libertarian argument

Ron has a post up about Abramoff and puerto rico - i dont know the details of this particular story, but it's not surprising that abramoff deals in fringe places - can you see the pattern? marianas, puerto rico, sovereign indian tribes, offshore casinos?

i have a conflicted political perspective - i dont think i've ever said here, but i have an economics degree and an mba - and i ascribe to many of the doctrines that you might expect from someone with such a background. i'm also Very Liberal - and also very libertarian, anti-government like my buddy scott horton. how do i reconcile all of it? well, it's all a bit confused.

when i was younger and acronyms were all the rage, i coined the term PUPPIE - which was a punk-yuppie cross - which is kinda how i described (justified?) myself

the reason that i mention this, in the context of abramoff, is that my tendency is to lean to the anarchic fuck-the-government end of the spectrum. governments make stupid laws (even with the best intentions)- and they are there to be broken/worked-around.

abramoff makes this crystal clear in a bunch of ways - not least when he blackmailed his clients by creating impediments to their business interests - but, for our current purposes, by virtue of the fact that he operated in 'fringe' regions. 'shoulder' regions might be a better descriptor.

when governments say "marianias can stamp stuff 'made in the usa' but dont have to oblige by working conditions regulations" then they are effectively inviting abuse. it doesnt take a genius to find a way to utilize that loophole. similarly, when a government creates a rule where campaign contributions, a la hastert, donations under some artificial $200 limit aren't required to be disclosed, then people will find a way around the law. whenever the government creates an artificial boundary or 'shoulder', smart people will find a way around it.

it was this type of law that gave abramoff the space to do what he did. governments arent smart enough to create laws that are impervious to this type of 'gaming' - and that's why i'm inclined to side with the libertarian argument - despite the bad name they have been getting.

norad 'stood down '

* ive previously mentioned that i'm in awe of a-list bloggers to keep track of everything - which is really an apology that i can't even find the time to paticipate in comments on my own c-list (or z-list) comments. (sorry jon - i keep meaning to get to the oneill thing!) - but you should all read the comments over here - some amazing input by the remarkable damien and miguel

if i can just frontpage a couple of comments from there - not becuase they are better than the others, but only becuase i have some observations:

"As far the ATC infiltration of the FBI translation program, I would like to present a third possibility: the ATC tried to infiltrate the FBI before 9/11, but it was only after 9/11 that the opportunity came up when there were multiple positions for Turkish translators that came open."

i disagree. sibel's application was on ice for years, but ready to go the day after 911. as far as i can tell, the fbi had NO turkish translators before then - so maybe it depends on how you define 'infiltration.' remember, robert wright (or whoever) somehow knew that he was getting dodgy translations out of that office. my guess is that the ATC (et al) 'knew' that they could chata away as they liked - becuase they didnt think their conversations would ever get translated, even though they presumably had suspicions that they were being recorded. mike feghali was presumably complicit.

and look who they recruited - apart from sibel, there was kevin - who could hardly speak any language by all accounts, although his sister (or wife or someone) worked at the fbi, and then there was melek can dickerson. my best guess is that the 'infiltration' was more that they didnt have anyone to translate, rather than they had agents there.

damien says:

"My basic premise is that there is considerable evidence for 911 as a US inside job."

miguel says:

"As much as I despise the Bush Administration, I don't think Bush and Cheney are quite that evil- or that competent to pull something like that off. "

you'll have to read the rest for the full context - but i generally agree with damien - there sure is a lot evidence to support that theory - or more generally, that it certainly wasnt exclusively the job of a bunch of cave-dwelers.

as to miguel's point that bush/cheney arent sufficiently evil - i kinda agree that its difficult to imagine that anyone is so evil - yet it happened. someone is apparently sufficiently evil - so the only question is 'who?' we know that bush/cheney created a war out of cloth which has killed nearly 200,000 people, so far - so we know they are at least that evil

damien points to one of the more telling issues - any reasonable hijacker would have headed straight fof the wtc - but these goons flew around for 90 minutes or something. the issue isnt so much that norad 'stood down ' - but rather that the hijackers acted like they knew that norad would stand down.

anyway - they both make great (supplementary) points. go read

videotaped torture sessions

in the comments, 'noise' writes:

I think the politicians who support the Bush administration and won't do oversight on torture should be willing to watch videotaped torture sessions. There is way too much detachment from reality in D.C. to state the obvious.

great point.

some congresscritters watched some of the darby vids around the time of the taguba report - and they were all visibly shaken to the core - including rumsfeld, who presumably asked for a private copy that he could take home to watch with mrs rumsfeld.

incidentally, i read somewhere today (the Danner interview?), but dont think i quoted, that rumsfeld demanded hourly reports on how the torture of john walker lindh was going. base motherfucker.

The politics is just a cover

also from the comments, damien (whose name i occasionally mis-spell, apologies) notes:

"Yep, criminal, criminal, criminal. Going way back and prepared to start wars, sell nuclear weapons, betray state secrets, all for their own gain. The politics is just a cover."

brilliant insight and frame.

someone (digby? josh?) recently made an observation (iirc, from one of their own commentors) that repugs dont believe in govt, as per their mission statement, and therefore any repug politician is only in politics for their own personal gain. otoh, Dems at least believe in govt and so there's at least the chance that a Dem politician (D-Probably Corrupt) isnt as corrupt as a repug (R-Corrupt).

torture doesn't work / torture works

As you know, I abhor torture in any form, and by most accounts - particularly those accounts 'on the left', it doesn't work.

Larry Johnson has a piece in the LAT:

"If you inflict enough pain on someone, they will give you information, but what they tell you may not be true. You will have to corroborate it, which will take time. And, unless you kill every suspect you brutalize, you will make enemies of them, their families, maybe their entire villages. What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust — even with a terrorist, even if it's time-consuming — than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets, who believed that national security always trumped human rights."

I hope we have a better argument than this - can you spot the flaw in the argument?

"the Nazis and the Soviets believed that national security always trumped human rights" - and therefore it was ok for them to torture...

if torture 'doesn't work', and it creates blowback, then we need to stop it for those reasons. if torture 'does work', then we need to throw the 'torture doesn't work' thing in the trash, and only argue on 'human' grounds, and we need to find another way to argue that we aren't terrorist lovers who don't care about national security.

perhaps we can argue that torture 'works' to the extent that it 'extracts quick confessions' - but those confessions are usually just self-incriminating lies to make the torture stop (if that is indeed the case). a while back, digby wrote a post or two about the fact that nazi/soviet torture methods were in fact designed to extract false confessions, and that 'we' have adopted the same techniques - perhaps we can take that line (again, if it is true).

the reality is that many countries torture, and many have tortured in the past - presumably because (they believe) it 'works' at some level, (or because the perpetrators are psychopaths).

we need to get the story straight, because we are going to officially be 'at war' for decades if the neocons have any say in the matter, and while we are at war, national security trumps paper, rock and scissors - ergo, the neocons will always argue that they should be be torturing more people.

(btw - the latest Darby pix release was a two day story, which makes me feel like i've been tortured)

Judge Reggie Walton

btw - i'm horrified by this development, despite the spin that the media is putting on it:

"Judge Reggie Walton seemed skeptical about a second request by the defense that it also be given highly classified documents known as the President's Daily Brief for a similar period. The judge deferred a final ruling on that request, which Libby's defense team says is essential in demonstrating that he was busy with other national security matters at the time of the Plame leak.

[snip]

A strategy to 'sabotage' case?
Defense lawyers have said that if Libby's statements to investigators were untrue, it was a case of innocent confusion or faulty memory because of his preoccupation with pressing national security matters at the time.

Walton said he is concerned that Libby’s request could “sabotage” the case because President Bush probably would invoke executive privilege and refuse to turn over the classified reports.

“The vice president — his boss — said these are the family jewels,” the judge said, referring to Cheney’s past description of the daily briefings. “If the executive branch says, 'This is too important to the welfare of the nation and we’re not going to comply,’ the criminal prosecution goes away.”"

grrrrrrr.

of course, walton used to work with cheney and libby and poppy bush, and keeps getting allocated to sibel's cases

Guns dont kill people, coathangers kill people

* "In a paper for an Israeli think tank, the same think tank for which Wurmser, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith prepared the famous “Clean Break” paper in 1996, Wurmser wrote in 1997 : “The residual unity of the nation is an illusion projected by the extreme repression of the state.” After Saddam, Iraq would “be ripped apart by the politics of warlords, tribes, clans, sects, and key families,” he wrote. “Underneath facades of unity enforced by state repression, [Iraq’s] politics is defined primarily by tribalism, sectarianism, and gang/clan-like competition.” Yet Wurmser explicitly urged the United States and Israel to “expedite” such a collapse. “The issue here is whether the West and Israel can construct a strategy for limiting and expediting the chaotic collapse that will ensue in order to move on to the task of creating a better circumstance.”" (link)
people seem to forget - the destruction of iraq was the whole point.

* when blastocytes become human, in south dakota et al, i can't wait to see the bumperstickers: "Guns dont kill people, coathangers kill people"

* "Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month." (link)
ponies all round. that's incredible - a 20% fall in a month. Yay, us.

* bob herbert: "In one of the great deceptive maneuvers in U.S. history, the military-industrial complex (with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as chairman and C.E.O., respectively) took its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan and launched the pointless but far more remunerative war in Iraq." (link)

* Glenn: " The Administration has been and still is defending a general theory of unchecked Executive power, not a theory of eavesdropping. They don't care about tinkering with FISA standards. They care about the power to make national security decisions (including, but not limited to, eavesdropping) without any oversight or limitation. As a result, the Specter legislation will not be any more acceptable to them than the current FISA legislation is, and their rejection of it will only serve to highlight just how radical the Administration's position is -- something which, in my view, is a development that ought to be welcomed and encouraged."

pre-mature

* the newly famous Paul Pillar slams Pat Roberts et al for not doing "Phase2" and calls the 911Comm report "a selective and misleading account of strategic intelligence on terrorism, obscuring the actual reasons US counterterrorist policy took the course it did prior to 9/11." (link)
go read

* from the editors at NRO: "If Iraq ever descends into a real civil war, we won't have to debate whether it has happened. It will be clear for all to see. The military will dissolve into ethnic factions, and the government will collapse. That hasn't happened, and so declarations of defeat in Iraq — of the sort our founder and editor-at-large William F. Buckley Jr. made last week — are pre-mature." (link)
i wonder if they intentionally hyphenated 'premature', perhaps demonstrating that they are, themselves, pre-mature.

* maha:

"Now I want to confuse everyone by arguing that “when life begins” is the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because life doesn’t begin. Or, at least, it hasn’t begun on this planet in a very long time. However life got to Earth — between 3 and 4 billion years ago, I believe — once it established it hasn’t been observed to “begin” again. It just continues, expressing itself in countless forms. The forms come and go — in a sense — but not life itself.

It will be argued that fertilization marks the beginning of a unique individual and is, therefore, a significant moment in the life process — the point when a life begins. But let’s say a couple of weeks later the egg divides into twins or triplets. Did those individuals’ lives begin with the conception? Or, since they didn’t exist as individuals at conception, is the cell division something like an existential reboot?"

stfu

* some people (FDL) are pointing approvingly to this complete and utter nonsense in the WaPo:

"Joseph King, who headed the customs agency's anti-terrorism efforts under the Treasury Department and the new Department of Homeland Security, said national security fears are well grounded.

He said a company the size of Dubai Ports World would be able to get hundreds of visas to relocate managers and other employees to the United States. Using appeals to Muslim solidarity or threats of violence, al-Qaeda operatives could force low-level managers to provide some of those visas to al-Qaeda sympathizers, said King, who for years tracked similar efforts by organized crime to infiltrate ports in New York and New Jersey. Those sympathizers could obtain legitimate driver's licenses, work permits and mortgages that could then be used by terrorist operatives.

Dubai Ports World could also offer a simple conduit for wire transfers to terrorist operatives in the Middle East. Large wire transfers from individuals would quickly attract federal scrutiny, but such transfers, buried in the dozens of wire transfers a day from Dubai Ports World's operations in the United States to the Middle East would go undetected, King said."

wtf?

even i'm astonished.

terrorists in the M.E. might get money? that's their argument? please shuthefuckup!

(and shame on anyone who approvingly points to this utter bullshit)

I feel like their ping pong game.

* quote of the day from mark danner: " "This is where the deer hang out," he says and points to a small area just beyond our chairs where the grass is slightly pressed down. "They lie there contemplating me as I pace on the other side of the bay window. I feel like their ping pong game."" (link)
its from a fascinating interview with tom dispatch, which i suggest you read.

* "Wade began providing information to the government shortly after the tainted sale of Cunningham's house was disclosed in a Copley News Service story published June 12 in The San Diego Union-Tribune." (link)

* Josh has the Wade Statement of Offence

Is Pat Roberts at risk or just a hack republican criminal

From the Witchita Eagle - Is Pat Roberts at risk?

Roberts' position is intriguing, said Rutgers' Baker, who has advised several Democratic senators and one Republican over three decades.

"Evidently Sen. Roberts has been persuaded there is something there that makes him need to defend the administration," he said.

But the aggressive defense of Bush may also compromise Roberts' committee leadership, Baker said.

"Three or four years ago, if you asked Democrats to list the 10 Republicans easiest to work with, Pat Roberts would have made the list," but no more, Baker said.

High-profile intelligence controversies, starting with Sept. 11, have turned the Senate's historically bipartisan intelligence committee into one of the most bitterly partisan in Congress, with negative consequences on national security debates, Baker said.

Roberts said he can't help it if Democrats have played politics with national security.

"Don't talk to me about partisan charges on the committee after what I've been through," he said, referring to a leaked memo showing Democrats' plan to use Roberts to advance their own political ends, as well as other partisan controversies that have roiled since Roberts took over Intelligence in 2003.

"I'm a very patient person," he said. "I'm not known as a partisan."

But circumstances might make that reputation unavoidable, Baker said. And for the public, it may be impossible to tell where security ends and politics begins.

"My problem or frustration is that I can't set the record straight," Roberts said.

bwahahahaha

You can re-read Larisa's take on Pat Roberts here - note that this is the first in her series about the OSP and WHIG and Feith and Plame and Ledeen etc. etc

Francis Fukyama

* quote of the today from the comments at emptywheel's place: "I could understand Francis Fukyama if he adhered to neocon thinking while deploring Libby-type execution. But he's apparently deploring neocon thinking while supporting Libby-type execution. He's got to be some sort of nutcase."

* emptywheel has 'finally' finished her conclusion piece on obeidi - she has nearly convinced herself that the nukes were planted by a Rendon operation.

* kleiman: "Now George W. Bush has given us a gift:
"This (port) deal wouldn't go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America."" (link)

* xymphora: "Ghorbanifar is using Fereidoun Mahdavi as a cutout to spread the stories about Iran in Washington, as he knows his own reputation is so bad that no one would believe them if it was known where they really came from. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Ghorbanifar was himself a cutout, being used to disguise the real source of the stories, his good friend Michael Ledeen." (link)

* xymphora: "The Dubai conspiracy is apparently going to be to use the American ports to fill the United States up with illegal drugs and illegal arms. Finally, the American people will have illegal drugs and arms! Then they'll fill all the ships up with terrorists and blow up the entire country! You might think this would be bad for business if you are trying to run an international port security company, but the Arab love for terrorism knows no bounds." (link)

Sibel's interview with Meria Heller

(update for those of you coming from dkos - there's more on Hastert's crimes related to Sibel Edmonds here)

here's some more from Sibel's interview with Meria Heller - see Meria.net - the show is in the archives, with all of Meria's other interviews

firstly, congratulations to meria and her audience for asking some great, direct, simple question. from my own experience, when i (and others) am talking to the 'most gagged person in american history' - for some reason, the tendency is to tiptoe around certain questions - which is dumb - sibel knows what she can, and can't, answer.

secondly, for more background, read my earlier pieces about Sibel, starting with how we got in contact here, and read here about our new campaign about Hastert here.

my transcription isnt quite verbatim, and there's some paraphrasing. all errors are mine.

Sibel was asked whether she knew anything about the 911 hijackers - she responded:

I don't have any direct information that relates to these 19 hijackers - I've never said that I did have any direct information. The information that I reported to COngress and the 911 Commission and the Inspector General's office - and even during a court hearing - that had to do with indirect involvement of certain people and/or entities and organizations involved with the money laundering aspect of it.

In certain cases - in return for bribery - providing certain visas for some of the hijackers - that information didn't directly relate to the hijackers themselves - but to their support network, their financial network. So to answer that question - I never had any direct information about the hijackers.

However - there were - and there still are today - certain individuals and entities and organisations who are very closely associated with the terrorist network - and they have not been touched.

now i'll paraphrase because this isn't new

and i would like to give an analogy - if you take the War on Drugs, imagine if they only went after street dealers and they refused to investigate the mid-level dealers or the drug lords. This is very similar.

and now back again to more or less direct quotes

What occured with the 911 related investigation - be it the FBI, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of State, or the CIA or the Pentagon - they choose to basically publicise the deal (?) at the hijacker level - and completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas - they have not touched those individuals. Those individuals are still roaimng free! Today!

Meria then had another question from the audience: Do you really believe that Arabs were involved in 911?
Sibel:

Ok - I have my own piece - and there are so many pieces involved - and I can't speak to many other pieces - so I'll just limit myself to my own direct experience, and direct information. We are talking about many countries - several countries. We're not just talking about - as they say - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - but they have glossed over the involvement of certain entities within other countries - such as Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - many central asian countries.

They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries - central asia - they call it "Sensitive Diplomatic Relations' - you know they are putting (military) bases there.

We are actually supporting what they are doing - even certain abuses - they are involved in... certain criminal activities.

Meria:

In effect - we are supporting terrorism

Sibel:

yes

Sibel then goes on to say that Saudi business people and officials, including Bin Ladens were moved out of the country immediately after 911 without even the slightest questioning - and then notes that 911 was used by the government as an excuse to implement a police state

Sibel then talks about a lot of whistblower stuff - which is important, but has been covered elsewhere

Another question from Meria "Do you believe 911 was an inside job?"

Sibel responded that she can't answer that definitively because she only has a piece of the information puzzle - then:

"I don't know everything that was involved but I can tell you -for sure - with 100% certainty - that they have gone out of their way to cover up the real entities involved in the 911 terrorist attacks - they have gone out of their way NOT to investigate. In fact, we warned (phonetic?) certain people who had involvement with 911 - and that raises the question that you just asked - WHY? Just why would they go to such lengths to cover up all the related, factual information about 911? And therefore, that gives credence to people who are asking the question!

If I was the government, and this outrageous incident took place in my country, I'd do EVERYTHING to bring about accountability - and to put out all the information if I really am saying that 'I'm fighting the terrorists'. WHY? The question is WHY?

And a part of that is - were there certain individuals (officials - some appointed, some of them elected) who were involved with these support networks?

Yes, there were!

Were some of them indirectly, but yet knowingly and directly involved?

Yes, they were!

Are these people still around? Are they some highly-recognizable, highly-known names? Yes! And that's why they invoked the States Secret privilege in my case. It's not because the information involved some low-level highjackers or some individual in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

They are protecting certain individuals whose names will automatically come out and have to be investigated if the entire information that I reported to COngress and to the Inspector General, and to the 911 Commission were to come out.

And as I said - highly recognizable individuals . Now, granted - some of them willingly left their positions due to the revolving door - and they are now with one firm or another - some of them don't have their governmental positions - or elected positions - but were there (people knowingly and directly involved)? Yes!

Is that the reason they have been invoking the gag orders and state's secret privilege? Yes!

Would we have criminal indictments of these people if - at least my part of the information - were to come out? Yes! Absolutely!

Sibel then went onto describe the Hastert situation with Louis Freeh - transcribed by the ever-wonderful Miguel:

“…what happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress.”

She then described the the VF article and Hastert and the American Turkish Council which I've previously discussed at length (see here for the claims against Perle and Feith, and as a general starting point for all things related to Sibel. See here for the Hastert bribery campaign)

Sibel then mentioned that the corruption extended beyond Perle and Feith to Grossman and Edelman - again, start here and here for more of that

She then went on to mention a Europol report which I havent yet seen for 2000-2005 which says that 30% of Turkish GDP is narcotics, and that 98% of Europe's narcotics are processed in Turkish labs

And then she discussed Judge Reggie Walton - we should have more on him in the next few weeks - but he is a bit of a concern - he keeps getting allocated to Sibel's cases, and he is the judge in the Libby/plame case. He was a Drug Czar in Bush 41's administration - and he is the only judge in history to have all of his personal records redacted... in fact, he worked with cheney and libby in previous administrations.

(and a final hat tip to miguel, again)

Iraq 3.0: This Time We're Not Dicking Around

* juan cole: "I gave an interview to Jim Lobe of Interpress Service in which I raised the possibility that there might now be a hung parliament in Iraq, with no group able to form a government, forcing new elections and further political gridlock." (link)

* jcole: "The shoe seems to be on the other foot now, with Muqtada al-Sadr attempting to cool Iraq's Shiites down and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani threatening to create a paramilitary to protect Shiites." (link)

* wolcott: "But it would be political suicide for Bush to follow such counsel and lift the troop levels in Iraq to crank the war up an aggressive notch: Iraq 3.0: This Time We're Not Dicking Around. Mind you, I'm all for Bush's political suicide, but what's in it for him? Not much and he knows it. He's lost too much political trust and capital, Americans are tired of the war (more tired than the political class and punditocracy), and the military is stretched max. It's too late for a Victor Davis Hanson cavalry charge into the black heart of the Sunny insurgency led by Kristol and his neocon comrades embedded in cable-news green rooms 3000 miles in the rear, cheering, "Kill them! Defeat them!" at the TV monitor in voices loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to disturb Richard Perle napping in his portable coffin."

