Honestly (and all perfunctory “wouldn’t wish it on anybody” statements aside), I don’t know if the presumably imminent departure of Kim Jong-Il (the five-year survival rate of people with pancreatic cancer is a mere 4%) and the rise of his son, Kim Jong Un (whom Kim Jong-Il named as his successor last month — which is no secret to anyone but the North Korean people, who apparently haven’t yet been told) is a good thing, or a bad thing.
What I do remember are the warnings we heard when Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il’s father, was dying, and Kim Jong-Il was poised to assume power — which can be boiled down to: “If you think the father is crazy, wait ’til you get a load of the son.”
What do we know about Kim Jong Un, and what can we expect — or fear?
“David R. Irvine is a Salt Lake attorney and former Utah legislator residing in Bountiful. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve as a strategic intelligence officer in 1967 and retired as a brigadier general. He taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years for the Sixth United States Army Intelligence School.”
I knew this name sounded familiar — and now I’m sorry I ever studied up on PNAC, ’cause at this juncture I’d rather forget everything I ever learned in the past eight years, and live the rest of my life in blissful ignorance. But once your eyes have been opened…
Dennis Ross, a former top diplomat for the George H W Bush and Clinton administrations, will become the Obama administration’s top envoy on the Middle East, an internal email from Mr Ross’s current employer has revealed.
Mr Ross, who previously served as the US envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is set to take a wider role as Hillary Clinton’s top adviser for the Middle East as a whole. Ms Clinton herself is due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing for Secretary of State next Tuesday.
Executives at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the think-tank where Mr Ross works, told the organisation’s board that Mr Ross had “accepted an invitation to join the Obama administration as ambassador-at-large” in a job “designed especially for him,” covering a range of issues from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Iran.
The email, first reported by Chris Nelson, a Washington-based foreign policy expert, adds that Mr Ross “will not reprise his previous role as special Arab-Israeli peace envoy, a post that will be held by someone else; rather he will be working closely with both the special envoy and the secretary.”
Mr Ross is likely to strike a high profile in his new job, particularly given the current Gaza conflict and mounting fears about Iran’s nuclear capacity. He served as an adviser on the Middle East to president-elect Barack Obama during the election campaign, calling for bigger carrots and bigger sticks to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons capacity. …
More at the link. And if mention of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy alone hasn’t already given you a heart attack, here’s the rest of the story on Ross, from the invaluable Right Web:
Although generally considered a political moderate, Ross has been closely associated with a number of neoconservative-led organizations and policy initiatives. A consultant for the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ross supported the advocacy efforts of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a key role advocating invading Iraq in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also frequently promotes aggressive Mideast policies in his writings and congressional testimony, and regularly teams up with scholars from organizations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft policy approaches toward Tehran’s nuclear program and other issues in the region. …
Ross got his start in high-level policymaking working under Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon during the Jimmy Carter administration, where Wolfowitz headed up a project called the Limited Contingency Study, the results of which, writes author James Mann, “would play a groundbreaking role in changing American military policy toward the Persian Gulf over the coming decades.” …
After the election of Ronald Reagan, Wolfowitz became head of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, where he assembled a team of advisors that included a number of figures who later became closely involved in neoconservative-led campaigns, including Ross, I. Lewis Libby, James Roche, Zalmay Khalilzad, Alan Keyes, and Francis Fukuyama. Discussing this period, Mann points to Ross in arguing that “not everyone on [Wolfowitz’s] staff was a neoconservative. … The fact remained, however, that Wolfowitz’s policy planning staff turned out to be the training ground for a new generation of national security specialists, many of whom shared Wolfowitz’s ideas, assumptions, and interests.”
Also during the Reagan presidency, Ross “served as director of Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff … and as Deputy Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment,” according to his biography on the website of the Harry Walker Agency, a speakers bureau that also promotes, among others, former George W. Bush aide Peter Wehner, the neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and alarmist antiterror wonk Steven Emerson. …
During the presidency of George W. Bush, Ross continued his policy work as a consultant to and fellow at WINEP, authoring policy papers, penning op-eds, and providing congressional testimony on Middle East issues. He repeatedly joined forces with neoconservatives, signing open letters for PNAC, advising advocacy groups like United against Nuclear Iran (whose leadership include former CIA director James Woolsey and hawkish weapons proliferation expert Henry Sokolski), and joining AEI scholars Michael Rubin and Reuel Marc Gerecht in discussing Mideast policies with their counterparts at the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute…
In 2006, Ross joined a cast of neoconservatives and foreign policy hawks in supporting the I. Lewis Libby Defense Fund, an initiative aimed at raising money for the disgraced former assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in connection to the investigation into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name. Ross served on the group’s steering committee along with Fred Thompson, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbes, Bernard Lewis, and Francis Fukuyama. The group’s chairman was Mel Sembler, a real estate magnate who serves as a trustee at AEI and has funded the group Freedom’s Watch. …
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ross supported the advocacy work of PNAC, a neoconservative-led letterhead group that advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein in response to the attacks, even if he was not tied to the them. Ross signed two PNAC open letters on the situation in post-war Iraq, both published in March 2003. The first of these, “Statement on Post-War Iraq,” was issued on March 19, 2003, the day before the United States began its invasion. The letter argued that Iraq should be seen as the first step in a larger reshaping of the region’s political landscape, contending that the invasion and rebuilding of Iraq could “contribute decisively to the democratization of the wider Middle East.” Other signatories included Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Thomas Donnelly, Joshua Muravchik, and several other core neoconservatives. …
In the aftermath of the invasion, Ross—as well as a number of neoconservatives—expressed deep skepticism about the course of the war and the future prospects in Iraq. …
However, in critiquing Bush’s Mideast policies, Ross has limited his criticism to issues of implementation, while giving the White House high marks for its objectives. …
Ross’s approach to Iran appears to have grown increasingly belligerent over time. …
During the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections Ross participated in two study groups aimed at influencing the next president’s policies toward Iran, both of which proposed extremely aggressive approaches. …
Much, much more at the link, with lots of sourcing.
Normally, I breeze by the homophobic garbage on Democratic Underground, partly because I don’t haunt the halls of DU anymore (unless I’m tipped off to a particularly interesting meltdown going on in real-time), and mostly because I don’t see the point in torturing myself watching my people battle those hopelessly (and happily) entrenched in their own bigotry. I wasted six years battling the “Some of my best friends are gay, so I’m an expert on what’s homophobic and what’s not” brigades myself, and it was, indeed, a complete waste of time I could have spent doing something, anything, more productive… like trying to teach goldfish to drive.
Hearing there was something of a meltdown going on (again), I ran across a post by a gay DUer I’ve long liked and respected, who (for the umpteenth time for any LGBT DUer) pointed out the pervasive compulsion to label George W. Bush, or Karl Rove, or pretty much any right-winger as “gay.” This is different from outing a right-winger who really is gay (or at least a verifiable down-low type like Larry Craig); this is the Everyone We Hate is Gay syndrome, and it’s ugly, and extremely offensive to gay people.
