If Fitzgerald reaffirms the post-Watergate principle that Big Brother can go to jail, it will do more to advance the cause of civil liberties than a baker’s dozen of Washington pseudo-journalists. On the other hand, if he backs down now, it’s easy to imagine future administrations finding other official secrets to use against their critics, all in the name of national security.
Back to Main
October 22, 2005
WB: Will the Grinch Steal Fitzmas?
Comments
That’s a very narrow non-politically savvy interpretation for Dean to take. Fitzy is a good repug. By throwing the Thugs out, he’s basically saving the Repugs from themselves. As much as I’d love to see the whole sordid lot of them guillotined on the Mall for what they’ve done to the Republic, from which it will Never Recover – EVER – on a certain level it doesn’t matter if anything holds up in court. The crucial thing is to get the NeoNuts away from the levers of power. The country simply won’t survive otherwise.
The Key Words in Wilkerson’s yak @the Soros outfit the other day was “We can’t sell anything.” I hrd. an interesting rap yesterday by a chap named Johann Galtung – this weeks Alternative Radio presentation on “independent radio stations” – “Decline and Fall of the Am. Empire”. He is Norwegian, Father of Peace Studies, had correctly predicted the fall of Soviet Union. Prior to 2000 he’d put date of fall as 2025. He called Bu$h an Accelerator (of decline). He moved the date up 5 yrs. after ’00 coup & another 5 after ’04 Theft. That’s 10 yrs. from now.
He said he spoke to Mandela, and last white Prime Minister. Both said it was the boycott that did in apartheid; not so much of any single item, but of the world’s revulsion w/the country that the education around the boycott produced. Same thing happening now w/America. He noted weak dollar. Said 2 ways of dealing w/that – inc. commercial sales/exports. But there’s a building boycott of American brands. If it was formal they could fight it. But it’s not. It’s just revulsion, making everything American seem toxic. Or as Wilkerson said – “We can’t sell anything”.
That’s why Soros, leading the Pirates, is in league w/the CIA to throw them out. It’s a Major Crisis for them. If there is any hope of turning this around it has to start immediately.
(The other thing America can do to stimulate exports, he noted, is to generate Fear to stimulate export of weapons. [Since Pirates deliberately destroyed all of our factories, all xAmerica exports anymore is food & weapons.] But it’s obviously reached beyond the point of no-return on this. I think that’s another reason for pushing martial law at home – further weapon sales. It also, explains why they’re carrying on w/all this bird flu panic, although it cannot even be transmitted between humans – it’s a subsidy to Big Pharma. Hey, if fear worked so well for arms sellers, why not them as well!!)
So, what Fitzy doesdepends who he has cocktails w/. It’s politics & economics. The big difference bet. now & when Nixon was in is that the Republic was still healthy then & pre-eminent in the world.
Posted by: jj | Oct 22 2005 6:35 utc | 1
A lawyer in a Repug suburb of Bay Area has same feeling, although for different reasons. He’s building a coalition called The World Can’t Wait – Drive Bush from Office. Here’s an excerpt from their statement:
Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it. Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.
Your government suppresses the science that doesn’t fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.
There is not going to be some magical “pendulum swing.” People who steal elections and believe they’re on a “mission from God” will not go without a fight.
There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into “leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.
link
They’re calling for a Nov. 2 Mobilization. AfterDowningStreet & Cindy Sheehan have signed on.
Posted by: jj | Oct 22 2005 6:43 utc | 2
While Fitz may not be our ‘Fe’-i-ne’, i.e. ancient Irish warrior, TIOCFAIDH AR LA! (Irish for”Our Day Will Come!”).
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 22 2005 6:51 utc | 3
In short, I cannot imagine any of them being indicted, unless they were acting for reasons other than national security…
I cannot believe that Fitzgerald is that gullible. Remember the article about Rove’s tactics in The Atlantic Monthly in 2004? Who doesn’t know about the whisper campaign against McCain in the first primary?
