Playing Politics with the NIE

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is a document prepared for the President and other key government officials. It is the consensus opinion of 16 intelligence agencies, and it represents the working hypotheses of the United States Government.

On Saturday, September 23rd, the New York Times reported on a then-secret NIE, as follows:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

This put Dubya in an awkward place. He has been telling us how well things are going, and that the war in Iraq is essential to the overall war on terror. Iraq, he tells us, the central front and now we learn that the intelligence community believes that we are losing the war on that front. Again, from the NIE:

“The war in Iraq has made the terrorist threat worse by providing a focal point for an entire American message that has contributed to the spread and decentralization of Islamic radicalism around the globe. The Iraq war has diverted untold resources from efforts to protect Americans from terrorism and weakened the nation militarily.”

As usual, the White House reaction was to ignore the reality and instead address the P.R. problem. As Billy Crystal might say, “it is better to look marvelous, than to be marvelous.”

King George made a speech in which he commented on the fact that the leak of the NIE was “an indication that we’re getting close to an election.” Speaking at a White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Dubya angrily called the leak a political act intended to affect the upcoming midterm elections. “[H]ere we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it’s on the front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes,” he said, (forgetting for the moment that a singular subject takes a singular verb.)

There’s nothing new in the Bush party attacking the messenger. Indeed, that is standard fare for this pack of liars. But it is noteworthy nevertheless because it reveals the mindset of the party of Bush. Fundamentally, they do not believe in democracy.

You see, democracy depends on an informed electorate. It presupposes that there is wisdom in the combined judgment of the many. It has faith in people to make good decisions when they know the facts.

King George the Incompetent doesn’t believe any of this. He regards the leaking of information as subversive of democracy because when people collectively making informed, fact based decisions, well, it isn’t always the decisions that the faith based foreign policy community endorses. Give the people information? Nah! Let them eat cake!

All of this would be bad enough, but wait: it gets worse. Remember Bob Woodward? As I said about him Dick Armitage is a Poor Excuse, “Bob Woodward was [formerly] into the whole Fourth Estate as a check on government abuse of power. Now, he’s more into the kissing administration asses to get the scoop, and if necessary keeping the outing of Valerie Wilson on the q.t. to suck up to his handlers.”

Predictably, that sort of behavior made him a darling of the Bush White House. Sure, he was no Judith Miller, but still, he did make the case for the Bushies better than anyone else had. Presumably, it gave him unprecedented access to the people in the White House. Until now. The New York Times (!) broke the story of Washington Post poster boy Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial. Here’s the lede:

The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

I could point out that King George has told us over and over again that he would listen to his commanders and if they ask for troops he will give them what they wanted. But to do so, I would in effect be pointing out the fact that George W. Bush is a liar.

Of course, Woodward does that in the new book. Here’s Dan Froomkin from a washingtonpost.com editorial, “Is Woodward calling Bush a liar?”

CBS News reports: “Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year. . . .

“According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. . . .

“The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. ‘The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,’ he tells Wallace. ‘Now there's public, and then there's private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,’ says Woodward.”

George Bush might say, “Here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it’s on the front page of your newspapers.” I wonder: Will he also accuse Bob Woodward of playing politics?

Woodward will be on 60 Minutes tomorrow. Be sure to watch ...

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Just the facts, ma'am.

George Bush is one of the luckiest men in the history of the world. He has fallen into one pit of manure after another throughout his life, and he always comes up smelling like roses. And so it was with 9-11 at least until this week.

George Bush came into office, having lost the popular vote, and having narrowly avoided having the Florida votes counted, which would have resulted in him losing the vote in the Electoral College.

Until 9-11 his major policy initiative had been a gobbledygook position on stem-cell research that pleased no one completely but did effectively relegate the United States to the second tier in biological research.

And then came 9-11, which was one leg of what Bush called the “trifecta.” Bush was cool, calm and collected, so much so that he was able to finish a book he had been working on, My Pet Goat. Then he appeared on a rubble heap in New York City with a bullhorn, at a time when the nation was reeling in shock and in need of a leader to rally around.

Instinctively, the American people understood that the attack was intended to undermine our confidence in the leadership, and the response was an out-pouring of good will toward everything identified as representative of America. This was very good for manufacturers of flags and lapel pins. But it was really, really good for the President’s approval ratings.

There was, and to a lesser extent still is, a hard core of people who will support the President no matter what. Some of these people are just hard-core Republicans. Some are hard-core ‘my-president-right-or-wrong’ types. And some are just plain morons. At the risk of stating the obvious, there's some overlap.

There is also a large number of people who do not follow or care very much about politics. These people felt the out-pouring of good will toward the President, and never had a chance to revisit the issue in lo, these five years. Some of these people are hooked on right wing talk radio, and therefore, appear indistinguishable from the aforementioned "just plain morons."

No matter how you categorize them, there are still about 40% of the population who approve of the way George Bush is doing his job, in spite of the fact that everything he has touched has turned to turd. And that is why I say he is one of the luckiest men on earth.

Until now. As I reported here, Bill Clinton has showed us how to talk about the fact that the Bush administration failed miserably in job #1, namely, protecting the country from outside attacks.

Here’s a taste from a transcript that appears on Think Progress.

CLINTON: …And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much — same people.

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried.

So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

As you can well imagine, the White House couldn’t let that stand. Instead, they sent out Dr. Condi Rice, who had been the National Security Advisor whose total disregard of the Presidential Daily Briefing “Bin Laden determined to strike within the United States” resulted in her being promoted to Secretary of State. She denied Clinton's claim in the television interview that the Bush administration had not aggressively pursued al-Qaida before the attacks of 2001.

“What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years. The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false, and I think the 9/11 commission understood that.”

Rice also took exception to Clinton's statement that he “left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy” for incoming officials when he left office.

“We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida,” she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the company that owns Fox News Channel.

So who’s telling the truth? To help you decide, I refer you to a column by William Rivers Pitt, over on Truthout.org, entitled Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts and published on August 30, 2006. Here’s an excerpt:

Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the period 1999-2001, responded to these allegations [that Clinton did not do enough to capture Bin Ladin] in an article for the Washington Times in 2003. “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” wrote Cressy. “As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden. The current administration faces many of the same challenges. Confusing the American people with misinformation and distortions will not generate the support we need to come together as a nation and defeat our terrorist enemies.”

Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton's 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion. The following is a partial list of the initiatives offered by the Clinton anti-terrorism bill:

Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 million

Screen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 million

Passenger Profiling: $10 million

Screener Training: $5.3 million

Screen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 million

Deploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4
million

Provide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 million

Explosives Detection Training: $1.8 million

Augment FAA Security Research: $20 million

Customs Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 million

Anti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 million

Capacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 million

Improve Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 million

Critical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 million

Additional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 million

Firefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 million

Public Building and Museum Security: $7.3 million

Improve Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 million

Critical Incident Response Facility: $2 million

Counter-Terrorism Fund: $35 million

Explosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 million

Office of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million

The Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence community itself. Within the National Security Council, “threat meetings” were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure.

Clinton’s dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous “wag the dog” tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie “Wag the Dog” while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.

In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.

Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them “totalitarian.”

In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm’s wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.

Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al-Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed, and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement.

According to Time magazine, in an article entitled “Banking on Secrecy” published in October of 2001, Bush economic advisors Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard were urged by think tanks like the Center for Freedom and Prosperity to opt out of the coalition Clinton had formed. The conservative Heritage Foundation lobbied Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, to do the same.

In the end, the lobbyists got what they wanted, and the Bush administration pulled out of the plan. The Time article stated, “Without the world's financial superpower, the biggest effort in years to rid the world’s financial system of dirty money was short-circuited.”

…

A mission statement from the internal FBI Strategic Plan, dated 5/8/98, describes the FBI’s Tier One priority as ‘counterterrorism.’ The FBI, under the Clinton administration, was making counterterrorism its highest priority. The official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Janet Reno to department heads, dated 4/6/2000, detailed how counterterrorism was her top priority for the Department of Justice. In the second paragraph, she states, “In the near term as well as the future, cybercrime and counterterrorism are going to be the most challenging threats in the criminal justice area. Nowhere is the need for an up-to-date human and technical infrastructure more critical.”
Contrast this with the official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General John Ashcroft, dated 5/10/2001. Out of seven strategic goals described, not one mentions counterterrorism. An internal draft of the Department of Justice’s plans to revamp the official DoJ Strategic Plan, dated 8/9/2001, describes Ashcroft’s new priorities. The areas Ashcroft wished to focus on were highlighted in yellow. Specifically highlighted by Ashcroft were domestic violent crime and drug trafficking prevention. Item 1.3, entitled “Combat terrorist activities by developing maximum intelligence and investigative capability,” was not highlighted.

There is the internal FBI budget request for 2003 to the Department of Justice, dated late August 2001. This was not the FBI's total budget request, but was instead restricted only to the areas where the FBI specifically requested increases over the previous year’s budget. In this request, the FBI specifically asked for, among other things, 54 translators to transcribe the backlog of intelligence gathered, 248 counterterrorism agents and support staff, and 200 professional intelligence researchers. The FBI had repeatedly stated that it had a serious backlog of intelligence data it has gathered, but could not process the data because it did not have the staff to analyze or translate it into usable information. Again, this was August 2001.

The official Department of Justice budget request from Attorney General Ashcroft to OMB Director Mitch Daniels is dated September 10, 2001. This document specifically highlights only the programs slated for above-baseline increases or below-baseline cuts. Ashcroft outlined the programs he was trying to cut. Specifically, Ashcroft was planning to ignore the FBI's specific requests for more translators, counterintelligence agents and researchers. It additionally shows Ashcroft was trying to cut funding for counterterrorism efforts, grants and other homeland defense programs before the 9/11 attacks.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Big Dawg shows us how it’s done!

The internets are abuzz with comments and opinions regarding Bill Clinton having wiped the smirk off of Chris Wallace’s face on Faux news. If you missed it, you can catch it here. Basically, the President was invited on to Faux news to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative. Instead, he was asked a couple of questions about it and then, according to Chris Wallace, “I asked what I thought was a non-confrontational question about whether he could have done more to ‘connect the dots and really go after al Qaeda.’”

Of course, that’s according to Chris Wallace. Now, who are you going to believe, Chris Wallace or your lying ears? If you listen to the tape, or read the transcript you will see that the actual question sounded more like this:

WALLACE: Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

CLINTON: OK…

WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.

CLINTON: No let’s talk about…

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

Okay, so Chris Wallace is lying when he says that he asked a non-confrontational question. But lying by FOX News hosts is hardly the stuff of “Stop the presses!”

What was new and different was this. It was the first time that a prominent Democrat called a spade a goddam shovel. This is the message that Dems have to learn to articulate: Republicans can’t be trusted to wage the war on terror. They are too incompetent, too corrupt, too ideological, and they have proven that they are not up to the task by 5 years King George W not "thinking too much" about Osama bin Ladin.

The Neo-Cons have confabulated the war in Iraq with the so-called “War on Terror.” Incredible though it may seem, the general population gives them almost passing grades on the fighting terrorism. Bill Clinton is, if not the first, certainly the most prominent, and the most articulate to explain that these buffoons have fouled up the war on terrorism so bad, that every last one of us is less safe now than he or she was on January 20, 2001.

Fighting terrorism is the Republican party’s strongest suit, even though, as the Huffington Post reports: “The National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report containing a consensus view of the 16 governmental spy agencies, states that the Iraq war has worsened the threat of terrorism across the globe.”

The Republicans went after Kerry and Gore on their strongest suit, as they did against Max Cleland. And they lied about it every inch of the way. You would think Dems could go after them on their strongest suit, since to do so would merely involve telling the truth. And especially since Bill Clinton just showed us how it’s done!

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

A former governor of Texas

Rest in peace, Ann Richards.

In 1988, she famously said of George Herbert Walker Bush, 41, “Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” One of the improbable achievements of his son is that he makes the old man sound like a regular Demosthenes.

Was that her most memorable quote from that convention? Maybe, but she also offered a memorable salute to the achievements of women, reminding her worldwide audience, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

She was governor for one term, losing her re-election bid to George W. Bush.

The same George W. Bush had his own memorable quote about the fair sex over at the Republican National Convention in 1988. A Hartford Courant reporter asked him about what he and his father talked about when they weren't talking about politics.

