capt. Bringdown Isles

[Tripp]

Greg Palast: How They Stole the Mid-Term Election
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 1:34pm. Guest Contribution

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast for The Guardian (UK), Comment

Here's how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I'm not kidding.

And shoot me for saying this, but it won't be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they'll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.

For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We've found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here's how they'll do it, in three easy steps:

Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind.

On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year's Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act -- strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can't be verified against a state verification database.

Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won't feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School's Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters.

How? To begin with, Mr. Bush's Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday.

But don't worry: those holding passports from their ski vacations to Switzerland are doing just fine. And that's the point. It's not the number of voters rejected, it's their color. For example, California's Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson figured out how to block 40% of registrants, mostly Hispanics. In a rare counter-move, Los Angeles, with a Hispanic mayor, contacted these citizens, "verified" them and got almost every single one back on the rolls. But throughout the rest of the West, new Hispanics remain victims of the "Jose Crow" treatment.

In hotly contested Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State and the Republican's candidate for Governor, remains voter-rejection champ -- partly by keeping the rejection criteria a complete secret.

Theft #2: Turned Away - the ID game

A legion of pimple-faced Republicans with Blackberries loaded with lists of new voters is assigned to challenge citizens in heavily Black and Hispanic (i.e. Democratic) precincts to demand photo ID that perfectly matches registration data.

Sounds benign, but it's not. The federal HAVA law and complex new ID requirements in states like New Mexico will easily allow the GOP squads to triple the number of voters turned away. Rather than deny using these voter suppression tactics, Republican spokesmen are claiming they are "protecting the integrity of the vote."

I've heard that before. In 2004, we got our hands on fifty confidential internal memos from the files of the Republican National Committee. Attached to these were some pretty strange spreadsheets. They called them "caging lists" -- and it wasn't about zoo feeding times. They were lists (70,000 for Florida alone) of new Black and Jewish voters -- a very Democratic demographic -- to challenge on Election Day. The GOP did so with a vengeance: In 2004, for the first time in half a century, more than 3.5 million voters were challenged on Election Day. Worse, nearly half lost their vote: 300,000 were turned away for wrong ID; 1.1 million were allowed a "provisional" ballot -- which was then simply tossed out.

Tomorrow, new federal ID requirements and a dozen new state show-me-your-ID laws will permit the GOP challenge campaign to triple their 300,000 record to nearly one million voters blocked.

Theft #3: Votes Spoiled Rotten

The nasty little secret of US elections is that three million ballots are cast in national elections but not counted -- 3,600,380 not counted in 2004 according to US Election Commission stats. These are votes lost because a punch card didn't punch (its chad got "hung"), a stray mark voided a paper ballot and other machinery glitches.

Officials call it "spoilage." I call it, "inaugurating Republicans." Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will "spoil" this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or "blank" are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP.

That's where the Black Boxes come into play. Forget about Karl Rove messing with the software to change your vote. Rather, the big losses occur when computers crash, fail to start or simply don't respond to your touch. They are the new spoilage machines of choice with, statistically, the same racial bias as the old vote-snatching lever machines. (Funny, but paper ballots with in-precinct scanners don't go rotten on Black voters. Maybe that's why Republican Secretaries of State have installed so few of them.)

So Let's Add it Up

Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations.

Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for "improper ID."

Then add yet another million for Democratic votes "spoiled" by busted black boxes and by bad ballots.

And let's not forget to include the one million "provisional" ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots.

And there's one more group of votes that won't be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain.

Driving this massive suppression of the vote are sophisticated challenge operations. And here I must note that the Democrats have no national challenge campaign. That's morally laudable; electorally suicidal.

Add it all up -- all those Democratic-leaning votes rejected, barred and spoiled -- and the Republican Party begins Election Day with a 4.5 million-vote thumb on the vote-tally scale.

So, what are you going to do about it? May I suggest you -- steal back your vote.

It's true you can't win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. The regime's sneak attack via vote suppression will only net them 4.5 million votes, about 5% of the total. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. If you can't get 55%, then you're just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don't deserve to win back America.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE."

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

2 seconds?!

I've been here for 4 hours with absolutely no supervision.

are you sassing me? okay, timeout in the capn bringdown isles. go.

