Stephanie Says

Daily Kos Interviews Joseph Wilson

2005-02-09T11:08:00.000-05:00

(click the headline above for the link)

Daily Kos has been conducting a massive investigation on the fake WH "reporter" Jeff Gannon. Now Kos poster SusanG has posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the suject, as Gannon requested and got an interview with Wilson in 2003. Gannon is on the subpoena list in the Plame case, which is curious because he is not a journalist.

Conyers Holds Election Fraud Forum in OH

2004-12-11T20:42:00.000-05:00

______________________________

PRESS ADVISORY
Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
Fourteenth District, Michigan
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary
Dean, Congressional Black Caucus
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/index.html

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT:
December 10, 2004 Dena Graziano (202) 226-6888

REP. CONYERS, WATERS, TUBBS JONES, STRICKLAND, ALONG
WITH REV. JACKSON AND OHIO STATE SENATOR RAY
MILLER, TO HOLD 2004 ELECTION FORUM

Rep. John Conyers, Jr, and other Representatives along with Rev. Jesse Jackson will be holding a congressional forum in Columbus concerning new evidence of election irregularities and fraud in Ohio, the issue of Ohio electors meeting while recounts and litigation are pending,
and to discuss legislative and other responses to the problems.

WHAT: “2004 Election Forum”

WHEN: Monday, December 13th @ 10:30am

WHERE: Columbus City Hall, Columbus City Council Chambers
90 West Broad Street, Columbus, OH

WHO: Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Rep. Maxine Waters
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Rep. Ted Strickland
Ohio State Senator Ray Miller
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Founder Rainbow Push Coalition
Prof. Robert Fitrakis, Editor, The Free Press
Cliff Arnebeck, Arnebeck Associates
John Bonifaz, General Counsel, National Voting Rights Institute
Gregory Moore, Executive Director, NAACP National Voter Fund
Councilwoman Charleta Tavares

##JUD-108-12/10/04##
______________________________

GOP: Bin Laden tape a "little gift"

2004-10-30T20:17:00.000-04:00

Despicable.

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection. NY Daily News

Iraqi Nuclear Site Also Looted - Boston Globe

2004-10-28T14:31:00.000-04:00

This account parallels what happened at Al Qaqaa. Troops were NOT ordered to guard the nuclear facility at Tuwaitha, which was completely looted.

Boston Globe
Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith | October 27, 2004

.... "When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, 'I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon.' About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

"There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the US troops arrived."

* * * *

"Some of the looting continued for many months -- possibly into 2004. Using heavy machinery, organized gangs took apart, according to [an] IAEA [report this month], 'entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment.' This equipment could be anywhere. But one good bet is Iran, which has had allies and agents in Iraq since shortly after the US-led forces arrived.

"This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites."

NPR: Bush shows World Trade Center wreckage before his entrance at rallies

2004-10-23T20:47:00.000-04:00

link to audio + my transcript of that section:

scroll down

NPR

Bush, Kerry Trade Barbs in Pennsylvania, Ohio

At 00:45

Reporter:President Bush started the day in Pennsylvania, a state he has visited 41 times since taking office.

This morning he spoke in a hockey arena in Wilkes Barre.

Bush"Just seems like yesterday I was here in Wilkes Barre. But come to think of it, I was."

ReporterBut that folksy greeting quickly gave way to a speech that contained a sustained assault on John Kerry, portraying the Democrat as a man who won't do what is necessary to protect the nation.

Before the president took the stage, images from the World Trade Center wreckage played on the arena's giant TV screens.

CIA Report on 9/11 Suppressed by BushCO

2004-10-22T13:41:00.000-04:00

Who will stand up to these monsters?

October 19, 2004
Robert Scheer:
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

* * * *
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible." L.A. Times

Getting Closer

2004-10-15T15:28:00.000-04:00

Are we about to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs?

Rove Testifies Before Grand Jury in CIA Leak Investigation

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2003 — With election day getting closer the President's top advisor, Karl Rove, took time away from his duties to testify before a federal grand jury this morning. Rove appeared before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's name and testified for almost 2 and a half hours.

