Holden has something about “rediculous”. McClellan said this in 2003:

Q: Wilson now believes that the person who did this was Karl Rove. He’s quoted from a speech last month as saying, “At the end of the day, it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.” Did Karl Rove tell that —
MR. McCLELLAN: I haven’t heard that. That’s just totally ridiculous. But we’ve already addressed this issue. If I could find out who anonymous people were, I would. I just said, it’s totally ridiculous.
Q But did Karl Rove do it?
MR. McCLELLAN: I said, it’s totally ridiculous.

Now it is “ridiculous” that Cheney is involved … tells you something about what to come.

Posted by: b | Oct 26 2005 21:00 utc | 3

What was the name of that Rabbi who ended up with Nixon at the very very end? Not that I think this will offer up anything like that end with the prez on a helecopter takeing off from the south lawn. However in the way Bush is becomming isolated.
There was that meeting at Camp David last weekend and I thought maybe just maybe some changes in staff would be announced. With even outsiders comming in to give the appearance of solidity. Instead we get stay the course and now this, delusion.
It’s to the point there needs to be an intervention I think. The lines of authority, as corrupt as they were are now gone and he doesn’t even know it. I just hope he doesn’t go biblical on us.

Posted by: rapier | Oct 26 2005 21:56 utc | 5

Dollar may slide on White House staff indictments
Talk about pathetic scare tactics!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 26 2005 22:37 utc | 7

I think the empty flight suit will be discovering that his toy chest is empty too. His Walter Mittyesque fights of fantasy won’t have an international audience. And worst of all, there will be no one to laugh at his jokes.
No one thinks he’s a President, do they?
If he is truly the loyal fella he says he is, maybe he will visit his pal Rove in the pen. It’s the least he could do.

Posted by: jm | Oct 26 2005 23:37 utc | 9

Taking the press away from the billionaires may not be easy but boy is it essential… Juan Cole a few days back wrote

The extraordinary exchanges between New York Times editor Bill Keller and reporter Judith Miller over her role in the Plame scandal and reporting on non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have suggested to me a wider context of the entire matter.
The wider context is that Rupert Murdoch, and Richard Mellon Scaife, and other far rightwing billionaires have deeply corrupted our information environment. They are in part responsible for what happened at the NYT.
[…]
So in this polluted information environment, in which Howell Raines’s view of reality, which was perfectly correct, was constantly pilloried by powerful rightwing media as nothing short of treason, there was every incentive to give Judith Miller her head. Remember that the NYT is a commercial publication. All major newspapers were seeing their subscription base shrink. After September 11, the country had moved substantially to the right on national security issues. The Times could easily go bankrupt if it loses touch with the sentiments of the American reading public. There is a lot at stake in the Murdoch et al. assault on the NYT. In its absence, the information environment in the US would be even more rightwing. I’ve even rethought my own rash response to its editorial on the Columbia Middle East studies issue last spring.
[…]
In essence, Murdoch, Scaife and other far rightwing super-rich propagandists succeeded in maligning the NYT and in pushing it off its liberal perch even further to the Right. In trying to defend themselves from the charge of treason, Raines and Keller fell into the trap of using Miller’s shoddy reporting as a rampart. In the end, it was revealed to be not a rampart but a Trojan Horse for the Right.

I’ve always thought it would be rather fun to own a newspaper…
To what extent does e.g. Fox News construct the climate of consent (or at least obfuscation) in which the US public sleepwalks into the authoritarian neocon dreamworld? This question was asked repeatedly after the unfortunate epoch in the life of a modest-sized European nation about a generation ago: to what extent did its propagandist press bear responsibility for (hat tip to Chomsky) manufacturing consent for aggression, atrocity, suppression, and the whole dismally familiar package?
Comrade R’giap rails often at Murdoch. I tend to agree.

