Author: catnip

This morning on Meet The Press with Tim Russert, Condaleezza Rice unwittingly blew Bushco’s cover by asserting the real reasons the hawks decided to invade Iraq. It is, of course, what we all suspected for a very long time. But, having Rice admit it publicly adds a lot more fuel to the fire of those who do not support this illegal war.

But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East.

The fix was in. Every attempt made by the Bush administration to tie Saddam Hussein to Al Quaeda was just a smokescreen. They had already made the decision to invade Iraq.

You can view the video at Crooks and Liars or read the transcript here.

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Courtesy of the Washington Post:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Dan Glickman , president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 9 a.m.: Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad , Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and former U.S. attorney Joseph E. diGenova .

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), former FBI director Louis J. Freeh and Rice .

LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.); Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari ; Washington Post foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid ; Irwin Redlener of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness; and Khalilzad .

The Iraq referendum, Judy Miller, Bill Clinton bashing and more…

RAW STORY informs us, via a New York Times spokesperson, that Judith Miller is taking a little holiday. Note the wording:

“until we decide”

That suggests that this is not a voluntary leave.

As if the torture, endless detentions, lack of rebuilding progress and the refusal to count Iraqi casualties weren’t enough harm to perpetrate on the Iraqi people, the US military has now added a new tactic in its so-called War on Terrorism: just starve Iraqis.

According to “a source”, Judith Miller will not face charges related to the Plame leak investigation:

One person who will not be charged is Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify in the case before making two recent appearances before the grand jury. Miller was recently told by Fitzgerald that she is only a witness in the case, according to a source close to Miller.

That source could well be Miller’s lawyer:

“Judy has always been a witness in this case and nothing more,” said Robert S. Bennett, Miller’s attorney. “She is neither a subject nor a target of the investigation.”

If Bennett is indeed the source, can we trust what he says?

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