Monday, April 10, 2006
More News and Old News
And in other news…
Knight-Ridder has an article that echoes my claim the other day about the coercive effects of selectively leaking classified intelligence to the media.
Scotty McClellan has degenerated to contradicting himself within nine minutes of making a statement.
Rumors of Scotty’s departure abound. I guess no one in America really cares that the president has to get a new Press Secretary every three years because even the supine corporate press simply get sick of being lied to so obviously. I can’t remember when a press secretary has been as regularly excoriated by the press while continuing to stonewall inconvenient questions and misrepresent the truth.
Regarding leaking information, Larry Johnson rakes the administration over the coals about the selective leaking of classified intelligence to reporters.
This is related to his assertion, backed up by Murray Waas, that Bush was given information about the dissent in the Intelligence community regarding WMDs in Iraq but he simply ignored it when he gave his speeches saying there was “no doubt” Iraq had WMDs and when he cited the aluminum tubes and yellowcake uranium “evidence.”
It really shouldn’t take the reporting of Murray Waas to tell us that Bush was aware of the fundamental flaws in the intelligence he cited to bring a nation to war. You’d think he would study up on that subject.
This is just Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra all over again. Oliver North defended himself by saying that he was “a pawn in a game played by giants.” How many of those giants ever spent time in jail? None. Even Ollie got a slap on the wrist, followed by a dismissal of the charges due to do his congressional testimony. So much for accountability.
When the “giants” learn that they can get away with lawbreaking they will do it over and over again, using the same tactics: throw the NSC staffers under the bus and have the leaders claim ignorance of their own policies.
So now, according to conservatives like Pat Roberts and John McCain, the WMD debacle was the result of a “massive intelligence failure.” Blame the CIA.
Poor Tenet. He had to play politics and make concessions endlessly to keep his job when Bush took office, and then he had to bow to interdepartmental bullying from Don Rumsfeld, who was trying to take operations away from the CIA and put them in the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. And then, on his way out, he got a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a kick in the ass as his organization was blamed for the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history.
Never mind that the Bush Administration pressured the CIA. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA with the Office of Special Plans. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA with the efforts of State Department people like John Bolton who shucked his CIA advisor and stovepiped intelligence right into the White House. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA by having Iraqi defectors deal directly with people in the Pentagon after those same defectors, like Chalabi, were discredited by the CIA.
Never mind that the Department of Defense has jurisdiction over 80% of the intelligence community through organizations like the Defense Intelligence Agency and the satellite imaging agency.
Don Rumsfeld was at the head of these efforts. You know, Don Rumsfeld, the guy who signed that PNAC letter in 1998 saying that we should invade Iraq, regardless of WMD issues, to set up a friendly government and “stabilize” the region. The neocon who had already decided that Iraq had to go before he took office.
He was hardly alone. Dick Cheney was another signatory to that letter. The Downing Street Memos and other memo leaks from Britain attest to the fact that this administration had already made up its mind to invade Iraq. This corroborates the statements of the Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke, Bush’s first treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, and the testimony of CIA and State Department people who have spoken anonymously with journalists like Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh, James Risen, and many others. It corroborates the testimony of Paul Pillar, the intelligence officer at the CIA in charge of all intelligence regarding the Middle East until he left the CIA in 2005.
The writing is on the wall, for God’s sake. There was no intelligence failure. This administration already had its mind made up to invade Iraq the day it took office.
It is no secret that Bush and his advisors edited the intelligence estimates they got from the CIA before they presented them to congress and the American people, removing qualifications in the estimates. It is no secret that the administration repeatedly and specifically cited the testimony of defectors who had been discredited by the CIA and German intelligence at the time. I have already written about this specifically, but it seems we need to be reminded of the obvious over and over again.
So now there is some kind of question as to who exactly authorized the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, an act of political retribution that Nixon would have quailed at.
Speaking of quail, Dick Cheney seems to be involved, as does the president, as does Karl Rove.
When analyzing the vile election strategy of the Bush administration in South Carolina in 2000 and with the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, one commentator said that “all low roads lead to Karl Rove.” Karl has a long history of dirty political tricks. It wouldn’t surprise me if Plame’s betrayal was one of them.
After all this, however, does it really matter who in the White House came up with this disgusting idea? Bush has refused to simply call his staff to the carpet and demand to know who leaked the name, and then relay that information to the public. He’s decided that rather than do that, he’ll let a prosecutor figure it out, taking years of investigations and acrimonious legal battles and millions of taxpayer’s dollars. Maybe he’s worried that someone in the administration will lie and take the blame for another, but the willing testimony of anyone would help. Maybe he authorized it himself.
Bush’s crimes are so numerous that his lesser moral failures don’t get any time in the spotlight. His critics just take them for granted and his supporters simply refuse to address them. Underfunding the Veteran’s Administration just doesn’t get any play time when war and blatant lies dominate the airwaves.
