Bush's Response.

In response to Kerry's acceptance speech claim that he will only raise taxes on the top 2%, Bush had this to say:

Bush argued that Kerry will raise taxes on the middle class. Although the
senator from Massachusetts has repeatedly insisted he will roll back Bush's tax
cut only for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, Bush insisted, "you know who
'the rich' is. They got accountants. It means you pay."

This is absolutely nuts! First, it assumes that the rich are not now using those tax loopholes if it's going to make any sense at all. But anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that this is not the case. What are we supposed to believe? That the rich are not currently using these loopholes, but come Kerry they will? I don't think so (even Bush doesn't suggest this; he says 'they have accountants', not 'they're going to get accountants'). What the President has just told us, then, is that the lower and middle classes are shouldering most of the tax burden now. Second, it's irrelevant. The Kerry tax plan is aimed at percentages, not solid numbers. That means that taxes are going to be raised on those in the top 2% of taxable income-- that is, post-deduction. Third, it misses the point. If the rich are able to use tax loopholes to dodge their tax burden, then I don't think that's a reason to reject the Kerry plan, because it occurs now. It is a reason, however, to talk about closing these loopholes so that we can reduce that tax burden of working folks. Surprisingly, Bush didn't have much to say on this point.

This just indicates a ton of contempt for the American public, in my assessment, because it's so stupid, but they don't expect people to see through it. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that they may not be to far off in their assessment of the American public.

I Hate Technology.

Maybe the Uni-bomber just had about as much trouble as I am with a new computer and that's what caused him to totally lose it.

From the SFGate:

John Kerry's home state went first, but it was the key battleground state of Ohio that put him over the top.
And so, 35 minutes after the roll call began Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, the Massachusetts senator officially became the party's presidential nominee.

All I've got to say is, "don't lose, dick".

Status

I know that nobody reads this thing (except for my Mom, maybe), but on the off-chance that you have picked up on this thing and have wondered why no real activity has been going on, then I've got an explanation for you.  I'm going to be moving half-way across the country for law school, so I'm quite busy with that.  Also, I've bought a couple of new computers, so I've been pretty busy with them. 
Anyway, that's the scoop. 

Afganistan Invasion and the Oil Pipeline

I've heard a lot of Moore's crtics provide as an example of his conspiritorial thinking that he advanced the notion that Afganistan was invaded only to that the Bush cronies could build a pipeline though the region. I don't think that he ever advances this notion. Actually, he states that the invasion was in response to 9-11, in that they had to do something.
He does bring up the point that post-invasion a pipeline was build, but I think that he is trying to suggest that they wasted no time in taking advantage of this opportunity. This is a much weaker claim.

Details of the 9/11 Report.

The NYT's has an article that illustrates how many of the commonly held beliefs about the 9/11 attacks are incorrect.  Of particular interest is the notion that nobody could have any indication that terrorists would use planes as missiles.  According to the article:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center," Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, said in May 2002. As recently as this April, in testimony to the Sept. 11 commission, Mr. Freeh said that he "never was aware of a plan that contemplated commercial airliners being used as weapons."

But in its investigation, the commission found that an attack described as unimaginable had in fact been imagined, repeatedly. The commission said that several threat reports circulated within the government in the late 1990's raised the explicit possibility of an attack using airliners as missiles.

Most prominent among those reports, the commission said, was one circulated in September 1998, based on information provided by a source who walked into an American consulate in East Asia, that ''mentioned a possible plot to fly an explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S. city." In August of the same year, it said, an intelligence agency received information that a group of Libyans hoped to crash a plane into the World Trade Center.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command had gone so far as to develop exercises to counter the threat and, according to a Defense Department memorandum unearthed by the commission, planned a drill in April 2001 that would have simulated a terrorist crash into the Pentagon.

Then there's this:

In the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks and ever since, the White House has consistently insisted that President Bush and his deputies had no credible evidence before the attacks to suggest that Al Qaeda was about to strike on American soil.

