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with it.

This was the back-and-forth at Scott McClellan's White House press briefing on Oct. 10, 2003:

Reporter: Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliott Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

McClellan: Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.

And that is, in fact, where it stood until this summer, when leaks from the grand jury room and then firsthand reports from reporters made it clear that Rove and Libby were both very much involved in leaking Plame's identity. The press has much to answer for: Reporters, sworn to secrecy by their sources, remained complicit in the administration's lie even as their readers stepped into the polling booths in November. And whatever Patrick Fitzgerald announces today, the White House has some long-overdue explaining to do, too.

McClellan started that process this week. For months, a lot of us have been asking this about McClellan's 2003 denials: Did Rove and Libby lie to McClellan, or did McClellan lie to the American people? At a press briefing three days ago, McClellan insisted that it was the former, that he had merely passed on -- accurately -- the assurances he'd received from Rove and Libby.

Reporter: Scott, a couple of years ago, you told us that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove had nothing to do with the CIA leak. It appears that you may have gotten bad information before you made that statement ... My question is: Can we be confident that when we hear statements from the White House in public that they are truthful?

McClellan: I think you can because you know that our relationship is built on trust, and I have earned that trust with you all. As you pointed out, you pointed back to some past comments that I gave and I've talked to you about the assurances that I received on that.

Translation: Rove and Libby lied to me.

So maybe we can check that one off the list, at least so far as McClellan's culpability is concerned, and at least so far as we can believe McClellan this time. But then there's still this: At a press briefing on Sept. 29, 2003, McClellan acknowledged that Bush knew that he was proclaiming Rove's innocence and was standing by and letting it happen. "The president knows" that Rove wasn't involved, McClellan said. He wouldn't explain then how the president "knew," and -- with the cloud of investigation still hanging over Rove -- it's unlikely that he's going to explain it now.

Early on his administration, George W. Bush said: "We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal but what is right." Patrick Fitzgerald will begin to address the "legal" part of that equation when he announces his decisions today. As for the "right" part? We're still waiting.

-- Tim Grieve

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Meanwhile, the president talks about 9/11
As a federal grand jury meets to consider indictments against one or more members of his administration, George W. Bush is in Norfolk, Va., where he's standing before a sea of digitized American flags and talking about the threat that terrorists pose to the United States.

-- Tim Grieve

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No Rove indictment today -- but the investigation continues
Karl Rove's lawyer has just issued a statement that seems to confirm what we've been hearing: The president's top political advisor won't be indicted today, but he will remain under investigaton for his role in the Valerie Plame case. Robert Luskin says that "Mr. Rove's status" has not changed and that the investigation is continuing.

The Associated Press says that Patrick Fitzgerald's office told Luskin last night that the special prosecutor has not completed his investigation into Rove's role and still has matters to resolve before deciding "what he is going to do."

We'll learn more when Fitzgerald releases documents around noon today and goes before the cameras at 2 p.m.

-- Tim Grieve

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An indictment for Libby? More time for Rove? And why?
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is back inside the federal courthouse in Washington, and CNN says he'll make an announcement at 2 p.m. today. Until then, we're at a more advanced stage of where we've been all week: Waiting, speculating and watching the smoke signals.

The Associated Press says Dick Cheney arrived at work an hour early today!

Conventional wisdom seems to have converged quickly on two core assumptions. The first is that Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, will be indicted today, probably on charges that he lied to the grand jury about his involvement in Valerie Plame's outing. Libby reportedly told the grand jury that he learned about Plame from reporters; his own notes reportedly say that he learned about her from Cheney, and Judy Miller has testified that Libby told her about Plame, not the other way around. That's a problem, and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal suggest that it's likely to lead to his indictment.

The second bit of late-breaking conventional wisdom is that Karl Rove will be spared an indictment -- for now. The Wall Street Journal, relying on "a person briefed on the matter," says that Rove was "informed yesterday evening that he may not be charged today but remains in legal jeopardy." NBC News is reporting it the same way. And the Associated Press, relying on a source "familiar with recent developments in the case," is reporting this morning that Fitzgerald "signaled" last night that "he might simply keep Rove under investigation."

