Tristero

Friday, July 11, 2003

Buy It Now  

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posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:52 AM

Half A Truth Is Often A Great Lie - Ben Franklin  

Summary of the post below: Bush lied. People died. It cannot be denied.

Here's the long version:

We have just learned, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how great a lie Bush and his administration put over on us. We will be living with the consequences of that lie for the rest of our lives.

Still, the administration pretends that we can't see what is directly in front of our face. Here are excerpts from a CBS News report about Condoleeza Rice's response to the lie about Iraq's wmds in Bush's January '02 SOTU speech:

"The CIA cleared the speech. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," Rice said as Mr. Bush flew from South Africa to Uganda.

The agency raised only one objection to the sentence involving an allegation that Iraq was trying to obtain yellow cake uranium, she said. "Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," Rice said.

"With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared," she said. "The agency did not say they wanted that sentence out."

This is a non-denial denial. Here, in its final version from the SOTU speech, is the sentence that the CIA originally objected to until it reached this form. Read it carefully:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Again, this is the sentence that had "some specifics about amount and place" taken out, at which point the CIA withdrew its objections. Now why would they do that knowing, as they have admitted, that the principal assertion was totally wrong?

Because the sentence, as it now stands, is technically accurate. Bush isn't saying that he knows Saddam was trying to acquire nuke material. He's not even saying that the US govermnet knows Saddam was trying to acquire nuke material. All he is saying is that a British report says Saddam was trying to acquire nuke material.

And yes, one has to admit that that is exactly what a British report says. So if you think that Bush, or the US government know that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium from Africa, you clearly would be jumping to a totally unwarranted conclusion.

Totally unwarranted. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

It is precisely because Bush's language is so carefully worded to counter this "unwarranted conclusion" that we know for a fact that he, George Bush knew the principal assertion, the one he wants you to believe, was bogus. If they were interested in telling the truth, the sentence would have read instead, "While all US intelligence and investigation leads to the most likely conclusion that they are mistaken, the British government reports that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

That, folks, is the actual truth because it is the whole truth.

For if "lie" means "a false statement deliberately presented as true," (which it does, according to Sherlock's dictionary.com) then Bush clearly lied in the SOTU. It is a lie because the US government, including the White House, including Bush knew the British report was bogus. If they didn't so know, they would have told the whole truth and not had recourse to such a trivial quibble.

Here's the details of what happened, according to the same CBS news report, but you'd have to be deliberately obtuse not to guess all this long before:

The evidence in question referred to a supposed deal between Iraq and Niger, though neither the president nor the British identified that country in public.

The president's statement was incorrect because it was based on forged documents, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday.

Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin .

CIA officials warned members of the president’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.

The White House officials responded that the September paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"

As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that's how the charge was delivered.

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Mr. Bush said in the speech.

Once again, I would like to point out that I figured out the structure of this lie a long time ago - to be precise, I posted about it on May 6. More recently, on June 24, Krugman published the exact same conclusion.

Here's where I start getting bummed out. Of course, Krugman's never read this blog. And of course, Krugman being much smarter and more cynical than I, probably came to the same conclusion that I did at least as far back as I had. The point is this: how come it falls to a rank amateur and a professional economist to be among the first to notice the structure of a blatant lie in the president's State of the Union address? Where are the political reporters who should have been all over this the morning after or at the very least after Powell's UN speech a few weeks later, when he pointedly did not bring up any references to Iraq trying to purchase African uranium?

One final observation about this today.

Folks, this is one of the most egregious lies ever told by a president in American history. It has led already to the deaths of some 200 American soldiers and the wounding of 1000 others. It has further destabilized one of the least stable and most dangerous areas in the world. If this country ignores this lie and its consequences, if we permit this administration to continue its lies after 2004, we will be truly responsible for the disasters that will be wreaked upon us.

There is denial and then there is denial, folks. To pretend that this lie was in some sense inconsequential, or noble, or necessary, is to live in a fantasy world. We cannot run the world on a faith-based foreign policy. We cannot fix our economy with a faith-based financial plan. We cannot be safe by having faith in a leader who believes in basing his policies on faith rather than reason and compassionate national interest.

