Weapons of Mass Distraction
posted by Rick at 8:16 AM

Arianna Huffington strikes again.

In Bush Rouses The Sleeping Dogs Of The Culture War, the reborn progressive points out the latest tactic in the Bush League's desperate struggle to retain power:

With Silver Starred John Kerry threatening the president’s hold on the high ground of national defense, Team Bush has decided it’s time to switch battlefields and start screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah.
. . .
The Justice Department has recently assigned a team of FBI agents to focus exclusively on adult obscenity cases. That’s right, with the war on terror in full swing, our war president is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the porn beat when they could be tracking down — oh, I don’t know — terrorist sleeper cells. Talk about your misguided allocation of manpower. I don’t know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson.

We see the same loopy sense of right and wrong being played out in the Janet Jackson firestorm. Less than two weeks after the shock and bra of the Super Bowl, Bush’s congressional cronies were already holding hearings on the matter. Compare that to the foot-dragging that followed 9/11. It took 14 months — and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the victims’ family members — before the president finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Now that’s indecent.

For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political purposes.

So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porno is a sin, but Halliburton’s wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Cheney and Scalia shacking up in a duck blind is a win. Telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMD is a win. And so, apparently, is GOP staffers hacking into Senate computers and Tom DeLay illegally funneling corporate money to Texas politicians.

I think I'm in love.

USA Today: Prosecutor in terror case controversy sues Ashcroft
posted by Rick at 8:12 PM

A federal prosecutor in Detroit is suing the Justice Department alleging "gross mismanagement" of the war on terror, and seeking damages for First Amendment and Privacy Act violations.

Richard Convertino, an Assistant US Attorney in Detroit, worked on the successful prosecution of a case involving an alleged terrorist cell in Detroit, then told a Senate committee he had concerns about the management of the war on terror--whereupon he was targeted by an internal investigation. He alleges that the investigation was launched in retaliation for his testimony, violating his right to free speech.

He also says officials deliberately leaked the identity of a confidential informant in the case, also in retaliation for his testimony.

Sound familiar?

Just another case of Bush League Machiavellianism, as they callously sacrifice a valuable informant in order to punish one of their own for daring to speak the truth.

Serial Liar

Bill Gallagher of the Niagara Falls Reporter has written a scathing indictment cataloguing Bush's lies about the pretext for war, his National Guard service, and what his tax cuts for the rich and famous have done for the economy. It's a handy list of facts, worth memorizing in order to counter the lies that are sure to be spewing forth soon with millions of dollars behind them.

What is the Bush League hiding?

 
Remember how the Bush League cherry-picked intelligence reports to make it seem there was ironclad proof of WMDs in Iraq? It seems they're at it again....

The White House late Wednesday released a copy of a dental evaluation Bush had at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery on Jan. 6, 1973, which Bush's spokesman said documented that the president had served in Alabama as required.

The White House obtained the dental record, along with other medical records it did not release, from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The inch-tall stack of medical documents has been the subject of debate within the White House, where staff members have pored over the records while wrestling with how much to release to the public — and which contents inside the file would clear up lingering questions.

(AP story via USA Today)

As opposed to raising new ones, we can assume.

Surely I'm not the only one wondering why they don't just release the whole stack. When John Ashcroft wants to rummage through abortion records, the administration argues that there's no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality:

Citing federal case law, the department said in a brief that "there is no federal common law" protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of "modern medical practice" and the growth of third-party insurers, it said, "individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."

In that case, all I can say about the President's records is "Bring 'em on!" For that matter, why not release all of the President's military records, as John McCain did in 2000 to disprove a Bush campaign smear?

But forget what Bush may be hiding about the performance of his military duties in the seventies. What is he hiding about the performance of his Presidential duties from 2001 to the present?

In a chilling article published by the New York Observer, Gail Sheehy writes that 9/11 commission executive director Philip Zelikow screens the evidence and witnesses that are seen by the commissioners. Incredibly, the commission was unaware of the story of Amy Sweeney. The flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 has been publicly honored by the state of Massachusetts and the FBI for her bravery; her in-flight phone call not only alerted American Airlines that a hijacking was in progress, it enabled them to identify three of the hijackers.