…yeah, it’s national security, and the mafia doesn’t exist, either.
I’m linking to BooMan Tribune, but the original post was a DKos.
Apparently members of Congress have asked Fitzgerald to investigate the Niger forgeries, too, and reminded the S.P. about the crime of lying to Congress…esp. to go into an unneccessary war. So, it’s the word of Congress against the world of this administration over what scenario (indict or unindicted, etc.) is a danger to nat’l security?
Who in the reality-based world does not think this administration has made the entire world less safe, has damaged the U.S.’s reputation around the world, has played into bin Laden’s strategy of “war” by martyrdom?
puleeeze.
Considering Scrowcroft is also coming out against them, I do not see how or why Dean’s argument could hold.
Will there be another grand jury and special prosecutor when ppl in the U.S. finally wake up and realize they are endorsing torture of innocent people by allowing Gonzalez to blithely continue to maintain the Geneva Conventions are quaint?
Until I hear otherwise, I will continue to believe that people as criminally corrupt as the Bush administration can be brought to justice…that their power has not absolutely corrupted this nation.
…and, of course, if the outcome is otherwise I will not be surprised that the world will soon be in even more horrific flames, courtesy of BushCo.
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 22 2005 6:55 utc | 4
I also think Dean is wrong about this.
I mean really – to claim that the purposeful outing of our own spy has any rational relationship to furthering US National Security interests is nothing short of the Mother of All Silliness – especially when that spy worked for years to develop a network that helped prevent unfriendly nuclear proliferation in the Middle East!
Fitz isn’t going for just a perjury rap. Miller’s own report of her testimony is enough to at least indict Libby on the underlying charge(s). And we don’t even know what other testimony is out there from the alleged flippers et al..
Fitz will be coming hard; because unlike Watergate, here the CRIME is far worse than the cover up.
Posted by: Night Owl | Oct 22 2005 7:01 utc | 5
Night Owl, I agree, yet not entirely. I think that a wider defiition of the Crime is in order. It has to be Worrisome to any supporter of the Republic, that a small handful can stage a bureaucratic coup & seize control of the govt. as easily as these guys did, eliminating the Entire Foreign Policy Apparatus apart from the slots they filled. That’s a precedent that needs to be dealt w/harshly. The outing of Plame is the outward symbol for that process. If that isn’t a Crucial Matter of National Security, or rather I’d call it National Survival, what is?
Posted by: jj | Oct 22 2005 7:08 utc | 6
More and more, I see death by a thousand cuts.
Watching Washington Week tonight I was astounded at how they came down on Harriet Miers’ nomination. And all of their rationales completely contradicted the positions they took on the Roberts nomination. We all know that the corrupt MSM can do that whenever they want, but the point is that they did do it.
So, we have the war, with the 2000 death milestone hitting the front pages on Monday and 200 in Afghanistan, and 40K+ disabled. We have the torture, even as minimized and decontextuallized on Frontline. We have Delay and Frist in trouble. We have Katrina, Rita, and also hitting Monday probably, is Wilma, knocking out another 10% of the Gulf wells. I think Jon Q. Public might be getting the global warming message. If not, he is definitely gonna get the gas and heating price message as he starts to fill up his oil tank.
Actually, as I total up the damage, Monday could be the PERFECT STORM: 2000 dead, Wilma, Fitzzy handing down indictments, and Scowcroft and Bush I denouncing Dim Son–all in one day. So that is like a tranverse slit of the wrists, not fatal, but lots of blood in the water.
Anyway, if they survive Monday, there will only be more rats jumping ship, and sooner or later the rats that jumped earlier on and haven’t yet drowned–O’Neill and Clarke, will be back doing cameos for their prescience. I’m sure there is more crude oil yet to hit the fan that I am forgetting.
