Sink the BFEE: Foley gives us Congress. Condi sends 'em to prison.

[Octafish]

Dear DUers:

Even though they're the only business mentioned by name in the Constitution, Corporate McPravda – ABCNNBCBSFoulNoiseNutwork – doesn’t do squat when it comes to informing the American public about what the Bush Family Evil Empire is about and what they are doing to the United States of America, its Constitution and We the People.

Because of DU, however, we know these things about the Bush Family Evil Empire that most Americans know just a little, if anything, about. And we know what we know about BushCo because we help each other learn. We help spread the Truth about the BFEE.



We live in a time where we can change the course of history. Thanks to the perfect storm of Truth, we Democrats can retake Congress and relegate the BFEE to the dismal ash can of history and its members to prison, where they belong.

First: The Foley scandal has given the Democrats the ammo needed for a sea change in both houses of Congress.



The short story on ex-U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.): A known child molester was given a position to oversee laws designed to protect children from child molesters. What’s worse, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) covered it up. In America, married households may now be a minority, but parents who have kids hate child molesters. Same for most people, in general: Child molestation generates universal hatred.

That’s why Fox and so many other “news” media have tried to connect Foley, “by accident,” to the Democrats. Even Huffington Post made the connection. Once an idea is in a person’s head, it takes a LOT of Truth to drive it out. Consider the nonexistent ties between Osama and Saddam that so many Americans still believe to exist. So, if the connection between the House Republicans and Foley can be made in the minds of enough Americans, they will not vote for Republicns.

Eleven GOPers Fingered in Foley Cover-Up

By Justin Rood - September 30, 2006, 9:32 PM
Roll Call's John Bresnahan reports:

As of Saturday evening, nearly a dozen House GOP lawmakers and staffers have acknowledged that they knew of the initial batch of non-sexually explicit messages from Foley to a 16-year-old former House page, some of them for a year or more. These include Hastert <(IL)>; Majority Leader John Boehner (Ohio); National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.); Reps. Rodney Alexander (La.) and John Shimkus (Ill.); Mike Stokke, the Speaker’s deputy chief of staff; Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s counsel; Paula Nowakowski, Boehner’s chief of staff; Jeff Trandahl, the former Clerk of the House; and another Hastert aide and Alexander’s chief of staff, according to public statements and GOP insiders.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001645.php

Which brings me to the second, and the better thing for our country. Let’s talk about the end of the BFEE.

Lost in Foley-GOP-Pagegate scandal are the “Bush administration” lies regarding what they knew before 911. The public record shows almost every public utterance regarding September 11 of George W Bush, Dick Bruce Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and their assorted toadies have been false. Here’s what the public is starting to see: They are all liars. Consider, please, the following:

Condescenda said she doesn’t remember an emergency briefing on July 10, 2001. She said so recently. And she certainly said so during her testimony before the 9-11 Commission. Yet there’s the White House records saying she was briefed. Liar.

Rice Denies Book's Assertion She Brushed Off CIA Terror Warning

`Incomprehensible,' she says of the idea that she ignored Tenet's anxiety over a strike before 9/11.

By Paul Richter
LA Times Staff Writer
October 3, 2006

State Department officials acknowledged late Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was at a 2001 meeting where she was reportedly warned of the need to act on an impending terrorist threat to the United States.

They said she met with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet on or around July 10. A new book by Bob Woodward says she brushed off Tenet's warning at that session.

SNIP...

"The idea that I would have ignored that, I find incomprehensible," Rice told reporters late Sunday during the flight. "I am quite certain that it was not a meeting in which I was told that there was an impending attack, and refused to respond."

The State Department said Monday that a meeting around the time described by Woodward had in fact taken place, based on government records, but that no new information was given to Rice, who then was President Bush's national security advisor.

In his book, Woodward writes that Tenet and J. Cofer Black, then director of the CIA's counterterrorism center, decided on July 10, 2001, that they had to request a dramatic, "out-of-cycle" meeting with Rice to describe their anxiety over the chance of an attack against American interests, possibly within the United States.

CONTINUED…

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-book3oct03,1,531509.story?coll=la-news-politics-national&track=crosspromo

Gee. Let’s put that in perspective, please Mr. Scheer?

Rice More Sordid Than Foley

by Robert Scheer
Published on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 by Truthdig.com

They are such liars. And no, I am not speaking only of the dissembling GOP House leaders led by Speaker Dennis Hastert who, out of naked political calculation, covered up for one of their own in the sordid teen stalking case of Rep. Mark Foley.

Call me old school, but I am still more concerned with the Republicans molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to be guarding the nation’s security, an assignment which they have totally botched. The news about the Foley coverup, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation.

On Monday, a State Department spokesman conceded that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had indeed been briefed in July 2001 by George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, about the alarming potential for an Al Qaeda attack, as Bob Woodward has reported in his aptly named new book, “State of Denial.”

