Vice Pres. Lied as White House Sought to Defuse Leak Inquiry

[senorsalvia]

The way I see it, this stuff has been brought out.  The truth has been told, the lies and manipulations have been exposed; problem is, The normal garden variety AmeriKKKan just is so media sickened by a constant barrage, that they are virtually apathetic to anything that does not directly affect them.  I mean really, people are not that naieve..  Unfortunately they do know, but will not react.  Every single person I talk to does not hesitate to agree that this is the most corrupt country on the face of the earth, and that we, as a people are headed for ruination...  :cry: ------------  sal

[Avery L. Breath]

Well Sal, you could be right.  I mean, I could state polling figures to you about how people view the war and the president, but 9 out of 10 people know that statistics can prove anything.  I just, I've fallen into the sad trap of watching right wing news every once in a while like the O'Reily factor and his ilk i.e. Fox News and it makes me so angry when I watch these guys.  They appear to have equally strong convictions that my thoughts on these things are completely off base.  And news outlets like that have huge followings.  It's like the abortion debate all over again.  People develop such strong emotional attachments to opinions and conventions that theirs just no convincing them otherwise.  (me included maybe.)  I mean, I'm pretty convinced in my opinion on this.  I'd love to be proven wrong however.  But I don't see it happening.

It just burns me up......... to the point where apathy would be such a sweet escape from it all.  I've just been so mad about all of this for so long and I fucking hate politics.

[TooStonedToType]

Avery: "Yah know I'm just baffled, it seems obvious to me that the U.S. was dragged into this war under false pretenses ... Why are the lies not being exposed?"

I've seen this before, at least with the evangelicals.  They have been told Bush and this war are God's will.  They have been supporting the war, believing it is God's work.  To find out now this War is a lie, means their ministers, Bush (Gods right hand man on earth), Jesus and maybe God as well, lied.   Its easier to just have blind faith and stick your head in the sand then to admit your belief structure has serious flaws.  Its more than "strong emotional attachments"  it is their religious faith being challenged.

[Avery L. Breath]

French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence 2001
    By Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten and Bob Drogin
    The Los Angeles Times

    Sunday 11 December 2005

The foreign spy service warned the US various times before the war that there was no proof Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ex-officials say.
    Paris - More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

    The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

    The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigated at the CIA's request.

    Chouet's account was "at odds with our understanding of the issue," a U.S. government official said. The U.S. official declined to elaborate and spoke only on condition that neither he nor his agency be named.

    However, the essence of Chouet's account - that the French repeatedly investigated the Niger claim, found no evidence to support it, and warned the CIA - was extensively corroborated by the former CIA official and a current French government official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The repeated warnings from France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure did not prevent the Bush administration from making the case aggressively that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons materials.

    It was not the first time a foreign government tried to warn U.S. officials off of dubious prewar intelligence.

    In the notorious "Curveball" case, an Iraqi who defected to Germany claimed to have knowledge of Iraqi biological weapons. Bush and other U.S. officials repeatedly cited Curveball's claims even as German intelligence officials argued that he was unstable and might be a fabricator.

    The case of the forged documents that were used to support claims that Hussein was seeking materials in Africa launched a political controversy that continues to roil Washington.

    A special prosecutor continues to investigate whether the Bush administration unmasked a covert CIA operative in a bid to discredit her husband, a former diplomat whom the CIA dispatched in February 2002 to investigate the Niger reports. The diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, like the French, said he found little reason to believe the uranium story. The investigation into the leak led to the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.

    The French opposed U.S. policy on Iraq and refused to support the invasion. But whether or not that made top U.S. officials skeptical of the French report on Niger, intelligence officials from both countries said that they cooperated closely during the prewar period and continued to do so. And the French conclusions on Niger were supported by some in the CIA.

    The CIA requested French assistance in 2001 and 2002 because French firms dominate the uranium business internationally and former French colonies lead the world in production of the strategic mineral.

    French officials were particularly sensitive to the assertion about Iraq trying to obtain nuclear materials given the role that French companies play in uranium mining in France's former colonies.

    "In France, we've always been very careful about both problems of uranium production in Niger and Iraqi attempts to get uranium from Africa," Chouet said. "After the first Gulf War, we were very cautious with that problem, as the French government didn't care to be accused of maintaining relations with Saddam in that field."

    The French-U.S. communications were detailed to The Times last week by Chouet, who directed a 700-person intelligence unit specializing in weapons proliferation and terrorism.

    Chouet said the cautions from his agency grew more emphatic over time as the Bush administration bolstered the case for invading Iraq by arguing that Hussein had sought to build a nuclear arsenal using uranium from Niger.

    Chouet recalled that his agency was contacted by the CIA in the summer of 2001 - shortly before the attacks of Sept. 11 - as intelligence services in Europe and North America became more concerned about chatter from known terrorist sympathizers. CIA officials asked their French counterparts to check that uranium in Niger and elsewhere was secure. The former CIA official confirmed Chouet's account of this exchange.

