Worst President Ever!

[The 801]

Rove was asked to fire U.S. attorney
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

Weh's account calls into question the Justice Department's stance that the recent decision to fire Iglesias and seven U.S. attorneys in other states was a personnel matter - made without White House intervention. Justice Department officials have said the White House's involvement was limited to approving a list of the U.S. attorneys after the Justice Department made the decision to fire them.

Rove could not be reached Saturday, and the White House and the Justice Department had no immediate response.

"The facts speak for themselves," Iglesias said, when he was told of Weh's account of his conversation with Rove.

Weh's disclosure comes as Congress investigates the circumstances behind the firings of the U.S. attorneys, most of whom had positive job evaluations, including Iglesias. Democrats have charged the Bush administration tried to inject partisan politics into federal prosecutions in order to influence election outcomes.

Weh said he doesn't know whether Rove was directly involved in the firing or was merely advised of the decision.

Weh insisted this wasn't about partisan politics.

"There's nothing we've done that's wrong," he said. "It wasn't that Iglesias wasn't looking out for Republicans. He just wasn't doing his job, period."

But Iglesias, who was fired Dec. 7, said he believes politics was the driving force. He accused Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of trying to pressure him to bring indictments against several Democrats in time for the 2006 congressional election.

Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias, but deny pressuring him.

Justice Department officials have revealed that Domenici repeatedly contacted officials within the department requesting Iglesias' removal. But when asked Friday whether he contacted Rove about the issue, Domenici said he could not remember.

Iglesias said Friday he believes the impatience of state Republicans raises the possibility that the Bush administration might have been more involved than officials have acknowledged.

"Part of the controversy behind this is prosecutorial discretion," Iglesias said. "What that means is it's up to the sole discretion of the prosecutor in the case of how to handle the indictment and when to issue it."

Former federal prosecutors and defense lawyers who've represented public officials in corruption cases say the allegations of political inference could undermine the reputation of U.S. attorneys as impartial enforcers of the law.

Defense lawyers trying to convince juries to acquit their clients in corruption cases often accuse the government of mounting political vendettas against their clients. But it's virtually unheard of to have the former U.S. attorney in the case to be offering possible evidence of such interference.

"Anyone with any experience within the Justice Department is completely shocked and appalled by what has been described," said Stanley Hunterton, a former federal prosecutor of 12 years who investigated organized crime in Detroit and Las Vegas. "One of the things the Department has stood for was being apolitical. Sure, politics does gets involved in the appointment process, but this is just nuts."

Several Republican activists interviewed for this story said their frustration with Iglesias dated back to before the 2004 election, and his decision to create a task force on voter fraud rather than try to prosecute Democrats who submitted allegedly fraudulent voter registrations.

They also felt that he had largely botched a corruption case against the state treasurer, a Democrat. After a mistrial, federal prosecutors eventually secured a conviction.

By last fall, Wilson's re-election campaign was in serious trouble. But Republicans, including Weh, said they remained convinced that federal indictments were about to come down against several high-profile Democrats in a long-brewing corruption investigation related to courthouse construction projects.

On Sept. 30, nine donors were summoned to Weh's house for a $5,000-a-plate luncheon with Rove.

Among them was Paul Kennedy, a former state Supreme Court justice who had advised state lawmakers on whether to impeach the state treasurer.

Kennedy also represented the accountant who went to the FBI and U.S. attorney's office with the initial evidence implicating Democrats in the courthouse corruption case.

He acknowledges that he thought indictments of Democrats would help Wilson's re-election, and possibly hurt Democrats all the way up to Gov. Bill Richardson. But he also insists that's not what was driving his impatience - that it was a matter of the serving the public interest.

"What was I supposed to do?" he asked. "Look the other way when I saw corruption? It had to go the FBI. We gave them a lot of solid evidence."

Kennedy sat next to Rove at the luncheon that day. But in an interview he insists he never discussed the matter with him. Pat Rogers, former general counsel to the state Republican Party says he can't remember whether he attended the luncheon but that he also never discussed the matter with Rove or with Bush.

Weh says neither Iglesias nor the courthouse probe came up. Instead, donors voiced concern that Republicans would lose control of the House of Representatives. Rove assured them they would not.

But between then and the election, at least three backers of the courthouse corruption case - Wilson, Domenici, and Rogers - acknowledged they were on the phone to Iglesias to inquire about the status of the investigations. Rogers represented Wilson after she won re-election by less than 900 votes.

Rogers said he asked Iglesias before the election to talk about the case. When they finally met for lunch, Rogers said he told Iglesias, "David, in my mind, the failure to bring appropriate changes and proceed on a corruption case because of the pending election is as bad as ignoring it entirely."

"I don't know whether anyone talked to Rove or President Bush about David at any time, but complaints about David would track way back to before the election of 2004," Rogers said. "It was not a secret, the unhappiness with David."

The courthouse controversy has yet to yield indictments. And for the time being, Iglesias' firing has overshadowed talk of that probe.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16872058.htm

Now, Rove's not the kind of guy who would undermine the election process for political reasons, is he? - 801

[The 801]

A classic from 2004, just to review some of the greatest hits....


President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says
by NewStandard Staff

Among a new batch of documents rights groups have forced the gov't to release, a Bureau communication refers to a presidential Executive Order endorsing some forms of torture witnessed at Iraq prison.

Dec. 21, 2004 – Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq.

The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.

An Executive Order is a presidential edict -- sometimes public, sometimes secretive -- instituting special laws or instructions that override or complement existing legislation. The White House has officially neither admitted nor denied that the president has issued an Executive Order pertaining to interrogation techniques.

The specific methods mentioned in the email as having been approved by the unnamed Executive Order and witnessed by FBI agents include sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners’ heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, forcing captives to stand in so-called "stress positions," and the employment of work dogs. One of the more horrifying tools of intimidation, Army canines were used at the prison to terrorize inmates, as depicted in photos taken inside Abu Ghraib.

The correspondence is dated May 22, 2004 -- a couple of weeks after images of torture and humiliation at the prison broke in the world media -- and was sent between FBI officials attempting to clarify the Bureau’s position on the terminology to use when categorizing and reporting such techniques. The author repeatedly states those techniques were, at least temporarily, permitted under the mysterious presidential directive. The author also wrote that Pentagon policy had since restricted most of the techniques to require specific authorization from the chain of command.

"As stated, there was a revision last week in the military’s standard operating procedures based on the Executive Order," the letter reads. "I have been told that all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted." The author goes on to recount having seen a military email that said certain techniques -- including "stress positions," the use of dogs, "sleep management," hoods, "stripping (except for health inspection)," and blaring music -- cannot be used without special authorization.

The author wonders if techniques that fall within the scope of the Executive Order should be referred to as "abuse," since they are technically legal. Unless otherwise advised by the Bureau, the email continues, agents "will still not report the use of these techniques as ‘abuse’ since we will not be in a position to know whether or not the authorization for these tactics was received from the aforementioned officials."

The author does believe that interrogation methods that involve "physical beatings, sexual humiliation or touching" clearly constitute "abuse," suggesting they are not within the scope of the repeatedly referenced Executive Order.

The email says that FBI personnel operating at Abu Ghraib witnessed but did not participate in prisoner interrogations that involved actions approved by the Executive Order. That statement upholds separate documentation also obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests backed by a lawsuit on the part of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

As reported by The NewStandard, documents revealed in October showed that FBI agents had witnessed abuses like those mentioned in the email, in addition to many more severe actions.

The email that was revealed on Monday is the first official document to state that the Oval Office was the source of directives permitting abuse and torture.

After the ACLU released the documents, White House, Pentagon and FBI officials told reporters that the author of the email was mistaken, and that the order was not an Executive Order, but a Defense Department directive. All sources refused to be identified in news reports.

The White House does not appear to have ever officially denied that President Bush issued an Executive Order specifying interrogation techniques, though none has been made public. The ACLU and other organizations involved in forcing the release of documents regarding prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib as well as prison camps in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have demanded the White House "confirm or deny the existence of such an order," according to an ACLU press release issued on Monday.

Last June the president insisted that the only authorization he has issued with regard to interrogation procedures was that American personnel "would conform to US law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations."

But as the unidentified FBI official noted in his email, techniques are made legal under US law if and when the president issues an Executive Order rendering them so.

Asked more directly less than two weeks later if President Bush had ever approved particular prisoner handling methods, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan responded, "In terms of interrogation techniques related to what the military may carry out in Guantánamo Bay or Iraq, those are determinations that are made by the military, and we expect that those techniques fit within the policies that this President has instituted."

The president and his legal advisors have repeatedly said that the US government neither condones nor commits torture. The Bush administration’s conservative definition of torture, as expressed at a June 22 press briefing by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, incorporates only acts bearing "a specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental harm or suffering."

If White House statements are to be taken at face value, then, they still leave considerable room for the possibility that President Bush has authorized specific acts that civil libertarians and international law consider torturous, including the methods listed in the FBI email.

The United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the United States Congress has ratified, defines "torture" far more broadly as including "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."

Also included among the newly released documents were notices regarding the initiation of criminal investigations pertaining to abuse of Iraqi detainees.

One of the documents is a memo stating that the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division had commenced an inquiry "regarding the alleged rape of [a] juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison." The name of the investigating officer or unit has been blanked out, and no identifying information is offered pertaining to the case.

Another document notifies Valene Caproni of the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel, that two FBI agents who were stationed in Iraq were to be interviewed by Army investigators looking into the alleged torture of an Iraqi detainee. Gary Bald of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division wrote the email message, in which he notes suspicious military paperwork on a detainee whose name is redacted. He also writes that the two FBI special agents were with the military police unit that held the Iraqi and signed receipts claiming to have seen him before he was transferred to Abu Ghraib for further interrogation.

While the email states that the prisoner does not mention the FBI in his complaint, he described his treatment in troubling detail. "They tortured me and cuffed me in an act called the scorpion and pouring cold water on me," the email quotes the detainee’s complaint as saying. "They tortured me from morning until the morning of the next day, and when I fell down from the severe torture I fell on the barbed wires, and then they dragged me from my feet and I was wounded and, and they punched me on my stomach."

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1348&x=x

[The 801]

We folks, I can't believed this surfaced again. While I didn't vote for or like bush for many reasons, this was the original reason that I really really disliked him. Now it looks like somebody remembered this little piece of business and plans to take care of it. Now why would bush want to suppress presidential papers to historians?

House overturns Bush order on papers secrecy
Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:48pm ET138


By Peter Szekely

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.

The measure, which drew bipartisan support and passed by a veto-busting 333-93 margin, was among White House-opposed bills the House passed that would widen access to government information and protect government whistleblowers.

"Today, Congress took an important step toward restoring openness and transparency in government," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said.

The presidential papers bill nullifies a November 2001 order, criticized by historians, in which Bush allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president's papers and put the onus on researchers to show a "specific need" for many types of records.

Among beneficiaries of the Bush order was Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, a former vice president and president.

The order gave former vice presidents the right to stop the release of their papers through an executive privilege that previously only presidents could use. And it extended to deceased presidents' designees rights to keep their papers secret indefinitely.

The House bill would give current and former presidents 40 business days to object to requests to view their papers, allow a sitting president to override a former president's claim of executive privilege and strip former vice presidents and the designees of deceased presidents of the power to use executive privilege to block access to their historical documents.

n its veto warning, the White House said the bill encroaches on the president's constitutional authority and the 40-day deadline would force presidents to use executive privilege to block information requests "out of an abundance of caution" and thereby invite litigation.

The real reason, the White House said, for delays of up to five years in releasing presidential papers to researchers is a lack of archivists at presidential libraries.

Many historians, however, support the House bill, saying the Bush order has slowed the declassification process.

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archives at George Washington University, said the average time to release presidential documents has grown to 78 months from 18 months since the Bush order, which he said directly contributed to one year of the lag.

A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate.

Also passed by the House by a 331-94 margin, despite another veto threat, was a bill aimed at bolstering protections of government whistleblowers who report wrongdoing, especially those with private contractors and national security and scientific agencies.

A third bill, which passed 308-117, was aimed at speeding requests for government information made under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House stopped short of threatening to veto it but said it could not support the bill.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-03-14T234814Z_01_N14298921_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-BUSH-SECRECY.xml

[The 801]

Squabbles delayed Walter Reed contract for 3 years
POSTED: 12:15 p.m. EDT, March 19, 2007

• Delayed privatization contract led to staff shortages, maintenance delays
• Non-medical staff shrank from 300 to around 50 over last year
• Efforts to privatize parts of the hospital go back to 2000.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Army contract to privatize maintenance at Walter Reed Medical Center was delayed more than three years amid bureaucratic bickering and legal squabbles that led to staff shortages and a hospital in disarray just as the number of severely wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan was rising rapidly.

Documents from the investigative and auditing arm of Congress map a trail of bid, rebid, protests and appeals between 2003, when Walter Reed was first selected for outsourcing, and 2006, when a five-year, $120 million contract was finally awarded.

The disputes involved hospital management, the Pentagon, Congress and IAP Worldwide Services Inc., a company with powerful political connections and the only private bidder to handle maintenance, security, public works and management of military personnel.

While medical care was not directly affected, needed repairs went undone as the non-medical staff shrank from almost 300 to less than 50 in the last year and hospital officials were unable to find enough skilled replacements.

An investigative series by The Washington Post last month sparked a furor on Capitol Hill after it detailed subpar conditions at the 98-year-old hospital in northwest Washington and substandard services for patients. Three top-ranking military officials, including the secretary of the Army, were ousted in part for what critics said was the Pentagon's mismanaged effort to reduce costs and improve efficiency at the Army's premier military hospital while the nation was at war.

IAP is owned by a New York hedge fund whose board is chaired by former Treasury Secretary John Snow, and it is led by former executives of Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary spun off by Texas-based Halliburton Inc., the oil services firm once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.

IAP finally got the job in November 2006, but further delays caused by the Army and Congress delayed work until February 4, two weeks before the Post series and two years after the number of patients at the hospital hit a record 900.

"The Army unfortunately did not devote sufficient resources to the upfront planning part of this, and when you do that, you suffer every step of the way," said Paul Denett, administrator for federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, the White House unit that prepares the president's budget and oversees government contracts.

The contract includes management of Building 18, which houses soldiers with minor injuries and was highlighted in the Post series as symptomatic of substandard conditions: black mold on the walls of patient rooms, rodent and cockroach infestation, and shoddy mattresses.

Those 54 rooms are now vacant. Interior work cannot be started until a badly damaged roof is repaired, and that will need another contract because it's not covered in the IAP contract, Walter Reed officials said.

"These rooms are exactly as they were left," Master Sgt. Gary Rhett, manager of Building 18, said Thursday. "No changes have been made."

The Army has confirmed the timing of the contract delays but declined several requests for comment on why the protest and appeal process took so long, even as more and more injured soldiers were arriving.

The trail goes back to the end of the Clinton administration. The Army began studying the cost benefits of privatization in 2000.

When President Bush took office, he mandated the competitive outsourcing of 425,000 federal jobs. At the time, the Pentagon was aggressively pushing for increased outsourcing, and in June 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate committee he was considering outsourcing up to 320,000 nonmilitary support jobs.

That's the same year that the Army asked for bids on Walter Reed and, coincidentally, the same year the United States invaded Iraq.

One company responded: Johnson Controls World Services Inc., which would be acquired by IAP in March 2005. It initially bid $132 million, but it and Walter Reed's then-management agreed that the Army was underestimating the cost.

By September 2004, the Army had decided it would be cheaper to continue with current management, which said it could do the work for $124.5 million. Johnson Controls filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office.

The protest was dismissed in June 2005, but the Army agreed to reopen bidding three months later to include additional costs for services. In January 2006, after two rounds of protests by IAP and two appeals by Walter Reed employees to the U.S. Army Medical Command, IAP was named the winner, according to Steve Sanderson, a Walter Reed spokesman.

Instead, in an unusual turn of events, the contract wasn't awarded for another 11 months, the GAO said. Walter Reed officials blame several factors, including an additional protest to the GAO filed by Deputy Garrison Commander Alan D. King, a separate appeal to the U.S. Army Medical Command by Walter Reed's public works director, at least one intervention by Congress, and delays on required congressional notifications about government employee dismissals.

IAP spokeswoman Arlene Mellinger said "it was up to the Army to decide when to begin that contract." The company was ready to start at any time, she added.

In August 2006, led by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, lawmakers asked then-Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey to hold off on the contract until Congress finished work on the fiscal 2007 defense appropriations bill. Congress approved that bill Sept. 29.

The Army's plan then was to eliminate 360 federal jobs at Walter Reed in November and turn the work over to IAP, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal workers' trade union. But the Army failed to notify Congress 45 days in advance, as required by law, so the turnover was delayed until early this year.

Then it was IAP's turn to have problems.

When work finally began at the hospital, IAP made an immediate request, which the Army approved, to hire 87 temporary skilled workers for up to four months "to ease the turbulence caused by employees being placed into positions or other installations and otherwise finding new jobs early," said Sanderson, the Walter Reed official.

However, a "tight" job market in the Washington area meant that only 10 qualified temporary employees were found, he added. Meanwhile, injured soldiers continue to arrive weekly to a short-handed, deteriorated hospital, which the Army still plans to close in 2011.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/19/walter.reed.iap.ap/index.html?eref=rss_politics

[The 801]

Ex-Bush Aide Challenged on Climate Reports


Article Tools Sponsored By
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 19 — Democratic lawmakers released documents today that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty or to play down evidence of a human role in global warming.
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Across NASA, researchers and career public affairs workers spoke up to alert The New York Times to rising political interference with the flow of science news to the public. A week after The Times' first story, Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator, issued a statement "on scientific opennness" to the agency's 19,000 employees saying changes would be made.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he made in government reports over several years, saying the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

The hearing included the first public statements on the issue by Mr. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, Mr. Cooney was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby in Washington.

He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.

Mr. Cooney said his past work opposing restrictions on global warming gases for the oil industry had no bearing on his work once he joined the White House. “When I came to the White House,” he testified, “my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration.”

He added that he based his editing and recommendations on what he saw in good faith as the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge.”

He was also staunchly defended by James L. Connaughton, the chairman of the council and his former boss.

The hearing was part of a continuing investigation, begun under the committee’s Republican chairman last year, of charges of political interference in climate science by the Bush administration.

It became a heated tug of war over the appropriate role of scientists and political appointees in framing how the government conveys information on global warming.

The hearing also produced the first sworn statements from George C. Deutsch III, now 25, who moved in 2005 from the Bush re-election campaign to public affairs jobs at NASA, where he warned career press officers to exert more control over James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at the space agency.

Testifying at the hearing, Dr. Hansen said that editing like that done by Mr. Cooney and efforts to limit scientists’ access to the press and public amounted to censorship and muddied the public debate over a pressing environmental issue.

“If public affairs offices are left under the control of political appointees, it seems to me that inherently they become offices of propaganda,” he said.

Republicans criticized Dr. Hansen for what they described as taking political stances, spending increasing amounts of time on public speaking, and accepting a $250,000 award from the Heinz Family Philanthropies, run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Senator John Kerry.

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from Southern California, proposed that Dr. Hansen, by complaining about efforts to present two sides on global warming research, had become an advocate for limiting the debate.

“What I’m an advocate for is the scientific method,” Dr. Hansen replied.

Mr. Deutsch said his warnings to other NASA press officials about Dr. Hansen’s statements and media access were meant to convey a “level of frustration among my higher-ups at NASA.”

Mr. Deutsch resigned last year after Web and newspaper reports showed that he never graduated from Texas A&M University, as his resume on file at NASA said he had. He has since completed work for the degree, he said today.

Democrats focused on fresh details that committee staff compiled showing how Mr. Cooney made hundreds of changes to government climate research plans and reports to Congress on climate that boosted a sense of uncertainty about the science.

The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.

“The documents show that Mr. Cooney and other Council on Environmental Quality officials made at least 181 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties,” the memo said. “They also made at least 113 edits to the plan to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/washington/20climatecnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[The 801]

And now, for the first time, a Robert Novaks column:

A President All Alone

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, March 26, 2007; Page A15

Two weeks earlier on Capitol Hill, there was a groundswell of Republican demands -- public and private -- that President Bush pardon Scooter Libby. Last week, as Alberto Gonzales came under withering Democratic fire, there were no public GOP declarations of support amid private predictions of the attorney general's demise.

Republican leaders in Congress, who asked not to be quoted by name, predicted early last week that Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for the attorney general.



"Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here," a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

Attorneys general in recent decades have ranged from skilled political operatives close to the president (most notably Bobby Kennedy under John F. Kennedy) to nonpolitical lawyers detached from the president (such as Ed Levi under Gerald Ford). Gonzales is surely close to Bush, but nobody would accuse him of being skilled at politics. He puzzled and alarmed conservatives with a January speech in which he claimed that he would take over from the White House the selection of future federal judicial nominees.

The saving grace that some Republicans find in the dispute over U.S. attorneys is that, at least temporarily, it draws attention away from debate over an unpopular war. But the overriding feeling in the Republican cloakroom is that the Justice Department and the White House could not have been more inept in dealing with the president's unquestioned right to appoint -- and replace -- federal prosecutors.

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

The reconstruction of the Bush administration after the president's reelection in 2004, though a year late, clearly improved his team. Yet the addition of extraordinary public servants Josh Bolten, Tony Snow and Rob Portman has not changed the image of incompetence.

A few Republicans blame incessant attacks from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today's problems in the administration derive from the continuing impact of yesterday's mistakes. The answer that is not entertained by the president's most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and will not change while he is in the Oval Office.

Regarding Libby and Gonzales, unofficial word from the White House is not reassuring. One credible source says the president will never -- not even on the way out of office in January 2009 -- pardon Libby. Another equally good source says the president will never ask Gonzales to resign. That exactly reverses the prevailing Republican opinion in Congress. Bush is alone

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/25/AR2007032500912.html

God, this is tragic shit. It can only get worse.

[NYer]

AG Gonzalez' behavior thus far is incomprehensibly weak-kneed. Ralph Kramden would be more forthright. However, the irony of pandering Senators, who pride themselves on being champions of the minorities, piling on a prominent Hispanic is palpable.

[The 801]

Yea, Bush and Company is really throwing Gonzalez under the bus.

And after he got that drunk driving issue taken care of when Bush was governor of Texas too.

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/19125

What a friend Bush turned out to be. Next thing you know the family of the woman that The first lady killed when she was DUI will pop out of the woodwork, and he will make them look like the bad guys.

[The 801]

Can you believe this shit? This is the result of the administrations war on terror? They let the guy go! And he had to agree not to sue the US?! what is that about?

This can only mean that the administration is all talk and no do against Al Qeada. They set up a plea agreement, make a bunch of generals look like dopes, get a conviction, and cut him loose. This can only mean the administration is in trouble on the legal end of getting the job done.

Tragic.

Australian to Return Home to Serve Shortened Term

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 31, 2007; Page A12

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, March 30 -- Australian David M. Hicks, who pleaded guilty this week to lending material support to terrorists, will be a free man by the end of the year after the presiding officer of his military commission announced Friday night that a pretrial agreement limited his sentence to a maximum of nine months.

Hicks will leave the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for an Australian prison by the end of May. When he is freed Dec. 30, he will have spent more than six years behind bars for training with al-Qaeda and playing a limited role in the war in Afghanistan in late 2001.




A military commission panel deliberated two hours Friday night on Hicks's sentence and handed down the maximum term: seven years in prison, on top of the five years he has already spent at Guantanamo Bay. But Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, the presiding officer, announced that the convening authority, Susan J. Crawford, had already agreed to suspend all but nine months of the term.

Hicks's case marks the first conviction and penalty under Congress's new rules for enemy-combatant terrorism trials, and it was charged with political influence from one of America's closest allies. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, up for reelection later this year, had been asking for his countryman's return; Hicks will be released from prison just after the elections.

The sentence was part of a carefully crafted plea agreement with Crawford that will allow him to leave his tiny cell on this island by May 29 but also will provide novel protections to the U.S. government. U.S. officials hailed the verdict as showing that the military commissions system works, but the case gave just a glimpse of the complex and untested law because Hicks pleaded guilty on the case's first day.

Perhaps most important to Hicks, his five years at Guantanamo are nearly up, and there is a definitive end to his incarceration in sight. Kohlmann accepted his guilty pleas Friday morning.

Faced with the prospect of a life sentence had he gone to a full trial, Hicks entered what was essentially an Alford plea, meaning he did not admit guilt but did accept that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him. He also said that the version of events presented to the jury, which described him as training with al-Qaeda and taking up arms with the Taliban briefly in Afghanistan, squared with what he remembered doing.

Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit and purple tie with a new, short haircut, Hicks decided not to directly address the military commission but asked his defense attorney, Marine Maj. Michael "Dan" Mori, to speak on his behalf. Hicks offered an apology to his family, Australia and the United States and, Mori said, said he "wishes to acknowledge the 'many members of the U.S. military that have treated him with professionalism and humanity here at Guantanamo.' "

Hicks agreed to say that he was never "illegally treated" by anyone while he was in U.S. custody, and he promised not to file lawsuits against anyone in the U.S. government. He also agreed not to talk to the media about his actions, his capture or his detention for at least the next year. He is forbidden by Australian law to ever profit financially from his ordeal.

The U.S. government arranged to treat Hicks's five years in Guantanamo as exempt from applying toward time served in prison. The precedent could mean that terrorism suspects in future military commissions will face sentences that would be tacked onto their time spent in Cuba.

Prosecutors called Hicks "the enemy" and described him as someone who wanted to kill Americans on the front lines in the war in Afghanistan. Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail called Hicks repeatedly by one of his aliases, Muhammad Dawood, during a closing argument that included calling him a "mere tool for terrorism."

"Muhammad Dawood will be a threat unless he changes his beliefs, his ideologies," Chenail said, arguing for the maximum sentence of seven years. He said Hicks could easily have stayed out of the fight but chose instead to travel to Afghanistan to oppose the United States and its allies.

Mori, on the other hand, said Hicks "hasn't hurt one person" and has taken steps to improve his life since entering Guantanamo, such as taking correspondence courses toward his high school equivalency degree and cooperating with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials. Mori painted him as a hapless "wannabe soldier" who could not hack it on the battlefield and instead ran from the fight.

The new system's rules required that a jury assemble for sentencing. The jury left the courtroom before Kohlmann announced the nine-month sentence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033002529.html

[The 801]

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted
Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 6, 2007; Page A01

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations," that CIA report said, adding that discussions on the issue were "necessarily speculative."

The CIA had separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on weapons of mass destruction were "episodic, sketchy, or not corroborated in other channels," the inspector general's report said. It quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more closely resembling "two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other" rather than cooperating operationally.

The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had concluded that year that "available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship" between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, it said.

But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war -- were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work.

Feith has vigorously defended his work, accusing Gimble of "giving bad advice based on incomplete fact-finding and poor logic," and charging that the acting inspector general has been "cheered on by the chairmen of the Senate intelligence and armed services committees." In January, Feith's successor at the Pentagon, Eric S. Edelman, wrote a 52-page rebuttal to the inspector general's report that disputed its analysis and its recommendations for Pentagon reform.

Cheney's public statements before and after the war about the risks posed by Iraq have closely tracked the briefing Feith's office presented to the vice president's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That includes the briefing's depiction of an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence official and one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers as one of eight "Known Iraq-Al Qaida Contacts."

The defense report states that at the time, "the intelligence community disagreed with the briefing's assessment that the alleged meeting constituted a 'known contact' " -- a circumstance that the report said was known to Feith's office. But his office had bluntly concluded in a July 2002 critique of a CIA report on Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda that the CIA's interpretation of the facts it cited "ought to be ignored."


The briefing to Libby was also presented with slight variations to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. It was prepared in part by someone whom the defense report described as a "junior Naval Reservist" intelligence analyst detailed to Feith's office from the DIA. The person is not named in the report, but Edelman wrote that she was requested by Feith's office.

The briefing, a copy of which was declassified and released yesterday by Levin, goes so far as to state that "Fragmentary reporting points to possible Iraqi involvement not only in 9/11 but also in previous al Qaida attacks." That idea was dismissed in 2004 by a presidential commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, noting that "no credible evidence" existed to support it.

When a senior intelligence analyst working for the government's counterterrorism task force obtained an early account of the conclusions by Feith's office -- titled "Iraq and al-Qaida: Making the Case" -- the analyst prepared a detailed rebuttal calling it of "no intelligence value" and taking issue with 15 of 26 key conclusions, the report states. The analyst's rebuttal was shared with intelligence officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but evidently not with others.

Edelman complained in his own account of the incident that a senior Joint Chiefs analyst -- in responding to a suggestion by the DIA analyst that the "Making the Case" account be widely circulated -- told its author that "putting it out there would be playing into the hands of people" such as then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and belittled the author for trying to support "some agenda of people in the building."

But the inspector general's report, in a footnote, commented that it is "noteworthy . . . that post-war debriefs of Sadaam Hussein, [former Iraqi foreign minister] Tariq Aziz, [former Iraqi intelligence minister Mani al-Rashid] al Tikriti, and [senior al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh] al-Libi, as well as document exploitation by DIA all confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and al-Qaida did not cooperate in all categories" alleged by Feith's office.

From these sources, the report added, "the terms the Intelligence Community used to describe the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida were validated, [namely] 'no conclusive signs,' and 'direct cooperation . . . has not been established.' "

Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S. invasion.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040502263.html?hpid=topnews

Weeehoo, these guys are the best...

[4liberty1st]

Worst president? Shouldn't be in Iraq?

Let's talk fact and not revisionism.

First off, our choices in 2000 and 2004 were Bush or some far left wing kook who had nothing of any substance to offer. So what choice did the people have? In fact Gore or Kerry were terrible candidates with no known plans other than far left DNC talking points. In fact to this day the Democrat party has no plan to help the nation in our war on terror and they have no plan to hel us in Iraq. Maybe some here can vote for a party with no plan, I cannot. So I hold my nose and vote for the Republicans and the far left democrat party is useless.

Now, let's get real about Iraq.

First off, the link between Saddam and terrorism is well known and documented. In fact Saddam gave sanctuary to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the bombers of the WTC in 1993.

Saddam is also linked to Al Qaeda.

The 911 Report confirmed it
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-17-hadley_x.htm

The Resolution giving the Government authority to wage war against Iraq mentioned the link and the Demcorats who ran the Senate in 2002 voted for that resolution.
http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/H.J.Res.114_RDS.pdf

Bill Clinton was the first to make the connection between the two in 1996 and again in 1998.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040624-112921-3401r.htm

Hillary Clinton mentioned the link on the Senate floor on 10.10.02 while debating H J res 114, mentioned in the point, two links above.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S10288&position=all

Bin Laden himself rushed Al Qaeda troups to help Saddam when we liberated the country
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3660179/

In fact Saddam's own government officials have testified to the link.
http://www.nysun.com/article/39631

ANd there are other clear cut efvidence proving the link

What is the worst in history is the worst scam pushed on the public in time of war. And thqat scam is being pushed by the Democrats when they try to twist the facts to make it seem like Saddam was not what he was all in an effort to get Bush.

[NYer]

Anatomy of A Bush Administration Scandal (http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/21229/Anatomy_Of_A_Bush_Administration_Scandal.html)

Day 1

The New York Times reports that President Bush regularly holds clandestine gatherings among his hand-selected cronies, who devise federal policy in secret, as a sort of “shadow government.”

The White House issues a press release explaining that those gatherings are merely cabinet meetings, that every administration has them, and that the cabinet secretaries have all had their nominations confirmed by the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complains that the president did not consult the Democrats before holding any of these “so-called cabinet meetings,” and therefore that he’s violating the constitutional separation of powers. He adds that none of the secretaries was confirmed while the Democrats controlled the Senate, and argues that their nominations should all be resubmitted.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) appears on “Hardball,” where he likens the meetings to the activities of the Third Reich, which also conducted government business in secret.

Day 2

The Washington Post reports that, according to well-placed anonymous sources, Dick Cheney regularly attends these “so-called cabinet meetings,” raising the specter of Big Oil pulling the strings of government.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi points out that the White House made no mention of Cheney when it referenced the secretaries. She accuses Bush of deliberately concealing the VP’s role, and demands an investigation.

Day 3

On ABC’s “The View,” Rosie O’Donnell declares the president’s secret meetings with Dick Cheney to be a crime against humanity, and says that Saddam Hussein was shot over a lot less. Elisabeth Hasselbeck points out that Saddam was hanged, and not shot. O’Donnell responds by throwing a shoe at her.

Sen. Hillary Clinton says she can’t recall whether there were any cabinet meetings in her husband’s administration, but insists that if there were, they wouldn’t have been corrupted by Big Oil. In an interview with CNN’s Larry King, former president Bill Clinton says he never attended a cabinet meeting with Dick Cheney, and that he never met secretly with anybody in the White House.

Sen. Reid announces plans to subpoena all the cabinet secretaries, along with Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, to appear at congressional hearings.

Day 4

A Gallup poll says that 64 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the cabinet meeting scandal.

The Boston Globe cites anonymous sources who complain that Cheney’s prominence at the meetings intimidates some of the cabinet secretaries and leaves them “feeling bullied.” Thus, the report concludes, the president and vice president are “trampling minority rights.”

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean charges that the Bush cabinet meetings are racist, because they are exclusive, secret gatherings of privileged white men. A reporter informs him that there are actually five non-white members of Bush’s cabinet, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Dean quibbles with the characterization of Rice as non-white, saying, “A black chick with a Ph.D.? And who’s the secretary of defense, the Great Pumpkin?”

Day 5

In his first public statement regarding the scandal, President Bush seeks common ground with his detractors, agreeing in principle that nefarious plots are bad. He maintains that a president has every right to meet with his own cabinet, but concedes that the matter has been handled poorly.

In a joint press conference, Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi demand that since the president has admitted wrongdoing, he must honor their subpoenas and cooperate with their hearings. Republican Sen. John McCain praises Bush for having the courage to admit his mistakes, even if it ultimately leads to his impeachment.

With Rev. Jesse Jackson at his side, Dean apologizes to anybody who misunderstood his remark about Secretary Rice. Jackson says that if President Bush hadn’t been holding controversial secret meetings, Dean would have had no reason to discuss the cabinet, and so he would never have made the offending statement.

Day 6

Actor Kevin Bacon demands President Bush’s resignation. The president fires White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten in an effort to quell the ensuing media frenzy. Sen. Reid says that the dismissal is evidence of endemic corruption in the executive branch, and demands that every administration official who had been in contact with Bolten be forced to testify before Congress.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad says the cabinet meeting scandal shows the world that President Bush cannot be trusted. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) cites the Iranian president’s statement as proof that Bush has lowered America’s standing in the world.

Day 7

Republican senators openly spar over the growing controversy on “Meet the Press.” Sen. Arlen Specter calls the cabinet meetings “an exercise in dictatorship,” and vows to help the Democrats put an end to “this imperial presidency.”

On “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sen. John Kerry says, “Mr. Bush claims to be a uniter and not a divider. It’s time for Mr. Bush to stop lying, and come clean with the American people.”

“60 Minutes” broadcasts previously unreleased tapes of Richard Nixon’s cabinet meetings and reminds viewers that Nixon was subsequently forced to resign.

Day 8

President Bush invites Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi to the White House to negotiate a compromise. The agreement they reach stipulates that the president will resubmit the nominations of all his cabinet secretaries for consideration by the new Democrat-controlled Senate, and that any future nominees must be selected from a list of pre-approved candidates. It also requires cabinet meetings to be held in the presence of a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon panel of journalists to ensure transparency, and forbids anybody from speaking without first being recognized by the panel chair, Helen Thomas.

In exchange for these concessions, the Democrats agree not to subpoena any cabinet secretaries, or to begin impeachment proceedings, unless they feel they are compelled to do so by “extreme circumstances.”

Day 9

With Reid and Pelosi by his side in the Rose Garden, President Bush hails the agreement as a triumph of bipartisanship, and thanks the Democrats for helping to bring a “new tone” to Washington.

[The 801]

Welcome 4liberty1st. Hope you contribute without using adjectives to describe those who you don't like without using adjectives to describe who you like.

Like in :
"First off, our choices in 2000 and 2004 were Bush or some far left wing kook who had nothing of any substance to offer. "

You have no offsetting adjective to describe Bush.

Another item. We do have a Best President ever thread. Use search to find it. It is where we like to tally the pro bush opinions.

But in the meantime, check out how our brave, man's man of a president that we are under the command of handled those terrorist loving hippies. ( see, I offset the negative adjectives with positive adjective for our hero)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/15/us/190-eject.jpg

(People like this are ruining our county! - 801)

2 Ejected From Bush Speech Posed a Threat, Lawyers Say

By DAN FROSCH
Published: April 15, 2007

DENVER, April 13 — Lawyers for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005 are arguing that the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his.

Alex Young and Leslie Weise said they were ejected because of an antiwar bumper sticker.

Lawyers for the two, Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, said the men were working as organizers for a public presidential forum on Social Security at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on March 21, 2005, when they were involved in ejecting two audience members, Alex Young and Leslie Weise.

Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court here, saying they were ejected shortly after they had arrived in a car that had an antiwar bumper sticker, although they had done nothing disruptive. The suit charged Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman with violating Mr. Young’s and Ms. Weise’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman lost their motion for dismissal, and this week their lawyers filed an appeals brief arguing that their clients had the right to take action against Mr. Young and Ms. Weise precisely because the two held views different from Mr. Bush’s.

“They excluded people from a White House event because they posed a threat of being disruptive,” said a lawyer for Mr. Casper, Sean Gallagher.

The brief filed by Mr. Gallagher and other lawyers refers to a 1992 case involving a woman who wore a button supporting Bill Clinton for president as she tried to enter a campaign rally in support of George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle. She was denied entry until she removed the button.

A lawyer for Ms. Weise and Mr. Young, Martha Tierney, said that case was different because the event was sponsored by the Strongsville, Ohio, Republican Party, a private entity. “I think if the court adopts this argument, they’ll essentially gut the First Amendment in terms of viewpoint discrimination,” Ms. Tierney said.

Earlier this year, Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a separate lawsuit against three White House staff members who were also working at the Denver speech, saying they were responsible for their removal and thus had violated their right to free speech.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/us/15eject.html?_r=1&ex=1334289600&en=a5e627c00&oref=slogin

Now, let's see, bush is not afraid of terrorist, but he is afraid of someone with a different opinion. Like when his long time family friend James Baker turned against him, after making him president, and submitted that bi-partisan report on Iraq. Now he won't talk to Baker. Smart move.

Oh yea, what does this article have to do with bush? Well, he and that patriot Karl Rove, run the republican party, and this is an action that they are defending. They could have shut this down in a blink, but obviously think it is worth going forward with. That will teach them damn hippies....

[4liberty1st]

Your assumption that I am pro Bush is pointless to the topic and misplaced. I am pro fact. I realize many on the left worship at the alter of "I Hate Bush" ideology... but those of us who do not have that ideology blindly leading us are able to discern facts from the moveon dot org and mediamatters dot org George Sorros (The Felon) BS.

I would like to state publicly that the NY Times is an anti-Bush rhetoric rag consumed with the same blind worship of ideology as much of the Democrat party and left wing and that blind adherence to ideology keeps it from being factual, truthful or even believable.

I would no more accept their nonsense as fact as I would Ann Coulter's blog. I prefer looking at facts and basing my opinions on them.

I would also scoff at the far left "journalist" Dan Frosch piece you posted being credible. That he wrote it makes it incredibly un-credible.
http://www.alternet.org/authors/6398/ A look at his articles shows he is another in a long list of far left wing propaganda pushing "journalists". He has no more or less credibility than Ann Coulter, he is simply a far left version.

Unless you are prepared to look at links to Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh articles/blogs and give them the same credibility you give that silly propaganda you posted.... Are you? I'm not.

The thread opener made some basic claims. I used factual data to debunk those claims. When you feel you can dispute them with factual retorts... let me know. It seems to me you wish to talk about everything but the facts I presented. This deflection to adjectives and hit pieces from far left wing propaganda pushers like Frosch doesn't do much for me.

Like it or not, Bush was right to go to Iraq and we, as a country, had little choice to go to Iraq knowing what we knew in Oct of 02. That is why a DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED SENATE passed H J Res 114 and gave the President the authority to liberate Iraq. That the same Democrats now want to pretend they did not and want to use Iraq as political fodder to gain power only speaks to their putting politics before their country.

Saddam's links to Al Qaeda, who had attacked us and declared war on the US, are not only documented and known they are proven. To claim now that they were not is ridiculous and rhetoric. Nothing more.

Furthermore, for the Democrat party to control the legislature and yet still, 4+ years after our country sent troops to Iraq, have no plan to help the country win is appalling and piteous.

That they would hand Iraq over to the same people who are targeting and killing women and children in marketplaces is just further evidence of how corrupt Harry Reid, Nanci Pelosi and the Democrat party are.

Thanks for the welcome.

[ELMIZMO]

Worst president? Shouldn't be in Iraq?

Let's talk fact and not revisionism.

First off, our choices in 2000 and 2004 were Bush or some far left wing kook who had nothing of any substance to offer. So what choice did the people have? In fact Gore or Kerry were terrible candidates with no known plans other than far left DNC talking points. In fact to this day the Democrat party has no plan to help the nation in our war on terror and they have no plan to hel us in Iraq. Maybe some here can vote for a party with no plan, I cannot. So I hold my nose and vote for the Republicans and the far left democrat party is useless.

Now, let's get real about Iraq.

First off, the link between Saddam and terrorism is well known and documented. In fact Saddam gave sanctuary to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the bombers of the WTC in 1993.

Saddam is also linked to Al Qaeda.

The 911 Report confirmed it
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-17-hadley_x.htm

The Resolution giving the Government authority to wage war against Iraq mentioned the link and the Demcorats who ran the Senate in 2002 voted for that resolution.
http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/H.J.Res.114_RDS.pdf

Bill Clinton was the first to make the connection between the two in 1996 and again in 1998.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040624-112921-3401r.htm

Hillary Clinton mentioned the link on the Senate floor on 10.10.02 while debating H J res 114, mentioned in the point, two links above.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S10288&position=all

Bin Laden himself rushed Al Qaeda troups to help Saddam when we liberated the country
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3660179/

In fact Saddam's own government officials have testified to the link.
http://www.nysun.com/article/39631

ANd there are other clear cut efvidence proving the link

What is the worst in history is the worst scam pushed on the public in time of war. And thqat scam is being pushed by the Democrats when they try to twist the facts to make it seem like Saddam was not what he was all in an effort to get Bush.

WHAT IN FACT IS THE REPUBLICANS PLAN? DID I MISS SOMETHING? I DIDN'T THINK THERE WAS ANY PLAN EXCEPT TO TRY OUT SOME NEW WEAPONS AND DEVELOP SOME MORE EFFECTIVE ONES.

[ELMIZMO]

Your assumption that I am pro Bush is pointless to the topic and misplaced. I am pro fact. I realize many on the left worship at the alter of "I Hate Bush" ideology... but those of us who do not have that ideology blindly leading us are able to discern facts from the moveon dot org and mediamatters dot org George Sorros (The Felon) BS.

I would like to state publicly that the NY Times is an anti-Bush rhetoric rag consumed with the same blind worship of ideology as much of the Democrat party and left wing and that blind adherence to ideology keeps it from being factual, truthful or even believable.

I would no more accept their nonsense as fact as I would Ann Coulter's blog. I prefer looking at facts and basing my opinions on them.

I would also scoff at the far left "journalist" Dan Frosch piece you posted being credible. That he wrote it makes it incredibly un-credible.
http://www.alternet.org/authors/6398/ A look at his articles shows he is another in a long list of far left wing propaganda pushing "journalists". He has no more or less credibility than Ann Coulter, he is simply a far left version.

Unless you are prepared to look at links to Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh articles/blogs and give them the same credibility you give that silly propaganda you posted.... Are you? I'm not.

The thread opener made some basic claims. I used factual data to debunk those claims. When you feel you can dispute them with factual retorts... let me know. It seems to me you wish to talk about everything but the facts I presented. This deflection to adjectives and hit pieces from far left wing propaganda pushers like Frosch doesn't do much for me.

Like it or not, Bush was right to go to Iraq and we, as a country, had little choice to go to Iraq knowing what we knew in Oct of 02. That is why a DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED SENATE passed H J Res 114 and gave the President the authority to liberate Iraq. That the same Democrats now want to pretend they did not and want to use Iraq as political fodder to gain power only speaks to their putting politics before their country.

Saddam's links to Al Qaeda, who had attacked us and declared war on the US, are not only documented and known they are proven. To claim now that they were not is ridiculous and rhetoric. Nothing more.

Furthermore, for the Democrat party to control the legislature and yet still, 4+ years after our country sent troops to Iraq, have no plan to help the country win is appalling and piteous.

That they would hand Iraq over to the same people who are targeting and killing women and children in marketplaces is just further evidence of how corrupt Harry Reid, Nanci Pelosi and the Democrat party are.

Thanks for the welcome.

WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR FACTS? ARE THEY ACTUAL FACTS BASED ON EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OR THINGS THAT YOU ACCEPT AS FACTS BECAUSE SOMEONE TOLD YOU THEY WERE OR YOU READ THEM SOMEWHERE. IT IS REALLY TOUGH TO DISCERN WHAT IS ACTUALLY FACT AND WHAT IS REPORTED AS FACT. SO HOW DO WE DETERMINE WHAT IS ACTUALLY FACTUAL.

[4liberty1st]

WHAT IN FACT IS THE REPUBLICANS PLAN? DID I MISS SOMETHING? I DIDN'T THINK THERE WAS ANY PLAN EXCEPT TO TRY OUT SOME NEW WEAPONS AND DEVELOP SOME MORE EFFECTIVE ONES.

The President/GOP plan was preemptive strikes and is outlined in the President’s plan known as “The Bush Doctrine”. It can be seen here...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
... and is what we have been basing our efforts on for a long while now.

[4liberty1st]

WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR FACTS? ARE THEY ACTUAL FACTS BASED ON EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OR THINGS THAT YOU ACCEPT AS FACTS BECAUSE SOMEONE TOLD YOU THEY WERE OR YOU READ THEM SOMEWHERE. IT IS REALLY TOUGH TO DISCERN WHAT IS ACTUALLY FACT AND WHAT IS REPORTED AS FACT. SO HOW DO WE DETERMINE WHAT IS ACTUALLY FACTUAL.


The facts I quoted can be seen in post 515 where you quoted me pointing them out with links. I could add more facts to that if you want.

Unlike the "I hate Bush" ideologs and various others, I do not base my opinion on what someone told me. I base them on the best information I can find.

While I do not wish to make you the topic or insult anyone... I find it ironic that you would ask me if I base them on something someone told me when you indicated in a previous post that you did not know that the US/Bush/GOP even had a plan.

Certainly facts can be hard to find or even hard to pick out of the rhetoric. I don't dispute that. But what is fact beyond any question is that H J Res. 114 specifically mentions the link between Al Qaeda and Saddam as did Hillary on the Senate Floor while debating the Resolution.

What is clearly fact is that UN 687 specifically condemns Saddam for making terrorist threats against the West (this includes the US)

What is clearly fact is that the 911 Report confirms the link.

What clearly is fact is that the Democrats ran the Senate (Under Tom Daschle's leadership) in 2002 when H J Res 114 was passed (and remember it has the verbiage in it that confirmes the link) and yet the Democrats now want to pretend there was no link and that Bush somehow lied. The claim is so dishonest and corrupt it would be laughable if it were not being used by the terrorists to keep their efforts going.

[The 801]

Yeesh, 4liberty1st, whoa, whoa there.

Listen, this site was started by a very fine person who decided that the open dissemination of facts concerning the terrorist's and their influences would benefit our country, and is the same man and the first american to really take it to Al Qeada (if you don't count Clinton "wagging the dog" with those cruise missles into Al Qeada training camps).

So here is the deal. We deal in facts. I know that, as Mr. Colbert is want to say, that facts have a liberal bias. But here it our job to put aside our beliefs and inform our fellow readers with the best, supportable, facts. A lot of these facts tend not to come from this county. But remember, as I tell my kids, if the guy didn't have his hand on a bible when he said it, there is an excellent chance that they are lying, or more likely they have an agenda connected to making money in some way.

So, heres how I do it. I read alot of news sources, and figure out which one are most accurate in the past are the ones that are the ones I figure are most accurate now.

Have fun posting, and look forward to reading your entries.

[NYer]

White House mum on Davis' call to give Sandy (Burglar) Berger lie detector. (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20327)

Not convinced that Sandy Berger acted alone in the theft and destruction of top secret documents while on the 9-11 Commission, Rep. Tom Davis (R.-Va.) and seventeen other Republican House members recently called on the Department of Justice to administer a polygraph examination to the one time Clinton National Security Advisor asking him about his admittedly illegal behavior at the National Archives in 2002 and ’03.

But George W. Bush’s Justice Department as well as his own White House have given Davis and the other lawmakers the cold shoulder on administering a lie detector test to Berger, who pled guilty to removing highly classified documents from the National Archives relating to the Clinton Administration’s record on terrorism.

Perhaps, Berger's activities had something to do with this. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1176152805791) And who received Berger's cell phone calls? The DOJ's inaction is as astonishing as it is perplexing.

Enquiring minds want to know ...

[4liberty1st]

Yeesh, 4liberty1st, whoa, whoa there.

So here is the deal. We deal in facts. I know that, as Mr. Colbert is want to say, that facts have a liberal bias. But here it our job to put aside our beliefs and inform our fellow readers with the best, supportable, facts. A lot of these facts tend not to come from this county. But remember, as I tell my kids, if the guy didn't have his hand on a bible when he said it, there is an excellent chance that they are lying, or more likely they have an agenda connected to making money in some way.

