GOP Corruption Probe Grows

Last weekends NYTimes highlights Department of Justice statements that the GOP Corruption probe which has snared GOP Lobbyists Mike Scanlon and Jack Abramoff could widen to include members of Congress.

Scanlon & Abramoff

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The Justice Department has signaled for the first time in recent weeks that prominent members of Congress could be swept up in the corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former Republican superlobbyist who diverted some of his tens of millions of dollars in fees to provide lavish travel, meals and campaign contributions to the lawmakers whose help he needed most.

The investigation by a federal grand jury, which began more than a year ago, has created alarm on Capitol Hill, especially with the announcement Friday of criminal charges against Michael Scanlon, Mr. Abramoff's former lobbying partner and a former top House aide to Representative Tom DeLay.

For those who've forgotten or simply been hiding under rock -- Mike Scanlon is the really sensitive and funny guy who was saying the following in an email:

Judging by the sentiments of Mike Scanlon, a former spokesman for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and Abramoff's secret partner, conservative Christians provided an essential and unwitting tool in the lobbyists' fight in Louisiana on behalf of the Coushatta tribe against rival gambling operations. Scanlon composed a memo in October 2001 that he sent to Coushatta lawyer Kathy VanHoof and Abramoff describing the role religious radio could play in the effort:

"Simply put," Scanlon wrote, "we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them. The wackos get their information from the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees."

Scanlon detailed a strategy to advertise on Christian radio against proposed casinos at Delta Downs and Pinnacle. "We will produce and air at least two radio ads that give biblical reasons why [the casinos] should be blocked and the tracks shut down." Scanlon recommended providing $575,000 for "solidifying the support of the Christian conservatives and the minority religious outlets of SW Louisiana."

Meanwhile back in the NYT article:

The charges against Mr. Scanlon identified no lawmakers by name, but a summary of the case released by the Justice Department accused him of being part of a broad conspiracy to provide "things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment to federal public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts" - an attempt at bribery, in other words, or something close to it.

Mr. Abramoff, who is under indictment in a separate bank-fraud case in Florida, has not been charged by the federal grand jury here. But Mr. Scanlon's lawyer says he has agreed to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation, suggesting that Mr. Abramoff's day in court in Washington is only a matter of time.

So Scanlon has already plead guilty, mostly likely with an offer to rat on the bigger fish - most likely including members of Congress. Hey Mr. Delay - ready for your next mug shot?

Scholars who specialize in the history and operations of Congress say that given the brazenness of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying efforts, as measured by the huge fees he charged clients and the extravagant gifts he showered on friends on Capitol Hill, almost all of them Republicans, the investigation could end up costing several lawmakers their careers, if not their freedom.

The investigation threatens to ensnarl many outside Congress as well, including Interior Department officials and others in the Bush administration who were courted by Mr. Abramoff on behalf of the Indian tribe casinos that were his most lucrative clients.

The inquiry has already reached into the White House; a White House budget official, David H. Safavian, resigned only days before his arrest in September on charges of lying to investigators about his business ties to Mr. Abramoff, a former lobbying partner.

"I think this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress in over a century," said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional specialist at the Brookings Institution. "I've been around Washington for 35 years, watching Congress, and I've never seen anything approaching Abramoff for cynicism and chutzpah in proposing quid pro quos to members of Congress."

Even by the gold-plated standards of Washington lobbying firms, the fees paid to Mr. Abramoff were extraordinary. A former president of the College Republicans who turned to lobbying after a short-lived career as a B-movie producer, Mr. Abramoff, with his lobbying team, collected more than $80 million from the Indian tribes and their gambling operations; he was known by lobbying rivals as "Casino Jack."

Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work was not limited to the casinos, though. Newly disclosed documents from his files show that he asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of Gabon, in West Africa, to set up a White House meeting with President Bush; there was an Oval Office meeting last year, although there is no evidence in the public record to show that Mr. Abramoff had a role in the arrangements.

