"It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement most of the key ideas for quelling the Iraqi civil war that are outlined in a classified Nov. 8 memo to President Bush from National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, experts said Wednesday."* obscure comment of the day from palo verde:
"Sibel's husband is a rock ribbed Republican
his family has been Republican forever
he is the one standing behind Sibel
Sibel is no Michael Moore"
"Can we cut the bullshit and admit that Sadr now runs Iraq."
"Based on an "investigation" notable only for failing to interview a single firsthand eyewitness, the National Commission on Terrorism’s 9/11 Report totally ignored the big dirty secret lying at the heart of the 9/11 cover-up... A war for global supremacy being fought through drug trafficking, weapons sales, and the associated money laundering necessary to keep secret armies in the field."
"Semantically, and by the military's official definition, what is happening in Iraq is nowhere near a civil war.* mizgin:
But does it make a difference? Whether Iraq has or hasn't descended into civil war, nothing has changed from last week or last month. It would be a shame if we were blind to that stark reality and instead indulged Washington and New York's time-wasting debate."
"Sibel Edmonds has published her second article in a series on the Deep State in America and, WOW! Talk about a journalistic version of a JDAM! She discusses Turkey's tight connections with, and control of, a big chunk of the world's heroin market; Turkey's shady dealings with the transfer of nuclear technology and materials to Pakistan and others; and the role of that powerful Deep State front in the US, the American Turkish Council."
"A surprise for Americans: The most urgent and destabilizing crisis in the Middle East is not Iraq. It is, according to King Abdullah II of Jordan (who will meet Bush today), the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a major engine driving the radicalization of Muslims in the Middle East and in Europe. It seldom makes the front page any more, but the Israelis are keeping the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in Bantustan penitentiaries and bombing the ones in Gaza relentlessly, often killing signficant numbers of innocent civilians. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser and other Likudniks who had managed to get influential perches in the US government once argued that the road to peace in Jerusalem lay through Baghdad. It never did, and they were wrong about that the way they were wrong about everything else.
In fact, September 11 was significantly about the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, and as long as the Israelis continue their actual creeping colonialization of Palestinian land while they pretend to engage in a (non-existent) "peace process," radicalism in the region will only grow. Polls taken in the last few years have shown that 64 percent of Egyptians expressed satisfaction with the Mubarak government, but only 2 percent had a favorable view of US foreign policy (i.e. knee-jerk pro-Likud policy) in the Middle East. That is, the argument that authoritarian government breeds radicalism is either untrue or only partial. It is the daily perception of a great historical wrong done to a Middle Eastern people, the Palestinians, that radicalizes people in the region (and not just Muslims)."
"The NYT was told by somebody in Washington that Hizbullah has trained between 1,000 and 2,000 Mahdi Army militiamen.* kathleen reardon:
[]
There is a real possibility that this report is disinformation "leaked" by the Cheney/Wurmser axis in order to forestall a move to negotiation with Iran and Syria over Iraq, which the Baker-Hamilton Commission will likely recommend."
"Sounds good, but years of studying negotiation tells me that common ground can be a useful start for talks among hostile adversaries, but it is rarely a productive end point and is even an ill-advised, unreliable starting one when the other side has proven its penchant for deception.
[]
I don't have Tom Hayden's connections, but over the years I've learned to smell a rat - to read the tea leaves if you prefer. Would it be all that surprising after years of a war based on lies, executed with shocking ineptitude, causing thousands of deaths that a civil war might now be seen by the current Bush Administration as a viable path to a "win" of sorts? Would it be beyond the current leadership, as abhorrent as it sounds, to turn lemons to lemonade in Iraq - to let a civil war get firmly underway before admitting to its existence so that in its blood and dust the post "Mission Accomplished" years of failure, to use George Bush's words, might be, with a little help and a new library, reduced to a mere "comma"?
It's unwise to forget with whom we're dealing here. This administration has amply demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice nearly all but itself. The chief players are not beyond lying and they have two more years to go. Call this view paranoid, an unwelcome, party-pooping conspiracy theory, or just plain out-to-lunch, but a heads up on Iraq in the midst of post-election jubilation is surely needed if we're to avoid being made fools yet again."
"Report: Pakistan Urging NATO to Accept Defeat in Afghanistanmon dieu.
Back at the NATO Summit, the London Daily Telegraph is reporting the Pakistani government is urging NATO countries to accept defeat in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s foreign minister has reportedly told counterparts the Taliban is winning the war and that NATO is bound to lose. Pakistan has also called for negotiating with the Taliban towards a new coalition government that could exclude Afghan president Hamid Karzai."
"Remember Brandon Mayfield? He's the guy the FBI arrested in 2004 and held for two weeks for allegedly aiding a terrorist bombings of Spanish commuter trains. Except, he didn't do it.* peter lance was on democracynow:
Mayfield just won a $2 million settlement from the U.S. government for its rather egregious error, along with a written apology for its mistakes."
AMY GOODMAN: Where is Ali Mohamed today?he slams those who criticise him, including Larry Johnson.
PETER LANCE: Ali Mohamed is in some kind of custodial witness protection. As I said, he cut a deal. He escaped the death penalty...
AMY GOODMAN: Why would the US be protecting him?
PETER LANCE: Because he is a one-man 9/11 commission. Ali Mohamed, if he ever told the full truth under oath, would expose all the years of negligence by the Southern District. Amy, look, Patrick Fitzgerald and the Southern District prosecutors have had an almost unblemished reputation for years as being the primary, you know, terror-busters. You know, Vanity Fair did this glowing article on him, in which they described him as the bin Laden brain, scary smart intelligence.
No one has ever, ever gone back and audited Patrick Fitzgerald in the Southern District. The 9/11 Commission didn’t, because Dietrich Snell was a co-prosecutor with Fitzgerald, is the one who wrote Staff Statement 16 on the origin of the plot. And he literally pushed the plot, the 9/11 plot forward from Manila, the Philippines, with Yousef and Khalid Shaikh. He moved it to 1996, claiming that Khalid Shaikh wasn’t even a member of al-Qaeda at the time.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen now?
PETER LANCE: What I think needs to happen is there needs to be a real investigation of 9/11, not staffed by alumni of the very agencies that, you know, were asleep at the switch in the years leading up to 9/11. It should be staffed by American citizens, journalists, scholars, widows, the Jersey girls should be on it. It should be fully funded, and it should have subpoena power, because anyone that thinks that in reading the 9/11 Commission Report you’ve gotten the full story is wrong. No accountability. They never named a single name in the 9/11 Commission Report."
"Pope Benedict XVI has invited Henry Kissinger, former adviser to Richard Nixon, to be a political consultant and he accepted."* me:
"maybe the Turks / Bin Ladin / Gray Wolves / Ledeen were going to take out a hit on the Pope, and so the Pope had to get his own 'heavy' as a signal that his team knows that something is in the wings?"a moment, and/or strategy, of tension.