So, heres how I do it. I read alot of news sources, and figure out which one are most accurate in the past are the ones that are the ones I figure are most accurate now.

Have fun posting, and look forward to reading your entries.

Whoa what? I made a point. Nothing else should be read into it.

Facts have no bias. Spin has bias. the Facts I provided include hard data. AlQeida "known" to be linked to Saddam being mentioned in H J Res 114, for example. Hillary mentioning the link on the senate floor as another. These are facts that cannot be spun to be less than they are. They are there in black and white, as it were, for any to see.

News sources are okay but don't expect to get "facts" from them. Evidence is about as close to facts as we can get for them. Media is in the business to make money. Thus, what they report is never just the facts as they try to sensationalize things to sell papers or viewership.

But back to the subject of the thread.

Was it a mistake to go to Iraq and remove Saddam and is Bush the worst president ever. The claim he is and that we should not have gone to Iraq is the spin. The facts as well as any honestly examined evidence makes it clear that it was not a mistake and in fact it was a choice Bush had to make. What can be argued is if we went in at the right time or if we did it the right way but when we examine the known links to Al Qaeda, the known deception and cat and mouse game being played with weapons inspectors and 15 separate intel agencies all saying the same thing about Saddam and the threat he posed... we had no choice and it was and still is the right move.

The opening post makes some rather rediculous claims and casts some seriously silly and easy to dispute far left wing fringe koolaid talking points.

I would prefer you address the topic and what I posted on the topic and not deflect to me, some silly far left op ed piece about hippies being asked to leave a Bush function or something else.

Fact: The opening post made claims.

Fact: I shot those claims down.

Fact: Nobody has disputed what I pointed out.

[The 801]

Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights "fundamentally flawed."

She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws," citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English speaking voters.

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

-Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

-Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

-Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

-Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

The administration's presence was felt last year in at least one state legislative battle over voter identification.

In Missouri, where Republican Sen. Jim Talent was fighting to hang onto his seat and hold the U.S. Senate for the GOP, a Republican-backed photo ID requirement cleared the state House of Representatives by one vote in May 2006 after an intense lobbying effort in which backers alleged voter fraud in heavily Democratic St. Louis and Kansas City.

"The White House was heavily involved" in the effort to win passage, state Rep. Bryan Stevenson, the Republican floor leader, said in a telephone interview. Stevenson said he wasn't privy to the details of the White House efforts.

In late 2001, Ashcroft also hired three Republican political operatives to work in a secretive new unit in the division's Voting Rights Section. Rich said the unit, headed by unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Mark Metcalf of Kentucky, bird-dogged the progress of the administration's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and reviewed voting legislation in the states.

One member of the three-person political unit, former Georgia elections official and Republican activist Hans von Spakovsky, eventually took de facto control of the Voting Rights Section and used his position to advocate tougher voter ID laws, said former department lawyers who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Those former employees said that Spakovsky helped state officials interpret the Help America Vote Act's confusing new minimum voter identification requirements. He also weighed in when the Voting Rights Act required department approval for any new ID law in 13 states with histories of racial discrimination.

In November 2004, Arizona residents passed Proposition 200, the toughest state voter ID law to date, which requires applicants to provide proof of citizenship and voters to produce a photo ID on Election Day. The Voting Rights Act state requires states to show that such laws wouldn't impede minorities from voting and gives the Justice Department 60 days to approve or oppose them.

Career voting rights specialists in the Justice Department soon discovered that more than 2,000 elderly Indians in Arizona lacked birth certificates, and they sought their superiors' approval to request more information from the state about other potential impacts on voters' rights. Spakovsky and Sheldon Bradshaw, the division's top deputy and a close friend of top Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, a former Bush White House lawyer, denied the request, said one of the former department attorneys.

Later in 2005, career lawyers wrote a memo recommending that the department oppose a new Georgia law requiring voters to present a $20 photo ID. They argued that the requirement would discriminate against poor blacks, but that was quickly rejected.

Toby Moore, one of the five career lawyers who reviewed the memo, said the only dissenter to the recommendation was a new hire, Joshua Rogers, a member of the National Republican Lawyers Association, a partisan organization interested in election issues.

Moore said that John Tanner, who'd just been appointed the new section chief, "doctored the memo ... reversing many of our findings," and used the occasion to change procedures so that he alone could make future recommendations.

A Georgia state judge, acting on a suit by civil rights groups, struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Moore, now the project manager for American University's Commission on Election Reform, said he believes that administration officials felt the Voting Rights Section was populated by "recalcitrant, embedded, liberal Democrats ... and they were determined to plant their DNA, change the institution and bring it to bear on behalf of Republican interests."

Spakovsky, who declined to be interviewed, also played a role in an expansive interpretation of the new federal election law.

The Help America Vote Act directed states to create central, computerized voter registration lists, to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible names and to match new applicants' driver's licenses and Social Security numbers to those in state databases.

A failure to match wasn't grounds for rejection: Tiny variations such as the inclusion of a middle name or misplaced figure could prevent a match. But when confused state officials asked the Justice Department about the requirement, Spakovsky offered a harsh reading of the law.

In a letter on Sept. 8, 2003, he advised Judith Arnold, Maryland's counsel for election laws, that the application "must be denied" if an applicant's data failed to match that in driver's license and Social Security databases. He wrote that "the prudent course" would be to let those voters cast provisional ballots that would count only if their registration information were verified later.

His guidance was posted on the Voting Rights Section's Web site.

Some states, including California, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington, began to reject applicants whose credentials didn't match.

The rejections prompted a lawsuit and protests by civil rights groups, which halted the practice.

The practice was "a barrier to voting," said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, whose suit in Washington state led to a court injunction.

Catherine Blinn, Washington state's assistant elections director, said in a sworn statement last year that her state was merely following guidance from the Justice Department and cited Spakovsky's letter to Maryland.

Just before the 2006 election, the California Secretary of State's Office rejected more than 20,000 registration applications, including 43 percent of Los Angeles County's new applicants. Those rejections were reversed before Election Day amid a public clamor.

Former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, a moderate Republican, said in a phone interview that Justice Department officials reviewed his office's regulations and okayed the rejections, but gave no hint that they exceeded federal law.

The Bush administration also has shifted enforcement priorities under the National Voter Registration Act, known as the "Motor Voter" law because it provides for registration at state vehicle licensing and public assistance agencies.

In the last six years, the number of voters registered at state government agencies that provide services to the poor and disabled has been cut in half, to 1 million.

Instead of forcing lax agencies to increase registrations, the Justice Department sued at least six states and sent threatening enforcement letters to others requiring them to scour their election rolls for potentially ineligible voters.

Deputy Director Michael Slater of Project Vote, a national voter registration group, called this "selective enforcement. ... They've focused on purging of voters from registration rolls at the expense of enforcing provisions that encourage registration."

He said that Kentucky eliminated 4,000 people from its list of voters, but "did it poorly, and took off people who lived there and tried to vote."

One of the Justice Department suits was filed against Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Last week, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey in Jefferson City, the capital, threw out the suit, noting that the motor voter law was intended to increase voter participation and eliminate fraud.

The judge wrote that the Justice Department had offered no evidence that anyone had been denied his right to vote as a result of deficiencies in voter rolls, and "nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred."

For more information on the Georgia litigation, as well as other major election law litigation: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/common-cause.php

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17102317.htm


SOS here folks... move along, nothing to see....

[The 801]

4liberty1st,
HJ R114 was an very interesting point in American history. While I would not use a point of fact. I mean, a JOINT RESOLUTION

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;..... Blah blah blah. A resolution is an article of faith, not fact.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/bliraqreshouse.htm

Most of the people who are still in the Senate disavowed that vote, did ya notice?

Look, if this was proof that Iraq was involved with AQ, then how come alot of those guys who voted for it lost their jobs? Is this the same declaration that Colin Powell said that supporting this point of view in the UN was the worst moment of this professional career.

Look, I am not bragging, but here are the facts. The whole build up to war was deeply questioned at Itshappening. Why? Because we gave a lot of weight to what the foreign press was saying. Remember, the "war on terror" was being followed here religiously, deeply and openly since about 2 weeks after 9/11. How come the information gleaned by the people on this site foresaw a different outcome for the war in Iraq? Maybe because we studied who AQ was, where they were and what there MO was. They are shits. They are supported by Pakistan and Iran. They don't hate us, they hate our policies and our support of governments that oppress their religious goals. That is their words.

Am I defending AQ? Fuck no. They killed my friend in Tower Two that day.
And here is a bit of data that was pretty evident prior to 9/11. Iraq hated any religious organization that threatened them. Bin Laden was right up there with them.

And AQ and their buddies the Taliban have an interesting problem. They are good at having and making enemies, and killing innocents with a glee that only hitler could appreciate, but they are hollow. They have no political agenda short of fucking with us. They want to shove the world back to the 6th century. They treat woman like dogs. Their economy is based on Opium. They couldn't run a government if it was handed to them. They are fed on poverty of the oppressed and hate. Hate always sells, better then sex it seems.

So I leave it to the historians to decide if bush was the worst president.
But I believe that by starting a war with a tin horn defanged drunk dictator with a big mouth, but no weapons of mass destruction, was a grievous error.

It is evident by the people who post news reports here that AQ might not have been in Iraq before the war, but they are now. In fact, Islamics used the war as a recruiting method. AQ was on the ropes, and now they are not. Anyone who "gives aid and comfort to our enemies" is called what? a traitor?

Imagine if you had sent pallets of money to a county with no economy. Would that be wise? What if you had Powell on your war staff. Do you know what the Powell doctrine is? Overwhelming Force, or don't do it. What happened to him? He was publicly humiliated and fell on his sword. Do you hear from him now? rarely. He's just living on his millions and his pension and his board of director gigs. And instead we got the Rumsfield doctrine. Small, technicality advance highly mobile troops. Rumfield pushed out Powell. Now there was a guy who could make good management decisions. He's laughing all the way to the bank these days.

Anywho, The deal is this: If you help our sworn enemies, you are a traitor. If you send money with no accounting that ends up in the hands of our enemies, you are a traitor. If you give our enemies a place to flourish, you are a traitor. If you pay lip service to defending our shores, your a traitor. And if you think you can deal with our enemies without talking to them, then your foreign policy is almost no policy at all. And if you create a situation that kills Americans because your fantasies are fed by the worst vice president in history, then you are not helping us, you are helping them. The Iraq war is lost. The army is shattered. The point of going was a lie and bush's finest moment was in a flight suit with the words mission accomplished over his head. ( now were did that site go on the White House website, anyway?)

I wonder what was accomplished? Our enemies laugh at us. And our allies avoid us. And I think of my friend getting crushed to death and It make me really angry.

Sorry, but that is where I am coming from. Raw Anger at a pointless loss and a dry drunk of a president who found god but forgets to go to church.


801

[NYer]

When did Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda get debunked? (http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/04/18/saddams-ties-to-al-quedadebunk/)

[4liberty1st]

"A resolution is an article of faith, not fact."
--the 801


Not in the way I am speaking to it. My point is simply that it is a FACT that the resolution makes the statement

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
--"" http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/H.J.Res.114_RDS.pdf


The other fact about that point is that a Democrat lead Senate, under the leadership of Tom Daschle, voted for and passed that resolution with that verbiage in it.

"Most of the people who are still in the Senate disavowed that vote, did ya notice?"
--the 801
Most? No. Most Democrats. Yes. They want to pretend now that it was all Bush and the pubs. That they do speaks to how dishonest they are... and to little else.

The facts still show that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda. The facts show that the link was "known" by our government and that the Democrats claim now that this was the "wrong war" at the "wrong time" yada yada yada is nothing but putting politics before our country.

The proof Al Qaeda and Saddam are linked can be seen by looking at the evidence. From Bill Clinton's administration linking them in 96 and 98 to Hillary speaking to the link in 02. he link is documented and as the Resolution said, the link was "KNOWN".

As for those who lost their job. The pubs lost the average number of Senate and house seats that a sitting president's party loses in the 6th year of his term of office. The silly rhetpric of the Democrats that they won a landslide is ridiculous, at best.
A good article on the subject
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/11/a_democratic_victory_would_be.html

Frankly, what the few people here said about the war in Iraq in the early days is irrelevant.

The facts show Saddam used WMD on many occasions.

The facts show Saddam was at the minimum exploring a relationship with Al Qaeda and was aiding other terrorists.

The facts show Saddam was a year from having a nuke.

He had to be dealt with and removed. PERIOD!

[4liberty1st]

But I believe that by starting a war with a tin horn defanged drunk dictator with a big mouth, but no weapons of mass destruction, was a grievous error.

Rhetoric does not speak to the actual facts.

Defanged? Saddam was 1 year or less away from having a nuclear weapon according to the IAEA.
http://morningcoffee.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/ny-times-saddam-1-year-away-from-atomic-bomb/

According to David Kay, Saddam was spending millions of Dollars to keep his WMD programs alive.

Duefler also stated basically the same thing in his report.

The Chief Weapons inspector for the UN spoke to finding banned WMD etc material from Iraq in Jordan.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122311,00.html

Saddam WAS SEEKING YELLOWCAKE dispite the left wing propaganda that it was not true.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/

Saddam's own regime has not accounted for WMD he admitted to having.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/09/time.saddam.weapons/

The UN mentioned concern over known Chemicals used to make WMD being missing
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/03/iraq/main699433.shtml

Saddam was condemned in UN 687 for making terrorist threats against the west/US.

Claiming he was not a danger not only goes against the evidence, it goes against what damned near every intelligence source said before the invasion and in fact the Democrat Co Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee had this to say:

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years .. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
— Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Senate Intel Committee co-Chair, Oct 10, 2002


The wishful thinking that Saddam was not a threat is political rhetoric. Not fact. Hell, David Kay found Bio-Toxin's hidden in a scientists flower garden for goodness sake.

[4liberty1st]

In fact, Islamics used the war as a recruiting method.
Certainly the terrorist are recruiting and some muslims are drawn to fight America.

But the facts show that Al Qaeda/Bin Laden rushed assets from Afghanistan to Saddam's aid.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3660179/

They have no political agenda short of fucking with us.
Not exactly the case. Their main objection comes from our culture influencing theirs as it relates to their women. But there are other things as well. Bin Ladens Fatwah is a strange thing to read on this topic.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

[The 801]

I respectfully disagree. The Administration sold this war on "slam dunk" "facts".

I have looked forward to concrete evidence of these issues. I see a war that must be solved by political means, by someone that lacks the political savy, intellectual curiosity and who surrounds himself with kowtowing yes men.

The administration has placed us on a course that is damaging our county. I see no options in Iraq. The administration has painted the US into a corner with no good options. So we stay in Iraq. That is a lack of imagination. And hope for the years to pass to allow the next administration to handle the situation. That is there plan, right?

I mean, am I alone in thinking this is a mistake here?

And I must beg to differ on what conclusions were reached here have no effect on what actually happened. Of course it did not. But when it turned to shit, it was no surprise. It was easy to see what happened.

Your support of the war is heartening. Too bad it's ruining our military.

[The 801]

I looked up that Morning Coffee link for the Saddam Weapons situation. I had never heard of this blog before

http://morningcoffee.wordpress.com/2...m-atomic-bomb/

NY Times: Saddam 1 year away from Atomic Bomb

I then check out the primary source:

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?ex=1177214400&en=e46aba29a4542af2&ei=5070

"Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away."

( The way I read this, Iraq was 1 year away from making an atomic bomb within a year of the last gulf war, or am I reading that in a slanted way?- 801)

"Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued."

"On March 16, after the documents’ release was approved, Mr. Negroponte’s office issued a terse public announcement including a disclaimer that remained on the Web site: “The U.S. government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.”


And it contained this correction at the bottom of the article:

Correction: Nov. 7, 2006

A front-page article on Friday about concerns that certain Iraqi documents published in recent weeks by the federal government on a Web site set up in March might reveal nuclear secrets misstated the reason that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, gave for the campaign for the Web site. Mr. Roberts, Republican of Kansas, argued that the captured documents posted on the site would provide valuable information about Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He did not say that he believed they would support the idea that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs before the 2003 invasion

end

Now, if we want to get back into this, I suggest that we get a new tread going. But the way I read the source material, the Morning Coffee headline’s attempt to pin an atomic bomb possible in one year from 2003 is hyperbole, and could lead to the wrong impression of what the situation was current, rather than 10 years ago.

This reminds me of the administration planting news stories and then quoting them as proof. It is kind of an adolescent thing for a bunch of Multimillionaires to do.

Read the source material. It is much fuller than Blogs….

[NYer]

Melanie Phillips in The UK Spectator: I found Saddam's WMD bunkers. (http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/29092/i-found-saddams-wmd-bunkers.thtml)

If true, neither the present administration nor the Democrat Party looks especially good.

[The 801]

No Offense Intended With This Year’s Choice of Entertainer, but Still an Outcry

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: April 18, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 17 — After more than 40 years in show business, Rich Little is still a working comedian, doing his well-practiced impersonations from Las Vegas to Granite Falls, Minn. He is even available for corporate retreats and weddings.

Stephen Colbert performed at last year’s correspondents’ dinner.

But this weekend, Mr. Little will return to the national stage, where he once held a regular place, when he appears at the Hilton Washington as headliner at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. It is the capital’s premier social event for the president, Congressional leaders and the reporters who cover them — some of whom were too young to know Mr. Little’s work, others who were surprised to learn he was still alive (actually, he is only 68).

In hiring an impersonator practiced in an old-school approach to comedy, meant to entertain but not offend, the White House Correspondents’ Association has, however, provoked left-leaning political activists, who see his assignment as a retreat from last year’s dinner. Then, the television satirist Stephen Colbert delivered a stinging roast of President Bush and, to a lesser extent, the White House press corps.

Mr. Little has said he would deliver no such performance this year. And his selection has become something of a symbol in the liberal blogosphere for what its members consider the proclivity of Washington reporters to give Mr. Bush and his administration a pass.

“It represents that the White House press corps is more interested in playing friendly and cozying up to the Bush administration than it is in providing the sort of oversight that a free press should provide in a democracy,” said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos. “They shouldn’t be yukking it up together as if they’re pals and friends, and that’s why we’ve had so much terrible coverage.”

Conservatives, of course, hoot at the idea that reporters are too cozy with the White House, saying that by and large the news media is implacably hostile to the administration and ideologically left-leaning. And association officials say they are in no way seeking to protect their relationships, to the extent they have any, with Mr. Bush and his aides — and that whatever relationships they do have are neither cozy nor friendly.

Mr. Little’s appearance has further fueled a long-running debate over whether these types of dinners are relics best dispensed with, especially at a time when partisan divisions are intense, the nation is at war and reporters are pursuing scandals on multiple fronts.

But for Mr. Little, who began his career in the early days of television, the reaction to his coming appearance has come as a lesson in the Bush-era clash between the old-line news media and the new-line liberal activists angry about what they view as journalistic malpractice during a time of war, and empowered by the Internet to make their views heard.

He has been on the receiving end of some tough jokes since his appointment was announced this year. “Bob Hope Sadly Too Dead to Headline WCHA Dinner,” read the headline on Wonkette.com. Under the heading “A ‘Little’ cowardice for the White House Correspondents Association dinner,” The Carpetbagger Report wrote, “As a rule, when you have to say, ‘My dad loved him’ to sell a performer, you’ve probably picked the wrong guy.’ ”

Mr. Little’s comments to The Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had no plans to mention Iraq and that association officials “don’t want anyone knocking the president,” stoked the blog firestorm that much more, and he and the association have since denied that he had agreed to any restrictions on what he could say.

In an interview from Nevada this week, Mr. Little, a Canadian, said that he preferred a nonpartisan and unoffensive approach to comedy. He readily acknowledges he harks back to a time before the Internet, before cable, and before the era of off-color, no-holds-barred comedy that rose as his profile faded.

His promotional biography says, “He’s particularly fond of doing Alan Ladd and other stars no longer typically remembered.” And Mr. Little said his specialty remains impersonations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as well as Johnny Carson — though he plans to mimic Mr. Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona on Saturday night.

Mr. Little said he was an especially well-chosen guest for the dinner after the dust-up over the offensive comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team by the radio host Don Imus (to whom he twice mistakenly referred as “Amus.”)

“There’s a fine line between freedom of speech and being disrespectful and racist,” Mr. Little said. He said when he imitates Mr. Bush at Saturday’s dinner, “It won’t be anything on him personally. I don’t do that anyway, and I think it would be in bad taste.”

Mr. Little said he did not fault Mr. Colbert for his performance last year, though he said he disagreed with his approach: “I don’t care what your beliefs are politically, when you’ve got a man sitting there, you’ve got to use some judgment.”

Mr. Colbert played the part of the mock, conservative commentator of his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report.” In one typical joke, he argued against describing a White House staff shake-up as “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Rather, the administration was “soaring,” he said, and, “If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

White House officials did not publicly criticize the routine, though some privately said they thought it was more critical than comical.

Steve Scully of C-Span and president of the correspondents’ group, said he hired Mr. Little after seeing him last fall on “Late Show with David Letterman.” But Mr. Scully indicated that he was not looking for somebody who would offend this year. “He doesn’t have to come to our dinner,” Mr. Scully said of Mr. Bush, adding that the event raised money for college scholarships. “Clearly, you want to make the dinner enjoyable; you don’t want to embarrass anyone.”

Mr. Colbert was not the first to offend in this type of setting. Mr. Imus angered the Clinton White House in 1996 when he made fun of Mr. Clinton as a philanderer at a Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Larry McQuillan, a former White House Correspondents’ Association president, said he had chosen Ray Romano, whose routine is nonpolitical, as a safe bet in 1998 as impeachment loomed.

But that was pre-blogosphere, which is populated by people who “feel that the press was run over, and kind of told itself some story to avoid confrontation and lapsed into a phony kind of balance,” said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University.

It is enough to make some reporters bristle. “Some of them seem to want us to hate the people we cover,” said Ken Herman, a White House correspondent for Cox Newspapers and an association board member. “They don’t seem to understand that you can have a professional relationship with them where you don’t hate them, and you can sometimes talk to them, and maybe have dinner with them.”

But this is all beyond the scope of Mr. Little, who just wants to score some laughs. “If I don’t go over at the White House dinner,” he said, “maybe next year they should go with Julie Andrews.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18memo.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Yeesh. At least they didn't get a balloon folder to entertain them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk5ynzxTo9Y&mode=related&search=

[The 801]

Key Initiative Of 'No Child' Under Federal Investigation
Officials Profited From Reading First Program

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 21, 2007; Page A01

The Justice Department is conducting a probe of a $6 billion reading initiative at the center of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, another blow to a program besieged by allegations of financial conflicts of interest and cronyism, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.

The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.

"That sounds like a criminal enterprise to me," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House education committee, which held a five-hour investigative hearing. "You don't get to override the law," he angrily told a panel of Reading First officials. "But the fact of the matter is that you did."

The Education Department's inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said he has made several referrals to the Justice Department about the five-year-old program, which provides grants to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade.

Higgins declined to offer more specifics, but Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, said in an interview that he was questioned by Justice officials in November. The civil division of the U.S. attorney's office for the District, which can bring criminal charges, is reviewing the matter.

Doherty, one of the two Education Department employees who oversaw the initiative, acknowledged yesterday that his wife had worked for a decade as a paid consultant for a reading program, Direct Instruction, that investigators said he improperly tried to force schools to use. He repeatedly failed to disclose the conflict on financial disclosure forms.

"I'm very proud of this program and my role in this program," Doherty said in the interview. "I think it's been implemented in accordance with the law."

The management of Reading First has come under attacks from members of both parties. Federal investigators say program officials improperly forced states to use certain tests and textbooks created by those officials.

One official, Roland H. Good III, said his company made $1.3 million off a reading test, known as DIBELS, that was endorsed by a Reading First evaluation panel he sat on. Good, who owns half the company, Dynamic Measurement Group, told the committee that he donated royalties from the product to the University of Oregon, where he is an associate professor.

Two former University of Oregon researchers on the panel, Edward J. Kame'enui and Deborah C. Simmons, said they received about $150,000 in royalties last year for a program that is now packaged with DIBELS. They testified that they received smaller royalties in previous years for the program, Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention, and did not know it was being sold with DIBELS.

Members of the panel said they recused themselves from voting on their own products but did assess their competitors. Of 24 tests approved by the committee, seven were tied to members of the panel.

"I regret the perception of conflicts of interest," said Kame'enui, former chairman of the committee, who now works at the department as commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research. "But there was no real conflict of interest being engaged in."

The intricate financial connections between Reading First products and program officials extend beyond issues the committee explored yesterday.

Another researcher, Sharon Vaughn, worked with Kame'enui, Simmons and Good to design Voyager Universal Literacy, a program that Reading First officials urged states to use. Vaughn was director of a center at the University of Texas that was hired to provide states advice on selecting Reading First tests and books.

The publisher of that product, Voyager Expanded Learning, was founded and run by Randy Best, a major Bush campaign contributor, who sold the company in 2005 for more than $350 million. Now Best runs Higher Ed Holdings, a company that develops colleges of education, where former education secretary Roderick R. Paige is a senior adviser and G. Reid Lyon, Bush's former reading adviser, is an executive vice president.

"I'm very disappointed and saddened by the information that was provided at the hearing today," said Lyon, who had been a strong defender of Reading First, which he said had nothing to do with his new job. "The issues appear much more serious than I had been led to understand."

Despite the controversy surrounding Reading First's management, the percentage of students in the program who are proficient on fluency tests has risen about 15 percent, Education Department officials said. School districts across the country praise the program.

Members of both parties continue to support the goals of Reading First even as they attack its management. Miller and Senate education committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) joined Republicans yesterday in pledging to tighten restrictions on conflicts of interest in No Child Left Behind.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who declined to comment yesterday, has said management problems with Reading First "reflect individual mistakes." But Doherty said nearly every aspect of the program was carefully monitored by the department and the White House, where Spelling was Bush's top education adviser.

"This program was always firmly under the watch and control of the highest levels of the government," Doherty said.

Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002284.html?hpid=topnews

Nice.

But these folks were very loyal to bush and contributed money to elect him.

Really folks. If any of you are teachers or have a school age child, do you think that no child left behind has served your child well. I don't think so, unless you think teaching to the test is the goal of education.

[NYer]

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Ronald Wilson Reagan

[4liberty1st]

I respectfully disagree. The Administration sold this war on "slam dunk" "facts".

Yes, I understand the left wing propaganda "talking points" and that many just follow them like lemmings off a cliff. But let us examie the actual facts.


"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
--President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/04/us.un.iraq/

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
-- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
--Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb 18, 1998
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
--Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
http://www.house.gov/pelosi/priraq1.htm

These were all before Bush even decided to run for President. Now for after 911 while debating the Iraq War Resolution:



"In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad. In the 4 years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

"It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein wiill continue to increase his capability to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East which, as we know all too well, affects American security."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S10288&position=all

"There is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
--Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen Bob Graham and others, December 5, 2001
http://usinfo.org/wf-archive/2001/011207/epf510.htm

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

...

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
--Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-23-gore-text_x.htm


Rather a stark contrast to what this lying piece of crap is saying these days.


"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
— Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable."
—Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9,2002
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S10174&position=all

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years .. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
--Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002 (While serving as the Co-Chair of the Senate Intelligence committee)
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2002_record&page=S10306&position=all

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do"
--Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002
As spoken on the Senate floor.


So as we can see if we look without partisan propaganda blinding our judgement, Bush no more "sold" the war than he sold koolaid on the corner.

Let us for the sake of argument say he did sell the war. Are we to believe that Hillary, Waxman, Pelosi, Gore and Kerry... not to mention many many other Democrats are so stupid that they can be so easily fooled by Bush? And if so, how can anyone support people that are so easily fooled to run the country when.... to date... they still have no plan to defend America or fight the war?

[4liberty1st]

The administration has placed us on a course that is damaging our county. I see no options in Iraq. The administration has painted the US into a corner with no good options. So we stay in Iraq. That is a lack of imagination. And hope for the years to pass to allow the next administration to handle the situation. That is there plan, right?

I mean, am I alone in thinking this is a mistake here?

And I must beg to differ on what conclusions were reached here have no effect on what actually happened. Of course it did not. But when it turned to shit, it was no surprise. It was easy to see what happened.

Your support of the war is heartening. Too bad it's ruining our military.

The thing damaging the country is the Democrats being at war with Bush and not those who wish to harm the country.

Let us face facts. The left are politically invested in the US losing in Iraq. How twisted is that?

They have a plan to bring down Bush. They have no plan to bring down the terrorists or the insurgency in Iraq. So tell me? Who are you and the Democrats you support really at war with? And who's damaging the country?

[4liberty1st]

Post 529 is also laughable.

Hell, the same people making similar claims of a nuke claim being hyperbole condemned Bush for allowing the nuke plans found in Iraq on a web page.... showing they want it both ways.

The facts show that the IAEA confirm that Saddam could have had a nuke in 1 year. He had the plans...he had the material.

The UN has confirmed Saddam's WMD threat
http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/2004/07/13/un_admits_saddam_had_wmd.php

The evidence shows clearly that Iraq was seeking yellow cake, dispite the lies by Wilson and his wife who was not covert.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/

The UN has voiced public concern over Chemicals that came up missing in Iraq
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/03/iraq/main699433.shtml

The US is reported to have moved the nuclear material from Iraq
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/07/iraq.nuclear/

I realize the left and Democrats want this all to be false for political reasons. BUT THAT is what is hurting our country. Not the war which is so obviously based on truth and credible intel.

[The 801]

Look, I know that it is a common idea to look to Clinton for reinforcement of bushes policy ideas, but, where I work, if the problem happens on your shift, it is your responsibility. 4Liberty1st, didn't Clinton tell bush that his # 1 problem was going to be Al qeada?

As far as ginning up evidence, I suggest that if you have the time,

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9775496

An interview with Bill Moyer, the guy that was found not to have bias in his reportage, but who's boss was put in place to swing PBS to the right. Where is Delano E. Lewis today, any way, and where is Bill Moyer?

Look, if bush is on the right path, 4Liberty1st, well, support him and start a thread. I would welcome it. Really.

[The 801]

Why are we discussing this again?

Is it your desire that there were WMD in Iraq, justifing our invasion?

Let me ask you, 4 liberty1st, you seem to be well versed in the conservative canon. Let me ask you, what reason did Bush senior give for not imprisoning Saddam Hussein after the first gulf war? It was in Time Magazine in 1998.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/dom/980302/special_report.clintons_29.html

and now the real thing:

http://www.objectivethought.com/libertarian/texts/saddam.html

That's right. There was no way out. Too bad that Bush didn't speak with his father first, before he invaded Iraq. Heck, it was only his dad and the only American to invade Iraq before.

OH yea, I remember, "he sought guidance from a higher father".

Umm, that's a good way to conduct foreign policy. To me, this is the same as eviscerating a goat and reading it entrails for sign. (Extispicy is the term for this, for all my fellow word freaks - 801)

So please 4liberty1st, exercise your rights and get that thread started. But please, if you would, first hand news items in support of your point of view, not a bloggers interpretation. It would be a more intellectually honest approach.

[4liberty1st]

Oh look, the truth struck a nerve!


Look, I know that it is a common idea to look to Clinton for reinforcement of bushes policy ideas, but, where I work, if the problem happens on your shift, it is your responsibility. 4Liberty1st, didn't
Clinton tell bush that his # 1 problem was going to be Al qeada?

Back the tuna boat up there 801. You made the claim

The Administration sold this war on "slam dunk" "facts".

I showed the facts and the facts show that the previous administration was saying the same things. That you don;t like to be proven WORNG is really not a concern to me. Bush no more sold this war than you did and I proved it.


As far as ginning up evidence, I suggest that if you have the time,

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9775496

An interview with Bill Moyer, the guy that was found not to have bias in his reportage, but who's boss was put in place to swing PBS to the right. Where is Delano E. Lewis today, any way, and where is Bill Moyer?

Bill Moyer? No Bias? Surely you Jest!! And what in the hell does that have to do with the FACTS I presented that show the DEMOCRATS before Bush ran for President and while debating H J Res 114 all said the same things about Iraq that Bush did? Quit running from the facts that your blindly followed ideology don't like being presented and THINK!!


Look, if bush is on the right path, 4Liberty1st, well, support him and start a thread. I would welcome it. Really.Seems to me that I need my fishing waders...the BS is getting deep in here.

First, I never said Bush is on the right path. So you are deflecting again.

Second, according to Bush, the Democrats, the previous administration and Saddam himself... Saddam had WMD and they were a threat to the USA.

Who signed the Iraq Liberation act of 1998 into Law?

Now address the proof and facts. Bush no more lied us into war than he danced in a pink leotard at the local drag queen club.

The facts, I have presented, prove that.

Remember this:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

I guess Clinton was lying us into war too?

Bah!!!

Now. I realize many are married to ideology and their emotional attachment to their ideology makes them ignore the facts and get testy when they are confronted by them. But the facts are the facts and the same Democrats claiming Bush lied all said the same things Bush said at the time. Nothing you or the rest of the blind "I wanna be cool so I hate Bush" crowd can say changes the facts.

[4liberty1st]

Why are we discussing this again?

Is it your desire that there were WMD in Iraq, justifing our invasion?

My desire has nothing to do with it. I am simply one of those people who are honest enough to look at the facts.

I have no need to be seen as "cool" so I don't have to spout the DNC and Moveon dot org rhetoric to fit in. Since I am not a Republican or a Democrat, I have no partisan need to spin the truth either.

The facts show Bush was right to go to Iraq.

The facts show the Senate, lead by Tom Daschle and the Democrats, agreed with Bush until they decided they could gain politically by claiming they did not. (That lemmings of the left don't call them on their hypocrisy is besides the point)


Let me ask you, 4 liberty1st, you seem to be well versed in the conservative canon. Let me ask you, what reason did Bush senior give for not imprisoning Saddam Hussein after the first gulf war? It was in Time Magazine in 1998.

Irrelevant. G H W Bush did not have the authority under the UN action in the first Gulf war to go to Baghdad and get Saddam. So he didn't.

G W Bush, due to Saddam breaking the cease fire resolution and 16 other UN resolutions and based on intelligence about Saddam's tiues to Al Qaeda etc... did have the authority. In fact had he not gone he would have been neglegent based on the information available at the time.

As for the rest of your post, it is deflection. The topic of the thread is about of we should have gone to Iraq. I have shown that we not only should have but we had to.

So tell me... since it is obvious you listen to the Howard Dean lies and swallow them without question...

When should the Democrats come up with a plan for national security? It's been over 5 years since 911. They still don't have one.

When should they have a plan to help us win in Iraq?

When should you expect one of the two major parties in the US to be American's first and not Democrats first?

[The 801]

4liberty1st,
Ugg, this is boring, ain't it? You are implying I am picking a position that is cool, rather than a opinion that can be reasonably arrived at by reading and thinking about it.

The reason for this tread is not to debate Iraq. The reason for this thread is to document the ongoing incompetence of our commander and chief. Is that a fact? Not for me to tell. Is it an opinion? it is. One reasonably arrived at. For example, here is an opinion for someone with an ax to grind, but well thought out......

This is an opinion:

George McGovern: Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war


April 24, 2007

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.

Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.

They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.

Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).

In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.

The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.

Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.

On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.

The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.

Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.

The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.

There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of '72?



THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?

We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.

On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story

You know, Senator McGovern may have something there. From now on, I will strive to only cite conservatives about bushco. It would be more intellectually honest, don't you think?

[NYer]

Unfortunately, the McGovern wing of the Democrat Party unintentionally led to Pol Pot's unencumbered rise to power.

http://asia.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/southeast/01/06/cambodia.rouge.01/story.killing.fields.jpg

[The 801]

Wait, the veil has been lifted from my eyes....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/huffposoros.jpg

[The 801]

Weren't we just talking on this?

CIA TENET: BUSH ADMIN USE OF HIS 'SLAM DUNK' COMMENT TO PUSH WAR WAS DISINGENUOUS, DISHONORABLE AND RUINED REPUTATION AND CAREER
Thu Apr 26 2007 14:11:35 ET

Ex-CIA Director George Tenet says the way the Bush administration has used his now famous "slam dunk" comment Ð which he admits saying in reference to making the public case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Ð is both disingenuous and dishonorable. It also ruined his reputation and his career, he tells Scott Pelley in his first network television interview. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, April 29 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The phrase "slam dunk" didn't refer to whether Saddam Hussein actually had WMDs, says Tenet; the CIA thought he did. He says he was talking about what information could be used to make that case when he uttered those words. "We can put a better case together for a public case. That's what I meant," explains Tenet.

Months later, when no WMDs were found in Iraq, someone leaked the story to Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, who then wrote about a Dec. 21, 2002 White House meeting in which the CIA director reportedly "rose up, threw his arms in the air [and said,] 'It's a slam dunk case.'" Tenet says it was a passing comment, made well after major decisions had already been made to mobilize the nation for war.

The leak effectively made him a scapegoat for the invasion and ended his career. "At the end of the day, the only thing you have... is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor and when you don't have that anymore, well, there you go," Tenet tells Pelley. He says he doesn't know who leaked it but says there were only a handful of people in the room. "It's the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don't do this. You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection. Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me," he says.

Tenet says to have the president base his entire decision to go to war on such a remark is unbelievable. "So a whole decision to go to war, when all of these other things have happened in the run-up to war? You make mobilization decisions, you've looked at war plans," says Tenet. "I'll never believe that what happened that day informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never!"

Tenet says what bothers him most is that senior administration officials like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continue using "slam dunk" as a talking point. "And the hardest part of all this has been just listening to this for almost three years, listening to the vice president go on "Meet the Press" on the fifth year [anniversary] of 9/11 and say, 'Well, George Tenet said slam dunk' as if he needed me to say 'slam dunk' to go to war with Iraq," he tells Pelley. "And you listen to that and they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. ÔLook at the idiot [who] told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous... Let's everybody just get up and tell the truth. Tell the American people what really happened," says Tenet.

drudgereport thang

[Alli]

Ex-CIA Director George Tenet says the way the Bush administration has used his now famous "slam dunk" comment Ð which he admits saying in reference to making the public case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Ð is both disingenuous and dishonorable.Oh, ok :rolleyes:

[The 801]

Looks to me like Tenent is drinking the NYT's Kool aid, and has altered his autobiography to support their point of view....... (801)

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq
Eric Draper/The White House

http://http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/27/world/27tenet-600.jpg

George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, foreground, in March 2003. Mr. Tenet now says there was never a “serious debate” about the Iraq threat.

Article Tools Sponsored By
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: April 27, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.”

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.

Despite such sweeping indictments, Mr. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Mr. Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom, is portrayed personally in a largely positive light, with particular praise for the his leadership after the 2001 attacks. “He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed,” Mr. Tenet writes of the president, whom he describes as a blunt-spoken kindred spirit.

But Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.

Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”

“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.

Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

He describes an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state. Mr. Powell described what Mr. Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Mr. Tenet as C.I.A. director.

“In the end, the president said yes, and said so publicly,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.”

He writes that the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the C.I.A., he wrote, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.”

Mr. Tenet also says in the book that he had been “not at all sure I wanted to accept” the Medal of Freedom. He agreed after he saw that the citation “was all about the C.I.A.’s work against terrorism, not Iraq.”

He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. “It may have worked more than three years ago,” he wrote. “My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.”

Mr. Tenet says he decided to write the memoir in part because the infamous “slam dunk” episode had come to define his tenure at C.I.A.

He gives a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq.

During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.

“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”

Mr. Tenet has spoken rarely in public, and never so caustically, since stepping down in July 2004.

Asked about Mr. Tenet’s assertions, a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, defended the prewar deliberations on Thursday. “The president made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein for a number of reasons, mainly the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s own actions, and only after a thorough and lengthy assessment of all available information as well as Congressional authorization,” the spokesman said.

The book recounts C.I.A. efforts to fight Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Tenet’s early warnings about Osama bin Laden. He contends that the urgent appeals of the C.I.A. on terrorism received a lukewarm reception at the Bush White House through most of 2001.

“The bureaucracy moved slowly,” and only after the Sept. 11 attacks was the C.I.A. given the counterterrorism powers it had requested earlier in the year.

Mr. Tenet confesses to “a black, black time” two months after the 2001 attacks when, sitting in front of his house in his favorite Adirondack chair, he “just lost it.”

“I thought about all the people who had died and what we had been through in the months since,” he writes. “What am I doing here? Why me?” Mr. Tenet gives a vigorous defense of the C.I.A.’s program to hold captured Qaeda members in secret overseas jails and to question them with harsh techniques, which he does not explicitly describe.

Mr. Tenet expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.”

“I do know one thing in my gut,” he writes. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html?ex=1335326400&en=e6f2b52b9d75afb5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

-- I hope that this book comes with a vomit bucket so you can react to the harm that has been done to our county due by hubris alone. I weep for us.

[4liberty1st]

4liberty1st,
Ugg, this is boring, ain't it? You are implying I am picking a position that is cool, rather than a opinion that can be reasonably arrived at by reading and thinking about it.

The reason for this tread is not to debate Iraq. The reason for this thread is to document the ongoing incompetence of our commander and chief.

So basically all the points I made, supported with links, that prove the assumptions and rhetoric you are pushing to be bogus partisan diatribe.... you can't address and want to avoid.

Noted.

And the thread is about what the opening post stated.

Oh well. I was told there was decent debate here. The person was obvioulsy mistaken as nobody is willing to debate anything here. You just want to C&P far left wing diatribe hit pieces and condemn Bush without any thought of your own. You're right... that is boring.

[4liberty1st]

www.nike.com

Y'all need to get some running shoes so you can continue to run from the truth for the sake of your blidnly worshipped ideology of hate.

[The 801]

The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress


By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 28, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.

That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.

On Friday, during an appearance with Japan’s prime minister at Camp David, President Bush said that he would invite congressional leaders to the White House on Wednesday, immediately after his expected veto message, to talk about a “way forward.”

Several American officials who have spoken recently with Mr. Maliki say they believe that he would like to achieve the kind of political reconciliation that Mr. Bush outlined in January as the ultimate goal of the troop increase. But they say the Iraqi prime minister appears to have little ability to manage the required legislation, including bills requiring fair distribution of oil revenues among Iraq’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and reversing the American-led de-Baathification that barred many Sunnis from participation in the new government.

Even as administration officials have been telling Congress that Mr. Bush would accept no time limits on success, they have been pushing Mr. Maliki to move faster.

“He is trying to fight fires coming from every direction,” Ryan C. Crocker, the newly arrived American ambassador to Iraq, said of Mr. Maliki this week, speaking by telephone. “We have to be clear to him on where our priorities are, so that we can buy him the time he needs. And we have to buy the time now because he is going to need it in the future.”

Mr. Crocker said that he had told Mr. Maliki that evidence of progress “is important in American terms” because “to sustain American support we have to be able to see that Iraqis are stepping up to hard challenges.”

But the new view of Mr. Maliki’s limitations was put bluntly by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, who spent the week pressing Congress not to put limits on either the timing or conduct of his operations, as he described what he discovered upon returning to Iraq after a two-year hiatus.

“He’s not the Prime Minister Tony Blair of Iraq,” General Petraeus said of Mr. Maliki on Thursday. “He does not have a parliamentary majority. He does not have his ministers in all of the different ministries,” and they “sometimes sound a bit discordant in their statements to the press and their statements to other countries. It’s a very, very challenging situation in which to lead.”

Mr. Bush was careful when he announced his new strategy in January to avoid public estimates of how quickly Mr. Maliki might take steps toward political reconciliation. Even now, White House officials are being careful not to describe with any precision the mix of benchmarks they expect Mr. Maliki to deliver.

By the time Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus complete a comprehensive assessment of progress in September, three months after the troop increase has been fully in place, American officials are hoping that some of the pieces of crucial legislation will have passed.

But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found himself pressing Mr. Maliki last week to keep Parliament from taking a two-month summer break. If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, “we’ll have some outputs then.”

He added, “That’s different from having outcomes,” drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success, which could take considerably longer.

In public, Mr. Bush has remained enthusiastic about Mr. Maliki, with whom he talks over a secure video link every few weeks. But Mr. Bush was also publicly supportive of several of Mr. Maliki’s predecessors, even though White House officials now dismiss many of them as ill-suited for the job.

In January, Mr. Bush characterized Mr. Maliki as an architect of the troop increase plan, even while telling visiting Congressional leaders that “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought the new strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back, “Because it has to.”

That, in short, is the same position he is taking now with Congress. In interviews, his aides said Mr. Bush is convinced that once he vetoes the troop funding plan, because of its timetable for withdrawal, he will have the upper hand in negotiations.

“There is a segmented market” among the Democrats, the senior American official said. “Harry Reid has declared the war is lost, but there are a lot of people in his own party who have said they do not agree. Some of them are telling us privately that if they see some progress by the fall they would support us, because they do want this to succeed.”

But the Democrats say that if there is no measurable success by August, they believe several more Republicans will defect from Mr. Bush’s camp and vote for a staged pullout. Moderate Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who grudgingly backed the administration in the Senate vote this week, have said they are not willing to back an open-ended commitment.

Other Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to explain the political strategy more clearly, arguing that the troop increase is merely a tactic, and not one that can be sustained for long.

“We’ve tried that with the president several times,” said a Republican who spoke with him about the issue in the past week. “But he knows that it doesn’t pay to say what you expect Maliki to get done.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/washington/28prexy.html?ex=1335412800&en=c70bf93efca9340b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Let's be honest here. Maliki's inability to get things done is legend here on itshappening. It has been painfully evident for a while that he lacks the political ability to get things done.

It is evident to me that bushes "we will stand down as they stand up strategy" is based on them (Iraq government) doing something first, and that will not and can not happen.

The nice thing for bush is that he can always blame someone else if this doesn't work. The Democrats, for not supporting the troops ( like supporting the troops is synonymous with supporting the war, yeah, right) or Maliki, or the bush administrations creation of a breeding ground for AQ.

But I can pretty much predict who's fault the failure in Iraq will not be be. Can you guess who will not take responsibility for this misadventure?

[The 801]

4liberty1st,
Look, I love ya pal, but the whole WMD in Iraq argument is moot.

There were none. The UN couldn't find them. They were not hidden. He got rid of them. Saddam wouldn't fess up because he was a psychopath. They found a handful of shells. We didn't go there to defend ourselves from a handful of shells.

The Niger letters were fakes. The new italian government wanted to ingratiate themselves with the bush administration after 9/11. They may have wanted Yellowcake, but it was a masturbatory fantasy of Saddams.

There was no viable AQ connection in Iraq. Saddam is of Arabic descent, he followed the arabic political technique of keeping his options open all the time, but that did not dictate policy. AQ was poison after 9/11. AQ in Iraq would disturb his balance of viagra, scotch,virgins, and his big mouth. Saddam feared religious zealots in his country above all. He killed people left and right for putting god above him. He would no more want AQ in Iraq then he wanted us there.

AQ was friendly with Iran, his sworn enemy. Saddam was running a Potemkin Village.

He was a tinhorn. An idiot, who used fear instead of effency to run his county.

Bush could have found out with a phone call why he should not invade Iraq. He instead relied on a bunch of ideologies with no common sense to determine US policy and now history.

I fail to understand why blaming Clinton, or Congress, Or the CIA, of the UN alleviates any of his responsibility in this matter. The buck stops with him. Thats his only job. And if he places his party before his responsibility to the people, well, what do you call that?

OK, Back to business.

[The 801]

In an unprecedented decision, Speaker Nancy Pelosi designated a retired three-star general, William E. Odom, to respond to President George Bush's Saturday radio address.

General Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and head of Army intelligence, has consistently and publicly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has called for withdrawal ever since. In his capacity as one of the Nation's foremost experts on Russia, he now teaches at Yale University.

Introducing himself in typically straightforward east Tennessee fashion, Odom began: "I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former director of the National Security Agency."

In principle, he normally does not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. military policy. But the West Point graduate stated that the conflict in Iraq is different: "Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. Thus he lets the United States fly farther and farther into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies." Congress, he believes, is now "the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment."

Odom, a one-time military aide on the NSC staff, takes direct aim at POTUS (President of the United States): "To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, the acronym for 'absent without leave.' He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President's management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right."

Reminding that "we are in a crisis," the general argued that "the challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests," charged this student of Clausewitz.

BUT "it has served Iran's interest by revenging Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran's influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda's interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible."

Therefore, said Odom, the U.S. "cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies' interest and not our own. Continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did."

The Vietnam combat officer advised that "a wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed." HOWEVER, "no effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us."

General Odom, who has written several books on America's security in the world, contended that withdrawal from Iraq, in addition to serving as the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe and other major powers--China, India, Japan, and Russia--"will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq's borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches...to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused."

Signing the bill that Congress approved this week, with some bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, offers "the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not an impossible victory he seeks in Iraq," he reasoned.

General William Odom made this concluding pledge: "I will respect him greatly for such an act of courage."



Umm, a war that serves our enemies interests. What is that called? Treason? To work against the interests of the United States in foreign policy? What is that called again?

Thanks General Odom. You continue to serve the United States in a direct and patriotic way.

[The 801]

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers for the trouble, the New York City Bar says.

The group's president leveled the criticism in asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to abandon a Justice Department proposal to limit lawyers' access to the nearly 400 detainees.

In a court filing this month, the department said attorney access via the mail system has "enabled detainees' counsel to cause unrest on the base by informing detainees about terrorist attacks."

The mail system was "misused" to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts in the war on terror, the Hezbollah attack on Israel and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, the department said in this month's court filing.

"This is an astonishing and disingenuous assertion," the association president, Barry M. Kamins, wrote Gonzales.

Kamins said many detainees have been held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and have lost hope of a fair hearing to demonstrate their innocence.

"Blaming counsel for the hunger strikes and other unrest is a continuation of a disreputable and unwarranted smear campaign against counsel," according to the letter Friday.