But the assertion has been questioned as a result of the commission's digging. After its most heated showdown with the Bush administration over access to classified information, the commission pressured the White House to declassify and make public a special intelligence briefing that had been presented to the president at his Texas ranch on Aug. 6, 2001, a month before the attacks.

The existence of the document - but not its detailed contents - had been known about since 2002, when the White House confirmed news reports that President Bush had received an intelligence report before Sept. 11 warning of the possibility that Al Qaeda might hijack American passenger planes.

In testimony this April to the Sept. 11 commission, before it was made public, Ms. Rice insisted that the report was "historical."

"It did not, in fact, warn of attacks inside the United States," she testified. "It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information.''

But there were gasps in the audience in the hearing room when she disclosed the name of the two-page briefing paper: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S."

The document was made public several days later and contained passages referring to F.B.I. reports of "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." It noted that a caller to the United States Embassy in the United Arab Emirates that May had warned that "a group of bin Laden supporters was in the U.S.," planning attacks with explosives.

The commission's final report revealed that two C.I.A. analysts involved in preparing the brief had wanted to make clear to Mr. Bush that, far from being only a historical threat, the threat that Al Qaeda would strike on American soil was "both current and serious."

That bitch! Now I think that she may have been completely full of shit when she testified before the 9/11 commission.  I mean, the report seems to be saying that she should've known about places being used as missiles, but she said this was impossible.  Then the whole line she gave aboutthe PDB being nothing more than a "historical document" seems to be complete bullshit.   

Fair and Balanced.

Fox just had a report on the horserace that is the Presidential election and they stated that the President was keeping a low profile by taking one of his "working vacations" at the "western White House" in Texas.  That's not even covert; it's totally obvious. 

The Hard Problem.

I am sick and tired of hearing anti-gay rights politicians spouting off about how marriage is just between a man and a woman. Let's go ahead and ignore all of the stupid arguments that we've heard about how the purpose of marriage is child-rearing. What about an infertile couple, stupid?
Here's an even harder problem: what about a trans-gender couple? Can they marry anyone? Or can they marry no one? I'd love to know the answer .

I Wonder What's Going to Happen with Iran.

I'm sure that many have heard that the 9/11 Commission will report, among other things, the Iran gave the 9/11 hijackers safe passage, and so helped facilitate the attack, I guess. I think a lot of people are speculating that we will invade in the not too distant future, because, after all, the Bush doctrine says so. But I'm not so sure, and the reason being an over-stretched military, compounded by recruitment and retention problems.
I suspect that the Bush administration's response will be far more cool-headed this time around.  Seriously, I think he's going to try to use it to illustrate that he's a changed man.  Also, if he can get the U.N. to take some sort of action, no matter how small, I'm sure that it will be spun as proof that he is in fact capable of convincing the International community to get involved in Iraq. 

American and Bristish Intelligence Services Must Have Been Comparing Notes.

Look at what was reported in today's Washington Post:
 

Although the Joint Intelligence Committee's confidential assessments to Blair before the war emphasized that sources were thin and questionable, the dossier prepared for the public omitted those caveats. "Warnings were lost about the limited intelligence base on which some aspects of these assessments were being made," the panel concluded. This was "a serious weakness."
When new intelligence from an untested source arrived in September, two weeks before the dossier was published, MI6 used it in the dossier but refused to share it with weapons experts at the Defense Ministry's intelligence service who might have cast doubts on its validity, the inquiry said. That intelligence was withdrawn in July 2003 because it was found to be unreliable.