"It’s hard to understand how the Bush Administration could appoint a special envoy with so many conflicts of interest, but Lockheed’s corporate slogan says it all: “We never forget who we’re working for.” Neither, it seems, does General Ralston."
"House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel's No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year."yay!
"A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that key portions of a presidential order blocking financial assistance to terrorist groups are unconstitutional, further complicating the Bush administration's attempts to defend its aggressive anti-terrorism tactics in federal courts.
U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins, in a ruling released late Monday, found that two provisions of an executive order signed Sept. 23, 2001, are impermissibly vague because they allow the president to unilaterally designate organizations as terrorist groups and broadly prohibit association with such groups.
[]
Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan years who has criticized the Bush administration's broad assertions of executive power, said that appealing Collins's ruling may carry more risks for the government than simply changing the executive order's language.
"If they take this up on appeal, they risk another repudiation of this omnipotent-presidency theory that they have," Fein said."
"Iraq Bars Journalists from Attending Sessions of Parliament
The Iraqi government has banned journalists from attending sessions of parliament. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the decision was designed to make sure people speak with one voice to the media."
"So what will Bush announce in the coming weeks? Who knows? But whatever the decision is, it's critical that the president look decider-y."
"Yes, Jane Harman has experience. Exactly the kind of experience that disqualifies her for the job as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. For Harman, access to power, to the inner sanctum of Bush and Cheney, trumped oversight. Nancy Pelosi is right to pass over Democrats who colluded with the Bush administration to jeopardize our national security, tarnish our world image, and undermine our constitutional rights. We need leaders we can trust. It's a matter of life and death."
"A high-level commission investigating corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program released a long-awaited report on Monday stating unequivocally that a major Australian wheat company paid more than $224 million in kickbacks and bribes to Saddam Hussein’s government.yay, us.
The commission also found that the company, AWB Ltd., had “deliberately and dishonestly” devised a scheme for the payments — from 1999 until the overthrow of Mr. Hussein in 2003 — to deceive the United Nations. When the United Nations conducted its investigation in 2005, headed by Paul A. Volcker, AWB withheld thousands of pages of documents and its lawyers made statements to Mr. Volcker that were patently false, the commission found.
The Australian commission’s report was the most thorough — and damning — investigation of corruption in the United Nation’s oil-for-food program. It is certain to have repercussions for politicians in Canberra as well as in Washington, where incoming Democratic Congressional representatives have pledged to hold their own hearings."
"The Cohen Group involved with AWB is the same one that also provided Lockheed Martin with its current "PKK coordinator" to Turkey, Joseph Ralston. Does anyone honestly believe, that with the conflict of interest in surrounding Ralston's appointment and the US government's full knowledge of Ralston's connections, and adding in William Cohen's buddies at the Australian Embassy in DC, that the Australian government really didn't have a single clue as to what was going on?
Does anyone honestly believe that Democrats in the Senate are going to expose former high-ranking officials of the Clinton administration in all their glorious venality? Whoever honestly believes that needs to go on a clue hunt with the Australian government.
Dirty is as dirty does. Sounds to me like it's time to give Public Strategies, Inc. a call."
"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al-Qaida causing people to seek reprisal."1) i'm not interested in his 'opinion'.
"The college student loan industry has been so well-connected in the Republican-controlled Congress that a powerful committee chairman once assured its bankers and other financiers that their interests were in "two trusted hands."I'm convinced that Ryan and Cary Katz should be in jail. and probably half of sallie mae's leadership too. and boehner
Now that Democrats are about to take control of Congress, those bankers will have to contend with a lawmaker who has compared them to the usurers Jesus drove from the temple of Jerusalem."
"The more important aspect of Toobin's article is that it provides an important and potent reminder that while it is nice that Democrats, rather than Bush-loyal Republicans, now control Congress, the people who occupy the White House don't think that matters because they believe -- literally -- that Congress has no power to restrain what they do.
[]
There are a lot of Democrats who, understandably enough, seem all excited about the great new policies and legislation they think they can enact now. And many people are equally excited (at least) about the Congressional investigations that are going to commence. But it is vital to keep at the forefront of our political discussions the fact that the Bush administration is composed of individuals who do not recognize the rule of law or the authority of Congress to do much of anything, and -- unless they are absolutely forced to do so, and it's unclear what that might include -- they are not going to comply with these things we used to call "laws" or with Congressional subpoenas and other mandates because they believe they do not have to. And they have said so expressly, time and again."
Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie yet?
Well, he claimed that would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.
What page do you think he’s on?
I would encourage him to see the movie and read the book. I wish that he would.
Don’t you find it appalling that he won’t?
Well, you know, he’s probably no more objective about me than I am about him.
[]
Okay, on to 9-11. What were you really feeling? Was there a part of you that felt a sense of relief that you weren’t in charge that day?
You mean a sense of relief that I didn’t have to deal with it? Oh no. Not at all. Not for one second. Not for one second. Why would I? I mean, well first of all, it just didn’t occur to me to feel anything like that. What did occur to me was to feel what every American felt, the outrage and anger and righteous anger, and support for the President at a time of danger… And, honestly, I was focused on the reality of the situation. And I wasn’t president, so, you know, it wasn’t about me. Now, I do wish, now that we have some distance from the events, and we have all this knowledge about what this administration did do, I certainly feel that I wish that it had been handled differently, and I do wish that I had somehow been able to prevent some of the catastrophic mistakes that were made.
Do you feel that we would be safer today if you had been president on that day?
Well, no one can say that the 9-11 attack wouldn’t have occurred whoever was president.
Really? How about all the warnings?
That’s a separate question. And it’s almost too easy to say, “I would have heeded the warnings.” In fact, I think I would have, I know I would have. We had several instances when the CIA’s alarm bells went off, and what we did when that happened was, we had emergency meetings and called everybody together and made sure that all systems were go and every agency was hitting on all cylinders, and we made them bring more information, and go into the second and third and fourth level of detail. And made suggestions on how we could respond in a more coordinated, more effective way. It is inconceivable to me that Bush would read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001, and, according to some of the new histories, he turned to the briefer and said, “Well, you’ve covered your ass.” And never called a follow up meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a single question. To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job. And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off! And I don’t know why—honestly—I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way. [Practically screaming now] But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!
But how do you really feel?
(cracks up)
What’s the nicest thing you can say about George Bush?
He made a terrific appointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Ok, Is there a second best thing?
I can’t think of another one, actually.
Congrats on all recent your work re Gates' nomination.more on Susurluk (and Sibel) on friday.
I've been re-reading some of Martin Lee's work regarding Susurluk etc - including at ConsortiumNews - and thought that perhaps you could write an article about Gates from the context that he tried to cover up the Gray Wolves' papal shooting (by pushing the Bulgarian angle) and we could maybe peel off some support from christian types.
