Detainee Released by Bush Then Attacked U.S. Embassy

You read that right. A terrorist released from Guantanamo two years ago at the order of then-president George W. Bush later bombed an American embassy.

The emergence of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

As Steven Benen notes:

I get the idea behind reports like these -- Guantanamo has housed some dangerous folks, and if we let them go, they'll do dangerous things. Therefore, we better not let them go, and Obama should rethink all of his recent announcements.

Except, the evidence doesn't match the conclusion. Obama isn't saying that he wants to just open the Gitmo doors, he saying he wants to review the pending cases and present evidence against the bad guys as part of a legal process. Ali al-Shihri returning to al Qaeda isn't evidence of a flawed Obama process, it's evidence of a flawed Bush process. Why did Bush let a dangerous guy this guy go? Did Bush's team not consider, I don't know, bringing charges against him before setting him free?

The same is true with the incessant media fascination with the 61 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who've since become alleged terrorists. First, the confirmed number is 18, not 61. Second, even that number isn't considered entirely reliable.

And third, again, the argument about how this relates to Obama is flawed. As Atrios noted, it wasn't Obama's policy that led to their release. The administration created this nightmare at Guantanamo, which was supposedly necessary for U.S. national security. What do we have to show for the former president's efforts? A series of bad guys who went free, and many more bad guys we'll struggle to prosecute because the Bush administration broke the law and tortured them.

As John Cole noted, "The moral of this story is not the danger for Obama going forward with his Gitmo decommissioning, the moral is that when venal, shallow, small men are given unfettered power and authority, they do incompetent, stupid, and evil things."

Glenn Greenwald takes the argument further.

All of this is pure fear-mongering -- the 2009 version of Condoleezza Rice's mushroom cloud and Jay Rockefeller's "we'll-lose-our-eavesdropping-capabilities" cries. Both before and after 9/11, the U.S. has repeatedly and successfully tried alleged high-level Al Qaeda operatives and other accused Islamic Terrorists in our normal federal courts -- in fact, the record is far more successful than the series of debacles that has taken place in the military commissions system at Guantanamo. Moreover, those convicted Terrorists have been housed in U.S. prisons, inside the U.S., for years without a hint of a problem.

SNIP

Both pre- and post-9/11, there are numerous other individuals who have been convicted in U.S. civilian courts of various acts relating to terrorism inspired by Islamic radicalism, including many alleged to be high-level Terrorists, who are now serving sentences inside the U.S., in U.S. prisons. Moreover, terrorists accused of being members of Al Qaeda and affiliated groups have been successfully tried in the regular courts of other countries -- including Britain and Spain -- and currently sit in those countries' regular prisons, without a whiff of a problem.

If it were really the goal of Terrorists to attack American prisons where their members are incarcerated and if they were actually capable of doing that, they already have a long list of "targets" and have had such a list for two decades. If U.S. civilian courts were inadequate forums for obtaining convictions of Terrorism suspects, then the above-listed individuals would not be imprisoned -- most of them for life -- while the Guantanamo military commission system still has nothing to show for it other than a series of humiliating setbacks for the Government. As is true for virtually every fear-mongering claim made over the last eight years to frighten Americans into believing that they must vest the Government with vast and un-American powers lest they be slaughtered by the Terrorists, none of these claims is remotely rational and all of them are empirically disproven.

SNIP

The crime for which Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted and for which he's currently serving a life sentence in Colorado is the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, of which Rahman was the alleged "mastermind." That terrorist attack took place just seven weeks after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, but after that attack -- to use the Beltway parlance -- Clinton kept us safe, for the rest of his presidency. No more foreign Terrorist attacks on the Homeland. It wasn't until Clinton left the Oval Office and George Bush became President were Islamic Terrorists able to strike the Homeland again.

Therefore, using the reasoning of Bush followers everywhere, this means that Clinton's counter-terrorism policies -- i.e.: trying accused Terrorists in civilian courts and incarcerating them in U.S. prisons -- have been proven to be extremely effective in keeping us safe (since, as any beginning student of Logic will tell you: if A precedes B, then it means that A caused B -- as in: A = "waterboarding, torture and GITMO," and B = "no Terrorist attack on U.S. soil from 2002-2008"). Using that same "logic": A = "trying Terrorists in civilian courts and imprisoning them in the U.S.," and B = "no foreign Terrorist attacks in the U.S. from February, 1993 through the end of the Clinton presidency

Smirky/Darth, their accomplices and their apologists are desperate to prevent people from discovering just how much danger their Excellent Iraq Adventure placed the nation in, and uncovering the full extent of their crimes.

It's now obvious that every argument - every argument - made in defense of the bush maladministration is at best deluded and more likely a pack of lies.

Don't let them get away with it.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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Simple Answers to Stupid Questions

It's going to be tough enough for the next few years fighting the already widespread lies about Smirky/Darth's true legacy to the nation and the world. The last thing we need is pseudo-progressives doing the wingnuts' work for them by publishing fake critiques that perpetuate the bushies' lies.

Granted, Jake Weisberg has been for years one of the most gullible and least insightful "journalists"on the subject of Smirky/Darth, the Iraq clusterfuck, the War On A Noun and destructive repug idiocy in general, but this really takes the cake.

As George W. Bush once noted, "You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." What I think he was trying to say is that, over time, historians may evolve toward a more positive view of his presidency than the one held by most of his contemporaries.

No, what he actually was saying is "as I have done for my entire life, I'm going to escape accountability, not to mention punishment, for my many war crimes and acts of treason."

At the moment, this seems a vain hope. Bush's three most obvious legacies are his decision to invade Iraq, his framing of a global war on terror after Sept. 11, and the massive financial crisis. Each of these constitutes a separate epic in presidential misjudgment and mismanagement.

No, the Iraq clusterfuck, delcaring war on a noun to justify torture and shredding the Constitution, and destroying the economy are not, by any stretch "misjudgment and mismanagement." They are major crimes and acts of treason.

It remains a brainteaser to come up with ways, however minor, in which Bush changed government, politics, or the world for the better. Among presidential historians, it is hardly an eccentric view that 43 ranks as America's worst president ever. On the other hand, he has nowhere to go but up.

No, there's a long, long fall to the eternal damnation Smirky has richly earned. After he's arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned, spent decades getting his anus dry-reamed with a barbed dildo by the family members of dead American soldiers and marines, and become a curse in the mouths of former supporters who blame him for the complete distruction of the republican party, THEN we can talk about whether he has anywhere to go but up.

In a different sense, however, Bush's comment has some validity to it.

No, nothing Smirky says has "validity" except in the sense of incriminating evidence.

We do not know how people will one day view this presidency because we, Bush's contemporaries, don't yet understand it ourselves.

No, those of us with functioning reasoning capacity and an ounce of personal and professional integrity understand it perfectly well. It's only sniveling apologists like Jake Weisberg who pretend they don't understand.

The Bush administration has had startling success in one area—namely keeping its inner workings secret. Intensely loyal, contemptuous of the press, and overwhelmingly hostile to any form of public disclosure, the Bushies did a remarkable job at keeping their doings hidden for eight years.

No, it's been pretty fucking obvious to most of us for at least three years exactly what is and has been going on in the overlowing toilet that used to be the White House, despite the efforts of the repug dupes and cowardly transcribers of the Village to pretend otherwise.