“I don’t remember a so-called emergency meeting,” Rice had said only hours earlier, apparently still suffering from some sort of post-9/11 amnesia that seemed to afflict her during her forced testimony to the 9/11 Commission. The omission of this meeting from the final commission report is another example of how the Bush administration undermined the bipartisan investigation that the president had tried to prevent. Surely lying under oath in what was arguably the most important official investigation in the nation’s history should be treated more seriously than the evasiveness in the Paula Jones case that got President Bill Clinton impeached. Nor is it just Rice who should be challenged, for Tenet seems to have provided Woodward with details concerning the administration’s indifference to the terrorist threat that he did not share with the 9/11 Commission.

SNIP…

Such weaseling would be funny if the topic were not so serious. But there is no way Rice can squirm out of this one, despite her impressive track record of calculated distortion on everything from Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs to the trumped-up ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Can there be any better case for turning over control of at least one branch of Congress to the opposition party so that we might finally have hearings to learn the truth of this matter, which is far more important, and sordid, than the Foley affair?

SOURCE:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1004-33.htm

In brushing off the briefers, she had the nerve to ask them to go see Ashcan and Rumsferatu. Ashcan said he never got a briefing, but wished he had. It certainly explains why he stopped flying commercial in July 2001. Liar.

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11

By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Mon, Oct. 02, 2006email thisprint this

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

SNIP…

Clarke told McClatchy Newspapers that Rice focused in particular on the possible threat to President Bush at an upcoming summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, and promised to quickly schedule a high-level White House meeting on al-Qaida. That meeting took place on September 4, 2001.

CONTINUED…

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/15662785.htm

Bush said, before it became public knowledge, that he never heard nothing about no Osama. Yet, we discovered in March 2003, that was false.

Decoding The PDB

Larry C. Johnson is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He served with the CIA from 1985 through 1989 and worked in the State Department's office of Counter Terrorism from 1989 through 1993. He also is a registered Republican who contributed financially to the Bush Campaign in 2000.

Are George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice really as clueless as they are claiming to be? Bush and Rice are both on the record misstating what was in the 6 August 2001 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing). They both insist the information was only “historical” and “not actionable.” They apparently are not alone in their faux ignorance. Republican partisans and even some members of the media are busy bolstering the spin that this was “an historical memo.” Absolute nonsense!

I wrote about 40 PDB’s during my four-year tenure at the CIA. This particular PDB article was written in response to a presidential request. I am told that Bush’s request was a reaction to the intelligence warnings he was hearing during the daily CIA morning briefings. Something caught his attention and awakened his curiosity. He reportedly asked the CIA to come back with its assessment of Bin Laden’s intentions. The CIA answered the question –Bin Laden was targeting the United States.

The PDB article released Saturday is a classic CIA response to such a request. It lays out the historical and evidentiary antecedents that undergird the analyst’s belief about the nature of the threat and provides current intelligence indicators that reinforce the basic conclusion of the piece—i.e., Bin Laden was determined to attack the United States. It is true that the piece did not contain specific details about the plot that was launched subsequently on 9/11. However, the details that are included in the piece are so alarming that anyone familiar with the nature of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda should have asked, “What are they planning and what can we do to stop it?”

CONTINUED...

Published: Apr 12 2004

http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/10224.html

And now we’re discovering the CIA felt they weren’t getting anywhere. So they went to see Bush, on vacation for the month of August in Crawford.

The smirking turd from Crawford was briefed on his pig farm on Aug. 6, 2001. George W Bush even had the nerve to tell the briefer: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Liar.

Ron Suskind, George W. Bush and the Aug. 6, 2001, PDB

Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine" is out this week, and the Washington Post's Barton Gellman says it's full of "jaw-dropping stories" about the Bush administration's war on terror.

Or lack thereof.

We've known for years now that George W. Bush received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, in which he was warned: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." We've known for almost as long that Bush went fishing afterward.

What we didn't know is what happened in between the briefing and the fishing, and now Suskind is here to tell us. Bush listened to the briefing, Suskind says, then told the CIA briefer: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

-- Tim Grieve

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/06/20/911pdb/index.html

All of them denie getting briefed about Osama bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S. Doesn’t that seem odd? The records show they, too, got briefed. There’s even a nice power point presentation to connect the dots to airplanes and buildings. I’m sure it’s classified. Yet, they all continue to assert they didn’t know anything about OBL’s plans.

So, America, how much more proof do you need?

Like a broken record, I am wont to say the BFEE fears one thing more than anything else—the truth.

Why? The truth shows them to be the treasonous, warmongering, mass-murdering, gangsters they are.

Every so often, history provides us with the occasion to make it. Which is another way of saying change it from happening, or keep something from happening the way Bush wants.

The Bush Transnational Crime Family wants America to think they are powerless. That DIEBOLD will count their votes wrong. That their votes don’t matter. That one party is the same as another.

They aren’t. It does. They do. They aren’t.

That’s what we’re about, DU. We can do something about it.

Let’s go get these Bush bastards! We got the Truth. It's what America's waiting for.

