Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Flying Blind

Dark days: Singed by the special prosecutor and rattled by the Harriet Miers mess, Team Bush is in turmoil.

By Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Nov. 7, 2005 issue - The mood in the White House last Friday afternoon was grim, but eerily quiet. Dick Cheney was gone, off in Georgia giving yet another apocalyptic terrorism speech to yet another military crowd. The president, just back from his own rally-the-troops address, was eager to chopper to Camp David for the weekend. But, in the small dining room adjoining the Oval Office, he was doing something uncharacteristic: watching live news on TV.

The Deadliness Below

Weapons of mass destruction thrown into the sea years ago present danger now - and the Army doesn't know where they all are
by John M.R. Bull

In the summer of 2004, a clam-dredging operation off New Jersey pulled up an old artillery shell.

Barges often were piled high with one-ton steel containers of mustard gas to be thrown into the ocean in the 1940s and 1950s. More than a dozen such as this were unloaded off the coast of South Carolina.
U.S. Army photo

The long-submerged World War I-era explosive was filled with a black tarlike substance.

Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air Force Base, Del., were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them were injured - one hospitalized with large pus-filled blisters on an arm and hand.

The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.

OPEC AND THE ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF IRAQ

Harper's
Monday Oct 24, 2005
By Greg Palast
By special arrangement with Harper's magazine, we are reproducing here for the first time the entire updated article on the US government's secret schemes for seizing control of the oil fields of Iraq.
On Saturday, October 22, the Greg Palast investigative team received a Project Censored award, the "alternative Pulitzer Prize," for uncovering the State Department's confidential pre-war plans for the economic conquest of Iraq.

Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Bush rocked as senior Cheney aide is indicted for perjury

Two down, five to go!!!
Smiles everyone, smiles!! :-)

BB


ALEX MASSIE
IN WASHINGTON

VICE-PRESIDENT Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was indicted yesterday for obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements after a two-year investigation into the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity, plunging the Bush administration into turmoil.

Mr Libby, who could face up to 30 years in prison, resigned minutes after the grand jury indictment was issued in the federal court in Washington.

Patriot Act Bill Would Expand Death Penalty

Summary:
Under the proposals, 41 new crimes would be added to the 20 terrorism-related offenses now eligible for the federal death penalty. Prosecutors would also find it easier to impose a death sentence in cases in which the defendant did not have the intent to kill.

The death penalty provisions are emerging as one of the major points of contention between House and Senate negotiators

The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.
The bill also triples the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty, adding, among others, the material support law that has been the core of the government’s legal strategy against terrorism.

La Repubblica's Scoop, Confirmed

Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced.
By Laura Rozen

With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leak investigation, questions are again being raised about the intelligence scandal that led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House obtained false Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq had tried to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.

The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt later turned out to be crude forgeries, created on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents -- and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

Weldon on the Warpath

Dissention in the Ranks!!!!

By Rory O'Connor
GOP congressman demands answers on operation that tracked 9/11 hijackers

Representative Curt Weldon, Republican from Pennsylvania, has declared war on his own Defense Department. Upset with the Defense Intelligence Agency over its continuing refusal to allow public scrutiny of the controversial Able Danger ‘information warfare’ program (which identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the World Trade Center attacks,) as well as transparent DIA attempts to smear whistleblower Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Weldon is calling for a full “felony investigation” of DIA’s actions by the Defense Department Inspector General.

Read on to get such memorable quotes as:
“This is a series of felonies,” Weldon told me. “It’s also further evidence of stupidity, incompetence and gross ignorance” on the part of DIA officials.
and
“This is worse than any gulag in Russia,” Weldon said. “This is something I would expect from Kim Jong-Il in North Korea. This is not America!

Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture

Well, just when Red State values were hoping things were going to start to get quite for their Commander in Thief.
Another blow is thrown.

BB


By JUSTINE DAVIDSON

On Monday, October 17th Gail Davidson and Howard Rubin along with Jason Gratl and Micheal Vonn representing B.C. Civil Liberties stepped into courtroom 55 of the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver with the hopes of lifting the publication ban which, since December of 2004 August, has kept the case out of the public eye. After a relatively short session of 45 minutes they emerged successful. "I don't know that I would call it a victory quite yet," said Ms. Davidson, "but it is at least a step in the right direction. People deserve to know what is happening here."
What is happening is that Ms. Davidson and Lawyers Against the War have laid charges against George Bush Jr; accusing him of aiding, abetting, and counseling the commission of torture. This charge is based on the abuses of the prisoners held at the U.S. prisons in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and Abu-Ghraib, Iraq including Canadian minor Omar Khadr, who has been held in Cuba since 20

Lotto Trouble

Oh, 'tis a tangled web they weave.