After reading the usual “I don’t see any homophobia, so it doesn’t exist” replies from DUers who either have a serious memory disorder, or feign blindness to the neverending stream of homophobia right in front of their keyboards, I thought I’d ever-so-helpfully dredge up a few examples of what they’re “not seeing”… which, apparently, is too herculean a task for the Google-impaired.
Here are 1) the original post in question, and 2) two of the nastiest, most insensitive replies:
LeftCoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 02:57 PM Original message
I’ve been around here for years and it just never stops. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay”. It happens over and over. It’s against the rules and the mods do try, but it never ends. Why?
They say that doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity so I don’t know why I keep expecting it to change.
I don’t know what to do, but I don’t like how DU makes me feel.
devilgrrl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:08 PM Response to Original message
15. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay” - By whom?
Quit painting everyone with one brush stroke please.
kestrel91316 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:21 PM Response to Original message
22. Do you always make shit like this up?
I have been here quite a while and can’t recall a single instance of a Republican being called gay for the hell of it. Now, if they are gay AND closeted AND a homophobe, I can see that.
You probably wanna run back to FR if you wanna concoct fables out of whole cloth.
For these “I can’t recall” folks (who can never again claim that DUers just don’t do this sort of thing), here’s a memory-refresher (and this, my friends, only scratches the surface):
And the winner of the Most Offensive Asshat on DU in 2008 (So Far) Award goes to “kurtboss,” who — to the credit of the DU admins — has since been banned:
kurtboss (361 posts) Mon Aug-04-08 09:05 PM Original message
Okay, let’s just make clear that there is nothing wrong with being Gay, however employing this strategy does make use of the negative cultural stereotypes about homosexuality. It’s exploiting it…but, to a good end.
So, here’s the deal. I want opinions. I don’t know if he’s really gay, but it doesn’t matter. This is hardball politics. A war, healthcare, the economy, etc all ride on this election…so it’s probably worth getting dirty for a couple months. I believe this can destroy his chances for victory by putting this seed of doubt in the minds of bigots.
1. The GOP Evangelicals HATE gays
2. Obviously easy to exploit McCain’s obsession with Obama–it’s practically pathetic at this point and noted everywhere in the media
3. He’s in the Navy. Village People anyone? It gets awfully lonely on ships.
4. To tie this up for you…McCain is already questioned by the Evangelicals and absolutely requires they turn out for him in droves. It’s his weakness.
How to attack it? Viral email. Youtube some effete moments put together…perhaps the infamous hug?? McCain is pretty pro-gay as GOP guys on policy isn’t he??? Check out the four photos below in what my FIRST and only google image search turned of of McCain hug
As for transphobia (or: Everyone We Hate is Transgender), there are far too many references to “Mann Coulter” to waste my time listing them all; see for yourself.
Don’t even get me started on the “prison rape is funny” posts — or the “Gays will lose us the next election! / Gays lost us the election!” scapegoating that happens every two years, like clockwork.
* While Hillary Clinton is not a right-winger, she is loathed as much as Bush, Rove, and all the rest by a substantial portion of DU. Remember, the ploy is called Everyone We Hate is Gay.
Statement by US Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich Presenting an Article of Impeachment of the President
WASHINGTON — July 10 — Yesterday in the House, we had a moment of silence for the troops. Today it is time to speak out on behalf of those troops who will be in Iraq for at least another year, courageously representing our nation while their Commander in Chief sent them on a mission that was based on falsehoods about the threat of WMDs from Iraq.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2002, the Congress, the media and the American people heard the terrifying drumbeat of fear from the Bush White House in the form of loud, well-advertised and orchestrated chanting by the President and his Administration about “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” “Nuclear Threats,” “Biological Weapons,” “Chemical Weapons,” “Threats of Imminent Attack,” all calculated to gain media attention, public support and Congressional support for a war against Iraq.
This afternoon I will introduce a single Article of Impeachment of the President.
The Article is entitled: “Deceiving Congress with Fabricated Threats of Iraq WMDs to Fraudulently Obtain Support for an Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.” The Impeachment resolution focuses narrowly on what the President presented to Congress in the Authorization of the Use of Military Force. It does not address the voluminous evidence of orchestrated deceptions which have been well documented by various governmental, non-governmental and media sources.
I understand that many members of Congress voted in good faith to authorize the use of force against Iraq. And I understand that many in the media supported that action. When the President of the United States makes representations on matters of life and death, we all want to believe him and give him the benefit of the doubt. Trust is the glue which holds the fabric of our nation together.
Those in Congress and in the media who acted on the President’s representations of the threat of Iraq WMDs did so trusting that those representations were honest. Unfortunately, they were not. We all know the consequences of the war, the loss of lives and injury to our troops, the deaths of innocent Iraqis, the cost to the American taxpayers. There has been another consequence: Great damage to our Constitution through an unnecessary, illegal war and the destruction of the superior role of Congress in the life of this nation.
Congress must, in the name of the American people, use the one remedy which the Founders provided for an Executive who gravely abused his power: Impeachment. Congress must reassert itself as a co-equal branch of government; bring this President to an accounting, and in doing so reestablish the people’s trust in Congress and in our United States system of government. We must not let this President’s conduct go unchallenged and thereby create a precedent which undermines the Constitution.
In the final analysis this is about our Constitution and whether a President can be held accountable for his actions and his deceptions, especially when the effects of those actions have been so calamitous for America, Iraq and the world. Unless Congress reasserts itself as the power branch of government which the Founders intended, our experiment with a republican form of Government may be nearing an end. But when Congress acts to hold this President accountable it will be redeeming the faith that the Founders had in the power of a system of checks and balances which preserves our republic.
DRAFT
AN ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
INTRODUCED BY CONGRESSMAN DENNIS J. KUCINICH
JULY 10, 2008
Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following Article of Impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:
An Article of Impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.
ARTICLE ONE
DECEIVING CONGRESS WITH FABRICATED THREATS OF IRAQ WMDs TO FRAUDULENTLY OBTAIN SUPPORT FOR AN AUTHORIZATION OF THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ.
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” deceived Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization for the use of force against Iraq and used that fraudulently obtained authorization, then acting in his capacity under Article II, Section II of the Constitution as Commander in Chief, to commit US troops to combat in Iraq.
To gain Congressional support for passage of the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, the President made the following material representations to the Congress in SJ Res 45:
1. That Iraq was “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability. …”
2. That Iraq was “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability. …”
3. That Iraq was “continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security.”
4. That Iraq has demonstrated a “willingness to attack, the United States….”
5. That “members of Al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq. …”
6. The “attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat that Iraq will transfer weapons of mass destruction to international terrorist organizations…”
7. That Iraq “will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, …”
8. That an “extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack,. .. .”
9. That the aforementioned threats “justify action by the United States to defend itself; …”
10. The enactment clause of Section 2 of SJ Res 45, the Authorization of the Use of the United States Armed Forces authorizes the President to “defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq…”
Each consequential representation made by the President to the Congress in SJ Res 45, in subsequent iterations and the final version was unsupported by evidence which was in the control of the White House.