    Then twice in 2002, Chouet said, the CIA contacted the French again for similar help. By mid-2002, Chouet recalled, the request was more urgent and more specific. The CIA was asking questions about a particular agreement purportedly signed by Nigerian officials to sell 500 metric tons of uranium to Iraq.

    Chouet dispatched a five- or six-man team to Niger to double-check any reports of a sale or an attempt to purchase uranium. The team found none.

    Chouet and his staff noticed that the details of the allegation matched those in fraudulent documents that an Italian informant earlier had offered to sell to the French.

    "We told the Americans, 'Bull - -. It doesn't make any sense,' " Chouet said.

    Chouet said the information was contained in formal cables delivered to CIA offices in Paris and Langley, Va. Those communications did not use such coarse language, he said, but they delivered the point in consistent and blunt terms.

    "We had the feeling that we had been heard," Chouet said. "There was nothing more to say other than that."

    The former CIA official could not confirm the specifics of this 2002 communication, but said the general conclusions matched what many in the CIA were learning at the time.

    Chouet left the French government in the summer of 2002, after the center-right coalition led by President Jacques Chirac won control, forcing out top officials who had been aligned with the outgoing Socialist Francois Mitterand.

    When Bush gave his State of the Union address in January 2003, citing a report from the British that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium in Africa, other French officials were flabbergasted.

    One government official said that French experts viewed the statement attributed to the British as "totally crazy because, in our view, there was no backup for this." Nonetheless, he said, the French once again launched an investigation, turning things "upside-down trying to find out what was going on."

    Chouet's comments come as the FBI and the Italian government reopen investigations into the origins of the documents that surfaced in 2002 purporting to prove the Iraq-Niger link. The documents in question originally surfaced in Rome.

    Before speaking with The Times last week, Chouet had told part of his story to La Repubblica, a Rome newspaper, prompting Italian investigators to resume their inquiry and seek Chouet's testimony.

    In the U.S., the FBI recently reopened its inquiry into the documents in part because it had won access to new information.

    Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the allegations, said he believed that his trip was inspired by the forged documents. He said the briefing he received at the CIA referred to a sales agreement between Iraq and Niger that sounded like the forged documents.

    Bush attributed the African uranium information to British intelligence in his 2003 address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

    The British government maintains that its conclusions were based not on the forged documents but on other, more reliable sources. In fact, British officials have said that they reached their conclusions long before the forged documents surfaced.

    Still, Chouet said in the interview that the question from CIA officials in the summer of 2002 seemed to follow almost word for word from the documents in question. He said that an Italian intelligence source, Rocco Martino, had tried to sell the documents to the French, but that in a matter of days French analysts determined the documents had been forged.

    "We thought they [the Americans] were in possession of the documents," Chouet said. "The words were very similar." The former CIA official said that in fact the U.S. had been offered the same documents in 2001 but had quickly rejected them as forgeries.

    A spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Chouet's remarks, reiterating that the British government continued to stand behind its conclusions that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa.

    A British report on prewar intelligence found the Africa claims in Bush's speech to be "well-founded," noting that British suspicions on Iraq's efforts to buy uranium originated with visits in 1999 by Iraqi officials to Niger and the Congo.

    Bush's assertions in his 2003 State of the Union speech had previously been made by other U.S. officials in speeches and internal documents.

    On Sept. 8, 2002 - within months of the third French warning - Cheney and then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice spoke in dire terms of Iraq's alleged efforts to pursue nuclear materials. Rice warned: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

    Chouet, asked for his reaction to Bush's speech and the claims of his lieutenants, said: "No proof. No evidence. No indication. No sign."

    White House officials scrambled to explain how the 16 words found their way into the 2003 speech when so much doubt surrounded the claims. Ultimately, then-deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley took responsibility for allowing them to remain.

    On June 17, 2003, five months after Bush's State of the Union, the CIA clarified its position on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.

    "Since learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad," the agency said in an internal memorandum that was disclosed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Bush critics now say that - in light of the warnings from the French and others - the White House owes the public a better explanation.

    Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was chairman of the Intelligence Committee when the Niger claims first surfaced in 2002, said some officials in the U.S. State Department were also expressing doubts: "The big mystery is why did the administration, in the face of at least a very persuasive contrary view, feel the president should take the risk of stating this?"

    --------

    Hamburger and Wallsten reported from Paris and Washington, Drogin from Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Paris contributed to this report.

  -------

[Avery L. Breath]

December 15, 2005
FBI Pressured to Gin Up Iraq-al-Qaeda Links
 
by Paul Sperry
In the run-up to the Iraq war, FBI veterans say they were pressured by the Bush administration to come up with links, no matter how tenuous, between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda to help sell the planned military incursion.

They came up empty, however, and were told to redouble their efforts, scraping the bottom of the barrel, former officials say. When they still came up empty, the administration did not invite the bureau to the critical prewar National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB) meeting that produced the dossier on Iraq used by the White House to sway Congress.

