It's a Blunderful Life
http://desktopdownload.inyer.org/mas/blunderful_life.mp3



from the Stephanie Miller Show, voice man Jim Ward tells the holiday story...

FEMA fake ‘journalists’ get promotion

In October, while the California wildfires raged, FEMA staged a notorious “fake” press conference where FEMA employees posed as journalists and lobbed “softball” questions to a FEMA administrator. Today, Al Kamen reports that two of those fake “journalists” have been promoted:

On Oct. 23, the day of FEMA’s now infamous phony news conference, the agency’s former external affairs chief, Pat Philbin, announced plans to promote a number of people in the shop as part of an effort to build a “new FEMA.”

Cindy Taylor, deputy director of public affairs, was to become head of a new Private Sector Office, Philbin said in his e-mail to staff members. And Mike Widomski would move up to replace Taylor as deputy director of public affairs. […]

They’ve received the promotions they were in line to get.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/30/fema-f...-get-promotion/

Former Reagan Advisor angry Bush 'bankrupted America'
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former_Reaga...upted_0418.html

TAVIS SMILEY: Bruce Bartlett is a columnist who served as economic policy advisor to Ronald Reagan and later Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department under the first President Bush. The most recent book is "Imposter: How George W. Bush bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." Nice to have you on.

BRUCE BARTLETT: Happy to be here.

TAVIS SMILEY: Did George W. Bush do all of that?

BRUCE BARTLETT: Bankrupt America? Yes, I think that we have had something like a $20 trillion increase in the national debt under this president's watch and I think that one of these days, I don't know when, but one of these days, the chickens are going to come home to roost.

TAVIS SMILEY: When he ran for office the first time around, persons like you and other conservatives rallied around this guy as the guy you wanted in the White House now you call him, six years later, an impostor?

BRUCE BARTLETT: Well I think you are entitled to judge candidates on the basis of what they say they are going to do and then judge them later on the basis of what they do. I don't think there were very many people that anticipated that he would turn out to be the kind of president that he is.

TAVIS SMILEY: Tell me what you think happened. Where economic policies concerned, since you thought you were backing the right horse, what happened?

BRUCE BARTLETT: Well, obviously 9/11 changed a lot of things. But I think that the main thing is that it appears in retrospect this president didn't really have any clear economic plan. A lot of things were done in an ad hoc basis or based solely on political considerations without much thought as to how all the pieces fit together. And I think that led to a lot of mistakes.

TAVIS SMILEY: With all due respect to the president you slid past 9/11 and I would be the last person on earth defending George W. Bush and his economic policies but to his credit you can't just slide past 9/11. I wonder whether you are being a little bit too harsh on the president given your perspective on these matters, any president would have had a difficult time trying to keep the country on track when something like 9/11 happened out of the blue.

BRUCE BARTLETT: Obviously that's the case. But one wonders about the linkage to the Iraq war and other things of that sort. We still don't really know whether there was any connection between Iraq and 9/11 and when I said 9/11 I meant that as shorthand for all of the terror-related issues we have had to deal with the last seven years.

TAVIS SMILEY: Give me some concrete examples of what the president, two or three examples of what the president has done on fiscal policy or not done as it were that has fiscal conservatives like yourself so upset with him.

BRUCE BARTLETT: The first thing that bothered me a lot and the reason I wrote the book was because of the Medicare drug benefit, which I thought was a really bad policy because we couldn't afford it. The Medicare system was already broken and to add an enormous new entitlement on top of it without any way of funding it, I thought, was irresponsible. Secondly, I think a lot of the tax cuts were not well designed to help with economic growth and were really just the tax equivalent of pork barrel spending, just special deals for special groups. And as a consequence I don't think we have really gotten the economic benefits of the tax cuts the way we would have if they had been more targeted, made permanent in the first place instead of expiring and things of that sort.

TAVIS SMILEY: Talk to me more specifically, educate me about your point of view and view of others where these tax cuts are concerned. Because I ask that against the backdrop that I suspect most Americans, certainly those on the left, are a bit taken aback when they hear a conservative complaining about a tax cut. I can hear clearly Democrats and liberal complaining about a tax cut but why are conservatives complaining about tax cuts?

BRUCE BARTLETT: For one thing they are all expiring.

TAVIS SMILEY: Now, that makes sense to me. I get that part.

BRUCE BARTLETT: As an economist, you look at tax cuts, different kinds of tax cuts they have different effects on the economy. Some have very positive effects, some have virtually no effect at all. Some might have negative effects. If you look at the whole menu of all the different kinds of tax cuts that this president enacted, only some of them were really very helpful to economic growth and a lot of the others were not. They were just revenue that was lost to no purpose of any kind whatsoever. That's what I was getting at when I say there was not really a logic or plan in place at the beginning to tell us exactly what we should have been doing. We could have completely reformed the tax system if we had wanted to, have had a flat rate tax or any number of other things that were opportunities lost.

TAVIS SMILEY: Tell me more specifically how you think he betrayed the Reagan legacy on these matters.

BRUCE BARTLETT: The main thing is that he himself, he calls himself a big government conservative and I think that is just a contradiction in terms. Ronald Reagan was a small government conservative. I think that virtually all conservatives are small government conservatives and I think that in many ways this president is one of the biggest government presidents we have had in a long time.

TAVIS SMILEY: But again back to six years ago when he ran and you all embraced him he told you he was a different kind of conservative, he coined the phrase "compassionate conservative." What did you take that to mean?

BRUCE BARTLETT: In 2000 I thought that was election year rhetoric. I didn't think it meant anything. I learned the hard way as a lot of us did what he really meant it when he talked about compassionate conservatism. But at the time I thought it was just throw-away rhetoric that all candidates use on the campaign trail to win votes.

TAVIS SMILEY: That sounds, respectfully, a bit naive to me. If a guy is telling you upfront I'm a different kind of conservative, I have a certain level of compassion, I believe there is a role that government ought to play, government can't do everything, government ought to play a role in our lives, may it's not that he's an impostor. Maybe you just misread the entire situation.

BRUCE BARTLETT: Well, that's quite possible. I plead guilty. But an awful lot of other people were just as taken down the wrong path. I mean, I didn't know that much about George Bush except that he was the son of the former president and had been middlingly successful Governor of Texas. We have learned a great deal about this man that we know today that we didn't know in 2000.

TAVIS SMILEY: You have drawn clear distinctions between George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Since you worked for his father, how does he compare and contrast with his father on these policies?

BRUCE BARTLETT: If I didn't know with a certainty they were related, I wouldn't think that they were. I mean the father, as we recall, what got the father in trouble politically was that he had a big budget deal in 1990 that he raised taxes and what a lot of budget experts think that was one of the most important budget deals in American history. This president doesn't care one whit about the fiscal situation, doesn't worry at all about deficits or debt. His father did and his father paid a heavy political price for it. So I really think there's almost nothing -- there's nothing between the two of them in terms of fiscal policy.

TAVIS SMILEY: Finally and respectfully, you are the expert, not me, but it wasn't the supply side economics of the Reagan area in retrospect a bit overrated anyway?

TAVIS SMILEY: No, I don't think so. I think the problem is that you had a good idea that was appropriate for a certain time and place and a certain set of circumstances, and it has been carried too far. It is now -- we have a completely different economic situation, completely different fiscal and tax situation and I think people are still using rhetoric that was appropriate at one time for a situation that in which it is no longer appropriate.