Rove declined to answer reporters' questions as he departed the federal courthouse and set off in a-non descript bronze colored midsize car. Rove was escorted out of the courthouse by two US Marshals and an unidentified man. Rove sat in the back seat of the car and immediately began making using his cell phone. - ABC News

"Stolen Honor" producer is a Bush appointee

2004-10-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

The owner of Sinclair's "Stolen Honor" production company is a Bush appointee. Surprise, surprise.

As originally posted at DU:

This is the address of Quantum Communications, the production company of "Stolen Honor":
Red, White and Blue Productions
C/O Quantum Communications
123 State St.
Harrisburg, PA 17101
Phone 717-213-4955
link

This is the man who owns Quantum Communications:
Mr. Charles R. Gerow
Law Offices of Charles R. Gerow
Reagan/Bush Campaign Field Staff, 1980
Reagan Alumni Association
Active involvement in numerous campaigns
Advance work in 6 Presidential campaigns
Alternate Delegate at Large, 1988
Dole for President, surrogate speaker,1996
Candidate for U.S. Congress
Lawyers for Bush, 2000
Principal, Quantum Communications
Adjunct faculty of several Pa. colleges
link

He ran for Congress as a Republican in 2000:
link

He was a Pennsylvania delegate to the GOP Convention in New York
"I don't like smoking bans. I'm a guy who believes in freedom," said Charlie Gerow, a cigar-smoker and delegate from Harrisburg, Pa. "Doesn't every civilized person enjoy cognac with a good cigar after dinner? I miss that here."
link

He's doesn't just own the production company, he's the publicist for "Stolen Honor":
The controversy over the anti-John Kerry ads aired by the swift boat vets has settled to a low boil, but the issues could take on new life and a new direction on September 9 with the premiere in Washington of a for-profit documentary called Stolen Honor. "I believe this is going to be the documentary of 2004," says Charlie Gerow, publicist for the film. "Forget about Michael Moore."
link

HE'S A BUSH APPOINTEE
The President intends to appoint Charles R. Gerow, of Pennsylvania, to be a Member of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Commission. (Recommendation submitted by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.)
link

If Bush Took a Mulligan on the Three Mistakes Question...

2004-10-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

If he weren't a moral coward, he might say:

I regret that I did not anticipate nor prevent the attacks of September 11th, and I deeply, deeply regret the loss of those 3000 lives on that horrific day. It happened under my watch. I regret the intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War, and I will do everything in my power to prevent such a failure in the future. It happened under my watch. I regret the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. It happened under my watch. I bear full responsibility.

But of course he would never say any such thing.

Buckle Your Seatbelts

2004-10-07T21:27:00.000-04:00

Also, there seem to be threats with regard to Election Day.

____________________________

U.S. Alerts Schools About Terror Threat
Thu, Oct 07, 2004

WASHINGTON - The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.

The warning follows an analysis by the FBI (news - web sites) and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.

"The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members," Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups. - Yahoo!
____________________________

Bush: Kerry Would 'Weaken' U.S.
President Defends Iraq War in Run-Up to Second Debate

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01

=snip= The strongly worded speech, which indicted Kerry as a "tax-and-spend liberal," was timed to deflect criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from such key sources as former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. weapons inspector and the State Department. A Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race with more biting attacks on Kerry's record and trustworthiness and on what Bush charges is Kerry's reluctance to use U.S. military force to defeat terrorism. The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said. - Wash. Post

____________________________

Stirrings in the Plame case

2004-09-16T01:49:00.000-04:00

Something's happening here.

Post Source Reveals Identity to Leak Probers

A Washington Post reporter's confidential source has revealed his or her identity to the special prosecutor conducting the CIA leak inquiry, a development that provides investigators with a fact they have been pursuing in the nearly year-long probe.

Post reporter Walter Pincus, who had been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury in the case, instead gave a deposition yesterday in which he recounted his conversation with the source, whom he has previously identified as an "administration official." Pincus said he did not name the source and agreed to be questioned only with the source's approval.