Everyone seems to agree that Fitzgerald might -- or might not -- obtain or announce additional indictments today. Everyone seems to agree that Fitzgerald might -- or might not -- indict or at least reveal the identity of whoever it was that first leaked Plame's identity to Robert Novak. Everyone seems to agree that everything is still fluid and that just about anything could change between now and the time of Fitzgerald's expected midday announcement -- or even after.

So here's what we want to know. First, if the supposition about Rove's status is true, why does Fitzgerald need more time before making a decision? Maybe, after two years of work, he's still got more investigating to do: Earlier this week, his investigators were out interviewing Plame's neighbors, and one of his prosecutors was still asking a former White House aide questions about Rove. Or maybe Fitzgerald knows what he needs to know, and "more time to investigate" really just means "more time to negotiate." Fitzgerald was in contact with Rove's criminal defense lawyer this week; it's possible that they're working on some sort of plea bargain and just aren't done with it yet.

And that leads to our second question. In Robert Luskin, Rove has a lawyer who specializes in criminal defense. In Joseph Tate, Libby has a lawyer with some criminal experience but whose focus seems to be antitrust work. It's looking like Rove won't be indicted today. It's looking like Libby will be. Coincidence? Maybe. But most criminal defense attorneys will tell you that your best chance of beating an indictment comes before one is handed down. The Washington Post says that Libby is looking for a criminal defense attorney now. Why didn't he do that a long, long time ago? Why did he reportedly tell the grand jury that he heard about Plame from reporters when he knew, presumably, that his notes said otherwise? Did Libby think he could somehow outsmart or outlast Fitzgerald? That's another way of asking this: Has the same arrogance that led the country to war led Scooter Libby to the brink of a criminal indictment?

-- Tim Grieve

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NYT: Libby indictment likely, Rove indictment not -- maybe
Patrick Fitzgerald still hasn't made announcements yet, but the New York Times seems to think it has things figured out -- sort of.

In a two-steps-removed-from-firsthand-knowledge lead, the Times says that "lawyers in the case" are saying that "associates" of Scooter Libby "expect" that he'll be indicted on a charge of making false statements to the grand jury. Meanwhile, the Times says, "people briefed officially" on the case are saying that Karl Rove won't be indicted but will continue to be investigated. Fitzgerald, the "people briefed officially" say, likely will seek an extension of the grand jury term.

It all sounds a little speculative, and we haven't even gotten to the Times' disclaimers yet: A "flurry of behind-the-scenes discussions" has "left open the possibility of last-minute surprises," people "involved in the case" won't "rule out the disclosure of previously unknown aspects of the case," and the question of whether anyone other than Libby or Rove might be charged remains an "unresolved mystery." And then there's this: Contrary to the Times' suggestion, the Washington Post quotes "legal sources" who say that Fitzgerald has indicated that he won't be extending his investigation. But then there's this: Contrary to the Post's suggestion, the Associated Press says that a "person outside the legal profession familiar with recent developments in the case" says that Fitzgerald "signaled" Thursday that he'll keep his investigation open -- and that Rove will remain in legal jeopardy even if he isn't indicted Friday.

The Post isn't predicting who will or won't be indicted, only observing that Libby is shopping for a criminal defense attorney -- a move we would have recommended, if he'd asked us, long before today. As for Rove? He already has a criminal defense attorney. But as of Thursday night, "people close to the investigation" tell the Los Angeles Times, Rove hadn't yet received notice that he was going to be indicted. The paper said that Fitzgerald is expected to make his decisions known around midday Friday.

Here's the part of the story the New York Times -- and everyone else -- can be sure is right: If any indictments come down Friday, the Times says, the Bush administration will be keeping "as low a profile as possible." The White House press secretary hasn't scheduled a briefing for Friday, and the president is leaving town early for a weekend at Camp David.