...


i said, go, kurtis.

Yeah, but...politics are totally depressing.  

[Sabamah]

well, maybe you'll think about that next time you post about the prisoner movie and how fragmented it will most likely be.



this hurts me more than it hurts you.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Can I talk about the Borat movie?  That's politcal.

British funnyman Sacha Baron Cohen has been threatened with legal action by the Romanian village which stood in for his comic creation Borat's native Kazakhstan in his hit movie. Gypsy citizens of Glod are outraged that Cohen ridiculed their lifestyle in Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, which has topped international box offices, and paid them a pittance to allow farm animals into their homes. Local leader Nicolae Staicu will meet with a public ombudsman today to formulate legal action against Cohen and distributor 20th Century Fox. Staicu accused the producers of paying locals just $4 to perform degrading acts, misleading the village into thinking filming was for a documentary and refusing to sign proper filming contracts. Resident Dana Luca, 40, says, "We thought they came here to help us - not mock us. We haven't got anything here. We haven't got running water. We can't even bathe. We are poor people, but we are still people."

A) It was a documentary.

B) Generally people who are trying to help you don't ask you to perform "degrading acts."

[Tripp]

Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial Law
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

It’s amazing what you can find if you turn over a few rocks in the anti-terrorism legislation Congress approved during the election season.

Take, for example, the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, named for the longtime Armed Services Committee chairman from Virginia.

Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, the law (PL 109-364) has a provocative provision called “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies.”

The thrust of it seems to be about giving the federal government a far stronger hand in coordinating responses to Katrina-like disasters.

But on closer inspection, its language also alters the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to limit the president’s power to deploy troops within the United States.

That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

But the amended law takes the cuffs off.

Specifically, the new language adds “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident” to the list of conditions permitting the President to take over local authority — particularly “if domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order.”

Since the administration broadened what constitutes “conspiracy” in its definition of enemy combatants — anyone who “has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States,” in the language of the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) — critics say it’s a formula for executive branch mischief.

Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.

One of the few to complain, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., warned that the measure virtually invites the White House to declare federal martial law.

It “subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law,” he said in remarks submitted to the Congressional Record on Sept. 29.

“The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor,” he said.

Moreover, he said, it breaks a long, fundamental tradition of federal restraint.

“Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.”

And he criticized the way it was rammed through Congress.

It “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study,” he fumed. “Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

No matter: Safely tucked into the $526 billion defense bill, it easily crossed the goal line on the last day of September.
Silence

The language doesn’t just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated to take over the Judiciary Committee come January. It also runs over the backs of the governors, 22 of whom are Republicans.

The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, sending letters of protest from their Washington office to the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees.

No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill — Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and his Democratic opposite, Nancy Pelosi of California.

“This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors,” said the Aug. 6 letter signed by every member of the National Governors Association, “and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors . . .to the federal government.”

“We urge you,” they said, “to drop provisions that would usurp governors’ authority over the National Guard during emergencies from the conference agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act.”

Again, no response from the leadership, said David Quam, the National Governors Association’s director of federal relations.

On Aug. 31, the governors sent another letter to the congressional party leaders, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had met quietly with an NGA delegation back in February.

The bill “could encroach on our constitutional authority to protect the citizens of our states,” they protested, complaining again about how the provision had been dumped on a midnight express.

“Any issue that affects the mission of the Guard in the states must be addressed in consultation and coordination with governors,” they demanded.

“The role of the Guard in the states and to the nation as a whole is too important to have major policy decisions made without full debate and input from governors throughout the policy process.”

More silence.

“We did not know until the bill was printed where we stood,” Quam said.

That’s partly the governors’ own fault, said a Republican Senate aide.

“My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices,” she said. “If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day.”

Quam disputed that.

“The letter was only the beginning of the conversation,” he said. “The NGA and the governors’ offices reached out across the Hill.”
Blogosphere

Looking back at the government’s chaotic response to Katrina, it’s not altogether surprising that the provision drew so little opposition in Congress and attention from the mainstream media.

And of course, it was wrapped in a monster defense bill related to the emergency in Iraq.

But the blogosphere, of course, was all over it.