Perhaps you could use the imminent papal trip to Turkey as a hook for the story.
In other news, there have been some new developments in the Susurluk case. Mehmet Eymur is apparently now free to travel in Turkey again despite being on the most-wanted list, Mehmet Agar is one of the front-runners for the election in 2007, and Sedat Bucak (the sole survivor at Susurluk) was recently ' convicted' - and given a one year suspended sentence.
The situation in Turkey is starting to look the US - with the return of all the Iran-Contra/Susurluk criminals. That's the problem when people don't get convicted first time around. Let's hope we start to learn that lesson, and soon!
I've never been sure what to make of the celebrated "close friendship" that is said to exist between Bush and Putin -- to laugh at it because it is so obviously a fraud and a transparent media concoction, or to be horrified by the very remote possibility that it might be real. On the surface, the two men could not be starker opposites: Bush the silver spoon-fed dunce who was all but handed the reins of the American empire, and Putin the ultra-cunning self-made criminal mastermind who clawed his way to the top through the ranks of the Petersburg underworld. Putin bested a thousand superior men in one of the world's most lethal political arenas to get to where he is today; if he made that journey just to buddy up to a lumbering fool like George Bush, the world is an even darker place than I thought it was."
"As the experience of both post-communist Russia and America has proven beyond any doubt, the vast majority of journalists in this world will roll over for anyone who pays the bills even without the threat of violence. But you get a much more enthusiastic crowd of reportorial ball-washers and ass-kissers when you dash the brains out of the rare malcontent who steps out of line, and this is what Putin has achieved in Russia. That's why the best way to get a sense of what life is like for journalists in Russia these days isn't to ponder the crime scene of Anna Politkovskaya."* btw - i've long thought that the two most stupidly obvious 'advances' in blogospheric commenting technology were A) wysiwyg B) an aggregator where you could keep track of all your comments in one place and check to see if someone has responded or if you were whistling in the desert. Apparently A) is still beyond the geniuses at Blogger, Haloscan and Typepad - but it appears that there might be an answer to B). see www.cocomment.com I'm still testing it - so this isn't an endorsement.
"Any Bets on Judy's Source?No, not her Plame source. Her Muslim charities source. SCOTUS has just ruled that the NYT has to turn over Judy's call data to Fitzgerald to see if the person who leaked word of impending raids on Muslim charities did so with criminal intent. (Thanks to Quicksilver for the heads up.)
I had to explain to someone last week WTF I thought this might be about. "No one could have leaked the information to Judy intentionally, could they have?" the person asked. "Actually," I responded, "I think it is possible." I gave my best guess. I suspect someone might have leaked the info to Judy so it would not be discovered that the Saudis were funding Hamas. I'd guess that someone either in Treasury, or cognizant of what Treasury was doing, laundered the tip through Judy to save our good friends the Saudis some serious embarrassment.
And btw, if you haven't already read Sibel Edmonds' piece on the influence industry in this country, I recommend you do so. She echoes a lot of ideas I raised in this piece, about how dangerous it is when foreign countries can basically bribe their way into influencing your legislative agenda. She highlights the Saudi's successful efforts at avoiding any embarrassment with the 9/11 Commission report. As the press wonders what Dick Cheney was doing in Saudi Arabia this week, they might want to consider Edmond's argument.
Anyway, back to Judy and Fitzgerald. I suspect we'll only learn who her source is if he ends up indicting that person. But he doesn't have much time. The statute of limitations on the first potential crime expires on December 5, the five year anniversary of Judy's first article tipping one of the charities off to the imminent raid.
Man that guy is busy."
"Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the oil giant and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, says the former Russian spy came to Israel with classified documents on Yukos which may be damaging to Russian leaders. Nevzliln estimates that Litvinenko’s death was connected with this information, which he has handed to London police investigators of the murder.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources add that the Russian ex-spy is believed to have been a double agent, who sold trade secrets to different parties in and outside Russia, among them some of the Russian oligarchs living in exile in the West. Livinenko served as a colonel in a Russian Federal Security Services unit which investigated and carried out special operations against businessmen. "
But the Nicaragua-bombing memo alone should give the senators pause. One could readily imagine Gates playing into George W. Bush’s predilections on Iraq by presenting similar dichotomies between doing the wise but “politically unacceptable” thing by escalating the violence or “putting our heads in the sand” to negotiate some cowardly compromise.
What’s less clear is whether Gates actually believed his hard-line rhetoric in 1984 or was just parroting what he thought his boss wanted to hear.
[]
So, is Gates a closet ideologue who shares his real views only with like-minded individuals like Casey or is he a skilled apple-polisher who curries favor with those above him by leaving them little presents like the Nicaragua-bombing memo for Casey.
Another striking aspect of the Nicaragua memo is that it proves what many Gates critics have alleged over the years – that he tossed aside the principles of objective analysis to position himself as a political/policy advocate.
Gates did that in the 1984 memo even while serving as the official responsible for protecting the integrity of the intelligence product. But Gates not only crossed the red line against entering the world of policy recommendations, he turned out to be wrong in virtually all his dire predictions.
"AMY GOODMAN: Nir Rosen, you’ve just returned in the last hours from the Middle East. You were last in Lebanon, you were in Syria, you’ve been in Iraq for several years reporting. Yesterday, on This Week with George Stefanopolis, King Abdullah of Jordan was there, he said there are three civil wars that could be happening at once, Palestine and Isreal, in Iraq and in Lebanon. Your assessment of this?
NIR ROSEN: Well, there is a civil war in Iraq. There’s been for a couple of years now. There's a low-scale civil war in the Palestinian occupied territories, but Jordan is in part, responsible for that, because the Americans and the Jordanians have been supporting Fatah thugs, led for example by Mahmoud Ahmad, against the popularly elected Hamas government, which they fear. And Jordanian Special Forces have been training, what I think they call the “Badr brigade”, which is Palestinians who support Fatah against Hamas, they’re a militia, so I think he has a great deal responsibility for the chaos in the Palestinian Territories, occupied Palestine. However, in Lebanon, I think concerns are exaggerated. Having just spent three months there, I don't perceive the likelihood of civil war in Lebanon to be a problem right now. Much has been made of the assassination of Pierre Gemayel last week. And the American media portrait it as if ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand had been killed, or John F. Kennedy, but really this guy was a fairly insignificant politician. And not a vocal anti-Syrian critic. He does come from a party with fascist links that massacred thousands of Palestinians. Which nobody seems to mention.
AMY GOODMAN: Which Party?
NIR ROSEN: The Phalanges. They were responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982. It's important people mention this when they lionize this guy who belongs to basically one of the worst death squads in Lebanon. He was hardly democratic. Just like anybody else in Lebanon.