“Pussy,” Dubya replied.

As Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Who is behind the revisionist history, “The Path to 9/11”

The following article, Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC’s 9/11 Deception, previously appeared in its entirety on The Huffington Post’s column “Eat the Press,” under the byline, Max Blumenthal, and on his blog.

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Less than 72 hours before ABC's “The Path to 9/11” is scheduled to air, the network is suddenly under siege. On Tuesday, ABC was forced to concede that “The Path to 9/11” is “a dramatization, not a documentary.” The film deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's handling of the Al Qaeda threat.

Now, ABC claims to be is editing those false sequences to satisfy critics so the show can go on -- even if it still remains a gross distortion of history. And as it does so, ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive nature of “The Path to 9/11” is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie.

In fact, “The Path to 9/11” is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11’s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.” As part of TFI's long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission's "global training network" in film industry jobs “so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,” according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham’s TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled “Untitled History Project.” “TFI's first project is a doozy,” a newsletter to YWAM members read. “Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!” (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series “under a shroud of secrecy” about the 9/11 attacks. “At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries ‘Untitled Commission Report’ and producers refer to it as the ‘Untitled History Project,’” the Post noted.

Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive “Untitled” film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.

Nowrasteh's conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too “politically incorrect” to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo -- both friends of Nowrasteh -- announced they were “partnering” with right-wing activist David Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as “A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.”

Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens. The group’s headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a “think tank” bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugardaddies like eccentric far right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.)

With the LFF now under Horowitz’s control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh’s “Untitled” project, which finally was revealed in late summer as “The Path to 9/11.” Horowitz's PR blitz began with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine. In the interview, Nowrasteh foreshadowed the film’s assault on Clinton's record on fighting terror. “The 9/11 report details the Clinton's administration’s response -- or lack of response -- to Al Qaeda and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests,” Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag's Jamie Glazov. “There simply was no response. Nothing.”

A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton administration officials and objective reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review for FrontPageMag that emphasized the film's partisan nature. “‘The Path to 9/11’ is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I’ve ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible,” Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty’s article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and LA Times by more than a week.

Murty followed her review with a blast email to conservative websites such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers to throw their weight behind ABC’s mini-series. “Please do everything you can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries,” Murty wrote, “so that ‘The Path to 9/11’ gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!”

Murty's efforts were supported by Appuzo, who handles LFF's heavily-trafficked blog, Libertas. Appuzo was instrumental in marketing The Path to 9/11 to conservatives, writing in a blog post on September 2, Make no mistake about what this film does, among other things: it places the question of the Clinton Administration’s culpability for the 9/11 attacks front and center... Bravo to Cyrus Nowrasteh and David Cunningham for creating this gritty, stylish and gripping piece of entertainment.”

When a group of leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to ABC CEO Robert Iger urging him to cancel The Path to 9/11 because of its glaring factual errors and distortions, Apuzzo launched a retaliatory campaign to paint the Democrats as foes of free speech. “Here at LIBERTAS we urge the public to make noise over this, and to demand that Democrats back down,” he wrote on September 7th. “What is at stake is nothing short of the 1st Amendment.”

At FrontPageMag, Horowitz singled out Nowrasteh as the victim. The attacks by former president Bill Clinton, former Clinton Administration officials and Democratic US senators on Cyrus Nowrasteh’s ABC mini-series “The Path to 9/11” are easily the gravest and most brazen and damaging governmental attacks on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans since 9/11,” Horowitz declared.

Now, as discussion grows over the false character of The Path to 9/11, the right-wing network that brought it to fruition is ratcheting up its PR efforts. Murty will appear tonight on CNN’s Glenn Beck show and The Situation Room, according to Libertas in order to respond to “the major disinformation campaign now being run by Democrats to block the truth about what actually happened during the Clinton years.”

While this network claims its success and postures as the true victims, the ABC network suffers a PR catastrophe. It's almost as though it was complacent about an attack on its reputation by a band of political terrorists.

The Path to 9/11 and other atrocities

****CORRECTED****

The ABC television network is a cog in the Walt Disney empire. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 the network plans to broadcast a two-night mini-series, which is a shameless attempt to re-write history. It was written by right-wing extremists to blame Clinton for 9/11, and to benefit the Republican ‘we have nothing to sell but fear itself’ crowd as we approach what may be the most important election in American history.

Here’s how ABC is touting the show:

On September 11, 2001 the world stood still as terrorists used four planes as lethal weapons against innocent Americans. The 9/11 Commission was formed to determine how such an attack could happen, and its report documents the trail from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the tragedy of that autumn morning. The bipartisan commission effort created a comprehensive record of events and provides valuable insight into what must be done to protect the nation in the future.

ABC will present “The Path to 9/11,” a dramatization of the events detailed in The 9/11 Commission Report and other sources, in an epic miniseries event that will air with limited commercial interruption.

Since that announcement, ABC has determined that the best strategy for airing this disgraceful slander is with no commercials whatsoever. One can conclude that ABC was unable to attract advertisers, but the more cynical among us might wonder if ABC fears the boycotting of advertisers who underwrite revisionist history.

To spread the word about “The Path to 9/11,” ABC is sending 100,000 high school educators a letter from 9/11 Commission co-chair Tom Keane informing them of the various platforms on which the mini is available.

ABC and Scholastic have produced an online study guide, according to Variety, the entertainment industry’s magazine. As I write this, MSNBC is reporting that Scholastic has pulled out of the deal.

Also according to Variety,

[President of ABC Entertainment] Steve McPherson said by offering the show for free on iTunes and via streaming video on ABC.com, the network hoped to expose as many people as possible to the findings of the 9/11 Commission, whose report forms the basis of the script.
By giving it this platform and by dramatizing it, we’ll get more people to get that information,” he said. “We spent $30 million on this and we're putting it on without commercials. How important we think this is speaks for itself.”

There are sites all over the internet where you can sign on to a letter to ABC urging them not to air this despicable propaganda. My sense tells me that it will not work. Anyone who might sign such a letter is not within the target audience, and ABC Entertainment is already bragging about taking a $30 million bath.

So, what will work?

