This Week's Best Description of the Bush Strategy

From Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone:

Up until now this president's solution to everything has been to stare into the cameras, lie and keep on lying until such time as the political problem disappears. And now, unable to comprehend that while political crises may wilt in the face of such tactics, real crises do not, he and his team are responding to this first serious feet-to-the-fire Iraq emergency in the same way they always have -- with a fusillade of silly, easily disprovable bullshit. Bush and his mouthpieces continue to try to obfuscate and cloud the issue of why we're in Iraq, and they do so not only selectively but constantly, compulsively, like mental patients who can't stop jacking off in public. They don't know the difference between a real problem and a political problem, because to them, there is no difference. What could possibly be worse than bad poll numbers?

Right on the money. The money shot, so to speak.

Someone Who Knows About War Crimes

Last night I watched a rerun on C-SPAN of a panel presentation at Georgetown Law School regarding the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two. What particularly struck me were some of the fundamental principles that had been set down in 1945-46 for the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court, to which agreement there are now over 100 nations. The United States, however, is not one of them.

Mr. Benjamin Ferencz, one of the prosecutors at Nuremberg, has a terrific website, and has devoted his life to international law. If you don't yet subscribe to the idea of the Bush regime as a collection of war criminals, I would ask you to consider that the invasion of Iraq was done without United Nations authorization (unlike the 1991 Gulf War) and on the basis of "pre-emption." Here's what Mr. Ferencz has to say about that after he had obtained convictions for war crimes of Nazis by their own admission

The twenty-two defendants in the Einsatzgruppen case were selected on the basis of high rank and education. Many held doctor degrees -- six were SS Generals. The principle defendant, General Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, patiently explained why his unit had killed about 90,000 Jews. Killing all Jews and Gypsies was necessary, said Ohlendorf. as a matter of self-defense.

According to Ohlendorf, it was known that the Soviets planned total war against Germany. A German preemptive strike was better than waiting to be attacked. It was also known, said Ohlendorf, that Jews supported the Bolsheviks - therefore all Jews had to be eliminated. But why did he, the father of five children, kill the little babes -- thousands of them? The bland reply was that if the children learned that their parents had been eliminated, they would grow up to be enemies of Germany. Long range security was the goal. He lacked facts sufficient to challenge Hitler's conclusions. It was all very logical -- according to General Dr. Ohlendorf.

Please note how a kneepad press might contribute to the dissemination of such beliefs.

I had not called for the death penalty, although I felt it was richly deserved. I simply asked the court to affirm the right of all human beings to live in peace and dignity regardless of race or creed. It was "a plea of humanity to law." The three experienced American judges concluded that a preemptive strike as anticipatory self-defense was not a valid legal justification for mass murder. If every nation could decide for itself when to attack a presumed enemy, and when to engage in total war, the rule of law would be destroyed and the world would be destroyed with it.

As to those 100 nations who do support the International Criminal Court, the signatories include our European allies from WWII as well as Germany itself. Mr. Ferencz makes this final point that is perhaps what should have the Bushits running scared most of all:

Aggression, according to the Nuremberg judges and other precedents, is "the supreme international crime" since it includes all the other crimes. There can be no war without atrocities and unauthorized warfare in violation of the UN Charter is the biggest atrocity of all.

I encourage you to visit this site and look over Mr. Ferencz's writings in which he lays out a convincing case of the ICC, the UN, and the need for law instead of war. When we, as a nation that spends more on its military than all other nations combined, fail to adhere to international law, then it is clear that our ideas need reexamination, paricularly regarding the means by which we wish to spread these ideas.

Question of the Day

Joe Conason, one of the true journalists still standing, poses a question worthy of speculation in this paragraph posted today in an article on the requirement for impeachment of Bush:

Why would the President instruct the Attorney General not to seek warrants from the FISA court, as the statute requires? What did he and his aides fear from that court's conservative judges -- appointed by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- who have routinely approved all but a tiny percentage of the warrants presented to them by this and other administrations over the past quarter-century? Which wiretaps did he expect those pliable judges to reject?

Wiretaps on people from his enemies list? Wiretaps on journalists who badmouth his administration? You have to wonder that when a FISA warrant can be obtained after the wiretap has been ordered, and when the FISA court has rejected almost none of the 19,000 requests made since the law was enacted, just how outrageous were the wiretaps that El Presidente wanted?

At home my telephones sport stickers that say "This phone is tapped," and it was originally meant as a joke. Little did I expect that it would turn out to be an accurate assessment of the violation of the Fourth Amendment by the criminals that continue to assault the Constitution in the name of security.

Assault on the First Amendment

Those-who-wish-to-be-tyrants despise a free press. Of course, if we really had a free press, I wouldn't be to worried about what is happening when Bushito summons New York Times and Washington Post editors for some strongarming on truths they might care to tell. You see, although the First Amenedment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a free press, it does not guarantee the existence or availability of a free press, particularly within an environment so controlled by strictly commercial interests (GE owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS, etc.) whose leadership hobnobs and begs favors from the political establishment. So this revelation is all the more chilling by its secrecy.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

You see, now we not only have to depend on leakers to get the truth out about what goes on in the White House, we have to have leakers to find out what goes on in the press when it deals with the White House.

If these meetings had occurred three years ago, or even one year ago, do you think that Keller and Taubman would have had the courage to run the stories Bush was trying to suppress? Well, we already know that the Times sat on the NSA domestic spying case for a year.

Free press my fucking ass.

Mythology of Terrorism

Do terrorists exist? Yes, of course, and they exist in many guises. Do some of them want to do us harm? Unquestionably! It's a fact of life in any civilization, and 9/11 brought it home in spades to the U.S. (but let's not forget domestic terrorism like McVeigh in Oklahoma City, or Eric Robert Rudolph in Atlanta and Birmingham).

But the way the Bush administration wants to cast what is really a highly fragmented and variegated collection of terrorist groups into some monolithic threat on the order of the Cold War Soviet regime is a lie on a scale so massive that it can only have a single purpose. The so-called "War on Terror" has been fabricated so that under this phony blanket of fear the fascist-minded zealots can keep chipping away at limits to their power, visibility into our own government, and our very rights as citizens.

The War on Terror is a marketing scheme, designed to collect any threat or act anywhere and put it into the pot of rationalization that this group of thugs keeps stirring and serving up as a gruel of repression. Quit eating this shit! Quit using the term. Start talking about the war on Al Qaeda, or Indonesian bombers, or Islamic extremists in Spain. Get specific.

The reason for this is that how we use language to describe what must be done reveals whether or not we understand--or intend to explain--what our plan is for dealing with the situation. If the police simply talked about our "war on crime" every time a robbery occurred, wouldn't you be asking who did it, where, with what, and how? And yet our news media doesn't seem to want to delve any deeper than the thin porridge of platitudes that Chimpie's gang serves up in steaming bowls.

The threat of terror is real, but it is no more or less than it was four years ago, or ten, or twenty, or fifty. It's a fact of life, but rather than effectively dealing with terrorists, the game is now played to hold up terrorism as a justification for acts by government that are much more of a real threat to our way of life.

Don't be conned. Demand specifics, and demand specific actions. The next time someone says "War on Terror," ask where that war is being waged, with what means, and against whom. These are not phantoms or supermen or boogiemen. And we don't have to surrender to fascist fear-mongering to effectively deal with them. Unless, that is, you're running a corrupt and incompetent evil empire of your own.

The Belly Laugh

Last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, I had myself a truly purging release through laughter. Dave introduced a segment called "The Late Show Response to Bush Spying" (or something like that), bringing up stage manager Biff Henderson, who was standing next to a telephone.

Dave: Take it away, Biff.

Biff: All right, Dave. (Picks up telephone receiver.) Hey Bush. Mind your own fucking business. (Hangs up.)

Dave: And there you have it.

I think I had an abdominal rupture or something after that.

Another chant for the season.

Oh My, More on Impeachment

Go to this Editor and Publisher issue for a great piece on this subject. And they answer the accusation that the MSM is still largely a gargling nest of bum-slurpers:

When Washington Post pollster Richard Morin finally answered the "I" question in his online chat, he said, "We do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion -- witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08 are calling for Bush's impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls."

Oh, WaPo, how far you've fallen since Nixon.