The FBI normally has a seat at the NFIB. But in this case, it was not represented, even though the dossier makes judgments about the likelihood of Hussein launching terrorist attacks inside the U.S. â€" a topic clearly within the FBI's realm of expertise.

John M. Cole, who retired late last year from the FBI as program manager for foreign intelligence investigations covering Pakistan and Afghanistan, says he and other managers were tasked before the war with exhausting all sources in the field for information tying Iraq to al-Qaeda.

"Everybody was tasked," he recalls in a exclusive interview. "Right before we attacked, my unit chief [in Washington] came over and said, 'OK, I want you to e-mail the field divisions and ask them to check their sources to find if they're aware of any connection between al-Qaeda or any terrorist groups and the Iraqi government.'"

Cole, who worked out of FBI headquarters, says the bureau-wide search did not turn up any substantive links.

"We had some very good sources, and I sent the communication out, and they all came back negative â€" nothing that they were aware of," he says. "Some of them said al-Qaeda doesn't even get along with the Iraq regime because they're not fundamentalist enough, and there were other reasons why they didn't associate with each other."

However, FBI sources did find links between Hussein's regime and the Palestinian Intifada against Israel. Hussein had sent millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

"The only connection they came even close to establishing was that the Iraqi government was providing funds to the suicide bombers' families in the Palestinian territories," Cole says. "That was the only thing we could find, but that hardly amounted to a direct threat against the United States."

When they reported back to headquarters that they'd struck out finding a solid Iraq-al-Qaeda link, top FBI brass insisted they dig harder. "They said, 'Look again,'" Cole recalls.

"I remember thinking it was bullsh*t, because it just seemed to me they were grasping at anything they could find to justify this war," Cole says. "And I was sitting there telling [a colleague] this is wrong â€" we should never attack somebody unless they're a threat to us. Saddam's not attacking us, he hasn't attacked us, he's not the threat. The al-Qaeda group is the threat. Why are we even looking at Iraq?"

Phone calls seeking comment from FBI headquarters were not immediately returned.

Cole, who voted for Bush in 2000, says the president's decision to invade Iraq in the middle of a war on al-Qaeda played right into Osama bin Laden's hands, and only made America a bigger target for terrorists.

"We're in a mess now though. Bin Laden started this thing, but now we've played right into his hands. Iraq validates everything he's been saying about America," he says. "By attacking Iraq we've increased the terrorist problem."

"Bush says we're fighting the terrorists over there and not here," he adds. "Well, he's made the whole situation worse, as far as I'm concerned."

Before the war, CIA analysts were tasked with the same assignment of turning over every stone to see if a link between Hussein and bin Laden could be made.

Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's al-Qaeda unit at the time, says then-CIA Director George Tenet in 2002 asked his team to review all their classified files going back 10 years. Scheuer and his analysts combed through some 20,000 documents totaling more than 65,000 pages and found no connection in Iraq of a state sponsorship of al-Qaeda.

The agency took its findings to the White House, and it had "no impact," Scheuer says. Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials nonetheless went on TV and said a relationship between Hussein and al-Qaeda could be clearly documented.

The CIA's inconvenient findings made their way into the final judgments section of the dossier on Iraq called the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which was the consensus of the intelligence community (sans FBI input) regarding the Iraqi threat. It was presented to the White House and Congress on Oct. 1, 2002.

Page four of the 92-page NIE concluded that there is no evidence to suggest Hussein's regime "directed attacks against U.S. territory" or formally collaborated with al-Qaeda.

In fact, it said that Hussein would not even attempt to join forces with bin Laden unless he feared an attack by the U.S. that threatened the survival of his regime. Then, and only under those desperate circumstances, the secular leader might seek "revenge" by taking the "extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists," according to the document.

"The point we made to the NIE was he [Hussein] would only provide weapons and material support to terrorists to attack the United States if he was cornered," confirms then-deputy CIA director John McLaughlin.

Indeed, the NIE gave "low confidence" to the view that "Saddam would engage in clandestine attacks against the U.S. homeland" or would â€" even "in desperation" â€" "share chemical or biological weapons with al-Qaeda." (Of course, it now turns out that he did not have such weapons â€" or even the programs in place to build them.)

Curiously, the findings downplaying a terror threat from Iraq were removed from the unclassified version of the NIE, or "white paper," that the administration posted on the CIA Web site for public viewing later in October 2002.

The white paper, which was quoted often by the media, focused instead on the threat from Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that it was adapted from an earlier document drafted by the White House Iraq Group, a secret shop set up by Bush's chief of staff and other top advisers to sell the war to Congress and the public.

In speeches, Bush contradicted the classified findings of the NIE â€" which of course were unknown to the public at the time â€" insisting that Hussein's regime was an "ally of al-Qaeda" and posed a direct terrorist threat to America.

Less than a week after the NIE was published, for example, he warned that "on any given day" â€" provoked by U.S. attack or not, sufficiently desperate or not â€" Hussein could team up with bin Laden and conduct a joint terrorist operation against America using weapons of mass destruction.

