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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
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Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman: 'Bush resigns'
If only!
The Smirking Chimp: "Russell Mokhiber & Robert Weissman: 'Bush resigns'"
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
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Monday, November 28, 2005
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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman: 'Ohio's Diebold debacle: New machines call election results into question'
No doubt about it, e-voting is an unmitigated disaster and if isn't fixed soon the Bad Guys will just keep rigging and stealing....
The Smirking Chimp
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A Growing Wariness About Money in Politics
let's hope indeed that there is a backlash against the unparalleled corruption of Bush=Cheney-Rove Gang and their corporate allies...
A Growing Wariness About Money in Politics
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest scam on Bush administration and Repug scandals from Salon:
"When the question is Republican politicians facing legal problems, the answer is: It's getting awfully hard to keep up.
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty today to a charge of conspiring to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud. In the process, the California Republican admitted to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes from a defense contractor and other co-conspirators. "He did the worst thing an elected official can do — he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there," said U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. In a tearful appearance before the press a few minutes ago, Cunningham announced that he is resigning immediately from Congress. He said that he has forfeited the "trust of my friends and family" and vowed to cooperate with an ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that at least half a dozen other members of Congress are the subjects of an ongoing investigation into the dealings of indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Sources tell the Post that Ohio Rep. Robert Ney and his chief of staff have both been warned that prosecutors are preparing a possible bribery case against them. Other Republicans in investigators' sights? The Post identifies Montana Sen. Conrad Burns and California Rep. John Doolittle as well as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who has already been indicted on an unrelated criminal charge in Texas.
DeLay's former press secretary, Michael Scanlon, has already pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the Abramoff probe and is helping investigators now. Authorities are still looking into the suspiciously timed stock sales of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. David Safavian, the top procurement official in the Bush administration and former chief of staff for Republican Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, has already been indicted. And there are so many state-level Republican officials under investigation that you really do need a scorecard to keep track.
And then there's the CIA leak case. The vice president's chief of staff has been indicted, and now Patrick Fitzgerald is talking about needing a new grand jury amid revelations that somebody leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Bob Woodward and more questions about what Karl Rove did or didn't tell the grand jury and why.
Christmas is still a month away, but for prosecutors around the country, Republican control in Washington is already the gift that keeps on giving.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [14:25 EST, Nov. 28, 2005]
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What ever happened to Scott McClellan?
On the White House Web site today, you'll find a photograph of the president phoning troops in Iraq and a copy of the Bush family's Thanksgiving dinner menu. What you won't find is a transcript of a Scott McClellan press briefing -- at least not a recent one.
As Think Progress notes, 19 days have passed since McClellan last delivered an on-the-record press briefing. On Nov. 9, McClellan appeared before the cameras in the White House press briefing room to spin away questions about the Republicans' poor showings in off-off-year elections. There have been a number of on-the-record White House press briefings since then, but not with McClellan at the lectern. Stephen Hadley has handled several. Condoleezza Rice has done one. Mike Green, a special assistant to the president, has appeared at several more. But no McClellan.
Except insofar as it would be an admission that there's a problem there, it wouldn't be particularly surprising if the White House found a way to ease McClellan and his press briefings out of the picture. After assuring the public that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby weren't involved in outing Valerie Plame, McClellan's credibility is pretty much shot. His press briefings have become little more than daily fodder for bloggers and the TV networks, providing fresh text and video every day to accompany stories about a White House under siege.
McClellan still seems to be around: A press release lamely claiming that Joe Biden shares the president's views on Iraq went out over his name over the weekend. But when Think Progress called the White House to find out if there would be a daily press briefing today, a press assistant said no -- and that there's nothing on the schedule for the week yet.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [13:36 EST, Nov. 28, 2005]
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The president, in denial and on a crusade
The president returns to Washington today after another vacation in Crawford, Texas, and the White House hopes that talk of immigration reform and the Samuel Alito nomination will distract the public from worries over the war in Iraq and continuing developments in the CIA leak case.
As for George W. Bush? He doesn't need any distracting. Two new reports -- one in the New Yorker, one in the New York Daily News -- suggest that the president is living in a state of denial about the troubles facing him and the country he is supposed to lead for three more years.
In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh tells the tale of a former senior administration official who visited Iraq after the 2004 presidential election and returned to inform Bush that the war wasn't going well. "I said to the president, 'We're not winning the war,'" the official told Hersh. "And he asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.'" Bush was "displeased" with the answer, the official told Hersh. "I tried to tell him. And he couldn't hear it."
Hersh paints the picture of a president who believes that he was chosen by God to lead the United States after 9/11, a man whose faith blots out any concern over setbacks in Iraq. "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course," a former defense official tells Hersh. "Bush is a believer in the adage 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'" The former official tells Hersh that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney reinforce the president's delusions by having him appear only in front of friendly audiences and keeping him "in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway." Bush, the former official says, has no idea that he's living in a bubble.
In the Daily News, Thomas DeFrank and Kenneth Bazinet say the state of denial extends well beyond Bush. They quote a "card-carrying member of the Washington GOP establishment with close ties to the White House" who dined recently with several senior presidential aides and left shaking his head. "There is just no introspection there at all," he said. "It is everybody else's fault -- the press, gutless Republicans on the Hill. They're still in denial." Another "close Bush confidant" says: "The staff basically still has an unyielding belief in the wisdom of what they're doing. They're talking to people who could help them, but they're not listening."
Meanwhile, the Daily News says, the president is growing paranoid about the people around him, furious over leaks about the mood inside the White House but unsure which of his aides is spreading the stories. One "knowledgeable source" says: "He's asking [friends] for opinions on who he can trust and who he can't."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:49 EST, Nov. 28, 2005]
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A "trophy video" from Iraq
From the "Can It Get Any Worse?" Department comes news of what appears to be a trophy video of somebody firing an automatic weapon at drivers in Iraq, all set to the tune of Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train."
The Sunday Telegraph broke the story yesterday, saying that the discovery of the video on a Web site "unofficially linked" to a major private security contractor operating in Iraq has prompted investigations by both the contractor and the British government.
Last year, the Bush administration granted the contractor, Aegis Defense Services, a $293 million contract for security work in Iraq. The contract was controversial at the time it was granted because of questions about the past of Aegis chief executive Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guard. Among other things, Spicer was accused of selling weapons to Sierra Leone in violation of United Nations sanctions.
While it's not clear whether Aegis employees were involved in making the video, the Telegraph says voices with Irish or Scottish accents can be heard on the tape as somebody fires rounds out of the back of a car. A spokesman for Aegis tells the Telegraph that there is "nothing to indicate" that the film clips are connected to the company. At the same time, however, the Web site on which the video was found also contains what appears to be a notice from Spicer in which he notes the "media interest in the site" and reminds "everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:21 EST, Nov. 28, 2005]
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From the prosecutor, more questions about Rove in the Plame case
For Karl Rove, Thanksgiving leftovers aren't the only thing that's getting old. Time magazine reported over the weekend that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is talking with another one of its reporters about Rove's role in the Valerie Plame case.
Time says that Fitzgerald will depose Viveca Novak about conversations she had with Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, beginning in May 2004. That would be almost a year after Rove, Scooter Libby and one or more other administration officials leaked Plame's identity to reporters, including Novak's Time colleague Matthew Cooper.
As the New York Times notes this morning, the summer and fall of 2004 were a "significant time" for Rove: It was then, the Times says, that Rove claims to have searched for and found an e-mail message to then Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that reminded him that he had had talked with Cooper about Plame in July 2003 -- a conversation that Rove failed to mention when he was initially interviewed in the investigation.
Of course, the summer and fall of 2004 were a "significant time" for Rove in other ways, too: He was in the final stretch to Election Day, a day on which voters would go to the polls knowing -- thanks to White House lies and media complicity -- far less than the truth about the role Rove, Libby and others played in revealing the identity of a CIA agent for the president's political gain.
-- Tim Grieve
a href="http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/print.html">Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Sunday, November 27, 2005
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Jonathan Schell: 'The fall of the one-party empire'
Dreams of Empire by one-Party Repugs turn to ashes under Bush blunders
The Smirking Chimp
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Matthew Rothschild: 'Bush targets Al Jazeera? CNN head should get job back'
its appearing that former CNN head was right that Bush administration was targeting media....
The Smirking Chimp
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Gary Leupp: 'Bush the dupe?'
sounds like Bush is cracking up, shored up only by a small group of female enablers...
The Smirking Chimp: "Gary Leupp: 'Bush the dupe?'"
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Friday, November 25, 2005
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Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm - New York Times
what a joke that someone would hire FEMA incompetent Brownie for advice on planning; that anyone would consider this is an index of depth of Bush cronyism, that insider access is key to political process for Bush-Cheney Gang and that one can always buy favors and legislation with the right connections
'Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm - New York Times
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Mark Brzezinksi: 'Secret CIA prisons: Picking up where the Soviets left off'
The Bush-Cheney Gang as the historical successors to Stalinism
The Smirking Chimp
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Andrew Greeley: 'Is Bush lying about his lies?
The Bush-Cheney Gang are such liars they are now lying about lies
The Smirking Chimp
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Thursday, November 24, 2005
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Marshall Auerback: 'Bush's 'Compassionate Converatism,' a report card from the front'
the record is clear, Bush is a miserable failure....
The Smirking Chimp
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E.J. Dionne, Jr.: 'Dysfunctional democracy: Has Washington gone insane?'
E.J. Dionne is right, US Democracy is increasingly disfunctional while Washington lools insane
The Smirking Chimp
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George Monbiot: 'Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes'
George Monbiot is right: Falluja was the site of multiple US war crimes, one of the horrors of the horrific war
The Smirking Chimp
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Cheney's Reign
Here's a good analysis by Sidney Blumenthal of the role of Cheney in his co-administration:
"The long march of Dick Cheney
For his entire career, he sought untrammeled power. The Bush presidency and 9/11 finally gave it to him -- and he's not about to give it up.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Nov. 24, 2005 The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined.
Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held "cabal" -- as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it -- wields control.
Within the White House, the office of the vice president is the strategic center. The National Security Council has been demoted to enabler and implementer. Systems of off-line operations have been laid to evade professional analysis and a responsible chain of command. Those who attempt to fulfill their duties in the old ways have been humiliated when necessary, fired, retired early or shunted aside. In their place, acolytes and careerists indistinguishable from true believers in their eagerness have been elevated.
The collapse of sections of the façade shielding Cheney from public view has not inhibited him. His former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, appears to be withholding information about the vice president's actions in the Plame affair from the special prosecutor. While Bush has declaimed, "We do not torture," Cheney lobbied the Senate to stop it from prohibiting torture.
At the same time, Cheney has taken the lead in defending the administration from charges that it twisted intelligence to justify the Iraq war and misled the Congress even as new stories underscore the legitimacy of the charges.
Former Sen. Bob Graham has revealed, in a Nov. 20 article in the Washington Post, that the condensed version of the National Intelligence Estimate titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" that was submitted to the Senate days before it voted on the Iraq war resolution "represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed [WMD], avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version." The condensed version also contained the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was seeking "weapons-grade fissile material from abroad."
The administration relied for key information in the NIE on an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball. According to a Nov. 20 report in the Los Angeles Times, it had learned from German intelligence beforehand that Curveball was completely untrustworthy and his claims fabricated. Yet Bush, Cheney and, most notably, Powell in his prewar performance before the United Nations, which he now calls the biggest "blot" on his record and about which he insists he was "deceived," touted Curveball's disinformation.