"Prosecutors in Rome have launched an investigation into claims that Silvio Berlusconi tried to electronically rig Italy's April general election. The claims are contained in an investigative report released today in video form with a weekly political review, Il Diario.fancy that.
The election marked the first time that electronic voting machines were used in Italy, not to do the initial counting but to collate results arrived at by manual counting at the different polling stations.
The vote was extraordinarily close, and it was not until late in the morning of the day after the election that the centre-left announced that it had secured enough seats in both houses to form a government. Mr Berlusconi refused to recognise the victory, and claimed that the election had been stolen by the opposition's skulduggery.
The film claims there probably was skulduggery, but that it was all on Mr Berlusconi's side: after all, as the editor of Il Diario, Enrico Deaglio, points out, Mr Berlusconi and his allies were in control of the Interior Ministry, which polices the elections.
The thesis of the film is that, thanks to software surreptitiously installed in the central computers, spoiled ballots were transferred to Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia. But Interior Minister Beppe Pisanu, a trusted former Christian Democrat, learned of the attempted fraud and vetoed it."
"If Geragos is now on the case, I think it means a federal indictment in California is looming. It's either time for a pre-indictment deal or gearing up the war chest."
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser on Iraq is leaving the State Department to return to his teaching job.I wonder how many of his political obits will mention the fact that the JerseyGirls tri
Philip D. Zelikow is the best-known member of Rice's academic brain trust at the State Department, and the author of sometimes contrarian appraisals of the Iraq conflict and reconstruction effort. He holds the title counselor, a sort of adviser without portfolio."
"Progress is difficult to gauge, because so much US reporting grossly exaggerates progress, ignores or understates real-world problems, and promises unrealistic timelines. The US Defense Department has stopped releasing detailed unclassified material about Iraqi Army, Police, and Border Enforcement readiness, only giving information about how many units are "ready and equipped" and "in the lead." These are vague, if not meaningless categories – "in the lead" does not indicate the level of independence from US support, and we do not how many "ready and equipped" soldiers quit or deserted the force.
[]
To put it bluntly, the US government and Department of Defense must stop lying about the true nature of Iraqi readiness and the Iraqi force development....Like all elements of strategy, Iraqi force development needs to be based on honesty and realism, not "spin," false claims, and political expediency."
"In the altered landscape that is Washington, there's a new contender for the title of Scariest Guy in Town. He stands 5 ft. 5, speaks softly and has all the panache of your parents' dentist. But when it comes to putting powerful people on the hot seat, there's no one tougher and more tenacious than veteran California Congressman Henry Waxman. In the Democrats' wilderness years, Waxman fashioned himself as his party's chief inquisitor. Working with one of the most highly regarded staffs on Capitol Hill, he has spent the past eight years churning out some 2,000 headline-grabbing reports, blasting the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress on everything from faulty prewar intelligence and flaws in missile defense to the flu-vaccine shortage and arsenic in drinking water.bring it.
Come January, however, the man that the liberal Nation magazine once called the "Eliot Ness of the Democrats" can do even more, thanks to the two words that strike fear in the heart of every government official: subpoena power. As the new chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, Waxman will have free rein to investigate, as he puts it, "everything that the government is involved with." And the funny thing is, Waxman can thank the Republicans for the unique set of levers he will hold. Under a rules change they put through in the days when they used the panel to make Bill Clinton's life miserable, the leader of Government Reform is the only chairman who can issue subpoenas without a committee vote.
[]
While Waxman promises what he calls oversight, the Republicans say it'll be more like a witch hunt, and the Administration is promising to fight him all the way to the Supreme Court to protect itself against what it expects to be a frontal assault on Executive power. Waxman says the G.O.P. should take comfort in the fact that he has historical perspective. "I've seen a good example of overreaching," he says, referring to the committee's treatment of Clinton. "It's not the way to behave.""
"The Usual Suspects Pt 3: Dr. Stephen Bryenread the rest.
Unlike the previous two Suspects, Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen, the average American has probably never heard of Stephen Bryen. If they had, the average American would be scared shitless.
Bryen was executive director of JINSA after Michael Ledeen stepped down. In 1981 he handed over the directorship to his wife and became a consultant for Richard Perle. After Perle became Assistant Secretary of Defense, he named Bryen as deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of regulating the transfer of US military technology to foreign countries.
Bryen, like Ledeen and Perle, was thought to be a spy for Israel.
[]
In April 2001, at the urging of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Bryen was appointed a member of the China Commission by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. In August 2004, his appointment was extended through December of 2005.
One former senior FBI counter-intelligence officials reaction to his appointment was:My God, that must mean he has a ‘Q‘ clearance!A Q clearance is required to gain access to nuclear technology."
"And in Colorado, a homeowners association is threatening to fine a resident for putting up a Christmas wreath with a peace sign on her house because it could be considered divisive. The owner of the wreath – Lisa Jensen – has vowed to keep the wreath up until after Christmas even though it will result in a fine of about one thousand dollars."* TREX:
"The Iraq Study Group is merely going to be another exercise is delusional bullshit. It will be Conservative Yoga, that rarified practice in which the participants have dedicated years of their lives to learning how to tie themselves into intricate ethical and semantic knots while simultaneously blowing smoke up their own assholes. "
"When Center City lawyer and Russian trade expert John J. Gallagher lost a $2.5 million investment in a cognac distillery in a former Soviet republic, a family friend stepped up to help - in a big way.
The friend, U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, first called the president of Moldova. When that didn't work, Weldon went to the House and proposed cutting all U.S. aid to Moldova until Gallagher got his money back.
That deal, now part of an FBI corruption investigation, wasn't the only time that Weldon used his office to help Gallagher, a lawyer who specializes in putting together business deals - from Philadelphia City Hall to the U.S. Capitol to the Kremlin.
Weldon also backed an effort that funneled federal money to former Soviet scientists working for a partnership between Gallagher and a Russian firm.
Gallagher's software firm apparently had no workers and did little in the partnership, The Inquirer found."
"Mr. Bush spent 90 minutes with (Baker's) commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago “essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a ‘stay the course’ strategy,” said one commission official who was present."I suppose it's not surprising that Bush argued his 'case' in front of the ISG - but still... can you imagine him actually thinking anything, let alone making a case? Can you imagine the look of contempt on Baker's face while he had to sit there for 90 minutes listening to 'we used to be protected by oceans'?
"And in Colorado, a homeowners association is threatening to fine a resident for putting up a Christmas wreath with a peace sign on her house because it could be considered divisive. The owner of the wreath – Lisa Jensen – has vowed to keep the wreath up until after Christmas even though it will result in a fine of about one thousand dollars."
