Author: Zandar1

After studying the news today that the Iranian NIE showed Iran closed up its nuclear weapons program back in 2003, the question was “Why did this get leaked?”  The WHO (and there are a couple theories on that) isn’t as important as the why in this case.
The “why” is actually simple:  like every other piece of “intel” the Bushies used in Iraq before we invaded, this is being spun as hard as possible in order to justify the coming attack.

But how could this be spun that crazily?  Not even the Bushies are capable of that.  Maybe, maybe not.

But the collective insanity of the Wingnutosphere is more than up to the challenge.  The good Cap’n takes a stab at it.

Hmm. What might have happened in 2003 to convince Teheran to stop its nuclear-weapons pursuit? Could it have been the events on its western border, where the American military removed a dictator that they couldn’t beat in eight years of brutal warfare? Libya’s Moammar Ghaddafi certainly had the same idea in 2003, and for that very reason.

The intelligence community only has high confidence on the point that the weapons program stopped for several years. Its confidence that they have remained quiet on weapons is moderate. That’s an admission that intel in Iran is hard to get, and reliable intel even less available. If they’re re-evaluating their analyses from two years ago, it’s a sign that their data is old and not terribly indicative of what’s happening now.

What do we know about Iran? They have openly bragged about getting a 3,000-centrifuge cascade in operation, on the way to 54,000. We know that the former can produce weapons-grade enriched uranium in nine months, the latter two weeks. We know that Iran got plans for nuclear weapons from the AQ Khan network. That tells us that even if Iran doesn’t want to build a bomb tomorrow, they can get to work on one rather quickly.

Right now, however, we think they’re waiting to see whether they want to make that move. We think that’s the case, based on limited intelligence. While Iran continues to run terrorist proxie groups, we have to focus on the shape of the threat we know, rather than what we think of their intentions. Therefore, the Bush administration has kept up pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program or at least the uranium enrichment, while rejecting for now the option of military intervention.

It explains why the White House has maintained its current policy, which seems sound and careful without being unnecessarily provocative.  Read properly, it makes perfect sense.

Got that?  The spin is in and it goes right round like a record baby round round right round.  The NIE actually has justified all that saber-rattling because:

1. Our invasion of Iraq scared the Iranian regime.
2. The CIA is using old, outdated intel.
3. For all we know, they might be making nukes.
4. Iran has centrifuges.  This is important.
5. They’re attacking us in Iraq.

Ergo, Bush’s Iran policy makes perfect sense.

And that’s why it was released.  The Bushies have decided to spin it as yet another reason we need to drop the hammer on Tehran.

They’re getting the juicy stuff out there now so that the public forgets about it when the bombs start falling, and letting the wingnuts process the proper spin for it.  They farmed the job out to a distributed net-based community of loonies instead of making poor Dana Perino lose her temper again.

Look for the rest of the right (and the White House for that matter) to pick this up as exactly why our current attitude towards Iran must continue…and for justification why any change in that attitude will only be followed by a massive bombing campaign.

No matter how you feel about Hillary Clinton, Friday’s strange if not downright bizarre hostage standoff is yet another sign that our political process, and in particular the reporting on that process, is completely broken.

If it isn’t FOX News turning the situation into a circus of absurdities…

Fox News has a novel way of covering the election, the Election Link vehicle. Inside, the reporter (today it’s Carl Cameron) does live streaming coverage from the passenger seat alternating with dashboard shots of the road ahead. As Cameron sped towards the Rochester, NH headquarters he said, “This is exactly why the election link vehicles are going to deployed by Fox News in New Hampshire and Iowa.”

…it’s the all too predictable reaction to the story.
But the real cake winner is, of all people, The Nation’s John Nichols with that lovely chestnut, “blame the victim”.

The problem for Hillary Clinton that arises from the incident in which a disturbed man invaded her Rochester, New Hampshire, campaign headquarters is not any kind of physical threat. Clinton is the most carefully-managed and thoroughly-secured presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who when he began to show the first signs of the dementia was placed in a sort of protective custody during the 1984 campaign. Clinton is is no greater danger now than she has been in since the start of her campaign; and neither, thankfully, were her New Hampshire supporters, who exited the headquarters without injury.

With you so far.

The problem for Clinton is a political one.

Wait, what?  This is a problem for Clinton?

The incident in Rochester reminds prospective Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers that the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination is a celebrity candidate who attracts controversy, who is legitimately seen as divisive and who– barring a major shift in tone and style — will always campaign at a distance from the American people.

Read, “Hillary’s a bitch.” Sigh.

This is not entirely fair to Clinton. She has indeed been the victim of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that she named after millionaire conservatives and their paid minions defining her as a cruel and conniving egomaniac who would stop at nothing to obtain power and position.

No shit, but I smell a huge “but” coming, and I don’t mean Rush Limbaugh.

But there is nothing fair about American politics. And, while Clinton has made some progress when it comes to softening her image, she has not begun to transform herself so successfully as did the “ruthless” Bobby Kennedy in 1967 and 1968 — or even the “boring” Al Gore in the period since he ceded the presidency to George Bush.

Hillary Clinton remains a charged figure who excites great passions. She is a highest-profile politician whose fame is both blessing and curse. The blessing is that, without offering much more than platitudes, she has been able to wink and nod her way to the top of most Democratic polls. The curse is that, if an desperate man in Rochester, New Hampshire, is looking for a campaign headquarters to invade, it’s going to be Clinton’s.

If a few other desperate men target the Clinton campaign in coming weeks — or even a desperate woman as hyped up as the one who called the Democratic senator a “bitch” at a recent John McCain event — the contender who so recently seemed inevitable will be in trouble.