Posted by: DeAnander | Oct 27 2005 0:26 utc | 11

dea
i rail & i rail often but not nearly as often as these thugs who rule from the roll of dollars do with the screaming banshees whether they are the crude & cruel o’reikky or the pisselegant judith miller
it is absolutley clear that not only do they create the environments of consent, that they brutalise all that is affective in the individual, that they deliberately & with great premeditation create & institutionalise fear – they are deeply complicit in the criminal actions of those that rule
& when someone of a higher dignity arrives to speak some truth to power, whether it be naomi kleni, john pilger, robert fisk or sy hersh – they are immediately isolated, demonised & marginalise & in almost every case – there are implicit questioning of their ‘sanity – notably in the case of hersh but also of fisk
that this current bunch of criminals at the white house actualy accused helen thomas of being a ‘partner’ of terrorism di not surprise me – these thugs brook no opposition & especially in their dying hours they are the most dangerous

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 27 2005 0:52 utc | 13

Bet this was a friendly meeting:
 The negotiations began with a face-to-face meeting Monday morning between Ms. Miller and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the lawyer familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. Ms. Miller didn’t return calls. link
Far-seeing of Sulzberger to put this off until staff revolt was filling the pages of the paper. Wonder how much they’ll pay her to go back to work w/Danny Pipes et al?

Posted by: jj | Oct 27 2005 1:14 utc | 15

jj- first I’ve read of this.
i guess you missed this comment then 🙂

Posted by: b real | Oct 27 2005 2:22 utc | 17

Perhaps Al Gore’s new TV channel will be the trickle that leads to a flood of genuine reporting.
What the public discourse needs is not left, liberal, libertarian, right, conservative, fascist or even neocon media.
It needs fact-based reporting.
Perhaps a new newspaper, established as a public trust to do nothing but honest investigative reporting, would prove such a hit that advertisers would stand in line to place in it.
The mob is hungry as ever, Debs. Perhaps we only need to feed it.

