Author: hfiend

AHHHH!  

The House chairman of the Judiciary Committee has drafted and sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the warrantless wiretapping program.

The Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has issued 51 questions to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on President Bush’s warrantless wiretap program.

The letter, issued to Gonzales today and acquired by RAW STORY, demands answers to myriad legal questions on the program, which involved eavesdropping on Americans’ calls overseas. Sensenbrenner has given Gonzales a Mar. 2 deadline to respond.

This is combined with Heather Wilson’s (NM) recent shocker

A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

Shit meet fan?

Questions:

“What is the rationale for authorizing a program to conduct surveillance in a manner that does not require prior judicial review by the FISA court?”

“Have past United States Presidents employed signals intelligence of the kind authorized by President Bush after 9/11 to protect the nation during wartime? Please explain.”

“What legal precedents, if any, support the Administration’s position that the September 14, 2001 AUMF directive to the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against al Qaeda included the ability to authorize NSA intercepts of al Qaeda-related communications into and out of the United States?”

“Do you agree that FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) ‘expressly prohibits’ the specific activities under this program?”

Read letter here

I don’t know if he was kidding around or just ranting but yesterday Don Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi insurgency doesn’t “… merit the word ‘insurgency.'”  He added “I think” on the end there.  This additional “I think” is important because the Sec. of Defense is wrong.  Iraq meets the seven attributes listed by Robert McColl in his timeless paper The Insurgent State:  Territorial Bases of Revolution.  Rummy went on to say that the insurgency has no “legitimate gripe.”

So what’s going on here?  Do we have a Sec of State that doesn’t know the definition of insurgency?
Although McColl’s paper is quite extensive, the meat of his analysis can be summed up with seven attributes that an ideal insurgent state should have

•  The region should have a history of revolution or opposition to central government;
•  the region should be located on or near military and political objectives;
•  political stability should be weak at best;
•  political or ethnic boundaries provide excellent locations for insurgencies;
•  favorable terrain for military operations and security should be used;
•  the area should be economic self-sufficient;
•  the insurgent base area should not be abandoned (McColl, 1969, p. 617-8).

Starting from the bottom.  

Have insurgent bases been successfully eliminated?  No.

I don’t know of any city that has been completely pacified.    They’ve been cleared out, leveled, et cetera, but no city has been completely abandoned by the insurgency, especially in the Sunni heartland.

Economic self-sufficiency…

Perhaps someone can provide some proof here.  I don’t see any signs that economic problems are inhibiting the insurgency, but what do I know I’m in SC not Baghdad.  I’d imagine this attribute would be satisfied in the case of Iraq.  If not, missing one would do little to weaken the argument.

Favorable terrain…

First off, it is their home and the urban centers of Iraq offer excellent cover for the guerrilla.  We may bristle with weaponry but the home field advantage is, well, priceless.  All the military might in the world can fail if not used properly.  Smart bombs aren’t so smart when the intel sends them into a civilian residence.  That smart bomb memory comes back as the Iraqi insurgent.  We have such our ignorance in the region as a whole, not just Iraq, time and time again.

Ethnic boundaries and insurgencies…

Anyone ever seen the tribal map of Arabia?  Look here.  Pretty complex, huh?  Let’s move on.

Political stability…

You can argue that the stability is on the way, perhaps next month.  I’d say your incorrect, but what you can’t argue is that the political situation is or has been stable at any point.  On top of the waning Iraqi government, the occupation is bunkered down in the green-zone’s and barrack’s spread throughout the region.  We’ve been caught torturing and killing prisoners, using chemical weapons, targeting journalist, and forcing war based on systematic manipulations of bad intel and repeated mistruths by party operatives.  That is not a good foundation for stability and Iraq isn’t a stable political state.

Proximity to prime objectives

Well Baghdad is one.  The entire region is immersed in religious and cultural traditions.  Some of the holiest Shi’a shrines and such are in Iraq.  In a similar fashion a large section of Iraq is floating on black gold.  The ‘Sunni triangle’ is sliced by the Euphrates River.  Water and oil, we’ve seen it in the Sudan, wars are fought over these resources and I suspect we’ll see the same in Iraq.