Wait, what?  It sounds like what you’re saying is “Hillary is a bitch, it’s not really fair, but it’s the truth  As a result all the whack jobs who hate her unfairly will only serve to remind voters how much of a bitch she is.  What a shame.  Bitch.”

Stop me if I’m wrong.

It’s won’t be Clinton’s fault, at least not wholly. But incidents of this kind will make Democrats, who think they have a good chance of winning the presidency in 2008, start asking: Why invite the volatility that goes with Hillary Clinton? Why not nominate someone — a John Edwards, a Barack Obama, even a Bill Richardson — who provokes a little less passion?

To deny that such thinking will go on in the heads not just of pundits but of grassroots Democrats would be absurd as the calculus that said John Kerry was the most electable Democrat of 2004.

You’re not stopping me, in fact you’re validating every word of the whole Village moron “the perception is Hillary’s a bitch” thing.

The challenge for Clinton, then, is not to avoid the issue. She must confront it. She must turn her volatility to her advantage. She should take a risk that puts her outside the comfort zone of her own campaign — and of contemporary politics. She should speak bluntly about the bitter partisanships, the crude tactics, the open hatreds that now characterize campaigning and that so undermine the ability of elected leaders to govern in a functional, let alone inspiring, manner.

The incident in Rochester was not a big deal. It was overplayed by the media. Clinton and her aides are safe, as safe as any serious presidential contenders and their hangers on. But the Friday’s headquarters invasion got the attention it did for a reason. Everyone recognizes the emotions — both positive and negative — that Hillary Clinton inspires. And everyone suspects that they could boil over again, either physically or politically.

So, the media’s unfair portrayal of Hillary as Ultra Harridan 5000 is best solved by admitting that everyone believes she can castrate men and seduce women with just her stare.  How nice.  The best way to dispel a myth is to not only acknowledge it, but for Hillary to waste time denying it, which won’t fuel more of the same ridiculous accusations and innuendo.  Brilliant.

Clinton needs to address her perception and her reality as a remarkable political figure who has already made a great deal of history and could make a great deal more. She cannot do it with spin. The reliance on spin, on managed messages and manipulated moments, is a big part of what Americans — even some of her supporters — distrust about her.

Hillary Clinton needs to open up. She needs to speak frankly. She needs to acknowledge that, for better or worse, she inspires intense reactions. She needs to start talking about that intensity. And she needs to explain to the American people — if she can — how that intensity, as opposed to silly spin about “bringing us all together, is what this country needs after George Bush’s sleepwalk across the minefield.

If Clinton does this, it will not matter what passions play out during the course of the coming campaign. She will be on her way to the Oval Office. If she fails to do so, Clinton will remain vulnerable to the incidents that are all but certain to unfold, and that vulnerability will beg questions that could well cost her the presidency.

So the best way to prove that the accusations of Hillary being a purely political animal and fight the perception of her being a ballbreaker (instead of being the first woman in our country’s history with a real shot of being President) is to do the purely political thing and stop being such a ballbreaker.

Now look.  I have problems with Hillary, but it’s because of her record, not the fact that she’s a woman who knows how to play politics.  But because she is arguably the most successful woman in recent history to play the game, she has to be attacked for all the wrong reasons.  Attack her on her voting record.  Attack her on her policies.  But “she’s a bitch, ergo she needs to stop being a bitch” is the most idiotic piece of Rahm Emmanuel bullshit I’ve heard in a long time.

It’s the “her outfit and her manner meant she was begging for it, your honor” argument.  What is being overlooked is the fact that the whackjobs are going after Hillary not because she’s a “bitch” but because she is so despised and hated by the right wing media that the freaks come out for her blood.

It’s not Hillary Clinton that created this problem.   It’s the so-called “liberal” media that has gotten so out of hand that Hillary’s “bitch” status is now a given truism of political life.  But according to “the media” it’s Hillary’s fault for having the balls so to speak to run for President.

And since it’s Hillary’s fault, she is the one who has to change, not the crazy ass Village press.

Screw that.

OK, WaPo’s jumped the shark.  Despite the clever and dry chuckle I get from a guy named “Bacon” writing about people attacking Obama for being ZOMG SECRET MUSLIM!!11one!, I can’t help but ask myself who the hell still believes in the liberal media myth after this.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.

The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, and he talks more about his multicultural background than he does about the possibility of being the first African American president, in marked contrast to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who mentions in most of her stump speeches the prospect of her becoming the first woman to serve as president.

“A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It’s actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live,” he said earlier this month in Clarion, Iowa.

“The day I’m inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently, but the world also looks at America differently,” he told another Iowa crowd. “Because I’ve got a grandmother who lives in a little village in Africa without running water or electricity; because I grew up for part of my formative years in Southeast Asia in the largest Muslim country on Earth.”

While considerable attention during the campaign has focused on the anti-Mormon feelings aroused by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), polls have also shown rising hostility toward Muslims in politics. It is not clear whether that negative sentiment will affect someone who has lived in a Muslim country but does not practice Islam.

Really, ol Perry Bacon Jr. here coulda saved column inches by simply writing “Despite denials, some people say Obama is going to kill all of us in our sleep and replace us with Islamonazihomodhimmiaboriofacist android clones with turbans.”

So, what’s the source, Baconator?

An early rumor about Obama’s faith came from Insight, a conservative online magazine. The Insight article said Obama had “spent at least four years in a so-called madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.” It attributed this detail to background information the Clinton campaign had been collecting.