"Amy, this is Michael Woodward." The American Airlines flight service manager had been friends with Sweeney for a decade, so he didn’t have to waste any time verifying that this wasn’t a hoax. "Michael, this plane has been hijacked," Ms. Sweeney repeated. Calmly, she gave him the seat locations of three of the hijackers: 9D, 9G and 10B. She said they were all of Middle Eastern descent, and one spoke English very well.

Mr. Woodward ordered a colleague to punch up those seat locations on the computer. At least 20 minutes before the plane crashed, the airline had the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit cards of three of the five hijackers. They knew that 9G was Abdulaziz al-Omari, 10B was Satam al-Suqami, and 9D was Mohamed Atta—the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists.

"The nightmare began before the first plane crashed," said Mike Sweeney, "because once my wife gave the seat numbers of the hijackers and Michael Woodward pulled up the passenger information, Mohamed Atta’s name was out there. They had to know what they were up against."

The commission did not learn about this in their January hearing on aviation security because Zelikow--a former Bush advisor--screened it from them, apparently along with a lot of other information about what the authorities knew and when they knew it.

What her husband wants to know is this: "When and how was this information about the hijackers used? Were Amy’s last moments put to the best use to protect and save others?"

"We know what she said from notes, and the government has them," said Mary Schiavo, the formidable former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, whose nickname among aviation officials was "Scary Mary." Ms. Schiavo sat in on the commission’s hearing on aviation security on 9/11 and was disgusted by what it left out. "In any other situation, it would be unthinkable to withhold investigative material from an independent commission," she told this writer. "There are usually grave consequences. But the commission is clearly not talking to everybody or not telling us everything."

The article also reveals that authorities heard one of the hijackers "clearly threatening" the pilot, who was surreptitiously keying his microphone.. They also heard the hijackers saying "We have more planes. We have other planes."

Sheehy presents quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that United Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field, may have been shot down by F-16s, not wrestled to the ground by a passenger uprising as has been reported.

Melody Homer, the wife of Flight 93’s first officer, was at home in Marlton, N.J., the morning of Sept. 11 with their 10-month-old child. Within minutes of seeing the second plane turn into a fireball, Ms. Homer called the Flight Operations Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which keeps track of all New York–based pilots. She was told that her husband’s flight was fine.

"Whether or not my husband’s plane was shot down," the widowed Mrs. Homer said, "the most angering part is reading about how the President handled this."

Mr. Bush was notified 14 minutes after the first attack, at 9 a.m., when he arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He went into a private room and spoke by phone with his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. Mrs. Homer’s soft voice curdles when she describes his reaction: "I can’t get over what Bush said when he was called about the first plane hitting the tower: ‘That’s some bad pilot.’ Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist hijacking, but our President didn’t know? Why did it take so long to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my husband’s plane took off [at 8:41 a.m.] and when the second plane hit in New York [9:02 a.m.], they could have turned back to airfield."

Melody LeRoy later learned from a member of the Air Force who worked with her husband that "a couple of weeks before the incident, they were all sitting around and talking about the intelligence that was filtering through the military that something big was going to happen. For all of this to get ignored," she said as she swallowed a sob, "it’s difficult to excuse that."

What is Bush's response to all of this? Stonewalling. He initially resisted any inquiry into the tragedy but the administration's own. According to Tom Daschle, Bush and Cheney repeatedly urged him in 2002 not to investigate the attack at all. After finally bowing to pressure and appointing the 9/11 commission to follow up on the Congressional inquiry he had tried to subvert, he has fought to keep information from them at every turn--refusing, for example, to give them access to the infamous Presidential Daily Briefs showing that, yes, they could have anticipated the use of airliners as missiles (in fact, the CIA anticipated exactly that).

The President, in bowing to public pressure again and appointing a commission to investigate the purported intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war, said he wants the "big picture." As Sheehy points out, the Congressional investigation has already given him the big picture on the pre-9/11 failures--900 pages' worth.

But as we know, the President doesn't read.

Nor, when it comes to information about his own failure to carry out his duties, does he want anyone else reading either.

Redefining cooperation

 
February 8:

President Bush:  We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton.  As you know, we made an agreement on what's called "Presidential Daily Briefs," so they could see the information the CIA provided me that is unique, by the way, to have provided what's called the PDB, because - 

Russert:  Presidential Daily Brief?