Probably the biggest question Bush leaves behind is about the most consequential choice of his presidency: his decision to invade Iraq.

No. This question was answered in Ron Suskind's 2004 book, in which Smirky/Darth started planning to invade Iraq about 35 seconds after the Inauguration.

When did the president make up his mind to go to war against Saddam Hussein?

January 20, 2001. And it was never a "war." It's an illegal invasion.

What were his real reasons?

Dictatorial power. He admitted as much when he said his father didn't get re-elected because he ended the Gulf War instead of keeping it going forever.

What roles did various figures around him—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice—play in the actual decision?

For pity's fucking sake, Weisberg, have you read nothing but Harry Potter for the past five years? Shit, even that repug tool Woodward managed eventually to document all of this.

Was the selling of the war on the basis of WMD evidence a matter of conscious deception or of self-deception on their part?

Again, read a fucking book. To name just one, Fiasco proves irrefutably that it was deliberate deception.

Bob Woodward, Ron Suskind, and I recently debated in Slate the issue of how much we really know about Bush's biggest decision. Woodward, the author of four inside accounts of the Bush administration, believes that we do know the most important facts. He argues that Bush decided to invade Iraq in January 2003, that the reason was 9/11, and that Bush himself was the real decision-maker. Suskind and I argued that we don't know really how, when, or why the decision was made—though we suspect it was much earlier. By the summer of 2002, administration officials and foreign diplomats were hearing that Bush's course was already set.

Wrong. January 2001, as Suskind himself documented. What kind of pharmaceuticals were distributed at this "debate?"

The disputed dates and details go to the most interesting larger issues about what went wrong during the Bush years.

No, they don't, and no, they aren't disputed, except by tools, apologists and accomplices.

Did Bush's own innocence and incompetence drive his missteps?

He's neither innocent nor incompetent, and they aren't missteps. He's a psychopath, and what he did are high crimes and acts of treason.

Or was it the people around him, most importantly his vice president, who manipulated him into his major bad choices? On so many issues—the framing of the war on terrorism, the use of torture, the expansion of executive power—it was Cheney's views that prevailed.

Darth's evil does not absolve Smirky's eager treason. To say Cheney "manipulated" him is like saying I "manipulated" my dog into eating his favorite snack.

Yet at some point, perhaps around the 2006 election, Bush seems to have lost confidence in his vice president and stopped taking his advice.

So what and who cares? These are Smirky's crimes and treason, from beginning to end. Darth has his own crimes and treason for which he must pay. Stop trying to muddy each with the other.

To reckon with the Bush years, we need to understand what went on between these two men behind closed doors.

Oh gag. I just ate.

Yet despite some superb spadework by journalist Barton Gellman and others, we know very little about Cheney's true role. We have seen few of the pertinent documents and heard little relevant testimony. Congressional investigations and litigation have shed only the faintest light on Cheney's role in Bush's biggest blunders.

Wrong, irrelevant and stop calling murder and treason "blunders."

The same is generally true of Bush's most important political relationship, with Karl Rove, and his most important personal one, with his father. Only with greater insight into these connections are we likely to be able to answer some of the other pressing historical questions. To what extent was Bush himself really the driver of his central decisions? How engaged or disengaged was he? Why, after governing as a successful moderate in Texas, did he adopt such an ideological and polarizing style as president? Why did he politicize the fight against terrorism? Why did he choose to permit the torture of American detainees? Why did he wait so long to revise a failing strategy in Iraq?

Bleeding baby jeebus. Smirky has done everything to acquire power, authority and popularity without work, responsibility or accountability. He is engaged to the extent required by acquire power, authority and popularity without work, responsibility or accountability. He was NOT a successful governor, but merely a repug with a famous name in a repug state, who knew just enough to avoid offense in a constitutionally weak office. He showed his true self as president because the office permitted him to do so. He politicized terrorism, encouraged torture and ensured we'd never get out of Iraq because all those things acquired power, authority and popularity without work, responsibility or accountability.

It seems unlikely that the memoirs in the works from Rove and Rumsfeld will challenge Bush's repeated assertions that he was not only in charge but in control. As for the president himself, we're unlikely to get much: Bush has a poor memory and is too unreflective to have kept the kind of diary that would elucidate matters. In time, however, other accounts are sure to emerge. Congressional investigations will shed new light. Declassified documents and e-mails may paint a clearer picture.

Was this written five years ago? C'mon, Jake - there are dozens, if not hundreds, of books out there that have answered every one of these questions over and over and over again. Pretending this is all still a mystery makes you look like a tool or an idiot.

Once the country is rid of Bush, perhaps we can start developing a more nuanced understanding of how his presidency went astray. His was no ordinary failure, and he leaves not just an unholy mess but also some genuine mysteries.

Don't you listen to your own Fearless Leader? Smirky doesn't do nuance. There is no nuance. There is no mystery. It's as obvious as a five-buck whore.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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The Damage

Salon has a great article quantifying the damage done by the Smirky/Darth maladministration.

After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy -- foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial -- starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he's about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay.

To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms -- sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.

The numbers - on Iraq, the economy, Katrina, the environment, the military - start in the billions and rapidly reach the trillions.

Those are numbers literally beyond human comprehension. The article's devastating specifics, however, serve as both a weapon against revisionist history that paints Dubya as a success, and a tool in the current debate over the economic stimulus bill.

Read it and use it.

There's more: "The Damage" >>

Keeping the Crimes Straight

Having trouble keeping the infinite crimes of the Smitky/Darth maladministration straight? Confused about what and who warrants prosecution, impeachment, pardoning?

Slate to the rescue, with a clickable Venn Diagram that covers all the major players, all their crimes and how they all interact in a single, easy-to-use graphic.

Also in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick explains why both pardoners and impeachers should agree to investigate first.

It says much about the cartoonish ways in which we talk about law and politics that the conversation about accountability for the Bush administration's lawbreaking takes place chiefly at the extremes. The choice, it would seem, is between Nuremberg-style war crime tribunals, broadcast live at primetime in January of 2009, or blanket immunity for everyone, in advance of knowing what they did or why. The men and women responsible for our descent into torture and eavesdropping in the last seven years are cast as either Nazi war criminals, in the manner of Judgment at Nuremberg, or valiant American heroes, in the model of Fox television's Jack Bauer.

(SNIP)
... the question for most of us now is not whether laws were broken, but what to do about it. The War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a federal crime for any American—military or civilian—to cause a "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions' ban on inhumane treatment for prisoners. U.S. interrogators have been inhumane. Some of them have not only tortured but, in at least 100 cases, killed prisoners. A smattering of relatively low-ranking soldiers have been prosecuted, but in most instances there has been little or no accountability and none whatsoever at the top.

Will a sorting and allocating of responsibility for torture and other acts of lawlessness tear the country apart, or is it a necessary step toward repairing our image in the world? Is punishing wrongdoers a partisan witch hunt? Or is the failure to punish its own kind of lawlessness?

(SNIP)

I am not arguing for instant war crimes prosecutions or for criminal indictments. The vital lesson of the past seven years is that hasty legal judgments are often bad ones and that criminal cases are difficult to build for a reason; questions of intent and knowledge really do matter more than conclusory labels. So this time, let's allow those legal processes to work.