TAVIS SMILEY: About 20 seconds, anything the president can do over the next two years to make Bruce Bartlett happy?

BRUCE BARTLETT: No, I don't really think so. I think we are on automatic pilot. Very few administrations do much of anything the last year and a half in office. I think the best thing we can hope for is a new president who will take America in a different direction.

TAVIS SMILEY: The new book by or latest book by Bruce Bartlett "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." Nice to have you on program.

BRUCE BARTLETT: Thank you.

National debt grows $1 million a minute
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_...ation_in_debt_4

WASHINGTON - Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.

What's that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.

A major economic slowdown, as some economists suggest may be looming, could hasten the day of reckoning.

The national debt — the total accumulation of annual budget deficits — is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.

That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.

It only gets worse

Over the next 25 years, the number of Americans aged 65 and up is expected to almost double. The work population will shrink and more and more baby boomers will be drawing Social Security and Medicare benefits, putting new demands on the government's resources.

These guaranteed retirement and health benefit programs now make up the largest component of federal spending. Defense is next. And moving up fast in third place is interest on the national debt, which totaled $430 billion last year.

Aggravating the debt picture: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade

Despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II — when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP, but it's a big chunk of liability.

"The problem is going forward," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating agency.

"Our estimate is that the national debt will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged policy. Something has to change, because if you look at what's going to happen to expenditures for entitlement programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the current tax rates, it doesn't work," Wyss said.

With national elections approaching, candidates of both parties are talking about fiscal discipline and reducing the deficit and accusing the other of irresponsible spending. But the national debt itself — a legacy of overspending dating back to the American Revolution — receives only occasional mention.

Who is loaning Washington all this money?

Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S. savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds, mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion of the total and is called the "publicly held" debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security and other government accounts, according to the Treasury Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down to the penny on its Web site.

Some economists liken the government's plight to consumers who spent like there was no tomorrow — only to find themselves maxed out on credit cards and having a hard time keeping up with rising interest payments.

"The government is in the same predicament as the average homeowner who took out an adjustable mortgage," said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst and now managing director at Qorvis Communications, a business consulting firm.

Much of the recent borrowing has been accomplished through the selling of shorter-term Treasury bills. If these loans roll over to higher rates, interest payments on the national debt could soar. Furthermore, the decline of the dollar against other major currencies is making Treasury securities less attractive to foreigners — even if they remain one of the world's safest investments.

For now, large U.S. trade deficits with much of the rest of the world work in favor of continued foreign investment in Treasuries and dollar-denominated securities. After all, the vast sums Americans pay — in dollars — for imported goods has to go somewhere. But that dynamic could change.

"The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt — whatever level it is at that point — becomes unmanageable," said Collender.

A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the country should buy more euros instead of dollars helped send the Dow Jones plunging more than 300 points.

The dollar is down about 35 percent since the end of 2001 against a basket of major currencies.

Foreign governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion — or about 44 percent — of all publicly held U.S. debt. That's up 9.5 percent from a year earlier.

Japan is first with $586 billion, followed by China ($400 billion) and Britain ($244 billion). Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries account for $123 billion, according to the Treasury.

"Borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from China and OPEC puts not only our future economy, but also our national security, at risk. It is critical that we ensure that countries that control our debt do not control our future," said Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a Republican budget hawk.

Of all federal budget categories, interest on the national debt is the one the president and Congress have the least control over. Cutting payments would amount to default, something Washington has never done.

Congress must from time to time raise the debt limit — sort of like a credit card maximum — or the government would be unable to borrow any further to keep it operating and to pay additional debt obligations.

The Democratic-led Congress recently did just that, raising the ceiling to $9.82 trillion as the former $8.97 trillion maximum was about to be exceeded. It was the fifth debt-ceiling increase since Bush became president in 2001.

Democrats are blaming the runup in deficit spending on Bush and his Republican allies who controlled Congress for the first six years of his presidency. They criticize him for resisting improvements in health care, education and other vital areas while seeking nearly $200 billion in new Iraq and Afghanistan war spending.

"We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "That's fiscal irresponsibility."

Republicans insist congressional Democrats are the irresponsible ones. Bush has reinforced his call for deficit reduction with vetoes and veto threats and cites a looming "train wreck" if entitlement programs are not reined in.

Yet his efforts two years ago to overhaul Social Security had little support, even among fellow Republicans.

The deficit only reflects the gap between government spending and tax revenues for one year. Not exactly how a family or a business keeps its books.

Even during the four most recent years when there was a budget surplus, 1998-2001, the national debt ranged between $5.5 trillion and $5.8 trillion.

As in trying to pay off a large credit-card balance by only making minimum payments, the overall debt might be next to impossible to chisel down appreciably, regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls Congress, without major spending cuts, tax increases or both.

"The basic facts are a matter of arithmetic, not ideology," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates eliminating federal deficits.

There's little dispute that current fiscal policies are unsustainable, he said. "Yet too few of our elected leaders in Washington are willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the long-term fiscal problem and even fewer are willing to put it on the political agenda."

Polls show people don't like the idea of saddling future generations with debt, but proposing to pay down the national debt itself doesn't move the needle much.

"People have a tendency to put some of these longer term problems out of their minds because they're so pressed with more imminent worries, such as wages and jobs and income inequality," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Texas billionaire Ross Perot made paying down the national debt a central element of his quixotic third-party presidential bid in 1992. The national debt then stood at $4 trillion and Perot displayed charts showing it would soar to $8 trillion by 2007 if left unchecked. He was about a trillion low.

Not long ago, it actually looked like the national debt could be paid off — in full. In the late 1990s, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of a $5.6 trillion over ten years — and calculated the debt would be paid off as early as 2006.

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently wrote that he was "stunned" and even troubled by such a prospect. Among other things, he worried about where the government would park its surplus if Treasury bonds went out of existence because they were no longer needed.

Not to worry. That surplus quickly evaporated.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said he's more concerned that interest on the national debt will become unsustainable than he is that foreign countries will dump their dollar holdings — something that would undermine the value of their own vast holdings. "We're going to have to shell out a lot of resources to make those interest payments. There's a very strong argument as to why it's vital that we address our budget issues before they get measurably worse," Zandi said.

"Of course, that's not going to happen until after the next president is in the White House," he added.

___

On the Net:

Treasury site listing share of national debt held by foreigners: http://www.treasury.gov/tic/mfh.txt.

The national debt to the penny: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?applicationnp

...just us bush haters explaining once again what a liar he is....

Report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWBT00801220071203

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released on Monday could undermine U.S. efforts to convince other world powers to agree on a third package of U.N. sanctions against Iran for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment activities.

Tensions have escalated in recent months as Washington has ratcheted up the rhetoric against Tehran, with U.S. President George W. Bush insisting in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three.



is there a spin doctor in the house?

Has she had her breakdown yet? Last I heard she wasn't sleeping and her therapist was worried about her mental health.

she seems perfectly fine to me... I alternate morning talk radio between steph, bill handel, and lionel. I can't believe my three faves all have the same time slot.

She's on early here. It's a bit too manic for my early AM. It may be a bit too manic for her psyche as well. That new study that says lack of sleep makes people crazy rather than vice-versa might be an important little fact in her case.