It strikes me that the ABC-Disney(world)-Florida-Bush connection is part of this story. Should there be an organized boycott of Disneyworld explicitly in response to this? On a good day, I have worse ideas than this before breakfast.

What about boycotting selected corporations that advertise on ABC on September 11th and 12th? ABC is in business to do business. Advertisers need to get the message that advertising on the network of Republican agi-prop is bad mojo. A hundred thousand emails from upset viewers will get the message across. You can’t hit a corporation in the heart, so you must aim for the pocketbook.

And since ABC Entertainment is in the business of making money, what are they doing giving away a miniseries that cost $30,000,000. For that kind of money they could have given a dollar dividend to each of 30,000,000 shareholders. (Correction: Fiscal results for 2005 showed an 11% increased income compared to the previous year. Add in 30 million, and it would have been a 12% increase.) Folks who invest in Disney have a right to expect that the business will be run, well, like a business. When it is run like a charitable propaganda organ for the Republican Party, the law provides a remedy, viz., a shareholder lawsuit.

This story is developing quickly. It is now being reported by the L.A. Times that ABC is still in editing mode. (It does make you wonder what the network made available for previews to Rush Limbaugh and his fellow travelers.) In any event, according to the LA times, this is “after leading political figures, many of them Democrats, complained about bias and alleged inaccuracies.” It is also after they network discovered that there was 10 minutes of time that had been set aside for advertising that needs to be filled. Whatever the reason for the rewrite, it enables ABC to say that any criticism of the mini-series is “premature.”

Stay tuned – to this channel,

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Dick Armitage is a poor excuse.

So, what we know so far is that Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage was the first source for Bob Novak when he outed Valerie Plame. Here’s what the Washington Post had to say about it:

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue.

This is bizarre thinking, unworthy of the paper that played such a big role in uncovering Watergate. Of course, that was when Bob Woodward was into the whole Fourth Estate as a check on government abuse of power. Now, he’s more into the kissing administration asses to get the scoop, and if necessary keeping the outing of Valerie Wilson on the q.t. to suck up to his handlers.

The Post’s argument is that Armitage’s name-dropping was just a matter of sharing gossip with Bob Novak. Now, maybe the Post doesn’t know the difference between “gossip” and a secret dossier that was created to discredit Wilson, but you can bet your bippie that Armitage does. But more directly to the point, if it is true that Armitage’s loose lips were just a thoughtless act, how does that discredit the fact that the White House was engaged in a very pre-meditated, coordinated effort to respond to the Wilson article? It doesn’t.

The White House no longer denies that Karl Rove was pushing the story. Chris Matthews has said, “Karl Rove called [him] up and said that ‘Valerie Plame is fair game.’” Did Scooter Libby give up Valerie Wilson to the press? What we know so far is that his denials got him indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. We know that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has alleged, and a grand jury has agreed, that there was a concerted effort in the White House to discredit Wilson in the course of which Valerie Wilson, a protected person, had her identity made public.

Joe Conason makes the point eloquently in The Observer, but he, too, is missing a crucial ingredient in this cocktail.

How did it help the White House to out Valerie Plame? The main theories put forward are (1) that it was simply to punish Joe Wilson, (2) it made Wilson look like a girly-man because his wife got him a gig, and (3) by portraying the trip to Africa as a “junket” they could deny that there was any fact-finding mission, at all. None of these make any sense, and it amazes me that they are accepted so uncritically.

Since The Price of Loyalty, at least, we have known that these are mean bastards in the White House. But would they destroy a CIA secret operative, engaged in learning about Iranian nuclear plans, to punish Joe Wilson, even in light of the damage that it did to ongoing operations by destroying her cover and exposing her contacts? Nah. They could have punished Wilson much more directly, for example, by trumping up some charges against him for revealing his “secret mission.” That would have bankrupted him.

Did you, dear reader, have the least bit of a negative reaction to Joe Wilson upon hearing that his wife may have played a role in sending him to Africa? Me, neither. It’s absurd to think that as buffoonish as these guys are, they would think, “Hey, once people learn that this former ambassador is married to a sexy spy, who sent him on a secret mission, people are just going to just think he’s a pussy and not pay any attention to him.” And how did it work out for them?

What about after you learned that when Saddam Hussein threatened to hang Ambassador Wilson, he put a noose on as if it were a necktie, and said, “I wanted Saddam to know that if he was going to hang me, I would bring my own fucking rope.” It was for this that Geo. Herbert Walker Bush called him, “a true American hero.”

Even if it were a “junket,” so what? Does that undermine the credibility of his findings? Nope. To do that, you have to attack Wilson’s credibility. There was plenty of that, to be sure, but it didn’t necessarily involve the Valerie Wilson connection. Also, notwithstanding the fumigations of the Washington post, none of it stood up.

When the White House launched the attack on Joe Wilson the war in Iraq was pretty much a done deal. And by the time the war came, the Bushies had acknowledged that the 16 words shouldn’t have been in the State of the Union address, and pretty much dropped the nuclear threat as a cause for the war.

So why did the White House attack Wilson’s wife? It was for one simple reason: the Bushies knew that Cheney had let King George make a State of the Union speech that he knew was bullshit. It wasn’t about hurting Wilson: it was about protecting Dick Deadeye. And so it was that Rove and Scooter were sent out to make the case that they had no idea about what Joe Wilson didn’t find in Africa.

It is crucial to understand that Darth Cheney thought that the article had stated that the he had personally sent Wilson to Niger. Wilson never said that, and what he did say was true, to wit: in response to questions raised by the Vice President, the CIA sent him on a mission to Niger. And so, when the veep’s clipping service sent him Wilson’s article, he scribbled some brainstorming ideas on how he can maintain plausible deniability regarding his knowledge of Wilson’s trip. “Was it a junket?” “Is it unusual to send a former ambassador on a trip like this?” You get the idea.

In order for Big Mitch’s theory to hold, you would want to see some evidence of Dead-eye Dick actually using plausible, but false, statements to deny his knowledge of Wilson’s trip. I posted it here and here:

This is from [Cheney’s] September 14, 2003 appearance on Meet the Press:

“I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report -- that I ever saw -- when he came back.

