Monday, February 13, 2006

A video of "42 brainless blows" reportedly shows beatings of Iraqi youths by British troops, eliciting the argument that 'the video is not the problem,' as Lila Rajiva welcomes the U.K. to the 'Axis of Child Abusers.' [Cursor.org] 2:29:44 PM    comment []

The New York Times | The Trust Gap. We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers - and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less, writes The New York Times. [t r u t h o u t] 2:03:21 PM    comment []

Judge okays evicting 12,000 Katrina families. Judge okays evicting 12,000 Katrina families [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 1:57:00 PM    comment []

Michael Hirsh | Where's the Oversight?. The untold tale of the latest Pentagon budget is the wastage and overpricing that continue to lard it up to the tune of perhaps $100 billion - with Congress scarcely paying attention remarks Michael Hirsh. [t r u t h o u t] 1:05:54 PM    comment []

Bush Spent Over $1.6 Billion on Advertising and Public Relations Contracts. Today Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Representative George Miller, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span. [t r u t h o u t] 1:04:53 PM    comment []

Ray McGovern | Who Will Blow the Whistle Before We Attack Iran?. With no perceptible demurral from inside the government, George W. Bush launched a war of aggression, defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal as "the supreme international crime." If this doesn't qualify for whistle blowing, what does? Let us hope that administration officials, or analysts - or both - will find the courage to speak out loudly, and early enough to prevent the "disconnected-from-reality" cabal in the Bush administration from getting us into an unnecessary war with Iran, writes Ray McGovern. [t r u t h o u t] 1:04:13 PM    comment []

Cartoonist can't take Coulter joke. Cartoonist can't take Coulter joke [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 1:00:14 PM    comment []

Report: Katrina response a 'national failure'. A congressional report due out this week slams the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, calling it a "failure of leadership" that left people stranded when they were most in need. "Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the report says. "At every level -- individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental -- we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw." [CNN.com] 12:59:43 PM    comment []

Steve Clemons: Cheney Team's Plame Leak Sabotaged America's Iran-Watching Intelligence Effort. An important and provocative report has just been published that suggests that Iran was the target of much of Valerie Plame's covert investigative work and that outing her identity had far worse consequences than has thus far been acknowledged. This information also dovetails with information I have been digging up on Iran's interests in Niger uranium. Raw Story has just published this piece by Larisa Alexandrovna. The core of the article is: The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned. According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran. Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program. While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran. This is rather huge news. The Washington Note had some knowledge of this Raw Story article before it hit the net and mentioned it was on the way on the WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show earlier today. There are different directions this story may go. The first might be that one of the reasons that Plame was outed had to do with bureaucratic and/or political enemies who were predisposed against the intelligence results of her team's Iran WMD-watching efforts. I would have to be further convinced of that case -- as I think that internal pettiness inside the Bush White House over Joe Wilson's public outing of the contrived Iraq-Niger-Uranium gambit is a pretty compelling rationale for Cheney's machine to out Plame. But another dimension of this story has to do with an assessment of the damage that her outing caused this nation. As we now start down a path towards harder-edged threats against Iran, allies will naturally question the quality of our intelligence given our failures on Iraq WMDs. If Cheney & Co. outed one of the key intelligence operations monitoring the inputs and outputs of Iran's nuclear program -- then Cheney & Co. did vast damage to our ability to know what is real and contrived inside Iran. One other piece to this that I need to review in my notes -- so please take the following with a grain of salt until further sourced -- has to do with Joe Wilson's findings in Niger. Someone with knowledge of the classified report that Joe Wilson "orally" filed after his now famed investigative trip to Niger shared with me that there were two notes in that report that had nothing to do with Iraq and its purported activities in Niger. These two notes focused on Iran's interests and possible activities in Niger. The question is "why would Iran be interested in Niger uranium when it has more than adequate domestic sources of uranium?" The response that has come from various intelligence sources that I have consulted is that if Iran was trying to access external sources of uranium -- somewhere like Niger -- it is because those "secret efforts" would be outside the international intelligence monitoring of Iran's domestic mining operations. I do not have the fully articulated "notes" from Joe Wilson's Niger report (in fact, I have just learned that those written "notes" were destroyed), but I have just learned that these Iran-Niger references appear in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Joe Wilson's Niger trip. (I will link as soon as I secure the electronic version). What is fascinating is that one of the staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence mistakenly recorded in the published report that Iraq -- rather than Iran -- attempted to purchase 400-500 tons of uranium. Wilson apparently made clear that it was Iran and not Iraq attempting to make such purchases. The Washington Post, which reported this inaccuracy -- had to issue a correction that the purchase effort, as reported by Joe Wilson, was made by Iran and not Iraq. More soon. -- Steve Clemons [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:59:09 PM    comment []

"When the shooting was finally reported, it was told as a joke," notes Rigorous Intuition's Jeff Wells, who adds: "Remember, this is a man who attended the Auschwitz memorial ceremony dressed for a duck hunt." And, "was the VEEP ... juiced?" [Cursor.org] 11:41:10 AM    comment []

As the CIA's top counter-terrorism official is 'sacked for opposing torture,' an Iowa man says "I pray that our chair is not used for torture," a draft U.N. report concludes that the treatment of Guantanamo detainees "must be assessed as amounting to torture," and Ann Louise Bardach details how 'For one Marine, torture came home.' [Cursor.org] 11:40:33 AM    comment []

"60 Minutes" also obtained a memo in which the Baghdad airport's security director wrote that contractor "Custer Battles has shown themselves to be unresponsive, uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war profiteers. Other than that, they are swell fellows." Plus: 'Baghdad Embassy Bonanza' [Cursor.org] 11:30:43 AM    comment []

Raw Story, citing U.S. intelligence sources, reports that Valerie Plame's outing "was more serious than has previously been reported," and that "Iran was the focal point of Plame's work." [Cursor.org] 10:54:45 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.