'So Harman has a history of defending the administration's illegal intelligence activities. She was among the most gullible and/or deceitful when it came to disseminating the administration's most extreme (and most inaccurate) intelligence claims to "justify" the invasion of Iraq. She supports the administration's efforts to criminally investigate, if not prosecute, journalists who reveal illegal intelligence activities on the part of the President (including illegal activities about which Harman knew but said nothing).
Given her position as ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Harman was repeatedly used by the administration -- with her consent -- as a potent instrument to shield itself from scrutiny, by creating the "Responsible Democrat" (Harman, Lieberman) v. "Irresponsible Democrat" dichotomy and then arguing that they enjoyed bipartisan support from the Good, Sensible Democrats like Harman. That's why, just like Joe Lieberman, Harman's most vociferous defenders are the most extreme Bush followers and neoconservatives. It is their agenda whom she promotes (which is why they defend her).
In light of that history, why would anyone think that Nancy Pelosi should choose Jane Harman to be the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a key position for exercising desperately-needed oversight over the administration's last two years of intelligence mischief and, as importantly, for investigating and exposing the administration's past misconduct? She instinctively supports, or at least acquieses to, the administration's excesses, and would be among the worst choices Pelosi could make."
"Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to lead the Pentagon, advocated a bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984 in order to "bring down" the leftist government, according to a declassified memo released by a nonprofit research group.
The memo from Gates to his then-boss, CIA Director William J. Casey, was among a selection of declassified documents from the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal posted Friday on the website of the National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ .
In the memo, Gates, who was deputy director of the CIA, argued that the Soviet Union was turning Nicaragua into an armed camp and that the country could become a second Cuba. The rise of the communist-leaning Sandinista government threatened the stability of Central America, Gates asserted.
Gates' memo echoed the view of many foreign policy hard-liners at the time; however, the feared communist takeover of the region never materialized.
[]
"It sounds like Donald Rumsfeld," said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. "It shows the same kind of arrogance and hubris that got us into Iraq."
In the memo, Gates noted he was advocating "hard measures" that "probably are politically unacceptable."
Indeed, Blanton said, Gates' advocacy of military strikes against Nicaragua was extreme."
Pelosi's political instincts tell her that the best way to do impeachment is for her not to say impeachment, at least not until events force her to utter the I-word. Such a triggering event might come in the form of a startling revelation divulged during one of the upcoming congressional hearings. You can bet on revelations aplenty. Of course, after six years of neocon atrocities, one wonders whether anything can still startle the citizenry.(Cannon has more)
Another trigger might be a groundswell of public opinion. Impeachment from below, as it were.
That's where we come in. It's not enough for us to cite online polls indicating that the American people favor impeachment if, if, if. No, we have to do something.
And here's what we're gonna do:December 10 is Human Rights Day, and this year we're making it Human Rights and Impeachment Day. Slogan: "Putting Impeachment on the Table."You should also visit the Democrats.com Impeachment for Change site. There's a petition to sign. A million signatures will do nicely, thank you very much.
We encourage you to organize a town hall forum or rally on this day for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Do you have some drab telephone poles in your neighborhood which could use a spot of decoration? Try printing out the Ten Reasons the Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, which you can find here. Consider printing it out on a neon-colored paper.
AfterDowningStreet and Democrats.com have started a movement. Join it.
You may also want to take a glance at the novel strategy advocated by a group called ImpeachforPeace. In short and in sum, these folks have discovered an oddity in the congressional rules:Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.These folks envision a mass mailing on January 15, when the new Congress convenes. A million pieces of mail should have a rock-em sock-em effect.
After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.
So those are your big dates: December 10 and January 15. And even then, we will have just begun to do political battle.
Do you want to wallow in cynicism, or do you want to do every damn thing you can to force Congress to solve the problem? Take action. Join the fight. If you do, then when your grandkids ask you "What did you do during the great war for impeachment?" you won't have to tell them: "Well, I was shoveling shit at Nancy Pelosi."
"Foreign governments and foreign-owned private interests have long sought to influence U.S. public policy. Several have accomplished this goal; those who are able and willing to pay what it takes. Those who buy themselves a few strategic middlemen, commonly known as pimps, while in DC circles referred to as foreign registered agents and lobbyists, who facilitate and bring about desired transactions. These successful foreign entities have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying influence in Washington DC. They have the required recipe down pat: get yourself a few ‘Dime a Dozen Generals,’ bid high in the ‘former statesmen lobby auction’, and put in your pocket one or two ‘ex-congressmen turned lobbyists’ who know the ropes when it comes to pocketing a few dozen who still serve.In Sibel's paper, she used the example of the Saudis whitewashing-via-redaction of the initial inquiry into 9/11, quoting Senator Bob Graham: “It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety.”
The most important facet of this influence to consider is what happens when the active and powerful foreign entities’ objectives are in direct conflict with our nation’s objectives and its interests and security; and when this is the case, who pays the ultimate price and how. There is no need for assumptions of hypothetical situations to answer these questions, since throughout recent history we have repeatedly faced the dire consequences of the highjacking of our foreign and domestic policies by these so-called foreign agents of foreign influence."
Pakistan gave tens of thousands of dollars through its lobbyists in the United States to members of the 9/11 inquiry commission to 'convince' them to drop some anti-Pakistan findings in the report.For the record, I can't prove that this is true. However, it was reported both in Pakistan and India and the reports claim that the expenditure is documented in offical records in Pakistan. I've detailed Pakistan's (registered) lobbying firms from the relevant timeframe here.
[...]
According to the FO (Foreign Office) official, 'dramatic changes' were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission report after Pakistani lobbyists arranged meetings with members of the Commission and convinced them to remove anti-Pakistan findings. This information is also given in the PAC records available with TFT and reveals that Pakistan won over the sympathies of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard the interests of Pakistan in the United States.
[...]
According to Sadiq, a few days before the completion of the inquiry report, US lobbyists told embassy officials that they had inside information that the inquiry commission had damaging findings on Pakistan`s role in 9/11. Meetings were hence arranged with commission members who were convinced to drop this information."
There are a number of exemptions (for FARA) . For example, persons whose activities are of a purely commercial nature or of a religious, academic, and charitable nature are exempt. Any agent who is engaged in lobbying activities and is registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is exempt.AIPAC, for example, is not registered under FARA. In a speech last month (youtube, transcript), Scott Ritter explained why this might be a problem:
"One of the big problems - and here comes the grenade - is Israel. The second you mention the word 'Israel', the nation of Israel, the concept of Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We're not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel.
The other thing we're not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel, and the notion of Israeli interests, may in fact be dictating what America is doing. That what we're doing in the Midle East may not be to the benefit of America's National Security, but to Israel's National Security.
But we don't want to talk about that - because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israel Lobby which has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together - so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say 'No - we're speaking of American interests'
It's interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don't have to register as agents of a foreign government. It'd be nice if they did, because then we'd know when they're advocating on behalf of Israel, and when they're advocating on behalf of the USA.