And then, we start getting into that wierd realm of completely unexpected events, where who knows what will happen. It is entirely possible that Congress may grow some huevos and another investigation is launched, or this one extended. Maybe another military fiasco, another “terrorist” attack, a Cheney heart attack, Bush caught with his niece doing some crack, who knows. Once you lose control of the news cycle, which they have, the real world has a way of intruding. I don’t believe that Nixon had such a string of bad news. Fasten your seatbelts, the next few weeks will be very interesting.
The big difference bet. now & when Nixon was in is that the Republic was still healthy then & pre-eminent in the world.
Reality wakeup!
This mess doesn’t begin and end with BushCo, rather BushCo is the logical extension of the concentration of power in one spot under a winner takes all system.
Dictatorship of the ‘majority’.
You know we thought it outrageous when the Iraqis tried to pull the majority of people not majority of votes cast to ensure the constitution got approved (I suspect they have done it anyway but that’s another story)
However the current US system of putting so much power into the executive who also happens to be the commander in chief and head of state and then deciding that the position is given away in a winner takes all ballot is always going to end up with something like this.
The only reason it has taken over 200 years has been that for about half that time states still had considerable powers of their own.
When we think of the concept of democracy most of us imagine a system where decision making reflects the will of the people. That power is moved out from the centre in a sort of entropy, spreading out across the citizens until every person has as much say as any other.
How can democracy work when the model is moving in the opposite direction?
At first when there appeared to be only two points of view to everything the disenfranchisement wasn’t as apparent.
That is if your bloke got the most votes he won and your point of view held sway.
However many people weren’t particularly comfortable with this division of the world into black and white, right and wrong because it meant that 49.999% of the population could hold a particular concept eg state run health to be the most important issue confronting the nation but if 50.111% of people considered killing murderers (I like that phrase; killing murderers, its not oxymoronic but it should be) to be more important then the murderers get killed and it is as if the health issue was never a debate.
Now simple logic will tell you that at least some of the poeple who favour killing murderers will also believe in state health care but just not as much as they want to kill murderers.
So even though a majority of people want a health care system they don’t get one cause the power to make the decision has been concentrated in the hands of someone who has found a more emotive but totally unrelated issue to crank up the populace.
How to fix it? Well it’s your country but I would think that devolution of power could work for some of this stuff. Obviously that isn’t the total solution because when you get geographic areas of a country where the majority of people favor one point of view to the exclusion of other unrelated POV all that has happened is the problem has been localised.
Surely a fair executive would be one that represented the points of view of as wide a range of citizens possible.
In other words whilst a majority of people on the executive committee regarded killing murderers as their raison d’etre 49.999% would regard state health care as theirs.
The executive committee which many call a ‘Cabinet’ could then work together to resolve these issues.
Now if you hold any sort of ‘radical’ belief chances are you won’t subscribe to this point of view. Simply because a setup like the one I’ve described would never go for the outrageous. It would be quite middle of the road.
Hmm yep that doesn’t particularly float my boat either. How’s about if politicians act like physicians as in rule number one “First do no harm”
So although you would probably never get a majority on cabinet who believed in a national holiday for dwarf lesbian puppeters, you wouldn’t find a majority in favour of torturing left handed redheads to death.
But it also occurs that a lot of this unfair repression comes about because many decisions are being made in Washington that would be more representative of the people they effected if they were made back in the communities of those effected people.
Looks down… sees nothing beneath…help! what am I doing way out on this limb?
Yeah well I moved off the point a bit. But the essential nub of this is that while the US power structure is the shape it is if it hadn’t been BushCo it would have been another mob of greedy, power hungry assholes.
No this isn’t an anti-amerikan diatribe. Plenty of other countries have the same problem to a greater or lesser extent although at the moment I am hard pressed to think of one where the spheres of control have aligned so neatly.
Now some of the alignment has been induced by the gravitational pull of those masses already in place. All is not lost however, not everything has ended up just so, and right for the greedheads to do their dirty work.
Fitzgerald is a remnant of the former universe, where power was divided between different areas.
The question is if he does try to resist the gravitational pull, will others move to his aid or will Amerikans wait for somebody–anybody else to do it?