Sympathy post.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/086

* * *


BuzzFlash: When we interviewed you in 2003, you had just published your book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. At that point, one of the things you were urging was for people to become whistleblowers, to out information that the government was keeping from the American public that would reveal the truth about the war with Iraq. Here we are, and the war with Iraq is still going on. Bush seems likely to bomb Iran. What happened? When we last talked, there was hope for the end Iraq war movement. Now it seems to have been pretty much abandoned, at least by the Democrats in Congress.


Daniel Ellsberg: That's true. The Congress has signed on essentially to a new war. And I'm talking now not of people like Dennis Kucinich or any members of the Out of Iraq Caucus. But the majority of Democrats, and particularly the Democratic leadership, I believe, have accepted privately at least the secret goal of many people in the administration. And that is an indefinite occupation of Iraq, preferably of reduced scale in forces. A more politically sustainable and less costly environment, with hopefully fewer U.S. casualties.

But the maintenance of U.S. bases in the middle of the oil-rich sphere of the Middle East, and specifically in Iraq -- indefinitely. I don't mean the ten-year war that Nancy Pelosi has accused the President of having in mind, and which General Petraeus talks about. I'm talking fifty years, the way the President talks, when he mentions Korea or other places. We've been in Korea, of course, over fifty years. I think that not only President Bush and Cheney foresee a stay that long, and indeed much longer -- basically until the oil is gone in the Middle East. But I think that the Democratic leadership and the major Democratic candidates have essentially accepted that idea and that project. Hillary Clinton revealed as early as March 13 in The New York Times that if she were president, she would not remove all troops from Iraq. She wasn't specific as to just how many she would reduce, but the same article gave estimates of cutting the troops in half, taking out most of the so-called combat troops, which is a rather elastic definition actually, and getting down to between 50,000 and 100,000 troops to remain indefinitely. She mentioned a number of goals which could actually easily justify leaving a much larger force there indefinitely.


The other candidates essentially have not disagreed with that, as you've probably noticed. Even when they were asked the simple, concrete question: Do you foresee our American troops being out at the end of your first term if you were elected -- that is, by 2013, the start of a new term -- not one of them was willing to say yes. And that's five years away.


I really don't think they were just allowing a little flexibility as to whether it would be five years or six years. I've seen no indication that the Democratic leadership in Congress, or the Republican leaders, or the candidates, envision the Americans being out of those bases any time in their lifetime or our children's lifetime. And that means that Americans will be killing Iraqis and dying, and killing Iraqi civilians -- committing atrocities, among other things -- as long as they're there. And that, as I say, is another half-century or more.


BuzzFlash: If we go back literally a hundred years, the British Navy that then ruled the seas was in the process of converting from coal-burning engines to oil, and they had a great interest in developing the oil capacity of the Middle East. The region was starting to emerge at that point -- people were realizing its potential. Winston Churchill, who was not yet prime minister, but was advancing in the government, had a role to play in positioning Britain to essentially control Iraq and the oil reserves in Iran, going into World War I and later.

Are we essentially seeing a continuation, now under the U.S. neo-colonial sponsorship, of that effort to control the oil assets of the region? And by colonial, I mean that the sovereign states of that area are not allowed to control their own natural resources, but another power does. A hundred years ago, it was Britain and France that kind of divided up the Middle East. Russia also had tried to dominate some of that, but they were kind of out-foxed by the British, and to some degree, the French. Now the U.S. is in there, basically ensuring oil for the foreseeable future. Is that an accurate assessment?


Daniel Ellsberg: Yes. I don't need to expand on that. I couldn't say it better. We took over Britain's "responsibilities" for controlling the oil of the Middle East, and we established a special relationship during the war with Saudi Arabia, which a hundred years ago had not yet emerged as the source of these enormous reserves.

I think we do have an administration in office now, whose response to the end of the Cold War is to see the chance to dominate the world unilaterally. Everything is open now, not only to our influence, which is inevitable with the strongest country in the world, but domination, especially in a military basis. That's the peculiarity of this particular administration -- the emphasis, I think, on unilateralism and on military force.


Around the world, it's very helpful -- and as they would see it, essential -- to control the oil in the Middle East. And that's what they are in the process of doing.


BuzzFlash: The irony, of course, is Bush wraps this in the flag of "liberating" Iraqis, giving them freedom, giving democracy a chance to work. But as we saw in the Blackwater situation, where the Iraqis said get them out of here, the Bush administration said: Not so fast -- we'll decide that.


Daniel Ellsberg: It's basically absurd. Our concern for the freedom of Iraqis is no more than our concern for the humanity of the Iraqis, and our policy of torture and our reckless, negligent use of firepower there, both on the ground and especially in the air, our total unconcern for a process here that has apparently produced 1.2 million civilian casualties over the war, means that an assertion that we're concerned about their welfare is an obscene lie.


BuzzFlash: There are many Americans who support the administration. The majority of Americans polls indicate want us out of Iraq. But the diehards are still with Bush.


Daniel Ellsberg: 24% is it?


BuzzFlash: Well, it depends on which specific polling questions you look at. A lot of people go along with the cover story that this is about freedom and democracy. We would speculate that white males, particularly, go along with the basic concept that America just can't lose. We're too big. We're too powerful. And the people who advocate withdrawal are "defeatists." And we're just too big of a nation to lose a war.


Daniel Ellsberg: In short, much of our population has accepted this role of empire for the government. They've accepted the notion that their own material welfare probably depends on that in a variety of ways. They're willing to accept the cover story of concern for the Iraqis, which is, let's say, laughable, and that's not to their credit. It means that they essentially have paid no attention to what's going on there, or they accept without any question absurd fabrications by the President, without demanding that Congress, their representatives, investigate these claims. Have the Democrats actually held hearings?

I'm going to switch the subject a little bit to Iran, if I may. Quite the same process of lying us into a war, for the domination of Iraqi oil, is being used now to make sure that Iran does not have an independent role in the Middle East. The thought is to destroy it from the air. And again, Congress is showing no useful lesson learned in the process of manipulating them five years ago.

People have asked me why am I dismayed that no lessons seem to have been learned from Vietnam. And my reaction is: You know, that's 35 or more years ago. That's not too surprising that a new generation or two will have forgotten most of what happened during that. But what does dismay me is that it's possible for an administration to manipulate the media and Congress in exactly the same way, through virtually the same words that they used, just five years ago. That, I think, gives one pause about who our countrymen are in terms of their voting. And it's somewhat dismaying. Obviously, there are many people who recognize that we're again in a major crisis here that may lead to another disastrous war. But they're a minority.


BuzzFlash: Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times reporter, wrote a wonderful book on the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 by Kermit Roosevelt, I believe the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, who was working for the CIA at the time. They had a Western-style government with a very charismatic elected leader -- the kind of government Bush claims he wants to see throughout the world -- basically pro-Western, secular.


Daniel Ellsberg: But Britain and BP wanted to share the profits of the oil industry.


BuzzFlash: The British petroleum industry had a contract with the former government of Iran before they became democratic. In essence, it allowed them to control the oil reserves. That's what it amounted to within Iran. They controlled the property where the oil was taken from. A new leader wanted to take back that right, restore the ownership and the right to decide who would extract that oil. The Dulles brothers convinced Eisenhower to go ahead with the coup of this democratically elected leader, partially claiming that the communists would come in to overtake this guy and make Iran a surrogate government. But the real reason was the U.S. didn't want to see the oil industry nationalized there. They wanted it in the hands of either the British or the U.S. government. [wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iran#Pahlavi_dynasty...]