In two speeches over the past week Cheney has called congressional critics "dishonest," "shameless" and "reprehensible." He ridiculed their claim that they did not have the same intelligence as the administration. "These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities." Lambasting them for historical "revisionism," he repeatedly invoked Sept. 11. "We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001 -- and the terrorists hit us anyway," he said.
The day after Cheney's most recent speech, the National Journal reported that the president's daily briefing prepared by the CIA 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, indicated that there was no connection between Saddam and the terrorist attacks. Of course, the 9/11 Commission had made the same point in its report.
Even though experts and pundits contradict his talking points, Cheney presents them with characteristic assurance. His rhetoric is like a paving truck that will flatten obstacles. Cheney remains undeterred; he has no recourse. He will not run for president in 2008. He is defending more than the Bush record; he is defending the culmination of his career. Cheney's alliances, ideas, antagonisms and tactics have accumulated for decades.
Cheney is a master bureaucrat, proficient in the White House, the agencies and departments, and Congress. The many offices Cheney has held add up to an extraordinary résumé. His competence and measured manner are often mistaken for moderation. Among those who have misjudged Cheney are military men -- Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Wilkerson, who lacked a sense of him as a political man in full. As a result, they expressed surprise at their discovery of the ideological hard man. Scowcroft told the New Yorker recently that Cheney was not the Cheney he once knew. But Scowcroft and the other military men rose by working through regular channels; they were trained to respect established authority. They are at a disadvantage in internal political battles with those operating by different rules of warfare. Their realism does not account for radicalism within the U.S. government.
Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal thwarted his designs for an unchecked imperial presidency. It was in that White House that Cheney gained his formative experience as the assistant to Nixon's counselor, Donald Rumsfeld. When Gerald Ford acceded to the presidency, he summoned Rumsfeld from his posting as NATO ambassador to become his chief of staff. Rumsfeld, in turn, brought back his former deputy, Cheney.
From Nixon, they learned the application of ruthlessness and the harsh lesson of failure. Under Ford, Rumsfeld designated Cheney as his surrogate on intelligence matters. During the immediate aftermath of Watergate, Congress investigated past CIA abuses, and the press was filled with revelations. In May 1975, Seymour Hersh reported in the New York Times on how the CIA had sought to recover a sunken Soviet submarine with a deep-sea mining vessel called the Glomar Explorer, built by Howard Hughes. When Hersh's article appeared, Cheney wrote memos laying out options ranging from indicting Hersh or getting a search warrant for Hersh's apartment to suing the Times and pressuring its owners "to discourage the NYT and other publications from similar action." "In the end," writes James Mann, in his indispensable book, "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet," "Cheney and the White House decided to back off after the intelligence community decided its work had not been significantly damaged."
Rumsfeld and Cheney quickly gained control of the White House staff, edging out Ford's old aides. From this base, they waged bureaucratic war on Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, a colossus of foreign policy, who occupied the posts of both secretary of state and national security advisor. Rumsfeld and Cheney were the right wing of the Ford administration, opposed to the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, and they operated by stealthy internal maneuver. The Secret Service gave Cheney the code name "Backseat."
In 1975, Rumsfeld and Cheney stage-managed a Cabinet purge called the "Halloween massacre" that made Rumsfeld secretary of defense and Cheney White House chief of staff. Kissinger, forced to surrender control of the National Security Council, angrily drafted a letter of resignation (which he never submitted). Rumsfeld and Cheney helped convince Ford, who faced a challenge for the Republican nomination from Ronald Reagan, that he needed to shore up his support on the right and that Rockefeller was a political liability. Rockefeller felt compelled to announce he would not be Ford's running mate. Upset at the end of his ambition, Rockefeller charged that Rumsfeld intended to become vice president himself. In fact, Rumsfeld had contemplated running for president in the future and undoubtedly would have accepted a vice presidential nod.
In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld undermined the negotiations for a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty being conducted by Kissinger. Fighting off Reagan's attacks during the Republican primaries, Ford was pressured by Cheney to adopt his foreign policy views, which amounted to a self-repudiation. At the Republican Party Convention, acting as Ford's representative, Cheney engineered the adoption of Reagan's foreign policy plank in the platform. By doing so he preempted an open debate and split. Privately, Ford, Kissinger and Rockefeller were infuriated.
As part of the Halloween massacre Rumsfeld and Cheney pushed out CIA director William Colby and replaced him with George H.W. Bush, then the U.S. plenipotentiary to China. The CIA had been uncooperative with the Rumsfeld/Cheney anti-détente campaign. Instead of producing intelligence reports simply showing an urgent Soviet military buildup, the CIA issued complex analyses that were filled with qualifications. Its National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet threat contained numerous caveats, dissents and contradictory opinions. From the conservative point of view, the CIA was guilty of groupthink, unwilling to challenge its own premises and hostile to conservative ideas.
The new CIA director was prompted to authorize an alternative unit outside the CIA to challenge the agency's intelligence on Soviet intentions. Bush was more compliant in the political winds than his predecessor. Consisting of a host of conservatives, the unit was called Team B. A young aide from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, was selected to represent Rumsfeld's interest and served as coauthor of Team B's report. The report was single-minded in its conclusion about the Soviet buildup and cleansed of contrary intelligence. It was fundamentally a political tool in the struggle for control of the Republican Party, intended to destroy détente and aimed particularly at Kissinger. Both Ford and Kissinger took pains to dismiss Team B and its effort. (Later, Team B's report was revealed to be wildly off the mark about the scope and capability of the Soviet military.)
With Ford's defeat, Team B became the kernel of the Committee on the Present Danger, a conservative group that attacked President Carter for weakness on the Soviet threat. The growing strength of the right thwarted ratification of SALT II, setting the stage for Reagan's nomination and election.
Elected to the House of Representatives in 1978, Cheney became the Republican leader on the House Intelligence Committee, where he consistently fought congressional oversight and limits on presidential authority. When Congress investigated the Iran-Contra scandal (the creation of an illegal, privately funded, offshore U.S. foreign policy initiative), Cheney was the crucial administration defender. At every turn, he blocked the Democrats and prevented them from questioning Vice President Bush. Under his leadership, not a single House Republican signed the special investigating committee's final report charging "secrecy, deception and disdain for law." Instead, the Republicans issued their own report claiming there had been no major wrongdoing.
The origin of Cheney's alliance with the neoconservatives goes back to his instrumental support for Team B. Upon being appointed secretary of defense by the elder Bush, he kept on Wolfowitz as undersecretary. And Wolfowitz kept on his deputy, his former student at the University of Chicago, Scooter Libby. Earlier, Wolfowitz and Libby had written a document expressing suspicion of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalizing perestroika and warning against making deals with him, a document that President Reagan ignored as he made an arms control agreement and proclaimed that the Cold War was ending.
During the Gulf War, Secretary of Defense Cheney clashed with Gen. Colin Powell. At one point, he admonished Powell, who had been Reagan's national security advisor, "Colin, you're chairman of the Joint Chiefs ... so stick to military matters." During the run-up to the war, Cheney set up a secret unit in the Pentagon to develop an alternative war plan, his own version of Team B. "Set up a team, and don't tell Powell or anybody else," Cheney ordered Wolfowitz. The plan was called Operation Scorpion. "While Powell was out of town, visiting Saudi Arabia, Cheney -- again, without telling Powell -- took the civilian-drafted plan, Operation Scorpion, to the White House and presented it to the president and the national security adviser," writes Mann in his book. Bush, however, rejected it as too risky. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was enraged at Cheney's presumption. "Put a civilian in charge of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with setting policy but wants to outgeneral the generals," he wrote in his memoir. After Operation Scorpion was rejected, Cheney urged Bush to go to war without congressional approval, a notion the elder Bush dismissed.
After the Gulf War victory, in 1992, Cheney approved a new "Defense Planning Guidance" advocating U.S. unilateralism in the post-Cold War, a document whose final draft was written by Libby. Cheney assumed Republican rule for the indefinite future.
One week after Bill Clinton's inauguration, on Jan. 27, 1993, Cheney appeared on "Larry King Live," where he declared his interest in running for the presidency. "Obviously," he said, "it's something I'll take a look at ... Obviously, I've worked for three presidents and watched two others up close, and so it is an idea that has occurred to me." For two years, he quietly campaigned in Republican circles, but discovered little enthusiasm. He was less well known than he imagined and less magnetic in person than his former titles suggested. On Aug. 10, 1995, he held a news conference at the headquarters of the Halliburton Co. in Dallas, announcing he would become its chief executive officer. "When I made the decision earlier this year not to run for president, not to seek the White House, that really was a decision to wrap up my political career and move on to other things," he said.
But in 2000, Cheney surfaced in the role of party elder, above the fray, willing to serve as the man who would help Gov. George W. Bush determine who should be his running mate. Prospective candidates turned over to him all sensitive material about themselves, financial, political and personal. Once he had collected it, he decided that he should be the vice presidential candidate himself. Bush said he had previously thought of the idea and happily accepted. Asked who vetted Cheney's records, Bush's then aide Karen Hughes explained, "Just as with other candidates, Secretary Cheney is the one who handled that."
Most observers assumed that Cheney would provide balancing experience and maturity, serving in his way as a surrogate father and elder statesman. Few grasped his deeply held view on presidential power. With Rumsfeld returned as secretary of defense, the position he had held during the Ford administration, the old team was back in place. Rivals from the past had departed and the field was clear. The methods used before were implemented again. To get around the CIA, the Office of Special Plans was created within the Pentagon, yet another version of Team B. Senior military dissenters were removed. Powell was manipulated and outmaneuvered.
The making of the Iraq war, torture policy and an industry-friendly energy plan has required secrecy, deception and subordination of government as it previously existed. But these, too, are means to an end. Even projecting a "war on terror" as total war, trying to envelop the whole American society within its fog, is a device to invest absolute power in the executive.
Dick Cheney sees in George W. Bush his last chance. Nixon self-destructed, Ford was fatally compromised by his moderation, Reagan was not what was hoped for, the elder Bush ended up a disappointment. In every case, the Republican presidents had been checked or gone soft. Finally, President Bush provided the instrument, Sept. 11 the opportunity. This time the failures of the past provided the guideposts for getting it right. The administration's heedlessness was simply the wisdom of Cheney's experience.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/11/24/cheney/print.html
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Tuesday, November 22, 2005
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Bush's Bust
Bush's Asia trip was a bust with nothing accomplished and embarassing the US as usual while at home debate on Iraq intensified and got nastier and Bush-Cheney Gang villains continued going down; here's Salon summary:
"If what's good for GM is good for the country ...
If you're George W. Bush, you've got to think that a day that begins with a ceremonial drink of Mongolian mare's milk isn't likely to get much worse. Would that it were true. The president returns from Asia today with little to show for his efforts, and the news that will greet him back home isn't exactly welcoming: General Motors has just announced that it will close nine North American plants and cut 30,000 jobs between now and 2008.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:09 EST, Nov. 21, 2005]
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From the president, nice words but nothing new
We clicked over to the White House Web site this morning to read the transcript of the president's latest comments on Iraq, but this headline caught our eyes first: "Cast Your Vote for the 2005 National Thanksgiving Turkey."
Oh, where to begin?
Fifty-four percent of the public thinks it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq. Sixty percent say the war hasn't been worth the cost. And while the country is perhaps more divided over what should happen next in Iraq -- the truth is, the Bush administration's policies have left the United States with no good options -- the White House seems to be realizing that the president can't dismiss calls for a prompt troop withdrawal by simply smearing the people who are making them.