After Obama denied the rumor, Jeffrey Kuhner, Insight’s editor, said Obama’s “concealment and deception was to be the issue, not so much his Muslim heritage,” and he suggested that the source of the madrassa rumor was the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign denied the charge.

Human Events, another conservative magazine, published on its Web site a package of articles called “Barack Obama Exposed.” One of them was titled “The First Muslim President?”

Robert Spencer, a conservative activist, wrote in Human Events that “given Obama’s politics, it will not be hard to present him internationally as someone who understands Islam and Muslims, and thus will be able to smooth over the hostility between the Islamic world and the West — our first Muslim President.”

Conservative talk-show hosts have occasionally repeated the rumor, with Michael Savage noting Obama’s “background” in a “Muslim madrassa in Indonesia” in June, and Rush Limbaugh saying in September that he occasionally got “confused” between Obama and Osama bin Laden. Others repeatedly use the senator’s middle name, Hussein.

The rumors about Obama have been echoed on Internet message boards and chain e-mails.

Bryan Keelin of Charleston, S.C., who works with an organization of churches there, posted on an Internet board his suspicion that Obama is a Muslim. “I assume his father instructed him on the ways of being a Muslim,” said Keelin, who described himself in an interview as a conservative Republican who will vote for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

“The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out,” says one of the e-mails that was posted recently on a blog at BarackObama.com, the campaign’s Web site, by an Obama supporter who warned of an attempt to “Swift Boat” the candidate. “What better way to start than at the highest level, through the President of the United States, one of their own!”

Another e-mail, on a site called Snopes.com that tracks Internet rumors, starts, “Be careful, be very careful.” It notes that “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim,” and that “since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.”

So…you’re basically writing a news article whose only purpose is that it’s all wingnut rumors just to point out…what?  That the rumors aren’t true?

Except you don’t mention that the rumors are complete batshit nutbar wank fantasies about Barack Obama.  You say that he denies them.  And then you make it sound like there’s a huge army of brave patriots just waiting to expose him as ZOMG SECRET MUSLIM!!11one! and save America from dhimmitude, instead of just, you know, a bunch of purely evil rumors being regurgitated about the Mysterious Mulatto Gentleman For Your Titillating Consumption.

Assholes.  All the way around.  Throwing in Romney’s Mormonism as a dodge is a particularly nice touch.

No seriously.  Assholes.  This column has no place anywhere near the Washington Post.  Even FOX would call this a hatchet job and walk away from it.  But this is what passes for news in the Village…on page A01.

The “fact” that “there are rumors about Obama being a Muslim” and that “it would negatively impact his campaign if he WAS a Muslim” is FRONT FUCKING PAGE NEWS.

I do have a problem with Obama on some policy issues, key word being “policy”.  I do like his stance on other policy issues.  I think he would be a preferable candidate to Hillary because of his anti-war stance, I think Edwards would be a slightly better candidate on other economic and health care POLICY ISSUES.  But why would I expect the WaPo to talk about policy issues when it’s much more fun to make shit up about candidates?

Now, I have a couple of problems with Obama.  He’s a nice guy, but I don’t agree with him on a number of things.  However if I was the GOP, my plan of attack against Obama would probably not include going after the man for being too honest with people.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama started the debate when he admitted to a high school audience in New Hampshire that he had experimented with drugs while he was in high school.

“There were times when I got into drinking, experimenting with drugs. There was a stretch of time where I did not really apply myself,” Obama said.

He added that when he left for college he realized he wasted a lot of time using drugs.

“It’s not something I’m proud of,” Obama said. “It was a mistake as a young man.”

What a change from Bill Clinton’s 1992 admission that he had smoked marijuana a time or two and didn’t like it. “And I didn’t inhale and didn’t try it again.”

“I never understood that line,” Obama said, who said he did inhale marijuana when asked by a student. “The point was to inhale. That was the point.”

So yeah, the guy’s up front about drug use.  He was a slacker, admittedly.  He turned himself around.  But then Mitt decides to take Obama to task for the admission.

Clinton’s admission has become a cultural joke. Obama’s comments? If you ask Republican rival Mitt Romney, Obama’s comments were too honest.

“I think in order to leave the best possible example for our kids, we’re probably wisest not to talk about our own indiscretions in great detail,” Romney said.

Hey, Mitt, bro…news flash.  Your party has in fact made institutionalized obfuscation of the truth a way of life.  Lying is standard operating procedure for the GOP.  I’m thinking as a Republican, the last thing you want to do is remind everyone that you publicly believe that honesty about admitting past “indiscretions” is not the best policy when setting examples for the kids, or anyone for that matter.

America has been lied to by your party, repeatedly, for a very long time.  We’re sick of it.  A little honesty about past foibles would in fact be a very refreshing change of pace, Mitt.

You might want to try the truth once in a while.  Not to say that the Dems are saints, but dumping on Obama for telling the truth is pretty far down the “asshole GOP scale of assnosity” ya know?

Maybe it’s me.  We’ve arrived at the point where it’s news that a politician is telling the truth, and he’s in fact being publicly attacked for doing so.  The political process in this country is beyond broken, it’s screwed.

NPR ran a story about the GOP wanting a piece of California’s electoral votes.  Thought it was dead?  No way.  The Rethugs want it all, and they want it forever.  Can’t get a permanent majority through gerrymandering and vote fraud?  Easy, just cheat the Dems out of a 55 electoral vote advantage.

There is a huge political battle raging in California that is viewed as either a much needed quest for electoral reform or an attempt to steal the presidential election.

Republicans are backing a proposed ballot initiative that would change the way California allocates its Electoral College votes. Right now, the statewide winner gets all 55. The proposed initiative would instead award two votes to the winner of each congressional district.