Told You So

My relatives, even my wife, have long considered me to be wild-eyed and prone to overstatement with regard to the Bush administration. Two years ago I was severely taken to task for referring to them as a "criminal enterprise," and when I was hollering for impeachment on the basis of the many, many offenses committed against the U.S. Constitution and international law, again my various in-laws told me I was nuts. There was no way that was going to happen, what with a Republican controlled Congress, blah, blah, blah.

Well, friends, the word "impeachment" has now reached a level of play that even the mainstream media is afraid to ignore, and when even those sycophants rise up far enough from their kneepads to clear their throats of Cheney's cock and cough out the "I-word," then things must be in a state of panic inside the White House.

Howard Fineman of Newsweek, who I must grudgingly respect as he seems to have remained an actual journalist instead of an eager-to-swallow stenographer for the Official Word of Emperor Bush, has put the issue front and center.

For months now, I have been getting e-mails demanding that my various employers (Newsweek, NBC News and MSNBC.com) include in their poll questionnaires the issue of whether Bush should be impeached. They used to demand this on the strength of the WMD issue, on the theory that the president had “lied us into war.” Now the Bush foes will base their case on his having signed off on the NSA’s warrant-less wiretaps. He and Cheney will argue his inherent powers and will cite Supreme Court cases and the resolution that authorized him to make war on the Taliban and al-Qaida. They will respond by calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an authority than John Dean to testify to the president’s dictatorial perfidy. The “I-word” is out there, and, I predict, you are going to hear more of it next year — much more.

And Patrick Fitzgerald is still working on the Karl Rove treasongate issue too.

It's getting to feel a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go. Hee-hee-hee.

Time to Impeach, and then Indict

Am I missing something? Here's the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now here's George W. Bush, presidential impostor, lying about how he has authorized violations of this law, from the White House's own website, from April 20, 2004:

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

Further on in the speech, however, he was frighteninly candid about how far he and his criminal gang were prepared to go:

. And we needed to change the whole attitude about how we protect the homeland. We'll do everything we can to stay on the offensive.

Apparently, even to the point of tossing out the Constitution. Who needs to fear Osama (still on the loose, by the way) when we've got our own domestic forces destroying our protections?

Chimpie Clobbered by Conservative George Will

This is a first for me, I think, but I absolutely must quote George Will in today's Washington Post:

The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?

I think the answser to this is that he, or his controllers, were convinced that he could get away with it. "Urgent facts" or "facts" in general are not anything that this administration feels are relevant to any action they take. Given the timidity of the mainstream media to call him on his blatant lies in his news conference yesterday, I can understand why the Chimpie criminal gang continues to believe that they can violate the law of the land, jeopardize our liberties, and do so with impunity and no fear of prosecution.

Welcome to the North American Banana Republic of the United States. All that is lacking is a flashy uniform with giant epaulets and a gold-braided high-peaked cap for El Presidente.

Chimpie: No Irony Gene?

If you're a Seinfeld fan, then you'll remember the episode where the four characters split up in the subway--Jerry to head to Coney Island, Kramer to pay some fines, George to interview for a job, and Elaine off to a lesbian wedding. At one point, Elaine says to a woman, "That's ironic." The woman says, "What do you mean?" Elaine begins to explain why what she has said is ironic. The woman stops here. "No," she says, "what does 'ironic' mean?"

Don't you imagine a similar conversation with Chimpie Bush if you tried to explain the following as ironic:

After initially refusing to discuss whether he had authorized domestic spying without court approval, President Bush decided to come clean. He acknowledged over the weekend that such spying had taken place, much as it was described in Friday's New York Times. He argued that it was vital to thwart an enemy that knows no boundaries.

And which enemy would that be? Well, the greatest threat to my constitutionally protected personal liberties seems to be a presidential imposter who considers himself completely above the law, who personally, repeatedly, ordered the National Security Agency to spy on citizens, which they could legally do by simply getting a secret court to authorize them. This court, created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which almost never refuses such requests (in fact, it has approved over 15,000 of them!), and was instituted to give some oversight to such extraordinary measures, which is all fair and good. But even that little bit of bother is too much for the Chimperor who must at all costs maintain his fantasy of monarchic power, missing the days when he could regularly sign death warrants and rule like Caligula, which may be fine in Texas, but ought not to be considered anything but criminal behavior on the national level.

"An enemy that knows no boundaries." Was he pointing a finger at his temple and winking when he said that?

To My Faithful Readers...

You may have noticed a dearth of postings these past two weeks. I have no excuse other than a kind of exhaustion of rage against increasingly outrageous behavior of the Chimpie Criminal Empire. Even when the whole world cries "Liar, Thief, Criminal" at Cheney, Chimpie, Rumsfeld, and company, they forge ahead, stripping our nation of respect, protection for the individual, sovereignty of nations, sanctity of life, and compounding their lies with an unimaginable level of hypocrisy. Their minions in the national legislature and in the exectutive continue an unrelenting assault against the environment and the working person, education, expression, sexual freedom, and separation of church and state. And on and on it goes.

I'm tired of ranting and raving and marching and carrying signs. It's not enough, at least for now.

So I'm taking a little break over the holidays. I hope you'll check back in in a week or two when perhaps I'll be refueled with anger and bile. But for now, I'm turning to some self-indulgent reading and musical enjoyment.

Have a great holiday season. May all your dreams come true.

Condi Rice to World: We Are the Torturers and Mighty Proud of It

Berlin may be my favorite city on earth, and it just galls me that Condoleezza Rice is not persona non grata there as a principal liar and handmaiden to war crimes for the Bush administration. She's appearing in Europe essentially to bully the Europeans into keeping quiet about our torture policies lest they lose our "protection" for them in the overhyped and underplayed "war on terror."

European governments have expressed outrage over reports of a network of secret Soviet-era prisons in Eastern Europe where detainees may have been harshly treated and reports of CIA flights carrying al-Qaida prisoners through European airports.

Several countries have denied they hosted such sites. If the United States did operate such prisons, or is still doing so, the information would be classified. The Bush administration has refused to answer questions about it in public.

"Were I to confirm or deny, say yes or say no, then I would be compromising intelligence information, and I'm not going to do that," Rice told reporters on her plane to Germany. Before leaving Washington, Rice told reporters that fighting terrorism is "a two-way street" and that Europeans are safer for tough but legal U.S. tactics.

If there are any Europeans reading this, I'd like to know your views on whether or not you're safer because my country is now cheerfully and energetically engaged in cruel, inhumane, and degrading practices for interrogation to the point that even language in a Senate bill outlawing such practices is grounds for Chimpie's first veto of his entire administration. And don't forget Dick Cheney's sexually charged defense of the practice. I know it's harder to get it up when you're married to Lynn and have heart trouble, but having innocent people beaten, shocked, chained to the floor in their own feces and forced to perform homosexual acts for the camera is a kind of pornography he should be shy of admiring in public.

You see, these war criminals don't deny such charges against them; rather, they seek to reclassify torture and unprovoked invasions of sovereign nations as legitimate enterprises. The slippery slope that that unrolls is a terrifying one indeed. Maybe that's the "war on terror" they should be studying for a change.

The Joy of Greed, the Danger of Hubris: America Waking Up

You don't have to be a radical anti-capitalist to realize that when the nation's largest employer is Wal-Mart that something is dreadfully wrong. And when the behemoth retailer controls both the production and retail ends of consumer products, that it essentially has dictatorial power. Well, they may have overstepped their bounds at last and even the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil mass of the middle and lower consuming class addicted to Wal-Mart's alleged low prices (low because they make a public cost every obligation that does not enhance the bottom line). The Walton family is worth over $90 billion. Should we be afraid?

Here is at least one way people are becoming aware and fighting back.

Nancy McShane used to spend $600 to $700 a month at Wal-Mart on everything from groceries to oil changes. Then in March she abruptly switched to other discount stores, upset over what her turkey-farming relatives saw as undue price pressure from the world's largest retailer.
McShane, a Springfield, Mo., housewife with children aged 11 and 12, is among what organized critics claim is a growing number of Americans turning against Wal-Mart amid allegations from unions and others that the company is bad for workers, the environment and communities.

When regular folks like Ms. McShane come to the realization that their savings is coming out of someone else's hide, they can change really quickly in their opinions and habits.

But at Springfield, McShane said she changed stores after her relatives, who also raise produce, complained Wal-Mart exerts too much pressure on suppliers to cut their prices.

"That's too much power for one company to have," she said.