The next week, in an Oct. 14 speech in Michigan, Bush claimed Hussein was in league with bin Laden and planning to use his network of terrorists as a "forward army" to attack America.

"This is a man that we know has had connections with al-Qaeda," he said, referring to Saddam. "This is a man who would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army. And this is a man that we must deal with for the sake of peace."

Last year, the 9/11 Commission concluded in its exhaustive report that there were no operational ties between Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda before Bush invaded Iraq.

Former FBI official I.C. Smith says that point would have been made even more forcefully in the prewar NIE report if the FBI had been present at the critical NFIB meeting held at Langley on Oct. 1, 2002.

Smith, who has represented the FBI at NFIB meetings in the past, says it's no coincidence the bureau was not represented along with the other intelligence agencies, which included: the CIA; Defense Intelligence Agency; National Imagery and Mapping Agency; National Security Agency; INR, the State Department's intelligence unit; and the Energy Department's intelligence unit. Tenet chaired the meeting and later briefed the president and Rice on the key findings of the NIE, which was drafted by the National Intelligence Council, based at Langley.

"I was against going to war in Iraq simply because I didn't trust the intelligence. I knew that there were few, if any, human source assets in Iraq," Smith says. "But more important, I didn't trust Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney or Rice and their motives."

He says they hammered the FBI and CIA, as well as other agencies, to gin up negative information to justify attacking Iraq.

But when they couldn't come up with what they needed, he says they turned to Iraqi defectors and other sources outside the government â€" many of whom they knew to be unreliable â€" to help them make the terror case against Iraq.

For example, a report repeatedly cited by Cheney that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable source â€" a drunk, no less. And the claim cited by several officials, including then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush himself, that Iraq was coaching al-Qaeda on chemical warfare came from an al-Qaeda informer that the Defense Intelligence Agency identified as a fabricator in reports circulated months earlier.

"It was clear to me when I saw Powell make his presentation before the UN, that most of the information, most of the suppositions, were based on intercepts and imagery â€" that is, photographs and even drawings [in the case of the phantom mobile bioweapons labs] â€" and not on human-source reporting" from reliable assets on the ground inside Iraq, Smith says.

And the little human-source reporting Bush officials relied on came from Iraqi defectors who had been out of the country for years, or other unreliable informers with a motive to lie, he adds.

[Avery L. Breath]

he Patriot Act Amendments to HR3199 include a portion for creating a Secret Service Uniformed Devision.

This "Secret Police" will have rights to warrantless arrest. They can be called upon by the president at special events of national significance, as determined by the President.

(1) When directed by the President, the United States Secret Service is
authorized to participate, under the direction of the Secretary of Homeland
Security, in the planning, coordination, and implementation of security
operations at special events of national significance, as determined by the
President.

the entire text:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R ... 0:@1(hr333)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r ... 001:H11280

******

SEC. 605. THE UNIFORMED DIVISION, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE.

(a) In General- Chapter 203 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by
inserting after section 3056 the following:

`Sec. 3056A. Powers, authorities, and duties of United States Secret Service

Uniformed Division

`(a) There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be

known as the `United States Secret Service Uniformed Division'. Subject to
the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States
Secret Service Uniformed Division shall perform such duties as the Director,

United States Secret Service, may prescribe in connection with the
protection of the following:

`(1) The White House in the District of Columbia.

`(2) Any building in which Presidential offices are located.

`(3) The Treasury Building and grounds.

`(4) The President, the Vice President (or other officer next in the order
of succession to the Office of President), the President-elect, the Vice
President-elect, and their immediate families.

`(5) Foreign diplomatic missions located in the metropolitan area of the
District of Columbia.

`(6) The temporary official residence of the Vice President and grounds in
the District of Columbia.

`(7) Foreign diplomatic missions located in metropolitan areas (other than
the District of Columbia) in the United States where there are located
twenty or more such missions headed by full-time officers, except that such
protection shall be provided only--

`(A) on the basis of extraordinary protective need;

`(B) upon request of an affected metropolitan area; and

`(C) when the extraordinary protective need arises at or in association with

a visit to--

`(i) a permanent mission to, or an observer mission invited to participate
in the work of, an international organization of which the United States is
a member; or

`(ii) an international organization of which the United States is a member;

except that such protection may also be provided for motorcades and at other

places associated with any such visit and may be extended at places of
temporary domicile in connection with any such visit.

`( Foreign consular and diplomatic missions located in such areas in the
United States, its territories and possessions, as the President, on a
case-by-case basis, may direct.

`(9) Visits of foreign government officials to metropolitan areas (other
than the District of Columbia) where there are located twenty or more
consular or diplomatic missions staffed by accredited personnel, including
protection for motorcades and at other places associated with such visits
when such officials are in the United States to conduct official business
with the United States Government.

`(10) Former Presidents and their spouses, as provided in section 3056(a)(3)

of title 18.

`(11) An event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special
event of national significance.

`(12) Major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and, within 120
days of the general Presidential election, the spouses of such candidates,
as provided in section 3056(a)(7) of title 18.