A close analysis of the bill by Frank Morales, a 58-year-old Episcopal priest in New York who occasionally writes for left-wing publications, spurred a score of liberal and conservative libertarian Web sites to take a look at it.

But a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms “Insurrection Act,” “martial law” and “Congress,” came up empty.

That’s not to say the papers don’t care: There’s just too much going on in the global war on terror to keep up with, much less write about such a seemingly insignificant provision. The martial law section of the Defense Appropriation Act, for example, takes up just a few paragraphs in the 591-page document.

[matthew]

Bush's people are still at it:

EPA Libraries Being Purged    
December 7, 2006

EPA SCRUBBING LIBRARY WEBSITE TO MAKE REPORTS UNAVAILABLE — Agency Sells $40,000 Worth of Furniture and Equipment for $350

Washington, DC — In defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar.

In a letter dated November 30, 2006, four incoming House Democratic committee chairs demanded that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson assure them “that the destruction or disposition of all library holdings immediately ceased upon the Agency's receipt of this letter and that all records of library holdings and dispersed materials are being maintained.” On the very next day, December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA’s Washington D.C. Headquarters.

Last month without notice to its scientists or the public, EPA abruptly closed the OPPTS Library, the agency’s only specialized research repository on health effects and properties of toxic chemicals and pesticides. The web purge follows reports that library staffers were ordered to destroy its holdings by throwing collections into recycling bins.

“EPA’s leadership appears to have gone feral, defying all appeals to reason or consultation,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Congress has yet to review, let alone approve, the library closures. “The new Congress convening in January will finally have a chance to decide whether EPA will continue to pillage its library network.”

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an effort to limit Congressional options, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of the several libraries that it has already completely shuttered. In its Chicago office, which formerly hosted one of the largest regional libraries, EPA ordered that all furniture and furnishings (down to the staplers and pencil sharpeners) be sold immediately. Despite an acquisition cost of $40,000 for the furniture and equipment, a woman bought the entire lot for $350. The buyer also estimates that she will re-sell the merchandise for $80,000.

“One big irony is that EPA claimed the reason it needed to close libraries was to save money but in the process they are spending and wasting money like drunken sailors,” Ruch added, noting EPA refuses to say how much it plans to spend digitizing the mountains of documents that it has removed from library shelves. “While the Pentagon had its $600 toilet seat and $434 hammer, EPA has its 29 cent book case and file cabinets for a nickel.”

In spite of its pleas of poverty, EPA is spending millions on a public relations campaign to improve the image of its research program, as well as a $2.7 million program (more than its estimated savings from library closures ) to digitize all employee personnel files, in a program called “eOPF.”

“No one believes that EPA is closing libraries and crating up irreplaceable collections for fiscal reasons,” Ruch concluded. “Instead, the real agenda appears to be controlling access by its own specialists and outside researchers to key technical information.”

###

Look at the materials removed from the OOPTS Library website
http://snipurl.com/151fx

Note the December 1, 2006 date at the bottom of the notice of file unavailability for OPTTS collections
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_file_not_found.pdf

See a letter from an outside librarian underlining the new unavailability of OPPTS collections
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_librarian_ltr.pdf

Read the November 30, 2006 letter from Democratic House leaders requesting a moratorium on further library closures
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_house_library_ltr.pdf

View the catalog of what EPA auctioned off from its Chicago library
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_library_auction.pdf

Discover what EPA earned from its Chicago “fire sale”
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_chicago_lib_furniture_sale.pdf

Revisit the order to “recycle” the OPPTS collection
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=786

Compare the $2.7 million price tag for “eOPF” with the proposed $2 million in library savings
http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_7_12_eopf_cost.pdf

Trace EPA’s campaign to shut down its libraries
http://www.peer.org/campaigns/epa_library/news.php

[matthew]

I do not think much of John Kerry as a leader, nor would I have supported him for President (though I would have voted for him if I were in a "red state"), but he has a way with words:

"I'd rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live."

Ouch!

[matthew]

Keith Olbermann And The President Who Cried Wolf (includes references to fertilizer)

Only this President, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even Messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this President, could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" — only to follow that, by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

Only this President could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — "engage Syria and Iran" - and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" — when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country, run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy's friends, "ok, which one of you is next?"