History of conflict

I’ve saved perhaps the most apparent trait of the insurgent state for last.  Any freshman history book would be a disgrace if it did not paint Mesopotamia as a region of historical conflict.  So what is happening at the Pentagon?  Was Rummy kidding or is he guilty of a little revisionism of his own?  Does our Sec of Defense not know the standard definition of the insurgent state?  Why hasn’t anyone in the military gone over this with him at some point in the past two years?  If he is willing to stand by his statement, then why is he still Sec of State?

McColl, Robert W.  1969.  “The Insurgent State:  Territorial Bases of Revolution.”  ANNALS of the Association of American Geographers.  59:613-631.

The subject of our foreign policy under the Bush administration is one that troubles me; it can be given credit for my interest in politics, my opposition to Republicans, and the reason I started blogging.  The simple fact is that our policies are dangerously flawed, they damage our reputation and aid in the recruitment of terrorists; our number one threat.  

That said, this is troubling, but an opportunity.

“So far, public thinking is a disquieting mix of high anxiety, growing uncertainty about current policy and virtually no consensus about what else the country might do“

For some time it was assumed that the average American either didn’t care about foreign policy or didn’t understand it.  Even our MSM can’t develop a grasp of how problematic our policies are.  For those in freeperville or in Faux land the perspective is that our foreign policy is productive and making great strides towards worldwide utopia.  They think we are winning the WOT or GSAVE or whatever you call it (on another note the WH can’t seem to figure out which or what the slogan is).

However, the ignorance of the masses has broken,

Some 63 percent of Americans say the charge that the United States has been too quick to go to war is justified and three-quarters worry about losing trust abroad and about the growing hatred of the United States in Muslim countries, it said.

Consider me shocked!  I can’t even get into a coherent debate about this subject in SC, but if this study is close to reality we have a problem in the WH and an issue to press in ’06 and ’08.

But what is our answer?  Sherle Schwenninger wrote a great article for the nation called “Reconnecting to the World: A Foreign Policy for the Democrats” (may be behind a password) which is a start, I’ve written about our approach to the WOT (GSAVE) on dKos here.  But with this new concern in the American public, now may be the time to start pushing for a counter plan to propose the people before the ’06 midterms and, IMO, we must have a full blown alternative for the voters in ’08.  I think we should be discussing this now as the performance of Paul Hackett in a very conservative district (where I’m from) of Ohio indicates the moderates are looking to the left for answers while the Bush Admin. struggles to pick slogans, let alone fight our foes.

While the study made a point not to blame the Admin.

Dan Yankelovich, Public Agenda’s chairman, declined to describe the results as a reprimand of the Bush administration but said “there is definitely dissatisfaction … a feeling that we’re not on the right track.”

I say BS, the points that are salient are Iraq, U.S. relations with Muslim countries.  Both fall right in the lap of the current Admin.  Yankelovich continues by noting that Americans “are reaching a point where the public’s concerns will be too strong to be ignored.”

Finally!

The article ends with more trends that excite me and at the same time worry me with Bolton heading to the U.N.

Some 64 percent of respondents said the U.S. government should put more emphasis on using diplomatic and economic methods to fight terrorism and 72 percent said that showing more respect for the views and needs of other countries would enhance U.S. security.

Call me whatever you want, but we need to address this!!!

NYT has a story up for tomorrow discussing the “patriotism lite” that is coming from this country as far as acknowledgement of the simple fact that we are at war.  The article mentions Charles Moskos, military sociologist, who claims that this denial is bipartisan

“My terminology for it is ‘patriotism lite,’ and that’s what we’re experiencing now in both political parties. The political leaders are afraid to ask the public for any real sacrifice, which doesn’t speak too highly of the citizenry.”