And this underlines a basic problem in our country today--the substitution of economic relations for social relations. When people care more about saving ten cents on a pair of tube socks than about maintaining the spirit of community, we're all sunk. Wal-Mart is just part of the problem, which links to sprawl, dependence on the automobile, shrinking workers' rights, etc. but it's a hugely powerful and visible manifestation of a way of thinking that's got to change.

And perhaps, in its grab to own the world, Wal-Mart may have overreached and at last alarmed a lot of Americans.

Textbook Definition of Religious Megalomania?

Too bad he's in the White House. From The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh gives the country some very scary confirmation of our worst fears:

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remain convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparage any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

At what point does this constitute a diagnosis of mental illness? Who voted for this fanatic with the messiah complex?

Whoever you all are, I hope your consciences are kicking your asses. Chimpie thinks he's bringing about the New Jerusalem from a smoking pile of ruins and broken lives. That's on your heads, you motherfuckers, every last one of you.

Rover Goin' Down

RawStory has some outstanding inside dope on Plamegate. Boy, talk about dishonor among thieves. Karl Rove is in the hot seat and may not pull the G. Gordon Liddy bit.

Two things are clear, the sources said: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak.

If Rove does agree to a plea, Fitzgerald is not expected to discuss any aspect of his probe into the President’s senior adviser because Rove may be called to testify as a prosecution witness against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was indicted last month on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the leak.

So will it be Liddy vs. Rove?

When You're Heading for the Precipice...Step on the Gas Daddy-O!

It's become perverted sport, watching the Bushits plunge toward the chasm of history. Every bit of bad news that doesn't also hurt someone innocent is cheering--or would be if these were just inmates in the war and social criminal prison in which they belong. The trouble is, people are hurt by these incompetent, corrupt idiots, these Neros and Caligulas of the 21st century. Still, it's good to read something like this in the New York Daily News:

Embattled White House aides have begun to believe President Bush must take the reins personally if his evaporating agenda and credibility are to be salvaged.
"We're just plodding along," admitted a senior Bush aide from deep within the West Wing bunker. "It's up to the President to turn things around now."

I don't want to bore you with a review of Chimpie's career whenever he took "the reins personally," but permit to label him one major and continuous fuck-up in life (think oil company, think Texas Air National Guard, think congressional campaign, etc.). So as bad as you might think it's gotten, or however enjoyable this sideshow of disaster is for you, it is only going to get worse, or more entertaining, however you care to view it.

A card-carrying member of the Washington GOP establishment with close ties to the White House recently encountered several senior presidential aides at a dinner and came away shaking his head at their "no problems here" mentality.

"There is just no introspection there at all," he said in exasperation. "It is everybody else's fault - the press, gutless Republicans on the Hill. They're still in denial."

So my earlier pronouncements of a version of Hitlerian bunker mentality, criticized as being "overstated" seems to be right on the money. And I hope someone will review the blog to revisit what the only outcome for such a mentality when reality finally breaks in. For the Nazi leadership, it was a tab of cyanide and/or a self-inflicted bullet in the brain. And pressing his foot all the way down on the accelerator, Chimpie is holding hands with the shithead who got him to this point in the first place--Karl Rove.

Much to Bush's relief, political mastermind Karl Rove is said to be engaged in day-to-day strategy, even though he still could be indicted in the CIA leak case.

In my memory, at least, the image of Thelma and Louise yahooing as they drive their convertible over the North Rim of the Grand Canyon will be replaced with a whining pair of losers named Bush and Rove as they run their administration at full throttle over the rim of history and into the ignominious infamy they so rightly will earn.

Irrefutable: Chimpie and Cheney Are Liars (I'm Shocked! Shocked!)...and WORSE

The National Journal is a pretty sober journal of insider information in Washington D.C., about as nonpartisan as it can be, and rather expensive too. I have a relative by marriage who writes for them and I've become livid trying to get this person to explain to me how in the world the Bush administration ever achieved any level of credibility given what has been know for a very long time inside the Beltway and is now only trickling--and soon to be gushing--forth from the mainstream media outlets. But I'm not a moderate by any means and I have to accept that to gain traction in politics in this country, or to get read by those who have traction, people and publications have to be diplomatic, measured, and maddening (to me).

So consider what it means when The National Journal publishes this piece by Murray Waas, and its first paragraph says this:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

This isn't The Daily Worker or Michael Moore's website or International A.N.S.W.E.R. or a blog by some nutcase like me, this is a magazine that if it were a stew would send you scurrying for salt, Tabasco, Worcestershire, gunpowder, anything to make it more exciting to taste. It is as bland, and therefore neutral, as you can stand, the perfect gruel for political wonks, geeks, and nerds alike, but hardly grist for the radical freaks like me who need their tongues singed before they consider that something has taste, good or bad.

Then comes the zinger:

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

Got it? If there was any connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda, it was as adversaries, and I have to wonder why, when not that long ago earlier Donald Rumsfeld was shaking Saddam's hand, we didn't enlist him in helping us to destroy Al Qaeda. After all, who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

Incompetence? Cover-up? Stupidity? After all those years of punishing sanctions against Iraq plus the UN weapons inspections, wouldn't you think that the mad dictator would have wanted to play ball to ease the pressure on his regime? Wouldn't native Iraqis have been ideal for infiltration of Al Qaeda?

Of course, that's a side issue at this point. What Mr. Waas's article points out with as near certainty as can be had in my lifetime is that Chimpie Bush, Dickfuck Cheney, and Donald "War Criminal" Rumsfeld are baldfaced liars, and worse. Much, much worse. For example, remember this?

Although the Senate Intelligence Committee and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 commission, pointed to incorrect CIA assessments on the WMD issue, they both also said that, for the most part, the CIA and other agencies did indeed provide policy makers with accurate information regarding the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

But a comparison of public statements by the president, the vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld show that in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

Now Chimpie claims that he was just acting on the intelligence he was given, which, if you can twist your mind into the pretzel logic of the neocons, you could almost pull off, because indeed there was information that supported these contentions:

One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

And you'd expect, of course, that this unit would be staffed by intelligence professionals:

At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks.

Wait, wait. I'm not impugning someone just because he's a journalist or a neocon. Read on:

But neither Maloof nor Wurmser had any experience or formal training in intelligence analysis. Maloof later lost his security clearance, for allegedly failing to disclose a relationship with a woman who is a foreigner, and after allegations that he leaked classified information to the press. Maloof said in the interview that he has done nothing wrong and was simply being punished for his controversial theories. Wurmser has since been named as Cheney's Middle East adviser.

It just makes you feel good all over, doesn't it? One reason we're in Iraq is because two ideological incompetents, one of whom was even a bad security risk under rules your humble blogger understands (his modest military career was in the intelligence arm), had the undivided attention of the highest policymakers in the land, to the exclusion of the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, and all the military forign intelligence services.

But wait, as they say in the K-Tel commercial, there's more:

In January 2002, Maloof and Wurmser were succeeded at the intelligence unit by two Naval Reserve officers. Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to former and current government officials. Intense debates still rage among longtime intelligence and foreign policy professionals as to whether those who cited the information believed it, or used it as propaganda. The unit has since been disbanded.

Dig? Having served the nefarious agenda of the criminal war profiteering empire of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, the office was disappeared, so to speak--poof! That seems odd, because if they'd done such a bang-up job, you'd want to keep them around. Especially when they were so wonderfully compliant, as this paragraph reveals:

On July 22, 2002, as the run-up to war with Iraq was underway, one of the Naval Reserve officers detailed to the unit sent Feith an e-mail saying that he had just heard that then-Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz wanted "the Iraqi intelligence cell … to prepare an intel briefing on Iraq and links to al-Qaida for the SecDef" and that he was not to tell anyone about it.

Now, is there anybody out there who doesn't think impeachment, indictment, trial, conviction, imprisonment and perhaps execution are in order for some fuckers involved in this fiasco, this catastrophe?

And yet there are still more than 30% who still approve this cabal. How fucking goddamned stupid can people get, even in America?

The Bad News

While everyone not participating in National Buy Nothing Day is probably pillaging the aisles of their favorite local front for sweatshop labor, I chanced upon this sentence (on page 2) in today's Washington Post which reminded me of how hard it is to get your government to react to you:

In Vietnam, there were 20,000 fatalities by the 1968 Tet offensive, a psychological turning point in the war, when a similar percentage of Americans called that conflict a mistake.

The last U.S. serviceman to die in Vietnam was killed in April, 1975, bringing the total to over 58,000.