A few weeks ago, it appeared the campaign for the initiative was dead. Backers had raised no money to pay for gathering signatures. Ultimately, the initiative’s organizers walked away.

But the initiative itself was still on the books, and an entirely new crew of supporters took it up.

I wonder why that is?  Clearly somebody has realized that by taking that 55 electoral vote advantage away from the Dems and reducing it to say, three, that the GOP would assuredly never lose the White House.  Ever.  Again, it’s too valuable a GOP weapon to waste.  That’s why it’ll be back again and again and again.

“We said we thought it would be the Freddy Krueger of initiatives and come back to life, and, indeed, at some level it has,” says Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, who’s spearheading the effort to defeat the measure.

But the prize offered by the Electoral College initiative was just too tantalizing for Republicans to let it fade away, he says.

“It would effectively give Republicans between 20 and 22 Electoral College votes, essentially handing them a state the size of Ohio, which would make it virtually impossible — or at least extremely difficult — for a Democrat to be able to win in 2008, even if that Democrat wins the majority vote,” Lehane says.

But the initiative has nothing to do with partisan advantage, says Dave Gilliard, who is managing the initiative. Theoretically, Democrats could benefit, too.

For instance, in 1988 Michael Dukakis won 48 percent of the votes in California, he says, so it does not make sense for either party to be in favor of a winner-take-all system.

But in California politics, 1988 is a long time ago. In the past four presidential elections, California has become reliably Democratic. So, presidential candidates usually come here just to raise money and that’s about it.

Does anybody on Earth believe this?  Why isn’t NPR calling complete bullshit on this?  It’s a scam to gerrymander the presidential election in favor of the GOP, to give them an unbeatable advantage.  Period.

Note that the GOP isn’t trying to get this done to any other state.  By having the California GOP do it with the excuse “Now candidates will campaign here” its nothing more than a shabby ruse.

Now again, people knew it was a shabby ruse and the initiative was dead on arrival.

So why did it come back?  Who revived it?  Club For Growth?  Family Research Council?  Karl Rove?

Nope.

Unlike the first campaign for the initiative, this one has money to spend. A large share of the credit for that goes to one of the Republican operatives who revived the measure, Anne Dunsmore.

Dunsmore was Rudolph Giuliani’s chief fundraiser until she left the campaign in September. Other movers and shakers backing the measure have also been tied to Giuliani or to the co-chair of his campaign in California.

Campaign Denies Connection

Lehane thinks Giuliani is trying to give himself an advantage in the state if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee. All the connections between Giuliani and the initiative cannot be a coincidence, Lehane says. Opponents of the measure have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

But Giuliani’s campaign says there is no connection between the candidate and the measure.

“The campaign had no knowledge and no involvement in this effort, and we’d be fine leaving it as it is. California is a state that Mayor Giuliani puts into play in the general election regardless of what rules are in place,” Maria Comella, the Giuliani campaign’s deputy communications director, says in a written statement.

Yep, good ol Nine Eleven Man(tm) himself.  Nice guy, huh?  Plausible deniability and the power to steamroll the Dems into a ditch.  The GOP can’t win a fair election, so they change the rules so that they can win.  They do it because that’s the only way they can do it now.

The saving grace is this would be on the ballot in 2008, meaning it wouldn’t affect anything until 2012, and there’s a major chance the ballot will fail.

But with a lock on the oval office if this passes, how many dirty ticks are we going to see on this vote?  We already know the GOP is willing to steal Presidential elections.  Will they steal this one too?

I’ve suspected something like this for a long time but as usual, it’s depressing to see yet another civil liberty confirmed taken away from us.

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

In other words, if you have a cell phone, the government can use it to track you in real time.  Not only can they do this, but they do this even without evidence of a crime.  They just say “We want this tracking data.”

Using these in connection with finding an obvious criminal fugitive is one thing.  Using it just to track people because they might be doing something unsavory is illegal.

As the government has said, “change your definition of privacy.”  You have none in this country.  The enablers will say that “well if you aren’t being a criminal, you have nothing to worry about.”

What if somebody on your cell phone list calls somebody connected through the government’s Six Degrees Of Being A Terrorist program?  Ooops, you’re a suspect now.  You’re subject to your own government spying on you now.  You’ve done nothing wrong, but the government can and will track your every location that you and your cell phone go to.

Maybe they’ll track everybody that’s ever called your cell phone, too.  Your family, your friends, your boss, the nice neighbor lady next door who lets your cat out.  You’re being lo-jacked.  Hey, you might be a terrorist.

Pretty soon, we’re all potential terrorists.  Innocent until proven guilty is antiquated, 9/10 thinking.  We’re simply a nation of potential suspects.  But people are fighting it.

“Most people don’t realize it, but they’re carrying a tracking device in their pocket,” said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air.”

In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker’s phone location by using the carrier’s E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent’s affidavit failed to focus on “specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places.”

Owsley decided to publish his opinion, which explained that the agent failed to provide “sufficient specific information to support the assertion” that the phone was being used in “criminal” activity. Instead, Owsley wrote, the agent simply alleged that the subject trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. The agent stated that the DEA had ” ‘identified’ or ‘determined’ certain matters,” Owsley wrote, but “these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency.”

The government simply will ignore this.  In fact, they already are.

Instead of seeking warrants based on probable cause, some federal prosecutors are applying for orders based on a standard lower than probable cause derived from two statutes: the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Statute, according to judges and industry lawyers. The orders are typically issued by magistrate judges in U.S. district courts, who often handle applications for search warrants.