Kamins pointed to recent remarks by the former deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, Charles Stimson. Stimson resigned after saying he found it shocking that lawyers at many top firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The 137-year-old New York City Bar, with more than 23,000 members, is one of the oldest and largest lawyers' organizations in the country.

A Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said the department is reviewing the New York City Bar's letter.

Ablin pointed to the department's court papers that say the proposal on attorney access is well beyond what the Constitution and the law require.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military is giving broad lawyer access to many detainees, even though they are accused of having al-Qaida or Taliban links and the U.S. is at war.

Attorney Zachary Katznelson sees the Justice Department proposal as an attempt to seal the facility from critics.

"If we cannot come in, the only news getting out of here will be the government's carefully crafted version, which to my chagrin as an American deviates far too often from the truth," Katznelson said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He is spending two weeks at Guantanamo Bay to meet with 18 client detainees.

The department wants to narrow the definition of "legal mail" and impose a three-visit rule on the number of face-to-face meetings once a detainee agrees at an initial meeting to let an attorney represent him.

On Thursday, American Bar Association President Karen J. Mathis criticized "arbitrary restrictions concerning the number of times and the ways that lawyers may confer with their clients in Guantanamo." She said such practices at Guantanamo or in a court "would threaten competent representation without at all advancing national security."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear arguments on the department's proposal May 15.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070429/guantanamo-lawyers

[The 801]

Here's a good one. This guy deserves a medal. Jerk.

From George Tenet's new book At the Center of the Storm

I first flew into Iraq just about the time Jerry Bremer took over as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, during the third week of May 2003. I took a helicopter ride with Jerry right over Baghdad. It was daylight. The helicopter door was wide open, and I was looking out as we flew. On the ground, the environment was strikingly permissive, considering that a foreign army had just invaded the capital and deposed the country's long-term dictator. People were going out, eating in restaurants. You half expected to see double-decker buses rolling down the main streets, with curious tourists gaping out the windows.

When I returned to Iraq in February 2004, the environment had changed dramatically. We flew into Baghdad at night, because you couldn't come in during the day. The C-17 bringing us there made a full-combat landing—a steep dive, quick on the ground. I was seated far forward, wearing flak jacket and helmet. There was no sightseeing this time. In those intervening ten months, Iraq had become a very different place, but not at all in the way that the U.S. government had intended. How did it get that way? Through a series of decisions that, in retrospect, look like a slow-motion car crash.

In fact, the problems started well before the war. There was little planning before the invasion concerning the physical reconstruction that would follow. But regarding the political reconstruction of Iraq—how the country was to be administered and what role, if any, Iraqis would play in determining their political future—there was a great deal of spirited interagency discussion, often at the highest levels. Condi Rice and the vice president took an intense interest and often participated directly.

The debates generally broke down along familiar lines: State, CIA, and NSC favored a more inclusive and transparent approach, in which Iraqis representing the many tribes, sects, and interest groups in the country would be brought together to consult and put together some sort of rough constituent assembly that might then select an advisory council and a group of ministers to govern the country.

The vice president and Pentagon civilians, however, advocated a very different approach. Rather than risking an open-ended political process that Americans could influence but not control, they wanted to be able to limit the Iraqis' power and handpick those Iraqis who would participate. In practice, that meant Ahmed Chalabi and a handful of other well-known, longtime exiled oppositionists, along with the leaders of the essentially autonomous Kurdish areas. The differences in approach were clear and starkly articulated. The vice president himself summed up the dilemma: The choice, he said, was between "control and legitimacy." [Undersecretary of Defense] Doug Feith clearly stated his belief that it would not be necessary for the Iraqi exiles to legitimize themselves: "We can legitimize them," he said, through our economic assistance and the good governance the U.S. would provide. They never understood that, fundamentally, political control depends on the consent of the governed.

No consensus was ever reached, and no clear plan ever devised.

Hovering over this entire process was the figure—seldom acknowledged, almost never mentioned—of Ahmed Chalabi. Time and again, during the months leading up to the invasion and for months thereafter, the representatives of the vice president and Pentagon officials would introduce ideas that were thinly veiled efforts to put Chalabi in charge of post-invasion Iraq. Immediately before the invasion, the effort took the form of a proposal, put forward insistently and repeatedly, to form an Iraqi "government in exile," comprised of the exiles and the Kurdish leaders. These exiles would then be installed as a new government once Baghdad fell. My CIA colleagues were aghast. It was as though Defense and the vice president's staff wanted to invite comparison with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Russian troops deposed the existing government and installed Babrak Karmal, whom they had brought with them from Moscow.

2. Two fateful — and secret — decisions

Bremer made two decisions in 2003, Tenet alleges, that opened the doors to the insurgency that plagues Iraq today. And kept the CIA in the dark about both.

Although he was a presidential envoy, Bremer would report directly to the secretary of defense. His organization was given the title Coalition Provisional Authority. Once CPA had been established, Condi Rice ordered the interagency committee that had been constituted to deal with postwar planning issues to fold its tent. It was only a short while later, however, that, as one White House official told me, "The shit hit the fan and we had to rely on the British to tell us what was going on because we were getting no political reporting out of CPA." Rice then ordered the NSC process to start up again. But by then, fundamental decisions on disbanding the army and de-Ba'athification had already been made. The early returns filtering back to me on CPA indicated that it was not running smoothly.

What Iraq needed were Arabists and Foreign Service officers who understood the country's tribal allegiances, or who at least knew a Sunni from a Shia. What CPA seemed to be getting were people anxious to set up a Baghdad stock exchange, try out a flat-tax system, and impose other elements of a lab-school democratic- capitalist social structure. One of my officers returned from a trip to Iraq a month or two after CPA had taken over and told me, "Boss, that place runs like a graduate school seminar, none of them speaks Arabic, almost nobody's ever been to an Arab country, and no one makes a decision but Bremer."

Shortly before going to Baghdad, Bremer met with Doug Feith in the Pentagon. Feith, he says, urged him to issue an order as soon as possible upon arriving in Iraq that would prevent former Ba'ath Party members from having a role in the new government. Bremer did just that, on May 16, just four days after landing in Iraq. That morning's New York Times carried a hint of what was to come: "Shortly I will issue an order on measures to extirpate Baathists and Baathism in Iraq forever," Bremer was quoted as saying. "We have and will aggressively move to seek to identify these people and remove them from office."

Just a few weeks before the war started, senior U.S. officials were saying publicly that the conflict might be avoided if Saddam and a few dozen of his top henchmen simply left. This concept was never embedded in our war goals. Now, the war having been waged, the United States apparently was saying that thousands of officials around the country would be aggressively removed.

Bremer writes in his memoir that the intelligence community estimated that this order would affect only about 1 percent of the Iraqi population. That could be taken to imply that [CIA] supported the move and thought it was a good idea, but that was definitely not the case. In fact, we knew nothing about it until de-Ba'athification was a fiat accompli. Clearly, this was a critical policy decision, yet there was no NSC Principals meeting to debate the move. As for the 1 percent number Bremer cites, he didn't ask for that estimate until the date after he issued the order, and once he got it he ignored the two fold context: first that many of those Ba'athists were technocrats of exactly the sort Iraq would soon need if it were to again resume responsibility for its governance, and, second, that every Ba'athist "extirpated" from Iraq, to use Bremer's word, had brothers and sisters and aunts, uncles, and cousins with whom to share his anger.

We soon began hearing stories about how Iraqis could not send their kids to school because all the teachers had been dismissed for being members of the Ba'ath Party. In the context of a country armed to the teeth, this was not a good thing. If the kids and teachers were not in school, they were on the streets. I went to see Condi Rice and complained that the indiscriminate nature of the de-Ba'athification order had swept away not just Saddam's thugs but also, for example, something like forty thousand schoolteachers, who had joined the Ba'ath Party simply to keep their jobs. This order wasn't protecting Iraqis; it was destroying what little institutional foundations were left in the country. The net effect was to persuade many ex-Ba'athists to join the insurgency. Condi said she was very frustrated by the situation, but nothing ever happened. Several months later, with a full-blown insurgency under way, an interagency group headed by Deputy National Security Advisor Bob Blackwill desperately looked for ways to reach out to dissident Sunni Arabs. We again raised the subject of rolling back the de-Ba'athification order. Doug Feith retorted that doing so would "undermine the entire moral justification for the war."

Bremer's de-Ba'athification order became known as CPA Proclamation Number One. As bad as that was, CPA Proclamation Number Two was worse. Again, without any formal discussion or debate back in Washington—at least any that included me or my top deputies—Bremer, on May 23, ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi army.

At meetings in the White House and in Baghdad after the two proclamations were issued, we argued that the orders were having unintended negative consequences. The actions had taken large numbers of common Iraqis and given them few prospects beyond being paupers, criminals, or insurgents. One of our senior officers tallied the numbers, including affected family members and the like, and came up with a pool of a hundred thousand Iraqis who had been driven toward the brink by the de-Ba'athification order alone. In the end, too many of them chose insurgency.

For some officials in the Pentagon, the accelerating violence simply proved the wisdom of excluding these Ba'athists and ex�army members from the future of Iraq. As late as the spring of 2004, at a meeting in the White House, one of our officers was asked for "out-of-the-box" ideas to stem the violence. He suggested rescinding CPA Proclamation Two and mounting an aggressive campaign to round up former army members and enlist them to help secure Iraq's borders and maintain internal security. As later described to me, a U.S. Army colonel present, who had been DIA's liaison to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, said, "I agree. We should round them all up and shoot them."

The moves the U.S. government was making were driving a wedge between the various factions in Iraq. [Longtime US weapons inspector] Charles Duelfer was told by an Iraqi friend that, in the past, Iraqis were not accustomed to thinking of themselves primarily as Shia or Sunni. But the way we implemented democracy had led people to believe that they deserved a piece of the pie based on their membership in a certain group. So the whole dynamic was to pull away from the center. The decisions we made tended to fracture Iraq, not to bring it together.

On one of his trips to Iraq, [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz told our senior man there, "You don't understand the policy of the U.S. government, and if you don't understand the policy, you are hardly in a position to collect the intelligence to help that policy succeed." It was an arrogant statement that masked a larger reality. In many cases we were not aware of what our own government was trying to do. The one thing we were certain of was that our warnings were falling on deaf ears.

3. A Mysterious Obsession with Chalabi


Both the Pentagon and the Vice Presidents office backed exiled Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi as a possible Iraqi leader afte the invasion. Tenet compares aides in Cheney's and Rumsfeld's office to schoolgirls in love.

By mid-November 2003, it was clear in the minds of many that something was going to have to change in Iraq. Condi Rice asked Ambassador Robert Blackwill of the NSC staff to go to Baghdad just before Thanksgiving. Blackwill asked [CIA Iraq mission Manager Robert] Grenier to accompany him. On the way out, Grenier asked him, "What is your mandate?" Blackwill said that Rice had charged him with trying to bring about some changes and that he was going to have a "Socratic dialogue" with Bremer. Nobody wanted to give Bremer specific marching orders. According to Blackwill, Rice felt she could not order changes, but she wanted Blackwill to lead Bremer in the direction they thought they needed to go.

On the way back, Blackwill and Grenier agreed that CPA was essentially hopeless; as currently constituted, it would be neither willing nor capable of doing what was necessary. Blackwill summed up his feelings to Grenier: "The only hope we have is you, CIA, and the deployed military. So it is over to you guys, to figure this thing out and do what you can."

Equally futile, or so it seemed, were our efforts to form a credible and durable Iraqi governing body. In Afghanistan, we had started from the ground up, allowing the various political groups to legitimize themselves, then building toward a central, representational government. In Iraq, the process couldn't have been more different. We never had a conference comparable to the Afghan Loya Jirga that produced a leader, Hamid Karzai, around whom the country could coalesce. We had won the war; we had the guns, the tanks, the soldiers, and the air power. We were in charge, and by God, we knew what was best. Alas, what too many people in the U.S. government were convinced would be best was an Iraqi government headed up by Ahmed Chalabi.

Sometimes Chalabi's name would be strangely absent from the discussion, although he was obviously on everyone's mind. We would sit around these White House meetings expressing the hope that a strong, unifying Iraqi leader would emerge, and while you could tell that one name was on the minds of many in the room, no one would utter it. You had the impression that some Office of the Vice President and DOD reps were writing Chalabi's name over and over again in their notes, like schoolgirls with their first crush. At other times, so persistent was the cheer- leading for Chalabi, and so consistent was our own opposition to imposing him on Iraq, that I finally had to tell our people to lay off the subject.

During President Bush's State of the Union speech on January 20, 2004, Chalabi was given a seat of honor in the gallery near the First Lady. In March he appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes blaming U.S. intelligence for not doing a good enough job checking out the fl awed information his organization was peddling.

"What the hell is going on with Chalabi?" the president asked me at a White House meeting that spring. "Is he working for you?" [Senior CIA officer] Rob Richer, who was with me at the meeting, piped up, "No sir, I believe he is working for DOD." All eyes shifted to Don Rumsfeld. "I'll have to check what his status is," Rumsfeld said. His undersecretary for intelligence, Steve Cambone, sat there mute. "I don't think he ought to be working for us," the president dryly observed.

A few weeks later the president again raised the issue. "What's up with Chalabi?" he asked. Paul Wolfowitz said, "Chalabi has a relationship with DIA and is providing information that is saving American lives. CIA can confirm that." The president turned to us. "I know of no such information, Mr. President," Richer said. The president looked to Condi Rice and said, "I want Chalabi off the payroll."

At a subsequent meeting, chaired by Condi Rice, DIA confirmed that they were paying the INC $350,000 a month for its ser vices in Baghdad. We knew that the INC's armed militia had seized tens of thousands of Saddam regime documents and was slowly doling them out to the U.S. government. Beyond that it was unclear to me what the Pentagon was getting for its money. Somehow the president's direction to pull the plug on the arrangement continued to be ignored.

4. Was Condi Overmatched?

Without using her name, Tenet alleges that then-National Security Adviser Condi Rice did not exert the kind of scrutiny of Rumsfeld's and Cheney's ideas as she did of the CIA and the State Department. Tenet says the lack of clear White House oversight of reconstruction efforts in Iraq meant US policy was "almost guaranteed" to fail.

The true tragedy of Iraq is that it didn't have to be this way. I can't begin to say with absolute clarity how things might have worked out, but I have to believe that if we had been more adept at not alienating entire sectors of the Iraqi population and elites; if we had been smarter at the front end; if we had thought about reconstruction from the perspective of how much money we could put in people's hands so that they would know they had a steady stream of income; if we had figured out a way to let Iraqis know that they actually did have a role in their future that went beyond words, a role they could see being implemented in practice on the ground—we would be far better off today.

Whenever you decide to take the country to war, you have to know not only that you can defeat the enemy militarily but that you have a very clear game plan that will allow you to keep the peace. There was never any doubt that we would defeat the Iraqi military. What we did not have was an integrated and open process in Washington that was organized to keep the peace, nor did we have unity of purpose and resources on the ground. Quite simply, the NSC did not do its job.

Despite the consequences of decisions regarding de-Ba'athification or disbanding of the army, and the inability to use the billions of dollars at our disposal to implement a political strategy that might have succeeded, not much was done to change course. The National Security Council was created in 1947 to force important policy decisions to be fully discussed, developed, and decided on. In this case, however, the NSC did not fulfill its role. The NSC avoided slamming on the brakes to force the discussions with the Pentagon and everyone else that was required in the face of a deteriorating situation. By sending Bob Blackwill out to chat with Bremer, NSC substituted a time-tested process for one almost guaranteed to fail.

The critical missing element was an Iraqi government that could have helped us. We decided instead to have Americans administer Iraq. It may have worked in World War II, after the entire world fought against Nazi Germany for many years. But in the context of the Middle East, it was not going to work any more than the French occupation of Algeria. To Arabs it looked as though this was all about occupation as opposed to liberation. We were dismissive about the capacity of Iraqis to control their own future. We have struggled ever since.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1615848,00.html

[The 801]

Critics of George Tenet have rightly savaged him for trying in his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm, to gloss over his complicity with the Bush administration's shameful selling of the invasion of Iraq based on outright lies. Nevertheless, Tenet does reveal more details of an astonishing story that remains virtually unknown -- how the Bush administration officials who pushed the United States into war in Iraq in 2001 were not only utterly unresponsive to the urgent warnings of CIA officials about a big attack by Bin Laden's terrorists on U.S. soil, but did their best to discredit them.

Tenet recounts how CIA officials gave Condi Rice a "chilling" briefing on July 5, 2001 indicating Bin Laden had told trainees three weeks earlier that a "big event" was coming soon, and that it would be designed to inflict mass casualties, possibly through "multiple and simultaneous attacks." The briefers made it clear that Bin Laden's threats were well known throughout the Arab world, so the possibility of disinformation could be discounted.

But shortly after the briefing Steve Cambone, then undersecretary of defense for intelligence and a spear-carrier who reflected Donald Rumsfeld's views, suggested to Tenet that Bin Laden's threats were all just "a grand deception, a clever ploy to tie up our resources and expend our energies on a phantom enemy that lacked both the power and the will to carry the battle to us."

That was only the tip of the iceberg of Bush administration hostility to the CIA's message about the al Qaeda terrorist threat. The most determined foe of the CIA's warnings was Paul Wolfowitz, the number two man at the Pentagon and the main advocate of war on Iraq. As White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke recalled in his 2003 memoirs that Wolfowitz began his campaign against the CIA's emphasis on the threat from Bin Laden early in the Bush administration. When Clarke briefed a "Deputies" meeting in April 2001 on the need to put pressure on al Qaeda and its Taliban regime sponsor in Afghanistan, Wolfowitz complained he couldn't understand "why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Wolfowitz insisted that Saddam represented "at least as much" of a threat to the United States as al Qaeda.

The 9/11 Commission reported that Wolfowitz questioned the CIA's June 30, 2001 report titled "Bin Laden Threats are Real." He offered the fascinating theory that all the activity they were picking up was just bin Laden trying to "study U.S. reactions".

Why were Bush's advisers so determined to discredit the idea that al Qaeda represented the most urgent threat to American security? The answer to that question is clear from the response of the same advisers to the 9/11 attack itself. Even as the attack revealed how utterly wrong they had been about the threat from al Qaeda, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz remained hostile to the whole idea of going after bin Laden and his Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan.

In the White House bunker the very night of the 9/11 attacks, Tenet recounts, Cheney worried about whether there were targets in Afghanistan "worth hitting." Two days later, Wolfowitz argued at Camp David against an operation in Afghanistan to search for al Qaeda, which he said would turn into a "mess," according to then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's account.

The common thread connecting these expressions of hostility to dealing with al Qaeda as the priority was the interest of the Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in preparing for and fighting a war against a state enemy. Those now-discredited figures were tied in various ways to the military bureaucracy, and the military is organized only to fight state enemies. The state enemy they were preparing to fight and defeat at that moment was Saddam's Iraq, and conceding that al Qaeda could be a more urgent threat than Saddam would have interfered with their plans.

The conflict between the real threat to American security and interests of the military in preparing for war against state enemies and from non-state actors is the fundamental national security issue of this era. In an October 16, 2003 memo on the "Global War on Terrorism", Rumsfeld stated the problem with shocking clarity: "DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces," he wrote. "It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the war on terror."

The military bureaucracy and its political allies now have to argue that the U.S. military is vitally important to fighting global terrorism. But the Rumsfeld memo and the shameful behavior of the Bush administration's top advocates of the military toward al Qaeda reveal the reality that those tied most closely to the military services are not really interested in the threat of terrorism. It is too far removed from their core mission and values.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gareth-porter/why-the-bush-administrati_b_48650.html

[NYer]

The hubris which facilitated the 9-11 attacks may be the last truly bipartisan effort seen in DC.

And in a somewhat related incident, another Clintonista is disbarred. (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007555.htm)

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/images/bergler2.jpg

[NYer]

Hijacked. (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/187906.php#187906)

... The root of what currently ails the Republican Party is found in the White House.

[NYer]

The Anchoress implores: "Let's do it. Let's impeach President Bush." (http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/24/lets-do-it-lets-impeach-bush/)

Bring all of your accusations, narratives, memes, large conspiracy theories and small distrusts, petty dislikes and visceral hatreds. Let’s make it a very thorough impeachment, with long, hard looks and bright, hot lights, and everyone under oath and on the record! You won’t mind if - once we finally lance the purulent boil that is George W. Bush - some of the pus splashes up on you, will you? For the good of the nation?

Read the whole thing.

[The 801]

Lawyer: Cheney Visitor Logs Not Recorded

PETE YOST | May 29, 2007 05:56 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states.

The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney's lawyer says logs for Cheney's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.

The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence.

The newly disclosed letter about visitors to Cheney's residence is accompanied by an 18-page Secret Service document revealing the agency's long-standing practice has been to destroy printed daily access lists of visitors to the residence.

Separately, the agency says it has given Cheney's office handwritten logs of who visits him at his personal residence.

Because of pending lawsuits, the Secret Service says it is now keeping copies of all material on visitors to Cheney's residence. According to the Secret Service document, Cheney's office has approved the agency's retention of the records, while maintaining they are presidential records subject to Cheney's control.

"The latest filings make clear that the administration has been destroying documents and entering into secret agreements in violation of the law," said Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel.

Regarding visitor information, the Secret Service "shall not retain any copy of these documents and information" once the material is given to the office of the vice president, says the September 2006 letter by Shannen Coffin, counsel to the vice president.

"If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible," the letter added.

The vice president's lawyer wrote the letter as The Washington Post sought copies of Cheney's visitors at his residence. The Post requested the records under the Freedom of Information Act. The newspaper subsequently dropped a lawsuit seeking the information.

The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service a year ago when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

When the agreement was signed in May 2006, a number of private groups and news organizations had filed FOIA requests with the Secret Service in an effort to identify how many times Abramoff or members of his lobbying team visited the White House.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070529/cheney-secrecy/

[NYer]

Anyone seen those JFK vistor logs?

[NYer]

Sandy Berger and the Clinton Cover-Up - Why It Matters. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/sandy_berger_and_the_clinton_c.html)

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/eibessential/trousergate/april_fools.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg


What information was worth risking his reputation, his career, and his freedom to keep hidden? And who was he risking that for?

Recently, the Board of the DC Bar, which had granted Berger his license, began asking those questions. There was only one way to stop that investigation, to keep from answering questions about what he did and why he did it, to keep the Bar from questioning his colleagues in the Clinton Administration about what had been in the documents Berger destroyed.

Berger took that step, surrendering his license, and stopping the investigation.

Ordinarily, anyone who has spent the time, effort, and money needed to master one of the "learned professions" fights with the utmost determination to keep his license. That is not merely a ticket to practice your chosen profession - it is also a badge of honor and accomplishment. Ask any doctor or lawyer, any architect or CPA, any professional at all, what it means to give that up.

That Berger didn't fight speaks volumes.

Read the whole thing ...

[NYer]

How quickly They Forget. (http://www.breitbart.tv/html/1602.html)

[NYer]

Father of The Iranian Revolution (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

[NYer]

Father of The Iranian Revolution (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

http://www.acepilots.com/mt/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/carter_pal.jpg

[NYer]

Radical Outreach (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODU1YWMyN2M4MWY0OWViMTBkMzY0MTM1Yjg1NGY5ZTQ=)

Steve Emerson:

Bush praised the OIC, saying, “We admire and thank those Muslims who have denounced what the Secretary General of the OIC called ‘radical fringe elements who pretend that they act in the name of Islam.’” The special envoy’s mission, Bush said, would be to “listen and learn” to OIC ambassadors.

While this may sound nice, it is rooted in complete ignorance of the rampant radicalism, pro-terrorist, and anti-American sentiments routinely found in statements by the OIC and its leaders, including referring to “Islamophobia” — and not the mass slaughter of innocents in the name of Islam — the “worst form of terrorism,” as OIC did last May.

In 2002, the OIC published its “Declaration on International Terrorism.” Therein, the authors stated, amongst other outrageous claims, that there was no such thing as Palestinian terrorism, writing, “We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism.” To the OIC, groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hezbollah are not terrorists, but “freedom fighters.”

Ugh!

[The 801]

Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence


BEN FELLER | July 2, 2007 07:24 PM EST | AP


WASHINGTON — President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case Monday, delivering a political thunderbolt in a highly charged criminal case. Bush said the sentence was just too harsh.

Bush's move came just five hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term. That meant Libby was likely to have to report soon, and it put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

"I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison."

Bush's decision enraged Democrats and cheered conservatives _ though some of the latter wished Bush had granted a full pardon.


"Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's decision showed the president "condones criminal conduct."

Unlike a pardon, which would have wiped away Libby's criminal record, Bush's commutation voided only the prison term.

The president left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for his conviction of lying and obstructing justice in a probe into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. The former operative, Valerie Plame, contends the White House was trying to discredit her husband, a critic of Bush's Iraq policy.

Bush said his action still "leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby."

Libby was convicted in March, the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

Testimony in the case had revealed the extraordinary steps that Bush and Cheney were willing to take to discredit a critic of the Iraq war.

Libby's supporters celebrated the president's decision.

"President Bush did the right thing today in commuting the prison term for Scooter Libby," said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.

"That's fantastic. It's a great relief," said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, who helped raise millions for Libby's defense fund. "Scooter Libby did not deserve to go to prison and I'm glad the president had the courage to do this."

Already at record lows in the polls, Bush risked a political backlash with his decision. President Ford tumbled in the polls after his 1974 pardon of Richard M. Nixon, and the decision was a factor in Ford's loss in his bid for re-election.

White House officials said Bush knew he could take political heat and simply did what he thought was right. They would not say what advice Cheney might have given the president.

On the other hand, Bush's action could help Republican presidential candidates by letting them off the hook on the question of whether they would pardon Libby.

A message seeking comment from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's office was not immediately returned.

Bush said Cheney's former aide was not getting off free.

"The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged," Bush said. "His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting."

A spokeswoman for Cheney said simply, "The vice president supports the president's decision."

The White House said Bush came to his decision in the past week or two and made it final Monday because of the ruling of the appeals panel, which meant Libby would be going to prison soon.

The president's announcement came just as prison seemed likely for Libby. He recently lost an appeals court fight that was his best chance to put the sentence on hold, and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had already designated him inmate No. 28301-016.

Bush's statement made no mention of the term "pardon," and he made clear that he was not willing to wipe away all penalties for Libby.

The president noted Libby supporters' argument that the punishment did not fit the crime for a "first-time offender with years of exceptional public service."

Yet, he added, "Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable."

Bush then stripped away the prison time.

The leak case has hung over the White House for years. After CIA operative Valerie Plame's name appeared in a 2003 syndicated newspaper column, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald questioned top administration officials, including Bush and Cheney, about their possible roles.

Nobody was ever charged with the leak, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage or White House political adviser Karl Rove, who provided the information for the original article. Prosecutors said Libby obstructed the investigation by lying about how he learned about Plame and whom he told.

Plame believes Libby and other White House officials conspired to leak her identity to reporters in 2003 as retribution against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who criticized what he said was the administration's misleading use of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Attorney William Jeffress said he had spoken to Libby briefly by phone and "I'm happy at least that Scooter will be spared any prison time. ... The prison sentence was imminent but obviously the conviction itself is a heavy blow to Scooter."

___

Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070702/cia-leak-trial/

[NYer]

It's about time someone ended this Martha Stewartesque farce.

[The 801]

Yea, it's about time somebody cut loose a traitor that endangered a valuable asset for his megalomaniac boss who can't decide what branch of government he belongs to.

[The 801]

Cheney was central voice in torture debate
He helped lay path for Gitmo interrogations



The Washington Post
July 03. 2007 8:00AM



Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from the CIA arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby.

The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees' " if interrogators confined themselves to humane treatment allowed by the Geneva Conventions.

From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials.

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress - both for Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."
---ADVERTISEMENT---

But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles supporting them, have survived intact but out of public view.

The vice president's unseen victories attest to traits that are often ascribed to him but are hard to demonstrate from the public record: thoroughgoing secrecy, persistence of focus, tactical flexibility in service of fixed aims and close knowledge of the power map of government. On critical decisions for more than six years, Cheney has often controlled the pivot points - tipping the outcome when he could, engineering a stalemate when he could not and reopening debates that rivals thought were resolved.

"Once he's taken a position, I think that's it," said James Baker, who has shared a hunting tent with Cheney more than once and worked with him under three presidents. "He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power."

Getting the enemy to talk

David Addington, Cheney's general counsel, set the new legal agenda in a blunt memorandum shortly after the CIA delegation's visit. Geneva's "strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners," he wrote on Jan. 25, 2002, hobbled efforts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."

No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney's lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives "difficult to predict," might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington's formula - with all its room for maneuver - verbatim.

In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, "We don't torture." What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to avoid a ban on cruelty. In international law, Mora said, cruelty is defined as "the imposition of severe physical or mental pain or suffering." He added: "Torture is an extreme version of cruelty."

How extreme? Yoo was summoned again to the White House in the early spring of 2002. This time the question was urgent. The CIA had captured Abu Zubaida, then believed to be a top al-Qaida operative, on March 28, 2002. Case officers wanted to know "what the legal limits of interrogation are," Yoo said.

This previously unreported meeting sheds light on the origins of one of the Bush administration's most controversial claims. The Justice Department delivered a classified opinion Aug. 1, 2002, stating that the U.S. law against torture "prohibits only the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and therefore permits many others. Distributed under the signature of Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, the opinion narrowed the definition of "torture" to mean only suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure . . . or even death."

When news accounts unearthed that opinion nearly two years later, the White House repudiated its contents. Some officials described it as hypothetical, without disclosing that the opinion was written in response to specific questions from the CIA. Administration officials attributed authorship to Yoo, a law professor who had come to serve in the Office of Legal Counsel.

But the "torture memo," as it became widely known, was not Yoo's work alone. In an interview, Yoo said Addington, as well as Gonzales and deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan, contributed to the analysis.

The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA - including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government has prosecuted as a war crime since at least 1901. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

Yoo said for the first time in an interview that he verbally warned lawyers for the president, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it would be dangerous as a matter of policy to permit military interrogators to use the harshest techniques because the armed services, vastly larger than the CIA, could overuse the tools or exceed the limits. "I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at DOD felt differently," Yoo said. The migration of those techniques from the CIA to the military, and from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, aroused worldwide condemnation when abuse by U.S. troops was exposed.

Through his spokeswoman, Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales declined a request for an interview about his time in the White House counsel's office and his interactions with Cheney. The vice president's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, declined to comment on Yoo's recollection.

Disputes over Guantanamo

In the summer and fall of 2002, some of the Bush administration's leading lawyers began to warn that Cheney and his Pentagon allies had set the government on a path for defeat in court. As the judicial branch took up challenges to the president's assertion of wartime power, Justice Department lawyers increasingly found themselves defending what they believed to be losing positions - directed by the vice president and his staff.

One of the uneasy lawyers was Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a conservative stalwart whose wife, Barbara, had died on Sept. 11, 2001, when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Olson shared Cheney's robust view of executive authority, but his job was to win cases. Two that particularly worried him involved U.S. citizens - Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi - who had been declared enemy combatants and denied access to lawyers.

Federal courts, Olson argued, would not go along with that.

Decision time came in a heated meeting in Gonzales's office, according to four officials with direct knowledge, none of whom agreed to be quoted by name about confidential legal deliberations. Olson was backed by associate White House counsel Bradford Berenson, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Berenson told colleagues that Kennedy, the court's swing voter, would never accept absolute presidential discretion to declare a U.S. citizen an enemy and lock him up without giving him an opportunity to be represented and heard.

Gonzales listened quietly. Then he decided in favor of Cheney's lawyer. John Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time, declined to discuss details of the dispute but said the vice president's views "carried a great deal of weight. A U.S. District Court ruled several months later that Padilla had a right to counsel.

Cheney's strategy fared worse in the Supreme Court, where two cases arrived for oral argument, shortly after Padilla's, on April 28, 2004.

For months, Olson and his Justice Department colleagues had pleaded for modest shifts that would shore up the government's position. Hamdi, the American, had languished in a Navy brig for 2½ years without a hearing or a lawyer. Shafiq Rasul, a British citizen at Guantanamo Bay, had been held even longer. Addington, the vice president's counsel, fought and won again. He argued that any declaration of binding rules would restrict the freedom of future presidents and open the door to further lawsuits. On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in the Hamdi case that detainees must have access to a lawyer and an opportunity to challenge their status as enemy combatants before a "neutral decision maker." The Rasul decision, the same day, held 6 to 3 that Guantanamo Bay is not beyond the reach of federal law.

Eleven days later, Olson stepped down as solicitor general.

Resisting rules on torture

Rumsfeld, Cheney's longtime friend and mentor, gathered his senior subordinates at the Pentagon in the summer of 2005. He warned them to steer clear of Senate Republicans John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, who were drafting a bill to govern the handling of terrorism suspects.

"Rumsfeld made clear, emphatically, that the vice president had the lead on this issue," said a former Pentagon official with direct knowledge.

Though his fingerprints were not apparent, Cheney had already staked out a categorical position for the president. It came in a last-minute insert to a "statement of administration policy" by the Office of Management and Budget, where Nancy Dorn, Cheney's former chief of legislative affairs, was deputy director. Without normal staff clearance, according to two Bush administration officials, the vice president's lawyer added a paragraph - just before publication on July 21, 2005 - to the OMB's authoritative guidance on the 2006 defense spending bill.

"The Administration strongly opposes" any amendment to "regulate the detention, treatment or trial of terrorists captured in the war on terror," the statement said. Before most Bush administration officials even became aware that the subject was under White House review, Addington wrote that "the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto" any such bill.

Among those taken unawares was Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. More than a year had passed since Bush expressed "deep disgust" over the abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib, and England told aides it was past time to issue clear rules for U.S. troops.

In late August 2005, England called a meeting of nearly three dozen Pentagon officials, including the vice chief and top uniformed lawyer for each military branch. Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, set the agenda.

Waxman said the president's broadly stated order of Feb. 7, 2002 - which called for humane treatment, "subject to military necessity" - had left U.S. forces unsure about how to behave. The Defense Department, he said, should clarify its bedrock legal requirements with a directive incorporating the language of Geneva's Common Article 3. That was exactly the language - prohibiting cruel, violent, humiliating and degrading treatment - that Cheney had spent three years expunging from U.S. policy.

'An indifference to public opinion'

Over the next 12 months, Congress and the Supreme Court imposed many of the restrictions that Cheney had squelched.

On Oct. 5, 2005, the Senate voted 90 to 9 in favor of McCain's Detainee Treatment Act, which included the Geneva language. It was, by any measure, a rebuke to Cheney. Bush signed the bill into law. "Well, I don't win all the arguments," Cheney told the Wall Street Journal.

Yet he and Addington found a roundabout path to the exceptions they sought for the CIA, as allies in Congress made little-noticed adjustments to the bill.

The final measure confined only the Defense Department to the list of interrogation techniques specified in a new Army field manual. No techniques were specified for CIA officers, who were forbidden only in general terms to employ "cruel" or "inhuman" methods. Crucially, the new law said those words would be interpreted in light of U.S. constitutional law. That made a big difference to Cheney.

The Supreme Court has defined cruelty as an act that "shocks the conscience" under the circumstances. Addington suggested, according to another government lawyer, that harsh methods would be far less shocking under circumstances involving a mass-casualty terrorist threat. Cheney might have alluded to that advice in an interview broadcast on ABC's "Nightline" on Dec. 19, 2005, saying "what shocks the conscience" is to some extent "in the eye of the beholder."

Eager to put the detainee scandals behind them, Bush's advisers spent days composing a statement in which the president would declare support for the veto-proof bill on detainee treatment. Hours before Bush signed it into law on Dec. 30, 2005, Cheney's lawyer intercepted the accompanying statement "and just literally takes his red pen all the way through it," according to an official with firsthand knowledge.

Addington substituted a single sentence. Bush, he wrote, would interpret the law "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief."

Top officials from the CIA, Justice, State and Defense departments unanimously opposed the substitution, according to two officials. None of that mattered. With Cheney's weight behind it, White House counsel Harriet Miers sent Addington's version to Bush for his signature.

"The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney," said a former White House ally. "What both of them miss is that . . . in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration - a complete and total indifference to public opinion."

A rebuke to Cheney's theories

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court struck its sharpest blow to the house that Cheney built, ruling 5 to 3 that the president had no lawful power to try alleged terrorists in military commissions.

Not only did the court leave the president beholden to Congress for the authority to charge and punish terrorists, but it rejected a claim of implicit legislative consent that Bush was using elsewhere to justify electronic surveillance without a warrant. And not only did it find that Geneva's Common Article 3 protects "unlawful enemy combatants," but it also said that those protections - including humane treatment and the right to a trial by "a regularly constituted court" - were enforceable by federal judges in the United States.

The court's decision, in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, was widely seen as a calamity for Cheney's war plan against al-Qaida.

In another reversal for Cheney, Bush acknowledged publicly on Sept. 6 that the CIA maintained secret prisons overseas for senior al-Qaida detainees, a subject on which he had held his silence since The Washington Post disclosed them late in 2005. The president announced he had emptied the "black sites" and transferred their prisoners to Guantanamo Bay to be tried.

The same week, almost exactly a year after the vice president's office shelved Waxman's Pentagon plan, Waxman's successor dusted it off. DOD Directive 2310.01E, the Department of Defense Detainee Program, included the verbatim text of Geneva's Common Article 3 and described it, as Waxman had, as "minimum standards of treatment of all detainees." The new Army field manual, published with the directive, said interrogators were forbidden to employ a long list of techniques that had been used against suspected terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001 - including stripping, hooding, inflicting pain and forcing the performance of sex acts.

For all the apparent setbacks, close observers said, Cheney has preserved his top-priority tools in the "war on terror." After a private meeting with Cheney, one of them said, Bush decided not to promise that there would be no more black sites - and seven months later, the White House acknowledged that secret detention had resumed.

The Military Commissions Act, passed by strong majorities of the Senate and House on Sept. 28 and 29, 2006, gave "the office of the vice president almost everything it wanted," said Yoo, who maintained his contact with Addington after returning to a tenured position at Berkeley.

The new law withstood its first Supreme Court challenge, on April 2. It exempts CIA case officers and other government employees from prosecution for past war crimes or torture

Without repealing the War Crimes Act, which imposes criminal penalties for grave breaches of Geneva's humane-treatment standards, Congress said the president, not the Supreme Court, has final authority to decide what the standards mean - and whether they even apply.

A year after Bush announced at a news conference that "I'd like to close Guantanamo," the camp remains open and has been expanded. Senior officials said Cheney, with few allies left, has turned back strong efforts - by Rice, England, new Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, among others - to give the president what he said he wants.

Cheney and his aides "didn't circumvent the process," one participant said. "They were just very effective in using it."

More than a year after Congress passed McCain-sponsored restrictions on the questioning of suspected terrorists, the Bush administration is still debating how far the CIA's interrogators may go in their effort to break down resistant detainees. Two officials said the vice president has deadlocked the debate.

Bush said last September that he would "work with" Congress to review "an alternative set of procedures" for "tough" - but, he said, lawful - interrogation. He did not promise to submit legislation or to report particulars to any oversight committee, and he has not done so.

Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to be authorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitly forbidden.

According to participants in the debate, the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney's argument that when courts and Congress "purport to" limit the commander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.

If Cheney advocates a return to waterboarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.

"That's just the vice president," said Gerson, the former speechwriter, referring to Cheney's October remark that "a dunk in the water" for terrorists - a radio interviewer's term - is "a no-brainer for me."

Gerson added: "It's principled. He's deeply conscious that this is a dangerous world, and he wants this president and future presidents to be able to deal with that. He feels very strongly about these things, and it's his great virtue and his weakness."

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070703/REPOSITORY/707030307/1013/NEWS03

[NYer]

I say we close Club Gitmo and outsource the inmates to Mexico.

[Alli]

I say we close Club Gitmo and outsource the inmates to Mexico.

But then they'd "immigrate" to here and our border guards would get arrested for trying to stop them.

[The 801]

A New Cheney-Gonzales Mystery
Tricky Dick: Cheney is refusing a government review of his office

Newsweek

July 2-9, 2007 issue - A new battle has erupted over Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to submit to an executive order requiring a government review of his handling of classified documents. But the dispute could also raise questions for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. For the past four years, Cheney's office has failed to comply with an executive order requiring all federal offices—including those in the White House—to annually report to the National Archives on how they safeguard classified documents. Cheney's hard-line chief of staff, David Addington, has made the novel argument that the veep doesn't have to comply on the ground that, because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his office is not really part of the executive branch.
Story continues below ↓advertisement

Cheney's position so frustrated J. William Leonard, the chief of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces the order, that he complained in January to Gonzales. In a letter, Leonard wrote that Cheney's position was inconsistent with the "plain text reading" of the executive order and asked the attorney general for an official ruling. But Gonzales never responded, thereby permitting Cheney to continue blocking Leonard from conducting even a routine inspection of how the veep's office was handling classified documents, according to correspondence released by House Government Reform Committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman.

Why didn't Gonzales act on Leonard's request? His aides assured reporters that Leonard's letter has been "under review" for the past five months—by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). But on June 4, an OLC lawyer denied a Freedom of Information Act request about the Cheney dispute asserting that OLC had "no documents" on the matter, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NEWSWEEK. Steve Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists researcher who filed the request, said he found the denial letter "puzzling and inexplicable"—especially since Leonard had copied OLC chief Steve Bradbury on his original letter to Gonzales. The FOIA response has piqued the interest of congressional investigators, who note Bradbury is the same official in charge of vetting all document requests from Congress about the U.S. attorneys flap. Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the OLC response "was and remains accurate" because Leonard's letter had generated no "substantive work product."


Waxman told NEWSWEEK he now plans to investigate the handling of the issue by Justice as well as Cheney's refusal to comply with the executive order, which he called part of a "pattern" of stonewalling by the veep. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "We're confident we are conducting the office properly under the law." She also pointed to comments by White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said that Bush, not the National Archives, was the "sole enforcer" of the executive order relating to classified information.

—Michael Isikoff

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19391241/site/newsweek/

[NYer]

The Executive's Privilege (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2FmNDljMTY5ZmNhZjcwMWJiOWFlOWMyYjc5ZjhmMTU=)

Indeed, rather than merely exposing presidential decision-making, Congress seems intent on ruining the name of anyone who has given the president legal advice it deems unacceptable. Congress is working off the template of what has been done to former Justice-department official John Yoo, whose reputation has been trashed for the advice he gave the president on issues of interrogation and detention of terrorists. Congress is searching for more Yoos, and if it succeeds in finding and battering them will make it that much harder for future presidents to get advice that is the least bit controversial. Ultimately — whatever one thinks of the controversies of today — this is a disservice to the executive branch.

Typically, disputes like those over the U.S. attorney and terrorist-surveillance program are worked out by compromise. If a president wants to protect his prerogatives, he also wants to preserve a working relationship with Congress. But this particular relationship can’t be saved. Comity is impossible with a Congress bent on doing all it can to destroy what remains of the Bush administration. In the matter of the U.S. attorneys, the administration has provided Congress 8,500 pages of documents and numerous officials and former officials have testified. This isn’t enough for a Congress that won’t stop until it has run-down every outlandish conspiracy theory about the firings that — even if clumsy and ill-advised — were perfectly within Bush’s power to make.

And so, the administration was justified in saying both, “no more,” and “see you in court.” There, it can hope to get a decision that strengthens the executive’s ability to protect its deliberations for a long time to come.

[The 801]

More left wing crap.....

Bush Equals Nixon's Highest Disapproval
by: Chris Bowers
Tue Jul 10, 2007 at 10:24:35 AM EDT

The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut is an excellent archive for poll junkies, featuring polling archives that go back much further than Polling Report (not that polling report isn't great). the coup de grace (I hope I spelled that right) at the Roper Center is their archive of every public, presidential approval poll ever conducted via telephone. It even dates back to the 1930's where you can review FDR's approval ratings from August, 1937 forward.

The reason I bring up this archive is because today Bush reached a historic milestone. His current disapproval rating in the latest Gallup poll, 66%, equals Richard Nixon's highest Gallup disapproval rating of 66%, registered the week before he resigned from office. Back then, Gallup was the only organization conducting presidential approval polls, and thus the Gallup poll is always taken as the gold standard for historical comparisons. this figure also puts Bush only 1% away from the all-time highest disapproval, set by Harry Truman in early January, 1952.

Here is a chart featuring the all-time worst Gallup poll results for every president over the past 70 years:
President Low Approval High Disapproval High Margin
Bush 2 29 66 -37
Clinton 36 50 -14
Bush 1 29 60 -31
Reagan 35 56 -21
Carter 28 59 -31
Ford 39 45 -6
Nixon 24 66 -42
Johnson 35 52 -16
Kennedy 56 30 +26
Eisenhower 48 36 +12
Truman 22 65 -43
FDR 48 43 +5

Note that I mentioned above how Truman's highest disapproval was 67%, but here it is listed as 65%. This is because, for the purposes of this table, I took the single poll for each President that resulted in the lowest overall approval / disapproval margin. Truman's overall worst gap was -45, but it did not come from a single poll. Nxon's overall worst gap was -43, but it did not come from a single poll.

Update: As noted in the comments by Max Fletcher, remarkably, no President had a negative approval / disapproval margin from February 1953-March 1966. In fact, every poll taken during that time period registered at least double-digit approval for the sitting President. No wonder the late sixties are viewed as such a tumultuous time in America, as they were clearly following the most remarkable period of general contentedness we have ever seen. For the flip side, from April 1966 through August 1983, presidential approval ratings were in the net negative more than half of the time.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=57

[NYer]

Congress and the Bush Administration are in a neck and neck race toward a zero approval rating.

[The 801]

Panel Demands Records on Tillman's Death


SCOTT LINDLAW | July 13, 2007 08:52 PM EST | AP
Compare other versions »

SAN FRANCISCO — Two influential lawmakers investigating how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death and how those details were disclosed accused the White House and Pentagon on Friday of withholding key documents and renewed their demand for the material.

The White House and Defense Department have turned over nearly 10,000 pages of papers _ mostly press clippings _ but the White House cited "executive branch confidentiality interests" in refusing to provide other documents.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va., the committee's top-ranking Republican, said Friday the documents were inadequate. They insisted that the Defense Department turn over the additional material by July 25 and asked that the White House do likewise.

Tillman, a San Jose native, turned down a lucrative contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to join the Army following the Sept. 11 attacks. He was killed April 22, 2004, by friendly fire in Afghanistan.


Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed he was killed by enemy fire.

Tillman's family and others have said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. The committee said Friday it had scheduled a second hearing on Tillman's death for Aug. 1, this time to probe what senior Pentagon officials knew and when.

Rumsfeld and Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among those the committee invited Friday to appear.

The White House has turned over nearly 1,100 pages of documents and the Defense Department nearly 8,500 pages since the committee requested information from them in April, part of an inquiry into why Tillman's family and the public were misled.

"The document production from the White House sheds virtually no light on these matters," Waxman and Davis wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding, part of a renewed request for additional papers.

The committee made public a letter last month in which Fielding said the White House was holding back certain papers "because they implicate executive branch confidentiality interests." He added the White House had blacked out portions of "purely internal e-mails between White House personnel."

The White House's argument for withholding some papers is the same one it used last month as it rejected congressional subpoenas for documents in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Executive "confidentiality" is a lesser claim than "executive privilege" _ more a polite way of declining than a firm refusal _ and thus still leaves room for negotiation, congressional staffers involved in the matter said.

Fielding added the White House had blacked out portions of "purely internal e-mails between White House personnel."

Waxman and Davis fired back that "these are not appropriate reasons for withholding the documents from the committee." And they charged that the White House had simply held other papers back.

In particular, they expressed doubt that the two documents they'd received on communications between the White House and Pentagon on Tillman's death were the only ones of their kind. One was simply a packet of newspaper clippings.

"Corporal Tillman's death was a major national story," they wrote. "It is not plausible that there were no communications between the Defense Department and the White House about Corporal Tillman's death."

"The committee was fully aware that certain documents were withheld as our letter to them made clear last month _ along with our offer to discuss possible accommodation that meets the committee's interests while respecting separation of powers principles," Blair Jones, a White House spokesman, said Friday evening. "We continue to offer an opportunity for the committee to move forward in a spirit of accommodation, rather than conflict."

Waxman and Davis complained to Defense Secretary Robert Gates of a "failure to provide a complete production to the committee." For instance, the committee received no documentation on how Rumsfeld learned of Tillman's death.

They said the Pentagon had not produced any papers from, among others, the offices of Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command.

A week after Tillman died, a top general sent a memo to Abizaid warning that it was "highly possible" that Tillman was killed by friendly fire. The memo made clear that the information should be conveyed to the president. The White House said there is no indication that Bush received the warning.

Two days later, the president mentioned Tillman in a speech to the White House correspondents dinner, but he made no reference to how Tillman had died.

A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Separately, Waxman asked the Republican National Committee for copies of e-mail communications that involved Tillman and White House officials. That request was an outgrowth of the oversight committee's finding last month that 88 White House officials had e-mail accounts with the RNC, and that the administration may have committed extensive violations of a law requiring that certain records be preserved.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070713/tillman-friendly-fire/

[The 801]

In Intelligence World, A Mute Watchdog
Panel Reported No Violations for Five Years

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 15, 2007; A03

An independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after the CIA scandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told Congress.

Although the FBI told the board of a few hundred legal or rules violations by its agents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the board did not identify which of them were indeed legal violations. This spring, it forwarded reports of violations in 2006, officials said.

The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community -- is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration.

The FBI sent copies of its violation reports directly to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. But the board's mandate is to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was doing its job.