`(13) Visiting heads of foreign states or foreign governments.

`(b)(1) Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members
of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to--

`(A) carry firearms;

`(B) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States
committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of
the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person

to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony; and

`(C) perform such other functions and duties as are authorized by law.

`(2) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall
possess privileges and powers similar to those of the members of the
Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia.

`(c) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall be

furnished with uniforms and other necessary equipment.

`(d) In carrying out the functions pursuant to paragraphs (7) and (9) of
subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security may utilize, with their
consent, on a reimbursable basis, the services, personnel, equipment, and
facilities of State and local governments, and is authorized to reimburse
such State and local governments for the utilization of such services,
personnel, equipment, and facilities. The Secretary of Homeland Security may

carry out the functions pursuant to paragraphs (7) and (9) of subsection (a)

by contract. The authority of this subsection may be transferred by the
President to the Secretary of State. In carrying out any duty under
paragraphs (7) and (9) of subsection (a), the Secretary of State is
authorized to utilize any authority available to the Secretary under title
II of the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956.'

[Avery L. Breath]

The Bonfire of the Inanities; Seriously, Could It Get Any Worse?
    By Barry Crimmins
    The Boston Phoenix

    Thursday 22 December 2005

    For 2005, my annual task of reviewing the past year has been complicated by an old adage: oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Here I sit, tangled in a web that many people began weaving way back when the Gipper was protecting us against deadly pollutants released by old-growth forests. It was a jumble out there this year - one that defies linear documentation.

    So let me borrow from our friend Mark Twain and offer this admonition: persons attempting to find chronology in this narrative will become lost; persons attempting to find morals in its subjects will be generally disappointed; persons attempting to find a plot will be overwhelmed (because it contains more plots than Arlington National Cemetery).

    And anyone expecting a comprehensive review will end up feeling they have a lot more coming.

    Scandalous to the End

    California Republican congressman Duke Cunningham had a narrow window of opportunity. It was late November, and he had 15, 20 minutes tops, to become a late entry in the scumbag sweepstakes that was 2005. The aging Navy fighter-jock did not miss his chance. At an impromptu press conference, Cunningham announced both his resignation from Congress and his guilty plea to several corruption charges. On that sunny autumn afternoon, the Dukester secured his place in history - as a simpering, blubbering jellyfish.

    Most years, Cunningham's weepy guilty plea and resignation would have been a major news story for weeks, but in 2005, it barely merited a "So what else is new?" shrug of the shoulders.

    By the time we got to Cunningham's sobbing exit, no one - absolutely no one - could keep track of all the scandals involving the Bush-Cheney administration, the Republican Congress, and state and local Republican leaders and their corporate and evangelical cronies. There were procurement scandals, media scandals, emergency-preparedness scandals, even treason scandals. These people stole everything, from coins in Ohio to billions in Iraq - including, in the estimation of some, the 2004 election, giving George W. Bush a matched set of nebulous claims to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    Which is where we entered 2005: believe it or not, Bush and Cheney's second inaugural was a scant 11 months ago. Feels more like 11 years, doesn't it? I've suppressed almost all memory of the inauguration except for two things: a hazy recollection of the halftime show for the Crusades and the faint hope that Bush-Cheney arrogance would lead to such brazenly incompetent and unconstitutionally criminal behavior that not even Rupert Murdoch would be able to conceal it.

    In mid December, Wally O'Dell, a big GOP fundraiser who promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes for Bush, resigned as CEO of Diebold, the company whose electronic balloting machines at least in part delivered Ohio to Bush. O'Dell left over allegations of insider trading. The same week, a Florida county announced it would no longer use Diebold machines because they're vulnerable to backdoor hacks and could be used to manipulate vote tallies.

    You know that saying "the fix is in"? Well in this case, was the fixer an inside trader?

    I mean how much more naïveté can we afford? We have a president who has twice been "elected" despite polling data that told us it wasn't going to happen. And then his administration is fraught with every possible insider scandal. They fix intelligence, they fix the media, they fix government contracts, and now the man that promised to hand them Ohio leaves his job at the secret voting-booth company because he was caught insider trading. Is it paranoid to connect the dots and understand that we have been living, for the past five years, under an unelected criminal regime? Or is it, to put it in W-era parlance, a slam-dunk? Use your own intelligence and trust it.

    The Ever-Helpful Press

    Bush-Cheney's cynicism and contempt for the media, and their administration's repeatedly exposed practice of fabricating and/or planting stories became so blatant in 2005 that newscasts should have begun with the disclaimer "I'm George W. Bush and I approved of this message."

    In January, we learned that neo-con columnist Armstrong Williams was on the federal dole to tout Bush's No Child Left Behind program. In February, "Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert" the "Washington Bureau Chief" of "Talon News," who had been given media access to the White House more than 100 times, was exposed as a male prostitute by bloggers who decided to investigate the "reporter" whose Nerf-ball questions made him White House press secretary Scott McClellan's go-to guy when things got sticky. (It's simply impossible to write this without cheap jokes.)