President Bush:  Right. And see, the danger of allowing for information that I get briefed on out in the public arena is that it could mean that the product that I receive or future presidents receive is somewhat guarded for fear of - for fear of it being revealed, and for fear of people saying, "Well, you know, we're going to second-guess that which you told the President."

I need good, honest information, but we have shared this information with both those gentlemen, gentlemen I trust, so they could get a better picture of what took place prior to September the 11th.

And again, we want - I want the truth to be known.  I want there to be a full analysis done so that we can better prepare the homeland, for example, against what might occur.

Meet the Press

February 9:

Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned the White House on Monday that it could face a politically damaging subpoena this week if it refused to turn over information from the highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports given to President Bush before 9/11.

The panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, said through a spokesman that he was hopeful an agreement would be worked out before the commission's next meeting, on Tuesday. Commission officials said that negotiations continued throughout the day on Monday and into the evening with the office of Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel.

But other members of the commission said that without an immediate resolution, they would call for a vote on Tuesday on issuing a subpoena to the White House for access to information in the documents. The papers are known as the President's Daily Brief, the intelligence summary prepared each morning for Mr. Bush by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Responding to earlier threats of a subpoena, the White House agreed last year to allow three members of the 10-member commission and the panel's Republican staff director to review portions of the daily briefings from before the Sept. 11 attacks that referred to intelligence warnings about Al Qaeda and its plans for terrorist attacks.

The commission has described the briefings as vital since they would show whether the White House had warnings of a catastrophic terrorist attack. The White House has acknowledged that one briefing Mr. Bush saw in August 2001 referred to the possibility of a Qaeda strike with commercial airplanes.

In recent weeks, however, the White House has refused to give permission for the four members of the delegation to share their handwritten and computerized notes - which have been retained by the White House under the agreement - with the full commission. That has outraged Democrats and Republicans on the panel and prompted the renewed threat of a subpoena.

NY Times

With apologies to the memory of Douglas Adams, this must be some new meaning of "extraordinary cooperation" which I was previously unfamiliar with.

New fears of global warming: now, not later

According to some people, there is "growing evidence" that global warming may have disastrous consequences much more quickly than has been suggested--that a catastrophic change cold occur in the space of a decade, once the climate reaches a "tipping point" that could be upon us within a few years.

Although the change would be triggered by warming, say these people, the effect in much of the US and Europe could be drastic cooling, coupled with violent storms and severe drought. By 2010, global warming could cause the circular currents that ferry warm tropical surface water to the Northern Atlantic and return deeper, colder water to the tropics to shut down. Within a decade afterward, according to one scenario, vast stretches of the Southern US turn to dust bowls and burned-out forests. The Netherlands are inundated. Northern Europe goes into a deep freeze, and Southern Europe is overwhelmed by refugees from Africa. Widespread famine and a deepening energy crisis lead to global unrest, and eventually to all-out wars over food, energy, and other scarce and dwindling resources.

And this is based on a "midrange case" of abrupt climate change. Things might not go so badly--and then again, the reality could be much worse.

Who are the tree-huggers preaching this gloom-and-doom scenario? They include Pentagon planner Andrew Marshall and futurist Peter Schwartz, former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, according to FORTUNE Magazine.

Their scenario, detailed in an unclassified DOD report summarized in FORTUNE's January 26 edition, is far from certain, and may well be unlikely. But its consequences are so dire, says FORTUNE, that "it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate."

The FORTUNE article calls for "action now" to prevent the catastrophe, if possible, and to plan for ways to lessen its effects--climatoligically, economically, and politically.

It's becoming more and more apparent that the Bush League's abandonment of the Kyoto Treaty was a huge mistake. The issue of global warming cannot take a back seat to corporate profits or even national security--indeed, it could prove to be the biggest threat to both.

Maybe the dog ate them

Ah, Dubya: the President Quayle we never had....

I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons.  But David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons.  And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went.  They could have been destroyed during the war.  Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq.  They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out.  That's what the Iraqi survey group  let me  let me finish here.

But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons.  Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons.  Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons.  He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world.