In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.

Another magistrate judge, who has denied about a dozen such requests in the past six months, said some agents attach affidavits to their applications that merely assert that the evidence offered is “consistent with the probable cause standard” of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The judge spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously ‘ping’ wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target,” wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA — the Wireless Association, in a July comment to the Federal Communications Commission. He said the “lack of a consistent legal standard for tracking a user’s location has made it difficult for carriers to comply” with law enforcement agencies’ demands.

Gidari, who also represents CTIA, said he has never seen such a request that was based on probable cause.

Got that?  A lower standard of probable cause.  The government mandates that cell phone carriers have to maintain this real-time tracking data “for public safety.”  Then they declare that because the carriers are doing this, then the government has full rights and access to this data.  This dangerous precedent means that thousands of companies that collect data on Americans are according to the government actually contractors in the “public safety” business and should be forced to turn over that data when the government deems it necessary.

Government mandates companies collect data on you.  Government wants that data.  Government uses it against whomever it wants to, whenever it wants to.  End of line.

Your privacy is a commodity on sale to the highest bidder.  And in the end the highest bidder is the government.

Blackwater’s been out of the news recently, but it doesn’t mean things haven’t been happening for the company.  There’s the whole messy tale of Cookie and Buzzy Krongard that has come to light…

The brothers’ parallel career arcs crossed disastrously last week when Cookie, at a House oversight committee hearing to clear up a number of troubling allegations about his performance as inspector general, misremembered a fraternal conversation that had occurred a few weeks earlier and testified emphatically that Buzzy was not affiliated with the State Department’s troublesome contractor Blackwater Worldwide. (See below and the following page for a recap by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.) During a hearing recess, Buzzy, who had been watching his brother’s mistaken testimony on C-SPAN, reminded Cookie by phone that he had indeed recently joined a Blackwater advisory board and added that he’d just participated in his first board meeting. Cookie came back to the hearing and quickly corrected his testimony. While insisting that he is not his brother’s keeper, Cookie has now recused himself from Blackwater-related oversight. Buzzy, meanwhile, has stepped down reluctantly from the security contractor’s board in order to minimize any appearance of conflict-of-interest. The committee has invited both brothers to clear up additional misunderstandings at their witness table next week.

And that’s just for starters.  Blackwater’s legal troubles are just getting started.

Remember that recently-impaneled grand jury looking at Blackwater’s Nisour Square shootings? Turns out it’s not just about Blackwater.
Four years into the occupation, prosecutors are attempting to build the first criminal case against private security companies — who up until now worked in a system rigged to ensure unaccountability.

The Washington Post:

   

The Washington grand jury has issued subpoenas to several private security firms, including Blackwater, a legal source briefed on the probe said yesterday. Authorities are seeking company “after-action” reports and other documents that may shed light on specific incidents, he said.

    The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, declined to say which incidents have been targeted, but he said the investigation ranges well beyond Blackwater. Private security companies in Iraq “have been shooting a lot of people,” he said.

That’s an understatement.

There’s no word from the piece about which non-Blackwater firms are in the grand jury’s crosshairs, nor which incidents are potentially criminal. As the paper reports, the Iraqi government claims it knows more than 20 potential criminal incidents involving private security companies — most of which it lays at the feet of Blackwater — but whether that list has anything to do with the grand jury’s focus is unknown.

Now this is a serious problem for not just Blackwater.  This means possibly the entire PMC industry now faces intense scrutiny and possible criminal charges.  I have been saying all along that Blackwater is just the tip of the bloody iceberg.

We’re about to see the rest of that iceberg come crashing down.  You would think that the PMC industry would be a little more careful about shooting into crowds of Iraqis.

You’d be wrong.

Iraqi authorities on Monday detained at least 33 foreigners, including two men with U.S. Department of Defense-issued identification cards, in connection with a shooting incident in central Baghdad that injured a woman, the U.S. military said.

The arrests were the latest sign of growing Iraqi impatience with the activities of private security guards in the wake of the September killings of 17 Iraqi civilians by guards working for the Blackwater security company.

Also on Monday, the governor of Muthanna province said U.S. troops were no longer welcomed in the town of Samawa after U.S. troops opened fire on civilians there Sunday. Two people were reported dead in that incident on Sunday; a hospital worker said a third died Monday.

“We don’t want the American troops to enter Samawa, and we will oppose if they enter,” said the governor, Ahmed Marzook al Salal, who suspended cooperation with U.S. reconstruction efforts Sunday to protest the shooting. “We were handed responsibility for security a year ago, and we are not in need of the American troops.”

Details of Monday’s incident in Baghdad were murky. According to the Iraqi police, a private-security company opened fire on a woman as she crossed the street in the busy shopping district of Karrada. Two men also were injured, Iraqi police said.

Iraqi officers at a nearby police checkpoint witnessed the incident, chased down the convoy and detained everyone in the vehicles, including passengers who weren’t security guards, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi military official who oversees the Baghdad security plan. They also seized the vehicles.

It was the first time that Iraqi police had detained foreigners after such an incident.

The U.S. military identified the detained men as employees of ALMCO, a Dubai-based company that has contracts with the U.S. military to provide catering and life-support functions for the Multi-National Security Transition Command, as well as a contract with the Joint Contracting Command to build a courthouse.

The Iraqis are growing more bold.  They are telling us “Yankee go home!”  What happens when the Iraqis decide we all need to go home?  What then?

The threat to the PMC industry is growing.  It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet in the halls of power somebody is working to actually try to bring these killers down.  How far will this grand jury get in a Bush Justice Department?

We’re about to see.