The real question to me doesn't seem to be whether several members of Congress will eventually be frog-marched out of the Capital -- but simply how many, and whether they'll have the chutzpa to try and run again in 2006. Something tells me that they probably will, and it will be glorious to behold as they go down in flames, taking GOP control of congress with them.

Update From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department's wide-ranging investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has entered a highly active phase as prosecutors are beginning to move on evidence pointing to possible corruption in Congress and executive branch agencies, lawyers involved in the case said.

Prosecutors have already told one lawmaker, Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) [Pictured at Left], and his former chief of staff that they are preparing a possible bribery case against them, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The 35 to 40 investigators and prosecutors on the Abramoff case are focused on at least half a dozen members of Congress, lawyers and others close to the probe said. The investigators are looking at payments made by Abramoff and his colleagues to the wives of some lawmakers and at actions taken by senior Capitol Hill aides, some of whom went to work for Abramoff at the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, lawyers and others familiar with the probe said.

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R), now facing separate campaign finance charges in his home state of Texas, is one of the members under scrutiny, the sources said. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and other members of Congress involved with Indian affairs, one of Abramoff's key areas of interest, are also said to be among them.

Prosecutions and plea deals have become more likely, the lawyers said, now that Abramoff's former partner -- public relations executive Michael Scanlon -- has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and to testify about gifts that he and his K Street colleagues showered on lawmakers, allegedly in exchange for official favors.

Uh oh, it looks like the lesser Rat (Scanlon) has already jumped off the ship only to let the bigger Rats burn as the hull catches fire.

Vyan

The New Blue America

Posted by kpete on Democratic Underground


The latest 50 State Poll from SurveyUSA indicates that approval ratings for Republicans have dropped all across the country creating a brand New Blue America.

Bush knew there were no Iraq/al-Qaeda Links

Murray Waas at National Journal:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."

In arguing their case for war with Iraq, the president and vice president said after the September 11 attacks that Al Qaeda and Iraq had significant ties, and they cited the possibility that Iraq might share chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons with Al Qaeda for a terrorist attack against the United States.

Democrats in Congress, as well as other critics of the Bush administration, charge that Bush and Cheney misrepresented and distorted intelligence information to bolster their case for war with Iraq. The president and vice president have insisted that they unknowingly relied on faulty and erroneous intelligence, provided mostly by the CIA.

The new information on the September 21 PDB and the subsequent CIA analysis bears on the question of what the CIA told the president and how the administration used that information as it made its case for war with Iraq.

So when Bush talks about "having the same intelligence information" does he mean this? I seriously doubt it since a year after this information was provided to him he made the following statements...

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

All of this information turned out to be not true so just who is the liar here?

Further examples:

But a comparison of public statements by the president, the vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld show that in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."

The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, five months before the attacks. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: "[I]t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."

Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting.

Credit card and phone records appear to demonstrate that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time of the alleged meeting, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials. Al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence official with whom Atta was said to have met in Prague, was later taken into custody by U.S. authorities. He not only denied the report of the meeting with Atta, but said that he was not in Prague at the time of the supposed meeting, according to published reports.

So if the CIA was saying one thing - why did the President say another? Because he was getting intelligence from a secret unit within the Defense Department.

One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

Feith was a protégé of, and intensely loyal to, Cheney, Rumsfeld, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and Cheney's then-chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The secretive unit was set up because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby did not believe the CIA would be able to get to the bottom of the matter of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. The four men shared a long-standing distrust of the CIA from their earlier positions in government, and felt that the agency had failed massively by not predicting the September 11 attacks.

At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof andDavid Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks. They liked to refer to themselves as the "Iraqi intelligence cell" of the Pentagon. And they took pride in the fact that their office was in an out-of-the-way cipher-locked room, with "charts that rung the room from one end to the other" showing the "interconnections of various terrorist groups" with one another and, most important, with Iraq, Maloof recalled in an interview.