* wolcott: "Poor President Bush, prince of fools. He let the neoconservative creative destructors play upon his religiosity (and Cheney's power hunger) and persuade him that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a transformative moment that would set democracy and freedom in motion across the region, and crown him in history with Churchillian honor. I believe Bush wanted democracy in Iraq, or convinced himself that he believed it after the Chalabi-as-chess-king scheme fell through, because such belief flatters his pride in his own idealism. But the intellectual architects of the policy didn't care. If there was peace and stability in the new Iraq that would strength America's power in the region and bolster Israeli security, fine; if Iraq fissured into factional strife, fire, and chaos, better still."

Wizard of Oz

* john warner on MTP got all excised about portgate being referred to as FOREIGN OWNERSHIP - its just a lease, silly.

* "Google Inc.'s concerns that a Bush administration demand to examine millions of its users' Internet search requests would violate privacy rights are unwarranted, the Justice Department said Friday in a court filing." (link)

* "Money from MZM employees and PAC was the top source of cash for Harris’ campaign by a more than 2-to-1 margin. " (link)

* juancole:

"To tell you the truth I think it's like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the curtain is lifted. I think that much of the war on terror is an illusion. I think what you've really got is 4,000 or 5,000 jihadis that you should be tracking down through local cooperation and Interpol and the FBI, on the one hand. And you've got the Sunni Arab guerrillas of Iraq who are sore that we overthrew the Baath government on the other hand. And you have some tensions with Syria and Iran. But I don't see how this makes for a coherent enemy. I think Washington misses the Cold War, and the great tragedy is that the Muslims are just not going to be providing the analogy. We can talk as though they do, but they don't, and eventually this whole smoke-and-mirrors thing is going to collapse."

army recruiting

*

"During January, the Army recruited 8,337 new members, 103 percent of its goal; the Navy, 2,726, 101 percent; the Marine Corps, 3,234, 106 percent; and the Air Force, 2,915, 101 percent, Krenke said." (link)

glorious predictions all round. incidentally, that target was about the same as Jan last year. Things went a little haywire in February - stay tuned.


(mind you, they are already down a lot already this year vis last year)

punishing Holocaust denial

* xymphora: " The argument in favor of punishing Holocaust denial is even sillier than Holocaust denial itself. No one can really believe that David Irving's views are going to prevail, a fact clearly demonstrated by the universal reaction to him. "

* clemons: "The reality though -- hard as it is to admit -- is that Vice President Cheney shrugged off the Libby indictment in a few weeks and has roared back to a robust role in national security affairs and is now trying to strangle Condoleezza Rice's foreign policy agenda.
Addington's rise and those of his acolytes -- have given the neoconservative agenda some new faces, lesser known, but in many ways far more insidious."

* blumenthal: "Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president."

* speaking of Robert Wright and wiretaps, this from 2002:

"(Special Agent) Wright points to recent misconduct and falsifications of wiretap warrant applications by FBI agents (signed-off by the former FBI Director, Louis Freeh) to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Prior to September 11th, SA Wright alleged FBI intelligence agents lied and hid vital records from criminal agents for the purpose of obstructing his criminal investigation of the terrorists in order to protect their “subjects,” and prolong their intelligence operations. SA Wright was stunned to learn recently that some of the FBI intelligence agents that had stalled and obstructed his criminal investigations of terrorists in Chicago had also lied to the judges of the FISA Court in Washington, DC."

FISA is notoriously compliant - why would they falsify the applications? the interesting thing is that Wright appears to make these claims in the context of obstructing investigations, not facilitating them.

Franklin & Rhode speak Farsi

* Larisa is interested in the Rome meeting with Ledeen, Ghorbanifar, Franklin, Rhode and SCIRI, and she notes that Hadley (and Rice) authorised it. Larisa also notes that both Rhode and Franklin are in trouble for passing secrets to both Israel and Iran.

Re-reading Laura's story about Ledeen and Ghorbanifar from last May and i stumble across this: "

How the Bush administration came to authorize the initial December 2001 meeting in Rome is a curious tale that suggests how far Ghorbanifar can reach. The meeting included two Farsi-speaking Pentagon of?cials, Defense Intelligence Agency Iran expert Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, a polyglot Middle East specialist, both then working for Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith."

It's not a surprise that these people speak Farsi, given their roles, but we know that Sibel hates Feith, and she translates Farsi. We know that Rhode has been investigated before, and we know the broader investigation that snared Franklin has been going on since at least 1999. Is it possible that some of the stuff she talks about is straight outta the mouths of Rhode and Franklin? That would be an interesting turn of events, wouldnt it?

I can't find the quote at the moment, but Sibel specifically makes the point somewhere that it's possible to work out who she is talking about by looking at the languages they speak, and their career trajectory in and out of different countries and such

Also, we know that Sibel is familiar with the AIPAC case, and much more. She says

"the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's... as far as I can explain."

Incidentally, remember this conversation with scott horton which got some tongues wagging:

"SH: Okay, I'm going to go ahead and name some people whom I suspect inside the State Department and the Pentagon, and I suppose you won't be able to answer affirmative or negative on any of these, but I'm very curious when I read about this kind of corruption going on in the State Department, I immediately think of John Bolton and David Wurmser. Do those names mean anything to you?

SE: Well, first of all, I'm not going to answer that question at all, but also you should pay attention to the fact that some of these people have been there for a while, and some of these people had their roots in there even in the mid-1990s.

SH: So more career officials rather than political appointees.

SE: Or maybe a mixture of both."

Kenneth Pollack, identified in the Franklin case as USGO-1 seems to meet that criteria:

Previous Position(s): Director for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations (2001-2002); Director for Persian Gulf Affairs, National Security Council (1999-2001); Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs, National Security Council (1995-1996); Senior Research Professor, National Defense University (1998-99, 2001); Iran-Iraq Military Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency (1988-1995)

I wonder what Sibel knows...

update: this from Sibel's interview with Chris Deliso, discussing the Franklin case:

SE: But it will be interesting to see how far they pursue it – whether they will be satisfied just to make an example out of the fairly low-level guys they're looking at now, or want to keep going higher.

CD: When you were at the FBI, did you have any colleagues who were working on this case, investigating the Israelis?

SE: Look, I think that that [the AIPAC investigation] ultimately involves more than just Israelis – I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel.

She didn't answer Deliso's question about whether any of her colleagues were working on the case, but in answer to the question, she indicated that she knows some inside information. My hunch that she listened to some taps of Franklin and Rhode is getting stronger...

CominDownSunday

* the good news is that Driftglass already has his CominDownSunday review - i guess he was in a hurry to get to the first bloody mary. a coupla highlights:

""Good" Joe (Biden) showed up today, so I’m glad to see that he has gotten his meds rebalanced and has brought his raging Vichy bullshit glossolalia temporarily under control."

and

(When Fox-poo-nozzle Chris Wallace has the temerity to try to tag Joe Biden with a race card and Wallace doesn’t disappear in a flash of holy fire accompanied by a thundervoice intoning, “Alright, that’s it. I am a patient Diety, but even I have finally had it with you screwheads.” it’s enough to make me doubt the existence of a benevolent God. On a Sunday no less!)

and

But…but…aren’t elections brimming with Special Majyks, George? Isn’t that what your Rat People legion of Doom tell us every single day?

That you won, so we all should just shut the fuck up? That elections trump physics and causality and human nature? That there is no global warming, we’re winning in Iraq and the Earth is only 6,000 years old…because you voted it so?

psst

psst

what an odd sentiment

Bin Laden's visits to Turkey

in response to this post, miguel says:

"We should not underestimate the importance of this story of Bin Laden's visits to Turkey, if the story is true. It would be the first confirmation that I know of, outside Sibel Edmonds herself, that there was a Turkish connection to al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. And it fits with Sibel's story: she has consistently said that Turkish countries and lobbying/cultural organizations are tied to al-Qaeda through money laundering and other illegal activities. This article clearly states that Bin Laden was in Turkey to meet with the "most distinguished representatives of the Turkish financial elite."

One can see, if the article's charges are true, why the American Turkish Council would have wanted to penetrate the FBI translation program after 9-11. The exposure of Turkey, Turkic and Baltic countries, and related organizations to al-Qaeda money laundering would have been very bad for business. Of course, in retrospect, they needn't have bothered, for the Bush Administration was always going to be on their side( with a little help from the feckless Democrats.)

It would be nice to get Sibel's input on this- to see if this was a report she was aware of and if she gives the report any credence."

i must admit that i was startled by the allegations in the story - not only that obl was a guest of the distinguished turks, but also that there were 'training camps' in cyprus (i've always been skeptical of 'terrrorist training camps' - it sounds like propaganda) - however i'm really not deep in the weeds of osama's to-ing and fro-ing.

also - i'm not necessarily comfortable with miguel's characterization that the ATC infiltrated the FBI translation unit *after* 911 - i suspect that it happened beforehand

damien seems to know more about this stuff than anyone. damien, any thoughts?

finally, when i hear 'gray wolves' , for some reason i'm reminded of p2, which reminds me of ledeen, which brings me back to larisa's focus on those ledeen meetings in rome & paris.

i'm so dizzy... i guess that's the point

driftglass should get more traffic

* driftglass:

"In the Age of Dubya, the Party of God hasn’t just fallen down the rabbit hole, but has positively hurled itself down into darkness with JATO units strapped to their little, webbed feet to help rocket them to the bottom faster.

In the Age of Dubya, rabid weasels like Coulter and Hannity and Falwell speak for the Party and enforce Orthodoxy with a sledgehammer, and however untouchably revered (william) Buckley might have been in Conservative circles a week ago doesn’t matter. He can become just another Swiftboated unperson in the twinkling of an eye because in the Age of Dubya, Truth and Principle have long ago been bound and gagged and duct-taped into a duffle-bag in the trunk of the GOP Deathmobile...

Because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American, or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

So file this under "Duh", and cross-index under, "Well you certainly took your sweet fucking time, didn't you?"

[snip - dg quotes from the instantly famous Buckley article]

And as a public service to those of you on-the-goers who don't want to wade into Buckleyese this afternoon, this shorter version of Big Bill's article:

As 49 million Americans warned you, the Dear Leader has now lied himself and this country right off the proverbial cliff Wile E. Coyote style.

And as 49 million Americans warned you, while the bizarre GOP strategy of simply refusing to look down and hoping that will keep us aloft might seem viable in cartoons or in your Jebus-For-Dummies anti-religion, it doesn’t actually work out here in the Real World where cause and effect will have its merry way with you every, single fucking time.

And now that Buckley can actually feel the wind from our accelerating fall whipping through his comb-over, he thinks maybe someone should maybe do something about it."

whenever i read driftglass, i honestly get overwhelmed by his writing - and i know that some of you feel the same. his prose, and insight, is mind-bogglingly exquisitely delicious. i'm tempted to say that he is a writer's writer, but that's a cliche, and i'm not a writer, so that would be a dumb thing to say.

if i was a writer, not only could i say that i was motivated to somehow emulate driftglass, but i could also say that i was motivated to be a writer for the sole purpose of trying to somehow-accurately describe driftglass' writing/impact. that would be motivation enough. you already know this.

yesterday i wrote a confused post-without-a-purpose where i ended up marvelling at the ability of A-list bloggers to keep track of stuff. i agree entirely with that sentiment, but what is much more amazing is the b-listers and c-listers who do much the same thing, with an audience in the tens, rather than the tens of thousands. i'm sure they all have different motivations but there are thousands of bloggers who, for whatever particular reason, do their tiny bit to contribute to the discourse - and they each deserve medals - for their efforts, if not their impact.

for my own part, i try to do a little bit of activism, and provide links to a bunch of other stories that i'm reading, and try to solve some of the mysteries of the day, and preach-to-the-converted, and a bit of this and a bit of that. but i dont really 'market' (with a couple of exceptions) any of the work that i do - so i guess that's a major shortcoming in any 'activism' that i purport to do... which is to contribute to saving the world in my own little way - and i note, there are thousands of other bloggers who try do the same, in exactly the same way - and we all live on the fumes of the odd comment hither and tither, and the odd hit, and the odd link and whatnot. it makes it all worthwhile - yep, we are all that cheap.

all of which is a really long-winded way of introducing this post by driftglass - where he gives a snapshot of his traffic figures (after getting a C&L link)


its incredibly sad that his traffic figures are so low, however he notes:

I understand and feel a particlar kind of sorry for people who chase the spike in any endeavor: the Ahabs, forever stalking their particular White Whale, because IMHO, nothing I know ever works that way.

Bill Macy didn’t get to be a star today based on "Fargo"; he got to "Fargo" and beyond by practicing his craft like any other working man. Asimov wrote a jillion books, one at a time, year after year. Hell, Lincoln lost every damned election ever until the big one.

There are people -- people I know -- who routinely wager large parts of their lives and futures on the Big Score, and it just never works out that way. And so I don’t know if its blog taboo (blogboo?) to flash one’s hitcount to the world (as if the world were watching or cared :-) but while a daily total of visitors is satisfying and I cherish the comments and emails I get, the number itself is not relevant to me one way or another; the process, the work and the people I get to interact with are what matter, so I posted it up here just to illustrate a larger point.

That anyone can hit it big on any given day, but the inflation of the moment has no nutritional value, and it evaporates like dew in a firestorm. What matters is the work, and the residue of what endures after a freak sunny day in February has gone. And my reason for using this, specific example during this political season is this:

It is especially important to remember over the next nine months that the world we living in and the nation we love will not be changed by massed millions in streets on a Sunday, but by a few hundred scattered here and there in polling places on a Monday.

That winning back our nation is the hard, steady, behind-the-scenes work of thousands of volunteers – and, yes, I’m looking at YOU -- that does not come with the sugar-highs of huge spikes and fanfares and giant novelty checks.

Because virtually nothing of value ever does.

We win this country back one vote and one voter at a time.

We will kick the everloving shit out of these people…if we can just get used to the fact that this is a game of inches and single digits. Marches and rallies and petitions and blogs and so forth are terrific and I’m all for them, but in the trenches of the political universe, damned good ass-whippings are administered in the aggregate on election day, and that aggregates comes in small, unspectacular increments.

Or, as Voltaire said, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

driftglass is correct, of course. he always is. there are thousands of c-list bloggers out there (including me) who, collectively, make an inch of a difference. I am blessed because my work, and my contacts, and my wonderful, amazing commentors, give us a chance to hit it outta the park - and we are really close...

but even if 'we' dont, somewhere, amongst the thousands of people who are trying to do the same thing, we'll find the piece of the puzzle that stops these fukkers. eventually, collectively, we'll stop them. i dont care if we've been barking up the wrong tree all this time - so long as there are others barking up different trees - eventually, one of us will break through - and that's the only thing that matters. if it happens to be 'me', it will only be because of the collective contribution of you guys, and same thing if it's larisa, or emptywheel, or scott, or glenn, or anyone else. it might even be someone wingnut - but it will only happen because we were collectively barking up trees, trying to find an answer.

i was 'interviewed' a while back because of the impeachment thing that i set in motion, and i made exactly the same point - there are thousands of us trying to find a way to break through the nonsense and eventually one of us will find a way through.

kudos, of sorts, to the people who set up the barriers to the truth, they've done an incredible job. 5 years ago i would have sworn black and blue that it wasnt possible. but we'll defeat them. eventually. we must.

to summarize this post, a) driftglass should get more traffic b) they have to kill me to stop me trying to stop them

more 911 skyscraper blueprints and building composites

Further to my posts (here and here) about 'terrorists' receiving building blueprints and building composites for certain skyscrapers in July and August 2001...

(update: hello xymphorans. note that i refer to 'terrorists' - not osama)

In that first post I wrote:

"Regardless, the question remains - why were the plotters of 911 interested in blueprints and the construction materials of these skyscrapers? And perhaps even more interesting, why did they wait until their plot was well underway to source this information - presumably as some sort of afterthought?"

Damien has a theory:

"This is on the WTC plans/composition etc being passed to Middle East a few months before 911, as witnessed by S.Edmonds.

Assume there is a network of rogue US/CIA intelligence agents acting with operatives in Saudi & Pakistan (& even Israeli) intelligence and the neocon's drugs/arms networks. It is essentially a network for crime run by the neocons. Call it RogueNet. Assume OBL planned the plane attacks, but that the terrorists were spotted early on by RogueNet. The neocons then decide to let 911 run and get some benefits by helping it along. They install the explosives in the buildings and deflect FBI inquiries in the months leading up to 911.

OBL has no knowledge of any bombs(too hard to for him to organise). But, Sibel witnesses building plans being passed to RogueNet operatives in the Middle East by neocon handlers. Of particular interest here could be Mossad members of RogueNet interested in reviewing demolition plans to ensure its success, or to coordinate removal of Israeli citizens. (I don't particularly support the Mossad did it school, but some elements of Mossad may have supported the neocons for their own political reasons).

Certainly, the plans would not likely have been provided to OBL to organise the attack (insufficient time, and too far away). Rather I suspect it was for reviewing the plans that were in place already. The interested parties: other RogueNet operatives."

That's a pretty good theory, although the question remains why on earth they would consider helping the plot along - presumably RogueNet would get nearly all the benefit by simply letting it happen, without any of the associated risks... It's conceivable that they knew that the two towers would withstand the impact of the planes, and for some reason didn't trust that the resultant collective trauma would be sufficient to launch a few wars...?

Some have suggested that Silverstein was involved in some sort of insurance fraud, given that he bought the two towers just seven weeks before 911 (link), and Sibel's blueperints/composites claim would seem to add some weight to that possibility (particularly given the above scenario). However, xymphora does a reasonable job of debunking these claims (here and here), although I'd quibble with some of xymphora's premises & details.

Rereading Sibel:

In October 2001, approximately one month after the Sept. 11 attacks, an agent from one field office (city name omitted) re-sent a certain document to the FBI Washington field office, so that it could be retranslated. This special agent, in light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rightfully believed that, considering the suspect under surveillance and the issues involved, the original translation might have missed certain information that could prove to be valuable in the investigation of terrorist activities. After this document was received by the FBI Washington field office and retranslated verbatim, the field agent's hunch appeared to be correct. The new translation revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas (country name omitted)...."

A few points to note:
1. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest the Sibel has first-hand knowledge and that she actually translated this document, second time round. Therefore, we can presume that the document was in Turkish, Farsi or Azeri

2. Jan Dickerson didn't join the FBI till the end of October (link), so she presumably wasn't involved here. Therefore there were other people doing dodgy translations. (Sibel doesn't say, but I presume that the original translation was done before 911). Apparently there were people from the DoD who were called in to do translations when needed because there weren't any Turkish translators (!) at the FBI. However, Sibel says that the new translation wasn't sent back to the agent because "This supervisor, Mike Feghali, stated that sending the accurate translation would hurt the original translator and would cause problems for the FBI language department." I presume that we need to take his stated reasons with a grain of salt.

3. The special agent knew that there were bad translations emanating from the FBI - otherwise, why try to get a re-translation?

4. The special agent knew that the suspect was involved in 911 but we still dont know who the suspect was. "This special agent... rightfully believed that, considering the suspect under surveillance and the issues involved..."

5. Sibel and others have stated that "Chicago was actually the center of what was going on", i wonder if "one field office (city name omitted)" refers to Chicago. I wonder if the agent was Robert Wright or John Vincent (maybe the target was Yassin al-Qadi)

more mysteries.

Damien's theory is interesting - anyone else wanna chime in?

One unacknowledged assumption we've been making is that the July/August transmission of the blueprints & composites was the first occasion that this occured - although we have no real reason to believe that. Perhaps this had been happening for a year or more. Perhaps Abu Gonzales was correct when he told us all that terrorists are forgetful folk.

Regardless of all that, one thing we do know is that 'terrorists' were passing blueprints and whatnot around, and we don't have an adequate explanation...

also, of some interest, sibel only talks about skyscrapers - no mention of the empty wing of the pentagon that was hit.

are the PNAC crew celebrating or not?

* Tom Maguire: "Here is another stray question - how can it be that Libby's team knows this official is a source for two reporters, but does not know the official's name? Or do they know the name perfectly well, but just want the grand jury transcripts?"

* Maguire: "Final thought - *IF* the official leaked to Novak and Woodward, it is highly likely that the official neglected to mention the Woodward conversation until November 2005. So here is someone who leaked to Novak, gave incomplete or misleading information to the prosecutor about his leaks, and yet his anonymity is being protected ..."

* everyone is pointing to this Bill Buckley article saying that America the Coalition of the Willing has lost the Iraq war. The only real question is whether the PNAC crew are celebrating or not...

Frederick Fleitz and Robert Joseph

Plame Whistleblowers Targeted by Administration By Jason Leopold (link)

Two top Bush administration officials who played an active role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, have been removing from their jobs, career State Deptartment weapons experts who have spoken to investigators during the past two years about the officials role in the leak, according to a half-dozen State Department officials.

The State Department officials requested anonymity for fear of further retribution. They said they believe they are being sidelined because they have been cooperating with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald [snip]

The officials who have been leading the State Department reorganization plan are Frederick Fleitz and Robert Joseph. Fleitz now works for Joseph [snip]

Both men were directly involved in the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson, and have been targeted by Fitzgerald's probe as possible sources that unmasked Plame Wilson's identity [snip]

At the time of the leak, Fleitz was a senior CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control official as well as the chief of staff to John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, a position that Joseph was appointed to when Bolton was selected to be Ambassador to the United Nations by President Bush.

Beltway rumors have swirled for more than a year that Bolton, too, played a role in the leak [snip]

State Department officials and other people knowledgeable about the events leading up to the Plame Wilson leak said Fleitz is the unnamed CIA official identified in the federal indictment handed up by a grand jury in October against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby [snip]

These officials said Fleitz had told Bolton about Plame Wilson, and Bolton then shared that information with Libby and other senior aides in Vice President Cheney's office.