In a brief session with reporters in Beijing Sunday, George W. Bush tried to put some distance between himself and the attacks on Rep. Jack Murtha. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Democrat -- a man who served in Vietnam as part of his 37-year career in the Marine Corps -- said that he thinks it's time for the troops to come home from Iraq. By Friday morning, White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who didn't serve in the military, was equating Murtha with Michael Moore and saying he wanted to "surrender to terrorists." By Friday night, Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt, who didn't serve in the military, either, suggested that Murtha was a "coward" rather than a real Marine.
Sunday in Beijing, the president was making sure that his fingerprints weren't on any such smears. Bush called Murtha "a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States congressman." He said Murtha is a "strong supporter of the United States military," and he said he knew that Murtha had reached his decision about the future of the troops "in a careful and thoughtful way."
Bush may get some pundit praise for toning down the attacks, but it's clear that the nice words don't change anything. Shortly after Bush spoke, Donald Rumsfeld made the rounds of the Sunday talkers in Washington and kept up the attack by suggesting that Murtha's words had undercut the troops in Iraq and provided hope to the enemy. And Bush himself made it perfectly clear in Beijing that he won't be swayed by Murtha or anyone else. Leaving Iraq "prematurely" would have "terrible consequences for our own security and for the Iraqi people," Bush said. "And that's not going to happen so long as I'm the president."
Ten more U.S. soldiers died over the weekend in Iraq, bringing the death toll close to the 2,100 mark. Another dozen will probably die before Thanksgiving.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [08:53 EST, Nov. 21, 2005]
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The ax begins to fall on the Abramoff gang
As if Republican legislators didn't have enough to worry about these days, what with Bush's plummeting poll numbers, Democrats on the (anti) warpath, grand jury investigations, and daily reports of fraud and death in Iraq, today the long simmering Abramoff lobbying scandal boiled over.
As reported by numerous outlets, Michael P.S. Scanlon, a business associate of Abramoff's, was charged today with conspiring to defraud multiple Native American tribes of millions of dollars.
Salon obtained a copy of the Justice Department filing; you can read it here.
By midafternoon, Roll Call was reporting that Scanlon had already reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and would testify against Abramoff.
But Abramoff and Scanlon aren't likely to be the only ones who take a fall. The Justice Department filing charges that Scanlon did "knowingly conspire, confederate and agree with Lobbyist A [Abramoff]" to "corruptly offer and provide things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment to federal public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts benefitting Scanlon, Lobbyist A, and their clients."
Note the plural with respect to "federal public officials." One member of the House of Representatives, widely believed to be Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican, is specifically singled out in the filing, though only under the pseudonym "Representative #1." Ney is known to have attended the infamous golf trip to Scotland in 2002 that was paid for by Abramoff. But Abramoff's net spread very, very wide. As legislators prepare to split town for Thanksgiving, one wonders how many of them are going to have a happy holiday.
-- Andrew Leonard
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Permalink [17:04 EST, Nov. 18, 2005]
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House gets set to vote on bogus Iraq resolution
On Thursday, Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., shocked many of his colleagues with a heartfelt outburst against the war in Iraq. He even offered a resolution that, if passed, would force the president to withdraw all troops in Iraq ''at the earliest practicable date.''
Murtha may not have anticipated that the GOP would promptly seize the opportunity to offer their own resolution, one that states: "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately." The Republican leadership scheduled a vote on the resolution for Friday evening.
Never mind that there is big difference between "immediately" and "the earliest practicable date." The Republicans are looking to embarrass Democrats by forcing them to vote on a bogus resolution, hoping thereby to gain ammunition for later political battles. As War Room was getting ready to publish this item, the House had just completed a vote on whether they could even have a vote on a resolution without it first having gone through committee. That vote passed, narrowly.
Liberal bloggers are now calling for a mass walkout, and War Room agrees. It's way past time for Democrats to show some real backbone.
Certainly, their past votes, when Democrats, fearful of a public backlash, caved in to the Bush administration's rush to war, offer an example of what doesn't work.
An echo of that time can be heard in a press release sent out today by Sen. John Kerry, titled "Don't Stand for 'Swift Boat' Style Attacks on Jack Murtha." In fairly strong language, Kerry "decries despicable attacks on Jack Murtha's patriotism and courage" and says that "it disgusts me that a bunch of guys who have never put on the uniform of their country have aimed their venom at a marine who served America heroically in Vietnam and has been serving heroically in Congress ever since."
"Whether you agree or disagree with Jack Murtha is irrelevant," says Kerry. "Express your outrage about the tired old Rovian 'Swift Boat' style attacks on Jack Murtha."
There's little question the attacks on Murtha are appalling -- late Friday afternoon, Roll Call reported that Republican lawmakers were saying that ties between Murtha and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee!
Except, Kerry still seems to be missing the point. Nowhere in his press release does he say whether he disagrees or agrees with Murtha. Instead, just as he did during his campaign, he tries to play the patriotism card, without taking a strong stand on the war itself.
Democrats looking ahead to 2006 should take note. Let the Republicans play with their silly resolution. But don't try to weasel around what's at stake. The question is not whether we should support Murtha. It's whether we support the war.
-- Andrew Leonard"
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/
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Sunday, November 20, 2005
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Friday, November 18, 2005
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Salon.com | Woodward's disgrace
Bob Woodward has totally disgraced himself; for years he, like Judy Miller, has been a stenographer of power, a shill for those who tell him stories that he spins into mediocre books. I'm glad to see him go down, I think he was always overrated. Here's Joe Conason's take from Salon:
"Woodward's disgrace
He was once a great journalist, but his obsession with "access" turned him into a palace courtier and shill for the GOP.
By Joe Conason
Nov. 19, 2005 | Forced to reveal his strange secret about the Valerie Plame case, Bob Woodward has humiliated his trusting bosses at the Washington Post and exposed something rotten at the center of journalism's national elite. By withholding critical information from the Post's editors and pretending to be a neutral observer, Woodward badly compromised the values that he and his newspaper once embodied. A living symbol of the great constitutional role of a free press -- to hold government accountable -- has evidently degenerated into another obedient appendage of rogue officialdom.
With his relentless pursuit of "access," the literary formula that has brought him so much money and fame, Woodward placed book sales above journalism. Boasting of his friendly relationship with the president who facilitated his interviews with administration officials, he now behaves like the journalistic courtiers of the Nixon era.
To those who have observed Woodward's career since the glory of Watergate, including readers of his many bestselling books, the change in his role and outlook have long been obvious. For him, the cultivation of high-ranking sources is the very essence of journalism. And while there is no question that reporters owe a duty of confidentiality to their sources, it is also true that they owe candor to their colleagues and transparency to their readers.
Sadly, Woodward not only served as a silent accomplice of the Bush White House in its attack on Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, but went much further by publicly criticizing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of that attack -- and suggested repeatedly, up to the eve of the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, that the investigation should be curtailed. Now, instead, his own admission of involvement may have figured in Fitzgerald's indication Friday that he plans to call a new grand jury in the case.
Indeed, Woodward abused his position as a journalistic authority on intelligence and national security issues to denigrate the Fitzgerald probe. Last July 7, on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air," he claimed to know that the outing of Plame's identity had created "no national security threat" and "no jeopardy to her life." He went on to mock the case: "There was no nothing. When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great." He didn't say then how he supposedly knew what consequences did or didn't flow from the CIA operative's exposure.
Ten days later, on CNN, Woodward told host (and Post colleague) Howard Kurtz that he didn't think any crime had been committed. He went on to complain about how long the leak investigation had taken. "The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail." That kind of spin is more worthy of a Republican pundit than a Post editor (and of course Woodward never complained about the extraordinary length and expense of Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation, presumably because the sources in that case were leaking to the Post).
Woodward reiterated his exoneration of the White House on Oct. 27 -- and on that occasion, he told CNN's Larry King that he knew the CIA had completed its own assessment of the affair and found that no damage had been done in exposing Valerie Plame Wilson.
Only two days later, however, his own newspaper reported that the CIA had performed no formal damage assessment -- a process that doesn't begin until after any criminal investigation is finished. And Woodward neglected to tell King's audience that the CIA had originally demanded that the Justice Department investigate the leak because of its potentially serious effects on national security.
Those misleading remarks were only exceeded by his disingenuous statements about how the leak might have occurred. Denying that there had been a "smear campaign," he assured King that "when the story comes out, I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter."
Of course, Woodward knew then how the leak began, in very specific terms, and used his privileged position to help promote the Republican line. (For a full catalog of Woodward's media misbehavior in this case, see MediaMatters.org.)
According to the Post's ombudswoman, Deborah Howell, the public is now outraged over Woodward's conduct. They are confused by his actions and unconvinced by his explanations, which are contradicted by the timeline of the investigation. Post executive editor Leonard Downie, who bravely engaged in a chat with angry readers on Friday, was reduced to offering testimonials about Woodward's truthful character and bromides about his exceptional record.
"Bob Woodward never lied," declared Downie. Yet at another point in the same conversation, the Post editor conceded that a reader was "correct" in saying Woodward had been "dishonest in the extreme" and "probably destroyed his credibility." Those consequences of his "mistake," said Downie, would have to be measured against "Bob's exceptional record."
So will the contents of Woodward's next book on the Bush administration.
-- By Joe Conason "
Salon.com | Woodward's disgrace
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An open letter to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald from former White House Counsel John W. Dean
John Dean tells Fitzgerald to broaden the inquiry and see how big the scandals really are.... The Bush-Cheney-Rove etc scandals are definitely bigger than Watergate and Teapot Dome....
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=23685
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
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Bush put on restrictions by congress
Today congress passed a measure that requires the white house to give weekly progress reports on the war in Iraq. This vote passed with overwhelming support.
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Monday, November 14, 2005
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Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
Rove may be on hot seat for a long time-- and continue to do his Dirty Deeds; Bush keeps falling and falling; Edwards apologizes, all the latest from Salon and Tim Grieve:
"Report: Fitzgerald may keep Rove waiting until Libby talks
Justice delayed may be justice denied, but it can also be a political problem avoided. And maybe that's what explains the spring in Karl Rove's step these days.
Attorneys involved in the Valerie Plame investigation tell Murray Waas that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may not be able to make a final decision on Karl Rove's fate until the criminal case against Scooter Libby is completed. Even if Fitzgerald thinks he lacks the evidence to win a conviction against Rove now, Waas' sources say, he wouldn't rule out bringing charges against Rove later until he hears whatever he's going to hear from Libby himself.
Waas' sources say that Fitzgerald is interested in conversations Rove and Libby had with each other about Plame before Robert Novak revealed her identity in his column on July 14, 2003. Fitzgerald is apparently interested in testing Rove's vague recollection about where he first learned of Plame's identity -- as well as his claim that he and Libby were simply discussing information that they had heard from reporters.
To get to the bottom of those questions, Waas' sources say, Fitzgerald would like to hear more from Libby. That may take some time. Assuming that Libby doesn't strike a deal with Fitzgerald, it could be a year or more before a trial begins. And even then, there's no guarantee that Libby would actually take the stand and testify.
What does it all mean for Rove? On the one hand, it means that a cloud of investigation will continue to linger over Rove -- at least from a distance -- for a long time to come. On the other hand, it means that Fitzgerald is unlikely to make a decision to indict Rove anytime soon, leaving him free to remain at work for George W. Bush so long as the president will have him.
It also increases the incentive for Libby and his lawyers and their allies at the White House to drag out the Libby case as long as they possibly can. The longer Libby avoids trial, the longer he avoids the risk of implicating Rove -- or Dick Cheney, for that matter -- or of finding himself in federal prison. And if he can drag it out long enough, he can avoid those problems altogether: A pardon from the president, delivered just after the 2008 election, could get everyone involved off the hook for good.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [10:04 EST, Nov. 14, 2005]
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The president's days of malaise
Another day, another round of bad poll numbers for the president: A new Newsweek poll has George W. Bush's approval rating down to 36 percent.