If this lie is ignored, a blatant lie to justify the most solemn actions that a state can take, then anything Bush pulls off from here on in is being done with our direct collusion and approval. If Augustine is right, and I think he is, that evil is not a thing at all but an absence, an abcess or an omission, then surely it is evil to ignore this lie.

Where's the outrage? The outrage is here; I am furious. And it should be in every American's heart right now.

[UPDATE] Lambert over at Eschaton has a nice long post on all this.

[UPDATE] Josh Marshall also goes into detail about it. Be sure to scroll down and read the related posts.

And Kevin Drum's noticed it as well with usual blend of comments from regulars.

[UPDATE] The blogosphere is up in arms on this. Here's the first of several Kos postings on the subject.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 10:21 AM

Thursday, July 10, 2003

WiFi With 30 Mile Coverage? Gimme. Now.  

Intel's gonna make the gizmos. Read all about it here:

The IEEE 802.16a standard is a wireless metropolitan area network (WMAN) technology that connects wireless hotspots, which offer users wireless Internet access via the IEEE 802.11 or Wi-Fi standard, and other locations such as businesses and homes to the wired Internet backbone. It is expected that networks based on the 802.16a standard will have a range up to 30 miles and the ability to transfer data, voice and video at speeds of up to 70 Megabits-per-second (Mbps).

And just yesterday, I was saying to MSS that it was time for WiFi and broadband to be available as a utility, just like electricity, gas, and water.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:44 PM

Iraqi Resistance Groups  

A great blog called Iraq Democracy Watch has a list of running list of Iraqi resistance groups. Sure, it's plausible that they're all nothing but Baathist loyalists, like Rumsfeld says they are, but I can't think of a single good reason to trust anyone in this administration to tell the truth. All we know for certain, then, is that the current group of 12 wants the US out. Now.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:11 PM

"Bring 'Em On!" A Mother Responds  

via TAPPED comes a link to this letter:

As a mother of one of our brave troops in Iraq, may I just say, Mr. President, Perhaps you truly do believe in the invincibility of our military; however, the next time you invite attacks on my son, and others, kindly stand in front of our soldiers, rather than hiding behind.

If had a child in Iraq, I'd take the next plane over there, go up to the unit where s/he was, grab the kid by the arm and say in voice that brooks no argument, "We're going home now. No backtalk. We're leaving." I then get us both out of that country as quickly as possible.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:24 PM

Some Stuff The NY Times Left Out Today That You Should Know  

People ask, "Where's the outrage?" That's easy to answer. When outrageous facts are underreported or inconsistently reported, they go by unnoticed.

Case in point. In its article about Bush evading questions about the WMD, there's this little aside buried in the middle:

Those doubts [about the quality of US intelligence vis a vis Iraq's wmds] were further reinforced today in Washington by a recently retired State Department official, who said the Iraqi threat was vastly overstated, Reuters reported.

"I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq," said Greg Thielmann, who left his post as director of the strategic, proliferation and military affairs office in the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research last September.

Well, Thielmann did say those things. But on a CBS News video (click on the link then choose "WMD War of Words"), Thielmann went much, much further:

he principle reason that Americnans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the intelligence showed.

In other words, senior Bush administration officials lied about the Iraqi intelligence. The New York Times banned Paul Krugman from using the L word about Bush during the election and has apparently done so again. It looks like the extent of the alarm and the outrage former high ranking federal feel is not fit to print yet.

In another article in the Times about Donald Rumsfeld's congressional testimony, the Times left out a vitally important admission, also available in the CBS News broadcast linked above. Rumsfeld said:

The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11.

In other words, Rumsfeld admitted that there was no new evidence at all about an immediate or compelling threat to the US. The only thing new was a re-analysis based on 9/11.

But let us not forget: Saddam Hussein had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Nothing.

In short, Rumsfeld admitted to a Congress - which inexplicably trusted the Bush administration and transferred their right to wage war over to him - that Bush sent troops into harm's way despite the fact that there was no threat at all to the US.