It seems that the Pentagon Intelligence unit may have been directly at the heart of the entire Plame-gate affair (Which may be why Wurmser's has been reportedly been cooperating with Patrick FItzgerald for some time.

The Pentagon unit also routinely second-guessed the CIA's highly classified assessments. Regarding one report titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," one of the Naval Reserve officers wrote: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over the course of a decade on interactions between Iraq and al-Qaida. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only-and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored."

This same antipathy toward the CIA led to the events that are the basis of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, according to several former and current senior officials.

Ironically, the Plame affair's origins had its roots in Cheney and Libby's interest in reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. After reading a Pentagon report on the matter in early February 2002, Cheney asked the CIA officer who provided him with a national security briefing each morning if he could find out about it.

Without Cheney's knowledge, his query led to the CIA-sanctioned trip to Niger by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, to investigate the allegations. Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most likely not true.

It's seems that the Pentagon Intelligence Unit might just be at the center of this entire ball of yarn, which continues to unravel bit by bit...

Vyan

Republicans back down from Murtha-Gate

Oh, what a difference a week makes.

Last week President Bush was railing about Democrats throwing out "baseless and false charges" concerning the War. Dick Cheney quickly followed suit claiming that Democrats were "making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war." The criticism, Cheney said, threatens to undermine the morale of U.S. troops while "a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie."

This week, after seeing his great ship of state run aground by the swift-boating of Rep. John Murtha, Bush takes (almost) all of it back.

After fiercely defending his Iraq policy across Asia, President Bush abruptly toned down his attack on war critics Sunday and said there was nothing unpatriotic about opposing his strategy. "People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq," Bush said, three days after agreeing with Vice President Dick Cheney that the critics were "reprehensible."

The president also praised Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), as "a fine man" and a strong supporter of the military despite the congressman's call for troop withdrawal as soon as possible.

. . . Thousands of miles from home, Bush and other White House officials have not let a day go by without a tough counterattack against Democratic critics of the president's Iraq policies. But the president replaced the no-holds-barred approach with a softer tone Sunday. "I heard somebody say, `Well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position.' I totally reject that thought," Bush said.

"This is not an issue of who's patriotic and who's not patriotic," he said. "It's an issue of an honest, open debate about the way forward in Iraq."

An honest debate, wherein the first thing you do is attack the honesty of your opponents - followed quickly by eating your words with a side of crow? Indeed.

Even Cheney has softened his blows.

Cheney stopped short of joining those Republicans who have questioned the patriotism and courage of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, calling him "a good man, a Marine, a patriot." Cheney's subdued comments about Murtha followed those of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Still he did cling to the primary party line:

"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

This defense of course leaves open the possibilty that those other than the "Leader of the nation" were responsible for the distortions -- quite possibily even Cheney himself. He was clearly involved in the discussions of "how to handle Wilson", as well as took numerious personal trips down the CIA to talk directly with analysts. and according to State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson had a virtual Cabal with Donald Rumsfeld and actually attempted to block some papers from being included in the Senate Intelligence report.

As I've repeatedly said - the question depends on whether the President himself was made aware via his Daily Briefings that the DIA suspected that al-Libi was lying about links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, that "Curveball" was lying about Iraqi WMD programs, and whether had anything to do with suppressing the DOE and INR's doubt about the Iraqi Nuclear program just as they attempted to squash Joe Wilson's dessent on the Niger Uranium - and George Tenet and/or Condolezza Rice told the British government that the "facts were being fixed around the policy".

Whether Bush was personally aware or not his repeated claims that those in Congress "had the same intelligence" has been thoroughly debunked by not just the WashingtonPost(‘Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material.’), John Kerry ("...the only people who are trying to rewrite that history are the President and his Republican allies."), but also former Sen. Bob Graham who pointed out that the unclassifed version of the pre-war National Intelligence Estimate provided to most congressmen did not include many of the serious doubts about the veracity of claims regarding a renewed Iraq Nuclear program from both the State Department and the Department of Energy.