Moreover, State Department officials said Fleitz was one of the CIA officials who attended a meeting in February 2002, at CIA headquarters where Plame Wilson had accompanied her husband [snip]

"In essence, the undersecretary (Bolton) would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support," Hersh wrote. "Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign agent reports and electronic intercepts [snip]"(Page 222)

Robert Joseph was identified last week by CIA and State Department officials as one of a handful of administration officials who was instrumental in an effort to attack the credibility of Wilson [snip]

Sources close to the probe said witnesses involved in the case told FBI investigators that Joseph was one of the recipients of a classified State Department memo in June 2003 that not only debunked the Niger allegations but also included a top-secret reference to Valerie Plame Wilson's work for the CIA [snip]

The sources added that the witnesses testified that Joseph and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had worked directly with senior officials from Vice President Cheney's office - including Libby, Cheney's National Security Adviser John Hannah, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove - during the month of June to coordinate a response to reporters who had phoned the vice president's office and the NSC about the administration's use of the Niger documents [snip]

Now some State Department officials believe that Joseph and Fleitz are working to ensure the State Department is staffed with individuals who will support the Bush administration's foreign policies.

Fleitz and Joseph have been working in secret with other Bush appointees since last year to revamp the State Department by pushing out career weapons experts, many of whom have been interviewed by FBI investigators during the past two years probing the leak [snip]

the million dollar question is whether they are stacking State ( Nonproliferation Bureau & the new office of Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism et al), so that they can implement Bolton's scary designs on Nth Korea (and probably China) et al, or so that nobody discovers their nefarious smuggling activities (cf Plame)

civil war: it's all good

250 Emails Related to Plame Leak

* from the AP: "The defense was told that the White House had recently located and turned over about 250 pages of e-mails from the vice president's office. Fitzgerald, in a letter last month to the defense, had cautioned Libby's lawyers that some e-mails might be missing because the White House's archiving system had failed."
leopold's title said "White House 'Discovers' 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak", altho his article says "250 pages of emails." Is that one page per email? probably (?)

* via Laura: "The number of Iraqi army battalions judged capable of fighting the insurgency without U.S. help has slipped from one to zero since September, Pentagon officials said Friday." (link)
You'll remember that in September they reported that the number had fallen from three, to one. (in fact, from three to zero and back up to one)

* " An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday."(link)

* reddhedd: "In this case, though, the first amendment arguments are going to be fairly robust from the news organizations involved, I'm sure, considering the high profile names involved. I'd guess that Team Libby is banking on this -- but I must say that Judge Walton's framework on subpoenas and motions is an aggressive one, and that bodes well for him not taking kindly to attempts to stonewall and delay. The deadline on this was set for April."
that's a glimmer of hope that Reggie isnt in the tank

* jane: "According to the AP, Walton indicated that since the SAO has not been charged they have the right to privacy. But on Countdown tonight David Schuster seemed to be saying that to reveal the identity of that individual was getting to the "overall strategy" of Fitzgerald's investigation."

* jane: "How does the WaPo manage to print an entire article on the topic without mentioning the 250 pages of newly released emails from the Veep's office? I don't know but by jingo they do."

Robert Joseph or Elliot Abrams?

* viget thinks that Robert Joseph is Fitz's 'co-operating source' as identified by Leopold yesterday, as well as Woodward's Mr X, and possibly Novak's source.

* emptywheel thinks it's probably Elliot Abrams.

* the interesting thing is that Libby doesn't know who it is (?) (link)

* Leopold says that this person also outed Plame to journos. I can't wait for all the details to come out from this case and we can see who all the chicken-shit journos are we'll have to call a blogger ethics conference to revisit their reporting, in the context of the new knowledge that these journos were part of the story without disclosing it.

update: Larisa seems to still stand by the fact that Hadley was Woodward's source (i'm just relistening to her interview with scott horton)

more bandwidth than i

* waas: "Did the Bush administration “authorize” the leak of classified information to Bob Woodward? And did those leaks damage national security?
The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”"
put that in your pipe porter goss. (waas has more)

* man - i feel like i've had a busy day - 15 posts so far, and my guess is that 90% of the stuff that i do is on background (much more so today than usual) - apologies if the blogging has been a bit weird/sporadic lately. and apologies to those of you who arent really 'insiders' cos you aren't quite privvy about when i'm being side-tracked by other stuff and the posts (and direction) must seem weird sometimes. im sure most of you know, it's actually a full-time just reading stuff and trying to be up-2-date with that - when you add in the research component, it won't surprise you to learn that sucks up an extraordinary amount of time as well - even if you dont consider the dead-ends that we inevitably run into which suck a lot of time for no perceivable benefit - 'thankfully' the people we are dealing with are so horrible that there's usually something under every rock. trying to do 'activism' at the same time just makes things even more difficult. all of which is just to say, thanks to everyone who helps me out by offering tips and/or words of encouragement or by spreading the word and/or pointing others to my blog.

i'm not really sure what my point is - but i guess its mostly a shout-out to the a-list bloggers - the work they do is incredible, literally. if you can afford to support them (or any other bloggers that you like) financially, do so. they have a remarkable skillset - and it continues to blow my mind. they seem to know everything about everything - and somehow manage to actually blog insightfully in the interim - i marvel at the sheer 'bandwidth' that they have to offer. consider, for example, a single comment thread at FDL - any of us could spend an hour or two trying to read and understand and appreciate and contribute - yet all the while jane and christy are also finding new stuff to post and interpreting legal documents and dealing with a thousand emails, and being aware of the details of new scandals and whatnot. truly a feat of nature- they must have more hours in the day than i...

so here's a shoutout to all of them.

my Cheney Quail

everyone (except the most hard-hearted *cough* damien *cough*) seems to like my foray into animal photo-blogging (here and here) - with the curious mix of mary shelley meets australiana - so in honor of friday-miscellaneous-life-form-blogging here are a few pics...

firstly, here are some kookaburras that i took yesterday from my back door - sorry about the resolution, they weren't up close and personal. they are kinda shy, although they love to 'laugh' nearly every night - mostly in the late afternoon/evening. It's summer here, so the sun doesnt go down till around 8pm. I usually eat out on the deck overlooking the water, and they let themselves be heard most nights.



the rest of the pix are of the now-famous quail and its 'mum' - click for larger versions. the little tacker is really difficult to photograph - it moves like lightning, and it is nearly invisible in any part of the garden - not to mention that mum makes odd clucking noises that apparently convey alarm whenever i walk by. as you know, many studies have shown that children learn languages pretty quickly...

the only time i can get a chance to 'shoot' it (that's a Cheney joke - in fact, i've named it Cheney) is with mum's silky whiteness as a backdrop. hence the following photographs (i'm not really trying to cheaply appeal to your sense of cuteness by juxtaposing 'mother' and 'child')

Firstly, here is the original pic, just cos it's cute - on Cheney's first post-egg day, he kept climbing all over mum, but i havent seen it happen since.

The good news is that I put another 20 quail eggs under another hen a while back, so we might soon have lots more frankensteinian pics to drive the fetusfolk into a frenzy - i know they love adoption, but they hate messing with god's will - and who knows? maybe the adopted mothers are Buster-style lesbians... besides, cross-species witchcraft mumbojumbo drives the blastocyte-lovers batshitcrazy. Jane had a great post yesterday about naturally-discarded, fertilized human feti - apparently 80% of all human pregnancies.

Jane said:

" But say by some fluke God has a soft spot for unrepentant preacher's kids who are good to their dogs, and I wind up in heaven. Is 60 to 80 percent of the population going to be filled out with people who never made it past dome stage blastula? I mean -- conversation is liable to be a bit thin, don't you think? What can you really say beyond "congratulations on winning the big swim?""

that's some seriously funny blogging...

there was a great article in Reason about this called "Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?" a while back that i pointed to a couple of times. i love Reason, especially their blog, but it's one of the many sites i dont get to read :-(

Incidentally, my little Cheney quail isn't the only bird to climb onto mum's back - I have some gorgeous photos of baby black swans doing the same thing (altho it seems to make more sense if it happens in the water - I imagine that paddling can be kinda exhausting and it's much easier to hitch a ride on mum's back) - lemme know if you want me to post those.



(is that a chipmonk?)






anyway, the piece de resistance is this last pic, altho i'm not sure it looks as cute in a pic as it does in real life. apparently theres a little message in quail DNA that says 'when you are little, hide under your mum and snuggle into her feathers cos that's the safest place around, and besides, it's really cosy.' The problem is, quail mums have a low center of gravity so it's probably pretty easy to get under there and snuggle. As you can (hopefully) see from this pic, Cheney actually has to get on tiptoes to disappear itself into the delicious pillow that is mummy


i'm not sure whether to make the 'cheney has his head in the sand - but he even gets that all ass-about' gag or any of the other jokes that just write themselves...

Fitzgerald vs Cheney

* jason leopold:

" The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband...

lying to Feds is illegal whether you are under oath or no.

Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004...

2 weeks ago? that would be about 2 weeks after Fitz announced that he knew they were hiding stuff. Bwhahahah. Fitz will be pissed. This is like the third time or something that they've turned over something 'new', trying to save their asses.

However, the emails ... will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.

Maybe that's why wilson is pissed at the CIA.

Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the start of the war in March 2003.

hmmm - has leopold finally left the GetWilson reservation?

According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Hadley is so toast. I hope Fitz gets Condi as well. That would deserve a week-long Krystal and Blow bender.

Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.

If they've turned over 'explosive' emails that implicate the Veep, imagine what is in the emails that they wanna keep hiding... Let's hope that Fitz reminds them that they can redact the NatSec stuff, and hand over everything else.

In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.

Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration who is cooperating with the probe."

I wonder who that is... Joseph or Hannah?

If Fitz has the paper-trail, he'll know exactly why they outed Plame. I suspect that nothing in his history - not the OBL trials, not the Chicago corruption trials, and not the Hollinger trials - could possibly prepare him for the corruption that he is immersing himself in these days.

Hastert's travel to Turkey

Here are some details about a couple of Hastert's recent trips to Turkey, from an article in something called The International Post:

"During a (nov) 2002 visit with the Prime Minister in Turkey, Dennis Hastert stated:

It was a very good meeting that we had with the new Prime Minister. … We are committed as our country, the United States, to work with Turkey, to carry on. We see Turkey as a very stable country, as a matter of fact the model for stability and moderation and democracy. "

(Miguel found the official travel report here)

and this from WaPo about a Dec04 trip:

"Folks in Europe are still talking about that splendid, 10-day, pre-Christmas tour of Europe led by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to attend the 60th anniversary ceremonies of the Battle of the Bulge. The group stopped to… visit more troops at Incirlik air base in Turkey…

Hastert took four staffers to help him.... (and maybe Mrs Hastert?)

Support personnel... [were] amazed the plane got off the ground in Turkey -- what with all the fine rugs and pashminas -- not to mention some Turkish-made shotguns Hastert and Dingell bought. "

That's some good shopping, they were only in Turkey for a night.
(Miguel found the trip report here)

Further, the aforementioned International Post article quoted above says:

"With such a display of hospitality, it is not surprising that Speaker Hastert invited his Turkish friends for a visit in May 2005. The Anatolia News Agency reported on the trip:

Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc has indicated today that his visit to the US Congress will be the first ever one by a Turkish parliament Speaker…

Arinc will be in Washington DC upon an invitation from US House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert.

(snip)

Parliament Speaker Bülent Ar?nç visited Washington between May 24-27 as the guest of Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Ar?nç also attended a reception hosted in his honor by Hastert. …

Ar?nç, who completed his meetings in Washington D.C. arrived in Chicago on May 27. …

Ar?nç, who got information from Turkish Consul General Naci Koru about the work of the Turkish Consulate General in Chicago on Saturday… met Turkish community in Chicago on May 29.

[snip]

Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc, who is currently in the United States upon formal invitation of the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert, met representatives of the Jewish community and of the Assembly of the Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) on Wednesday."

Note that in response to Hastert's response letter in VF, Sibel scoffed:

"7) In the VF article Hastert’s spokesman says that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. [American-Turkish Council] or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.”

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)?"

crossposted at Disclose Denny

DPW's Nanny Problem

* when does DPW discover it's Nanny Problem? place yer bets

* further to viget's 'euphemization': "National Journal's Shane Harris has discovered that the "Total Information Awareness" program conceived in part under the direction of Iran-Contra tainted former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter was not terminated.
Only the name was.
Instead of TIA (Total Information Awareness), the program was passed off to a public-private host and re-branded "Basketball"." (link)
(thnx anon)

* earlier i mentioned the absence of spending on port security - Shields on Lehrer just said there spend on airport security since 911 is $27bn, and spending on ports has been $900million.

* according to wikipedia, current Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans members are Rep. Robert Wexler, Rep. Ed Whitfield and Rep. Kay Granger.

Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues: Rep. Joe Knollenberg, Rep. Frank Pallone

Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus: Rep. Solomon Ortiz, Rep. Curt Weldon

I wonder why Weldon is involved with Azerbaijan. I've been meaning to take another look at the USACC. Here's their list of members - eg James Addison Baker III, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Bruce Dick Cheney (resigned November 2000), Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Perle and Armitage etc etc. Looks a lot like the ATC, right?

Bin Laden in Cyprus & Turkey

* this via miguel - he notes "the source is a Greek newspaper...":

"Osama bin Laden visited Turkey twice, in 1996 and again in 1998, even though he was wanted by Interpol. It is almost certain that Turkish security forces were aware, not only of his arrival and contacts with businessmen and leaders of the officially tolerated fascist Grey Wolf organization, but also of his involvement in training Muslim terrorists in at least four camps in occupied Cyprus...

Given the context, it is noteworthy that Turkish authorities not only did not arrest the Muslim fugitive, but also provided assistance and facilitation... With this reality in mind, the Espresso article notes that bin Laden not only entered the country unmolested, almost with VIP status, but also met with some of the most distinguished representatives of the Turkish financial elite. In other words, the military cabal that actually rules Turkey clearly must have been aware of the bin Laden links.

"[bin] Laden, in order to realize his operations directed to East Europe, used the banks in the Turkish section of Cyprus. "

Joe Wilson and CIA

* i'm rereading larisa's interview with Wilson (i'm kinda newly fascinated by it). i don't know what it means, but this is an odd exchange:

"Raw Story: How has the CIA “family” been in regard to all of this? Have they been supportive and concerned? I usually think of this as one would of any co-workers.

Wilson: I can’t really talk about that."

you'd think he could have trotted a safe answer out at that one without breaking omerta

this is also odd, somehow:

Raw Story: Does all contact have to be severed when something like this (plame's outing) happens?
Wilson: I pretty much cut off all contact and in any event, there has never been any shop talk around the house.

Why would Wilson be grumpy at the CIA family?


FWIW, by all acounts, Wilson still seems to believe that Plame was outed (by WHIG) to GetWilson

Steven Jones and Sibel

* regarding my questions about Sibel referring to the blueprints et al of skyscrapers being sent to certain countries in july/august of 2001, and whether that adds any weight to the 'controlled demolition' theory, damien helpfully reminds us of Prof. Steven Jones' work:

"In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones... The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says.""

Jones, amazingly, was on Tucker Carlson's show - you can see the vid here. You'll be surprised to hear that Tucker was Tucker.

Actually, I've just come across Tucker's blog - here is what he said after the show:

"We've never had an e-mail response like the one we got after Monday's segment with Stephen Jones, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Brigham Young University. Jones believes that the World Trade Center buildings were likely brought down by bombs, rather than by hijacked planes on 9-11. "Use of powerful, pre-positioned explosives in the WTC buildings would imply an 'inside job'," Jones writes in a paper available on the BYU website. "Clearly, we must find out what really caused the WTC skyscrapers to collapse as they did."

When one of my producers first told me about him, my first thought was: Stephen Jones is insane. And he may be. On the other hand, he does have a legitimate job and a responsible-sounding title. He's not living in the park, or writing me letters in crayon. How crazy could he really be? In the interest of open-mindedness, we booked him.

That was probably a mistake. Talking about 9-11 is a lot like discussing someone else's religion: You can do it, but you've got to tread carefully. Most of the time, it's best to stick to platitudes and move on... Professor Jones wasn't up to the job. If you saw last night's show, you know what an uncomfortable six minutes it was. If not, I'll summarize: Jones was almost totally incapable of explaining his own ideas. By the end of the interview I understood no more about his hypothesis than when it began. He was an epically bad guest.

Yet - and here's the interesting part - he seemed to connect with a huge number of viewers. Some who e-mailed were offended that Jones would dare question the official version of 9-11. Some were confused by what he was trying to say. But the overwhelming majority wrote to thank me for my "courage" in putting him on, and to complain that we didn't give him more time to explain the conspiracy.

In other words, a lot of people seem to think it's possible that the U.S. government had a hand in bringing down the World Trade Center buildings.

Ponder that for a second: The U.S. government killed more than 3,000 of its own citizens. For no obvious reason. Then lied about it. Then invaded two other countries, killing thousands of their citizens as punishment for a crime they didn't commit.

If you really thought this - or even considered it a possibility - how could you continue to live here? You couldn't. You'd leave the United States on the next available flight and not come back. You'd have no choice. Continuing to pay taxes to a government capable of something so evil would make you complicit in the crime.

So of course most of the people who wrote to say they think the government might have been behind 9-11 don't really think the government might have been behind 9-11. For whatever reason, they just like to say so. Which as far as I'm concerned makes them phony and irresponsible.

phony and irresponsible, to be sure. invading countries for crimes they didnt commit? tell me he's kidding.


(i've just emailed Jones with the Sibel news)

Wade bribed Goode (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.)

* in an earlier post about Wade, I wrote: "of all the corruption cases we are seeing, i wonder how many will have nothing to do with either National Security and/or Election Fraud."

in the comments, viget says:

"Just to clarify, the criminal info DOES NOT imply that Wade had something to do with whatever potential fraud might have occurred in the 2004 elections. The elections fraud count has to do with scheming to violate FEC donation limits to two congressmen (I wonder who they are, one I'd bet is Duncan Hunter, but I have no clue as to the other) by reimbursing his MZM employees for personal contributions to these congressmen's campaigns in exchange for "earmarks" for MZM.

Any clue as to who Rep A and B are?"

Correct - I was thinking more about DeLay's money laundering and Hastert's 'fundraising' and Ney and all the rest. sorry for any confusion.

The plea says:

"Wade also made about $80,000 in illegal campaign contributions to the campaigns of two sitting Members of Congress. Wade targeted these two Members of Congress because he believed that these representatives had the ability to request appropriations funding that would benefit MZM."

According to rollcall:

"Wade also steered $78,000 in illegal contributions to the re-election campaigns of Reps. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) during the 2003-04 and 2005-06 election cycles. Neither lawmaker was aware that Wade was reimbursing other donors for making those contributions, according to the criminal information document."

Francis Fukuyama

* emptywheel tears apart Fukyama:

"Francis Fukuyama, you can't disavow Neo-Conservatism while trying to help someone avoid the consequences of the lies and politicization that disgraced Neo-Conservatism. You can't claim to disavow Neo-Conservatism if you're still investing money and your good name in defending Scooter Libby.
Before, you may have been too naive or credulous to understand that the democracy myths were just that, myths. An ignoble lie. But now, only self-deception prevents you from understanding that. Your ongoing support of Neo-Conservatism--in money and name--now comes with the culpability of knowing better. You've forsworn these lies, but not forgone them." (link)

read the rest

* in the comments at EW's, viget says:

"Not only was (Fukyama's) a non-apology apology, but rather I'd say this is the first salvo in a Great Euphemization of the neocon label.
Like death and taxes, linguistic euphemization is as close as we can get to near certainty in this world. If you've got a controversial, repugnant or otherwise negatively-connotated philosophy or idea that you refuse (or in some cases the ugly practicalities of society refuse) to let go of, just dress it up in a brand-new, shiny linguistic form, and voila, you've reinvented yourself."

viget has more

a secret agreement with osama...

* for obvious reasons, i sent my echidna picture to Echidne, blogging goddess. She friday-animal-blogged it and also pointed to the quail pic which she called "absolutely wonderful" (take that, Damien!)

* here's echidne on portgate: " Please, dear government, tell me what to believe and then stick to the story. I don't even care anymore if it's all a lie. Just give me one coherent myth."

* digby: "I would suggest that if the UAE is holding access to their ports over our heads as a way to ensure this deal goes through, then we may have to evaluate whether they are even the nominal ally in the war on terror we think they are. That's called blackmail. They can't interfere with our domestic policies any more than we can interfere with theirs."
i think he meant to say "any more than we SHOULD interfere with theirs (or anyone else)"

*

"So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?
Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it." (link)

I think this is an important, yet underappreciated point. We all know that everyone (except some rubes) knows that the terrorist threat is uber-hyped - but one of the reasons that i dont worry about terrorists is because the egadministration, by its actions, demonstrably doesn't worry about things like securing the nuclear plants, and screening port cargo, or even plane cargo. it's almost as though they know the country isn't at risk. it's almost as though there's a secret agreement with osama...

imagine how easy, and profitable, it would be for the war-profiteers to establish some port-screening company and appropriate tens of billions for their pockets - instead we see people like woolsey setting up police-state apparatus like iris-screening and whatnot.

so called liberal media

* reddhedd: "And to all those conservatives who have asked questions about this (port) deal, welcome to the "you are unpatriotic" club. How's it feel to know that your President thinks you ought to just keep your mouth shut and agree with him -- or have your patriotism and love of country questioned by your own government if you don't fall in their line?"

* "In Bremer's account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the (Iraqi) leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States.... Instead, Bush had only one demand: "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush's candidate for president of Iraq's interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition."" (link)

* Oreilly wants to fire Olbermann and replace him with antiwar Phil Donahue (link)

* your fair & balanced liberal media, courtesy of digby:

"Rita Cosby said that it's wrong that the Republicans in South Carolina are asking for church rolls to target the evangelical vote but it's just as wrong that Democrats are targeting the "hoodlum vote."