That's a record low for Bush's presidency, and it matches the worst number that Bill Clinton ever got. The good news for Bush? He's still a few ticks better off than his father was in 1992, and he's not quite in the territory that either Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon occupied during their darkest days. Carter's approval rating hit 28 percent in the summer of 1979, and Nixon's bottomed out at 24 percent in August 1974.
Of course, Nixon resigned in August 1974. Bush still has 1,162 days to go.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:18 EST, Nov. 14, 2005]
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John Edwards: "I was wrong" about Iraq
You can say this about John Edwards: He knows how to get an Op-Ed piece published.
The former senator and vice presidential candidate scored space in Sunday's Washington Post for an essay arguing that the United States should reduce its presence in Iraq, work to get more Iraqi security forces trained and funded, and encourage the international community to do more to help. It's nothing we haven't heard before. So why did the Post run it?
The answer lies in Edwards' opening paragraph: "I was wrong," he says.
John Kerry and John Edwards spent much of the 2004 presidential campaign trying to distinguish themselves from George W. Bush on Iraq, but they were hampered at every turn by the inconvenient fact that they both voted in 2002 to give the president the authorization to go to war. The Bush-Cheney campaign's charge of flip-flopping notwithstanding, neither Kerry nor Edwards would concede during the campaign that his vote had been wrong. Indeed, Kerry insisted over and over again that his vote had been the right one.
Now Edwards says that he was wrong. It's a good way for an out-of-work senator with presidential aspirations to get himself back in the picture, but it's not quite the mea culpa that it seems. Edwards says that his 2002 vote was a "mistake," and that he takes responsibility for it. But what, exactly, did Edwards do wrong? Should he have delved deeper into the intelligence? Should he have asked more questions before voting? Should he have listened to antiwar voices like Howard Dean's?
Edwards doesn't say, and, in not saying, he fails to take the responsibility he's claiming to take. To the contrary, he puts that responsibility pretty squarely on the shoulders of the president of the United States. "The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate," Edwards writes. "The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war."
There's nothing wrong with that, exactly. It's entirely appropriate to hold Bush accountable for the war in Iraq and for the twisted version of intelligence that led to it. But as he positions himself for 2008, Edwards is making the larger argument that "telling the truth" is a "foundation for moral leadership." To pull that one off, the former senator -- like the president he wants to replace -- has got to do more than say that he accepts responsibility in some abstract way. He has to come to terms with what that really means.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [08:52 EST, Nov. 14, 2005]
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The president attacks his critics
We said it was coming, and here it is: On Veterans Day, George W. Bush is defending his administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, not by rebutting the charges that have been made, but by attacking those who have made them.
In a speech in Pennsylvania today, the president accused his critics of making "baseless attacks," rewriting history and throwing out "false charges" that serve only to undercut the troops now serving in Iraq. Although a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week showed that 57 percent of the American public now believes that the president deliberately misled the country about the case for war in Iraq, Bush marginalized those concerns as the wild charges of "some Democrats and anti-war critics." He said it's important to remember that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."
But of course, members of the House and Senate weren't privy to all of the same intelligence the White House was. As Kevin Drum wrote the other day, it's true that lots of people thought before the war that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "The problem is . . . that there were also a fair number of people who had been skeptical about Iraqi WMD. INR, for example, thought the African uranium was bogus. DIA thought our prime witness for Iraqi-al-Qaida WMD collaboration was lying. The Air Force found the evidence on drones to be laughable. DOE didn't believe in the aluminum tubes. None of these dissents was acknowledged by the Bush administration."
How would the prewar debate have gone if everyone knew what the administration knew before the war started: that stories from an al-Qaida member about an Iraq connection had been called into question; that warnings Colin Powell delivered about mobile weapons labs weren't based on solid evidence; that claims about an Iraq-Niger had been debunked within the CIA before Bush made them; that pronouncements Condoleezza Rice made about aluminum tubes had been discredited before she spoke?
We weren't able to have that kind of debate before the war began because the administration kept any questions, any uncertainties, any second-guessing entirely to itself. As John Kerry said this afternoon, the White House "misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition."
At the prodding of Harry Reid and other Democrats, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally examining the administration's representations before the war to see how they match up not just with the intelligence that supported them but also with the analysis that called them into question. That query comes too late for 2,062 Americans. It comes too late for those who hoped a different president, with a different course for the country, might be in the Oval Office today. As for this president? It doesn't seem to matter if the truth comes out at all. As his poll numbers plummet, as his party begins to look past him, he spends Veterans Day on a stage set in Pennsylvania, insisting that it doesn't matter that he was wrong about war because the people he fooled were wrong about it, too.
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
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Eric Margolis: 'Bush's latest scandals of leaks and torture are turning him into a modern McCarthy'
Joe McBush
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Saturday, November 12, 2005
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Friday, November 11, 2005
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Thursday, November 10, 2005
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
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Salon.com | The time to act is now
Al Gore's right; we have a climate problem. Here's his talk:
"The time to act is now
The climate crisis and the need for leadership.
By Al Gore
Nov. 04, 2005 | It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely. "Global warming" is the name it was given a long time ago. But it should be understood for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization on multiple fronts. Stronger hurricanes and typhoons represent only one of many new dangers as we begin what someone has called "a nature hike through the Book of Revelation."
As I write, my heart is heavy due to the suffering the people of the Gulf Coast have endured. In Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and particularly in New Orleans, thousands have experienced losses beyond measure as our nation and the world witnessed scenes many of us thought we would never see in this great country. But unless we act quickly, this suffering will be but a beginning.
The science is extremely clear: Global warming may not affect the frequency of hurricanes, but it makes the average hurricane stronger, magnifying its destructive power. In the years ahead, there will be more storms like Katrina, unless we change course. Indeed, we have had two more Category 5 storms since Katrina -- including Wilma, which before landfall was the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic.
We know that hurricanes are heat engines that thrive on warm water. We know that heat-trapping gases from our industrial society are warming the oceans. We know that, in the past 30 years, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes globally has almost doubled. It's time to connect the dots:
Last year, the science textbooks had to be rewritten. They used to say, "It's impossible to have a hurricane in the South Atlantic." We had the first one last year, in Brazil. Japan also set an all-time record for typhoons last year: 10. The previous record was seven.
This summer, more than 200 cities in the United States broke all-time heat records. Reno, Nev., set a new record with 10 consecutive days above 100 degrees. Tucson, Ariz., tied its all-time record of 39 consecutive days above 100 degrees. New Orleans -- and the surrounding waters of the Gulf -- also hit an all-time high.
This summer, parts of India received record rainfall -- 37 inches fell in Mumbai in 24 hours, killing more than 1,000 people.
The new extremes of wind and rain are part of a larger pattern that also includes rapidly melting glaciers worldwide, increasing desertification, a global extinction crisis, the ravaging of ocean fisheries, and a growing range for disease "vectors" like mosquitoes, ticks and many other carriers of viruses and bacteria harmful to people.
All of these are symptoms of a deeper crisis: the "Category 5" collision between our civilization -- as we currently pursue it -- and the Earth's environment.
Sixty years ago, Winston Churchill wrote about another kind of gathering storm. When Neville Chamberlain tried to wish that threat away with appeasement, Churchill said, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year -- unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand for freedom."
For more than 15 years, the international community has conducted a massive program to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment on global warming. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, have produced the most elaborate, well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind and have reached a consensus as strong as it ever gets in science. As Bill McKibben points out, there is no longer any credible basis to doubt that the Earth's atmosphere is warming because of human activities. There is no longer any credible basis to doubt that we face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.
Scientists around the world are sounding a clear and urgent warning. Global warming is real, it is already under way and the consequences are totally unacceptable.
Why is this happening? Because the relationship between humankind and the Earth has been utterly transformed. To begin with, we have quadrupled the population of our planet in the past hundred years. And secondly, the power of the technologies now at our disposal vastly magnifies the impact each individual can have on the natural world. Multiply that by six and a half billion people, and then stir into that toxic mixture a mind-set and an attitude that say it's OK to ignore scientific evidence -- that we don't have to take responsibility for the future consequences of present actions -- and you get this violent and destructive collision between our civilization and the Earth.
There are those who say that we can't solve this problem -- that it's too big or too complicated or beyond the capacity of political systems to grasp.
To those who say this problem is too difficult, I say that we have accepted and met such challenges in the past. We declared our liberty, and then won it. We designed a country that respected and safeguarded the freedom of individuals. We abolished slavery. We gave women the right to vote. We took on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured fearsome diseases, landed on the moon, won two wars simultaneously -- in the Pacific and in Europe. We brought down communism, we defeated apartheid. We have even solved a global environmental crisis before: the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer.
So there should be no doubt that we can solve this crisis too. We must seize the opportunities presented by renewable energy, by conservation and efficiency, by some of the harder but exceedingly important challenges such as carbon capture and sequestration. The technologies to solve the global-warming problem exist, if we have the determination and wisdom to use them.
But there is no time to wait. In the 1930s, Winston Churchill also wrote of those leaders who refused to acknowledge the clear and present danger: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."
With Hurricane Katrina, the melting of the Arctic ice cap and careless ecological mayhem, we, too, are entering a period of consequences. This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations.
The men and women honored as warriors and heroes have risen to this new occasion. On the surface, they share little in common: scientists, ministers, students, politicians, activists, lawyers, celebrities, inventors, world leaders. But each of them recognized the threat that climate change poses to the planet -- and responded by taking immediate action to stop it. Their stories should inspire and encourage us to see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called for.
As these heroes demonstrate, we have everything we need to face this urgent challenge. All it takes is political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.
-- By Al Gore
Salon.com | The time to act is now
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Cheney on trial
Put Cheney on trial and send Dick and Scooter off to the slammer where they can write more porn novels....
From Salon
"Even if the vice president himself is not indicted, imagine the questions he might be asked, under oath, in Libby's case.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Nov. 10, 2005 | The trial of Scooter Libby will also be the trial of Dick Cheney. Throughout his long public career in four Republican administrations, starting as an aide in the Nixon White House, Cheney has operated in the background and through back channels. But eventually the vice president will be called to the stand, perhaps as a witness for both the prosecution and the defense.
Cheney may request a sealed courtroom, ask for a redacted transcript of the proceedings or assert executive privilege. But established legal precedent argues against a claim of executive privilege. The only basis on which he could refuse to testify would be to take the Fifth Amendment, protecting himself against self-incrimination. Of course, that would be political suicide because it would be perceived as a virtual admission of guilt. Indeed, Cheney has already waived that Fifth Amendment right, having submitted to an interview with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. And his testimony in the Libby trial opens a perjury trap if he contradicts anything he has previously said to the prosecutor.
In the trial, the prosecutor will attempt to penetrate Libby's coverup, his obstruction of justice, which Fitzgerald has analogized to throwing dirt in the eyes of an umpire. He will call a slew of White House aides, including a number of Cheney's, to break through Libby's bodyguard of lies. The truth about Cheney is to be found beyond the coverup.
Since his indictment on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, Libby the loyalist, Cheney's Cheney, has moved swiftly to disabuse anyone of the notion that he will fall on his sword. The surest way for him to protect Cheney would have been to plead guilty to the charges, admit nothing and go directly to jail. But Libby passed up his chance to plead in negotiations with the prosecutor before the indictment. He has hired a team of lawyers from three different firms who are making preparations for an aggressive defense. He has also begun raising money for his legal defense from Republican Party donors whose names will be kept secret. To coordinate this fund and his public relations, he has hired Barbara Comstock, a longtime Republican Party operative and former communications director for Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Libby is not a man in a hurry. His first legal maneuver was to waive his rights under the Speedy Trial Act, which requires a trial within 120 days. The presiding federal judge, Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, has not scheduled a status hearing until February 2006. This interregnum means that the trial might not take place until the spring or even the fall, rising to a rolling boil close to the midterm elections and even beyond.