BushCo is counting on the latter and the odds tell us that if there isn’t a concerted effort to break up the power formation, even if Fitzgerald is successful in bringing down BushCo; it’s only going to be a matter of time before another bloc of greedheads tries again.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 22 2005 9:16 utc | 8
onr more rat, or small cut, depending on your metaphor:
Official Says U.S. Rushed to War in Iraq
A top diplomat accuses the administration of sending the country to war too soon and poorly prepared because of ‘clear political pressure.’
By Paul Richter
L.A. Times Staff Writer
October 22, 2005
WASHINGTON — A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush’s approaching reelection campaign.
Robin Raphel, the State Department’s coordinator for Iraq assistance, said that the invasion’s timing was driven by “clear political pressure,” as well as by the need to quickly deploy the U.S. troops that had been amassed by the Iraq border.
Soon after the invasion, Raphel said, it became clear that U.S. officials “could not run a country we did not understand…. It was very much amateur hour.”
The ‘War on Terra’, Oops, I meant the new ‘War on the Weather’ !
You can’t ‘Be all that you can be’, dead. Think about it !
The presidents second surprise visit to Iraq
Posted by: Outraged | Oct 22 2005 10:08 utc | 10
I don’t think Fitzgerald would have been putting so much effort into this investigation because he needed a paycheck.
As far as the context of government action and secrecy in the name of national interest, that’s a seminal point. I felt the 2000 election was the last throes of 20th century reactionary politics; and they cheated their way in! 911 through a big old cruve ball into the way the first term would have progressed (or regressed). The denouement may be belated but is likely coming as a result of the WH/admin overreaching their visions of empire.
Multiple scandals abound, but this one touching the inner workings of the WH has begun to consume so much energy (though little MSM attention thus far) that I fear if it comes to little (except the Wilson’s civil suit) exhaustion will set in on the left. It happened after the ’04 election. Now there is another head of steam to “get the bastards”.
Watergate redux. But will the politicians, most of whom have been neutered or coopted, be part of a sea change, call for change, or simply try to ride the tide in a way that preserves their own viability?
One last fuzzy thought: Why is it that the humans we call politicians have yet to recognize that acting and speaking from a sense of honesty is not only the right thing to do but, I think, prevents catastrophe in the long run? Maybe they’re the ones who are captive to the paycheck, ethically and financially bought and sold.
Posted by: DonS | Oct 22 2005 15:09 utc | 11
that a small handful can stage a bureaucratic coup & seize control of the govt. as easily as these guys did, eliminating the Entire Foreign Policy Apparatus apart from the slots they filled.
JJ,
That is indeed the larger crime, and Plame is but one one example of how the usurpers purged their opposition after seizing control.
Unfortunately, our young Republic has yet to draft a statute specifically outlawing coups – so we have to do the best with what we have. 😉
Posted by: NIght Owl | Oct 22 2005 15:47 utc | 12
I think you got it DonS. We are setting ourselves up for a big disappointment. I remember how we were all sure that w would lose in 2004 and then there was a heavy silence the morning after the election.
This time it will be even worse because we will know that we are all completely powerless to stop the cabal from doing whatever they want to. It may even make them bolder and more dangerous.
I still hold out a bit of hope that the curtain will be drawn back and Joe Sixpack will see the sorry thieves hiding there. just a little though….
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 22 2005 15:51 utc | 13
we were all sure that w would lose in 2004
That’s not true. Some of us believed a Kerry victory to be a laughable fantasy.
Besides, w/ kerry, we’d be killing brown people for oil anyway.
Posted by: slothrop | Oct 22 2005 16:09 utc | 14
Fauxreal
Any prediction about the Plame fallout must be filtered through an assessment of the interests of the political class. The question for me has always been: How do indictments benefit power? It seems we will see indictments because the political class desperately needs to offer voters a symbolic drama of justice. As I said before, we can be sure the event will justify the future expansion of executive power.
Behold the Spectacle.