While I agree that politicians on both sides are in denial about the war on Iraq and are not acting like a political body with citizens in harms way; I hope to defend the Dems on this one.  I do believe the Republicans have control of the Presidency and both houses of congress.  Therefore, they have almost complete control of what sacrifices we as a nation make in a time of war.  Democrats have made repeated attempts to fund veteran programs and congressional repubs have used their clout to stop any measure proposed by Dems.  Most recently, the Bush administration disclosed that it had missed the required amount of funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs by $1 billion which

…angered Senate Republicans who have been voting down Democratic proposals to boost VA programs at significant political cost. Their votes have brought the wrath of the American Legion, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and other organizations down on the GOP.

The usual rebuttal by partisans is that the Bush admin has increased funding every year since 2000; just as Clinton did before them.  They might show you a graph like this…

The problem I have with the above graph is there is an obvious trend in the amount of funding year to year, and it doesn’t have a large or distinct change after the transition year of 2000-2001 and especially after the war on Iraq began; I would have expected a significant change not a continuance of an exponential curve.  I would hope that a war president would have realized that our current situation in Iraq, elsewhere, and any future wars are generating far more veterans and veterans in need of care from everything from combat injuries to psychological trauma; not to mention day to day needs for those able to escape Iraq unscathed.

The initial article, here, mentions “that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war.”  Again , this is true, day to day life continues.  Unfortunately, nearly every day I write at my blog, read at Juan Cole and comment here at dKos about the life or death struggle experienced by our men and women daily in Iraq.  But, for the first time in my life and in recent history we continue to cut taxes.

…neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

Cutting taxes in a time of war is unheard of and makes no sense to me; but I don’t claim to know how that works.  A further claim of lack of sacrifice at home mentions there is no let up, rationing or large scale effort to gain independence from oil.  But again there have been efforts to change this; in congress and on a local level, largely pursued by the progressive left.  This past Friday, while stuck in traffic, I called out a couple in a Hummer with the usual yellow ribbon and a Bush-Cheney ’04 on the bumper.  I asked them what type of mpg they got and that the Saudis were very grateful.  I mentioned the madrassas his dollars fund worldwide, he looked at me like I had switched to a different language.  They then began spitting Repub talking points.  It was truly disgusting.

All this talk of wartime denial goes both ways but I want to imply that much of this falls squarely on the shoulders of the current leadership.  Both parties should behave accordingly, but those in charge are in charge.  It is hardly the Dems fault if the Repubs cater to the have more’s while sending the common citizen off to war.  And when it comes to personal contributions, you can buy a sticker made in china and decrease the resale value of your automobile, or you can volunteer to bring you grandson/daughter home for a gruesome and unnecessary war.

I was beat by SusanG on this at dKos, here is her diary.

Is this political stunt that was once meant to hide the mis-intelligence of the Iraq war becoming a way to scare reporters and the media?  The Cleveland Plain Dealer is holding evidence from the public because it fears “penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.“

The editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer said last night that the newspaper, acting on the advice of its lawyers, was withholding publication of two major investigative articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters.

The editor, Doug Clifton, said lawyers for The Plain Dealer had concluded that the newspaper, Ohio’s largest daily, would probably be found culpable if the authorities were to investigate the leaks and that reporters might be forced to identify confidential sources to a grand jury or go to jail.

My immediate question is what is the top secret story this leak pertains to?  Does it involve coins?  Second is what is happening to our media?  And why is our government doing this? (I know why, it’s not really a question)

It sounds like this editor is feed up.

“Take away a reporter’s ability to protect a tipster’s anonymity and you deny the public vital information,” Mr. Clifton wrote. And to dramatize the point, he concluded his column by telling readers that The Plain Dealer was itself obliged to withhold stories based on illegal disclosures for fear of the legal consequences.

“As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands,” Mr. Clifton wrote. “The public would be well-served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn’t an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?”

Mr. Clifton said he was surprised that there had been so little public reaction to his disclosure of “something that newspapers typically don’t reveal – that real live news had been stifled.”

“I hoped the public would be bothered by that,” he said.

Well, I am.

And this is a direct result of Judy Miller’s vacation, provided by bushCo.

Update [2005-7-9 12:48:36 by hfiend]: E&P talks of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the CIA leak.

Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities.

“They’ve said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you’d lose,” Clifton said in an interview Friday afternoon.

“The reporters say, ‘Well, we’re willing to go to jail, and I’m willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'” Clifton added, “but the newspaper isn’t willing to go to jail. That’s what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation.”
…
Clifton declined to characterize the two stories, saying only they were based on material that was illegally leaked.

Clifton’s revelation that the PD was holding two investigative projects was actually first published in a column he wrote June 30 about the Miller and Cooper case. While the column garnered positive reaction, he said, almost nobody picked up on the disclosure tucked into the end of the piece.

On 17 June 2005 I posted this at dKos and this at my site.  In these posts I warned of a pending attack within 3 weeks.  I and others were right.  So why is everyone saying we had no warning of this attack in London?
I point you to an MSNBC article from the 17th.

The four occasions where an al-Zawahri statement was most closely followed by an attack were:

•   On Aug. 6, 1998, Zawahri sent a statement to a London-based Arabic newspaper saying: “We are interested in briefly telling the Americans that their messages have been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being readied.” The next day, suicide bombers blew up U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 220 people. Al-Qaida took responsibility for the attacks.
•   On Oct. 9, 2002, a Zawahri tape threatened attacks on the United States, its economy and allies. “I promise you that the Islamic youth are preparing for you what will fill your hearts with horror…” Three days later, bombs destroyed a Bali nightclub leaving more than 200 people, mostly westerners, dead. Officials in the U.S., Australia and Indonesia later said al-Qaida financed the attack.
•   In an Oct. 1, 2004, radio address, Zawahri called on Muslims worldwide to help in the Palestinian struggle. Six days later, al-Qaida attacked three Egyptian tourist resorts frequented by Israelis on the Sinai Peninsula, killing 34 people, about half of them Israelis.
•   On Nov. 29, 2004, Zawahri issued a video statement promising Americans that Muslims will continue to attack them unless the United States changes its policies against Islam.  He said that the U.S. invasion of Baghdad is only the beginning of the American occupation, and warned that it would spread to other countries. On the morning of Dec. 6, armed Jihadists attacked the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing eight and wounding 15 others.

I know that the focus of al Zawahri’s video was on democratic reform in the Mid East and the possible attack(s) sounded like they would be aimed at Mid East nations such as Egypt. However I think there is a link between these video releases that needs to be accounted for and those who overlooked it held accountable.

This is a composition of events surrounding the outing of CIA op and WMD specialist Valerie Plame; wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson.  It is taken from his book The Politics of Truth from the timeline near the end of the book but more so from the final handful of chapters in this book.  I’ve also added some recent events and other milestones.  I know there is a Plame Leak Timeline in the dKosopedia but it is cluttered and is much more than Wilson’s interpretation of the events.  Later today I will add any info in this list to the main list at the dKosopedia if anything should be added.

I feel this is pertinent to the present discussion and I hope it is informative.

•   1988  Joe Wilson takes position as the Deputy Ambassador to Iraq.

•    1990 Novak article on Wilson re: Iraq War I.  

“The chief American diplomat, Joe Wilson, shepherds his flock of some 800 known Americans like a village priest. At 4:30 Sunday morning, he was helping 55 wives and children of U.S. diplomats from Kuwait load themselves and their few remaining possessions on transport for the long haul on the desert to Jordan. He shows the stuff of heroism.

•   1992  George H. W. Bush appointees Wilson as ambassador to two African countries.

•   26 April 1999  George H. W. Bush (President and former Director of the CIA).

“[W]e need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country.  Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources.  They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.“

•   January 2002  Niger-Iraq nuclear connection first surfaces

•   February 2002  Wilson is asked and accepts the mission to Niger to investigate; Wilson found no evidence.

•   March 2002  Wilson delivers his report to CIA regarding the suspected uranium deal.

•   September 2002  British white paper makes an Iraq-Niger uranium connection.

•   28 January 2003  16 words are spoken by the President.

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

•   5 February 2003  Powell goes to the UN.