The conventional wisdom (if you’re a neocon) is that our mighty, peerless military has the Iranian regime over a barrel, in this case a gun barrel.

If you’re an actually aware, free-willed human being however, the wisdom is that Iran has us over a barrel, in this case oil.  And they’re openly firing first.  Bush’s foreign policy has gotten us into a sticky mess, and this time there may not be any hope. This is the scariest news article I’ve seen in a long time, and it may very well lead to war. Why?

OPEC’s considering getting out of the dollar business.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that OPEC’s members have expressed interest in converting their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a “worthless piece of paper.”

His comments at the end of a rare summit of OPEC heads of state exposed fissures within the 13-member cartel – especially after U.S. ally Saudi Arabia was reluctant to mention concerns about the falling dollar in the summit’s final declaration.

The hardline Iranian leader’s comments also highlighted the growing challenge that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, faces from Iran and its ally Venezuela within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad told reporters after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. He blamed U.S. President George W. Bush’s policies for the decline of the dollar and its negative effect on other countries.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned oil producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and has eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

“All participating leaders showed an interest in changing their hard currency reserves to a credible hard currency,” Ahmadinejad said. “Some said producing countries should designate a single hard currency aside from the U.S. dollar … to form the basis of our oil trade.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez echoed this sentiment Sunday on the sidelines of the summit, saying “the empire of the dollar has to end.”

“Don’t you see how the dollar has been in free-fall without a parachute?” Chavez said, calling the euro a better option.

The dollar exists as the world’s reserve currency of choice because OPEC exclusively accepts dollars.  If OPEC drops the dollar, everyone else will too, because there would be no reason to own what has become an increasingly “worthless piece of paper” anymore.

Got it?  No OPEC exclusivity on the dollar as the currency for oil, no dollar.  Our economy would quite literally collapse overnight.  Surely the neocons would see this as a deliberate attack upon the US, and we would have no choice but to “respond in kind”.

And here’s the scary part, the one that makes this scenario of Bush and his ilk crying “economic warfare” a real possibility:  The Saudis and Arab oil states are seeing the dollar in freefall and they’re willing to at least consider getting out of the singular business of propping up the dollar.

During Chavez’s opening address to the summit on Saturday, the Venezuelan leader said OPEC should “assert itself as an active political agent.” But Abdullah appeared to distance himself from Chavez’s comments, saying OPEC always acted moderately and wisely.

A day earlier, Saudi Arabia opposed a move by Iran on Friday to have OPEC include concerns over the falling dollar included in the summit’s closing statement after the weekend meeting. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister even warned that even talking publicly about the currency’s decline could further hurt its value.

But by Sunday, it appeared that Saudi Arabia had compromised. Though the final declaration delivered Sunday did not specifically mention concern over the weak dollar, the organization directed its finance ministers to study the issue.

OPEC will “study ways and means of enhancing financial cooperation among OPEC … including proposals by some of the heads of state and governments in their statements to the summit,” OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri said, reading the statement.

Iran’s oil minister went a step further and said OPEC will form a committee to study the dollar’s affect on oil prices and investigate the possibility of a currency basket.

“We have agreed to set up a committee consisting of oil and finance ministers from OPEC countries to study the impact of the dollar on oil prices,” Gholam Hussein Nozari told Dow Jones Newswires.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said the committee would “submit to OPEC its recommendation on a basket of currencies that OPEC members will deal with.” He did not give a timeline for the recommendation.

Got that?  The entire reason that the world uses the dollar as the reserve currency of choice is that it’s the only one OPEC accepts.  And we have literally financed the last two decades of American economic growth on the fact that the world needs oil to run, and they have to buy dollars in order to get oil.  If that no longer happens, the dollar is dead.  Kaput.  Toast.

And the US along with it.  We get a third world economy to go along with out third world dictatorship.  The fact that OPEC is even considering doing this will continue to wreck the dollar, and OPEC knows it.

Somebody’s found a way to reign in the US after all, and we’re already paying the price for it.  If OPEC goes through with this, the dollar will sink into oblivion and take us with it.  If Bush’s neocons go to war to stop it, the dollar will end as well as the price of oil forces OPEC’s hand.

In other words, we’re at the edge of the abyss this morning.

Happy Turkey Day.

We’ve entered a new phase in the continuing saga of Blackwater, the phase where the Bush Administration finally stops pretending that Blackwater doesn’t exist as they have for the last month or so and instead we learn that they approve the murder of Iraqi civilians tacitly.

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

Let’s stop and think about this for a second.  The State Department is the diplomatic arm of the United States of America.  Its job is to promote, negotiate, and explain US policy to the other roughly 5.7 billion people on Earth.  It’s a daunting task to say the least.

And we have just told those 5.7 billion people that we’ll kill every last one of you in cold blood if we have to in order to get our way, and that there’s nothing we’re going to do about it.  Screw you.

That’s American diplomacy in 2007.  The State Department is using hired thugs who murder other people’s citizens on their own soil, and then they shield those thugs from any redress from anyone within that country or without.  Now, this is the kind of thing we’ve been doing for decades now, but we were more…well…diplomatic about it.

Here in 2007, the esteemed Dr. Condolezza Rice does not give a good goddamn about that.  The US foreign policy being promoted, negotiated, and explained in your name as an American citizen is that we will fucking kill you if you piss us off.

A State Department spokesman did not have an immediate comment Monday. Both Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko declined comment.

FBI agents were returning to Washington late Monday from Baghdad, where they have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.

Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

So, there you have it.  The new phase is that we’re basically telling out putative allies, the Iraqi government that we installed, to go bugger themselves with a rusty cheese grater.  We do not care about rule of law, or democracy, or justice, or any of those things our Fearless Leader talks about.  It does not apply to the United States Government.  It applies to anyone else the United States Government says it applies to, backed up with the very real and very lethat threat of airstrikes, carrier task forces, expeditionary special ops units, and nuclear weapons.

When you do it, we invade your country, kill your leader, kill hundreds of thousands of your citizens, displace millions more, and take your natural resources.  When we do it, we say we have diplomatic immunity, and for you to go eat shit and die.  This is how American foreign policy works.

Now it’s still possible that the contractors involved may in fact turn evidence against the company they work for…but when you work for a company that kills people professionally, you really do have to wonder about anyone willing to speak out against Blackwater.  Would you?  The implied threat here is simple:  you have immunity as long as you don’t talk.  If you talk, we’ll take a lot more than that away from you.

You deal with professional killers.  You deal with people who kill in cold blood, without provocation.  You’re one of these people.  You know exactly what these people are thinking and what they are capable of doing to you.  Would you say anything?

So it’s clear what the plan here is:  as long as everyone sticks together to the script, everybody gets away with it.  It’s the Community of Immunity, and nobody wants to be left holding the bag.

This is the famed other shoe dropping.  The plan is to call diplomatic immunity and let the whole issue blow over, like so much dust and debris from a bunker buster detonation.

What will Iraq’s response be to this?  What will they do next?  The answer will define Iraq, and to an extent the US, for the next generation.

If the answer is “fold their cards” then the US will be in Iraq for perpetuity.  If the Iraqs aren’t willing to follow through on this, then they will never be free of us.  We will be in Iraq 10, 20, who knows how many years from now, fighting over the last scraps of cheap oil to keep out insane lifestyle as a country vastly overspending beyond its means and overabusing every aspect of the natural, scientific, and religious world.

But if the answer is to “tell the US to get out of Iraq,” if the answer is to demand justice for not only the Iraqis killed that Sunday in Nusoor Square, but for the hundreds of thousands killed by the US, and the millions of refugees we created with our greed and warmongering and hatred…then something might finally change in this country.

This is the decision point.  The Iraqis made an issue of this.  They demanded justice from us.  They demanded that we respect their sovereignty.  They demanded that we respect their justice, their democracy, their decisions, and their people. Now, they have received our reply.

We replied that the Iraqis will never, ever receive justice for any of the people we’ve killed.  We have replied that the only redress they have is to take up arms against the might of the superior military machine  and to die by the dump truckload in order to exact a death toll a sliver of a percentage point against us.  We have replied that they will forever by our slave caste, our conquered, our vassals.  We have replied that we can take anything and everything from them and any time we choose:  their property, their heritage, their history, their culture, their freedoms, their identity, and their lives.

How would YOU reply to that in turn?

That is what is truly at stake here.  That is what has been behind the Blackwater massacre that fateful day all along.  The underlying monstrosity of what we have done to these people is reflected in the microcosm of this sin smaller in scope but no lesser in its injustice.

We have given immunity to Blackwater’s contractors.  In effect, the power of our unitary executive has granted immunity to all its minions both great and small that carry out the atrocities in its name.

This is America in 2007.  We are the bad guys in this movie.  Millions of us don’t realize it.  Millions more do, but they are resigned to our hideous fate.  Still, there are those that remain that protest the dying of a country’s ideals, a country formed to combat tyranny in all its various guises.  But the greatest civic experiment in modern history is all but over now.

It is in precarious danger of ending as all stereotypically dastardly villains end:  Broken, alone, and only in the end aware of the true failure of their lack of their most basic moral ideals corrupted and explained away for loftier goals.

No aspect of humanity is more vicious, more banal, more truly dangerous than our ability to justify anything.

Just ask the families of the Iraqis gunned down by Blackwater.  Hell, ask any Iraqi anywhere.

Who will grant them immunity from us?

Update [2007-10-30 13:1:5 by Zandar1]:

It seems that CNN is reporting that there is no immunity deal for Blackwater.

No immunity deal was offered to Blackwater USA guards for their statements regarding a shootout in Iraq last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, a senior State Department official told CNN Tuesday.

The statement contradicts comments made Monday by a U.S. government official who said the guards were promised their statements would not be used against them in any prosecution resulting from the September 16 shootings in Baghdad.

The senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to speak on the matter, said the department’s Diplomatic Security branch does not have the right or ability to offer any kind of immunity and did not do anything that would inhibit prosecutors if charges are to be pursued.

“We want to see anyone who violated laws or broke rules held accountable,” the official said. “Nothing that was done prevents anyone from being prosecuted if they broke the law.

“It’s a gross distortion of understanding of the situation to say that anyone at State attempted to shield any of these individuals,” the official added.

Maybe, just maybe, the State Department isn’t as stupid as I thought it was. But my statement about our response to Iraq still stands: We’ve told them to basically go screw themselves, and then we wonder why we’re losing the war.

The Dems are making the right noises at least.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier on Tuesday accused the Bush “amnesty administration” of letting its allies, including security contractors in Iraq, shirk responsibility for their actions.

“In this administration, accountability goes by the boards,” Leahy said. “That seems to be a central tenet in the Bush administration — that no one from their team should be held accountable, if accountability can be avoided.

And the Iraqi response I talked about? Looks like they aren’t going to fold their hand after all, but they’re not playing to win.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s parliament is considering a draft bill that would require security companies operating in the country to obey Iraqi laws with no immunity, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Tuesday.