PS It is instructive to review Billmon's indispensable list of WMD quotes. For if Rumsfeld is telling the truth, that there was no new evidence, then Bush lied in his radio address of February 8, 2003 when he said "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:35 AM

Going To War On A Lie, Moolah, And Other Tales From Quagmire II  

Curiouser and curiouser. The tactic seems to be to confuse, obfuscate, and flood the news with so many contradictions, distractions, and wild rumors that the truth that the Bush administration, and Blair's as well, lied through their filthy teeth in order conquer Iraq. Here's a bit of a roundup.

BBC: Whitehall Says Iraq WMD "Unlikely to be Found"

Senior UK Whitehall sources no longer believe weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, the BBC has learned

BBC political editor Andrew Marr said "very senior sources" in Whitehall had virtually ruled out the possibility of finding the weapons.

They believe they did exist - but were hidden or destroyed by Saddam Hussein before the war.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the admissions were a "dramatic development" and ex-Prime Minister John Major has called for a full independent inquiry into the basis for war.

While this is going on Bush Skirts Question on 'Evidence' and Defends War, says the NY Times:

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace," Mr. Bush said. "And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth."

Translated: Now that I've recited three entirely empty bromides, let's move on to another subject so I can say three more.

Meanwhile, Fleischer tried to minimize the importance of Joseph Wilson's explosive op-ed by saying:

"He spent eight days in Niger and concluded that Niger denied the allegation," Mr. Fleischer said. "Well, typically nations don't admit to going around nuclear nonproliferation."

Fleischer complained that Wilson never addressed the main issue, that the docs were forged. But who said he had to? Wilson's report, which was passed to the White House nearly one year before the SOTU, was almost certainly used to help evaluate the veracity of the Nigerian documents. In short, it was an important piece of real intelligence.

And at the same time, back in Congress, Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate for Cost of Troops in Iraq

Gen. Tommy R. Franks said today that violence and uncertainty in Iraq made it unlikely that troop levels would be reduced "for the foreseeable future," and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld nearly doubled the estimated military costs there to $3.9 billion a month.

"We have about 145,000 troops in there right now," General Franks told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said he had talked to "commanders at every level inside Iraq," and found that the size and structure of those forces were appropriate for the current situation.

Let's run do a little recent history. An often quoted Council on Foreign Relations report mentions that a "respected military analyst" estimated before the Iraq war that 75,000 troops/year would be needed to stabilize the country. Now, Rumsfeld estimates nearly twice that much.

As for the cost, Rumsfeld is being disingenuous. With all the subtlety of a huckster touting tummy flatteners on TV, he estimates the troops will now cost $3.9 billion a month (get it? It's not $4 billion) or $46.8 billion/year. This is not double. This is nearly 3 times the cost estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. Nor does it include the cost of fighting of the war, nor the cost of humanitarian/reconsruction assistance, which was also wildly underbudgeted at $3.2 billion/year (by comparison, the entire similar budget for the much smaller Kosovo was $1 billion/year).

Ten billion here, ten billion there, soon you're talking serious money. Arguably worse, the Council report states, is the increased pressure and strain on our miliatary's capability:

Even the lowest suggested requirement, for 75,000 troops, will require that every infantryman in the U.S. Army spend six months in Iraq out of every eighteen to twenty-four. Given other demands on U.S. forces, this is not a commitment America alone can long sustain.Nor can our current coalition partners, with the exception of the United Kingdom, provide much help.

And here's another choice little ploy Rumsfeld's floating, buried at the end of the article:

Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, asked Mr. Rumsfeld about the threat from Iran, and Mr. Rumsfeld said he had received reports that Iran had relocated some border posts a few miles into Iraqi territory, and he cautioned the government in Tehran against such adventurism.

Is it true? Who the heck knows anymore?

And back in Iraq, two more US soldiers died.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:23 AM

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

LA Times Does Not Mention Leung's GOP Connection  

As Lambert over at Eschaton points out, Katrina Leung's connections to the GOP have completely disappeared from any and all reporting about her. Here, in the LA Times, you will find no mention of it.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:54 PM

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

BBC: CIA Says White House Knew, Pre-SOTU, That Niger Docs Were Bogus  

It's beginning to look that we cynics who said Bush lied were right.