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer "what are you thinking?," but rather "are you thinking at all?"

"I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended," you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public who spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November's elections; without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel are fleeing for higher ground); without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America's behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq, that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary, that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq, will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours — and now you're going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria"? Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie "Chinatown" and I quote it often. "Middle of a drought," the mortician chuckles, "and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!"

'Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq… and the President wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.'

Maybe that's the point: to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish, is this latest war strategy (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one, on deck).

We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government "breathing space."

In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give "breathing space" to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any Democracy — the capitol punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric, and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th Century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a "year ahead" which "will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve"?

They will try to seal up Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the President foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls over — but, no more after that — and if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes, and of the responsibility "resting" with you. But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, "if you knew what we knew… if you saw what we saw…"

"If you knew what we knew," was how we got into this morass in Iraq, in the first place.

The problem arose, when it turned out that the question wasn't whether or not we knew what you knew but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the President who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now, could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now, could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir. We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the Director of National Intelligence over to the State Department, because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the President's speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.

[matthew]

GO DEMOCRATS!

Oh, wait...

GOP hits Pelosi's 'hypocrisy' on wage bill

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 12, 2007

House Republicans yesterday declared "something fishy" about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved this week.
    "I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party's chief deputy whip, noting that Mrs. Pelosi campaigned heavily on promises of honest government. "Now we find out that she is exempting hometown companies from minimum wage. This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats."
    On Wednesday, the House voted to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.
    The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.
    One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.
    "There's something fishy going on here," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican.
    During the House debate yesterday on stem-cell research, Mr. McHenry raised a parliamentary inquiry as to whether an amendment could be offered that would exempt American Samoa from stem-cell research, "just as it was for the minimum-wage bill."
    A clearly perturbed Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was presiding, cut off Mr. McHenry and shouted, "No, it would not be."
    "So, the chair is saying I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa?" Mr. McHenry pressed.
    "The gentleman is making a speech and will sustain," Mr. Frank shouted as he slammed his large wooden gavel against the rostrum.
    Some Republicans who voted in favor of the minimum-wage bill were particularly irritated to learn yesterday -- after their vote -- that the legislation did not include American Samoa.
    "I was troubled to learn of this exemption," said Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, Illinois Republican. "My intention was to raise the minimum wage for everyone. We shouldn't permit any special favors or exemptions that are not widely discussed in Congress. This is the problem with rushing legislation through without full debate."
    A spokeswoman for Mrs. Pelosi said Wednesday that the speaker has not been lobbied in any way by StarKist or Del Monte.

down with politicians

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

I know you're not, but that's the way I feel.

Three Arab and Muslim groups have called on ABC to reverse its decision to hire CNN Headline News personality Glenn Beck as a commentator on Good Morning America. In a joint letter to ABC News chief David Westin on Thursday, the Arab American Institute (AAI), American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) said: "To provide a platform for his hateful speech is dangerous and irresponsible, and we strongly and urgently implore you to reconsider this move." Beck first aroused protests when he remarked to Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is Muslim, "Prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." (In an interview appearing in today's Washington Post, Beck said, "If I could take back the wording of that question, I would.") He has also accused Muslim-American organizations of displaying apathy towards terrorism.

[matthew]

My (media) hero in two parts:

Bill Moyers at the National Conference on Media Reform, Jan 12, 2007

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/kLK-rK3rfW8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/kLK-rK3rfW8</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/YaK3tSVu68k" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/YaK3tSVu68k</a>

[matthew]

January 29, 2007
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH CIA'S FORMER EUROPE DIRECTOR
"We Probably Gave Powell the Wrong Speech"

The former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller, discusses the United States foreign intelligence service's cooperation with Germany, the covert kidnapping of suspected terrorists and a Bush adminstration that ignored CIA advice and used whatever information it could find to justify an invasion of Iraq.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Drumheller, do you still dare to travel to Europe?

Drumheller: Yes, absolutely. I was a great friend of the Europeans. I grew up in Wiesbaden. I love Germany very much.

SPIEGEL: Arrest warrants have been issued in Europe for a number of your former colleagues. They are suspected of involvement in the illegal kidnappings of suspected terrorists as part of the so-called "renditions" program. Doesn't this worry you?