Of course, you might remember that this is pretty much the same thing that the Senate Intelligence Committee reported.  But in case you forgot, here's a little snip from an article I linked to in a previous post not too long ago:
 

Although the Joint Intelligence Committee's confidential assessments to Blair before the war emphasized that sources were thin and questionable, the dossier prepared for the public omitted those caveats. "Warnings were lost about the limited intelligence base on which some aspects of these assessments were being made," the panel concluded. This was "a serious weakness."
When new intelligence from an untested source arrived in September, two weeks before the dossier was published, MI6 used it in the dossier but refused to share it with weapons experts at the Defense Ministry's intelligence service who might have cast doubts on its validity, the inquiry said. That intelligence was withdrawn in July 2003 because it was found to be unreliable.

 

Niger Uranium Claim is Back, but Still Pretty Thin.

This is the Financial Times article that makes a desperate attempt to revive the Niger Uranium claim.  This is perhaps one of the crappies articles that I've read in a while.  The basic strategy here is to provide a bunch of really bad circumstantial (at best) evidence, and then suggest a bunch of outlandish interpretations that might actually support the Niger contention. 
 
Let's have a look at some of the stupidest points made.  We don't have to look too far because the article opens with this:
 

"When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions.

The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines".

 
Well, that would explain why the documents in question were crappy forgeries.  The problem is that we'd have to make a lot of leaps in reasoning here.  I mean, clearly these documents weren't of that great of quality, and people didn't come to this conclusion because of the stationary. My point is that if these guys were actually trying to pull off some sort of scam, and they wanted things to appear totally legit, you would think that the Niger official's name appearing on the document wouldn't be someone who had been dead prior to the dating of the forged document.  If they're willing to sweat the small stuff like making sure that the stationary is legit, you would think that they would try and avoid mistakes like this one too.  Second, are we supposed to believe that it's more difficult to counterfiet stationary than currency.  I realize that there is some very intricate stationary out there, but I know where Kinko's is.  I would seriously try to duplicate it on my own rather than break into an embassy.  Would you really risk the undoing of your international crime syndacate on a burglary that isn't really necessary? The claim about the watch and the perfume is odd too.  I guess we're supposed to believe that this sophisticated international crime ring just refuses to go away empty handed.  I can totally see some crack-head going into a pawn shop and trying to unload a watch, two bottles of perfume and a bunch of uranium. 
 
Here's another one:
 

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

 
One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden."

All this claim says is that Niger would like to sell uranium on the black market to countries; it says nothing about whether or not Iraq was interested. The weakness of this claim is evident by the inclusion of this quote. Notice how it's couched entirely in conditional terms, so unless Iraq is developing a hidden program, this statement is pretty much meaningless.  Of course, whether or not Iraq was trying to build a bomb is the point in question.  What the author is really trying to do with the inclusion of this statement is, I think, confuse the readers by conflating opportunity with intent (i.e. Iraq could buy illicit uranium from Niger, therefore they wanted to buy illicit uranium from Niger). 
 
Then there's this one:
 

Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two French-owned mining companies - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger.

 
"Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said.

He added that there was no evidence the companies were aware of the plans for illicit mining.

All this proves is that an illicit uranium mining program is possible, but I wasn't aware that this was a contested point.  I thought we were talking about whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase any illicitly mined uranium, which is an entirely different point.  Again, the author is try to conflate opportunity with intent. 
 
Last, but not least:
 

Mr Wilson was critical of the Bush administration's use of secret intelligence, and has since charged that the White House sought to intimidate him by leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

 
But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.

As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.

This is the only piece of "evidence" that actually says anything about what Iraq was actually doing.  Everything else was about what Niger wanted to do with Iraq--, that is, sell them illicit uranium (and maybe some anal), but there's nothing to indicate whether or not Iraq was receptive or not.  Enter this crap-tacular claim.  Of course, it's all predicated on this inference about how they must have been talking about uranium, but we know that this is pretty dubious.  Sure, Niger's main exports are goats and uranium, but it doesn't follow that they are Niger's only exports.

Trump to Bush Administration: You're Fired!