The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.

Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, the CIA has told the BBC.

On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January.

But the CIA has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.

Anyone want to say that simply because the White House knew it was a lie, Bush still may not have known the Niger documents were bogus at the time of the SOTU?

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:02 PM

Scalia Vs. The Declaration of Independence. Part 1 of 2  

Dave Neiwert received an interesting critique of a section of his marvelous e-book, "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism" (go to Orcinus, download the pdf, and donate at least $5 to David's kitty. It's worth it.) At issue is Anthony Scalia's infamous article, "God's Justice and Ours", which Atrios also links to today. In it, Scalia writes, citing Paul's letter to the Romans, that all governments, even democracies, take their power directly from the divine. He goes on: "[t]he reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

This seems a bit unclear to me, but when you read it carefully, it is clear, as David's correspondent points out, that Scalia is urging his readers not to be bamboozled by the Declaration of Independence into believing that Governments derive their power merely from the governed. No, he says, governments really derive their power directly from God. Yes, Scalia goes on, it is very difficult to see the hand of God "behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our will." But let's not be fooled: all governmental power derives from God, just as it does for those who "obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles" or by rulers who, "in the dim mists of history were supposedly anointed by God."

Scalia could not be more wrong.

Democracy, at least American democracy, does not "obscure" the divine nature behind a government's power. It absolutely, and without equivocation, rejects the notion. It is simply not possible, if one can read and comprehend, to come to any other conclusion after studying the Declaration of Independence. That Scalia claims otherwise is, as David says, deeply troubling.

This man, a Supreme Court justice, is espousing a position that flies in the face of everything that makes the United States what it is. Of course, whether he does so for ideological reasons or because of an intellectual deficit really is not that important. What is crucial is that Scalia's beliefs, and the beliefs of those who follow him, like Bush, Thomas and Santorum (to name just three), be exposed for what they are: a radical and unacceptable revision of the basic principles upon which the US government is founded.

God In The Declaration Of Independence

Let's start by noting the places in the Declaration that refer to a Creator.

God is mentioned in the first sentence which asserts that at some "necessary" time, a People is entitled by"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" to sever the ties with another government and assume a "separate and equal" government.

God is mentioned again in the second sentence (I've added emphasis):

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

In the final paragraph, God is mentioned two more times. The authors appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the World", i.e., God, for the correct judgement of the authors' intentions. Also, those who signed the Declaration pledge an oath to each other, "with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence."

These final two invocations of the Divine are a little difficult to understand as much more than conventional rhetorical flushes that God can see their good intentions and they swear an oath before God that the authors will stand together.

The real action, from Scalia's viewpoint, is in the first two sentences. These are the sentences he thinks "obscure" the "consensus of Western thought," i.e., that state power derives directly from God. In fact they do not obscure the consensus at all. They reject it. The authors of the Declaration of Independence knew exactly what they were doing. With great subtlety, they deliberately dispute the hoary interpretation of Romans 13: 1–5 Scalia uses to explain how a government derives its power.

People Come First, Not The State

In its first two sentences, the Declaration of Independence acknowledges the ancient divine right of kings, rejects it, then asserts a different divine right, a divine right of the people. Here's how:

In the first sentence, Men seem quite removed from God in a hierarchy which descends like this:

1. God
2. Laws of Nature
3. People (i.e. the State)
4. Men (citizens within the State, not mentioned, in fact, until the second paragraph).

This simple formulation appears to be in accord with Scalia (and his particular reading of Romans 13: 1-5). Men are beholden to the State which is beholden to the Laws of Nature, which is beholden to God. Therefore, as the state is above Men and consequently closer to God, Men owe their allegiance to the State.

But there is one glaring problem in this formulation which surely loomed large in all the authors' minds as they worked on the Declaration. By what right do Men, at the lowest end of this hierarchy derive the power to dictate to those above them? In a very real sense, a declaration of independence, a dissolving of political ties that bind a People to a Government would upset the law of God by placing Men as at least equal to the State. For are not Men subservient to the State?