On the other hand, we need careful investigation before we take the possibility of criminal prosecution off the table. To immunize or pardon everyone from John Yoo to David Addington to Monica Goodling, before we've seen critical classified memos or heard the conclusions on several fronts of the Department of Justice inspector general, is to remedy the reckless and dangerous decisions of the past with more dangerous recklessness. Criminal investigations aren't just about revenge, whatever Mukasey may think. They are a means of obtaining information and ultimately truth.

I also want to suggest that the wrong way to talk about legal accountability for the Bush administration is to cast it as something America owes the rest of the world. Sure, it's critically important to show our allies and enemies alike that the rule of law still means something here. But it is far more important to have this legal reckoning for America. Not because of some deranged liberal bloodlust, but because we need to understand that there just aren't two sets of law in America, one of which—like the good linen—we keep for special occasions. There isn't one set of laws for when we're panicky and reckless and another for tranquil times. There isn't one set of laws to punish the soldiers in the field and another for the commanders at the top. It's not just the president who seems to have forgotten this lesson in the last seven years. Most of us have. Worse yet, we've forgotten why it matters. We owe it to ourselves to begin to remember.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Keeping the Crimes Straight" >>

Sex Crimes in the White House

No, that is not a teaser headline. At HuffPo, Naomi Wolf gathers the evidence, including public confessions by the perpetrators, and makes the case.

Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

SNIP

We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rice -- who actually chaired the torture meetings. The Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorized sexualized abuse of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by female operatives. And documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, checking in on the sexualized humiliation of prisoners.

The sexualization of torture from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic S and M nature of some of this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy was aroused by all of this. And Phillipe Sands' impeccably documented Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, now proves that sex crime was authorized and, at least one source reports, eroticized: Diane Beaver, the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo who signed off on many torture techniques, told Sands about brainstorming sessions that included the use of "sexual tension," which was "culturally taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected."

"These brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo produced animated discussion," writes Sands. "'Who has the glassy eyes?" Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, thirty or more of them. She was invariably the only woman in the room, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get excited, agitated, even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas" [reported Beaver]. A wan smile crossed Beaver's face: "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard, I can stay detached."' [Sands, p 63]

SNIP

Though we can now debate what the penalty for waterboarding should be, America as a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem to discuss the sex crimes involved.

SNIP

Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex criminals in their midst through silence.

Just as sex criminals -- and the leaders who directed the use of rape and sexual abuse as a military strategy -- were tried and sentenced after the wars in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, so Americans must hold accountable those who committed, or authorized, sex crimes in US-operated prisons. Throughout the world, this perverse and graphic criminality has added fuel to anxiety about US cultural and military power. These acts need to be called by their true names -- war crimes and sex crimes -- and people in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their victims. As in a family, only when people start to speak out and tell the truth about rape and sexual assault can the healing begin.

Read the whole thing, if you think you can stomach the details.

Wolf doesn't say so explicitly, but those who study the use of torture know that the real purpose of torture is the sexual satisfaction of the torturer. Military leaders have known for decades that torture is worse than useless for gathering intelligence. Torture borders on counter-productive even as punishment, in that it tends to create martyrs and increase resistance by the population at large.

No, torture of defenseless prisoners is nothing more than a way for sexual deviants and impotent perverts to get their rocks off.

Just watch Smirky's face when he's making the "ticking bomb" torture defense: the glassy eyes, the lip-licking, the flared nostrils. You just know the only way he can get it up for Laura is by pretending she's a 10-year-old Iraqi boy.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Sex Crimes in the White House" >>

Attorney General Admits Bush Allowed 9/11 to Happen

In San Francisco this week, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey got so desperate to prove that we have to let Smirky/Darth break every law and stomp on every civil right, he actually admitted that this maladministration let Al Qaeda attack on 9/11.

Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, this is both a lie and an admission of culpability.

Even under the "old" FISA, no warrants are required where the targeted person is outside the U.S. (Afghanistan) and calls into the U.S. Thus, if it's really true, as Mukasey now claims, that the Bush administration knew about a Terrorist in an Afghan safe house making Terrorist-planning calls into the U.S., then they could have -- and should have -- eavesdropped on that call and didn't need a warrant to do so. So why didn't they? Mukasey's new claim that FISA's warrant requirements prevented discovery of the 9/11 attacks and caused the deaths of 3,000 Americans is disgusting and reckless, because it's all based on the lie that FISA required a warrant for targeting the "Afghan safe house." It just didn't.

Greenwald exposes many other despicable Mukasey lies, but don't let the cascade of lies obscure the truth that slipped out:

We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went.

Hard to imagine a more blatant failure to keep the nation safe, a more blatant provision of aid and comfort to an enemy, a more blatant example of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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And We Liberated Iraq From Sadaam? Who Will Liberate Iraq From Us?

[I have promoted this powerful and important late-night post back to the top of the page for a couple of more hours. --Blue Girl @ 10:40 am]

This is one of the sickest and most disturbing things I have seen in a while. America the good is dead and gone. What we have done, and are doing, in Iraq is not only no better than Sadaam Hussein, it is worse. At least it was his country. Read this stunning article from Solomon Moore in Saturday’s NY Times and try not to cry for both Iraq and what is now the rotting festering shell of America:

A top Army sniper testified Friday in a military court that he had ordered a subordinate to kill an unarmed Iraqi man who wandered into their hiding position near Iskandariya, then planted an AK-47 rifle near the body to support his false report about the shooting.

Under a grant of immunity, the sniper, Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, an expert marksman and sniper trainer, testified in the court-martial of Sgt. Evan Vela. Sergeant Vela is accused of murder, impeding a military investigation and planting evidence to cover up an unjust shooting. An earlier charge of premeditated murder was dropped.

Sergeant Vela is the third soldier to be charged in the death of the Iraqi, Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, last May. Sergeant Hensley and another soldier, Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., were acquitted of murder charges last year, but were convicted of planting evidence. As part of his sentence, Sergeant Hensley was demoted from staff sergeant.
(Please Keep Reading After Jump)
All three soldiers were elite snipers with the 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

The military trials have highlighted a secret baiting program, begun in early 2007, in which snipers placed lures like fake explosives or other weaponry to draw insurgents into the open, where they could be killed.

But Sergeant Hensley’s testimony at the base here suggested that by last spring, in addition to baiting and killing, soldiers had added a new tactic: carrying weapons to plant on bodies to deter prosecution.
…
Mr. Culp also said his client’s superiors pressed his squad to increase their kill rate, while holding out the threat of prosecution for unjust shootings.
…
Sergeant Hensley said that on May 11, he led his squad to a hiding spot overlooking a village they suspected was controlled by Sunni insurgents. But after several days with little rest, soldiers were drifting into sleep.

“I woke up to a local national squatting in front me with his hands up,” Sergeant Hensley testified. The man was Mr. Janabi, who lived nearby. Sergeant Hensley said he tackled Mr. Janabi and pinned him to the ground.

Mr. Janabi was followed into the hide-out by his son, Mustafa, 17. Sergeant Hensley and his team held the two captive until he spotted several Iraqi men in the distance and Mr. Janabi became agitated. Sergeant Hensley feared that Mr. Janabi’s thrashing would alert the other Iraqis.

