Hannah's Blog

Pro Bono John circa 2000

Memories seem to be fading quickly nowadays. Hardly anyone can remember what John Roberts was up to while the votes were being counted in 2000. Though it's now being reported that he actually authored the brief that went to the Supreme Court in Bush vs Gore.

Presumably, the primary quality to look for in a judicial nominee is good judgement. So what are we to make of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr's agreeing to have himself trotted out like some sort of show horse for the announcement of his nomination?

What are we to make of his co-operation with the Progress for America crew,whose reputation rests largely on orchestrating smear campaigns against the political opponents of those they support?

And what's the point of having his dad's subordinates at the steel mill speak well of a kid that's made good? We already know from the Justice Clarence Thomas record that a modest background does not necessarily produce compassion or a strong commitment to individual rights.

The news that John Roberts rushed down to Florida to offer some pro bono advice to help George W. Bush get selected to an office the majority of the American people clearly didn't want him in isn't reassuring either. If anything, it shows a level of partisanship that's fundamentally inconsistent with judicial independence. What's to keep us from concluding that John Roberts is just cashing in his chips?

Rice with Yellow Cake

Roger Morris sets the table.

Published on Thursday, July 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Source Beyond Rove- Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal
by Roger Morris

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." It was September 2002, and then-National Security Advisor, now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fastening on CNN perhaps the most memorable and frightening single link in the Bush regime?s chain of lies propagandizing the war on Iraq. Behind her carefully planted one-liner with its grim imagery was the whole larger hoax about Saddam Hussein possessing or about to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a deception as blatant and inflammatory as claims of the Iraqi dictator?s ties to Al Qaeda.

Rice?s demagogic scare tactic was also very much part of the tangled history of alleged Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, the fabrication leading to ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson?s now famous exposé of the fraud, the administration?s immediate retaliatory ?outing? of Wilson?s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and now the revelation that the President?s supreme political strategist Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney?s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby were involved in that potentially criminal leak?altogether the most serious political crisis Bush has faced. In fact, though her pivotal role has been missed entirely?or deliberately ignored?in both the media feeding frenzy and the rising political clamor, now-Secretary of State Rice was also deeply embroiled in the Niger uranium-Plame scandal, arguably as much as or more so than either Rove or Libby.

For those who know the invariably central role of the NSC Advisor in sensitive political subjects in foreign policy and in White House leaks to the media as well as tending of policy, especially in George W. Bush?s rigidly disciplined, relentlessly political regime, Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame?s identity. None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity. Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting.

"God's never failed me yet"

One summer weekend in 1998 at the family estate at Kennebunkport, Me., former president George H. W. Bush introduced his ambitious son George W. to a 43-year-old political science professor, Condoleezza Rice. One of the rare African-American women in the field of Soviet studies, she was rarer still for her archly conservative views. She had interrupted a teaching career at Stanford to work from 1989 until 1991 on the elder Bush's National Security Council staff as a specialist on Russian and East European affairs, and remained a vocal Bush loyalist. George W. Bush was planning on running for the White House and was woefully uninformed about world politics. At Kennebunkport, the politician and academic hit it off right away, and Rice was entrusted with a vital task: "to instruct and protect G.W. at his most vulnerable," as a friend put it. How the woman who became his National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State has fulfilled that trust has had fateful consequences for the United States, other nations, and not least for George W. Bush.

Since the end of the Second World War, the National Security Adviser's staff domain has varied between a dozen and nearly 100, but its function has remained strikingly the same: to be the presidency's eyes, ears, and brain, devoted like no other institution in Washington to protecting and serving the Chief Executive, the National Security Adviser's constituency of one. Rice, who worked for Brent Scowcroft, a cautious NSC adviser under the elder president Bush, defined her role early in 2001 as "stitching the connections together tightly."

The gravity of the NSC Adviser's role demands an extraordinary combination of intellect and substantive knowledge, with shrewd understanding of both the world and Washington-a capacity that previous office-holders have had to varying degrees, from Henry Kissinger's mastery of power on down.

Although usually relatively hidden from public view in her sensitive role as the president's advisor without peer, the Nigerien uranium scandal and case for war mounted by Rice illustrates vividly that she was a full party to the now notorious intelligence claims about Iraqi weaponry and ties to terrorists. Prey to the same impulse of the uninformed men around her, she repeated to the 9/11 commission, in one of her rare under oath testimonies before Congress, the regime's cant about terrorism in general-insisting "they attacked us for who we are, for no other reason" ignoring a half century of history of American foreign policy and musing with stunning hubris that victory in Iraq will "inspire hope and encourage reform throughout the greater Middle East."

However history records Bush's policy and Rice's counsel of war, to all appearances Rice has succeeded at the one task required for advancement in the current Bush regime-maintaining by her fierce loyalty the patronage of the President.

And in line with an administration that joins eagles claw to religious cloak, Rice looks to the same sense of divine guidance that fortifies her patron. "When I'm concerned about something, I figure out a plan of action, and then I give it to God. I just ask to be carried through it," she said in a 2002 interview with Essence magazine. "God's never failed me yet." It is an opinion, of course, that history will not share. *

The evidence of Rice?s complicity is increasingly damning as it gathers over a six-year twisting chronology of the Nigerien uranium-Wilson-Plame affair, particularly when set beside what we also know very well about the inside operations of the NSC and Rice?s unique closeness to Bush, her tight grip on her staff, and the power and reach that went with it all. What follows isn?t simple. These machinations in government never are, especially in foreign policy. But follow the bouncing ball of Rice?s deceptions, folly, fraud and culpability. Slowly, relentlessly, despite the evidence, the hoax of the Iraq-Niger uranium emerges as a central thread in the fabricated justification for war, and thus in the President?s, Rice?s, and the regime?s inseparable credibility. The discrediting of Wilson, in which the outing his CIA wife is irresistible, becomes as imperative for Rice as for Rove and Libby, Bush and Cheney. And when that moment comes, she has the unique authority, and is in a position, to do the deed. Motive, means, opportunity?in the classic terms of prosecution, Rice had them all. *

1995: Saddam Hussein?s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, in charge of Iraq?s strategic weaponry, defects to the West. He tells CIA debriefers that at his command after the Gulf War, ?All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed.? His claim is supported by continuing reports of UN inspectors and US intelligence, including sophisticated imagery analysis by both the CIA and Pentagon.

1999: The first rumors begin to circulate in Europe that the Iraqis may be trying to buy ?yellow cake? weapons grade uranium from Niger, a poor West African country that earns more than half its export income from the strategic ore. Since Iraq is known to have used only amply available Iraqi uranium in nuclear research until its disbanding in 1991, and because Niger?s yellow cake is produced solely at two mines owned by a French consortium and the entire output strictly controlled and committed to sale to France, European intelligence agencies and UN officials soon discount the story?though the rumors persist along with other alarming allegations by Iraqi exile groups long working to incite the US Government to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, American embassies and CIA stations in Europe routinely report the rumors in repeated, widely circulated cable traffic to Washington over the summer and fall of 1999. Among the recipients is the nuclear non-proliferation section of the Clinton Presidency?s NSC staff, whose files on Iraq, a ?red flag? country, are turned over to Rice and her staff when she assumes office eighteen months later

January 2001: Parties unknown burgle the Nigerien embassy in Rome. Stolen from the torn-up offices are various valuables along with stationery and official seals, which the Italian police warn might be used to forge documents.

February 24, 2001: ?Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass destruction,? says Secretary of State Colin Powell. ?He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.?

July 29, 2001: ?We are able to keep his [Saddam?s] arms from him,? NSC advisor Rice tells the media. ?His military forces have not been rebuilt.?

August 2001: An African informant reportedly hands Italian intelligence what are purported to be official Nigerien documents of ?great importance.? Among them are letters apparently dealing with Niger?s sale of uranium to Iraq, including an alleged transaction in 2000 for some 500 tons of uranium oxide, telltale in a weapons program. The Italians routinely pass the letters on through NATO channels to the US, where by the fall of 2001 both State Department and Department of Energy nuclear intelligence analysts doubt the genuineness of the documents, and duly report their findings to Rice?s NSC staff.

January 2002: In cables cleared by both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice, the first high-level reference to the subject after 9/11, Washington asks the US ambassador to Niger to uncover any possible Iraqi purchases of uranium. After talks with senior Nigerien officials and French executives in the uranium mining operations, along with a still wider investigation by the embassy, including the CIA, the ambassador reports back that there is no evidence of such dealings, and no reason to suspect them.

February 2002: Vice President Cheney hears ?about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger,? according to what his chief of staff Libby later tells Time. In his daily intelligence briefing by the CIA, as Libby relates, Cheney asks about ?the implication of the [Niger] report.? CIA briefing officers tell Cheney and Libby of the documents passed on months before by the Italians, including the State and Energy Department judgment that the papers are probable forgeries.

A few days later, with the routine concurrence of Rice and her staff, Cheney through Libby asks the CIA to look into the matter further. The Agency has no ready experts in Niger suitable to assign the Vice President?s requested inquiry. After routinely canvassing the relevant offices and relatively brief discussion, they seize on the suggestion of one of their operatives working on nuclear proliferation issues, a mid-level CIA veteran named Valerie Plame who has worked abroad and in Washington under ?NOC? ?non-official cover in private business in contact with several foreign sources. Her pertinent if personal recommendation for the assignment is her husband, then-fifty-three year-old Joseph Wilson IV, a retired Foreign Service Officer who has served briefly as Charge d?Affairs in Baghdad in 1990 and then from 1992-1993 as US Ambassador to Gabon, a seasoned diplomat with experience in both Iraq and West Africa, and even some specialization in African strategic minerals.

February 19, 2002: A meeting at the CIA discusses sending Wilson to Niger. Attending is an analyst from the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research who says the trip is unnecessary, since the US embassy in Niger and European intelligence agencies have already disproved the story of an Iraqi purchase?and whose notes of the meeting, including the facts of Valerie Plame?s CIA identity as an NOC operative on WMD and her role in recommending her husband, will be the basis for later crucial memos in the scandal.

Despite State Department objection, the CIA decides to go ahead with the Wilson mission to satisfy the Vice President?s request, and the former ambassador is ?invited out [to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia] to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject,? as he will remember it. Wilson is introduced to the gathering by his wife, who then leaves the room.

In late February, with the concurrence of CIA Director George Tenet as well as Rice and Powell, Wilson flies to Niger.

February 24, 2002: Meanwhile, to further emphasize the importance of the issue and with Washington?s concurrence, the US Ambassador in Niger has invited to the capital of Niamey Marine four-star General Carlton Fulford, Jr., deputy commander of the US-European Command, which is responsible for military relations with sub-Saharan West Africa. Fulford meets with Niger?s president and other senior officials on the 24th, and afterward confirms the Ambassador?s earlier findings, as he later tells the Washington Post, that there is no evidence of the sale of yellow cake to Iraq, and that Niger?s uranium supply is ?secure.? The General?s report duly goes up through the chain of his command to the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon and on to Rice at the NSC, Powell at State, the CIA, the Energy Department and other interested agencies.