How is that possible? Well, for an answer let’s look again at what Wilson said in the now famous article in the Times:

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

You may say that this concern for Dick Cheney’s credibility is rather extreme. And you would be right. But extreme times call for extreme measures. Don’t forget that the bottom line on Joe Wilson’s argument is that the claim that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear weapons was false, and Cheney knew it. Long ago, a majority of Americans came to the conclusion that if they lied us into a war, they ought to be impeached.

What happens when you get rid of a criminal vice-president who is the main reason for not impeaching the President of the United States? Ask Spiro Agnew.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Keith Olbermann’s brilliant philippic

Mr. Olbermann delivered a broadside against the Bush administration this evening. Delivered with all of the anger and passion of a man who loves his country and freedom, and who sees them under attack, it bears watching.



Video-WMV Video -QT (H/T: Crooks and Liars)

Herewith a transcript:


The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land; Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants – our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For, in their time, there was another government faced with true peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all - it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile – at best morally or intellectually confused. That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England - taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy. Excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscients. That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused… is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count — not just his. Had he or his President perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago - about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have – inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of America?

The confusion we — as its citizens - must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light… and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954.

“We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;

“Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular.”

Good night. And good luck.

Thanks, Keith.

What do the Anchorage Daily News and the Socialist Worker have in common?

As I documented in Seeing is believing, one unfortunate Lebanese woman has been seen on the pages of various publications, returning to her various homes, and finding each of them destroyed. In two of the pictures, she is wearing the same distinctive clothing, and in yet a third, her distinctive scars are visible. I asked, "How much suffering can this poor woman endure?"

Sad to say, as of that writing, I was unaware of the full extent of her misfortune. Now, in addition to being on the cover of the Anchorage Daily News, she has managed to be on the cover of the Socialist Worker. bewailing the loss of still another home.Those who would like to see a clearer picture can pick up the July 22nd issues of the The Spectator (London), which featured her on the cover. The lead article begins, "Truth is generally the first casualty in war."

Here's how that picture was described on Zombie Time:

A close-up of the somewhat low-resolution image appears to faintly show the distinctive scar on the woman's left cheek, confirming it is her despite the different outfit. As [one ZombieTime reader] writes, "Once again we see the -- unmistakable -- eyebrowless Wailing Woman coming home only to find her third Beirut apartment destroyed. Different location of course, and this time she is wearing an up-market outfit: aqua silk scarf, checked coat, sling bag over her shoulder and holding car keys. She has apparently just got out of her car, seen the damage, slung the bag over her shoulder -- as you do when you discover your apartment is no more -- and gone for it, the double hand Heavenwards Wail."

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

The very definition of crazy

There’s a new definition over on Urban Dictionary.com, “Katherine Harris crazy.” It roughly translates to “batshit crazy.” Why is there no entry for “Ann Coulter crazy,” which can be used whenever, “psychotic to the nth power,” is too awkward?

Over on Crooks and Liars, you can see a video of Ann Coulter saying that “Osama is irrelevant. Things are going swimmingly in Afghanistan,” on Hannity & Colmes. When confronted with reality, she freaks out and nearly walks off the set.

You may recall the kid-glove treatment she got on Jay Leno. The audience was clearly not your typical west coast lefty audience that one would expect in Studio City. They cheered wildly for some of her more bizarre blathering. Then, her book shot to the head of the Amazon list, which also strikes me as strange. Could it be that purchases on Amazon were manipulated to give her screed the buzz?

Something is crazy here. I mean, besides Ms. Coulter. Normally people that crazy are placed in straight-jackets. Why is she on the cover of Time Magazine?

Start with asking, ‘Who benefits?’ Well, obviously it is the right wing of the Republican party. But how? After all, nobody with the brains that God gave animal crackers believes that Osama is irrelevant or that things are going well in Afghanistan.

Think back, if you are old enough, to the time when they showed a cartoon before the movies. Sure, Betty Boop had some creative horsepower behind it, but it was not what brought people into the theaters week after week. What the cartoons did was this: they shifted the boundaries of reality. Theater, including cinema, requires that the folks in the audience willingly suspend disbelief. For something like a cartoon, it is an easy sell, because they are comedic. Then, when the main feature comes on, the shift is toward a more real representation, and so, the movie is more emotionally engaging.

Ms. Coulter is the Daffy Duck of political discourse. When she speaks, you shake your head and wonder if you really heard what you thought you heard. Then when someone on Faux News comes on and says, “we must fight the terrorists in Iraq, so we don’t fight them here,” it sounds like the voice of sweet reason. Compared to daffy Ann Coulter, it is so much easier to accept the talking head, who in this analogy might be compared to, say, Orson Wells, War of the Worlds.

Why the War of the Worlds? Because some people believe it and do batshit crazy stuff.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

More from the left-wing so-called “mainstream media” (and the ultra-left-wing blogosphere.)

Today, Eric Boehlert, author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush reveals on the Huffington Post that “New York Times’ Eavesdropping Story Wasn’t The Only One Squashed For Bush During the 2004 Campaign.”

Boehlert documents how the main-stream media sat on stories such as Rove outing Valerie Plame Wilson to Joe Cooper (Cooper did not ask Rove for a waiver of confidentiality until after the election because the story was too “explosive” in an election year.)

In the same vein, NBC revealed two days after the election that “U.S. military officials have said for some time that they were putting off any kind of major offensive operation in [Fallujah] until after the U.S. elections, for obvious political reasons,” according to Jim Miklaszewski. Should voters have known that Bush planned to escalate the war right after the election? NBC doesn’t report, so you can’t decide.

Over on CBS, News president Andrew Hayward thought it would have been “inappropriate to broadcast [Ed Bradley’s 30 minute report debunking administration claims about Saddam’s nuclear weapon capabilities] so close to the presidential election.” [Emphasis added.] How close was it? The election was six weeks away at the time of the unusual announcement. That swift-boating of Dan Rather worked!

For Big Mitch, the most interesting part of the HuffPo note was that the New York Times sat on the story of the Bush bulge.

You may recall that during the presidential debates, many attentive viewers noted a bulge under Dubya’s jacket. He passed it off as the work of a “badly tailored suit,” and said that the presidential tailor had been fired. Surprise, surprise! Bush was lying.