The CIA installed the Shah of Iran. He ruled ruthlessly and brutally. We forget now, of the SAVAK, who were the torturers of the time in Iran. And that's why many Iranians have such hostility toward the United States. My point is, once again, the current government in Iran is the direct result of our overthrowing the democratically elected government in 1953 and putting in an authoritarian torturer as the Shah of Iran.


Daniel Ellsberg: That's often cited as showing that covert action fails or is counterproductive. I don't think it's seen that way in the CIA or in the White House. I'm sure they've seen that overthrow as one of their most successful operations. And they measure that by a quarter century of an extremely pro-American, pro-oil company regime based largely in torture. It delivered to the oil companies and to the U.S., militarily, anyway, just what they wanted. For one thing, Iran became an extremely large buyer of U.S. arms, some of which I suppose is deployed by the current regime.

There is another interesting lesson there to be drawn from the fall of the Shah, when it finally did come about after 25 years. At the time of the fall of the Shah, nearly every family in Iran had had some member of their family tortured by the S-A-V-A-K -- their secret police, whose methods were tutored in part by the Gestapo in Germany, with the help and approval of the American CIA. The torture there was what led women and children, in particular, to mobilize in great numbers without violence. They didn't have any means of violence, which I think served them well. If they had been shooting at the time, the Shah would have stayed in. But as it was, the soldiers eventually sickened of firing on crowds literally of their own relatives, the women and children, and basically desisted. They wouldn't do it any more and the Shah left.


The moral of this is, of course, very related to what's going on now. The movie, The Battle of Algiers, is shown in the Pentagon as a training film, of an example of a success of torture. Toward the end of that film, it points out that the FLN leadership in Algiers had been decimated and that torture had contributed to that. The film does mention that the FLN triumphed in the end, and the French were forced out some years after the "victory" of the battle of Algiers. But it doesn't make sufficiently plain, which is very well known to every student of that war, that torture had lost the war. It won the battle of Algiers, but it lost the war. Basically the French were so discredited, so repressive, that, in fact, everybody turned against the French.

Of course, what we're seeing right now is a discussion in which the loudest voices favor the President's position, which says that torture saves American lives. In fact, all the inside experts who have leaked their opinions, or have told us their opinions after they got out, have testified that each person tortured -- and in particular, each "innocent" person who was tortured -- who has no information to give, or is in no way allied with the resistance movement -- when they are tortured, it has the effect of creating many, many more resistors, making the resistance unbeatable, just as our invasion and occupation has made the Sunni al Qaeda movement unbeatable. It creates so much support for it in the rest of the world, or neutrality among people who would otherwise be repelled by its goals, that it can't be destroyed, as in Algiers. We can kill this and that. We can even kill a majority of the leaders at a particular time. That's what they boast of. The U.S. administration has had to admit that that leadership has greatly grown.

So here we have a president who was portrayed as better able to protect the United States than his opponent, John Kerry, to keep us safe. In fact, by invading Iraq, he has made us, in the longer run, much, much less safe. He's made al Qaeda much stronger. It's not to the credit of those who did vote for him.


BuzzFlash: Let me return to Vietnam, which, of course, is an era you're an expert on. Since we last talked to you a few years back, Bush went to Vietnam, and he made a remarkable statement while he was there. But here we have Vietnam now, which has become an offshore source of cheap labor for the globalized national corporations.


Daniel Ellsberg: Yes.


BuzzFlash: In its own way, it embraced capitalism and said: come and exploit our people. Pay them low wages to do the jobs that Americans used to do. Bush is just happy as a clam that there's another country that's offering cheap labor to the globalized corporations. He goes to Vietnam and says, "You see, this shows why the Vietnam war was so important." We were just flabbergasted by this.


Daniel Ellsberg: Which leads to the question: Can he possibly mean that? Can he possibly believe that? Is he that stupid? Or is he simply that cynical and contemptuous of us? It could be both.


BuzzFlash: Simply from a logical standpoint, because it was the end of the Vietnam war that allowed Vietnam to evolve into the society that now is embracing multi-national corporations and providing cheap labor. But there is some thinking among the neo-cons that people who advocate politics like BuzzFlash, are the people who lost the Vietnam war. They still think we could have won that. And I'm left asking, well, what would we have won? If Vietnam is the way it is now, what more could we have won? I'm a little perplexed about what "winning" would be, except that, again, it seems there's a group of people in America that define winning as America can never lose.


Daniel Ellsberg: People who believe that we could have won with a different kind of effort in Vietnam -- basically with more bombing of North Vietnam, and possibly land invasion of North Vietnam, and possibly the use of nuclear weapons -- I don't know what else they had in mind.


BuzzFlash: What would we have won?


Daniel Ellsberg: First of all, they're nearly all totally ignorant of the war both at the time and since. I wonder if Bush has so much as read a book about the war.


BuzzFlash: But again, Daniel, I ask what would we have won?


Daniel Ellsberg: Of course, their notion is that we would still have Thieu in power, or his equivalent, and that it would be capitalism without a nominally communist leadership. It would be like China, but without the communist party on top.

Some feel that Thieu could have been kept in power a couple more years by bombing, and by U.S. bombing in support of ARVN. And it was Nixon intends to keep that air support on, and keep that going. And as soon as the American troops were out, he was going to return to bombing. Probably '76 is when they would have done it. Even then, U.S. B-52s might have fought it back. And they weren't flying in '75, and that's why the war ended.

And they weren't flying because Congress had cut off the money for a number of reasons, in particular because of Nixon's crimes against me and also against the anti-war movement in general. He used the NSA and FBI to conduct warrantless wiretaps, which were illegal. I was overheard on those wiretaps, which is the immediate cause of my mistrial. But the use of the CIA against an American citizen -- me, among others -- providing logistics for the White House "plumbers" who went into the illegal burglary in my psychoanalyst's office. I mention these things because each of those acts, which had to be covered up then, because they were illegal and lied about, and caused obstruction of justice, are now legal under the Patriot Act and under the deals that are being made with the Senate. The White House directed teams against an American citizen in an effort to incapacitate me. All of these techniques now have been legitimized basically. That's how much our country has changed. But what brought Nixon down was he was clearly perceived as acting illegally against U.S. domestic opponents -- and unconstitutionally, in a variety of ways. There was a reaction to that which faced him with impeachment, and he had to resign.


We have the same acts now, some of which, when they finally were discovered after leaks, after years of concealment, when they finally were discovered, they have been, in fact, enabled by Congress right now. And that doesn't make them constitutional. It means that the Constitution has been ripped up, with the passive connivance of the Democrats in power.


BuzzFlash: But going back to Vietnam --


Daniel Ellsberg: Yes, the bombing had continued, I do think that Thieu would have remained in power along with Nixon. They had to go together. If Nixon had not had to resign, he would have had the B-52s flying. I think he would have had a good chance of keeping Thieu in power through his administration -- through the end of '76, instead of '75, after Nixon had left office. But that's about it. Would a Catholic government in a Buddhist country still be in power in Vietnam? I don't think so.