-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com - War Room

Posted by: Douglas at 10/28/2005 03:56:43 PM | Permalink

Salon.com News | All the vice president's men

Here's a first-rate analysis by the excellent Juan Cole of Cheney's men that shows the complex of reasons that drove the Bush administration into Iraq; the nutty neocons in Cheney's office; and that Libby with Wolfowitz wrote the first crazed paper in 1992 urging the US to invade Iraq and was also active in the Project for a New American Century that was major influence on Bush administration Iraq debacle....
"All the vice president's men
The ideologues in Cheney's inner circle drummed up a war. Now their zealotry is blowing up in their faces.
By Juan Cole

Oct. 28, 2005 | As Washington waits on pins and needles to see if special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments, the focus falls on Dick Cheney's inner circle. This group, along with that surrounding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made up what Colin Powell's top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, called "a cabal" that "on critical issues ... made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." Cheney is the first vice president to have had, in effect, his own personal National Security Council. This formidable and unprecedented rump foreign policy team, composed of radical hawks, played a key role in every aspect of the war on Iraq: planning for it, gathering "evidence" to justify it and punishing those who spoke out against it. It is not surprising that members of that team, and Cheney himself, have now also emerged as targets in Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press, along with Bush advisor Karl Rove.

Although the investigation has focused on Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a number of other Cheney staffers have been interviewed. Who are these shadowy policymakers who played such a major role in shaping the Bush administration's foreign policy?

Most of the members of Cheney's inner circle were neoconservative ideologues, who combined hawkish American triumphalism with an obsession with Israel. This does not mean that the war was fought for Israel, although it is undeniable that Israeli concerns played an important role. The actual motivation behind the war was complex, and Cheney's team was not the only one in the game. The Bush administration is a coalition of disparate forces -- country club Republicans, realists, representatives of oil and other corporate interests, evangelicals, hardball political strategists, right-wing Catholics, and neoconservative Jews allied with Israel's right-wing Likud party. Each group had its own rationale for going to war with Iraq.

Bush himself appears to have had an obsession with restoring family honor by avenging the slight to his father produced by Saddam's remaining in office after the Gulf War. Cheney was interested in the benefits of a war to the oil industry, and to the military-industrial complex in general. It seems likely that the Iraq war, which produced billions in no-bid contracts for the company he headed in the late 1990s, saved Halliburton from bankruptcy. The evangelicals wanted to missionize Iraqis. Karl Rove wanted to turn Bush into a war president to ensure his reelection. The neoconservatives viewed Saddam's Iraq as a short-term danger to Israel, and in the long term, they hoped that overthrowing the Iraqi Baath would transform the entire Middle East, rather as Kamal Ataturk, who abolished the offices of Ottoman emperor and Sunni caliph in the 1920s, had brought into being a relatively democratic Turkey that was allied with Israel. (This fantastic analogy was suggested by Princeton emeritus professor and leading neoconservative ideologue Bernard Lewis.) This transformation would be beneficial to the long-term security of both the United States and Israel.

None of these rationales would have been acceptable across the board, or persuasive with Congress or the American public, so the various factions focused on the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately for them, this rationale was discovered to be a mirage. And in the course of trying to punish those who were pointing out that the emperor had no clothes -- or, in this case, that the dictator had no weapons of mass destruction -- Cheney and Bush's underlings went too far. Ironically, their attempt to silence critics succeeded only in turning a harsh light on their own actions and motivations.

"Cheney Assembles Formidable Team," marveled a Page One article in the Feb. 3, 2001, edition of the New York Times. It turns out that Cheney had 15 military and political advisors on foreign affairs, at a time when the president's own National Security Council was being downsized. The number of aides who counseled Cheney on domestic issues was much smaller. In contrast, Al Gore had been advised by a single staffer on security affairs.