"It's now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to have been needed the most," said Anthony Harrington, who served as the board's chairman for most of the Clinton administration.

"The White House counsel's office and the attorney general should have known and been concerned if they did not detect an active and effective IOB," Harrington said.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) added: "It is deeply disturbing that this administration seems to spend so much of its energy and resources trying to find ways to ignore any check and balance on its authority and avoid accountability to Congress and the American public."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Friday that "the president expects every single person working in counterterrorism and intelligence strictly to follow the law -- and if there are instances where that has not occurred, either intentionally or non-intentionally, he expects it promptly to be corrected." She said the White House relies on the presidentially appointed director of national intelligence to monitor problems.

Through five previous administrations, members of the board -- all civilians not employed by the government -- have been privy to some of America's most secret intelligence operations and have served as a private watchdog against unpublicized abuses. The subjects of their investigations and the resulting reports are nearly all classified.

The Bush administration first appointed board members in 2003. Since then, the CIA and the National Security Agency have been caught up in controversy over interrogation tactics at secret prisons, the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture, and domestic wiretapping not reviewed by federal courts.

Until recently, the board had not told the attorney general about any wrongdoing. "The Attorney General has no record of receiving reports from the IOB regarding intelligence activities alleged to be potentially unlawful or contrary to Executive Order or Presidential directive," the Justice Department told the House Judiciary Committee in a May 9 letter.

White House officials said the board began forwarding reports of problems shortly thereafter. The officials declined to discuss the board's interactions with President Bush and said its members could not be interviewed for this report.

President Gerald R. Ford created the board in the mid-1970s after the Church Committee identified numerous abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. President Ronald Reagan made the board permanent with an executive order in 1981 and gave it the mission to identify legal violations.

Harrington said that under President Bill Clinton, the board promptly sent reports of legal violations by intelligence agencies to the attorney general. Officials said the panel concluded that the administration showed poor judgment in supporting Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, and it complained about the CIA's policy of employing known torturers or killers as informants in Latin America.

Perino said that during the first two years of the Bush administration, a career intelligence officer at the White House collected and reviewed reports in which the FBI and other intelligence agencies self-disclosed violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards.

The board's three or four members -- the number has alternated over the years -- are usually drawn from the larger President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which advises the commander in chief on U.S. intelligence policy and performance. The oversight board has been a mix of intelligence experts, such as George H.W. Bush's choice of former Air Force Gen. Lew Allen, and civilians from other walks of life, such as Clinton's choice of Philadelphia investment banker Harold Pote.

The board now in place is led by former Bush economic adviser Stephen Friedman. It includes Don Evans, a friend of the president and a former commerce secretary; former Adm. David Jeremiah; and lawyer Arthur B. Culvahouse.

Perino said the board's "original unique mission and primary oversight role has been supplemented" in recent years by new layers of government. To watch for abuses, the administration now relies on the director of national intelligence -- a job created in 2005 -- along with presidentially appointed inspector generals. As a result, Bush is considering changes to Reagan's executive order, Perino said.

A Clinton-era deputy national security adviser, James B. Steinberg, said, however, that "you have to have a civilian proxy who on one hand can be trusted with these secrets and can still call the operator on the carpet when they go astray. If you neuter these internal mechanisms, then you are basically saying there is no one watching the henhouse."

On Friday, the FBI and the Justice Department announced several changes meant to strengthen internal oversight, including the creation of a legal "compliance office" inside the bureau and a review office inside the department that will regularly examine all violations.

Separately, Gonzales wrote the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), on Friday to defend his 2005 testimony that there had been no verified civil liberties abuses during the first three years of the efforts against terrorism. The Washington Post reported last week that the FBI had sent Gonzales a half-dozen reports of violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards before his testimony.

Gonzales wrote that he did not consider the conduct in those reports to be abuses because the violations involved mistakes, not deliberate misconduct. "My testimony was completely truthful, and I stand by that testimony," he wrote.

Leahy scoffed at Gonzales's explanation. "The American people deserve an attorney general who will fully and accurately inform the Senate and the public about violations of civil liberties. Instead, they have one who misleads Congress and then hides behind dictionary definitions," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071400862_pf.html

[NYer]

More (http://www.chronwatch-america.com/blogs/637/Selective-Secrets.html) on Leaky Leahy.

[Ono]

Wow!

[NYer]

Worst Congress Ever. (http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/07/18/worst-congress-ever/)

The new Reuters poll is out and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have pulled an upset: They have managed to make George Walker Bush twice as popular as Congress.

[The 801]

Bush Aides See Failure in Fight With Al Qaeda in Pakistan


By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: July 18, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 17 — President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an effort to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

While Bush administration officials had reluctantly endorsed the cease-fire as part of their effort to prop up the Pakistani leader, they expressed relief on Tuesday that General Musharraf may have to abandon that approach, because the accord seems to have unraveled.

But American officials make little secret of their skepticism that General Musharraf has the capability to be effective in the mountainous territory along the Afghan border, where his troops have been bloodied before by a mix of Qaeda leaders and tribes that view the territory as their own, not part of Pakistan.

“We’ve seen in the past that he’s sent people in and they get wiped out,” said one senior official involved in the internal debate. “You can tell from the language today that we take the threat from the tribal areas incredibly seriously. It has to be dealt with. If he can deal with it, amen. But if he can’t, he’s got to build and borrow the capability.”

The bleak intelligence assessment was made public in the middle of a bitter Congressional debate about the future of American policy in Iraq. White House officials said it bolstered the Bush administration’s argument that Iraq was the “central front” in the war on terror, because that was where Qaeda operatives were directly attacking American forces.

The report nevertheless left the White House fending off accusations that it had been distracted by the war in Iraq and that the deals it had made with President Musharraf had resulted in lost time and lost ground.

While the assessment described the Qaeda branch in Iraq as the “most visible and capable affiliate” of the terror organization, intelligence officials noted that the operatives in Iraq remained focused on attacking targets inside that country’s borders, not those on American or European soil.

In weighing how to deal with the Qaeda threat in Pakistan, American officials have been meeting in recent weeks to discuss what some said was emerging as an aggressive new strategy, one that would include both public and covert elements. They said there was growing concern that pinprick attacks on Qaeda targets were not enough, but also said some new American measures might have to remain secret to avoid embarrassing General Musharraf.

Ms. Townsend declined to describe what may be alternative strategies for dealing with the Qaeda threat in Pakistan, but acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The intelligence report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, represents the consensus view of all 16 agencies that make up the American intelligence community. The report concluded that the United States would face a “persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.”

That judgment was not based on any specific intelligence about an impending attack on American soil, government officials said. Only two pages of “key judgments” from the report were made public; the rest of the document remained classified.

Besides the discussion of Al Qaeda, the report cited the possibility that the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, might be more inclined to strike at the United States should the group come to believe that the United States posed a direct threat either to the group or the government of Iran, its primary benefactor.

At the White House, Ms. Townsend found herself in the uncomfortable position of explaining why American military action was focused in Iraq when the report concluded that main threat of terror attacks that could be carried out in the United States emanated from the tribal areas of Pakistan.

She argued that it was Mr. bin Laden, as well as the White House, who regarded “Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.”

Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state, acknowledged that Al Qaeda had prospered during the cease-fire between the tribal leaders and General Musharraf last September, a period in which “they were able to operate, meet, plan, recruit, and obtain financing in more comfort in the tribal areas than previously.”

But Mr. Boucher also described General Musharraf as America’s best bet, and several administration officials on Tuesday cited his recent aggressive actions against Islamic militants at a mosque in Islamabad.

The growing Qaeda threat in Pakistan has prompted repeated trips to Islamabad by senior administration officials to lean on officials there and calls by lawmakers to make American aid to Pakistan contingent on a sustained counterterrorism effort by General Musharraf’s government.

Some members of Congress argue that concern for the stability of General Musharraf’s government had for too long dominated the White House strategy for dealing with Pakistan, thwarting American counterterrorism efforts.

“We have to change policy,” said Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee who has long advocated a more aggressive American intelligence campaign in Pakistan.

In an interview on Tuesday, the New York Police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, called the report a “realistic and sobering assessment,” but said it had not caused officials in New York to take any specific steps to tighten security in the city.

“There is no surprise here for us,” he said. “Would we rather it be another way? Yes. But this is the world, as it is, and this is what we are guarding against.”

Al Baker contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/washington/18intel.html?ex=1342411200&en=88f5f1a45c8422d5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[NYer]

http://drudgereport.com/siren.gif

Dismissed. (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QFR71G1&show_article=1)

[Alli]

The Worst Economy Since Herbert Hoover? (http://www.bizzyblog.com/2007/02/13/what-happens-if-a-deficit-falls-and-almost-no-one-reports-it/)
Time for another tax cut (http://www.bizzyblog.com/2007/07/12/wsj-time-for-another-tax-cut-todays-treasury-report-supports-the-idea/)

[The 801]

Commerce, Treasury funds helped boost GOP campaigns

Marisa Taylor and Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
Aug. 18, 2007 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Top Commerce and Treasury department officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.

Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings - all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating whether the White House's political briefings to at least 15 agencies, including to the Justice Department, the General Services Administration and the State Department, violated a ban on the use of government resources for campaign activities.


Under the Hatch Act, Cabinet members are permitted to attend political briefings and appear with members of Congress. But Cabinet members and other political appointees aren't permitted to spend taxpayer money with the aim of benefiting candidates.

During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.

Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House's political guidance in mind.

The briefings are part of the legacy of White House political adviser Karl Rove, who announced this week that he is stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with his family. Despite Rove's departure, investigations into the briefings are expected to continue.

One congressional aide, who asked to remain anonymous, said the investigation was revealing "a number of remarkable coincidences" similar to how Treasury and Commerce events appeared to coincide with the strategy in the political briefings.

As part of the inquiry, committee investigators found that White House drug czar John Walters took 20 trips at taxpayer expense in 2006 to appear with Republican congressional candidates.

In a separate investigation, the independent Office of Special Counsel concluded that GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan violated the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of government employees. Witnesses told investigators that Doan asked at the end of one political briefing in January 2007 what her agency could do to help GOP candidates. Doan has said she doesn't recall that remark.

Violations of the Hatch Act are treated as administrative, not criminal, matters, and punishment for violations ranges from suspension to termination. The administration has not taken any action against Doan.

In the months leading up to the 2002 election, then-Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Bush's former campaign-finance chairman, made eight appearances or announcements with Republican incumbents in districts deemed by White House aides either as competitive districts or battleground presidential states.

During the stops, he doled out millions of dollars in grants, including in two public announcements with Rep. Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican in a competitive district.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0818goppolitics0818.html

Well,
A) Just have the people that they gave it to give it back.
B) Fine the republican party for transgressions like these.
C) Ask Karl Rove to explain this. I bet he blames the democrats.

[NYer]

Interesting, but let's see if this will stick. BTW, how's this for a conflict of interest -

http://bp1.blogger.com/_2-oDfgGpQKg/Rnvb6ynVfLI/AAAAAAAAAgU/EdWKfjTt0ic/s1600/Journalist%2BDonations.jpg

[NYer]

Commerce, Treasury funds helped boost GOP campaigns

Marisa Taylor and Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers


It appears McClatchy has more urgent concerns. (http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7b49D82304-8D7E-444F-8268-6A5D3CF99602%7d&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo)

[NYer]

Interesting, but let's see if this will stick. BTW, how's this for a conflict of interest -



http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f218/sono001/Journalist2BDonations.jpg

[The 801]

Hey NYer,
How have you been doing? Spending more time at Yankee games then ground zero too? I'm not surprised by the chart. You know, that intellectual thing that journalist tend to harp about. Where did the chart come from?

[The 801]

Bush: Swift-Boated by Bin Laden

By Michael van der Galien

Thomas Friedman wrote a heck of a column for the New York Times. His basic point is that George W. Bush - and thus America - are losing the propaganda war, at least in the Middle East. “One thing that has always baffled me,” Friedman writes, “about the Bush team’s war effort in Iraq and against Al Qaeda is this: How could an administration that was so good at Swift-boating its political opponents at home be so inept at Swift-boating its geopolitical opponents abroad?”

He goes on:

How could the Bush team Swift-boat John Kerry and Max Cleland — authentic Vietnam war heroes, whom the White House turned into surrendering pacifists in the war on terror — but never manage to Swift-boat Osama bin Laden, a genocidal monster, who today is still regarded in many quarters as the vanguard of anti-American “resistance.”

Quite right. This is something that never ceases to amaze me either. Bush et al. have proven themselves to be great propagandists, at least domestically, but in regards to the world, and especially the Muslim world, they are a bunch of PR amateurs. One reason for this is, in my opinion, that the Bush administration does not really understand the attitude in the Mideast. They try to appeal to them based on American values. As much as Americans like to think their values are universally accepted, the opposite is true. No, if Bush wants to win the PR war in the Mideast, he needs to appeal to Mideastern values - to Islamic values - not to American values.

http://themoderatevoice.com/general/14757/bush-swift-boated-by-bin-laden/

Answer: Because Bush never really spends much time thinking about bin laden and he was not much of a threat to the administration. Also, no money in it, so why bother.

[NYer]

Last week, Michael Savage had a spirited conversation with Michael Scheuer. The highlight was the following:

Savage: So you're saying Bush is the worst Commander in Chief in American History?

Scheuer: He'd have to go a long way to beat Clinton.

[The 801]

House to Hold Hearings on Two New Reports on Iraq

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 28, 2007; Page A08

The House will hold hearings next week on two key reports assessing political and military conditions in Iraq, jump-starting the debate over President Bush's strategy even before long-awaited testimony by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, due the following week.

A completed 70-page report by the Government Accountability Office, to be delivered to Congress next Tuesday, paints a bleak picture of prospects for Iraqi political reconciliation, according to administration officials who have seen it. The second report, by an independent commission of military experts, is being drafted. But a scorecard on the Iraqi security forces released yesterday by an adviser to the group concluded that the Iraqis are years away from taking over significant responsibility from U.S. combat forces.

The two reports -- and hearings on them in the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees -- will set a largely negative backdrop for Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, who are expected to testify together in a joint hearing before the two House committees and in a separate session in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has objected to a Pentagon proposal that they appear on Sept. 11, a Pelosi spokesman said, and the exact date remains under negotiation.

Administration officials said yesterday that the Petraeus-Crocker testimony will closely follow the National Intelligence Estimate judgments released last week, which predicted continued political deterioration in Iraq but cited "measurable but uneven improvements" in the security situation.

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.

Bush continued his efforts to frame the debate yesterday, congratulating Iraqi politicians on an agreement they announced Sunday in Baghdad. The accord reached by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish representatives "reflects their commitment to work together for the benefit of all Iraqis," Bush said in a visit to Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The agreement called for the release of thousands of detainees being held without charge, reform of a law barring members of Saddam Hussein's party from government jobs, regulation of the oil industry and provincial elections. Those elements are among a set of congressionally mandated benchmarks, and all require approval of Iraq's parliament. No details of the accord were released, and Sunni politicians expressed skepticism yesterday that Maliki's Shiite-dominated government would push for enactment of the measures.

Bush is scheduled to deliver today the second of two speeches designed to describe Iraq as caught between two forces that threaten U.S. security -- Sunni extremism, personified by al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban, and the Shiite extremism of Iran and its Mideast proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. The president plans to tell an American Legion convention in Reno, Nev., that an increase in U.S. combat forces in Iraq begun early last spring has been operational only for 75 days, a senior administration official said, yet gains are apparent. "It's understandable that political progress has been slower than security," the official said.

In a speech last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush compared the Iraq conflict to the Vietnam War, arguing that a U.S. troop withdrawal would lead to widespread death and suffering as he said it did in Southeast Asia three decades ago.

After the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, Bush will deliver his own written report to Congress assessing progress toward 18 congressionally mandated political and security benchmarks in Iraq. An interim report in July painted a mixed picture, and the White House is depending heavily this time on Petraeus to head off calls from congressional Democrats, and a number of influential Republicans, to begin withdrawing U.S. troops and turning security over to the Iraqi military.

In its benchmark legislation last spring, Congress arranged for its own security report, appointing a commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones to assess the Iraqi forces. Strategic and military expert Anthony Cordesman, a commission adviser, previewed that assessment in a report yesterday saying it will be years before the Iraqi army and police forces will be capable of taking over.

Progress was slowed this year as U.S. forces increased their own operations and turned attention away from Iraqi training and force modernization, Cordesman wrote. Although the Iraqi army has shown improvement, he said, corruption and sectarianism continue in police forces. White House and military projections of a timetable for transition from U.S. troops to Iraqi security forces have been often revised in recent years and have proved unrealistic, he said.

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright in Washington and Michael Abramowitz, who is traveling with the president, contributed to this report.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/27/AR2007082701917.html

Looks like there is a lot of leaking going on now in the administration. -801

[NYer]

Our feckless Congressional leadership, striving mightly to uphold their abysmal approval rating. Sheesh .... Saving Social Security, anyone?

[The 801]

Judge rules internet spying illegal

New blow to the Patriot Act
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 07 Sep 2007
ADVERTISEMENT
Click Here

A US judge has ruled that the FBI cannot spy on people's internet and telephone use without a warrant.

Judge Victor Marrero, of the District of Columbia, determined that the rules under the Patriot Act that allowed the FBI to secretly request telephone, internet and email logs without applying for a warrant were barred by the constitution.

The Patriot Act was passed 43 days after the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001.

Judge Marrero found that the practice offended constitutional principles of checks and balances, and violated the guarantee of free speech.

In a 24-page summation the judge concluded that the government would also have to hand over evidence requested on under the Freedom of Information act or explain why it would not.

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Archive and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"Today's ruling deals a blow to the administration's sweeping and often unfounded secrecy claims," said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

"When documents are withheld under the Freedom of Information Act, the government must have a better excuse for keeping the documents secret than 'because we said so'."

The judge found that the government's reasons for not releasing documents were "too vague and general" and that the FBI's justifications were "wholly inadequate".

The case will now go to the appeal courts and the government has until 12 October to respond.


http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2198292/judge-rules-internet-spying


Dick Cheney will probibly not like this.

[NYer]

Interesting ...

Ironically, the recent plot in Germany was uncovered by the same NSA program the Libs have been castigating since its inception.

Also, Mumbai now has Keyloggers (http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp=46e6e8101e63b035&ei=33TmRuDdD5CgarCQvYQJ&url=http%3A//yro.slashdot.org/article.pl%3Fsid%3D07/09/09/2011240&cid=1120566217) in place in internet cafes. Obviously, this is yet another plot perpetrated by the Bushitler crowd.

[The 801]

Spy Master Admits Error
Intel czar Mike McConnell told Congress a new law helped bring down a terror plot. The facts say otherwise.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Sept 12, 2007

Sept. 12, 2007 - In a new embarrassment for the Bush administration top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany.

The temporary measure, signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 5, gave the U.S. intelligence community broad new powers to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications overseas without seeking warrants from the surveillance court. The law expires in six months and is expected to be the subject of intense debate in the months ahead. On Monday, McConnell—questioned by Sen. Joe Lieberman—claimed the law, intended to remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to “facilitate” the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell's testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the new law, dubbed the "Protect America Act,” played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot. The U.S. military initially provided information that helped the Germans uncover the plot. But that exchange of information took place months before the new “Protect America” law was passed.

After questions about his testimony were raised, McConnell called Lieberman to clarify his statements to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, an official said. (A spokeswoman for Lieberman confirmed that McConnell called the senator Tuesday but could not immediately confirm what they spoke about.) Late Wednesday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement acknowleding that "information contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the 'Protect America Act'."

The developments were cited by Democratic critics on Capitol Hill as the latest example of the Bush administration's exaggerated claims—and contradictory statements—about ultrasecret surveillance activities. In the face of such complaints, the administration has consistently resisted any public disclosure about the details of the surveillance activities—even thought McConnell himself has openly talked about some aspects of them.

The Justice Department, for example, just two weeks ago filed a brief opposing the public release of secret legal opinions about the program—even in redacted form—on the grounds that any disclosure beyond a one-sentence comment earlier this year by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would “cause serious damage to the national security of the United States.” (The existence of one of those rulings was first disclosed by NEWSWEEK this summer and publicly confirmed by McConnell in an interview with the El Paso Times in August. The ACLU last month filed an unprecedented motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking public release of its rulings about the surveillance program.)

The flap over McConnell’s latest statements is especially sensitive because many Democrats have said they felt the White House and the director of national intelligence stampeded them into passing the new surveillance law—claiming it was needed on an “emergency” basis to protect the country against a future terror attack. Speaking Wednesday at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Rep. Jane Harman, who was ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee until she was bumped from the committee earlier this year, charged that McConnell had politicized negotiations over the bill. He "appeared to be taking orders from the White House, negotiating for the White House," said Harman. The role he played, "whether he intended it or not, appeared to be political," she said. "Hey—Jane to Mike," she said. "Don't become a political actor."

McConnell's testimony that the new law helped in the German case was especially striking—since it seemed to contradict public statements by American and German officials about how the plot was exposed. About 10 months ago—long before the new law was put into effect—guards at a U.S. military base near Frankfurt noted a suspicious individual conducting surveillance outside the facility. U.S. military officials tipped off German authorities, who quickly identified the individual and several accomplices as militants affiliated with the Islamic Jihad Union, a violent Al Qaeda-linked group. The Germans kept the group under surveillance for months and discovered evidence that the militants—some of whom had been to an Islamic Jihad Union training camp in Pakistan—were assembling chemicals for bombing attacks on American military installations in Germany. (The U.S. Embassy in Berlin issued a public warning last April that it had received intelligence reporting about threats against U.S. personnel in that country.) One U.S. intelligence official described the law-enforcement operation as a case of “good old-fashioned police work.”


Yet when McConnell testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he cited the German case as an example of how the new Protect America Act was working. The law, he started to say, "allowed us to see and understand all the connections with ..." At that point, Lieberman, the committee chair, interrupted McConnell. Lieberman expressed surprise that the law might have contributed to the German counterterror operation. "The newly adopted law facilitated that during August?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, it did,” McConnell responded. “The connections to Al Qaeda, the connections specifically to what's referred to as IJU, the Islamic Jihad Union, an affiliate of Al Qaeda. Because we could understand it, we could help our partners through a long process of monitoring and observation ... And so at the right time, when Americans and German facilities were being targeted, the German authorities decided to move."

Counterterrorism officials familiar with the background of McConnell's testimony said they did not believe the intel czar made inaccurate statements intentionally as part of any strategy by the administration to goad Congress into making the new eavesdropping law permanent. Officials said they believed McConnell gave the wrong answer because he was overwhelmed with information and merely mixed up his facts. Nonetheless, some officials said, as news of McConnell's misstatements spread, it would be in the intelligence director's best interests to correct his testimony—advice he is now heeding.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20749773/site/newsweek/

You know, statistically, it is plain to see you can rely on almost any statement of fact from the administration on the status of the war on terror, and the effectiveness of their actions, to be the opposite. - 801

[NYer]

Intercepts a Key Factor (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-plot7sep07,0,6683864.story?coll=la-home-center) in German case.

American authorities passed the lead to German police, who conducted a painstaking investigation that led to the arrests of the three suspects, two of whom are German converts to Islam. Police here suspected that militants were communicating with Pakistan from an Internet cafe, a frequent strategy to avoid detection, but they did not know which one. So they deployed surveillance teams at several dozen Internet cafes around the city, officials said.

[The 801]

Gingrich: Republicans need "clean break" from Bush

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidates need to make a "clean break" from President George W. Bush and the U.S. government or they will lose in November 2008, a veteran Republican leader said on Friday.

"If you don't represent real change, you just gave away the 2008 election," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994 and now is flirting with a White House run.

Gingrich cited the Iraq war, the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago and the inability to control U.S. borders and illegal immigration as evidence of a need for a complete overhaul of the U.S. system of governing.

"Now that may or may not make the White House happy. But I think that's the whole point about making a clean break," Gingrich told a group of reporters over breakfast.

He added: "I believe for any Republican to win in 2008 they have to ... offer a dramatic, bold change. If we nominate somebody who has not done that, they get to be the nominee but there is very, very little likelihood that they can win."

Gingrich echoed the view of many political analysts who believe voters are looking for a big change in 2008 and that Democrats hold a natural advantage after eight years with Bush in the White House.

While Gingrich, who has been considering a late entry into the Republican presidential race, said "the odds are very high that I won't run," he did not completely rule it out.

He said he would not make a final decision before September 29, depending on whether he feels a candidate from the current Republican group can defeat the Democratic nominee and whether he would be able to raise at least $30 million for a race.

But Gingrich, who represented Georgia for 20 years, indicated that a push he is making for a grass-roots change in how the country is governed, with less partisanship, would take at least five years to develop into a coherent alternative to the current system.

DOES NOT TARGET BUSH

Gingrich said he did not intend to specifically target Bush, just that he is the current leader of a government that has taken decades to become overly bureaucratic and ineffective.

"This isn't about Bush," he said, calling the president "a very decent man" who "believes very deeply in what he is doing."

Still, he took issue with a number of Bush's policies, and questioned why Bush felt the need to make an address to the country on Iraq on Thursday night, after the top U.S. officials in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, had already laid out the situation earlier in the week.

"The right two people to talk about Iraq were Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker," said Gingrich.

On Iraq, Gingrich said that "to stay the course I think in the long run is not a very sound strategy," and that the United States should work quickly to stop Iran's "proxy war" against U.S. troops in Iraq.

He said this should be done in a non-violent way, such as through diplomatic sanctions, economic pressure and covert action and "if necessary with indirect military application."

Washington accuses Iran of exporting improvised bombs to Iraqi militants that are killing Americans, a charge Tehran denies.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1446262920070914?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

[NYer]

This from a man who served his wife with divorce papers as she lay in a hospital bed, being treated for cancer.

[spinaway]

This from a man who served his wife with divorce papers as she lay in a hospital bed, being treated for cancer.



While he was being fellated by a male aide. Don't forget that part!

[NYer]

Alan Greenspan (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118978549183327730.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news) in ""The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," delivers more than a few body blows to Bush.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070915/capt.8300f76492724fd6b1cf7e3ccdff4f3f.greenspan_bo ok_wx106.jpg

Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a "lifelong libertarian Republican," writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake."

The biggest blow, however, maybe This. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece)

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.

Stay tuned ...

[The 801]

Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil
Graham Paterson

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.


Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2461214.ece

Now anyone who is surprised by this please raise your hand......

[NYer]

Please see #599 ...

Meanwhile, This (http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2682) is truly disturbing.

[NYer]

Gates Resonds. (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1618999120070916?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&pageNumber=2)

Personally, calling Greenspan a "Senile, Troofer Moron" ala Rantburg would have been far more interesting.

Here's my fave Greenspan quote:

“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said”

[NYer]

Greenspan now Clarifying. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil17sep17,1,1292645.story?track=rss&ctrack=7&cset=true)

Greenspan clarified his remarks in an interview with the Washington Post, telling the newspaper that although securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with a case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said. "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?,' I would say it was essential."

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive."

[The 801]

Bush ally's Kurdish oil deal proves the surge has failed
By Paul Krugman
Article Launched: 09/16/2007 01:49:27 AM PDT

To understand what's really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."

Near the top of his list was the promise that "to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis."

There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: Oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq's GDP and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What's particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month, the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week, a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with Hunt Oil of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.

Now here's the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. More than that, Hunt is a member of the President'sForeign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn't all that surprising, given this administration's history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Bush declared Iran a member of the "axis of evil."

No, what's interesting about this deal is the fact that Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's essentially betting that the Iraqi government - which hasn't met a single one of the major benchmarks Bush laid out in January - won't get its act together. Indeed, he's effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration - maybe even Bush himself - know this, too.

After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures, moving goal posts, and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible, instead of just a few.

All in all, Bush's actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you'd expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

In fact, that's my interpretation of something that startled many people: Bush's decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel.

Here's how I see it: At this point, Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq - and prevent the country's breakup from turning into a regional war - will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.

PAUL KRUGMAN is a New York Times columnist.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_6910364

looks like the insiders in the whitehouse know the cause is lost too. Only they age going to make money from it.

And I will bet you a donut that bush will end up on some board of directors at this company. Anybody wanna make a bet?
801

[NYer]

Larry Kudlow's made a whole career out of debunking Paul Krugman.

Meanwhile, Cutler feels Krugman's leap a bridge too far. (http://profcutler.com/wordpress_blog/?p=334)

Krugman reaches for the big interpretation:

By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January — won’t get its act together. Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

That would put “partition” question back in play.

I am not so sure.

Does Bush have ties to Hunt? Sure. But is Hunt the best Bush can do? He and Cheney don’t have ties to Big Oil? Of course they do. If the “smart money” is on the break-up of Iraq, where are the deals between the oil majors and the Kurdish Regional Government?

I think there is a different game being played here.

The central point of the Hunt affair is not to do the deal with the Kurds but to use the threat of such a deal to leverage concessions from political players in Baghdad who are holding up passage of the national hydrocarbons law.

Stay tuned ...

[The 801]

Waxman: State Dept. Official Thwarted Probes

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 18, 2007; 1:14 PM

Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, has repeatedly thwarted investigations and censored reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged today in a 13-page letter.

The letter, signed by committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and released by the committee today, said the allegations were based on the testimony of seven current and former officials on Krongard's staff, including two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used, and private e-mail exchanges obtained by the committee. The letter said the allegations were not limited to a single unit or project, but concerned all three major divisions of Krongard's office -- investigations, audits and inspections.

Waxman demanded documents and testimony for a hearing next month into Krongard's conduct. A copy of the letter also was sent to the committee's ranking minority member, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.).

Krongard's office said he is traveling today and would not have any immediate comment.

The inspectors general of government departments and agencies are intended to be independent and objective investigators of fraud and waste. Sometimes, Foreign Service officers are appointed as IG at State, but Krongard, who was confirmed by the Senate in May 2005, was not a Foreign Service officer. He previously worked for an international law firm and had been general counsel for Deloitte & Touche in the mid-1990s.

The letter charged that Krongard "interfered with ongoing investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment." It said that "your strong affinity with State Department leadership and your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies."

Waxman accused Krongard of refusing to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts; preventing his investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department probe into waste and fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq; using "highly irregular" procedures to personally exonerate the embassy's prime contractor of labor abuses; interfering in the probe of a close friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove; censoring reports on embassies to prevent full disclosure to Congress; and refusing to publish critical audits of State's financial statements.

Among the e-mails obtained by the committee are exchanges between staff members as they discuss Krongard's decision not to cooperate with the Justice Department on the embassy probe. "Wow, as we all [k]now that is not the normal and proper procedure," an investigator wrote to Assistant IG John A. DeDona. DeDona forwarded the e-mail to the Deputy IG, William E. Todd, saying, "I have always viewed myself as a loyal soldier but hopefully you sense my frustration in my voicemail yesterday."

Todd wrote back: "I know you are very frustrated. John, you need to convey to the troops the truth, the IG told us both Tuesday to stand down on this and not assist, that needs to be the message."

DeDona responded: "Unfortunately, under the current regime, the view within INV [the office of investigations] is to keep working the BS cases within the beltway, and let us not rock the boat with more significant investigations."

The letter also said that Krongard's actions have resulted in a "dysfunctional office environment in which you routinely berate and belittle personnel, show contempt for the abilities of career government professionals and cause the staff to fear coming to work." The letter said high personnel turnover has left the office with many senior-level vacancies and only seven of 27 investigator positions filled.

According to the letter, the committee subpoenaed Krongard's work product for a report he personally drafted, which exonerated the embassy's contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co. of sending workers to Iraq under false pretenses. The letter said Krongard has produced a total of only six pages of handwritten notes showing he had interviewed six foreign workers.

"Contrary to established investigative procedures, you allowed the subject of the investigation, First Kuwaiti, to select the employees you interviewed," the letter said, adding that the interview notes did not show how thoroughly each employee was interviewed.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/18/AR2007091800799.html


Good thing these IG's are not political appointments. Oh, you say they are?

[NYer]

Apparently, the Bush Administration isn't the only one Waxman has agreed to probe. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/5784.html)

[The 801]

CEOs, Bush Rangers Rebuff Republicans on War, Widening Deficit

Michael Janofsky Fri Sep 21, 12:16 AM ET

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Dozens of corporate executives who backed President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004, including some of his top fund-raisers, are now helping Democrats running for president.

John Mack, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., and Terry Semel, chairman of Yahoo! Inc., are among some 60 executives writing checks to Democrats such as Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, a review of U.S. Federal Election Commission records shows.

While the vast majority of business leaders still back Republicans for 2008, the stature of some of those donating to Democrats suggests that support may be eroding, seven years into the Bush presidency. Some executives expressed concern over Republican positions on issues ranging from the war in Iraq and stem-cell research to global warming and the fiscal deficit.

The shift in political-spending patterns is ``very unusual,'' says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates campaign-finance reform.

``Normally, if you have dissatisfaction with the administration, you figure out who in your own party you'll support in the next election,'' he says. ``You don't look at other parties.''

The Democratic victory in last November's congressional elections may have also sparked greater interest in the party. ``Money tends to follow people who have power,'' Wertheimer says.

`Strong Asset'

Bush sounded unconcerned yesterday that he might adversely affect Republican chances next year. Asked at a White House news conference if he were ``an asset or liability'' to members of his party seeking election, he replied, ``Strong asset.''

Nonetheless, some of his strongest supporters are wavering -- or at least hedging their bets.

Sig Rogich, president of Rogich Communications Group in Las Vegas, raised at least $200,000 for Bush in 2004, earning the campaign's designation of ``Ranger.'' This year, Rogich gave $2,300 to Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, and $4,600 to Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican, according to the most recent election records, which go through June 30.

``Conservatives have two hard-core beliefs,'' says Rogich. ``They favor lower taxes and lower spending.'' Federal spending is ``the highest in the history of the nation,'' he says.

Morgan Stanley's Mack, another of Bush's Rangers, held a fund-raiser for Clinton, a New York senator, in July.

`Beyond Party Labels'

``When it comes to supporting a political candidate, I have always looked beyond party labels to the person I felt was best for the job and most able to lead the country forward,'' Mack wrote to executives of the New York-based company in June, explaining his choice. ``I personally believe that person is Hillary Clinton.''

Murdoch, who donated $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004, has given Clinton $2,300. Semel of Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo!, who gave $2,000 to Bush in 2004 and $50,000 to the Republican National Committee, has given the maximum, $4,600, to Clinton and $2,300 to Obama.

The Republican National Committee says executives will continue to overwhelmingly back the party, citing its candidates' stances on issues such as cutting taxes and curbing lawsuits.

``We fully expect our nominee to have the resources to run a successful campaign,'' says Dan Ronayne, a spokesman for the RNC.

Outdoing Republicans

Through the latest FEC reporting period, the three leading Democrats -- Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards -- out-raised the three leading Republicans -- former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and McCain, $145.2 million to $103.3 million.

Spokesmen for Romney and the latest Republican to enter the field, former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, say they're also confident of their corporate backing.

``We're very happy with the level of giving from individuals in the private sector,'' says Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. Among executives who have donated to Romney are Richard Farmer, chairman of Cintas Corp. of Cincinnati, the largest U.S. uniform supplier, and Ray Irani, chairman of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., the fourth-largest U.S. oil company.

Spokesmen for Giuliani and McCain didn't return calls seeking comment.

Personal Choices

Mack, Murdoch and Semel declined to discuss their political choices. Tom Nides, chief administrative officer for Morgan Stanley, agreed to read aloud parts of Mack's letter.

Most of the executives declined requests to comment through spokesmen, saying the donations reflect personal choices.

Jeffrey Volk, a managing director at Citigroup in New York, was an exception. He says he grew disenchanted with Republicans after the federal government failed to provide more help to the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He says he remains a Republican, although he's supporting Clinton.

``It was absolutely inconceivable to me that after 9/11 another catastrophe could hit a major American city, and the United States government was not prepared,'' he says.

John Canning, a deputy board chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, expressed similar misgivings.

A Bush Pioneer in 2004 who has given Obama $2,300, he described the Republican Party in an April interview as ``neanderthal'' for its positions on stem-cell research and global warming. He says he liked Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq and his approach to reducing greenhouse gases.

Not On `Same Page'

``I no longer find myself on the same page,'' he says of Republicans.

The Bush administration opposes more federal spending on human embryonic stem-cell research. On global warming, the administration has been criticized by scientists for a slow response to evidence of climate change.

Elaine Wynn, who has donated to Republicans in previous cycles along with her husband, Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd. in Las Vegas, is serving as a member of the Obama campaign ``steering committee'' in Nevada.

Wynn, whose husband is a trustee of former President George H.W. Bush's presidential library, says she grew weary of two decades of leadership under two President Bushes and President Bill Clinton, with the possibility of another Clinton ahead.

`Two Families'

``That's a big chunk of my life overseen by two families,'' she says. ``I'd like to think this is a broad country with more people to weigh in.''

She says she remains a Republican yet was attracted to Obama more by seeing young adults drawn to him, rather than any disenchantment with the current president.

``I jumped on their bandwagon,'' she says.

Gerald Keim, associate dean of MBA programs at Arizona State University who has written extensively on corporate political activity, says executives would have little to gain by discussing their political preferences because shareholders and customers might not hold the same views.

``Most of this is very pragmatic,'' Keim says. ``This is about having relationships so an executive can have a voice heard on issues that affect the current or future operations of their companies.''

Number Will Grow

Keim says the number of Republican business leaders supporting Democrats will ``absolutely grow as it becomes clear who the Democrat nominee is.''

Among others who have already given are Richard Kelly of Xcel Energy Inc. of Minneapolis, who donated $1,000 to Bush last time and has given $2,000 to Richardson. Raymond Mason of Legg Mason Inc. in Baltimore gave Bush $2,000 in the last cycle and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, $2,300 this cycle.

Other former Rangers and Pioneers helping Democrats are Lance Weaver, vice chairman of FIA Card Services, who gave $4,600 to Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, and Robert Congel, senior managing director of Pyramid Cos., who gave Clinton $4,600. Neither responded to requests for an interview.

Richard Notebaert, who recently retired as CEO of Denver- based Qwest Communications International Inc., contributed $25,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004 and thousands more to candidates in both parties. This cycle, he has given Richardson and McCain $2,300 each.

He called Richardson ``a good man'' and McCain ``an outstanding individual'' but says it was still too early to choose sides.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Janofsky in Los Angeles at mjanofsky@bloomberg.net

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070921/pl_bloomberg/afar_kazjeds_1

[The 801]

Cheney In '92: "How Many Additional American Lives Is Saddam Worth...Not Very Damn Many"


A recently-unearthed video from 1992 shows Vice President Dick Cheney predicting the mess that occupying Iraq would create:

If you get into the business of committing U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq, to occupy the place, my guess is I'd probably still have people there today instead of having been able to bring them home...The bottom line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: not very damn many.

Read more from Think Progress.

Watch the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT7Ik_X1HU0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/28/cheney-in-92-how-many-_n_66305.html

Your gonna laugh and laugh and laugh at this clip. Cheney explains why a war with Iraq would be a quagmire. It's a riot.

[al-Canine]

Another shameful example of the ineptitude and corruption in the administration of the war in Iraq... State Department is complicit

Report Depicts Recklessness at Blackwater

By DAVID STOUT and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — Guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot innocent Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department, a report to a Congressional committee said today.

The report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, depicts the security contractor as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets.

In one incident, the State Department and Blackwater agreed to pay $15,000 to the family of a man killed by “a drunken Blackwater contractor,” the report said. As a State Department official wrote, “We would like to help them resolve this so we can continue with our protective mission.”

The report was compiled by the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Blackwater activities on Tuesday. That hearing is sure to be contentious now that the chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and other members have the staff’s findings to study.

A Blackwater spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell, had no immediate comment. “We look forward to setting the record straight,” she told The Associated Press. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder and chairman, is to testify before Mr. Waxman’s panel. The State Department said several of its senior officials would address the issues in the report at the hearing on Tuesday.

The report is likely to raise questions not only about the wisdom of employing private security forces in Iraq, but also about the basic American mission in the country.

Blackwater guards have engaged in nearly 200 incidents of gunfire in Iraq since 2005, and in the vast majority of cases Blackwater people fired their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the injured, the report found.

The shootings logged by Blackwater were more than those by the other two private military contractors combined, the committee found. Blackwater has more than twice the number of contractors than the other two combined. The other contractors are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

“Blackwater also has the highest incidence of shooting first, although all three companies shoot first in more than half of all escalation-of-forces incidents,” the staff report said.

And the State Department’s own documents “raise serious questions” about how department officials responded to reports of Blackwater killings of Iraqis, the report said.

“There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation,” the committee staff wrote.

Moreover, contrary to the terms of its contract, Blackwater sometimes engaged in offensive operations with the American military, instead of confining itself to its protective mission, the staff found.

The report also raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of United States troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day per guard, “equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier,” the report said.

The incident involving “a drunken Blackwater contractor” arose when the employee killed a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president, Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, in December 2006. State Department officials allowed Blackwater to take the shooter out of Iraq less than 36 hours later.

Then the State Department charge d’affaires recommended that Blackwater make “a sizable payment” and an “apology” in an effort to “avoid this whole thing becoming even worse,” the report went on. The State Department official suggested a $250,000 payment to the guard’s family, but the department’s Diplomatic Security Service said that was too much and could cause Iraqis to “try to get killed.” In the end, $15,000 was agreed upon. The report adds credence to complaints from Iraqi officials, American military officers and Blackwater’s competitors that company guards have adopted an aggressive, trigger-happy approach and displayed disregard for Iraqi life.

In late March 2004, four Americans working for Blackwater were ambushed and killed, and an enraged mob then jubilantly dragged the burned bodies through the streets of downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

The Congressional report, based on 437 internal Blackwater incident reports as well as internal State Department correspondence, says that that Blackwater’s use of force “is frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage.” It notes that Blackwater’s contract authorizes it to use lethal force only to prevent “imminent and grave danger” to themselves or the people they are paid to protect.

“In practice, however,” the report says, “the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are pre-emptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire.” Among the incidents cited in the report:

On Oct. 24, 2005, Blackwater guards fired on a car that failed to heed a warning to stop. In the gunfire, a civilian bystander was hit in the head with a bullet, but Blackwater personnel did not stop. Blackwater officials reported the incident as a “probable killing” but there is no evidence the company offered compensation to the victim’s family.

On June 25, 2005, a Blackwater team in Hillah fatally shot an Iraqi man, a father of six, in the chest. The victim’s family complained to the State Department, which said in an internal report that the Blackwater gunmen initially failed to report the killing and tried to cover it up.

On Sept. 24, 2006, a Blackwater convoy with four vehicles was driving the wrong way on a road in Hillah when a red Opel failed to get out of the way. The Opel skidded into one of the Blackwater vehicles, disabling it. The Opel then hit a telephone pole and burst into flames. The Blackwater team scooped up its people and equipment from the disabled vehicle and fled the scene without attempting to help the occupants of the burning car.

On Nov. 28, 2005, a Blackwater motorcade traveling to and from the Iraqi oil ministry collided with 18 different vehicles. According to an internal Blackwater report of the incident, the statements from employees were “invalid, inaccurate, and at best, dishonest.” Two Blackwater employees were dismissed, but there was no other apparent action taken as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/washington/01cnd-blackwater.html?

[The 801]

Remember Al Canine,
Your American values are best protected by immunity. Right?

[The 801]

Here's a special treat for NYer,

Jimmy Carter calls Cheney a "disaster" for U.S
Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:42pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a "disaster" for the country and a "militant" who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

Asked to comment on Carter's remarks, Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the Republican vice president, said, "We're not going to engage in this type of rhetoric."

Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the 2002 Nobel Peace prize for his charitable work, is a strong critic of the Iraq war and has often been outspoken in his criticism of President George W. Bush.

In a newspaper interview in May, Carter called the Bush administration the "worst in history" in international relations.

Carter did have kind words in the BBC interview for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"I'm filled with admiration for Condoleezza Rice in standing up to (Cheney) which she did even when she was in the White House under President George W. Bush," Carter said, referring to Rice's former role as White House national security adviser.

"Now secretary of state, her influence is obviously greater than it was then and I hope she prevails," Carter added.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1026419120071010?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true

[NYer]

Dhimmi Carter LOL. Thanks for a much needed laugh. :add09:

[NYer]

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks Dhimmi Carter was the worst president ever. (http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2007/10/mr-peanut-cheney-disaster-and-militant.html)

http://bp0.blogger.com/_9Bx0L3n3uAo/Rw1qk7O-1QI/AAAAAAAAAxI/8-4JGBkmFTQ/s320/0eedbcd7-e1f1-4dd2-aa98-e162a4813e91_ms.jpeg

[The 801]

Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is ‘a Nightmare’


WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”


Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current addition of American forces as a “desperate” move that would not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va.

He is the most senior war commander of a string of retired officers who have harshly criticized the administration’s conduct of the war. While much of the previous condemnation has been focused on the role of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Sanchez’s was an unusually broad attack on the overall course of the war.

But his own role as commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal leaves him vulnerable to criticism that he is shifting the blame from himself to the administration that ultimately replaced him and declined to nominate him for a fourth star, forcing his retirement.

Though he was cleared of wrongdoing in the abuses after an inquiry by the Army’s inspector general, General Sanchez became a symbol — with civilian officials like L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority — of ineffective American leadership early in the occupation.

General Sanchez said he was convinced that the American effort in Iraq was failing the day after he took command, in June 2003. Asked why he waited until nearly a year after his retirement to voice his concerns publicly, he responded that it was not the place of active-duty officers to challenge lawful orders from the civilian authorities.

General Sanchez, who is said to be considering writing a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.

“There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

White House officials would not comment directly on General Sanchez’s remarks. “We appreciate his service to the country,” said Kate Starr, a White House spokeswoman.

She noted that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the current top commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad, said in their testimony to Congress last month that “there’s more work to be done, but progress is being made in Iraq. And that’s what we’re focused on now.”

General Sanchez has been criticized by some current and retired officers for failing to recognize the growing insurgency in Iraq during his year in command and for failing to put together a plan to unify the disparate military effort, a task that was finally carried out when his successor, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., took over in mid-2004.

General Sanchez included the military and himself among those who made mistakes in Iraq, citing a failure by top commanders to insist on a better post-invasion stabilization plan. He offered a tepid compliment to General Petraeus. The general, he said, could use American troops to gain time in Iraq but could not achieve lasting results.

Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, criticized General Sanchez for implying in his speech that the current military strategy of relying on additional troops and on protecting the Iraqi people is little different than the strategy employed when he was in command.

Noting that calls by members of Congress for troops were rebuffed by the Bush administration in 2003, Mr. O’Hanlon said, “Sanchez was one of the top military people who condoned that, if not directly, then by his silence.”

General Sanchez’s main criticism was leveled at the Bush administration, which he said failed to mobilize the entire United States government, not just the military, to contribute meaningfully to reconstructing and stabilizing Iraq.

“National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone,” he said. “Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.”

Asked after his remarks what strategy he favored, General Sanchez ticked off a series of steps—from promoting reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sectarian factions to building effective Iraqi army and police units — that closely paralleled the list of tasks frequently cited by the Bush administration as the pillars of the current strategy.

General Sanchez, now a Pentagon consultant who trains active-duty generals, said the administration’s biggest failure had been its lack of a detailed strategy for achieving those steps and “synchronizing” the military and civilian contributions.

“The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” he said.

His talk on Friday at the annual convention of the Military Reporters and Editors Association was not the first time that General Sanchez has been critical of the administration.

He said in an interview in June with Agence France-Presse that the best the United States could achieve in Iraq would be stalemate. And he drew a standing ovation at a gathering of veterans last month when he argued that the country’s problems in Iraq were the result of a “crisis in national political leadership.”

Though General Sanchez remained on active duty after leaving Iraq in 2004, he never received a fourth star, in part because, though he was popular with Mr. Rumsfeld, the Bush administration feared that his nomination hearings in the Senate would turn into a bitter partisan fight and a public replay of the details of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/washington/13general.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

[NYer]

Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is ‘a Nightmare’

Bruce Kesler and others report on what the NY Slimes chose to leave out (http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/003494.html) of their reportage on Gen. Sanchez' speech.

Sanchez opened by criticizing the U.S. news media, saying he was unfairly labeled "a liar" and "a torturer" because of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and he alleged that the media have lost their sense of ethics. He said that members of the media blow stories out of proportion and are unwilling to correct mistakes, and that the "media environment is doing a great disservice to the nation."

Wait ... there's more from Gen. Sanchez:

FOR SOME, IT SEEMS THAT AS LONG AS YOU GET A FRONT PAGE STORY THERE IS LITTLE OR NO REGARD FOR THE "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" YOU WILL CAUSE. PERSONAL REPUTATIONS HAVE NO VALUE AND YOU REPORT WITH TOTAL IMPUNITY AND ARE RARELY HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR UNETHICAL CONDUCT.

From Bill Roggio: (http://www.longwarjournal.org/)

Wow…I can see why they [MSM] ignore that. Nice job Bruce.

While I strongly disagree with Sanchez’ current assessment of Iraq, his criticism of the media is spot on. I’ve seen it at work in the field – both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sanchez' criticism of the media is not the only thing the Slimes failed to emphasize, as Ed Morrisey (http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/) points out:

America has no choice but to continue our efforts in Iraq. A precipitous withdrawal will unquestionably lead to chaos that would endanger the stability of the greater Middle East. If this occurs it would have significant adverse effects on the international community. Coalition and American force presence will be required at some level for the foreseeable future. Given the lack of a grand strategy we must move rapidly to minimize that force presence and allow the Iraqis maximum ability to exercise their soveriegnty in achieving a solution.

You get the idea. Apparently, Bill Keller and the Slimes thought this was not fit to print.