1. Iraq was not “continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability…”
“A substantial amount of Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) actions. … There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has–or will–establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.” Defense Intelligence Agency. Iraq–Key WMD Facilities–An Operational Support Study. September 2002. Available: http://www.fas.org/…
“Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information. June 5, 2008. Available: http://intelligence.senate.gov/…
“In April and early May 2003, military forces found mobile trailers in Iraq. Although intelligence experts disputed the purpose of the trailers, Administration officials repeatedly asserted that they were mobile biological weapons laboratories. In total, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice made 34 misleading statements about the trailers in 27 separate public appearances. Shortly after the (mobile trailers were found, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) issued an unclassified white paper evaluating the trailers. The white paper was released without coordination with other members of the intelligence community, however. It was disclosed later that engineers from DIA who examined the trailers concluded that they were most likely used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. A former senior intelligence official reported that “only one of 15 intelligence analysts assembled from three agencies to discuss the issue in June endorsed the white paper conclusion.” House Committee on Government Reform- Minority Staff. Iraq on the Record: Bush Administration’s Public Statements about Chemical and Biological Weapons. March 16, 2004. Available: http://oversight.house.gov/…
Former chief of CIA covert operations in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, has said that the CIA had credible sources discounting weapons of mass destruction claims, incuding the primary source of biological weapons claims, an informant who the Germans code-named “Curveball” whom the Germans had informed the Bush Administration was a likely fabricator and including the Niger Yellowcake forgery. Two other former CIA officers confirmed Drumheller’s account to Sidney Blumenthal who reported the story at Salon.com on September 6, 2007.
“In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced biological weapons (BW) weapons quickly. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the Presidential level. In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent production systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons. … ISG harbors severe doubts about the source’s credibility in regards to the breakout program.” Duelfer, Charles. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s WMD. Available: http://www.lib.umich.edu/…
“While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.” Duelfer, Charles. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s WMD. Available: http://www.lib.umich.edu/…
2. Iraq was not “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.”
The key finding of the Iraq Survey Group’s (ISG) Report to the Director of Central Intelligence found that “Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date. Saddam Husayn (sic) ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.” Duelfer, Charles. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s WMD. Available: http://www.lib.umich.edu/…
Claims that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Niger were not supported by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002.
The CIA had warned the British not to claim Iraq was purchasing uranium from Niger prior to the British statement that was later cited by President Bush. George Tenet, July 11, 2003
“One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites. Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990. Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use n centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have been — it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminum tubes in question. Fourthly, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment program. As I stated above, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.” ElBaradei, Mohamed. Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency. Statement to the United Nations Security Council on The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update. March 7, 2003. Available: http://www.iaea.org/…
3. Iraq was not “continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States.”
“Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of [Iraq’s biological, chemical, and nuclear] programs and those debates were spelled out in the Estimate. They never said there was an ‘imminent’ threat.” Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Former CIA Director George J. Tenet at Georgetown University. February 5, 2004. Available: http://www.fas.org/…
“We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq … We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction have had some controls on them … it’s been quite a success for ten years.” Powell, Colin. Secretary of State. Interview with Face the Nation. February 11, 2001.
“[British Secret Intelligence Service Chief Sir Richard Billing Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. … The Foreign Secretary (of England) said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.” Rycroft, Matthew; Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Memo to British Ambassador to the United States David Manning. July 23, 2002. Available: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…
4. Iraq did not have the “willingness to attack, the United States.”
“The fact of the matter is that both baskets, the UN basket and what we and other allies have been doing in the region, have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions. His forces are about one-third their original size. They really don’t possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago.” Powell, Colin. Secretary of State. Transcript of Remarks made to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. February 2001. Available: http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/…
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.” Available: http://www.globalsecurity.org/…
5. Iraq had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, or with al-Qaida’s role in 9/11.
“The report [of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] documents significant instances in which the Admnistration went beyond what the Intelligence Community knew or believed in making public claims, most notably on the false assertion that Iraq and al-Qaida had an operational partnership and joint involvement in carrying out the attacks of September 11th. The President and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against al-Qaida as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the Nation to war on false premises.” Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Additional Views of Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV. Page 90. Available: http://intelligence.senate.gov/…
Richard Clarke’s memo of September 18, 2001, titled Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks found no “compelling case” that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks, and that there was no confirmed reporting on Saddam cooperating with Bin Laden on unconventional weapons http://www.9-11commission.gov/… (page 334).
On September 17, 2003, President Bush said: “No, we’ve no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th. What the vice president said was is that he (Saddam) has been involved with al-Qaida.” Available: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/…
On June 16, 2004, a Staff Report from the 9/11 Commission stated: “There has been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan [in 1996], but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. … Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” Available: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
“Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
“Feith’s office ‘was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,’ according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith’s activities as ‘an alternative intelligence assessment process.’” Pincus, Walter and Smith, R. Jeffrey. “Official’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted, ‘Dubious’ Intelligence Fueled Push for War.” Washington Post. February 9, 2007. A1.
6. Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction to transfer to anyone.
Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction to transfer. Furthermore, available intelligence information found that the Iraq regime would only transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations if under severe threat of attack by the United States:
According to information in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that was available to the Administration at the time they were seeking Congressional support for the authorization of the use of force against Iraq, the Iraq regime would transfer weapons to a terrorist organization only if “sufficiently desperate” because it feared that “an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable… ”
“Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge. Such attacks — more likely with biological than chemical agents — probably would be carried out by special forces or intelligence operatives.
“The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) probably has been directed to conduct clandestine attacks against US and Allied interests in the Middle East in the event the United States takes action against Iraq. The IIS probably would be the primary means by which Iraq would attempt to conduct any CBW attacks on the US Homeland, although we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam’s regime has directed attacks against US territory.
“Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa’ida — with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States — would perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.
“In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.” Available: http://www.globalsecurity.org/…
7. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and therefore had no capability of launching a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so…”
Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction to transfer. Furthermore, available intelligence information found that the Iraq regime would only transfer weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organizations if under severe threat of attack by the United States:
According to information in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that was available to the Administration at the time they were seeking Congressional support for the authorization of the use of force against Iraq, the Iraq regime would transfer weapons to a terrorist organization only if “sufficiently desperate” because it feared that “an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable…” October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Available: http://www.globalsecurity.org/…
“Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge. Such attacks - more likely with biological than chemical agents - probably would be carried out by special forces or intelligence operatives.”
“The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) probably has been directed to conduct clandestine attacks against US and Allied interests in the Middle East in the event the United States takes action against Iraq. The IIS probably would be the primary means by which Iraq would attempt to conduct any CBW attacks on the US Homeland, although we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam’s regime has directed attacks against US territory.”
“Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa’ida - with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States - would perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.”
“In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.”
As reported in the Washington Post on March 1, 2003, in 1995, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel had informed US and British intelligence officers that “all weapons–biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed.” Lynch, Colum. “Iraqi Defector Claimed Arms Were Destroyed by 1995.” Washington Post. A15. March 1, 2003.