So what these neo-cons that you speak of, and Bush himself, think would have been achieved, is another two years of bombing, and more killing of Vietnamese by Americans. And keeping Thieu in power. I don't know what they think that would have accomplished. Certainly, since they liked the final outcome, one would think it could have been achieved a bit earlier. What if Congress had stopped the bombing earlier?


BuzzFlash: Well, we back then what was argued was the domino theory -- we must prevent a communist takeover there.


Daniel Ellsberg: Another story that was not believed by, for example, Robert McNamara.


BuzzFlash: Because the Vietnamese were long-time antagonists of China for example. Isn't that right?


Daniel Ellsberg: Look, now we have an administration that, again, is willing to conflate the secular but Sunni population of Iraq and the Shia population and leadership of Iran, with the Sunni extremist membership of al Qaeda. They suggest that either of those would have given nuclear weapons, if they had them, or chemical or biological weapons, to al Qaeda, which would have been a very serious prospect actually, if there's any reality to it. Except that people who know the difference between Persians and Arabs, or Sunni and Shia, which did not include, of course, Bush and Cheney, but did include a lot of people in the CIA and the State Department, that Iran and Iraq would actually be at the bottom of the list of potential sources of WMD to al Qaeda compared to other people who would be on that. There was essentially no chance of that, and that's what George Tenet actually testified to Congress before the war.


BuzzFlash: In The New York Times, recently, Maureen Dowd had a column a speculating that Cheney may be using what might be called the madness theory to keep the government of Iran and anyone else who the Bush administration might regard as a threat off balance.


Daniel Ellsberg: I'll tell you what I have accepted on that. Nixon did very consciously use what he called the madman theory, and he put it into effect. He did have Kissinger warn Vietnam and China and Russia that we had a president who was somewhat crazy -- that he had a split personality. He was very shrewd and realistic in many ways, but also capable of being very impulsive and brutal, which actually was true. That was not a bluff.

I reflected on the fact that although he used that theory consciously, it didn't work. The main purpose of it was to get the North Vietnamese to take their troops out of South Vietnam, which they never did do. But he expected to get that by these threats, including the threat of nuclear weapons in 1969. It didn't work. It had no effect on them. He expected at least to keep them from launching an offensive while he was in office. It didn't work in 1972. And of course, later, in '75, they launched their offensives.

If they're using the madman theory now again, I would say, it has a lot of realism. It's not a bluff. These guys are crazy, along with being shrewd in many ways -- shrewd enough to get power and to use it covertly and then increasingly overtly. They're smart. They're not, in other words, stupid, except that I've learned in my time on earth that even very high intelligence can result in the same kind of stupidity and craziness very comfortably. Happens all the time. And that's what we have right now. The fact is that the attack on Iraq was perceived widely within the administration as crazy, from virtually any point of view. And the same is true of any impending attack on Iran. But I have to tell you that, the more closely you know the decisions of Vietnam -- and I know it pretty closely, because I was in the Pentagon at that time and I studied that as much as any other person since then -- and I have to say that the more you know about it, the crazier Johnson's escalation in Vietnam in 1965 was. He was warned about the enormous costs and slim prospects of any kind of real success, just as more recently Bush has been warned.


How much actually reached him through Cheney is not clear, but clearly Tenet conveyed this is not clear. We don't have the documents. We don't have the Pentagon papers. And we should. Someone who does have that kind of evidence -- and there must be dozens to hundreds -- should give them to Congress, should leak them now, including the Pentagon papers of Iraq -- the machinations of the war planning. And that would include the kind of thing that was in those Pentagon papers -- namely, the estimates officially by the Joint Chiefs, by the CIA, by the State Department, and just how costly that would be, and the low prospects of success. We have to see that information in document form. And I have no doubt whatever that it exists.

People are refraining from giving those documents to Congress. People are afraid of giving the documents on torture, and on the NSA illegal surveillance which Congress has been requesting now for years, and has still not succeeded in getting. The people who have those documents in the administration and fail to hand them over to Congress against the wishes of their high-level superiors are violating their oath of office, just as I violated my oath of office in '64-65, years before my leaking of the documents to the press.


The oath of office is not an oath to the President. It is not an agreement to keep secrets. They make agreements like that, and I made agreements like that, but that is not contained in the oath of office which you swear to. That oath is not to the President, and it's not to the flag. It is one thing only -- to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And that can easily -- in fact, daily -- it comes into conflict with these other agreements and obligations that people feel. It is simply intended to override any of those others. But hardly anybody sees that.

Members of the Congress right now and others are violating their oath of office when they fail to investigate these matters. In effect, they condone and comply with, and are complicit with the violations of international law, domestic law, the Constitution which they have sworn to protect. They have neither protected the Constitution, nor have they protected the people from the potential tyranny the Constitution was designed to protect us against

What I've been calling for is what no one has actually done, and that is a timely revelation of documents before the war, or in time to change these processes. We've had anonymous oral leaks, but we haven't had the documents. We do have one officer, Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who said no, that the war was illegal and unconstitutional, and he refused to participate in it. He is facing trial right now as we speak, and a possible prison sentence. He's the single official from the U.S. government, to my knowledge, who is taking seriously that oath of office to uphold the Constitution.

Standing up for our Constitution is still our best potential protection against executive tyranny, which is what we fought to avert in the revolution of this country, and the war of independence.


BuzzFlash: Thank you, Daniel, for this interview and your service to our country.

Enough Spin Already: Bush and Cheney Lied, Iran Didn't
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/11380

"Assessment Jars a Foreign Policy Debate About Iran."
Assessment? Jars? Debate? Excuse me?

Here's Gramma Pelosi this morning: "The NIE illustrates the effectiveness of international monitoring and targeted sanctions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Effectiveness? Targeted? Proliferation? Excuse me?

There were many other - oh I don't know what's a judicious word - deranged? duplicitous? drugged? - reactions this morning to yesterday's devastating NIE - even to my chagrin in these august columns - spinning as no big deal a watershed moment in the so far wretched history of the 21st century America. Not one of them seemed willing to grasp a very large nettle: the axis of evil that has this great nation in its paws, has been lying about Iran at least since August and probably far longer. Has been lying to us, to our allies, to the world. Again. And not just lying but striving with all their might to nuke - or allow an ally to nuke - innocent people who posed no threat to us.

Here are the salient points from the NIE:

We judge with high confidence that the halt (in trying to develop nuclear weapons, not producing them) has lasted at least several years. (Four to be exact, a lifetime in war and politics).

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. (Or has ever had one).

We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015. (Which Bush - and for that matter Gates - flatly lied about this morning implying that the NIE said they could re-up anytime).

Let's be quite clear how far the men in the White House were willing to go. In the lethal linguistic fog these warmongers and the rightwing quislings who enable them, have plunged us, reasonable people seem to have lost sight of what we're talking about. Nuclear weapons aren't a bigger better version of Daisy Cutters. Nuclear weapons aren't just more bang for the buck. Nuclear weapons are the most cowardly killing devices ever devised by our benighted species. Nuclear weapons are instant genocide. Nuclear weapons are designed to murder as many unarmed noncombatants as possible, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Using nuclear weapons - even throwing around the threat to use them - was is and always should be unthinkable. Yet the monsters, yes monsters in the White House were willing to lie through their teeth - again - to get the chance to use them. On innocent people who posed no threat to us.