They told me that if George Bush were re-elected in 2004, the MSM would be heavily censored. And they were right.

[The 801]

US agency apologizes for news conference on fires
Fri Oct 26, 2007 3:35pm EDT

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California's wildfires that no news organizations attended.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.

"We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. "Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received."

No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident "inexcusable and offensive to the secretary."

"We have made it clear that stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated," spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. She said the department was looking at the possibility of reprimanding those responsible.

The agency had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.

But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"

According to Friday's Post account, which Walker confirmed, Johnson replied that he was "very happy with FEMA's response so far."

He also said the agency had the benefit of "good leadership" and other factors, "none of which were present at Katrina." Chertoff was head of the Homeland Security Department during Katrina.

FEMA's administrator during Katrina, Michael Brown, resigned amid widespread criticism over his handling of the disaster, despite U.S. President George W. Bush's initial declaration that he was doing a "heck of a job."

E-mails between Brown and his colleagues over the course of the storm revealed a preoccupation with his media image, including his declaration, "I am a fashion god."

FEMA is reviewing its press procedures and will make changes to ensure they are "straightforward and transparent," Johnson said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26366100

Why would a government agency think they could get away with this? Is it because all of the administrations public appearances are orchestrated, because they really can't take real questions? Its like Cheney appearing on Limbaugh, a complete dumbshow, as they used to say in the navy.

Usually someone would have lost their job over this, but to this administration, well, it's OK if you get caught lying to the public. Just don't admit it.

[The 801]

This is an editorial from the Boston Globe

Now with 50 percent less truth

October 29, 2007

WHEN THE top public health official of the United States addressed the Senate last Tuesday on the health impact of global warming in this country, the senators - and the public - had a right to expect Julie Gerberding's full, unvarnished thoughts on this important issue. That's not what they got. In another case of the White House censoring what the public learns about climate change, the administration cut her testimony in half.

As a result, Gerberding, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not tell senators, as she had planned to, that "the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed." Nor did the senators learn that areas in the northern part of the country "will likely bear the brunt of increases in ground-level ozone and associated airborne pollutants. Populations in Midwestern and Northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity, and duration."

All of that information was included in the six pages stricken from Gerberding's original draft of 12 pages. The White House says it made the deletions because the information "didn't align" with a report this year from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In response, Senator Barbara Boxer of California released a comparison of the UN report and phrases stricken from the Gerberding draft. Both raise the threat of heat stress on vulnerable populations, increased respiratory diseases, and more waterborne infectious diseases.

This is not the first time the White House has muzzled government researchers who have raised concerns about global warming or pointed the way to addressing it. After NASA scientist James E. Hansen said in 2005 that greenhouse gas emissions were creating "a different planet," his superiors tried to control his appearances and limit his interviews.

In 2002, the White House made the Environmental Protection Agency drop a chapter on the risks of climate change from an annual EPA report that for six years had included such information. In 2003, the EPA did its best to bury an analysis by staff members showing that a proposal to cap carbon dioxide emissions by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman would not seriously damage the economy.

Recently, the Bush administration has been more willing to acknowledge the role of manmade emissions in the warming of the planet, while still shrinking from mandatory actions to deal with the problem. By watering down the views of a top official like Gerberding, the White House hopes to reduce pressure in the public and Congress for a carbon cap or tax that would force limits on emissions. But this is a case of what we don't know can hurt us. The Senate should bring Gerberding back to give her full testimony.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/10/29/now_with_50_percent_less_truth/

[NYer]

Now THIS (http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20071028/119359992000.html) is truly disturbing.

[The 801]

This is listed because the administration allowed this to happen:

State Dept. inspector-general bows out of Blackwater probe


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department's inspector-general announced Wednesday he would recuse himself from decisions involving security contractor Blackwater, after admitting his brother serves as an adviser to the company..

Howard Krongard already was under scrutiny by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, led by California Democrat Henry Waxman.

Waxman said Krongard's oversight of construction of the nearly $600 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, was conducted with "reckless incompetence," and that he refused to pursue allegations of fraud and labor trafficking by contractor First Kuwaiti.

Republicans on the committee accused the Democratic majority of conducting a "drive-by" investigation.

During a hearing Wednesday morning, Krongard first denied that his brother had any role with Blackwater -- but reversed himself after being confronted with evidence that his brother had attended a Blackwater advisory board meeting this week.

"I had not been aware of that, and I want to state on the record right now that I hereby recuse myself from any matters having to do with Blackwater," Krongard told the committee after calling his brother during the break.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/14/blackwater.state/


You gotta love this stuff, it just makes you glad you pay your taxes...

[NYer]

On a related matter: Blackwater guard gives his account (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGy5hnvkFkHnMwsZFRmrBqEII4Qw) of Iraq shootout.

[The 801]

From that Right wing, my way news. They must be running out of steam or something to post this...

Former Aide Blames Bush for Leak Deceit

Nov 20, 8:19 PM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

Bush's chief of staff at the time was Andrew Card.

The excerpt, posted on the Web site of publisher PublicAffairs, renews questions about what went on in the West Wing and how much Bush and Cheney knew about the leak. For years, it was McClellan's job to field - and often duck - those types of questions.

Now that he's spurring them, answers are equally hard to come by.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn't clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt. "The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information," she said.

McClellan turned down interview requests Tuesday.

Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the leak was retribution for his public criticism of the Iraq war. The accusation dogged the administration and made Plame a cause celebre among many Democrats.

McClellan's book, "What Happened," isn't due out until April, and the excerpt released Monday was merely a teaser. It doesn't get into detail about how Bush and Cheney were involved or reveal what happened behind the scenes.

In the fall of 2003, after authorities began investigating the leak, McClellan told reporters that he'd personally spoken to Rove, who was Bush's top political adviser, and Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff.

"They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved," McClellan said at the time.

Both men, however, were involved. Rove was one of the original sources for the newspaper column that identified Plame. Libby also spoke to reporters about the CIA officer and was convicted of lying about those discussions. He is the only person to be charged in the case.

Since that news conference, however, the official White House stance has shifted and it has been difficult to get a clear picture of what happened behind closed doors around the time of the leak.

McClellan's flat denials gave way to a steady drumbeat of "no comment." And Bush's original pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak became a promise to fire anyone who "committed a crime."

In a CNN interview earlier this year, McClellan made no suggestion that Bush knew either Libby or Rove was involved in the leak. McClellan said his statements to reporters were what he and the president "believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given."

Bush most recently addressed the issue in July after commuting Libby's 30-month prison term. He acknowledged that some in the White House were involved in the leak. Then, after repeatedly declining to discuss the ongoing investigation, he said the case was closed and it was time to move on.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071121/D8T1OGD81.html

[NYer]

I nominate Scott McClellan for the worst White House Press Secretary ever. Mr. McClellan knew more than Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Prosecutor with unlimited subpoena powers. Imagine that ...

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, 801.

[NYer]

Update: McClellan doesn't believe Bush lied. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21917188/) That won't stop the Chris Matthews rants, however. I'm still fascinated that Novak's real source, Richard Armitage, wasn't pursued in this case.

[The 801]

McClelland didn't lie. The article is an artful sophistry to appease everyone. This is the fundimental of the bush administration, in what I call bushit. It is the dissection of statement to the point of meaninglessness. Here is a prime example thereof.

Next on our list of fine bush govenance is this beauty:

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request
Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007; A01

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.

The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its "loopt" service even sends an alert when a friend is near, "putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town."

With Verizon's Chaperone service, parents can set up a "geofence" around, say, a few city blocks and receive an automatic text message if their child, holding the cellphone, travels outside that area.

"Most people don't realize it, but they're carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air."

In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker's phone location by using the carrier's E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent's affidavit failed to focus on "specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places."

Owsley decided to publish his opinion, which explained that the agent failed to provide "sufficient specific information to support the assertion" that the phone was being used in "criminal" activity. Instead, Owsley wrote, the agent simply alleged that the subject trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. The agent stated that the DEA had " 'identified' or 'determined' certain matters," Owsley wrote, but "these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency."

Instead of seeking warrants based on probable cause, some federal prosecutors are applying for orders based on a standard lower than probable cause derived from two statutes: the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Statute, according to judges and industry lawyers. The orders are typically issued by magistrate judges in U.S. district courts, who often handle applications for search warrants.

In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing "specific and articulable facts" showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation," said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.

Another magistrate judge, who has denied about a dozen such requests in the past six months, said some agents attach affidavits to their applications that merely assert that the evidence offered is "consistent with the probable cause standard" of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The judge spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously 'ping' wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target," wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA -- the Wireless Association, in a July comment to the Federal Communications Commission. He said the "lack of a consistent legal standard for tracking a user's location has made it difficult for carriers to comply" with law enforcement agencies' demands.

Gidari, who also represents CTIA, said he has never seen such a request that was based on probable cause.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said field attorneys should follow the department's policy. "We strongly recommend that prosecutors in the field obtain a warrant based on probable cause" to get location data "in a private area not accessible to the public," he said. "When we become aware of situations where this has not occurred, we contact the field office and discuss the matter."

The phone data can home in on a target to within about 30 feet, experts said.

Federal agents used exact real-time data in October 2006 to track a serial killer in Florida who was linked to at least six murders in four states, including that of a University of Virginia graduate student, whose body was found along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The killer died in a police shooting in Florida as he was attempting to flee.

"Law enforcement has absolutely no interest in tracking the locations of law-abiding citizens. None whatsoever," Boyd said. "What we're doing is going through the courts to lawfully obtain data that will help us locate criminal targets, sometimes in cases where lives are literally hanging in the balance, such as a child abduction or serial murderer on the loose."

In many cases, orders are being issued for cell-tower site data, which are less precise than the data derived from E911 signals. While the E911 technology could possibly tell officers what building a suspect was in, cell-tower site data give an area that could range from about three to 300 square miles.

Since 2005, federal magistrate judges in at least 17 cases have denied federal requests for the less-precise cellphone tracking data absent a demonstration of probable cause that a crime is being committed. Some went out of their way to issue published opinions in these otherwise sealed cases.

"Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns especially when the phone is in a house or other place where privacy is reasonably expected," said Judge Stephen William Smith of the Southern District of Texas, whose 2005 opinion on the matter was among the first published.

But judges in a majority of districts have ruled otherwise on this issue, Boyd said. Shortly after Smith issued his decision, a magistrate judge in the same district approved a federal request for cell-tower data without requiring probable cause. And in December 2005, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the Southern District of New York, approving a request for cell-site data, wrote that because the government did not install the "tracking device" and the user chose to carry the phone and permit transmission of its information to a carrier, no warrant was needed.

These judges are issuing orders based on the lower standard, requiring a showing of "specific and articulable facts" showing reasonable grounds to believe the data will be "relevant and material" to a criminal investigation.

Boyd said the government believes this standard is sufficient for cell-site data. "This type of location information, which even in the best case only narrows a suspect's location to an area of several city blocks, is routinely generated, used and retained by wireless carriers in the normal course of business," he said.

The trend's secrecy is troubling, privacy advocates said. No government body tracks the number of cellphone location orders sought or obtained. Congressional oversight in this area is lacking, they said. And precise location data will be easier to get if the Federal Communication Commission adopts a Justice Department proposal to make the most detailed GPS data available automatically.

Often, Gidari said, federal agents tell a carrier they need real-time tracking data in an emergency but fail to follow up with the required court approval. Justice Department officials said to the best of their knowledge, agents are obtaining court approval unless the carriersprovide the data voluntarily.

To guard against abuse, Congress should require comprehensive reporting to the court and to Congress about how and how often the emergency authority is used, said John Morris, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201444_pf.html

[NYer]

Well, to be honest, this is NOT warrantless wiretaps. A judge authorized these ... however, the bar was set unbelievably low ... and these searches did NOT involve terrorism.

I'm also concerned about These (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/11/23/150232.shtml) wiretaps.

Finally, back to young Scotty ... Again, Patrick Fitzgerald had unlimited subpoena power. It strains credulity that his investigation would have missed such an obvious misstep. Thankfully, young Scotty was there to save the day ... interestingly, after the fact. Ultimately, the luckiest man in this entire sordid affair is not Bush not Cheney nor Joe Wilson but ... this man. (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/041013_richardArmitage_vmed_3p.widec.jpg)

[The 801]

Bush strategist looks back in sadness

Matthew Dowd helped win the White House. Now he views the administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2007

WIMBERLY, TEXAS -- Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak -- a word he uses -- of his split with President Bush.

Dowd, 46, is one of the nation's leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush's policies -- policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

He began expressing his disillusionment, tentatively at first, at a UC Berkeley conference in January. Since then, he has grown more forceful.

On the administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks: "I asked, 'Why aren't we doing bonds, war bonds? Why aren't we asking the country to do something instead of just . . . go shopping and get back on airplanes?' "

On the White House stand against same-sex marriage: "Why are we having the federal government get involved? . . . Does a thing limiting someone's rights and aimed at a particular constituency belong in the U.S. Constitution?"

On the war in Iraq: "I guess somebody would make the argument, well, the Iraq war was about defending ourselves. But it seems an awfully huge stretch these days to say that."

With a rueful laugh and, at one point, a catch in his throat, Dowd offered a lengthy account of his break with Bush during hours of conversation at his 18-acre ranch in the green Hill Country outside Austin. He puffed a cigar, and then another, as the fading sun glinted off the Blanco River. A CD player cycled through sacred music and country songs.

Dowd is not the first Bush ally to part with the administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill contributed to a book that likened the president at Cabinet meetings to a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people." John J. Dilulio Jr., who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives, left with a shot at "Mayberry Machiavellis." Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who once led U.S. forces in Iraq, accused the administration of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan.

But Dowd was a part of Bush's political inner circle, enjoying a degree of power and intimacy that made his criticism all the more unexpected -- and hurtful to those still close to the president, many of whom are Dowd's friends.

"I care about him as a human being," said Mark McKinnon, a former Dowd business partner who produced Bush's campaign ads and sometimes bicycles with the president. "The problem was not just what he said, but that he never voiced any of those concerns directly to people he was supposed to be advising."

Dowd responded that he shared his feelings with McKinnon and others close to Bush more than once before going public.

In speaking out, Dowd has not only strained personal relationships but raised larger questions about loyalty in the political realm. Is he obliged to stand by his old boss, whose success made Dowd one of the most sought-after consultants in the campaign business? Or does he owe it to the country to openly dissent, even if he didn't do so from the start?

The answer, for Dowd, is simple, even if his life these days is less so. "When you're a public advocate of something in the high-profile way that I was, and all of a sudden it doesn't turn out the way you thought, the counterweight is not to just sit quietly and let it go," Dowd said. "I had to say something in a high-profile way."

His disenchantment with the president built over several years. Dowd went public at a Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor's race; Dowd was both a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee, where he landed after Bush took office, and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection effort. It was a question about the president that set Dowd off and, looking back, liberated him.

"Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we've ever had?" asked a young man. "I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"

Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of the oldest of his three sons, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq. "Now, am I a person who stays up at night thinking about that? Yeah. . . . Do we have hopes and dreams and disappointments? . . . Yes," Dowd said.

But when things don't turn out as hoped "it does not mean that you somehow have to walk down the street in a hair shirt with a sign that says, 'Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,' " he said. "We move on."

Dowd now sees the confrontation as "a gift [that] gave me the opportunity to start expressing things more and more publicly."

In March, he wrote a piece for Texas Monthly magazine suggesting Bush had undercut his "gut-level bond with the American public." Finally, applying torch to bridge in spectacular fashion, Dowd detailed his break with Bush in a front-page interview in the New York Times. No one in the White House was alerted.

"I was definitely disappointed I had to learn from a reporter, and not him, that he was going public," said Dan Bartlett, a former White House counselor and a friend of Dowd's.

In the seven months since, Dowd has spurned book offers and the talk-show circuit, as well as the antiwar movement. He is not comfortable in the role of Bush basher. "I don't hate the guy," he said of the president, who has not spoken with Dowd since he aired his views. "I don't think he's evil or bad. I think he's a good person that didn't accomplish what he set out to do."

Dowd grew up the third of 11 children in an Irish Catholic family in Detroit. His father was an auto executive; his mother taught elementary school before becoming a full-time mom. If not for all those kids, Dowd said, his family might have been upper-middle-class. Instead, there were hand-me-downs and lots of meatless suppers.

His conservative parents shaped his political views. But that changed at Cardinal Newman College, a small liberal arts school in St. Louis. Dowd became a Democrat, albeit one who opposed abortion and heavy taxation. It made for a good fit with conservative Democrats in Texas, where he moved in 1984 to work for Austin's congressman.

Over the next 10 years, Dowd helped elect Democrats throughout Texas and elsewhere, growing close to one in particular, the state's crusty Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. Bullock, in turn, hit it off with Bush after the Republican became governor in 1994. Bullock even crossed party lines to endorse Bush's 1998 reelection.

Soon after that landslide, Dowd was approached by Karl Rove, Bush's top campaign advisor. The two were friendly, having lectured together on politics at the University of Texas. Bush was preparing a presidential run, and Rove wanted help. Dowd was impressed with the way Bush worked with Bullock and other statehouse Democrats. "I thought Washington was so screwed up, so polarized, maybe he'd be the guy who could fix that," Dowd said.

His hopes rose during the 2000 campaign. "We were going to change Washington," Dowd said. "There was kind of a mutual agreement that [Bush] was going to be a different kind of Republican."

At first Bush governed that way, Dowd said, working with Democrats to cut taxes and overhaul education policy. But he believes something changed after Sept. 11, 2001. "There was an imperial feel to it," Dowd said. "The things he did in Texas, he didn't do any of that. . . . We didn't build relationships with Democrats in Congress, and we didn't build them overseas."

When Dowd voiced concerns -- about the failure to ask more of Americans after Sept. 11, about further tax cuts -- he felt ignored. "Karl wanted me to worry about other things," Dowd said. "I'd get a nice pat on the head." Rove had no comment for this article.

The GOP congressional gains in 2002 didn't help, Dowd said. "Increasing Republican majorities in both houses," he said, "became a disincentive for consensus building."

Still, Dowd stuck by the president and managed his reelection campaign because he assumed things would change once Bush was in a second term. It was, he said, like ignoring doubts in hopes of saving a marriage. "You say, 'Well, they got drunk last night but it'll be better next week.' Or, 'They had an affair but they're not really that way.' You talk yourself out of it because you believed, and you want to believe."

His disaffection grew, however, when Bush started his second term with an acrimonious fight over Social Security. Dowd felt the president had the chance -- but not the desire -- to reach out to Democrats.

The years between the 2000 campaign and Bush's reelection had been a whirlwind for Dowd, a time of great professional success and personal upheaval. In September 2002, he and his second wife had twin daughters born prematurely; one died after two months in the hospital. Their marriage began unraveling.

He spent much of 2005 co-writing a book on leadership, "Applebee's America," and thinking. His work advising Schwarzenegger pushed him further from Bush. The governor's bipartisanship, Dowd thought, was a favorable contrast to the president's "my-way-or-the-highway" approach.

The White House, however, was not pleased when Schwarzenegger distanced himself from Bush. After some "fairly heated discussions," Dowd said, he and Rove stopped talking before the midterm election. They have not spoken since. Dowd left his job with the Republican National Committee at the end of last year.

He expresses no regrets for repudiating the president he served, even if the experience seems to have deepened his disappointment in Bush and the ways of Washington. Dowd has taken comfort from strangers who called and sent e-mails "basically saying that it took a lot of courage to say the truth." It is friends who have let him down: "People who called up and said, 'We agree with you, but you should not have said anything until January '09.' "

Dowd had hoped his harsh words would break through to the president and White House. "But it doesn't seem to me less bunkered than it was," Dowd said, with a mirthless chuckle.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, rejected that notion. "I think there's a lot of exchange and interaction," Fratto said. "No one here fails to hear criticisms or concerns, whether it's coming from the media or experts or the public or Capitol Hill. In fact, I would say it's impossible not to."

Dowd said he heard secondhand that Bush was hurt by his criticism. Asked whether he would like to resume their relationship, Dowd paused. "Sure, I'd like to visit with him," he said. "It would be a nice thing to do at some point. But I don't feel a necessity to do it to settle something in myself."

Dowd lives alone on his ranch, amid the tall grass, cedar and live oaks that run to the edge of the Blanco River. It is an exile of his choosing, six miles outside Wimberly, population 4,000. He is, he happily noted, just another local tooling around in a silver Dodge pickup.

His 3,300-square-foot home has a country feel, with antique fixtures, a wraparound porch and knotty wood floors. A frilly bedroom guarded by a life-size stuffed tiger awaits frequent visits from his 5-year-old daughter, Josephine. The house is filled with books, inspirational sayings -- "Happiness often sneaks in a door you did not open" -- and, by a quick count, more than 100 crosses. The Prayer of St. Francis -- "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love" -- is inscribed on a big painting above the fireplace.

Notably absent are pictures of Bush, or any other politician. "I don't define myself by my professional career. How much money I made, who I elected," Dowd said. He may be through with campaigns; but there is plenty of work doing brand consulting for corporate clients, which takes him two to three times a week to Austin, a 50-minute drive.

Faith has always been important to Dowd, a former altar boy who once considered becoming a priest (except for the fact he liked girls too much). But it has become even more important after the discouragement of the last few years. He attends Mass each Sunday, and sometimes during the week. Recently, Dowd took a spiritual journey, including stops in India, Nepal and Israel, to walk in the footsteps of Gandhi, Buddha and Jesus, among others.

"If you really want to know where I'm at, it's understanding now that the people that have had the most profound effect on the world are not elected officials, not people who have held vast kingdoms, but are basically people who walked out their front door and acted right," Dowd said.

Happiness, he believes, requires three things: people, a place and work that feed the soul. He has his children and ranch. Dowd is now trying to figure out the last piece.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-dowd14nov14,0,2579982,full.story?coll=la-tot-topstories

[NYer]

Whatever happened to Little Billy? (http://www.nypost.com/seven/05242007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/bills_ugly_buddy_opedcolumnists_dick_morris__eilee n_mcgann.htm)

EVERY year since he left the White House, former Presi dent Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.

Senate rules don't require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don't come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, InfoUSA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as "more than $1,000" for "non-employee compensation" on Sen. Clinton's financial-disclosure forms. (Her latest Senate disclosure isn't yet public, so we don't yet know if the firm paid him anything last year.)

As best we can determine, this is one of only two companies with whom the ex-president has an ongoing, formal relationship.

As The New York Times reported on Sunday, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The company advertised lists such as: "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" - 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money "Suffering Seniors" - 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease; "Oldies but Goodies" - 500,000 gamblers over age 55. It described one list: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

Internal e-mails show that InfoUSA employees were aware that they were selling this data to firms under investigation for fraud - but kept on selling the information, even as the scammers used the lists to bilk millions from the elderly.

Last week, Hillary Clinton sought and obtained an extension of time to file her financial-disclosure statement for the presidential race. This will tell us more than her Senate statements - she's required to list not just the sources of Bill's income but exactly how much they paid him. While Sen. Clinton offered no reason for the postponement, we can't help suspecting that she hopes to conceal InfoUSA's payments to her husband while the company is under fire.

The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod "Vin" Gupta, InfoUSA's CEO and chairman, is longstanding and deep.

A frequent donor to Bill's campaigns, Gupta stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in the Clinton years. He admits donating $1 million to the Clinton Library and in 1999 gave $2 million for Hillary Clinton's Millennium New Year's Eve bash. He has raised over $200,000 for Hillary's Senate campaigns and given thousands to other Democratic funds.

Gupta's company has also been generous to Clinton causes. It was a sponsor of the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative, and of last summer's Aspen Festival of Ideas, where Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke. It put Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton's longtime money man, on the board of a subsidiary firm, videoyellowpagesusa.com

President Clinton returned some of the favors - he nominated Gupta as consul general of Bermuda and U.S. ambassador to Fiji, but Gupta was never confirmed. In his last days in the White House, Clinton appointed Gupta to the Kennedy Center's board of trustees.

This connection between the Clintons and InfoUSA only underscores the necessity of full disclosure of income sources and amounts by all the presidential candidates and the release of their income tax returns - a step that Sen. Clinton has, thus far, refused to take.

[The 801]

Finally, the truth can be told....

Rove: "Congress Pushed Bush to War in Iraq Prematurely"

You are not going to believe this, well, actually you will... According to Karl Rove (on Charlie Rose), the Bush Administration did not want Congress to vote on the Iraq War resolution in the fall of 2002, because they thought it should not be done within the context of an election. Rove, you see, did not think the war vote should be "political".

Moreover, according to Rove, that "premature vote" led to many of the problems that cropped up in the Iraq War. Had Congress not pushed, he says, Bush could have spent more time assembling a coalition, and provided more time to the inspectors.

If you are like me, you have stopped reading/listening, and are rushing to get your anti-emetic.

It is worth remembering that the Senate in the fall of 2002 was controlled, barely, by Democrats. Get it? George Bush, we are being told, wanted to delay, wanted to hold back, wanted to take the time to build a coalition and let the inspectors finish their job, but that damn Congress just pushed him into it. George Bush, you see, is a careful, prudent, leader, deeply concerned about the consequences of premature.

Get it? If Biden, Clinton, Dodd or Edwards is part of the Democratic ticket, the Republicans will run a campaign charging the Senate Democrats with rushing to judgment, of pushing the poor President to premature...(well, you fill in the blank)....

Not that Iraq is that big of an issue. Rove claims that, if Iraq had been a big issue, that Joe Lieberman, who was pro-war, could not have won in Connecticut, defeating receiving more Democratic, Independent and Republican votes than any of his opponents.

I have purposefully NOT provided the (obvious) answers to his claims because to answer is to give him control of the argument. That's Rove's tactic, and I have written about that many times in these pages.

Instead, this should be used as a trigger to talk about Rove's history of dissembling, how that is reflected in the Bush Administration's entire approach to public policy and public information. Bush, through Rove, should be attacked for trying to escape responsibility and accountability. And, it will help to make some historical references to rulers whose tenure was so dismal that they could not allow historians to provide objective analyses, and thus try to write the history themselves.

As might have been predicted, Rove raises "historical revisionism" to new depths, what may become known as "hysterical Rovisionism."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/rove-congress-pushed-bu_b_74039.html

[NYer]

Re: Senate vote of 11Oct2002
Resolution passed.
Res ipsa loquitur

YEAs ---77

Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bond (R-MO)
Breaux (D-LA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Campbell (R-CO)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Daschle (D-SD)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Edwards (D-NC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Gramm (R-TX)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Helms (R-NC)
Hollings (D-SC)
Hutchinson (R-AR)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Reid (D-NV)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Santorum (R-PA)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-NH)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thompson (R-TN)
Thurmond (R-SC)
Torricelli (D-NJ)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

NAYs ---23

Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chafee (R-RI)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (D-FL)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wellstone (D-MN)
Wyden (D-OR)

[NYer]

Unconscionable. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/12/02/2007-12-02_bushs_proposed_homeland_security_cut_doe.html)

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/12/02/amd_anti-terror-funds.gif

My personal favorite is a $36,000 Homeland Security grant to the Kentucky Office of Charitable Gaming "to prevent terrorists from trying to raise money for their plots at the state's bingo halls."

"The potential there, to me, is huge," John Holiday of the Office of Charitable Gaming was quoted as saying.

Another personal favorite is a $3,000 Homeland Security grant to Converse, Tex., to purchase a "secure trailer" to ferry riding lawn mowers to lawn mower races. The races accompany the local volunteer fire department's annual barbecue fund-raiser.

"Souped-up lawn mowers topping speeds of 70 mph on a 150-foot track," an Internet tour guide reports. "This community truly comes together around slow-cooked barbecue and fast-paced lawn mowers."

And then there is the $7,348 grant to Columbus, Ohio, to buy 11 bulletproof vests for dogs.

"These aren't wooly sweaters we bought them to walk in the park," a Columbus fire official was quoted as saying in defense of the grant. "These are flak vests."

And how about a $3,500 grant to Modoc County in California for "small crate and kennels to hold stray animals"?

When we have many stray animals, they may bite someone in fear or panic," a local humane society official has said.

There is also a $30,000 grant to Madisonville, Tex., for a "customized trailer" to be used at its annual Mushroom Festival. A town official said the trailer would be "a place where people can go if they get overheated or get lost or injure themselves."

Anyone with access to the Internet can check out the result of a $202,000 Homeland Security grant for 80 "downtown surveillance cameras" in Dillingham, Alaska, population 2,400. That equates to one camera for every 30 residents.


Can I get an "Oy Veh?"

[The 801]

I would say "Oy veh" too, but everybody know that this pork really ain't kosher.

[The 801]

White House Obstructing Plame Investigation

December 3, 2007 11:11 AM

The Bush Administration is actively blocking Congress' investigation into the outing of once-covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman.

In a letter sent today to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Waxman notes that "White House objections are preventing Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald from disclosing key information to investigating officials." Among the documents being withheld are interviews taken from White House officers during Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Plame's identity.

"Over the summer, Mr. Fitzgerald agreed to provide relevant documents to the Committee, including records of interviews with senior White House officials. Unfortunately, the White House has been blocking Mr. Fitzgerald from providing key documents to the Committee," Waxman writes to newly appointed Mukasey. "I ask that you personally look into this matter and authorize the production of the documents to the Committee without any further delay."

Waxman's letter provides one of the first tests for Mukasey, who stressed during his confirmation hearings that he would operate independently from White House directive. The letter also provides greater insight into the extent of collaboration between Fitzgerald and the oversight committee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/03/white-house-obstructing-p_n_75088.html

[The 801]

Commentary, thoughtful, but commentary non the less....

Iran NIE highlights Bush White House’s mendacity
Posted December 3rd, 2007 at 4:50 pm

Share This | Spotlight | Permalink

To be sure, the first reaction to the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is simple relief — the Bush administration is less likely to launch a unilateral, pre-emptive military strike against a nuclear program that doesn’t exist.

But then there are the second and third reactions, which are nearly as important in providing context. Matt Yglesias, for example, reminds us that in 2003, Iran reached out to the U.S. in order to strike a sweeping peace deal, which would have led the country to give up on a nuclear program that they then-realized would be too hard to develop. Bush wasn’t interested.

“To meet the U.S. concern about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, the document offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for ‘full access to peaceful nuclear technology.’ It proposed ‘full transparency for security [assurance] that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD’ and ‘full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols).’”

“There have been some efforts to discredit what [Gareth] Porter, Flynt Leverret, and others have said about this attempted opening, but the NIE’s conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program seem to strongly support it. With their secret enrichment activities exposed, the Iranian regime was reconsidering the utility of continuing such efforts in the face of international awareness and disapproval of them. The Bush administration then decided to squander this opportunity and focus on saber-rattling and dreams of regime change. But the thing about pressure is that you’ve got to be willing to take yes for an answer instead of just blundering around.”

Which leads us to the other easily-overlooked point from today’s news: Bush and his team have making a lot of claims about Iran, most of which were apparently patently false.

Remember, today is when the unclassified synopsis of the NIE was released, but the White House has had the full NIE at their disposal all year — but that didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from trying to scare the bejeezus out of the country.

TP assembled some startling examples of “faulty, inflammatory rhetoric”:

“The problem is Iran, and Iran has not stepped back from trying to pursue a nuclear weapon, and — or reprocessing and enriching uranium, which would lead to a nuclear weapon.” [White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, 10/26/07]

“We talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace.”

“[B]We’re in a position now, clearly, especially when we look at Iran, where it’s very, very important we succeed in our efforts, our national security efforts, to discourage the Iranians from enriching uranium and producing nuclear weapons.” [Cheney, 11/9/07]

“We are convinced that they are developing nuclear weapons.” [Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, 11/13/07]

It’s one thing to get a national security and foreign policy challenge wrong — Bush and his gang are probably used to that — but these comments were made after the administration had assembled an NIE that made clear that Iran hasn’t had a nuclear program in four years.

That’s the difference between a lie and a mistake — saying something that’s wrong, which one knows to be wrong at the time.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13797.html

[The 801]

Homeland Security Dept. Plagued By Corruption, Mismanaged Billions

December 5, 2007 12:20 PM

The Department of Homeland Security has wasted and mismanaged billions in taxpayer dollars and is plagued by internal criminal activity, a study released on Wednesday reveals.

Five years after it was created to help coordinate America' security apparatus, the DHS continues to suffer from massive failures. According to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the department's border agencies are rife with crime, its employee morale is at a dangerous low, information technology is obsolete, and several programs are either mismanaged or overrun.

"The Department of Homeland Security is an embarrassment that would be comical if only our national security were not at stake," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. "The agency and its leadership must be held accountable for its failures and pushed to do better."

Within DHS, wasteful spending is seen as ubiquitous. CREW highlighted at least $178 million that was spent on a failed Coast Guard Deepwater program, more than $600 million allocated for unworkable radiation border scanners, and $1.3 billion devoted to a US-VISIT program that was never implemented.

But it's not just the money. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency of the DHS has been haunted by smuggling, bribery, sexual misconduct, assault and theft of government property by its own employees. As the CREW report notes, rather alarmingly, "The former head of internal affairs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services thought the problem was so severe that he began complaining to Congress about rampant corruption that he claims remains un-probed".

DHS's out-of-date technologies, unqualified staff, and internal politics are also putting American's safety and taxpayer money at risk. Screeners at a Los Angeles International Airport missed 75 percent of the fake bombs smuggled through its doors by government auditors because of poor detection systems and untrained staff. In addition, CREW recognized at least a dozen officials who had been through the "revolving door" - having been hired to lobby DHS soon after leaving the agency.

As CREW concluded, problems such as these, in addition to the criminal and budgetary issues, will continue within DHS without greater accountability from Congress and attention from the presidential candidates.

"The question now is how will the next administration fix DHS?," asked Sloan. "The presidential candidates must do more than simply complain about the state of the agency. They should provide the American people with a blueprint - just like some have on healthcare - explaining how they would address this national security crisis.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/05/homeland-security-dept-p_n_75443.html

[The 801]

Sen. Whitehouse Reveals Secret DoJ Legal Memos: Bush Determines What Is Constitutional

This morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered an impassioned floor speech to help frame the debate over FISA reform. Using his privilege as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse said he has “spent hours poring over” secret opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — and he took notes.

Whitehouse is a lawyer, a former U.S. Attorney, a former legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and a former State Attorney General. He said he sought and received permission to have his notes declassified because he wanted to show the public “what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.”

“To give you an example of what I read,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor, “I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents”:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.


http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/07/whitehouse-speech-olc/

[NYer]

From Volokh -

Marty Lederman offers a thoughtful and reasoned response (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/12/misdirected-outrage.html) to Sen. Whitehouse' speech.

[The 801]

This is our war on terror. This is the best our govenment can do?

The End of a B-Movie Terror Trial
Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007 By AMANDA RIPLEY

If you were watching the movie version of the terrorism trial that ended Thursday in Miami, FL, you might walk out around the time the seven suspects take an oath to al-Qaeda in a warehouse. The scene would feel so contrived, such a low-budget mockumentary of itself, that you might not be able to stomach another second.
Related Articles
The Fort Dix Conspiracy

Preventing terrorist strikes that may never happen is a messy business. How a Circuit City clerk, the FBI and an ex-con landed five men in jail on charges of plotting to attack a military base

The fact that this videotaped scene was in reality the centerpiece of the government's case against seven defendants accused of conspiring to wage war against America is a testament to the strange challenges of trying to preemptively prosecute the war on terrorism.

On Thursday, after nine days of deliberation, a jury acquitted one of the defendants, Lyglenson Lemorin, and gave up on the remaining six. The judge declared mistrials in those cases, and a new trial is scheduled for next year. It was a major loss for the government. In 2006, after the arrests, then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales heralded the arrests and warned that, if "left unchecked, these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda."

The defendants in the Liberty City case (named after the poor Miami neighborhood where they lived), were members of the Moorish Science Temple, a sect that blends Islam, Christianity and Judaism and does not recognize the legitimacy of the U.S. government. (Moorish Science Temple leaders have since disavowed any links to the men.) On March 16, 2006, the men were recorded by the FBI vowing to be Islamic soldiers and to act at the direction of al-Qaeda, according to a motion filed by the government, which played the tape twice during the trial.

The evidence also included 12,000 recorded conversations — including one in which the leader of the ragtag group, Narseal Batiste, spoke of waging a "ground war" — surveillance photos some defendants took of federal buildings in Miami, wish lists of weapons and a request for $50,000 given to an FBI informant purporting to represent al-Qaeda.

We don't know yet know why the jury decided not to convict anyone in this case. "It was a very difficult case with a lot of evidence," jury foreman Jeffrey Agron, a school principal, told the Miami Herald. "People see evidence in different ways. There were different takes that people had." It's possible that jurors were struggling with the very thing that makes the Liberty City case so typical of the Justice Department's war on terrorism: it feels phony.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1694430,00.html

[NYer]

The Jury acquitted OJ too.

[el_diablo]

Would someone tell me why the Dub, in his infinite attempts to expand presidential power, has rarely exercised the one practically limitless power at his fingertips (the presidential pardon)? Maybe it's because he's from that great bastion of liberty, tejas. How many did that great christian state put down this week?

[NYer]

He should start with Border Agents Ramos and Compean.

[The 801]

Challenging Cheney

A National Archives official reveals what the veep wanted to keep classified--and how he tried to challenge the rules
By Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 24, 2007


J. William Leonard learned the hard way the perils of questioning Vice President Dick Cheney. The veteran National Archives official challenged claims by the Office of Vice President (OVP) to be exempt from federal rules governing classified information. His efforts touched off a firestorm—and a counter-strike by Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, who tried to wipe out Leonard's job. (Addington did not respond to requests for comment on the subject.)

Now, Leonard is quitting as director of the Archives' Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO)—the unit that monitors the handling of government secrets. He tells NEWSWEEK that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to retire after 34 years of government service.

Leonard-described by National Archivist Allen Weinstein as "the gold standard of information specialists in the federal government"-spoke to NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff. Excerpts:


NEWSWEEK: Explain how all this happened.
Leonard: Up until 2002, OVP was just like any other agency. Subsequent to that, they stopped reporting to us…At first, I took that to be, 'we're too busy.' Then we routinely attempted to do a review of the OVP and it was at that point in time it was articulated back to me that: 'well they weren't really subject to our reviews.' I didn't agree with it. But you know, there is a big fence around the White House. I didn't know how I could get in there if somebody didn't want me to.

So how did matters escalate?
The challenge arose last year when the Chicago Tribune was looking at [ISOO's annual report] and saw the asterisk [reporting that it contained no information from OVP] and decided to follow up. And that's when the spokesperson from the OVP made public this idea that because they have both legislative and executive functions, that requirement doesn't apply to them.…They were saying the basic rules didn't apply to them. I thought that was a rather remarkable position. So I wrote my letter to the Attorney General [asking for a ruling that Cheney's office had to comply.] Then it was shortly after that there were [email] recommendations [from OVP to a National Security Council task force] to change the executive order that would effectively abolish [my] office.

Who wrote the emails?
It was David Addington.

No explanation was offered?
No. It was strike this, strike that. Anyplace you saw the words, "the director of ISOO" or "ISOO" it was struck.

What was your reaction?
I was disappointed that rather than engage on the substance of an issue, some people would resort to that…

What rules were they saying didn't apply to them?
The ones that tell you how you mark [classified documents], how you declassify, how you safeguard them, how you store…


Ultimately, the White House said the president never intended that the vice president would have to comply. This had to have been frustrating -to have been publicly thwarted for doing what you saw as your job?
Well, you know, that I've had 34 years of frustration. That's life in the big city. I also accept that I'm not always right….But this was a big thing as far as I was concerned.

A number of people have noted that the vice president's office stopped reporting to you and complying with ISOO in the fall of 2003 when the whole Valerie Plame case blew up. Do you think there was a connection?
I don't have any insight. I was held at arms length [from that.] But some of the things based on what I've read [have] given me cause for concern. A number of prosecution exhibits [in the Plame-related perjury trial of I. Scooter Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff] were annotated, 'handle as SCI.' SCI is Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, the most sensitive classified information there is. As I recall, [one of them] was [the vice president and his staff] were coming back from Norfolk where they had attended a ship commissioning and they were conferring on the plane about coming up with a [media] response plan [to the allegations of Plame's husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.] That was one of the exhibits marked, 'handle as SCI.'

These were internal communications about what to say to the press?
Let me give you some the irony of that. Part of the National Archives is the presidential libraries….So we're going to have documents [at the libraries] with the most sensitive markings on it that isn't even classified. If I were going to do a review [of OVP], that would be one of the questions I would want to ask: What is this practice? And how widespread is it? And what is the rationale? How do we assure that people don't get this mixed up with real secrets?

Is too much government business conducted in secret?
One of the things I've reflected on lately is that I truly believe we need to introduce a new balancing test. In the past, we've looked at it as, 'we have to balance national security against the public's right to know or whatever.' My balancing test would be national security versus national security: yes, disclosing information may cause damage, but you know what, withholding that information may even cause greater damage… And I don't think we sufficiently taken that into greater account.

The global struggle that we're engaged in today is more than anything else is an ideological struggle. And in my mind….that calls for greater transparency, not less transparency. We're in a situation where we're attempting to win over the hearts and minds of the world's population. And yet, we seem to have a habit—when we restrict information, we're often times find ourselves in a position where we're ceding the playing field to the other side. We allow ourselves to be almost reduced to a caricature by taking positions on certain issues, oh , we simply can't talk about that.

(Note: Asked for comment, Lea A. McBride, spokeswoman for Cheney, pointed to recent comments by Cheney in an interview with the online publication, Politico, on his office's dispute with the National Archives. In the interview, the vice president specifically referred to his position that, because he serves as Secretary of the Senate, his office was not an "entity" in the executive branch governed by the executive order relating to classified information.

"I'm aware of the kerfuffle here a few months ago — is he or isn't he; is he part of the executive branch, part of the legislative branch?" Cheney said. "And the answer really is, you've got a foot in both camps. I obviously work for the president. That's why I'm sitting here in the West Wing of the White House. But I also have a role to play in the Congress as the president of the Senate. I actually get paid — that's where my paycheck comes from, is the Senate. So I try to keep lines open to both sides of the Congress, both the House and the Senate.")

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/81883/page/1

[NYer]

Speaking of secrecy, when will Sen. Clinton release documents requested from the Clinton library?

[The 801]

This is Political commentary.

The Most Inappropriate Bush War Smirk of 2007

Posted December 26, 2007 | 07:09 PM (EST)


Given 2008's inevitably ramped-up analysis of the Bush Legacy by the very serious traditional media, there's one aspect of the president which, staggeringly though not surprisingly, won't be covered. In fact, it's never been covered to my knowledge. The traditional media has never really challenged the president on his grotesquely inappropriate reactions to serious issues -- especially Iraq.

His uncomfortably ridiculous smirks and smiles illustrate his inadequacies as a leader: his fugacious attitude; his vacant stature; and, most strikingly, his apparent inability to grasp the reality of his decisions. It's all right there on the screen -- underlined by those tiny baby teeth.

So as a reminder to the traditional media, I'd like to present the Most Inappropriate Bush War Smirk of 2007. But first, some runners up.


http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-12-26-20071017worldwarthreehehehe.jpg

The date: October 17, 2007
The place: The White House Press Briefing Room
The hilarious quote: "But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding [grinning] World War III [end grinning], it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge [end giggling] necessary to make a nuclear weapon."


http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-12-26-bushpressersmirkcesca.jpg

The date: April 3, 2007
The place: The White House Rose Garden
The hilarious quote: "That's precisely why I sent more troops into Baghdad."

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-12-26-bush60minutesdecision.jpg

The date: January 14, 2007
The place: 60 Minutes
The hilarious quote: "There's not enough troops on the ground right now to provide security for Iraq and that's why I made the decision I made."

And now, for the historical record, The Most Inappropriate Bush War Smirk of 2007:


http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-12-26-lehrerBushsmiling3.jpg

The date: January 16, 2007
The place: PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer
The hilarious quote: "If I didn't believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn't ask 21,000 kids -- additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there."

Soon after this smirk, the president, as part of his euphemistically nicknamed New Way Forward, ordered an additional 21,000 soldiers into Iraq with the goal of providing military cover for a political solution to the civil war there.

During the intervening 11 months between the above smirk and today, 6,796 American soldiers were either killed or wounded under the president's hap-hap-happy command.

The political solution for which these soldiers gave their lives... never happened.
[B]
I don't know who he thinks he is or what he thinks he's grinning about, but for the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces to smile and giggle while discussing warfare of any form or magnitude is an insult -- not just to the soldiers who followed his orders into battle, but also to basic decency and human morality. From his zany "those WMDs have to be around here somewhere" sketch to his shit-eating grin whilst comparing warfare to wacky-yet-delicious breakfast foods, this extends far beyond the necessary objective distance of a military leader and into the realms of madness.

This is the Bush Legacy, Traditional Media. Please consider this in the coming months. President Bush injected a psycho bomb into the Middle East without any real grasp of the consequences and, nearly five years into the conflict, is so affectless about these consequences as to smirk and laugh at it all.

Or maybe there's an hilarious joke in there somewhere and we're all just dumb about it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-most-inappropriate-bu_b_78357.html

[NYer]

Sorry 801, I got that beat. The best/worst ad hominem description of Bush's smirk likens it to this famous grin.

http://blog.kir.com/archives/images/alfred_e_neuman.jpg

Happy New Year, Pal!

[The 801]

Back ach ya NYer. Have a safe and good one.

[The 801]

935 Iraq Falsehoods

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, January 23, 2008; 1:00 PM

A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Center for Public Integrity reports that its "exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The database also documents how Bush and others had reason to know, or at least suspect, what they were saying was not supported by the facts.

John H. Cushman Jr. writes in the New York Times: "There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call 'wallowing in Watergate.'"

And yet there are plenty of reasons why the deceitful run-up to war is not old news. For one, the war goes on. For another, government credibility remains severely damaged. And then there's the fact that the president has never really been held to account for his repeated falsehoods.

Bush famously told The Washington Post, upon embarking on his second term, that he saw the 2004 election as his "accountability moment." Yet neither before nor since has he admitted mistakes or poor judgment. The closest he came may have been in December 2005, when he acknowledged intelligence failures -- by others.

Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith write in the report's overview: "Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence -- not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. . . .

"Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence."

The Findings

Lewis and Reading-Smith write: "President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. . . .

"On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war. . . .

"President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

"The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews. . . .

"The cumulative effect of these false statements -- amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts -- was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."

Here are some key false statements. For example: "On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.' In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, 'Our reaction was, "Where is he getting this stuff from?"'"

White House Response

Douglass K. Daniel writes for the Associated Press: "White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"'The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world,' Stanzel said."

Earlier Versions

The new findings are somewhat reminiscent of an earlier, less exhaustive database prepared at the direction of Henry Waxman in March 2004, when he was the ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. That was a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq.

In August 2006, Mother Jones published "Lie by Lie," a sortable (if not searchable) timeline.

What About the Senate Intelligence Committee?

So what, you may well ask, ever happened to the Senate Intelligence Committee's promised inquiry into whether the White House intentionally deceived the public in the run-up to war? That, presumably, would provide an accountability moment of sorts.

You may recall that more than two years ago, in November 2005, Democrats were so upset about Republican foot-dragging on the inquiry that they brought the Senate to a halt with a rare closed session to demand that work resume.

The Republicans, not surprisingly, continued to stall anyway. But the Democrats have controlled the Senate for more than a year now. Where is the report?

Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, told me this morning that it will be out before the end of spring.

Why the delay? Due to the "lack of comity on the committee" when Rockefeller took over the chairmanship, he decided that pushing ahead with the inquiry right away "would again create tension," Morigi said.

Nevertheless, the committee staff has "continued to work" on the report, she said. And a hearing on the matter will be held "within the next few months."

Washington Post

[NYer]

Apparently, George Soros has Struck Again. (http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/01/debunking_the_cpi_report.php)

The FIJ and CPI researchers may have purposefully compromised the integrity of the report by creating the definition “false statements” and sub-categories “direct false statements” and “indirect false statements,” which seem to be predicated upon the ultimate veracity of the statements after several years of hindsight and study.

They did not, as it would seem to be fair, base the study upon what was known at the time in the 2001-2003 run-up to the war in Iraq. The premise for the report seems to be reflected in the title of the report, that there was orchestrated deception on behalf of senior Bush Administration officials, not statements made upon inaccurate or misleading intelligence information as events unfolded.

But wait ... there's more.
Dr. Jim A. Kuypers, an assistant professor of Political Communication and Rhetoric & Public Address at Virginia Tech University, is an expert in comparative framing analysis and is author of Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age and A Comparative Framing Analysis of Embedded and Behind-the-Lines Reporting on the 2003 Iraq War, published in Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, Volume 6, Issue 1 October 2005.

Asked by PJM to comment upon the CPI/FIJ study’s stated methodology and definitions, Dr Kuypers wrote that the study was compromised by biases and prejudiced assumptions from the outset:

The study does not appear to take into account the context of the time the original statements were uttered. Instead, it seems to start with an assumption that the administration deliberately mislead America to war. If the study had started with the assumption that the Bush administration and the intelligence community had misinterpreted intelligence reports, then these statements CPI collected could be interpreted in a very different manner. The study also fails to mention that a large majority in Congress, including top ranking Democrats, believed the intelligence assessments, and were briefed in more detail than the president about the situation. They still supported action against Hussein. It would be interesting to see the study enlarged to include statements made by those Democrats who voted for military action.