•   7 March 2003  IAEA, el Baradei, provides proof that the Niger-Iraq claims were based on forgeries.

•   8 March 2003  State Department says “we fell for it” regarding the forged documents.  

•   8 March 2003  Wilson indicates to the CNN that the U.S. government has more information than the state department acknowledged.

• 8 March 2003  Wilson is informed that the final decision to out his wife was made in the “Office of the Vice President – possibly attended by Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Newt Gingrich, and other senior Republicans – to produce a workup on Wilson to discredit him.”

•   2 May 2003  Mission Accomplished

•   8 June 2003  Rice deflects criticism surrounding the uranium claim

•   6 July 2003 Wilson writes his article; What I didn’t find in Africa.

•   8 July 2003  First word of treason.

A friend informs Wilson that Novak believes that his wife had something to do with Wilson’s appointment to investigate the Yellow Cake claim

“He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced.  Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the Uranium controversy.  It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before.  My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered:  “Wilson’s an asshole.  The CIA sent him.  His wife, Valerie [Plame], works for the CIA.  She’s a weapons of mass destruction specialist.  She sent him.””

Wilson’s friend went right to Wilson’s office and documented the exchange.

•   9 July 2003  Novak returns call from Wilson (made the day before) but they missed each other.

•   10 July 2003  In conversation with Novak he claimed a CIA source informed him of Plame’s position as an undercover CIA WMD specialist.  Wilson exclaimed that he couldn’t imagine why he would “blurt out to a complete stranger what he had thought he knew about my wife.”  To which Novak apologized and asked Wilson if he could confirm the claim.  Of course Wilson wouldn’t and reminded Novak that Plame had nothing to do with his stork re: Yellow Cake.  It was about the 16 words in the State of the Union address.

Wilson noted a story written in 1990 by Novak and Evans and suggested that Novak “check his files” before writing about him.  Wilson claimed he was “hardly antiwar, just anti-dumb war.”  Novak apologized.

•   11 July 2003  Condoleezza Rice skirted the question regarding the 16 words claiming that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) would have informed someone.

•   a few days before 14 July 2003

Wilson writes that Walter Pincus (WaPo) alerted Wilson that “they are coming after you.”  Also see 28 September 2003.

*   14 July 2003 Novak writes this

“Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.

this is completely different than what Novak claimed 4 days earlier; he said that his source was a CIA source not a “senior administration official”.  To this Novak said that he misspoke.

Wilson informed Plame and described her as “crestfallen” and wondering if her 20 years of work was all a loss.  She immediately started to “minimize the fallout” of this treasonous act.

•   17 July 2003  David Corn in the Nation publishes “A White House smear”.  Personal call from Corn informs Wilson that this leak was a crime.

•   20 July 2003  Andrea Mitchell informs Wilson that a senior White House source told her to press the story of the Wilson family.  Not the 16 words.

•   21 July 2003 [morning]   Wilson does interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.  In this interview the editors at the NBC evening news had omitted important qualifiers in the wording Wilson used to talk about his wife.  This, in Wilson’s words, “changed the tenor of the interview and gave CIA lawyers cause to briefly consider whether or not I myself might have been in violation of the same law of the senior administration officials…”.  Wilson requested a copy of the raw footage for future use but was denied.  Wilson requested Mitchell save a copy; she agreed.

•   21 July 2003 [afternoon]   Chris Matthews informs Wilson that Karl Rove considered his wife “fair game”.

•   22 July 2003  Wilson appears on the Today show.

•   22 July 2003  Stephen Hadley, Rice subordinate, admits the 16 words should have been deleted from the Presidents speech.  He offered to resign but was denied by the President.

•   24 July 2003  The CIA reported “possible violations of criminal law” to the Attorney General John Ashcroft.  (via Conyers letter reply)

•   24 July 2003  Wilson appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Here he shows Stewart a letter from Dick Cheney asking Wilson to be “a cochairman of the Washington, D.C., campaign to reelect Bush-Cheney.