“A substantial amount of Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) actions. … There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has–or will–establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.” Defense Intelligence Agency. Iraq–Key WMD Facilities–An Operational Support Study. September 2002. Available: http://www.fas.org/…
8. There was not a real risk of an “extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack” because Iraq had no capability of attacking the United States.
“Containment has been a successful policy, and I think we should make sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the (Gulf) War. … [Iraq is] not threatening America.” Powell, Colin. Secretary of State.
9. The aforementioned evidence did not “justify the use of force by the United States to defend itself” because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, or have the intention or capability of using the non-existent WMD’s against the United States.
10. Since there was no threat posed by Iraq to the United States, the enactment clause was predicated on lying to Congress.
Congress relied on the information provided to it by the President of the United States. Congress provided the President with the authorization to use military force that he requested. As a consequence of the fraudulent representations made to the Congress, the United States Armed Forces, under the direction of George Bush as Commander in Chief, pursuant to Section 3 of the Authorization for the Use of Force which President Bush requested, invaded Iraq and occupies it to this day, at the cost of 4,116 lives of US service men and women, injuries to over 30,000 of our troops, the deaths of over 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, the destruction of Iraq, and a long term cost over $3 trillion.
President Bush’s misrepresentations to Congress to induce passage of a use of force resolution is subversive of the Constitutional system of checks and balances, destructive of Congress’ sole prerogative to declare war under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, and is therefore a High Crime. An even greater offense by the President of the United States occurs in his capacity as Commander in Chief, because he knowingly placed the men and women of the United States Armed Forces in harm’s way, jeopardizing their lives and their families’ future, for reasons that to this date have not been established in fact.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States and of those members of the Armed Forces who put their lives on the line pursuant to the falsehoods of the President. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you look at Obama and see no “there” there.
If you’re an Obama supporter, nothing gets your goat like a Clinton supporter saying Obama is all style and no substance.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask Obama supporters to show you Obama’s substance.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you tell Clinton supporters that Obama is a “blank screen” onto which you’re supposed to project all your own hopes and dreams.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, the “blank screen” line just means there’s no “there” there.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you get angry when the Clinton supporters dismiss the “blank screen” concept.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask the Obama supporters to explain, in their own words, what Obama intends to actually do.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you direct all Clinton supporters to Obama’s Web site, to read somebody else’s words — and then complain that nobody reads Obama’s Web site.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’ve combed through Obama’s Web site, repeatedly, and find no “there” there.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, Obama’s entire campaign smacks of a preachy, religious tent revival.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you rail against religious or “cult” comparisons — while you refuse to discuss issues and policies, instead following your “Camp Obama” leader’s directive to share only “personal conversion stories.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you hate using such a heavily-loaded word as “cult,” but you’re extremely uneasy about the many ways in which the Obama supporters resemble the followers of… well… sorry to say it, but… yes… Jim Jones.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you take extreme umbrage at being branded “cult-like” — but you have to consult Wikipedia to find out who Jim Jones was.
If you’re an Obama supporter, once you find out who Jim Jones was, you suddenly understand what “drinking the Kool-Aid” means, and you’re positively aghast anyone would aim that Jonestown allusion at you.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you want to scream at the Obama supporters: “What do you think everybody meant about ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ in reference to the Bush administration all these years?!” And then you go bang your head against the nearest doorjamb until the pain stops.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you revile Bill Clinton — and by extension, Hillary — for signing NAFTA.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re still stunned that Bill Clinton was impeached over lying about a lousy blow job, yet all attempts to impeach George W. Bush, a bona fide war criminal, have failed.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached for lying about a lousy blow job, but you don’t support impeaching Bush or even Cheney, because Obama told you that he doesn’t support it, explaining that “you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority” — which means that Bill’s lousy blow job is a far more “grave, grave breech” than anything Bush or Cheney has ever done.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember when former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson risked everything to blow the lid off BushCo’s “yellowcake” lie and expose the treasonous, criminal betrayal of his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame — which not only endangered her life, but endangered national security.
If you’re an Obama supporter, Joe Wilson is a paid Hillary operative, and Valerie Plame is a ditzy blonde who needed her husband to bail her out of an embarrassing situation.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you think Paul Krugman is a brilliant economist and fine political commentator, whose progressive perspective has remained consistent since the early 1990s.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you think Paul Krugman is an inbred knuckledragger too stupid to balance his own checkbook.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’ve always thought Peggy Noonan was a bitter, nasty, right-wing hack, and your opinion has never changed.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you never realized how wise and erudite Peggy Noonan really was, until late January of 2008, when she ripped both Clintons up one side and down the other.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, nothing Peggy Noonan writes surprises you, since Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, after all, and— by the way, speaking of Ronald Reagan…
If you’re an Obama supporter, you agree with Obama’s praise of “that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship” Ronald Reagan employed in curbing “all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that the “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” Reagan’s right-wing backlash was targeting included the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, the consumer-protection movement, and the environmental movement. For starters.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you cry, “That’s not what he meant by ‘excesses of the 1960s and 1970s’!” but when pressed to explain what he did mean by “excesses of the 1960s and 1970s,” you start to mumble something about “fiscal excesses,” but stop mid-sentence when you realize that Reagan was a union-busting tax cutter who gutted the middle class and racked up the largest federal deficit in U.S. history.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t comprehend how Michelle Obama’s remark, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback,” could possibly be perceived as a dismissal of every American achievement of the past 25 years.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder, as Sasha Issenberg put it, “So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re quick to correct the quote; what she really said was “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you don’t see how the addition of the word “really” changes the meaning — especially since both quotes are correct, as she made them in two different speeches on the same day.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you respond that no one can possibly understand what Michelle Obama really meant unless you’re black, because America has yet to earn the pride of a minority that has been oppressed, demonized, and dehumanized throughout the entirety of America’s 232-year history.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, and you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, you wonder how you manage to find plenty of things to make you proud of America while remaining oppressed, demonized, and dehumanized throughout the entirety of America’s 232-year history.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you also wonder how Obama supporters can keep claiming that Barack Obama “transcends race,” when they keep using lines like “You can’t understand what Michelle Obama really meant unless you’re black.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’ve been demanding Clinton release her tax returns, right damn now!
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re not allowed to wonder why public access to Michelle Obama’s 1985 sociology thesis has been “Restricted until November 5, 2008.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remember that too — and you also remember the way the Clintons were raked over the coals for it.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you remind the Clinton supporters that Michelle Obama’s thesis is irrelevant — Michelle isn’t running for president.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you remind the Obama supporters that Hillary Clinton wasn’t running for president in 1993, either.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know Obama is going to take the general election in a landslide — just look at how he’s knocked Hillary flat on her butt in 24 state primary races already!
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that Obama wins caucuses and open primaries (in which registered Republicans and in some cases even unregistered voters) can vote for whoever they want, while Clinton wins closed primaries. (Obama has won eleven caucuses, five open primaries, and eight closed primaries — while Clinton has won nine closed primaries, three open primaries, and one caucus.)
