We Don't Need No Stinkin' Handouts

We don't need the federal government spending $100 on each and every taxpayer. We need a federal government with the guts to tell the oil companies to give us all a fair reimbursement for the obscene profits they're accumulating thanks to the policies of the failed federal government. As if.

POTUS GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES?

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF EVENTS SURROUNDING THE IRAQ WAR, THE NIE ASSESSMENT, THE OUTING OF VALERIE WILSON, AND THE EVIDENT WAR CRIMES OF G.W. BUSH

February 13, 2002. All credit for this and the following item goes to Larry Johnson. "During his CIA morning brief, Vice President Cheney asks the CIA to find out the truth about an item in the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Military Joint Intelligence Center Executive Highlight (Vo. 028-02) that analyzed a recent CIA intelligence report and concluded that, 'Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program'. No judgment was offered about the credibility of the reporting. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report [SICR], page 38)."

First part of March, 2002. Again, Larry Johnson, "Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue. Around this time, Ambassador Wilson returns from Niger and is debriefed by two CIA officers from the Directorate of Operations. The officers draft an intelligence report based on Wilson's findings. On 8 March 2002, this intelligence report is disseminated. The CIA rated the report as 'good', because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the intelligence community (SICR, pp. 43-46). The Senate Intelligence Committee goes to great length to try to impugn Ambassador Wilson, but these facts are clear: Joe Wilson, along with U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's and four-star Marine Corps general, Carleton Fulford, each separately reported that there was no substance to the intelligence report claiming Iraq was trying to buy uranium yellowcake. Even the Senate Intelligence Committee reluctantly reaches the same conclusion [emphasis added]."

IN OTHER WORDS, POTUS, VPOTUS, AND COMPANY UNQUESTIONABLY HAD TO KNOW THAT THEIR ARGUMENT FOR "PREEMPTIVE WAR" IN IRAQ WAS A CROCK OF LIES AND MISREPRESENTATIONS.

May 6, 2002. POTUS withdraws from the treaty to create an International Criminal Court. Senior diplomat Pierre-Richard Prosper states "It frees us [the USA] from some of the obligations that are incurred by signature. When you sign you have an obligation not to take actions that would defeat the object or purpose of the treaty," he said. "What we've learnt from the war on terror is that rather than creating an international mechanism to deal with these issues it is better to organise an international mandate that authorises states to use their unilateral tools to tackle the problems we have."

ALARMS SHOULD BE GOING OFF IN YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW. POTUS (OR HIS HANDLERS) KNEW THAT IF THEIR PREVARICATIONS WERE EVER DISCOVERED, THEY WOULD BE CONSIDERED WAR CRIMINALS!

Read Larry Johnson for the timetable between May 2002 and January 2003, during which all of the machinations aimed at discrediting Ambassador J. Wilson occurred, involving I. (just call me "Scooter") Libby, R. (just call me "Deadeye") Cheney, and G. W. (just call me "Dubya") Bush.

WE NOW KNOW THAT THEY HAD NO BASIS ON WHICH TO ARGUE THAT THE INTELLIGENCE THEY PROMOTED IN THE RUN-UP TO THE WAR IN IRAQ WAS THE BEST THEY COULD HAVE HAD. INDEED, THEY ACTIVELY SOUGHT AND USED ONLY THOSE ITEMS THAT SUPPORTED THEIR CASE FOR WAR, EVEN IF THERE WAS NOTHING CLOSE TO A CONSENSUS ON ANY ITEM IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.

January 28, 2003. POTUS utters the famous sixteen words, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

January 31, 2003: According to the NY Times there exists a British government memo indicating that POTUS had made up his mind to invade Iraq, a decision he has vehemently denied ever since.

