Dick and George

Eleanor Clift at NEWSWEEK elucidates upon the very strange arrangement involving Bush, Cheney, Rice, and the 9-11 Commission.

Essentially, in exchange for Condoleezza Rice's testimony in public, under oath, Bush and Cheney will appear before the Commission in tandem. Is there any precedent for this? I do not know. It is odd to say the least.

It's embarrassing to be an American. :) This is what passes for leadership? I hope that American's of all political stripes take a good, hard look at Bush.

Clift points out the obvious in her piece, and manages to have more than a bit of fun at our chief executive's(executives'?) expense.

For Bush supporters this must be an awkward moment at best. For Bush detractors, it certainly lends credence to the nagging suspicions that Bush has never really held the reins of power in the White House.

Accuracy in campaigning

In order to bring you the most accurate in campaign analysis, we again look to Annenberg's Fact Check. This time, a Kerry ad falls under the watchful eye of Fact Check.

What you need to know:

A Kerry ad has Bush saying that sending jobs overseas "makes sense." But Bush didn't say that.

The quote is actually from Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. The Kerry campaign claims Bush signed the report containing those words, but that's wrong, too.

Some Bush administration officials do indeed defend the practice of contracting for white-collar services overseas as one aspect of free trade, which they say creates jobs in the US. Textbook economics supports that notion. But the Kerry ad goes too far when it makes the President seem to be rooting for the loss of US jobs using words he never used...[snip]

Kerry's ad would have been closer to the mark had it said "The Bush administration says sending jobs overseas 'makes sense' for America." That would merely be taking words out of context and oversimplifying a complex economic argument. But falsely putting words in Bush's mouth is deception...[snip]

I expect this campaign to be filled with falsehoods and obfuscations. I'll do my best to point inconsistencies out in this blog.

Sibel Edmonds

Soon to be a Household Name

Andrew Buncombe, reporting for The Independent adds a bit more color than Democracy Now! offered when Ms. Edmonds called Condoleezza Rice's statement that 'we' could not have anticipated that Islamic terrorists might use aircraft as weapons "an outrageous lie."

From The Independent:

Sibel Edmonds, 33, said: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

Yesterday Mrs Edmonds said she hoped the panel would present Ms Rice with the apparent contradiction suggested by the joint congressional inquiry's report. "I think they will ask her. Will they get an answer? I can see her twisting it. I can see her trying to wriggle out of it by saying we thought they were going to hijack aircraft but not use them as missiles," she said.

"If you put this information [I saw] with other stuff they had from the Phoenix memo [about suspects taking flying lessons] and stuff coming in from field offices about flight schools, there is no way they can say they did not know. An idiot could work it out."

Mrs Edmonds, from northern Virginia, was fired from the FBI in March 2002 after she went public with allegations of incompetence within the translation department. At the time senior US senators testified to her credibility. The Republican senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he spoke to FBI officials who confirmed many of her allegations. "She's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story," he said at the time.

He said this week: "They admitted most of the facts but denied the conclusions. The FBI has failed to overhaul [the translation] unit, despite its obvious and critical importance in the war on terrorism."

You can add Ms. Edmonds name to the list of courageous truth-tellers that the Bush Administration will attempt to discredit through personal attacks - until their story morphs into the conventional wisdom.

Follow the link for more.

A Little Chaos

I was discussing the relatively small differences between Kerry and most of the GOP this morning with my brother.....Bush excepted. My brother is a mathematician.

In a moment he cut to the heart of the issue between the parties in a very precise manner. He simply said, "Small differences in the initial input states can have large implications in final outcomes."

From that, it should be plain that he has studied chaos theory in at least some cursory way. In fact, it is much of what he teaches. I got the looks, he got the brains :)

For anyone that has qualms about the minor differences between parties, this should allay some of their reservations about a Kerry Presidency.

We discussed other political topics that he framed mathematically. I will distill and condense this over the next week, and have something of an exegesis prepared next Saturday. Time permitting of course.

Powell Admits Errors

Powell Admits he was 'Probably Wrong' about Iraqi weapons trailers

Powell still claims that the trailer information was 'multi-sourced.' This doesn't jive with recent revelations that much of the alleged weapons information came from an Iraqi defector named Curveball.