    The bloggers no doubt figured the guy to be an escaped mental patient but soon learned that he was the driving force behind several pornographic gay-escort sites that promoted his patriotic desire to continue the rigid discipline of military service to America long after he'd been ... um, discharged. (Simply impossible.)

    He even asked a question of W from the fourth row of a rare presidential press conference. As I recall it was "Who do I have to blow to get in the first row?"

    Who's to Plame?

    Perhaps the answer was whomever it was on Bush's staff assigned to disclose to "Jimmy-Jeff" the identity of the soon-to-be world's most famous secret agent, Valerie Plame. Plame was a CIA WMD expert working undercover for the "brass plate" front firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates. Blowing her cover was meant as revenge against her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, after he went to Niger in 2002 and established that the Saddam Hussein/yellowcake-uranium story was nonsense and then wrote about it later in the New York Times. Within days, Robert Novak, a man with a voice so shrill only dogs can hear it and a column so odious only rodents read it, outed Plame. And then, in a follow-up piece, he disclosed Brewster Jennings and its true purpose, endangering not only Plame but dozens of other operatives as well.

    I'm no fan of the CIA, but treason is treason, and although betraying our nation is nothing new for this administration, this time the charge just might stick. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is still preparing the case, but if justice is served, presidential puppeteer-in-chief Karl Rove, clearly up to his splotchy pink neck in Traitorgate, could be back in Texas for good by the new year.

    Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was indicted for obstruction of justice and perjury in the case. Cheney, a man who makes Donald Trump look like a hands-off guy, would have us believe that he was shocked to learn that his top aide had become a rogue operative in this criminal conspiracy.

    Traitorgate was the epicenter of the snarl in the Bush-Cheney web of deceit, combining as it did the administration's media manipulation, its phony case for war, and its low-blow tactics. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was the gray lady down on the administration for exclusive access to every falsehood it wanted planted in the paper of record to make its phony case for war in Iraq. Miller, a viciously ambitious, narcissistic journalist made up of equal parts tenacity and wrong-headedness, had been informed of Plame's identity by Scooter Libby.

    This was a cynically wise move considering how furious she had become with Wilson's Times op-ed piece that refuted some very specific lies she had run above the fold in the mislead-up to war. Miller spent several weeks in jail for contempt of court rather than reveal Libby as her source in the Plame leak. But really all she was covering was her own complicit ass, which eventually was booted out on the street by the paper that allowed her to so compromise it.

    The Washington Post's Bob Woodward also traded ethics for access and got caught in the swirl of Traitorgate. As the story was exploding, Woodward went on Larry King and matter-of-factly implied the whole affair was a tempest in a teapot. He failed to disclose his own involvement, but we soon learned that he was just another rat in the sewer that ran between the White House and the corporate media. Richard Nixon would be so proud of him!

    Congressional Record/Rap Sheet

    The Republican Congress was a disgrace throughout the year. Low points included the ethics scandals that embroiled both the House and Senate majority leaders. Congressman Tom DeLay was indicted for money laundering, the only known connection to anything clean in his sordid career. A primary player in DeLay's K Street (soon to be renamed Shakedown Street) Project was lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who funneled funds, goods, and junkets to DeLay and others in exchange for right of first refusal on all legislation. The scandal is complicated and far-reaching and, as such, is my pick to click in 2006 - an ideal year for all Americans to take a good look at just how bought and paid-for their legislators really are.

    Dr. Bill Frist, the Senate's majority leader, was plagued by vision problems that actually caused him to see too much - like the contents of his blind trust, which now has him under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. His super vision also allowed him to use a home video to pronounce that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state. Of course he was wrong - she was in Florida.

    Camp Followers

    By July, polls showed 51 percent of the country felt it had been misled into war. The slide has continued. Dick Cheney is now trailing cholera in opinion surveys.

    In early August, with Traitorgate unwrapping and the country, his war, and his administration collapsing around him, Bush did what he always does in a tight spot. He went on an extended vacation. Prior to leaving for his Crawford, Texas, ranch, where he raises photo-ops, he made one of his boilerplate comments about why the war had to continue. It would be a disservice, he maintained, to abandon the "just cause" for which so many brave Americans had died.

    This raised a question in the mind of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of one of those brave slain soldiers, Sergeant Casey Sheehan. Since she was in nearby Dallas speaking at the Veterans for Peace conference, she decided to take a ride on the VFP bus over to Crawford to see if the president would take a moment from his busy leisure activities to see her. All she wanted to know was, "Exactly what just cause had Casey died for?"

    She let the gatekeepers know she was there and asked if she could please have a word with the president. The answer, more implied than articulated, was "NO!" And one of the great standoffs in American political history ensued. Soon, other members of Gold Star Families for Peace, the fledgling but instantly morally authoritative Iraq Vets Against the War, representatives of Military Families Speak Out, local activists from the Crawford Peace House, and concerned citizens of the United States and the world joined Sheehan. Camp Casey sprung up, then Camp Casey II was pitched on land loaned by a courageous Crawfordian who had become disgusted by the behavior of some of the locals toward the respectful assembly of citizens who still clung to the belief that the president of the United States is accountable to the people he serves.