Sergeant Hensley said he released the boy and ordered everyone except Sergeant Vela to leave because he “didn’t want them to bear witness” to what they were about to do.

“I pretty much knew at this point that something was going to happen to the father,” Sergeant Hensley testified. “He was making too much noise. I thought that the only way to protect my guys was to take this guy’s life.”

Sergeant Hensley said he ordered Sergeant Vela to load his 9-millimeter pistol, and then made four radio calls to his command post to support a cover story. The first call reported that an Iraqi man was approaching, the second that the man was armed, the third that the sergeant was preparing to shoot.

The fourth call confirmed that he had killed his target.

“At that point his head was at Sergeant Vela’s feet, and I asked him if he was ready and then I moved out of the way,” Sergeant Hensley said. He ordered Sergeant Vela to fire, and Sergeant Vela complied immediately, Sergeant Hensley said.

“A round was fired into his head,” he said.

Mr. Janabi did not die immediately, Sergeant Hensley said. As his brain hemorrhaged, he choked on his blood. Sergeant Hensley simulated the gurgling sound and testified that he ordered Sergeant Vela to fire again.

Sergeant Hensley said he pulled out an AK-47 that he had ordered one of his men to carry and placed it near the body.

But, hey, being the beacon of light, democracy, sanctity of life, truth, justice and accountability that we are under the Pol Pot Bush Administration; we meted out fair and equal justice, because “As part of his sentence, Sergeant Hensley was demoted from staff sergeant”. Words just really don’t mean much here…

There's more: "And We Liberated Iraq From Sadaam? Who Will Liberate Iraq From Us?" >>

935 Administration Lies = 3931 Dead Americans

A recently-concluded study by two independent, non-profit journalism organizations, The Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, has pinpointed 935 specific instances of the president and members of his administration lying to advance the narrative pushing for a war with Iraq. the study concluded that the lies peddled were "an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

On at least 532 occasions, administration officials stated adamantly and unequivocally that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida. (emphasis added)

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements - amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts - was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

So - four Americans who stepped up to serve have died for every lie these feckless bastards told. So far.

Yet Nancy the Nattering Nabob still insists that impeachment is off the table.

[Thats all, folks...]

There's more: "935 Administration Lies = 3931 Dead Americans" >>

Put Your Civil Liberties Down and Back Away Slowly

I have just finished reading Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy by Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage, and can sum it up this way:

The phrase "we are so completely fucked" is the understatement of the century.

Over the past two years, as one outrage after another by the Smirky-Darth administration has come to light, the cumulative impact has been numbing: Abu Graib, torture, rape and murder of innocent civilians, American citizens secretly and indefinitely detained, warrantless wiretapping of anyone and everyone, hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers to enrich bush/cheney cronies, laws ignored, laws broken, the Constitution shredded.

Even the death of our last hope - the self-strangling of the "Democratic" Congress - is just one more hardly-felt blow to a body politic already at death's door.

The great revelation of Savage's meticulously documented book is just how thoroughly, successfully and permanently this maladminstration has stripped power from citizens, from Congress, from the bureaucracy and from the courts, until there is legally and literally nothing anyone can do to stop this or any other president from exercising the absolute power he has finally acquired.

Right now, this minute, if Smirky took it into his head to declare martial law, dispatch Blackwater to round up everyone who objects and throw them into Guantanamo forever or just summarily execute them, there is nothing - nothing - to stop him.

(More after the jump.)


Martial law? Specifically authorized by Congress in the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Secret and indefinite detention of citizens? Once it was stopped only by the prospect of a Supreme Court decision on Jose Padilla, but Congress specifically stripped the courts of jurisdiction in such cases in - you guessed it - the MCA.

"The Republican-led Congress used the Military Commissions Act to virtually eliminate the possibiity that the Supreme Court could ever again act as a check on a president's power in the war on terrorism. The bill aslo granted a congressional blessing, in statute, for many of the hugely expanded executive pwoers that the Bush-Cheney administration had previously seized onb its own, ensuring that they would be even more difficult to roll back."

The "Commander in Chief" of America now has powers over his own citizenry that dictators like Pinochet, Somoza, and Mugabe, who slaughtered thousands of their countrymen, could only dream of.

Because the powers of the "Commander in Chief" of America were handed to him on a silver platter by a Congress democratically elected by the people.

We asked for it, we deserve it, we got it.

Forgive us, Ben: you gave us a Republic, but we couldn't keep it.

If you're thinking about next year's elections, don't bother. Seriously, if you'd spent seven years accumulating unprecedented power, the kind of power that allows you to straddle the world as a colossus and do exactly as you damn well please, would you just give it up and walk away? Especially if it meant handing all that hard-won power to someone who stands for everything you hate, despise and loathe?

And if you were that someone, suddenly handed, by virtue of having won a democratic election, power on the level of that wielded by medieval kings, would you demand that Congress take it away from you? Especially when you need all the power you can get to undo the damage done to your beloved country and the world over the previous eight years?

The kind of power that we, the people, have handed to the Commander in Chief of America is the kind of power I wouldn't trust in the hands of anyone. Not Obama, not Edwards, and certainly not Hillary.

Hell, that kind of power would turn even gentle, Department-of-Peace-creating Dennis Kucinich into a monster.

We are lip-deep in the quicksand, people, and sinking fast. This one is not going to be fixable in a year, or a decade, or a generation.

No, I don't have the answer. I don't think a real, bullets-flying revolution is practical, much less winnable. Nor do I think continuing to elect "Democrats" who perpetuate the status quo is going to cut it.

But because so many of these dictatorial powers are tied to Smirky's claims of inherent and exclusive executive powers in prosecuting the "war on terror," the key may be taking that excuse away.

I've argued for a long time that the Iraq occupation and the temporarily derailed attack on Iran have nothing to do with terror, oil or even enriching cronies. They are all about creating and perpetuating permanent war. And permanent war is the one irreplaceable ingredient in establishing and maintaining a dictatorship.

Leaders at peace are leaders with minimal power. Leaders at war have carte blanche.

So the first step in restoring the Constitution is to not just end the Iraq occupation, but change the "war on terror" into what it should have been from the beginning: a criminal investigation, with law enforcement making arrests and civilian courts trying suspects before civilian juries.

It's going to be a long, hard slog through the enemy jungle, dodging snipers, drinking fever-water, eating our boots.

But it's one we've faced before, and one that the smartest sumbitches who ever lived (thank you Molly) knew we'd face again. One of them spoke the words that gave them strength then, and give me strength now:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

Happy New Year.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "Put Your Civil Liberties Down and Back Away Slowly" >>

I wonder if George saw a hint of this when he looked into Pootie-Poot's soul?

The Bush administration lost a big one on Monday when Russia announced that it had delivered a shipment of nuclear fuel rods to Iran to be used in a reactor that is to be used for power generation. Russia stressed that the fuel rods are in Iran, but will be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , the United Nations agency that monitors nuclear material across the globe.

Back in Washington, aWol nearly strained something as he struggled mightily to construct a sentence and make a comment that wouldn't do any further damage to the fragile relationship the United States currently has with Russia. He managed to not only tamp down his urge to criticize, but also to offer something along the lines of praise...“If the Russians are willing to do that, which I support, then the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich,” President Bush said Monday. “If the Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there’s no need for them to learn how to enrich.”