Posted by: Antifa | Oct 27 2005 4:42 utc | 19

Intelligent Design
I was going to log off early and get some
work done tonight, but Fitzblog is a real
retinal burn these days. So there wasn’t
time to home-cook, just a frozen pizza,
a beer, and network cartoon-reality TV.
Now it’s almost 9:00PM … it just hit me.
Intelligent design ex machina vox populi.
Take one part frozen pizza, full of cheese
“products” and meat “byproducts” on a GMO-
plasticized cardboard-and-sawdust platter.
Heat to just below the safe cooking level,
then so demolish your natural chi-energy,
that you can scarcely stay awake to drink.
Take one part American can beer, not nearly
as “taste of the Rockies” as you might be
inclined to believe, the methanol and all,
a wheaten source of GMO’s, propylene glycol
alginate, sinamar, isomerized alpha-acids,
and jehovah knows what else, American beer
will so quickly destroy your chi, you may
not be able to reach that remote control.
Take one part non-stop laugh-track, cartoon-
squeal, sim-docu-drama and mix thoroughly
with suitably brain-dead pravda-ized network
MSM, long on composition, lighting, and way
too many Robert McKee “The Story” seminars.
Mix thoroughly, and turn your average hard-
working clear-headed red-blooded American
into an oatmeal-brained, pot-gutted maggot.
Any chi you still got, has got up and left.
Then spam the networks with National Patriot
stories about low-level army brats who stole
this and that for $100 here and $100 there,
just before Fitzpatrick releases indictments
for high-level draft-dodging brats who stole
this and that for *bales*, 10,000’s of $100’s
here and *bales*, 10,000’s of $100’s there.
Blink, blink. Click-away to another channel.
New Orleans? Radio silence. War in Iraq, the
daily dose of death. Quick click-away before
you ask about those missing $1B’s of bales.
Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons. Adult cartoons.
Which, finally, brings me back to the rollup.
Here’s what I wrote in May, 2003, before Iraq.
“The Neo-Zionists are gonna con America into
believing that the Iraqis will welcome them
with roses and chocolates. It’s a bold lie.
The Israelis have been fighting Palestinians
for over 40 years now. Forty years of jihad!
Israelis have all the guns, the helicopters,
F-16’s, smart missiles, all the ordinance you
could possibly want, and a well-trained army
that speaks both Hebrew and Arabic fluently.
The Palestinians have nothing. Zero. Nada.
There are about 5,000,000 Palestinians and
about 5,000,000 Israelis. The Israeli’s don’t
reveal the size of their army, but eligible
men and women are drafted at age 18. Men
serve for three years, women for 21 months.
With standard heuristics, the army is about
250,000 in active strength.
That would be one Israeli soldier for every
twenty Palestinian civilians. A soldier who
has trained with his peers, as has every
generation since 1967, who lives and breaths
the game, and plays from the highest ground.
Still, forty years on, and no peace at all.
Not even close. Were it not for the $2B a
year the US grants it as a gift, and all the
agricultural aid and arms aid, and piracy of
intellectual property and software, Israel
would be in a world of hurt, here 40 years on.
Now comes America to the Middle East, but not
to poor defenseless Palestine, oh no! With a
great shock and awe, we drop a mere 150,000
90-day wonder troops and sad-sack reserves
into the midst of 25,000,000 Iraqi civilians,
on their turf, in their blistering heat, in
their incomprehensible language, and with
porous borders on each side, possibly even
a Saudi jihad, but the rulers keep a lid on.
Hey, 9/11 was Egyptian’s and Saudis, 100%!
So here we are in year two of forty, 2,000
dead and 40,000 maimed and forgotten. We
don’t speak their language, there is nowhere
in our living experience that’s 130 degrees
in the shade, full of sand fleas and horrible
diseases, and most of all, we aren’t defending
our country against an aggressor, it’s Iraqi’s
who are defending their country against US.
Brave, brave American soldiers, to fight and
die for a colonial war in the desert sands,
like poor prison convicts those French Foreign
Legion soldiers fighting and dying in Algeria.
So here we are in year forty of forty, and
40,000 American soldiers dead, and 800,000
maimed and forgotten, $20,000,000,000,000,
that’s right, TWENTY TRILLION TAX DOLLARS
down the rathole of sand, so Big Oil and
Big Detroit can sock it to your mortgage
and your social security, and your kids,
and your grandkids and great-grandkids.
No wonder the Patriot Act II contains those
anti-sedition passages. Speaking out against
this abortion of blood and oil will get you
a hole in the wall, no lawyer, no charges,
indefinite detention, and seizure of all
your assets, without a legal indictment.
This is serious grift. Mad grift! Never-in-
history grift, where a cabal of neo-zealots
can walk away with literally bales and bales
of $100’s, shrinkwrapped, and helicoptered
out of Iraq, unaccountable $B’s already
MIA, and 100’s of $B’s more by 2043.
2043. I’ll be dead. My kids will be parents.
Their kids will be draft age. My grandkids
will be fighting in Iraq when the deficit
is measured in tens of TRILLIONS, and the
PRC and Saudis own the majority of America.
My grandkids will be fighting in Iraq for
$8.86 an hour, a “national emergency”, a
suspension of prevailing wages and renig
on re-signing bonuses. $8.86 an hour, six
year tour, a final $500 thank-you-ma’am-
and-clear-out-your-barracks-locker, then
hit the street.
In twenty years, there will be LINES to
sign up for Iraq. People will KILL to get
sent to Iraq. Three hots and a cot and
$8.86 an hour will seem like manna from
heaven compared to America’s mean streets.
You will own nothing, everything will be MSFT
pay-per-view. Everything will be roach-coach,
7-11, Motel-6 style, a prussian blue ecstacy.
Come 2034, the Regency Politburo will announce
the 50th anniversary of the Reagan Revolution
begun in 1984. All the secret evidence gays
and tax dodgers will be turned out of their
holding cells, loaded on buses, driven out
into the desert, and then live-at-five, mowed
down by machine gun in mass graves, ala PRC.
Those few stragglers will have their heads
chopped off and genitals mutilated, ala Saud.
Then they’ll play a martial version of, O Say
Can You Lend Me a Five, by Ministry of Truth,
a Neo-Fascist Southern Baptist youth rock band.
back to the future, comrade. One future, anyway.
Let’s hope Fitz does his job, and the Supremes
do their’s and we get back America The Beautiful.