We now have 2100 dead and 16,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. Will we not be able to extricate ourselves from this disaster until a proptionate time and number have been lost? Does "stay the course" mean another 4000 will die?

Put it to the leadership that way, those of you in the mainstream media. Go ahead. I dare you. I dare you.

And in the same article, White House official whiner Dan Barlett cried about the way things seem to work in our new media-rich environment now that Chimperor Chimpie is considered honest and trustworthy by less than 40 percent of the American people:

White House counselor Dan Bartlett acknowledged the concern. "I do think that it demonstrates that if you spend enough money and repeat the charge enough, the old political axiom in Washington can come true: that charges left unanswered can stick," he said. "That's why we felt it important to marshal a vigorous defense by calling out our critics and the transparency of their charges."

So, big money, lots of repetition makes things seem true. Gee, I wonder who perfected that tactic? Paging Mr. Rove! Paging Mr. Rove! Call from Herr Goebbels! The burning black courtesy telephone in hell is available for you.

Ah, The Military Genius of Chimpie the Chimperor

One of the countries used for staging US forces prior to the invasion of Iraq was tiny Qatar. As I recall, a number of the press briefings by the military were done in Doha, and Qatar was and is our ally in the "war against terrorism," such as it's called. So then, what do you make of this little tidbit?

US President George Bush planned to bomb Arab broadcaster Aljazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror has reported, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret.

The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.

The transcript of the pair's talks during Blair's 16 April 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

We all know how terrified Chimpie is of words and the media, even when they're as compliant and comfortable on their kneepads before him as the American mainstream media has been until recently. But this is truly something else. It brings back to mind Crazy Ann Coulter's comment about wishing Timothy McVeigh had targeted the New York Times.

Seeing as they were the target of this idea, and since Aljazeera offices in both Afghanistan and Iraq were indeed struck by US missiles, let's let them have the last word. Please take it with a grain of salt, since all media outlets are suspect; some of this fellow's rhetoric may be a bit overblown, but his final paragraph hits the nail on the head, and that's tragic for us. Clearly, Chimpie and his band of criminals know nothing of winning hearts and minds.

Speaking to Aljazeera from London on Monday, Abd al-Bari Atwan, chief editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said: "The issue of Bush's plan to bomb Aljazeera's headquarters in Doha will be widely discussed in Washington and London.

"Reporters in the US and Britain are enraged by reported US plans to use force against media organs.

"Arab and international media organs are now under a terrorist campaign launched by the US as it does not want the truth to be revealed.

"This [US] administration has been disgraced as it has used immoral and illegal ways to occupy and tear out a country, kill more than 100,000 and wound more than 400,000 of its people.

"The results of the war, being revealed now in Iraq, have forced reporters to ask why they have been misled.

"New York Times has apologised, saying it has misled public opinion when it did not accurately investigate the objectives of the US administration.

"I believe that considering use force against a media station is the worst kind of media terrorism practised by a country which pretends to lead the free world, democratic values and media freedom."

Somewhere in Sugarland, Texas, a Scumbag Needs to Change His Underwear

More wet-ass hour for the Giant Flying Cockroach:

Michael Scanlon, a former partner to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to bribe public officials, a charge growing out of the government investigation of attempts to defraud Indian tribes and corrupt a member of Congress.

Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle and agreed to pay restitution totaling more than $19 million to the tribes.

Scanlon, who is expected to cooperate in the investigation of Abramoff and members of Congress, could face up to five years in prison.

So, do you think that DeLay is smiling now?

Ha ha ha ha...

Cheney Admits Administration Misled Country

That's how I read it. Here's an excerpt from his speech at the American Enterprise Institute this morning:

Cheney said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that there is no problem debating whether the United States and its allies should have gone to war in Iraq...

Gee, that's mighty big of you, Dick. Thanks for giving us the permission to speak. Anyway...

but he lashed out at some in Washington who have aggressively questioned the administration.

"What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence," Cheney said.

So now Dicky-lick concedes that his administration misled the American people on prewar intelligence. All we're quibbling about now is whether they knowingly did so.

I expect that the next move will be to concede that, yes, they did knowingly mislead on the intelligence, but that it was for our own good, or that they didn't know it was wrong to lie. It will be a real George Costanza moment. Imagine Cheney in the dock, being questioned by the prosecutor.

Prosecutor: So, Mr. Cheney, you admit that you deliberately intimidated analysts to twist intelligence to fit your aims to invade Iraq?

Cheney: Yes.

Prosecutor: And you further stipulate that you took intelligence given to you and the President and altered it to deceive the American people on the reasons for invading Iraq.

Cheney: Yes. But let me ask one question. What that wrong? You see, in other administrations I worked in, we lied all the time. I mean, heh-heh, telling the truth was for suckers, you know? Like during Watergate when I was with Nixon. And then again in the Iran-Contra thing under Reagan. Hoo-hoo! Boy did we lie! But nobody thought it was wrong. I mean, if someone had told me three years ago that lying about intelligence was wrong, well, heh-heh, I don't think I would have done it. But how was I to know? I mean, I may be the vice president, but you can't expect me to know everything, fer chrissakes. If someone had just pulled me aside and said, "Dickie, Baby, don't fake the intel. Bubby, please, lying for war is just not a good idea." Hell, I could've changed my plans. But I didn't know!

Put the hood on, slip the noose over, pull the lever on the trapdoor.

The Gallows Awaits Thee, Mr. Dick Cheney

What's the difference between Dick Cheney and a war criminal?

The International Criminal Court hasn't hanged Dick Cheney yet.

On CNN late yesterday and again this morning, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, stated that

Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities..."There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."

At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

And some may think that there should be additional nooses available for Rumsfeld ("I was just following orders!"), for the various enablers in the administration (all promoted since the Iraq debacle started) like Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove. Chimpie may have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment due to mental retardation.

Rumsfeld told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that the White House was in negotiations with the Senate over the amendment.

"There's a discussion and debate taking place as to what the implications might be and what is supportable and what is not," he told the program. "But the fact of the matter is the president from the outset has said that he required that there be humane treatment."

So here we are, the United States of America, beacon of liberty and justice for all, in the 21st century, and we're having a debate about torture?

The hangman awaits thee, you evil, traitorous motherfuckers.

Chimpie: Cheerleader for America!

Just when you thought things couldn't be worse imagewise, this news comes over the wire to let us know that our Chimp-in-Chief has found a way to bring us to a new low, and I mean no disrespect for Mongolia, but whatever happened to "What about Poland?"

In the wake of congressional unrest over his war policies, President Bush thanked Mongolia on Monday for standing with him in
Iraq and compared the struggle against Islamic radicalism to this country's battle against communism.

Let me break in here to make it clear that the "struggle" against terrorism is in no way, no how, no fucking way anything like the "battle against communism." It's insulting to compare the two, but, of course, Chimpie is clawing at the steel walls of his self-imposed isolation chamber trying to make the faintest scratches, hoping someone might actually try to read the ravings of a dry drunk spoiled frat boy dress-up soldier wannabe. But I digress.

Bush's four-hour stop in this poor and sparsely populated nation was the first by an American president. The brief visit was a reward for Mongolia's pursuit of democracy and support for the U.S. fight against terrorism...Bush brought up the growing Iraq debate when he met reporters after inconclusive talks with President Hu Jintao about friction in U.S.-China relations. He expected a warmer welcome in Mongolia, which has been eager for closer military relations with the United States and has provided about 120 Mongolian soldiers in Iraq.

Now why would Mongolia do that, you might ask? I won't keep you in suspense.

The Mongolians have been rewarded with $11 million in U.S. aid to improve military forces. Bush also noted that the country was one of 16 chosen to share in $1 billion in U.S. aid as part of his Millennium Challenge Account that rewards poor countries that show a commitment to economic and government reform. Bush urged the parliament to pass anti-corruption legislation as part of the transition to a successful democracy.

Mongolia's share of the $1 billion is subject to approval after the country submits a spending proposal to Washington. The millions of dollars expected from the program could make a big difference for a country with a total gross domestic product of only $1.1 billion.

Gee, let's do the math. I'm just positive that it has nothing to do with them offering the lives of 120 of their soldiers. No, of course not. And I know that Chimpie's commitment to freedom is such that if the Mongolians decide to, you know, pull some guys out, they'll still get all that dough once their "spending proposal" is accepted. I mean, we wouldn't be purchasing guns for hire right? These neocons have been so responsible with our federal funds over these last 4 1/2 years, nobody should worry. Besides, $1 billion shared among a bunch of poor nations is less than two days' spending in Iraq.