The timing could not have been worse. Just two weeks ago, the intelligence shops released their NIE that revealed that the Iranians stopped their weapons program in 2003. That NIE cut the legs from under aWol and Cheney, and has dampened the call for war with Iran.

Even thought the administration has moved to keep the pressure on the Iranian government, the release of the NIE has served to embolden Iran, and it has made it highly unlikely that China and Russia will be on board for the next round of sanctions by the United Nations Security Council.

The delivery of the fuel rods to the Iranian facility will certainly embolden them further.

As for Bush administration officials, their public comments were one thing, and their private comments were another thing entirely. “There is no doubt that Russia and the rest of the world want to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” was the public comment made by White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe. “And today’s announcement provides one more avenue for the Iranians to make a strategic choice to suspend enrichment.”

In private, however, they lamented the fact that the Russians didn't stall on the delivery, and project an image of a united front that was hanging together and toeing a hard line. “We for many years tried to stop it, and for the last year we’ve known there was no way to stop it, and that it was coming, and we held our breath on the timing,” a senior administration official said.

All that breath-holding was for naught.

Two weeks ago, Russia alerted the Bush administration that the details had been worked out, including the placement of safeguards that would allow for greater international inspections at Bushehr, and that the shipment would proceed.

The U.S. had already agreed, in principle, that Russia could provide the fuel rods, so long as safeguards were in place to handle the spent fuel. With that position clarified, there was no choice for the U.S. to make - the Bush administration had to accept that they had no grounds to keep pressuring Russia to delay the shipment.

So the shipment went forward. Now the question remains - was it purely economics? Or was there a subtle, hidden message? Is this muscle flexing by Russia routine, or something that we should be concerned about?

I'm gonna hazard a guess, and say it's probably the latter.

Heckuva job, there, George. Heckuva job.

There's more: "I wonder if George saw a hint of this when he looked into Pootie-Poot's soul?" >>

Bipartisanship on the NIE

Who says the Left and Right don't agree?

The NIE finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003 brought two divergent voices together within 48 hours to acknowledge that Bush-Cheney have exaggerated the Iranian threat to scare the bejesus out of people... well, those of us still gullible enough to believe the warmongering.

From the Right, Pat Buchanan (with emphasis):

[Keep reading...]

BLITZER: What do you make of this new intelligence estimate that Iran actually froze or suspended, stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago?

BUCHANAN: This is a horrendous indictment of the Bush administration, of the Bush intelligence community. The president of the United States and Mr. Cheney have really created almost hysteria in this country where half the country thinks we will have to smash Iran because they're building nuclear weapons. The question, Wolf, is when after 2005 when the intelligence community said that Iran was driving towards nuclear weapons, when did the community come to believe that they had stopped in 2003? Did the president know this when he is talking about a nuclear holocaust and World War III?? If he did, what does that say about the president of the United States? If he didn't, what does that say about the intelligence community?

BLITZER: Sy Hersh was writing about this new estimate a year ago.

BUCHANAN: Certainly then Mr. Negroponte and the head of the CIA certainly have got is to [start] walking into the president and saying, Mr. President, a lot of the community now believes and we're getting more evidence of this that they shut the program down and if they told the president that, how could the president talk about a nuclear holocaust and World War III and have the whole country and half the country believing we have to attack Iran.

Also, Wolf, look at the republican candidates. Many of them have been saying we may have to use tactical atom weapons. Look at Hillary Clinton. She's for that Kyl resolution which authorizes virtually the president to attack Iran. The whole political community in this country looks like it's doing the same thing we did when we went into Iraq without justification.

From the Left, Crooks and Liars, a Countdown special comment from Keith Olbermann... excerpt from the transcript at C&L (with emphasis):

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole — or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked — at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so — whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear now.

In August, the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence, Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president, Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, sir, to scare the Americans?

Now that's some bipartisanship!

There's more: "Bipartisanship on the NIE" >>

First Iraq and now Iran

I'll never forget watching U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testify that his team had found no WMDs in Iraq.

The latest NIE on Iran's lack of nuclear capability reminded me of Kay's poignant admission, "It turns out that we were all wrong." Thankfully, adults with conscience from 16 agencies dared to contradict the wrong-headed warmongering of the WH with their NIE findings about Iran.

And, once again, the IAEA and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, were right.

Rewind to Aug. 23, 2006, when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) then chaired by loyal Bushie Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) issued a report, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States [PDF].

[Keep reading...]

Responding to the House committee brief, U.N. inspectors denounced portions of the report as "outrageous and dishonest." The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2006:

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

You remember the Niger yellow cake uranium forgeries that led to the 16 words in Bush's 2003 SOTU, right? We still don't know who forged those docs and for what reason... although one can speculate that a nuclear threat would thwart opposition to preemptive military action against Iraq. Sound familiar?

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are."

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

What? How dare our intel agencies refuse to fabricate a slam dunk on Iran for the preznut and the veep. They will never get a Presidential Medal of Freedom with that attitude.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised "concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program." The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an "unstated" policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly "outrageous and dishonest," according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

A copy of the 2006 IAEA letter as a PDF is here.

To describe the 2006 committee report as flawed would be a gross understatement. The trumped-up handiwork of the Administration's neocon handmaidens served to bolster the WH case to use military force against another member of the "axis of evil." Cheney had already boasted about Iran's "fairly robust new nuclear program" on Imus in the Morning just hours before Bush's inaugural in January 2005. And we know how Bushies work -- the WH claims thus, and then magically... Presto! Documents (and media reports) appear to lend credence to their pronouncements. Before Democrats won majority control over congressional committees, Hoekstra in the House and Pat Roberts (R-KS) in the Senate "vetted" intel for WH lies assertions like the strategic threat that Iran posed to U.S. interests.

What's available to remedy the damage done to U.S. foreign affairs and get back on track? Unfortunately, our rotting press corpse has to cooperate. Today, John Bolton appeared as CNN's NIE contrarian spreading his wacky neocon scaremongering throughout the afternoon. Laughing John Bolton out of D.C. and never permitting him access to a government job or official would be a good step, but don't hold your breath against the neocon revolving door. Impeaching Cheney would be a giant leap for mankind, but too many door-stoppers would halt a Senate indictment or trial if H.R. 799 miraculously revived and passed. Michigan and Kansas voters ought to kick servile Hoekstra and coverup Roberts out on their asses in '08 -- a possibility for Roberts; Hoestra, I dunno. Fleitz can flip burgers; he knows how to take orders. Negroponte, now deputy secretary at State, has already been contained via lecondel. And Iran? Bush remains... undaunted by the NIE to put it politely.

Our best remedy is electing a Democratic president who knows how to use diplomacy, sending a positive signal to Tehran in persuading Iranians to relinquish development of nuclear weapons. You don't think Mitt, Rudy, Huck or Fred can do that, do you?

Repubs have proven they know nuthin' about diplomacy. Or conducting war, which Iraq has revealed so miserably. The neocon dream articulated in the Bush Doctrine has shattered American foreign policy -- our goodwill, blood, and treasure spent. When have the neocons been right?

It's a very useful rule of thumb in foreign affairs to simply assume that the neocons are wrong no matter what, because they are always wrong about everything. That is not to say that all conservatives are wrong about everything, and neocons merge with the more traditional hard line hawk faction just often enough that it gets confusing.