March 5, 2002: Having met with several Nigerien officials and sources over a ten-day visit and debriefed at length the US Embassy staff and Ambassador (who promptly cables a report on to Powell and Rice), Wilson returns from Niger and gives CIA officers, as they request, an oral report which is the basis for a CIA-written memo on his trip then forwarded to Rice and Powell, and for a further CIA debriefing for Cheney in response to his original request. Republicans will later dispute about how categorical or emphatic Wilson?s report and its derivatives actually are at this point. He refers to "an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary" for Iraq who had approached Niger about sales of ore, though adds that Niger ?ignored the request.? But the essence of his conclusion is, once again, that there is no evidence of Iraq procuring uranium from Niger. In de facto acceptance of this finding, the several Washington agencies involved in the issue, including Rice and her NSC staff, make no other effort?beyond the US embassy investigation, General Fulford?s trip, and the Wilson mission?to investigate the matter further in Niger or anywhere else.

May-June 2002: With the Iraq-Niger uranium issue apparently laid to rest, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld establishes in the Pentagon, with the full knowledge of Rice, a new Office of Special Plans, under the direction of Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and cabal of neo-conservatives the Bush regime has assembled at the upper civilian reaches of the Defense Department. Believing the CIA, FBI and other agencies in myriad negative reports, including the Wilson mission, have simply ?failed? to find existing evidence of Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction and Saddam?s ties to al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz direct ?Special Plans? to gather and interpret its own ?intelligence? on Iraq. Meanwhile Rice takes over coordination of efforts to stymie ongoing arms inspections of Iraq by the United Nations.

June 26, 2002: In a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior British officials at Ten Downing Street, Sir Richard Dearlove, ?C,? head of MI6 British intelligence, reports on what he found during recent Washington conversations at the highest levels of the CIA, White House and other US official quarters. ?Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,? as a summary records his words. ?But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.?

July 2002: Concerned at the potential opposition to the war, and to coordinate policy and media relations for the coming attack on Iraq, a special White House Iraq Group (WHIG) is set up, chaired by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and composed of Rice, Rove, Libby, Rice?s deputy Stephen Hadley, and media strategists Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush aide, Mary Matalin and others. The WHIG is to plan and control carefully all high-level leaks and public statements on Iraq and related issues. ?Everything, I mean everything, was run through them and came out of them,? a ranking official will say of the group. ?It was understood, of course, that Condi or Hadley would clear everything from a policy point of view, Rove and Libby would do the politics, and the rest would handle the spin.?

August 26, 2002: ?Now we know,? Vice President Cheney tells the VFW convention, ?Saddam Hussein has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.? Rice routinely clears this speech.

September 2002: Several months earlier, the US and UN embargo of Iraq has seized a shipment of high strength aluminum tubes, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US State and Energy Departments duly identify as designed solely for launch tubes for conventional artillery rockets. Despite those expert findings, Rice now claims publicly that the tubes are ?only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.?

Apparently reflecting the original rumors of the Iraq-Niger deal and the subsequent dubious documents handed the Italians thirteen months before (copies of which have reportedly been given to MI6 British intelligence by an Italian journalist), a British Government White Paper on Iraq released in September mentions that Baghdad ?had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.? Pressed on the issue by the CIA (on the basis of its now-several reports debunking the story) to drop that statement as inaccurate, the British claim they have sources for the assertion ?aside from the discredited [Nigerien] letters,? but never identify them. Rice is fully briefed on all these exchanges.

(Eventually, British intelligence officials will admit the 2002 White Paper statement on uranium from Africa was ?unfounded.? Meanwhile, however, much of official Washington is aware of the CIA-MI6 squabble over the Niger uranium and questionable letters. ?The Brits,? a Congressional intelligence committee staffer will later tell the New Yorker?s Sy Hersh in discussing the issue, ??placed more stock in them than we did.?)

It?s also that September, in answer to a question in a CNN interview about what evidence the White House has of Iraqi nuclear weapons, that Rice makes her infamous quip, a line first authored by Mary Matalin??We don?t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.?

September 26, 2002: In closed-hearing testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (with a transcript closely reviewed by Rice), Powell refers to ?reports? of an Iraqi purchase of Nigerien uranium as ?further proof? of Saddam Hussein?s weapons of mass destruction.

October 2002: Seizing on the British White Paper, despite the documented disagreement of the CIA as well as the State and Energy Departments, the Office of Special Plans inserts in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, apparently one of the few documents Bush reads in this sequence, a reference to the British report of an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. Though the NIE at CIA insistence notes ?different interpretations of the significance of the Niger documents,? and that the State Department judges them ?highly dubious,? the reference to Nigerien uranium is listed among other reasons to conclude that Iraq poses a danger to American national security.

?Facing clear evidence of peril,? Bush says in a speech in Cincinnati that October, ?we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.? Behind the scenes, an earlier draft of the October speech has also contained a reference to an Iraqi purchase of 500 tons of uranium from Niger, the now-revived claim from the discredited documents of fifteen months before. CIA Director Tenet urges that the White House take out that reference, and though the Pentagon?s Special Plans office is pushing for inclusion of the reference, Rice?s deputy (and eventual successor) Stephen Hadley, after two memoranda and a phone call from Tenet, finally agrees to drop the passage. Rice is fully briefed on all this.

December 19, 2002: As preparations are hurried for the attack on Iraq, a State Department ?Fact Sheet,? cleared by Rice, asks ominously, ?Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement??

The assumption of the Niger-Iraq uranium connection now begins to appear regularly in the President?s Daily Brief, the CIA intelligence briefing which is now also drafted under the influence of the Office of Special Plans.

January 23, 2003: In a New York Times op-ed entitled ?Why We Know Iraq is Lying,? Rice refers prominently to ?Iraq?s efforts to get uranium from abroad.?

January 28, 2003: "The British government,? Bush says in his State of the Union litany on the dangers of Iraq, ?has [sic] learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.?

Rice and her staff, of course, have as always laboriously worked and reworked the national security passages of the speech. In readying the address, Rice?s NSC Staff assistant for nonproliferation, Robert Joseph, asks Alan Foley, a ranking CIA expert on the subject, about the ?uranium from Africa? passage, which obviously refers to the old Niger issue. Foley says the CIA doubts the Niger letters and connection, has disputed the British White Paper (as Rice and Joseph well know), and recommends that the NSC strike the reference. In typical bureaucratic fashion, however, Foley also says it would be ?technically accurate? to say that the British had in fact issued such a report on Iraq, however mistaken. With the approval of Rice and her deputy Hadley, the passage stays, becoming a major piece of ?evidence? in the case for war.

February 5, 2003: In his now infamous presentation to the United Nations, a factor in silencing many potential dissenters in Congress, Powell pointedly omits any reference to the Nigerien uranium. The story ?had not stood the test of time,? he says later.

That February, too, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as part of his own propaganda for war, issues a Ten Downing Street paper called ?Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,? which includes a reference to the Nigerien uranium. Thought to be drawn from authoritative MI6 intelligence, the paper is soon widely ridiculed, eleven of its sixteen pages found to be copied verbatim from an old Israeli magazine.

March 7, 2003: In response to a request four months before, the State Department finally hands over to the IAEA copies of the Niger letters, which UN experts promptly dismiss as ?not authentic? and ?blatant forgeries.? "These documents are so bad," a senior IAEA official tells the press, "that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.? A former high-level intelligence official tells The New Yorker, ?Somebody deliberately let something false get in there. It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.?

March 8, 2003: In reply to questions about the forgery, a State Department spokesman says the US Government ?fell for it.? "It was the information that we had. We provided it,? Powell will say lamely on ?Meet the Press". ?If that information is inaccurate, fine."

March 17, 2003: Bush, in a statement cleared by Rice, repeats that ?Iraq continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.?

March 19, 2003: Bush orders the invasion of Iraq.

March 21, 2003: Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D. WVa) writes FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for an investigation of the Niger letters. "There is a possibility,? Rockefeller says, ?that the fabrication of these [Niger] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."

May 6, 2003: In an anonymous interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Ambassador Wilson?identified none too subtly as ?a former US Ambassador to [sic] Africa,? says about the failure to find WMDs in Iraq: ?It?s disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this [that Saddam had no nuclear program or weapons] for a year.?

June 10, 2003: Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman asks the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) for a briefing on the Niger uranium issue, and specifically the State Department?s opposition to the continuing White House view that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake. The resulting memo is dated the same day, and drawn from notes on the February 19 meeting at the CIA on the Wilson mission and other sources. Befitting the sensitivity of the information, the memo is classified ?Top Secret,? and contains in one paragraph, separately marked ?(S/NF)? for ?Secret/No dissemination to foreign governments or intelligence agencies, ? two sentences describing in passing Valerie ?Wilson?s? identity as a CIA operative and her role in the inception of the Wilson trip to Niger. This June 10 memo reportedly does not use her maiden name Plame.

June 12, 2003: The Washington Post reports that an unnamed ?former US ambassador? was sent to Niger to look into the uranium issue and found no evidence of any Iraqi purchase.

At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage asks INR to prepare a memorandum on the background of what the Post is reporting, and INR sends to Armitage that same day a copy of the June 10 memo to Grossman. The memo is also sent to Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security (and future UN Ambassador-designate) John Bolton.

July 6, 2003: Outraged by continuing references to the Nigerien uranium, Wilson breaks his anonymity with a sensational New York Times op-ed disclosing his mission to Niger sixteen months before, and the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraqi purchase of ore. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," Wilson writes, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." He tells "Meet the Press," "Either the administration has information that it has not shared with the public or ... they were using the selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision that had already been made to go to war."

Later in the day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls INR Assistant Secretary Carl W. Ford at home, and asks him to send a briefing memo to Powell about the Niger uranium issue. Ford simply pulls out the previous June 10 memo with its reference to Wilson?s wife (her name now corrected from Wilson to Plame), addresses it to Powell, and forwards the memo to Rice to be passed on to Powell, who is due to leave the next day with the Presidential party on a trip to Africa.

Meanwhile, the WHIG is also moving that Sunday to deal aggressively with the Wilson op-ed. They will no longer focus on the too obviously fraudulent claim of an Iraqi purchase of yellow cake?White House orthodoxy before the invasion?but will instead discount the issue, discredit Wilson, and shift blame for the now-embarrassing State of the Union reference. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is to try to downplay and dismiss Wilson?s article on-the-record at the next day?s press briefing, while Rice and others begin to make off-the-record calls to the media to do the same. While pursuing their own contacts among right-wing reporters and columnists, Rove and Libby are also to work with CIA Director George Tenet in a statement by Tenet taking responsibility for any inaccuracy in the State of the Union passage.

July 7, 2003: Under a barrage of questions at a 9:30 am press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says of the Wilson claims, ?There is zero, nada, nothing new here,? adding that "Wilson's own report [shows] that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales." (A reference to the ?Algerian-Nigerien intermediary? in Wilson?s debriefings? "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged?" Wilson later that day replies to Fleischer. "These guys really need to get serious.") But as the briefing wears on, Fleischer?s defense grows ?murkier,? as the New York Times reports, and he seems to ?concede? that the State of the Union reference to Niger uranium ?might have been flawed.?