If his 'multi-sourced' information is that "Curveball" told the same story twice, I suppose that this dismisses Powell on some academic level of lying.

I'll refrain from calling Secretary Powell a serial liar. I'll let you, my dear readers decide how to label Colin 'My Lai' Powell.

Medicare Scandal?

What ever do you mean?

Yesterday, the LA Times reported that the House GOP members shut down an inquiry into whether or not the Bush White House enaged in illegal or inappropriate obfuscation of the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill(now law).

In case you have, like me, been living under a rock for the past few weeks, at issue is the following: Then Medicare Administrator Thomas A. Scully threatened to fire -- or more accurately, face severe recriminations -- his top actuary, Richard Foster, if he gave lawmakers his analyses showing the costs would be much higher than administration officials were saying publicly.

This issue is far from over. There is a move underway by the Health and Human Services Department to investigate the matter, and Democratic lawmakers have requested civil and criminal inquiries into the matter.

It may yet turn out that the White House and GOP members of Congress may re-open the issue, as the pattern of White House bullying, and obfuscation yields to popular pressure.

Meanwhile in Iraq

....CNN is reporting March turned out to be the second deadliest month since the 'end of major combat operations.'

Safer with Saddam gone?

Certainly not for Iraqis.

Certainly not for U.S. troops.

Then for whom?

Another Republican Talks

Flynt Leverett -- Former Senior Director for Middle East Affairs on President Bush's National Security Council. He is a former CIA analyst and Middle East specialist. He is now a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East studies at the Brookings Institution.

He spoke to DN's Amy Goodman this morning. Here's a bit:

FLYNT LEVERETT: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you respond to what the administration is saying about Clarke’s critique?

FLYNT LEVERETT: Well, I think that they are beginning, finally, to offer something resembling a substantive response to Mr. Clarke's charges rather than simply impugning his character or his motives. But I think that Clarke has laid out a very serious and substantive critique of the way the administration has conducted the war on terror since the September 11 attacks. It's hard to get around the fact that critical resources were taken away from the Afghan theater, to my mind, prematurely, before we had finished the job against bin Laden. They were taken away because if they were going to be ready to do their part in an Iraq campaign on the timetable that the White House wanted to do it, you had to pull these people out in the early spring of 2002. I think it's because of that that we have not captured bin Laden, we have not captured Zawahiri. Al Qaeda has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and, it would seem, in Iran. If we had the right people on the ground in the spring and summer of 2002, I think we might have caught these people. If we catch them now, that's obviously a good thing, but -- if it's two years too late because Al Qaeda has morphed into a different sort of organization.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who specifically was pulled from Afghanistan in March, 2002, to go to Iraq?

FLYNT LEVERETT: Well, I think I have said -- others and I have talked about these people being very highly trained, highly specialized -- special forces and intelligence officers. There's not an infinite supply of those sorts of people to go around. As I said, my view is that those people were pulled prematurely from Afghanistan because the administration was determined to go to war in Iraq on a specific timetable.

Listen here

Furthermore, Leverett told WaPo in this article that: "Clarke's critique of administration decision-making and how it did not balance the imperative of finishing the job against al Qaeda versus what they wanted to do in Iraq is absolutely on the money."


Oops.

Don't Call the White House...

..if it's a "911"

The Bush administration is blocking the 9/11 commission from examining over about 8,000 classified documents from the Clinton administration turned over for the commission to review.

The files contain classified documents about the Clinton administration's efforts against Al Qaeda.

An attorney for Clinton's presidential foundation accused the Bush White House of blocking the release of material that would be valuable to the 9/11 commission.

The 9/11 commission has announced National Security Advisor Condolleeza[sic] Rice will testify publicly under oath before the panel next Thursday, April 8.

Courtesy of Democracy Now!

See. The White House is giving the 9-11 Commission 'unprecedented access.'

The Fadin Facade

Bush Has A Credibility Issue

The results of the linked to poll are striking.

The trend is likely to stick as Clarke is seen as more credible, and the Administration was busily adjusting policies -- and money -- to missile defense pre-9/11 :)

Air America Now Airing

I forgot. Air America - Progressive Radio has launched!

Listen in. It's fun.

GTWO!

New Get Your War On! Get Some!