I'd challenge the New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There's nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy - let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is that when they do it, and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government, and they advocate on behalf of a foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that govt so we know where they're coming from. That's all I'm asking the Israelis to do - let us know where you're coming from. Stop confusing the American public that Israel's interests are necessarily America's interests."
I won’t get into the details and history of my own case, where the government invoked the state secrets privilege to gag my case and the congress in order to ‘protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations.’ The country, the foreign influence, in this case was the Republic of Turkey. The U.S. government did so despite the far reaching consequences of burying the facts involved, and disregarded the interests and security of the nation; all to protect a quasi ally engaged in numerous illegitimate activities within the global terrorist networks, nuclear black-market and narcotics activities; an ally who happens to be another compulsive and loyal buyer of the Military Industrial Complex; an ally who happens to be another savvy player in recruiting top U.S. players as its foreign agents and spending million of dollars per year to the lobbying groups headed by many ‘formers.’ Turkey’s agent list includes generals such as Joseph Ralston and Brent Scowcroft, former statesmen such as William Cohen and Marc Grossman, and of course famous ex-congressmen such as Bob Livingston and Stephen Solarz. Turkey too seems to have all its bases covered.All of the people that Sibel mention here in relation to her case, a case about Turkey's foreign influence, are active in the ATC - yet the ATC isn't registered as an agent of foreign influence.
a. Please refer to Mr. Hastert’s trips to Turkey (all trips that took place- 1996- 2002); its sponsors…they are self evident. Now how can he claim not knowing these entities (very intimately)?She's basically calling Hastert a liar - and threatening him with more revelations regarding Hastert, Livingston, and the ATC
b. Also, should we refer to Mr. Hastert’s dealing with the named foreign organization via [former House Speaker] Bob Livingston’s lobbying firm (Livingston Group)?
Since 2000, Livingston has taken in more than $11 million from foreign governments and the vast majority of that money, $9 million, has come from Turkey, with $1 million more each from Morocco and the Cayman Islands.Livingston actually registers his work with FARA, as required - identifying the client as "Republic of Turkey, Embassy" - however in an interview in January, Sibel said:
"(Livingston) is charging $1.2m - He's charging Turkey - and this is not the government of Turkish Republic, this is ummm... Who are these people who are paying him $1.2m per year? To do what? That is the question."I don't know who is paying Livingston, or why, but violating FARA is a criminal offence - so if Livingston says that the Republic of Turkey is the client, and Sibel says the client is someone or something else, then Livingston might be in trouble (I suspect that FARA is the least of his problems)
Jim Hogue: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?Curiously, I suspect that if Hogue had asked Sibel "What is the American Turkish Council?" - her answer might have been quite similar.
Sibel Edmonds: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap-- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying.
"Put out those tapes. Put out those wiretaps. Put out those documents. Put out the truth. The truth is going to hurt them. The truth is going to set me free."I agree. Release the tapes.
"I thought we have not had a civilization ending thermonuclear war because everyone supposed MAD was true. Beyond the prospect of massive destruction of buildings, infrastructure, agricultural development, and people, the economy (the elite's main concern) would suffer irreparable damage.and:
Xymphora argues that the U.S. won't go into Iran because the people in charge here still believe in major parts of this theory. According to Xymph, there are limits to the things the powerful will do in order to steal the world's valuables.
However, I'm not sure that MAD is now true. I'm not sure that attacking Iran, or anyone else, assures unacceptable consequences.
If neo con planning is about anything, it's about arranging things so their team comes out ahead in the long run. The economic bankruptcy of the United States and its elites is a function of the growing strength and aggresiveness of the rest of the world, particularly those folks we can't control in Russia, China, and the Islamic world, like Iran.
If you can't compete any more, and you can't figure out a way for your "enemies" to give you all their valuables, all I'm saying, there is always the idea of "eliminating" them. The consequences in that event, where there really are no powers left in the world to put up a challenge, would be much less problematic.
Xymphora's argument depends on the elites in this country, represented by the neo cons and others, to shrink back from doing anything like this that would benefit them in the long run.
He assumes that it's only Germans who can implement "final solutions."
Having laid out my apocalyptic vision, I wonder whether it is that unreasonable, and if it does present a possible if not likely scenario, what can anybody do about it."
"I would agree that it would be unlikely and even crazy to think that Bush, or anyone else, would start a thermonuclear war just to regain one's economic position. However, if we've found that moral, legal, and psychological arguments are ineffective deterents for preventing the continued killing of Iraqis, what does prevent the President from "throwing the long bomb"?"polonium-210?
"Two former senior U.S. officials suggested on Monday deploying NATO forces in northern Iraq to forestall the risk of a Turkish invasion.that's not comforting. of course, there's no way that NATO will go into N. Iraq. What will it take for Turkey to invade Iraq?
In a policy paper issued before a summit of the 26-nation alliance in Riga next week, Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus said NATO members had an interest in doing everything possible to maintain Iraq's unity and prevent a full-scale civil war.
"Already today in Turkey there are voices openly calling for an invasion of northern Iraq to deal with the constant raids into southeastern Turkey by the terrorist organization known as the PKK," they wrote in a study published by the German Marshall Fund transatlantic think-tank.
[]
Holbrooke and Asmus contend that a NATO presence as part of a deal with the Iraqi Kurdish regional leadership to rein in Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas would help prevent Turkish military intervention."
"Nato's fragile unity over Afghanistan has begun to crack ahead of an important summit - with one public call to discuss an exit strategy from the Allied forces' bloody confrontation with the Taliban."* meanwhile, daily star via mizgin:
"MOUNT QANDIL, Iraq: The United States government is in contact with Kurds struggling against Iran, a top rebel leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said Thursday. Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, a founder of the movement that has struggled for Kurdish self-determination for the past 30 years, said the United States was in touch with the Party for Freedom in Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran, but that it was not helping actively.Mizgin has been saying that he was wrong re PJAK since Hersh's article.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed recently in the New Yorker magazine that American forces were supporting the PJAK as part of their strategy to destabilize the Tehran government.
"American authorities want to have contact with PJAK, and as a matter of fact they do have contact with PJAK," Bayik said in an exclusive interview at his headquarters deep in Iraq's remote Qandil Mountains on the Iranian border.
"But to say that the United States is supporting the PJAK is not right," he added. "PJAK is until now continuing their struggle just with the support of the Kurdish people and the PKK."
[ . . . ]
"If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well," Bayik said. "The PKK is the one who formed PJAK, who established PJAK and supports PJAK.""
"Meanwhile, back in the States, there are a number of lawmakers who have been specifically agitating for wide support for the anti-Kurdish MEK. These lawmakers include Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT), Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY), and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).