"I understand that my source has already spoken to the special prosecutor about our conversation on July 12 <2003>, and that the special prosecutor has dropped his demand that I reveal my source. Even so, I will not testify about his or her identity," Pincus said in a prepared statement.

"The source has not discharged us from the confidentiality pledge," said The Post's executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr. [more] - Washington Post

Godfather IV

2004-09-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

OTTUMWA, Iowa, Sept. 13 - Mr. Cheney said Monday that last week's massacre at a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan had caused some foreign leaders who have been skeptical of America's aggressive foreign policy to reconsider.

"Some of our European friends have been somewhat ambivalent," Mr. Cheney told a town hall meeting inside an airport hangar on the outskirts of this small town in southeast Iowa. He mentioned no nations by name.

Some foreign countries have probably been thinking that "if they kept their heads down," their citizens would not suffer terrorist attacks, the vice president said. "Well, Russia got his anyway," he said.

As a result, Mr. Cheney said, "people are reassessing now" whether they should shed their ambivalence and openly support Mr. Bush's policies.NY Times

Bush didn't come to NYC until September 14th

2004-09-12T20:29:00.000-04:00

And what did he do then? The only thing he knows how. Played the cheerleader. Stood on the smoldering grave of the 2749 and cracked wise.

It's the Hypocrisy, Stupid

2004-09-07T08:48:00.000-04:00

Kitty Kelley's new book on the Bushes is out next week.

Book: Bush once snorted cocaine at Camp David
By Jennifer Rosinski
Tuesday, September 7, 2004

Shocking accusations that President Bush snorted cocaine at Camp David when his father was in the White House have surfaced in a racy new book by celeb author Kitty Kelley about the powerful family.

``Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was president, and not just once either,'' Kelley quotes former sister-in-law Sharon Bush as saying, according The Daily Mirror of London.

The president first dabbled in drugs in the mid-1960s while at Yale and later snorted cocaine or smoked marijuana while in the National Guard, according to Kelley's new biography, ``The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.''

The book, to be released later this month, also alleged first lady Laura Bush smoked pot in her youth. - Boston Herald

Graham: Bush Blocked Investigation of Saudi Connection to 9/11

2004-09-05T03:11:00.000-04:00

Graham will discuss the missing 28 pages:

WASHINGTON — Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers “would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,” the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham’s book, “Intelligence Matters,” obtained by The Miami Herald on Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry’s final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources — including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leaders — were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. - Miami Herald

We've Been NEO-CONNED

2004-09-03T21:19:00.000-04:00

John Kerry can defuse all of the 'voted for it before he voted against it' BS if he addresses the REAL reasons for the war.

Kerry was lied to by the neo-cons before his vote on the Iraq resolution. Was George Bush also lied to, or did he know the evidence against Iraq was false and demand that America fight a war anyway?

Six years ago, an extremist right-wing think tank called Project for a New American Century dreamed up this Iraq war as the first stage in a planned 50-Years-War. They wanted to conquer the Middle East and then move on to establish America as the one supreme world power. American hegemony. They presented their plan to Clinton, who refused to implement it.

When George Bush came into office these neo-cons got themselves plum jobs in the Pentagon and the Vice President's office.

Immediately after 9/11 the neo-cons moved to exploit the tragedy to their advantage.

When they still couldn't justify attacking Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, they installed a special office in the Pentagon.

The OSP was formed for the purpose of distorting intelligence and employing false intelligence to advance the neo-con agenda of invading Iraq.

The neo-cons surely knew their evidence was false. What did the President know and when did he know it?

Those lies got us into Iraq, and made a fool of Colin Powell at the UN.

Last summer, a diplomat named Joseph Wilson challenged Bush on one of those lies, by writing an article in the NY Times.

Consequently, the diplomat's wife was exposed by the neo-cons and the WH as an undercover CIA agent, jeopardizing not just her life but every member of her CIA network. This was a treasonous betrayal, and a felony. It is currently under investigation by the Justice Department.