More Rice

Condi to testify on April 8th

Meanwhile, it has now been widely reported that Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's top lawyer, called commissioner Fred Fielding and may also have called commissioner James Thompson, before Richard Clarke was due to appear on March 24.

I'm sure it was to 'do lunch.'

Ugly.

Does anybody believe a word these people say?

Clarke 2, Rice 0

From WaPo comes this:

On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.

The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text.

Much more at link

The speech was obviously not given by Rice with this emphasis. The amended speech Rice delivered prominently featured Islamic terrorists, and gave only cursory mention to missile defense.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Clarke is a lot more right than wrong. I have yet to see anything substantive that Clarke has alleged to be effectively refuted.

Sorry about the lack of timely updates. I'm in feast mode at the moment. That is, I've enough work to occupy three people at present.

A couple of things.

Do you have a vexing question for NSA Anacondoleezza Rice? Send mail !

Can't hurt. Might just be fun.

FYI, you can use the same contact info. to propose questions for Bush and Cheney as well. Sure, it's a lark. But fun is always a good thing...No running with scissors!

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Gold is around $427 USD/oz. There are two sharply divided camps as to the overall health of equities markets, and economies. Moves into metals are generally seen as 'safe haven' buying. There is of course much to be concerned about.

From discord in the Middle-East to the November election to the high price of energy, there are certainly enough unknowns for people to be shifting asset classes.

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600 U.S. deaths in Iraq. Sad. Very sad.

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Read or listen to this account of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. You will not be disappointed. Amazing stuff.

Hired after 9/11 to translate intelligence information, Ms. Edmonds says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice's claim the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes "an outrageous lie.

OUCH!

You will not be disappointed. Amazing stuff.

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Also from Democracy Now! comes a conversation with long time Middle-East correspondent, Robert Fisk.

Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reports live from Baghdad. Fisk describes the "grotesque, gruesome, terrible" attacks in Fallujah, the contracted mercenaries that have infiltrated Iraq: "They swagger in and out with heavy weapons, with automatic weapons and pistols as if they're cowboys" and the deteriorating situation throughout the country: "The violence and the insecurity, the sense of anarchy is greater."

Link

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From The Bulletin comes specific information about the U.S' potential issues with strategic long-term planning in the interest of short-term political goals.

The piece deals with the U.S. duplicitous policy regarding Pakistan: A known nuclear proliferator.

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More stuff tomorrow.

With any luck, I'll have template v0.3 ready in the AM.

Kerry's 50 Cent Per Gallon Gas Tax Unspun

Again, the ever informative Annenberg Fact Check does the heavy lifting.

Quick summary:

A Bush ad released March 30 attacked Kerry for once supporting the "wacky" idea of raising the gasoline tax by 50 cents per gallon. That was a decade ago. More recently, the man who later became Bush's own chief economist said higher gasoline taxes would lead to "less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming" and that raising gasoline taxes 50 cents to pay for a cut in income-tax rates "may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer." How "wacky" is that?

Point.

Set.

Match.

Lots more at link.

Kerry, cheaper gas is my aim.

...Facing GOP attacks for advocating higher gas taxes as a senator, Kerry will call on President Bush to temporarily suspend filling U.S. oil reserves and to apply greater pressure on oil-producing nations to increase production, said Stephanie Cutter, a Kerry spokeswoman...[snip]

As this back-and-forth shows, both parties think the issue packs a political punch. Of the nine states with the highest regular gas-price increases, four -- Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada -- are considered swing states in the upcoming elections.

Democrats think the price of gas could become a major flash point in the presidential debate over oil, the economy and even Iraq and broader Middle East foreign policies. As one measure of the political sensitivity of the issue, a group of House Republicans has formally asked the White House to do what Kerry is calling for -- to ease pressure on prices by suspending shipments to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the government's emergency stockpile of oil...[snip]

More at link

Now, if I was running for president, I would use higher fuel costs as an environmental issue first, a national security issue sceond, and an economic issue last.

I needn't go through the litany of Bush anti-environmental policies. Kyoto, mercury emissions and gutting the Endangered Species Act are but three.

Oil has always been a 'strategic' problem for the U.S. This doesn't require expounding, as it is a truism.

The economic issue is important as well. Higher energy prices result in both higher costs of goods, and less money in the hands of consumers to pay for said goods.