Posted by: slothrop | Oct 22 2005 16:25 utc | 15
Besides, w/ kerry, we’d be killing brown people for oil anyway
maybe, the difference is that he would be a Democrat with the Senate and House against him. How could the Republicans eagerly support his war effort. That was the only reason I voted for the sorry bastard, he would never have the unswerving support that w has.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 22 2005 16:30 utc | 16
Maybe they’re the ones who are captive to the paycheck, ethically and financially bought and sold.
“Politicians” = “Outsourced Employees of The Multi-National Corporatocracy”.
A government of the Bechtels, by the Bechtels, for the Bechtels.
Yes ..to other posters…the neocons effed up and they have gone too far, the PTB want them out. The groundswell of negative opinion and the thrashed image of the US – partly the outcome of the internet – count for much here. I like to think!
What appeared to be a possible agreement between the ‘democracy’ ideologues (read economic take over and control) and the guns is now put in question, because the guns performed so badly. New management is needed!
I suppose Fitz’s indictements will fall into that scenario, cause and consequence intermingle here. But maybe not?
(Afaik) Fitz is a BIG supporter of the 9/11 myth, including making rousing speeches about how ‘they hate our freedoms’, without the s I guess, as that is so Bush-like. He has staunchly upheld this nonsense, even providing some neat phrases to Repub warmongers (guessing). He does sound rather jingoistic on occasion, but then, he may be deliberately confusing his role as prosecutor (hit hard, play on emotions, as he did to get convictions for terrorists who killed mostly or only Africans and no Americans..) and as witness or expert testifier.
He misrepresented things to the 9/11 Commission about Ali Mohamed (arrested 98, pled guilty in 00 to offenses re. the Embassy bombings, Fitz was the state attorney. Ali was FBI and has recently been freed!) but told the truth on another matter – that no links between ALQ and Saddam were found, though originally there was some suspicion of it. Some say he lied, about Ali, and point to various other ambiguities (Peter Dale Scott, Bigley, Hopsicker). At the hearings, it was pointed out that to learn about AlQ secret info was hopeless, all one had to do was read open source material, such as transcripts of the 93 WTC bombing court cases, run by Fitz. Fitz modestly agreed, stating that it was a mystery to him why the public (err?) did not pay attention to public information. (Not exact words.)
Fitz left the terrorist seraglio 10 days before 9/11 and moved to Chicago. He himself has said he was surprised at the job offer.
Frankly, I can’t grasp Fitz. My knowledge of him is only thru 9/11 – terrorism. I have only read his words, never seen him. He is a careful speaker, he plays it ‘straight’ and is not open to influence (I mean influence from the context – who he is adressing, etc.); he plans 29 steps in advance and is never surprised; he decides on a path and then sticks to it. He is also a very private person, his personality does not leak. And yet, he is not cold – he does not rely on detachment, power, boring logic, there is nothing machine-like about him.
It is possible that he decided that contesting the 9/11 myth would be detrimental to the US – although he would know that civil war would not result – just, it is too big right now. Such a position would involve quite a bit of duplicity, have to be deftly handled. Also, – as a good prosecutor it is best to go with what you have got; he is but one actor and has but one mandate. That makes sense to me. So I have hope.
On the other hand, some clean-up re. burning Plame, with a game of musical chairs following is also a possibility. If that happens, we will never know what role Fitz played in it, the answer being possibly: none.
Sorry no links, that was just off my dirty cuff, I can dig some up if someone is really interested.
Posted by: Noisette | Oct 22 2005 16:51 utc | 18
This line from Billmon underscores what I think is the most under-reported aspect of this. The media is not admitting it’s role:
“What the special prosecutor is doing, on the other hand, is challenging a cozy insider-trading racket that’s done far more to housetrain the corporate media and shield an out-of-control classification regime from reform than it has to serve the American people’s right to know.” -Billmon
Posted by: vaughan | Oct 22 2005 16:56 utc | 19
If there are no or insufficient indictments handed down in this matter, it will only mean one thing. It will mean that we have clearly crossed the threshold that people who share a different political philosophy or opinions from the views in power are no longer entitled to the equal protection of the law.