Yes, the hoodlum vote. When a plainly confused Chris Matthews asked what she meant, she explained that Democrats were going through voter rolls to find felons to vote for them."

abramoffal shakedown operation

* in response to this post, miguel:

"Sibel has said, and the VF article implied, that more than one Congressperson is suspected of taking bribes from Turkish interests. It seems the Congressional Turkish Caucus might be a good place to start... I strongly suspect Alcee Hastings. He was accused of corruption as a judge, and I can see no other reason why he would be such a strong supporter of Turkey."

Does anyone have more on Mr Hastings?


* and in response to this post, calipendence writes:

"Just like we have a cabal in charge of our government and in various points of power that a majority of Americans don't support and if known what they do would want to put them in prison, there are probably a number of Turks in positions of influence over there that are part of this mafia, that later (hopefully) when this cabal here is brought down, Turks will also be thankful that Turkish members of this cabal are also taken down in the process, and perhaps then our two countries can have a constructive and healthy relationship again and they will be more welcome into the EU too.
[snip]
For all we know there perhaps were competing bribes from Armenian lobbies both to Hastert and other congress members on that resolution too. We don't KNOW that like we have strong hints on the Turkish corruption from Sibel's testimony, but we shouldn't think that this issue is black and white, except for what appears to be might be the Speaker of the House taking bribes from foreign nationals to dictate our nation's business in congress.

The more we can remove any kind of bribery/special interest excessive influence over congress people that will be what restores the integrity and credibility of that body then. That will probably need things like public financing, etc., but that's a whole different topic that should have its own thread.
[snip]
I'd like to think that some day, if and when we can clear this mess up, (Sibel will) be revered as a hero both in this country and in her native Turkey for having helped clean houses in both places."

Indeed, indeed and indeed.

If they Armenian lobby isnt trying to bribe congresscritters, then they probably arent doing their job properly... (and presumably will never be effective, given the playing field they have to operate on)

Similarly, one of the odd things about the genocide resolution is that it got as far as it did. The Turkish lobby should have been bribing earlier - it would have been cheaper and less dangerous. Sometimes I wonder whether the whole thing wasn't a shakedown operation out of Abramoff's playbook...
step one: threaten to bring up some legislation
step two: charge like a wounded bull for killing the legislation

National Security and/or Election Fraud.

* "Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.... Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the possible implications of the Marine Corps research." (link)

* " Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday... Military interrogators "are adamant that their interrogation strategies are the best ones to use despite a lack of evidence of their success," it said." (link)
jeebus.

* Jonathon at ATR laughs at the evil Pletka cos on Tuesday she wrote an oped in the LATimes complaining that the CIA gets everything wrong "There were, for example, inaccurate warnings... that [Iraq] would erupt into civil war..."
badaboom.

* pletka is such a piece of work. i hate her. read her oped just to see how ridiculous she is. she's complaining that the CIA is a bunch of antiwar handwringers who are always wrong. to prove that the cia is always wrong, she manages to spit this out: "There were, for example, inaccurate warnings that Hussein would share WMD with terrorists..." Note that she doesnt complain that the CIA was wrong that SAddam didnt have any WMD (that idea came from her ilk), no, she complains that the CIA suggested that if he had WMD, some terrorists might get their hands on some. sheesh.

* Wade pleads guilty, faces up to 135 months of incarceration. "Specifically, Wade pled to a four-count information, including one count of conspiring both to bribe Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham and to tax evasion; one count of Use of Interstate Facilities to Promote Bribery; one count of conspiring to deprive the Defense Department of the honest services of its employees; and one count of election fraud." (link)
of all the corruption cases we are seeing, i wonder how many will have nothing to do with either National Security and/or Election Fraud.

Neocons Sabotaged Iran

* "How Neocons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al-Qaeda: The United States and Iran were on a course to work closely together on the war against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002 – until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped in to scuttle that cooperation, according to officials who were involved at the time." (link)
(via scott)

* "Australia is the world biggest seller of black coal, and also uses this product to generate much of the nation's electric power. Indeed Australia coal is said to account for 10% of all the world's Greenhouse gases, making Australia, in a sense, a true rogue nation, and a major source of the world's climatic change problem... Just as Bush's Republicans have launched a War on Science, Howard and his minions have set out to silence the CSIRO experts, in the interests of the powerful Coal lobby, who are major contributors to his ruling Liberal Party." (link)
yay, us.

* "Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky, two executives of the Russian energy company Naftasib with close ties to the Russian government and security services, appear to have funneled at least ($3.4m) to three DC GOP lobbyists between 1997 and 2004... The question of the hour, of course, is just what the Russians were after, especially since, in every case, Naftasib's true role as the source of the money remained hidden." (link)

* laura has a new piece out in Prospect about the genesis of the niger forgeries (and she got to visit Rome. lucky woman.) She seems to think that the forgeries were created by SISMI, perhaps for the purpose of an internal sting... its all still murky (and dont forget that larisa puts Ledeen at Panorama at the same time)

* Laura:

"Something strange is happening in Italy. For months, the Berlusconi-linked press there has been pushing back on revelations emerging from the Niger forgeries scandal, trying to point away from the evidence that the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi was involved at some level in the scheme. But in the past few days, Milan paper Il Giornale, owned by Paolo Berlusconi (the baby brother of Italian prime minister -- up for reelection in April), has been publishing selections from the leaked transcripts of those interviewed about the case by a Rome prosecutor, Franco Ionta."

* "In 2002, Majority Whip Roy Blunt's then top aide, Gregg Hartley, went to Turkey from May 25-June 2, 2002. The trip was paid for and sponsored by the American Turkish Council, along with Phillip Morris, who Blunt's then-girlfriend lobbied for." (link)

* apologies for light posting - im working on a bunch of other stuff in the background - hopefully all will be published soon....

Dennis Ross

* Clemons (a few weeks ago):

"Dennis Ross is raising money for Scooter Libby's Legal Defense Fund.... Libby is the first indicted White House official in over a century -- and is involved in a crime that the President of the United States himself was an outrageous violation of our national security. The involvement on the Libby Legal Defense Fund of Ross -- no matter how much he makes the case that he is a 25-year long friend of Libby -- looks like he is there to reinforce the Cheney/Libby connection to Israel -- and that those concerned about Israel should bail out Libby.""

* (via scott) Juan Cole (aug 04):

"Israeli government officials and people like Dennis Ross at the AIPAC-funded "Washington Institute for Near East Policy" keep saying that this (Larry Franklin) case makes no sense, since if Israel wanted to know something about US policy toward Iran, they could just make a call. This line of defense doesn't really help, though, since it suggests that there are no US government secrets to which Israel would be denied access on a simple request. That is an impossible proposition, and if it were true then it really would be the case that AIPAC runs the US government."

meria heller

(update: apparently lots of new readers weren't aware that Hastert is involved. I've actually got another blog called Disclose, Denny which discusses all this in much greater depth)

update - more of the interview here

sibel was on the meria heller show this week - i'll write up the interview over the weekend, but miguel has this:

"Here is the quote from the Maria Heller show about Hastert:

“…what happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress.”"

portgate and spygate are closely related

* wolcott: "As I post, President Bush is on Fox News delivering a speech in Indiana, looking jaunty and relaxed, repeating soundbites such as "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" and working that Determined Jaw as if he were personally going to grind terrorists between his back molars. He has to repeat himself ad nauseum because if he paused to reflect on the harm he's done and the horror he's unleashed he'd collapse like a paper cup crushed beneath a boot."

* "The UAE is not only the center of financial dealings in the Persian Gulf, it is switching central for dope and arms dealing. The dope comes out of Afghanistan into the UAE where tax monies are collected and used to buy arms, which were sent back in for the Taliban." (link)

* Glenn has a good post on why portgate and snoopygate are closely related. It ends thusly: "The fact that Congressional Republicans have stepped so publicly out of line, questioned the President's judgment with regard to defending the nation, and insisted that they have a serious and important role to play in exercising oversight concerning national security matters, is actually the most encouraging sign yet of the real possibility that there will be serious consequences for George Bush's (snoopygate) decision to deliberately violate the law."

* and dont miss Glenn's post on the importance of freedom of speech, and the associated hypocrisy coming from the wrongwingers

Banking in (on?) Cyprus

Further to my post on banking in Dubai, miguel points to this Jan 03 article in WSWS (WSWS rocks, btw)

"After its election victory in Turkey last November, the AKP (Party for Justice and Development) led by Recep Tayip Erdogan promised a new policy. The Cyprus conflict was to be resolved in order to hasten negotiations on Turkey’s own accession to the EU. In December, the EU decided to accept Cyprus as a full member in 2004, and the UN presented a new plan to overcome the division of the island.

However, Denktash, with the support of the Turkish army leadership, has since blocked this plan. While the Turkish population of Cyprus is protesting against Denktash in the streets, and Erdogan has been warning that the will of the people must not be ignored, high-ranking military figures came out with several statements in the Turkish media declaring that the UN plan for Cyprus posed a threat to Turkey’s security interests.

The Turkish military is clinging to Northern Cyprus for ideological, economic and strategic reasons.
[snip]
Economically, the occupation and division of the island creates a lucrative source of income for members of the military as well as for the criminal fascist gangs, the Gray Wolves, which constitute a key pillar of Denktash’s regime. It has been an open secret for a long time that the money laundered in the numerous banks and casinos in Northern Cyprus comes from drug dealing and is used to finance the dirty war against the Kurdish minority in Turkey.
Following the de facto capitulation of the Kurdish nationalist movement, the PKK, even sections of the military regard the mafia structures that developed within the army during the 15 years of war against the Kurds as an obstacle to Turkey’s economic development. Still, the strategic importance of Cyprus has gained even greater significance for them."

It's a fascinating article - particularly with respect to understanding the delineation between the Turkish military and the Turkish government (remember, it was written just prior to the Iraq invasion)

Now remember what Sibel told Chris Deliso:

"SE: Well, I'm wondering why in this "war on terror" they aren't taking a look at the role of banks in Dubai, banks in Cyprus – they've always concentrated on banks in places like, say, Switzerland. They almost never look at these two other huge areas for money-laundering."

Miguel continues:

It would seem to me that if the above is true that the goal of the Turkish lobby, assuming the Turkish lobby is not representing the Turkish Republic, but rather the Turkish Military and certain Turkish business interests, would be to keep the status quo in Cyprus. Because the status quo is quite lucrative for these groups. Any settlement that created peace in Cyprus would be bad for business.

Indeed.

Sibel often points to Cyprus et al as a dodgy banking center. After my first phone call with her I wrote:

"it sounds like think she pulls her hair out in frustration at the fact that the banks in cyprus, malta, dubai and other similar places dont get investigated..."

And while we're at it, don't forget this post of mine where I noted that in Wilson's book, he writes:

"Throughout the two years I was at European Command, our relations with the Turkish military needed constant attention. [Deputy CINC] Jim Jamerson was on the phone several times a week with the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Marc Grossman, working on the most trivial details. (Politics of Truth 218)"

Jamerson had a pretty big job - why would he need to micromanage Turkey's military? Was he/they shipping drugs and arms and whatnot? Was Valerie Plame onto them?

John Snow's CSX was a Carlyle company

* steve soto: "How important is national security to this administration when the f*cking Treasury Secretary, who chairs the committee on foreign investment, didn't even handle the approval of this transaction? He left something of this magnitude to his staff. Fire John Snow now.
Carl Levin went on the attack today against the Bush Administration at John Warner’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Dubai ports deal. After Treasury officials said that all security concerns about the UAE were looked into and resolved, Levin specifically asked the administration officials if any of them consulted with the 9/11 Commission on the UAE’s record of supporting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The answer? No, they didn’t consult with the 9/11 Commission at all about Dubai and Al Qaeda. "

* btw - everyone is pointing out that John Snow's CSX was sold to DPW - but not many seem to have noticed that CSX was a Carlyle company.

* froomkin: "In his briefing yesterday, press secretary Scott McClellan asserted that "100 percent of cargo is screened." But he was defining cargo screening loosely, apparently including the screening of manifests."

* froomkin: "Wondering why (libby's) defense fund needs so much money? Here's just one example, from the affidavit: "In preparing the defense based on confusion, mistake or faulty memory, the defense has reviewed extensive research on the functioning of memory.""

* froomkin:

"And here's a new development: According to the hunting guide who was on the scene with Cheney and Ambassador Pamela Willeford when Cheney opened fire, there was a Secret Service agent alongside Cheney as well.

That's the first time anyone has talked about a Secret Service agent being that close. But the sheriff's department apparently did not interview the Secret Service agent, Cheney didn't mention one in his Fox News interview , and the Secret Service is staying mum."

Regarding the UAE/DPW port deal

Regarding the UAE/DPW port deal:

From Time Magazine May. 01, 2003

A Pakistani police roundup of al-Qaeda figures in Karachi Tuesday has netted a Bin Laden bagman who funneled nearly $120,000 to ringleader Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers to finance their flight lessons and living expenses in the US, according to FBI and U.S. intelligence officials.

[snip]

On June 29, 2000, using the alias Isam Mansur, Aziz wired $5000 via Western Union from the United Arab Emirates to hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi in New York City. From July 18 to September 18, 2000, Aziz, (nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and first cousin of Ramzi Yousef)... wired another $109,500 from the UAE Exchange Centre in Dubai to an account at Sun Trust Bank held jointly by Al Shehhi and 9/11 hijack team leader Mohammed Atta, while both men were attending Huffman Aviation school in Venice, Florida.

Damien sent this through from Wayne Madsen (yeah, yeah):

"UAE banking insiders have revealed that accounts used to fund the Taliban and Al Qaeda involved members of the Dubai royal family. Banking insiders in Dubai report that in March 2002, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill visited Dubai and asked for documents on a $109,500 money transfer from Dubai to a joint account held by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi at Sun Trust Bank in Florida. O’Neill also asked UAE authorities to close down accounts used by Al Qaeda and affiliated partners like Victor Bout. The UAE complained about O’Neill’s demands to the Bush administration. O’Neill’s pressure on the UAE and Saudis contributed to Bush firing him as Treasury Secretary in December 2002."

This is kind of interesting becuase Sibel points to Mahmood, who also apparently sent $100k to Atta - so between the two of them, thats half of the total 911 funds.

The evil Fifth Column

* via Damian, here's some remarkable news via Nat Parry (Robert's brother) at Consortium News:

"Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”

In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror."

Sheesh!

Remarkable, no? According to GoogleNews, no-one decided to cover this extraordinary exchange.

Parry continues:

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

[snip]

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”

This might be a good time to remind you that if the USG shuts down Blogger in the event of a 'terrorist attack' or some such, i'll switch to my backup blog at wotisitgood4.blogdrive.com

reggie walton is corrupt

* a while back, reddhedd had a post where she argued that abortion rights are important because of rape and incest situations. I was going to write a scathing attack on that idea, because it plays right into the hands of the fetus-lovers and gives them scope to take away the basic right to choice, if they carve out exceptions based on certain extraordinary situations. in my book, choice is choice. in any case, reddhedd has a new post explaining her position a little bit from a personal perspective.

* reddhedd also has two posts up about Libby's defense here and here - as you know, libby's defense is that he was too busy with important NatSec matters to remember stuff about Plame. THe problem with this is twofold - he had about a thousand conversations about Wilson and Plame, and documented it prescisely, and second, i wish that he really was worried about NatSec stuff like the war that he and his friends were about to start, for no reason.

* via steve soto: "Lawyers for Vice President Cheney’s former top aide asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss his indictment because the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case lacked authority to bring the charges...
Libby’s lawyers warned U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton that he may need to require the Justice Department to turn over records — including a secret letter from Comey to Fitzgerald — to determine whether the special counsel’s appointment is legal."
there's a lot of mocking of Libby's defense strategy - the problem is that reggie walton is corrupt - and anything is possible... we'll hear more about him soon...

911 criminals

Further to my recent post about Sibel stating that documents relating to the construction of skyscrapers (blueprints and building composites) were intercepted in July/August 2001.

One of the issues I mentioned in that post is that Sibel refers to the "targeting four or five major cities" - as we know, only two cities were hit on 911, and i wondered what happened to the rest of the plan.

It's not obvious whether Sibel was one of the translators who overheard this information, but we do know that one of them was Behrooz Sarshar. His language specialty is apparently Farsi (one of the languages that Sibel speaks), but it isn't clear whether he speaks other languages.

Some familiar with Sarshar's briefings last month say the tip cited major cities with skyscrapers, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. (link)

FWIW, the "Liberty Tower" thing that Bush recently mentioned apparently wasn't instigated until after 911 - so it's not clear whether this was the same plot.

(see more here, here here and here)

My main interest, however, is why terrorists would want blueprints and details of the construction materials and whatnot. It's true that osama would probably have access to engineers and the like - but what could they learn from the building plans? The WTC and other buildings proudly advertised (beforehand) that they were built to withstand an impact with a airliner.

Miguel notes that "It's also possible the FBI itself didn't know why someone wanted the blueprints, but the request for such diagrams should have set off alarm bells."

I agree that this information needn't have necessarily set off alarm bells for the FBI - although 1) this was only 3 months after the FBI heard that Osama was hoping to hit skyscrapers with planes 'in a few months' and 2) the FBI was wiretapping people about whom they presumably had cause to suspect they were up to no good. But putting all that aside, my question is still relevant, even in retrospect - why did the terrorists want specific details about building composites?

By all acounts, the pilots could hardly fly, so they couldnt have been trying to pinpoint a single weak spot like Luke Skywalker trying to blow up the Death Star. And the absolute destruction of the buildings was apparently mostly an afterthought - they were asking for the blueprints in July and August - long after the plan was put into place, and only weeks before the actual attack.

Many have argued before that the WTC towers were actually brought down by explosives (all three of them) - this 'news' that they wanted the blueprints seems to support that theory - but even if it doesn't, I'm still intrigued by the motivation...

I'll leave it there for the mo' - except to add a couple of quotes from Sibel:

"I came forward because criminal activities are taking place – have been taking place – some of them since 1997. Some of these activities are 100 percent related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States"

and

"...the reason I went to the Congress and to the 9/11 Commission had to do with criminal activities and the criminal activities I provided information on had a lot to do with 9/11."

criminals criminals criminals.

this whole 'clash of cultures' thing is largely nonsense - although there are certain criminals who have been successful in trying to generate incite global culture wars. But the global culture war thing is created out of cloth - in the same way that the am.domestic 'culture wars' have been ginned up outta nothing. (i think the same thing has occured in iraq - to the point that it is now self-sustaining)

bin Laden and Zawahiri : fortunate in their enemies

* "The South Dakota State Senate just passed a bill banning all forms of abortion except when the life of the mother is endangered." (link)

* Newsweek:

"Listening this week to the latest excerpts from Osama bin Laden's and Ayman al Zawahiri's taped messages, it is hard not to marvel at how lucky these would-be revolutionaries have been in their enemy. Who would have thought that, four and a half years on, facing down the mightiest power in history, this sociopathic pair would still be out there talking trash, their continued existence a daily desecration of the memory of the 9/11 dead? Or that bin Laden and Zawahiri would have been able to whip what had been a bare ember of “global jihad”—one barely smoldering on 9/10/01—into a global conflagration?
[snip]
So, yes, bin Laden and Zawahiri have been fortunate in their enemies. Had the Bush administration been more competent, these two would have long since been bloody pulp, perhaps largely forgotten. Luckily for the rest of us, the Al Qaeda revolutionary program is so abhorrent that most of the world still has no choice but to stick with us, through thick and thin—and dumb and dumber. How long we can test the world’s patience is another matter."

Bush: mystified by the orgy of xenophobia

* Brithume (carl cameron) did a story on the UAE port thing, and they explained that the ports were previously managed by P&O. In an exquisite piece of hackery, as part of the story, they showed a photo of Blinky in front of an adoring crowd with some P&O containers in the background - cameron helpfully pointed to the containers as an explanation for who P&O is, but it was just a transparent excuse to show a photo of Blinky touching hands with Bush Cultists. amazing, but not surprising.

* froomkin: "Not once in Bush's five years as president has he gone to Plan C -- a veto. And while Bush threatened one yesterday, using his very first veto in the face of so much public flak would be a dramatic political defeat. Having that veto overridden would be a debacle."

* froomkin: "New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (subscription required) writes: "Mr. Bush is hoist on his own petard. For four years, the White House has accused anyone in Congress or the press who defended civil liberties or questioned anything about the Iraq war of being soft on terrorism. Now, as Congress and the press turn that accusation back on the White House, Mr. Bush acts mystified by the orgy of xenophobia.""
(and dont forget the CNOOC takeover bid)

* juan cole:

"I think the peace movement has a real opportunity here to make a push for much heavier United Nations involvement in Iraq. I say, let's make up placards calling on Kofi Annan to get involved, and calling on Bush to let the UN come in in a big way, with proper protection.
Here are the advantages:
[snip]
7. Bush invaded Iraq in part in order to destroy the United Nations. Forcing him to bring it in to Iraq would be a blow against American unilateralism and rightwing American aggression for decades to come."

the kleptocracy has literally ceased governing

* josh: "Watch out for that falling shoe: White House says Bush didn't know about Dubai ports deal until after it was approved. "He became aware of it over the last several days," says Scott McClellan."

* fdl: "McClellan press briefing today: "this is a deal that is supposed to have been scrutinized" as a national security review process.
WTF? Was it scrutinized, or not? Did you do the work -- or NOT?
Let me get this straight: The president is threatening to veto any bill slowing down or limiting a deal that he knew nothing about until recently, and the Board which is legally mandated to scrutinize these sorts of deals is only "supposed to have done so" in this case."

* i'm surprised about this UAE / port brouhaha - it's almost as though people actually thought that the maladministration actually cared about security! as i've been saying forever, the kleptocracy has literally ceased governing. People seem surprised about this, remarkably.