Mongolia is on our side. The war is won. Hail the Cheerleader in Chief!

One Possible Theory on the Clinton and Bush-41 Friendship

Are Bill and George Sr. trying to engineer a quiet coup against Chimpie, who they realize is delusional, falling apart emotionally, and putting the nation in even graver danger than most realize?

That theory makes a lot of sense, not that logic makes it true, but if there's any decency and genuine concern for the republic in either of these dudes, perhaps that is exactly what is happening.

Ideas?

I'm Shocked, Shocked, I Tell You!!! Oil Company Execs Lied?

Remember the Cheney secret energy task force in 2001? Remember how Dickie fought tooth and nail to deny access to the documents of its meetings? Well, gee, it seems like all of us conspiracy nutwads were right after all about the composition of the task force and the fact that they had shit that they knew damn well to cover up.

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

Now even though oil lobby butt-boy Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska made sure these liars weren't sworn in when they testified before Congress, there still may be a wet-ass hour for some oil big shots when they learn something about the law.

The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress.

You see, the evidence is none other than Secret Service records, probably as close to an unimpeachable source as you could want, and it contrasts significantly with the testimony of five oil bigwigs.

Toward the end of the hearing, [New Jersey Senator Frank] Lautenberg asked the five executives: "Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001?" When there was no response, Lautenberg added: "The meeting . . . "

"No," said Raymond.

"No," said Chevron Chairman David J. O'Reilly.

"We did not, no," Mulva said.

"To be honest, I don't know," said BP America chief executive Ross Pillari, who came to the job in August 2001. "I wasn't here then."

"But your company was here," Lautenberg replied.

"Yes," Pillari said.

Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has held his job since earlier this year, answered last. "Not to my knowledge," he said.

Deny, lie, cover-up, then lie some more, denying the reality, finally slipping into cognitive dissonance as the lie becomes truth in self-inflicted Orwellian brainwashing. That's how your Republican-big business fascist axis spins.

Hell to Pay for Many Democrats

They may want to lay it off on Chimpie that they were duped, but the truth is that most of the Democrats who voted for authorization for use of force in Iraq back in 2002 did it because they were and are lily-livered, bottom-feeding, political opportunists who care about one thing above all else--their power. They're no different than their Republican counterparts in this one area. Although they may have a slightly different political ideology, or at least mouth slight variations on the same themes, when it's ball-cuttin' time, they don't examine their hearts, or speak their truth, or do what's right. No, what they do is what makes them morally suspect whether in or out of power--they pander. They pander to the worst and simplest and basest and most craven impulses of the people they serve in order to remain in office. And on this count, they sold us out.

The chief culprits in all this are John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton, because of their presidential ambitions and because they constituted the party leadership. While Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich were crying in the wilderness from the get-go that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Hadley, et. al. were working the evidence to reach a foregone conclusion, no prominent member of the opposition party had the guts to stand up in their faces and call bullshit on everything that we now know IS bullshit, 2059 dead Americans and tens of thousands of dead Iraqis later. If Kerry or Clinton had stood up and opposed this war crime vehemently, it would not have marginalized them--it would have made them into true leaders, instead of the sorrowful hacks we've already had to suffer from for far too long.

This talk of Hillary Clinton as the inevitable candidate in 2008 makes me sick. I used to like her, because she was smarter than most of the other senators, quick on her feet, and seemed to have a collection of strong principles on which she operated. But her vote on the war resolution was so clearly calculated, so carefully weighed, that it revealed her as an even viler offender of the public trust. And as such, she doesn't deserve this vote.

Their cowardice not only enabled this war, but now is enabling Chimpie to defend his decision because, in his logic, they were as stupid (or corrupt) as he was. And to hear the Dems whine that they were fooled is pathetic. How was anyone fooled? Go look at those tapes of the case for war. Bush, Cheney, Powell, all visibly lying, or at least very, very uncomfortable in what they were saying, because, see, they didn't know at the time how easily the opposition would fold. What glee they must have had to see how easily they could cow their Democratic counterparts into playing along.

My friends and I were protesting a Bush visit in September, 2002, and then protesting against the war in San Francisco before in started in 2003 and then again in 2004, and we went to high schools to counter the recruiters, plus many other actions in print and on the streets, like a 4th of July parade in which a confrontation with Toys for Tots ex-marines revealed just how deeply this ugliness in the American character festers.

But for once, at least, my conscience is clear. Let's hope that the conscience of each of the enabling quislings in the Democratic Party still has some power to redeem them.

Spin This, Wingnuts

Oh, how Chimpie must be screaming up and down the aisle in Air Force One, pulling out hanks of hair and slamming tray-tables in front of quaking staffers. The poll just issued by USA Today is devastatingly negative, and the killer stat has got to be this:

• A 53% majority say they trust what Bush says less than they trusted previous presidents while they were in office. In a specific comparison with President Clinton, those surveyed by 48%-36% say they trust Bush less.

By twelve points, they trust Clinton--Clinton who was impeached, Clinton who lied about Monica Lewinsky's prodigious fellatio technique, Clinton who lied to Hilary, but who never lied us into war, or lied about lying us into war, or who had a chief staffer indicted for lying about outing a CIA agent--more than Chimpie! Amazing!

This is just wonderful, because even though the Republican held House and Senate will not life a finger to hold Chimpie accountable--yet--the American people are finally waking up from their long stupor of hope that people in power will be truthful if they say they are. Psych! All politicians, all leaders, must earn their credibility every fucking day, every fucking day, by being straight with those they serve.

Or else.

Quick! Give Pat an Aluminum Helmet!

What a day. I'm still on my first cup of coffee and this is my fourth posting, thanks to the wacky world we inhabit. ABC News reports that Pat Robertson is off his meds again and preaching apocalypse for rational thinkers in Pennsylvania:

Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck...In voting on Tuesday, all eight Dover, Pennsylvania, school board members up for re-election lost their seats after trying to introduce "intelligent design" to high school science students as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

Send this guy up to MIT, for God's sake, and get him outfitted for whatever it is that is screwing up his brain waves. It sure as hell isn't God transmitting this crap.

Bad News for Alien Abductees and Mind Control Victims

Thanks to a posting in Americablog, we've learned of some new findings from a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It has long been suspected that the government has been using satellites to read and control the minds of certain citizens. The use of aluminum helmets has been a common guerrilla tactic against the government's invasive tactics [1]. Surprisingly, these helmets can in fact help the government spy on citizens by amplifying certain key frequency ranges reserved for government use. In addition, none of the three helmets we analyzed provided significant attenuation to most frequency bands.

So should I switch to tin? Titanium? Disprobium? Simple lead or iron? Anyone out there know what will save me from these evil impulses?

Ali Scores Another Knockout

From the Washington Post, this is a delightful item:

Aretha Franklin was teary-eyed, Carol Burnett was teasing, Alan Greenspan was reliably taciturn, and "The Greatest of All Time" stole the show when President Bush bestowed the Medal of Freedom on them and 10 others in a White House ceremony yesterday.

Bush, who appeared almost playful, fastened the heavy medal around Muhammad Ali's neck and whispered something in the heavyweight champion's ear. Then, as if to say "bring it on," the president put up his dukes in a mock challenge. Ali, 63, who has Parkinson's disease and moves slowly, looked the president in the eye -- and, finger to head, did the "crazy" twirl for a couple of seconds.

The room of about 200, including Cabinet secretaries, tittered with laughter. Ali, who was then escorted back to his chair, made the twirl again while sitting down. And the president looked visibly taken aback, laughing nervously.

Was Ali making a political statement? In his remarks about the fighter, Bush mentioned the Olympic gold medal, the grit, "the Ali shuffle, the lightning jabs . . . the sheer guts and determination he brought to every fight." He did not mention Ali's very public opposition to the Vietnam War, which led the prizefighter to lose his boxing license for three years when he refused to serve in the Army.

Let me point out that Ali risked everything, including prison, because of his principles, and even as a veteran, I honor his choice. He was stripped of his heavyweight title because of his courageous stand against the war. Contrast that with Chimpie who evaded service in Vietnam by getting daddy Bush's help to jump over 1000 others to get into the "Champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, and then didn't even fill that obligation. The writer of this piece, Jose Antonio Vargus, sums the ceremony up perfectly with this:

Ali, dressed in a suit, barely cracking a smile, received the loudest and most sustained applause of the day. And the always quotable man who said "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong" and "I am the onliest of boxing's poet laureates" delivered the most striking moment without speaking a word.