•   30 July 2003  Rice “grudgingly” admits the contents of the speech were her responsibility; never offered her resignation.

•   30 July 2003  The CIA reported to the DoJ      (via Conyers letter reply)

•   4 August 2003  Paul Wolfowitz quotes Wilson’s claim that he believes that there will be WMDs found in Iraq.

•  12 August 2003  The Wall Street Journal editorial page charged that Wilson was “moving the goal post” in Iraq by saying that the WMDs did not meet the “imminent threat test”; which the Journal claims is a phrase the President and his administration had never used in the first place.

20 August 2003  Wilson at a town meeting in Seattle with Congressman Jay Inslee; “wouldn’t it be fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs?  And I measure my words.”

•   14 September 2003  Wilson publishes “Seeking Honesty in U.S. policy” in The San Jose Mercury.

•   28 September 2003 MSNBC has announced that Justice Department has begun its investigation.

•   28 September 2003  the Washington Post quotes a senior administration official saying “that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.”  …  “They [the leakers] alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him.”

•   29 September 2003   John Conyers, Jr. sends letter to the CIA, the response is cited several times above.  The point is the time lapse is large for such an important matter of security to the nation.

•   29 September 2003  DoJ requests the FBI investigate the leak.

•   30 September 2003  Ed Gillespie on CNN said Wilson had donated to the Gore and Kerry campaign.  Which was true but Gillespie failed to mention contributions to Republicans.

•   1 October 2003 Novack writes this

The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush’s Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson’s wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

•   1 October 2003  On the set of Face the Nation Senator Chuck Hagel expressed “bewilderment” at Republicans who were spinning a possible high crime into a partisan attack.  During the broadcast he claimed that Plame was not a partisan issue.  WTF?

•   7 October 2003  The President, when asked about the leak, said “I want to know the truth.”  But fail to hold his senior people accountable.

•   October [first week]  investigators begin to collect documents.

•   15 October 2003  Wilson receives the truth teller of the year award.

•   October [late]  Ken Star advisor during Whitewater, Samuel Dash’s Newsday article argues that the PATRIOT Act should be invoked.

“If, as it now seems likely, top White House aids leaked the identity of an American undercover agent, they may have committed an act of domestic terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.”

He cited Section 802 which defines domestic terrorism as an act that endangers human life while violating criminal laws of the U. S. in order to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

•   24 December 2003 Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board finds that the White House made a “questionable claim” with respect to the Iraqi nuclear ambitions.

•   30 December 2003  Ashcroft labels this issue a “grave matter” indicates that it shouldn’t be managed by partisan politics.

•   21 January 2004  The federal grand jury begins hearing testimony.

•   23 January 2004  David Key resigns as head of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group; admitting that Iraq had no WMDs.

•   30 January 2004  Conyers receives letter response.

•   3 June 2004   CIA Director George Tenet resigns.

•   3 June 2004  Bush and his administration consult lawyers.

•   27 June 2005  SCOTUS refuses to hear reporters, Miller and Cooper, appeal.

•   30 June 2005  Time magazine will hand over Cooper notes surrounding the leak case

•   6 July 2005  Wilson statement

The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability that infects the Bush White House from top to bottom.  President Bush’s refusal to enforce his own call for full cooperation with the Special Counsel has brought us to this point. Clearly, the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House than coming clean on a serious breach of national security.  Thus has Ms Miller joined my wife, Valerie, and her twenty years of service to this nation as collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to challenge the President on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa.

The real victims of this cover-up, which may have turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly.

Baghdad was the pride and joy of nearly every neo-con, conservative, right-winger and Joe 6-pack in America after the decisive victory over Saddam Hussein back in ’03.  

so how is it going now, Mr. Mayor of Baghdad?
It is “Crumbling“

•   Baghdad produces about 544 million gallons of water per day, nearly 370 million gallons short of its required amount. About 55 percent of the water reportedly is lost through leakage in the pipes.
•   Before the invasion, Baghdad residents had about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they get about 10, usually broken into two-hour chunks.
•   Iraq is not able to refine enough oil, so gasoline must be imported.
•   the municipality had requested $1.5 billion for the 2005 fiscal year but only received $85 million.