Corruption knows no national boundaries

miguel writes in:

"On this one count, I will say shame to the Armenians for the following they had put in a press release in 2005:

Myths and realities about Turkey
**********************************************************************************
Myth #1: Turkey is a reliable ally of the United States

Reality: In March of 2003, when we needed Turkey the most, the Turkish government blocked U.S. efforts to open a northern front in the Iraq War.

*******************************************************************************

I think the Armenians were taking advantage of right-wing anger at Turkey to whip up support for their own cause. But the vast majority of Turks were against the Iraq War. Do the Armenians really think that Turkey would have served any good cause by ignoring its own people and allowing the US to launch its aggressive war from Turkish territory?

If that is the position of the Armenian lobby, then perhaps they are little better than the Turkish lobby."

Before i get to the essence of Miguel's comment, let me first note that the Armenians et al have previously made the "Myth #1: Turkey is a reliable ally of the United States" claim.

For example, as i wrote here:

the same groups ("leading Armenian, Greek and Kurdish American organizations") took wolfowitz to task in a letter to GWB for saying that Turkey is "one of our strongest, most reliable and most self-reliant allies" - pointing out that " The record shows that during the Cold War, Turkey brushed aside U.S. interests on many occasions and deliberately gave substantial assistance to the Soviet military."

Miguel's point is valid - but, to be clear, from my own perspective, I don't really care whether the armenians et al are as pure as snow, or as evil as hitler. I don't care if the armenians are 'right' and the turks are 'wrong', or vice versa. in fact, i don't even take a position one way or other (and miguel is correct to specify the 'turkish lobby' rather than anything that can be extrapolated to any broader population)

The issue for me is that there is a dangerous cabal (or a few), and as ive argued before, they are simply criminal enterprises, and are essentially supra-national. They are dangerous and need to be stopped - and i'll do whatever i can to stop them, and to stop the murder and destruction that they bring to our world.

The 'Turkish lobby', as far as i can tell, really has nothing to do with Turkey, other than (perhaps) the fact that Turkey happens to be a major funnel in the trading route. I don't even know if there are any Turks involved - it might just as easily be controlled by russian mafia, or israeli mafia, or (the only thing that we are sure of), the american mafia (which happens to be populated with american politicians, past and present).

Corruption on this scale knows no national boundaries.

To the extent that the Armenian lobby tried to appeal to Americans by highlighting that Turkey isnt the reliable friend that the Turkish lobby pretends, then who can begrudge them? And if the Armenians bribe Duke Cunningham in an attempt to level the playing field, again, who could blame them? I assume that the armenians aren't trying to be a beacon on the hill of democracy, and nor are they pretending to defend America's purported (but long dead) democracy/freedom. In the real world, where israel and turkey apparently own just about every politician in town (by their own account (see Rosen and the napkin story)), I can hardly criticise the Armenians for trying to do what they can to break the stronghold.

Our task is to shed light on one end of the transaction, and to try to put a stop to it.

plame, iran, larisa and wilson

(update - see my interview with larisa about Plame and Iran here)

I just stumbled again across this July 05 interview between larisa and Joe Wilson (edit)

This is kinda interesting, although I'm not quite sure what Wilson was trying to say:

Raw Story: Then Novak runs a second article outing the front company that your wife was using, falsely connecting it to a campaign donation.

Wilson: Right, he runs a second article exposing her front company.

Raw Story: Just in case the first article did not take, one can assume.

Wilson: Actually, that indicates a pattern of disclosure there.

This is also interesting given Larisa's latest reporting:

Raw Story: And now we see that Iraq and Iran have just signed a military treaty. Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Iran is the big winner in this.

Raw Story: Is the goal a fundamentalist military conglomerate? Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Sitting right on the border of the Kuwait and eastern Saudi oil fields...

Raw Story: Right, if that is what we wanted…

Wilson: Then we have achieved it.

Larisa's series on Plame and Pat Roberts et al began just a month after this interview with Wilson... I don't wanna read too much into it, and at first pass that last bit that I quoted from the interview appears to be tongue in cheek and/or sarcastic - by both of them - but maybe it wasnt... (it was a common scoff at the time).

Also note that Wilson kinda threw in the kuwait/saudi oil-field thing outta nowhere - as i said, it's probably nothing...

Here's one of the first paragraphs in Larisa's first article in the series:

"In a sense, the pre-invasion of Iraq and the post-invasion intelligence blame game can be seen through the lens of a chess game, with the pieces in place well before any troops set foot on the ground."

Incidentally, there were two issues that I could never quite work out because of the competing spin, and probably therefore largely ignored. Both include chalabi - and at least one of them includes iran directly. Firstly there was the issue of someone apparently drunkenly telling chalabi that the americans had broken iran's crypto-codes, leading to Chalabi telling the iranians. The other episode was the raid on chalabi's home. I still don't know how those episodes contribute to the story, but they've both been nagging in the deep recesses of my brain these last couple of days.

While I'm disconnectedly throwing ideas out there, one other thing. Yesterday, i said:

"The three relevant (Plame) questions seem to be: 1) by whom? 2) why? 3) why in July 2003?"

That third question has been bubbling away in the back of my mind for a while - the presumption had generally been that Plame's outing was reactive and had something to do with either iraq (e.g. larisa's article about Feith planting WMD in iraq) or somehow related to Sibel's arms/drugs trafficking network. Larisa's latest article states that Plame's work was "focusing almost entirely on Iran." (h/t miguel).

I presume that means that Plame was actually tracking the network globally, but with a focus on Iran as a destination (and would therefore include Sibel's claims that there was a route through Turkey (and probably the 'stans)). My question for the day, then, is whether Plame 's outing was related to Iraq, or perhaps was a proactive measure related to the proposed Iran invasion.

That, in turn, raises another couple of questions - (taking this speculation further) was plame outed because the CIA knew that there wasn't any trafficking of WMD into Iran, which would therefore negate the scary AIPAC story that Iran wants to kill anyone & everyone? Or had brewsterjennings learnt that the neocons were trying to plant wmd in iran in order to create a cassus belli? or is there an option C?

i'm still waiting for the penny to drop... i havent worked it out. stay tuned for more unsubstantiated speculation...

More Leopold on Plame

Jason Leopold has another traitorgator article out suggesting that we need to ensure there's still some champagne on ice (mine is!).

He's still claiming that Plame was outed to GetWilson...

"The investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson is heating up. Evidence is mounting that senior officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council conspired to unmask Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence, according to sources close to the two-year-old probe.

In recent weeks, investigators working for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald have narrowed their focus to a specific group of officials who played a direct role in pushing the White House to cite bogus documents claiming that Iraq attempted to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger, which Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had exposed as highly suspect.

One high level behind-the-scenes player who has been named by witnesses in the case as a possible source for reporters in the leak is Robert Joseph, formerly the director of nonproliferation at the National Security Council. Joseph is responsible for placing the infamous "sixteen words" about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Niger in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

[snip]

The sources added that the witnesses testified that Joseph and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had worked directly with senior officials from vice president Cheney's office - including Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, National Security Adviser John Hannah, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove - during the month of June to coordinate a response to reporters who had phoned the vice president's office and the NSC about the administration's use of the Niger documents.

...Legal scholars said that Fitzgerald can ask a grand jury to add conspiracy charges against Libby if he uncovers evidence that Libby and other administration officials worked together to leak Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to silence her husband...

[snip]

Although that remains to be seen, former State Department and CIA officials who have testified about their role in the leak said they believe officials at the National Security Council and in the vice president's office worked together to unmask Plame Wilson to reporters, specifically to undercut her husband's credibility. They said that Joseph was one NSC staffer who worked with Cheney officials to do so.

Joseph, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control - a position once held by John Bolton, now United States Ambassador to the United Nations - testified before the grand jury that he played no part in the leak and was not involved in attempts by the administration to discredit Wilson.

[snip]

The sources said it was during this time that Libby, Hadley, Joseph, Hannah and Rove plotted to silence Wilson by leaking his wife's name to a specific group of reporters, saying that she chose him for the fact-finding mission to Niger and as a result his investigation was highly suspect. It's unclear what role, if any, Cheney played, but the sources said Fitzgerald is trying to determine if the vice president was involved.

The sources said Hannah is one of the cooperating witnesses in the probe.

The sources said this time frame was chosen because there were "rumors" that Wilson was "going to go public" and reveal that he had checked out the Niger claims on behalf of the CIA and that there was no truth to them. According to the sources close to the probe, all five of the officials have spoken with reporters about Plame Wilson.

Rumours? Let's recap. Hadley was Rice's deputy. Wilson, at Scowcroft's suggestion, went to Rice in an attempt to get her & the egadmin to STFU about Niger, and Rice told Wilson to go to the press.

Also, did we know that all 5 of them spoke to journos?

I'd be happy to be wrong about everything, forever, if Fitz get's them on conspiracy charges. That's 30+ years. for each of them - not just those listed by Leopold, but also the entire WHIG

an IED is just a broken-up sword

* Preznit Blinky speaks: ""I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company," Bush said. "I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, `We'll treat you fairly.'""

* Preznit Blinky speaks: "Now, when you hear people say coal, it causes people to shudder, because coal -- it's hard to burn it."

* "A triumphant Mr Blair claimed the government had won the argument. He said: "The new law will mean that if people are going to start celebrating acts of terrorism or condoning people who engage in terrorism, they will be prosecuted, and if they do not come from this country, they should not be in this country. We have free speech in this country, but you cannot abuse it."" (link)
you cant yell fire in a crowded fire truck

*

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of Fred Phelps and an attorney for the Topeka, Kansas-based church, said neither state laws nor the Patriot Guard can silence their message that God killed the soldiers because they fought for a country that embraces homosexuals.
"The scriptures are crystal clear that when God sets out to punish a nation, it is with the sword. An IED is just a broken-up sword," Phelps-Roper said. "Since that is his weapon of choice, our forum of choice has got to be a dead soldier's funeral."" (link)

wtf? "An IED is just a broken-up sword"? - that's some seriously unstrict biblical constructionism.

actually - maybe thats just a typo, perhaps she meant to say "an IED is just a broken-up WORD" - aka Improvised Explosive Device.

Similarly, perhaps the bible is actually the sWord of God...

(go read the article, it's pretty funny)

ricin plots and other lies

* the lawsuit against the EPA for lying about air-quality after 911 is proceeding. how 'funny' would it be if more people died because of those lies than alqaida... (link)

* Tchris at Talkleft: "By the way, did (Frist) have a chance to diagnose Harry Whittington based on photographs of his buckshot-riddled face?"
(btw - i love talkleft, but the comment trolls over there often drive me batty)

* Eli: "Putting some numbers to Condi's lies, this tonight from ABC News: before the U.S. invasion, 13 million Iraqis had access to clean drinking water. Today, the figure is 8 million -- a 40 percent drop.
But for really dramatic numbers there's the figure for the numbers of hours per day that electricity is available to Baghdad residents. Before the invasion - 18 hours. Now? Four hours. Four hours a day of electricity."

* Preznit Blinky speaks: "There's -- issues come, they go, and they -- but I hope that when it's all said and done, people see me as a strategic thinker.""
strategic blinker. when all is said and done, i hope people see him in orange.

* The Independent has a big story on Blair et al lying about terror threats in the UK - particularly the *disgraceful* ricin nonsense that ive ranted about repeatedly:

"Conclusion: This collapse in trust has come about because few people now believe what the Prime Minister, the security services and the police tell us about security matters. This dissonance is a massive problem. Britain today faces a threat from international and domestic terrorism which is far more dangerous and insidious than anything it has confronted before. We need to trust our politicians, our police, and the media. But that trust has been betrayed."

condi: "we made a mistake"

* egads! condi used the M word (link):

"But the chief US diplomat admitted that the process of raising an Iraqi army and police force had got off to a bumpy start.
"To be fair, we made a mistake earlier. We relied on number rather than on quality," she said."

altho now she's just mexing her missages:

"about 227 000 "quality" Iraqi troops had been trained and equipped to battle a raging insurgency alongside US forces."

take yer pick, condi - it's either quality OR quantity. anything else would just confuse the rubes.

also - i love the use of detail, just to demonstrate that she knows how what she is talking about - two hundred and twenty seven thousand.

i also like the use of 'earlier' as in "we made a mistake earlier" - as far as i can tell, 'earlier' means the first 35 months of the invasion

pinocchio knows

please impeach

Scripps News:

"Those blasphemously "liberal" media outlets have once again deprived the American public of widespread coverage of nothing less than startling poll results. The non-partisan polling firm Zogby International last month found that by a margin of 52 percent to 43 percent, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush "if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval."
[snip]
Yes, the poll results have been reported on a few Web sites. But they have not exactly been trumpeted by the Blow Hard Boys on the Fox News Channel, nor even "front-paged" on the New York Times. Nor have they appeared as the lead story on any of the evening newscasts. From the right to the left, this poll has been ignored - as has a recent Gallup poll showing a majority of Americans consider the Bush presidency to be a failure. Why? Because it's seen as risky.
[snip]
But grassroots passion for impeachment prompted by this president's circumvention of Congress and the Constitution is what's driving growing public support. And America's transition from "Bush fan" to "Bush foe" is being ignored by the mainstream media.

Surprisingly, the media did anything but ignore the Republican-led impeachment movement against former President Clinton, even when the public was decidedly more supportive of that president than it is of the current one"

'partial birth abortion' = Bush vs Gore

* here's the website for the Libby defense fund - nice to see the advisory board in all its glory. i was surprised to see fukuyama there for some reason.

* ron has more: "RAW STORY has learned, via a WHOIS search at Network Solutions, that the domain name was registered on December 19, 2005 by Blank Rome, LLP with Barbara Comstock listed as the Administrative Contact."

* also, dont miss emptywheel's post on the mysteries of the warmongering Texas Mafia

* brithume's 'panel' actually discussed whether 'partial birth abortion' is an appropriate term - i'm sure it was just an excuse for fredbarnes to colorfully describe the procedure. liasson actually dissented (and she also accidentally referred to 'pro-lifers' as 'anti-abortion' before correcting herself). for some reason, the term 'partial birth abortion' reminds me of Bush vs Gore

UAE port nonsense

* "The Sunday Times of London is reporting the U.S. military has been operating secretive flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use. This has allowed the U.S. to carry out covert missions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa The Sunday Times reported one flight apparently transported 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition to Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo. In another case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign." (link)

* soj slaps down the UAE port nonsense (link) (the only interesting thing about this story is that the egadministration doesnt seem to offer anything substantive to support its argument, other than the due diligence has been done in secret - and the veto threat)

* digby:

"The Democratic party did everything it could to alleviate the culture war and the partisanship in the 90's by electing southern moderates to the white house and helping the Republicans pass a lot of legislation born of major compromise of Democratic principles. Nothing was good enough. The culture war raged, not on the basis of policy --- there was much in Bill Clinton's policies for a Republican to love. It was based purely on the tribal instincts of the culture warriors who insisted that liberals not only be marginalized (fair enough in politics) but that they be annihilated. They gave no quarter unless public opinion absolutely forced them to.

The grassroots believe that after all that, after moving to the right, after offering to compromise, after allowing our "red state Democrats" to run with the other side who then treated them with nothing but bad faith, now is the time for politicans to make a choice. Submit to them or stand with the resistance."

go read

Neo-Feudalism

* WaPo jumps into the Wilkes/Horizon story - much the same as the SDUT story from earlier in the month, altho they add the story about Pure Aqua Technologies, and leave out the part about Duke financier, Kontogiannis.

* "Zogby: On Bush, his overall approval/disapproval rating is 40%-60%, but he has his lowest support yet from those groups who make up his political base. Among both conservatives and those who consider themselves very conservative, 61% approve of the job he is doing. He gets only 32% of independents, and only 73% among Republicans – his lowest rating yet. Even rural voters give him just 50% approval, and 59% among those who say they are born again spiritually – marking the lowest ratings from both of these demographic groups. And Bush remains low among men, married voters and investors."

* further to our earlier discussion about cheney lying about his authorisation to shoot down planes, damien has more funkiness about the timelines that dastardly morning - rumsfeld's lack of availability that morning really is a little bit suspicious. FIrst he was outta the loop, and then he was out in front of the cameras 'helping' people and such

* Arkin: "An unfortunate contradiction about Donald Rumsfeld, and a debilitating handicap for America, is that the Secretary of Defense thinks like a futurist and acts like a Neanderthal.... Donald Rumsfeld is the Secretary of the military, and for him, a new communications strategy really comes down faster information bombs, higher technology that penetrates all of the modern modes of communication, "more rapidly deployable communications forces" -- I'm not making that phrase up -- and the establishment of a 24/7 information operation."

* emptywheel:

"And in search for a term that more accurately describes their plan, I'm settling on Neo-Feudalist...

The biggest reason I don't think they're aspiring to fascism is because they're making people a different promise. Fascism offers stability and security through the rule of law in times of insecurity. One appeal of a fascist society, for those who get suckered in, is the degree to which law--utterly overwhelming law--provides a sense of security. The order of law, and an inflated sense of self-worth attached to an imperialist project.

But these Neo-Feudalists have no intention of extending the rule of law. In fact, their project requires rolling it back. No international law. No international weapons control regimes. No national sovereignty to ensure that all people are subjects of one nation. No national control over your ports. No consistent application of laws about leaking classified information. No consistent handling of shooting accidents, not if you're in South Texas in the sphere of power of one of the Neo-Feudalists."

Real Madrid 0-1 Thierry Henry

Real Madrid 0-1 Thierry Henry

cheney/hume interview

* for one reason or other, driftglass is impressed with Katrina vanden Heuvel and comes down with her. c&l has the clip

* and here's the ending of Drifty's bit on the cheney/hume interview:

"So for those of us with functional cerebral cortices that watched Cheney being interviewed by his own penis and wondered what possible purpose was being served – who was being swayed or fooled by this ridiculous fraud, the answer is...we’re asking the wrong question.

The rank and file of the Modern GOP – people that have blindly stuck by the Bush Junta despite a daily avalanche of proof of their treachery and criminality that is simply breathtaking to behold – these are not people for whom facts and figures and causality and honor have any meaning.

These are not people of reason, but of ritual.

Sorta Obsessive Compulsive Christalopithecene, who don’t notice or care about the actual lies and treasons of their Dear Leader, but only freak out when the proper rituals are not followed to counter-hex those lies. It is very Old Testament and very schizophrenic, this idea that if you just follow the proper sacraments perfectly, and make the proper sacrifices just so, the High Priests of your Party and Faith will keep the raging Death God you've created out of your own nightmares at bay.

So, for example, part of that ritual is to “Bring out the Gimp”.

When polls show that 98% of African Americans loathe the GOP to the point they wouldn't scrape a Republican off their shoe and feed it to an alley rat…they trot out one of their “Fo’ Rent Two-Percent” hirelings like Ron Christie to spout Party Dogma as if that proves something.

When the GOP claws its way to power by gay-bashing but they have to pretend they didn’t…they trot out Andy Sullivan to show that their Klan is an Inclusive Klan.

When they need to lay on a light coating of “bi-partisan” shellac over the latest pile of dogshit they’re flogging as Kobe Beef Tenderloin Medallions…they trot out Kapo Joe Lieberman who will cheerfully sell out his own Party, anywhere, any time.

Which to an averagely bright eight-year-old would prove nothing except how desperate you are to cover the stink of the massive corpse in the middle of the room, and how pathetically you go about trying to do it with a doily and a schpritz of Lie-Sol.

But none of this has ever been about proof; it is entirely about ritual.

These are solemn rites performed for the Party Golem -- the Men of Mud with no thoughts but the thoughts they are told to think by the Dear Leader, hard-wired with the Prime Directive that Liberals are Always Wrong, Liberals are to Blame for Everything, and that the Dear Leader is a Plainspoken Man and a Per’fessed Christian and therefore is simply incapable of telling anything other than the Unvarnished Truth.

They are brought to a semblance of life by the stamp of hate and fear and greed that the Roves and Dobsons affix to their steeply-sloped foreheads. They are animated by Majyk Conjure Bile words by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh; the demigods who casually burn yesterday's Scripted Verities, carefully inscribe on Hate Radio Parchment what their thralls are supposed to think today, and slip the new talking points into their mouths.

Their eyes flutter – the Party Golem – and they roar out into the streets to obediently scream today’s lies, which may or may not completely contradict what they were screaming the day before.

These people are not recruited for their critical thinking skills; they are useful only for their stupidity and meek submission to Conservative Authority. For the manipulable hellfest of bad religion and ugly ideology that packs their Creationist Bell Jar skulls. For the leering, jeering delight at that particular bloodthrill pleasure knucklewalkers get when they can pound the shit out of people who are better, smarter and more honorable than they will ever be.

But here's the catch: The rites must be observed.

And if the proper Kabuki is not performed with all deliberate speed, the rank-and-file will start rubbing their little, dry hind legs together and making little frightened chirping noises. Not out of any concern for the “truth” -- they don't "do" truth -- but out of a growing fear of being stranded out in the big, scary Liberal World with no one to tell them what slogans they’re supposed to shout.

So when the Vice President shoots a man in the face, and the story stinks on ice seven different ways, another meaningless bit of theater must be enacted: the “Candid TeeVee Conversation”.

The liar summons the fake press to “tell his story” with just enough truthiness to shut the drones up. A well-compensated peon asking his liege lord softball questions with no substantial follow-up of any kind on any matter.

Me, I have always found that lag time between Republican Lies and the reprogramming of the Republican Golem to be a useful barometer of just how much trouble the Administration is actually in at that moment, because you can always tell when something has gone horribly wrong with the slow and dirty job of reformatting the opinions of the Party Meat.

Since they are unwilling or incapable of thinking for themselves -- many believing free and independent thought to be, in fact, a Snare set by the Devil -- when a glitch pops up, they return to their default setting of running in tight, panicked verbal circles, mindlessly screaming Liberals are LiarsLiarsLiars until they are told what to think and say and feel and blame by an Authorized Party Technician.

