Monday, February 19, 2007

the first step in the pardon campaign

* larry:
"Last year, I told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC that Libby's highly publicized defense-fund fundraiser was really the first step in the pardon campaign. Libby is a very rich man. He didn't need the defense fund. He needed the public rally with Mary Matalin types walking the virtual red carpet on the way in singing his praises as a great public servant. Fred Thompson, the senator-actor, did a version of this at the trial--showing up, giving "moral" support, then offering his TV prosecutor view of how unfair the Libby prosecution is. Look for the popular TV prosecutor to play an important role in the pardon campaign.

Libby knows more than his lawyers do about the next stage of his legal proceedings. Libby helped obtain the sleaziest pardon that Bill Clinton issued on his way out of the White House. Clinton pardoned Libby's client, the fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, over the unanimous objections of the White House staff. When Cheney hand-delivers Libby's pardon application to President Bush, who is going to object?"

* rudepundit:
""Quds force" is the new "U.N. Resolution 1441." That is, shit that sounds like the people saying it know what they're talking about. Bush mentioned it no less than a dozen times in the course of the press conference. It gave him power, man, to repeat "Quds force" like he understands the intricacies of the hierarchy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It's one of those "what the fuck?" things that we'll all learn because of how the White House defines it, rather than, say, people who don't want a pretext to start a war with Iran."

* scott interviews just about everyone. go check him out. bamford, bob watada, prather , giraldi , ellsberg, kwiatkowski.

* nyt:
"The American military has said that seven helicopters have been downed since Jan. 20, a figure that exceeds the total number of coalition aircraft shot down in 2006."

* larisa:
"In Turkey, someone had the really clever idea of running a TV show about the Gray Wolves, only more closely aligned with Turkish mafioso and Western interests (I wonder what they could have in common?) a group like Al Qaeda, who operate out of Turkey with the help of their neighborhood Gladio office. And with that, Turkey is officially welcomed into EU."
* (btw - i want to give an interim shout-out to the guestposters. more later)

1 comment:

Track said...

I love the way the Libby trial is covered by the corporate press as if it is disconnected from the rest of the Universe.

It's rather simple: The people who are running around calling people traitors for opposing their think tank escalation garbage...are the VERY SAME PEOPLE who fixed the intelligence and then proceeded to retaliate against anyone who called them on it. They also implemented occupation policies that helped create the insurgency.