The leader of the team was Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Libby had studied at Yale with Paul Wolfowitz, who brought him to Washington. He co-authored a hawkish policy document with Wolfowitz in the Department of Defense for its head, Dick Cheney, after the Gulf War in 1992. When it was leaked, it embarrassed the first President Bush. Libby was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century in 1997 during the Clinton years, when many neoconservatives were out of office. The PNAC attempted to use the Republican-dominated Congress to pressure Clinton to take a more belligerent stance toward Iraq, and it advocated significantly expanding military spending and using U.S. troops as "gendarmes" in the aftermath of wars to "shape" the international security environment.

Cheney was also a PNAC member, and his association with this group from 1997 signaled a shift from his earlier hard-nosed realism, as he allied himself with the neoconservatives, who dreamed of transforming other societies. The James Baker branch of the Republican Party had long been critical of Israel for causing trouble for the United States in the Middle East with its expansionist policies and unwillingness to stop the settlement of the West Bank, and Baker was well aware that the vast majority of American Jews do not vote Republican.

Although a staunch defender of Israel, Cheney at one time was at least on speaking terms with this wing of the Republican Party. (The sense of betrayal felt by his old colleagues was summed up by Bush I's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who told the New Yorker he considered Cheney a friend, "But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." As time went on, however, he increasingly chose to ally with neoconservatives and the Jewish right in the U.S. and Israel, accepting them as powerful allies and constituents for his vision of a post-Cold War world dominated by an unchallenged American hegemony that would be backed by a vast military-industrial establishment fed by U.S. tax dollars. He continually promised skeptical Jewish audiences that a democratic Iraq would benefit Israel. His choice of advisors when he became vice president demonstrated a pronounced preference for the neoconservatives.

But Cheney's alliance with the neocons was probably driven more by his Manichaean, Cold War-inspired worldview -- in which the U.S. battled an evil enemy -- and his corporate ties, than by an obsession with Israel or remaking the Middle East. Islamist terror provided a new version of the Soviet "evil empire." And the neocons' dynamic foreign policy vision, their "liberalism with guns," offered more opportunities for the military-industrial complex than did traditional Republican realism in a post-Soviet world, where peer states did not exist and no credible military threat menaced the U.S. Only a series of wars of conquest in the Middle East, dressed up as a "defense" against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could hope to keep the Pentagon and the companies to which it outsourced in the gravy.

Such wars could no longer be fought in East Asia, given Chinese and North Korean nuclear capabilities, and there were no U.S. constituencies for such wars in most other parts of the world. The Middle East was the perfect arena for a renewed American militarism, given that the U.S. public held deep prejudices against the Arab-Muslim world, and, after Sept. 11, deeply feared it.

A key, but less well-known, Cheney advisor on the Middle East is John Hannah, a former Soviet expert. He had been part of a policy group assembled by Cheney when he was secretary of defense, in 1989, under the direction of Paul Wolfowitz. Hannah was distinguished for his distrust of Soviet reformist Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, according to the New Republic.

Hannah then came to head the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a stridently pro-Israel think tank that has gained enormous influence in Washington. WINEP had been founded in the 1980s with the backing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the legendarily powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. The initial impetus for it was that think tanks like the Brookings Institution were felt to be insufficiently pro-Israel. Initially WINEP tended to support the government in power in Israel, but in the past 15 years it has increasingly been drawn into the orbit of the right-wing, expansionist Likud Party.

WINEP wields enormous influence, to the point where it almost functions as a governmental entity. The director of a private consulting firm with a contract from the Department of Defense that involved trying to think about the future of the main political parties in Iraq told me in 2004 that he was specifically instructed, as part of his contract, to depend on the material at the WINEP Web site. State Department officials and U.S. military officers are detailed to WINEP to learn about the Middle East and are indoctrinated into a pro-Likud point of view at taxpayers' expense. Despite its highly political activities, WINEP has the status for tax purposes of a nonprofit charitable foundation.