The Politics of the Harriet Miers nomination are getting stranger as attention turns toward Ms. Miers's tenure as head of the Texas Lottery Commission. Two key players in last year's presidential campaign--Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans book "Unfit for Command," and Ben Barnes, a former Texas lieutenant governor who claimed President Bush got special treatment when he joined the Texas Air National Guard--are involved in the debate.

Miers family received 'excessive' sum in land case

Well, what did you expect?

By JACK DOUGLAS JR. and STEPHEN HENDERSON

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers collected more than 10 times the market value for a small slice of family-owned land in a large Superfund pollution cleanup site in Dallas where the state wanted to build a highway off-ramp.

THE LOBBYIST OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

Friday, October 14, 2005

2006 PROJECT CENSORED AWARD WINNER

Project Censored 2006: The News That Didn't Make the News

In his article “Adventure Capitalism,” Greg Palast exposes the contents of a secret plan for “imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq’s banks and bridges—in fact, ‘ALL state enterprises’—to foreign operators ... especially the oil.” This economy makeover plan, says Palast, “goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before.”

This highly detailed program, which began years before the tanks rolled, outlines the small print of doing business under occupation. One of the goals is to impose intellectual property laws favorable to multinationals. Palast calls this “history’s first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation’s copyright laws.”

It also turns out that those of us who may have thought it was all about the oil were mostly right. “The plan makes it clear that—even if we didn’t go in for the oil—we certainly won’t leave without it.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Palast Team Win Two Project Censored Awards

Project Censored 2006
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Reverend Jesse Jackson and Greg Palast will share an award for the article they co-authored on the non-count of the African-American vote in the 2004 election. Greg Palast's investigative team, reporting for BBC Television Newsnight (London), Harper's Magazine and TomPaine.com will also receive an award for their investigations uncovering the State and Defense Department secret plans for US control of Iraq's economy, "especially in the oil and supporting industries," according to the confidential documents.

Colbert Report

I have just finished watching my 3rd Colbert Report and I have to say. Pretty damn funny!! Oh I admit, I had my reservations at first. I had my doubts. I was even expecting not to like it. Dare I say, I went in slightly prejudiced against it. Well, I am here to testify here today and say "Mr. Colbert, well done." Your show, quite funny.

BB

Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes

Thursday, October 20, 2005;

By Dana Milbank

As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time.

He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."

US Planning Invasion, Says Chavez

O.K.
I don't know if the US is planning an invasion or not, first of all, the State department isn't in the invasion planning business. Regardless do you really think that the State dept. would just admit it if they or any other government agency were planning to oust the democratically elected Chavez? Even if they knew about it? (again State dept. not being in the invasion business.)


By BBC
Republished from BBC
The country's vast oil reserves - the largest in the Americas - have given it a strategic importance

Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez, says he is in possession of intelligence showing that the United States plans to invade his country.

In a BBC interview, Mr Chavez said the US was after his nation’s oil, much as it had been after Iraq’s.

But he stressed that any invasion would never be allowed to happen.

Mr Chavez has long accused Washington of being behind what he describes as a coup – claims the United States denies.

DeLay Booked in Houston on Charges

Yahoo!!!!!
One down, several to go.

BURN THE WITCH!!!!!


By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, October 20, 2005

(10-20) 15:10 PDT HOUSTON (AP) --

Rep. Tom DeLay turned himself in Thursday at the sheriff's office and was fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bail on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

Dick Cheney's Covert Action

Larry C. Johnson
October 19, 2005

Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Face it, America. You’ve been punk'd.

It is now quite clear that the outing of Valerie Plame was part of a broader White House effort to mislead and manipulate U.S. public opinion as part of an orchestrated effort to take us to war. The unraveling of the Valerie Plame affair has exposed their scam—and it extends well beyond compromising the identity of a CIA officer. In short, the Bush administration organized and executed a classic “covert action” program against the citizens of the United States.

