|
 |
Monday, August 09, 2004 |
With Laura Bush calling John Kerry's stance on stem cell research ridiculous, and Teresa Kerry yelling four more years of hell, I see a great Celebrity Boxing match brewing between the two shortly before the October debates. Leave it to FOX to steal the idea and try to set up a bout between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ann Coulter.
2:48:55 PM 
|
|
Gen. Franks: Kerry 'absolutely' qualified
WASHINGTON - Retired Gen. Tommy Franks, producer of the early military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Sunday that criticism of John Kerry’s war record is political hyperbole and Kerry is “absolutely” qualified to be commander in chief.
2:39:10 PM
|
|
Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in CIA Leak Case
A federal judge on Monday upheld subpoenas to compel testimony of journalists at NBC News and Time magazine in a special prosecutor's probe into whether Bush administration officials illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the news media.
Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country.
A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium claim.
Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/08/09/judge_upholds_media_subpoenas_in_cia_leak_case/
2:04:37 PM
|
|
Bozell on Whoopi Goldberg: "[D]og muzzles, for people's mouths, sometimes are a very good thing"
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408090003 As a guest on the August 5 edition of CNN's Crossfire, the founder and president of the conservative Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III, said, "[W]hen I think of the people like Whoopi Goldberg and the kind of things they say. I'm reminded that muzzles, dog muzzles, for people's mouths, sometimes are a very good thing."
This isn't the first time that a conservative has mentioned muzzles in reference to a woman expressing her political views. Two days earlier, as Media Matters for America noted, as a guest on MSNBC Live, former Republican presidential candidate and regular CNN contributor Bob Dole said of Senator John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, "There's not a muzzle big enough out there, I don't think."
1:38:00 PM
|
|
IRAQ – NEOCON DARLING A WANTED MAN: In seven short months, Ahmad Chalabi has gone from being President Bush's special guest at the State of the Union (seated behind First Lady Laura Bush) to having an arrest warrant hanging over his head. An Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for the former darling of the Bush administration for counterfeiting Iraqi currency and money laundering. (He also has been under investigation for passing U.S. secrets to Iran.) His nephew, Salem Chalabi, the chief prosecutor in the case against Saddam Hussein, has also been charged with participation in the June murder of an Iraqi official who had been investigating the Chalabi family and the Iraqi National Congress for illegally seizing hundreds of properties after the U.S.-led invasion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports, "Supporters like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not available for comment."
9:09:28 AM
|
|
Blame Michael Moore for everything.
I just read an article by Stanley Crouch of the NY Daily News and he believes that because of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11," the Bush administration will do nothing about Sudan. Excerpt: Moore - who claims to believe that if America is going to war it should be a war worth fighting for - may have done much to make it nearly impossible, for now, to fight that very war.
The irony is that Moore may end up with thousands of black Sudanese corpses covering him and his inevitable next Oscar.
Mr. Crouch, I know this might be hard for you to understand but, if President Bush hadn't started a second preemptive war, he might have actually been able to send forces into Sudan. Or maybe Iran or maybe a country that actually had nuclear capabilities to hurt America. Have you just given many people another reason why America should not have invaded Iraq at this time? To put the blame of some many deaths on Michael Moore is simply absurd and down right despicable. I know Moore has been called many things, but I didn't know that he had orchestrated the genocide in Sudan.
7:47:24 AM
|
|
Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder-Experts
LONDON (Reuters) - The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror.
Juan Cole sums it up nicely:
In other words, the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside al-Qaeda that the US has ever had.
The announcement of Khan's name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have known he was a double agent, since they got emails from him Sunday and Monday!) One of the twelve has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fall-out of the Bush SNAFU. It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee.
Why in the world would Bush administration officials out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against al-Qaeda? In a way, the motivation does not matter. If the Reuters story is true, this slip is a major screw-up that casts the gravest doubts on the competency of the administration to fight a war on terror. Either the motive was political calculation, or it was sheer stupidity.
Wolf Blitzer had a report Sunday about the al-Qaeda double agent whose identity was revealed on Monday:
Blitzer discussed the Khan case with US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She admitted that the Bush administration had in fact revealed Khan's name to the press. She said she did not know if Khan was a double agent working for the Pakistani government. (!!!)
If Rice is right, it means that it was indeed the U.S. who blew Khan's cover, and if Rice is well informed, it means that it was done without even knowing that the Pakistanis were still using him.
I'm a little surprised that Rice would say something like this, so I think I'll wait for further confirmation on this story. But it sure looks pretty bad at the moment.
7:14:03 AM
|
|
Jimmy Breslin is sick to his stomach:
Every time something like that happens, Bush stumbles or a 9/11 report comes out to make him look bad, he cries "terrorist." He has done this for over two years now. This time, a great bin Laden target in New York was the Citigroup Center on Lexington Avenue. You could be incinerated if Osama gets at this building! Right away in the morning, George Bush's wife and daughters rushed up from Washington to stand bravely in the front of all those cameras. It was not for the election. They truly wanted to stand with New Yorkers and be incinerated, the same as anybody else.
It probably was the one most fraudulent act we have had since the World Trade Center bombing, and at that time, Bush himself got up on a destroyed fire engine and pretended to be tough.... Nothing new was in the list of greatest danger that Bush released to the city in attempting to frighten everybody into believing that he should be re-elected. Here. Look at my soldiers in your streets.
And as you listen to George Bush telling his fable, if you listen carefully, you can hear in the background the faint but unmistakable cry of a wolf.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nybres053918153aug05,0,634744.column?coll=ny-news-columnists
6:59:30 AM
|
|
The most popular Republican in the country will not be speaking at the Republican National Convention. Secretary of State Colin Powell will not even be there -- and may not be in the United States, according to U.S. officials.
Powell consistently has scored better than his boss in public-opinion polls, often by 20 points or more. But in keeping with tradition, Cabinet officials do not speak at the conventions -- or other campaign events. So Powell will not appear.
Oh really?
At the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, then-Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, now a U.S. senator from Tennessee, was given a second-night prime-time slot.
What about this Cabinet Member this year?
Paige Given Prime Slot At the GOP Convention
It is a time slot often reserved for firebrand speakers and party favorites, and during the Republican National Convention next month, a portion of it will belong to Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
It's more like the time-honored tradition of not having a cabinet secretary speak at the Convention that would remind everyone of incredibly failed policies and strategies.
6:51:41 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2004 John Amato.
|
|
|