Their “methodology” is short on detail, but I infer that they (who, how many?) actually performed a sort of “content analysis” using very broad categories: Direct false statements — “when [the administration] specifically linked Iraq to Al Qaeda or referenced Iraq’s contemporaneous possession, possible possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons). In addition, any use of the verb ‘disarm’ was categorized as a direct statement because of the literal meaning of the word.” The other category, Indirect false statements—“Statements were classified as “indirect” if they did not specifically link Iraq to Al Qaeda but alleged, for example, that Iraq supported or sponsored terrorism or terrorist organizations, or if they referred to Iraq’s former possession of weapons of mass destruction or used such general phrases, for example, as “dangerous weapons.” These indirect false statements are not included in the total count of 935.”

Essentially, then, someone (we don’t know who or how many) read through transcripts and speeches looking for quotes that would in anyway support the a priori belief that the Bush administration misled Americans.

On the one hand, this looks like a sloppy study; on the other, the results do fall within the categories above, it is just the “spin” or interpretation put on them that causes one to wonder about motivation.

Conclusion:
The “study” is based upon spin, false pretenses, cherry-picked statements, and artificial limitations to the breath of scope which excludes similar conclusions reached by the Clinton administration and Democrats and Republicans alike in both houses of Congress, and assessments from foreign governments.

The study’s “Key False Statements” page is as much an indictment of the lack of integrity from The Center for Public Integrity, and lack of independence from The Fund for Independence in Journalism, as it is an assault on the Bush Administration.

Ouch!

For those who've forgotten so soon, I give you This. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=wLrjGq-V700)

And btw, after watching last night's Sixty Minutes, perhaps the meme should be: Saddam Lied, People Died.

[The 801]

This is dope on the bill the telecommunications companies want Bush to veto, right?

NSA's Domestic Spying Grows
As Agency Sweeps Up Data
Terror Fight Blurs
Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (Ah, carnivore returns......801)

But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
[Combo]

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency's mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn't clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency's work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy "has never really been resolved," said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

NSA officials say the agency's own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.

The Fourth Amendment

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA's capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.
[Michael Hayden]

The NSA "strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American's privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," agency spokeswoman Judith Emmel said in a statement, referring to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA in conjunction with the Pentagon, added in a statement that intelligence agencies operate "within an extensive legal and policy framework" and inform Congress of their activities "as required by the law." It pointed out that the 9/11 Commission recommended in 2004 that intelligence agencies analyze "all relevant sources of information" and share their databases.

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item -- and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city -- for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans -- the government's spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

The information doesn't generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone's location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.

Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI -- which don't need a judge's signature -- to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided "reasonable suspicion" that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The White House wants to give companies that assist government surveillance immunity from lawsuits alleging an invasion of privacy, but Democrats in Congress have been blocking it. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has spurred 38 lawsuits against companies. Current and former intelligence officials say telecom companies' concern comes chiefly because they are giving the government unlimited access to a copy of the flow of communications, through a network of switches at U.S. telecommunications hubs that duplicate all the data running through it. It isn't clear whether the government or telecom companies control the switches, but companies process some of the data for the NSA, the current and former officials say.
[Graphic]

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called "Quantico Circuit." Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau "does not have 'unfettered access' to any communication provider's network."

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn't need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their "essential privacy," or "what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs," should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon's experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA -- which also is funded by the Pentagon -- and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. "When it got taken apart, it didn't get thrown away," says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA's current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals' data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says "the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they're using today." The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms' immunity, he said. "There's not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be."

Opportunity for Debate

But Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the committee, said by email his committee colleagues have had "ample opportunity for debate" behind closed doors and that each intelligence program has specific legal authorization and oversight. He cautioned against seeing a group of intelligence programs as "a mythical 'big brother' program," adding, "that's not what is happening today."
READ THE RULING

While the Fourth Amendment guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," the legality of data-sweeping relies on the government's interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls -- but not actual conversations -- to be collected without a warrant. Read the ruling.1

The legality of data-sweeping relies largely on the government's interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls -- but not actual conversations -- to be collected without a judge issuing a warrant. Multiple laws require a court order for so-called "transactional'" records of electronic communications, but the 2001 Patriot Act lowered the standard for such an order in some cases, and in others made records accessible using FBI administrative subpoenas called "national security letters." (Read the ruling.2)

A debate is brewing among legal and technology scholars over whether there should be privacy protections when a wide variety of transactional data are brought together to paint what is essentially a profile of an individual's behavior. "You know everything I'm doing, you know what happened, and you haven't listened to any of the contents" of the communications, said Susan Landau, co-author of a book on electronic privacy and a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. "Transactional information is remarkably revelatory."

Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it's "extremely questionable" to assume Americans don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. "These are questions that require discussion and debate," she said. "This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret."

Gen. Hayden, the former NSA chief and now Central Intelligence Agency director, in January 2006 publicly defended the activities of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was disclosed by the New York Times. He said it was "not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out." Rather, he said, it was carefully targeted at terrorists. However, some intelligence officials now say the broader NSA effort amounts to a driftnet. A portion of the activity, the NSA's access to domestic phone records, was disclosed by a USA Today article in 2006.

The NSA, which President Truman created in 1952 through a classified presidential order to be America's ears abroad, has for decades been the country's largest and most secretive intelligence agency. The order confined NSA spying to "foreign governments," and during the Cold War the NSA developed a reputation as the world's premier code-breaking operation. But in the 1970s, the NSA and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes. That led to the original FISA legislation in 1978, which included an explicit ban on the NSA eavesdropping in the U.S. without a warrant.

Big advances in telecommunications and database technology led to unprecedented data-collection efforts in the 1990s. One was the FBI's Carnivore program, which raised fears when it was in disclosed in 2000 that it might collect telecommunications information about law-abiding individuals. But the ground shifted after 9/11. Requests for analysis of any data that might hint at terrorist activity flooded from the White House and other agencies into NSA's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters outside Washington, D.C., one former NSA official recalls. At the time, "We're scrambling, trying to find any piece of data we can to find the answers," the official said.

The 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks criticized the NSA for holding back information, which NSA officials said they were doing to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. "NSA did not want to be perceived as targeting individuals in the United States" and considered such surveillance the FBI's job, the inquiry concluded.

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects "expanded exponentially," said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.

It isn't known how many Americans' data have been swept into the NSA's systems. The Treasury, for instance, built its database "to look at all the world's financial transactions" and gave the NSA access to it about 15 years ago, said a former NSA official. The data include domestic and international money flows between bank accounts and credit-card information, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The NSA receives from Treasury weekly batches of this data and adds it to a database at its headquarters. Prior to 9/11, the database was used to pursue specific leads, but afterward, the effort was expanded to hunt for suspicious patterns.

Through the Treasury, the NSA also can access the database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, the Belgium-based clearinghouse for records of international transactions between financial institutions, current and former officials said. The U.S. acknowledged in 2006 that the CIA and Treasury had access to Swift's database, but said the NSA's Terrorism Surveillance Program was separate and that the NSA provided only "technical assistance." A Treasury spokesman said the agency had no comment.

Through the Department of Homeland Security, airline passenger data also are accessed and analyzed for suspicious patterns, such as five unrelated people who repeatedly fly together, current and former intelligence officials said. Homeland Security shares information with other agencies only "on a limited basis," spokesman Russ Knocke said.

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI's Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn't know the number. "As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified," said FBI spokesman John Miller.

The budget for the NSA's data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. "Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does," says a budget justification document, noting an "expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120511973377523845.html

[NYer]

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems 1998

[The 801]

Long time no post, lots of "awesome speech, pope" stuff went by the by, but this was to sad and sick not to post:


Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

It was published by the university's National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion.

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.

"Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army."

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a 'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It says that in November 2001, before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld "to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq."

Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney, bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became "the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders."

" ... the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld," it continues, "cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation." Later, he shut down the military's computerized deployment system, "questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk."

In part because "long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld," the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls "War B," the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after "War A," the fight against Saddam Hussein's forces, ended.

Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush's top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam's dictatorship. The administration also expected that "Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction."

The report also singles out the Bush administration's national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that "senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect."

Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill, who said: "Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. ... Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/34101.html

Read it and weep, you'll be payin for it for a long time, not counting what your paying at the pump today .....

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf

[NYer]

Rusty of the Jawa Report breaks down the two Iraq Wars. (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/192340.php)

Oh ... and the events of this past week solidify Dhimmi Carter's claim to the title of Worst President ever.

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/q/i/1/carter_worst.jpg

[NYer]

Long time no post, lots of "awesome speech, pope" stuff went by the by, but this was to sad and sick not to post:

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers



Pentagon Study? Current Events in Iraq? Not So Fast... (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/04/pentagon-study-current-events/)

The Miami Herald piece on a NDU "occasional paper" (Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath), quoted alternately as a Pentagon or NDU study, raised some flags here at SWJ. So we asked the author, Joseph Collins, to provide some context. His reply:

The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism.

[The 801]

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

A PENTAGON CAMPAIGN Retired officers have been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.

By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

How the Pentagon Spread Its Message


The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

It was, Mr. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.”

Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests.

“I’m not here representing the administration,” Dr. McCausland said.

Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity.

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

The documents released by the Pentagon do not show any quid pro quo between commentary and contracts. But some analysts said they had used the special access as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities.

John C. Garrett is a retired Army colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq. In promotional materials, he states that as a military analyst he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” One client told investors that Mr. Garrett’s special access and decades of experience helped him “to know in advance — and in detail — how best to meet the needs” of the Defense Department and other agencies.

In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten “information you just otherwise would not get,” from the briefings and three Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq. He also acknowledged using this access and information to identify opportunities for clients. “You can’t help but look for that,” he said, adding, “If you know a capability that would fill a niche or need, you try to fill it. “That’s good for everybody.”

At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.

Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said.

With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show.

Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 — the first of six such Guantánamo trips — which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key messages — how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees.

The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely.

“The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false,” Donald W. Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, reported live on CNN by phone from Guantánamo that same afternoon.

The next morning, Montgomery Meigs, a retired Army general and NBC analyst, appeared on “Today.” “There’s been over $100 million of new construction,” he reported. “The place is very professionally run.”

Within days, transcripts of the analysts’ appearances were circulated to senior White House and Pentagon officials, cited as evidence of progress in the battle for hearts and minds at home.

Charting the Campaign

By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.

Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.

In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences.

The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.

Even analysts with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst. “It is my life.”

Other administrations had made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke’s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. “We didn’t want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information out,” Mr. Meyer said.

The Pentagon’s regular press office would be kept separate from the military analysts. The analysts would instead be catered to by a small group of political appointees, with the point person being Brent T. Krueger, another senior aide to Ms. Clarke. The decision recalled other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism. Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with fawning accounts of administration accomplishments. The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda.

Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war.

Assembling the Team

From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.

“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.)

Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.

The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks.

Several were defense industry lobbyists, such as Dr. McCausland, who works at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, a major lobbying firm where he is director of a national security team that represents several military contractors. “We offer clients access to key decision makers,” Dr. McCausland’s team promised on the firm’s Web site.

Dr. McCausland was not the only analyst making this pledge. Another was Joseph W. Ralston, a retired Air Force general. Soon after signing on with CBS, General Ralston was named vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by a former defense secretary, William Cohen, himself now a “world affairs” analyst for CNN. “The Cohen Group knows that getting to ‘yes’ in the aerospace and defense market — whether in the United States or abroad — requires that companies have a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government decision makers,” the company tells prospective clients on its Web site.

There were also ideological ties.

Two of NBC’s most prominent analysts, Barry R. McCaffrey and the late Wayne A. Downing, were on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein. Both men also had their own consulting firms and sat on the boards of major military contractors.

Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.

This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”

The Selling of the War

From their earliest sessions with the military analysts, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides spoke as if they were all part of the same team.

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.

In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.”

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

On April 12, 2003, with major combat almost over, Mr. Rumsfeld drafted a memorandum to Ms. Clarke. “Let’s think about having some of the folks who did such a good job as talking heads in after this thing is over,” he wrote.

By summer, though, the first signs of the insurgency had emerged. Reports from journalists based in Baghdad were increasingly suffused with the imagery of mayhem.

The Pentagon did not have to search far for a counterweight.

It was time, an internal Pentagon strategy memorandum urged, to “re-energize surrogates and message-force multipliers,” starting with the military analysts.

The memorandum led to a proposal to take analysts on a tour of Iraq in September 2003, timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush’s request for $87 billion in emergency war financing.

The group included four analysts from Fox News, one each from CNN and ABC, and several research-group luminaries whose opinion articles appear regularly in the nation’s op-ed pages.

The trip invitation promised a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

The situation, as described in scores of books, was deteriorating. L. Paul Bremer III, then the American viceroy in Iraq, wrote in his memoir, “My Year in Iraq,” that he had privately warned the White House that the United States had “about half the number of soldiers we needed here.”

“We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat,” Mr. Bremer recalled telling the president during a private White House dinner.

That dinner took place on Sept. 24, while the analysts were touring Iraq.

Yet these harsh realities were elided, or flatly contradicted, during the official presentations for the analysts, records show. The itinerary, scripted to the minute, featured brief visits to a model school, a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave and even the gardens of Babylon.

Mostly the analysts attended briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The “growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run.

“We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaimed.

One trip participant, General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan.

But if the trip pounded the message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many with a say in how the president’s $87 billion would be spent. It also was a chance to gather inside information about the most pressing needs confronting the American mission: the acute shortages of “up-armored” Humvees; the billions to be spent building military bases; the urgent need for interpreters; and the ambitious plans to train Iraq’s security forces.

Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood.

Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition.

“Those sheiks wanted access to the C.P.A.,” Mr. Cowan recalled in an interview, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Mr. Cowan said he pleaded their cause during the trip. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s people to engage these people of Al Anbar,” he said.

Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.

“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.

“We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment — whether to send more troops — the analysts were unanimous.

“I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.

Access and Influence

Inside the Pentagon and at the White House, the trip was viewed as a masterpiece in the management of perceptions, not least because it gave fuel to complaints that “mainstream” journalists were ignoring the good news in Iraq.

“We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Its success only intensified the Pentagon’s campaign. The pace of briefings accelerated. More trips were organized. Eventually the effort involved officials from Washington to Baghdad to Kabul to Guantánamo and back to Tampa, Fla., the headquarters of United States Central Command.

The scale reflected strong support from the top. When officials in Iraq were slow to organize another trip for analysts, a Pentagon official fired off an e-mail message warning that the trips “have the highest levels of visibility” at the White House and urging them to get moving before Lawrence Di Rita, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s closest aides, “picks up the phone and starts calling the 4-stars.”

Mr. Di Rita, no longer at the Defense Department, said in an interview that a “conscious decision” was made to rely on the military analysts to counteract “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts, he said, generally had “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war, and the combination of their TV platforms and military cachet made them ideal for rebutting critical coverage of issues like troop morale, treatment of detainees, inadequate equipment or poorly trained Iraqi security forces. “On those issues, they were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen,” he said.

For analysts with military industry ties, the attention brought access to a widening circle of influential officials beyond the contacts they had accumulated over the course of their careers.

Charles T. Nash, a Fox military analyst and retired Navy captain, is a consultant who helps small companies break into the military market. Suddenly, he had entree to a host of senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met. It was, he said, like being embedded with the Pentagon leadership. “You start to recognize what’s most important to them,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.”

Some Pentagon officials said they were well aware that some analysts viewed their special access as a business advantage. “Of course we realized that,” Mr. Krueger said. “We weren’t naïve about that.”

They also understood the financial relationship between the networks and their analysts. Many analysts were being paid by the “hit,” the number of times they appeared on TV. The more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level Pentagon “sources,” the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several analysts prominently advertised their network roles.

“They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level,” Mr. Krueger said. “This has been highly honed.”

Mr. Di Rita, though, said it never occurred to him that analysts might use their access to curry favor. Nor, he said, did the Pentagon try to exploit this dynamic. “That’s not something that ever crossed my mind,” he said. In any event, he argued, the analysts and the networks were the ones responsible for any ethical complications. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he said.

The analysts met personally with Mr. Rumsfeld at least 18 times, records show, but that was just the beginning. They had dozens more sessions with the most senior members of his brain trust and access to officials responsible for managing the billions being spent in Iraq. Other groups of “key influentials” had meetings, but not nearly as often as the analysts.

An internal memorandum in 2005 helped explain why. The memorandum, written by a Pentagon official who had accompanied analysts to Iraq, said that based on her observations during the trip, the analysts “are having a greater impact” on network coverage of the military. “They have now become the go-to guys not only on breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues,” she wrote.

Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.

“We knew we had extraordinary access,” said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor.

Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that “some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ ” For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not share this on TV.

“Human nature,” he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical.

Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air.

Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof.

“ ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ ”

Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.

Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts.

“There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.”

Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006.

“Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.”

Pentagon Keeps Tabs

As it happened, the analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.

Omnitec evaluated their appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report, assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks.

“Commentary from all three Iraq trips was extremely positive over all,” the report concluded.

In interviews, several analysts reacted with dismay when told they were described as reliable “surrogates” in Pentagon documents. And some asserted that their Pentagon sessions were, as David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst put it, “just upfront information,” while others pointed out, accurately, that they did not always agree with the administration or each other. “None of us drink the Kool-Aid,” General Scales said.

Likewise, several also denied using their special access for business gain. “Not related at all,” General Shepperd said, pointing out that many in the Pentagon held CNN “in the lowest esteem.”

Still, even the mildest of criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding telephone calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after being on the air.

On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give “a heads-up” that some of his comments on Fox “may not all be friendly,” Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld’s senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift.

Mr. Cowan said he was “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, “simply didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t carrying their water.” The next day James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths further erode support for the war.

“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”

“General, I just made that point on the air,” an analyst replied.

“Let’s work it together, guys,” General Conway urged.

The Generals’ Revolt

The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals — none of them network military analysts — went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.

On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.”

That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.

“Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.

“Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.

The standard secrecy notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates.

On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.

“I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ”

“What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?”

There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.”

“Frankly,” one participant said, “from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative.”

An analyst said at another point: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a regime over there that’s not a threat to us.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, taking notes.

But winning or not, they bluntly warned, the administration was in grave political danger so long as most Americans viewed Iraq as a lost cause. “America hates a loser,” one analyst said.

Much of the session was devoted to ways that Mr. Rumsfeld could reverse the “political tide.” One analyst urged Mr. Rumsfeld to “just crush these people,” and assured him that “most of the gentlemen at the table” would enthusiastically support him if he did.

“You are the leader,” the analyst told Mr. Rumsfeld. “You are our guy.”

At another point, an analyst made a suggestion: “In one of your speeches you ought to say, ‘Everybody stop for a minute and imagine an Iraq ruled by Zarqawi.’ And then you just go down the list and say, ‘All right, we’ve got oil, money, sovereignty, access to the geographic center of gravity of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.’ If you can just paint a mental picture for Joe America to say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine a world like that.’ ”

Even as they assured Mr. Rumsfeld that they stood ready to help in this public relations offensive, the analysts sought guidance on what they should cite as the next “milestone” that would, as one analyst put it, “keep the American people focused on the idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” They placed particular emphasis on the growing confrontation with Iran.

“When you said ‘long war,’ you changed the psyche of the American people to expect this to be a generational event,” an analyst said. “And again, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job...”

“Get in line,” Mr. Rumsfeld interjected.

The meeting ended and Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing pleased and relaxed, took the entire group into a small study and showed off treasured keepsakes from his life, several analysts recalled.

Soon after, analysts hit the airwaves. The Omnitec monitoring reports, circulated to more than 80 officials, confirmed that analysts repeated many of the Pentagon’s talking points: that Mr. Rumsfeld consulted “frequently and sufficiently” with his generals; that he was not “overly concerned” with the criticisms; that the meeting focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government.

Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:

“Focus on the Global War on Terror — not simply Iraq. The wider war — the long war.”

“Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.”

But if Mr. Rumsfeld found the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC analyst, was repulsed.

“I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions,” he said.

View From the Networks

Two weeks ago General Petraeus took time out from testifying before Congress about Iraq for a conference call with military analysts.

Mr. Garrett, the Fox analyst and Patton Boggs lobbyist, said he told General Petraeus during the call to “keep up the great work.”

“Hey,” Mr. Garrett said in an interview, “anything we can do to help.”

For the moment, though, because of heavy election coverage and general war fatigue, military analysts are not getting nearly as much TV time, and the networks have trimmed their rosters of analysts. The conference call with General Petraeus, for example, produced little in the way of immediate coverage.

Still, almost weekly the Pentagon continues to conduct briefings with selected military analysts. Many analysts said network officials were only dimly aware of these interactions. The networks, they said, have little grasp of how often they meet with senior officials, or what is discussed.

“I don’t think NBC was even aware we were participating,” said Rick Francona, a longtime military analyst for the network.

Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006.

“The worst conflict of interest was no interest.”

Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations.

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.

CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.

Yet even where controls exist, they have sometimes proven porous.

CNN, for example, said it was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts, General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq.

General Marks was hired by CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional vetting.

“We did not ask Mr. Marks the follow-up questions we should have,” CNN said in a written statement.

In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said.

CNN, however, said it did not know the nature of McNeil’s military business or what General Marks did for the company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts, CNN said, that should have disqualified him from being a military analyst for the network. But in the summer and fall of 2006, even as he was regularly asked to comment on conditions in Iraq, General Marks was working intensively on bidding for a $4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of the McNeil spin-off that won the huge contract in December 2006.

General Marks said his work on the contract did not affect his commentary on CNN. “I’ve got zero challenge separating myself from a business interest,” he said.

But CNN said it had no idea about his role in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job.

“We saw the extent of his dealings and determined at that time we should end our relationship with him,” CNN said.

[The 801]

The above article is probably the only part of the Phase 2 intelligence report that will ever be released. The NYT just got bored waiting for it.

[NYer]

LOL ... 7800 words of vacuous air. The NY Times went off on a Bear Hunt and returned with a few squirrels. Geraldo ... call your office.

Meanwhile, my candidate Dhimmi Carter was hard at work as Carter and Hamas concluded One Party Peace Talks. (http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2950)

[VERITAS]

USA Today/Gallup Poll. April 18-20, 2008. (http://www.pollingreport.com/wh-hstry.htm)
.


"Since the start of 2001 when George W. Bush became president, in general, would you say his presidency has been a success or a failure?"

.


Success 27%.......................Failure 69%.



http://www.looptvandfilm.com/blog/bushvogue.jpg

...

[NYer]

This still leaves Bush higher than Truman at the low point of his Presidency - 22%. Most historians now regard Truman more favorably today.

On the other hand, IBD makes the case for My Candidate. (http://www.ibdeditorials.com/images/IBDeditorials_CarterSeries.pdf)

http://ginacobb.typepad.com/gina_cobb/images/2007/05/23/jimmy_carter.jpg

[The 801]

White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner


Apr 30, 7:08 PM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT

(AP) In this May 1, 2003, file photo, President Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq as he...


WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.

Thursday is the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," Bush said at the time. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on." The "Mission Accomplished" banner was prominently displayed above him - a move the White House came to regret as the display was mocked and became a source of controversy.

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq. Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

She said what is important now is "how the president would describe the fight today. It's been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy."

At least 49 U.S. troops died in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month since September when 65 U.S. troops died.

Now in its sixth year, the war in Iraq has claimed the lives of at least 4,061 members of the U.S. military. Only the Vietnam War (August 1964 to January 1973), the war in Afghanistan (October 2001 to present) and the Revolutionary War (July 1776 to April 1783) have engaged America longer.

Bush, in a speech earlier this month, said that "while this war is difficult, it is not endless."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080430/D90CFP8G0.html

From now on, to spice these things up a bit, I am thinking of adding the term "with a straight face" after every time a news article says "The White House said..." Or "a spokesman said..." what do you think?
801

[NYer]

Yep ... about as great a PR Faux Pas as New Coke or ...
This. (http://www.rightwingnews.com/speeches/carter.php)

[The 801]

Ex-officials: Bush admin. ignored Iraq corruption

ANNE FLAHERTY | May 12, 2008 09:04 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption _ including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency _ was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.

Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the administration takes the issue of corruption seriously and pointed to its recent appointment of Lawrence Benedict as coordinator for anti-corruption initiatives at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Benedict's appointment "is another demonstration that we are working at very senior levels to help the Iraqis deal with this issue," Casey said. "Any assertion that we have not taken this issue seriously or given it the attention it deserves is simply untrue."

The Office of Accountability and Transparency, or "OAT" team, was intended to provide assistance and training to Iraq's anti-corruption agencies. It was dismantled last December, after it alleged in a draft report leaked to the media that al-Maliki's office had derailed or prevented investigations into Shiite-controlled agencies.

The draft report sparked hearings in Congress and prompted a showdown between Democrats and senior State Department officials on whether the public has a right to know the extent to which al-Maliki was involved in corruption cases.

Brennan charges the State Department never responded to his team's report, which was retroactively classified because agency officials said it could hurt bilateral relations with Iraq. Other recommendations by the group also were kept secret, including a negative assessment of Iraq's Joint Anti-Corruption Committee, Brennan said.

In July 2007, the OAT team concluded that the committee's only purpose was to provide a forum for complaints against Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, a top anti-corruption official in Baghdad whom many U.S. officials have hailed as the most effective in exposing fraud and abuse.

But information later released by the embassy ignored the team's assessment and ultimately "failed to even mention what a disaster" the committee "really was," Brennan said.

Brennan said he approved the embassy report against his better judgment but later regretted it.

Mattil, who worked with Brennan, made similar allegations. Specifically, he said the U.S. "remained silent in the face of an unrelenting campaign" by senior Iraqi officials to subvert Baghdad's Commission on Public Integrity, which had been led by al-Radhi. Then, the U.S. turned its back on Iraqis who fled to the United States after being threatened for pursuing anti-corruption cases, he said.

"Since we have done so little (to undercut corruption), it's easy to see why the government of Iraq has not done more," said Mattil, who left the accountability office last October after having served for a year as its chief of staff. "We have demanded no better."

Brennan was appointed as OAT director last summer and arrived in Baghdad in July. He left only a few weeks later after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He stepped down from his position in August.

Iraqi government officials could not be reached for comment.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, head of the Democratic Policy Committee, said the testimony was critical in light of upcoming legislation that would appropriate more than $170 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate Appropriations Committee, of which Dorgan is a member, is expected to approve the legislation Thursday.

"It is a cruel irony if we are appropriating money next Thursday or did appropriate money last month or last year and that money ends up actually providing the resources for an insurgency in Iraq which ends up killing Americans," said Dorgan, D-N.D.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/12/exofficials-bush-admin-ig_n_101424.html

Big F'in surprise here. No wonder they castrated the whistleblowers department.

[Casey]

Well geez, this should probably go here...

U.S. drops charges against '20th hijacker' facing Guantanamo trial
1 hour ago

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Pentagon is dropping charges against a Saudi at Guantanamo who was supposed to have been the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of six men facing murder charges before a U.S. military tribunal for the attacks.

But U.S. military defence lawyers confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that a Pentagon official has finalized the charges only against the other five, including the alleged architect of the attacks.

U.S. officials have said al-Qahtani was subjected to harsh treatment authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHDwsXRiqT7FqMm2txovY8Jrd8_Q

[The 801]

Thanks Casey,
Never thought I would see you here, but this is disgusting.
This administration couldn't convict a terrorist for spitting in the street.
The other item, not in the news, is the number of detainees in gitmo who are released "quietly". No press, just cut them loose, no explanation.

[The 801]

Now the bullshitter wants you to eat more of his bullshit. Nothing new here, just throwing the Boss under the bus after he threw all of us under the bus. I don't get it. Is he lying now, or was he lying then?
Ugh.

Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House
By MIKE ALLEN | 5/27/08 6:18 PM EST

McClellan says the administration relied on "propaganda" to sell the war.
Photo: AP

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

n a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.”

McClellan lost some of his former friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.

The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.”

At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.

“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.

“Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.

“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …

“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.

“I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”

Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”

“I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.”

The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.

In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.

Among other notable passages:

• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: “Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign.” The offer “was rejected almost out of hand by others present,” McClellan writes.

• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”

• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

• “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

• McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.”

• “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."

McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649.html

[The 801]

General Ricardo Sanchez's Book Slams Bush, Iraq Handling

The Washington Post points out that in the hubbub of the McClellan book, another scathing memoir has come out exposing the truth behind Iraq.

Getting lost in the media furor over McClellan's memoir is the new autobiography of retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, who is scathing in his assessment that the Bush administration "led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions."

Among the anecdotes in "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story" is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president.

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a "confused" pep talk:

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal."

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

A White House spokesman had no comment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/02/general-ricardo-sanchezs_n_104664.htmlGeneral

[The 801]

Sad that this is so obvious, outdated and anticlimactic. It is posted here as a matter of historical note.

Bush Inflated Threat From Iraq's Banned Weapons, Report Says


By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 6, 2008; Page A03

President Bush and top administration officials repeatedly exaggerated what they knew about Iraq's weapons and its ties to terrorist groups as the White House pressed its case for war against Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee said yesterday in a long-awaited report.

While most of the administration's prewar claims about Iraq reflected now-discredited U.S. intelligence reports, the White House crossed a line by conveying certainty about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, according to the report, approved over the objections of most of the committee's Republican members.

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee chairman, said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

The report, the last and most contentious of a series of Senate reviews of prewar intelligence, sought to compare the administration's public claims about Iraq with the intelligence reports available to them at the time. While many of the White House's statements -- such as Bush's warnings about a secret Iraqi nuclear program -- were amply supported by intelligence files at the time, the report said, others were not.

Bush and other administration officials strayed far from official intelligence reports when it came to describing alleged ties between al-Qaeda and Hussein, the report said. It cited repeated statements by Bush, including his Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech in which he alleged that Iraq had "trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making" and had maintained "high-level contacts that go back a decade."

The report said that "statements and indications by the president and secretary of state suggesting that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence."

Approved by eight Democrats and two Republicans on the 15-member committee, the report also highlights an October 2002 claim by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Iraq had concealed its stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in underground bunkers too deep to be destroyed by air power alone. Rumsfeld, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, had told senators that U.S. officials did "know where a fraction" of Hussein's banned weapons were, adding that a "good many are underground and deeply buried," suggesting that ground forces were required to destroy them. His statement contradicted intelligence at the time that no such facilities were known to exist, the report states.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a committee member, called for a separate investigation of Rumsfeld's statements, which he said appeared intended to drive support for an invasion. "This is stunning: The secretary of defense, testifying before Congress about whether or not ground forces would be strategically necessary in a war against Iraq, said the executive branch 'knew' something that it did not know," he said.

The report's conclusions were sharply criticized by several Republican members, who accused the Democratic majority of rehashing old material for political advantage.

Committee Vice Chairman Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) called the new report a "waste of time" and said the allegations about administration officials were deliberately misleading. "It is ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the Committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the Administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence," he said.

Bond also noted that key Democrats -- including several who ran for their party's presidential nomination this year -- also made public statements during the same period portraying Iraq's weapons as a threat to the United States. Those statements were omitted from the report over Republican objections, resulting in a flagrantly partisan document that is "flawed, incomplete and irrelevant," he said.

The committee's final report also focused on efforts by Bush appointees at the Pentagon and White House to collect intelligence on Iran. The effort included a series of meetings in Rome and Paris that featured Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile the CIA had labeled as a fabricator based on his role in the Iran-contra affair.

The group kept the CIA in the dark about Manucher's involvement, the report said, and as a result the agency never learned about "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" gained in a December 2001 meeting in Rome with two Iranian intelligence officers. The CIA also was prevented from learning of Ghorbanifar's attempts to obtain Pentagon funds for covert activities in Iran and otherwise influence U.S. government activities, committee members found.

The new report is the last in a series of Senate reports on the intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war. The first such report, released in July 2004, focused on flaws in intelligence-gathering and analysis by the U.S. intelligence agencies but put off the politically explosive question of whether Bush administration officials deliberately distorted or misused the information they were given. The final report was delayed as committee members clashed over what the report should say and whether such a report was still necessary.

The earlier Senate report, released when Republicans controlled the chamber, concluded unanimously that U.S. intelligence agencies had botched the task of assessing Iraq's capabilities regarding weapons of mass destruction. It said key intelligence reports made unwarranted assumptions and overstated what was then known about Hussein's weapons programs. The report faulted the CIA and other agencies for failing to cultivate reliable informants and for basing key assessments on extrapolation and inference.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/05/AR2008060501523.html?hpid=moreheadlines

We leave this to the historians to look back upon when discussing the decline of the American century.

[The 801]

Abramoff, White House Connection Detailed In House Report


Reps. Henry Waxman and Tom Davis have released a draft of the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the Jack Abramoff scandal. Despite facing some restraints in their capacity to gain information (largely in part because the Justice Department is pursuing concurrent investigations), the report offers a few jems to those following the story.

It turns out that Abramoff was indeed fairly friendly with the Bush White House. He was thought well of by senior officials, helped guide the hiring and firing process of federal employees and provided gifts for White House staff (at least one of whom is now an economic adviser to John McCain).


FIRING: The report confirms that Abramoff used the White House to remove a government official that opposed his client:

One action that White House officials took at the request of Mr. Abramoff was to intervene to force the removal of a State Department official, Alan Stayman. In a previous position at the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior, Mr. Stayman had advocated positions opposed by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, then a client of Mr. Abramoff. Mr. Stayman was appointed to his position at the Department of State during the Clinton Administration.


In a recent Committee deposition, Monica Kladakis, then-Deputy Associate Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP), confirmed that OPP became involved in Mr. Stayman's removal after White House officials were contacted by Mr. Abramoff's team.

HIRING: Abramoff had insight into hiring decisions facing the White House, and was able to provide (and in some cases was solicited for) his opinion on nominees:

One of the main Administration offices of interest to the Abramoff team was the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) at the Department of the Interior, which handles issues relating to Pacific Island territories where Mr. Abramoff had clients. The Greenberg Traurig documents showed and the White House documents corroborate that the Abramoff team succeeded in obtaining information from White House officials regarding the status of the nomination process for OIA posts. In addition, the White House records and testimony of White House officials show that top White House aides solicited and considered the views of Mr. Abramoff and his associates in deliberations over OIA appointments.


One example of the Abramoff team's access to the White House regarding the nomination process is a February 20, 2001, e-mail from Susan Ralston to Matt Schlapp to let him know that Jack Abramoff had called Karl Rove a few days earlier to discuss appointments at OIA. According to this e-mail, Mr. Abramoff had heard that Esther Kia'aina was going to be considered for a position and "wanted to let Karl know that he didn't think this was a good idea." Ms. Ralston continued, "Karl asked that you return his call." Ms. Kia'aina was not appointed to a position at OIA.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES: Abramoff influenced White House decisions on political appointees:

Mr. Abramoff and his team also succeeded in persuading the White House to refrain from issuing a presidential endorsement of Juan Babauta, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) in 2001, who was running against a third party candidate favored by Mr. Abramoff. According to the Greenberg Traurig documents, on October 26, 2001, Mr. Abramoff sent a memo to Mr. Mehlman arguing against an endorsement, spoke with Mr. Mehlman over the phone about this issue in the same time frame, and received an e-mail from Susan Ralston on October 31, 2001, stating: "You win :). KR said no endorsement."

MCCAIN ADVISER: As TPMmuckraker points out, at least one White House official who received gifts from Abramoff is now playing a role in the McCain campaign:

On October 18, 2001, Kevin Ring sent an unknown number of tickets to an unknown event to Mr. Bonilla by courier. In addition, in response to an offer from Kevin Ring, Mr. Bonilla requested and was provided with two tickets to sit in the Abramoff suite for the November 20, 2001, Washington Wizards game.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/09/abramoff-white-house-conn_n_106097.html

[The 801]

My god, what a riot. Maybe he will write a tell all book......

President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war

’I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric’
Tom Baldwin and Gerard Baker in Ljubljana

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

The unilateralism that marked his first White House term has been replaced by an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism. He said that his focus for his final six months in office was to secure agreement on issues such as establishing a Palestinian state and to “leave behind a series of structures that makes it easier for the next president”.

Mr Bush is concerned that the Democratic nominee Barack Obama might open cracks in the West’s united front towards Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. At the EU-US summit in Slovenia, he pressed for tougher sanctions against Iran unless it agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment programme verifiably: “They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us.”

Mr Bush told The Times that when his successor arrived and assessed “what will work or what won’t work in dealing with Iran”, he would stick with the current policy.

Shaul Mofaz, a hardline Israeli minister, has suggested that a military strike on Iran is “unavoidable”. But Mr Bush said: “We ought to work together, keep focused. His comments really should be viewed as the need to continue to keep pressuring Iran.”

The President was keen to bind his successor into a continued military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, but offered only cautious optimism about a recent decline in violence. Asked about corruption allegations dogging Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, Mr Bush insisted: “I have found him to be an honest man.”

He also offered words of encouragement for another ally, Gordon Brown, whom he will meet on Sunday. He said that he needed no advice on coping with political adversity. He is “plenty confident and plenty smart, plenty capable — he can sort it out”.

But he delivered a thinly veiled warning to Mr Obama that his promises to renegotiate or block international trade deals were already causing alarm in Europe and beyond.

“There is concern about protectionism and economic nationalism,” he said. “Leaders recognise now is the time to get ahead of this issue before it becomes engrained in the political systems of our respective countries.”

Acknowledging that his refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol once created consternation in Europe, he said that there was now a recognition that that richer countries needed to “transfer out of the hydrocarbon economy”. He insisted, however, that any binding emission targets would have to include China and India to be workable.

The President knows that Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain will have to distance himself from the current Administration. "He's an independent person who will make his decisions on what he thinks is best."

Asked if the US is ready for a black president, Mr Bush says: "I think the fact that the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama is a statement about how far America has come.

"Having that all that, it's going to be important for the American people to figure out who can handle the task of the 21st Century. It's a challenging job."

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

The unilateralism that marked his first White House term has been replaced by an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism. He said that his focus for his final six months in office was to secure agreement on issues such as establishing a Palestinian state and to “leave behind a series of structures that makes it easier for the next president”.

Mr Bush is concerned that the Democratic nominee Barack Obama might open cracks in the West’s united front towards Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. At the EU-US summit in Slovenia, he pressed for tougher sanctions against Iran unless it agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment programme verifiably: “They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us.”

Mr Bush told The Times that when his successor arrived and assessed “what will work or what won’t work in dealing with Iran”, he would stick with the current policy.

Shaul Mofaz, a hardline Israeli minister, has suggested that a military strike on Iran is “unavoidable”. But Mr Bush said: “We ought to work together, keep focused. His comments really should be viewed as the need to continue to keep pressuring Iran.”

The President is keen to bind his successor into a continued military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, but offered only cautious optimism about a recent decline in violence. Asked about corruption allegations dogging Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, Mr Bush insisted: “I have found him to be an honest man.”

He also offered words of encouragement for another ally, Gordon Brown, whom he will meet on Sunday. He said that the Prime Minister needed no advice on coping with political adversity. He is “plenty confident and plenty smart, plenty capable — he can sort it out”.

But he delivered a thinly veiled warning to Mr Obama that his promises to renegotiate or block international trade deals were already causing alarm in Europe and beyond.

“There is concern about protectionism and economic nationalism,” he said. “Leaders recognise now is the time to get ahead of this issue before it becomes engrained in the political systems of our respective countries.”

Acknowledging that his refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol once created consternation in Europe, he said that there was now a recognition that that richer countries needed to “transfer out of the hydrocarbon economy”. He insisted, however, that any binding emission targets would have to include China and India to be workable.

The President knows that Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain will have to distance himself from the current Administration. "He's an independent person who will make his decisions on what he thinks is best."

Asked if the US is ready for a black president, Mr Bush says: "I think the fact that the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama is a statement about how far America has come.

"Having said all that, it's going to be important for the American people to figure out who can handle the task of the 21st Century. It's a challenging job."


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4107327.ece

Gee, I hope you feel better now, george.

[NYer]

"The evil that men do lives after them ... the good is oft interred with their bones."

William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
Act III, Scene III

[The 801]

Get Osama Bin Laden before I leave office, orders George W Bush

Sarah Baxter

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House.

Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

Bush arrives in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe. He will have tea with the Queen and dinner with Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah before holding a private meeting with Brown at No 10 tomorrow and flying on to Northern Ireland.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

America rarely acknowledges the use of Predator and Reaper drones, but the most recent known strike was on a suspected Al-Qaeda safe house in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan earlier in June. Villagers said the house was empty.

Intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden is sketchy, but some analysts believe he is in the Bajaur tribal zone in northwest Pakistan. He has evaded capture for nearly seven years. “Bush is swinging for the fences in the hope of scoring a home run,” said an intelligence source, using a baseball metaphor.

A Pentagon source said US forces were rolling up Al-Qaeda’s network in Pakistan in the hope of pushing Bin Laden towards the Afghan border, where the US military and bombers with guided missiles were lying in wait. “They are prepping for a major battle,” he said.

The main operations in Pakistan are being undertaken by Delta, the US army special operations unit, and the British SBS.

Special forces are being sent to capture or kill Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters based on intelligence provided by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and its US counterpart, the Security Co-ordination Detachment.

The step-up in military activity has increased tensions between Pakistan and the US. A senior Pakistani government source said President Pervez Musharraf had given tacit support to Predator attacks on Al-Qaeda.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said last week that the US would “partner [the Pakistanis] to the extent they want us to” to combat insurgents.

Pakistan lodged a strong diplomatic protest last week over what it claimed was an airstrike on a border post with Afghanistan that killed 11 of its troops.

The United States declined to accept this version of events. “It is still not exactly clear what happened,” said Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4138791.ece

Now, does this need a comment here?
Lets see....
How about we blame Clinton for not getting him? Or would that be passing the buck? At least clinton recognized he was a threat.
How about we ask why this was not done for the last 7 plus years. That"s what I would ask.
Maybe it was because "I don't think about him too much"
Sickening.
And a quater says it doesn't happen on Bush's watch.

[NYer]

Investigation advances for US Attorneys Scandal. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121358634983076541.html)

Justice Department lawyers have filed a grand-jury referral stemming from the 2006 U.S. attorneys scandal, according to people familiar with the probe, a move indicating that the yearlong investigation may be entering a new phase.

[NYer]

And again ... more on my candidate for dubious distinction - the man instrumental in bringing Robert Mugabe to power. (http://www.nysun.com/opinion/carters-role-in-zimbabwe/58232/)

[al-Canine]

It's obvious these fellas (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jkKFU8CvHoLV5ont_58iLTVBWLVQD91BLF880) are up to no good. Too bad the Bush Administration took their eye off the ball (http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2008/0103/spch/spch_biden.html). Bet it will come back to bite us in the ass. :sad_01:

[The 801]

Probe: Pentagon lawyers sought harsh interrogation

By ANNE FLAHERTY – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks pursued abusive interrogation techniques once used by North Korea and Vietnam on American POWs despite stern warnings by several military lawyers that the methods were cruel and even illegal, according to a Senate investigation.

The findings, detailed in a hearing Tuesday, brought rebukes of the Pentagon effort from Democrats and Republicans alike.

"The guidance (administration lawyers) provided will go down in history as some of the most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our nation's military and intelligence communities," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Air Force Reserve colonel who teaches military law for the service.

The hearing is the Senate Armed Services Committee's first look at the origins of harsh interrogation methods and how policy decisions were vetted across the Defense Department. Its review fits into a broader picture of the government's handling of detainees, which includes FBI and CIA interrogations in secret prisons.

The panel is expected to hold further hearings on the matter and release a final report by the end of the year.

Among its initial findings is that senior Pentagon lawyers, including the office of general counsel William "Jim" Haynes, sought information as early as July 2002 regarding a military program that trained U.S. troops how to survive enemy interrogations and deny foes valuable intelligence.

Much of the training program, known as "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape," or SERE, is based on experiences of American prisoners of war in previous conflicts, including those in Korea and Vietnam.

In response, SERE officials provided Haynes' office a list of tactics that included sensory deprivation, sleep disruption and stress positions.

Haynes, who resigned his post in February, testified that he remembers receiving the information, but that he did not recall requesting it personally.

Several of those techniques, including stress positions, were later approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a December 2002 memo for use at Guantanamo Bay. Rumsfeld and Haynes agreed to the methods, despite objections by military service lawyers that they might be illegal.

"Whatever interrogation techniques we adopt will eventually become public knowledge," wrote Col. John Ley of the Army's Judge Advocate General office in November 2002. "If we mistreat detainees, we will quickly lose the (moral) high ground and public support will erode."

Haynes said he too had misgivings, but that he was unaware of the legal objections in the military services. He said he was doing the best he could to help prevent another major terrorist attack.

"There was a limited amount of time and a high degree of urgency," Haynes said of his decision to cut short at one point a department-wide review of the legality of the interrogation methods.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Rumsfeld's endorsement paved the way for abuses to occur in Iraq and Afghanistan and makes U.S. troops more likely to someday be tortured if captured by the enemy.

"If we use those same techniques offensively against detainees, it says to the world that they have America's stamp of approval," said Levin.

The committee also released previously secret and privately held documents on Tuesday. According to minutes from an October 2002 meeting, a top military lawyer at Guantanamo said prisoners were exposed to previously forbidden techniques, such as sleep deprivation, but that such treatment was hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Officially it is not happening," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver said in the meeting. "It is not being reported officially. The ICRC is a serious concern. They will be in and out, scrutinizing our operations, unless they are displeased and decide to protest and leave. This would draw a lot of negative attention."

A senior CIA lawyer at the meeting, John Fredman, explained that whether harsh interrogation amounted to torture "is a matter of perception." The only sure test for torture is if the detainee died.

"If the detainees dies, you're doing it wrong," Fredman said.

Beaver wrote a now-infamous Oct. 11, 2002, memo that determined abusive methods could be used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison because they were not considered prisoners of war. Her proposed methods included extended isolation, 20-hour interrogations, death threats and waterboarding.

On Tuesday, Beaver told the committee that she was "shocked" that her memo became the primary justification for Rumsfeld's approval to use harsher methods.

She had asked her superiors for input because those working at Guantanamo and engaged in the interrogation program "don't always have the best perspective."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the administration does not review every legal opinion, but that its position has been "to deal with these detainees humanely" and "get the information from them that we can to protect this country."

Notably absent from the hearing Tuesday was the Senate's biggest champion of detainee rights and the top Republican on the committee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. A former prisoner of war, McCain has become less visible on the issue of detainee treatment since becoming a presidential candidate.

McCain was in San Antonio on Tuesday giving a speech on energy and attending campaign fundraisers.

Associated Press writer Pamela Hess contributed to this report

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jlcklXVQaqEKan6SFvWXydTqGtkAD91C2RT80

[NYer]

So-called Harsh Interrogation had KSM bawling like a baby in short order. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Time will tell.

[The 801]

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes



By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.

Taguba didn't respond to a request for further comment relayed via a spokesman.

The group Physicians for Human Rights, which compiled the new report, described it as the most in-depth medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date.

Doctors and mental health experts examined 11 detainees held for long periods in the prison system that President Bush established after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. All of them eventually were released without charges.

The doctors and experts determined that the men had been subject to cruelties that ranged from isolation, sleep deprivation and hooding to electric shocks, beating and, in one case, being forced to drink urine.

Bush has said repeatedly that the United States doesn't condone torture.

"All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated and, if substantiated, those responsible are held accountable," said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. The Defense Department responds to concerns raised by the International Committee for the Red Cross, he said, which has access to detainees under military control.

"It adds little to the public discourse to draw sweeping conclusions based upon dubious allegations regarding remote medical assessments of former detainees, now far removed from detention," Gordon said.

The physicians' group said that its experts, who had experience studying torture's effects, spent two days with each former captive and conducted intensive exams and interviews. They administered tests to detect exaggeration. In two of the 11 cases, the group was able to review medical records.

The report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," concurs with a five-part McClatchy investigation of Guantanamo published this week. Among its findings were that abuses occurred — primarily at prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were held en route to Guantanamo — and that many of the prisoners were wrongly detained.

Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld didn't specifically approve of the worst abuses, but neither he nor the White House enforced strict limits on how detainees would be treated.

There was no "bright line of abuse which could not be transgressed," former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora told the Senate committee.

Leonard Rubenstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuses his group uncovered. "The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and ... suffering," he said.

Detainee abuse has been documented previously, in photos from Abu Ghraib, accounts by former detainees and their lawyers and a confidential report by the International Committee for the Red Cross that was leaked to the U.S. news media.

Of the 11 men evaluated in the Physicians for Human Rights report, four were detained in Afghanistan between late 2001 and early 2003, and later sent to Guantanamo. The remaining seven were detained in Iraq in 2003.

One of the Iraqis, identified by the pseudonym Laith, was arrested with his family at his Baghdad home in the early morning of Oct. 19, 2003. He was taken to a location where he was beaten, stripped to his underwear and threatened with execution, the report says.

"Laith" told the examiners he was then taken to a second site, where he was photographed in humiliating positions and given electric shocks to his genitals.

Finally, he was taken to Abu Ghraib, where he spent the first 35 to 40 days in isolation in a small cage, enduring being suspended in the cage and other "stress positions."

He was released on June 24, 2004, without charge.

://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html

[NYer]

Oh wait, McClatchy again ... there wouldn't be an agenda, would there?

In the interest of balance, there was more to the Taguba Report (http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/5/6/05732.shtml) than reported in the MSM.

[al-Canine]

Bush fails to appoint a nuclear terror czar

President leaves unfilled a congressional mandate backed by the 9/11 panel

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | June 22, 2008

WASHINGTON - Ten months after Congress passed a law establishing a White House coordinator for preventing nuclear terrorism, President Bush has no plans to create the high-level post any time soon, according to the National Security Council.

The provision - suggested by leading members of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - was contained in 2007 legislation designed to improve homeland defenses. Congress passed it by a wide margin, with bipartisan support.