If you’re an Obama supporter, you snark at Clinton supporters because they’re essentially saying: “Some states don’t count.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know that Republicans who “cross over” to vote for the weaker Democrat in open Democratic primaries — like the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Bluey — are not an anomaly.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you scoff at Clinton supporters who just can’t believe that Obama is accomplishing exactly what he said he was going to do: convert Republicans and Independents to the Democratic Party.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’re stunned by how deeply in denial the Obama supporters are about the Republicans’ long tradition of gaming the system.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you just don’t believe the Republicans are that smart, or that organized.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you wonder if the Obama supporters have even the first clue about the real meaning of “Rovian tactics.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re convinced that Obama’s healthcare plan will give every American the same health-insurance coverage Obama himself enjoys.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you know Obama’s plan is a mandate for 15 million uninsured American children — and nobody else.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you rail against Clinton’s healthcare plan because you think it involves “wage garnishment.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you ask Obama supporters if they think Social Security (a.k.a. FICA) deductions are a form of “wage garnishment,” too.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you point out the vast unfairness of Clinton’s healthcare plan, as it will “penalize” childless Americans who have to pay for the coverage of somebody else’s kids.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you point out — again — that Obama’s plan is a mandate for 15 million uninsured American children, and nobody else — which means childless people will be paying for the coverage of somebody else’s kids.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re stuck for an answer to this one, especially as the Clinton supporters turn to the next logical question: “Do Obama supporters complain just as loudly about their taxes paying for ’somebody else’s kids’ to attend public school, too — or would they prefer school vouchers?”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you’d never in a million years dream of attributing any of Obama’s negative campaign tactics or unlikeable personal characteristics to the fact that he’s black — that would be a truly despicable, racist thing to do.
If you’re an Obama supporter, there’s a strong chance you attribute everything you hate about Hillary Clinton to the idea that she’s having her period, or she’s not having her period, or she’s past having her period — all of which makes her “unhinged,” “hysterical,” “shrill,” “screeching,” a “harpy,” a “shrew,” a “bitch,” a “nag,” a “virago,” “weepy,” “emotionally unbalanced,” “losing it,” “cracking up,” “like your ex-wife yelling at you,” “an angry schoolmarm,” “insane,” subject to “mood swings,” “bipolar,” having “Mommy Moments,” having a “case of the vapors,” “on the rag,” and “in need of a Midol” — or, as Obama himself so slyly put it, “the claws come out” and she “launches attacks” … “periodically when she’s feeling down.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, you know it’s not your place to judge whether or not anyone is a “true Christian” — but you’re well within your rights to judge whether or not anyone is a “true Democrat.”
If you’re a Clinton supporter, the familiar strains of “You’re either with us or you’re against us” sends a chill down your spine.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you wax poetic over the way Obama is going to unite all Americans.
If you’re a Clinton supporter, you tremble when you think of the last presidential candidate who billed himself as “a uniter, not a divider.”
If you’re an Obama supporter, “unity” means: Vilify, marginalize, ostracize, and ridicule Hillary Clinton and her supporters — while “reaching out” to Republicans; gloat like a soccer hooligan over Obama’s popularity; and tell Clinton supporters Obama doesn’t need their support, their donations, or their votes.
If you’re an Obama supporter, you can’t understand why Clinton supporters respond with: “OK, then win without us in November. Good luck.”
Yes, it looks like we’re going to have a Part 3!
Copyright (c) 2008 LavenderLiberal.com. Permission is granted to reproduce “If You’re An Obama Supporter… / If You’re A Clinton Supporter…” in part or in full, on the World Wide Web or through email only (i.e., not in any hardcopy or other permanent storage medium), solely on the condition that 1) this copyright notice, 2) proper attribution (”Lavender Newswire”) and 3) a live hyperlink back to this post or to the Lavender Newswire home page ( http://news.lavenderliberal.com ) is included with the reprinted content.
Having already run over Mary once, Liz prepares to back up and do it again.
Well, we assume Liz Cheney, the not-lesbian daughter of The Big Dick and his wife who’s not a lesbian but appears obsessed with lesbian sex, hates the guts (or at least the oh so sinful lifestyle) of Mother Mary— er, her sister, Mary Cheney, the boyish, brainless lesbian turncoat we love to hate (because she got hers, so to hell with everybody else).
It’s bad enough that Neocon Liz was working for the presidential campaign of Fred Thompson, until the ugly, mediocre actor with the hearing problem (or maybe just the stupid problem) dropped out of the race, but now Liz is working for Mitt Romney as senior foreign policy adviser (so Mitt’ll have some good-sounding made-up reasons to bomb Syria and Iraq and anybody else he damn well pleases back to the Stone Age the very second he receives divine inspiration to visit blood atonement upon them non-believin’ heathens).
I tell you, if my sister decided to work on getting Rabidly Anti-Gay Magic Underwear Man — who believes that a dead parent is better than a gay parent (helllllo, Mary!) — into the White House, I’d disown her (after I tried to have her involuntarily committed).
[T]he endorsement is likely to be well received among conservatives who comprise a critical primary voting bloc in both Florida, which votes Tuesday, and the 22 states voting Feb. 5.
Romney has also enjoyed the support of aides with ties to the Bush family, including top assistants to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former President George H.W. Bush.
Liz Cheney, 41, is the elder of Dick and Lynne Cheney’s two daughters. Her younger sister, Mary, has been more prominently in the public eye after revealing she is a lesbian and having a son last year with her partner, Heather Poe, despite the administration’s opposition to gay marriage.
Liz Cheney, the mother of five children, said in a statement: “Throughout his campaign, (Romney) has distinguished himself as a leader who can guide our country with a clear vision for overcoming the threats we face today. … I look forward to working with Governor Romney because he is the leader our country needs.”
Now, we don’t really give a hoot what idiotic pursuits Liz Cheney chases, and quite frankly, we don’t have a whit of sympathy for that elitist little traitor Mary Cheney either.
We’re just struck by how not surprised we are that one Cheney would throw another Cheney even further under the bus. (And we will be even less surprised if Mary Cheney comes out to support her sister’s decision.)
As Republican family dynamics go, politics (which, for those people, translates directly into money and power) is always thicker than blood.
Nevertheless, we think Liz Cheney sucks. And not in a good way.
A good friend tells you when you’re wrong, and it’s time to be good friends to our Senators. Any Senators who voted to “censure” MoveOn.org for an ad which raised legitimate concerns about the Bush Administration’s politicization of the military simply blew it. They rubber-stamped the right wing’s effort to paint sensible discourse as out-of-bounds while validating (by not censuring) extreme right wing abuses.
Here are just a few examples of outrages our Senators chose not to censure: Ann Coulter advocates executions to “intimidate liberals,” writes books accusing Democrats of “Treason,” and chides terrorists for not blowing up the NY Times Building. Rush Limbaugh claims liberals want people to get AIDS and openly advocates anti-gay bigotry and racism. Bush and Cheney warned that a vote for a Democrat would invite “mushroom clouds” over our cities. Republican TV spots morphed Democrats including then-Senator Max Cleland into bin Laden. Our Senators took no action. No resolutions condemning these attacks on our national character.