From the beginning, the White House has acted as though the Plame affair were a minor irritation that could be contained. Libby's elaborate stories to the grand jury of how he was told Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA operative by journalists suggested supreme confidence that the journalists would not disclose their conversations with him. But only Judith Miller acted to shield him as a "source"; she was sentenced to prison for 85 days before she agreed to testify. The others cited in the indictment, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC News, had earlier undercut Libby's various accounts.
President Bush's insistence that he wanted to get to the bottom of the incident and that he would fire anyone involved in the leak was followed by studied inactivity. When the prosecutor revealed Libby and Rove as culpable for the leak, Bush made no gesture to fulfill his pledge. The Libby indictment, moreover, states that Libby learned of Plame's job from Cheney, though Cheney had publicly denied any knowledge or involvement. Yet Bush has taken no action and made no statement about his vice president's alleged deception.
Fitzgerald declared in his Oct. 28 press conference announcing the Libby indictment that he was "not done." Regardless of whether there are future indictments of Bush administration officials, the Libby trial itself will be a spectacle subjecting Republican candidates to vulnerability during the campaign season. A new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows that 79 percent believe that Libby's indictment is a matter of national importance. Cheney's legal exposure is also the Republicans' political exposure.
The prosecutor's cross-examination of Cheney need not be limited to the bits of information about him that are sprinkled in the Libby indictment. Cheney cannot expect that he knows what the prosecutor has learned. He cannot, therefore, fully anticipate what he will be asked. He might be presented with surprises that test his veracity and challenge his poise. Fitzgerald may also have testimony that contradicts what Cheney might say on the stand, and may not necessarily reveal it to him.
Certainly, Cheney should expect to answer a series of questions similar to these: Mr. Vice President, you shared with Mr. Libby the information that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee, didn't you? You believed that revealing Plame's supposed involvement in her husband Joseph Wilson's mission to Africa would discredit him, isn't that true? What was your reaction when you learned of Robert Novak's column divulging the identity of Valerie Plame? You spoke to people about Mr. Novak's column after it appeared, didn't you? Please name them and describe those conversations.
Did you know the identity of the two senior administration sources cited in his column after you read it? If not, what efforts did you make to determine the identities of these individuals? When White House press secretary Scott McClellan told the press corps in a briefing that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby was involved in leaking Plame's identity, you knew that was false, but you never took any steps to inform McClellan or, more importantly, the president and the American people, did you?
What conversations did you have with Karl Rove or others on the White House staff about Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame? You were present at meetings discussing Wilson's objections to the false Niger claims, weren't you? Did you discuss Plame with the president? What other critics of the administration did you ever discuss in meetings? Who else was present? Please tell us about those conversations. What conversations did you have about Valerie Plame or Joseph Wilson with the president?
Mr. Vice President, you knew from talking to Mr. Libby that he didn't obtain the information about Plame's identity from the press, didn't you? You knew Mr. Libby spoke with Tim Russert, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, isn't that true? And you knew that he provided information about Plame to them, not them to him, didn't you? You were his source, not them, isn't that true?
Mr. Vice President, you are under oath.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/11/10/cheney_trial/print.html
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Salon.com News | Niger forgeries: The Italian connection
The Italian Connection is a big, big story that could be explosive for the Bush-Cheney Gang; will it penetrate US Media? here's Salon version:
"Niger forgeries: The Italian connection
Did Italian spooks collude with American neocons to trump up evidence for war?
By Samuel Loewenberg
Nov. 09, 2005 | Rocco never met Scooter, but he did hang with Michael L. ... Gen. Nicolo and Sen. Massimo can't seem to get their stories straight ... Silvio may be in denial about the funky stamps ... and the yellowcake seems to have been baked in Italy after all.
Welcome to Italy's latest scandal, a dizzying tale that catapults the government of Silvio Berlusconi into the midst of the unfolding controversy over the Bush administration's trumped-up evidence for weapons of mass destruction. The faked documents formed the basis of George Bush's now-infamous claim in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy nuclear material from the African republic of Niger, which was among the administration's most important justifications for the invasion of Iraq.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is beginning an investigation this week on how the Bush crowd came to use the bogus evidence, despite repeated warnings by the State Department and the CIA about the dubious nature of the dossier. But don't hold your breath for any dramatic revelations from the Republican-controlled committee. A recently terminated investigation by the FBI turned up nothing. Tellingly, the feds specifically exculpated the Italian secret service over allegations in the Italian press that it had a role in disseminating the forged documents. And just last week an intelligence oversight panel of the Italian Senate held closed-door hearings and found … nothing.
The real work of unraveling this scam has been coming from the press, both in the U.S. and Italy. Among the most dramatic revelations to date have been by investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo, who co-wrote a series in the left-leaning Italian daily La Repubblica. According to Bonini and d'Avanzo, the Italian secret service, known as SISMI, hatched an elaborate plan to get the forged documents to the hawks in the Bush administration and still keep their hands clean. The reporters allege the falsehoods were propagated at the behest of Prime Minister Berlusconi, who was eager to help his new American friend make the case for war. While the articles do not go so far as to say Berlusconi knew about the scam, they do finger Italian intelligence chief Gen. Nicolo Pollari.
The bogus dossier at the center of the scandal is what President Bush relied on in his January 2003 State of the Union speech. The documents purport to show that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Yellowcake is a type of concentrated uranium that can be used to make nuclear weapons. As it turns out, Niger, the world's second poorest country, was not involved in anything illicit other than the beginnings of a famine, which has not received one-hundredth of the press attention of the sexier WMD controversy.
The Niger uranium scams have led to at least one concrete result, although probably not the one the mysterious perpetrators intended: the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheney. Libby, like many white-collar criminals, was busted not for the crime itself but for lying to prosecutors about it -- in this case, what he knew about covert CIA agent Valerie Plame and whom he heard it from. The White House campaign against Plame appears to have been designed to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who went public with his claims that the Niger-Iraq connection was a fabrication.
Which brings us back to Italy. According to the La Repubblica series, the source of the fake nuclear evidence was a disgraced Italian police official and former SISMI informer named Rocco Martino, who was working with a shadowy senior SISMI official named Antonio Nucera. The Italian secret service had tracked Martino's dealings with French and British officials and knew he was peddling the false documents, according to the reporters. Pollari, the SISMI head, admits in the stories that his service was tracking Martino. But in public statements since then he claims he was innocent as to the substance of his former informant's dealings.
Bonini told Salon it was clear that SISMI knew about the forgeries, not least because they were secretly passing on the story about the Iraq-Niger connection to pro-war hawks in the Bush administration. His claim has since been backed up by reporters from the American news agency Knight-Ridder. An Oct. 29 story by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel asserts that "Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, and people close to it, repeatedly tried to shop the bogus Niger uranium story to governments in France, Britain and the United States. That created the illusion that multiple sources were confirming the story."
The story quotes a U.S. intelligence official as saying, "SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt."
As the documents were making their way to the American allies, Pollari, the SISMI chief, held a secret meeting in Rome with senior Pentagon officials, including hawks Harold Rohde and Lawrence Franklin (the analyst charged with passing unauthorized information to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby) and neoconservative civilian Michael Ledeen, infamous for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. According to La Repubblica, this paved the way for a Washington meeting between Pollari and Stephen Hadley, at the time the second in command at the National Security Council. It was Hadley who ultimately took the blame for the inclusion of the Iraq-Niger falsehoods in Bush's State of the Union speech. Hadley, who is today the president's National Security Advisor, told reporters last week that he has no "recollection" of the Niger uranium intel being mentioned at the meetings.
The La Repubblica articles make the case that the Italian secret service did not pass on the forgeries themselves, but instead talked up the information in them, as a way of setting up an intelligence "echo chamber." By keeping quiet about the forgeries, says Bonini, the Italian spooks could pass on seemingly valuable information without having to take responsibility if the scheme went awry.
"The question is why SISMI didn't ring the bell for U.S. that the documents were faked," Bonini told Salon. He noted that the unreliable Martino only played a small part in sourcing their story, and the majority of it came from contacts in Italian, U.S. and other foreign intelligence and diplomatic services.
SISMI and the Italian parliament, for their part, maintain that Martino cooked up the whole scam to make money. Martino, who by all accounts is as unreliable as they come, claims he was nothing more than a "postman" and didn't know the documents were faked.
What Martino knew about the Niger dossier, which apparently also included outdated 10-year-old Italian intelligence, is still far less important than what the Italian and the American governments knew. According to Knight-Ridder, a U.S. State Department WMD analyst cast doubts on the documents immediately upon seeing them. In the weeks before Bush's infamous Jan. 28 State of the Union speech, the analyst concluded the documents were crude forgeries, writing, "documents bear a funky Emb. Of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess)."
Both the Berlusconi and Bush administrations deny the allegations. But their denials raise more questions than they answer.
Testifying before the Senate intelligence oversight panel on Thursday, Gen. Nicolo Pollari, the SISMI chief, denied any Italian government involvement in the forged dossier.
Berlusconi says neither his government nor the Italian intelligence agency had any part in the alleged scam. The La Repubblica stories threatened to damage the reputation of Italy, Berlusconi told the conservative newspaper Libero, saying, "If they were believed, we would be considered the instigator" of the war in Iraq.
Berlusconi's and SISMI's claims of innocence were recently bolstered by a clean bill of health from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced on Friday, Nov. 4, that it had closed its two-year investigation into the fraudulent dossier. According to the New York Times, an FBI official confirmed reports that the agency had sent a letter to the Italian government on July 20 thanking it for its help and clearing the Italian secret service of disseminating the false documents.
But that is a bit strange, since, according to Newsweek, as of September 2004 the Italians had still not given the FBI permission to interview Martino. Moreover, the thoroughness of the FBI inquiry is itself questionable: Although Martino had visited the U.S. twice in the summer of 2004 to appear on television, and by the time of his second visit had been the subject of international press coverage because of his role in the scandal, the FBI reportedly never even attempted to interview him. In fact, to this date the FBI has never interviewed Martino.
The FBI did not return three calls by Salon asking for comment.
The Senate hearings also disclosed that the Italian intelligence agency first warned the U.S. and Britain about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium on Oct. 15, 2001, about a month after the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. SISMI acknowledged that on that date it confirmed to the CIA that it had "intelligence data" provided by "a creditable source." (The "creditable source" was a female SISMI asset known as "La Signora," who according to the La Repubblica series took part in the forgery scheme.)
Italian officials have seemed quite confused about whether SISMI ever had the documents or not. In the wake of the hearings last week, Sen. Massimo Brutti told reporters that SISMI had warned the U.S about the fake dossier around the time of Bush's infamous State of the Union speech in January 2003. (The French, to whom Martino also peddled the bogus papers, and whom both Italian officials and neocon strategist Ledeen have accused of being responsible for peddling the fraud, alerted the U.S. to the fraud on Feb. 4, 2003.) But later that day he backtracked, calling Reuters and the Associated Press and saying that he had been mistaken, that SISMI never had the documents and therefore could not have warned about them.
After President Bush made his State of the Union claim that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, the International Atomic Energy Agency investigated the Niger dossier. They proved them to be "a crude forgery" within two hours, according to Newsweek. What did the IAEA do that the American and British governments apparently hadn't? They Googled them.
The FBI may have closed its investigation of the Niger yellowcake forgery, but many questions about the role played by both Italy and by Bush administration hawks remain.