When Hannah was at WINEP, he was still deeply concerned with post-Soviet Russian foreign policy toward the Middle East. The Soviets had been major patrons of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Syria and Iraq, all of whom Hannah viewed as enemies. In a 1993 interview with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, another pro-Israel, right-wing organization, Hannah expressed anxiety about the rise of Russian nationalists who, he claimed, sought to undermine United Nations sanctions against Libya and to position Russian companies to invest in Iraq should the sanctions on that country begin to slip. For figures such as Hannah, Russian nationalism and Middle Eastern rogue states like Libya and Iraq represented unfinished business left over from the Cold War. For the Israeli hawks and their American supporters, the Cold War was not really over as long as the former Soviet allies in the Middle East continued to express enmity to Israel.

As former Secretary of State Warren Christopher once remarked, the U.S. State Department probably owes WINEP a finder's fee for providing it with key personnel. From the institute, Hannah came to work for Christopher (who served from 1993 to 1997). During this period, Hannah cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, an expatriate group funded by the CIA and the State Department to overthrow Saddam. One of the things that made Chalabi attractive to Hannah and other neocons was that he promised them that if he came to power he would recognize Israel and take Iraq in the same direction as Turkey, a Muslim country allied with the Zionist state.

We next meet Hannah as an aide to John Bolton. Bolton, a curmudgeonly lawyer who helped stop the Florida recount in 2000, was rewarded by Bush by being made undersecretary of state for arms control and international proliferation. Bolton detailed Hannah to Cheney's office as chief adviser on the Middle East. (Hannah actually knew little about the Middle East and knows no Arabic, being primarily an old Russia hand.)

Cheney's other major advisor besides Libby on Middle East affairs is David Wurmser, a Johns Hopkins Ph.D. in international relations. He served as project officer at the congressionally funded U.S. Institute of Peace, from 1988 to 1994. He then moved for two years to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he was director of institutional grants until 1996. In the latter year he co-authored, with Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and others, a now-famous policy paper for incoming Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," that advocated a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein and install a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq as a way of moderating the Shiites of the region and securing "the realm" of Israel. Since post-Khomeini Shiites despise monarchy as un-Islamic, and since the Hashemites, who used to rule Iraq before 1958 and still rule Jordan, are Sunni Muslims, this plan was worse than science fiction. Science fiction is coherent and often involves some actual knowledge.

The neoconservatives were actually more concerned with Syria initially than Iraq, since it more directly threatened Israeli security. Indeed, "A Clean Break" advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein mainly as a way of pressuring Damascus. The policy paper said, with astonishing ignorance, "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf [sic] Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet's family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein."

This paragraph must be the most absurd, ill-informed and frankly lunatic pieces of prose ever produced by any policy advisor anywhere. It is full of false premises and ignorant assumptions. Saddam Hussein's branch of the Baath Party was a rival of the Syrian Baath Party, not a supporter. Syria had joined Bush I's coalition against Iraq, allying with the Americans in 1990-91. Removing the Iraqi Baath would more likely strengthen Syria than weaken it. As for the Shiites in Iraq and southern Lebanon, they had been deeply influenced by the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, who preached that monarchy is incompatible with Islam. The idea that the old Hashemite monarchy could be revived and reinstalled in revolutionary Iraq was itself absurd. That a Sunni king in Baghdad might have any appeal to the Shiites of southern Lebanon, who favored Hezbollah and Khomeinism, would only occur to someone completely ignorant of the actual politics of Tyre and Nabatiya. The tragedy is that this sort of hallucination appears actually to have underpinned real policy moves by the neoconservatives as they became powerful in Washington under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Wurmser is married to Meyrav Wurmser, director of Middle East programs at the right-wing Hudson Institute. She was listed as a co-author of "A Clean Break." She had also co-founded, with a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence, the MEMRI translation service, which cherry-picks Arabic newspapers for the more outrageous articles and political cartoons, and translates them into English for the purpose of creating a negative view of the Arab world.

In 1999 David Wurmser published "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein." In 2000, Wurmser authored a paper urging the U.S. government to push Syria out of Lebanon and to refuse to engage with Damascus that was published by the Middle East Forum of Daniel Pipes. The Middle E