Happy Veterans Day

To all who have served, bless you, for you have done your duty in sacrifice, even when those who hold the reins of power have abused your loyalty and faithfulness. As an instrument of policy, the military must be under civilian control. Sadly, when the civilian control is corrupt, greedy, and without military experience of their own, grievous harm is done by and to our fighting men and women under arms. It is paramount that we always use force as a last resort, that we employ it wisely and only necessarily in our defense and never as an imperial power, for the private gain of corporations, or the religious idealism of theocratic extremists.

Have a good day. My wife always makes meatloaf for me on Veterans Day, with real mashed potatoes, good greens (Brussels sprouts!), and maybe even devils food cake with chocolate icing. Enjoy yourselves.

Chimpie, Karl, Dickless, Wolfowitz, DeLay, the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the Chickhawks--hang your heads in shame, then get down on your bony knees and thank your god that those other brave souls died in your place so you could espouse your hate-filled war whooping like little boys playing soldier. And no, Chimpie, you MAY NOT put on your flight suit. Go to your room.

More for Your Entertainment Dollar

Oh, goodness, this is wonderful news for rhetoricians and linguists everywhere. Courtesy of CNN:

White House officials are determined to reverse President Bush's poor poll showings on the topics of Iraq and "honesty and trustworthiness."

What they're going to learn is that honesty and trustworthiness are like virginity--despite "born again" Christian claims of assertion to the contrary, once you're fucked on any of these, you're not honest, trustworthy, or hymenally intact, whichever the case may be.

I'll be charitable--everyone is entitled to one mistake, even two mistakes. But when the evidence stacks up for dozens of breaches of the public trust, or if your significant other is caught in bed with someone else thirty times, or if a car salesman's statements are provably wrong ten instances in ten minutes, reestablishing credibility, fidelity, or belief is impossible. But hey, nobody accused the White House of living in a world governed by logic or common sense.

White House aides, who agreed to speak to CNN only on the condition of anonymity, said they hoped to increase what they called their "hit back" in coming days.

The officials say they plan to repeatedly make the point -- as they did during the 2004 campaign -- that pre-war intelligence was faulty, it was not manipulated and everyone was working off the same intelligence.

Yeah, that'll work--repeatedly shout what has already been discredited and no one but the dimmest fanatic of Chimpie is going to even hope to believe. How are they going to do it?

They hope to arm GOP officials with more quotes by Democrats making the same pre-war claims as Republicans did about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

This is actually good news for the more leftist radical among us, because it will help to tar the "moderate" Bush bootlickers in the Democratic Party with the aiding and abetting brush. Shitheads like Biden, Lieberman, and, yes, Hillary Clinton, political opportunists all who voted for war will be exposed for the traitors to the people that they indeed are. Perhaps some fresh blood with real democratic ideas, with real desire to serve the people, will at last ooze into this sclerotic political whorehouse.

But in the meantime it's going to be hysterical to watch the backpedaling, rationalizations, and pretzel logic of these assholes squirming together under the new light of American awareness.

Welcome to Your Police State

From today's Washington Post comes a chilling report on how determined this administration is to use any means necessary against ordinary citizens to consolidate power. You think you have a right to privacy, established by your Constitution and protected by those sworn to uphold it? Well, thanks to the Chimpie gang's broad reinterpretation and reimplementation of old policies and their railroading of the PATRIOT Act greased by fearmongering of willing hysterics in the mainstream media, if you have been missing life under Stalin, don't be so blue. In Connecticut, a good citizen just doing his job was approached and intimidated by FBI agents wanting him to violate privacy rights of other innocent individuals and remain quiet about it under penalty of law.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

But wait, you protest. The courts require certain standards of suspicion be met, right? Oh, you are so, so very naive. Remember that this is a government run by liars, thieves, murderers, war profiteers, and totalitarians.

ssued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that they are also horribly incompetent--the Chimpettes have no proof that it even works!

You see, these are motherfuckers who want power. That's it. They are not concerned with security or the rule of law or the protection of the citizenry. What other conclusion can one draw from the insistence on a practice that is unproductive, anti-American, and in fact ties up valuable investigative resources that should actually be looking for dangerous people with evil designs on our nation.

Here's a tip: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. Any cabbie can take you there.

Exhibit # 13, Your Honor, on Why Cheney Is a War Criminal

From today's Washington Post comes an article explaining the internal war regarding the use of torture, and I have to ask you all, why are we even having such a debate? Isn't the issue absolutely clear? Apparently, we have Americans in leadership positions who think that any means should be available, just in case. From the WaPo article:

Cheney's camp says the United States does not torture captives, but believes the president needs nearly unfettered power to deal with terrorists to protect Americans. To preserve the president's flexibility, any measure that might impose constraints should be resisted. That is why the administration has recoiled from embracing the language of treaties such as the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Cheney's aides find vague and open-ended.

Did you catch the incredible contradiction in Cheney's thinking? On the one hand, he finds the UN treaty against torture "vague and open-ended" while simultaneously wanting to give the president "nearly unfettered power to deal with terrorists," which is also vague and open-ended. What the fuck?

Of course, you can't expect the WaPo to point out the hypocrisy that is so obvious within a single paragraph, because I'm sure that it will be readily apparent to all those news screaming heads on MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and--of course--FOX. Since that's where America gets its debating points, I'm sure they'll be fully informed of this dark, bloody stain on our national reputation abroad.

Dick Cheney is a fascist and a criminal. My God, I hope we have our own version of the Nuremburg trials. Who wants to pull the lever that makes this crooked motherfucker's neck snap? We'll have to have a lottery for that privilege.

Is Chimpie Now "Toasty"? Is Scooter Soon to Be "Inmate # 3374871"?

Chimpie's poll numbers remind me of the tech stock bubble crash of 2000-2001. Lucent, previously the darling of the investment community, had soared from an initial IPO of $24 (or close to that) to $80 a share and I had colleagues who were shifting their entire portfolios into Lucent stock, with some even borrowing money to buy even more of Lucent on margin. Considering that these folks were also working for a Lucent-owned subsidiary, this was really not the wisest of moves, but hell--it was going to $100/share!

Then it dropped to $75, $73, $70...well, a buying opportunity, they said, a little profit-taking, that's all. They bought more. $69...$65...$61...$55. Some started dumping shares of exercising their options. $37...$29...$17...by now it was clear that there was going to be no recovery, as it was revealed that like many other high-flyers, Lucent had engaged in questionable practices to make their books look good. For example, they loaned money to customers to buy Lucent equipment, thus logging the loans as assets along with the sales which had yet to actually put any gear into the hands of customers, who then were to use it to make money to pay back the loans. Got it? Yeah, it sounded corrupt to me too.

$12...$11...and the joke became, "Hey, it can't go below zero dollars." $7...$4...we began to wonder if that was strictly true. It's been hovering between $1 and $3.25 a share ever since, and sinking last time I looked.

And so it is with the Chimpie administration. Bush is at 35 percent approval rating, when it once was at 90-something right after 9/11.

Well, at least it can't go below zero, ha ha ha. Unless you consider the finger in the dike of corruption that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has as one of the digits on his left hand. He's being arraigned today, expected to plead not guilty. He's facing 30 years in prison. Patrick Fitzgerald's appearance on Friday to present his case, according to Newsweek, even impressed Bush himself. If Libby flips...

It can go below zero.

How It's Breaking Down for Bush

There is a fault line running through the executive branch of our government right now. On one side is El Presidente Chimperor Chimpie Bush, our incurious and rather dimwitted chief executive. Allied with him are Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and the Bush clan. On the other side of the increasingly widening divide is the Cheney cabal, consisting of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter "I"m a-goin to Prison" Libby, new VP chief of staff David Addington and new assistant to the vice president for national security affair John Hannah. Now that Scooter has been indicted and Rover is still under investigation, it looks definite that somebody is going to take a fall, and if Seymour Hersh is right, it's going to get very big and very heavy.