I suspect we will hearing a lot more confusing rhetoric about the worth of the NIE. What's clear to me is Bush's and Cheney's bellicosity towards Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program has been, to refrain David Kay, all wrong.

And for goodness sake, when the ElBaradei speaks, dammit, listen! He was right about Iraq and he's right about Iran. Bush, Cheney and their loyal rubber-stamp Repubs... Not so much.

There's more: "First Iraq and now Iran" >>

Spinning the NIE

I swear that our rotting press corpse must be completely incompetent, illiterate, or mainlining payola to have transformed the NIE on Iran's lack of nuclear capability into the opposite of what the intel estimate says. Crooks and Liars posted up a Google search of "bogus and misleading headlines." More about that in a minute. First, check this priceless lame-ass excuse from Hadley that makes the WH look supremely stupid and unabashedly craven:

As Shuster and Maddow point out, the Bush administration has no shame, which is why they had no problem trotting out National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, to float the ridiculous notion that the report wasn’t completed until Tuesday of last week and that President Bush only learned that Iran halted its nuclear program four years ago — the following day.

Uh huh. So while, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb, Iran" played in the background over the years, Hadley fed a howler to the American public yesterday to cover the wild assertion that Bush didn't know what the intel folks were debating over the summer. As the Washington Post noted in its front page story about the NIE this morning (with emphasis):

[Keep reading...]

A major U.S. intelligence review has concluded that Iran stopped work on a suspected nuclear weapons program more than four years ago, a stark reversal of previous intelligence assessments that Iran was actively moving toward a bomb.

The new findings, drawn from a consensus National Intelligence Estimate, reflected a surprising shift in the midst of the Bush administration's continuing political and diplomatic campaign to depict Tehran's nuclear development as a grave threat. The report was drafted after an extended internal debate over the reliability of communications intercepts of Iranian conversations this past summer that suggested the program had been suspended.

But Hadley would have us believe that Bush only learned of the "stark reversal" of intel on Iran just last week. OK, maybe things go real s-l-o-w at the WH and/or Bush reads real s-l-o-w. Or, George -- expecting so many dignitaries for his Annapolis bash, celebrating Thanksgiving, attending all the festivities, meetings, and summits of which a preznut must undertake along with summer vacations -- got distracted. Shucks, keeping up with nukes in the world is indeed hard work.

Another possibility: Incurious George decided to treat the NIE as adeptly as he handled the August 2001 PDB, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S" or the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. He ignored it, in denial of anything that didn't fit his own biased agenda. We'll get to learn the scoop today since he's called a press conference. Oh, joy!

As for the misleading stories that headline the opposite of what the NIE says... how did it happen? Spencer Ackerman at The Horse's Mouth captured a screen shot last evening of an AP story that got picked up by numerous news outlets repeating the erroneous, US Officials: Iran Has Nuke Capability. Ackerman rightfully surmised:

These misleading AP headlines aren't free of consequences.... casual readers will come away with an impression of the Iranian nuclear weapons non-program that's exactly the opposite of what the U.S. intelligence community says it is -- or, at the least, they'll be needlessly confused. And when Bush administration hawks or GOP politicians or Joe Lieberman lie about the nuclear threat from the Tehran Islamofascists, they'll be playing to an already-bamboozled audience. Nice work!

This morning I googled the identical headline text (see screen shot above) just as Ackerman and Crooks and Liars did. When I clicked through, the faulty headlines in all 10 instances that I found displayed appropriate headlines representative of the NIE. For example, the WaPo story headline after the click reads, "U.S. Finds That Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Bid in 2003." Ackerman also noted the same was true yesterday.

I know from work experience that GoogleBot spiders online news editions at various times throughout a 24-hour period. The question is, did the errant AP headline -- indicative of a first pass by GoogleBot recording initial online errors, possibly of a first print edition repurposed for the Web -- show up in the wire story in dead-wood newspapers? Check your local newspapers and let us know in Comments. Hopefully, copy editors caught the mistake before the presses rolled. At this posting, the wrong headlines in Google's search remain unchanged.

There's more: "Spinning the NIE" >>

When all else fails, change the talking points!

From the department of moving goalposts:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

Now, the focus has shifted to smaller, short-term goals - like authorizing a budget for the nation. (But the Iraqis are already in the process of doing that anyway.)

And of course, the Bush maladministration is all hot and bothered to get the U.N. mandate that authorizes the presence of the American occupiers renewed. (They do this routinely because it's a puppet government that would not exist for more than thirty days if the Americans weren't propping them up.)

And de-de-baathification, so members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party can reenter government service. (That's merely pro forma - former Baathists have been rehired on the q.t. for some time, because they are the ones who actually know how to, you know, do the jobs.)

[Keep reading...I'm not even warmed up yet...]

The administration insists that they have not given up on their larger goals, averring that they will be met *eventually.* But damnit, they have to figure out a way to make lemonade, and do it pronto.

They sold the AEI's Surge™ scheme by packaging it as a necessity, needed to give the political process "breathing space" to achieve reconciliation. Tours were extended, leaving soldiers in combat for 15 months with only 12 months dwell-time. They sacrificed American lives like they meant nothing. And the Iraqi parliament went on vacation the entire month of August.
Tony "Karma's a Bitch" Snow excused the fecklessness of the Iraqi politicians with a blasé "It's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," conveniently forgetting that his war-criminal boss sent American fighting forces into that hellhole, and they didn't even get the benefit of operating in an air conditioned Green Zone when it was 130 degrees.

But reconciliation didn't happen.

In fact, Maliki and Hashemi snipe at one another like two bleached-blond teenage girls vying for head cheerleader in a one-high-school Texas football town.

Instead of sucking it up and admitting that things didn't work as planned, they are insisting that modest steps such as these - if taken soon - could, maybe, perhaps, if they cross their fingers and say the right magic words in just the right order and cadence, perhaps while hopping on one foot and chanting "I believe" - set the stage for "more progress." You know - like the Surge™ set the stage for the arming of the Sunni thugs who in the past were the insurgents who were killing Americans. (Well, give 'em guns and money and you can rent some temporary loyalty...)

But not to fear! aWol is "applying pressure" on the Iraqi government to produce some sort of political progress. “If we can show progress outside of the security sector alone, that will go a long way to demonstrate that we are in fact on a sustainable path to stability in Iraq,” said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity. On Saturday, [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker said the military had created opportunities for progress, and added that there were "indications" that Iraqis wanted to move forward on the local and national levels. But he quickly dialed back the expectations and cautioned against expecting quick results on the core issues.

“We are seeing encouraging signs of movement. This is going to be a long, hard slog,” he said, apparently channeling Rumsfeld, "It is going to be one thing at a time, maybe two things at a time, we hope with increasing momentum,” he said. “It is a long-term process.”

Although violence has ticked downward in recent months, the administration has not touted this development, because if they did, scrutiny would surely follow, and that they certainly don't want.

Furthermore, there are clear signs that any influence Americans have over Iraqi politicians is dwindling. In the absence of religious and ethnic reconciliation, the expectation has been dialed back to "accommodation." An American official, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said “We can’t pass their legislation. We can’t make them like each other. We can’t even make them talk to each other."