With the tacky hair and even tacky taste in clothing and home furnishings, I really just assumed that The Donald was just an all around tacky guy-- but not so.  Apparently he thinks that the Bush administration sucks too, and for all the right reasons.  Check it out:
 

In an interview for the August edition of Esquire Magazine to be published on Friday, the magazine says he makes it clear the administration would never keep a job with him.

"Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country?," Trump said.

"C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have," Trump said in excerpts of the interview released in advance to Reuters
 
 
 
 

Groupthink!

I think that they should just ditch Friedman and keep Ehrenreich, or at least keep her on.  Her latest column deals with the prevalence if "groupthink" and how in many ways it can be particularly dangerous.  I think this line is just great:
 
 

"...while the capacity for groupthink is an endearing part of our legacy as social animals, it's also a common precondition for self-destruction. One thousand coalition soldiers have died because the C.I.A. was so eager to go along with the emperor's delusion that he was actually wearing clothes."

Bush administration won't Release Key Document.

I'm sure that most of you are more than familiar with the secrecy of this administration. We don't have to look too far to find examples: Cheney's secret energy task force, Justice Department torture memos, the cost of their prescription drug plan...the list goes on. Anyway, here's yet another example:

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.

Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.

The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.

"In determining what the president was told about the contents of the N.I.E. dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and all, there is nothing clearer than this single page," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page "additional view" that was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on Friday

A separate white paper summarizing the National Intelligence Estimate was made public in October 2002. The Senate report criticized the white paper as having "misrepresented'' what the Senate committee described as a "more carefully worded assessment" in the classified intelligence estimate. For example, the white paper excluded information found in the National Intelligence Estimate, like the names of intelligence agencies that had dissented from some of the findings, most importantly on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. That approach, the Senate committee said, "provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of the debate within the intelligence community regarding these issues."

The reason that this document is not going to be released is simply because its totally consistent with intelligence manipulation. That is, intel that supported a particular point was presented, but evidence that contradicted that same point was left out.

British Intel Report Ought to Serve as a Model for US.

CBS is reporting that a report analogous to the Senate Intelligence Report will report a few interesting findings. Perhaps most interesting:

The intelligence services rushed to justify a political decision that had been made to go to war.

I willing to bet that pretty much the same thing happened with Bushco, but so far Congress doesn't have the balls to call them on it.

Interesting Revelation comes out of Senate Intelligence Report Still.

In an earlier post, I point out how the forthcoming Senate Intelligence Report on the intelligence used to build the case for war was not going to deal with the crucial question of whether or not the Bush administration had in anyway misused or manipulated intelligence and intelligence sources. Still, it seems that the report is going to prove politically embarrassing for the Bush administration (although far less) insofar as the report does note that there is a huge discrepancy between a classified and unclassified version of the a National Intelligence Estimate dealing with Iraq's WMD programs. Here are some interesting snippets from the LA Times article:

In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq war, the CIA hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge.

But in the unclassified version of the NIE — the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war — those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.

The repeated elimination of qualifying language and dissenting assessments of some of the government's most knowledgeable experts gave the public an inaccurate impression of what the U.S. intelligence community believed about the threat Hussein posed to the United States, the committee said.

[snip]

For example, the panel cited changes made in the section of the NIE dealing with chemical weapons:

"Although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile," the classified NIE read, "Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of such poisons.

In the unclassified version of the report, the phrase "although we have little specific information" was deleted. Instead, the public report said, "Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."

The Senate report also noted one instance in which a dissenting view was left out of the unclassified version.

In that example, the classified NIE stated that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents."

But in a footnote, the U.S. Air Force's director for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance said he did not agree.

By eliminating that footnote from the unclassified version, the panel said, the public NIE "is missing the fact that [the] … agency with primary responsibility for technological analysis on UAV programs did not agree with the assessment."

[snip]

The committee's report describes not just sins of omission, but of addition.

The classified NIE stated, for instance, that "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing … a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives."

In the unclassified version, the words "potentially against the U.S. homeland" are inserted at the end of the statement.

