It's just been one giant dick-measuring contest, from the very first day

The Senate Intelligence Committee today released the final two sections of the Phase II report on prewar intelligence, and I just want to say...I feel physically ill and personally betrayed.

What emerges is a picture of different areas of the government, all ultimately charged with a sacred duty to the American people, abdicating that responsibility. The Rumsfeld Pentagon was a petty, vindictive place and comes under harsh scrutiny in the report.

Additionally, the Committee issued a report on the Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. The report found that the clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris were inappropriate and mishandled from beginning to end. Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to keep the Intelligence Community and the State Department appropriately informed about the meetings. The involvement of Manucher Ghobanifer and Michael Ledeen in the meetings was inappropriate. Potentially important information collected during the meetings was withheld from intelligence agencies by Pentagon officials. Finally, senior Defense Department officials cut short internal investigations of the meetings and failed to implement the recommendations of their own counterintelligence experts.

In plain English: The Pentagon withheld intelligence from the CIA and DIA, because to Rummy it was all just one big pissing contest and he was going to get his war.

It is all so wrong on so many levels. I can not believe that we haven't arrested and tried some of these war criminals. The one thing that they all, every last one, have in common is an almost sociopathic depraved indifference to others.

The Iraqis who would suffer and die, the American soldiers who would be lost or broken, none of them crossed the minds of any of these fuckers.

And by the way - We have known this all along. The Senate report merely puts in the public record what a hundred intel-savvy left-leaning blogs - this one included - have been saying all along.

We have known all along.

And so did Pat Roberts. He was in a position to do something all along, when he was the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but he was blinded by ideology and he did nothing. He withheld the information, at great harm to national security. Where I come from, we call that obstruction, and we have laws against it.

Jim Slattery has a chance of taking Roberts Senate seat. To do that, he needs to seize on this issue and beat Roberts' bald, addled pate bloody with it. Roberts' tenure as committee chairman is deplorable and it has the potential to sink him if Slattery will play hardball with the old prick. I spent a lot of my adult life among Kansans. Some of my best friends are Kansans (honest!) And they are pissed at Roberts right now. They will vote for Slattery if he gives them a reason.

Give them a reason, Jim. Please.

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Putting out a fire with gasoline

Lest you think that Yellow Dog gets all the fun because she gets to write about Kentucky politics, we Missourians can give just about any state a run for the money when it comes to mendacious polecats in the GOP.

It would have been a sight to behold, and I wish I had seen it...

On Veterans Day, Matty B came to KC to the world headquarters of the VFW for the obligatory medal ceremony that happens every November, and after the event, three KC Star reporters tried to get an answer from Baby Guv about the brewing email scandal in Jefferson City. He quite literally broke into a run to get away from the likes of Kit Wagar, Steve Kraske and Dave Helling.

As the reporters closed in, a security guard (who looks disturbingly like that guy on Springer) shoved Wagar, who was pushed back into Kraske, who was knocked back into Helling - who is a pretty big guy, so presumably he didn't go anywhere. But Kraske was suddenly faced with having to acknowledge that there is indeed a story there, and he should prolly say sumthin' about it, and damnit to hell, thats gonna deal a setback to his secret desire to be Matty B's next press secretary...But Helling had that damnable camera of his running, and the video was all over the interwebs an hour later...

For those unfamiliar with Missouri's latest gubernatorial malfeasance, it's a potboiler.

[keep reading]



It all started a few weeks ago when Tony Messenger, political reporter for the Springfield News-Leader came into possession of an email from Blunt chief-of-staff Ed Martin that indicated Martin was performing political work from his state-funded office, and that is a violation of ethics rules. Messenger started asking questions of the governors office, and under the states Sunshine Law, he asked to see other emails like it. He was told that other emails didn't exist because Martin and other officials in the Blunt administration routinely deleted emails, which violates violates public records rules that mandate openness and transparency, and to that end, email retention.

Well, the governors office went into full freak-out mode and proceeded to compound their troubles exponentially. They denied they were aware of the policy on email retention - but the AP soon turned up with an email from a lawyer who served in the Blunt administration who said he had advised the governors staff to stop deleting email.

And here is where it gets really weird and the hubris becomes palpable. Scott Eckersley, the attorney who gave the administration the advice they didn't want to hear was fired and slandered and had his character and his ethics challenged; and Eckersley, a devout Mormon, was accused of getting porn emails at his state email address. (Don't we all get offers for penis enlargement, and gender is no deterrent?)

The issue has consumed a tremendous amount of newsprint all over the state, and it has been scathing of Blunt and Martin, and sympathetic to Eckersley. And two weeks in to the whole fiasco, the Blunt administration cut off their nose to spite their face. The administration filed a complaint with the state bar association, claiming that Eckersley violated the confidentiality he owed the governor as his attorney when he talked to the press. The complaint is tacit acknowledgment that Eckersley did indeed advise the governor and his staff to stop deleting emails.

And by Thursday of last week, baby guv had unveiled a new plan to archive every single email that is sent or received on state computers, because he wants to "avoid confusion" - except his staff seems to be the only folks who are afflicted by confusion. But that didn't stop him from blaming Jay Nixon, the current Attorney General. Blunt, in a stunning display of audacious gall, said his new scheme would "prevent what has happened in Attorney General Nixon's office, where the spokesperson said that e-mails are routinely deleted." Nixon, as every Missourian knows, is challenging Blunt in next years governors race, and in the words of Hotflash, my good friend and fellow co-blogger at Show Me Progress (and by the way, she has been absolutely tireless on this issue) Blunt isn't just going to lose next fall. He is going to get demolished.

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Reining in a Rogue Elephant

To my (admittedly wonkish) way of thinking, the most exciting RSS feed these days is the one coming from Representative Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Representative Waxman and the Oversight Committee today (Monday, March 26, 2007) informed both the Republican National Committee and the Chairman of the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign that they are not to destroy any email records they may be in possession of, in light of the evidence that certain high-ranking public officials (*cough* Karl Rove *cough*) have used non-official email servers to conduct the business of the government and avoid scrutiny and transparency in government affairs, and have most likely acted in ways that violate the Presidential Records Act.

One thing is for certain – the mendacity and hubris of this administration is staggering. If their actions were not so consequential for the rest of us, it would almost be funny – but as that is not the case, they are simply appalling on an epic scale.

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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