That evening, with the White House scrambling to defend itself against Wilson?s resonating charges, Bush leaves for a trip to Africa, accompanied by Rice and Powell. Before the party flies out of Andrews, Rice is in several meetings with Rove, Libby and other senior aides of the WHIG.

The scene now shifts to the plush but still relatively close quarters of Air Force One, the specially configured 747 where the accompanying media are boarded through a rear door and funneled directly to their mid-level section closed off from the forward official compartment, and where Administration VIPs like Rice and Powell are in conference rooms and adjoining lounge chairs in closer and easier proximity and informality than in any other official venue. It is in this setting, soon after takeoff, as the New York Times will report two years later, that Powell is seen walking around carrying the INR June 12/July6 memo detailing Wilson?s mission and Plame?s identity and role in the ?(S/NF)? paragraph. Powell discusses the memo with Rice and other presidential aides on board, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. Witnesses later see Fleischer ?perusing? the memo. There are reports, too, of several calls between the plane and the White House discussing the Wilson affair. En route over the Atlantic, Rice and Fleischer both call contacts at the Washington Post and New York Times ?to make it clear,? the Times will report, ?that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush?s statement about the uranium?the first such official concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war.?

It is in these hours of late July 7 and early July 8 that Rove, Libby and other officials get word of Plame?s identity from Air Force One. Rove and Libby will hear of Plame in the drafting with Tenet of his mea culpa, but officials on the plane reading the INR memo cannot know or be sure of this, and the memo?s passages on Wilson, including his wife, are now relayed back to Washington. Reporters later speculate that Powell might have called either Rove or Libby with such information, but as one concludes aptly, ?That was above his pay grade.? The President himself might have read the memo and called the two aides. But given Bush?s style and grasp, that, too, is implausible, though he may well have been informed of the calls and given his approval. The only official on board Air Force One with the knowledge and authority?motive, means and opportunity?to instruct Rove and Libby in their leaks and so betray Plame was Condoleezza Rice.

July 7-8, 2003: Right-wing Columnist Robert Novak is called by thus far unidentified senior officials leaking to him that Wilson?s wife, Valerie Plame (they use her maiden name), is a CIA operative who instigated her husband?s trip to Niger. ?I didn?t dig it out, it was given to me,? Novak tells Newsweek of the leak. ?They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it.?

July 9, 2003: Rove discusses the Wilson imbroglio, including the role of Wilson?s CIA wife, with columnist Robert Novak, who identifies her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

July 11, 2003: Peppered by questions about Wilson?s charges, Bush in a press conference in Uganda says, ?I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services.? That evening, aboard Air Force One flying over East Africa, Rice speaks at length with the media about the ?clearances? of the President?s speech. ?Now I can tell you,? she says, ?if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ?Take this out of the speech,? it would have gone without question.? She says nothing about the actual maneuvering behind the now-troublesome passage, the Joseph-Foley exchange, the controversial British memorandum US intelligence has disputed, the shadowy history of the yellow cake fraud.

July 11, 2003: Back in Washington, working to discredit Wilson, Rove leaks to Time?s Matthew Cooper that ?Wilson?s wife? is, in fact, in the CIA ?working on WMD? and has been behind his mission to Niger. Rove ?implied strongly,? Cooper later emails his editor, ?there?s still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger.?

After that conversation, in evidence of the central role of Rice and her staff in the betrayal of Plame?s identity to discredit Wilson, Rove emails Rice?s NSC deputy Hadley that he has ?waved Cooper off? Wilson?s claim, and that he (Rove) ?didn?t take the bait? when Cooper offered that Wilson?s revelations had damaged the Administration. Hadley immediately relays this message to Rice in Africa.

That same day, after extensive deliberations with Rove and Libby, CIA Director Tenet makes a public statement that the Nigerien uranium allegation should never have appeared in the Bush 2003 State of the Union. "This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches,? he confesses, ?and CIA should have ensured that it was removed,"

July 12, 2003: When asked by Cooper about Plame being CIA, Libby confirms the story to the Time reporter. That same day, in a talk with the Washington Post?s Walt Pincus, an unidentified ?senior administration official? brings up Plame?s CIA identity, in what is now a widely authorized leak approved by Rice as well as Rove.

July 14, 2003: Columnist Robert Novak, attributing the story to ?two senior administration officials? ?neither of which is Rove or Libby?identifies Plame as a CIA ?operative on weapons of mass destruction? who was behind her husband?s mission to Niger.

July 20, 2003: ?Senior White House sources? call NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell to say, ?the real story here is not the 16 words [Bush?s reference to Niger uranium in the State of the Union]? but Wilson and his wife.?

July 21, 2003: On MSNBC, host Chris Mathews tells Wilson, ?I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ?Wilson?s wife is fair game.??

July 30, 2003: Alarmed about the impact of the betrayal of Plame?s identity on current and future agents and sources abroad, the CIA asks the Justice Department to investigate the leak, which leads to the naming of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Prosecutor.

September 2003: An unidentified ?White House official? tells the Washington Post that ?at least six reporters? had been told about Plame before Novak?s column appeared. The disclosures, the source says, were ?purely and simply out of revenge.?

This chronology will no doubt continue to expand in the days and weeks ahead. There may well be a ticking time-bomb in the Grand Jury investigation of the Plame leak that goes beyond anything we now envision. In earlier findings in cases of reporters refusing to testify, DC Circuit Judge, David Tatel, a distinguished jurist known for his devotion to civil liberties and especially press freedoms, had stoutly maintained a federal privilege for the media, shielding it from being compelled to testify except under the most exceptional conditions. But then later joining his colleagues in ordering Cooper and the New York Times? Judith Miller to testify, Tatel reviewed extensive secret information from the prosecutor, devoted eight blacked-out pages of his judgment to the material, and concluded that the privilege he had upheld throughout his career as a lawyer and judge had to give way before "the gravity of the suspected crime." No other element of the scandal bodes so ill for the Bush regime.

There is also the intriguing relationship between John Bolton, the regime?s stymied appointee to the UN, and Judith Miller, the New York Times correspondent sent to jail for contempt in refusing to divulge her sources on Plame even for a story she never wrote. Bolton?s close relationship to Miller, in which many suspect the right-wing lobbyist handed the reporter much of the fraudulent accounts of Iraqi weaponry that ended up on the front page of the Times, may well have encompassed as well the passing of information from the INR memo on Plame, which Bolton saw before Powell or even Rice.

Then, too, as the Progressive Review?s Sam Smith and Counterpunch?s Alexander Cockburn have pointed out from their lonely perch of substance and perspective atop what?s left of American journalism, there is, in the end, much less to the whole story than meets the eye. In their too obvious relish of celebrity, Wilson and Plame as heroes are as dubious as the Niger letters. The CIA, and the Presidents who used it as a private mafia, account for a more than half-century history far more catastrophic than a legion of seedy Roves and Libbys or even multiple Bush regimes. Relentlessly corrupt, inept, anachronistic, if ever an institution deserved to be ?outed? and prosecuted in its numbers, it is our vastly bloodstained intelligence agency. But as it is so often in politics, we are left with the lesser, still needed reckoning at hand.

And, of course, the larger issue beyond Plame is the Bush regime?s Big Lie behind the invasion of Iraq, in which the phantom Nigerien yellowcake was an important malignant element. No government since World War II has more blatantly invented the pretext for waging a war of aggression. The Rove and Libby collusion only begins to peel away the layers of the crime. Rice is the next skein to be pulled.

Her manifest failures in the fateful months before 9/11 in meeting the principal responsibilities of the National Security Advisor?the sheer incompetence and shallowness that left so much intelligence uncoordinated, so much neglected or misunderstood?should have been enough to have run her from public office long ago, of course, were it not for her hold on this tragically flawed president, and her deplorable immunity amid the chronic political cowardice of both the Democrats and the media.

Now, however, her role in the Plame scandal cannot be ignored or excused. She alone among senior officials was knowing and complicitous at every successive stage of the great half-baked yellow cake fraud. She alone was the White House peer?and in national security matters the superior?to Rove and Libby, who never could have acted without her collusion in peddling Plame?s identity. She as much as anyone had a stake in smearing Wilson by any and all means at hand. If Rove and Libby are to be held criminally or at least politically accountable for a breach of national security, our ?mushroom cloud? secretary of state should certainly be in the dock with them

(This article owes a primary debt to the ground-breaking research of Professor Gary Leupp of Tufts University in his ?Faith-Based Intelligence,? CounterPunch.org, July 26, 2003.)

Roger Morris was Senior Staff on the National Security Council under both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award winning author, he has written extensively about the Presidency and American foreign policy.

© 2005 The Green Institute

Dean to AME

DNC: Excerpts of DNC Chairman's Remarks to the AME Church's Political Empowerment Agenda

Houston, TX - Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean today addressed the Political Empowerment Agenda at the 29th Biennial Convention of the Connectional Lay Organization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). The following are highlights from his remarks as prepared for delivery:

"The AME church was founded in response to discrimination - when black Methodists were asked to worship separately from their white counterparts. Since then the church has been a cornerstone of the black community...and it's an honor to be here...

"The church has an essential role in America and in nations around the world. It provides social services, outreach, and refuge to the poor and downtrodden...

"Although we work on different paths, we are united by many of our common goals...

"Our values are far closer than some would have us believe...

"I want to talk to you about what Democrats stand for, and why we are Democrats. We believe that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. We want to bring people together around the common good, and we have a strong belief in the fundamental value of community...

"Many in the political arena want to distort moral values for their own purposes and ignore what's really important. Universally throughout multiple religions and faiths, the idea of reciprocity and treating your neighbor as you want to be treated is a basic tenet...

"I am not a preacher. That is not my calling. But in my public role as Chair of the Democratic Party and in my private role as citizen, I believe that I and we collectively are called to serve one another...

"You can not lift up your fellow man by cutting education programs such as Head Start, Pell grants, or by cutting community development block grants. You can not lift up your fellow man by cutting job training, and Social Security, and small business opportunities. And you can't lift up your country, if you cater to the lower laurels of human nature by using a political strategy that divides Americans by race or religious denomination to win elections...

"Today all across the country the Republican party is driving an anti-immigrant hysteria, intended to divide America ahead of the 2006 elections. In 2002 they used the racially coded word "quota" to incite fear and prejudice on the part of those who thought they would lose jobs and educational opportunities to minorities...

"The Democratic Party will not divide Americans to win elections. We have much to do...and we need to do it together...

"The Republican leadership likes to talk about their connection with African Americans and their heritage as the party of Lincoln. This new stump is chock full of apology but light on true repentance...

"Like America, the Democratic Party has grown and evolved and our relationship with the African American community is a progressive movement...

"We are the party of the Congressional Black Caucus and Senator Barack Obama...It is no mere coincidence that the vast majority of African American elected officials are Democrat and that Democrats continue to lead the effort to put African Americans in office around the country...

"We have to be in the African American community today and year round and not just two weeks before an election. The African American community has been a loyal constituency of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has taken the African American vote for granted - we will not do that again...

"Decency, lifting up our fellow man, bringing hope to the those left out of the process and ensuring that our nation's prosperity is shared by all...these are things that the African Methodist Episcopal Church has stood for and these are things that Democrats stand for...