Undeterred, the neo-cons now want us to move on to step two - Iran. Every day we see, in neo-con speeches and articles, hints that Iran will be next.

This despite the fact that, according to Bob Herbert in the NY Times today, it is common knowledge in Washington that we will not get out of Iraq for another 10 to 20 years. John McCain admitted as much.

America has been lied to. We've been neo-conned.

Is this President smart enough to know he's been neo-conned? Or will he let it happen again?

Should the US invade Iran, too? What about Syria?

Are you prepared to see your grandchildren fighting this same war in 30, 40, 50 years' time?

Are these neo-cons in the Pentagon working for the best interests of the United States?

If so, why are many of the neo-cons currently under criminal investigation for passing American state secrets to to the Israeli government, and to Ahmed Chalabi (who gave them to Iran).

Whose side are these neo-cons on? And why did George Bush hire them to run our foreign policy?

There are only two explanations: incompetence, or treason.

George Bush will have to tell us which it is. - more info

Republican Humor

2004-08-31T15:10:00.000-04:00

Who's the SPY? or SPIES!

2004-08-28T02:26:00.000-04:00

Are we about to see a neo-con bloodbath?

____________________________

...I have come into possession of information that points to an official who is the most likely target of the FBI investigation into who allegedly passed intelligence on deliberations on US foreign policy to Iran to officials with the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, and to the Israelis, as alleged by the CBS report. That individual is Larry Franklin, a veteran DIA Iran analyst seconded to Feith’s office. - warandpiece
____________________________

"But according to one senior government source, the investigation has been ongoing for over a year and has also focused on other officials in Feith's operation who may have passed other information on to Israel." Newsweek
____________________________

It's hitting the fan - SPY inside the Pentagon

2004-08-27T21:51:00.000-04:00

CBS sources say that last year the suspected spy, described as a trusted analyst at the Pentagon, turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was, "in the draft phase when U.S. policy-makers were still debating the policy."

This put the Israelis, according to one source, "inside the decision-making loop" so they could "try to influence the outcome."

The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?

With ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the analyst was assigned to a unit within the Defense Department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy. - CBS

The Coward of Crawford goes to NY

2004-08-25T21:25:00.000-04:00

What exactly is he afraid of? Every cop, National Guardsman, and state trooper in the state of NY has been summoned to midtown to protect him. Streets blocked off, barricades erected, trains shut down. Helicopters, snipers, searches. No one's getting into MSG without credentials. What is this about? Bush will NEVER live this down.

Aug. 20--When president Bush accepts the Republican nomination in two weeks, he will enter Madison Square Garden on a specially made blast- and bullet-proof stage, the Daily News has learned.

The platform is being constructed off-site from the Garden, sources said.

"It's a whole different" stage from the one that will be used during the other hours of the Republican National Convention, which runs from Aug. 30 through Sept. 2, the night Bush arrives, said one source. - NY Daily News 8-20 archived, mirrored here

Like this?

[image by YellowDog_Buck]

George Bush, the Coward of Crawford

2004-08-25T20:33:00.000-04:00

Senator Max Cleland, Vietnam Veteran, is denied access at the gate of Bush's "ranch" as he attempts to deliver a letter signed by nine U.S. Senators demanding Bush call off the Swift Boat Liars and their smears against John Kerry. How cowardly must Bush be to turn THIS man away at the gate?

Kos on Plame

2004-08-24T00:19:00.000-04:00

We've heard rumors that there are rumors going around about the Plame case. Kos has some:

I've received some unsubstantiated rumors that Fitzgerald's office is nearing the end of its investigation, and that it will issue three indictments including Scooter Libby. According to these rumors, John Hannah, a Libby deputy, has been "turned" by the investigators and is singing like a canary. Hannah has already been linked to the case. If indeed he has turned state's witness, it would present a major breakthrough in the case.

As for timing, while the investigators hoped to wrap up the investigation within the next four to six weeks, that timeline is now in doubt and may, in fact, be put off until after the election.