The Times quashed a story of a NASA scientist who used the same techniques that are used to analyze photos from space to sharpen photos from the debate. These enhanced photos clearly showed that Bush could not be trusted.

Boehlert continues:

According to the reporting of David Lindorff, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Report’s Extra!, Nelson was told by a Times reporters that the bulge article, complete with his compelling imagery, would run Oct. 28, five days before the election. Instead, on the night of Oct. 27 the story was killed. In an email the next day, one of the Times reporters apologized to Nelson: “Sorry to have been a source of disappointment and frustration to you.” Two months later, executive editor Keller explained, “In the end, nobody, including the scientist who brought it up, could take the story beyond speculation. In the crush of election-finale stories, it died a quiet, unlamented death.”

Why was this so interesting to Big Mitch? Because of one little-bitty parenthetical remark that Boehlert includes:

(The bulge was later confirmed to be a bullet proof vest.)

According to the Houston Independent Media Center, Dubya was “wearing a medical device for persons at risk of cardiac arrest.” It is a LifeVest wearable defibrillator. He started using it sometime after his January 2002 fainting spell, which was attributed to choking. Based on photos showing him wearing the device, one can conclude the fainting was due to atrial fibrillation (AF), which his father also had. His father’s AF was caused by Graves hyperthyroidism, which his mother also has. Bush likely has AF and less likely Graves’, based on his family history and symptoms. The AF may have caused a stroke or TIA (mini-stroke), of which physicians watching the debates detected symptoms. Observers have noted psychological symptoms consistent with this and with Wernicke-Korsakoff disease.”


Here’s another picture showing the device under Dubya’s tee-shirt.


People pretty much knew that Bush was a liar before the debate. I can only wonder if, in an election so close, it would have made a difference to know that the man who was one fluttering heartbeat away from the presidency was fellow heart–patient Dick Cheney, a man who’s warmth and popularity can be compared to that of body lice.

“… and tell ‘em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Seeing is believing

It is impossible not to feel the pain of the poor Lebanese woman pictured on Page 1 of the August 15th edition of the Anchorage Daily News, under the heading “Lebanese Return Home to Find Devastation.” Credit is given to Ben Curtis of the Associated Press for putting a human face on the suffering.

She is seen standing in front of a building apparently destroyed by Israeli bombers, in that country's efforts to rid Southern Lebanon of the terrorists who killed over two hundred U.S. Marines, bombed our embassy, and, who, by the way, were lobbing missiles at civilians in Israel.

How much has suffering can this poor woman endure? She is seen here lamenting the loss of a different house in a suburb of Beirut on August 5, 2006 in a photo taken by Hussein Malla for A.P.



As if that weren’t enough suffering for this poor woman, it must be recalled that she also lost a different home in Beirut proper on July 22, 2006, as evidenced by this photo, captured by Issam Kobeisi for Reuters:



As they say, seeing is believing.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Dubya responds to terrorist plot!

In The Ignorer-in-chief, I mused, “We will see if King George can extend his incredible string of ignoring problems, while there is still brush to be cleared in Crawford. I am betting he can.”

Today, I found the answer in AHN Newservice:

Crawford, TX (AHN) - President George W. Bush helps Republicans raise big money by headlining a barbecue at a ranch near his Crawford, Texas vacation home.

Kathy and Stan Hicky own the Broken Spoke Ranch, where the event took place. The fundraiser has been held annually since the start of Bush's presidency. The barbecue attracted 350 people, and raised $750,000 for the Republican National Committee.

The money will be given to Republican candidates on the ballot this fall. Only donors who had contributed at least $15,000 in the past were invited. They were treated to a spread of beef, ribs, turkey, pinto beans and potato salad.

As the president’s motorcade drove to the fundraiser, he passed anti-war protestors linked to Cindy Sheehan. They held signs, including one saying “WMD Lies Lost Lives.”

Of course, King George would argue that shaking down multi-millionaires for campaign donations is a critical element of the War on Terror. After all, if Democrats are elected, the terrorists will have won. At least that’s the import of the comments of Dick Cheney, and Tony Snow.

If this is to be his defense, I must say, it leaves me breathless. I wonder how Bush would answer the answer the underlying accusation that he is the Ignorer-in-chief, in light of this revelation from AP:

WASHINGTON - While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Republicans want to run on their record on terrorism? Bring it on!

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Two reasonable questions

Terrorists were planning to blow up as many as ten trans-Atlantic airliners. Scotland Yard estimates that there were 50 individuals involved, of whom fewer than half have been taken into custody.

The White House is hoping that this will “play big” as a political opportunity, according to the Huffington Post. Let’s examine What we know so far …

The terrorists who were arrested were British born men of Pakistani extraction. We are told that Pakistan’s intelligence services provided crucial help to the Brits. I am not an intelligence analyst, but it seems to me that some part of the plot took place in Pakistan.

The plot involved pairs of terrorists boarding airplanes with innocuous liquids, which when combined form a peroxide explosive. These explosives were to be ignited with a flash from a disposable camera. If ten airliners blew up, the number of deaths involved would be multiples of the number who perished on 9-11.

This plot is identical to another one broken up in 1995, called Operation Bojinka, which was the brainchild of Kahlid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11. The British plot had other ear-marks of al-Qaeda, for example, the element of numerous coordinated targets. Of course, al-Qaeda has been promising a big operation for some time now.

Most of all, there is the Pakistan connection. MSNBC is reporting that the mastermind of the operation is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Osama Bin Ladin is also believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Osama Bin Ladin is a name I have not heard in all of the coverage of the spoiled terror plot. For those who may have forgotten, King George, in a moment of macho enthusiasm promised to get Osama Bin Ladin “dead or alive.” One of those who apparently have forgotten is Dubya, who in a candid moment, admitted he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about him.

A reasonable question to ask is this: “Why is that son-of-a-bitch, Bin Ladin, still alive?” The answer, of course, is that it is because of the incompetence of this administration at every level.

When the Presidential Daily Briefing said that Bin Ladin was determined to strike in America, the National Security Advisor considered it historical information, which was not actionable. She was later promoted to Secretary of State.

The Defense Department apparently lied to the 9-11 Commission to make it seem that they were more competent on that dreadful day than the newly released information indicates. (I wrote about it here.)