Rove is probably right now telling Chimpie that he'd better be prepared to throw Cheney to the sharks if he wants to survive as president. Hell, that's what Nixon tried to do by letting the prosecution go forward against Spiro Agnew. Distraction is the name of the game. Trouble is, Cheney has far more power that Agnew did and Cheney is no pie-eyed idealist who thinks Chimpie is Our Saviour. In fact, he knows good and well what the Bush clan is capable of, up to and including assassination (remember CIA-chief William Casey's convenient death during Iran-Contra?), so you can bet he has kept a few trunks and suitcases secreted that contain a plan of escape should the Bushits realize that the only way to sever th umbilical cord of corruption between Chimpie and Cheney is to make him the scapegoat for all that twisting of intelligence leading to war. Then a sudden heart attack, elaborate funeral and inflated rhetoric after substantial revelations in the press, and Chimpie scrimps out his last months in the White House, broken, but not destroyed.

You see, if it is suddenly revealed that Cheney was behind the intelligence cooking and that Bush was just a gullible dupe, no one would be surprised, much as when Reagan said he couldn't remember and guns for hostages negotiations or arms for the contra forces in Nicaragua. He was the "amiable dunce" to Bush's irritatingly incurious ignoramus. Since George W. has always been protected by Mommy Barbara and Daddy Bush and their moneyed friends like Prince Bandar (among the Saudis, for example) they've got the will and the resources to really stick it to Cheney if it will pull the prosecutorial bloodhounds off the scent of a panicked Chimperor, up to and including having Cheney essentially take a bullet for team Bush.

But Cheney is a wily insider, with a lot of keys to closets in which skeletons for every major conservative pol are hidden, and he won't hesitate to call in all and any favors he can to salvage his own skin. And he knows that if the stain can be splashed on Bush, he can remain the enigma he's always wanted to be and return to Wyoming fo clip his Halliburton coupons for his remaining days.

The real battle royale will not be between Patrick Fitzgerald and the corrupt scum of the exeuctive branch, but rather betwen the White House and the Naval Observatory. Chimpie and Cheney are scheduled for a steel-caged death match.

It's gonna be great!

Making My Day

What a great day! Senator Harry Reid's move today was extremely heartening. Now add this Canadian article on New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh's view of the Scooter Libby indictment:

"He's going to save America," Hersh predicted, on the phone from his home in Washington, just days before Fitzgerald announced indictments against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on Friday.

"Because it's not just about Wilson," maintained Hersh, who, as a New York Times reporter in the late 1960s, first blew the lid off the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and, more recently, exposed abuses at Abu Ghraib, the prison west of Baghdad where U.S. forces engaged in torture and humiliation of prisoners. He appears in Toronto tomorrow to speak to the group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

"Fitzgerald's going deep. He may just unravel the whole conspiracy," continues Hersh, who might be proven right. While Libby resigned after being indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, Fitzgerald continues to investigate Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's influential deputy chief of staff.

Mr. Hersh is no cockeyed optimist--unlike your humble blogger who finds such accusations a badge of honor in such dire times--and for him to be this upbeat tells me that he knows something we don't and that something is very, very bad news for Chimpie and the Chimpettes.

If You Think Chimpie's Plan for Avian Flu Will Work...

...then review the record for national security in general.

The Bush administration has missed dozens of deadlines set by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks for developing ways to protect airplanes, ships, and railways from terrorists.

A plan to defend ships and ports from attack is six months overdue. Rules to protect air cargo from infiltration by terrorists are two months late. A study on the cost of antiterrorism training for federal law enforcement officers who fly commercially was supposed to be done more than three years ago.

I guess Jesus will take care of it.

Cafferty Again, Now on Tom DeLay

"The former house leader accused of money-laundering and conspiracy--he's charged with felonies--is suddenly concerned with integrity...So let me get this straight: Republicans get Republican judges?"

Go Jack!

Jack Cafferty Speaks Like an American

On CNN, just moments ago, Jack Cafferty launched into a passionate rant in which he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that this is not a Republican or Democratic thing, but has to do with what's right and what's wrong, and if we were lied to, and most Americans now believe we were, then it has to be discussed and examined, and if it is proven, then those that lied us into war should have their fingernails pulled out and then be thrown out.

Whew! A journalist with blood flowing through his veins. Imagine!

My hat's off to you, Jack. Of course now we have to listen to Leslie Blitzer and his overfed pundits try to dampen Cafferty's clear insight. At least Jeff Greenfield, despite his conservative bent, is owning up to the lack of honesty in the Chimpie administration.

"This country is involved in a war that is not like Pearl Harbor...with a grave and gathering fret." That's what Greenfield is saying, and that a debate on the war would actually benefit this country.

The kneepad press may be recognizing that the winds have shifted.

The Tide Has Turned

For those of us who have known for three years that Chimpie's program for invasion of Iraq was a deranged and/or dishonest play for raiding the U.S. Treasury, paralyzing the citizenry by fear, and seizing all power in the name of national security, this is a sweet, sweet moment. At long last, Harry Reid and the Democrats are showing some fucking spine and forcing the Senate into closed session because, as Popeye would have put it, "I've taken all I can stands and I can't stands no more!"

They are going deep into why Scooter Libby has been indicted, why Dick Cheney has continuously lied and been allowed to get away with it, and why hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives have been destroyed for a war which is not indefensible on any level. War crimes, war profiteering, and general trafficking in human misery are crimes that deserve hanging, and now the motherfucking bastards are going to get what they deserve.

At last. At last. At long last, we may see that democracy can work in this country.

Further into the Bunker

Chimpie is retreating further into the labyrinthe, both of his own delusion and ignorance, and of his literal evasion of scrutiny of all that has gone before--an illegal and bungled war, the alienation of our allies, economic weakness, and moral corruption the likes of which I have never seen. His nomination of Samuel Alito is certainly going to lead to a huge fight in the Senate and the press, and will conveniently shunt the indictment and resignation of VP Dick "I'm a Crook" Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on two charges of perjury, two charges of giving false information, and one charge of obstructing justice. No big deal, really, since these crimes carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in a "pound me in the ass" federal penitentiary.

These fools don't even try to be subtle or tricky any longer with these "Hey! Look! Over here!" distraction strategies. And the complicit kneepad mainstream media collectively scuttle over with beaks open waiting for the White House to feed them their talking points. If you want to understand how the press in this country operates, just watch chickens for a few days. I keep a small flock, and while I hate to denigrate these noble birds by using them as an example of Pavlovian behavior, in them it is entirely understandable. We feed them and protect them and they give us eggs.

But the media has a responsibility to protect us, yet they think that their care and feeding comes from the halls of power, which they give such sycophantic obeisance to that you'd think they were on the payroll. In a sense, they are, since the corporate masters of NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, the New York Times, and so on are connected ball in socket to the very politicos on whom these intrepid reporters are supposed to be keeping honest. When the powerful in the press and the powerful in politics hold banquets together as a normal part of business, when they marry one another (example, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan), when they get nice and familiar and their kids play together, there is not going to be what we need to protect the public interest. In any other business in which one agency monitors another, it would be unthinkable for regulators to socialize with those they inspect, but in Washington D.C., it's the only way to fly.

So, in perfect marching cadence, every media outlet this morning was hyping the food fight to come over Alito's nomination to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat, and Scooter Libby literally became yesterday's news.

Just chickens running in the barnyard toward the fellow holding the corncobs.

The Wet-Ass Hour

For Rove, Libby, Cheney, Chimpie, et alia, the wet-ass hour is going to be extended indefinitely, which is really a brilliant move on Fitzgerald's part. Keeping the tension and uncertainty mixed into the mess at the White House is the best way to torture those lousy motherfuckers. Rove may be happy he's not indicted today, but remaining under investigation can only mean worse rather than better for him.

The indictment of Scooter may be a demonstration to Rove what will happen to him if he does not flip to save his own pasty, bulbous ass. Fitz must have an airtight case on Libby, and he'd going to show Rove's lawyers that the only way to avoid hard prison time is going to be to turn over a bigger fish. That means Chimpie, Cheney, maybe Rumsfeld, and perhaps quite a number of others.

Remember, the rumor mill has been stoked solely by the lawyers and staffers of those under investigation, not from Fitzgerald's staff, so none of it carries any weight at all. When Fitz has his press conference in a couple of hours, I think there are going to be some very, very shocked motherfuckers.

Stay hopeful and stay tuned.

Absolutely Priceless

Click and laugh.