Which, in this case meant that Deadeye Dick had to sit still and at least pretend he was fielding real questions from a real reporter long enough to satisfy the minimum needs of the ritual. So that tomorrow or next week when Scotty Dog is “peppered” with questions from thirty yards away, he can say, “The Vice President already covered that” a million times.

And it must be terribly frustrating for not-so-Heart-Healthy Dick not to be able to bust out and just say what is so clearly gnawing and stinking away at the inside of his skull like a rabid skunk.

That, “What I say and what I do is none of anyone’s fucking business. Not the Democrats, not the gibbering monkeymass ‘public’, not the tinned-eel sycophant ‘press’ and certainly not the Dimwit Dauphin.

"Look, I’m trying to get shit done here.

Shit you people are all too fucking stupid to comprehend, but lemme tell you, dismantling the entire United States government and replacing it with a Chief Executive Emperor right in front of your eyes is not a job for a pussy, so quit jiggling my elbow with your stupid questions and your mock surprise and STFU!"

But he must instead bite his tounge and fake contrition.

Because in the end, even the Dread Lord Cheney must bend a bloated knee to a slightly higher power: the empty rituals that keep the Obsessive Compulsive Christopaths from twitching out of control."

I probably coulda said it better, but he has more time than i do...

Hastert & Government Reform

Miguel also points to this from 1997 CAMPAIGN FINANCE IMPROPRIETIES AND POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF LAW HEARING before the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight:

"Chairman Burton: This Committee's hearings will cover many subjects . . . . Our initial focus has been how political parties took or raised contributions from foreign sources. I am gravely concerned about foreign governments, foreign companies or foreign nationals trying to influence our electoral processes.”

Hastert was on the Comittee. He said the following, presumably with a straight face:

"Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I think the real question of these hearings addressed the searing question of have the election laws of these United States been broken? And have the election laws of this country been broken or circumvented by the campaign committee of the chief law enforcement officer of this Nation?

The real issue here is will these hearings be used by some to divert our attention from that issue and instead use it for a launching platform for, quote, campaign reform, end quote.

Mr. Chairman, we need to keep our focus on one question: Have the election laws of this country been broken intentionally or unintentionally? As chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, I want to simply and directly state my concerns about the potential threat to our country's security that may have been and may continue to be posed by foreign influences on our electoral process.

The peril associated with direct foreign influence on our elections should be obvious. This Nation is a democracy and a democracy is not for sale. And one more point: If foreign governments have been contributing to U.S. elections, they have not been doing so for our benefit. Any such contributions would, by definition, imperil our Nation's security, since the reasons for contributions would likely be to secure favors and extend influence. I won't belabor the point, but it is central to this inquiry.

[snip]

As Judge Sirica once said, in a different context, follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.

[snip]

It concerns me, and I think it should concern every American, that there are so many people close to the President who believe that they may have committed a crime...."

Crossposted at Disclose, Denny

Duke Cunningham and Turkey

In this post, I looked at the Public Citizen report into Livingston, and noted that Duke Cunningham had tried to strip $1billion from the budget that was designated to go to Turkey, I said:

"The effort re the $1billion appropriation is kinda interesting. This happened immediately after the iraq invasion, and Duke Cunningham was trying to cut Turkey's $1bn - ostensibly in retaliation for Turkey blocking American access to Iraq, (but more likely someone offered the Duke something in return for this favor.)"

Now, Miguel has just sent through this from Madsen (yeah, we know) from Sep 05:

"September 28, 2005 -- After the bogus Iraqi intelligence scandal comes this: CIA Director Porter Goss is now accepting politicized intelligence from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Porter Goss's successor as HPSCI chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, has stated that his committee is now providing "intelligence" to the CIA from sources who have no way of directly providing it to the embattled intelligence agency. Goss, it should be pointed out, brought several GOP political hacks with him to Langley, including Dick Cheney's former spokesperson and Bush-Cheney 04 operative Jennifer Millerwise and Goss's former HPSCI Executive Director Michael Kostiw, a former CIA officer who resigned in 1981 after he shoplifted a $2.13 package of bacon from a supermarket near CIA headquarters. These and other Goss political hacks have made damaging decisions that are resulting in a mass departure of seasoned and experienced intelligence officers from the CIA. Intelligence insiders report that Goss's decision to accept tainted political "intelligence" from the HPSCI has contributed to plummeting morale at Langley. For example, a number of HPSCI members are also members of special House caucuses that are established by lobbyists to push agendas to further the agendas of other nations. The most powerful are caucuses representing the interests of Israel, Turkey, South Korea, Greece, and India.

For example, HPSCI members who are also members of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues include Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Rush Holt (R-NJ), and John Tierney (D-MA). Any "intelligence" provided to members by such a group would certainly bear the imprimatur of the Armenian government. Eshoo, Holt, and Tierney are also members of the Congressional Caucus for India and Indian-Americans. Cunningham, Tierney, and Jo Ann Davis (R-VA) are members of the anti-Turkish Hellenic (Greek) Caucus. The Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans, which has close connections to the Turkish government and intelligence, as well as the American Turkish Council and Turkey's chief lobbying firm Livingston Associates, counts among its HPSCI members ranking Democrat Jane Harman (D-CA), second and third ranking Democrats Alcee Hastings Hastings (D-FL) and Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX), respectively, and Jo Ann Davis (R-VA). In addition, HPSCI Chairman Hoekstra's passport bears Turkish entry and exit visas. He is also a member of the House Baltic Caucus...."

I wonder what the Duke charged for that? He probably could have got more from the Turks. I wonder if he had an Armenian 'bribe menu'?

Of more import is this scary line: "Hoekstra of Michigan, has stated that his committee is now providing "intelligence" to the CIA from sources who have no way of directly providing it to the embattled intelligence agency"

jeebus.

I hope Harman is getting well paid for her efforts - she was on the Talkies on Sunday saying how terrific it is that Bush & Cheney are spying on people, and more specifically, without oversight.

sibel, larisa & plame

I've long said that Larisa is closer than any of us to unravelling the mess that is the Bush Maladministration - and she's already gone to enormous lengths to paint the picture for us, although it is still just out of reach.

(update: i interviewed Larisa - see part 1 and part 2)

Larisa's latest article in Raw Story makes it clear that it is just one of a series of related stories, ranging from:

1. Bush restricting intelligence access to congress' Gang of Eight, with Pat Roberts controlling the bottleneck and blocking investigations

2. The shenanigans of Feith, Perle, Cambone, Hadley and Rumsfeld and Chalabi in the NSC, DoD and OSP and AIPAC et al and attempts to plant WMD in Iraq

3. The Niger forgeries and Ledeen, Ghorbanifahr, and other assorted dodgy stories, including an attempt to suggest that Iran was stealing enriched uranium from Iraq

4. Plame's work in Iran, and the apparently intentional outing of her and her work - setting back intelligence about Iran by a decade.

Here are the stories, in order. I suggest you read them all, in full, in one sitting.

1. August11: "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"
2. August11 (pt2): "Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"
3. December 2 "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
4. Jan5 "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq..."
5. Jan11 "Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"
6. Jan17 "American (Ledeen) who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"
7. Jan 30 "Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk (Feith) stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"
8. Feb13: "Outed CIA officer (Plame) was working on Iran..."


I've excerpted (very) liberally from them all below - but before we get to that, let's remember some things.

1. Sibel accuses Feith and Perle of being guilty of narcotics trafficking, arms trafficking (including nuclear) and somehow being complicit in 911

2. Sibel points to Wilson and Plame for reasons that aren't entirely clear, although she specifically highlights the connection with Turkey, and the AmericanTurkish Council.

3. "The Gang of Eight" is composed of the House speaker (Hastert) and minority leader (Pelosi), the Senate majority (Frist) and minority leaders (Reid), and the chairmen and ranking minority members (Hoekstra & Harman) of the House and Senate (Roberts and Rockefeller) intelligence committees.

4. In 2001, the Gang was Hastert, Gephardt, Daschle, Lott, Bob Graham, Shelby, Goss & Pelosi. (Note that Goss is now the head of the CIA, and is desperately screaming "Whistleblowers are Evil")

5. Hastert is apparently in the pocket of the Turkish mafia via the ATC, and Jack Abramoff amongst others

6. Pat Roberts is currently getting slammed by everyone, and even surprised himself this week by pretending not to roll-over.

7. Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz have previously been suspected of leaking information to AIPAC, and are again.

8. Perle recruited Feith and Wolfowitz into the DoD.

9. AIPAC and the neocons are desperate to invade/attack Iran.

10. Neocon Central is the Office of Vice President

11. Sibel says " the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's... as far as I can explain."

12. Sibel says: "You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us."

13. Sibel also says "The Department of State is easily the most corrupted of the major government agencies." - Note that Brent Scowcroft, Joe Wilson and Marc Grossman are all State Department careerists who were also actively involved in Turkey and the ATC.

14. Also keep in mind that Sibel points to the head of Pakistan's ISI General Mahmoud Ahmed (who financed Atta) who met with Grossman, Goss, Tenet, Armitage and Powell during the week of 911.

With all that in mind, here are many liberal snippets of Larisa's articles (apologies to Larisa in advance again, I suggest that you go to the source)

Larisa's first piece comes on August11:

"Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush issued an order to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and his cabinet members that severely curtailed intelligence oversight by restricting classified information to just eight members of Congress.

[snip]

The order is aimed at protecting "military security" and "sensitive law enforcement."

But what was said to be an effort to protect the United States became a tool by which the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.

Timeline: How Roberts helped fix pre-war intelligence

Coupled with limited access to intelligence documents, RAW STORY has found that Roberts and a handful of other strategically-placed Washington players stymied all questions into pre-war intelligence on Iraq and post-invasion cover-ups, including the outing of a CIA covert agent, by using targeted leaks and artfully deflecting blame from the White House.

[snip]

In a sense, the pre-invasion of Iraq and the post-invasion intelligence blame game can be seen through the lens of a chess game, with the pieces in place well before any troops set foot on the ground.

Roberts appears to become an extension of the White House in selling the war beginning in January 2003. That month, he is appointed to chair the Senate Intelligence Committee, picking up one of the eight coveted clearances.

[snip]

Roberts embraces a larger pro-war role. His voice is joined by Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

[snip]

Shortly thereafter, the Administration hits a snag: Documents alleging Iraq’s intention to reconstitute its nuclear program by purchasing uranium from Niger are publicly acknowledged to be forgeries.

[snip]

Roberts blocks Niger questions

Whether Roberts actually saw the Niger forgeries during Hadley’s briefings is unclear. What is clear is that by March of 2003, the Intelligence chairman was in a position to head off any serious investigation into concerns raised by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the committee's ranking Democrat and vice-chair.

Rockefeller has grave concerns about deceptive intelligence, so serious that he pens a formal letter to FBI director Robert Mueller.

Rockefeller urges Mueller to investigate the Niger forgeries as part of what he feared to be "…a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq," writes the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.

[snip]

Roberts blocks WMD questions

Roberts also figures prominently in warding off bipartisan efforts to investigate WMD in Iraq - the reason given by the Bush administration for going to war.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larisa's second piece, also Aust11 (pt2):

"Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"

Niger forgeries and WMDS – Roberts fingers CIA

As more questions surface on the Administration's lies about WMD and forged Niger documents, Roberts becomes a staunch Bush defender, deflecting pre-war "failures" away from the White House and pinning all blame on the CIA.

On July 11, 2003 - five days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes an article for the New York Times challenging the White House claim of Niger uranium sales to Iraq, Roberts issues a statement:

"What now concerns me most," he remarks, "is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the President."

Ironically, on the same day that Roberts issues his statement, CIA chief George Tenet takes full responsibility for the uranium claim and its insertion in the State of the Union.

What follows is a bizarre war of departments as the CIA and the White House duke it out. The latter's campaign is abetted by Roberts in the Senate, Goss in the House and Hadley and John Bolton at State.

Three days after the Roberts volley at the CIA and Tenet's apology for the uranium claim in the President's State of the Union, CIA covert asset Valerie Plame Wilson -- wife of Joseph Wilson -- is outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The leak seems aimed at both Wilson and his wife, as a part of carefully orchestrated strategy on the part of senior White House officials.

In late September 2003, now-CIA director Porter Goss, acting in his capacity as then chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, concludes that the CIA is to blame for Iraq pre-war intelligence failures.

Like Roberts, Goss is said to be "...under the spell of Vice-President Dick Cheney and that his presence on the joint 9/11 inquiry gave the administration a deal of protection."

The following day, the CIA asks the Department of Justice to investigate the Plame outing.

Fixing the fix: Leaks and blame games

In July 2003, two astonishing political strategies merge: Hadley takes responsibility for the Niger statements -- though CIA Director Tenet has already done so -- and on the same day, Roberts calls Hadley to testify in pre-war intelligence failures.

"We have made an inquiry with the National Security Council, with [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and asked to meet with Mr. Hadley and any other person that might be of particular interest to us," Roberts says. "So we will be in the business of taking a hard look at that."

[snip]

What follows is a series of White House salvos, aimed at Senate Democrats, the CIA and policy skeptics, aiming to shift blame away from the Administration. Classified documents and smears become White House tools of choice.

First, blame the CIA

[snip]

Rockefeller publicly questions Roberts efforts' in clearing the Administration of wrongdoing.

[Roberts was trying to] "lay all of this out on the intelligence community and never get to any other branches of government; in particular the White House and associated high and visible government agencies," Rockefeller told Knight Ridder.

[snip]

Second, blame the Democrats

[snip]

Finally, blame Wilson and close the books

[snip]

Republicans embed Roberts' false assertion that Valerie Wilson sent her husband to Niger in talking points and media fodder. Although both Wilson and the CIA correct the record, Roberts, White House staff and others continue to make the charge.

Roberts pitches the case for closing the book on the lead-up to war.

"I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence," he quips. "I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further."

Now, blame Fitzgerald

[snip]

In July of this year, Roberts frames the Plame outing as not really the outing of a covert agent.

"I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," he tells CNN.

[snip]

All eyes are now on Fitzgerald's probe."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larisa's third piece, December 2:

"Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"

Phase II, the follow-up to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq, is still facing opposition from administration officials and has seen little action from the committee’s chairman, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), RAW STORY has learned.

[snip]

Senior Democratic Senate aides familiar with the task force’s activities say Republicans are stonewalling. One aide, who asked not to be named citing the secrecy of the investigation, explained that without the power of subpoena, Democrats are left with few options. “Phase II is dead,” the staffer said.

[snip]

Key Areas of Focus

Phase II is the second part of a larger investigation into pre-war planning and post-invasion failures. Phase I focused primarily on intelligence failures by the CIA, while Phase II focuses on five specific areas of inquiry:

[snip]

4. Any intelligence activities relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and

5. The use by the Intelligence Community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

Feith and the Office of Special Plans

Part of the delay is due to resistance from the Pentagon regarding its ultra-secretive Office of Special Plans (OSP). The group was set up by then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Doug Feith. OSP was considered by many Defense Department officers and staff to be highly paranoid, secretive cabal of ideologues bent on creating a war with Iraq.

The group was tasked with finding intelligence that fit the administration’s anti-Iraq policy.

The Pentagon has specifically refused to address Feith's role and the activities of OSP.

Members of OSP included Larry Franklin, now charged with conspiracy to leak classified and defense information to a Washington pro-Israel lobby; Iran Contra player Michael Ledeen, hired by Feith as a consultant; and Harold Rhode, a staunch anti-Muslim said to have been directly involved in purging the DOD of anyone opposing the anti-Iraq policy who Feith also brought on as a consultant.

Other, “visiting,” players in the group included the now-discredited German intelligence source , “Curveball”; Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who fed bogus intelligence to the Pentagon and U.S. papers; and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who conveyed Chalabi’s falsehoods to the American body politic.

Under orders from Feith, Ledeen, Rhode and Franklin made un-authorized trips to meet with Manucher Ghorbanifar, another Iran Contra figure, in Rome and Paris in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The meetings have yet to be explained, but some suspect they are linked to the Niger forgeries.

More documents are needed

Democratic senators on the Phase II task force have requested interviews and documents from Feith’s office regarding Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress and “Curveball,” but have been denied access.

[snip]

An earlier RAW STORY investigation of Roberts revealed a pattern of collusion with the Vice President’s office not only in stalling the investigation of pre-war intelligence, but also in thwarting inquiries into allegations of torture by the US military, the Niger forgeries and the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

[snip]

Some insiders question whether the Office of Special Plans, and Feith in particular, violated the 1947 National Security Act.

[snip]

“If Feith’s office was running intelligence activities that were unauthorized or not in compliance with this National Security Act and other legal requirements, then the activity may have been unlawful,” a source said. [snip]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larisa's fourth piece, jan5:

"Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq, intelligence sources say"

New allegations indicate that American civilian military leadership may have used an off-book quasi-military team to address political issues, placing those concerns above securing peace in the region, RAW STORY has learned.

[snip]

Task Force 20 and other units

The primary operational team responsible for the early activity on the ground in Iraq was Task Force 20, which was comprised of CIA, FBI, Green Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group. Task Force 20 consisted of roughly a 40-man assault team and a private aviation unit provided by Special Operations Command. Sources believe this was the team tasked with the three objectives of securing the fallen pilot, the weapons, and the dictator.

Other groups operating at this same time included the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a unit of roughly 900 specialists, made up of smaller tactical teams, who followed on the heels of TF20. Judith Miller was embedded with one of the units of the 75th.

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

But the lines between what were considered sanctioned forces and those considered almost as rogue units began to blur shortly after the invasion. Whether this was done deliberately to misrepresent official military, CIA, and other operations missions in the region, or whether this confusion stems from a lack of coordination remains unknown.

[snip]

Sources raised most concern about an alleged off-book 4-5 man team which operated in the summer through the fall of 2003. What this team was doing and under whose authority it operated is unclear.

Yet at least one source close to the UN Security Council tells RAW STORY that the smaller team was acting on behalf of Office of Special Plans and Defense Department leadership, specifically under the guidance of Feith and in tandem with Cambone.

[snip]

Secret team looked to ‘solve’ WMD problem?

This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.

“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.

Former and current US intelligence officers explain that such forensics is essential and would have in fact proved if a weapons stash found was using Iraqi methodology. [snip]

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Larisa, Part Five, jan11:

"Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"

Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.

The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot. It later emerged that the Iranian exile was trying to collect money for his tales, sources say.

By all credible accounts, the source of this dubious tale was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who used middle-men and cut-outs to create the appearance of several sources. Ghorbanifar played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to take down the Reagan administration, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan militants.

[snip]

"Ali provided information that indicated Iranian intelligence had sent a team to Baghdad to extract highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) from a stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein," one intelligence source said.

Ali asserted that an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program, sources say.

Ghorbanifar said "the team successfully extracted the stockpile but on the way back to Iran contracted radiation poisoning," one source remarked.

[snip]

Sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase. The question of motive, however, seems to either have been entirely missed or simply glossed over.

[snip]

Neoconservative Leeden explains meetings

Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence, Iranian nationals and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special plans.

Ledeen was consulting for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq.

[snip]

According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December of 2003, Ledeen was a paid consultant to the National Security Council at the time of the meeting. Risen reports that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background.

The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief or the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler.

Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor.

[snip]

The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen.

[snip]

Ledeen says his source then went on to explain that the "stash" was buried in an underground facility and recounted, much like Weldon did, that neither the CIA, the Defense Department or the State Department would listen to his concerns.

[snip]

Who arranged the meetings and their ultimate purpose remains unclear. One intelligence official, however, described the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking as follows: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand." [snip]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

larisa, Part 6, jan17 :

"American who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"

A controversial neoconservative who occasionally consulted for the Bush Defense Department has confirmed that he was a contributor to the Italian magazine Panorama, whose reporter first came across forged documents which purported that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Niger.

The bogus documents became the basis for the infamous sixteen words in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, in which he detailed his case for war. Their origin has been one of the most persistent mysteries in how American intelligence on Iraq was so wrong.

In an email to RAW STORY, occasional Bush foreign affairs advisor Michael Ledeen confirmed that he was, "several years ago," a regular contributor to Panorama. Leeden would not provide more specificity.

[snip]

A closer look at the series of overlapping relationships and events, however, suggests that Ledeen may have been connected, even if inadvertently, to the Niger forgeries.

Panorama has been in the crosshairs since late 2002, when one of its journalists, Elisabetta Burba, was handed a set of documents -- including contracts -- purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had purchased 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger. These documents were critical in supporting the administration's claims that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

[snip]

"The thing that was so embarrassing about the episode was not simply that the documents were forgeries, but that they were clumsy forgeries, as was so quickly determined by the IAEA," Pike said. "It is one thing to be taken in, but to be so easily taken in suggests either bewildering incompetence or intentional deception, or possibly both."

[snip]

After investigating the documents for an article and finding them to be suspect, Burba suggested to her editor, Carlo Rossella, that she take a trip to Niger to investigate further. Rossella diverted her to the U.S. embassy in Rome instead. She never ran the article. Burba dropped off the forgeries to the US embassy on Oct. 9, 2002.

But as Burba was investigating the veracity of the documents, head of Italian intelligence Nicolo Pollari was meeting with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

The meeting, which took place in September 2002, is alleged to be brokered by Ledeen, although the only U.S. official Pollari claims to have met is George Tenet, whom he also met in October 2001. Questioned about the meeting, Hadley has said no one involved in the meeting had "any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed."

Burba delivered the forgeries to the U.S. embassy a month after the Pollari and Hadley meeting.

Questions also surround Burba's attempts to authenticate the documents.

Speaking to RAW STORY, foreign intelligence sources say they wonder why she delivered documents she felt to be bogus to the U.S. embassy. These sources say there are two questions surrounding Burba's account: If she did indeed find the documents to be forgeries, why did she take them to an embassy as opposed to her own authorities -- and why did she deliver them to the U.S. embassy specifically?