Covert action refers to behind-the-scenes efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to plant stories, manipulate information and shape public opinion. In other words, you write stories that reporters will publish as their own, you create media events that tout a particular theme, and you demonize your opponent. Traditionally, this activity was directed against foreign governments. For example, the U.S. used covert action extensively in Greece in the 1960s to help fend off communists. Covert action also played a major role in rallying world support for the Afghanistan mujahideen following the Soviet invasion in 1979.

Cheney resignation rumors fly

Keep your fingers crossed. :-)
BB

Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The evolution of creationism

This comes from the Christian Science Monitor. Even they recognize that teaching "Creationism" is a bad idea.

Enjoy.
BB
The Monitor's View
In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that forbade teaching evolution in public schools unless creationism were also taught. The court found creationism to be a religious belief. But evolution's challengers have since adapted their cause to the new legal climate, just like Darwin's famed finches that formed special beaks to survive on the Galapagos Islands.
Their alternative to Darwin's theory is called "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex it had to be designed by an intelligent (unnamed) agent. Last month, a federal court began hearing a case against the school board in Dover, Pa., which decided last year that 9th-grade biology students should be read a brief statement that evolution is "not a fact" and has "gaps." The statement also alerts students to a book about intelligent design. Some parents sued the school board, arguing that intelligent design is just a 21st-century version of creationism.

More Improprieties Surface for Tom DeLay

Boy, this fuckbag just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier. BURN THE WITCH!!!!

BB

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose aggressive use of power has earned him ethics reprimands in the past, is drawing fresh fire on Capitol Hill this week over his role in a Texas political-financing operation and reports of possible travel irregularities in violation of House of Representatives rules.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday renewed her call for the House ethics committee to determine whether DeLay's activities require further investigation. Some House Republicans worried that the revival of an ethics flap surrounding DeLay could distract him from pushing President Bush 's second-term agenda.

DeLay was treated Thursday at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for heart arrhythmia and wasn't available to comment. After tests, he was sent home to rest. His office said the condition has been monitored for years.

Report Says U.S. Reduces Protection of Waters, Wetlands

October 13, 2005 — By Alan Elsner, Reuters
WASHINGTON — In the past four years, the United States has drastically cut back on its protection of waterways and wetlands, whose erosion was cited as a factor in the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, according to a report issued Wednesday.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, examined how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency assert jurisdiction over many of the nation's waterways and wetlands.

Environmental groups criticized government practices discussed in the report.

"Losses of wetlands in many areas in the United States are unprecedented, yet the corps is allowing many of the remaining wetlands to be destroyed, in violation of its Clean Water Act obligations, without even trying to figure out why," said Christy Leavitt of environmental group U.S. PIRG.

Navis Bermudez of the Sierra Club said, "The GAO's report confirms the administration is secretly pursuing a policy that favors developers and other industrial interests."

Bush Strafes New Orleans

by Greg Palast
Friday, September 2, 2005

The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she'd piss on herself: the President of the United States had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and concerned.

That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.

I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles were wet.

There is nothing new under the sun. In 1927, a Republican President had his photo taken as the Mississippi rolled over New Orleans. Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, "a little fat man
with a notebook in his hand," promised to rebuild the state. They didn't. Instead, They left to play golf with Ken Lay or the Ken Lay railroad baron equivalent of their day.

In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial. As depression approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for balancing the budget.

Then, as the waters rose, one politician finally said, roughly, "Screw this! They're lying! The President's lying! The rich fat cats that are drowning you will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for profit, they take away your schools and your hope and when you complain, they blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they push your kids under. I say, Kick'm in the ass and take your rightful share!"

Negroponte creates new clandestine service

Oh yeah, another intelligence service. Because the fifteen that we currently have can't coordinate their efforts so another one is going to do it. Let us not forget that all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11 had been identified and documented as potential terrorist threats, as many as eight (8) times and the services still dropped the ball.
Too much bureaucracy got in the way of uncovering the truth so let's create some more bureaucracy. Government thinking at it's finest.
BB

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.

The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.

Shrub Resume'

I know it's been done, but it's nice to have a refresher.
enjoy...or should I say weep at the history of our President.