    This attracted the national media, myself included, who was dispatched there by Air America's Randi Rhodes. Nineteen days later, I returned inspired by the rebirth of the American peace movement. Bush could have avoided the whole mess by facing one sincere mother; instead he stuck to form and hid from conflict that would require his actual participation. Sheehan gave Bush a shove down a slope that was about to become much slipperier.

    A Mighty Wind

    Camp Casey was so traumatic for W that he was probably relieved when Hurricane Katrina's epic storm surge washed Cindy Sheehan out of the headlines. As ever, Bush was careless about what he wished for, and soon the world was looking at shocking aerial views of a country run by dim frat boys.

    George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sold themselves as offering the kind of adult supervision this country needs in time of crisis. Homeland security is their alleged strong suit, but apparently someone forgot to brief them on the fact that the most important part of homeland security is land itself. Their slow response to thousands of stranded victims made many realize that terra firma is an even bigger concern than terror.

    Bush sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency's director Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown (W has such a knack for nicknames!), who had risen to the top of our nation's crisis-management team because he was the most qualified former college roommate of a Bush crony available. Ever detail-oriented, Brown immediately distinguished himself by surveying the area for suitable restaurants and carefully considering the proper attire to wear to a massive human calamity. As the water rose and the evacuees' plight grew worse, Brown assured a concerned nation that there was really nothing we could do right away for those thousands of people yelling, "Help! Help! Help!" in unison. Now what's for lunch?

    Eventually, FEMA distinguished itself by evacuating the one most truly helpless person on the Gulf Coast: Brownie. Bush then made a series of visits to the region, promising all who would listen that rebuilding the area, and particularly New Orleans, was his top priority - at least until he could distract the American people from the crucial city that had been lost on the "watch" he's always reminding us he's on.

    Bottoms Up?

    After Katrina, it began to seem that Bush's actions and policies were nothing more than the result of drunken bar bets. In fact, the very reputable National Enquirer posited that W was back on the bottle. That would explain Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers: Watch this, this'll be funny - the next person that walks in here, I'm naming to the Supreme Court.

    Two interesting stories came out in December. The first exposed Bush's practice of wire-tapping American citizens without so much as clearing the microscopic hurdle of obtaining a special secret-court warrant. But hey, if you don't have anything to hide, what are you worried about?

    And then the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University, discovered that the administration, breaking with a tradition of openness that began in 1816, has decided to withhold the names and work locations of about 900,000 government civilian workers. If we don't know who's working for the government, we don't know who to ask what the government is doing. If they don't have anything to hide, why are they hiding 900,000 people? Too bad they didn't have this policy when Valerie Plame still had her job.

    And They Call It Democracy

    Shortly following Bush's feudal fiesta of an inauguration was the first of three Iraqi elections. The January 30 vote was memorable because it marked a novel approach to democracy - the candidates for the interim government were anonymous but the voters were fingerprinted. The Bush-Cheney administration touted the vote as a major turning point. Ditto for an October vote for an Iraqi constitution and for December's permanent-legislative elections. In each case, this wildly optimistic assessment was then parroted by the mainstream media and accepted as an important marker on the invaded nation's road to democratic self-rule. Unfortunately, after the first two votes, that road was lined with improvised explosive devices, and the year in Iraq was to become much more notable for bloodshed than watersheds.

    In the lead-up to the December election, Bush finally attempted to answer Cindy Sheehan's question in a series of four identical speeches. In each of them, he'd open with a joke and then immediately mention 9/11. He reminded us that everything has changed since 9/11. Yeah, since the year 911 when torture was a widely accepted governmental investigative device. Within a few hundred years, civilization broke out and large groups of human beings began denouncing the practice. Not only was it unjust and unspeakable, it was also highly ineffective. Torture victims were notoriously compliant and would tell interrogators anything they wanted to hear. Even worse, when people learn that torture is being committed, they tend to rise up in anger and seek vengeance against the torturers.

    The Bush-Cheney team has ignored these obvious truths. It's become clear that one of the reasons they wanted Iraqi oil was so they could boil it for use in interrogations. It used to be that an "extraordinary rendition" involved William Shatner singing "Mr. Bojangles"; now it has to do with re-opening Eastern European gulags.

    Notwithstanding attempts by Bush-Cheney to rig Iraqi and American news with phony stories planted by its media operatives in the slimy Rendon and Lincoln Groups, the truth has been announced in the blood-curdling screams of agony from the victims of its torture. Whether at the hands of US military personnel, CIA agents, private contractors, or collaborating thugs from other nations, torture has become synonymous with our nation's foreign policy.

    Despite Bush's strong denials and Condi Rice's assurances that this administration has a strict policy of probably never committing torture, Dick Cheney's legislative arm-twisting on the matter tells the real story. Any agreement the administration may make with John McCain or anyone else will be entered into with all the sincerity of its promise to rebuild New Orleans.