No! says the second sentence of the Declaration. The State exists only via the "Consent of the Governed." The actual structure proposed by the second sentence is closer to something like this:

1. God
2. Laws of Nature which endow Men with Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
3. The State, which is derives its "just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."

In this second sentence, the State is clearly beholden to Men who, endowed by the Laws of Nature with rights, are beholden only to God.

There's nothing obscure about this at all! Men trump State. Scalia is just plain wrong to think that American democracy says differently, even if those Men are "fools and rogues (as the losers would have it)". For in American democracy, those Men, no matter how foolish or criminal their conduct, are surely responsible for their government, but just as surely answer only to God.

But what about Romans? Does the Declaration deny the authority of the Bible? Absolutely not. It is not by accident that the Declaration never quotes the Bible. Instead, it simply asserts the primacy of human beings in the affairs of humans who are endowed by their Creator with rights. Since it deliberately avoids Scripture, the Declaration rejects merely the ancient, flawed interpretation of Romans that Scalia invokes.

It is important to note that this rejection of Scalia's interpretation is done in passing, as an aside. It is all in keeping with one of the most marvelous qualities of the Declaration's language, its "here-and-now-ness." It's not that the Bible or its interpretation are unimportant to the authors per se, but rather that the issues before them are best addressed by focusing directly on the human forces in opposition. It's not the case that the Bible or God are irrelevant. They are quite relevant in their minds, but what is important are the clear injustices of an oppressive state, injustices that patently contradict its pretense of a divine mandate. The authors of the Declaration insist that, given the abundant evidence of these injustices, clearly God will understand their "rectitude" and the reasons why all political ties with King George must be "dissolved."

Romans: is Scalia's interpretation correct? if so, is it the only correct one? Does his interpretation reallly represent a consensus of western thought, as he claims?

That's for another day.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 3:46 PM

Ari Disavows Bush On Niger Forgeries  

[UPDATE:] Mary at The Left Coaster has posted a nice timeline about NigerGate.


So they're backing off more on the Niger forgeries, but the major question now is:

Why didn't the Bush administration immediately publicly declare the Niger intelligence was bogus when they were informed it was wrong, within hours of the speech?

Remember, yesterday, Joseph Wilson wrote:

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.

And here are some quotes from the Times today:

The White House acknowledged for the first time today that President Bush was relying on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate information from American intelligence agencies when he declared, in his State of the Union speech, that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from Africa.

The White House statement appeared to undercut one of the key pieces of evidence that President Bush and his aides had cited to back their claims made prior to launching an attack against Iraq in March that Mr. Hussein was "reconstituting" his nuclear weapons program. Those claims added urgency to the White House case that military action to depose Mr. Hussein needed to be taken quickly, and could not await further inspections of the country or additional resolutions at the United Nations...

Separately tonight, The Washington Post quoted an unidentifed senior administration official as declaring that "knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." Some administration officials have expressed similar sentiments in interviews in the past two weeks...

Asked about the accuracy of the president's statement this morning, Mr. Fleischer said, "We see nothing that would dissuade us from the president's broader statement." But when pressed, he said he would clarify the issue later today.

Tonight, after Air Force One had departed, White House officials issued a statement in Mr. Fleischer's name that made clear that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement...

In an interview late last month, a senior administration official said that the news of the fraud was not brought to the attention of the White House until after Mr. Bush had spoken.

But even then, White House officials made no effort to correct the president's remarks...

In interviews in recent days, a number of administration officials have conceded that Mr. Bush never should have made the claims, given the weakness of the case...

Other key members of the administration said the information was discounted early on, and that by the time the president delivered the State of the Union address, there were widespread questions about the quality of the intelligence.

"We only found that out later," said one official involved in the speech.[Emphasis added.]

So, to answer that question earlier: why didn't they 'fess up the day after the speech?

Well, as the cliche has it, it's always better to apologize than ask permission. Iraq is now a fait accompli, relationships with pesky allies are strained, and the UN has been marginalized. In short, mission accomplished.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:43 AM

Monday, July 07, 2003

Justice Dept. Whistleblower Learns About Compassionate Conservatism  

MSS sent me this article about Jesselyn Radack, a 32 year old lawyer who used to be the ethics adviser at the Department of Justice. Her problems began when she decided to take her job seriously. Unfortunately, under AG Ashcroft, ethics take a back seat to singing hymns and posturing.