. . .
How many Democratic Senators supported Sen. Feingold’s effort to censure Bush? Not many. “I’m amazed at Democrats … cowering with this president’s numbers so low,” Feingold mused after the Republican leadership sought a vote on his measure to hold Bush accountable and Democrats blocked the vote. How many Democrats voted to censure MoveOn? Twenty Two. …
. . .
MoveOn was far more generous than Petraeus’ immediate boss Admiral William Fallon who called him an “ass kissing chickens***.” It’s self-defeating, stupid, and downright un-American for the Senate to waste its time intimidating citizens from exercising their freedom of speech. The Americans who paid for this ad have been correct about Iraq while the Senate has repeatedly been wrong. The Senate’s time would be better undoing the harm it is complicit in creating.
I’ve been waiting more than three years to see the Dixie Chicks vindicated — and they have been, as seen in this “update” from Mike Thompson in the Detroit Free Press:
The Case for Impeachment: Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush
…House Resolution 635 [introduced by Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.), is not] a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers’s staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses … the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth. …
Entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,” the Conyers report examines the administration’s chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration’s criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.
That President George W. Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. … At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad. … Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagon’s western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings (the “best info fast… go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not”) that will justify an attack on Iraq. …
By November 13, 2001, the Taliban have been rousted out of Kabul in Afghanistan, but our intelligence agencies have yet to discover proofs of Saddam Hussein’s acquaintance with Al Qaeda. President Bush isn’t convinced. On November 21, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he says to Secretary Rumsfeld, “What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?…I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.”
The Conyers report doesn’t return to the President’s focus on Iraq until March 2002, when it finds him peering into the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, to say, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” At a Senate Republican Policy lunch that same month on Capitol Hill, Vice President Dick Cheney informs the assembled company that it is no longer a question of if the United States will attack Iraq, it’s only a question of when. The vice president doesn’t bring up the question of why, the answer to which is a work in progress. By now the administration knows, or at least has reason to know, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, that Iraq doesn’t possess weapons of mass destruction sufficiently ominous to warrant concern, that the regime destined to be changed poses no imminent threat, certainly not to the United States, probably not to any country defended by more than four batteries of light artillery. …
By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. …
Before reading the report, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don’t know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal — known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?
In Mideast, Bush presses Arabs on peace. In his first trip to the region, Bush meets today with Arab leaders to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian road map. [Christian Science Monitor]
Chirac: Moufflarge! Voulez-vous cesser de me cracher dessus pendant que vous parlez?
Dubya: Thanks, Jack, you’re a real swell guy, too!
U.S.-French Détente: Leaders Lower Voices. When the American and French Presidents met, they were polite in public and, by all accounts, even nice to each other in private. [New York Times]
Another chicken resigns from KFC:
Mary Cheney ducks out of GOP gay group. Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, has resigned from the board of the Republican Unity Coalition slightly more than one year after taking on the largely honorary post with the gay-straight political alliance. [The Advocate]
Let’s take one more look at the Russert-Cheney interview:
Russert: “So if the United States government became aware that a hijacked commercial airline[r] was destined for the White House or the Capitol, we would take the plane down?”
Cheney: “Yes. The president made the decision… that if the plane would not divert… as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out. Now, people say, you know, that’s a horrendous decision to make. Well, it is. You’ve got an airplane full of American citizens, civilians, captured by… terrorists, headed and are you going to, in fact, shoot it down, obviously, and kill all those Americans on board?”
And what was the alternative, Dick? Kill a couple of hundred people by shooting down the planes — or sit on your hands, watch the planes crash, and kill a few thousand?
Playing along with the idea that it was ever “your” decision to authorize intercepts:
NORAD managed to get not one, but multiple F-16s into the air to intercept Payne Stewart’s plane.
But “you” couldn’t manage to scramble a single jet the morning of September 11th — until after American Flight 11 had already crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
The USAF was ready to shoot down Payne Stewart’s plane and didn’t, because there was no danger of it hitting a densely-populated area — like Pierre, South Dakota (population: 13,876).
But “you” couldn’t manage to get a single jet in the air before the crash of the first of two planes you already knew were headed straight for New York City (population: 7,322,564).
Sounds to me like the Air Force was more prepared to take out a plane containing nine people to prevent it from crashing into a rural town of 13,000, than “you” were to take out four commercial jets, containing a total of 245 people, from crashing into two of the most densely-populated metropolitan areas in the United States (one of which, incidentally, is the nerve center of the federal government).
Now, I don’t mean to make it sound as though the lives of the folks in South Dakota are any less important than the lives of those in New York or Washington. It’s as great a tragedy, in my eyes, to lose nine souls — or even one — as it is 3,000. And, in fact, I commend all involved for their handling of the Payne Stewart incident; shoot it down or let it crash — what else could be done?
But I do find it curious, Dick, that “they” could hold the total death count in South Dakota to a mere nine, while “you” allowed…
Wait, let me do some math here… 87 aboard Flight 11, plus 59 aboard Flight 77… carry the one… 40 aboard Flight 93, plus 59 aboard Flight 175… carry one… plus 2,629 in the WTC, and another 125 at the Pentagon… zero on the ground in Penn… Got it.
As I was saying: I find it curious, Dick, that the USAF was authorized (without any need to clear it with President Clinton) to use all means available to hold the South Dakota death toll to nine, while “you” used none of the means available to avoid the deaths of 2,999 — until it was much too late.
Granted, there’s probably nothing that could have been done to save the lives of the 245 aboard those planes. But as far as I’m concerned, Dick, somebody — maybe not “you,” but somebody on your watch — had more than enough time to do something about saving the lives of the other 2,754 people on the ground.
But it looks like “you” didn’t even try.
Of course, there are countless questions about September 11th aside from the failure to scramble F-16s — but you no doubt realize what a monumental task it would be to compile them all here.
Besides, every time I delve into the details, my eyes nearly roll back in their sockets at the overwhelming volume of information, and the mind-boggling contradictions all screaming for attention at once. So, when the subject of 9-11 comes up, I intend — as I did here — to try to concentrate on just one aspect, and in fairly brief form, so as to overwhlem neither myself nor you. I want you, dear reader, to become aware of facts you may not have heard before, and to be able to digest those facts — and realize why it really is so important that you know these things, and start asking your own questions.
September 11th wasn’t something that happened “out there”; no matter where it was, or who died, or why, it was the trigger the PNAC boys had been waiting for; they were desperate for some excuse — any excuse — to unleash decades of carefully-worked back-room plans on the unsuspecting public. With 9-11, they got their excuse — in spades.
As a result, your life has changed in ways you may already feel, and in ways you may not recognize until the next time you try to board a plane, take a day trip to Tijuana — or say the “wrong thing” in class (and suddenly find yourself hauled off for questioning by Secret Service agents).