    Regardless of what Bush makes of the latest election in Iraq, his game is up there. Congressman Jack Murtha, a man who never met a military action he'd question, has become the voice of the generals Donald Rumsfeld has censored. He knows the cause is lost, and that it's time to get out. He knows that US troop presence will do nothing more than provoke perpetual violence. And he's earned a crisp salute for saying so.

    History's Stooge

    Bush keeps accusing the Dems of rewriting history - excuse me, George, but a point of literal order. You never write the history of the rise and fall of any Reich until after the fall. In this case, we're hoping for the fall of 2006.

    The majority of Americans now know that Bush justified this needless fight by lying to Congress, the American people, and the entire world. His premises were false, his motives were megalomaniacal. The results are tragic.

    Bush picked a fight he didn't need to pick. And lost. In doing so he weakened our nation and allies, and strengthened our enemies. And he did one more thing: he secured his place in history as a dangerous and soulless lunatic. It would require serious generosity to simply label him as pathetic.

    You know, pathetic like Duke Cunningham.

    When a common streetwalker gets busted, he or she behaves with dignity that Cunningham couldn't buy with all the money in the Pentagon's vault. But then, a common streetwalker is nowhere near the whore Duke Cunningham became. The streetwalker trades in what is his or hers to exchange. Cunningham was just a red, white, and blue pimp, profiteering on what wasn't his to trade.

    But say this much for Cunningham. He set a good example for his fellow Republicans by resigning in disgrace. If by next year at this time we've seen several more Republicans blubbering like defrocked beauty queens after copping pleas, 2006 will seem blessedly shorter than 2005.

    George W. Bush picked a fight he was sure he could win - because the con artists who own and operate him told him he could. So in front of every other kid in the world, he called his victim out to the playground and had six or seven of his goons restrain the little guy while he hit him with everything he could find. In doing so, he pissed off everyone else on the playground.

    So when Bush turned away from his bloodied victim to raise his hands in triumph, he was hit squarely from behind with a two-by-four. Repeatedly.

    And it hasn't stopped for two and a half years.

    Curly or Larry would have thrown in the towel by now.

    Unfortunately, Moe's our president.

[Avery L. Breath]

NBC: Libby defense will allege Cheney role
Attorneys: Vice president OK'd sharing classified information with reporters

MSNBC
Feb. 9, 2006


WASHINGTON - I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, will in part base his defense on the claim that Cheney instructed and encouraged Libby to share classified information with reporters, sources familiar with the case tell NBC News.

Libby's attorneys discussed the matter with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the judge in the case in a recent conference call, the sources confirmed.
A cryptic reference to the conference call and the alleged Cheney role emerged a few days ago when a series of letters between Fitzgerald and Libby lawyer John D. Cline were released by the court.
Cline wrote to Fitzgerald, “As we discussed during our telephone conversation, Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that he had contact with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in the course of his interaction with reporters in June and July 2003. ... We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors.”

The case against Libby stems from the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium "yellowcake" in Niger. A year earlier, the CIA had sent Wilson to Africa to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports.

Bush made his case for going to war against Iraq in part on the uranium allegations, claiming that Saddam Hussein was trying to build weapons of mass destruction.

Authorization crucial to defense
Legal sources close to the defense indicated the authorization to discuss classified information by superiors, including Cheney, will be a crucial part of Libby's defense. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the case hasn't gone to trial yet.

At the moment, Libby's defense team and Fitzgerald are battling over access to pretrial evidence and classified information. Libby has said that certain classified documents are essential to his defense.

Fitzgerald says the classified documents are irrelevant to whether Libby lied to the grand jury about conversations with reporters. Libby is trying to make the argument that without the classified documents, his due process rights are being violated and therefore the case should be dismissed. The refusal of the White House to turn over the documents could lead to the case being thrown out.

However, most lawyers contacted by NBC News have called Libby's arguments “thin,” and suggest it is highly unlikely that Judge Reggie Walton of federal court for the District of Columbia would agree to throw out the case. And lawyers also told NBC News that prosecutors have made a strong case as to why the classified documents irrelevant.

The attorneys also spoke condition of anonymity because the case hasn't gone to trial.

Judge's rulings expected soon
A ruling from Walton is expected within two weeks.

In their indictment of Libby, prosecutors stated that Cheney may have instructed Libby or been involved in the Plame leak.

According to the indictment, on June 12, 2003, Cheney told Libby that Plame worked at the CIA. On July 12, the indictment says, Cheney gave Libby advice on Air Force Two about how to handle the Plame matter. Later that day, Libby allegedly spoke about Plame with two reporters.

Libby has not been charged with breaking laws by speaking to reporters Plame. He was indicted on Oct. 28 on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements during the course of the investigation.

On Thursday afternoon, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., issued a statement saying that any implication of Cheney as the one who authorized release of classified information would require Bush to honor his promise to "clean house" of anyone who had anything to do with the Plame leak.