"I commend the AME Church for your commitment to opening the doors to opportunity through education. Since Brown v. Board of Education, we have made tremendous progress, but there is work to be done. We must ensure that every child in America regardless of race, class, economic status receives a quality education...And we must provide more than paltry funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

"It is unacceptable that we are the only industrialized nation where illness can be met with uncertainty, even poverty. Only 58% of blacks have private health insurance in comparison with %79 of whites. HIV/AIDS has been disproportionately affecting the AA community. We need a healthcare system that works for everyone...

"The new civil rights struggle is the fight for economic opportunity, for entrepreneurship, jobs, prosperity, and home ownership. It is a struggle for equal access to loans, small business training and assistance and financial literacy...

"It is the idea that every American is entitled to a fair shot at the American dream...

"Finally, I want to commend the AME on the creation of the AME V-Alert initiative. There is no democratic right more basic to our democracy than the power of the vote...

"Democrats understand that you can't ask for the vote of African Americans if you're not willing to support the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act...the very thing that empowered African Americans to participate in the political process...

"Last month the DNC Voting Rights Institute issued a report on the 2004 Ohio elections that found that if you were African American you had to wait three times as long to vote and were twice as likely to experience problems while trying to vote...

"This is not right. This is not the American way, and it's not good for our democracy when our citizens don't have confidence that their voice is being heard...and Democrats will continue to fight to guarantee that no American is denied the right to vote, and that their votes are counted."

Our Sensitive Police

The following is a transcription of a communication from our chief of police to a member of his department and the Town Administrator--a transcription, not an exact copy.

From: David Kurz
Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2005 11:10 AM
To: David Holmstock
CC: Todd Selig
Subject: RE: Julian Smith

Thanks David for the information. I will discuss the situation with Todd next week. In the interim, if there are any further issues, be as polite as you can . . . I know that anyway . . . .and contact me immediately.

----------Original Message--------------
From: David Holmstock
To: Andrew Buinicky; Bob Joslin; Dave Kurz
CC: dholmstock at ci.durham.nh.us
Sent: 7/16/2005 7:32 AM
Subject: Julian Smith

Dear Chief,

I would like to bring to your attention what I feel is a pattern of an abuse of power by Council Person Julian Smith. Two incidents lead me to write this letter about the concerns the patrol has about his conduct.

The first incident occurred with Sgt. Joslin not long after we started patrolling the Wiswall Bridge as a directed patrol. Sgt. Joslin was stopped by Council Person Smith and he told Sgt. Joslin that he did not believe we should be enforcing the bridge by stopping people from jumping off of it. He went on to have further conversations about his experience with the bridge and continued to express his opinions about the way we should enforce the bridge. This incident was shortly after we were given the clear directive on how to enforce the bridge. Then we have a council person telling us that we should not be dealing with it the way we are directed to deal with it. Sgt. Joslin said he tried to avoid furthering any conversation with him on that night. If Council Person Smith had an issue or concern, it is my opinion that should have been forwarded to the Chief and not to a Sgt. on patrol as if he was giving orders.

Yesterday, 07-15-2005, Sgt. Buinicky stated he was going to an ambulance call when he was stopped by Council Person Smith. Again, Council Person Smith spoke to Sgt. Buinicky in ehat he described as a, "Loud and Threatening" voice. Smith asked Sgt. Buinicky if he was the officer that was out patrolling the area the night prior. He asked him again, even after the quesion was answered. Council Person Smith then went on to point out how he wanted a motor vehicle accident investigation conducted by our department and the steps he wanted us to take to investigate it. The facts of the accident are that Officer Lyczak had already investigated the crash, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Smith in any way shape or form. That did not stop him form trying to tell us how to do our jobs.

In my opinion, Council Person Smith is clearly trying to intimidate officers on this department because of his position on the council. My concern, and that of Sgt. Buinicky, is what if that was officer Lyczak on patrol yesterday, and not Sgt. Buinicky. According to Sgt. Buinicky, Mr. Smith told him he was going to speak to the officer who took the accident and tell him what should be done anyway. Would the tone and message have been any worse than what it was when he was talking to a Sgt, who clearly described his tones as threatening and loud in nature?

At this point I would like these concerns on record in case this pattern of dealing with officers in this department gets any worse. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Sgt. David Holmstock (204)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some points of clarification and/or correction to the above---

1) to "enforce the bridge" means to tell the kids jumping off a 15' high bridge into the river and swimming not to, even though there is no ordinance on the books prohibiting this activity.

2) Whichever police officer engaged in a casual and brief conversation with Council Person Smith did not identify himself, but it was in the afternoon, when the children and teens were swimming, not at night, as is stated in the report.

3) The matter of how swimming in the river at the bridge is to be regulated has been taken up by the Council and the Town Administrator, as well as the town's insurance advisor.

4) Since Sgt. Buinicky (who also did not identify himself) was sitting in his cruiser with the motor and the air-conditioner running, it was probably necessary to speak loudly in order to be heard.

5) The particulars of the accident investigation--an accident in which town property was damaged and Council Person Smith found it necessary to alert the Department of Public Works to have the damage repaired, because the police investigation took no note of it--were not discussed with Sgt. Buinicky, but rather with the watch commander in charge when Council Person Smith called the police department on behalf of the neigbor whose garage doors were totally destroyed when the vehicle careened across the road, through the yard and knocked an antique auto off the blocks on which it was stored. (7/29/05 addendum--it now seems that it was Sgt. Buinicky who took the call from Council Person Smith, but did not consider it worth-while to volunteer when he was asked about the accident that they had already spoken on the phone)

Bottom line--police officers do not like being told what to do by citizens. Not even by citizens who have been elected to represent those who pay their salaries and provide their perks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Town Administrator states his position:

Dear Julian,

I am writing to let you know that two recent interactions between you and our police officers have caused concern amongst two of our sergeants. (Please see email
stream below dated July 16, 2005 between Chief Kurz and Sgt. Holmstock.) There is a perception that you are utilizing your position as a Town Councilor to direct officers in the field as though you were their supervisor. As you know, the Town Charter states, "No Councilor shall give orders to or interfere with the performance of the duties of any of the administrative officers or employees, either publicly or privately." While I do not believe that this was at all your intention, once one is a Town Councilor it becomes very hard for that individual to speak only as a resident when our officers know very well that the individual is also on the Council and as such has great influence over the affairs of the Town. Whether you identify yourself as a Councilor or not, the police officers likely know you by sight and understand that you are a member of the Town's governing body. Thus your words carry special weight. While I regularly encourage members of the Council to politely and professionally interact with staff to obtain information or to learn more about policy issues, great care should be taken not to give the impression that orders or directives, overt or subtle, are being conveyed as a result of the discussion. If Councilors disagree with policy directives or feel strongly that a certain action should be taken, the appropriate course would be to contact me individually or to bring the matter up before the full Council so that the topic could be fully and openly discussed. I would then follow up on the concern utilizing the appropriate chain of command.

Judge John G. Roberts, Jr.

What do we know about Judge John G. Roberts, Jr?

So, let's see, what have we got on Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. so far?

1) He has shown poor judgement in several instances connected to the announcement of his nomination. In addition to parading his family before the cameras, like he was some candidate for a political office, who wanted to distract us from his lack of personal depth, he co-operated with a lobbying group, Progress for America, which has a rather sordid history of putting out smears on the opponents of those whom they support. I reach this conclusion because it is unlikely that PFA came up with the names, pictures and quotes from laborers subordinate to Roberts' dad in the plant on their own. Never mind that PFA is a very partisan group. They are entitled to support anyone they like. It is the judges who are supposed to be non-partisan.

2) Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. seems to have a very short memory in that he can no longer remember associates from seven years ago. Either that, or his commitment to those associates is very superficial. If, indeed, as is now claimed his inclusion in the membership of the steering committee of the Federalist Society was a mistake, it is a mistake that should have been corrected at the time. Not to have done so demonstrates a certain inattention to detail which does not bode well for a judge who's going to be making life and death decisions--at least as long as the death penalty is on the books.
If there is a memory problem, then that would seem to make a perusal of the documents Judge Roberts prepared in the Reagan/Bush White House even more important. After all, we keep documentary records just for that purpose--because human memory is fallible and often unreliable.

3) Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. has demonstrated a commitment to the principle of "judicial restraint" which counsels that other branches of the government are not to be interfered with. While it seems entirely appropriate to assume that "judicial restraint" refers to a reluctance to interfere in citizens' private lives, that's not what an analysis by Jeffrey Toobin, who's much better acquainted with the law than I, concludes. In any event, if Judge Roberts is reluctant to interfere with the other branches of the government, specifically the executive and the legislative, then that sort of throws the principle of "checks and balances" out the window, doesn't it?

4) Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. seems to be somewhat of a literalist in that he sets great store by the "provisions" of the Constitution. Which probably means that whatever isn't there in black and white, simply doesn't exist. And the verbiage about "rights" left "to the people" is just a sop, a promise to respect individual human rights that doesn't mean anything in real life. Consequently, since citizens don't enjoy any human rights, other than those specified in the Constitution, captives held on foreign soil can't be expected to fare better, as the Judge's recent ruling regarding the detainees on Guantanamo clearly demonstrates.

5) Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. is a strong proponent of the principle of "intent." What that means in regards to individuals who seek to be compensated for an injury inflicted by another is that they have to prove that the injury was inflicted on purpose. As Justice Souter has pointed out, this standard makes it impossible for anyone to get any satisfaction since what's in a person's or corporation's mind is impossible to establish. Moreover, if the offending entity is a government body, whose purpose is presumably the public welfare, the negligent, inattentive or even slightly malicious public servant responsible for causing harm is likely to go unpunished, uncorrected and unrepentant.
So, for example, one might expect that the polluted terrains and waters being left behind as more military facilities are abandoned will remain uncorrected since it is fairly obvious that the US Army, Air Force and Navy never meant to poison their neighbors or their neighbors' children.
While Judge Roberts cannot be questioned on such a hypothetical situation coming before him, since it is likely to be an important issue in the near future, one can extrapolate from his ruling on the case of an employee whose wrists succumbed to carpo tunnel injury and whose employer was found within his rights to simply fire her, because he clearly didn't intend to injure the employee.
While my own quarrel with the principle of "intent" has been prompted by its use in the criminal law to let experienced miscreants escape responsibility for their actions and makes it very difficult for the victims of their actions to get justice, its application to corporate or public entities makes them virtually immune to accountability for their behavior. Again, the principle of "checks and balances" by which we insure that government does not become abusive, seems to be undermined by this interpretation.

7) There has been some public discussion of the conservative legal community's commitment to the principle of "original intent." Most cursory readers of such discussions would probably conclude that courts were trying to figure out what those who wrote the Constitution meant by what they said. While I think it is doubtful that is is possible to make an accurate determination of what someone meant in retrospect, I'm more inclined to think that's not what the "original intent" people are interested in anyway. Rather, their focus is on the "original intent" in setting up a government in the first place and that seems to be related to an assumption that humans, having been tainted by "original sin," are in dire need of being governed to make them behave.
Of course, if that is one's assumption, or the prejudice from which one proceeds, then the general welfare is obviously best served by keeping individuals (especially those that haven't yet been "saved") under tight control. And the notion of government as a social contract which provides benefits to the parts and the whole flies out the window.