Drumheller: No. I'm not worried, but I am not allowed to discuss the issue.

SPIEGEL: One of the cases is the now famous kidnapping of Khalid el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who was taken into custody at the end of 2003 in Macedonia and later flown to Afghanistan. How could the CIA allow an innocent person to be arrested?

Drumheller: I'm not allowed by the agency to comment on any of those cases or the so-called "secret prisons." I would love to, but I can't. We have a life-long secrecy agreement and they are very, very strict about what you can say.

SPIEGEL: The renditions program saw the kidnapping of suspected Islamist extremists to third countries. Were you involved in the program?

Drumheller: I would be lying if I said no. I have very complicated feelings about the whole issue. I do see the purpose of renditions, if they are carried out properly. Guys sitting around talking about carrying out attacks as they smoke their pipes in the comfort of a European capital tend to get put off the idea if they learn that a like-minded individual has been plucked out of safety and sent elsewhere to pay for his crimes.

SPIEGEL: We disagree. At the very least, you need to be certain that the targets of those renditions aren't innocent people.

Drumheller: It was Vice President Dick Cheney who talked about the "dark side" we have to turn on. When he spoke those words, he was articulating a policy that amounted to "go out and get them." His remarks were evidence of the underlying approach of the administration, which was basically to turn the military and the agency loose and let them pay for the consequences of any unfortunate -- or illegal -- occurences.

SPIEGEL: So there was no clear guidance of what is allowed in the so called "war on terrorism"?

Drumheller: Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target. I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. I would have expected a big meeting, a debate about whether to proceed with the plan, a couple of hours of consideration of the pros and cons. We should have been talking about the value of the target, whether the threat he presented warranted such a potentially controversial intervention. This is no way to run a covert policy. If the White House wants to take extraordinary measures to win, it can't just let things go through without any discussion about their value and morality.

SPIEGEL: Perhaps the White House wanted to gloss over its own responsibility.

Drumheller: Let me give you a general thought: From the perspective of the White House, it was smart to blur the lines about what was acceptable and what was not in the war on terrorism. It meant that whenever someone was overzealous in some dark interrogation cell, President (George W.) Bush and his entourage could blame someone else. The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn't do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks. Perhaps the Bush Administration deliberately created a gray area on renditions.

SPIEGEL: Investigations in the European Parliament and the German parliament, the Bundestag, are trying to ascertain the extent to which European governments cooperated with the CIA after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. How close is the relationship?

Drumheller: On terrorist issues very closely -- we did some very good things with the Europeans. Two weeks after Sept. 11, August Hanning (the head of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND) came with a delegation to discuss how we can make cooperation better. Elements of the Bush administration developed the view that European personal privacy laws were somehow to blame, that the Europeans are too slow. We can be very frustrating to work with. I always said, 'Stop preaching to them.' The Europeans have been dealing with terrorism for years, we can learn from their successes and failures. Its not a good spy story, but it's actually how you do this.

SPIEGEL: How important is Europe to the CIA?

Drumheller: The only way we will ever be able to protect ourselves properly is if we can get a handle on the threat in Europe, since that is the continent where fanatics can best learn their most crucial lesson: How to disappear in a Western crowd. Europe has become the first line of defense for the United States. It has become a training ground for terrorists, especially since the war in Iraq has heralded an underground railroad for militants to go and fight there. It is being used for young fanatics in Europe to be smuggled into Iraq to fight Americans and, assuming they survive, to return home, where they present a more potent threat than they did before they left. Since the odds against penetrating the top of al-Qaida are phenomenally high, we must pursue the foot soldiers.

SPIEGEL: But given the uproar in Germany and all over Europe, it looks highly unlikely that they will cooperate fully with the CIA.

Drumheller: The guys who attacked the World Trade Center didn't fly from Kabul to New York. They came from Hamburg. So the value in befriending the local intelligence services in Europe instead of alienating them is clear: We need to ensure that they are telling us everything they know.

SPIEGEL: But it was your agency that was coming up with all the wrong information concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. To what degree is the intelligence community responsible for the disaster?

Drumheller: The agency is not blameless and no president on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA. But never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war.

SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. That came from a German BND source who was given the code-name "Curveball." An offical investigation in the United States concluded that of all of the false statements that were made, this was the most damaging of all.

Drumheller: I think it is, it was a centerpiece. Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. When he became an asylum-seeker in Germany, the BND questioned him and produced a large number of reports that were passed here through the Defense Intelligence Agency. Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time.

SPIEGEL: There are more than a few critics in Washington who claim that the Germans, because of Curveball, bear a large part of the repsonsibility for the intelligence mess.

Drumheller: There was no effort by the Germans to influence anybody from the beginning. Very senior officials in the BND expressed their doubts, that there may be problems with this guy. They were very professional. I know that there are people at the CIA who think the Germans could have set stronger caveats. But nobody says: "Here's a great intel report, but we don't believe it." There were also questions inside the CIA's analytical section, but as it went forward, this information was seized without caveats. The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn't go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.

SPIEGEL: The German government was convinced that "Curveball" would not be used in the now famous presentation that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave in 2003 before the United Nations Security Council.

[matthew]

cont'd

Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that it wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."

SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell's presentation -- and nobody had told him about the doubts.

Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.

SPIEGEL: So the White House just ignored the fact that the whole story might have been untrue?

Drumheller: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy. Right before the war, I said to a very senior CIA officer: "You guys must have something else," because you always think it's the CIA. "There is some secret thing I don`t know." He said: "No. But when we get to Baghdad, we are going to find warehouses full of stuff. Nobody is going to remember all of this."

SPIEGEL: After the war, the CIA was finally able to talk to "Curveball" -- something the BND had never allowed before. What was the result?

Drumheller: In March 2004, a fluent German-speaking officer, one of my best guys, who had a scientific background went to Germany and worked for about two weeks. Finally, at the end of it, Curveball just sort of sat back and said: "I don't have anything more to say." But he never admitted. People here always ask, was he polygraphed? Well, lie detector tests aren't used very much in Germany.

SPIEGEL: Do you think it would have make a difference if the Germans had allowed you to question Curveball earlier?

Drumheller: If they had allowed us to question him the way we did in March of 2004, it would have. Maybe the whole story would have turned out in a different way.

SPIEGEL: In your book, you mention a very high-ranking source who told the CIA before the war that Iraq had no large active WMD program. It has been reported that the source was Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri.

Drumheller: I'm not allowed to say who that was. In the beginning, the administration was very excited that we had a high-level penetration, and the president was informed. I don't think anybody else had a source in Saddam's cabinet. He told us that Iraq had no biological weapons, just the research. Everything else had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. But after a while we didn't get any questions back. Finally the administration came and said that they were really not interested in what he had to say. They were interested in getting him to defect. In the end we did get permission to get back to the source, and that came from Tenet. I think without checking with the White House, he just said: "Okay. Go ahead and see what you can do."

SPIEGEL: So what happened?

Drumheller: There were a lot of ironies throughout this whole story. We went on a sort of worldwide chase after this fellow, and in the end, he was in one place, and our officer was in another country asking for permission to travel. I called up people who were controlling operations, and they said: "Don't worry about it. It's too late now. The war is on. The next time you see this guy, it will be at a war crimes tribunal."

SPIEGEL: Should you have pressed harder?

Drumheller: We made mistakes. And it may suit the White House to have people believe in a black and white version of reality -- that it could have avoided the Iraq war if the CIA had only given it a true picture of Saddam's armaments. But the truth is that the White House believed what it wanted to believe. I have done very little in my life except go to school and work for the CIA. Intellectually I think I did everything I could. Emotionally you always think you should have something more.

Interview conducted by Georg Mascolo and Holger Stark.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Al Franken will run for the US Senate in Minnesota in 2008. A senior Democratic official from Minnesota confirmed the comedian has decided to run for office, but he has not made an official announcement. The 55-year-old has been calling members of the Minnesota congressional delegation to get their advice on his candidacy. He announced this week he would be leaving his show on Air America Radio on February 14, and told listeners he would be making a decision soon on his run for office. Franken will take on Republican Norm Coleman, a first-term senator who is among the Democrats' top targets. In addition to his work on Saturday Night Live, he has also written several best-selling books combining humor and politics.

[Tripp]

Cheney for President?!