-- By Samuel Loewenberg
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/09/italy/print.html
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Salon.com - War Room
Salon summary; Bad Day for Bush, Arnold and Repugs; Dems coming alive demanding Bush not pardon Libby and fingering Cheney; summary= "Election 2005: A bad day for the GOP
Well, he asked for it.
By landing Air Force One in Richmond for an election-eve rally with Republican Jerry Kilgore, George W. Bush guaranteed that the results of the Virginia governor's race would be viewed as a referendum on his presidency. Here it is: In what was supposed to be a close race, Kilgore lost to Democrat Tim Kaine by a margin of 52 to 46 percent. "Several GOP supporters conceded that the party's inability to recapture the executive mansion reflected dissatisfaction with President Bush," says the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Kilgore's defeat may have been the most direct reflection on Bush, but the news from Tuesday's off-off year elections was pretty much bad all over for the president's party. In the New Jersey governor's race, Sen. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, cruised to a 10-point victory over Republican Doug Forrester. And in California, voters appeared to be delivering truckloads of humiliation to a governor who was once so popular that there was talk of amending the Constitution so that he could run for president. Arnold Schwarzenegger threw every inch of himself into four initiatives he said were needed to reform the state. Voters rejected every last one of them plus four more that found their way into the $50 million special election the governor called. In its lead news story this morning, the Los Angeles Times calls the vote a "sharp repudiation" of Schwarzenegger that "shattered his image as an agent of the popular will."
The California vote was about Schwarzenegger, not Bush, but the same can't be said of the mayor's race in St. Paul, Minn. Former City Council Member Chris Coleman ousted Mayor Randy Kelly by an embarrassing 38-point margin, and even Kelly said that the reason for his loss was his support for the president.
There were a few bright spots for Republicans and the religious right. As expected, Michael Bloomberg won an easy victory in the New York mayor's race. And while Maine voters rejected an effort to rescind that state's new gay-rights law, voters in Texas overwhelmingly approved an initiative outlawing same-sex marriage there. But the overall message seemed to be clear, at least for those not paid to spin by the GOP: The president is a hindrance, not a help, for Republican candidates right now. That may or may not be a predictor of things to come, but the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato suggests that it will be unless Bush can turn around his presidency soon. "I think the basic lesson is that Bush is at a point where he is going to pull down all Republicans a few points in 2006," Sabato tells the Los Angeles Times. "He has got to restore a good 10 points on his popularity if Republicans are even going to hold their own in '06."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [08:47 EDT, Nov. 9, 2005]
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Democrats to Bush: Rule out Libby pardon now
When a reporter asked Scott McClellan last week if he could rule out the possibility that George W. Bush might pardon Scooter Libby, the White House press secretary said he wouldn't "speculate about things like that." Today in Washington, the Senate Democratic leadership delivered a message straight to McClellan's boss: Don't even think about it.
In a letter to the president, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and three other Democrats said that while it's too early to judge whether Libby is guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged, "it is not too early for you to reassure the American people that you understand the enormous gravity of the allegations. To this end, we urge you to pledge that if Mr. Libby or anyone else is found guilty of a crime in connection with Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, you will not exercise your authority to issue a presidential pardon."
The Democrats said it is "crucial" for Bush to make it clear to Libby, in advance, that he "will not be able to rely on his extraordinary close relationship with you or Vice President Cheney to obtain the kind of extraordinarily special treatment unavailable to ordinary Americans." They urged Bush not to do anything to interfere with Fitzgerald's investigation, and they called on him to reveal whether anyone in the White House -- including Cheney or White House counsel Harriet Miers -- has discussed the possibility of a pardon with Libby.
The Democrats' letter is another in a series of one-day events designed to keep the focus on the Plame case and Iraq rather than on whatever it is the Bush administration would rather be discussing. But there's a longer-term concern behind the request, too. If Libby knows he'll be pardoned, he has no incentive to cooperate with Fitzgerald and every incentive to simply drag out the prosecution as long as he possibly can. If, on the other hand, Libby knows that a pardon is off the table, he may decide it's worth his while to strike a deal with Fitzgerald in which he gives up information on others in the White House -- or force a trial in which Cheney and other White House officials would inevitably be called to testify. The Democrats have got to like those prospects, and they know that the prospect of a presidential pardon could stand in the way of either of them.
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com - War Room
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
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Good to have friends in high places
Libby is putting together a list of donors to help finance his legal battle. No doubt that many high ranking republicans and corporate friends will come to his aide; must be nice to compile such a list when one is facing a criminal lawsuit.
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Monday, November 07, 2005
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
When Bush travels he often has to face reporters, something he obviously doesn't like to do; what a joke that he is calling for Ethics in the White House, approving torture and then denying torture; here's Salon summary:
"From the president, a tortured answer on torture
We told you earlier that George W. Bush, visiting Panama today, once again refused to answer a question about the Valerie Plame case. But the Plame question was only one of two the president was asked about doings back home. And he didn't really answer the other one, either.
The second question concerned torture. As Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, as the Iraq death toll mounted, as gas prices rose and his top aide was indicted, Dick Cheney has been pretty near invisible. The Washington Post offers one reason why: The vice president has been busy waging "an intense and largely unpublicized campaign" to prevent the imposition of any limits on how the military, or at least the CIA, treats detainees in U.S. custody. Cheney's unyielding approach on the question of torture puts him at odds with everyone from Condoleezza Rice to John McCain -- and that's just on the Republican side of the equation.
The president was asked today whether he sided with Cheney. His answer: "Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people." To be fair, Bush did elaborate. He said that the executive branch and the legislative branch both have an obligation to protect the American people, and he insisted that "anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law." Then he added: "We do not torture."
Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of "law" is. And "torture," too. The administration's lawyers have argued that the president has infinite authority during wartime. Read in that light, Bush's comments today are a sort of tautology: "Anything we do ... is within the law" because "anything we do ... is within the law." As for torture? As former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee taught us in a legal memorandum the Justice Department has since repudiated, at least officially, the word "torture" can be defined so narrowly that almost nothing comes within its meaning.
So what did Bush really mean today? A clue can probably be found in what he said next. Apparently referring to Cheney's efforts to fight off a ban on torture that passed the Senate by a 90-9 vote, Bush said that his administration is "working with Congress to make sure as we go forward, we make it possible -- more possible -- to do our job."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [16:25 EDT, Nov. 7, 2005]
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Another day, another question, but still no answers
After meeting today with Panamanian President Martin Torrijo, George W. Bush was asked once again about the Valerie Plame case. It was a simple question, really, and one that didn't require any speculation about the course of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation or Scooter Libby's prosecution. The president declined to answer it anyway.
Here's the illuminating back-and-forth:
Reporter: Back in October of 2000, Mr. President --
Bush: October of 2000?
Reporter: Yes, sir. Back in October of 2000, this is what you said --
Bush: Okay. Whew.
Reporter: "We will ask not only what is legal, but what is right; not what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves." In the CIA leak case, has your administration lived up to this campaign promise?
Bush: In the -- pardon my -- I didn't hear you.
Reporter: In the CIA leak case, has your administration lived up to this campaign promise?
Bush: Oh, Deb, look, I said the other day to the press corps that was assembled in Argentina that there's still an ongoing investigation. We take this investigation very seriously, and we'll continue to cooperate during the investigation.
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Sunday, November 06, 2005
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Ancien regime
William Greider's article in the Nation predicts that Bush's calamities signals something more than just another presidential scandal.
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Saturday, November 05, 2005
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Free trade and Latin America
Naomi Klein's article in the Guardian does a good job of discussing the broader context of the proposed free trade agreement for the Americas.
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Friday, November 04, 2005
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Southern Hemisphere's reception of Bush
Everywhere Bush goes he is met with resistance and scorn. As the Summit of the Americas began yesterday in Argentina tens of thousands of people rallied in protest to Bush's presence and the neo-liberal policies he is peddling. Bush was also not able to escape the trail of questions about Rove's role in CIA leak.
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Thursday, November 03, 2005
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Wednesday, November 02, 2005
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Salon.com | Bush's bunker strategy
Sidney Blumenthal on Bush in his bunder:
"Bush's bunker strategy
A prisoner of the neocons, the president hunkers down, awaiting the outcome of the Libby indictment.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Nov. 03, 2005 | One year after his reelection President Bush governs from a bunker. "We go forward with complete confidence," he proclaimed in his second inaugural address. He urged "our youngest citizens" to see the future "in the determined faces of our soldiers" and to choose between "evil" and "courage." But as he listened to Bush that day, Vice President Dick Cheney knew that the election had been secured by a coverup.
"I would have wished nothing better," declared Patrick Fitzgerald in his press conference of Oct. 28, announcing the indictment on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, "that, when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, witnesses testified then, and we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005. No one would have went to jail."
The indictment of Libby documents that it was Cheney who confirmed the exact identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to him. The indictment also describes a figure called "Official A," subsequently disclosed to be Karl Rove, the president's chief political advisor, who informed Libby that he had told conservative columnist Robert Novak of Plame's secret status. The next day, July 12, 2003, Libby conferred with Cheney on how to handle the press on the matter. That same day, Libby revealed Plame's identity to two reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Then Libby falsely testified that he had learned Plame's name from reporters. On Sept. 30, 2003, President Bush emphatically stated that he wanted anyone in his administration with information about the Plame leak to "come forward"; if anyone inside was involved, he wanted to know; and if anyone had violated the law, "the person will be taken care of." On June 10, 2004, he pledged that anyone on his staff who had leaked Plame's name would be fired.
When the Libby indictment was announced, Bush and Cheney praised him as a fine public servant. Still under investigation, Rove remains in the West Wing. But Cheney knew during the presidential campaign that he had discussed with Libby how to deal with Plame. Now Bush knows that Rove had enabled Novak to publish her identity. But the president's promise to fire officials is suddenly inoperative. It is apparently acceptable for aides to deceive the president and compromise national security so long as they further his short-term political benefit. Ever-shifting ends justify ever-shifting means.
Libby's alleged coverup was undertaken in the spirit of neoconservative Leninism. The vanguard, which sets all policy and uses the party as its instrument, rationalizes any tactic. Libby was a deeply seeded neoconservative apparatchik, possessing long experience and great bureaucratic skill, an inside man, never seeking the spotlight for himself. He was a member of a small cadre of his caliber, not easily replenished. If he had testified truthfully in October 2004 the result would have consumed the final days of the campaign. His Leninist logic permitted him to protect the Republican cause, but he has tainted Bush's victory in history as surely as the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore did in 2000.
Bush took his 2004 win as a resounding mandate for a right-wing agenda. His second term was to be the fulfillment of conservative dreams to roll back decades of liberalism. With each right turn, however, his popularity declined. Iraq acted as an accelerator of his fall.
His nomination of his White House legal counsel Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court was an acknowledgment of his sharply narrowed political space. Bush believed he could thread the needle with her because her record was unknown. While the Republican masses supported him, the Leninist right staged a revolt. In Bush's cronyism and opportunism, they saw his deviation. He was the disloyalist. With the prosecutor's indictment imminent, Bush withdrew Miers and caved. Broadly unpopular, he could not suffer a split right. His new nominee, federal Judge Samuel Alito, a reliable sectarian, is a tribute to his bunker strategy.
Hostage to his failed fortune, Bush is a prisoner of the right. His administration has become its own little republic of fear. Libby's public trial will reveal the administration's political methods. Cheney, along with a host of others, will be called to testify. Whatever other calamities may befall Bush, their specter harries him to the right. "Disunity, dissolution and vacillation" are hallmarks of "the path of conciliation," as Lenin wrote in "What Is to Be Done." The vanguard on "the path of struggle," criticized for being "an exclusive group," must oppose any retreat proposed by the "opportunist rearguard." "We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire."