Essentially, then, this indirectly deals with the manner in which Bushco used, or misused rather, the intelligence provided by giving a very clear example of White House manipulations. Again, of course, this isn't nearly as damning as finding out what the deal is with Feith's special intel team or whether or not the White House actively pressured intelligence officials to come up with the right answer, but at least it's something.

Democracy...American Style! Coup, bitches, coup!

Link
You know, I really am one to try and avoid conspiricy theories and the like, but if you look at this administrations record and reports like what we've seen in "The New Republic", it is just too hard to resist. Seriously, I don't think that we need to worry so much about terrorist trying in disrupt the democratic process, but rather we need to worry about Bushco. trying to disrupt the democratic process. Check it out:

The department wants to know about the possibility of granting emergency power to the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission, authority that Roehrkasse said was requested by DeForest B. Soaries Jr., the commission's chairman.

Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey.

He wrote in April to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asking them to seek such legislation from Congress, Roehrkasse said.

Roehrkasse said the recent discussions were sparked by intelligence indicating al Qaeda wants to "disrupt our democratic process."

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of such an attack in a news conference last week, saying it was based on intercepted "chatter" among al Qaeda operatives.

Roehrkasse noted, however, that there was no specific information suggesting such an attack would be aimed at the political conventions or Election Day.

Democracy... Florida Style, Bitch!

The New York Times reports that the newly unsealed potential purged voter list is has almost no republican leaning hispanics (Cubans) but plenty of democratic leaning blacks. Check it out:

Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged yesterday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list.

Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American.

About 8 percent of Florida voters describe themselves as Hispanic, and about 11 percent as black.

In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican.

And:

Hispanic Republicans outnumber Hispanic Democrats by about 100,000 voters in Florida. But more than 90 percent of the approximately one million registered blacks there are Democrats. The exclusion of Hispanics from the purge list explains some of the wide discrepancy in party affiliation of voters on the felon list, which bears the names of 28,025 Democrats and just 9,521 Republicans, with most of the rest unaffiliated.

Jeb's mouthpiece has this to say:

Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Governor Bush, said: "The governor is complying with the law and complying with the settlement. Recognizing now that there is a discrepancy, the Department of State is looking into the options."

I don't know what the hell that means, especially since I'm sure one of the options that they're looking into is not doing a damn thing. I think this guy is pretty much on the right track:

Democrats said yesterday that the latest disclosure should be the last straw. "Either this administration is acting incompetently in regard to voters' rights,'' said Scott Maddox, the Democratic state chairman, "or they have ill will toward a certain class of voters. Either way, it's unacceptable.''

"The honorable thing to do,'' Mr. Maddox added, ''is throw the list out and not purge people erroneously on the eve of election."

July Surprise?

The New Republic has just released an article which claims that the Bush administration is pressuring Pakistan to produce bin Laden, or some other important figure during the Democratic Convention.
I was just watching a piece on CNN about the article, and they attempt to completely discredit the article because it is largely based on unnamed sources. This is basically the same tactic that was used against Sy Hersh's article, and just about every other indicting article about the administration that is based on unnamed sources. To me, this is nothing more than throwing dust up in the air when you don't have any sort of critical argument to advance. I absolutely agree that unnamed sources can present a bit of a problem, but I think that this is where the credibility and reputation of the publication become so incredibly important. We can conclude that The New Republic is actually publishing a story that they know is dubious at best. However, I think that we have to consider the consequences of such an action. If it were to turn out that the article was totally bogus (either intentionally or unintentionally) the credibility of the TNR would be totally shot. No matter how leftist someone wants to paint this magazine and imply that they just absolutely hate Bush, it seems hard to believe that they would actually be willing to run the risk. On the other hand, if we assume that the Pakistani sources are somehow screwing around with these journalists, that's even harder to explain. The article makes it clear that Pakistan thinks that the GOP best preserves their interests, whereas the Democrats are contrary to their best interests. So, then, why would Pakistani officials throw these reporters a red herring that would potentially run counter to their interests by jeopardizing Bushco's reelection chances. It just doesn't make sense.