The single biggest difference between MEK's position on The List and PKK's position on The List is that MEK targeted and killed US military personnel in the 1970s and supported the takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979. PKK has never targeted or killed Americans.
Why is Seymour Hersh covering up high-level US support for MEK while making up stories about PKK?"
"A federal grand jury in Honolulu has indicted a leading former military engineer for allegedly transferring classified information to Israel, China, and other countries.
Noshir Gowadia, a 62-year-old Indian-born former engineer with US defense giant Northrop Grumman, was indicted on 18-counts of federal charges and is suspected of trying to sell Israel "top secret" data about US weapons systems, according to the Washington Times. He could face the death penalty.
According to the indictment, Gowadia sent e-mails to Israel, Germany and Switzerland in 2002 and 2004 that continued data labeled "secret" and "top secret" that was related to US stealth technology intended for use in the TH-98 Eurocopter. The indictment was handed down on November 15.
Gowadia was one of the lead engineers on the B-2 stealth bomber project, and was originally indicted in November 2005 for allegedly selling information about the B-2 to China.
Justice Department officials told ABC News that Gowadia was paid about $2 million for the secrets he compromised on the B-2. The scientist was provided top secret access while he worked for Northrop, the designer of the B-2, from 1968 to 1986. He then later worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory before establishing his own consulting company."
"The real issue is not going to be serving subpoenas. Oh, they'll serve them all right. Nor will the issue be whether or not the White House will obey them. They won't.* indy:
No, the real issue is what will happen when the White House refuses to respond to nearly any subpoenas. One thing is for sure: Bush and Cheney are prepared to bring down the the US government rather than comply. What will Congress do then? And how far will Congress be willing to push?"
"In the bloodiest day of violence to grip the country in many weeks, a series of fierce clashes between Nato forces and Taliban fighters and a suicide bombing left 76 people dead and more than 45 injured yesterday, many of them children."that's afghanistan. 75 people! i didnt even see that story anywhere.
"Richard Dawkins, the Oxford geneticist, best-selling author and campaigning atheist, is to take his battle against God into Britain's schools after setting up a foundation to counter the religious indoctrination of young people.can you imagine any news paper in the US referring to non-madrass "religious indoctrination" (and without using scarequotes)?
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs for teachers to fight the "educational scandal" that has seen the growth in popularity of "pseudo science" and "irrational" ideas."
"Pope Benedict was given another warning yesterday of what lies ahead for him in Turkey when more than 20,000 people demonstrated against his coming visit in central Istanbul and urged him to stay at home.
[]
But the Turks are taking no chances: Benedict, they say, will be given the same level of protection that would be given to President Bush."
"Trent Lott is a GOP Jukebox: drop in a nickel and he’ll spit out bumper sticker slogans and sentence fragments, one after another, all day long. They don’t make any sense, and they don’t form any coherent sentences. They are just market-tested nonsense syllables that Lott firehoses out in every direction to keep Ugly Reality at bay.
Fox exists to perform the ritual sliming of every Democrats and the ritual fellating of every Republicans. It is Ku Klux Kabuki by the GOPs pet teabagging “reporters” on behalf of their disgraced Party of thieves and degenerates."
"One in seven of CIA's current employees joined the agency in the past year, and nearly 40 percent of its employees began working at the agency after the Sept. 11 attacks - statistics at once helpful and troubling."
"Bottom line: If you think Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer would make good foreign policy advisors, then McCain is your man. However, if you're not insane, that prospect will scare the hell out of you. As it should."
"The neocons are reeling, but they're not dead yet. A few stalwarts are digging in their wing-tips. And there's already a small backlash against the backlash. At the State Department, supposedly the bastion of realism, some officials are sounding defiant. "There are a lot of people throughout the ranks who believe in the democracy agenda," says one senior official who would only discuss policy issues anonymously. "If the result of the Baker report is that we have to make any deal necessary ... to get out of Iraq, I don't think that's going to fly." Their hopes, and the hopes of neocons everywhere, may rest on the shoulders of Elliott Abrams, the number-two official at the National Security Council—who remains in charge of promoting democracy in the Middle East, a linchpin of the neocon agenda.
[]
But Abrams has one powerful advantage. "Bush has enormous regard for him," says a senior administration official
[]
The biggest dogfight is still ahead: whether to cut a deal with regimes like Iran, North Korea and Syria. Bush's approach has been to counter threats from oppressive regimes by trying to change them. Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and the punditocracy's best-known neocon, says it's hard to imagine the president turning his back on all that. "I think Bush is the last neocon in power," he says. "The truth is, it was always Bush.""
"However, there is an element of hypocrisy inherent in the Israeli position. Israel possesses nuclear weapons capabilities that were acquired surreptitiously, and fields a force of modern ballistic missiles capable of firing nuclear warheads into not only Iran, but also every other nation in the region. The irony of Israel, a nation born of the Holocaust and alone among Middle Eastern nations in possessing the holocaust-generating power of nuclear weapons, condemning Iran for its rhetoric while itself espousing the demise of the Iranian government, is lost on few outside of Israel and the United States, and for a large part explains why the legitimacy of the Israeli concerns about Iran to a large extent fall on deaf ears."
"It occurred to me this weekend, listening to family and others talk about the war, that really what we're doing now as a country is looking for some answer that doesn't make us wrong, doesn't make us assholes, doesn't make us the people who screwed this up so catastrophically that there's no way out.
You see that with McCain and his troop plans, you see it with various Bush officials and their whole "we have to give it time, just like Vietnam" schtick (which, way to lose the five people you still had on this issue, Genius McMensa), and you see that with every single person around the Thanksgiving table that talks about how "we can't leave now, it'll just turn into chaos." And I think the liberal war supporters are most swayed by the last argument, because c'mon, they clung so desperately to their hope that Bush wouldn't cock this up, plus they were the ones screaming about US sanctions and repression in the Middle East long before we needed those excuses to blow some stuff up.
Things will be horrible if we leave. The answer to that last is always, unequivocably yes, yes, it will. Iraq will continue to be chaos, civil war, a breeding ground for hatred of America and a place of misery for those who live there. When the bough breaks, the cradle of civilization will fall. It's time to stop dancing around that and just admit it. If we leave, it will be awful. For us, for them, for everyone.
BUT THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO TO STOP IT ANYMORE.
We lost this war three weeks after the invasion; we lost this war two and a half years ago at least. Those of you who read this blog just to be pissed off and think I take some pleasure in that can just go fuck off, you don't know how much I wanted to be wrong about the sick feeling in my gut at seeing the looting start. We lost this war before it even began, with the piss-poor excuses for planning that gave us the Ballad of Dougie Feith and His Sidekick Ahmed Chalabi, that gave us Curveball and WMDs and letting libraries burn. We lost this war when we marched in with our own ideas about how to run Iraq and as much as said to the locals, fuck off now, let us play with our new toy. We lost this war long ago, while the majority of Americans were still waving flags and singing "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." The only way to fix it, the only way to win, is to build ourselves a time machine and go back and not invade in the first place.
