by fauxreal
stolen from a comment

I did read an interesting comment that bin Laden may have appeared to undercut the 60 Minutes appearance of Tyler Drumheller who put the case forward to voters that the Bush junta knew the reasons they gave for war were lies, and thus the invasion of Iraq was a violation of the Nuremberg Principles. (That thus is my conclusion, but one that flows naturally, imo, from a war based upon lies, dressed up as defense when it was, in fact, an act of aggression. Yo, Poland.)

Josh Marshall makes the interesting point that, given Drumheller’s statements, the legislators who investigated the Iraq war claims covered for those lies and also deceived the American people.

To me, this is all an extension of the Constitutional crisis that began with the 2000 elections. I knew no good would come from it, but I had no idea things could be this bad.

Digby has a post that talks about the calls to arrest people who are telling the truth. Criminalization of dissent. Digby links to Robert Parry, who notes calls for imprisoning journalists (Bill Bennett), charging generals with sedition (Moonie Times) and as Parry notes:

The firing of CIA officer Mary McCarthy and the threats of criminal charges against various dissenters are just the latest skirmishes in the political war over who will decide what Americans get to see and hear.

The other signal to Bush’s critics, however, is this: If they ever thought he and his administration would accept accountability for their alleged abuses of power without a nasty fight, those critics are very mistaken.

From Harper’s, regarding the current power struggle: 

This former senior officer said there “seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people” at the agency to avoid involvement in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially “renditions”—the practice whereby the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the CIA: “There’s an SS group within the agency that’s willing to do anything and there’s a Wehrmacht group that is saying, ‘I’m not gonna touch this stuff’.”

The analogy is regular army against Hitler’s bodyguards. He used the SS to gain power, not just fight wars or run extermination camps. The Wehrmacht attempted an assassination, the July 20 (1944) plot.

The military evaded political meddling during most of the Third Reich’s history. Most of its leadership was politically conservative, nationalistic and hoped to reconquer territories that had broken away from Imperial Germany. Hitler had promised to rebuild Germany’s military strength and officers were mostly sympathetic towards the National Socialist movement. Political influence in the military command began to increase later in the war when Hitler’s flawed strategic decisions began showing up as serious defeats for the German army and tensions mounted between the military and the government. Not only did Hitler appoint unqualified personnel to lead his armies, but also gave to his commanders impossible orders, such as to shoot all officers and enlisted men who retreated from a front line.

(From the Wehrmacht link at the July 20 entry.)

And, going back to the question of that German politician mentioned by Uncle $cam, Laura Rozen, at War and Piece, mentioned Drumheller on April 2, 2005. This is an article to go back to, considering the appearance of Drumheller. It concerns "Curveball" and intelligence sources who discredited him and those who shielded him. That article, and the link to Der Spiegel, question whether or not someone in German intelligence helped Bush fabricate evidence.

Several weeks later, Drumheller discovered that his warning had been ignored when his executive officer brought him an advance copy of Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N.

Drumheller said he then arranged a meeting in McLaughlin’s office and described what the German operative had told him over lunch several months earlier. After listening for 10 minutes, Drumheller said, McLaughlin responded by saying, "Oh my! I hope that’s not true."

McLaughlin, who retired in January after 32 years at the CIA, said he did not recall the meeting and denied that Drumheller told him Curveball might be a fabricator.

"I have absolutely no recall of such a discussion. None," McLaughlin said in a statement Friday. "Such a meeting does not appear on my calendar, nor was this view transmitted to me in writing." He said he was "at a loss" to explain the conflicting accounts.

But another red flag appeared. On Jan. 27, 2003, the CIA’s Berlin station warned in a message to headquarters that Curveball’s information "cannot be verified."

Drumheller, meanwhile, said he never heard from McLaughlin or anyone else to confirm that Curveball’s material had been deleted from Powell’s speech. So when Tenet called him at home on another matter the night before Powell was to speak in New York, Drumheller said he raised the Curveball case.

"I gave him the phone number for the guy he wanted," Drumheller recalled. "Then it struck me, ‘I better say something.’ I said, ‘You know, boss, there’s problems with that case.’ He says, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m exhausted. Don’t worry about it.’ "