So disastrous has been the Murtha incident for Republicans that even the Colonel who was allegedly the source for Rep Jean Schmidt's comments has disavowed them.

From the NY Times

Colonel Denies Disparaging Murtha

By The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - A colonel in the Marine reserves has taken issue with how his views were represented in a Republican attack last week on Representative Murtha.

Speaking on the House floor on Friday, Representative Jean Schmidt, Republican of Ohio, asserted that the colonel had "asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, marines never do."

But a spokeswoman for the colonel, Danny R. Bubp, said Ms. Schmidt had misconstrued their conversation.

While Mr. Bubp, a Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives, opposes a quick withdrawal for forces, "he did not mention Congressman Murtha by name nor did he mean to disparage Congressman Murtha," said Karen Tabor, his spokeswoman. "He feels as though the words that Congresswoman Schmidt chose did not represent their conversation."

Asked to respond on Monday, the congresswoman's office said only, "Mrs. Schmidt's statement was never meant to disparage Congressman Murtha."

And just to make matters even worse, Donald Rumsfeld on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer this weekend claimed that the U.S. will begin drawing down at least 20,000 troops in Iraq following the successful completion of this Decembers elections - which is exactly the plan that was suggested by John Kerry over a week ago.

Senator John Kerry introduced in the Senate his plan to succeed in Iraq and bring the vast majority of our combat troops home in a reasonable timeframe tied to specific, responsible benchmarks to transfer responsibility to Iraqis – beginning with the draw down of 20,000 U.S. troops after successful Iraqi elections in December. These additional troops are in Iraq only for the purpose of providing security for the upcoming elections. If they remain in Iraq after that benchmark is achieved, it only exacerbates the sense of American occupation.

With Rumsfeld now lining up with John Kerry on troop withdrawals it should be interesting to see what's happens to the rhetoric of the right-wing when they can no longer use their favorite slur after "Liberal" -- "Traitor".

Then again they could always pitch a bitch about some irrelevant black "X" over Dick Cheney's face on CNN.

Vyan

What the Dems Knew

In a new article in the Washington Post, Former Sen Bob Graham has laid out exactly what he and other Democrats who voted for the Iraq War knew - when they knew it, and most importantly what they didn't know.

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham

Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page B07

In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.

The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.

As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.

I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

So, nearly a year before going to war with Iraq or effort in Afghanistan began to be compromised - this criticism has been echoed by not only John Kerry, but also by former CIA Bin Laden Desk Chief Michael Scheuer in his book "Imperial Hubris".

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

It's important to note here as Sen Graham does - that the Administration did not willing provide an NIE to the Congress prior to the Iraq War, such information was only provided as a result of actions demanding it be Sens. Graham and Durbin.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so [use WMD's] unless he was first attacked.

If Saddam was unlikely to use WMD's unless attacked and provoked - exactly why did we attack him in March of 2003?

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

Ok, here's the kicker people --

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

So basically, all the critical questions that needed answering - "how valid is this intelligence" - "can we trust these informants?" - were left out of the unclassified version of the report the most of Congress saw Further, even the classified version did not include additional information that we now know was available as early as Feburary of 2002 from the Defense Intelligence Agency which indicated that the two primary sources for the NIE information were both unreliable (Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi and "Curveball") and very likely liars.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

So ultimately the question as to whether most of Congress was mislead and misinformed deliberately by the Bush Administration is clearly "yes". The only remaining question is whether the dispositive information available from the DIA, DOE, INR ever reached President Bush before he made various speeches - such as his Cincinnati speach where he claimed...

• And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Yet, Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world.
• We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
• Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
• The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Did President Bush know that all of these statements were falsehoods when he spoke them, and did he even care? It's interesting to note that the Intelligence Information provided the Congress failed to show the indications that were well available within the Intelligence Community that Iraq might not still possess viable WMD's, did not have an active nuclear program and did not actives links to Al-Qaeda.