Lest it appear that I am dumping on poor Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. let me hasten to assure you that there is nothing personal in the issues that concern me. I'm trying to be as objective as I can and focus on what's in the record, nothing more.

NH Photos

I Don't Recall Roberts

When I woke this morning, I didn't intend (word we will hear much of in coming months) to focus on Judge Roberts. But then the cartoon on the editorial page of the Boston Globe pointed out just what I'd been thinking: that it's strange for such a brilliant man not to remember what organizations he belonged to just seven years ago.

Well, not strange actually. Seems to me Judge Roberts has made a significant number of other errors in judgement in his brief tenure in the public arena.

The first, of course, was in permitting the announcement of his nomination to be played like that of a candidate for political office, parading his wife and children in hopes that the electorate won't pay attention to his back-room deals.

The second, or perhaps it actually came first, was his co-operation with the Progress for America crew whose great expertise, until now, has been in smearing democratic candidates for the presidency and promoting the piratization of social security.
Though I'm not a proponent of guilt by association, judges should be careful about the people they choose as friends and supporters.

Third, of course, was permitting the White House press secretary to act as his spokesperson when answering questions from the press. While it's quite possible that McClellan could have made it on his own initiative, a statement about what the judge does or doesn't remember is either accurate, or should have been corrected by Roberts himself.

Roberts' retreat into the "I do not recall" mode so early in the process is worrying. On the other hand, it's actually quite consistent with his commitment to the proposition that "intent" has more weight than action and that, no matter how, avoiding responsibility is a good thing. So, we should probably be glad to have gotten such an early clue that when it comes to choosing between right and wrong, Judge Roberts prefers "I don't remember."

Guess that's what he's got in common with his latest mentor.

Iraq's Kurds --Iraq's Saviors?

Peter W. Galbraith is on the right track with his report from Irbil. He's noticed that America's support for its Kurdish friends is not all they expected. No surprise there.

The constitution and the Kurds

By Peter W. Galbraith | July 25, 2005

ERBIL, Iraq
THERE ARE NOT many places in Iraq where the locals want to celebrate American Independence Day. But, in Iraq's self-governing Kurdistan region, the newly elected government decided to host a Fourth of July party for their American allies. Top coalition officers were invited along with US civilians, food and drinks ordered (the secular Kurds serve and drink alcohol), and the Kurdistan prime minister had prepared his speech. Then America's top diplomat in the region delivered an ultimatum: She would not attend unless the Kurds flew Iraq's flag at the party. The Kurds refused and canceled the party.

[...]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/25/the_constitution_and_the_kurds/

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That the Iraqi people are fussing over the allocation of their natural resouces should not come as a surprise.  The Interim Constitution that Bremer shoved down their throats made it quite clear that the American occupation was directed towards achieving what they had failed to get out of Saddam Hussein, preferential access to ALL of Iraq's natural resources (land, water, minerals and oil).

What most Americans probably missed was that, under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a socialist state and most natural and capital assets belonged to the state.  In theory, this should have made it easy for American corporate interests to acquire exclusive long-term leases and buy up Iraq's resources cheaply.  In theory, it also should have made it easy for the United States to negotiate the construction of those fourteen military bases we wanted to have there-- in order to assert our dominance over the Indian Ocean basin.  But, Saddam was resistant.  That's why he had to be removed.

Easy access to Iraqi oil is nice, but we really don't need it.  Much more important to military bases in the desert are water and electricity to keep the troops cool and replicate all the comforts of home.

John Kerry has challenged the Administration to declare that the US has no interest in the permanent bases we are even now building.  He expressed that conviction during the campaign.  Which made it absolutely imperative that he be defeated.  A permanent American military presence in the region has been the Pentagon's goal for several decades.  Very likely it's what drove the occupation of Vietnam.  Fat chance they will give up that dream without a fight.

And to think, that fellow Chalabi promised it would be easy.

What the Hell?

What the Hell?

That's what a Republican Senator friend of mine had to say when he read my call for a Democrat majority in Congress-- or at least in one of the two Houses-- in 2006. However, I feel, that were he to look at how absolute power corrupts absolutely-- case in point Speaker DeLay-- perhaps we Republicans ought to be more careful in what we wish for, given the blight our wishes brought upon us. After all, before DeLay we had Gingrich. And though he walked out after getting caught without making too much of a fuss, he couldn't resist that "call" inside his brainstem-- more to ego than "to serve" myth-- and is now embarrassing us all bucking for the presidency and introduced on FOX-TV as if he speaks for all of us Republicans.

How I miss the days when the Democrats had one side of the Congress, the Senate, and the Republicans just swept the House right from under Bill (is is) Clinton. In adversity, Bill Clinton showed us that he not only has "cahones" (though a bit overactive) but also a cerebral cortex to more than match his pituitary. He devours writ en words as if they were feminine parts and processes issues as if thinking brought him orgasms.

Clinton was at his best after taking a severe body blow from us Republicans, who for decades were so outraged, for example, by the WELFARE EMPIRE devouring urban America. It was composed of a massive bureaucracy that both kept clients down, insuring sloth on their part and rewarded irresponsible reproduction. One might say its motto was: "WE REWARD REPRODUCERS WHO DON'T PRODUCE WITH CASH." I recall my outrage upon learning, however, that the welfare clients were not the problem; for example, in New York, they got only 17 cents out of every welfare dollar while the bureaucracy ate up the other 83 cents. Ron Reagan tried to dent the bureaucracy of welfare. However, when he couldn't he just went after the most vulnerable in order to get some results: the disabled, who could not protect themselves. It was Bill Clinton who hopped into bed with the Republican Congress and together created the most revolutionary welfare reform in American history. That's what the Founding Fathers told us to do "persevere and compromise relentlessly" to produce bipartisan legislation in the people's service.

Personally, in 2000 I looked into GW Bush's soul-- so I thought-- and saw humble, candid, compassionate conservatism from a man who hit rock bottom and crawled his way out, Bible in hand. Alas, I failed to check how much gray matter was left after a life of coke and booze. We thus got a president, unfortunately, whom no one yet has described as well as his former Sec. of the Treasury, O'Neill: a blind man talking to the deaf.

When crisis hit on 9/11, Evil Dick Cheney and carnivorous Rumsfeld got together with the Devil's Disciples, the neocons-- and did exactly what they used to practice doing back in the Reagan years. Back then, Cheney and Rumsfeld, though private citizens with no official authority, would go to the depths of a mountain cave to form an "alternate US Govt," in case the White House was nuked by the Soviets. Asked why they don't take members of Congress, given the succession rules in the Constitution, they insisted that such an alternative government had to be decisive and Congressmen would slow them down. Well, come 9/11, Evil Dick sent President GW Bush on Air Force One to circle around the Midwest while he took over the government. It was then that the Iraq War was hatched out. But, when meeting with Cheney and the neocon cabal at Camp David, Bush had to shut them down, insisting that we WILL attack Afghanistan, not Iraq, as they demanded.

Yet, Evil Dick dicked us all by beating at Bush until he went along with an Iraq War. Since Bush reads nothing, has a limited attention span and little memory, he couldn't argue; all he could finally do was accept the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocon demand for war in principle in order to delay the war until Saddam Hussein is-- he hoped-- deposed by his own people, thus avoiding war. However, when the cabal threatened to expose Bush's indecisiveness, he relented and gave the "Saddam, ya got 48 hrs, ta git outa Baaagghdaaad!" speech. From that point on, Bush focused on the DECISIVE WAR PRESIDENT myth weaved by court scribe Woodward, the ahistoric picture of "Bush's War."

Finally, after re-election, Bush grew Clintonesque cohones too and he threw out all the neocons, locked Cheney down in the basement and took over the Administration. Cabinet status was based on two criteria: (1) never bring GW bad news; (2) be loyal no matter what, just like the tree monkeys that see, hear nor speak evil. Alas, cahones ain't no substitute for gray matter of the cerebral kind. And so Bush focused exclusively on paying off the robber barons that payed for his campaign by giving America over to them, piece by piece.

Noting that the White House had no foreign policy, no economic policy, no environmental policy, just engaged in the great give away at taxpayer's expense and the failing war in Iraq, Republican legislators became nervous-- especially Republican Congressmen, for there's no one more accountable to the public than Congressmen, and they will face a hostile public, per the polls, in 2006. Rove, however, assured them that he would pull off another miracle as he did in 2002 and 2004. Considering himself the Pied Piper of the Christian Yahoos, he insists that he will deliver votes galore.

Unfortunately, a funny thing happened to Rove on the way to the Forum. Diverting attention of the Plame investigation (the exposing of a CIA covert operative in order to punish her husband for NOT proving Cheney's WMDs lies true) onto himself, a political operative, away from Cheney's neocon parallel NSC of Middle East fanatics, who did have clearance and appropriate legal responsibility, he lost all his seeming impenetrable glow. The more Bush came to his defense, the more he stepped in his own doodoo.

Now Republican legislators are coming to realize that they are Republicans, not Rove trolls. They realize that the balding little guy does not put them into office with his campaign magic, but the voters do with confidence. They realize that, like the Democrat Party, the Republican Party is a party of the people, not of Evil Dick and Dumb George. THAT IS INDEED A REVOLUTION, in every way as important as the Welfare Revolution because now the Republican Congressmen that Rove thought he controls like trained seals realize that their words must reflect the thinking of the voters, not of Rove.

And, for the first time, all those Americans who shut closed their minds when first presented the CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE of GW Bush and the CRIMINAL INTENT of Evil Dick Cheney during the first term, are given another chance to revisit how we as a nation got into such a mess in less than five years. However Rove cajoles, intimidates and tries to buy off Republican legislators, truth is, everyone realizes that he is a moral midget instead of a frightening ogre. Consequently, when he rants his usual bravado: I'll kill him, tear him limb from limb; I'll squeeze him until he stops breathing; I'll get this s.o.b. and shake him till he can suffer no more, etc., Rove is seen as a puny little pain in the butt, just like like the Wizard of Oz.

All this forebodes a great prospect for the Democrats. But not so if Mrs. Clinton on her way to presidential candidacy accepts to embrace the neocons in return for lots of seed money for her campaign. Already, watching her on MEET THE PRESS from Baghdad, it was impossible to know which, she or Sen. McCain, sitting next to her, was answering the questions-- BOTH were spouting identical BUSHIT!

I don't know if there's any connection between Bill's bad mixing of sex and politics and Hilary's political prostitution, but it ain't gonna work. Americans in the last election chose not to know because they didn't want to know how we got stuck in Iraq-- they were still to frightened by 9/11. After all, most people suffered then from the "ain't my kid going to Iraq" syndrome. But now they have a chance to review what they sent soldiers into by voting for Bush. This time they can't escape the fact that if you don't consider every soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan as "MY KID," you are nothing but a Bushit American. Real Americans will save their souls and this time will want to know why and how. As a result, we enter the 2006 Campaign again debating history. But this time, we won't be debating the Vietnam War of 30 years ago, as in 2004, but the Iraq War, begun three years ago by Evil Dick, Avaricious Rummy and the nutty neocons.