BB

The Latest in "The Wilson/Plame affair"

The Case of the Missing Notebook
The latest twist in the Plame Affair only deepens the mystery: What's in the suddenly uncovered notebook that documents the previously unknown Judith Miller/Scooter Libby chat of June 25, 2003? Who told the prosecutor about it? And why, exactly, does he want to talk to Miller again?

By Greg Mitchell

(October 09, 2005) -- If its recent track record is any guide, The New York Times, later today or tomorrow, will get around to confirming Michael Isikoff's Newsweek revelation late Saturday that the missing notes Judith Miller has suddenly found and turned over to the federal prosecutor in the Plame case were located in a notebook in the newspaper’s Washington, D.C. bureau. The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has now scheduled another meeting with Miller on Tuesday.

Besides the ongoing mystery of why the Times is always a step or two behind its competition in reporting on its own reporter, this latest twist raises several tantalizing issues. If anyone at the Times objects to raising the following questions: It's your own fault for not disclosing more about this case yourself.

Before getting to The Case of the Missing Notebook: What's with Miller, after going to jail for 85 days -- purportedly to stand up for a journalistic principle (protecting a source) -- now turning over her notes to the prosecutor, apparently with her newspaper's blessing?

The notes in question, we now know, cover a Miller discussion with I. Lewis Libby on June 23, 2003, two weeks before Joseph Wilson's WMD Op-Ed that was thought to have set the Bush backlash in motion. These notes, the Times has disclosed, do mention Joseph Wilson. Isikoff observes that the notebook is "significant because Wilson's identity was not yet public."

Outside Inquiry Sought on Prosecutor's Demotion

By PHILIP SHENON
Published: October 7, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The ranking Democrats on three House committees called Thursday for an outside investigator to determine why a prosecutor in Guam was demoted in 2002 after opening a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.

BBC report: Bush said God told him to invade Iraq

If I walked around saying some moistened bink handed me a sword and made me king they'ed put me away!
...Monty Python

Does life imitate art.....

We have lots of people in this country who say that "God made me do it." These people are usually locked up for what "God told them to do."



AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

October 6, 2005, 8:08 PM EDT

LONDON -- US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details released on Thursday.

Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.

A Snake Oil President

Timothy Karr
October 11, 2005

Timothy Karr is the campaign director of Free Press ( www.freepress.net).

Treating policy as product to be marketed to the electorate is no great stretch for a president who fashions himself the CEO of White House Inc. But in its zeal to promote sales of the Bush brand, this administration has crossed the line that separates honest brokers from snake oil salesmen.

Bush and company sold Americans defective goods in clear violation of federal law. Yet Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hasn’t budged. Instead, the man charged with enforcing our laws has tasked his army of lawyers to throw a legal shield around the White House, telling the administration to ignore investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which repeatedly has blasted Team Bush for using taxpayer money to fund “covert propaganda.”

Excerpts: The Politics of Truth

Ambassador Wilson is, of course, the husband of the CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the press by the Bush Administration. The Politics of Truth highlights Ambassador Wilson's fascinating career and provides an insiders clarifying view on some of this century's most dramatic events, including the current war in Iraq.

While talking about a dinner he enjoyed with some of hollywood's biggest stars:"The great irony was that these talented and involved people are routinely lambasted by the Right for daring to utter their political opinions, while a serial groper like Arnold Schwarzenegger, a caricature of a comic-book figure, had just received the benediction of none other than that self-promoting paragon of morality-and admitted gambling addict-William Bennett, in his run for governor... The hypocrisy was breathtaking." p 406

"It may be true that some of the intelligence was not as good as policy makers might like, but there is so doubt that the administration cherry-picked, exaggerated, and manipulated information often no more credible than gossip to fabricate a justification for war." p. 414

"It was clear...that the entire war had been a disastrous charade; that the administration, from the president on down, had systematically deceived the American people, Congress, and the world." p 414

"Like a CEO seeking a clean break from a disastrous corporate venture, President Bush should fire Donald Rumsfeld and the entire band of neoconservatives that occupy positions of responsability under him. " "The the Reagan years, these ideologues pursued a recklessly aggressive arms buildup against an imagined threat from a Soviet Union that most seriou analyst's understood was a rapidly decaying power, and later they embarrassed us with the arms-for-hostages escapade in Iran and Central America that culminated in the Iran-Contra scandal." p.431

Thought for the day

Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a debate that goes
on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 "wolves"
inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false
pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth,
compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his
grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."