Posted by: monkey boy | Oct 27 2005 4:57 utc | 21

@ Antifa
Upthread you opined

The outcome most devoutly to be hoped for is that this continuing investigation into the Plame outing and the Niger forgeries and the stovepiping of intelligence by hacks creates such a firestorm of public anger during the coming Bush-inspired recession that it burns the Republican Party and the mass media to the point of disfiguring them forever.

I agree that discrediting the mass media to the point
of disfiguring them in the public mind is devoutly to be wished, and I certainly would like to see something to replace the glacial duopoly constituted by the Democratic
and Republican wings of the Property Party, but for the time being it seems that the Republicans are indispensable. The congressional Democrats are conspicuous rather more by their absence than by their presence among the hard core antiwar activists. (I know, there are a few noble exceptions, but the party line is
all too obviously censured by AIPAC.) Indeed, if Kerry were president we’d probably be increasing our troop committment in Iraq, perhaps with the aid of conscription palmed off in the name of fairness. Even now the Democratic silence is deafening, and their soon-to-be-blossoming verbal bouquets of shocked dismay, will ring true only to those with short memories.

To call for a third party of honorable women and men dedicated to the well-being of the country rather than to the exigencies of the monied classes smacks of naivté, but the last 30 years have amply demonstrated the ills that accompany the absence of such a counterweight to corporate corruption in the body politic. Disenheartening as it may be, for the time being the “responsible wing” of the Republican party seems to be the only instrument capable of clipping the wings of the neo-con vultures.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 27 2005 5:52 utc | 23

@ Antifa
Once there were real republicans.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 27 2005 6:52 utc | 25

R Giap wrote: when someone of a higher dignity arrives to speak some truth to power, whether it be naomi kleni, john pilger, robert fisk or sy hersh – they are immediately isolated, demonised & marginalise & in almost every case – there are implicit questioning of their ‘sanity – notably in the case of hersh but also of fisk.
No, they are not isolated. They are respected journalists / writers / pundits who have quite a following. They have a tribune open to them – their articles and books are published. They talk on ‘left’ radio. They are not silenced. That the rabid ‘right’ may either ignore them, question their sanity, or even go further such as making empty threats, is so.
They are in no danger, are tolerated, as some kind of opposition must exsit.
While I don’t want to call them all left gate-keepers, or question their sincerity, there are vast differences between a N. Klein and a J. Pilger.
Pilger, I believe, is absolutely sincere and has done really excellent work, and has escaped ..well…whatever. Klein is riding the waves, clearly.
The crux is this: the Kleins, the bloggers, the analysts, the internet pundits are all dependent on the mainstream news. They feed on what is published, what is leaked, what the mainstream allows to enter the public discourse.
A Sy. Hersh – an old hand – does what he can and implicitly admits this; he makes his position crystal clear, even if it is necessary to read between the lines to understand that. And he investigates, as best as possible.
N. Klein does not – she treats the numbers, ‘facts’ and ‘news’ from the mainstream as a base for her discourse, her perspective is built on it…still it is welcome and interesting.
Fisk, I leave aside.
What is needed is just one thing:
New investigative journalism, and mainstream outlets for it.
That is the one thing that probably cannot be achieved in the present landscape.