[AntiFascist]

1. K&R, also....

Only 16% of Americans in a very high profile poll believe that the Bush Admin. is telling the truth about 9/11. This would seem like a golden opportunity for the Democrats to question: what incompetence/corruption are they trying to cover up?

[Phredicles]

2. Hell yes...

Asscrack's changing his air travel habits sure looks like they knew SOMEthing was up, and I believe this is at the heart of everything rotten that's happened in the last 6 years. The Democrats need to pull on this thread as hard as they can; the rest will unravel.

[Octafish]

8. That's a great thread...

Poll : Only 16% of Americans think Govt. is telling truth about 9/11

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2395527&mesg_id=2395527

Survey says:

Americans Question Bush on 9/11 Intelligence

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13469

These turds are in deep doo-doo, AntiFascist. They're buying land in Paraguay, on top of the world's largest untapped aquifer, where their neighbors are Rev. Moon, former NAZIs and their descendants, and cocoa farmers. BFEE Heaven.

[AntiFascist]

13. Paraguay, where Josef Mengele ended up?

Maybe the BFEE wants to continue its torture and mind control programs down there...together with Rev. Moon, how fitting.

[Danascot]

27. The Bush Family Escape Plan to Paraguay thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2397803

[Octafish]

54. Turns out land sits atop natural gas reserve.

Gee. That sounds like ENRON terrirory.

NAZI, too.

Bush Paraguay Land Grab Incites Unease

Asuncion, Oct 18 (Prensa Latina) The land grab project of US President George W. Bush in Chaco, Paraguay, has generated considerable discomfort both politically and environmentally.

The news circulating the continent about plans to buy 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay) is the talk of the town in these countries.

Although official sources have not confirmed the information that is already public, the land is reportedly located in Paso de Patria, near Bolivian gas reserves and the Guarani indigenous water region, within the Triple Border.

Alto Paraguay Gov. Erasmo Rodriguez Acosta revealed he heard that part of the land purchase consists of an ecological reserve (Fundacion Patria), with which Bush is affiliated.

CONTINUED...

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B2DA7BAE4-061B-49B6-983F-3D69A4396E37%7D)&language=EN

Thanks for the heads-up, Danascot. This is insider information of the most treasonous kind.

[indepat]

3. Re Condi photo, her eyes are surely a mirror of her soul which gives me

the hebegebees. :scared:

[Octafish]

9. With bad reason. Those are the eyes of more than a liar.

Those are scary eyes, reflecting a soul that harbors more than a propensity to lie. Remember, indepat, when she didn't want to testify before the 911 Ommission, back in 2004?

In rush to defend White House, Rice trips over own words

Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Friday, March 26, 2004

(03-26) 04:00 PDT Washington -- This week's testimony and media blitz by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has returned unwanted attention to his former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

SNIP...

The White House, reacting to the public relations difficulties caused by the refusal to allow Rice's testimony, asked the commission Thursday to give Rice another opportunity to speak privately with panel members to address "mischaracterizations of Dr. Rice's statements and positions."

Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she had misspoken; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies, and Clarke, had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.

In an op-ed essay Monday in the Washington Post, Rice wrote that "through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate" al Qaeda that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" including the use of ground forces.

But Armitage, testifying this week as the White House representative, said the military part was not in the plan before Sept. 11. "I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11," he said. McCormack said Rice's statement was accurate because the team had discussed including orders for such military plans to be drawn up.

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/26/MNGSR5RPMV1.DTL

Gee. No wonder the Democrats were playing softball in that election. They didn't want to overturn the applecart of this "investigation."

What history shows us is that we have to take them to task for every treasonous activity they engage in. The reason we're in this mess today is that the government of the United States failed to investigate Iran-Contra fully. Poppy Bush would never have had his pardons of Weinberger, Poindexter and the rest of that gang stand were it not for the "intimidation factor" of the BFEE. Their enemies end up dead, from where they can not testify.

[hootinholler]

19. What history shows us is

Not only do we have to take them to task for each and every thing, but, we have to take the enabling underlings as well. Otherwise our children will be going through this shit in 40 years when those mentored by these thugs find their way into power.

Had Rumsfield and Cheney been jailed after watergate, what a different world we would have now.

-Hoot

[ocean girl]

4. K & R

Thanks, Octafish, for educating us all.

In the rare instance when I get into a discussion with some right-wing idiot at work, I am truly amazed at how they spew Bush lies without even researching to find out if what the believe is true. I did get a born-again Bush lover speechless when I told him that fundamentalism is the root of all evil and he started sputtering and when I told him that Hitler used Christianity in his doctrine and he flipped out and said I was lying. Thanks to a quick Google search, I shut him up in about 5 minutes. (Actually, I wasn't aware of this myself until recently!)

Anyway, thanks again and also for the "real" White House photo.

[Octafish]

11. Outrage as Misdirection: The Real Scandal Isn't Foley

Thanks for the kind words, ocean girl. Thank you for standing up and telling it like it is to your co-worker.