April 10, 2006: The shoe finally drops. Bush admits he declassified an NIE to 'get the truth out' regarding Niger, Wilson, and his SOTUS. Laughable. If true, why all the cloak and dagger? Why did they need the Office of Special Plans that repackaged raw (and often erroneous) intelligence to support the White House Iraq Group , whose job it was to market the Iraq adventure to the American people? Taken together, the Wilson push-back, the leaked NIE (and others now revealed), the Herculean effort to produce enough fear to confuse and constrain legislators to approve of the use of force once all diplomacy had been exhausted, and so many others, a picture emerges of a pack of lies used to promote a strategic policy long held by Bush and his cronies that the US should extend its hegemony to the Middle East, and in particular, Iraq . It's hard to imagine a stronger case for calling the Iraq attack and occupation anything but unprovoked aggression. And that is a crime against humanity. All we have to do now is have someone with a little clout sew all of the little details together, and send it off to the Hague, and the President of the United States of America will be indicted for war crimes. Oh, and all of this before Iran gets nuked. Wish the world and all its inhabitants luck.

A Crock of Bushit

Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan said only this about Scooter Libby's contention that POTUS authorized him to relate national security information to Judith Miller of the NY Times:

"there's a distinction between declassifying information that is in the public interest and the unauthorized disclosure of classified information that could compromise our nation's security."

OK. Let's assume, for a moment, that POTUS has unlimited power to declassify at will. Likewise VPOTUS. And let's assume for a moment that the information (the "key findings") contained in the NIE was truly going toward shoring up national security. In other words,

"...the reason why the National -- portions of the National Intelligence Estimate were declassified. It was very much in the public interest. I think what you have to do is balance the public interest with protecting national security information. And at that point in time, what was disclosed in the National Intelligence Estimate provided important historical context for the public debate that was going on about the intelligence. And so ... that's why it went through a process, and there was nothing in there that was being disclosed that would have compromised national security."


If I interpret Mr. McLellan's statement correctly (and remember, he speaks for POTUS), revealing details of the NIE to Judith Miller was in the nation's interest, in the peoples' interests, to refute Joseph Wilson, and to back up the White House's pre-war contention that Saddam Hussein wasn't looking for uranium in Niger. All the better to reassure the public that the US was in Iraq for good reason (or, at any rate, because the intelligence told them so), and thus preclude further interest in the WH's use of pre-war intelligence.

I see two glaring problems with POTUS's position, provided to us by Mr. McLellan. First, and this has been mentioned repeatedly on other blogs, according to Patrick Fitzgerald's Wednesday night filing the information to be imparted to Ms. Miller was highly selective and biased in the government's favor (in other words, although not outright lies, these revelations were, at a minimum, disingenuous). Be that as it may. The White House is entitled to its opinion in such matters. If this were the administration's only act, the behavior could be seen as scurrilous, but certainly not illegal. The other problem I see with POTUS's position (again, as received from Mr. McLellan) is that the once-highly sensitive, national security, classified NIE information, which was considered so vitally important to the nation and the war effort, wasn't the substance of a statement to the nation, or the matter of a press conference, or even, at the time, something Scott McLellan saw fit to mention to the news writers and reporters of America. No. It was so vitally important to national interests--the public interest, to use Mr. McLellan's phrase--that it was imparted as deep background, in the guise of a "former Hill staffer", to only one member of the news media. So vitally important was it that the President told the Vice-President to tell his Chief of Staff to whisper it, on the promise of anonymity (the source of which was to be revealed at no time under penalty of perjury), to one newspaper reporter. Important, indeed. Now, the flaw in this plan of the administration's to get the important word out, to assuage the peoples' fear that they might have been lied to, and to do the nation a service, is that all that subterfuge belies the administation's position, as espoused by Mr. McLellan just this morning.

For, if their intention was to perform a service to the nation, why all the cloak-and-dagger behavior? Why ensure that the information be portrayed as having come from an ex-White House staffmember? You would have thought, wouldn't you, that something so important to the people, and to the war effort, would have been something that President Bush would take credit for, or at least Vice-Presidenty Cheney, or even Scooter Libby. Something so illuminating that it could, in one act, foreclose on further worry about the reason for the war in Iraq, shouldn't it have been marquee material?

