looks like things are heating up, crescendo style. its hard to know where to start but here goes...

ive alwasy had the sense that there mite not be a us election, and that things would blow up before then - well, it seems that the escalation has begun, and itll be hard to manage, and harder to stop.

1. lemme start with chalabi - the latest is:
"According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02CHAL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=

this is all very funny, and getting really serious. the fbi is running around the shitehouse giving everyone liedetector tests to work out who told chalabi 'when drunk' (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/politics/03CHAL.html?pagewanted=all&position=). much more likely of course, is that chalabi wasnt involved, and someone (am?) was trying to set him up. it was a pretty expensive way to do it of course cos now the iranians know the code is broken.

"The Iranians sent what American intelligence regarded as a test message, which mentioned a cache of weapons inside Iraq, believing that if the code had been broken, United States military forces would be quickly dispatched to the specified site. But there was no such action."
this is presumably bullshit cos the iranians wouldnt do this, knowing that the msg about the broken code would have been picked up...

it was only a week or 2 ago that chalabi challenged tenet to meet him in congress and debate him or whatever - which was a pretty ballsy thing to say... i wonder whether chalabi knew that tenet was in trouble in advance? if so, then one might take an extra dose of suspicion with all this iran stuff...

2/ tenet
"im going to resign to spend time with my family" lol.
but heres the thing, thats not wot he said... the more cynical of you may have noticed his exact words - the decision "had only one basis in fact—the *well being* of my wonderful family. Nothing more and nothing less." "wellbeing" - which sounds a lot like his family has been threatened. (it was only a few days ago when i asked whether moore had received the same threat). and the more observant of u will have noticed that the media hasnt touched on this curiousity - repeating the "he wants to spend more time with the family" mantra. im watching jimlehrer/pbs and they pretend that the 'more time with the family' thing is an actual quote, also quoting "personal decision" (text on screen). i always thought that tenet knows too much about 911 to get the sack, but i didnt figure his family mite be at risk - his language seems to specifically, directly point that out... i wonder if that was in the approved version of his speech?

one imagines that if the head of the cia is scared about his family after 8 years in the job, then it mite be an inside thingy...

and hows this for a tip o the hat to all those 911 families? "Mr. Bush asked Mr. Tenet to stay through the end of the year, the person said, but Mr. Tenet responded that summer was a natural break point and a good time to depart."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/04/politics/04TENE.html - particularly nice given that ashcroft has warned of attacks over the summer... surprising most of us who thought the attack would be pre-election. it occured to me today that ashcroft might be correct about the summmer - but he mite be referring to the oz election...

remember hagiog woodward completely overdoing the 'slam dunk' thing - that was prolly all a setup: "According to Woodward, Mr Bush's response to the CIA briefing was "nice try". He insisted the public would not understand it. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" he asked Mr Tenet." i never believed the 'slamdunk' line, and i never believed gwb questioned the wmd story (remember, 43 didnt see any of the wmd evidence till a dress rehearsal for a speech way late in the process).

3/ speaking of oz - as you know i think oz is toast at election time (still not fixed) . 43 made some extraordinary "unprecedented" comments today about the oz election and opposition leader latham who wants to pull troops outta iraq. " Labor's plan, if carried out, would dispirit "those who love freedom in Iraq". et al... http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203575179.html
im starting to think that therell be a bunch of demonising of latham - praps incl in the am media - and then a kaboom a few days b4 the oz election. the bad news is that there are a bunch of stories newly around about how bad the nuke situation is... im not sure whether latham or howard will get the election - howard to show how strong ozzies are, or another round of spanish style 'appeaser' labeling. if theres an attack here, then 43 can call off the am election - 'elections cause explosions, we dont want an explosion, ergo no election'.

the other thing that is curious is that no-one is mentioning the possibility of an attack here in oz at electiontime. check out http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/06/03/howard.bush/ they very clearly draw a link between spain and oz with subtitle "spanish withdrawal" - but the obvious implication that alq might try to affect electoral changes isnt mentioned - despite that fact that alq often mention oz as a target.