Posted by: bcf | Oct 22 2005 18:30 utc | 20
I am a lawyer and I agree totally with Billmon as to why Fitzgerald set up his website. As I noted yesterday in a comment on Talk Left:
“Posted by DaveGFromNYC at October 21, 2005 07:31 PM
I think Fitzgerald set up the website so that the public could see, in the documents posted, that he was expressly authorized by the Assistant Attorney General to bring charges relating to anything having to do with the Plame leak, expressly including a charge based on lying to the Office of Special Counsel. This was in anticipation of Republican claims that he would be going beyond his mandate in filing indictments based on obstruction of justice, and not just violations of the espionage acts. It also clearly indicates to me that he intends to bring indictments next week, if that wasn’t already clear. Indictments against Libby and Rove, and their juniors, are a foregone conclusion. The only question is does Fitzgerald have enough to go against Cheney (quite possibly, if Hannah and Wurmser have flipped to the extent reported in the Daily News and Raw Story) and Bush himself, as an unindicted co-conspirator, if they can establish, as has been reported, that he knew of Rove’s leaks to the press in 2003 and denied any such knowledge when interviewed by Fitzgerald in 2004.
Hold onto your hats.”
Posted by: DaveGFromNYC | Oct 22 2005 18:35 utc | 21
Billmon, good comments about Fitzgerald, but who is that other guy Fitzpatrick you mentioned? 😉
Deans last line is:
“In short, I think the frenzy is about to end — and it will not go any further. Unless, of course, these folks were foolish enough to give false statements, perjure themselves or suborn perjury, or commit obstruction of justice. If they were so stupid, Patrick Fitzgerald must stay and clean house. What Do You Think?”
I think that yeah, they were “foolish” enough to do all those things. They do it all the time. They never expected to get caught. If the war had been the cakewalk they bragged it would be, they would have made a perfect getaway.
They failed.
Posted by: blakey | Oct 22 2005 19:50 utc | 22
I think John Dean may be trying to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the Republican Party.
Republicans hold him responsible for bringing down the 37th president and despite his specious claims to the contrary, the motive was simple self preservation.
So if Dean can ‘do his bit’ to have the public accept this has gone far enough, he will never get back at the top table but he may be allowed a few crumbs.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 22 2005 20:36 utc | 23
i think fitz put up his site because it give all of us the opportunity to see the same information at the same time in the order he wants it presented. it gives bloggers the same expediency as the msm. we do not have to hear it thru anyone elses drip drip.
another possibility, far out, but not an impossibility.
TreasonGate: The little-discussed ace in the hole
A possibility has been raised by several sources that a death may have occurred as a result of this leak. Under the Espionage Act, this could lead to a death penalty case. The CIA Wall of Honor has stars representing agents killed on duty. Named stars are used where information is not classified, and anonymous stars are used when the agent’s name cannot be released. Below the stars is a chronological Book of Honor. An anonymous star was added to the wall between named stars that can be dated to deaths on February 5, 2003 and October 25, 2003. The anonymous star thus fits the timing of the Plame leak. Wayne Madsen, a reporter and former NSA employee, has claimed, “CIA sources report that at least one anonymous star placed on the CIA’s Wall of Honor at its Langley, Virginia headquarters is a clandestine agent who was executed in a hostile foreign nation as a direct result of the White House leak.”
Posted by: annie | Oct 22 2005 21:34 utc | 24
That was the only reason I voted for the sorry bastard, he would never have the unswerving support that w has.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 22, 2005 12:30:05 PM | #
That’s interesting, dan. I know those who were, on the other hand, content to leave the whole mess solidly in the lap of a Republican Administration and Congress. Fat lot of good it’ll do the Democratic Party, but I understand the thinking behind it.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 22 2005 22:13 utc | 25
Primer on Illegal War in Iraq
The Lie Factory
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
This special Mother Jones investigation late last year detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp
“They created an organization that would give them the answers they wanted.”