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com | Bush's bunker strategy
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
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whatever already!
Murray Waas is MSM reporter most up on Bush-Cheney-Rove scandals. Excerpts and his website=
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Senate Democratic Leader Invokes Rule 21, takes senate into executive session
The Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, has taken the U.S. Senate in executive session, to discuss how they have been stymied in an effort to complete a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of faulty pre-war intelligence that lead up to the war with Iraq. The doors of the Senate were locked, all staff were ordered out of the Senate chamber, and the lights were dimmed inside.
"I demand on behalf of the American people... that the Senate go into close session," Reid said, an action virtually unprecedented because rule 21, which sends the Senate into executive session, is ordinarily done by agreement by both Democrats and Republicans.
Reid explained his actions by saying: "They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why,"
He added: "The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions," Reid added. Then he unilaterally invoked Senate rules that led to the closed session.
An angry First later stepped out of the Senate chamber to briefly tell reporters: "The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership.... "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas," the Republican leader said.
Two senior Senate staff aides said that a story that I was posted on the National Journal's website Thursday night, for the first time linking Vice President Cheney himself, Libby, and Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington, to withholding information from Congress on the pre-war intelligence committee, on members of the committee, most notably the committee's vice-chairman, and ranking Democrat, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, and Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Illinois, also a member of the committee.
The very next day after that story appeared, of course, on Friday, the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case indicted Libby on five felony counts of misleading federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice, for concealing his role, and perhaps other Bush administration officials, in outing Valerie Plame. The confluence of the two events lead Democrats to take the fight right to the Senate floor as to what will know happen regarding how they will now investigate the pre-war intelligence issue.
I will have more later...
posted by murray waas at 3:32 PM
Monday, October 31, 2005
Addington named as new chief of staff to Cheney (updated twice since original post)
Vice President Dick Cheney earlier today named David Addington to replace I. Lewis Libby as his new chief of staff. The appointment comes just as the man he is succeeding-- Libby-- is to be arraigned on Thursday before Federal District Court Judge Reggie Walton on five felony counts of making false statements to federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice, for his role in the CIA leak case.
Paul Singer and myself wrote a long investigative profile of Addington on the National Journal's website that appeared yesterday. For a further idea as to what is to come, one senior government official who has worked closely with Addington simply told me today that "he is more Libby than Libby."
Cheney also today named John Hannah to be his new national security advisor. (Libby, before his five-felony indictment on Friday, was simultaneously Cheney's staff of staff, his national security adviser, and special assistant to the President.) Hannah has been Cheney's deputy national security adviser since the first days of the Bush administration. Like Addington, Hannah has been at the center of very much related controversies regarding the misuse of pre-war intelligence by the Bush administration to make the case to go to war, and the Plame affair. This NYT story, by Doug Jehl, is perhaps the best background.
Below are some excerpts from the story that I wrote with Paul Singer about Addington for the National Journal:
On the morning of July 8, 2003, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then-chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, had a two-hour meeting with New York Times reporter Judith Miller at which Libby gave information to Miller in an attempt to discredit former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.
When Libby returned to the White House, he immediately sought out David Addington, the vice president's counsel, according to court records and interviews. During their breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, Libby had promised Miller he would try to find out more about Wilson, and Wilson's wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame. As the former general counsel to the CIA and counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, Addington was the right man for Libby to see.
Libby's and Addington's fates have dramatically changed as a result of the events of that day. Libby, long Cheney's most trusted aide, resigned as the vice president's chief of staff on Friday following his felony indictment on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case. A federal grand jury accused Libby of trying to cover up that he had disclosed the identity of Plame, a covert CIA operative, in an effort to discredit Wilson and his criticism of the administration.
Addington is currently considered the leading candidate to succeed Libby as the chief of staff to a weakened but still powerful Cheney. But Addington's own role in the Plame matter is emerging just as the vice president considers whether to name him as his next chief of staff.
There is no evidence that Addington has done anything outside the law, or that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has regarded him as anything other than a witness during the two-year probe that led to Libby's indictment...
But Addington was deeply immersed in the White House damage-control campaign to deflect criticism that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to administration and congressional sources.
Moreover, as a pivotal member of the vice president's office, Addington also attended strategy sessions in 2003 on how to discredit Wilson when the former ambassador publicly charged that the Bush administration misled the country in pushing its case for war, according to attorneys in the CIA leak probe.
Further, Addington played a leading role in 2004 on behalf of the Bush administration when it refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee documents from Libby's office on the alleged misuse of intelligence information regarding Iraq. Because Addington may be in line to succeed Libby, the Intelligence Committee-White House battle over the documents has sparked new interest on Capitol Hill...
When Libby and Miller met on July 8, 2003, Cheney's office was involved in an effort to discredit Wilson. The former ambassador had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium material from the African nation in order to build a nuclear weapon...
At their breakfast meeting, Libby told Miller that Plame worked at the CIA, and also alleged that the CIA sent Wilson to Niger on Plame's recommendation, according to the grand jury indictment.
During the breakfast, according to attorneys familiar with Libby's previously undisclosed statements to federal investigators, Miller insisted that Libby provide her with additional information on Wilson and Plame to bolster any story she might write. Miller testified to the grand jury that it was Libby who offered to find additional evidence to verify what he had told the Times reporter, according to legal sources familiar with Miller's version of events.
Whatever the case, when Libby returned to the White House after meeting with Miller, he sought out Addington. Attempts to reach Addington for comment for this story were unsuccessful. He did not return messages left on his White House voice mail over the course of several days.
According to the grand jury indictment, Libby met with Addington "in an anteroom outside the Vice President's office," and asked Addington, "in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee's spouse undertook an overseas mission."
The indictment does not say what actions, if any, Addington took to learn more about Plame's CIA employment.
Four days after the Libby-Miller breakfast and Libby's discussion with Addington, Libby gave Miller additional information on Wilson and Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Miller's testimony...
To read the article in its entirety, click here. CNN.com has this story tonight on the Addington and Hannah appointments. And I will be on my friend's, Amy Goodman's radio show, Democracy Now, on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the CIA leak probe, the Libby indictment, and the Addington appointment. I personally don't get up at such an early, wretched hour, but if any of you are awake...
Update: 9:32 P.M.: The New York Times has now posted a story on their website about the Addington and Hannah appointments. Some key passages:
Lea Anne McBride, Mr. Cheney's press secretary, said Mr. Addington's new job would also carry with it another title that had been held by Mr. Libby, assistant to the president, placing him in the senior ranks of the White House staff.
Mr. Addington was referred to by job title in the indictment of Mr. Libby on Friday, and appears likely to be called as a witness should Mr. Libby's case go to trial. The indictment referred to a conversation Mr. Libby held with the vice president's counsel on July 8, 2003, in which Mr. Libby asked what paperwork the Central Intelligence Agency might keep if an employee's spouse took an overseas trip...
The appointments, which are not subject to Senate confirmation, suggest that the White House has little intention of bringing in fresh faces in the wake of the indictment...
Known as a strong advocate of presidential power, he has favored a broad reading of the president's power to detain terrorism suspects and to use interrogation techniques that critics say amount to torture. He has also backed the administration's efforts to conduct much of its business behind closed doors, taking a role in the fight over whether Mr. Cheney's energy task force would have to release information about its meetings.
Asked about Mr. Addington and Mr. Hannah at his news briefing on Monday, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said, "These are two individuals that have served the vice president very well since 2001, and the vice president selected them because he values their judgment and their insight and looked to their experience as people that could fill these two positions."
The choices brought immediate criticism from Democrats, who suggested that Mr. Cheney was thumbing his nose at calls for accountability in the leak case.
"I've called for a thorough house-cleaning in the vice president's office," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, "but what they've done is just rearrange some office furniture. It is time for the president and vice president to bring in a new team of advisers who are above ethical reproach, like Reagan did in his second term, not stonewall like Nixon did during Watergate."
Mr. McClellan said Mr. Bush had no plans to overhaul the top ranks of the White House, despite pressure from Republicans as well as Democrats to bring in new people and new ideas after months in which the administration has stumbled from crisis to crisis.
Second update, Nov. 1, 9:08 A.M. : The LAT has since posted thier own story on the Addington and Hannah appointments, with some more background, written by a good friend of mine, Tom Hamburger, and Peter Wallensten.
whatever already!
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Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
Josh Marshall is totally on top of the CheneyGate/Italian Gate scandals; here's last two days excerpt and his valuable blog=
"(November 01, 2005 -- 02:39 PM EST // link)
I'm told Sen. Reid has taken the senate into closed session to discuss the senate's failure to "phase two" of the Senate Select Committee on Inteligence report on the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure. Phase two, you'll remember, was to examine alleged administration manipulation of intelligence.
Click here to read the statement Reid gave before taking the senate into closed session.
-- Josh Marshall
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(November 01, 2005 -- 01:45 PM EST // link)
The name of Stephen J. Hadley (first term Deputy National Security Advisor and now National Security Advisor) has come up again and again in the Niger-uranium story.
In early 2002 Hadley was tasked with shutting down the unauthorized meetings Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin and Michael Ledeen were holding with Iraqi and Iranian exiles, and Italian intelligence figures including the head of SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, in Rome in late 2001.
On September 9th, 2002, Hadley met with Pollari in Washington. According to the Italian daily La Repubblica Pollari was there to press the details of the Niger-uranium story. The NSC has now confirmed that the meeting took place but claims it was a brief meeting and that no one present remembers the yellowcake story coming up.
In other words, it's a quite hazy denial if it's even a denial at all.
Less than a month later Hadley and others at the NSC tried but failed to get the Niger story into President Bush's October 7th WMD speech in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Days later copies of the forgeries surfaced in Rome.
Three months later Hadley and the same colleagues at the NSC succeeded in getting the Niger story included in the president's 2003 State of the Union address.
In July, Hadley took personal responsibility for allowing the bogus claim to be included in the State of the Union address and apologized publicly to the president.
Much of what I've just laid out here has been known for some time. But Hadley is doing a press briefing tomorrow afternoon at the White House to discuss the president's upcoming visit to Latin America.
It would certainly be welcome to get some clarification directly from Mr. Hadley about just what he discussed with Pollari at that September 2002 and whether the claims contained in the La Repubblica article is in fact false.
-- Josh Marshall
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(November 01, 2005 -- 12:07 PM EST // link)
What did the president say to Berlusconi?
From this morning's gaggle ...
QUESTION: Thank you. Any more explanation of the Berlusconi-President discussion about Italian intelligence on Iraq -- is this to say that Mr. Fitzgerald's finding that the Niger claim had its genesis in Italian intelligence was wrong?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Mr. Fitzgerald's -- I'll have to look back at what his finding was. I don't recall the specifics of that.
QUESTION: Fitzgerald found that what we had been calling British intelligence, the document -- the forged document --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I missed that. I don't think so. I don't think so.
QUESTION: -- alleging an Iraq --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Okay, I don't think he did.
QUESTION: I'm wrong on this?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think he --
QUESTION: That's not ringing any bells.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes.
QUESTION: It's not ringing any bells with other people either.
QUESTION: No, it is, it is. And I can't remember if it's Fitzgerald or somebody else, but there's this is the central issue is --
QUESTION: The central issue was --
QUESTION: -- the source of the --
QUESTION: The source of the forged document was Italy, who handed it to --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, the -- we actually briefed on the source of the information back in July of 2003, and the source was the National Intelligence Estimate and British Intelligence. That was the basis for the reference in the President's State of the Union address.