It seems to me that the only reasonable way to absorb the reality of 9-11 is to look at one small aspect at a time. However, if you’d like to try to digest the whole enchilada (and it’s one damn-big enchilada), you couldn’t find a better starting point than 911 Timeline.net (which also provides links to many more sites guaranteed to overwhelm you with detail).
Good luck. I feel my eyes starting to roll back in their sockets…
One might argue that, even if NORAD protocols have not changed since 9-11 (which they have not), then NORAD has become more vigilant in the past 20 months.
It hasn’t.
Whenever I think of September 11th — and the complete failure to scramble Air Force jets in any reasonable (much less expedient) time — Payne Stewart always come to mind.
If you’re not familiar with the story: Payne Stewart was a professional golfer who was killed in the crash of a Learjet on October 25, 1999. The flight left Orlando for Dallas, then inexplicably turned north, and kept flying until it ran out of fuel over South Dakota.
The last transmission from the plane to ground control was at 9:27 a.m.
At 9:33 a.m., ground control radioed instructions to the plane to change frequencies, and waited for acknowledgement. Over the span of the next four and a half minutes, the controller made five more calls to the flight, but received no response.
Thus, at about 9:38 a.m., the ground controller ceased calls to the plane.
By 9:52 a.m., “a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm” of the doomed aircraft.
That’s a total of 14 minutes from the time the ground controller gave up on raising a response from the plane, and the time NORAD was contacted, ordered an F-16 intercept, and the F-16 was in the air and a mere 8nm from the Learjet.
After making two calls to Stewart’s plane and receiving no response, the F-16 began its visual inspection at about 10:00 a.m.
And here’s the punch line: The F-16 from Eglin AFB was only the first plane scrambled to intercept the Learjet:
Over Missouri, four F-16s from an Air National Guard unit based in Fargo, North Dakota, took over the escort mission, and stayed with the plane until it crashed.
The Air Force says additional F-16s were also scrambled from the Oklahoma Air National Guard unit in Tulsa, but were not used because the Fargo planes arrived first. …
The CNN article also goes on to note that shooting down the Learjet wasn’t an option — but only because there was no need to shoot it down:
The Pentagon said Monday it never came close to shooting down Stewart’s wayward plane in order to prevent a possible crash into a heavily populated area.
Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said, “Once it was determined it was apparently going to crash in a lightly populated area, we didn’t have to deal with other options, so we didn’t. …
At 11:10 p.m. [sic] CDT (12:10 p.m. EDT) the Northeast Air Defense sector estimated the Learjet would run out of fuel in one hour, and calculated the plane would likely to go down in a sparsely populated area near Pierre, South Dakota.
And it’s not as if the Air Force wasn’t ready to shoot the plane down if necessary:
In fact, a Pentagon spokesman said, the F-16 fighter planes that monitored the jet’s flight were not armed with air-to-air missiles. …
Two other F-16s on “strip alert” at Fargo, South Dakota, were armed, but never took off.
So, if the F-16s weren’t about to shoot down Stewart’s plane, what could they have done?
The FAA routed air traffic around the Learjet and kept planes from flying underneath it in case it crashed.
Pentagon officials say the fighter jets could do little but watch as the plane completed it fatal fight. …
In theory, the fighters could have tried to tip or nudge the wings of the plane to change it’s [sic] course, but it’s not clear if the Learjet’s auto-pilot would have simply automatically corrected its course.
It’s impossible to say what those jets might have done, had the Learjet been headed straight for a densely-populated area — and “other options” had to be considered. But one wonders: Who would have been responsible for making the call?
Curiously, Vice President Dick Cheney would have you believe that the responsibility for the decision to intercept errant aircraft belongs to the Commander-in-Chief — and on the morning of September 11, 2001, that would have been George W. Bush.
Five days after the September 11th attacks, Cheney appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and, in discussing American Flight 77 (the plane that hit the Pentagon), Tim Russert asked, “What’s the most important decision you think he [Bush] made during the course of the day?”
Cheney: “Well, the–I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft.”
Russert: “And you decided?”
Cheney: “We decided to do it. We’d, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city; F-16s with an AWACS, which is an airborne radar system, and tanker support so they could stay up a long time… It doesn’t do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don’t give them instructions to act, if, in fact, they feel it’s appropriate.”
There are some glaring problems with Cheney’s statements:
• Cheney confused (deliberately? that’s not my judgment to make) “intercept” with “shoot down.” “Intercept” means to deflect, divert, or just get the attention of another aircraft by any number of means (from a simple radio call to signalling the errant plane visually to the more desperate “wing-nudging”); it does not necessarily mean “shoot down.” Cheney knows that. And if he doesn’t, he should.
• The decision to intercept errant aircraft is not that of the President of the United States. Intercepts are more frequent than you can imagine — and if the decision to intercept fell to the president, no president since the start of the jet age would have had time to do much else. Bill Clinton was not consulted about the Payne Stewart intercept — regardless of whether “interception” included a shoot-down. Cheney knows that, too — or should.
• Cheney said it “doesn’t do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don’t give them instructions to act.” Ignoring the fact that neither Bush nor Cheney needed to issue any order to intercept (and/or fire), it sounds to me like the pilots who finally did get into the air on 9-11 had carte blanche to take out any subsequent commercial flights gone astray.
Of course, the point is moot; once the fourth and final plane went down in Pennyslvania (and all other commercial flights were either grounded or diverted), there was nothing left to shoot out of the sky.
The only thing that was “diverted” — temporarily, at least — was the public’s attention, away from questions which beg answers.
“My father crapped bigger ones than George Bush,” says the former president’s son, in a flame-throwing conversation about the war and the Bush administration’s efforts to lay claim to the Reagan legacy.
The Bush inner circle would like to think of George W.’s presidency as more of an extension of Ronald Reagan’s than of his one-term father’s. Reagan himself, who has long suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, is unable to comment on those who lay claim to his political legacy. But his son, Ron Jr., is — and he’s not pleased with the association.
“The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he’s in now,” he said during a recent interview with Salon. “Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the ’80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father’s — these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don’t trust these people.” …
Reagan, still as lean as he was in his dancing days, has a sharp tongue — but like his father, he has a knack for softening his barbs with a charming affability and disarming sense of humor.
Reagan took a swipe at Bush during the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, which featured a tribute to his father, telling the Washington Post’s Lloyd Grove, “The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job… What’s his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?” Since then he’s been quiet about the current occupant of the White House — until now.
“My father had decades of experience in public life. He was president of his union, he campaigned for presidential candidates, he served two terms as governor of California — and that was not a ceremonial office as it is in Texas… He knew where he was coming from, he had spent years thinking and speaking about his views. He didn’t have to ask Dick Cheney what he thought.
“Sure, he wasn’t a technocrat like Clinton. But my father was a man — that’s the difference between him and Bush. To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.”