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be “a high crime” under the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”
A Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet of Falsehoods
http://www.earthisland.org/project/newsPage2.cfm?newsID=491&pageID=177&subSiteID=44
According to [USAF Retired, Colonel Sam] Gardiner, “It was not bad intelligence” that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, “It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before the war” that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner’s research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant “stories of strategic influence” that were known to be false.
Niger Uranium Mystery Solved?; The Fitzgerald/Plame Investigation Goes in New Direction
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681
Before Fitzgerald is done, we’ll see the warlords of Washington hauled before a court of the people. We’ll hear the whole sordid story of how a band of exiles, at least two foreign intelligence agencies, and a cabal of neoconservatives inside the Pentagon and the vice president’s office bamboozled Congress and the American people into going to war. As the indictments come down, so will the elaborate narrative so carefully constructed by the War Party in the run-up to war be exposed as a tissue of fabrication, forgery, and fraud.
The Most Important Criminal Case in American History
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-most-important-crimin_b_9183.html
[S]omeone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion of Iraq. And when a former diplomat made an honest effort to find out the facts, a plan was hatched to both discredit and punish him by revealing the identity of his undercover CIA agent wife.
Oil in Iraq
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm
The four giant firms [Exxon, Chevron, British Petroleum, and Shell] located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. They face companies from France, Russia, China, Japan and elsewhere, who already have major concessions. But in the post-war setting, with Washington running the show, the US-UK companies expect eventually to overcome their rivals and gain the most lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars in profits in the coming decades.
The Anti-Torture Memos
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/09/anti-torture-memos-balkinization-posts.html
Money For Nothing
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/print/coverprint.html
The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,” each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.
Posted by: manonfyre | Oct 22 2005 22:43 utc | 26
If the NYT wants to help out & rehabilitate themselves they could have someone actually listen to the 911 Firemen’s tapes they helped pry free, and perhaps talk to David Ray Griffin. An Article appearing Sun. or Mon. would certainly help kick the ball along. According to DRG, there’s irrefutable evidence on them that it was an inside job. Many firemen talking about how there were explosions going off all over the place over a considerable period of time – those were the explosive charges that would have been set to destroy the Core Beams to allow buildings to collapse @~ freefall speed.
From retired Prof. of Theology Griffin’s Testimony this summer:
Another standard feature of controlled demolitions is, of course, the occurrence of explosions. The oral histories recorded by the New York Fire Department, which were finally released this past August, contain dozens of testimonies about multiple explosions in both towers, which reinforce previously available testimonies. However, although the Commission had access to the oral histories, it did not quote any of them. That is too bad, because the authors of the Report obviously like colorful quotations, and the 9/11 oral histories contain some pretty good ones. For example, firefighter Thomas Turilli, referring to the south tower, said that ?it almost sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight.” Paramedic Daniel Rivera, describing what he called a ?frigging noise,? said: ?do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’? That’s exactly what . . . I thought it was.? Firefighter Edward Cachia, referring to the collapse of the south tower, said: ?It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit. . . [W]e originally had thought there was like an internal detonation, explosives, because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.? Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: ?I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they . . . blow up a building. . . ?? Firefighter Richard Banaciski said: ?[T]here was just an explosion. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.? link
Posted by: jj | Oct 22 2005 23:51 utc | 27
Ringing heart-shout from Scott Horton:
Faster Please!
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2452_0_1_0_C
See also Horton’s excellent scholarhip and analysis of US torture policy, here:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/09/anti-torture-memos-balkinization-posts.html
Posted by: manonfyre | Oct 23 2005 3:46 utc | 28
Oops!
“Faster Please!,” author, Scott Horton informs me he is not anti-torture memo author, Scott Horton.
But he did interview him! Here: http://weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/horton.mp3
Posted by: manonfyre | Oct 23 2005 4:25 utc | 29