QUESTION: Fitzgerald found an Italian tie, and I presume this is what the discussion between the President and Berlusconi was about.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, they -- like I said they -- Prime Minister Berlusconi brought it up, and as they indicated, that there wasn't any documents that were provided to us on Niger and uranium by --
QUESTION: Wait, no documents or no intelligence?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?
QUESTION: The press report out of Italy is a transcription -- it's a transcription of the forged documents, not the actual documents themselves. But Berlusconi said yesterday was, no information passed from Italy to the United States.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I think he was accurately reflecting what he indicated in the meeting.
QUESTION: So that accurately characterizes the President's position, that the United States never received any intelligence --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, Prime Minister Berlusconi was reflecting that within the meeting, and we've previously said in regards to a question that came up about a meeting here at the White House that no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed at that meeting, much less any documents being provided.
More to come.
-- Josh Marshall
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(November 01, 2005 -- 11:47 AM EST // link)
Possible Correction: Yesterday I reported that the Bush-Berlusconi press conference had been cancelled and I suggested that it had happened because both were worried about taking questions about the brewing Niger-Uranium controversy. The two also refused to take any questions when they appeared in front of reporters before their meeting in the White House.
The report of the cancellation came out of the Italian press. But I'm now told, by a reliable source, that there was actually no press conference scheduled. I think what this means is that the decision not to hold a press conference was made before it ever made it on to the schedules handed out to reporters. So I think the underlying issue is the same. But I just wanted to clear that up.
-- Josh Marshall
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(November 01, 2005 -- 01:12 AM EST // link)
A great experiment in student journalism: warnewsradio.com, exploring the many dimensions of the war in Iraq.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 31, 2005 -- 07:12 PM EST // link)
In Washington today, at a session with members of the Italian press, PM Silvio Berlusconi said, "Lo stesso Bush mi ha confermato che gli USA non hanno avuto alcuna informazione dai servizi italiani." That loosely translates to "Bush himself confirmed to me that the USA did not have any information from Italian agencies." And the answer was reference to whether the United States had gotten any of the Niger intelligence from Italy.
The claim here is simply a lie. US suspicions about Niger and Iraq began with intelligence reports from Italy in October 2001. Those reports were based on the forged documents. Did President Bush really say that? Berlusconi must know this is false.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 31, 2005 -- 02:32 PM EST // link)
Question of the day.
Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is in Washington today.
Later this week Berlusconi's intelligence chief will be questioned before a closed session of a committee of the Italian parliament about allegations he was responsible for using back channels to funnel the Niger uranium forgeries to the White House.
Last week a top White House official was indicted on five counts stemming from the Niger scandal.
Please let us know if any journalist in Washington today puts a question regarding Italy's role in the Niger caper to Bush, Berlusconi or spokespersons for either man.
It won't be as easy as it might have been: their scheduled joint press conference was cancelled and reporters were not permitted to ask questions after the two gave brief statements today at the White House.
The White House doesn't want to answer any questions about this story; and few reporters seem inclined to press the point.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 31, 2005 -- 01:13 PM EST // link)
Just out from the veep's office ...
The Vice President today appointed David S. Addington of Virginia to be the chief of staff to the Vice President. The Vice President also appointed John P. Hannah of the District of Columbia as the Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs.
Mr. Addington has served in the position of Counsel to the Vice President since January 20, 2001. In prior Federal service, Mr. Addington served at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the White House, and four congressional committees. In the private sector, he headed a multicandidate political action committee, practiced law with two firms, and headed the law department of a trade association. Mr. Addington is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and the Duke University School of Law.
Mr. Hannah has served on the national security staff in the Office of the Vice President since March 2001 and is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. In prior Federal service, Mr. Hannah served at the Department of State. In the private sector, Mr. Hannah practiced law in Washington, D.C. and served as a senior official of a Washington-based foreign policy research organization. Mr. Hannah is a graduate of Duke University and the Yale Law School.
Circling the wagons.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 30, 2005 -- 11:45 PM EST // link)
The Italian Connection, Part I
(ed.note: At various points over the last two years, I've discussed here at tpm reporting I've done on the origins of the Niger forgeries. I've never put all the reporting in one place; and until now there was still a good bit of information I wasn't at liberty to report. This is the first of a series of installments I'm going to publish here at TPM in which I will lay out the story as I understand it based on my own reporting and research.)
On March 7th, 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that documents purporting to show that Iraq had purchased uranium ore from Niger were in fact forgeries. The documents had been provided to the IAEA by the United States. "Based on thorough analysis," said ElBaradei, "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic."
As the world would soon learn, the documents had first emerged in Rome in October 2002 when an unnamed ‘security consultant’ had tried to sell them to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist working for the Italian magazine Panorama. From there, the documents made their way to the American Embassy in Rome and finally back to Washington. In early 2003, the IAEA had demanded that the US provide whatever evidence it had to support its claims that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. And in response the US handed over copies of the documents.
Ever since ElBaradei’s revelation, the story had been one that interested me greatly, as it did many others. And my interest only grew that summer when renewed controversy erupted over the claims retired Ambassador Joe Wilson made about his fact-finding trip to Niger. But the following winter, two streams of information opened up to me which suggested that the forgeries story went well beyond this unnamed Italian ‘security consultant’ and that the US government appeared less than interested in discovering the identities of either the forgers or those who had used the documents to deceive the American people.
One stream of information came from sources within the US government itself.
According to US government sources I spoke to in the course of my reporting, there was far more tying the forgeries to Italy than the mere fact that they had first emerged in Rome in October 2002. Almost a year earlier, US suspicions about an illicit uranium trade between Iraq and Niger had begun with intelligence reports from Italy. Soon after the September 11th attacks, the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI sent its first report to the US government including details of an alleged Iraqi purchase of 500 tons of lightly-processed uranium ore from Niger.
Details of this and a subsequent SISMI report formed the basis of a reference to alleged Iraq-Niger uranium sales which was included in a CIA briefing Vice President Cheney received in early 2002. It was that briefing that prompted Cheney's request for more information on the Iraq-Niger sale. And that request led, in turn, to the CIA's decision to dispatch Joe Wilson on his trip to Niger. The Italian reports had set the whole process in motion.
But there was another key detail: The reports out of Italy were not a separate source of intelligence from the forgeries. They were the forgeries. To be precise, the intelligence reports from Italy were actually text transcriptions and summaries of the forged documents. The reports from Italy and the forgeries were one and the same. The distinction is rather like saying you haven't seen the PDF of a letter only the text from the letter that someone copied down from the PDF. The fact that the Italian reports came from as-yet-to-be-revealed forgeries of course could not be known at the time. That only became clear to intelligence officials much later when these post-9/11 Italian reports and the forgeries were compared. But looking back in retrospect, it was clear that the whole Niger uranium canard seemed to lead back to those forgeries.
Just what that meant for Italy's role wasn’t clear. Indeed, it still isn’t entirely clear. What was quite clear, however, was that the Italian government would be a key place to start to get to the bottom of the forgeries’ mystery.
And there was more.
I also learned of the existence of a Joint State Department-CIA Inspectors General report on the “16 words” and the Niger forgeries which was produced in the fall of 2003. Much of the report detailed information later revealed in the Senate intelligence committee report. But there were other briefly noted but intriguing details.
For instance, the State-CIA IG report briefly noted a murky story about contacts between SISMI and the CIA in the summer of 2002. That summer SISMI had approached the CIA about an operation they intended to run against the Station Chief of Iraqi intelligence in Rome. The plan was to send disinformation about the Iraqi Station Chief back to Baghdad via a third country. And the subject of the disinformation was to be trade between Iraq and Niger. (The Americans did not object but declined to participate.)
That was certainly interesting.
Later, from other US government sources, I learned another detail. When the forgeries arrived at the US Embassy in Rome in October 2002, the first reaction of the CIA Station chief was to wonder whether this wasn’t the same story the Italians had suggested using against the Iraqi only months before.
As you can see, quite a lot of information seemed to suggest that the Italian government played a large role in the story of the Niger forgeries, even if it might be an innocent or unwitting one. Yet neither the CIA nor the FBI, a knowledgeable source told me, seemed intent on getting to the bottom of what had happened.
In addition to these clues, there was one more piece of information. And here is where the two streams of information I noted above flowed together. A US government source pointed me toward a series of suspicious points of overlap between the forgeries story and a series of unauthorized meetings between Italian intelligence figures, two Pentagon employees working under Doug Feith, other Americans and the disgraced Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar. These meetings were the subject of an article ("Iran-Contra II?") I published with Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris in the Washington Monthly in early September 2004. Around the same time, another source -- this one outside the US government – told me a murky series of details about the meetings which purported to connect them to the emergence of the forgeries in Rome in October 2002.
These were the details -- some quite specific and solidly-sourced, others murky but intriguing -- that led me to start reporting on the Niger forgeries in earnest in early 2004. In the second installment, how the Washington Monthly, Laura Rozen, and finally 60 Minutes came into the picture, and new information pointing toward the role of Italian intelligence.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 30, 2005 -- 10:05 PM EST // link)
Larry Johnson on Bob Woodward.
-- Josh Marshall
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(October 30, 2005 -- 06:57 PM EST // link)
Larry Johnson sets the record straight about Joe Wilson, the senathttp://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/e intel report and the Fitzgerald indictments."
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
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Salon.com - War Room
scuttlebutt of the day by Salon's Tim Grieve; note the entry on Iraq's Deadly Month, this is the Albatross on Bush-Cheney trying to change the subject
Salon.com - War Room
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What the 'Shield' Covered Up
the WP is having a good day: E.J. Dionne berates journalists like Judy Miller for not speaking up before election and makes the great point that Dems should hold back on Alito nomination until Bush comes clean on the scandals; he won't but its a good tactic to stall and make the point that Bush has spent his political capital and deserves nothing-- but maybe impeachment....
What the 'Shield' Covered Up
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Questions of Trust in the Press Room
Here is an EXTREMELY INTERESTING posting from Dana Millbank that the Washington Press corps roasted Scott McClellan yesterday, asking if he should resign, and refusing to drop the ScandalGate queries; since the press has so passive during most of the Bush-Cheney Reign of Error and Terror, it is good to see them more aggressive. As Paul Krugman put it yesterday:
Paul Krugman writes in his New York Times column (subscription required) about the Bush years: "Let me be frank: it has been a long political nightmare. For some of us, daily life has remained safe and comfortable, so the nightmare has merely been intellectual: we realized early on that this administration was cynical, dishonest and incompetent, but spent a long time unable to get others to see the obvious. For others -- above all, of course, those Americans risking their lives in a war whose real rationale has never been explained -- the nightmare has been all too concrete."
But, he writes, "the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we tell the public?"
Questions of Trust in the Press Room
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Robert Parry: 'Is impeachment the answer?'
And let us not forget that Impeachment is the ultimate solution to the whole Bush-Cheney morass
The Smirking Chimp
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Bill Gallagher: 'Libby's lies are just the tip of the iceberg'
here's a good acount of the farcial Italian Connection behind Bush-Cheney WMD disinformation and lies; this story is circulating broadly in Europe and there is an Italian govt investigation of the story so it could break and splatter some deep doodoo over the US NeoCon Gang
The Smirking Chimp
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All the Prosecutor's Hints
Here's a good summary by Dan Froomkin of various stories from yesterday that keep alive the Libby-Cheney-Rove scandals; some articles indicate Rove is still a target and that Cheney and his office is tarred; yesterday he promoted two of his most rightwing thuggish ideologues to replace Libby, planting the seeds of later Downfall....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/10/31/BL2005103101009.html
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