Not to mention very high unemployment, an foreign occupation, militant, 8k dead in 6 months heat and sand.

The

Mayor has threatened to quit.

opencrs.com

This should be nice to have…

CRS Reports do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report. A number of libraries and non-profit organizations have sought

for those who like a little action

I think the time has come to introduce a new frame to the people of America.  These people that I refer to our the people who create the middle; not the far-right nor the far-left, but a large portion of America that works day to day and leads busy lives  They do not read the paper and watch the news, or otherwise follow the mainstream media let alone read blogs like this.  They defiantly do not look into what they hear, they just process it.  I believe that, if polled, a large majority of this group (the middle) would say and/or think that our enemies, in Islam, are so because of our culture or religion.  I would go out on an edge and say that half of this group believes the same thing of any other adversary of ours, whether it is a diplomatic, economic, or geographical foe.  I believe and know that this is false; at the very least it is false with respect to Islamic terrorism.  It is neither about our religion nor culture; it is our policies.  I think the public is ready to embrace this logic because the logic that has been used so far in the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq has become sour to the average American; those Americans who decide elections.

We had better change our thinking and policies; else we get stuck in a cyclic war that protects the very policies that causes Arabs, Muslims, whomever worldwide to staff the ranks of the global Islamic insurgency.
I’ve known this for some time, as I expect most readers have as well; but it needs to be repeated and projected to the middle.  It is not the myth that we are a nations of infidels, a nation of freedom, or a representation of a just civilization that causes young men to fight us and martyr themselves en masse.  Thomas Friedman almost had it when he wrote (emphasis added) “…we have to prove that we are serious, and that we understand that many off these terrorists hate our existence, not just our policies.” in his 13 September 2005 column entitled World War III.  This phrasing was due to raw emotion and alarm from the attacks of 2001, but it stuck and the Bush administration and the RNC have adopted it and they have won with it.  They currently wield it now.

It is our policies; it is not the peoples fault, it is our governments.

The thing is, is that these policies are right in front of everybody and certainly available to the MSM.  These are six points that top-priority target and propagandist Osama bin Laden refers to repeatedly in communication after communication with the Western World.  These points are repeated for a reason; because it gains strong support from every nook and cranny of the Islamic world.  They are, as prepared in the book Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer.

•   U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall.
•   U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
•   U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
•   Support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
•   U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
•   U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.

A few of these are feasible, some are not; but until something changes in American foreign policy, the above issues will sustain this insurgency regardless of whether we catch, kill, or otherwise marginalize bin Laden.  The insurgency will continue long after Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, et cetera.

These are all current policies, and some may say that to change or alter these policies is a concession.  Well, is that better than generating an enemy while fighting it?  If that is your logic than we will soon be fighting ourselves.  Following up with; Does American survival rest on the political, military and economic support for Israel?  Is our freedom and democracy best spread through fire?  Is oil worth supporting tyrant regimes and/or positioning troops within Arab lands; thus flaming resentment?  Do you know that the three holiest sites in Islam are in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel/Palestine?  Would it not be smart to create some serious thought into the renewable energy issue?  How many lives per barrel of oil?  What is that price now and what could it be?

I think it is time to reach out, again, to the middle.  Now is the time.  The emotion and the need for optimism are over; truth is slowly permeating into the conventional conscience.  With the ambiance surrounding the Republican leadership, right now,

•   DSM
•   propaganda
•   Coingate
•   Delay
•   Gitmo, torture
•   Schools
•   and so on…  feel free to add in the comments.

we should try to reframe this issue away from the `they hate my religion‘ or `freedom, culture, SUV whatever…‘ rhetoric of the Republican mouthpieces, and into one addressing the root problem.  Our policies abroad caused this era long before September 2001; and with a few minor changes, adjustments or reassessments we could do more for the war on terror than any quantity of currency could hope to do.  After all, how secure/stable/much better is our situation now than when compared to that of 10 September 2001?

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