Those are the rumors. Take them with a grain of salt.- kos

There are more rumors, at the link.

Watch Kerry's New Ad - Starring John McCain

2004-08-21T19:00:00.000-04:00

This one's a winner! Bush has that too familiar deer-in-the-headlights look while McCain rips into him in the 2000 debate. Too funny! Excellent ad. And right to the point.

link to >>>Watch the New Ad

Meet Sibel Edmonds

2004-08-20T23:43:00.000-04:00

Sibel Edmonds began working as an FBI translator on September 20, 2001. She speaks Farsi, Turkish and Azerbaijani.

NORVILLE: All of which were languages that would have been probably useful in trying to discern some of the chatter that any al Qaeda-linked terrorists might have been...

EDMONDS: Correct.

NORVILLE: ... picked up by the United States. When did you start having doubts about the way the department of translations was being operated?

EDMONDS: Well, actually, it started immediately. Within a few weeks after I started working there, I came across some really serious issues, from security breaches to certain documents from pre-9/11 and also post-9/11 that were being either intentionally blocked or mistranslated, and also some really significant security breaches that had been already confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. And I started reporting these issues within the bureau from November, December, 2001, until March, 2002.

And I did not blow the whistle immediately. I took these issues all the way up to Director Mueller and his assistant, Dale Watson. And finally, when they refused to take any action, I took these issues to the Department of Justice‘s inspector general‘s office and to the Senate.

NORVILLE: I want to talk specifically about what you say took place in the office. One of the things was you say that there was a translator, a Turkish translator, who was putting aside documents that related to people with whom this individual was familiar. And you charge that that person was engaged in espionage. - MSNBC

She was fired in March 2002, for blowing the whistle.

Sibel Edmonds speaks Farsi, Turkish and Azerbaijani.

Swift Boat Liars - Another Rove Dirty Trick?

2004-08-20T19:39:00.000-04:00

You don't have to read the entire NY Times expose to get the picture. Just look at the accompanying graphic and it all becomes very clear. It's classic Rove. Which is why Kerry has filed a complaint with the FEC. I have no doubt we will find Rove's fingerprints all over this. For a guy who never finished college, Rove's certainly made himself useful around the WH.

Kerry’s complaint to the Federal Elections Commission about the ads produced and aired by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth alleges "overwhelming evidence” that the veterans group is “coordinating its expenditures on advertising and other activities designed to influence the presidential election with the Bush-Cheney Campaign,” Kerry spokeswoman Allison Dobson told NBC News. -MSNBC

Swift Boat Liar Exposed

2004-08-19T08:32:00.000-04:00

Rove seems to be off his game. The smears against Kerry just won't stick. Watch out for Plan B - October Surprise, Iran.

Aug 19, 8:18 AM EDT
Navy Documents Cast Doubt on Kerry Critic

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Vietnam veteran who claims Sen. John Kerry lied about being under fire during a Mekong Delta engagement that won Kerry a Bronze Star was under constant fire himself during the same skirmish, according to the man's own medal citation, a newspaper reported.

The newly obtained records of Larry Thurlow show that he, like Kerry, won a Bronze Star in the engagement and that Thurlow's citation said he also was under attack, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Thurlow, also like Kerry, commanded a Navy Swift boat during the Vietnam War. Thurlow swore in an affidavit last month that Kerry was "not under fire" when he rescued Lt. James Rassmann from the Bay Hap River.

Thurlow's records, obtained by the Post under the Freedom of Information Act, include references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at all five boats in the flotilla that day. In his Bronze Star citation, Thurlow is praised for helping a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him." - AP

Highly recommended

2004-08-16T19:32:00.000-04:00

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

While numerous books have been written criticizing the policies and practices of the George W. Bush administration, few have been as foreboding about the meaning of those policies and practices as Mark Crispin Miller's Cruel and Unusual. In Bush and company, Miller sees a regime comparable to the most ruthless authoritarian dictatorships of the modern era and warns that Americans, skillfully duped by a corrupt government and a complicit mass media, are blithely accepting the curtailing of their liberties and the eradication of their democracy. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the tremendous fear and insecurity they generated among the American people provided, in Miller's estimation, ample opportunity for Bush and company to move the country to a place where dissent is crushed by force, wars are started on lies, and democratic elections will soon be a thing of the past.... - link

Goss would have CIA spying on Americans

2004-08-14T20:43:00.000-04:00

Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush’s nominee to head the CIA, recently introduced legislation that would give the president new authority to direct CIA agents to conduct law-enforcement operations inside the United States—including arresting American citizens.