When we thought Bin Ladin was in Afghanistan, we pulled troops out of there to fight a war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist.

The head of Homeland Security is the same guy who was in charge of Homeland Security a year ago, when Hurricane Katrina brought their incompetence into sharp focus.

Here’s another reasonable question: How in the world can the White House think that this record of incompetence can “play big” as a “political opportunity.”

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Cheney, Dick—Head cheerleader for Leiberman.

Today, Dick Cheney held a press conference via conference call because, as he said, “It’s suggested I chat with you a bit just for a couple of minutes here about the Connecticut Democratic primary yesterday …”

The Veep praised Joe Lieberman:

I think we can look at it on a personal basis and say I think he’s a good man. And if he were to leave the Senate, that would be a loss to the Democrats.

But then, as if he had caught himself being solicitous of Democrats,

But we’re not embracing Joe Lieberman’s candidacy.

Without actually embracing Joe Lieberman, he did manage to put forth the idea that a vote against Lieberman was a vote in favor of al-Qaeda and an invitation for another 9-11. This is how Republicans campaign; they sow fear, because fear has a well-documented capacity for over-coming reason. Witness this comment from Lieberman’s sub rosa supporter, Dick Cheney:

The thing that’s partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.

Obviously, he’s on the same page as Tony Snow. Bush’s mouthpiece was in front of the podium yesterday. As he put it, Lieberman’s defeat was ratification of “one of the approaches [which] is ignore the difficulties and walk away.”

Now, when the United States walked away, in the opinion of Osama bin Laden in 1991, bin Laden drew from that the conclusion that Americans were weak and wouldn't stay the course, and that led to September 11th.

Here's a question for Tony Snow: If you believe that, what do you have to say about America’s walking away from Saudi Arabia, 17 months after the 9-11 attack? Here’s how it was reported in The Telegraph of Great Britian:

America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations is Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks.

The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq.

Withdrawal of “infidel” American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was “irrelevant.”

Since the Republicans control all branches of government, and most of the mass media, it follows that any encouragement that al-Qaida has received is their responsibility. So how is King George reacting to the news that an al-Qaeda planned to bomb as many as 10 trans-Atlantic flights, and that of the estimated 50 terrorists involved, less than half have been arrested?

He’s ignoring it and walking away to Crawford, where there is brush to be cleared.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

The Ignorer-in-chief

Tony Snow, the White House mouthpiece, had this to say at his daily press briefing.

And the real question for the American people to ask themselves is, do you take the war on terror seriously, with all the developments going on around the world? And, if so, how do you fight it to win? There seem to be two approaches. And in the Connecticut race one of the approaches is ignore the difficulties and walk away.

Now, when the United States walked away, in the opinion of Osama bin Laden in 1991, bin Laden drew from that the conclusion that Americans were weak and wouldn't stay the course, and that led to September 11th.

The thing that leaps out is that it was Ronald Wilson Reagan who pulled our troops out of Lebanon. (This was the point made by Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.)

I was drawn to the unstated alternative in the false dichotomy. Snow’s comment was that there were two approaches. What is the alternative to ignoring the difficulties and walking away? Funny you should ask: It is the policy of King George and Joe Lieberman, rejected by the Democrats of Connecticut and by 60% of Americans.

This policy – call it “faith-based foreign policy,” if you will – retains the element of ignoring the problems. In place of “walking away,” it introduces two different elements, namely, getting killed, and making matters worse.

For example, the war has already cost the U.S. treasury $302 billion dollars. Some would say deficits are a problem, but not the boys in the White House.

The Republicans have adopted a theory of economics, formerly known as voodoo economics, but now resurrected as faith-based economics. It is summed up in the words of Dick Cheney to former Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill: “Deficits don’t matter.”

But ignoring the difficulties caused by deficits is child’s play compared to ignoring the whole difficulty of the civil war in Iraq. Nobody was better prepared for the work of ignoring it than George W. Bush. According to Raw Story, “Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq.”

Dubya has been busy ignoring sectarian violence as it descends into a civil war, and as he likes to remind us, “It is hard work.” He takes his information from his Generals.

Recently, as reported on Think Progress “Gen. John Abizaid, the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, raised the prospect that Iraq could be sliding toward civil war. Abizaid said, ‘I believe that the sectarian violence is probably is as bad as I’ve seen it in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war.’ Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ‘I believe we do have the possibility of that devolving to a civil war.’”

How can Dubya ignore that?. Here’s the Decider at work:

You know, I hear people say, “Well, civil war this, civil war that.” The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box.

Since that election, our military has sustained 1,155 deaths, and perhaps as many as ten thousand wounded. But Dubya has taken a firm stand in favor of ignoring their deaths. Not only has he boycotted their funerals, he wants you to ignore them, too. He has forbade any pictures of coffins coming home.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have marched under banners that said, “Bush and Saddam: Two sides of the same coin.” Who could ignore that? Bush is who! He is scheduled to begin a 10-day vacation in Crawford.

As I write these words, NBC News is announcing that a Scotland Yard has detected an Al Quaeda plot to blow-up trans-Atlantic flights to the United States. Twenty-one British born terrorists have been arrested. The threat level is ‘critical’ in Britain, and elevated to ‘Red’ in the U.S.

We will see if King George can extend his incredible string of ignoring problems, while there is still brush to be cleared in Crawford. I am betting he can.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel

CORRECTION: I originally published this speech under the note The following is a speech of Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, published in Ma'ariv on Monday, July 31, 2006.

Subsequently I learned that although it may sound to some people like the kind of "tough talk" speech Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might deliver to explain what Israelis are fighting for in their battle with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, it's actually a case of someone's putting into the Prime Minister's mouth the words he wishes the Israeli leader would say.

This "speech" was an opinion piece created by Ben Caspit, a journalist writing for Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper, who expressed his viewpoint in the form of a "Suggested Speech for Prime Minister Olmert." Caspit's editorial has since been translated into English and widely circulated via e-mail, losing its original attribution in cyberspace and creating the impression that it is the text of a speech actually delivered by Prime Minister Olmert.

Nevertheless, it bears reading.

---

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel. We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere.

The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility. Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us. The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya?