Vyan

Congress goes Bizarro over Iraq

Yesterday Republicans attempted to head off serious debate of resolving the Iraq War by offerring a sham version of Rep Murtha's House Resolution to withdraw and redeploy our troops in Iraq into a fall back position "in six months".

To Recap.

Murtha's Public Statements:

The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.” General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the
coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.”

I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won “militarily.” I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.
Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a “free” Iraq.

My plan calls:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces. To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines. To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

Murtha's resolution:

Whereas Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable
progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a
stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote
the emergence of a democratic government";

Whereas additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

Whereas more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

Whereas, as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

Whereas U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

Whereas, according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

Whereas polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

Whereas, due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that
continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the
United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which
were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such
action;

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That:

Section 1. The deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date.

Section 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S Marines shall be deployed in the region.

Section 3 The United States of America shall pursue security and
stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

And here's the GOP "rewrite":

RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately. Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.

After first having a fight on whether they would vote on the issue or not which ended with a 210-204 party-line split with Democrats and 6 Republicans opposed to voting on the GOP resolution, the GOP version of was eventually voted down 3 to 403, but not after a rather contentious debate...

Courtesy of the Stakeholder:

The Speaker Pro Tempore: The gentlelady from Ohio is recognized for one
minute.

Ms. Schmidt: Yesterday I stood at Arlington National Cemetery attending the funeral of a young marine in my district. He believed in what we were doing is the right thing and had the courage to lay his life on the line to do it. A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bop, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body - that we will see this through.

[Note by kos -- the whole chamber went nuts at this point, with Democrats shouting and booing Schmidt down]

The Speaker Pro Tempore: The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The gentlelady will suspend. And the clerk will report her words. All members will suspend. The gentleman from Arkansas has demanded that the gentlelady's words be taken down. The clerk will report the gentlelady's words.

The Speaker Pro Tempore: The house will be in order. Members pleas take seats. The gentlelady from Ohio.

Ms. Schmidt: Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed at any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest that they applied to any member. Most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania. I therefore ask for unanimous consent that my words be withdrawn.

The Speaker Pro Tempore: Without objection. The gentlelady's words will be
withdrawn.

From the AP:

Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., charged across the chamber's center aisle screaming that it was an uncalled for personal attack. "You guys are pathetic. Pathetic," yelled Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass.

Now Jean Schmidt (R-OH) has only been in Congress for a few months after narrowling winning a special election in her district against Democratic challenger (and Iraq War veteran) Paul Hackett in one of the most staunchly Republican parts of the state. Hackett is now running for Senate in 2006 and is already polling ahead of the incumbent.

During much of the House discussion, many Republicans called the GOP version which called for "Immediate withdrawal" a Democrat bill - and even the AP seemed to have become confused between Congressman Murtha's bill and the GOP alternative which was submitted by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA).

Some posters on Powerlineblog have commented that the "immediate" line in the GOP version of the withdrawal resolution opposed by Democrats is a "Distinction without a diffence"- in doing so they ignore Murtha's comments in the Q/A with reporters where he describes that it should take "about six months" to complete his proposed redeployment, as well as his comments that the "immediacy" of the shift be performed at the "earliest practicable date" and "consistent with the safety of U.S. Forces".

Ok, those are the facts - but what does it all mean?

Apparently, the GOP now has almost every House Democrat on record as opposing an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Yeah, and? No one, other than the GOP themselves had even suggested such a thing - Murtha only suggested 6-month pull back of forces - the real question, which they managed to avoid, is what is our long term Iraq Policy? Why is it that after two years we still don't have more than a single operational Iraqi Brigade?

Besides denouncing the "Swift-boating" of John Murtha, John Kerry has also laid out his own plan for a phased draw down of American troops from Iraq following the successful completion of elections in December. In response, 79 members of the Senate voted for an amendment to a pending bill stating that: 2006 should be "a period of significant transition" in which Iraqi security forces take the lead in protecting their citizens, creating conditions for a "phased" withdrawal of U.S. forces.