You say they didn't lie because they didn't have the current NIE? Bullshit. They said they knew that Iran had nuclear weapons, that Iran was about to start World War III. At the barest minimum they knew that was a lie. At the barest minimum they had no evidence to back that up - just as they had no evidence to back up their assertion that Saddam had nukes - yet they said that they did. They said they knew. That's called lying. And they were willing to murder on a monumental scale - again - based on those lies.

In reality - not the barest minimum - it's inconceivable that this intelligence has not been available to them since August, that some of it has not been known far longer. It's inconceivable that Israel which has the most reliable intelligence services in the Mid-East did not develop some intelligence in four long years, that Iran had no nuclear weapons and was no longer even trying to acquire them. It's inconceivable - surely - that if Israel had such intelligence, it would not pass it along. At some point in four long years. To someone in the US power structure.

Waking in New York this morning and reading the responses to this Force Nine news story, I felt as if I should try again to wake myself up. I don't mean that as a figure of speech: it was one of those experiences where you wake up in a dream and then try to really wake yourself up. Reading the New York Times was truly like being a character in a Kafka short story. For a while the world was making no sense. The acceptance of this shattering exposure of duplicity, appeared totally impossible for even well-informed, responsible journalists.

It's plausible that we've reached the point where we just cannot face that Americans, elected Americans, who talk in familiar accents, who grew up in familiar places, who wear familiar clothes and look not terribly unlike us, could be as evil as it increasingly appears George Bush and Richard Cheney really are. Americans simply aren't that evil, are they? They can't be. There must be some good intentions somewhere. But there aren't and there never have been.

And we cannot face the fact that the threat to our security and integrity as a people, is not in Tehran despite the blatherings of its ludicrous (and largely powerless) President, anymore than it was in Baghdad. Nor is it in the gullies, caves, hilltops and villages of the North-West Frontier. Threats from there - hot air and light weaponry - are nugatory compared to one we must now confront.

The threat to America is right here at home, sitting in two chairs in Washington right now, not faces on a screen, not characters in the tawdry television drama we call politics, but two actual human beings, their buttocks warming the leather of their seats, plotting how to cover up their crimes - the ones we don't know about yet - plotting how to avoid accountability for the crimes they can no longer conceal, plotting even now in the fading twilight of their reign of lies, theft and murder, how by any means necessary, they can get still their hands on most of the world's oil and pass the proceeds along to their cronies.

If you won't impeach now Gramma, you're on your way to being as guilty as they. Those who enable high crimes and misdemeanors - including never let us forget, treason - become as culpable as the perpetrators. If you don't impeach now, you will be an accomplice as will be all the others who stand with you - those who voted to declare the nuclear-free armed forces of a sovereign nation 'terrorists' for example, or one of your leading candidates for President who refused to take 'off the table' the 'option' of nuking innocent people who posed no threat to us, just so that she could look as tough as war-criminals.

Enough. This is the moment of enough. This is the moment where we lose or win back what was once and still can be again a great nation. Use the Constitution or lose the Constitution.

It amazes me that there isnt more outrage over this. The lapdog "lefty" media asks a few questions and thats it. It blows over. Meanwhile reich wing media (and that is what it really is) is poluting as usual, making up excuses and lies to explain away the lies the sh_t administration has been feeding every one. Damn straight AWOL and cheney need to be impeached, and then every single one of their enablers, democrats and filthy republicans alike, need to be impeached or the equivalent thereof.

This half-assed reaction from the so-called democrat leadership in DC is sickening at best. Why they are still as afraid as they ever were of these lying, thieving fascists is beyond me. And how shrillary survives as a presidential candidate of the surrender/appeaser democrat party is beyond me as well.

because its a house of cards

Olbermann calls him on it

http://desktopdownload.org/mas/baldfaced.mp3

36 second mp3 570k

Bravo!

Secret Torture Memos Disclosed on Floor of Senate

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001875

An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.



The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. Let’s start with number one. Bear in mind that the so-called Protect America Act that was stampeded through this great body in August provides no—zero—statutory protections for Americans traveling abroad from government wiretapping. None if you’re a businesswoman traveling on business overseas, none if you’re a father taking the kids to the Caribbean, none if you’re visiting uncles or aunts in Italy or Ireland, none even if you’re a soldier in the uniform of the United States posted overseas. The Bush Administration provided in that hastily-passed law no statutory restrictions on their ability to wiretap you at will, to tap your cell phone, your e-mail, whatever.

The only restriction is an executive order called 12333, which limits executive branch surveillance to Americans who the Attorney General determines to be agents of a foreign power. That’s what the executive order says. But what does this administration say about executive orders?

An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

“Whenever (the President) wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order,” he may do so because “an executive order cannot limit a President.” And he doesn’t have to change the executive order, or give notice that he’s violating it, because by “depart(ing) from the executive order,” the President “has instead modified or waived it.”

So unless Congress acts, here is what legally prevents this President from wiretapping Americans traveling abroad at will: nothing. Nothing.

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001875

The Dumbest Things President Bush Said in 2007
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/bushquo...ms2007.htm?nl=1

10. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --interview on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

9. "I fully understand those who say you can't win this thing militarily. That's exactly what the United States military says, that you can't win this military." --on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, D.C., Oct. 17, 2007

8. "One of my concerns is that the health care not be as good as it can possibly be." --on military benefits, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

7. "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." --addressing Australian Prime Minister John Howard at the APEC Summit. Later, in the same speech: "As John Howard accurately noted when he went to thank the Austrian troops there last year..." --referring to Australian troops as "Austrian troops," Sept. 7, 2007

6. "My relationship with this good man is where I've been focused, and that's where my concentration is. And I don't regret any other aspect of it. And so I -- we filled a lot of space together." --on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007

5. "You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --to Queen Elizabeth, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2007 (Watch video clip)

4. "The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm a Commander Guy." --deciding he is no longer just "The Decider," Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007 (Watch video clip)

3. "Information is moving -- you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets." --Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007

2. "There are some similarities, of course (between Iraq and Vietnam). Death is terrible." --Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

1. "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." --on the No Child Left Behind Act, Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2007

the know nothing king... the right loves it

Bush: I Didn't Know About Destruction Of CIA Interrogation Tapes
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/20...i-didnt-kn.html

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/trend_graph.jpg

Bush Secret Shredding Soars
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/12/...dding-soars.php

HELL BENT ON DESTRUCTION Shredding contracts during Bush/Cheney

Behold, the Bush Administration in chart form: Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office. This chart, generated by usaspending.gov, the U.S. government's brand spanking new database of federal expenditures, shows spending on "contracts for paper shredding services" going back to 2000. Click here for the full, heartbreaking breakdown. In 2000, the feds spent $452,807 to make unpleasant truths go away; by 2006, the "Cheney Effect" had bumped that number up to $2.9 million. And by halfway through 2007, the feds almost matched that number, with $2.7 million and counting. Pretty much says it all.

Bush administration: Back off CIA tape probe
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/15/cia.tapes/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration wants a federal court and congressional committees not to pursue investigations into the destruction of videotapes showing CIA interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects.

It says the inquiries would interfere with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department in collaboration with the CIA.

Defense attorneys for some terror suspects have asked U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy to look into whether the tapes' destruction violated a June order.