Condi, with a twist

WASHINGTON (AP)--In a reversal, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.

In addition, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have agreed to a single joint private session with all 10 commissioners, with one commission staff member present to take notes of the session, said Gonzales's letter.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on Air Force One with President Bush, said the commission had unanimously agreed to the administration's conditions for the testimony.

The decision was conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent and that the commission does not request "additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice,'' White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said in a letter to the panel.

Subject to the conditions, the president will agree "to the commission's request for Dr. Rice to testify publicly regarding matters within the commission's statutory mandate,'' Gonzales's letter stated.

A bit more at link

I would say that this is a winf democracy, but Rice giving conditional testimony -- that no other WH staffers be called to testify -- flatly bothers me. The Commission should have full unfettered access to whoever it wants.

American democracy, an interesting concept.

This NEWSWEEK poll concerning 'Bush and the 9/11 Charges' once again shows the disparity of web poll responses versus the 'magazine' poll responses.

No, I'm not going to expound upon the results. Go take the poll, and you'll see what I mean.

The Trend is Your Friend, in the equities markets as in politics.

Unless you happen to be GWB.

Last week was, well, a disaster for Bush.

Politics is mostly a battle for the marketplace of ideas. Bush's kiosk was closed with an "Out of Stock" sign prominently displayed.

Rumor has it that he watched Anacondoleezza on 60 Minutes last evening, and then spent the remainder of evening grousing about the waste of three hours of his time.

The Independent brings more gloomy news about the environment.

I should post the whole thing here as it is that important. The toxifying of the world's oceans is amongst the most disturbing of environmental maladies.

I've said it before, and I'm going to say it again; the environment is the only issue that is transcendent over election cycles. It transcends human lifespans and I think that it is pretty clear that habitable planets are rather scarce. At least within our solar system.

The environment is the only issue that matters in the longest time spans. We are playing with a hand grenade that has the pin pulled. It is only a question of when it detonates, not if.

Will no one make this a campaign issue?

Corpocracy

This comes courtesy of Knight Ridder:

WASHINGTON - The Air Force gave the Boeing Co. five months to rewrite the official specifications for 100 aerial refueling tankers so that the company's 767 aircraft would win a $23.5 billion deal, according to e-mails and documents obtained by Knight Ridder.

In the process, Boeing eliminated 19 of the 26 capabilities the Air Force originally wanted, and the Air Force acquiesced in order to keep the price down.

The Air Force then gave Boeing competitor Airbus 12 days to bid on the project and awarded the contract to Boeing even though Airbus met more than 20 of the original 26 specifications and offered a price that was $10 billion less than Boeing's.

The Boeing tanker deal has been under investigation since it became public two and a half years ago and has been suspended pending the outcome of the probes.

But the e-mails and other documents show just how intent the Air Force was on steering the deal to Boeing, even though Airbus' tankers were more capable and cost less.

In one document, Bob Gower, Boeing's vice president for tankers, noted that one objective in rewriting the specifications was to "prevent an AoA from being conducted." "AoA" stands for "analysis of alternatives" or, in essence, a look at serious competitors...[snip]

...Politics has played a heavy role in the Boeing deal. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., whose state is home to Boeing headquarters, and Democratic Rep. Norman D. Dicks, who represents the state of Washington, where a key Boeing production plant is located, lobbied the White House on the deal.

Boeing and the Air Force also lobbied for the deal, and President Bush designated his chief of staff, Andrew Card, as the point man on the issue....[snip]

Much more at link

You really should take the couple of minutes to read the piece. It's a very revealing article about the closeness corporate America is with policy makers.....as if that needed any further evidence.

Dewey once said: "Government is the shadow cast by corporations over society." This is probably the most terse explanation of our dysfunctional democracy.

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Hypocrisy

It appears the Kerry has raised the ire of the bush camp by quoting scripture. I didn't know that only the GOP could use religion as political tool. But then, I'm grossly uninformed about religious things. Here are the words:

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but doesn't have works? -- James 2:14.

And:

He allegedly told listeners of a stump speech to become: "doers of the word, not hearers only."

I have no beef with that. He is obviously giving Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' bs a left hook.

I remember MA. Governor Bill Weld telling the Bush camp that Kerry is a fierce campaigner. It appears that Weld was correct. Disarming your enemy is an effective way to win a war.