So the battle now is between leaving immediately or having a planned/phased reduction in U.S. forces in conjuction with a ramp-up of Iraqi forces. It's seems clear to me that we can't simply "cut and run" - but that the only thing continuing to hold our forces in Iraq, making them a target and instigator for the continued insurgency, is the complete and abject failture of the Bush Administration to get the Iraqi Forces trained and deployed. It should be a given that as Iraq's own military comes online, our forces should step back and be redeployed away from the front and into the rear areas.

But this isn't happening - and the real question is why not?

We shouldn't have these temper tantrams happening in Congress, we shouldn't have to wonder what's going on or what the plan is. The argument that stating our plans would embolden the terrorist to simply "wait it out" is ridiculous if they know that what would be in place to greet them once the waiting is over is a well-trained, strong and effective Iraqi Military.

The only way for them to realize that is for them to get to know the Iraqi Army now - right now - not simply wait until some far off day to yank our forces out and then plug in a bunch of inexperienced semi-trained Iraqis. That scenario would be exactly the "Recipe for Disaster" that the President is talking about - and no-one, except the House Republicans seem to be putting that idea on the table.

Vyan

Bush in a dive... Kerry punches back.

Crossposted on Dailykos:

Why are the Republicans and the President so angry and desperate in their most recent set of attacks on the Democrats?

Could it be the President horrible poll numbers?

CNN/USA Today/Gallup

11/11-13/05

37% Favorable

60% Unfavorable

Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, has dismissed criticism of the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the build up to the Iraq war as "dishonest and reprehensible".

	Mr Cheney accused opponents of lacking 'backbone'

Democrats have exploited rising anti-war feeling in the US in recent weeks and accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to justify the war and leaking classified information to discredit critics.

But the White House has launched an aggressive counter-attack, accusing Democrats - many of whom voted in favour of the invasion in 2002 - of "rewriting history".

Mr Cheney called Democrats "opportunists" who were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" to gain political advantage while American soldiers died in Iraq.

"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone - but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," he said.

President George W Bush, whose public approval ratings have dropped to the lowest point of his presidency, has given two speeches in the last five days attacking Democratic critics.

At a news conference in South Korea he backed his vice-president, one of the a principal architects of the war, and accused Democrats of irresponsibility.

"What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics. That's exactly what is taking place in America," he said.

John Kerry Responds to the President:

The President even used the solemn occasion of Veterans Day to continue his campaign of misrepresenting the facts and throwing up smokescreens. His statement that Democrats saw and heard the same intelligence he did is just flat out untrue - unless of course the President and his Administration didn’t do their job and study the additional intelligence given only to them and not the Congress. As the Washington Post put it on Saturday, ‘Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material.’

“But that whole discussion is nothing more than an effort to distract attention from the issue that matters most and can be answered simply: did the Administration go beyond what even the flawed intelligence would support in making the case for war? Did they use obviously inaccurate intelligence despite being told clearly and repeatedly not to? Did they use the claims of known fabricators? The answer in each case is yes. And the only people who are trying to rewrite that history are the President and his Republican allies.

“There is no greater breach of the public trust than knowingly misleading the country into war. In a democracy, we simply cannot tolerate the abuse of this trust by the government. To the extent this occurred in the lead up to the war in Iraq, those responsible must be held accountable. That is why Democrats have been pushing the Senate Intelligence Committee to complete a thorough and balanced investigation into the issue.

“When the President tried to pretend on Friday that the Intelligence Committee had already determined that he had not manipulated intelligence and misled the American public, he knew full well that they have not yet reported on that very question -- that is why Democrats were forced to shut down the Senate and go into closed session to make the Republicans take this issue seriously. When the President said that his opponents were throwing out false charges, he knew all too well that that these charges are anything but false.