Whitewash!

Link

The NYT's is reprting that a Senate intel report is going to completely sidestep the issue of whether or not the White House misused intel reports in building their case for war in Iraq. Here's the good stuff:

Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.

The effect may be to provide an opening for President Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its departing chief, George J. Tenet, rather than Mr. Bush and his top aides.

Great, lets give an adminstration that has no problems spouting a lie that is not even remotely plausible more than enough ammunition to spout a lie that actually seems somewhat plausible. I can see it now. The administration is going to argue that because the report does not indict the administration's use of the intel, it is in fact proof that there was no wrong doing on the part of the administration. Of course, we know that's not the case, but if history has taught us anything, the truth is at best only a
minor obstacle for this administration.

It's About Time-- Lay Indicted in Enron Scandal.

CNN has an article on Lay's indictment. It appears that Lay will claim that "...knew nothing of the secret partnerships managed by Fastow and fully believed in the company's long-term viability when he urged employees to hold onto their Enron shares". But common sense realy makes this hard to buy given Lay's behavior. Specifically, "While details of the charges are not yet publicly known, prosecutors are expected to focus at least part of their case on assurances Lay gave, in the months leading up to Enron's fall, to employees about the company's financial health at the same time that he was quietly unloading his own Enron stock". The obvious problem here is that if Lay really did believe that the company was in good financial shape, then he would also want to hold on to his own stock, but he didn't. It just seems strange.

Look what got Buried in the NYT's

This story presents the findings of a recent internal investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services. According to the investigation, "the administrator of Medicare, Thomas A. Scully, issued the threat to Richard S. Foster while lawmakers were considering huge changes in the program last year. As a result, Mr. Foster's cost estimate did not become known until after the legislation was enacted". And if that's not enough, "Mr. Scully, who resigned in December, in part to become a lobbyist for health care companies...". I'm absolutely shocked that the policy in question is largely seen as a giant give-away to drug and insurance companies. I mean seeing as how this guy is...oh, wait, it actually says that he left to become a lobbyist for health care companies. I guess it's not that shocking then.
You know, this sort of corruption is something that only happened in Mexico and stuff. This sucks!

Liberty in the Newly Liberated Iraq

This NYT's article reports that, "Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday signed into law broad martial powers that allow him to impose curfews anywhere in the country, ban groups he considers seditious and order the detentions of people suspected of being security risks".

I completely understand that given the terrible security situation over there, something like this is totally necessary, but I just don't see how people can say with a straight face that we have 'liberated' Iraq, or that we have brought 'freedom' to Iraq.

Lets Hope this Story Gets Picked Up by the Domestic Media.

The Telegraph is running a story which reports that Gen. Karpinski, the officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib facility, claims that Rumsfeld signed off on importing Gitmo-style interrogation tactics to Abu Ghraib. If true, this totally corroborates Sy Hersh's article, "The Gray Zone". I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The New York Times: Officials Detail a Detainee Deal by 3 Countries

This article is pretty interesting. In an earlier post I made the point that despite the fact that the US said that they would not negotiate with terrorists, the newly appointed interim government, with their offer of amnesty to insurgents, would. It turns out that we don't need to look quite as hard to find an inconsistency in US policy because "American officials agreed to return five terrorism suspects to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, last year as part of a secret three-way deal intended to satisfy important allies in the invasion of Iraq, according to senior American and British officials".

I Really Hate Fox News.