Most of the time their ignorance is due to Bushco co-opting the nation's news media. Perhaps half of America gets their information exclusively from television -- no newspapers, magazines or books pass before their eyes. Just TV and some right-wing radio 24/7/365. No wonder so many people believe Osama and Saddam worked together on 911.

And for, me GOOGLE's a friend, the Library of Alexandria on one's desktop.

Outrage as Misdirection

The Real Scandal Isn't Foley

By DAVE LINDORFF
Counterpunch October 4, 2006

It's a sad commentary on the state of American democracy, on the instincts of the American citizenry, and on the standards and judgment of the American news media that the unsavory advances of a pathetic Florida congressman can have the nation in high dudgeon, while the ramming through of a patently illegal piece of legislation undermining a crucial 13th century civil liberty (habeas corpus), and the Fourth and Eighth Amendments of the constitution, and the secret planning for an illegal and catastrophic attack on Iran, both merit almost no complaint or mention.

Far be it from me to complain if Rep. Mark Foley's sexual obsession with teenage boys ends up sinking Republican hopes for hanging onto the House and Senate. But how sad that it would be if it is this, and the cover-up of his crimes by the Republican leadership, that undoes the Bush administration, when its real crimes are of such grandeur and seriousness?

How are we to compare seeking to screw a 16-year old with totally screwing the Constitution? How are we to compare secret email solicitations with a secret plot to attack a nation of 62 million that poses no immediate threat to the U.S.?

How are we to compare the Republican Party's cover-up of a member's efforts to corrupt young pages with the same party's conspiracy to cover up the Bush administration's ineptness and possible foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks, and of the campaign of lies and misinformation it used to drum up hysteria for an illegal and totally unwarranted invasion of Iraq?

How are we to compare the media feeding frenzy over the Foley scandal with the profound silence about Bush's Iran invasion planning, and with the deliberate brownout about information regarding a growing popular movement to impeach the president for his crimes?

And finally, how to we to compare the public revulsion over Foley's indiscretions with the widespread acceptance or, or even support for abuse of American captives in the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the so-called "War" on Terror, which has included rape, sodomy, sexual humiliation and torture of all kinds, and murder--especially when it is known that the vast majority of those captives were either guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or of simply being honest fighters for their respective countries, deserving of decent treatment under the Geneva Convention, and of a fair hearing into the propriety of their detention?

What kind of nation have we become?

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10042006.html

We just may see these turds hand over power. And we may even see these thugs in jail. By telling the truth -- to bullies on the street or know-it-all know-nothings at work -- makes those possibilities closer to reality.

[kohodog]

5. And Why did Ashcroft stop flying in commercial planes in July 2001?

(CBS) Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml

[Octafish]

14. Condi worried about security for Monkey at Genoa G-8 Summit

And Ashcan stopped flying commercial. So, why didn't they warn the rest of the country?

Some right-wingers I know always say "Bush didn't want to alarm the flying public and ruin the economy."



Right.

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

SNIP…

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

CONTINUED…

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

Some more on the Genoa warnings…

Plot to assassinate Bush – reports

MOSCOW, Russia -- Osama bin Laden has threatened to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in Italy, the head of Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service has said, according to reports.

The Associated Press said Yevgeny Murov was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying: "Bin Laden is threatening the American president, but we know what international terrorism is today and therefore all the bodyguard units concerned are preparing for this.

"We view the threats as totally serious, but hope that with joint efforts we can solve all the problems."

The Group of Eight summit is meeting between July 20-22 in Genoa, Italy. Leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States are expected to attend the summit.

Murov -- Russian President Vladimir Putin's chief bodyguard -- did not elaborate on the threats. He said agents from Russia's Federal Bodyguard Service have travelled to Genoa to coordinate with their counterparts from the other nations taking part in the summit to investigate the threats.

CONTINUED…

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/20/russia.binladen/

Bush es muy covarde.

Missiles to protect summit leaders

Special report: globalisation

Rory Carroll in Rome
Wednesday July 11, 2001
The Guardian

Italy has installed a missile defence system at Genoa's airport to deter airborne attacks during next week's G8 summit, fuelling hysteria about looming violence.
A land-based battery of rockets with a range of nine miles and an altitude of 5,000 feet has been positioned in the latest security measure against perceived threats from terrorists and protesters.

Unidentified planes, helicopters and balloons risk being shot down should they drift too close to the heads of state from the group of seven leading industrialised nations and Russia.

Colonel Alberto Battaglini, of the ministry of defence, said the precaution was not exces sive. "The measure, which was planned by the previous government, may seem open to criticism, but in reality it is merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion during the summit.

CONTINUED…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,519925,00.html

Gee. Things really have worked out for the Worst.

In rush to defend White House, Rice trips over own words

Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Friday, March 26, 2004


EXCERPT...

In an op-ed essay Monday in the Washington Post, Rice wrote that "through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate" al Qaeda that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" including the use of ground forces.