Prediction

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. Here goes: Patrick Fitzgerald's real goal in his investigation will go to the absolute heart of the runup to the invasion of Iraq and key in on the forged Niger uranium documents to determine who forged them. Mr. Fitzgerald is going to rock the Chimpie administration like a Richter Scale 10 'quake would rock San Francisco. When he gets to the bottom of the forgery, it is going to land right smack in Dick Cheney's lap, aided and abetted by Rove, with Bush's knowledge and consent.

They're all going to be royally fucked...by their own goddamned criminality.

Hooray. Too bad the cost had to be so high before the people get it.

Another Angle on Cheney's Culpability

Like Picasso, I am trying to shift points of view to more realistically render the overall phenomenon we are all trying to observe while impatiently waiting for the hammer to fall on the Chimpie Outlaw Cabal. Over at Alternet author Stephen Pizzo guides us through another passage through the crimes at the White House in the runup to war. Along with the great insights, Mr. Pizzo also drops one of the best similes I've read in a while, this time in regard to Patrick Fitzgerald's relentless pursuit of his quarry.

Letting a fellow like that loose on the Bush administration is like turning a bloodhound free in sausage factory -- his nose must have begun twitching the moment he arrived.

So the question is not "if" he found anything, but how much he found. Because when you find a fresh sausage there's almost always another one connected to it -- and another, and another. In this case the first sausage in that string is not the Valerie Plame affair, but war -- specially, how the administration justified invading another nation.

I love that--"like turning a bloodhound free in a sausage factory." As the pal of my two dogs, one of whom is part hound, I have a vivid picture of the excitement with which Mr. Fitzgerald must be pursuing the bad guys.

Mr. Pizzo also gives an excellent analogy as to the technique by which the cabal will be taken down.

First, understand that Dick Cheney was the maestro of that crime. Libby was his Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, the guy who got his hands dirty doing the boss's work. When tough-guy Sammy faced years in prison he rolled over on boss John Gotti. Sammy looked his old boss right in the eye in court as he dropped dime after dime after dime on him. Sammy got out of prison. Gotti died, alone and ranting, in a federal prison hospital.

That's why when Cheney looks at his old pal Scooter these days, he must shudder. Gone are he "atta boy" backslaps, between boss and sidekick. Gone are the "nod, nod, wink, winks," between two soul mates who think so much alike they seldom have to explain. Now when Cheney looks at Scooter he sees a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried -- because he helped bury them. When Scooter looks at Cheney he must see a guy who could spend his golden years luxuriating in his Jackson Hole mansion, while he, Scooter, spends his retirement filing appeals from a cell at Camp Beefcake -- where a nickname like "Scooter" would be a real liability.

So, it must be awkward between the two old friends these days.

If I learned anything about crooks from my years of covering such folk, it's this - good crooks always take out insurance. In the world of white collar crooks, insurance amounts to incriminating evidence - secretly tapped conversations with co-conspirators, copies of documents, notes and emails. The message is, "don't sell me up the river because I have the goods on you too."

So now we have even greater suspense as we await our Fitzmas. What indictments will come down from the Grand Jury? Will Fitz flip Libby and finally get Cheney dragged kicking and screaming from his quarters at the former house of the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory. At last, perhaps, the crooked smirk will become a scar of terror across his face, eyes wide with fear when he realizes that he is going to a place where he will be told when to eat, when to sleep, when to pray, and when to shit.

And then after the fatal heart attack, he'll burn in hell for all eternity. Beautiful.

The Forged Uranium Documents from Italy--Did the White House Know They Were Fake?

This story just keeps growing as our anticipation of the Plamegate indictments swells into discomfort (imagine being a kid and Xmas day starts getting getting shifted out a day on Xmas eve). It's painful, man. In The Washington Monthly on October 24, 2005, Kevin Drum advances a theory that if true could mean war crimes level malfeasance on the part of Chimpie, Cheney, Rice, and the rest of the criminals. First he asks the question that has occurred to many following this affair:

. After all, as Bob Somerby is fond of pointing out, Joe Wilson's famous July 2003 op-ed in the New York Times didn't actually contradict anything the White House had said. In his 2003 State of the Union address, George Bush said that Iraq had "sought...uranium from Africa," while Wilson said only that his trip to Niger convinced him that Iraq had not in fact succeeded in buying uranium. So why the desperate smear campaign against Wilson? Even Karl Rove must have known that leaking his wife's name was fantastically reckless and over the top. Why not just point out the lack of contradiction and leave it at that?

So why? Rove is a smart guy--nobody argues with that--and he is also quite adept at putting in play very complex operations that are several levels of indirection removed from him so that he and whomever he works for are insulated. He does play close to the edge sometimes, as when Chimpie's father fired Rove for leaking to the press during GHW Bush's campaign, but in his whole career he's developed a fine sense of where the line is and he can dance along it with great skill, much to the disgust and frustration of all who have been smeared by him.

Okay, so why take such a risk over such a minor problem? Well, maybe to the White House it wasn't so minor, because they already knew something that hadn't yet come out.

Well, there was something the White House knew at that point that the rest of us didn't. They knew that not only were the Nigerien documents fake, but that they had been proven fake the previous year — though not by Wilson or the IAEA. At that time, everybody thought the timeline went like this: (1) Bush gives SOTU address in January 2003, (2) IAEA proves Nigerien documents are phony in March. That's bad, but not catastrophic. However, the real timeline, known to only a few, was this: (1) State Department determines Nigerien docs are phony in October 2002, (2) Bush mentions African uranium anyway in January SOTU address.

Get it? Bush and his minions KNOW the documents are fake, but proceed to use them anyway, figuring that our collective short memory will prevent their subsequent exposure as bogus as having any effect on their desired goal--invading Iraq.

Mr. Drum makes a final observation that could be comic if the results hadn't turned out so tragic for so many human beings and for the soul of our nation.

And that's what scared them: the possibility that someone was about to expose the story behind the forged documents. That would have blown the pre-war stories about "mushroom clouds" and nuclear programs sky high, and that's what caused them to wildly overreact to Wilson's otherwise innocuous criticisms.

And that's why Fitzgerald wanted to see the Italian report. He figures it might explain the original motivation for the whole affair, and knowing the motivation might help him make his case.

At least, that's my best guess. The irony, of course, is that Wilson didn't know the story behind the forged documents and neither did anyone else. And despite plenty of digging, to this day no one knows the story. But the aftershocks live on.

So the White House, out of fear of exposure of the very dishonest game they were playing with the facts to argue for war, exposes the very depth of its criminality by overreacting to Wilson's revelations. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has requested the Niger documents and I can only hope that it is because he has decided that the crimes committed by this horrid cabal are much, much more serious than outing a CIA agent or lying under oath, although that's enough to cry treason.

Meanwhile, we all wait for Fitzmas.

I Smell Something Big and It's Bad, Bad, Bad

Sismi is Italy's military intelligence service. Its head is a fellow named Nicolo Pollari. And the Italian paper La Repubblica has busted open a story relayed via Buzzflash and American Prospect Online. To wit:

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.

Remember, Stephen Hadley is Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

The Sismi chief's previously undisclosed meeting with Hadley, who was promoted earlier this year to national security adviser, occurred one month before a murky series of events culminated in the U.S. government obtaining copies of the Niger forgeries.

The forged documents were cabled from the U.S. embassy in Rome to Washington after being delivered to embassy officials by Elisabetta Burba, a reporter for Panorama. She had received the papers from an Italian middleman named Rocco Martino. Burba never wrote a story about those documents. Instead her editor, Berlusconi favorite Carlo Rossella, ordered her to bring them immediately to the U.S. embassy.

Berlusconi, of course, is Silvio Berlusconi, pal of Chimpie and yet another corrupt right-wing corrupt leader, prime minister of Italy. Why would he want to influence or help to influence American policy with regard to an invasion of Iraq? La Repubblica covers that:

For Berlusconi and Pollari, according to La Repubblica, the overriding motive was a desire to win more appreciation and prestige from the Americans, who were seen as eager for help in making their sales pitch for war. On Monday, the newspaper described the atmosphere in 2002: "Berlusconi wants Sismi to be big players on the international security scene, to prove themselves to their ally, the United States, and the world. Washington is looking for proof of Saddam's involvement … and wants info immediately."

And the rest, as you know, is history. Bad, bad fucking history for 2000 Americans, countless Iraqis, and even 27 Italians. All in the name of power, of criminality, of arrogance.

May Bush, Berlusconi, and their ilk roast eternally on a spit in hell over Satan's barbecue.