I'm left with only one conclusion. They acted improperly. They knew they were acting improperly. They covered up their improper activities. They continue to cover up their improper activities. And they expect us to believe them. Shame on us if we buy this crock of Bushit.

To John Dean: Paging Eliot Ness

Dear John,
Although your words will, no doubt, be lost on the 59 million who voted for POTUS in 2004, and therefore constitutes, to a large degree, preaching to the choir, I still applaud your engagement in the issue of presidential power and selective release of classified information for political gain. If hypocrisy were a federal crime, and you had the clout to actively pursue the truth-twisters on capital hill, we would long since have seen the lot of them in the brig. And that brings up my point in this letter. You don't have the clout. Nor does Kos, nor Josh Marshall, nor Red Head, nor any of the rest of us. It seems as if, at the moment, only one person wields the power to apply legal pressure on the White House--Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the CIA outing investigation. One person with the clout. Not the Attorney General. Not the Senate Judiciary Committee (well, they actually have the power, but not the inclination). Not the House. It seems that those who are justifiably incensed at the behavior of POTUS and his ilk are powerless, unless and until there is a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate while the hypocrites are still in office. Thus, we must cross our fingers and hope that historically lethargic Democratic voters flock to their polling stations this coming November and are able to reright the imbalance on Capitol Hill. Unless, of course, a modern-day Eliot Ness bursts in to rid us of the putrid odor emanating from Pennsylvania Avenue.

INTERESTING TIMES

I haven't much to say tonight. I'm certainly glad DeLay is in the dustbin of legislative history, but I'm not at all certain that we've seen or heard the last of him. I'm worried about POTUS having his sights trained on Iran. They would be a formidable foe. I read yesterday that they are equipped with Mach 2 cruise missiles that are at present impossible to defend against, with a range of 100 miles or so--enough to vaporize anthing in the Persian Gulf (aptly named under the circumstances, I think). I can't shake this feeling of 'impending doom', as Charlie Brown used to say (I believe). Three more years of that fascist POTUS and his venomous snakepit of advisors. Three more years, at least, of slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish I had the answer. Getting angry doesn't do any good by itself. Being depressed about it doesn't seem to matter, either. Obsessively clicking around the blogosphere is fruitless, if eminently edifying. I have enough energy (almost) to be engaged, but not enough, it appears, to be effective. Guess I'll just hope that the interesting times we live in are not really the curse I think them to be, and that there'll be lessons learned and slates wiped clean and heroic speeches and even more heroic deeds. All I really have is hope. And that's not such a bad thing.

POTUS's 14 points of light: Fascism on the Potomac

I never really understood what fascism was all about, except maybe for a sense that it entails secret police, ubiquitous use of party symbolism, intolerance of difference to the extent of institutionalized murder, and imperialist agression. Most of these are visible in any totalitarian system. So what makes fascism Fascism, I wondered? Laurence Britt has as good an explanation as any I've seen. When you ignore the qualities I've mentioned above, along with a few others, because they are shared with other kinds of socioeconomic systems, two characteristics remain. First, corporate power is protected to the advantage of the politicians and the business aristocracy. Second, but equally important, I think, is that religion and government are inextricably related. The government uses religion as a weapon against dissent, to marginalize free thinkers. And government has no compunction about acting in a distinctly un-religious manner when it suits them. If any of this sounds familiar, it should. We are witnessing a political transformation in this country. Not, as the Republicans and the religious right maintain, a union of traditional Christian values and moral imperatives with government, but rather the infliction of de facto fascism on the people of the United States, right under their noses. Welcome to fascist America, everyone. Make yourselves comfortable. But as the shrunken head in the Prisoner of Azkhaban so prophetically announced: "Clench your buttocks. It looks like we're in for a bumpy ride."