****

But in language that until now has not gotten any public attention, the Goss bill would also redefine the authority of the DCI in such a way as to substantially alter—if not overturn—a 57-year-old ban on the CIA conducting operations inside the United States.

***

“This language on its face would have allowed President Nixon to authorize the CIA to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters,” Jeffrey H. Smith, who served as general counsel of the CIA between 1995 and 1996, told NEWSWEEK. “I can’t imagine what Porter had in mind.” - Newsweek

Oh, it's not so hard to imagine what Porter has in mind. He's Dick Cheney's pick, isn't he?

Over the Transom

2004-08-13T00:45:00.000-04:00

Pentagon in meetings today about female aspects of Abu Ghraib. The issues are children and women. The Top Brass are being told it is bound to break in the media.

Never forget that the WH commissioned memos from counsel on how to legally justify torturing prisoners. But we haven't heard the half of it yet.

Cheney's Convictions

2004-08-11T21:42:00.000-04:00

Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Democratic Sen. John Kerry lacks "deeply held convictions about right and wrong" as he argued that voters would make a grave mistake if they replaced the current commander in chief. - link

Click here to review Cheney's convictions.

McCain caves

2004-08-10T19:59:00.000-04:00

Oops! They did it again!

2004-08-10T19:38:00.000-04:00

Last week BushCo was widely suspected of cooking up a false terror alert based on the discovery of four-year-old surveillance files on an Al Queda computer, in order to change the subject from Kerry's convention success. In response to the accusations, the Bushies have outted yet another undercover U.S. intelligence operative. They explained that they were forced to do it, because they were under political pressure. Oh.

Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder - Experts

LONDON (Reuters) - The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror.

Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources on Friday that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working under cover to help the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz."

Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning. - Reuters

Porter Goss on Plamegate

2004-08-10T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sure this is reassuring to the remaining undercover CIA operatives whose identities have not yet been revealed by the White House.

Rep. Porter Goss said Thursday that the uproar over allegations that White House officials purposely identified a covert CIA agent appears largely political and doesn't yet merit an investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs.

****

"I would say there's a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security," said Goss, R-Sanibel. "But I would never take lightly a serious allegation backed up by evidence that there was a willful -- and I emphasize willful, inadvertent is something else -- willful disclosure, and I haven't seen any evidence."

Goss said he would act if he did have evidence of that sort.

"Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation," Goss said. - *link*

Must read - will they try to cancel the election?

2004-08-09T20:51:00.000-04:00

Ray McGovern (CIA analyst for 27 years, member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) fears BushCO may be in enough trouble that they will try to "postpone" the elections.

Perhaps most worrisome of all from the administration’s point of view are the fresh photos, film footage, and other reporting of torture in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and elsewhere that will surface in the coming weeks. This round is said to include details of the rape and other abuse of some of the Iraqi women and the hundred or so children—some as young as 10 years old—held in jails like Abu Graib. U.S. Army Sergeant Samuel Provance, who was stationed there, has blown the whistle on the abuse of children as well as other prisoners. He recounted, for example, how interrogators soaked a 16-year-old, covered him in mud, and then used his suffering to break the youth’s father, also a prisoner, during interrogation.