But Armitage, testifying this week as the White House representative, said the military part was not in the plan before Sept. 11. "I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11," he said. McCormack said Rice's statement was accurate because the team had discussed including orders for such military plans to be drawn up.

In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."

But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals. "He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that ... Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas, or we didn't follow them up."

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/26/MNGSR5RPMV1.DTL

These are monstrous times, filled with traitors.

Thanks for giving a damn, kohodog.

[Binka]

26. "Didn't Want To Ruin The Economy" Oh Fer Shits Sake

As if 9-11-2001 didn't wreak world wide economic woe. All by design of course but that RW argument is up there with the dog ate my homework. Thanks for the thread Octafish.

[Rex]

6. They've committed crimes that no one should commit in America.

So obvious and transparent are their crimes, even the average person takes note. Rove's fatal mistake could be that the average American is far smarter then he anticipated.

[Octafish]

16. Powell bio: Wolfowitz downplayed OBL threat and upped JINSA

More honest members -- inc. Colin Powell -- peg them for what they are:

Lying, thieving, warmongering, mass-murdering traitors of the first rank.

Of course, Powell didn't use those exact words:

Powell biography involves a game of connect the blots

"Soldier" provides a sketchy, but intermittently fascinating, portrait of the former secretary of state.

'Odd man out'
(Timothy Greenfield-Sanders / Knopf)

By Tim Rutten, Times Staff Writer

There is so much to like and admire about Colin L. Powell as a man and as a public servant that it would be vaguely comforting if his failure as secretary of State were somehow mysterious.

It wasn't, although it still may fairly be described as tragic.

SNIP...

Despite that, when the Cabinet's deputy secretaries first met, Paul D. Wolfowitz — Rumsfeld's assistant — "disputed Clarke's assessment of the al-Qaeda threat, suggesting that the more immediate terrorist danger to the United States came from Iraq."

Even after Sept. 11, the Cheney-Rumsfeld faction kept up the pressure for an attack on Iraq, while Powell worked to make possible an assault on Al Qaeda and its Taliban patrons in Afghanistan. Later, although he would do his best to sell the American people and the world the administration's case for war against Hussein, Powell also did his best to warn Bush of its consequences. (Powell's wife, Alma, told DeYoung that her husband was "callously" used by the White House, and the general now says he regards his infamous U.N. appearance as a "blot" on his record. "If I had known there were no stockpiles, I never would have said there were stockpiles," he says.)

There is one bit of malice at work in the Powell-DeYoung version of these now familiar events that should not pass unremarked upon. According to the author, the then-secretary went out of his way to identify the pro-war neoconservatives as affiliates of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think-tank with decidedly hard-line views on Israel's security. "Powell referred to Rumsfeld's team as the 'JINSA crowd.' " Later in "Soldier," readers are told that the neoconservatives in the Defense Department — nearly all of them Jews — supported war against Iraq as the first step to replacing Arab despots with democratic governments that would sever their ties to the Palestinians, thereby enhancing Israel's security. In explaining why he did not resign over his profound differences with the White House, Powell cited the example of Gen. George C. Marshall, who refused to quit as secretary of State even though he opposed President Truman's recognition of Israel as a quest for "Jewish votes."

CONTINUED...

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-book9oct09,0,7002827.story?coll=cl-books-top-right

These are gangster times. They're connected by money, power and ruthlessness that are most un-American.

[gordianot]

7. The un-forgiven. I do wonder what justice will look like?

Will there be enough will to face the truth? I do like the idea of a Bush escape and exile to Paraguay.

[Octafish]

17. They're gonna need a lot of land, there's so many of them...

We may have to use their entire holdings as one enormous prison.

As to whether we hold the will or not, we must ask ourselves if we're willing to fall victims as the people of Europe did in the 19302 to the BFEE's precursors?

Hawks flying high with Rice posting

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell consolidates the control over US foreign policy of the coalition of hawks that promoted the war in Iraq, led by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The promotion of Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to take her place in the White House also confirms Cheney's pre-eminence in Bush's second term.

A major booster of national missile defense and the development of "usable" mini-nuclear weapons, Hadley held a key policy position under the vice president when Cheney served as Pentagon chief under Bush's father, president George H W Bush, from 1989-93.

Growing speculation that another Cheney ally, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, will be nominated to serve as deputy secretary of state under Rice is adding to the impression that the hawks are on the verge of a clean sweep.

As expected, the State Department's current No 2, Richard Armitage, announced his resignation on Tuesday, thus opening another key slot in the foreign-policy bureaucracy and one on which Bolton and his neo-conservative and ultra-unilateralist backers have had their eyes for months.

"This is a statement that Bush sees that what he's done in his first term is the way he wants to go into the second term, if not a bit more so," said Jonathan Clarke, a former British analyst based at the libertarian Cato Institute and co-author of America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order.

"It's a way of saying, 'If you liked what you saw in the first administration, you're going to love the second one,'" he said in an interview.

CONTINUED...