Some congressional leaders said Bush's failure to fill the job nearly a year later marks an outright evasion of the law, and called on the president to fill the position swiftly, even though his administration has only seven months left in office.

"Congress and a range of bipartisan experts, including 9/11 commissioners, clearly judged that such a position would help strengthen the effectiveness of the administration's handling of [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation matters," the office of Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who sponsored the legislation in the Senate, said in a statement. "The Congress passed and the president signed into law this requirement."

When asked this month why the position remains unfilled, the National Security Council described it as an internal matter still under deliberation.

"There has been no decision as yet on how best to implement the coordinator position," the council said in a statement.

The White House opposed creating the position from the start. In a January 2007 letter to Congress - six months before the law was adopted - the Bush administration wrote that the appointment of a nuclear antiterrorism chief "is unnecessary given extensive coordination and synchronization mechanisms that now exist within the executive branch," citing a 2006 strategy document that lays out the responsibilities of numerous government departments.

But in the past, Bush has tried to bypass provisions of laws he disagrees with by issuing "signing statements," documents singling out those parts of statutes that White House lawyers advised would infringe on his constitutional powers as chief of the government's executive branch. Bush has used this practice more than any prior president.

This time, however, the White House seems to be ignoring the nuclear terrorism coordinator requirement not for constitutional reasons but simply because the administration thinks it is a bad idea. It is a stance some legal scholars called an even more blatant disregard of the checks and balances on presidential power.

"It is one thing when the president claims it infringes on his constitutional authority," said Phillip J. Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who specializes in separation of powers issues. "It is something else altogether when no such argument is made."

"Congress has the authority to create by statute different responsibilities in executive departments," he added. "You can't ignore a valid statute. I don't think he has the authority to do that."

National security analysts have long advocated for a top presidential adviser focused solely on organizing the government to prevent terrorists from acquiring catastrophic weapons, such as a nuclear device, a radioactive "dirty bomb," or biological agents. They contend that the current arrangement - in which that responsibility is spread across the Departments of Energy, Defense, State, and Homeland Security - is not fully integrated and has gaps in preparedness.

Calls to create such a post date to before the 9/11 attacks. A January 2001 task force - headed by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker, a Republican, and Lloyd Cutler, a former White House aide to Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter - called for a similar position and additional resources to lock down former Soviet arsenals and vulnerable nuclear stockpiles worldwide.

Under the law at issue, which Bush signed on Aug. 3, 2007, the nuclear antiterrorism coordinator would serve as the "principal adviser to the president on all matters relating to the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism."

That official - which the legislation stipulates must be "full time" and carry no other responsibilities - would draw up budgets and strategies for securing and detecting materials around the world that could be used in weapons of mass destruction. The president would appoint the coordinator pending Senate approval, and he or she would command a small staff that would participate in the deliberations of both the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, the law states.

Advocates say the post is needed now more than ever, pointing to growing evidence - documented by international intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency - that terrorist groups are actively seeking nuclear or radiological weapons and the know-how to make them.

Meanwhile, a government-funded report released this month concluded that some of the current efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism are not fully coordinated.

The review by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Pentagon office that helps secure nuclear stockpiles in the former Soviet Union, found that the current practice of having individual executive departments propose their own budgets for nuclear security programs "risks creating gaps and redundancies."

The review pointed out that the White House budget examiner who is responsible for approving Department of Defense and Department of Energy programs is not responsible for the State Department's related efforts. It also found that the Pentagon agency - which employs some of the preeminent antiproliferation specialists - often is not consulted on critical decisions related to stopping nuclear proliferation.

Senator John F. Kerry, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he believes a presidential adviser with the power to track and coordinate the nation's efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism is critical to national security.

"There needs to be someone with a clear line of authority whose full-time job and only job is this," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a recent interview.

During a debate between Kerry, the Democratic nominee, and Bush during the 2004 presidential election, Kerry declared that a terrorist attack involving a nuclear or radiological device poses the greatest national security threat. Bush readily agreed.

But without a single person coordinating the government's prevention efforts, the necessary urgency is lacking, said Charles Curtis, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Washington, and the former deputy secretary of energy in the Clinton administration.

"I believe that until there is a senior official with direct access to the president who has specific and singular responsibility for coordinating efforts to keep nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction out of terrorist hands, we will not get the action we need," he told the National Defense University Foundation in Washington last month. "We need a centralized means in the office of the president to set priorities, assign responsibilities, ensure resources, and hold people to account."

"It's the law," he added. "But it's not enough to have a law."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/06/22/bush_fails_to_appoint_a_nuclear_terror_czar/

[NYer]

The performance of Govt-appointed "Czars" has been less than optimal (Think Drug Czar.) I say if you want a Czar, you'll have to dig up Ivan the Terrible. Otherwise, this is much ado about nothing on a slow news day. Now if you want to talk about Immigration, Social Security, etc. ...

[The 801]

How about just get a few generals?

White House Blocking Army's Plan To Overhaul Contracting System

RICHARD LARDNER | June 23, 2008 07:06 AM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — The Army's march to overhaul its tarnished contracting system has been slowed by an unlikely foe: the White House.

The Office of Management and Budget, President Bush's administrative arm, has shot down a service plan to add five active-duty generals who would oversee purchasing and monitor contractor performance.

The boost in brass was a key recommendation from a blue-ribbon panel that last fall criticized the Army for contracting failures that undermined the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, wasted U.S. tax dollars, and sparked dozens of procurement fraud investigations.

As the Army's contracting budget ballooned _ from $46 billion in 2002 to $112 billion in 2007 _ it had too few experienced people negotiating and buying equipment and supplies, according to the panel. Worse still, there wasn't a single Army general in a job with contracting responsibilities. That meant the profession had little clout at a critical time.

Senior officers are needed to make sure past mistakes are not repeated, said the panel, chaired by former Pentagon acquisition chief Jacques Gansler.

"If a contracting person has to say to a general that they have to follow the rules, it's easier if you have your own general who will back you up," says David Berteau, a panel member and a former Defense Department official.

Having generals in contracting jobs also will build the talent pool by showing junior soldiers that contracting is a promising career path.

The increase would generate a modest $1.2 million per year in personnel costs. But the Army already has more than 300 full-time generals, enough, it's been told, to handle any new demands.

The panel called for two major generals and three brigadier generals. One of the major generals, who wear two stars, would run a newly established Army Contracting Command. Formation of the command was another of the Gansler panel's recommendations.

The second two-star general would be assigned to a senior staff position at the Pentagon.

Two of the brigadier generals, who wear a single star, would also be assigned to the contracting command while the third would become chief of contracting at the Army Corps of Engineers.

According to a May 28 report to Congress on the status of the recommendations, Army Secretary Pete Geren said a proposal for five extra generals was submitted in March to OMB for approval. The office's role is to ensure proposed budgets and legislation are consistent with the administration's policies.

On May 12, the Army learned its proposal had been rejected. The report does not say why. A week after the rejection, the Army appealed OMB's decision.

OMB spokeswoman Corinne Hirsch said Wednesday the office is "internally deliberating" the proposal and would not discuss the reasons for the initial rejection.

Lt. Col. Martin Downie, an Army spokesman, said Thursday that communications between the Army and OMB are "pre-decisional and not releasable to the public at this time."

Generals are carefully controlled commodities; federal law prescribes how many each military branch may have. The Army has 306 generals leading nearly 525,000 troops. More than 240 of those are one- and two-star officers.

Adding a brigadier general to the ranks costs roughly $217,000 a year in pay, benefits and retirement contributions; a major general costs $261,000 annually.

The Army opened the Contracting Command three months ago. Jeffrey Parsons, a senior Army civilian official with heavy contracting experience, was picked to run it. Parsons will be in charge "until an appropriately skilled and experienced (major general) is available to assume command," the Army's report to Congress said.

The Army is also adding 1,400 military and civilian employees to its contracting work force. A purchasing office in Kuwait that had been identified as a hub of corruption has been revamped.

In the complex world of military acquisition, contracting is a specialized occupation. Contracting personnel negotiate with vendors, translate jargon-filled requirements for equipment and services into sensible descriptions, and oversee the deals to be sure the Army gets what it ordered.

The war in Iraq exposed major flaws in the Army's contracting abilities, particularly when the buying was done outside the United States. An overworked, under-experienced, and short-handed Army contracting staff was unable to meet the fast-paced demands for supplies and services. Bad deals were made and procurement fraud cases mounted in an environment prone to abuse.

Defense contractors, frequently criticized for war profiteering, complained of being pushed to accept flat-fee arrangements in high-risk combat zones where expenses could soar and confusion existed over what U.S. laws and regulations applied.

Collectively, the shortcomings created a "perfect storm," according to the panel.

Since 2005, the Army Criminal Investigation Command has opened 168 investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, according to spokesman Chris Grey. Ninety-five of those cases are ongoing. Of the 73 that have been closed, the subjects were indicted, the allegations turned out to be false, or the inquiry ended because of a lack of evidence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/23/white-house-blocking-army_n_108641.html

[NYer]

Or soldiers ... I think they have all the generals they need.

[The 801]

GAO Report Faults Post-'Surge' Planning
Lack of Comprehensive Strategy Cited, but Pentagon Study Sees Gains in Iraq


The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

Bush's strategy of January 2007, the GAO said, "defined the original goals and objectives that the Administration believed were achievable by the end of this phase in July 2008." Not meeting many of them changed circumstances on the ground and the pending withdrawal of the last of the additional U.S. forces mean that strategy is now outdated, the report said. The GAO recommends that the State and Defense departments work together to fashion a new approach.

The GAO report contrasted with a Pentagon report, dated June 13 but not released until yesterday. The Defense Department's quarterly assessment to Congress, "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq," said that "security, political and economic trends in Iraq continue to be positive, although they remain fragile, reversible and uneven."

In many respects, the two reports seemed to assess wholly different realities. The 74-page Pentagon document emphasized what it called the "negative role" in Iraqi security that Iran and Syria have played. The 94-page GAO report did not mention Iran and referred to Syria only in the context of Iraqi refugees who had settled there.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate last year ordered the GAO -- Congress's investigative arm -- to assess the progress of U.S. objectives in Iraq. Yesterday's GAO report, which cites statistics through early June, said its work drew on a review of U.S. and Iraqi documents; interviews with officials across the U.S. government and intelligence agencies; and military and diplomatic personnel in Iraq.

In comments appended to the GAO report, the State, Treasury and Defense departments objected to its conclusions, especially the judgment that the administration needs to fashion a new strategy.

"We do not require a new strategic document," the State Department wrote. The Pentagon said it "nonconcurs with the GAO recommendation" to update the strategy, adding that the "New Way Forward . . . remains valid."

The Defense Department also disagreed with a separate GAO criticism -- contained in a classified appendix that was not publicly released -- that the Pentagon's year-old Joint Campaign Plan, written in Baghdad, "is not a strategic plan; it is an operational plan with limitations."

The Pentagon said the GAO chose a "misleading" measurement of Iraqi security capabilities -- that only 10 percent of Iraqi units had reached full operational readiness. A better measurement, it said, was the number of Iraqi units "in the lead" in joint operations, which it put at 70 percent.

The GAO's assessment of electricity, the Pentagon said, was flawed because it was measured against "an ever-rising demand." The Pentagon noted that output is now higher than before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The Pentagon also criticized the GAO's conclusion that Iraqi oil production is lagging. The "arbitrary goal" of 3 million barrels a day, the Pentagon said, had been set by the U.S. occupation government -- the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority -- and "fail[s] to capture the fact that oil exports" are now higher than at any time since the invasion.

The Treasury Department disputed the GAO's assessment of the Iraqi government's expenditures. It said investigators had used the wrong metrics to conclude that "Iraq's central ministries spent only 11 percent of their capital investment budgets in 2007, a decline from similarly low spending rates of 14 and 13 percent in 2005 and 2006, respectively."

On numerous points, the GAO report countered the rebuttals. "We agree that Iraq's budget doubled in size between 2005 and 2008," it said in one response to Treasury's objections. "However, much of the increase was due to a 25 percent appreciation of the Iraqi dinar and a four-fold increase in the budgets of Iraq's security ministries."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062302050.html?nav=rss_world

[NYer]

Jimmy Carter's Revenge (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/06/020827.php)

When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, he promised a foreign policy that would reflect the basic decency of the American people. In practice, that meant a foreign policy designed to project far less American power and influence than we had done throughout the heroic Cold War years. Thus, the U.S. remained indifferent when Iran, a key ally in the Middle East, faced the prospect and then the reality of being taken over by fanatically anti-American Islamic extremists. We reacted with similar indifference to the establishment of a Communist dicatorship in Central America. And when the Soviet Union promised Carter it would not invade Afghanistan, its word was good enough for our oh-so-decent president.

Ronald Reagan's foreign policy successes seemed to vanquish the notion that too much U.S. power and influence was a bad thing for the world, much less the U.S. That notion, implausible on its face, became impossible to defend when our lack of abnegation seemed to produce a victorious end to the Cold War.

Yet domestic policies pursued by Jimmy Carter now threaten partially to re-impose Carter's foreign policy vision of a diminished United States. For it was mostly in the Carter presidency (the years of sweater-wearing and ceiling fans) that the U.S. began systematically to deny itself access to domestic sources of energy. More than 30 years later, with the soaring price of oil creating perhaps the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, that lack of access makes it increasingly more difficult for us to project power and influence on the world stage. And, predictably, it is nations with interests sharply divergent from our own -- e.g., Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran -- that are filling the void (Venezuela is a special case; few expected this this country to become the next Cuba, though one should never be surprised when a country with massive new wealth becomes belligerent).

In Europe, Russia, flush with new wealth and now a major oil supplier, is increasingly able to counter-balance U.S. influence. In the Middle East, our leverage with Saudi Arabia is in jeopardy due not only to our dependence on Saudi oil, but also the ability of the Saudis to sell their oil to China and India. More generally, the U.S. is seen as weakened, and objectively our economy is now weaker, due to its lack of status in the great global oil game.

Carter, of course, does not bear all of the blame. Republicans have had substantial power since 1980 and were never able (and not always even willing) to promote oil drilling in the U.S. or the use of nuclear power. Carter stands out at least as much for his eagerness to see the U.S. diminished as for his responsibility for bringing this about through bad energy policies.

More than 30 years of neglect cannot quickly be overcome. But the signal we would send by reversing our policies on drilling and nuclear energy would be unmistakable. History shows that when the U.S. plays, it usually wins eventually. It would be extremely salutary if the rest of the world came to believe that we are back, in a serious way, in the energy producing game.

[The 801]

Ideology-Based Hiring at Justice Broke Laws, Investigation Finds

The report says Michael Elston used "impermissible considerations." (By Dennis Cook -- Associated Press)

Senior Justice Department officials broke civil service laws by rejecting scores of young applicants who had links to Democrats or liberal organizations, according to a biting report issued yesterday.

The report by the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that a pair of high-ranking political appointees who are no longer with the department had violated department policy and the Civil Service Reform Act by using ideological reasons to scuttle the candidacy of lawyers who applied to the elite honors and summer intern programs.

In one instance, steering committee member Esther Slater McDonald deemed "unacceptable" an applicant who professed admiration for the environmental group Greenaction and passed over another with ties to the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the report said.

McDonald, who left the Justice Department last year and now works for a law firm in the District, sent colleagues a Nov. 29, 2006, e-mail in which she complained about "leftist commentary and buzzwords" in applications. Many of the underlying documents, on which McDonald and others wrote comments, were destroyed before the probe began, according to the report.

Auditors also criticized Michael J. Elston, former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, for failing to supervise McDonald and for weeding out candidates on his own based on "impermissible considerations." Elston may have denied one Stanford Law School applicant because she had written a law review article about gender discrimination in the military, the report said. Elston left the Justice Department last year amid questions about his role in the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys. He now works at a private law firm.

McDonald and Elston did not return calls for comment yesterday. Experts said they are unlikely to face sanctions for what investigators called deliberate "misconduct" because they have left government employment.

Traditionally, the highly coveted intern and honors jobs had been awarded based on merit. But in 2002, top Justice Department officials moved to give political appointees more control, prompting complaints from the career ranks. The problem flared up again in 2006, when hundreds of applications were rejected for questionable reasons, according to the report.

Candidates for the Honors Program that year whose résumés indicated liberal affiliations were weeded out at three times the rate of conservative-leaning applicants, investigators said. San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, who was later fired for reasons that remain under investigation, reached out to no avail to Elston over the decision to reject a candidate who had won a prestigious appellate clerkship with a Democratic judge.

Peter Keisler, then chief of the Justice Department's civil division, called Elston after several applicants to his unit were denied, including a Harvard Law School graduate and former Justice summer intern who had worked as a paralegal at Planned Parenthood, the report said.

The honors and intern program report is the result of the first in a series of investigations into the role that politics may have played in law enforcement and hiring decisions at the Justice Department over the course of the Bush administration. Studies focusing on hiring and enforcement in the troubled civil rights division, the rationale for the U.S. attorneys' dismissal, and the role played by former Justice Department officials including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales could be issued soon, according to lawyers following the issues.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who replaced Gonzales last year, said he has taken steps to overhaul the hiring process. Considering politics in hires for career slots is "unacceptable," Mukasey said in a statement.

Former Justice Department officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations said the study underscores the challenge for the next president.

"The Honors Program at DOJ has always been the 'A-List,'" said Nicholas M. Gess, a Justice official under President Bill Clinton. "The next attorney general will be stuck with many from the 'B-List."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/24/ST2008062401003.html

[al-Canine]

Amid U.S. Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan

By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID ROHDE

WASHINGTON — Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easier for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda.

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

The new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan. They also argue that catching Mr. bin Laden will come only by capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

A recent American airstrike killing Pakistani troops has only inflamed tensions along the mountain border and added to tensions between Washington and Pakistan’s new government.

The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Publicly, senior American and Pakistani officials have said that the creation of a Qaeda haven in the tribal areas was in many ways inevitable — that the lawless badlands where ethnic Pashtun tribes have resisted government control for centuries were a natural place for a dispirited terrorism network to find refuge. The American and Pakistani officials also blame a disastrous cease-fire brokered between the Pakistani government and militants in 2006.

But more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan tell another story. American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.

Inside the C.I.A., the fights included clashes between the agency’s outposts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad. There were also battles between field officers and the Counterterrorist Center at C.I.A. headquarters, whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missile strikes, was derided by officers in the Islamabad station as the work of “boys with toys.”

An early arrangement that allowed American commandos to join Pakistani units on raids inside the tribal areas was halted in 2003 after protests in Pakistan. Another combat mission that came within hours of being launched in 2005 was scuttled because some C.I.A. officials in Pakistan questioned the accuracy of the intelligence, and because aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld believed that the mission force had become too large.

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.

Some former officials say Mr. Bush should have done more to confront Mr. Musharraf, by aggressively demanding that he acknowledge the scale of the militant threat.

Western military officials say Mr. Musharraf was instead often distracted by his own political problems, and effectively allowed militants to regroup by brokering peace agreements with them.

Even critics of the White House agree that there was no foolproof solution to gaining control of the tribal areas. But by most accounts the administration failed to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant problem there, and never resolved the disagreements between warring agencies that undermined efforts to fashion any coherent strategy.

“We’re just kind of drifting,” said Richard L. Armitage, who as deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005 was the administration’s point person for Pakistan.

Fleeing U.S. Air Power

In March 2002, several hundred bedraggled foreign fighters — Uzbeks, Pakistanis and a handful of Arabs — fled the towering mountains of eastern Afghanistan and crossed into Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area.

Savaged by American air power in the battles of Tora Bora and the Shah-i-Kot valley, some were trying to make their way to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Some were simply looking for a haven.

They soon arrived at Shakai, a remote region in South Waziristan of tree-covered mountains and valleys. Venturing into nearby farming villages, they asked local tribesmen if they could rent some of the area’s walled family compounds, paying two to three times the impoverished area’s normal rates as the militants began to lay new roots.

“They slowly, steadily from the mountainside tried to establish communication,” recalled Mahmood Shah, the chief civilian administrator of the tribal areas from 2001 to 2005.

In many ways, the foreigners were returning to their home base. In the 1980s, Mr. bin Laden and hundreds of Arab and foreign fighters backed by the United States and Pakistan used the tribal areas as a staging area for cross-border attacks on Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

The militants’ flight did not go unnoticed by American intelligence agencies, which began to report beginning in the spring of 2002 that large numbers of foreigners appeared to be hiding in South Waziristan and neighboring North Waziristan.

But Gen. Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, the commander of Pakistani forces in northwestern Pakistan, was skeptical. In an interview this year, General Aurakzai recalled that he regarded the warnings as “guesswork,” and said that his soldiers “found nothing,” even when they pushed into dozens of square miles of territory that neither Pakistani nor British forces had ever entered.

The general, a tall, commanding figure who was born in the tribal areas, was Mr. Musharraf’s main adviser on the border areas, according to former Pakistani officials. For years, he would argue that American officials exaggerated the threat in the tribal areas and that the Pakistani Army should avoid causing a tribal rebellion at all costs.

Former American intelligence officials said General Aurakzai’s sweeps were slow-moving and easily avoided by militants. Robert L. Grenier, the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002, said that General Aurakzai was dismissive of the reports because he and other Pakistani officials feared the kind of tribal uprising that could have been touched off by more intrusive military operations. “Aurakzai and others didn’t want to believe it because it would have been an inconvenient fact,” Mr. Grenier recalled.

Signs of Militants Regrouping

Until recent elections pushed Mr. Musharraf off center stage in Pakistan, senior Bush administration officials consistently praised his cooperation in the Qaeda hunt.

Beginning shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Musharraf had allowed American forces to use Pakistani bases to support the American invasion of Afghanistan, while Pakistani intelligence services worked closely with the C.I.A. in tracking down Qaeda operatives. But from their vantage point in Afghanistan, the picture looked different to American Special Operations forces who saw signs that the militants whom the Americans had driven out of Afghanistan were effectively regrouping on the Pakistani side of the border.

When American military officials proposed in 2002 that Special Operations forces be allowed to establish bases in the tribal areas, Pakistan flatly refused. Instead, a small number of “black” Special Operations forces — Army Delta Force and Navy Seal units — were allowed to accompany Pakistani forces on raids in the tribal areas in 2002 and early 2003.

That arrangement only angered both sides. American forces used to operating on their own felt that the Pakistanis were limiting their movements. And while Pakistani officials publicly denied the presence of Americans, local tribesmen spotted the Americans and protested.

Under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration decided in 2003 to end the American military presence on the ground. In a recent interview, Mr. Armitage said he had supported the pullback in recognition of the political risks that Mr. Musharraf had already taken. “We were pushing them almost to the breaking point,” Mr. Armitage said.

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 added another complicating factor, by cementing a view among Pakistanis that American forces in the tribal areas would be a prelude to an eventual American occupation.

To have insisted that American forces be allowed to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Mr. Armitage added, “might have been a bridge too far.”

Dealing With Musharraf

Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004 brought with it another problem once the president overhauled his national security team. By early 2005, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Mr. Armitage had resigned, joining George J. Tenet, who had stepped down earlier as director of central intelligence. Their departures left the administration with no senior officials with close personal relationships with Mr. Musharraf.

In order to keep pressure on the Pakistanis about the tribal areas, officials decided to have Mr. Bush raise the issue in personal phone calls with Mr. Musharraf.

The conversations backfired. Two former United States government officials say they were surprised and frustrated when instead of demanding action from Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Bush repeatedly thanked him for his contributions to the war on terrorism. “He never pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘Pervez you have to do this,’ ” said a former senior intelligence official who saw transcripts of the phone conversations. But another senior administration official defended the president, saying Mr. Bush had not gone easy on the Pakistani leader.

“I would say the president pushes quite hard,” said the official, who would speak about the confidential conversations only on condition of anonymity. At the same time, the official said Mr. Bush was keenly aware of the “unique burden” that rested on any head of state, and had the ability to determine “what the traffic will bear” when applying pressure to foreign leaders.

Tensions Within the C.I.A.

As attacks into Afghanistan by militants based in the tribal areas continued, tensions escalated between the C.I.A. stations in Kabul and Islamabad, whose lines of responsibility for battling terrorism were blurred by the porous border that divides Afghanistan and Pakistan, and whose disagreements reflected animosities between the countries.

Along with the Afghan government, the C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan expressed alarm at what they saw as a growing threat from the tribal areas. But the C.I.A. officers in Pakistan played down the problem, to the extent that some colleagues in Kabul said their colleagues in Islamabad were “drinking the Kool-Aid,” as one former officer put it, by accepting Pakistani assurances that no one could control the tribal areas.

On several occasions, senior C.I.A. officials at agency headquarters had to intervene to dampen tensions between the dueling C.I.A. outposts. Other intragovernmental battles raged at higher altitudes, most notably over the plan in early 2005 for a Special Operations mission intended to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Mr. bin Laden’s top deputy, in what would have been the most aggressive use of American ground troops inside Pakistan. The New York Times disclosed the aborted operation in a 2007 article, but interviews since then have produced new details about the episode.

As described by current and former government officials, Mr. Zawahri was believed by intelligence officials to be attending a meeting at a compound in Bajaur, a tribal area, and the plan to send commandos to capture him had the support of Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, and the Special Operations commander, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

But even as members of the Navy Seals and Army Rangers in parachute gear were boarding C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan, there were frenzied exchanges between officials at the Pentagon, Central Command and the C.I.A. about whether the mission was too risky. Some complained that the American commando force was too large, numbering more than 100, while others argued that the intelligence was from a single source and unreliable.

Mr. Goss urged the military to carry out the mission, and some C.I.A. officials in Washington even tried to give orders to execute the raid without informing Ryan C. Crocker, then the American ambassador in Islamabad. But other C.I.A. officials were opposed to the raid, including a former officer who said in an interview that he had “told the military guys that this thing was going to be the biggest folly since the Bay of Pigs.”

In the end, the mission was aborted after Mr. Rumsfeld refused to give his approval for it. The decision remains controversial, with some former officials seeing the episode as a squandered opportunity to capture a figure who might have led the United States to Mr. bin Laden, while others dismiss its significance, saying that there had been previous false alarms and that there remained no solid evidence that Mr. Zawahri was present.

Bin Laden Hunt at Dead End

By late 2005, many inside the C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia had reached the conclusion that their hunt for Mr. bin Laden had made little progress since Tora Bora.

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time ran the C.I.A.’s clandestine operations branch, decided in late 2005 to make a series of swift changes to the agency’s counterterrorism operations.

He replaced Mr. Grenier, the former Islamabad station chief who in late 2004 took over as head of the agency’s Counterterrorist Center. The two men had barely spoken for months, and some inside the agency believed this personality clash was beginning to affect C.I.A. operations.

Mr. Grenier had worked to expand the agency’s counterterrorism focus, reinforcing operations in places like the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia and North Africa. He also reorganized and renamed Alec Station, the secret C.I.A. unit formed in the 1990s to hunt Al Qaeda.

Mr. Grenier believed that the Counterterrorist Center and Alec Station had both grown very rapidly since 2001 and needed to be restructured to eliminate overlap.

But Mr. Rodriguez believed that the Qaeda hunt had lost its focus on Mr. bin Laden and the militant threat in Pakistan.

So he appointed a new head of the Counterterrorist Center, who has not been publicly identified, and sent dozens more C.I.A. operatives to Pakistan. The new push was called Operation Cannonball, and Mr. Rodriguez demanded urgency, but the response had a makeshift air.

There was nowhere to house an expanding headquarters staff, so giant Quonset huts were erected outside the cafeteria on the C.I.A.’s leafy Virginia campus to house a new team assigned to the bin Laden mission. In Pakistan, the new operation was staffed not only with C.I.A. operatives drawn from around the world, but also with recent graduates of “the Farm,” the agency’s training center at Camp Peary in Virginia.

“We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience,” one former senior C.I.A. official said. “But there wasn’t much to choose from.”

One reason for this, according to two former intelligence officials directly involved in the Qaeda hunt, was that by 2006 the Iraq war had drained away most of the C.I.A. officers with field experience in the Islamic world. “You had a very finite number” of experienced officers, said one former senior intelligence official. “Those people all went to Iraq. We were all hurting because of Iraq.”

Surge in Suicide Bombings

The increase had little impact in Pakistan, where militants only continued to gain strength. In the spring of 2006, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan launched an offensive in southern Afghanistan, increasing suicide bombings by sixfold and American and NATO casualty rates by 45 percent. At the same time, they assassinated tribal elders in Pakistan who were cooperating with the government.

Once again, Pakistani Army units launched a military campaign in the tribal areas. Once again, they suffered heavy casualties.

And once again, Mr. Musharraf turned to General Aurakzai to deal with the problem. Having retired from the Pakistani Army, General Aurakzai had become the governor of North-West Frontier Province, and he immediately began negotiating with the militants. On Sept. 5, 2006, General Aurakzai signed a truce with militants in North Waziristan, one in which the militants agreed to surrender to local tribes and carry out no further attacks in Afghanistan.

To help sell Washington on the deal, Mr. Musharraf brought General Aurakzai to the Oval Office several weeks later.

In a presentation to Mr. Bush, General Aurakzai advocated a strategy that would rely even more heavily on cease-fires, and said striking deals with the Taliban inside Afghanistan could allow American forces to withdraw from Afghanistan within seven years.

But the cease-fire in Waziristan had disastrous consequences. In the months after the agreement was signed, cross-border incursions from the tribal areas into Afghanistan rose by 300 percent. Some American officials began to refer to General Aurakzai as a “snake oil salesman.”

A Rising Terror Threat

By the fall of 2006, the top American commander in Afghanistan had had enough.

Intelligence reports were painting an increasingly dark picture of the terrorism threat in the tribal areas. But with senior Bush administration officials consumed for much of that year with the spiraling violence in Iraq, the Qaeda threat in Pakistan was not at the top of the White House agenda.

Mr. Bush had declared in a White House news conference that fall that Al Qaeda was “on the run.”

To get Washington’s attention, the commander, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations forces and C.I.A. operatives to assemble a dossier showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a haven.

Behind the general’s order was a broader feeling of outrage within the military — at a terrorist war that had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.

For months, military officers inside a walled-off compound at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where a branch of the military’s classified Joint Special Operations Command is based, had grown increasingly frustrated at what they saw as missed opportunities in the tribal areas.

American commanders had been pressing for much of 2006 to get approval from Mr. Rumsfeld for an operation to capture Sheik Saiid al-Masri, a top Qaeda operator and paymaster whom American intelligence had been tracking in the Pakistani mountains.

Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff were reluctant to approve the mission, worried about possible American military casualties and a popular backlash in Pakistan.

Finally, in November 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld approved a plan for Navy Seal and Army Delta Force commandos to move into Pakistan and capture Mr. Masri. But the operation was put on hold days later, after Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out of the Pentagon, a casualty of the Democratic sweep of the 2006 election.

When General Eikenberry presented his dossier to several members of Mr. Bush’s cabinet, some inside the State Department and the C.I.A. dismissed the briefing as exaggerated and simplistic. But the White House took note of his warnings, and decided to send Vice President Dick Cheney to Islamabad in March 2007, along with Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy C.I.A. director, to register American concern.

That visit was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan’s government into stepping up its fight. The decision last year to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing for a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort.

But the fact that the order remains unsigned reflects the infighting that persists. Administration lawyers and State Department officials are concerned about any new authorities that would allow military missions to be launched without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad. With Qaeda operatives now described in intelligence reports as deeply entrenched in the tribal areas and immersed in the civilian population, there is also a view among some military and C.I.A. officials that the opportunity for decisive American action against the militants may have been lost.

Pakistani military officials, meanwhile, express growing frustration with the American pressure, and point out that Pakistan has lost more than 1,000 members of its security forces in the tribal areas since 2001, nearly double the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan.

Some architects of America’s efforts in Pakistan defend the Bush administration’s record in the tribal areas, and vigorously deny that Washington took its eye off the terrorist threat as it focused on Iraq policy. Some also question whether Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s top two leaders, are really still able to orchestrate large-scale attacks.

“I do wonder if it’s in fact the case that Al Qaeda has really reconstituted itself to a pre-9/11 capability, and in fact I would say I seriously doubt that,” said Mr. Crocker, the American ambassador to Pakistan between 2004 and 2006 and currently the ambassador to Iraq.

“Their top-level leadership is still out there, but they’re not communicating and they’re not moving around. I think they’re symbolic more than operationally effective,” Mr. Crocker said.

But while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured “dead or alive,” the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil.

“The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.

“The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and David Rohde from Washington and Islamabad, Peshawar and Rawalpindi, Pakistan. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/washington/30tribal.html?

[The 801]

Umm, they should have considered the administrations SOP.


Probe of Tillman misinformation goes nowhere

Congressional investigators fail to uncover the origins of wrongful accounts about the former NFL player's death and about the Iraq rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
From the Associated Press
July 15, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO -- A "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials has prevented congressional investigators from determining who was responsible for misinformation spread after the friendly-fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in 2004, a House committee said Monday.

Although military investigators determined within days that the onetime NFL player was killed by his own troops in Afghanistan after an enemy ambush, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire.

The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), said in April 2007 that his goal was to learn if the misinformation was "the result of incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy."

]The panel has failed[/SIZE], it acknowledged Monday. It received a flurry of White House e-mails but no documents about friendly fire. It interviewed several top White House officials: "Not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response," the committee's 48-page report said.

The committee reported a similar lack of information relating to misinformation surrounding Pvt. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after she was badly injured and captured in a 2003 ambush. The committee examined how the story of the ambush of her convoy was changed into a tale of her heroism.

"As the committee investigated the Tillman and Lynch cases, it encountered a striking lack of recollection," the report said.

The panel concluded that the lack of information "makes it impossible for the committee to assign responsibility for the misinformation in Cpl. Tillman's and Pvt. Lynch's cases."

Jim Wilkinson, a onetime White House official who was communications director for U.S. Central Command, told the committee he did not know where the false information on Lynch originated or who disseminated it.

White House officials sent or received nearly 200 e-mails about Tillman on April 23, 2004, the day after he died, the committee found. Several came from staffers for President Bush's reelection campaign, urging Bush to respond publicly.

The White House "rushed" to release a public statement of condolence about noon April 23. In doing so, it violated a military policy enacted into law by Bush himself in 2003, the committee found. The Military Family Peace of Mind Act bars the announcement of a casualty until 24 hours after a family is notified.

The authors of the congressional report carefully avoided assigning blame or intent in either the Tillman or Lynch cases.

But they concluded: "In both cases, affirmative acts created new facts that were significantly different than what the soldiers in the field knew to be true. And in both cases, the fictional accounts proved to be compelling public narratives at difficult times in the war."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tillman15-2008jul15,0,246216.story

[NYer]

Somebody's knuckles at the LA Times are bleeding after scraping the bottom of the barrel for that one. Oh and while they're at it, perhaps they should investigate this story. (http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/general-gard-vietnam-and-iraq-needs-more-informative-title/)

[The 801]

Long time no post.
Well, I think I made my point long ago, but sometimes, I find some old news that just didn't get the proper vetting at the time.

So:

Bush had no plan to catch Bin Laden
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - New evidence from former United States officials reveals that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were able to skip Afghanistan for Pakistan unimpeded in the first weeks after September 11, 2001, as the George W Bush administration failed to plan to block their retreat.

Top administration officials instead gave priority to planning for war with Iraq, leaving the United States with not nearly enough troops or strategic airlift capacity to close the large number of possible exit routes through the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area where Bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the US military was also forced to turn down an offer from then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to intercept the al-Qaeda leaders.

As Northern Alliance troops marched on Kabul with little resistance in November 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency had intelligence that Bin Laden was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border.

The war had ended only days earlier, much more quickly than expected, and United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Tommy Franks, responsible for the war in Afghanistan, had no forces in position to block bin Laden's exit.

Franks asked Lieutenant General Paul T Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command (ARCENT), if his command could provide a blocking force between al-Qaeda and the Pakistani border, according to David W Lamm, who was then commander of ARCENT Kuwait.

Lamm, a retired army colonel, recalled in an interview that there was no way to fulfill the CENTCOM commander's request, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place.

"You looked at that request, and you just shook your head," recalled Lamm, now chief of staff of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Franks apparently already realized that he would need Pakistani help in blocking the al-Qaeda exit from Tora Bora. Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting that Franks "wants the [Pakistanis] to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what's going in and out", according to the National Security Council meeting transcript in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War.

Bush responded that they would need to "press Musharraf to do that".

A few days later, Franks made an unannounced trip to Islamabad to ask Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf to deploy troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border near Tora Bora.

A deputy to Franks, Lieutenant General Mike DeLong, later claimed that Musharraf had refused Franks's request for regular Pakistani troops to be repositioned from the north to the border near the Tora Bora area. DeLong wrote in his 2004 book Inside Centcom that Musharraf had said he "couldn't do that", because it would spark a "civil war" with a hostile tribal population.

But US ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong's claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden's exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, "Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al-Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan," according to Chamberlin.

Although Musharraf admitted that the Pakistani government had never exercised control over the border area, the former diplomat recalled, he said this was "a good time to begin". The Pakistani president offered to redeploy 60,000 troops to the area from the border with India but said his army would need airlift assistance from the United States.

But the Pakistani redeployment never happened, according to Lamm, because it wasn't logistically feasible. Lamm recalled that it would have required an entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region - far more than was available.

Lamm said the ARCENT had so few strategic lift resources that it had to use commercial aircraft at one point to move US supplies in and out of Afghanistan.

Even if the helicopters had been available, however, they could not have operated with high effectiveness in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region near the Tora Bora caves, according to Lamm, due to a combination of high altitude and extreme weather.

Franks did manage to insert 1,200 marines into Kandahar on November 26 to establish control of the airbase there. They were carried to the base by helicopters from an aircraft carrier that had steamed into the Gulf from the Pacific, according to Lamm.

The marines patrolled roads in the Kandahar area hoping to intercept al-Qaeda officials heading toward Pakistan. But DeLong, now retired, said in an interview that the marines would not have been able to undertake the blocking mission at the border. "It wouldn't have worked - even if we could have gotten them up there," he said. "There weren't enough to police 1,500 kilometers of border."

US troops probably would also have faced armed resistance from the local tribal population in the border region, according to DeLong. The tribesmen in local villages near the border "liked bin Laden", he said "because he had given them millions of dollars".

Had the Bush administration's priority been to capture or kill the al-Qaeda leadership, it would have deployed the necessary ground troops and airlift resources in the theater over a period of months before the offensive in Afghanistan began.

"You could have moved American troops along the Pakistani border before you went into Afghanistan," said Lamm. But that would have meant waiting until spring 2002 to take the offensive against the Taliban, according to Lamm.

The views of Bush's key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start. During the summer of 2001 Rumsfeld refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite a National Security Presidential Directive that called for such planning, according to the 9-11 Commission report.

Rumsfeld and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9-11 Commission, at four deputies' meetings on Iraq between May 31 and July 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have US troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.

Even after September 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

Bush's top secret order of September 17 for war with Afghanistan also directed the Pentagon to begin planning for an invasion of Iraq, according to journalist James Bamford's book Pretext for War.

Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed for a quick victory in Afghanistan in NSC meetings in October, as recounted by both Woodward and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Lost in the eagerness to wrap up the Taliban and get on with the Iraq War was any possibility of preventing Bin Laden's escape to Pakistan.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JJ01Df05.html

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

[NYer]

Missing opportunities to get Bin Laden was a truly bipartisan effort. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4540958/)

[NYer]

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/q/i/1/carter_worst.jpg

[saintepaix]

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/q/i/1/carter_worst.jpg

Takes one to know one....lol
I loved JF Kennedy

[The 801]

I liked it when Carter used to torture people.....
I bet Mondale talked him into it...

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
Waterboarding Got White House Nod


By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.

"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed.

A. John Radsan, a lawyer in the CIA general counsel's office until 2004, remembered the discussions but did not personally view the memos the agency received in response to its concerns. "The question was whether we had enough 'top cover,' " Radsan said.

Tenet first pressed the White House for written approval in June 2003, during a meeting with members of the National Security Council, including Rice, the officials said. Days later, he got what he wanted: a brief memo conveying the administration's approval for the CIA's interrogation methods, the officials said.

Administration officials confirmed the existence of the memos, but neither they nor former intelligence officers would describe their contents in detail because they remain classified. The sources all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the events.

The second request from Tenet, in June 2004, reflected growing worries among agency officials who had just witnessed the public outcry over the Abu Ghraib scandal. Officials who held senior posts at the time also spoke of deteriorating relations between the CIA and the White House over the war in Iraq -- a rift that prompted some to believe that the agency needed even more explicit proof of the administration's support.

"The CIA by this time is using the word 'insurgency' to describe the Iraq conflict, so the White House is viewing the agency with suspicion," said a second former senior intelligence official.

As recently as last month, the administration had never publicly acknowledged that its policymakers knew about the specific techniques, such as waterboarding, that the agency used against high-ranking terrorism suspects. In her unprecedented account to lawmakers last month, Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects.

After learning about waterboarding and similar tactics in early 2002, several White House officials questioned whether such harsh measures were "effective and necessary . . . and lawful," Rice said. Her concerns led to an investigation by the Justice Department's criminal division into whether the techniques were legal.

But whatever misgivings existed that spring were apparently overcome. Former and current CIA officials say no such reservations were voiced in their presence.

In interviews, the officials recounted a series of private briefings about the program with members of the administration's security team, including Rice and Cheney, followed by more formal meetings before a larger group including then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. None of the officials recalled President Bush being present at any of the discussions.

Several of the key meetings have been previously described in news articles and books, but Rice last month became the first Cabinet-level official to publicly confirm the White House's awareness of the program in its earliest phases. In written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rice said Tenet's description of the agency's interrogation methods prompted her to investigate further to see whether the program violated U.S. laws or international treaties, according to her written responses, dated Sept. 12 and released late last month.

"I asked that . . . Ashcroft personally advise the NSC principles whether the program was lawful," Rice wrote.

Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the briefings described Tenet as supportive of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the officials said were developed by CIA officers after the agency's first high-level captive, al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, refused to cooperate with interrogators.
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"The CIA believed then, and now, that the program was useful and helped save lives," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the events. "But in the agency's view, it was like this: 'We don't want to continue unless you tell us in writing that it's not only legal but is the policy of the administration.' "

One administration official familiar with the meetings said the CIA made such a convincing case that no one questioned whether the methods were necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.

"The CIA had the White House boxed in," said the official. "They were saying, 'It's the only way to get the information we needed, and -- by the way -- we think there's another attack coming up.' It left the principals in an extremely difficult position and put the decision-making on a very fast track."

But others who were present said Tenet seemed more interested in protecting his subordinates than in selling the administration on a policy that administration lawyers had already authorized.

"The suggestion that someone from CIA came in and browbeat everybody is ridiculous," said one former agency official familiar with the meeting. "The CIA understood that it was controversial and would be widely criticized if it became public," the official said of the interrogation program. "But given the tenor of the times and the belief that more attacks were coming, they felt they had to do what they could to stop the attack."

The CIA's anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program. A secret White House "memorandum of notification" signed by Bush on Sept. 15, 2001, gave the agency broad authority to wage war against al-Qaeda, including killing and capturing its members. But it did not spell out how captives should be handled during interrogation.

But by the time the CIA requested written approval of its policy, in June 2003, the population of its secret prisons had grown from one to nine, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Three of the detainees had been subjected to waterboarding, which involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face and pouring water over his nose and mouth to simulate drowning.

By the spring of 2004, the concerns among agency officials had multiplied, in part because of shifting views among administration lawyers about what acts might constitute torture, leading Tenet to ask a second time for written confirmation from the White House. This time the reaction was far more reserved, recalled two former intelligence officials.

"The Justice Department in particular was resistant," said one former intelligence official who participated in the discussions. "They said it doesn't need to be in writing."

Tenet and his deputies made their case in yet another briefing before the White House national security team in June 2004. It was to be one of the last such meetings for Tenet, who had already announced plans to step down as CIA director. Author Jane Mayer, who described the briefing in her recent book, "The Dark Side," said the graphic accounts of interrogation appeared to make some participants uncomfortable. "History will not judge us kindly," Mayer quoted Ashcroft as saying.

Participants in the meeting did not recall whether a vote was taken. Several weeks passed, and Tenet left the agency without receiving a formal response.

Finally, in mid-July, a memo was forwarded to the CIA reaffirming the administration's backing for the interrogation program. Tenet had acquired the statement of support he sought.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403331.html

[NYer]

Pity we can't waterboard Barney Frank or Chris Dodd.

[The 801]

A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks
With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008; A01

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they found out, some legislators were furious. Some congressional staff members have privately concluded that the notice was illegal. But they have worried that saying so publicly could unravel several recent bank mergers made possible by the change and send the economy into an even deeper tailspin.

"Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no," said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. "They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks."

The story of the obscure provision underscores what critics in Congress, academia and the legal profession warn are the dangers of the broad authority being exercised by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in addressing the financial crisis. Lawmakers are now looking at whether the new notice was introduced to benefit specific banks, as well as whether it inappropriately accelerated bank takeovers.

The change to Section 382 of the tax code -- a provision that limited a kind of tax shelter arising in corporate mergers -- came after a two-decade effort by conservative economists and Republican administration officials to eliminate or overhaul the law, which is so little-known that even influential tax experts sometimes draw a blank at its mention. Until the financial meltdown, its opponents thought it would be nearly impossible to revamp the section because this would look like a corporate giveaway, according to lobbyists.

Andrew C. DeSouza, a Treasury spokesman, said the administration had the legal authority to issue the notice as part of its power to interpret the tax code and provide legal guidance to companies. He described the Sept. 30 notice, which allows some banks to keep more money by lowering their taxes, as a way to help financial institutions during a time of economic crisis. "This is part of our overall effort to provide relief," he said.

The Treasury itself did not estimate how much the tax change would cost, DeSouza said.

A Tax Law 'Shock'

The guidance issued from the IRS caught even some of the closest followers of tax law off guard because it seemed to come out of the blue when Treasury's work seemed focused almost exclusively on the bailout.

"It was a shock to most of the tax law community. It was one of those things where it pops up on your screen and your jaw drops," said Candace A. Ridgway, a partner at Jones Day, a law firm that represents banks that could benefit from the notice. "I've been in tax law for 20 years, and I've never seen anything like this."

More than a dozen tax lawyers interviewed for this story -- including several representing banks that stand to reap billions from the change -- said the Treasury had no authority to issue the notice.

Several other tax lawyers, all of whom represent banks, said the change was legal. Like DeSouza, they said the legal authority came from Section 382 itself, which says the secretary can write regulations to "carry out the purposes of this section."

Section 382 of the tax code was created by Congress in 1986 to end what it considered an abuse of the tax system: companies sheltering their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value was the losses on their books. The firms would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes.

Lawmakers decried the tax shelters as a scam and created a formula to strictly limit the use of those purchased losses for tax purposes.

But from the beginning, some conservative economists and Republican administration officials criticized the new law as unwieldy and unnecessary meddling by the government in the business world.

"This has never been a good economic policy," said Kenneth W. Gideon, an assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy under President George H.W. Bush and now a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a law firm that represents banks.

The opposition to Section 382 is part of a broader ideological battle over how the tax code deals with a company's losses. Some conservative economists argue that not only should a firm be able to use losses to offset gains, but that in a year when a company only loses money, it should be entitled to a cash refund from the government.

During the current Bush administration, senior officials considered ways to implement some version of the policy. A Treasury paper in December 2007 -- issued under the names of Eric Solomon, the top tax policy official in the department, and his deputy, Robert Carroll -- criticized limits on the use of losses and suggested that they be relaxed. A logical extension of that argument would be an overhaul of 382, according to Carroll, who left his position as deputy assistant secretary in the Treasury's office of tax policy earlier this year.

Yet lobbyists trying to modify the obscure section found that they could get no traction in Congress or with the Treasury.

"It's really been the third rail of tax policy to touch 382," said Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
'The Wells Fargo Ruling'

As turmoil swept financial markets, banking officials stepped up their efforts to change the law.

Senior executives from the banking industry told top Treasury officials at the beginning of the year that Section 382 was bad for businesses because it was preventing mergers, according to Scott E. Talbott, senior vice president for the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for some of the country's largest financial institutions. He declined to identify the executives and said the discussions were not a concerted lobbying effort. Lobbyists for the biotechnology industry also raised concerns about the provision at an April meeting with Solomon, the assistant secretary for tax policy, according to talking points prepared for the session.

DeSouza, the Treasury spokesman, said department officials in August began internal discussions about the tax change. "We received absolutely no requests from any bank or financial institution to do this," he said.

Although the department's action was prompted by spreading troubles in the financial markets, Carroll said, it was consistent with what the Treasury had deemed in the December report to be good tax policy.

The notice was released on a momentous day in the banking industry. It not only came 24 hours after the House of Representatives initially defeated the bailout bill, but also one day after Wachovia agreed to be acquired by Citigroup in a government-brokered deal.

The Treasury notice suddenly made it much more attractive to acquire distressed banks, and Wells Fargo, which had been an earlier suitor for Wachovia, made a new and ultimately successful play to take it over.

The Jones Day law firm said the tax change, which some analysts soon dubbed "the Wells Fargo Ruling," could be worth about $25 billion for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo declined to comment for this article.

The tax world, meanwhile, was rushing to figure out the full impact of the notice and who was responsible for the change.

Jones Day released a widely circulated commentary that concluded that the change could cost taxpayers about $140 billion. Robert L. Willens, a prominent corporate tax expert in New York City, said the price is more likely to be $105 billion to $110 billion.

Over the next month, two more bank mergers took place with the benefit of the new tax guidance. PNC, which took over National City, saved about $5.1 billion from the modification, about the total amount that it spent to acquire the bank, Willens said. Banco Santander, which took over Sovereign Bancorp, netted an extra $2 billion because of the change, he said. A spokesman for PNC said Willens's estimate was too high but declined to provide an alternate one; Santander declined to comment.