“But the President and Republicans seem far more interested in confusing the issue and attacking their opponents than getting honest answers. Let’s be clear: there is no question that Americans were misled into war in Iraq. Simply put, they were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he did not. The issue is whether they were misled intentionally. Just as there is a distinction between being wrong and being dishonest, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and making statements that you know are not supported by the intelligence.

“The bottom line is that the President and his Administration did mislead America into war. In fact, the war in Iraq was and remains one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history. The facts are incontrovertible. The act of misleading was pretending to Americans that they hadn’t made a decision to go to war, and would seriously pursue inspections when the evidence strongly suggests that they had already decided to take out Saddam Hussein, were anxious to do it for ideological reasons, and hoped that inspections, which Vice President Cheney had opposed and tried to prevent, would not get in their way.

“The President misled America about his intentions and the manner in which he would make his decision. We now know his speech in Cincinnati right before the authorization vote was carefully orchestrated window dressing where again he misled America by promising that “If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully.” He did none of these things.

“The act of misleading was just going through the motions of inspections while it appears he really couldn’t wait to just kick Saddam Hussein out of power.

“The act of misleading was pretending to Americans the real concern was weapons of mass destruction when the evidence suggests that his real intent was to finish the job his father wisely refused and remove Saddam Hussein to “remake the Middle East”.

“The act of misleading was saying in his Cincinnati speech that “Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable” when the evidence suggests that all along the goal was always to replace Saddam Hussein through an invasion. For most of us in Congress, the goal was to destroy weapons of mass destruction. For President Bush, weapons of mass destruction were just the first public relations means to the end of removing Saddam Hussein. For most of the rest of us, removing Saddam Hussein was incidental to the end of removing any weapons of mass destruction.

“In fact, the President was misleading America right up until two days before launching his war of choice when he told Americans we had exhausted all other avenues. The truth is that on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday launch of the war, there were offers [to] Security Council members to pursue an alternative to war, but the Administration, in its race to go to war, rebuffed them, saying “the time for diplomacy is over.”

“By shortcutting the inspections process and sidestepping his own promises about planning, coalition building, and patience, the President used WMD as an excuse to rush to war. That was an act of misleading contrary to everything the President told Americans about the walkup to war.

“The very worst that Members of Congress can be accused of is trusting the intelligence we were selectively given by this Administration, and taking the President at his word. But unlike this Administration, there is absolutely no suggestion that we intentionally went beyond what we were told were the facts. That is the greatest offense by the Administration. Just look at their most compelling justification for war: Saddam’s nuclear program and his connections with Al Qaeda.

“The facts speak for themselves. The White House has admitted that the President told Congress and the American public in the State of the Union Address that Saddam was attempting to acquire fuel for nuclear weapons despite the fact that the CIA specifically told the Administration three times, in writing and verbally, not to use this intelligence. Obviously, Democrats didn’t get that memo. In fact, similar statements were removed from a prior speech by the President, and Colin Powell refused to use it in his presentation to the UN. This is not relying on faulty intelligence, as Democrats did; it is knowingly, and admittedly, misleading the American public on a key justification for going to war.

“This is what the Administration was trying so desperately to hide when it attacked Ambassador Wilson and compromised national security by outing his wife. It is shameful that to this day Republicans continue to attack Ambassador Wilson rather than condemning the fact that those sixteen words were ever spoken, and that so many lies were told to cover it up. How are the same Republicans who tried to impeach a President over whether he misled a nation about an affair going to pretend it does not matter if the Administration intentionally misled the country into war?

“The State of the Union was hardly an isolated event. In fact, it was part of a concerted campaign to twist the intelligence to justify a war they had already decided to fight. Again playing on people’s fears after 9/11, the Administration made statements about the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq that went beyond that what the intelligence supported. As recently reported by the New York Times, in a Cincinnati address the President said “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases” despite the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency had previously concluded that that source was a fabricator.