The measure requires the government to preserve evidence and information regarding detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But Friday night, the Bush administration urged Kennedy not to hold that inquiry, saying the tapes were not covered by the order because one of the detainees videotaped -- Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah -- was not at Guantanamo Bay in June.

Also Friday, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson and assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein sent a letter to the top Democrat and Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, urging the panel to abandon its investigation because of the inspector general and Justice Department probe.

"We cannot estimate how long this process will take or where it will lead, but pledge to advise you as soon as we conclude that our efforts are no longer at risk or that these requests can be fulfilled without jeopardizing our inquiry," says the letter to committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes and ranking Republican member Peter Hoekstra. Watch a report on the dispute and the requests to delay investigations »

House Intelligence Committee leaders have said the executive branch cannot be trusted to oversee itself.

no! ya think?

But CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Saturday, "the CIA will cooperate fully with both the preliminary inquiry by the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General as well as with the Congress. That has been, and certainly continues to be the case."

Lawmakers continued their criticism Saturday.

"The continuing saga of cover-up and delay by this administration must be stopped before more documents are lost to future investigators," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, a presidential candidate.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected demands from key congressional leaders for information about the Justice Department's preliminary inquiry, saying turning over the information might be seen as bowing to "political influence."

In letters to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Mukasey said he would not turn over the material, nor would he appoint a special prosecutor to conduct the investigation, as some lawmakers had requested.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey said.

"Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry and the relevant law applied."

He sent a third similar letter to Assistant Senate Majority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, who had been the first to issue demands for information from the Justice Department.

"With regard to the suggestion that I appoint a special counsel, I am aware of no facts at present to suggest that department attorneys cannot conduct this inquiry in an impartial manner. If I become aware of information that leads me to a different conclusion, I will act on it," Mukasey said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said he was disappointed by the decision and indicated a confrontation with the new attorney general would come early next year.

He also suggested that access to the CIA tape inquiry will be an issue when Mukasey's nominated deputy, Mark Filip, comes before the panel for a confirmation hearing next week.

The tapes -- showing then-newly approved "alternative" interrogation techniques -- were recorded in 2002, CIA Director Michael Hayden said earlier this month in a letter to CIA employees.

The CIA made the decision to destroy the tapes in 2005 "only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries," Hayden said.

White House officials have said the president did not learn about the destruction of the tapes until last week.

The preliminary inquiry is to determine "whether further investigation is warranted," the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for national security, Kenneth L. Wainstein, said Saturday in a letter to the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo.

http://www.misdirections.com/images/SHRUNKENBILL-FULL.jpg

YouTube Video: It's a Blunderful Life

Better off dead.

SuperNews! - It's a Horrible Life

Nixon gets his wings.

What Will Be Bush's Legacy?



The quagmire in Iraq, Katrina, torture at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo,outing Valerie Plame, biggest deficit ever, illegal wiretaps,$100/bbl oil etc. So many to choose from



France has its Inspector Clouseau, England has its Mr. Bean and the US has President Bush. All three leave chaos and disaster wherever they have been as they stumble forward, totally unaware of the chaos they have created behind them.



With the world in flames, George W. Bush can truly say he lit the fire. That will be his legacy: arsonist.



Didn't David Koresh also think he was a messiah? Isn't Crawford near Waco? Hmmmmmmmm



In the same interview, this C minus president says his legacy will be about his "freedom agenda," while openly admiring the King of Saudi Arabia, who hates democracy.



What a lunatic--the biggest mistake in U.S. history and we haven't even began to pay the price.


Historians will spend more time examining Bush sanity than his legacy.


Give the man a slingshot and a ticket to the San Francisco zoo.


http://www.allhatnocattle.net/1-8-08_jesus_bush.htm

Bush considering $800 tax rebate to boost US economy
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=08...;show_article=1

lunch money?

The Dow Jones industrial average, up more than 180 points in morning trading, was down 124.45, or 1.02 percent, at 12,034.76 minutes after Bush finished speaking. The Dow plunged 306 points Thursday amid deepening pessimism about the economy.

Buy intel...they say it's always a bargain below $20...make your ol' man proud.

where did you get your intel?

how much did it cost ya?

The Bush people have made the destruction of evidence part of their routine.

They have no qualms whatsoever about looking the other way as the CIA incinerates the videos showing U.S. interrogators torturing their prisoners. Those administration attorneys who cautioned it might not be a good idea were only too happy to pull their Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of the whole matter.

What sets me off on this today is the disclosure that the White House may have simply" lost" forever 473 days of e-mail in a blatant violation of the law requiring their preservation.

Worse, officials in the administration tried to conceal their erasures from the public, even after they briefed members of Congress on a study which identified the missing communications.

Only after a Bush press spokesman brazenly insisted there was "no evidence" the 473 day gap existed, did Congressman Henry Waxman, the Bush gang's worst nightmare, release the study.

What's remarkable about all this? Sad to say, not a damned thing. Same doo-doo, different day-day.

This administration, time and again, has tried to hide its misdeeds. The motto seems to be not that the public has a right to know how its government operates, but that it's none of the public's damned business.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-franken/...of_b_82172.html

You might actually want to visit a workplace environment someday just to observe the quality of emails. Try counting the number of significant items found among the jokes, personal messages, excuses, and other trash before you bemoan the "loss" of such jewels.

and tell me how many are free to break any law they choose

got employees?

This administration takes it's not the crime it's the coverup to a whole new level.

appeasement takes on a whole new meaning

heckofajob

There was more than one lesson learned from that Watergate deal.

And Iran/Contra.

scratching the surface

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Ima...arCardChart.jpg

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

A Government of Liars Must Be Brought Down


When journalists are caught lying outright, they can be fired, and can even find their careers terminated. Take Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who made up a story about a young drug user. A decade after her firing, she was earning $6/hour as a Liz Claiborne clerk in a department store. Or consider Stephen Glass, who famously made up stories at the New Republic. He landed on his feet as a fiction writer, but his journalism days are over.

So what to do about George Bush and his gang of fabulists, who now, thanks to a study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, stand shown to have lied to Congress and the American people 935 times in what the two organizations say was "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."



And while it is a given in American political life that "politicians lie," we're talking here about some whoppers that weren't just about self-promotion, like Hillary Clinton's claims that she was involved in all of the major decisions in Bill Clinton's White House, or Obama's claim that he has always opposed the war in Iraq, or John McCain's claim that he is a "straight talker." We're talking about lies that led to the US violating international law by invading a country that posed no imminent threat, lies that have led to the needless and pointless deaths of some 4000 American military personnel and to the maiming of nearly 80,000 others, lies that have left a nation of 34 million in ruins, with 4 million refugees, 1 million dead, and political chaos that is perhaps irremediable. We're talking about lies that have cost the US upwards of $2 trillion in actual military outlays and future debt payments. Lies that have cast the US in the role of pariah nation and terrorist state in the eyes of the rest of the world.

The idea that Americans would be willing to impeach a president for lying about a sexual act, or that they would reject a candidate for plagiarizing part of a speech, but that they would then simply shrug at hard evidence that a president, along with his vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary and national security adviser had all lied in a conscious, coordinated conspiracy to trick them into a disastrous war is hard to believe.

At this point, we should have hordes of people pressing on the iron fences of the White House, armed with pitchforks, baseball bats and cattle prods, ready to storm the place and wreak vengeance. Where are the angry relatives of dead and maimed soldiers? Where are the idealistic students? Where are the taxpayers who've been robbed blind? Where's the outraged Congress? Where are the incensed editorialists in the media?