“All security companies operating in Iraq, those affiliated with them and non-Iraqi parties they have a contract with, are subject to Iraqi civil and penal laws,” al-Dabbagh said. “There will be no immunity.”

The draft bill would also subject security companies to Iraqi laws concerning visas, residency, taxes and customs, al-Dabbagh explained.

The law apparently would not be retroactive, but would address only violations that occur after its passage.

There’s the catch of course, it looks like Blackwater may indeed still get away with this. The Dems are insane if they don’t push this in the elections. Many progressive blogs over the last day have pointed out the unifying theme of the Bushies granting immunity to people they want to protect who they know have broken the law. That apparently may not extend to murder in cold blood…but then again, it was the Bushies who put the current immunity law in place to begin with.

And of course the biggest criminal is still getting away with it.

…you get soaked, dirty, and miserable.  Sometimes you feel like things are just out of your hands.

The truth of the matter is that for all its perceived power as America’s elite “security contractors” Blackwater’s fate is no longer determined by Blackwater.  Many other players are moving the pieces around the board, and it’s looking more and more like the PMC is the knight being sacrificed to protect the queen.

The US embassy has begun offering thousands of dollars to the victims of a shooting in Baghdad last month involving Blackwater security guards, relatives and US officials say.

But family members of several victims turned down the money, out of concern that acceptance would limit their future claims against the US security firm.

Others said that the money being offered, in some cases $US12,500 ($13,850) for a death, was paltry and that they wanted to sue Blackwater in a US court.

“This is an insult,” said Firoz Fadhil Abbas, whose brother Osama was among 17 Iraqis who died in the barrage of bullets fired by Blackwater guards on September 16. “The funeral and the wake cost more than what they offered. My brother who got killed was responsible for four families.”

The offers of compensation, while a standard practice in the US military, are unusual for the US embassy to undertake, reflecting the diplomatic and political sensitivities raised by the shootings, which sparked outrage in Iraq and the US.

An embassy spokeswoman, Mirembe Nantongo, described the offers as “condolence payments” to support the relatives of the victims and said they were not intended to be a final settlement of their claims. Relatives could still bring suits against Blackwater.

“It’s not an admission of culpability,” Ms Nantongo said.

The “condolence payment”.  That’s what the mighty United States of America has been reduced to:  a country where the “condolence payment” is now a matter of accepted government “best practices”.

I have no pity for Blackwater.  But it’s interesting to see that the company’s being “thrown under the bus” (to use the vernacular) so quickly in order to protect the big fish that matter in this bloody pond.  In the chess game, Blackwater was never more than just another piece, another variable in the calculus of death this administration has been scrawling on history’s blackboard.  And now more pieces on the chessboard are being sacrificed for the queen’s sake.

Richard Griffin, the State Department official in charge of diplomatic security, announced his resignation today.

According to an internal e-mail read to AP, Griffin gave no reason for his departure upon making the announcement at a weekly staff meeting.

A review panel created after the Sept. 16 shooting of several unarmed Iraqi civilians by Blackwater USA security guards concluded that there was insufficient oversight of private contractors by State Department security personnel. Griffin, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, effectively employs the private guards hired to protect U.S. diplomatic employees in Iraq.

Following the shootings, which prompted the Iraqi government to order Blackwater employees out of the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered new operating guidelines for contractors. Yesterday, the State Department announced that future incidents involving contractors could be referred to the Justice Department, and that the ground rules for security guards would be brought closer in line to those of the U.S. military, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Earlier this month, Rice ordered all Blackwater convoys to be outfitted with cameras and accompanied by a State Department security official.

Meanwhile, more Democrats are signing on to the Blackwater tax evasion investigation juggernaut.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry vowed on Thursday to press for further investigation of the tax practices of Blackwater USA, the private security firm already under scrutiny over killings of Iraqi civilians.

“Blackwater is hiding behind the Bush administration to explain why they bilked the taxpayers out of millions of dollars,” said the Massachusetts Democrat in a statement. “I intend to get to the bottom of this.”

I’d like to hear more from some of the current Democratic candidates for Bush’s job and where they stand on Blackwater’s books, particularly Hillary and Obama.

“How do you know Blackwater is doomed?” people ask me.  I reply simply that when your defenders call your actions “horrific” you’re not long for this world.

The U.S. ambassador said yesterday he still held Blackwater USA bodyguards in “high regard” even as he labeled the killing of 17 Iraqis by the company’s security contractors a “horrific” incident that prompted him to seek an FBI probe.

The Iraqi government has demanded Blackwater’s expulsion within six months and $8 million compensation for each of the victims of the Sept. 16 shootings.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker lauded the Blackwater guards, mostly military veterans who protect him and other American envoys and officials in Baghdad’s dangerous streets.

“Those guys guard my back,” he said, “and I have to say they do it extremely well. I continue to have high regard for the individuals who work for Blackwater, as I do for other security contractors. That said, the incident in September was . . . horrific.”

He also said he had failed to fully examine possible problems with Blackwater. Critics have accused the Moyock, N.C.-based company of lax oversight of its heavily armed security teams in Iraq.

“I’m the ambassador here, so I’m responsible,” Crocker said, responding to questions from Western reporters. “Yes, I certainly do wish I’d had the foresight to see that there were things out there that could be corrected.”

If only Crocker would take responsibility for the thousands of other murders in Iraq we’ve committed.  you know you’re in trouble when anybody in this administration “takes responsibility” for anything.  Again, if this is the best defense of Blackwater that the Bushies can manage, Blackwater’s a goner.  It will not survive this incident.

The problem is plenty of PMCs and of course Bush and Cheney will survive this incident.