Radack's troubles began in December 2001. She was working in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, a special branch created by the department in 1999 to advise on potential ethics conflicts. The government in Afghanistan had just captured Lindh, the "American Taliban." In a series of e-mails, Radack advised John De Pue, a counterterrorism prosecutor, that since Lindh's father had hired James Brosnahan of Morrison & Foerster, she didn't think the Federal Bureau of Investigation could question Lindh alone. Others at Justice disagreed, and Lindh's statements became the basis of a ten-count indictment.

As you may recall, the case against John Walker Lindh was, to say the least, extremely shaky by any standards. Jane Mayer's article in The New Yorker brought the shappy story to light. Radack felt her arguments were being ignored.

When Radack argued that her e-mails should be disclosed to the judge hearing Lindh's case, she and her bosses ended up at odds. In April 2002 Radack quit the Justice Department and joined the D.C. branch of New York's Hawkins, Delafield & Wood.

Two months later her e-mails showed up in a story by Newsweek 's Michael Isikoff.

Well, the Justice Department began hounding her and pressuring Hawkins, Delafield, and Wood.

In mid-August, four weeks after the Lindh case settled in a plea agreement, Powell called Hawkins's offices and began questioning staff and lawyers, saying Radack was under criminal investigation. Powell wanted the firm to turn over Radack's phone, fax, and e-mail records.

The firm agreed to cooperate, but supplying Radack's phone records presented a logistical problem. Hawkins's D.C. office phone system didn't record which extension local calls went into or out of. Eventually Powell answered the question himself, supplying Hawkins with a list of six calls traced from Isikoff to the firm.

Relations between Radack and her new law firm quickly deteriorated. She was eventually put on unpaid leave, and the law firm has contested her employment benefit of $319/week.

Would that this story of harassment was the only one. There's another one out there which I hope to tell you about soon...
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 7:00 PM

Savage Fired  

It is outrageous that MSNBC took this long. He crossed some line by telling he a gay caller that he wished he got AIDS and died.

As mentioned, I believe that Savage, like Coulter, is an extremely disturbed individual. To air his psychotic ranting is the 21st Century equivalent of what the fops did in the 19th Century when they went to the madhouse to watch the entertaining crazies. Anyway, USA Today has the full story:

GLAAD spokeswoman Cathy Renna said of Savage's firing: "It's about time.

"This latest attack made the clearest case for why Savage has no place on any reputable news network. MSNBC witnessed firsthand exactly the kind of verbal assaults GLAAD's been warning them about for the past five months, and to their credit, they backed up their promises to hold Savage accountable."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:48 PM

The Niger Forgeries: Joseph Wilson  

Over the weekend, the man who learned that Niger had not provided uranium yellowcake to Saddam published an op-ed in the NY Times. Check out the dates: a little less than one year before the State of the Union address which mentioned them, the US government was informed that there was no truth to the story:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office...

In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's...

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place...

Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip...

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them...

I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government...

Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.

But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:45 AM

Rush, Newspeak and Fascism Is Out!  

Dave Neiwert has finally published his ongoing series, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis as a pdf file so go immediately, download it and send Dave at least the five measly bucks he requests for all his hard work. Dave's site is one of the best of the blogosphere, doing yeoman's work not only reporting buy analysing th US's seduction by fascism. "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" distils and attempts to identify crucial aspects of the phenomenon. I'll be printing it out for fun reading next weekend back out in the country.

Oh, and while you're at it, go and get David's excellent, detailed reporting on right wing militias and the Patriot movement called In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest. He is a rarity these days, a real investigative journalist that has a scholarly command of his subject. While he has no sympathy for his subjects' beliefs or behavior, David writes with genuine understanding, never demonizing even the most hateful people. The result is that you truly understand the subject and have an opportunity to come to your own conclusions as to what a rational response to the troubling growth of fascism might look like.


Congrats, Dave, on all the hard work and great writing!
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:49 AM