I was just watching a Fox news interview about the discovery of shells by Polish soldiers that allegedly contained chemical agents, but after testing, in fact, did not. What irked me so much is that this idea that a discovery like this is proof the Saddam had WMD. It was also mentioned that his gassing of the Kurds was proof the he had WMD. To a less than savvy viewer, this might be interpreted as proof that directly prior to the invasion, Saddam did in fact possess stockpiles of WMD. That is, the administrations claims during the build up to war were actually true. However, his gassing of the Kurds took place more than a decade ago and the warheads found (which, again, tested negative) were also over a decade old. All these statements prove is that Saddam had WMD at sometime. To the best of my knowledge, this statement is not in dispute (Let's cut to the chase. We know Saddam had WMD because we have the receipt: "The cozy relationship was an effort to build a regional bulwark against America's enemies in Iran.The newspaper says a review of a large tranche of government documents reveals that the administrations of President Reagan and the first President Bush both authorized providing Iraq with intelligence and logistical support, and okayed the sale of dual use items — those with military and civilian applications — that included chemicals and germs, even anthrax and bubonic plague"). What is disputed is whether or not he still possessed stockpiles of WMD, an active WMD program and designs on a nuclear program immediately prior to the invasion.
In essence, what FNC is trying to do hear is confuse there views, and thereby shape public opinion, by equivocating between the notions of 'had WMD' and 'has WMD'. This is not journalism, it's an agenda.

Uh-oh...This ain't good-- Iran's Making a Power Play in Iraq.

The New York Times has a long article detailing some of the efforts that Iran is undertaking in Iraq. This really illustrates what a destabilize effect that the invasion has had on the region. Perhaps the worse case scenario would entail the US being put in a position where we need to invade Iran, but I'm really not sure that we would be able to put enough boots on the ground. Oh yeah, and Iran might have nukes, too.

What Saddam Wasn't Charged With.

My Mom, the brilliant one, pointed out something that I think is pretty interesting. As you most likely already know, Saddam was arraigned in an Iraqi court earlier. According to CNN:

The former dictator listened to seven preliminary charges outlined in his arrest warrant -- the killing of religious figures in 1974; gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988; killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983; killing members of political parties in the last 30 years; the 1986-88 ''Anfal'' campaign of displacing Kurds; the suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites; and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

What I think is so interesting here is what he wasn't charged with. Specifically, we don't here anything about his participation in 9/11, and if he would be charged with invading Kuwait by this particular court, I see no reason why they would not also charge him with any role he played in 9/11. More generally, we also don't see any charges surrounding his connections with Al Queda. Further, there's nothing about building nukes, WMD's or whatever. I wonder if anyone is going to point this out? I'm not going to hold my breath.

Faith-Based Electioneering on the Part of the Bush Campaign.

The Washington Post has this article detailing the continued activities of the Bush campaign to use churches as mere branches of the campaign. Here's what they're doing:

"The instruction sheet circulated by the Bush-Cheney campaign to religious volunteers lists 22 "duties" to be performed by specific dates. By July 31, for example, volunteers are to "send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters or give [it] to a BC04 Field Rep" and "Talk to your Pastor about holding a Citizenship Sunday and Voter Registration Drive."

By Aug. 15, they are to "talk to your Church's seniors or 20-30 something group about Bush/Cheney '04" and "recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."

By Sept. 17, they are to host at least two campaign-related potluck dinners with church members, and in October they are to "finish calling all Pro-Bush members of your church," "finish distributing Voter Guides in your church" and place notices on church bulletin boards or in Sunday programs "about all Christian citizens needing to vote"".

And here's why it's illegal:

"...the IRS on June 10 sent a strongly worded letter to both the Republican and Democratic national committees, reminding them that tax-exempt charitable groups "are prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office."... The IRS letter noted that religious organizations are allowed to sponsor debates, distribute voter guides and conduct voter registration drives. But if those efforts show "a preference for or against a certain candidate or party . . . it becomes a prohibited activity," the letter said".

It seems to me then, given the provision that churches "are prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office", at the bare minimum, any effort that they undertake for the Bush campaign, they would also have to undertake for the other candidates in the election. In reality, they shouldn't be doing any of this.