4. and while im on oz - i dont think i mentioned the turnaround early this week in oz politics: "In what appears to be a delayed reaction to the budget, there has been a startling 13 percentage-point turnaround" yeah rite. its amazing how many 'startling' surprises we get these days... i guess polls dont lie, but its odd to get a startling uptick at a time when the govt was getting its ass kicked, and caught repeatedly lying and all that jazz - and the 'delayed response' line was pure gold. (there was no poll bounce when the budget came out - which was widely see as a big pre-election bribe to everyone)

5/ and another oz bit - the am ambassador here is a guy called tom scheiffer. he was wheeled out on dentons show this week which i missed (ive mentioned questions about denton being spooky b4) but the transcript is http://www.abc.net.au/enoughrope/stories/s1120407.htm scheiffer is kinda famous here for making extraordinary comments about oz domestic politics - telling us who should be pm and such, alto purported hardhitter denton didnt mention any of that in the interview.

turns out, tom ran and part owned the texas rangers for 43 (and afterwards for the clearchannel boss), then he left the baseball club to get involved with all that shady realestate biz around the park (thanks jeb). also "Ambassador Schieffer has one brother, Bob Schieffer (who i dont know), a journalist, who is the Chief Washington Correspondent for CBS News as well as the host for CBS's Face the nation. "
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/7583.htm

some hilites from the interview
"TOM SCHIEFFER: In the Middle East... no-one wants us to absent the field, no-one wants to say, "America, go home, don't be here any more."

TOM SCHIEFFER: I don't think we really know how much contact there was between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

TOM SCHIEFFER: What bothers us and should bother us about the inability to find these weapons of mass destruction is not the effect they have on the political argument, it's what happened to them... What we have not been able to do is reconcile the weapons we knew were there with what we find now. Only three things could have happened to them. They were either destroyed, they were hidden or they were given to somebody else.

Because we can't reconcile that with what we find it ought to be very troubling to us because it can only be one of those three options. Until we find that out, the whole idea of weapons of mass destruction should be very troubling for us.

... this is not America that is under attack, it is civilisation that's under attack.

...The George Bush that I know is a very kind, very compassionate, uh, very thoughtful person. He reads all the time. He's married to a librarian. I mean, this is a woman and this is a man who...they love books."

none of the scheiffer thing is important, other than that he was wheeled out on denton this week, and then gwb too the same swipes at oz politics as tom is famous for, and ive just realised that he is a way-back mate of gwb. and that ive always though oz was a part of the stragegy.

6/ praps the plame sotu niger thingy is heating up - 43 has got himself a crim lawyer http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/03/bush.leak/ twasnt so long that 43 announced the investigation with the seemingly pessimistic "im not sure we'll find the culprit". for 18 months ive sed that this is the one that deserves to have them all thrown in jail... we'll see what happens next.

7/ ftr, heres a story on mayfield - the madrid fingerprint guy http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5092810/site/newsweek/ which includes this nice bit " (The affidavit that helped secure his arrest made much of the fact that he had converted to Islam, is married to an Egyptian-born woman)" muslim converts are toast. they are worse than muslims.

8/ and then weve got 911comm to come, unless it collapses in a heap of bipartisan acrimony beforehand.

its gonna be a pretty bizzy summer. there are so many things that look like they could indivd/collectively get completely outta control - once the curtain is peeled back a bit, one expects that the whole thing might start to unravel. november looks a long way away... prpas thats why ashcroft came out with that stupid terra-in-da-summer thingy against the law, and apparently w/out ridge or tenets approval/notice.

the next key thing is the oz election date - it looked like it was gonna be 'early' say aug8 - but then there was some suggestion of a delay. given the fab 13 point turnaround in the polls just as howard was side byside with arnie, and then 43, we might actually see an early election here. athens opening ceremony is aug 13 - praps we'll see an oz election b4 then, and an attack, and the us/oz pulling out of the olympix. im not sure what the rules are for deciding the timing of an oz election - howard is in the us for another week so we wont hear from him for a while...

so there u go.

looneybomber x