Attorneys representing banks celebrated the notice. The week after it was issued, former Treasury officials now in private practice met with Solomon, the department's top tax policy official. They asked him to relax the limitations on banks even further, so that foreign banks could benefit from the tax break, too.
Congress Looks for Answers

No one in the Treasury informed the tax-writing committees of Congress about this move, which could reduce revenue by tens of billions of dollars. Legislators learned about the notice only days later.

DeSouza, the Treasury spokesman, said Congress is not normally consulted about administrative guidance.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member on the Finance Committee, was particularly outraged and had his staff push for an explanation from the Bush administration, according to congressional aides.

In an off-the-record conference call on Oct. 7, nearly a dozen Capitol Hill staffers demanded answers from Solomon for about an hour. Several of the participants left the call even more convinced that the administration had overstepped its authority, according to people familiar with the conversation.

But lawmakers worried about discussing their concerns publicly. The staff of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee, had asked that the entire conference call be kept secret, according to a person with knowledge of the call.

"We're all nervous about saying that this was illegal because of our fears about the marketplace," said one congressional aide, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "To the extent we want to try to publicly stop this, we're going to be gumming up some important deals."

Grassley and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have publicly expressed concerns about the notice but have so far avoided saying that it is illegal. "Congress wants to help," Grassley said. "We also have a responsibility to make sure power isn't abused and that the sensibilities of Main Street aren't left in the dust as Treasury works to inject remedies into the financial system."

Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for the Democrats on the Finance Committee, said it is in frequent contact with the Treasury about the financial rescue efforts, including how it exercises authority over tax policy.

Lawmakers are considering legislation to undo the change. According to tax attorneys, no one would have legal standing to file a lawsuit challenging the Treasury notice, so only Congress or Treasury could reverse it. Such action could undo the notice going forward or make it clear that it was never legal, a move that experts say would be unlikely.

But several aides said they were still torn between their belief that the change is illegal and fear of further destabilizing the economy.

"None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression," one said.

Some legal experts said these under-the-radar objections mirror the objections to the congressional resolution authorizing the war in Iraq.

"It's just like after September 11. Back then no one wanted to be seen as not patriotic, and now no one wants to be seen as not doing all they can to save the financial system," said Lee A. Sheppard, a tax attorney who is a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Analysts. "We're left now with congressional Democrats that have spines like overcooked spaghetti. So who is going to stop the Treasury secretary from doing whatever he wants?"


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902155_pf.html

[NYer]

It's possible that had McCain taken the Lou Dobbs No Bailout position, the election might have ended differently. Hey, isn't Bernanke looking for a job in the Obama Administration? Hmmmm ....

[NYer]

Bush, Obama and the Ghosts of Hate. (http://theanchoressonline.com/2008/11/06/bush-obama-ghosts/)

I doubt President Obama will find missing "O's" from the White House keyboards.

Please read this in the spirit intended.

[The 801]

A GOP Dirty Trickster Has Second Thoughts

by Benjamin Sarlin

Ira Schwarz/AP

Consultant Roger Stone, the notorious political hitman who helped George W. Bush prevail in the 2000 Florida recount, tells The Daily Beast that he wishes he hadn’t.

Roger Stone is one of the last guys on Earth one would expect to feel guilty over an episode of rough and tumble politicking. As a self-admitted hit man for the GOP, Stone has had a hand in everything from Nixon's dirty tricks to Eliot Spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a Michelle Obama “whitey” tape during the 2008 Democratic primaries. You might call Stone the Forrest Gump of scandal, popping up to play a bit part in the most notorious negative campaigns in recent history.

The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.

"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."

Stone voted for Bush in 2004 as well (“John Kerry was an elitist buffoon”) but he pulled no punches in his assessment of the last eight years. Stone's own political philosophy is libertarian, and he says it conflicts with Bush's penchant for expanded executive power.

“I think across the board he's led the party to its current position, which means losing both houses of congress and now the White House,” Stone said. “How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties. Big brother listening in on your phone calls—I got a problem with that.”

That Stone joins Matthew Dowd, Scott McClellan, and Colin Powell in the group of disaffected ex-Bushies shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Stone advised Donald Trump on his prospective bid for the presidency in 2000. According to Stone, he didn't even want to get involved in the 2000 race at all until the GOP's recount head, James Baker III, called him up and asked him for his help. Stone said that Baker had helped him out in 1981 by getting Reagan and Bush to lend support to New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, whose campaign Stone ran. He owed him a favor.

“In this business, if you don't pay your debts you're finished,” Stone said.

Nor does Stone regret dirty politicking. Stone still offers his services as a no-holds-barred strategist to domestic and foreign politicians alike, and claims his client list is full. Ironically one Florida race this year even hinged on his role in the 2000 recount. In a hard-fought campaign for Broward County sheriff, the Democratic candidate, Scott Israel, flooded the airwaves with over-the-top ads attacking his Republican incumbent Al Lamberti for utilizing "the same Bush hatchet man who tried to steal the 2000 election." Obama carried Broward County by 243,567 votes, the biggest margin of any county in Florida, but incredibly, Israel lost to Lamberti by 15,400 votes, a rare Republican upset in an overwhelmingly Democratic year. Stone may be paying a price for the 2000 recount in his conscience, but he didn't pay one at the ballot box.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-20/a-gop-dirty-trickster-has-second-thoughts/

I think this will be the way this thread will start going. The guys who did all this shit will now mea culpa. Its just Anal Ocularity.

[The 801]

Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI
By murrayw Tuesday December 23, 2008 11:14am


Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

Cheney revised the talking points on July 8, 2003– the very same day that his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and told Miller that Plame was a CIA officer and that Plame had also played a central role in sending her husband on his CIA sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger.

Both Cheney and Libby have acknowledged that Cheney directed him to meet with Miller, but claimed that the purpose of that meeting was to leak other sensitive intelligence to discredit allegations made by Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information to go to war with Iraq, rather than to leak Plame’s identity.

That Cheney, by his own admission, had revised the talking points in an effort to have the reporters examine who sent Wilson on the very same day that his chief of staff was disclosing to Miller Plame’s identity as a CIA officer may be the most compelling evidence to date that Cheney himself might have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to Miller and other reporters.

This new information adds to a growing body of evidence that Cheney may have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to reporters and that Libby acted to protect Cheney by lying to federal investigators and a federal grand jury about the matter.

Still, for those in search of the proverbial “smoking gun”, the question as to whether Cheney directed Libby to leak Plaime’s identity to the media at Cheney’s direction or Libby did so on his own by acting over zealously in carrying out a broader mandate from Cheney to discredit Wilson and his allegations about manipulation of intelligence information, will almost certainly remain an unresolved one.

Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007 of four felony counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice, in attempting to conceal from authorities his own role, and that of other Bush administration officials, in leaking information to the media about Plame.

One of the jurors in the case, Dennis Collins, told the press shortly after the verdict that he and many other jurors believed that Libby was serving as a “fall guy” for Cheney, and had lied to conceal the role of his boss in directing information about Plame to be leaked to the press.

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in both opening and closing arguments that because Libby did not testify truthfully during the course of his investigation, federal authorities were stymied from determining what role Vice President Cheney possibly played in directing the leaking of information regarding Plame that led to the end of her career as a covert CIA officer, and jeopardized other sensitive intelligence information.

Speaking of the consequences of Libby’s deceit to the FBI and a federal grand jury, Fitzgerald, who is also the U.S. attorney for Chicago, said in his Feb. 20, 2007 closing argument: “There is talk about a cloud over the Vice President. There is a cloud over the White House as to what happened. Do you think the FBI, the Grand Jury, the American people are entitled to a straight answer?”

The implication from that and other comments made by Fitzgerald while trying the case was that Libby had lied and placed himself in criminal jeopardy to protect Cheney and to perhaps conceal the fact that Cheney had directed him to leak information to the media about Plame.

Although it has been widely reported in the media that Cheney and Libby have denied that Cheney directed Libby ever to speak to reporters about Plame, those reports have been erroneous. As Washington Post.com columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in this largely overlooked column, Libby instead had told both the FBI and a federal grand jury that he was uncertain as to whether or not Cheney had directed him to talk to reporters about Plame.

An FBI agent testified at Libby’s trial, as Froomkin pointed out, that Libby had told the FBI that during a July 12, 2003 conversation that Libby had with Cheney, the two men possibly discussed “whether to report to the press that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.”

That conversation occurred exactly four days after Cheney ordered the revision of the talking points and Libby had his conversation with Judith Miller about Plame.

And immediately after that July 12, 2003 conversation between Cheney and Libby, Libby spoke by phone with Matthew Cooper, then a correspondent for Time magazine, and confirmed for Cooper that Plame worked for the CIA and that she had played a role in sending her husband to Niger.

A contemporaneous FBI report recounting the agents’ interview with Libby also asserts that Libby had refused to categorically deny to them that Cheney had directed him to leak information to the press about Plame. A heavily redacted copy of Libby’s interviews with FBI agents was turned over this summer to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey on June 3, 2008, reiterating an earlier request that Mukasey turn over to the committee the FBI report of its interview of Vice President Cheney in regards to the Plame matter:

“In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby states that it was `possible’ that Vice President Cheney instructed [Libby] to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson’s wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President’s interview.”

Mukasey declined to release the Cheney report to Waxman in particular, and Congress in general.

But a person with access to notes of Cheney’s interview with federal investigators described to me what Cheney said during those interviews. Later the same person read to me verbatim portions of the interview notes directly relevant to this story.

***

At the time of the leak of Plame’s identity, Cheney, Libby and other Bush administration officials were attempting to discredit Wilson because of the charges that he was making that the White House had manipulated intelligence information to take the nation to war with Iraq. Wilson, a retired career diplomat and former ambassador, had traveled to Niger in February 2002 on a CIA- sponsored mission to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation. Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most certainly untrue.

Despite numerous warnings from the CIA and elsewhere in government that the Niger allegations were most likely false or even contrived, President Bush cited them in his 2002 State of the Union address as a rationale to go to war with Iraq.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson published an op-ed in The New York Times charging that the Bush administration had “twisted” intelligence when it cited the alleged Niger-Iraq connection in the president’s State of Union earlier that year. At the time, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq could not find out weapons of mass destruction. Wilson’s allegations were among the first from an authoritative source that the administration might have misled the nation to go to war.

A central part of the effort to counter Wilson’s allegations entailed discrediting him by suggesting that his slection for the trip had been a case of nepotism. Cheney, Libby, then-White House political adviser Karl Rove, and other White House officials told reporters that Wilson’s wife, who worked at the CIA, had been primarily responsible for selecting him to go to Niger.

The day after Wilson’s op-ed, on July 7, 2003, Cheney personally dictated talking points for then-presidential secretary Ari Fleischer and other White House officials to use to counter Wilson’s charges and discredit him.

A central purpose for writing the talking points was to demonstrate that the Vice President’s office had played little if any role in Wilson being sent to Niger and that Cheney was not told of Wilson’s mission prior to the war with Iraq.

In talking points Cheney dictated on July 7, Cheney wrote as his first one: “The Vice President’s office did not request the mission to Niger.” The three other talking points asserted that the “Vice President’s office was not informed of Joe Wilson’s mission”; that Cheney’s office was not briefed about the trip until long after it occurred, and that Cheney and his aides only learned about the trip when they received press inquiries about it a full year later.

***

About a month prior to Wilson having written his own op-ed for the Times, he had told his story of his mission to Niger to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a detailed account of Wilson’s trip and his allegations.

In reaction to that column, Cheney personally made inquiries about the matter to both then-CIA director George Tenet and then-CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, apparently on either June 11 or June 12, 2003, according to evidence made public at Libby’s federal criminal trial. Both Tenet and McLaughlin told Cheney of Plame’s role (in reality, a tenuous one) to the selection of her husband for the Niger mission.

On June 12, Cheney and Libby spoke, and Cheney told Libby about Plame’s supposed role.

In notes that Libby took of the conversation, Libby wrote that Cheney said he been told by the CIA officials that Wilson’s mission to Niger “took place at our behest”-in reference to the CIA. More specifically, the notes indicted the mission was undertaken at the request of the CIA’s covert Counterproliferation Division. The notes said that Cheney told Libby that he had been informed that Wilson’s “wife works in that division.”

Cheney then instructed Libby, according to the notes, to ask the CIA to set the record straight by saying that the Vice President’s office “didn’t known about [the] mission” and “didn’t get the report back”, in reference to the fact that Cheney’s office never received a copy of a CIA debriefing report of Wilson after he returned from Niger.

Surprisingly, despite the prominence of Kristof in particular, and the Times in general, the column was largely ignored– at least for a while.

But Wilson’s own July 6, 2003 Times op-ed column by rekindled the issue. Stoking the flames, Wilson appeared on Meet the Press that same morning to discuss his column.

Wilson’s column, prosecutor Fitzgerald asserted at Libby’s trial, ignited a “firestorm.”

Wilson’s charges, Fitzgerald went on to say, “came in the fourth month of the war in Iraq, the fourth month when weapons of mass destruction were not found. Coming as they did, they ignited a media firestorm… the White House was stunned.”

In a handwritten notation at the bottom of the July 6 op-ed, Cheney wrote out several rhetorical questions regarding Wilson and Plame: “Have they [the CIA] done this before? Send an Amb. to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro-bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

The next day, July 7, Cheney crafted talking points to be distributed to the media which emphasized that his office had not requested that Wilson go to Niger, that the CIA had not told him about Wilson’s findings, and that he personally only learned of the matter long after the U.S. invaded Iraq– from press reports.

The four talking points dictated by Cheney to his press aide, Catharine Martin, stated:

*The Vice President’s office did not request the mission to Niger.
* The Vice President’s office was not informed of Joe Wilson’s mission.
*The Vice President’s office did not receive a briefing about Mr. Wilson’s mission after he returned.
*The Vice President’s office was not aware of Mr. Wilson’s mission until recent press reports accounted for it.

Martin, in turn, sent those talking points on to, among others, Ari Fleischer, the-then White House press secretary, who utilized them in his briefing or “gaggle” for the press that morning.

Fleischer told reporters that same day, according to a transcript of the briefing: “The Vice President’s office did not request the mission to Niger. The Vice president’s office was not informed of his mission and he was not aware of Mr. Wilson’s mission until recent press accounts… accounted for it. So this was something that the CIA undertook… They sent him on their own volition.”

Also hat same day, Fleischer, who was planning to leave his position as White House press secretary, had lunch with Libby, during which, according to Fleisher’s testimony at Libby’s trial, Libby spoke extensively about the role of Plame in sending her husband on the Niger mission.

At the lunch, Fleischer would testify, Libby told him: “Ambassador Wilson was sent by his wife. His wife works for the CIA.” Fleischer testified that Libby even referred to Wilson’s wife by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

“He added it was `hush-hush’, and on the QT,’ and that most people didn’t know it,” Fleisher testified.

The very next morning, on July 8, Libby met with reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times for two hours for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in downtown Washington in an effort to staunch the damage done by Wilson’s column.

Miller testified at Libby’s trial during the breakfast Libby told her that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that Plame had played a role in selecting him for his Niger mission.

In testimony before the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case, Libby testified that Cheney had instructed him before the breakfast to “get everything out.” Regarding the allegations that he leaked information to Miller about Plame, Libby told federal investigators that he had never done so.

During the same breakfast, Cheney also disclosed to Miller portions of a then-still classified National Intelligence Estimate which Cheney believed demonstrated that the CIA was to blame for robustly endorsing the Niger information as accurate.

President Bush had personally and secretly declassified portions of the NIE for the specific purpose of leaking them to Miller. In disclosing selective portions of the NIE to Miller, only the President, the Vice President, and Libby knew about the secret declassification.

“So far as you know, the only three people who knew about this would be the President, the Vice President, and yourself,” Libby was asked by Fitzgerald during one session by Libby before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case,

“Correct, sir,” Libby answered.

Also that same day, July 8, 2003, Cheney met again Cathy Martin– this time on Cheney’s office on Capitol Hill. During the meeting, according to an account Martin gave federal investigators, Cheney told Martin that he wanted some changes and additions made to the talking points devised the previous day that had already been disseminated to Fleischer and other White House communications aides.

Martin told investigators that Cheney dictated the changes to her, and in each case, she took down word for word what the Vice President said. (Martin later repeated this same account under oath during Libby’s trial.)

Cheney told Martin that he wanted the very first of the talking points to now read: “It is not clear who authorized Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger.”

Cheney, of course, knew that the CIA had authorized Wilson’s trip and had sent Wilson to Niger. Both Cheney and Libby had been told by a large number of CIA and State Department officials by then that such was the case, according to the sworn testimony of those officials at Libby’s trial. And the day before, Fleisher had told the press that Wilson’s mission to Niger was “something that the CIA undertook” and that they had also “sent him on their own volition.”

Why would Cheney change the talking points from the day before if he knew that the CIA had sent Wilson and he and his staff had encouraged Fleischer to say that the day before? Obviously, saying it was unclear who had authorized Wilson’s trip to Niger was not only untrue, it also pointed reporters in the direction of asking about Plame?

Asked about this during his FBI interview, Cheney was at a loss to explain how the change of the talking points focusing attention on who specifically sent Wilson to Niger would not lead reporters might lead to exposure of Plame’s role as a CIA officer.

There was a matter, as well, as to why Cheney changed the talking points to say it was unclear who sent Wilson when in fact he had admitted earlier during the same interview with investigators that he clearly knew it was the CIA.

Finally, of course, there was the fact that on the very same day that Cheney changed the talking points that Libby was meeting with Miller and telling Miller that Plame worked for the CIA and had sent her husband to Niger.

In his closing argument during the Libby trial, however, Fitzgerald did mention the issue briefly. None of the media covering the trial, however (with the sole exception once again being Dan Froomkin), appeared to understand its significance or broader context, and did not report it.

Noting the change of Cheney’s July 7 and July 8, 2003 talking points, Patrick Fitzgerald said: “The question of who authorized became number one. That’s a question that would lead to the answer: Valerie Wilson.”

***

Four days later, on July 12, 2003 Cheney and Libby strategized again as to how to beat back Wilson’s allegations. They had traveled together, and with thief families, to the Norfolk Naval Station for the commissioning of the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.

On the flight home, Cheney pressed Libby to talk to reporters to once again, hoping to beat back Wilson’s allegations and discredit the former diplomat. Immediately after landing, Libby spoke to then-Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper and confirmed for him that Plame worked for the CIA and had played a role in sending her husband to Niger. It was regarding that conversation that Libby told the FBI it was “possible” that Cheney might have told him to discuss Plame.

On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted Libby’s thirty month prison sentence, saying he was doing so out of compassion for Libby’s family and because he believed that he believed that the sentence was excessive. The White House declined to say whether Bush might consider a full pardon for Libby.

In the next few days, it will become known whether Libby will in fact be pardoned by President Bush in his final days in office.

In the meantime, what the Vice President and the President told the FBI during their own FBI interviews during the Plame investigation will not be officially disclosed by the White House. Despite the fact that prosecutor Fitzgerald has said told Congress that he has no objections to the provision of the reports to Congress, the Bush administration has refused to follow through.

Special thanks to David Neiwart for editing assistance.

http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com/2008/12/23/exclusive-cheneys-admissions-to-the-cia-leak-prosecutor-and-fbi/

[NYer]

Happy New Year, 801. Something must be wrong ... Nowhere does the article mention the man who actually DID leak Plame's identity to Novak - Richard Armitage. Hmmmmm?

[The 801]

Bushisms Over The Years


The Associated Press | January 3, 2009 11:06 AM EST | AP


President George W. Bush will leave behind a legacy of Bushisms, the label stamped on the commander in chief's original speaking style. Some of the president's more notable malaprops and mangled statements:

___

_ "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." _ September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.

_ "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" _ January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.

_ "They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." _ Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

_ "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." _ Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.

_ "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." _ April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.

_ "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." _ April 18, 2002, at the White House.
Story continues below

_ "There's an old saying in Tennessee _ I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee _ that says, fool me once, shame on _ shame on you. Fool me _ you can't get fooled again." _ Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.

_ "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." _ Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.

_ "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." _ Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

_ "Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." _ April 20, 2005, in Washington.

_ "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." _ Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.

_ "I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." _ Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

_ "It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war." _ June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

_ "Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." _ Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

_ "These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." _ June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

_ "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." _ September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.

_ "Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.

_ "The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." _ May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.

_ "And they have no disregard for human life." _ July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

_ "I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." _ June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.

_ "Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people." _ July 4, 2008 in Virginia.

_ "The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer _ prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them. It's good to come down here." _ Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.

_ "This thaw _ took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

I'm gonna miss this stuff.

[NYer]

Don't worry, 801 ... the man who campaigned in all 57 states won't disappoint. Still, keeping "Ob-Gyns from practicing their love with women" will indeed be hard to top.

[The 801]

A Long-Lived Privilege?

Bush lawyer directs Rove not to talk to Congress—once again
By Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 29, 2009


Just four days before he left office, President Bush instructed former White House aide Karl Rove to refuse to cooperate with future congressional inquiries into alleged misconduct during his administration.

On Jan. 16, 2009, then White House Counsel Fred Fieldingsent a letter (.pdf) to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin. The message: should his client receive any future subpoenas, Rove "should not appear before Congress" or turn over any documents relating to his time in the White House. The letter told Rove that President Bush was continuing to assert executive privilege over any testimony by Rove—even after he leaves office.

A nearly identical letter (.pdf) was also sent by Fielding the day before to a lawyer for former White House counsel Harriet Miers, instructing her not to appear for a scheduled deposition with the House Judiciary Committee. That letter reasserted the White House position that Miers has "absolute immunity" from testifying before Congress about anything she did while she worked at the White House—a far-reaching claim that is being vigorously disputed by lawyers for the House of Representatives in court.

The letters set the stage for what is likely to be a highly contentious legal and political battle over an unresolved issue: whether a former president can assert "executive privilege"—and therefore prevent his aides from testifying before Congress—even after his term has expired.

"To my knowledge, these [letters] are unprecedented," said Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in executive-privilege issues. "I'm aware of no sitting president that has tried to give an insurance policy to a former employee in regard to post-administration testimony." Shane likened the letter to Rove as an attempt to give his former aide a 'get-out-of-contempt-free card'."

The issue arose this week after House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers announced that he had subpoenaed Rove to be deposed under oath next Monday to answer questions about his alleged role in the firing of U.S. attorneys and the prosecution of the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman. Conyers, whose panel extensively investigated both matters last year, signaled that he has no intention of dropping them now just because Bush has left office. "After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him [Rove] to talk," Conyers said in a press release.

But it is unclear whether Rove—or Miers, who was found in contempt of Congress last year when she refused to honor an earlier subpoena—is close to doing so. Luskin said he did not solicit the letter from Fielding, but maintains that its contents give his client little choice in the matter.

Fielding's letter cited the aggressive position of the Bush Justice Department on executive-privilege issues. That doctrine essentially held that White House aides not only did not have to answer specific questions before Congress about their presidential duties, they didn't even have to show up in response to subpoenas because they had "absolute immunity."

"We anticipate that one or more committees of the United States Congress might again seek to compel Mr. Rove's appearance, testimony or documents on the subject of the U.S. attorneys matter," Fielding wrote. "Please advise Mr. Rove ... that the President continues to direct him not to provide information (whether in the form of testimony or documents) to the Congress in this matter …"

Reached Wednesday afternoon, Fielding declined to comment. But a former presidential aide, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters, said that the letter to Rove was "basically the same" as the one sent to Miers (and a third letter sent to former White House chief of staff Josh Bolten). "If the president was going to assert privilege," this source said, he had to do it before he left office on Jan. 20.

Luskin said that he forwarded a copy of Fielding's letter, as well as the subpoena he got from Conyers, to Obama's White House counsel, Greg Craig, and essentially asked for the new president's position on these matters.

So far, he said, Craig hasn't responded; Luskin also says he has asked the House Judiciary Committee to postpone its deposition of Rove until he hears back. The committee has agreed to put off the deposition—but only for a few weeks.

The issue is likely to come to a head soon. The Justice Department is due to state its position on executive privilege to the U.S. Court of Appeals in a few weeks in response to the House's attempt to enforce its previous subpoenas for Miers and Bolten, who were subpoenaed to turn over documents relating the U.S. attorneys firings. Both refused to comply, or even show up—relying on the Bush Justice Department's sweeping position on "absolute immunity" from testifying before Congress.

Few legal observers expect the Obama Justice Department to endorse that position, but it remains an open question how the new administration will define the scope of presidential privilege. Bush's attempt to assert privilege even after he leaves office throws a new wrinkle into the dispute.

"We're in uncharted territory," Luskin said to NEWSWEEK when asked whether a former president can still assert executive privilege after he leaves office. He added that Rove has no personal objection to testifying and will cooperate with an ongoing Justice Department inquiry into the U.S. attorneys firing—although Luskin says he has not yet been contacted. (Rove is an occasional contributor to Newsweek).

A White House aide said Wednesday afternoon that Craig's office was still reviewing the issue.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182240/page/1

Bush is the git who just keeps giving......

[NYer]

Wonder if Rove paid his taxes ...

[NYer]

Gateway Pundit: Team Obama Nixes Offshore Oil Drilling. (http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/02/surprise-dems-nix-offshore-drilling-too.html)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_L6pDyjqqsvY/SW62PxMnZ0I/AAAAAAAAZQI/CiM_fQALEgA/s320/no+zones.jpg


President Obama is shelving a plan announced in the final days of the Bush administration to open much of the U.S. coast to oil drilling, including 130 million acres off California's coast from Mendocino to San Diego.

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the plan be put on hold while his agency conducts a 180-day review of the country's offshore oil and gas resources. Salazar's critical comments about the plan signaled that the new administration will seek to rewrite it if not completely scrap it.

The Bush proposal "opened the possibility of oil and gas leases along the entire Eastern seaboard, portions of offshore California and the far eastern Gulf of Mexico with almost no consultation from states, industry or community input," Salazar said at a news conference in Washington. "In my view it was a headlong rush of the worst kind."

But, honestly... Barack Obama is going to free America from our dependence on foreign oil.

Remember this when Gas gets back to $4/gallon.

[The 801]

I am in favor of gas being high in price. 4-5 bucks a gallon would be about right. The present low value is based on low demand, not low long term need. The feds should up the tax, apply it to alternative energy uses, and lower the tax as the per barrel price declines. A stable fuel price would go a long way to stablizing the economy, even if it is high. It would force alternative fuels to be the cheaper path. Our enemies control our fuel supply.

[NYer]

Don't worry ... the price of gas will be back to $4 soon enough ... The idea behind "Drill, Baby, Drill" is not to maintain the salad days of relatively cheap gas but to buy the time necessary for other technologies to mature.

Meanwhile, assuming GM survives, I'm on the wait list for the Chevy Volt.

[Atlas]

Don't worry ... the price of gas will be back to $4 soon enough ... The idea behind "Drill, Baby, Drill" is not to maintain the salad days of relatively cheap gas but to buy the time necessary for other technologies to mature.

Meanwhile, assuming GM survives, I'm on the wait list for the Chevy Volt.

Really? Whats the target price? 40K?

This would be more attractive as a hybrid, like Toyotas Camry hybrid. If you're an exclusively short hop urban commuter, maybe more attractive.

[NYer]

Actually, the Volt has a projected range as all electric of 45 miles and has outdone this consistently in tests thus far. The internal combustion engine, which kicks in to keep the battery at 30% charge, supposedly increases the range to 400 miles. Unlike the traditional hybrids, the Volt power plants run in series, not parallel. Also, watch for tax incentives to bring the price down. The biggest threat to the Chevy Volt is GM itself.

[Atlas]

Actually, the Volt has a projected range as all electric of 45 miles and has outdone this consistently in tests thus far. The internal combustion engine, which kicks in to keep the battery at 30% charge, supposedly increases the range to 400 miles. Unlike the traditional hybrids, the Volt power plants run in series, not parallel. Also, watch for tax incentives to bring the price down. The biggest threat to the Chevy Volt is GM itself.

So it is a hybrid then. I was under the impression it was all electric

[NYer]

Obama surrounding himself with Spivs and Chancers. (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25111997-5000117,00.html)

HT: Instapundit

GOOD thing for Barack Obama that he isn’t George Bush. He’d have been slaughtered for starting so badly that he’s picking a Cabinet of tax cheats. . . .

how loudly would the people who cheer Obama have screamed if Bush had, for instance, surrounded himself with this extraordinarily long list of spivs and chiselers?

There’s Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader whom Obama picked as Health secretary, but was forced to quit for having failed to pay more than $150,000 in taxes - and for pulling a mysterious $1.5 million a year as an influence-peddler to a law firm.

Nancy Killefer, Obama’s choice as the government’s chief performance officer, also had to quit, having failed to pay unemployment taxes for her household help.

Timothy Geithner, on the other hand, still got appointed Treasury secretary despite having also failed to pay taxes - more than $60,000 in his case. Hilda Solis likewise survived, becoming Labor secretary even though her husband owed $10,000 in taxes.

Hmm. What is it about Big Government Democrats that they so hate paying the taxes they impose on others? And we haven’t finished with that list, either.

Obama’s first choice as Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, had to quit to fight grand jury charges of selling favors. . . .And now helping Obama run the economy are two powerful Democratic Congressmen he’s inherited from his party - Charlie Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House ways and means Committee, who failed to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from his luxury Caribbean villa, and Chris Dodd, who as chair of the Senate banking committee received $200,000 in donations from the now collapsed Fannie Mae, plus sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, another business he was supposed to be regulating.

Not being able even to pick a clean team would be embarrassing enough - proof that the neophyte in the White House has run nothing in his life but an election campaign - but worse is that Obama actually promised to transform Washington with “the most sweeping ethics reform in history.

Oh, and then there's This. (http://gawker.com/5161837/obamas-chief-vetter-has-his-own-tax-problem)

[NYer]

Eh, I don’t worry about the market’s " day to day gyrations. (http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/03/economic-savior-eh-i-dont-worry-about-the-markets-day-to-day-gyrations/)"

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/files/2009/03/picture-107.png

Not much of a gyration actually ...

[The 801]

You know, I could never figure out how this works.

Are you to look long term and not worry about the ups and downs, or are you to focus on the day to day and ride the markets waves? Never could figure that out.

And another thing I can't figure out is Market watching. You are watching the market go up and down. But short of reacting to it, you do nothing. Nothing to help it go up, nothing to help it go down. I mean, if you are so smart, why don't you have your own business and make it thrive, with all your understanding of what makes a company strong. Or is it that this is an easier way to make money? So markets are decided by people who are too lazy to actually understand what makes a company strong? Or is it they cannot execute the skills necessary? That not who I want to give my investment money to.

[The 801]

Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and five high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo. By Scott Horton.

Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on other points: They will seek to have the case referred to a different judge.

Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations.

The six defendants—in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith—are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on terror.” The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. “The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation,” one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated.

But prosecutors will also ask that Judge Garzón, an internationally known figure due to his management of the case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other high-profile cases, step aside. The case originally came to Garzón because he presided over efforts to bring terrorism charges against the five Spaniards previously held at Guantánamo. Spanish prosecutors consider it “awkward” for the same judge to have both the case against former U.S. officials based on the possible torture of the five Spaniards at Guantánamo and the case against those very same Spaniards. A source close to the prosecution also noted that there was concern about the reaction to the case in some parts of the U.S. media, where it had been viewed, incorrectly, as a sort of personal frolic of Judge Garzón. Instead, the prosecutors will ask Garzón to transfer the case to Judge Ismail Moreno, who is currently handling an investigation into kidnapping charges surrounding the CIA’s use of facilities as a safe harbor in connection with the seizure of Khalid el-Masri, a German greengrocer who was seized and held at various CIA blacksites for about half a year as a result of mistaken identity. The decision on the transfer will be up to Judge Garzón in the first instance, and he is expected to make a quick ruling. If he denies the request, it may be appealed.

Judge Garzón’s name grabs headlines in Spain today less because of his involvement in the Gonzales torture case than because of his supervision of the Gürtel affair, in which leading figures of the conservative Partido Popular in Madrid and Valencia are now under investigation or indictment on suspicions of corruptly awarding public-works contracts. Garzón is also the nation’s leading counterterrorism judge, responsible for hundreds of investigations targeting Basque terrorist groups, as well as a major recent effort to identify and root out al Qaeda affiliates operating in the Spanish enclaves of North Africa.

Announcement of the prosecutor’s decision was delayed until after the Easter holiday in order not to interfere with a series of meetings between President Barack Obama and Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero. However, contrary to a claim contained in an editorial on April 8 in the Wall Street Journal, the Obama State Department has been in steady contact with the Spanish government about the case. Shortly after the case was filed on March 17, chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza was invited to the U.S. embassy in Madrid to brief members of the embassy staff about the matter. A person in attendance at the meeting described the process as “correct and formal.” The Spanish prosecutors briefed the American diplomats on the status of the case, how it arose, the nature of the allegations raised against the former U.S. government officials. The Americans “were basically there just to collect information,” the source stated.The Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters. They pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending. These inquiries met with no answer from the U.S. side.

Spanish officials are highly conscious of the political context of the case and have measured the Obama administration’s low-key reaction attentively. Although Spain is a NATO ally that initially supported “the war on terror” under Bush with a commitment of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, relations with the Bush administration deteriorated after Zapatero became prime minister and acted quickly to withdraw the Spanish contingent in Iraq. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican John McCain referred to Spain as a hostile state in comments that mystified Spaniards (it appears that McCain may have confused Spain with Venezuela and Zapatero with Hugo Chávez). Recently, the United States and Spain also wrangled over Spain’s decision to withdraw its troop commitment in Kosovo as well. Both Zapatero and Obama, however, have given a high priority to improving relations between the two long-standing allies. Spanish newspapers hailed the fact that Obama referred to Zapatero three times as “my good friend” during the recent European summit meetings, a sharp contrast with meetings at which former President Bush gave Zapatero a cold shoulder.

Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations, which both desire, particularly in regard to coordinated economic policy to confront the current financial crisis and a reshaped NATO mandate for action in Afghanistan. With the case now proceeding, that will be more of a challenge. The reaction on American editorial pages is divided—some questioning sharply why the Obama administration is not conducting an investigation, which is implicitly the question raised by the Spanish prosecutors. Publications loyal to the Bush team argue that the Spanish investigation is an “intrusion” into American affairs, even when those affairs involve the torture of five Spaniards on Cuba.

The Bush Six labored at length to create a legal black hole in which they could implement their policies safe from the scrutiny of American courts and the American media. Perhaps they achieved much of their objective, but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in. If U.S. courts and prosecutors will not address the matter because of a lack of jurisdiction, foreign courts appear only too happy to step in.

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-13/the-bush-six-to-be-indicted/

[The 801]

Sometimes, I just can't help myself.....

Poll: Bush Getting Even More Unpopular Out Of Office

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that former President Bush's popularity has dropped since he left office.

When he left office in January, 31 percent of American's viewed him positively. That number has now dropped to 26 percent.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is more popular than the past two presidents at this point during their first terms.

According to the poll, 61 percent approve of Obama's job -- that's compared with George W. Bush's 56 percent and Bill Clinton's 52 percent at this same juncture in their presidencies.


Also, 64 percent view Obama favorably versus 23 percent who see him in a negative light -- once again, higher than Bush's and Clinton's scores on this question.

Additionally, 64 percent of Americans also "feel more hopeful about the direction of the country with Obama in office," and a full 59 percent feel he has accomplished a "great deal" or a "fair amount."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/poll-bush-getting-even-mo_n_192861.html

I hate using Huffpo, so here are the real facts...

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ_NewsPoll_042809.pdf

[NYer]

Hillary blogger - Braces yourselves for this because we can hardly believe it ourselves, but we really miss Dick Cheney. (http://hillbuzz.org/2009/04/27/brace-yourselves-for-this-because-we-can-hardly-believe-it-ourselves-but-we-really-miss-having-dick-cheney-around/) This must surely be Bush's fault.

Also, Michael Scheuer, no fan of Bush-Cheney : Obama's gonna get somebody killed. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403459.html)

Americans and their country's security will be the losers. The Republicans do not have the votes to stop Obama, and the world will not be safer for America because the president abandons interrogations to please his party's left wing and the European pacifists it so admires. Both are incorrigibly anti-American, oppose the use of force in America's defense and -- like Obama -- naively believe that the West's Islamist foes can be sweet-talked into a future alive with the sound of kumbaya.

So if the above worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, Americans will have at least two things from which to take solace, even after the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen. First, they will know that their president believes that those losses are a small price to pay for stopping interrogations and making foreign peoples like us more. And second, they will see Osama bin Laden's shy smile turn into a calm and beautiful God-is-Great grin.

Yeah I know ... I couldn't help it either.

[pixikill]

if george turns up dead, having swan-dived from the eaves of his home whilst tethered, i wont be surprised at all.

[NYer]

"Bart Simpson" Obama on the deficit: "I didn't do it." (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/286646.php)

"That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance.

[NYer]

Knowing A Good Man When You See Him

The Dalai Lama has been visiting the Boston area, and I’d like to mention a few reports. First, a note from an NRO reader:

Hi, Jay,



I had the great opportunity to see the Dalai Lama speak at MIT this afternoon. When he opened the forum to audience Q&A, the following stunning exchange occurred (I will paraphrase):



Audience member: “Can you give us an example of a leader we should look up to as a positive influence?”



Dalai Lama (after thinking for a few seconds): “President Bush. I met him personally and liked him very much. He was honest and straightforward, and that is very important. I may not have agreed with all his policies, but I thought he was very honest and a very good leader.”



All this in Cambridge . . .



Incidentally, when he said, “I may not have agreed with all his policies,” the audience broke out into relieved laughter, as if they could not believe that someone — the Dalai Lama — almost made it through remarks about Bush with only positive sentiments.

And here is an item from The Tech, an MIT newspaper:

After his speech, the Dalai Lama answered questions, including one about model leaders. He singled out President George W. Bush for his straightforwardness, but stopped short on complimenting him for much else.



“I love him”, said the Dalai Lama of President Bush, “but as far as his policies are concerned, I have reservations.”

(Is it MIT policy to leave commas outside of quotation marks, British-style?) And here is something from the Boston Globe: “. . . the Dalai Lama said, referring to former President George W. Bush, ‘I love President Bush,’ acknowledging serious policy disagreements, but citing Bush’s warm personality.”



Finally, a blogger, whom Google brought up:

. . . he came out and told people he and Bush instantly hit it off and he loved the warmonger. He said he would withhold judgment on the attack of Iraq. He also said he supported Bush’s “war on terror” because, according to him, some humans are just inherently evil, referring to the Muslim “extremists” Bush branded for the kill. Bush is evil but the Dalai Lama proclaimed he loved him. The Dalai Lama is no Buddist.



In my experience — and I’m just generalizing here — the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Certainly the less snarky and narrow. Most of the people I admire most, admire the 43rd president. (Please note that I said “most of the people,” not “all of the people.”) This is particularly true of those who know something about tyranny, and the need to resist it: e.g., the Dalai Lama.



Anyway . . .

Link (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDM5YWFiOTA4YzkyOTViODk5NDIzMDg0MTU5YTIyMzE=)

[NYer]

Debra Burlingame: Obama and the 9/11 Families. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124174154190098941.html)

"This isn't goodbye," said the president, signing autographs and posing for pictures before leaving for his next appointment, "this is hello." His national security staff would have an open-door policy.

Believe . . . feel . . . hope.

We'd been had.

... Given all the developments since our meeting with the president, it is now evident that his words to us bore no relation to his intended actions on national security policy and detainee issues. But the narrative about Mr. Obama's successful meeting with 9/11 and Cole families has been written, and the press has moved on.

Just words ...

Ms. Burlingame's brother, Chic Burlingame was the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines plane which was crashed into the Pentagon.

[The 801]

Bush criticized by former 9/11 commission member

By PETE YOST – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former member of the 9/11 Commission criticizes former President George W. Bush in a new book for not responding to pre-attack intelligence on Osama bin Laden's intentions.

In "The Emperor's New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11," Richard Ben-Veniste writes that CIA analysts told Bush that bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, "yet the president had done absolutely nothing to follow up."

A Democrat and a longtime Washington attorney, Ben-Veniste provides an inside account of the commission's three-hour interview with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on April 29, 2004.

Bush told the panel that the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence summary — known as a presidential daily brief — was the only one he ever received on the domestic threat, Ben-Veniste writes.

In the interview with Bush, Ben-Veniste asked the president why he hadn't met with the FBI director after getting the PDB.

Bush replied that there were concerns predating his administration about politicizing the FBI and interfering in pending cases.

But "this was no pending case subject to claims of political interference," Ben-Veniste writes in his book.

The president said he couldn't recall whether he asked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to get in touch with the FBI regarding the PDB, according to the book.

On Friday, a spokesman for the former president, Rob Saliterman, declined to comment, referring all questions to statements Bush made on April 11, 2004, during his re-election campaign, the day after the PDB was publicly released.

"I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats," Bush told reporters that day. "And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin-Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?"

"I looked at the Aug. 6 briefing; I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America. Well, we knew that," Bush said.

Finally declassified by the Bush administration amid public and political pressure in April 2004, the PDB from Aug. 6, 2001, said, "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden related." The PDB also said that the CIA and the FBI at the time were investigating a call to the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates three months earlier saying that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives."

In his interview with the commission, Bush said the mention of 70 pending FBI investigations was a good thing, helpful, according to Ben-Veniste's book. Rice testified publicly that the PDB contained "some frightening things." At the time the president received the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB, Rice was not with Bush, who was vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The PDB also stated that FBI information "indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."

In his comments in April 2004 the day after the PDB was released, Bush told reporters, "You might recall the hijacking that was referred to in the PDB. It was not a hijacking of an airplane to fly into a building."

In the run-up to the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Ben-Veniste wrote, the summer of 2001 marked the most elevated threat level the country had ever experienced, providing convincing evidence that a spectacular attack was about to occur.

"CIA analysts had written a report for the president's eyes to alert him to the possibility that bin Laden's words and actions, together with recent investigative clues, pointed to an attack by al-Qaida on the American homeland," Ben-Veniste writes.

In the commission interview, "President Bush volunteered that if there had been 'a serious concern' in August 2001, he would have known about it," Ben-Veniste writes. "Being on my best behavior, I didn't come out and ask him what he thought a briefing from the CIA titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' was, if not a serious concern."

"Instead, I asked whether the president had discussed the Aug. 6 PDB with either the attorney general or the secretary of the treasury, the two cabinet officers who oversaw the FBI and other federal agencies charged with domestic law enforcement," Ben-Veniste wrote. "Had he discussed the PDB with Attorney General Ashcroft to ensure the FBI was doing everything necessary? The president said that he could not recall, nor could he say whether Rice had any such discussion with Ashcroft."

Ben-Veniste's book recounts five episodes from his career in which he played a role. Aside from his membership on the 9/11 Commission, Ben-Veniste prosecuted former top Nixon administration officials in the Watergate coverup; prosecuted the top aide to Democratic Speaker John McCormack for bribery and perjury; defended a lawyer in the FBI's Abscam sting operation in which bribes were paid to members of Congress; and served as Democratic counsel to the Republican-controlled Senate Whitewater Committee that investigated the Clintons.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hjsuf_9jR4zMZzyl8Ekx26_cg5yAD98BHH900

[NYer]

Richard Ben Veniste has his own issues. I still wish that Jamie Gorelick had appeared as a witness before the Commission instead of a Commissioner. The infamous "Wall of Separation" contributed to the massive fumble that allowed the plot to go forward.

[The 801]

Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says Saddam Hussein "provided sanctuary ... and resources to terrorists."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says Saddam Hussein "provided sanctuary ... and resources to terrorists."

He strongly defended the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein's previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.

Cheney, in an appearance at the National Press Club, also said he is intent on speaking out in defense of the Bush administration's national security record because "a clear understanding of policies that worked [in protecting the United States] is essential."

"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.

But Hussein was "somebody who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists. ... [It] is, without question, a fact."

Cheney restated his claim that "there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It's not something I made up. ... We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor -- a state sponsor -- of terror. It's not my judgment. That was the judgment of our [intelligence community] and State Department."

Cheney identified former CIA Director George Tenet as the "prime source of information" on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Tenet "testified, if you go back and check the record, in the fall of [2002] before the Senate Intelligence Committee -- in open session -- that there was a relationship," Cheney said.

Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in December 2003. In November 2006, the former Iraqi leader was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He was executed the following December.

Among other things Monday, Cheney also called the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center a "good facility ... if you are going to be engaged in a world conflict, such as we are, in terms of global war on terrorism. You know, if you don't have a place where you can hold these people, the only other option is to kill them. And we don't operate that way." Video Watch what Cheney has to say about the detention facility »

He reiterated his call for President Obama to declassify documents detailing the results of "enhanced interrogations" of high-value detainees.

Since Obama has already released memos detailing the interrogation methods, Cheney said, it is important to share the results of those interrogations with the public as well.

"I would not ordinarily be leading the charge to declassify classified information, otherwise they wouldn't call me Darth Vader for nothing," Cheney said.

But "once the [Obama] administration released the legal memos that gave the opinions that were used to guide the interrogation program, they'd given away the store. ... I [therefore] thought it was important to have the results that were gained from that interrogation program front and center as well."

On May 14, the CIA rejected the former vice president's request to declassify the documents. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano, in a written statement, said the two documents are the subject of pending lawsuits and therefore cannot be declassified.

Cheney said Monday that the memos previously released also were the subject of ongoing lawsuits. He said Obama can release the additional documents with "the stroke of a pen."
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On May 21, Cheney gave a full-throated defense of the Bush administration's enhanced interrogations of al Qaeda prisoners during an appearance at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

He has said that the interrogations saved the lives of "thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands." He called the techniques the Bush administration approved "legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/01/cheney.speech/

Now he tells us......

[NYer]

Team Obama Invites Iran to July 4th! (http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/team-obama-invites-iran-to-july-4th.html)

Hubba hubba hubba.

And then there's This... (http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/unreal-obama-agrees-with-ahmadinejad.html)

Gird your loins ...

[NYer]

Obama tax plan would increase progressivity, decrease growth. (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2009/06/obama-tax-plan.html)

[NYer]

Miranda rights for Foreign Terrorists? (http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/06/10/the-us-is-now-mirandizing-high-value-detainees/)

[T]he Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy…

[NYer]

Carter Met With Terror Master. (http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/197876.php) Confirmed.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/carterandfadlallah.jpg

Confirmed, Jimmay did in fact meet with the leader of the terrorist group which has killed more Americans than any other next to al Qaeda.

Despicable.

If not the worst President, clearly Mr. Peanut is the worst Ex-President ever.

[NYer]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_L6pDyjqqsvY/SlUnN8qa-pI/AAAAAAAAcsU/VhS6n2CR7Os/s400/barak.bmp

Someone's obviously been huked on fonix.

Our country's in the best of hands.

[The 801]

Report: Domestic surveillance program relied on flawed analysis



By Terry Frieden
CNN Justice Producer
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The highly controversial no-warrant surveillance program initiated after the September 11 terrorist attacks relied on a "factually flawed" legal analysis inappropriately provided by a single Justice Department official, according to a report to Congress on Friday.

The report was compiled by the inspectors general of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and the Justice Department.

The report, mandated by Congress, provides fresh context to information previously leaked in press accounts and buttressed by both congressional testimony and books written by former officials involved in the surveillance effort.

The 38-page unclassified version of the document reaches a cautious conclusion, stating that any use of the information collected under the surveillance program "should be carefully monitored."

The program, launched by President Bush in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, allowed for -- without court approval -- the interception of communications into and out of the United States if there was a "reasonable basis" that one of the parties was a terrorist.

The report, though not critical of the program's objectives, sharply criticizes the legal advice provided to the White House by the Justice Department.

Among other things, the report cites a Justice Department conclusion that "it was extraordinary and inappropriate that a single DOJ attorney, John Yoo, was relied upon to conduct the initial legal assessment" of the surveillance program.

"The lack of oversight and review of Yoo's work ... contributed to a legal analysis of the [program] that at a minimum was factually flawed," it says.

The report says Yoo largely circumvented both his boss, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Yoo, described by Bybee in the report as "the White House's guy" on national security, also provided the legal justification for the CIA's controversial harsh interrogation program. Yoo's legal rationale was later repudiated by the Justice Department.

The bitter debate within the Justice Department over the legal basis for the warrantless surveillance and related intelligence efforts is highlighted in references to the much-documented dramatic account of a March 2004 confrontation in Ashcroft's hospital room. Deputy Attorney General James Comey defied then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales by refusing to sign off on the reauthorization of the program.

The report notes that several members of Congress -- including then-House Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi -- were briefed on the program on October 25, 2001, and a total of 17 times before the program became public in 2005.

The document repeats the public assertion by former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden that no member of Congress had urged that the program be stopped.

The new report makes clear that the President's Surveillance Program was only a small part of the counterterrorism intelligence efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and its impact even today remains unclear.

Most of the intelligence officials interviewed by the inspectors general had, according to the report, "difficulty citing specific instances where PSP reporting had directly contributed to counterterrorism successes."

The report was compiled by inspectors general of five agencies despite the apparent refusal by key figures -- including Yoo, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former CIA Director George Tenet -- to be interviewed by investigators.

Those who consented to be interviewed by the investigators included Hayden, former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, former White House Counsel and Attorney General Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfe

[NYer]

Powell now has doubts about Ozero. (http://www.examiner.com/x-2913-Boston-Republican-Examiner~y2009m7d6-Is-Colin-Powell-now-having-doubts-about-Obama)

http://jdlong.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/obama-leer-1.jpg

As the sign in the STD Clinic reads, "Erections Have Consequences."