If the Democrats will not get over their awe of Rove, and will seek to emulate him in order to win elections, we will soon know. With Dr. Howard Dean on call as Chief of the DNC, Democrats are all being inoculated with polar positions that leave a wide space between Rove and Democrat principles. For that, Dr. Dean is cursed by all the Rove-copy cats. Hilary's bonding with the neocons, pretending that they are the returned prodigal sons, won't hold water when they are examined by Dr. Dean. Dr. Dean knows very well the difference between the patient and the cancer. He will not permit the metastasis to spread on.

Yet, we little people who only get to vote once in a while for one or the other candidate that the two parties put before us, know full well that politicians-- Democrat or Republicans-- are whores. Thus, neocons prowling dark corners with big bucks in hand will seem irresistible. But remember, once Democrats catch VD from the neocons, all these Democrat candidates will have no place else to go but to Dr. Dean for treatment. Then we will all know where you've been and what you did.

What Bush is made of is evident from the Pentagon's leak of a British document and then the admission that, yes, next year a lot of troops will be pulled out of Iraq. But so desperate are the Rovites that instead of bringing them home for Christmas, the Rovites are waiting until just before the 2006 election to bring them back. Don't you all get angry at the assumption that you are so dumb?

As a dying and disgusted old man, I can only thank God that in their disgust with politics my children chose to fight back rather than roll over and play dead for the likes of Evil Dick Cheney and the robber barons. That means that from now on politicians will be punished for prostitution ABOVE the belt, not just below. OUR kids will look at everything we chose not to see, instead passing on the burden to them. They will not waste time cursing us. Instead they will make us see what we should have done before we close our eyes forever. Thanks kids-- kick ass-- daddy loves ya!

Daniel E. Teodoru

Posted by Danielet on July 24, 2005 at 02:27 PM

Permission to Torture, Sir

We've known. of course, that the torture of foreign captives in American military prisons was implicitly authorized by a Presidential "finding" in February of 2002.

We had hoped that in the interim the present Administration has recognized that the results of the policy decisions were morally wrong.

We are astonished to find this is not the case--that the Administration is threatening to veto the appropriations bill for all our soldiers, airmen, marines and national guard troops if it contains a prohibition against such abuse.

Threatening the well-being of innocent people in order to force others to do one's bidding is the strategy of the terrorist.

"After ignoring repeated calls and court orders to release new, politically embarrassing images and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the president has stooped to new low. President Bush recently threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill if it includes any attempt to bar "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, let alone investigate past abuses at those facilities. The rationale behind this veto threat--that it would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice"--would be laughable if it weren't part of a reprehensible, concerted effort to obstruct the democratic process.

If the president of the United States is willing to hold hostage the funds necessary for the support of our men and women in uniform, just because some in Congress want to do what is right, then I despair for the future of this great country.

I urge the Congress to exert its powers enshrined in the Constitution and vote in favor of investigating and regulating the abuses and handling of detainees. And if President Bush does follow through on his veto threat, I pray there will be enough who will vote to override it. Our troops deserve nothing less."

RavenwindinCO

Bush w. Social Security Blanket

What is George W. Bush hiding under his SOCIAL SECURITY BLANKET and why does he need his mommy by his side?

Judge John G. Roberts, Jr.

Briefly stated, Judge Robers is wrong for the Supreme Court of the United States because he has little or no regard for individual or human rights. In addition, he seems convinced that there is no governmental responsibility to carry out the will of the polity. And, indeed, he hangs all determination of right and wrong on the notion of intent.

Never mind that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

View image

After an admittedly cursory review of the career of JudgeJohn G. Roberts, Jr. as outlined in dkosopedia, I have come to the conclusion that in no sense can Judge Roberts be described as a conservation whose primary object is to follow the Constitution of the United States.

Why do I say that? It seems quite clear from his positions on a variety of issues that Judge Roberts rejects the delegation of all rights not assigned to the federal government or the states to the people. Indeed, he sees no God-given or human individual rights at all, beyond those specifically enumerated. So, of course, since he doesn' t consider American citizens as having human rights, foreign captives detained on a foreign land mass (Guantanamo, Cuba) don' t have any either, as he argued in a recent decision.

On the other side of the leger, or because there are no individual rights, there aren' t any individual or government responsibilities, either. Like the phrase " of the people," " providing for the general welfare" would seem to be just a nice sounding catch-all. Indeed, as some of his rulings on environmental issues demonstrate, the federal government has no responsibility to even carry out legislative directives. In Judge Roberts' world, the role of the legislature would seem to be to pass rules and regulations that make governing (telling people what not to do) easier for the executive. Thus, any directions that the legislature might give to the executive can easily be ignored if they do not mesh with the intent of the executive.

If we think of an act, any act, being made up of an actor or agent (subject) and that which is acted upon (object) then it seems pretty clear, if my reading of Judge Roberts positions is correct, that subject and object are really irrelevant. What counts is the actor's intent. So, for example, if the government does not intend to discriminate against certain classes of people, then their exclusion from full participation must be considered as simply accidental. It' s nobody's fault. Naturally, Judge Roberts is opposed to affirmative action requirements. Similarly, if people are prevented from voting, unless it can be proven that someone had the intention of keeping them from the ballot, there is no recourse in the law.

Not only is intent almost impossible to prove in most circumstances, as Justice Souter has pointed out, but intent, as we are all now well aware, tends to be hidden in a veil of lies by all but the most simple criminals. If we want to consider some more consequences of this perspective, the exclusive focus on intent, we would find, for example, that a spouse who has been beaten black and blue would have to prove that the perpetrator actually meant to harm her, instead, as he might explain, of merely applying corrective measures to punish some forbidden behavior on her part. Or we might be confronted with a father who ascribes his impregnation of his teenage daughter as intended to teach her about sexual relations and their consequence (the pregnancy she will have to carry to term because medical intervention would keep her from learning the lesson well).

While one might be tempted to agree that there is no provision in the Constitution to permit or mandate the regulation of medical services, prohibiting certain citizens from gaining equal access to health care would seem to be a violation of the equal protection clause. But, again, Roberts does not seem to recognize ANY government obligations. And, when it comes to rights, it' s clear that the government has most, groups have some and the individual effectively has none. Even freedom of speech, for example, applies to the speech, not the speaker.

Perhaps he' s just overlooking the social contract upon which our government is supposedly based. Perhaps Roberts simply doesn't understand that when an individual cedes some of his God-given inalienable right for the greater benefit of the whole, he' s entitled to get something back.

There' s one position that s perhaps particularly relevant to considering whether Roberts is suited to the Supreme Court. In the summary of his career it' s described as an argument on Habeus Corpus in which Roberts joined a unanimous opinion, denying the claim of a prisoner who argued that by tightening parole rules in the middle of his sentence, the government subjected him to an unconstitutional after-the-fact punishment, which was overturned by the Supreme Court (Fletcher vs District of Columbia) This argument, of course, exactly mirrors the strategy Roberts is reported to have suggested to resolve the 2000 election in Florida--that the legislature simply change the rules governing the selection of delegates to the electoral college in media res.

I leave it to others to decide whether this demonstrates a disregard for the fundamental principles of the law. I find his cavalier attitude quite shocking. Though it is consistent with the belief that the fundamental purpose of the law is to govern or control individual behavior and hand out punishment when individuals intend to do wrong.

No doubt, Roberts' position on governmental responsibility makes him attractive to those who are (rightfully) concerned about the significant liability the government is creating in failing to adequately protect the troops in Iraq from environmental insults. Perhaps there are those who look forward to letting the government off the hook with the argument that it didn t intend for the soldiers to become disabled because of environmental exposures. I happen to think that would be morally and legally wrong and hope that our support for the troops will keep this fellow off the Supreme Court.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

According to the New York Times, Roberts made the following replies to questions during his last confirmation hearings:

"I do not have an all-encompassing approach to constitutional interpretation; the appropriate approach depends to some degree on the specific provision at issue," Judge Roberts wrote in response to a written question during his 2003 confirmation to the federal appeals court in Washington. "Some provisions of the Constitution provide considerable guidance on how they should be construed; others are less precise.

"I would not hew to a particular 'school' of interpretation," he added, "but would follow the approach or approaches that seemed most suited in the particular case to correctly discerning the meaning of the provision at issue."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What I find interesting is the repeated use of the word "provision." What it tells me is that Roberts is focused only on what's IN the Constitution and not what's been left out and presumably "left to the. . . people" which is where our individual human rights reside.

Looks like Roberts is a "if it ain't there, it doesn't exist" kind of guy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, while his Catholicism should not be held against him, one might ask how he reconciles the belief in original sin with the commitment to "innocent until proven guilty."

The Yellow-cake Tale or A Tale for the 21st Century

'Twas a marvelously allusive tale George W. Bush told the nation and the other credulous peoples of the globe, when he spun the story of Saddam Hussein. He told of the ogre of Baghdad, sitting in his palaces and plotting to buy some more yellow-cake uranium from the country of Niger (conveniently missing its second g )in deepest Africa, and to make a bomb or bomblets, that could be delivered by drones, like storks delivered babies of old, to any city in America he chose.

'Twas a tale worthy of the brothers Grimm. First there was the color (yellow) to remind us of all our other colored fears, the "redskins" and the "red menace" and the "yellow peril" and, of course, the darkest heart of Africa. But this time it was to be yellow cake, much better than that ginger-bread baked up by the witch.

Then there was the word uranium. No more need to worry about traces of strontium 90 that babies might drink from their mother's breast or breathe in with every breath. No, now we could all picture ourselves eating yellow cake, right there at the family table, if it didn t blast us all to smithereens first.

But, of course, there was nothing to cause real worry. Like the children reading the story of "My Pet Goat," fearless leader (along with the anti-aircraft batteries on the roof) would be there to protect us. George W. Bush would make sure that all good Americans are safe in their beds and secure in their homes. All the bad ones he'll lock up and throw away the key. What's not to believe?

'Twas a hell of a story, well told, and it sounded sincere. But it was all a lie. Saddam Hussein had no reason to buy uranium from Africa. There was more than enough in storage and, if he ran out, he could have just sent off to them thar hills, where the Kurdish people live, and ordered some more dug up. And, if he wanted to deliver anything anywhere, he'd best have relied on some storks because the American air patrol wouldn' t let anything fly in the no-fly zone, much less drones carrying
bundles of bombs.

So what was the point of the story? Why would the President of the United States make up such a whopper? Why scare the American people instead of telling them the truth? Was it because, having classified all the truth as top secret, the only safe thing left to tell was lies? Or was the story just too good not to tell? Where' s your sense of humor, America?

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

Another perspective from a retired CIA agent----

Testimony of James Marcinkowski

July 22, 2005

What is important now is not who wins or loses the political battle or who may or may not be indicted; rather, it is a question of how we will go about protecting the citizens of this country in a very dangerous world. The undisputed fact is that we have irreparably damaged our capability to collect human intelligence and thereby significantly diminished our capability to protect the American people.