It was Burba's editor at Panorama, Carlo Rossella, who allegedly told her to take the documents to the U.S. embassy, despite her own requests to travel to Niger to further investigate the claims.

[snip]

Rosella, intelligence sources say, could have been acting on the orders of Panorama's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's equivalent of Rupert Murdoch. Berlusconi -- who also happens to be the current Prime Minister -??? was a supporter of President Bush leading up to the war.

Berlusconi was not immediately available for comment. [snip]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larisa, Part Seven, jan 30 :

"Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"

The second part of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence is still being held up by an internal Pentagon investigation of Douglas Feith, one of the war's leading architects, RAW STORY has learned.

[snip]

More broadly, a RAW STORY investigation has found that Feith's access to classified information and his alleged wrongdoing can likely be laid at the feet of more senior officials in the Bush Administration -- namely Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who would have had to have overruled Pentagon background checks to reissue Feith's clearances after he was booted from the National Security Council for allegations of espionage in the mid 1980s.

[snip]

Senate and intelligence sources say that although the Phase II investigation into Iraq pre-war intelligence is stalled, the real issue is a "revolving door" policy which allowed a coterie of Iraq war hawks to shuttle in and out of the Pentagon despite their involvement in myriad intelligence-related scandals.

At the heart of the Senate Intelligence Committee's delay is the fact that Feith and the Defense Department refuse to provide documents and witnesses to the Committee. Senate sources say that Feith and the Pentagon have made the case that they will not share any information until the Senate provides them with full documentation of what the investigation is looking into, documentary evidence that Senate staff have acquired, and any other key findings that Feith's lawyers believe should be made available to them.

[snip]

But according to Senate sources, instead of forcing the release of documents, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KN) has deferred to the Pentagon's Inspector General, allowing the Pentagon to investigate itself, Feith and its clandestine Office of Special Plans.

[snip]

This lack of oversight has caused great concern among many former military and intelligence sources. One former intelligence source point to "a bigger can of worms" that a Feith investigation may unravel, pointing to the Israeli spy case -- in which Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed classified information to a pro-Israeli lobby -- and to the Defense Department's own inability to address security breaches.

Franklin and AIPAC

Much of the current concern over security breaches stems from the case of Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Larry Franklin, who has recently plead guilty to passing classified information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But Franklin seems to be a new face on the block when one considers the past involvement of higher level officials. Some intelligence sources have described Franklin as a "patsy" who is to take the fall for a much more insidious history and questionable activities by more senior officials.

The Franklin leak is hardly an isolated incident.

In 1978, the current head of the World Bank and former Deputy Defense Secretary Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was investigated for passing classified information through AIPAC, the same organization that Franklin is charged with passing state secrets to.

Wolfowitz, who at the time was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), was himself brought in by yet another high level alleged leaker, Richard Perle. Perle, too, is being investigated in the current AIPAC case.

Perle, who most recently served as chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board and quietly resigned after the AIPAC case broke, was alleged to have passed on highly classified information to the Israeli embassy when he was a foreign policy aide for Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson in 1970.

Perle was instrumental in bringing Feith into several positions, starting in the early 80s. By the mid-1980s Feith was relieved of his clearances for allegations of passing secrets to AIPAC, bringing the question of clearances full circle.

Rumsfeld seen to reinstate clearances

Despite their checkered past, Rumsfeld's Pentagon reissued clearances to Feith, Perle and Wolfowitz. Clearances were also issued to several of Feith's consultants, some of whom were major players in the Iran Contra scandal.

[snip]

Feith's team of consultants included such Iran Contra luminaries as Michael Ledeen and his go-to Iran arms merchant, Manucher Gorbanifar.

One former intelligence source said only an official of Rumsfeld's seniority could reissue clearances after they had been revoked. [snip]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larisa, Part Eight, feb13:

"Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say"
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.

[snip]

The damages

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.

[snip]

One former counterintelligence official described the CIA's reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: "[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public," the source said. "They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed."

The source described the findings of the assessment as showing "significant damage to operational equities."

[snip]

Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to "ten years" in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson's identity.

A.Q. Khan

While Plame's work did not specifically focus on the A.Q. Khan ring, named after Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the network and its impact on nuclear proliferation and the region should not be minimized, primarily because the Khan network was the major supplier of WMD technology for Iran.

[snip]

The United States forced the Pakistan government to dismiss Khan for his proliferation activities in March of 2001, but he remains largely free and acts as an adviser to the Pakistani government.

[snip]

"It slowly dawned on them that the collaboration between Pakistan, North Korea and Iran was an ongoing and serious problem," Pike said. "It was starting to sink in on them that it was one program doing business in three locations and that anything one of these countries had they all had."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan became the United States' chief regional ally in the war on terror.

The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration. [snip]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, great work by Larisa (and Raw Story), can you join the dots?

The penny hasn't quite dropped for me.

I've long argued that Brewster Jennings was intentionally outed. Let's presume that is true. The three relevant questions seem to be: 1) by whom? 2) why? 3) why in July 2003?

I'll try to unravel it all in a later post.

time to psst

The week is but young, time to psst

Hastert, Turkey & Livingston

In Sibel's response to the Hastert letter in VF - She specifically refers to both the ATC and Livingston:

"7) In the VF article Hastert’s spokesman says that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. [American-Turkish Council] or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.”:

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)?

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)?"

She's not being particularly coy here - and I'm pretty sure that this is somehow connected to this odd statement she made last month which set off a flurry of speculation:

"He (Bob Livingston) is charging $1.2m - he's charging Turkey - and this is not the government of Turkish Republic, this is umm - who are these people who are paying him $1.2m per year? to do what? that is the question."

The FARA forms specify that the official client is the Turkish Embassy - is it possible that some of the Embassy's financing comes from somewhere other than the Turkish Government? I would have assumed not - but perhaps the embassy has some 'external' fundraising. Even if that was the case, I would have assumed that the Turkish Govt had some oversight of the Embassy's budget, and therefore was at least aware of the big chunks of money being shovelled at Livingston (and similarly Feith and Perle's IAI)

In the comments here, some sugegsted that maybe it was the the Turkish military who was financing the lobbying expense, or perhaps the ATC (and/or ATAA et al). Sibel's comments above suggest that the ATC et al may have been the vehicle for bribing Hastert - it's possible that the same groups were the vehicle for paying Livingston and Perle/Feith.

I know that Turkey has been through some tough financial times in the past decade, but I absolutely don't believe that Turkey couldn't have come up with say $20million to pay for 'lobbying' expenses in DC if required (as has been suggested), therefore we can probably assume that if the ATC is paying the Turkish Embassy in order to shovel money at Hastert and Livingston et al, then it is for purposes other than for the specific benefit of Turkey - that is, the money from the ATC is to benefit the ATC (or more specifically, to benefit certain members of the ATC).

The FBI has the answer to all these questions, recorded, translated and transcribed - it sure would be helpful if they let us in on their secrets.

FWIW, "Friends of Bob Livingston PAC" doled out $310,000 in the years 2000 to 2006, and in the same period, the Livingston Group PAC handed out $450,000 - and it was generally spread far and wide (amongst Republicans)

cross-posted at Disclose, Denny

more on snoopy-gate

* everyone is getting excited by the Witchita Eagle slamming Pat Roberts in an editorial:

"So it's troubling that Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is fast gaining the reputation in Washington, D.C., as a reliable partisan apologist for the Bush administration on intelligence and security controversies.

We hope that's not true. But Roberts' credibility is on the line.

From Abu Ghraib abuses to secret CIA detainee prisons to the Valerie Plame affair, critics say, Roberts has become a dependable shill for the White House, ever ready to shield Bush policy from criticism and ever willing to compromise Congress' legitimate oversight role.

[snip]

What's bothering many, though, is that Roberts seems prepared to write the Bush team a series of blank checks to conduct the war on terror, even to the point of ignoring policy mistakes and possible violations of law.

That's not oversight -- it's looking the other way."

* glenn:

"Every day brings more conflicts, more disputes, more internecine fighting among Republicans. Indeed, Republicans are all fighting with each other on virtually every aspect of this (Snoopy) scandal - when have we ever seen that?

Just review media reports on this scandal over the last 24 hours alone. Does this sound like an Administration that welcomes this scandal as something that is politically beneficial? Does this sound like a scandal that is dying?"

* DemFromCT @ TNH:

"In fact, this whole right wing media notion that this is a 'winning issue' for the WH is just so much hot air. It's interesting that the myth of the WH being invincible on national security issues is beginning to get punctured. As a matter of course, it will depend on Republicans to do some of the damage, since they're the party in power and the President's own. But lame duck symptoms are creeping in everywhere, and will only accelerate the closer we get to 2006. That's what happens when you're stuck in miserable failure territory in the polls."

making fun of matalin

* everyone is in an uproar about the UAE/ports/p&o thing - which is absurd. ummm 95+% of containers dont get searched anyway and ton upon ton of drugs gets imported all the time. der. i love the saying that the best way to import WMD would be to hide it in a bale of marijuana

* Maureen Farrell has a ripper 2-parter about 'conspiracy theories' - one, two

* Jeffrey St. Clair has a nice extract (from his book at Counterpunch) about Cambone - it ends thusly: "As Rumsfeld's hatchetman, Cambone has become so hated and feared inside the Pentagon that one general told the Army Times: "If I had one round left in my revolver, I'd take out Stephen Cambone". This raises the concept of fragging to an entirely new level. "

* everyone is making fun of matalin after MTP - arianna joins the fray: "The impact of her appearance was to make the whole story seem even less under control than having a beer and shooting your friend in the face." and "Then there was Mary's use -- twice -- of the bizarre term "presumption of accident," which was never explained, but which wouldn't be a bad slogan for the entire administration." there's more... (link)

Sibel: 911 blueprints and building composites

Holy shit. I'd never noticed this before...

This from Awesome Scott Horton's interview with Sibel, August 22, 2005:

Sibel: I had this press conference last summer and together with 25 national security experts. These sort of people from NSA, CIA, FBI. And we provided the public during this press conference with a list of witnesses that had provided direct information, direct information. Some had to do with finance of al-Qaeda. These are people from NSA, CIA, and FBI to the 9/11 Commission, and the 9/11 Commission omitted all of this information, even though some of this information had been established as fact. One of them had to do with certain informants in April 2001. This informant provided very specific information about the attacks. The other had to do with certain information the FBI had in July and August 2001, where blueprints and building composites of certain skyscrapers were being sent to certain Middle Eastern countries...

(It isn't clear from the context whether that is something that she personally overheard, or if it came from one of the other whistleblowers, or if she heard one, but not the latter)

For the sake of argument, let's assume that she's talking about the WTC. Why would Osama's cave-dwellers want blueprints and building composites?

They could barely fly planes - so it wasn't a matter of pin-pointing a weak spot in the infrastructure - and even if they could do that, the (dodgy) NIST report basically explained the (identical) collapse of the buildings because the planes somehow stripped the buildings of the fire-retardants at crucial points, leading to the 'pancaking' of the buildings onto their footprint (as did WTC7) - certainly not something that anyone could plan.

Was alqaeda desperate to have the buildings collapse? Or would the effect of flying two passenger-laden into tall buildings and then exploding all over downtown sufficient?

If I'm reading Sibel correctly, it's difficult to imagine they would want the blueprints and building composites for any reason other than planting explosives to ensure that the buildings collapsed. And look at the timing: "July and August 2001" - just weeks before the attacks, and long after the plans (pilot training etc) was in place.


To complicate things just a little, here's an article written by Sibel, June 21, 2005:

Over four years ago, more than four months prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990 provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden. This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that: (1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four or five major cities; (2) the attack was going to involve airplanes; (3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States; and (4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months.
[snip]
In October 2001, approximately one month after the Sept. 11 attacks, an agent from one field office (city name omitted) re-sent a certain document to the FBI Washington field office, so that it could be retranslated. This special agent, in light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rightfully believed that, considering the suspect under surveillance and the issues involved, the original translation might have missed certain information that could prove to be valuable in the investigation of terrorist activities. After this document was received by the FBI Washington field office and retranslated verbatim, the field agent's hunch appeared to be correct. The new translation revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas (country name omitted)...."

Most likely, these blueprints and building composites were sent both in April, and in "July and August 2001 " and we actually have two different, corroborating accounts. In the first quote at the top, Sibel points to both the April intercept and a July/August intercept.

Regardless, the question remains - why were the plotters of 911 interested in blueprints and the construction materials of these skyscrapers? And perhaps even more interesting, why did they wait until their plot was well underway to source this information - presumably as some sort of afterthought?

(One other issue that I've been meaning revisit forever is that Sibel refers to the "targeting four or five major cities" - I have no idea what happend to that plot, and I haven't seen anyone even raise the issue in regard to Sibel's case.)

Abramoff, Kidan & Boulis

remember not long ago when the repugs kept saying that they were more scared of abramoffal than traitorgate - we need to remember that there's a lot more than lobbying and indian casinos involved.

Josh has this:

"Back in September, Big Tony was arrested at his home in Howard Beach, New York and later transferred down to Florida where he is now awaiting trial for Boulis' murder. During that time, beside visits from family and attorneys, Big Tony received only one visit.

Who? Right. Adam Kidan."

Hopsicker offers this:

"Because whatever else Abramoff is remembered for, he is sure to go down in history as the man who gambled the reputation and prestige of the national Republican Party on the uncertain outcome of a murder trial that Court TV's Nancy Grace should really sink her teeth into, placing the GOP squarely in the middle of somebody's deadly earnest Mob War.

To get some idea of the immensity of Mr. Abramoff's accomplishment, one need only picture Ed Meese and Dick Cheney going to the mattresses.

Nothing less than the future of the GOP rides on the uncertain outcome of a murder trial in Florida this Spring of three men accused of the gangland style slaying of the one man who stood in the way of Jack Abramoff's ascension into, if not heaven, then at least the realm of the Titans: Sun Cruz gambling czar Gus Boulis."

Speaking of mobbed up, let's not forget our good friend Mr Hastert:

"DAVID SHUSTER: "But the Speaker himself may be in some political trouble. Abramoff held fundraisers for Hastert. And after one event at Abramoff's restaurant that raised $21,000, the House Speaker sent a letter to Interior Secretary Gayle Norton pressuring her to stop a casino in Louisiana. That new casino would have competed with an Abramoff client."" (link)

and

" House Speaker Dennis Hastert became the latest lawmaker to dump campaign contributions from clients of high-flying lobbyist Jack Abramoff, giving about $70,000 to charity Tuesday." (link)

Apparently Denny was so concerned about 'appearances' that he was happy to depart ways with $70,000 - but he isn't so worried about appearances that he is hoping to ride out the VF bribery claims when all he has to do is disclose his campaign contributions - and he doesn't even have any excuse for not disclosing...

authorisation to shoot down the planes on 911

* further to my recent post where Newsweek states that Cheney didnt really have any authorisation from Preznit Blinky to shoot down the plane on 911, this isn't really new news - but it was just interesting to see some of the detail in print. IIRC, condi sort of half-pretended that she overheard Cheney talking to Blinky but didnt quite hear what was said, and there was someone else who half-made the same half-claim - or something like that. (was it Karen? or maybe even lynne cheney? i cant remember, and it doesnt really matter). The interesting thing of course is why he made up that lie - many speculate that the plane was in fact shot down, and i'm inclined to believe that - not least because the LetsRoll thing sounds exactly like it came outta the same prop-shop that gave us Jessica Lynch et al.

Damien in the comments pointed to something that i didnt know (by Prof. David Ray Griffin):

"The Commission also claims that people in the Pentagon had no idea that an aircraft was heading in their direction until shortly before the Pentagon was struck. But this claim was contradicted by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, in open testimony given to the Commission itself. Mineta testified that at 9:20 that morning, he went down to the shelter conference room (technically the Presidential Emergency Operations Center) under the White House, where Vice President Cheney was in charge. Mineta then said:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out." "The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to "the plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

When Mineta was asked by Commissioner Timothy Roemer how long this conversation occurred after he arrived, Mineta said: "Probably about five or six minutes," which, as Roemer pointed out, would mean "about 9:25 or 9:26."

According to the 9/11 Commission, no one in our government knew that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36 so there was no time to shoot it down. But the Commission had been told by Mineta that the vice president knew at least 10 minutes earlier, at 9:26. The 9/11 Commission dealt with Mineta's testimony in the same way it dealt with almost everything else that threatened its story--by simply ignoring it in the final report.

This testimony by Mineta was a big threat not only because it indicated that there was knowledge of the approaching aircraft at least 12 minutes before the Pentagon was struck, but also because it implied that Cheney had issued stand-down orders. Mineta himself did not make this allegation, to be sure. He assumed, he said, that "the orders" mentioned by the young man were orders to have the plane shot down. Mineta's interpretation, however, does not fit with what actually happened: The aircraft was not shot down. That interpretation, moreover, would make the story unintelligible: If the orders had been to shoot down the aircraft if it got close to the Pentagon, the young man would have had no reason to ask if the orders still stood. His question makes sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected--not to shoot down the aircraft. The implication of Mineta's story is, therefore, that the attack on the Pentagon was desired."

That's interesting for a few reasons, not least cos they didnt tell Rumsfeld till after the plane hit the building - lucky he was on the safe side of the building. But it's also interesting juxtaposed against Cheney's claim that he had authority to shoot down the LetsRoll plane.

Why they hate the New York Times

* via ron, Jay Rosen takes a walk through cheney's behaviour in shooting-gate. jay gets it wrong, mostly. He's somewhat correct in saying that the focus on cheney meant that the press wasn't focussing on other important issues, despite FNC's 'slow-news-week' meme. But Jay is wrong in his main thesis which is:

"The way I look at it, Cheney took the opportunity to show the White House press corps that it is not the natural conduit to the nation-at-large; and it has no special place in the information chain. Cheney does not grant legitimacy to the large news organizations with brand names who think of themselves as proxies for the public and its right to know."

here's the thing (and this goes beyond shootergate), the egadmin hates any institution that can possibly undermine it - so they actively, cleverly, take potshots at any institution that might be critical of them. It's the same with ivory-tower types, elites, newspapers, foreign govts, the UN, logic, mathematics, LeftBlogistan - even "washington."

That's why we see such nonsense just this morning where Matalin (and everyone) is pushing the meme that "real america doesnt care about this", and its why Gigot " was looking at it from outside the Beltway," and we get Bobo's World, and we get "French-looking" John Kerry, and Oil4Food and the Campus Professor Watch Lists etc etc.

The purpose is that redvoters are primed, in advance, to be able to discount any criticism, from anywhere, about their Codpiece-in-Chief Who Can Do No Wrong. And of course, we see the same thing, amply demonstrated by Glenn earlier in the week, in the immediate expulsion of any Conservative who takes a look in the Ugly Mirror and realises the horror of their ways, and is instantly tarnished as a liberal or something else.

mary matalin

* xymphora has what looks like an important post up about Able Danger - although I'm not sufficiently familiar with the details to have anything clever to say about it, and i can't make any sense of the AD thing anyway... The key line seems to be: "Since the revelations on Able Danger prove that the story of Atta must be a fraud, the Official Story must be a fraud. The 9-11 Commission knew about the Able Danger story, but omitted it from their report, obviously because it didn't match the Official Story."

* xymphora: "The Blogger spell checker doesn't recognize the word 'blog'."
funny. i should probably use spellcheck, but obviously dont. do you mind?

* digby & and the nyt introduce tristero (link)

* i mentioned Matalin's hacktacularness earlier when i was watching MTP. Wolcott has more, and better: "Even without the immature pouting and pissy expression, Matalin would have been a car wreck in repose: With a bad haircut topping a mistaken facelift and a ghastly floral pin that looked like spray-painted aluminum, she looked like the Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot. Maybe defending the defensible is getting to her, and the acid reflux has gone to her brain." (c&l have the vids - one & two)
Matalin did make a good point, that it's inconceivable that the secretservice would let people drink and hunt around the veep - but the flipside to that is that they are arguing that hunting accidents are a dime-a-dozen - to the extent that is true, then cheney shouldnt be hunting at all.

Raskin on impeachment

Jamin B. Raskin is a professor of Constitutional Law at American University and Director of its Program on Law and Government. He is also a Democratic candidate for the Maryland State Senate in the 2006 elections.

Here's what he has to say about impeachment:

"The key is to think of impeachment not as a single event but as a series of steps to restore the rule of law and reassert the practices of popular democracy that have been trampled ever since the Republican Party and five collusive Supreme Court justices derailed the presidential election in 2000. We should follow these three specific steps to restore constitutional law and order:

1. Moral Impeachment: One meaning of impeachment is to charge with malfeasance in office, but the other is “To challenge or discredit.” We can debunk the administration's policies all over America, especially with the excellent work done by Rep. John Conyers and his staff on the fraudulent rush to war. Institutions with moral authority like universities, municipalities, unions and churches should conduct their own “Impeach-Ins” to impeach the various frauds and policy deceptions of the administration. The Federalist Society and others who support Bush should be invited to defend the constitutionality of Bush's actions.

2. Electoral Impeachment: We should nationalize the coming elections and use them to “impeach the Republican Party,” which has been captured by its most extreme elements and now poses a real threat to the Republic. The Abramoff-soaked Republicans in Congress have presided over dangerous political corruption, deficit spending, violation of civil liberty, and military and national security lawlessness. The 2006 elections must become a nationwide referendum on corruption and restoration of the rule of law at every level of government.

3. Congressional impeachment: If the Democrats recapture Congress or at least one chamber in 2006 and evidence of the administration’s law-breaking continues to mount, the moral, political and legal predicate will have been laid to introduce articles of impeachment that can actually be heard and passed. If President Clinton can be impeached (though not convicted) for lying about sex, why can't President Bush be impeached for lying about weapons of mass destruction, for spying illegally on Americans, for violating the Constitution and international treaty obligations, and for criminal dereliction of duty before, during and after 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina?