I suspect it is the further revelations of torture that worries the White House most. Adding to its woes, last week over a hundred lawyers, including seven past presidents of the American Bar Association and former FBI Director William Sessions, issued a statement strongly condemning the legal opinions of government attorneys holding that torture might be legally defensible. The lawyers called for an investigation regarding whether there is a connection between those legal opinions and the abuses at Abu Graib and elsewhere.
- Buzzflash

Judge rules for Fitzgerald in the Plame case

2004-08-09T19:02:00.000-04:00

Russert Held in Contempt in CIA Leak Case

WASHINGTON Aug. 9, 2004 — A federal judge held a reporter for Time magazine in contempt of court Monday for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of a covert CIA officer.

In an order issued July 20 but not made public until Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Time's Matthew Cooper and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert were required to testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official."

NBC News issued a statement saying that Russert already had been interviewed under oath by prosecutors on Saturday under an agreement to avoid a protracted court fight. The interview concerned a July 2003 phone conversation he had with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Time and Cooper, however, did not agree to be interviewed and intend to appeal the judge's ruling, said Managing Editor Jim Kelly. If Time loses those appeals, Cooper could be jailed under Hogan's order until he agrees to appear and the magazine could be fined $1,000 a day.

This is good progress and gives me hope that Wilson will get his frog march before the election. Scooter Libby!

It depends on what the meaning of sovereignty is

2004-08-08T23:39:00.000-04:00

Bush spoke to journalists of color at the recent Unity Conference. Unfortunately for him. Here's his hilarious response to a question on the meaning of U.S. and tribal sovereignty with regard to the war on terror.

"Tribal sovereignty means that it's sovereign," Bush replied. "You're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." - link

But it's even better if you listen to this audio clip posted at Majority Report Weblog , so you can hear the panic in his voice. And the laughter from the audience.

Ahmed Who?

2004-08-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

George Bush, caught with his pants on fire again. Today we learned that Iraq has issued a warrant for the arrest of Ahmed Chalabi (currently in hiding in Iran!). Bush has been giving him the Kenny Boy Treatment, attempting to distance himself from that darling of the neo-cons, the man touted as the next leader of Iraq, the source of all that rich intelligence on WMD's. But it seems that, gosh, George Bush barely knows the guy!

As posted by Timothy Noah at Slate:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly—

A: Chalabi?

Q: Yes, with Chalabi.

A: My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.

—President Bush, in a Rose Garden exchange with reporters, June 1, 2004.

So I guess Chalabi is more Laura's friend.

What's a Frog March?

2004-08-08T20:18:00.000-04:00

But we’ll see. I mean I don’t think we’re going to let this drop. At the end of the day it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. - Joseph Wilson, August 2001

Joseph Wilson is the husband of Valerie Plame,whose status as an undercover CIA agent was revealed by the Bush administration in an apparent act of revenge against her husband. Wilson had challenged George Bush's "16 word" claim in the State of the Union that Iraq sought nuclear materials from Africa.

Frogmarch will attempt to track the many scandals and crimes of the Bush Administration, from the Plame outting to the Chalabi scandal, the PNAC to the OSP.

For a little background, please read this excellent essay by William Rivers Pitt in truthout, excerpted below:

The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC for short, is just another right-wing think tank, really. One cannot swing one's dead cat by the tail in Washington D.C. without smacking some prehensile gnome, pained by the sunlight, scuttling back to its right-wing think tank cubicle. These organizations are all over the place. What makes PNAC different from all the others?

The membership roll call, for one thing:

Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, former CEO of Halliburton;

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense;

Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense;

Elliot Abrams, National Security Council;

John Bolton, Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security;

I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top National Security assistant;

Quite a roster.

(snip)

Iraq, you see, has been on the PNAC menu for almost ten years.

The goals codified in 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' the manifesto, can be boiled down to a few sentences: The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. The building of several permanent military bases in Iraq, the purpose of which are to telegraph force throughout the region. The takeover by Western petroleum corporations of Iraq's nationalized oil industry. The ultimate destabilization and overthrow of a variety of regimes in the Middle East, friend and foe alike, by military or economic means, or both.

Pitt omits many names from that list for the sake of brevity, but one PNAC'er of special interest today is Ahmed Chalabi, now a wanted man, as the interim Iraqi government has issued a warrant for his arrest. Frog March!