Understandable to all Americans is a simple, incontrovertible, but damning truth: the United States government exposed the identity of a clandestine officer working for the CIA. This is not just another partisan "dust-up" between political parties. This unprecedented act will have far-reaching consequences for covert operations around the world. Equally disastrous is that from the time of that first damning act, we have continued on a course of self-inflicted wounds by government officials who have refused to take any responsibility, have played hide-and-seek with the truth and engaged in semantic parlor games for more than two years, all at the expense of the safety of the American people. No government official has that right.

For an understanding of what is at stake it is important to understand some fundamental principles. No country or hostile group, from al Qaeda to any drug rings operating in our cities, likes to be infiltrated or spied upon. The CIA, much like any police department in any city, has undercover officers--spies, that use "cover."

To operate under "cover" means you use some ruse to cloak both your identity and your intentions. The degree of cover needed to carry out any operation varies depending on the target of the investigation. A police officer performing "street buys" uses a "light" cover, meaning he or she could pose as something as simple as a drug user, operate only at night and during the day and, believe it or not, have a desk job in the police station. On the other hand, if an attempt were made to infiltrate a crime syndicate, visiting the local police station or drinking with fellow
FBI

FBI agents after work may be out of the question. In any scenario, your cover, no matter what the degree, provides personal protection and safety. But it does not end there. Cover is also used to protect collection methodology as well as any innocent persons a CIA officer may have regular contact with, such as overseas acquaintances, friends, and even other U.S. government officials.

While cover provides a degree of safety for the case officer, it also provides security for that officer's informants or agents. In most human intelligence operations, the confidentiality of the cover used by a CIA officer and the personal security of the agent or asset is mutually dependent. A case officer cannot be identified as working for the CIA, just as the informant/agent cannot be identified as working for the CIA through the case officer. If an informant or agent is exposed as working for the CIA, there is a good chance that the CIA officer has been identified as well. Similarly, if the CIA officer is exposed, his or her agents or informants are exposed. In all cases, the cover of a case officer ensures not only his or her own personal safety but that of the agents or assets as well.

The exposure of Valerie Plame's cover by the White House is the same as the local chief of police announcing to the media the identity of its undercover drug officers. In both cases, the ability of the officer to operate is destroyed, but there is also an added dimension. An informant in a major sophisticated crime network, or a CIA asset working in a foreign government, if exposed, has a rather good chance of losing more than just their ability to operate.

Any undercover officer, whether in the police department or the CIA, will tell you that the major concern of their informant or agent is their personal safety and that of their family. Cover is safety. If you cannot guarantee that safety in some form or other, the person will not work for you and the source of important information will be lost.

So how is the Valerie Plame incident perceived by any current or potential agent of the CIA? I will guarantee you that if the local police chief identified the names of the department's undercover officers, any half-way sophisticated undercover operation would come to a halt and if he survived that accidental discharge of a weapon in police headquarters, would be asked to retire.

And so the real issues before this Congress and this country today is not partisan politics, not even the loss of secrets. The secrets of Valerie Plame's cover are long gone. What has suffered perhaps irreversible damage is the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince our overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance to us. How are our case officers supposed to build and maintain that confidence when their own government cannot even guarantee the personal protection of the home team? While the loss of secrets in the world of espionage may be damaging, the stealing of the credibility of our CIA officers is unforgivable....

And so we are left with only one fundamental truth, the U.S. government exposed the identity of a covert operative. I am not convinced that the toothpaste can be put back into the tube. Great damage has been done and that damage has been increasing every single day for more than two years. The problem of the refusal to accept responsibility by senior government officials is ongoing and causing greater damage to our national security and our ability to collect human intelligence. But the problem lies not only with government officials but also with the media, commentators and other apologists who have no clue as to the workings of the intelligence community. Think about what we are doing from the perspective of our overseas human intelligence assets or potential assets.

I believe Bob Novak when he credited senior administration officials for the initial leak, or the simple, but not insignificant confirmation of that secret information, as I believe a CIA officer in some far away country will lose an opportunity to recruit an asset that may be of invaluable service to our covert war on terror because "promises of protection" will no longer carry the level of trust they once had.

Each time the leader of a political party opens his mouth in public to deflect responsibility, the word overseas is loud and clear--politics in this country does in fact trump national security.

Each time a distinguished ambassador is ruthlessly attacked for the information he provided, a foreign asset will contemplate why he should risk his life when his information will not be taken seriously.

Each time there is a perceived political "success" in deflecting responsibility by debating or re-debating some minutia, such actions are equally effective in undermining the ability of this country to protect itself against its enemies, because the two are indeed related. Each time the political machine made up of prime-time patriots and partisan ninnies display their ignorance by deriding Valerie Plame as a mere "paper-pusher," or belittling the varying degrees of cover used to protect our officers, or continuing to play partisan politics with our national security, it is a disservice to this country. By ridiculing, for example, the "degree" of cover or the use of post office boxes, you lessen the level of confidence that foreign nationals place in our covert capabilities.

Those who would advocate the "I'm ok, you're ok" politics of non-responsibility, should probably think about the impact of those actions on our foreign agents. Non-responsibility means we don't care. Not caring means a loss of security. A loss of security means a loss of an agent. The loss of an agent means the loss of information. The loss of information means an increase in the risk to the people of the United States.

There is a very serious message here. Before you shine up your American flag lapel pin and affix your patriotism to your sleeve, think about what the impact your actions will have on the security of the American people. Think about whether your partisan obfuscation is creating confidence in the United States in general and the CIA in particular. If not, a true patriot would shut up.

Those who take pride in their political ability to divert the issue from the fundamental truth ought to be prepared to take their share of the responsibility for the continuing damage done to our national security.

When this unprecedented act first occurred, the president could have immediately demanded the resignation of all persons even tangentially involved. Or, at a minimum, he could have suspended the security clearances of these persons and placed them on administrative leave. Such methods are routine with police forces throughout the country. That would have at least sent the right message around the globe, that we take the security of those risking their lives on behalf of the United States seriously. Instead, we have flooded the foreign airwaves with two years of inaction, political rhetoric, ignorance, and partisan bickering. That's the wrong message. In doing so we have not lessened, but increased the threat to the security and safety of the people of the United States.

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

IT REMAINS RELEVANT, ALAS. SO DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research.... [I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer.... Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations.... Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

Iraqi dispatch

For some reason one day of coverage of how the 27 million people are faring in Iraq is enough, according to the BBC. And even though it prides itself on having a "continuous presence" in Iraq, the Tribunal on Iraq that was held in Turkey was too far away to cover. Well, maybe because the way to Turkey runs through Fallujah and nobody wants to go there.

That's actually easier to understand than the official explanation:
"But unlike the WTI which takes the war in Iraq as unjust as its premise, the BBC must be open-minded and impartial in its approach."

Media Lens recently issued a media alert about the lack of British media
coverage given to the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul last
month. Our alert, The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing World Tribunal on
Iraq ,
was sent out on July 6, 2005.

We suggested that readers ask senior BBC managers and editors why the
BBC, a publicly-funded broadcaster, is failing to cover the many reports
of alleged US war crimes in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq. Why, in
particular, did the main BBC news programmes ignore the Tribunal's
damning findings against the invasion and occupation of Iraq? And when
has the BBC ever reported Bush and Blair's culpability for war crimes?

These are troubling questions for well-rewarded media professionals to
answer rationally, while preserving any semblance of self-respect. The
cognitive dissonance demonstrated by senior BBC managers trying to
believe that BBC 'impartiality' is upheld, even while actual media
performance clearly promotes the agenda of destructive state power, is
astounding to behold. One recalls the White Queen's boast in Lewis
Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass': "Why, sometimes I've believed as
many as six impossible things before breakfast."

    Alice in Wonderland: The "Evidence-Based Journalism" That Ignores
    Evidence!

Helen Boaden, the BBC news director, has now issued the following
statement to the many people who wrote to her. We asked a number of
knowledgeable commentators to respond (see below).

"Thank you for your email criticising the BBC for lack of coverage of
the World Tribunal on Iraq. We have received numerous complaints on this
subject in different parts of the BBC and - after careful consideration
of the matter - the following is the BBC response, which I am sending on
behalf of the BBC.

"The subjects under discussion at the Istanbul meeting are indeed
important and many of the topics are matters which the BBC has examined
persistently and regularly across our outlets. There are many
conferences which the BBC does not cover and - given finite resources -
we take the view that what is important is that a full range of issues
is aired.

"Currently our top financial priority in relation to Iraq is to report
on events from the country itself. The BBC is the only British
broadcaster to have maintained a continuous presence in the country,
including the maintenance of a permanent bureau in Baghdad. One example
of how this investment has paid off is the whole day of reports we
carried on BBC News 24, BBC World, Radio 5 Live and on the BBC News
website on June 7th. On that day, we chronicled different aspects of
life for the 27 million people who live in Iraq. There's a summary of
what we did on the website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4603875.stm

"Turning to the agenda of the World Tribunal on Iraq, the BBC has
examined events in Iraq from many angles, including the legal framework;
the role of the UN; international relations; the conduct of coalition
forces and the human rights violations at Abu Graib; the controversy
over Guantanamo Bay. But unlike the WTI which takes the war in Iraq as
unjust as its premise, the BBC must be open-minded and impartial in its
approach.

"We are committed to evidence-based journalism. We have not been able to
establish that the US used banned chemical weapons and committed other
atrocities against civilians in Falluja last November. Inquiries on the
ground at the time and subsequently indicate that their use is unlikely
to have occurred.

"The BBC takes its commitment to impartial reporting with the utmost
seriousness. Please rest assured that we strive for open-minded,
responsible journalism.

"Yours sincerely
Helen Boaden, Director, BBC News" (Email forwarded by numerous Media
Lens readers, July 13 onwards, 2005)

The award-winning journalist John Pilger, who has extensive experience
of visiting and reporting on Iraq, told us:

"Helen Boaden's response is simply ridiculous. She says the BBC 'has not
established' that the US has used banned weapons or committed
atrocities. The US has admitted using napalm, a banned weapon, and the
evidence of atrocities in Fallujah is overwhelming: too great to list
here. Read, for example, the statements of doctors at Fallujah General
Hospital and of other independent eye witnesses. The reason the BBC 'has
not established' all this is because its reporters are embedded with the
Americans and British and report the occupiers' news, about which there
is nothing 'impartial'." (Email to Media Lens, July 14, 2005)

We also contacted the World Tribunal on Iraq [WTI] for their response.
Communications coordinator Caroline Muscat told us WTI had invited the
BBC World Service correspondent in Istanbul, Jonny Dymond, to attend the
Tribunal's hearings. She helped to set up interviews and provide
footage: "we did our best to meet his needs".

Dymond confirmed to us that he attended the opening press conference,
and was present on the first day of the 5-day proceedings (email from
Jonny Dymond to Media Lens, July 14, 2005). This resulted in a news
story on the BBC World Service lasting 24 seconds, and a longer report
of about 90 seconds in length. These reports failed to mention the
Tribunal's finding that the BBC, and other named, mainstream media,
bears "special responsibility for promoting the lies about Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction".