Hey! Wake up! This is a goddamned outrage?

We all knew it, of course, but until now, thanks to a news media that has long since stopped reporting on serious issues, particularly where it involves criticism of the powerful, we could hide behind the belief that it was all "business as usual" in Washington, a truth-challenged city to be sure.

But now we know. Now there is no hiding from the truth. Now we have it documented and quantified in a way that makes the enormity of the offense clear and undeniable.

Now we are required to take action.

No editorial writer worthy of the name can ignore this scandal. No member of Congress can ignore this affront to the Constitution. No citizen can ignore this abuse.

There is only one appropriate response to the crime that has been documented here by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, and that is impeachment. We have the crime laid out before us. We have the evidence in hand. It is now the obligation of the House to hold an impeachment hearing in which that evidence will be put before the members. After that, there must be a vote on an article of impeachment, against Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld, for lying to the American people.

No president, no vice president, no senior cabinet officer, can be permitted to commit a treasonous act as serious as lying the nation into a needless war, and be permitted to remain in office. To allow such treachery to go unchallenged is to tell all future administrations that truth and openness have no place in American government. To allow this crime to pass is to declare that democracy in America is moribund, for the people can only be sovereign as long as they are given the truth about what their government and their leaders are doing.

No member of Congress who sits idly by and refuses to call these lying leaders to account deserves reelection.



It is time for action. If Congress will not act then it is up to we the people to clean house from top to bottom.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12370

Heckuva job, Georgie W! Heckuva job!

it used to be your money

How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Country

To get started, enshrine ignorance and elevate folly. Elect people to high office who don’t know much about history, for instance, and then let them have pretty much unfettered powers free from the checks and balances that were originally concocted in order to keep things from getting ruined.

Be sure that your children graduate from school and enter adulthood even more ignorant of their history than their leaders are, and be sure that they are equally clueless about their system of government.

Undermine confidence in the significance of voting by clouding election results.

Elect people to govern who don’t believe government is a good thing. Such elected representatives will, then, ensure that government fails to fulfill its functions because when government does exhibit such failures, those elected representatives have proven their point.

Instill passivity in the populace. In a democracy, for instance, a passive electorate will accept the subversion of the government bureaus instituted to serve the people’s interests. When, for example, functionaries are put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency who are actively hostile to the environment, a passive nation will countenance such an egregious betrayal of public trust.

But, if you are intent on ruining your nation, don’t stop at one or two such agencies. Be sure that the Department of Justice is run by people who are fuzzy on the concept of justice, and that the people named to be in charge of guarding the nation’s public airways and media outlets are actively working for media monopolists who restrict the public uses of those airways and outlets.

Be sure that your intelligence-gathering agencies spend much of their time spying on the citizenry, and that any foreign intelligence they turn up is first weighed and evaluated for possible political consequences to those in power. Intelligence inimical to the interests of those in power shall be excised or redrafted accordingly.

This same approach should also be applied to the findings of scientists. When and if scientific evidence reveals data injurious to political or pecuniary interests of the nation’s rulers, then that science will be identified as junk and will, accordingly, be junked in favor of science purchasable from science vendors already in corporate employ.

Trivialize news and information until reporting about the activities of minor entertainment figures is equal to reporting about the decisions that are affecting the lives of the citizenry.

Employ a network of disinformation specialists on radio and TV whose role it is to simplify all matters of national consequence, and to turn global disputes into clashes of good and evil, with all acts of your government cast as good, and all contrary acts portrayed as evil. If you have created a sufficiently ignorant populace through the work of your schools and your media, such a rendering of reality will be readily accepted by the governed.

If possible—and it is always possible—create an external threat, and use that threat to sow a permeating atmosphere of fear. Tweak this fear whenever it is necessary to distract the public from anything you want to escape their attention.

And keep that public attention scattered and antic. Manipulating the various media will make this easy, as will the endemic obsession with celebrities and trendiness fostered and fed by those media.

Intrude religion into all public discourse as often as possible, and blur the distinctions between church and state. This has multiple advantages. Religion can be used to bathe the most venal acts in heaven-sanctioned righteousness. Religious zealots can be counted upon to respond to the code phrases that indicate that the nation’s leaders share their zealotry, and religious disputes can also serve as a distraction from the things that put the aims and desires of the powerful ahead of the interests of the country.

Always manipulate the language, affixing labels to those who oppose your policies, repeating those labels in negative contexts until each of them retains the power to convey evil or harm simply by invoking them.

Positive connotations are as useful as negative connotations, so select words that associate policies with generally cherished values and attitudes. If you wish to strengthen domestic spying, for instance, push your objectives by lumping such activities under rubrics like “homeland” or “security,” the kinds of words no one is ever against.

Waste is profit. Maintaining power—and ruining a perfectly good nation—is dependent upon waste because government waste generates the profits that line the pockets of those whose largesse keeps you in power.

The biggest bull in the herd of sacred cows is the military. Bolster that bull land gild that sacred cow. The gilding of the military begins and ends with the image of the foot soldier, the grunt, the G.I. Once “our boys,” or “our brave men and women in uniform” have been properly gilded and enshrined, it is imperative that you associate yourself with those soldiers in every way you can, always taking pains to blur the distinction between the soldiers and the politicians who have put them at risk. One way to accomplish this blurring is by highly publicized behind-the-lines visits to media-friendly sites where you can be photographed sharing a safe meal with soldiers before hastening back to the nation’s capital.

Always amplify division between people and contending interests, driving wedges between races and ethnic groups, remembering to pit working people against one another whenever possible—and it’s always possible. Xenophobia will trump self-interest if you have been successful at maintaining the level of ignorance necessary to ruining the country for the benefit of yourself and your powerful associates.

Provide no models for emulation. Turn athletes into overpaid hucksters and drug abusers, and turn youth culture into a megaphone for the disaffected and the defeated, make everything venal and ripe for cynicism, turn the anger of the dispossessed back in on themselves in ways that market self destruction and self-punishing rebellion for the profit of media moguls. Make idealism uncool and unpopular. Channel the resulting spiritual hunger into illegal but readily available drugs, or into the evangelical religiosity that preys on the desire to have prayers heard for profit, or the aggrandizement of the merchants of messianic mercies.

Pump the people full of high fructose corn syrup, injecting the stuff into nearly everything they eat until they are as swollen as ticks, barely able to squeeze themselves into oversized gas-swilling SUVs for their pilgrimages to the big box stores that sell them all their overworked hearts desire.

Export jobs; import goods; borrow heavily from unreliable allies and trading partners. Ensure the indebtedness of future generations. Balance no budgets, but pass on the costs of war profiteering and government contracted waste to the children and grandchildren of the taxpaying classes. Spend taxpayer money as if there’s no tomorrow, and live accordingly, indifferent to any concept of a healthy heritage that would mark your time here, guaranteeing that your memory will occupy a bleak and resentful place in the hearts of those who come after you, left with the debt and the mess you’ve bequeathed to them.

http://www.chicobeat.com/?q=how_to_ruin_a_...ly_good_country

Unfinished business for Bush in final State of the Union address
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/28/sotu.main/index.html

cool! are we finally goin' to Mars?