--President George W. Bush, on NBC's Meet the Press, February 8, 2004

Right. While dodging cluster bombs and hiding in bunkers, with an unprecedented array of US military surveillance trained on them and the whole world watching on television, Saddam and his henchmen managd to secretly destroy or ship out their massive stores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and get rid of every shred of evidence that they still existed, that they hadn't all been destroyed as long ago as 1991.

Or maybe the tooth fairy came in the middle of the night and took them. Or the Easter Bunny--that no-good terrorist! See, we knew he was in cahoots with the Iraqis all along.

Or maybe, just maybe, the cautions from our own intelligence community that the evidence for such weapons was sketchy; the reports from defectors that the weapons had been destroyed over a decade ago; the UN inspectors' claims that they needed more time to do their job--maybe all those things that the Bush League uber-hawks chose to ignore in their rush to judgment--were things that we should have paid attention to in the first place.

Having it both ways

 
The Bush League neocons like to have it both ways.

For example, they continue to cite enforcing the will of the United Nations as a reason for the invasion of Iraq. George W. himself, in the Meet the Press interview of Feb. 8, said "U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them. And we said, there are serious consequences if you don't.  That was a unanimous verdict.  In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger.  So, it wasn't just me and the United States.  The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed."

Of course, the UN also made it plain that they didn't want the US going in, but in that case George's answer is "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country."

So, when it's convenient to use the wishes of the UN as an excuse to do what he wants, Bush is more than willing to latch onto it. However, the wishes of the UN suddenly become irrelevant when they don't happen to match what he wants to do.

Bush and his apologists also like to have it both ways when talk turns to Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. When attacks on US forces in country subside, they say it's because we've been so successful at restoring order. When the attacks increase, it's a sign that our enemies are growing more desperate because we're so successful. Either way, whether attacks are up or down, they spin it into good news.

A variation on the same theme deals with terrorist attacks here. As long as there are no more terrorist attacks on US soil, they will say it's evidence that their "war on terrorism" is succeeding, and therefore we need to renew and extend the Patriot Act. If, heaven forbid, there should be another attack--as many Americans think there will be--you can rest assured that they'll say it only goes to show that the world is a dangerous place...and therefore we need to renew and extend the Patriot Act.

The same kind of doublethink pervades Bush League pronouncements on the economy, the environment, and health issues. Any good news is due to their foresight and their corporate-driven policies; any bad news is evidence that we need more of the same. Whatever happens, not only will they claim it proves their policies are right, they'll find a way to say it's exactly what they predicted and planned for. And as long as the lap-dog press plays along, the Bush League will continue to have it both ways.

Madmen everywhere

 
Did anybody but me notice that on Meet the Press today, Tim Russert called Fidel Castro a madman, and implied that the rulers of Iran, North Korea, and Burma are madmen as well?

Did anybody notice that Bush claimed we had to fight a preemptive war (against a country he now admits was not an imminent threat) because dimplomacy had failed?

From the transcript:

Bush: ...He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time  I'm not saying immediately, but over time  which would then have put us in what position?  We would have been in a position of blackmail.

In other words, you can't rely upon a madman, and he was a madman.  You can't rely upon him making rational decisions when it comes to war and peace, and it's too late, in my judgment, when a madman who has got terrorist connections is able to act.

Russert: But there are lots of madmen in the world,  Fidel Castro …

Bush: True.

Russert: … in Iran, in North Korea, in Burma, and yet we don't go in and take down those governments.

Bush: Correct, and I could  that's a legitimate question as to why we like felt we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea.  And the reason why I felt like we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea, because we had run the diplomatic string in Iraq.

The facts say otherwise. Since the war, it has come to light that Saddam tried desperately, before the invasion, to reach a diplomatic solution. He offered to let the US bring in its own inspectors, and to give them free access to anything they wanted to see.

Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If he didn't already know it, he knew when Saddam offered to meet whatever terms Bush wanted to impose in order to avoid war.

Dubya's response was similar to the one Mel Gibson, as William Wallace in Braveheart, gave to the commander of the British army he was about to fight:

"Scotland's terms: Lower your flags, march straight back to England stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for one hundred years of theft rape and murder...before we let you leave, your commander must cross that field, present himself before this army, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own arse."

This is one of Bush's favorite ways of "negotiating": demand terms so outrageous that you know they will not be accepted, so that you can claim you tried diplomacy before rushing to war.