Crocker at least realizes that “The political stuff does not lend itself to sending out a couple of battalions to help the Iraqi’s pass legislation.” Still, he insisted that there are some positive signs that Iraqis are interested in making their own headway. For example, he pointed to Provincial governors, who are pressing for a law to define their powers. “We are past the point where it is an American agenda,” the ambassador said. “It is what needs to be done in Iraqi terms.” (In plain English - this is how warlords are made.)

Officials in both Baghdad and Washington are both realistic about the fact that military gains are not enough to overcome the deep divides that separate Iraqi factions. But in both capitals there are leaders who still engage in magical thinking. “We need a grand bargain among all the groups,” said a member of the Iraqi government - speaking - you guessed it - anonymously.

The most disturbing part of the whole thing is the repeated references to "long hard slogs" and the allusions to extended, multi-year commitments of American forces, like it's no big deal. But it is a big deal. Maybe not to these worthless, faithless and feckless jackals who have nothing to lose. But to the rest of us, it sure as hell is.

And if you agree, vote Democratic. Give the congress a Democratic president, and just as importantly the votes to end the obstruction of the Republican wingnuts who have no qualms about obstructing progress at the expense of American lives.

George aWol Bush has made the biggest mess the world has ever seen, and intends to keep the fucking up going apace and leave a mess so dire that the next president won't be able to extract us from.

Don't let him get away with it. Congress holds the pursestrings. Not one dime without strings attached. Not one dime.

There's more: "When all else fails, change the talking points!" >>

So much for the success of the Surge™

When the Resident stood in front of the nation on January 10 and announced that he was going to go ahead and implement another American Enterprise Institute pipe dream the reason he gave for escalating forces was to give the nascent Iraqi government the "breathing space" to achieve political reconciliation.

So much for that grand ideal.

The sniping is incessant, the skirmishes bruising. For months, the verbal warfare between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and his Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, has been escalating.

Now Iraqi politicians and American diplomats and analysts fear that the very public feuding between two of Iraq's most influential leaders will doom even the minimal hopes that exist for progress on a host of key benchmarks — such as holding provincial elections and equitably sharing oil revenues.

"This is not merely about personalities quarreling over something trivial," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Middle East for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "It's about control of the state. ... It's about basic interests, factional and sectarian, and survival."

In spite of a decline in violence there has been no hint of political reconciliation, and no progress on any of the benchmarks in anyones assessment; Iraqi, United Nations or United States.

In the absence of political progress, it is feared that violence will escalate once more when the "Surge™" ends and the United States begins to reduce the number of troops in Iraq.

[Keep Reading...]

The widening social chasms in Iraq go far beyond the bickering and sniping between Hashemi and Maliki, but the hostility between the two leaders illustrates clearly the failure of the Surge™ to bring Iraq's troubles to an end, in spite of the reduction in violence.

On Tuesday, Maliki accused Hashimi of abusing his position on Iraq's 3-member presidency council and blocking legislation passed by the Shiite-dominated parliament. (To become law, legislation passed by the parliament must be unanimously approved by the council.)

Maliki also ridiculed Hashemi's Iraqi Sunni political party, calling it "unrepresentative" of the country's minority Sunnis, in spite of the fact that the party is the largest Sunni bloc in the parliament.

Hashemi, a former military officer who never joined the Baath party, has taken his shots at Maliki on a few occasions as well, especially regarding security and human rights issues. He has pushed for amnesty for thousands of Sunnis who have been detained and imprisoned. He has visited overcrowded prisons with television cameras in tow to criticize Maliki and his government over the treatment of detainees, most of whom are Sunni Arabs. Maliki dismissed Hashimi's forays into the prison system as nothing more than political grandstanding.

Hashemi has accused the Maliki government of turning a blind eye to the sectarian violence that has claimed the lives of three of his siblings - and the accusation outrages Maliki.

American officials are frustrated that the Iraqi leaders are not acting to resolve the impasse and Phil Reeker, an official at the U.S. embassy last week urged the two men to put their differences aside. "Leaders have to take advantage of this opportunity to continue serious work in focusing on the most important matters at hand to move the country forward. I think it's very important that the Iraqi people are looking to their leaders to provide them with progress, with security, with services, with jobs, and it is legislative activity that is going to lead to that."

Other Iraqi politicians are frustrated with the situation as well. "It's becoming more than political; it's becoming personal, and that's unfortunate. I blame both of them. I hope they can just get over it, because it's affecting the credibility of the government," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament. "At this moment, they should be together now that the security situation is better. Iraq needs teamwork."

A GAO report issued last month found that the Iraqi government had failed to realize most of the 18 benchmarks established by the U.S. as signs of progress and reconciliation. Of vital importance - the GAO found that sectarianism within the government undermines the reconciliation effort. No one sees a quick solution.

Anthony Cordesman put the disputes in historical context, and put it bluntly - "There is not going to be reconciliation because of some magic agreement that will make everybody forget past grievances."

Othman, the Kurdish parliamentarian, agreed. "The lack of trust is the main issue," he said. "Maliki is not ready to have Sunnis as part of the decision-making process. There is a distrust there."

From the outset, the Bush administration has failed to consider the historic and ethnic realities of Iraq. That is why the situation is so thoroughly and utterly FUBAR, and was doomed to be from inception. Continuing the American presence only aggravates the situation. As long as American forces occupy the country, it is not going to get any better.

When faced with no good options, the least-bad option is the only intelligent choice. And right now, the least-bad option is to get the hell out of there and let the Iraqis solve their own problems. The wrong done to that country and it's citizens is of aWol's making, but we can no more solve the problems with military force than one can put out a fire with kerosene.

There's more: "So much for the success of the Surge™" >>

A hundred bucks a barrel by the end of the day?

Updated Below

Anyone feel like wagering?

CNN just reported that for the first time ever, the price of light, sweet crude oil has topped $99 a barrel, and hundred-dollar oil is "the next target to hit," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.

The surge in the price of oil, in a short trading week, underscores the bull-run on oil, and winter, with higher consumption of heating oil isn't even here yet.

This might be an opportune time for a trip down memory lane...

In January 2001, when Bush took office, OPEC convened a meeting in Houston where the biggest concern of the member nations was a price collapse and they took steps to institute a price band that would maintain the price between $22 and $28 per barrel.

If OPEC were to narrow the price band, political expediency on the home front would probably result in a price band centered around $25 per barrel. Unfortunately for OPEC nations this price band would likely come under threat within a year. The last report had non OPEC production up by 700,000 barrels per day and non OPEC production will continue to increase as long as prices remain much above $20 per barrel. If these increases are accompanied by weaker world economies OPEC will have to reduce its market share to maintain prices. At some point OPEC will have to make the decision that it usually faces twice a decade. It must choose price or market share, but it cannot have both. A price than can be maintained with market chare is closer to $20 per barrel than to $25.

What's left to say? "Heckuva job, Bushie"?

I need a valium and a drink...and it isn't even 3:00 PM in New York...

Update:

Oil topped at $99.29, but the Dow Jones fell 211.10 points, or 1.6%, and the decline was matched by the Standard & Poors. The dollar fell to $1.48 against the Euro.

From the New York Times:

“This is an ugly week,” said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. Indeed: the Dow lost 2.9 percent of its value in the last three days alone.