Knight-Ridder has an article that echoes my claim the other day about the coercive effects of selectively leaking classified intelligence to the media.
Scotty McClellan has degenerated to contradicting himself within nine minutes of making a statement.
Rumors of Scotty’s departure abound. I guess no one in America really cares that the president has to get a new Press Secretary every three years because even the supine corporate press simply get sick of being lied to so obviously. I can’t remember when a press secretary has been as regularly excoriated by the press while continuing to stonewall inconvenient questions and misrepresent the truth.
Regarding leaking information, Larry Johnson rakes the administration over the coals about the selective leaking of classified intelligence to reporters.
This is related to his assertion, backed up by Murray Waas, that Bush was given information about the dissent in the Intelligence community regarding WMDs in Iraq but he simply ignored it when he gave his speeches saying there was “no doubt” Iraq had WMDs and when he cited the aluminum tubes and yellowcake uranium “evidence.”
It really shouldn’t take the reporting of Murray Waas to tell us that Bush was aware of the fundamental flaws in the intelligence he cited to bring a nation to war. You’d think he would study up on that subject.
This is just Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra all over again. Oliver North defended himself by saying that he was “a pawn in a game played by giants.” How many of those giants ever spent time in jail? None. Even Ollie got a slap on the wrist, followed by a dismissal of the charges due to do his congressional testimony. So much for accountability.
When the “giants” learn that they can get away with lawbreaking they will do it over and over again, using the same tactics: throw the NSC staffers under the bus and have the leaders claim ignorance of their own policies.
So now, according to conservatives like Pat Roberts and John McCain, the WMD debacle was the result of a “massive intelligence failure.” Blame the CIA.
Poor Tenet. He had to play politics and make concessions endlessly to keep his job when Bush took office, and then he had to bow to interdepartmental bullying from Don Rumsfeld, who was trying to take operations away from the CIA and put them in the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense. And then, on his way out, he got a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a kick in the ass as his organization was blamed for the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history.
Never mind that the Bush Administration pressured the CIA. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA with the Office of Special Plans. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA with the efforts of State Department people like John Bolton who shucked his CIA advisor and stovepiped intelligence right into the White House. Never mind that the Bush administration circumvented the CIA by having Iraqi defectors deal directly with people in the Pentagon after those same defectors, like Chalabi, were discredited by the CIA.
Never mind that the Department of Defense has jurisdiction over 80% of the intelligence community through organizations like the Defense Intelligence Agency and the satellite imaging agency.
Don Rumsfeld was at the head of these efforts. You know, Don Rumsfeld, the guy who signed that PNAC letter in 1998 saying that we should invade Iraq, regardless of WMD issues, to set up a friendly government and “stabilize” the region. The neocon who had already decided that Iraq had to go before he took office.
He was hardly alone. Dick Cheney was another signatory to that letter. The Downing Street Memos and other memo leaks from Britain attest to the fact that this administration had already made up its mind to invade Iraq. This corroborates the statements of the Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke, Bush’s first treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, and the testimony of CIA and State Department people who have spoken anonymously with journalists like Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh, James Risen, and many others. It corroborates the testimony of Paul Pillar, the intelligence officer at the CIA in charge of all intelligence regarding the Middle East until he left the CIA in 2005.
The writing is on the wall, for God’s sake. There was no intelligence failure. This administration already had its mind made up to invade Iraq the day it took office.
It is no secret that Bush and his advisors edited the intelligence estimates they got from the CIA before they presented them to congress and the American people, removing qualifications in the estimates. It is no secret that the administration repeatedly and specifically cited the testimony of defectors who had been discredited by the CIA and German intelligence at the time. I have already written about this specifically, but it seems we need to be reminded of the obvious over and over again.
So now there is some kind of question as to who exactly authorized the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, an act of political retribution that Nixon would have quailed at.
Speaking of quail, Dick Cheney seems to be involved, as does the president, as does Karl Rove.
When analyzing the vile election strategy of the Bush administration in South Carolina in 2000 and with the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, one commentator said that “all low roads lead to Karl Rove.” Karl has a long history of dirty political tricks. It wouldn’t surprise me if Plame’s betrayal was one of them.
After all this, however, does it really matter who in the White House came up with this disgusting idea? Bush has refused to simply call his staff to the carpet and demand to know who leaked the name, and then relay that information to the public. He’s decided that rather than do that, he’ll let a prosecutor figure it out, taking years of investigations and acrimonious legal battles and millions of taxpayer’s dollars. Maybe he’s worried that someone in the administration will lie and take the blame for another, but the willing testimony of anyone would help. Maybe he authorized it himself.
Bush’s crimes are so numerous that his lesser moral failures don’t get any time in the spotlight. His critics just take them for granted and his supporters simply refuse to address them. Underfunding the Veteran’s Administration just doesn’t get any play time when war and blatant lies dominate the airwaves.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 7:55 PM 