Reagan says he doesn’t have anything personal against Bush. He met him only once, at a White House event during the Reagan presidency. “At least my wife insists we did — he left absolutely no impression on me. But Doria remembers him very negatively — I can’t repeat what she said about him, I’d rather not use profanity…”
But Reagan has strong feelings about Bush’s policies, including the war in Iraq, which he ardently opposes. “Nine-11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda — and they didn’t hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, ‘Let’s hit Iraq.’ They’ve used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling.” …
“Yes,” he concedes, “there are some holdovers from my dad’s years, like Elliott Abrams and, my God, Admiral Poindexter, who’s now keeping watch over us all. But that observation doesn’t hold up… He had no thought that America should be the world’s policeman…
“Now George and Dick and Rummy and Wolfy all have a very different idea about America’s role in the world…”
Reagan says his opinions about the war were not changed by the rapid fall of Baghdad. “Look, whether or not Saddam was a bad guy, or whether the Iraqi people were terribly oppressed, was never the issue. I mean I’m happy for the Iraqis, but that’s not what this was all about. Nor was the military conclusion ever in doubt; this was the Dallas Cowboys playing a high school team. Their army was a third the size it was in ‘91, and it didn’t give us much trouble then.
“And the weapons of mass destruction? Whatever happened to them? I’m sure we’ll find some,” he laughs. “They’re being flown in right now in a C-130…”
Reagan’s parents were notoriously remote from their four children. Ron Jr. reportedly had the closest relations with his parents and he remains close with his mother… Reagan says his mother shares his “distrust of some of these [Bush] people. She gets that they’re trouble in all kinds of ways. She doesn’t like their religious fervor, their aggression.”
Reagan says his family feels particularly alienated from the Republican Party over its opposition to embryonic stem cell research…
“And they told us, ‘Don’t worry about W. not knowing anything, good old Dick Cheney will be his minder.’ Dick Cheney? And this was going to be compassionate conservatism? Dick Cheney is to the right of Genghis Khan, he wants to drill in your backyard, he wants to deny black people their rights — it was all there in his voting record for us to see. What were we, rubes?”
While Reagan rejects a political career, he clearly doesn’t shy from speaking out. What if GOP conservatives, who still lionize his father as the greatest president of the 20th century, pressure him to shut up? “That wouldn’t be a smart thing for anyone to do.”
As deliciously dicey as his remarks may be, don’t get your hopes up that anything Ron Reagan, Jr., has to say will be taken seriously — or taken kindly to — by the Republican camp. Young Ron was never the John-John of the GOP; the right-wing has always branded him a sissy-boy, pointing to his career as a dancer as “proof” of that horror of horrors, homosexuality.
Which would be understandable, from a narrow-minded bigot’s point of view — if it were true. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I know people who know Ron Reagan, Jr., and I assure you — Ron is no queer. (I find that rather unfortunate, actually; a charming gay First Son — especially a Raygun progeny, and a progressive, outspoken one at that — would have been even more satisfying than relying on the well-meaning but easily-ignored lesbian half-sister of Newt Gingrich. No offense to Candace, mind you, but in reality a gay Reagan would have been a much greater coup).
And while it’s true indeed that Dutch & Nancy were none too palsy-walsy with their kids, the article correctly notes that Ron, Jr., was closer to his parents than his siblings. Make no mistake about blood and water — or the bond between mother and son.
Which brings us to Nancy — whose loathing for the BFEE isn’t even a well-kept secret.
Say what you like about Attila the Nun (I certainly do), but peel away the outer layers and layers (and layers) of the hollow-eyed shrew Tarpley & Chaitkin call “the social-climbing arriviste of capital society,” and you’ll find… well, “an evil-tongued presence on a thousand telephones a week complaining about the indignities she thought she was subjected to, always obsessed by public opinion and making Ronnie look good in the most ephemeral short term.”
But even the most passionate Reagan detractors are forced to admit that Nancy simply and truly loved Ronnie. And she still does. Don’t ask me to explain it; the thought of those two “having congress” is enough to make anybody swear off ugly-bumping for life - and the idea of a 75-year-old man calling his wife “Mommy” evokes a distinctly sickening feel of incest to the whole affair, compounded by the spectre of your grandparents playing bedroom games you’d really rather not think about.
Ahem.
The point is, Nancy is fiercely devoted to Ronnie, and she’ll go to her grave protecting his memory and (for better or worse) his legacy. (Granted, were it not for Ronald Reagan, hack actor, ex-rat fink, and framer of the “trickle-down theory” of economics - who was so politically self-conscious he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “AIDS,” let alone deal with the issue, until 1987 - you and I would be much healthier, happier, and more flush with cash. But we’ll save a detailed analysis of “How Reagan Ruined Your Life” for another day.)
Since the Gipper’s incapacitation by Alzheimer’s, Nancy hasn’t moved far from his bedside. No doubt she’s in that unenviable position known all too well by those of us who have watched a loved one die a cruelly lingering death: You love ‘em, but there’s nothing you want more than to see them finally let go… let go.
And when Ronnie finally lets go? What then? There are many who speculate that Queen Nancy will hold court and have her day — and make things mighty uncomfortable for her hubby’s former veep.
WASHINGTON - President Bush’s aides did not forcefully present him with dissenting views from CIA and State and Defense Department officials who warned that U.S.-led forces could face stiff resistance in Iraq, according to three senior administration officials.
Instead, Bush embraced predictions of top administration hawks, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, who predicted Iraqis would joyously greet coalition troops as liberators and that the entire conflict might be over in a matter of weeks, the officials said.
Dissenting views “were not fully or energetically communicated to the president,” said one top official, who, like the others, requested anonymity. “As a result, almost every assumption the plan’s based on looks to be wrong.”
First, take a gander at the photos of our fearless leaders in The Bush War Room. Keep that window open, then come back.
Either someone at ABC News has a ripping sense of humor, or there simply are no photographs of the militants in charge of the Iraqi slaughter even remotely resembling homo sapiens.
Dubya is cross-eyed and slack-jawed. ‘Nuff said.
Unka Dick “Dick” Cheney looks the same as always — like a snarling bowling ball.
Colin Powell looks like he’s about to vomit. (Perhaps the gravity of his own sudden hard turn to the right has had the same effect as the last gut-wrenching curve on Disney World’s Space Mountain.)
Don Rumsfeld? There’s never been a decent picture of Rummy. This is not the worst. Pass.
Condi Rice: What unseen matter has caused her skull to succumb to such a severe gravitational pull? (I also like Condi’s black-and-white background pic, behind Dubya in the uppermost image — although it drives me mad not to know whether she’s waving, saluting, or flipping somebody the bird.)
George Tenet, you’re looking more and more like J. Edgar Hoover every day. Here, take my copy of the latest Vicky’s Secret catalogue — there’s a sale on fishnets.
Andy Card appears constipated.
Tom Ridge either just woke up, or has finally caught the parked car he’s been chasing.
Franks & Downing: Has anyone ever seen these two in the same picture together? I think they’re either the same person, or were separated at birth. In any case, they both appear to be dozing off.
Finally, the photo of Howie Schmidt — director of the Office of Cyber Security — is broken. How appropriate!
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