Posted by: Noisette | Oct 27 2005 15:49 utc | 27

noissette
there is silence & silence. they are very clearly isolated even within the journals that employ them. they have all fought for their standing which is & remains singular. fisk in those first weeks of this war on the ground & especially during the sacking of baghdad i was concerned for the life of this writer – because as you remember he named names & forces
naomi klein is not in the same category – the risks & the risks have been entirely different
but they are all major investigative writers – who i would call the writers of the last instance – during any crisis – where the practice of state is in play – they are either not published or they are as in fisks case censored
the notion of freedom of speech is in itself limited by whether it is effective or not
this culture is not drenched in the facts of a pilger, a fisk or a hersh or even a klein – this cultural landscaped is dreesed in the garments of fear – o reilly, hannitty, mathews blitzer & all their little cousins who will not breathe a word until it is very very safe to do so
they are after all the employees of those who rule from the roll of dollars

Posted by: rgiap | Oct 27 2005 18:16 utc | 29

There are reporters, activists, academicians, commentators, independent theorists and artists. The lines blur, and people often wear many hats, even if one role predominates.
Pilger, Fisk, Hersh, et. al. are primarily reporters.
Klein is pricipally concerned with the effects of corporate globalization, and wears all of the above hats.
Others for you to categorize: Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Tariq Ali, Rahul Mahajan, George Monbiot, Immanuel Wallerstein, Stan Goff, etc. etc.

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 27 2005 19:18 utc | 31

& the point i wanted to mak to noisette fundamentally is when a commentator becomes effective as for example either a fred hampton, a george jackson or a malcolm x were – then they are not only isolated & demonised – they are murdered in cold blood
& that has always been true under the empires whether american french or british. there are real limits – & when those limits are met – the persons are extinguished
this was not only true for commentators or activists but for people who held a key, a piece of information or an important element of the jigsaw
it is my consistent belief that david kelly was in the possession of crucial facts & that is why he was murdered
& it is not one here or there but this has been consisent under the empire in all of its adventures on every continent – intellectual, activists & commentators are murdered
in the west – such commentating – even when i respect it does not go further than theatre for the powerful & they are not threatened – on th contrary they celebrate their own power & cruelty. kissinger & rumsfield are two open examples of such brutality
cindy sheehan constitutes a real threat to power because of her very ordinarienss & she is capable of gathering real & united support – so when she dies from an unfortunate car accident – i will not be at all surprised. after all it is a consisten policy with a rich history

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 27 2005 20:58 utc | 33

Tough to refute r-giap. Still, by standing up, even if ultimately doomed, we keep the ruling class occupied, and prevent worse treatment. Slain leaders ultimately become heros, to lead and inspire; sometimes even more powerful in death. That is the risk they take.

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 28 2005 5:00 utc | 35

Mixed reviews for Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation

This brilliant but enormous book has been 16 years in the making. Its obvious ingredients are 328,000 notes, documents and dispatches, and Robert Fisk’s 30 years’ experience of reporting on the Middle East.
But there is also a hidden element – the author’s ethical, philosophical and moral approach to his life’s work.
Fisk believes most journalists who have reported from the tragedy-strewn and bloody countries of the Middle East have failed their readers and viewers.
He has decided that they have been competent – even outstanding – in giving the who, how, where, what and when of events but have left out the “why”.
He says every journalist in the Middle East needs to walk round with a history book to remind him or her of why we got to where we are; why the injustices and horrors of yesteryear are engraved in people’s minds and have powerful influence on what happens next.
This conviction was put to the test in a most personal manner. Fisk was on the Afghanistan border in November 2001 when a crowd of refugees from the American bombing turned on him and began to stone him.
His head was split open, blood clouded his vision and for a while it looked as if he might not survive. He fought back and then realised what he was doing.
“What had I done?” I kept asking myself. “I had been hurting and attacking and punching the very people I had been writing about for so long; the very dispossessed, mutilated people whom my own country – among others – had been killing … The men whose families our bombers were killing were now my enemies, too.”

Posted by: Fran | Oct 28 2005 6:04 utc | 37