Caroline Muscat told us: "The lack of coverage on BBC World Service is
not due to any neglect our end."

But not a smidgen of even this limited coverage was broadcast on the
major BBC news bulletins, such as the evening Six O'Clock and Ten
O'Clock television news on BBC1. Muscat continued:

"In effect, Ms. Helen Boaden is saying that the Tribunal was not a
priority story for the BBC because of judgments made at the BBC on this
global initiative." She added that the Tribunal "was followed by
millions of people around the world on alternative media sites, the live
audio and video streaming provided by the WTI web site... The fact that
Iraqi people risked their lives to travel to Istanbul and testify on the
horrors they face on a daily basis was not a priority story because the
BBC says that, 'Currently our top financial priority in relation to Iraq
is to report on events from the country itself'.

"While we respect the BBC's commitment to evidence-based journalism, it
is hard to ignore the fact that the evidence in this story is the
Tribunal itself. The fact that a significant number of respected
diplomats, academicians, reporters and human rights lawyers came
together with international experts from various fields to bring to the
world's attention the injustice occurring in Iraq, is in itself a story
that merits reporting.

"The BBC has disregarded the experience and professionalism of all those
who participated in this Tribunal. In fact, one of the reasons why this
initiative took place is precisely because we felt, like millions of
people around the world, that there was an imbalance and a lack of
clarity and objectivity in the reporting of the so-called 'war on
terror'. By failing to understand the significance of presenting this
other side of the story of this war the BBC has in fact proved us
right." (Email to Media Lens, July 14, 2005)

We contacted Dahr Jamail, a 'non-embedded' journalist who has bravely
reported from Iraq for a total of 8 months to date. Jamail testified in
Istanbul, detailing many atrocities inflicted upon Iraqis by US forces.
This was his response:

"It is interesting that Helen Boaden uses the reason for not covering
the WTI that the BBC uses 'evidence-based journalism,' then goes on to
state that the BBC has, 'not been able to establish that the US used
banned chemical weapons and committed other atrocities against civilians
in Fallujah last November.'

"This is one of the main purposes for the WTI to have even occurred - to
provide this information to the media and to inform the world of the
atrocities being committed in Iraq." (Email to Media Lens, July 13, 2005)

Jamail pointed out that the Tribunal provided all the evidence the BBC
needs, "from witnesses which included several Iraqis, of the US use of
illegal weapons in Fallujah during November such as cluster bombs,
uranium munitions, napalm and chemical weapons". Jamail also pointed to
the "testimonies and photographs of the US military raiding hospitals
and killing both doctors and civilians as what appears to now be their
standard operating procedure for their military adventures in Iraq." He
concluded:

"It is clear that if the BBC was truly 'committed to evidence-based
journalism' as Ms. Boaden states, they would report what Iraqi doctors
and civilians say as to what occurred in Fallujah in November."

    Blind Faith: The BBC Ignores Its Own 'Impartiality' Mantra

Hans von Sponeck is a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who ran the
humanitarian oil-for-food programme in Baghdad for 18 months. He
resigned in 2000, appalled at the impact of UN sanctions on Iraq. He
also responded to Boaden's email:

"The World Tribunal was anything but just 'another conference'. A
sensitive and impartial BBC should have quickly discovered that the
Istanbul event provided a rare glimpse into a world-wide public mind
which stands for peace, justice, political honesty and accountability.
The BBC chose to ignore its own advice that 'impartiality is to cover
all sides'. To bypass a responsible international movement at a time
when political opportunism and dishonesty are rampant, when
international law is broken at will and human security is becoming a
distant dream, is anything but coverage of all sides and the antithesis
of open-minded journalism." (Hans von Sponeck, email to Media Lens, July
13, 2005)

Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, acknowledged "the
immense difficulties on the ground" for reporters in Iraq, but told us
that Boaden's points "about the deployment of depleted uranium and the
atrocities in Fallujah and elsewhere are specious". He continued:

"There is plenty of reliable evidence that the invasion forces used
depleted uranium and napalm-style materiel in Iraq (we the British
certainly used the former in 1991) and the BBC's defence experts could
do a lot more to put this into the public arena. The deployment of such
ghastly weapons against civilian areas is surely +feeding+ the anger
that results in attacks like those against Madrid and London. The
inability or reluctance of the BBC properly to expose or even discuss
intelligently the use of such weaponry as depleted uranium or napalm is
shameful and even provocative for its viewers and listeners, especially
given its propensity to allow its presenters and guests to go into
finger-wagging fury over Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons."
(Email to Media Lens, July 14, 2005)

Finally, Richard Keeble, professor of journalism at Lincoln University
and author of 'Ethics for Journalists', sent us his response to the BBC
statement:

"The mainstream media have been celebrating the 'revolution' that
occurred over the coverage of the London bombs - with the prominent use
of mobile phone images provided by members of the public and weblogs.
This, it has been argued, represents a major 'democratisation' of the
mainstream media. Yet significantly, the incorporation of data supplied
by non-professional journalists has in no way impacted on the overall
bias of the coverage. In other words, the most important revolution
needed in the mainstream media is over news values. Their failure to
report the Iraq War Tribunal shows how conventional news priorities
still predominate. Mainstream journalism remains too closely tied to
dominant economic, political and economic structures and interests. More
and more people are realising this and turning to more authentic
alternatives." (Email to Media Lens, July 13, 2005)

Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy director-general, claimed recently that
the "BBC now begins with the presumption that the licence-payer is
right. After all, the licence-payers are the public that fund and own
the BBC in the UK." (Byford, 'Your flexible friend', The Guardian, June
11, 2005) He observed: "How an organisation responds when someone
complains is an important determinant of how people feel about its
openness and responsiveness."

True enough. Alas, judging by the reactions we see every day, many
members of the public are deeply sceptical about the BBC's own claims of
"openness" and "responsiveness".

They are increasingly wise to the appalling reality that the
publicly-funded BBC is an accessory to war crimes and state terrorism
perpetrated by the British government, in tandem with its US ally.

Plamegate

OK, it may be a little premature. But it's beginning to look we've reached a turning point.

Here's some of what I've been thinking so far.

MonicaSmith wrote on July 21, 2005 06:10 AM:

TigerMom*in*NM wrote on July 21, 2005 12:42 AM

OK, the reason this stuff is still coming out is because Judith Miller is sitting in jail. That's given the whistle-blowers confidence that they have a reasonable chance of not being outed when they provide confidential information.

That said, I still think that the original ID came from George the Lesser himself. Perhaps the referenced document was a response to an inquiry for verification and a name that the original source, per usual, didn't have. Don't forget that the reason George the Lesser makes up nick-names for people is because he can't remember their names. And the reason for that is because people have no independent reality for him--people only exist as he sees them.

OK--I admit it. That's pure speculation and has about as much validity as the speculations about WMD in Iraq. But, like Clinton's quibbling, is unlikely to kill anyone.

MonicaSmith wrote on July 21, 2005 06:40 AM:

Shelley wrote on July 21, 2005 06:15 AM

I suppose lying is a very hard habit to break. During the Cold War a lot of people were able to convince themselves that their security depended on not letting our enemies (saber-rattlers to be sure) know what we were up to and so a whole culture of acceptable lying evolved.
Then Nixon got caught. But, having learned just yesterday that the Watergate burglars were paid with money that was laundered through bank accounts controlled by a partner of Poppy, Liedtke, I'm beginning to wonder if Nixon wasn't undermined from within and followed some bad advice which then made him realize that the rot was more wide-spread than he thought and he resigned for the good of the country.
Then Ford made Poppy head of the CIA and Carter got rid of him. Which is actually rather peculiar. The more customary thing is that agency heads, while they do serve at the pleasure of the executive, are retained from one administration to the next, as the head of the FBI was for years.
Strange that Carter, an experienced administrator got rid of Poppy. Perhaps Reagan was Poppy's revenge.

Or have I got the time-line wrong? Have to admit that I was real busy with three children under six about that time, not to mention renovating houses, so I didn't pay a lot of attention.

Anyway, I've never bought the oil story when it comes to foreign relations. (The BLM has just announced that it issued over two thousand new permits in one year for drilling on public lands--no doubt a response to the increased price per barrell, as well as opening up the public lands). What these people are after is power--an American Empire that they control--to achieve what their nazi forbears just missed accomplishing (because, it was long explained, they didn't have enough fuel--but that wasn't it).
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MonicaSmith wrote on July 21, 2005 06:49 AM:

I think the most surprising bit of information I've ever come across was the revelation that the sheik of Brunei or Bahrain or some such exotic nowhere place had been persuaded to donate money to some illegal project. I don't even remember the particulars. Only my reaction with the biggest WHY? ever. And I'm only now getting at the answers.
Michael Moore got it right about the "Sheiks of Araby" That's why they hate him so much. Those are the role models for the Bushes--absolute rulers. Of course, the empire they aim for is much, much larger. Too bad their name is BUSH. With a name like that, they'll never make it. Adding "Bandar" won't do it either. LOL

Did you all see in the paper that the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia is leaving? Again? Didn't we just get a new one?

Too much to keep track of!!!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MonicaSmith wrote on July 21, 2005 08:05 AM:

Patrick in LA wrote on July 20, 2005 10:06 PM

Agree with this analysis. However, it all depends on those with the physical force (military and police) being willing to enforce the dicta of the executive. And that's where it is beginning to slip.
And what we unarmed citizens need to do is make sure we protect the people who are telling us the truth. Because, as I've been repeating for a couple of days now, the situation that's been created makes is OK to lie and threatens to punish those who tell the truth, by making all truths secrets and their revelation, in time of war, treason.
Judith Miller had a choice between telling the truth and being charged with treason and keeping silent and going to prison. As long as people are going to be punished for telling the truth, we have to protect them by keeping quiet and spreading the truth surreptitiously.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MonicaSmith wrote on July 21, 2005 08:45 AM:

Renee*in*Ohio wrote on July 21, 2005 08:25 AM

He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. I said at the time that it was most unwise to force Tenet to resign--not because of what Tenet might reveal, but because of the message it would send to the institution that this Chief Executive can not be trusted. If the Chief cannot be trusted, then people will not put their lives on the line.
Obviously, what the public is learning now, has been known by the institution for some time. And it's been known by the people in the State Department.

Again, Miller sitting in jail is the Times' proffer of good faith. It's the key to unlocking a lot of secrets.
Stupid are the people who fed her lies.

And, finally, this from

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/072105Weiner/072105weiner.html

Excerpts to tempt you:

Bush&Co. realized they couldn't come right out and tell everyone what their true motives were?to depose the Saddam Hussein regime in order to control the world's second largest oil reserve, to set up permanent military bases there, and to use the presence of those bases and the "shock & awe" example of overthrowing a dictator as a warning to other autocratic regimes in the Greater Middle East to bow to U.S. wishes. Those wishes involved oil, Israel, nuclear reactors, terrorism, and the like. So, a convenient reason?one simple enough for the masses to comprehend?had to be found that would justify war.

[...]

The White House Iraq Group

But someone, or some entity, within the administration had to coordinate these concerted propaganda campaigns. That was the bailiwick and job-assignment of the WHIG, chaired by Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card, the regular members of which were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E