It is ironic that the House impeachment of President Clinton proved so easy when his “high crimes” were so base and trivial. Meantime, the massive and fundamental offenses against law and constitutional order committed by this administration are only beginning to surface in polite conversation on Capitol Hill. But all of this just shows the truth of Gerald Ford's statement when he was a congressman that an impeachable offense is whatever the House of Representatives “considers it to be at a given moment in history.” It is important that we not allow impeachment to become a mere partisan tool for harassing the president but rather the guarantee of constitutional law and order.

In American politics, our sense of what is possible and what is practical can turn on a dime, and we, the people, are usually the force that makes it happen.

patriotism vs nationalism

* simbaud points to A Tiny Revolution where Jonathon notes that he had never heard of the most humiliating point in Turkish history - the newly famous 'bag incident' from The Valley of the Wolves. good point. I hadn't heard of it either. as Jonathon says:

"In other words, it's possible for America to do things to other countries that they consider "the most humiliating moment" in their history...and even anti-American America-haters like myself can't be bothered simply to know it happened."

( i should visit ATR more often - Jonathon was sufficiently kind to say this about me a while back)

* maha has a nice riff on patriotism vs nationalism - she figgers the difference is one of responsibility.

* there was great new line from Fox News today - the reason the media focusing on cheney shooting someone was because it was a slow news week. d'oh. shooting-gate buried how many serious stories this past week? the katrina hearings? snoopgate hearings? abu ghraib photos? patriot act? sheesh.

* Tim over at Scott's place: "Of course, American readers, shouldn’t feel too bad. Things could be worse. You could be in Australia. Although there is some dispute about the methodology used in the numbers, it seems the odds of being snooped down under are between 3 times and 20 times the US per capita rate, excluding illegal NSA-gate taps of course." (link)

* mary matalin is hacktacular

it's not illegal if the president does it

* mark kleiman has some more entires in the new republican dictionary (link)

* laura: "Eye-opening Newsweek profile of Cheney's world. The last page sticks out:

... Around 9:35 on the morning of 9/11, Cheney was lifted off his feet by the Secret Service and hustled into the White House bunker. Cheney testified to the 9/11 Commission that he spoke with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that appeared headed toward Washington. (The plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a brave revolt by the passengers.) But a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events."

it's not illegal if the president does it...


* glenn:

"This 50-state polling chart compiled by USA Survey is quite telling. Bush's approval rating is above 50% in only 6 states in the entire country, and Texas is not one of them. In 40 out of 50 states -- 80% of the country -- more people disapprove of Bush than approve of him.

Most revealing is Bush's intense and pervasive unpopularity in Ohio, the state which swung the election in his favor. People in Ohio disapprove of Bush's performance by an amazingly lopsided margin of 37-60%. Apparently, they're not happy that they have no jobs, their kids have no health insurance, their neighbors have been stuck and are being killed in an increasingly unpopular, endless and senseless war in Iraq, and the President is surrounded by cronyism and corruption and thinks he has the power to break the law. But at least gay couples can't get married, so that's good."

Hastert's War on Drugs

Speaking of Hastert and the War on Drugs (tm) - I'd forgotten about an episode from Sep 2004.

Here's Jack Schafer of Slate in an article called "Dennis Hastert on Dope - Two heartbeats from the presidency, an absolute nut job":

"We enter the Fox News Sunday interview transcript just after host Chris Wallace introduces the subject of 527s, such as MoveOn.org and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Hastert starts complaining about the power flexed by non-political party groups:

HASTERT: Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, "reform," you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups.

You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where—if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. And I—

WALLACE (interrupting): Excuse me?

HASTERT: Well, that's what he's been for a number years—George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.

WALLACE: You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?

HASTERT: I'm saying I don't know where groups—could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know. The fact is we don't know where this money comes from.

Before, transparency—and what we're talking about in transparency in election reform is you know where the money comes from. You get a $25 check or a $2,500 check or $25,000 check, put it up on the Internet. You know where it comes from, and there it is."

Even Chris Wallace couldn't believe the hatchet job that Hastert was performing. In fact, I imagine that Hastert had to swallow hard when he drew the short straw to pull out the knife at the GOP strategy meeting that week.

Hastert could hardly complain that he probably wasn't the man for the job, given that he himself had taken money from the Turkish drug mafia - could he? (actually, he could probably brag about it and everyone else at the table would have nodded silently)

Apparently Denny got all defensive about it - here's Josh Marshall a few days later:

"You'll remember a couple days ago we noted House Speaker Denny Hastert suggesting that George Soros may get his money from drug cartels or other such groups.

I've talked to reporters who've asked Hastert this around the convention hall. And he's been aggressively restating the 'charge.' I'm told he even shoved his finger in the chest of one of them when repeating it.

Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically "either substantiate these claims -- which you canont do because they are false -- or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation."

protesting too much, and all that.

Hastert was forced to respond to Soros:

"Dear Mr. Soros:
[snip]
I never implied that you were a criminal and I never would, that's not my style. I will state clearly that I believe your agenda is dangerous, extreme and wrong for America. I also believe that 527 political organizations set a dangerous precedent for political discourse because we don't know where the money comes from. For all we know, funding for some of the 527s might come from foreign sources or worse. Giving special interests more power and less accountability, while taking power away from political parties is a sad, but inevitable result of the campaign finance law that we enacted into law in the last session of Congress. It is my hope that we will take more effective action in the future to bring more transparency to the political process, as we take equally effective action to limit the power of the special interests."

see chutzpa: (Yiddish) unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity

I don't particularly want to focus on the drug element at the moment - but let's look at two of the above statements:

HASTERT: transparency—and what we're talking about in transparency in election reform is you know where the money comes from. You get a $25 check... put it up on the Internet. You know where it comes from, and there it is.

and

HASTERT: For all we know, funding... might come from foreign sources or worse.

Anyone disagree with that? That sounds pretty reasonable right? "You get a $25 check... put it up on the Internet. " Plain as day, in his own words. I can imagine that statement might find its way into the Vanity Fair LTE and elsewhere in our campaign.

I agree with Mr Hastert - transparency is important, as a matter of course, and even more so when there are serious allegations of wrongdoing. David Rose's article made some very specific allegations - and Mr Hastert could presumably have debunked those allegations quite easily by disclosing his campaign contibution data - for all of his PACs, from 1996 to 2002 - but he refused.

Think about that - Hastert preferred to weather allegations that he was in the pocket of 'foreign sources or worse' rather disclose all his campaign contributions. Let's be clear, the only reason the law was written such that it excluded sub$200 donations was to minimize the required paper work. There's no suggestion that sub$200 donors have any right to privacy or any such thing - in fact, many politicians open their books completely - so Hastert doesn't have any defense, other than claiming 'preposterous' at every available opportunity.

Even when the tenacious Melanie Sloan at CREW filed a complaint with FEC, Hastert proactively stripped relevant information from the data that he sent to FEC - surely it would have been simpler to hand over the information, complete and intact, rather than *ahem* 're-purpose' it for FEC.

He sure is acting like a man with something to hide.

disclose, denny

crossposted at Disclose, Denny

Hastert's finances

another point from miguel - Hastert has never been rich. His personal finance details can be found here at opensecrets - his net worth is measured in the hundreds of thousands - a rank pauper by congressfolk standards. This is not surprising, given that he spent "16 years of teaching and coaching at Yorkville High School." (link)

One possible implication of this is that he was possibly susceptible to "tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information." (link)

Putting two kids through school can be kinda expensive, huh Denny?

The other possible implication is that Hastert didn't actually receive, at least not directly, the purported $500,000 that was apparently the price discussed for pulling the Armenian Genocide resolution. Of course, just because the money doesn't appear in his official statements doesn't mean that it was never paid. There are plenty of ways to hide the money - for example, in the freezer, or in french commodes, or by employing family members, or many other variations.

With the family member option in mind, I had a quick look at Hastert's family. As it happens, he has two sons (this from 2002):

"Joshua, 27, the oldest, in 1999 ran a record label and record store in DeKalb known locally as Seven Dead Arson, a name inspired by a news headline. After Hastert became speaker, Joshua moved to Washington and became a lobbyist, one of the rare ones who work the Capitol with a pierced ear. This summer, Joshua Hastert was named a principal member of the lobbying firm Federal Legislative Associates.

Joshua Hastert says his father has not changed much as speaker. He says key to his father’s style is “making sure everyone’s side is heard.”

His younger brother Ethan, 24, just wrapped up a stint as an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and is now at Northwestern University’s law school."

I wouldn't normally like to bring family into this - but given that one son worked for Cheney, and another is a newbie lobbyist, I figure they might be worth a closer look given that both Cheney and nepotism in lobbying seems to be the flavours of the day.

This from WaPo in 2003:

"Joshua Hastert, who represents high-tech and small businesses at Federal Legislative Associates, will not approach his father but has not ruled out lobbying other House leaders, Hastert spokesman John Feehery said."

Then:

"Hastert's son jumped to a bigger firm last year, Podesta Mattoon, where the Speaker's close adviser, Daniel Mattoon, is a name partner"

And then this from the Boston Globe last month:

"The website promoting the lobbying services of Joshua Hastert is enticing: ''Josh has long-standing relationships with numerous offices on Capitol Hill and in the administration as well as a unique understanding of the legislative process."

Unique, indeed. Hastert is the son of J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, making him one of dozens of high-powered lobbyists with family connections to members of Congress. Joshua Hastert, who says he does not lobby House Republican leaders, is registered as a lobbyist for clients ranging from Amgen, a biotech company, to Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor."

As noted, nepotism and lobbying in DC go together like a horse and carriage, love & marriage... so nothing unique there at all.

Ethan graduated Northwestern University’s law school in 2005 - his other claim to fame was in 2004:

"(AP) -- A son of House Speaker Dennis Hastert was arrested Saturday on charges including driving under the influence of alcohol, the speaker's office said.

Ethan Hastert was cited for several offenses, including DUI, in the early-morning hours, according to a press release from Hastert's office.

"It's regrettable, but as always, Ethan enjoys my love and full support in the face of this difficult situation,'' Hastert, R-Ill., said in the statement. "Now, we must respect the legal process while this matter is resolved.''

Hastert's spokesman, John McGovern, declined to elaborate, referring questions to police."

I'm not sure what the 'several offenses' were - for some reason this story didn't get picked up very much. It was one of those AP stories that wasnt picked up on the wires - I only found one mention of it. (although the NYT carried it )

I hope he was doing drugs - although the thought of any Hastert at a rave with his shirt off is somewhat disconcerting - mostly because:

"Chairman Hastert had broad oversight for the Departments of State, Defense and Justice, as well as the nation's War on Drugs..."

in any case, Hastert probably could have done with some extra funds in those early years.

another question that Miguel asked:

"why did the Turks start putting Hastert on the payroll in the 1996-1997 time frame? Hastert did not become House Speaker until 1999. Before then, he was Chief Deputy Whip. I believe Dick Armey was Majority Leader and Tom Delay was Whip.

Why did the Turkish mafia guys choose Hastert instead of Delay, Armey or Gingrich?"

I don't know the answer to that question. Maybe because it was cheap? Maybe they already had Delay, Armey & Gingrich on the payroll? Maybe because Hastert was involved in the War on Drugs(TM)? I'm not sure when his involvement in the WoD began - perhaps Hastert joined the WoD at the request of the Turkish mafia who relied on the 'War' for their profits...

cross-posted at Disclose, Denny

Randy Evans and FEC

One other thing that i noticed is that Randy Evans also represents HFCC "in connection with all matters pending before the FEC" - we must presume that the VF response was at least partially related to the response to FEC - probably the content, and perhaps the timing.

However the content of the letter to VF is substantially different to the 'justifications' offered in the affadavit to FEC (at least as represented in FEC's response). That strikes me as being really odd (as does the timing).

They are obviously a lot smarter, or a lot stupider, than we are. I can barely think of a plausible scenario.

If I was Evans, it would make sense to respond to VF immediately after the article was published - but after that window of opportunity had passed, it would be best to keep quiet. Having said that, almost by the time that the magazine had hit the newstands, he must have been aware of CREW's complaint. Similarly, if I was Evans, I'd probably make it my business to know when FEC was releasing their response to CREW - and I'd probably hope to have a pretty good understanding of whether there was likely to be anything damaging in the FEC report. But his actions don't seem to reflect any such thing...

Some conspiracy-minded folk might argue that Evans' absurd response in VF was an intentional attempt to fan some flames, only to have them doused by the FEC report - but to the extent that Hastert was seen to be exonerated (ie the aforementioned 'dousing') by the FEC report, then surely a better strategy would have been to let the exoneration speak for itself, without flaming the suspicion in advance with such obvious nonsense. Having said all that, if it wasn't for Miguel and I, the strategy would very probably have been successful - but if so, that would more likely have been by accident, rather than design - they still would have been better off just to let the FEC report speak for itself.

What are the other possibilities?

Is it possible that they were nervous about the FEC report because they were concerned about a possible negative outcome and were trying some pre-emptive media strike? It's difficult to imagine a scenario where that makes any logical/strategic sense.

Is it possible that Evans originally tried to get VF to publish a letter that was full of garbage (akin to the HFCC response to FEC) that VF knew to be false and they refused? again, difficult to imagine - and if it was the case, Evans' best game would have been to accept their refusal to print and just shutup. In fact, judging by the original Rose article, the lawyers were all over the story from the beginning - there sure is a lot missing from the article, and Sibel said that Hastert's camp was repeatedly offered the opportunity to input.

It would be kinda funny if FEC accepted Evans' nonsense response but VF wouldn't accept it, even in an LTE.

there's something happening here. what it is aint exactly clear.

crossposted at Disclose, Denny

Dallas Ingemunson

Miguel has made a few good points in the last couple of days - let me deal with a few in this post:

Miguel A):

"Hey, I just fond something else. The FEC report says Hastert's treasurer listed name and address of everyone making a contribution under $200. But NOT THE AMOUNT. One of the red flags would be amounts just under $200, such as a lot of contributions for $195. But since amounts are not listed, there is no way to evaluate.
[snip]
This is significant, if true, for it could render the list almost totally useless. You could not match the amounts on the list with the previously reported unitemized totals. Just as importantly, if you get a list of names that look suspicious, you cannot estimate how much each suspicious individuals might have donated. Does that make sense?"

Yep - sure does make sense. HFCC responded simply to the 'foreign names', 'foreign addresses' and 'foreign banks' claims - which are all largely irrelevant and are not responsive to the main claim.

Miguel B):

"The letter to CREW from the FEC says documents related to the case will be placed in the public record within 30 days. Should we wait for the 30 days to pass before filing the FOIA request?"

The law dealing with that is called the "Statement of Policy Regarding Disclosure of Closed Enforcement and Related Files" - details here (legalese warning).

Firstly, it isn't immediately obvious whether FEC will release all of the documents that they have - although I can't see any particular reason why they wouldn't.

As noted above, there isn't likely to be much useful in the documents that FEC has - just names and addresses, and it isn't obvious that would be of much assistance. It is possible that the list would also include the dates of the contributions which may be of some use/interest - specifically if we can identify periods of high activity outside of the 'annual events'.

Perhaps the best that we could hope for is to find some fake names and addresses. Also, we would learn the answer to how many names were listed on each page, which would answer the question I asked yesterday. Further, it is possible that HFCC made some supporting claims in their affadavit that were not mentioned in FEC's response to CREW.


Earlier, I asked:

"is it standard practice that the assistant treasurer would respond to a complaint of this nature? Or did they nominate her for the job so that she could correctly claim that the statement was true 'to her knowledge'?"

Miguel C):

"One issue you brought up is the Treasurer vs. Assistant Treasurer. Here is what FEC regs says about this issue:

"Assistant Treasurer

The Commission urges every committee to designate an assistant treasurer on its Statement of Organization. An assistant treasurer may assume the treasurer’s duties when the treasurer is unavailable or has resigned. 102.7(a)."

So the assistant treasurer is supposedly there when the Treasurer is unavailable. Kind of convenient that Hastert's treasurer wasn't around when it came time to sign the affadavit, huh?"

It sure does look a little convenient. Anyone have any thoughts?

Incidentally, FEC's response lists some dates in the meta-data of the report, although the meaning of them isnt entirely clear:

Date Complaint Filed: August 16, 05
Date of Notification: August 22, 2005
Last Response Received: Sep 7, 2005
Date Activated: Nov 7, 2005
Expiration of Statute of Limitations: (rolling from) Jan1 05 to Dec31 06

I presume that 'notification' means that HFCC was notified on that day, and that all responses from HFCC were received Sep 7, and perhaps FEC 'activated' an official investigation a month later (?). (alternatively, perhaps the initial back and forth was between CREW and FEC, and HFCC wasn't officially contacted till Nov 7 when the investigation was opened.)

Anyhow, for one reason or other, Treasurer Dallas Ingemunson wasn't available - either to write the affadavit or sign any of the documents - even though Dallas Ingemunson was personally named as a respondent in the affadavit. Incidentally, at least according to one political reporter, Dallas Ingemunson, is regarded as Hastert's "political godfather".

crossposted at Disclose, Denny

Duke Cunningham's “bribe menu”

* "Clinton's discussion about Lewinsky with Betty Currie immediately following his deposition in the Jones case became grounds for impeachment (suborning perjury). Cheney's discussion with the non-eyewitness witness GOP lobbyist Armstrong about his having just shot a man in the face -- and Armstrong's subsequent telephone call with Karl Rove -- well, that's just an attempt to be as accurate as possible before informing anyone, including the president, of what had happened." (link)

* reddhedd wanders over into our pasture: "Who was behind the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and why?" (thanks, larisa) (link)

* richard cohen. stupid and proud. jeebus. (link)

*

"Prosecutors recommended that disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham receive a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for his “stunning betrayal of the public trust,” according to a sentencing memorandum filed Friday.
[snip]
The prosecution's sentencing memorandum included a copy of a “bribe menu” written under the Congressional seal on Cunningham's office stationary. One column of figures represented the millions of dollars in contracts that could be “ordered” from Cunningham, according to prosecutors. The right column showed the amount of bribes Cunningham demanded in return." (link)

amazing. i wonder who he was talking to when he wore his wire...

Never play poker with Fitz

* Redhedd:

"Patrick Fitzgerald has filed his Consolidated Response to Team Libby's Discovery Motions. It's a 32-page response brief that covers all the motions filed thus far by Team Libby, for all of the myraid of discovery requests that they have made.
[snip]
I do wonder if Team Libby is fishing for some particular piece of information here -- potentially about someone who has testified adversely to Libby's or some other Administration official's interest. If there is some mole who has been feeding information to Fitz and his team, as some have speculated, this sort of fishing expedition might be one way to get a hint as to who that might be.
[snip]
Essentially, the entire response brief is one big "put up or shut up" from Fitz to Team Libby.
[snip]
One bit that amused me was on pages 28 and 29, wherein Fitz argues that Libby would not be entitled to information regarding Valerie Wilson's covert employment status unless he could show that he (Libby) had been privy to such documentary proof at the time that his alleged crimes were occurring. It's your basic "put up or shut up" response from Fitz -- but it requires that Libby either let it go (because he did not see such documentation, and thus admit that it has no relevence whatsoever to his state of mind at the time of indictment) or that Libby fesses up to knowing that she was covert (which would open a whole new level of speculation, now wouldn't it?) or that both sides will just keep on whistling past this issue altogether.

Never play poker with Fitz. That's all I'm saying."

is blogger working yet?

* josh has the Duke's court documents

* the AP has quite an honest headline (for them): "VP Accident Tale Filled With Discrepancies" - the lede wasnt bad either: "Dick Cheney said he didn't immediately disclose his hunting accident because he wanted the confusing details to come out right. Instead, authorized accounts came out slowly — and often still wrong." (link)


* RUmsfeld is becoming increasingly incoherent and dangerous: "Despite voicing concerns about the (pentagon's Lincoln propaganda) program, Rumsfeld condemned the U.S. news media's negative portrayal of it in a separate appearance Friday, saying such criticism has a "chilling effect" that discourages U.S. troops from finding creative ways to win hearts and minds abroad.
"The conclusion is drawn that there is no toleration for innovation," he said in an address before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York." (link)

rumsfeld: paranoid and delusional

i love the idea that RUmsfeld might not be able to sleep at night for fear of some arabs talking to each other - but at some point it becomes scary:

"(Reuters) -- The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday.

Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Pentagon chief said today's weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said.

"For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," Rumsfeld said, referring to old-fashioned U.S. retail stores and the online auction house respectively.

U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions, he said.

The Pentagon's propaganda machine still operates mostly eight hours a day, five or six days a week while the challenges it faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency."

It's also great to see Reuters call out "The Pentagon's propaganda machine "

the ghost of Harry Whittington...

apparently Blogger is eating posts. grrrr.

some of them are apparently even disappearing after they have been on the site for a while.

i'll try to keep a track of my posts and make sure they at least get published in the first place

so - apologies if things seem a little weird around here - maybe its the ghost of Harry Whittington...

update: holy shit - i didnt realise how bad the Blogger vaccuum was. i dont normally look at my blog - but i've just tried looking for a few separate things from yesterday that arent there. dammit.

hopefully Blogger will be able to restore them - apologies if things look sleepy around here. nothing of the sort...

update2: i might try to repost some of the things that seem to be missing - so if you see something that looks familar, thats why...

update3: it looks like every time i publish a new post, it simply overwrites the previous post. so i'll leave this explanation here, and will build the other posts in a different program, and then publish them all when Blogger comes back to life

falling out of love

oops - it's postsecret sunday saturday. im so late. they are having a vday special over there too.

osama is stupid - evil stupid

* simbaud, who has the good taste to be plugging Ron this week, and who has the wit to write a post about a mass pillow fight in SF and call it "Feeling a Little Down? Try Feeling a Little Down " also has the good sense to