He said, she said.

Clarke on Meet the Press averred that he wants what Frist wants.

MR. RUSSERT: But to be clear, Mr. Clarke, you would urge Congress, the intelligence committees, to declassify your sworn testimony before the congressional inquiry two years ago as well as your testimony before the September 11th Commission?

MR. CLARKE: Yes, and those documents I just referred to and Dr. Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission because the victims' families have no idea what Dr. Rice has said. There weren't in those closed hearings where she testified before the 9-11 Commission. They want to know. So let's take her testimony before the 9-11 Commission and make it part of the package of what gets declassified along with the national security decision directive of September 4 and along with my memo of January 25.

In fact, Tim, let's go further. The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I've sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of it.

MR. RUSSERT: As well as her responses?

MR. CLARKE: As well as her responses.

The reference to Dr. Bill 'Mengele' Frist(R-Serial Feline Murderer) is that he has been calling for the declassification of some of Clarke's testimony before Congress in July of 2002. In Bushspeak Clarke appears to be saying: Bring it on.

Meanwhile, at CBS on 60 Minutes, Condoleezza Rice mainly sticks to the GOP/White House talking points.

I should note that she reiterated the White House's position that she will not testify under oath in public before the 9-11 Commission.

Rice dissembles while Clarke says get it all out in the open. Not only for the Commission, but for the people to hear.

Today's scorecard:

Clarke - 1

Rice - 0

Couple of quick items before breakfast.

1. Bush's Brain* has the full text of both days of testimony and comments before the 9-11 Commission



2. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports that the Turks are 'missing' a Clintonian style U.S. President

The Bulletin is a great source of underreported news material. The piece is listed as an 'opinion' piece, and this undersores the high standards that The Bulletin adheres to....the article is, in my opinion, a great read.

* A caveat. The page is over 270K in size. So, it may take several seconds for it to load.

Chalabi under investigation by the GAO

From NEWSWEEK:

He apparently has no regrets that his WMD warnings have turned out to be inaccurate. What matters, Chalabi suggested recently, is that he finally got the regime change he had long sought. "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful," he told a British newspaper. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Some in Congress disagree. NEWSWEEK has learned that the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, is opening a probe into the INC's use of U.S. government money the group received in 2001 and 2002. The issue under scrutiny is not whether Chalabi prodded America into a war on false pretenses; it is whether he used U.S. taxpayer dollars and broke U.S. laws or regulations to do so. Did Chalabi and the INC violate the terms of their funding by using U.S. money to sell the public on its anti-Saddam campaign and to lobby Congress?

NEWSWEEK also points out the fact that Chalabi was convicted of embezzlement in Jordan in 1992, as well as the fact that both the State Department and the CIA divorced Chalabi after finding him to be a source of spurious material.

"Our guy" in Baghdad. Will we never learn?

There's a lot more there. Go have a read.

Kerry Points Out the Obvious

(I am not stating that as a bad thing at all)

In this NYT article, Kerry is reported to have used the now familiar phrase "character assassination" as the method of choice the White House has been using to discredit its detractors.

I agree. The Bushies' admonishing of critics seems -- by any reasonable account -- to begin and end with attacks upon the persons' rectitude rather than addressing the substance of their concerns.

Here's Kerry:

"Every time somebody comes up and says something that this White House doesn't like, they don't answer the questions about it or show you the truth about it, they go into character-assassination mode."

A bit more:

"I don't think people want questions about character. I think they want questions about our security to be answered."

He's not just talking about Richard A. Clarke. He also mentions former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and Medicare actuary Richard Foster.

I would lengthen the list to include other persons, but Kerry's point is taken.

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that this is not a peculiar affliction of the Bush administration, but they do seem to engage in personal attacks to a much higher degree than other recent White House administrations.

Character assassination is the weapon of choice when you have nothing else to use as fodder for your refutations.

Bush has only his character to run an election campaign on, as his policies are not in the best interests of the citizenry. It would be more accurate to state that Bush is running his campaign on keeping the populace fearful, and that he is most capable of keeping the people safe.

In this context that reasons for the vicious character attacks are clear. If assaults on Bush's character are successful, he is left with very little in the way of arguing that he is worthy of another four years as head of state.