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3992

They're frightened and getting ready to go on the run, gordianot. If they can, they'll take us out way before then. We must remain vigilant and vote them out and then have Congress toss them out before Smirko presses The Button. I don't mean to sound alarmist, but it really may already be too late for Iran and We the People.

[gordianot]

22. Lampposts comes to mind with the creation of a Mad-Max world.

Those who allowed it to happen are usually the first in line to use this solution. As I remember history the neo-con precursors created a similar South American refuge well in advance, several decades ago. At this point our only hope is that Corporate interests do not want to do business with savages.

Limited nuclear war is an old Reagan era dream that appears to be currently taken off the shelf and dusted off. We still have the old family farm with an excellent water supply, if we live that long.

Live long and prosper Octafish.

[bleever]

10. Eagles, as they grow, moult as the new and better supplant

what is spent.


Thank you, Octafish.

[Octafish]

23. What Terry Jones said about Bushler...

...TJ pins it on him, with oak leaf clusters:

A splendid achievement

George Bush should be congratulated - he has surely earned the right to join the ranks of despots

Terry Jones
Tuesday October 10, 2006
The Guardian

Dear President Bush,

I write to you in my capacity as secretary of the World League of Despots.

It is with great pleasure that I am finally able to extend an official invitation to you to join our ranks. For many years, we have watched your efforts to fulfil the requirements necessary to join our number. From the start, we were greatly impressed by your disdain for democratic principles - the way you wrested power from the democratically elected candidate in the 2000 election, and again in 2005 when you managed to swing what was clearly going to be a victory for your opponent.

Contempt for human life has always been a priority requirement for membership of the league, and I and my fellow adjudicators were well aware of your record as governor of Texas when you quadrupled the number of state executions. But your record since seizing power has surpassed even our expectations. The thousands of innocent people in Iraq, who have died so that you could fulfill your declared political objective of establishing “an American force presence in the Middle East,” attest to your eligibility to join our ranks.

I cannot, however, disguise the fact that we adjudicators were extremely anxious when you announced your intention to remove from office one of our most stalwart members, Mr Saddam Hussein. However, we need not have worried. According to a recent UN report, you have ensured that there are now even more human rights abuses in Iraq than there were under Saddam. No less than 10-percent of those in custody are being physically or psychologically abused. Well done!

Of course, your unstinting efforts to make torture an internationally accepted aspect of human life have surpassed everything we could have ever hoped for. I don't think there is a single member of the league who could have imagined, six short years ago, that our activities in tormenting our fellow creatures would once again be recognised as acceptable, civilised behaviour, as it once was in the middle ages.

Despite these achievements, we had, until now, felt unable to extend our invitation to you because you had been unable to fulfill one of our basic requirements: the ability to carry out arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trial, secret torture and executions at will.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1891707,00.html

Your Friendship is much appreciated, bleever. Every day we move closer to the day when these gangsters are recognized for the NAZIs they are.

[bridgit]

12. works for me, time to call them out...

[Octafish]

32. Christy Hardin Smith: Some Questions

Great graphic, bridgit. The spider is most apt.

Here's someone who's got a bead on these turds:

Some Questions

By: Christy Hardin Smith

The whole did she or did she not talk with Tenet in July of 2001 question appears to have been resolved — as Andrea Mitchell reported on MSNBC, by the WH sending a squad of folks over to the National Archives to do a damage control search for pushback on the new Woodward book (and isn't that a switch from the last two fawning tomes where they were racing themselves to find a microphone to prop Woody's research methods up and talk about his burnished journalistic credentials?)…and finding that Bob Woodward's assertion that a meeting took place was correct all along.

But that only scratches the surface on needed answers.

Mahablog reports that Roger Cressey received the same briefing that Condi did, and he talked about it a bit on MSNBC yesterday. Yowza.

A thinking person might ask, "gee, wasn't that just two months before 9/11?" Why, yes, it was.

SNIP...

Wish they'd been able to get a response from Zelikow, since he was the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission and now works for Rice at the State Department, that would put him right in the center of all of this, now wouldn't it?

SNIP...

UPDATE: Paul Lukasiak has a couple of excellent points that I wanted to bring up from the comments:

1) It appears that this “brush off” from Rice (and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld) was what lead to the creation of the August 6 “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the US” PDB. Having gone to the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the National Security Advisor and gotten no action, the CIA’s only hope was to present (basically the same) briefing to Bush…. who brushed it off as well.

2) Rice wanted Ashcroft and Rummy briefed…. but not Powell? This is especially strange, given that Rice claims to believe that she wasn’t warned about attacks in the United States — Powell should have been in the loop, and Ashcroft less involved, if the operational assumption was that US interests abroad would be targetted…

CONTINUED...

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/10/04/some-questions/

Thanks for giving a damn, bridgit. I very much appreciate your Friendship, too.

[bridgit]

35. cheers friend...

:toast:

[Subdivisions]

15. Thanks for this Octafish! I've been trying to keep these issues up

front but posts on this subject just seem to sink like a rock.