There were many more lies in the Meet the Press interview, and I'm sure we'll see many of them pointed out in the coming days and weeks. From September 11, 2001 to the present, the Bush League has used the so-called "war on terrorism" to rationalize the taking away of Americans' freedom of speech, freedom of peaceable assembly, freedom of association, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure--and there's little or no evidence that this all-too-dear price has bought anything but increased profits for the administration's corporate cronies.

So here's another Braveheart quote, one the President should hear repeatedly--from his challenger, from the press, and from the American people--between now and November: "You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it."

Huffington: Cheney is Dems' best weapon

Arianna Huffington, America's most famous recovering conservative, asks: Will Cheney Provide The Margin Of Victory...For Democrats?:

GOP inner circles are buzzing with the rumor that President Bush is planning to drop Dick Cheney from his re-election ticket and replace him with 9/11 action hero Rudy Giuliani.

As one firmly committed to making sure Bush doesn't get another four years in office, all I can say to this is: Please, Mr. President, say it ain't so!

From his insistence on clinging to long-discredited "evidence" of WMDs in Iraq and links between Saddam and Bin Laden, to his cozy relationship with his warmongering former company, to his also cozy relationship with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Huffington explains why Democrats should hope to have Dick Cheney to kick around in the campaign. And she does so with her usual sense of humor. A couple of my favorite lines...

Paraphrasing Bush League talking heads backpedaling from earlier claims: "Did I say 500 tons of sarin and 25,000 liters of anthrax? I meant 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities'."

Of the Cheney-Scalia duck-hunting trip in Louisiana: "Why bother with 'justice for all' when you've got hunting buddies who don't give a flying duck about fairness, impartiality, or the public's right to know?"

Of Scalia's claim that his impartiality can't be reasonably questioned: "That ranks right up there with Justin Timberlake's claim that the boob shot seen 'round the world was due to a 'wardrobe malfunction'."

Another open letter

An open letter to Mitch Albom, sports writer for the Detroit Free Press:

Mitch,

Sorry for the presumption of familiarity, but I can't help myself. You've been in my living room so many times I feel as if we were old pals. You don't know me without you have read a weblog, but you've always been one of my favorites on The Sports Reporters.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for standing up, in your Feb. 1 column, for your beliefs.. for sanity... for truth, justice, and the American Way. I'm sure you'll take a lot of flak over your stand, but it's refreshing to know that not all who cover sports are intellectually akin to Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Miller. (Come to think of it, those two didn't do particularly well covering sports, either, did they?)

The main thrust of your column reminds me of the Arundhati Roy quote that Jim Bouton chose to open Foul Ball: "...in the midst of putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

Thanks for being accountable.

No controversy here...CBS's actions speak louder than words

 
It was OK for Janet Jackson to sing during her Super Bowl halftime show on CBS, "I'm so hot, I'm gonna take off all my clothes," and then have Justin Timberlake rip off part of her costume, exposing her bare breast. It was OK for a beer commercial to feature a Chimpanzee making crude sexual overtures to an attractive (human) female, and for a voice-over in another commercial to ask rhetorically if you'll be able to perform sexually when the moment is right--but not to show a tongue-in-cheek ad reminding you that meat consumption increases the probability that you won't.

It was OK for an insurance company to facetiously offer a "trunk monkey" with every policy--that is, a chimpanzee which, if you get into a verbal altercation with another motorist, can be released to clobber your adversary with a tire iron. It was OK for a credit-card commercial to depict Homer Simpson sloshing suds immediately before driving home to spend time with his family. It was OK to run an advocacy ad from Philip Morris, and other advocacy ads from anti-smoking groups--including one highly critical of advocacy ads from Philip Morris. But an ad suggesting that future generations will be left to pay off the Bush administration's record deficits? Sorry, that's over the top.

In rejecting ads from MoveOn.org and PETA, CBS had cited a "50-year-old policy" of not accepting advocacy ads that deal with controversial subjects; but they demonstrated their tolerance for controversy by airing nudity in prime time; ads that made light of bestiality, drinking & driving, and road rage; and both a Philip Morris ad and an "anti-Philip Morris ad" ad. It's apparent that the only "controversy" CBS finds unacceptable is telling the truth about the Bush League.