Some market watchers suggested that lower trading levels during a holiday week make the market more volatile, but at least one analyst disputed that notion. “I don’t know of anyone taking a day off today,” said Dennis Davitt, who oversees equity derivative trading for Credit Suisse. “Not in these conditions.”

Crude oil futures briefly rose above $99 in overnight trading and an Energy Department report showed that inventories fell slightly last week, leaving investors wondering how soon oil will be nudged above its inflation-adjusted record of $102. Crude settled in New York trading at $97.29, down 74 cents.

The recent run-up in oil prices, which threaten to curb consumer spending, dovetails with a shaky economic outlook released by the Federal Reserve yesterday, which predicted a slowdown in growth over the coming months.

So...Happy Holidays, y'all...

[That's all, folks...]

There's more: "A hundred bucks a barrel by the end of the day?" >>

Another General Denounces Bush and the Iraq Fiasco

Retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez took a swipe at the aWol Bush maladministration and their inept, incompetent and inconsistent management of the occupation of Iraq. The United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.” He warned. “After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism.” General Sanchez was speaking to a gathering here of military reporters and editors.

The remarks were made during one of the first public speeches Sanchez has given since leaving the Army late last year. He blamed the administration for launching and mismanaging a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan”and he denounced the current “surge™” strategy as a “desperate” move that will fail to establish long-term stability.

General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities. General Sanchez, who is said to be considering a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.

“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

The White House had no initial comment.

[keep reading]

Sanchez is speaking out, in the face of the slime machine, even though he knows full well that he has an Abu Ghraib problem that will make him a target of vicious criticisms and accusations that he is trying to shift blame for his own shortcomings to the poor, hapless president. Although Sanchez was cleared of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by an Army investigation, he became a symbol of an occupation that was botched from the get-go.

Look for accusations that he has an axe to grind, that he is seeking revenge against the president who opted not to nominate him for a fourth star and effectively ended his career, forcing him into retirement.

Taking questions from reporters after his presentation, he included the military command structure, himself included, among those who exercised poor judgment and made tragic mistakes in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He lamented the failure to insist on a post-war stabilization plan.

Still, the bulk of his criticism was directed at the Bush administration and their failures of leadership. He lambasted them for failures to mobilize the entire U.S. government and not just the military in the reconstruction and stabilization efforts in Iraq. “National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone,” he said. “Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.”

He accused the administration of failing to craft any kind of strategy that went beyond military force. “The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” General Sanchez said.

There's more: "Another General Denounces Bush and the Iraq Fiasco" >>

We have a deal on North Korean Nukes

A year after North Korea popped off their fizzler, a deal has been reached to rein in the NorK nuclear program and get them off the “Axis of Evil” list of nations that are state sponsors of terrorism. The move is symbolic in the western world, but certain to throw a wet blanket on the relationship between the U.S. and Japan, which still wants answers about the kidnapping of Japanese Citizens by North Korean agents .

Under the new agreement, reached under the “Six Party Talks” consortium of nations, and involving a side-deal between the NorK’s and the United States, the U.S. is accepting a more limited action than originally bargained for, with one facility being mothballed instead of three. North Korea is in exchange disclosing the extent of it’s weapons program – how much fissile material do they have, and how much was used in last years test?

(keep reading)

According to the text of the document, released by China's official Xinhua news agency, North Korea agreed to disable the 5 megawatt experimental reactor at Yongbyon, a fuel reprocessing plant, and a nuclear fuel rod facility by Dec. 31. The work will be paid for and overseen by the U.S. Alongside that commitment, the document says that the U.S. will "begin the process of removing" North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and lifting trade sanctions.

The actions outlined by the document are "a major step towards the goal of achieving the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" and would "effectively end" North Korea's production of plutonium, said White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe, the Associated Press reported.

Under the agreement, North Korea also will allow nuclear experts from Russia, China and the United States to examine aluminum tubes procured from Russia that could have been used in a uranium-enrichment program, diplomats said.

Lest anyone rush to pat the Bush administration on the back for getting something right, lets do a reality check:

• The North Koreans kicked inspectors out of the country after the Bush administration cited solid intelligence that the North Koreans were cheating on the Agreed Framework. Par for the course, the Bushies had to fess up later that their intel was not all that and a bag of chips. You could even call it phony.

• When Bush took office, North Korea had miniscule amounts of fissile material, if any at all. Now it has conducted a nuclear test and has enough weapos grade material for up to a dozen nuclear bombs. Even the most conservative estimates peg it at enough for 6-8 weapons.

So don’t get in a big toot to congratulate the chimperor for putting out a fire when he struck the match and dropped it in a puddle of gasoline in the first damned place.

There's more: "We have a deal on North Korean Nukes" >>

Finding Yet More Ways to Fuck Vets Over

I work with a number of military combat veterans, their experience ranging from early Vietnam through peak Vietnam, to Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Columbia, Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

They are good men and women all: hard-working, dedicated, organized, responsible - exceptional employees and citizens. Despite experiences that would strain the sanity and peace of mind of the best and strongest of us, they have survived, prevailed, and thrived.

But if you read yesterday's lead story on Salon, you wouldn't believe that.

Thirty years ago, television shows were heavy on cops and PIs, and you could hardly get through one evening without seeing an episode that featured a "crazy" Vietnam vet going berserk and killing people.

The crazed vet plot accurately reflected the public perception of the time, but it also magnified that perception, making the job of advocates for veterans' mental health care nearly impossible.

In that atmosphere, even healthy veterans could not get a job, turned away by employers terrified by the popular stereotype of the drug-addled, violence-prone crazed vet. Denied work, the stereotype became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and no one was surprised to see homeless, substance-abusing, mentally disturbed vets wandering the streets. Although everyone should have been ashamed.

It's taken three decades of hard work to turn that perception around, to accomplish desperately needed changes in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to regain by inches public respect for military veterans and understanding of their mental health needs.

But the current treatment of soldiers, marines, guardsmen, reserves and veterans by the Pentagon, the VA, and Smirky's maladministration is about to plunge us back into those bad old days of abandonment of veterans by the government and fear and hatred toward veterans by the public.

Salon's story is as much as indictment of SWAT-enamored local police forces as it is of a military that sends PTSD-disabled vets back to Iraq.

But to me it also presages a new era of the "crazed vet" stereotype.

And that will be yet another crime to lay at the feet of Smirky's maladministration and his repug and democratic enablers in Congress and in the media:

Yet another generation of veterans crippled not just by their experience in combat, not just by their mistreatment by the Pentagon and VA, but by a society conditioned to fear, reject and hate them.

Don't get me wrong: the LAST thing I want is to censor stories like Salon's. What happened to Jamie Dean is horrible and needs to be read by every American.

But the potential his tragedy - and the tragedy of too many others like him - has to re-create the crazed vet era adds even more urgency to calls to end the Iraq clusterfuck YESTERDAY. Bring our soldiers, marines, guardsmen and reserves home NOW. Double, triple, quadruple the military health care and VA health care budgets IMMEDIATELY.

Raise taxes, confiscate Halliburton, take it out of Smirky's hide - do whatever it takes to ensure that not one more veteran dies in a hail of police gunfire because no one would listen when he said he was hurting.

There's more: "Finding Yet More Ways to Fuck Vets Over" >>