What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly. We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza -- what did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism, and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London. An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent.

What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't? In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle.

I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

Republicans taking hostages?

On Meet the Press today, Condaleeza Rice was asked directly if the U.S. would allow a mass emigration of Cuban Americans back to their native land, given that Castro’s health problems may present an opportunity for a transition to democracy in Cuba.

Her response was as straightforward as Dr. Rice is capable of being: “We are not going to do anything to stoke a sense of crisis” in Cuba. This is her way of saying “No way, Jose!”

Why should we? Well, for one thing, a cadre of people with a strong history of democracy can only assist in the island nation’s transition, if that is to occur. Additionally, capital may leave with these emigrants but if it is used to establish a prosperous trading partner 90 miles off the Florida coast, it is a good thing, is it not?

Call it xenophobia, or worse, but it must be admitted that within the Republican Party there exists a significant contingent that has deep concerns about preserving “American culture.” A couple of hundred thousand fewer Latinos in Florida couldn’t hurt their cause.

So why didn’t Dr. Rice say, “Hey, it’s a free country! If people want to leave, we don’t keep them here like they did in the bad old days of East Berlin. We wish them well, and we offer whatever help we can give in their noble efforts to establish a democracy in Cuba?”

The answer is that Cuban-Americans are, in Lincoln’s phrase, “not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it,” specifically, in Florida. While Cuban-American voters often split their votes between the two major parties in local or state elections, they tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican in presidential races, by margins that have fluctuated between 75 and 85 percent, making them perhaps the most solidly Republican ethnic bloc in the country. Without the support of Cuban Americans in Florida, Dubya would have lost both elections by margins too large to cover over with shenanigans.

Think about it! Cuban Americans being held hostage, kept in Florida against their will, so that Republicans can win elections. It is further proof, as if we needed any, that Republicans will stoop beneath dirt, to win elections. But don’t be so sure that Cuban-Americans will not see through this, and turn on the Republicans.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

REQUISCAT IN PACE ...

Susan Butcher (1954-2006) Four-time Iditerod champion.

Seven Days

From 1998 to 2001, there was a show named “Seven Days” on network TV. It is now in syndication, and my teenage daughter loves it. The premise of the show is that the hero, Frank Parker, works for a secret government agency that has the capability to send him back in time one week, so that he can undo whatever the evil villains have done to us.

The pilot episode aired last week. It showed how Jack was recruited (from a mental hospital) to travel seven days back in time. And what was the horror he had to literally undo? Someone had taken an airplane and flown it into the White House.

All of which set my mind to thinking. It made me recall a time in 2004, when, in response to pressure from the families of 9-11 victims,* the White House reversed its policy and allowed Condoleeza Rice to testify before the Independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly referred to as the 9-11 commission. She reiterated her previous statement that: “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.”

Maybe so, but 6 years earlier, someone had imagined them taking a plane and slamming it into the White House, using a plane as a missile.

As I pointed out in Cheney admits guilt, I consider it an admission of guilt when someone charged with planning for contingencies fails to imagine outcomes. This rule applies with equal force when the outcome is flying planes into the WTC, levees breaching, or levels of violence in Iraq, to name three examples where the administration has used this lame excuse. It also applies when the government we installed in Iraq, dominated as it is by Shi’ites, forms a military alliance with Shi’ite Iran, as I reported here.

Here’s the bottom line, the current administration is weak – hell, I’d go all the way to incompetent – when it comes to national security. The irony is not that King George ostensibly succeeded in an election by running on this issue. Rather, it is that Karl Rove still thinks Republicans can win on it in 2008.

Of course, the evidence I have submitted here relies on recognizing the failures of imagination as incompetence. But as it turns out, there is evidence beyond what is in the re-runs of Seven Days, that there actually was no failure of imagination.

On September 11, 2001 many branches of our defense community were engaged in exercises, a fact which figures prominently in the several conspiracy theories that have emerged since that dreadful day.

One of those exercises was a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. This exercise was not being coordinated by first responders nor even by some agency like FEMA. Rather it was being conducted by the CIA. They’re the guys who are tasked with assessing and responding to international threats.**

But worse, this week, Vanity Fair reported on 30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room of NORAD's Northeast headquarters. What is revealed is confusion and chaos, perhaps not entirely surprising considering the circumstances, but very much at odds with the story told by NORAD to the 9-11 Commission.

This week the Ed Schultz radio show had one of the 9-11 commissioners, Richard Benviniste as a guest. Here’s some of my unofficial transcript:

Question: Do you believe there was a deliberate effort to mislead the commission on exactly what actions took place at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001?

Benveniste: Let me respond this way: The initial account which was provided to us in our first hearing was inaccurate in important aspects. We had to divert attention and investigative efforts (which was precious to us because of the time constraints under which we were operating) to get the correct story. And we increased our staffing from one person to seven in order to go out into the field and get the NORAD records, which challenged and conflicted with the initial story we had received.

Question: Did they lie to you?

Benveniste: That implies that there was a deliberate effort to mislead. I am not going to cross that bridge at this moment. They certainly provided a story that was inexact, it was incorrect in many important aspects.

That story, I think, had its genesis in an initial press release that came out of the Defense Department. And it would seem to me, if I were a betting person, that the initial press release then dictated how the public affairs people and then the leadership at NORAD responded to official inquiries about their actions. That was a terrible mistake from the standpoint of those who were investigating this, and I think the reputations of those involved.

Mr. Benveniste went on to say that the matter was referred to the Inspector Generals of the Defense Department, in the case of NORAD, and the FAA.

We now know the story. We don’t know why we got an inconsistent version. NORAD went so far as to publish a book, entitled, I think it was, Air War over America in which they recounted this bogus story of how they were tracking the two flights and how they were ready to shoot them down. That never happened. So I think they went ahead and tried to burnish their reputation by suggesting facts that didn’t exist.

I could tell you that no one could have imagined that the government would have lied to us or engaged in a cover-up of its own incompetence. But as Nixon once famously said, “It would be wrong.”

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

*Which, by the way, is why a certain witch named Ann Coulter subjected them such a venomous attack.

**When the AP reported this story, it said that the simulation was of a civilian aircraft “accidentally” crashing into the building after a mechanical failure.