“The President went on to say that ‘Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons’ despite the fact that the Air Force disagreed with that conclusion. As the Wall Street Journal reported, ‘the Air Force dissent…was kept secret even as the President publicly made the opposite case…before a congressional vote on the war resolution.’ That’s two more memos that Congress never got.

“In fact, when faced with the intelligence community’s consensus conclusion that there was no formal relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda, the Administration set up their own intelligence shop at DoD to get them some answers better suited to their agenda. Again, there is a fundamental difference between believing incorrect intelligence and making up your own intelligence.

“Where would Republicans and the President draw the line? No where. How else would 70% of the American public be lead to conclude that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? This was no accident. In fact, I had to correct the President in the first debate when he said it was Saddam Hussein who attacked us. Why else did Vice President Cheney cite intelligence about a meeting between one of the 9/11 hijackers and Iraqis that the intelligence community and the 9/11 Commission concluded never took place? Why else make false statements about Saddam’s ability to launch a chemical or biological weapons attack in under an hour without clearing that with the CIA - which mistrusted the source and refused to include it in the NIE? Why else would they say we would be greeted by liberators when their own intelligence reports said we could be facing a prolonged and determined insurgency? Why else tell Americans that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion when they had to know that the dilapidated oil infrastructure would never allow that?

Vyan

Loveletters from Harriet to George

From The Newyorker: NEW NOTES FROM HARRIET TO GEORGE Issue of 2005-11-14 Posted 2005-11-07 October 27, 2005 Hi! Just a quick note to say that you looked heavyish last time I saw you, which, come to think of it, was this morning, in the Oval Office, when you accepted my withdrawal (which you had secretly demanded) and ruined my life and dreams and spirit. I hope we can stay friends. And, again, I am sorry for vomiting on your desk. Best to your wife (Laurel??). Harriet Miers, NOT a Supreme Court nominee October 27, later on It dawns on me that I may not have mentioned that you ruined my life. Or did I? Also, do you ever wonder where you’d be if it wasn’t for your father, who, when you think about it, was a really amazing person, who did SOOO much in his life, especially compared with you who have done so little? I read that you were a cheerleader once. Girls do that a lot. Eucalyptus is good for absorbing bad smells (like human vomit). That was a lot of vomit. But then I had a tough few weeks, in which I was humiliated in the national media, and you and your staff (some of whom may be indicted soon??) were not one scintilla of help. Friends forever! October 27, quite late Pinot Noirs are nice. This second bottle tastes better than the first, actually. Sometimes I pretend I’m the lead singer of the O’Jays (“People all over the world, join in, start a love train, love train”). Do you think I’m pretty? Once, I staged a mock wedding to you in my home, alone, except for Mr. Pickles, my cat. It was very, very late, like it is now, and I dressed in a fluffy white robe and walked slowly down the pretend aisle and said “I do” and closed my eyes and smooched your skinny, chapped lips because you were, to me, so perfect. I would like to file imaginary divorce proceedings against you now and withhold connubial favors. Let’s see what THAT does for that eye tic. Friends? Your ex-wife, Harriet Miers October 28, late What do I mean by emotional break-down? I guess I mean that the edges of everything seem to be rounded and sound disappears if I look at a thing too long. What is dignity? The phrase “Pass the brownies, please” plays over and over in my head. I was happy once, just a few weeks ago. I have no idea of the time or date or where I am. It’s not really a bench, is it? I mean, there are chairs. You said it was going to be like Roberts. Why lie? Want to know a secret? I don’t believe in God. <> October 28, the clock moves, as if on its own I just spoke with Michael Moore. What an inquisitive, interesting man. He said that many of the things I shared with him about being White House counsel were very, very interesting to him. We made plans to meet for coffee soon, so that I can show him some papers. Do you know what phrase has less and less meaning for me with each passing second? “Attorney-client privilege.” October 29 I have a question: Is Lewis Libby married? Because, if he’s not, he will be, in jail. Bye for now, friend!
— John Kenney