What's more, I think the people saying we can't abandon the Iraqi people, I think they know it, too. I think deep down they know there's no way this is going to end well, considering how it began. I think deep down they know there's no way to turn this around, but they don't want to look at it yet, stare themselves in the face, see how completely and utterly taken they got. Take responsibility for the collective American failure. Take the weight of that on their souls.
I do get it: It's not wrong to want the best. But it is selfish and small and downright immoral to allow your wanting the best to put others in danger when you know your delusions are just that. You have the right to pretend. You don't have the right to ask someone to die for your puppet show. You don't have the right to keep thinking it'll get better, not when you know it won't.
And so the answer to the statement, the desperate excuse, the Hail Mary: "We can't just leave, it'll be chaos."
Yes. Yes, it will."
Was former KGB agent murdered over false-flag terrorism within Russia?
Were a Russian journalist and an ex-KGB officer murdered over an investigation of the Beslan terrorist attack?
Former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who passed away late last week from what many intelligence officials have indicated they believe to be a state-sponsored assassination, was likely the victim of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR), well-placed sources tell RAW STORY.
Specifically, two former Cold War CIA officers, who still on occasion provide consulting work for the CIA, point to the S Directorate of SVR, which is in charge of black operations and other allegedly highly illegal transnational activities. They believe that the murders are closely tied to terrorist activities within Russia, and likely do involve Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian bombings bear all the hallmarks of such operations, including the most well-known of these bombings, in which a car bomb was detonated in front of an apartment building in the city of Buynaksk that served as military housing for Russian soldiers, killing more than sixty residents. The attack was blamed on Chechen separatists and was used to justify attacks on suspected Chechen sympathizers and alleged co-conspirators, as well as on Chechnya itself. Other bombings soon followed, leading to then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declaring war on the separatist region, which had gained de facto independence following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
But it was not until the failed Rayzan bombing attempt that the suspected role of the Russian government in the bombings began to be alleged publicly. In mid-1999, a group of agents of the Russian Federal Security Service, or Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB), were found placing explosives at an apartment complex in the city of Rayzan. The FSB is the Russian equivalent of the FBI, and it and the SVR are the two arms of what used to be known as the KGB. The materials used in this incident were similar to those found at the other bombings committed throughout 1999, but th FSB denied any involvement in the previous terrorist attacks and described the Rayzan bombing plot as a domestic counter-terrorism exercise.
A source in one of the Western European intelligence organizations suggests that "Annas heart never left Beslan," and that up until the moment of her death the journalist was pursuing evidence that might prove "embarrassing to the Kremlin."
However, one British intelligence officer, who wished to remain anonymous given that the investigation is still ongoing, suggested a different possibility. "You should start," says this source, "with the Italian." The Italian in question is Mario Scaramella, the contact whom Litvinenko met at the sushi bar to discuss the case of Anna Politkovskaya.
Scaramella, an expert on the former Soviet Union, does indeed appear to have both a relationship with the Russian FSB and some knowledge of radioactive materials. According to an account by BBC International Monitoring, originally from an Italian source, in 2004 Scaramella brought to the attention of Italian police an attempt to smuggle highly enriched uranium into Italy:"During the month of September 2004 I was approached by a Ukrainian national, whom I know by the name of Sasha, who wanted to sell me a briefcase containing radioactive material, and, more precisely, uranium for military use." There is enough testimony by Giovanni Guidi, a Rimini businessman, and by other defendants - Giorgio Gregoretti, Elmo Olivieri and Giuseppe Genghini - to fuel a spy story [preceding two words published in English] worthy of a novel by Le Carre. Involved is a briefcase containing five kilos of highly enriched uranium, half of which would be enough to build an atomic device, which remained for months in a Rimini garage. A briefcase, however, which eluded investigators, and which managed to get back into the hands of the Ukrainian national, who perhaps is still in Italy. Together with another briefcase having a similar content, and a third believed to conceal a tracking system. The entire kit geared to the assembly of a small tactical atomic bomb.Scaramella is also said to have connections to the deputy chief of the FSB, Viktor Komogorov, who is alleged by Chechen sources to have been conducting an internal FSB investigation of Litvinenko.
A mystery story fuelled by information supplied the Rimini police department by a consultant of the Mitrokhin committee, Mario Scaramella, who, acting on behalf of the agency presided over by Paolo Guzzanti, was trying to track illegal funds from the former USSR that had transited through [the Republic of] San Marino.
""It should be very clear to folks living in the United States that liberalism is a disease and it is contagious. Additionally, the move towards socialism will further stifle the greatest nation in the history of Mankind; The United States of America and slowly drown it in a red sea of political correctness.Imagine yourself an apolitical psychologist in 2006 in america and your clients were a mixture of moonbats and wingnuts, and you had to listen to the rantings, alternately, all day.
Some folks brag about being a liberal, but in essence they are bragging about causing the downfall of America and preventing this country from reaching its full potential. What a shame that these folks simply follow the purported wisdom of the liberal slanted mass media. What a shame that these people would work to destroy all we are and all we have built. What a shame that these folks would foresake the blood, sweat and tears of generations and piss it away, as if all this magically appeared out of the blue.
Not only should we resist the falsehoods brought forth by liberals, we must cure this disease. If not more will fall victim to this virus and it will continue to spread around the world rendering entire nation's populations as ineffectual, inefficient and incompetent. Consider this in 2006." "
"Luke, I think you have to wait for my article on the "nuclear sushi" as you call it, which I have already filed, to better get a grasp of just what happened. Suffice it to say both my researcher and I were fairly shocked ourselves when certain provided information led to some interesting finds."i look forward to reading... if it's already filed i guess we can hope to see it on monday. if i were larisa, i don't think much would shock me...
"Forget Nancy Pelosi's "100 Hours" agenda for the new Democratic Congress.* the great WiiG4 religious debate continues. LeeB finishes her post with:
The first thing Democrats need to do when they walk into the Senate and House chambers this January is to vote out a joint resolution repealing the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was the authorization for the U.S. attack Al Qaeda forces and the Taliban government of Afghanistan.
That AUMF has been used, wholly inappropriately and wantonly, by President Bush as the justification for his assault on the US Constitution, for his willful violation of laws domestic and international, and for his unconstitutional usurpation of legislative and judicial power.
[]
A simple majority vote of House and Senate would put the U.S. Constitution back in place, and would restore the balance of power between executive, legislative and judicial branches."
". . . Sigh . . . see why we seldom discuss religion around here? Too complicated, resolves nothing. Two good reasons, it seems to me, to stop using it to justify wars."heh.