Perhaps your more concise compilation of the facts will get these issues the attention they deserve.

[Octafish]

41. Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission

Thanks for posting those articles, Texas Explorer. If I didn't KBR, I tried on the other ones I saw. For the BFEE, this is the shit.

Here's an important article on the subject Will Pitt brought up in a recent article:

Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission

(Our guest blogger, Peter Rundlet, was a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission.)

Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.” And most Americans have also heard of the so-called “Phoenix Memo” that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the “possibility of a coordinated effort” by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001:

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and “sounded the loudest warning” to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.

Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, “They felt the brushoff.”

SNIP...

If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation — questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the Commission been told about this significant meeting. Suspiciously, the Commissioners and the staff investigating the administration’s actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting. As Commissioner Jamie Gorelick pointed out, “We didn’t know about the meeting itself. I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.”

The Commission interviewed Condoleezza Rice privately and during public testimony; it interviewed George Tenet three times privately and during public testimony; and Cofer Black was also interviewed privately and publicly. All of them were obligated to tell the truth. Apparently, none of them described this meeting, the purpose of which clearly was central to the Commission’s investigation. Moreover, document requests to both the White House and to the CIA should have revealed the fact that this meeting took place. Now, more than two years after the release of the Commission’s report, we learn of this meeting from Bob Woodward.

Was it covered up? It is hard to come to a different conclusion. If one could suspend disbelief to accept that all three officials forgot about the meeting when they were interviewed, then one possibility is that the memory of one of them was later jogged by notes or documents that describe the meeting. If such documents exist, the 9/11 Commission should have seen them. According to Woodward’s book, Cofer Black exonerates them all this way: “Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.” The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd. At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot.

– Peter Rundlet

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/30/911-meeting/

CONTINUED...

And thanks for giving a damn and posting those article, Texas Explorer. Getting the truth out is the fastest way we'll get to beating these cheating, lying, thieving, mass-murdering, warmongering gangsters out of power.

[Wiley50]

18. I hang on your threads, Octafish, But, an urgent question?

They're up against the wall and they know it.
They are most dangerous now.
Yes, We have a lot of manpower coming to play at the polls on Nov 7
But they have dirty suppression and Diebold
and carriers and other firepower steaming towards the gulf.
Even though we SEE it we can't get the word out
They have the TV media and if it ain't on JimmieJoe's remote control,
It ain't happening, no matter how loud we scream about it.

I hate to say it, almost as bad as I hate having to depend on it,
But it seems to me that the only hope is that Mr Putin and his Chinese counterparts
are at the helm with level heads and concern for global welfare,
and can back down these evil fools who have commandeered our ship of state
and keep them from making everyone's worst nightmare come real.

What are your thoughts?

[Octafish]

25. Agree. They are now at their most dangerous.

Regarding Putin, Hu and their ilk, they are BFEE comrades-in-despotics. Brother Neil hangs out with Boris Berezovsky (nee Platon Elenin), the exiled Russian kleptocrat who once was Putin's bud. Unka Prescott ran the US-China Chamber of Commerce, helped get the pieces of our spy plane back, and was near the first in line to clink champagne toasts post Tiananmen Square.

China and Russia's elites use muscle and the gun to rule. And to protect their own spheres of influence, they will resort to force. Estimates of the global nuke stockpile run to 70,000 H-bombs and 30,000 A-bombs. So, we should all make nicey-face to one another.

Guy named Makow wrote somewhere online recently that China let North Korea set off its little A-bomb in order to get the Pentagon’s attention focused somewhere other than Iran. That way, the heat’s off the world’s oil patch, meaning China will have access to the petrochemicals needed to feed more than a billion people. Don't agree with all he says, but the guy's close to what I believe holds in regards to NK's nuke test.

It’d be a heck of a lot easier if the world was truly democratic. Most people are good-hearted, IMFO, and realize it’s better for all concerned to do business rather than make war. That means dumping the chumps that prop up Putin, Hu and the BFEE.

My sincerest hope is that the good men and women in the US Government put a stop on these warmonger's ambitions. We the People must let them know we're standing with them -- at the polls and in the trenches.

[Nothing Without Hope]

30. Brother Neil ALSO hangs out with the Rev. Moon, who has strong ties

with the North Korean government. Here are sites with information on both of these ties, Bushies & pals to Moon, Moon to North Korea:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9868
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3624553
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3911573
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4386949
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4410555
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5507142
http://alternet.org/story/29054/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5632180
http://www.gorenfeld.net/
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/m/moonies/moonorg.htm

Still surprised that Bush suspended the requirement for inspectors in North Korea's nuclear program?

[fooj]

20. TRUTH is our most powerful weapon.

:patriot:

[Karenina]

21. K&R!!!

:bounce::bounce::bounce:

[Octafish]

42. Zelikow -- head investigator for 911 Omission -- big friend of Rice.

Wouldn't that be a conflict-of-interest, or something?

Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice

Washington Post
Sunday, October 1, 2006; Page A17

EXCERPT...

For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention.

SNIP...

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the National Security Agency intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.

Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

SNIP...

Philip D. Zelikow, the aggressive executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and a University of Virginia professor who had co-authored a book with Rice on Germany, knew something about the July 10 meeting, but it was not clear to him what immediate action really would have meant. In 2005 Rice hired Zelikow as a top aide at the State Department.

Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, but she just didn't get it in time, Tenet thought. He felt that he had done his job and had been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.

Black later said, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000282.html

We live in dangerous times. Thanks to you, fooj, and all who give a damn, we just might live through them and see these treasonous turds in gaol.

[WinkyDink]

24. AWESOME post! Thank you!

They are CRIMINALS, and they have used the age-old Mafia techniques: take over a legitimate enterprise (the U.S., Iran, etc.), suck it dry financially, and leave it an empty husk behind you.

[seafan]

38. The same tactic used by big box stores to destroy small town businesses

and shall remain nameless...

Suck all the lifeblood out of the town, send the $$ out of state to its headquarters, then leave behind a white elephant empty warehouse when the pickings are better elsewhere.


Sorry to veer off topic, but I'm ready to take back our country from these thieves.

[Octafish]

43. At best, they belong in prison.

Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

Bust Out - A technique devised by organized crime to loot large sums of money from unsuspecting businesses prior to the movement of organized crime into the looting of S&Ls after the Reagan deregulation. Soon picked up by the Savings and Loan criminals.

Cash for Trash

Daisy Chain

Dead Horses for Dead Cows

Land Flip

Kissing the Paper

Straw Borrower

Walking Money

White Knight

SOURCE: http://www.netmagic.net/~franklin/ST1.html

EDIT: Hit "Post" before I added the most important part:

Thank you for the kind words, WinkyDink. I appreciate you underestanding what this is about and thanks for giving a damn, my Friend.

[texpatriot2004]

28. K&R nt

[Octafish]

44. Rice's Lost Credibility

This is the crux of the matter: They lied to us about everything -- from Selection 2000 to ENRON Energy Policy to 911 to the illegal Iraq Invasion and all that's happened since.

Rice's Lost Credibility

John Prados
TomPaine.com October 05, 2006

John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington. His new book is Safe For Democracy (Ivan R. Dee Publisher).

EXCERPT...

According to Rice recently, the phony mushroom cloud line was merely a generic warning about terrorists’ potential access to weapons of mass destruction. Then, in the context of last month’s ABC television movie, “The Path to 9/11,” Rice erupted again. When former president Bill Clinton told “Fox News Sunday” on Sept. 24 that he had at least tried to get Osama bin Laden and that his successors had not tried, Rice came back hard: “What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did.” Now President Bush’s secretary of state, Rice declared that the notion the Bush administration “sat there” and did nothing is “flatly false.”

Is that so? There are two parts to the answer.

One concerns policy. President Bush could have adopted a broad counter-terrorism strategy and begun moving against bin Laden. Rice claims that the Clinton administration left behind no “comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” That, in fact, is what is flatly false. The “comprehensive” strategy document was declassified in April 2004 along with its cover memorandum, dated exactly four days after Bush became president and Rice the national security adviser (both documents have been posted on the website of the National Security Archive). Contrary to Rice’s assertion that “big pieces were missing, like an approach to Pakistan,” the section in the strategy proposal on Pakistan is three pages long. Indeed, Rice’s claims do not even meet the smell test, since every new administration always remakes the options proposed by predecessors, as Rice, a White House veteran, well knows. That is exactly what the Bush administration did.

It is a matter of record that the post of White House counter-terrorism czar, then occupied by Richard Clarke, was downgraded by excluding this official from the National Security Council Deputies Committee, contrary to Rice’s assertion that Clarke was not demoted. Even the subject of terrorism was demoted—from the NSC Principals Committee to that of the deputies. It was Clarke who pressed for a strategic choice, and Rice who kicked the can down the road. She consigned this initiative to the bureaucratic wonderland of policy reviews, and further watered it down by dividing proposals among different reviews, no longer comprehensive in any meaningful sense.

The Deputies Committee waited three months before discussing the terrorism review, and then Pentagon officials, specifically Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz, tried to turn the focus to Iraq. Scheduling problems were blamed for the delay. When the reviews were completed over the summer of 2001, scheduling intervened again—officials’ summer vacations were more important than pushing a terrorism policy up to the president. Mark that. The end result was that a policy proposal only reached the NSC Principals days before 9/11, and the finished directive landed on George Bush’s desk just 24 hours before the attacks. That same day, Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft zeroed out proposals to up the FBI’s counter-terrorism budget. The priorities were clearly not terrorism.

SNIP...

Is it really credible that Rice would not remember events about which she testified, gave press conferences, and which resulted in Federal Aviation Administration threat advisories? Most significantly, it was in this context that officials’ summer vacations were more important than hammering out a policy directive on terrorism. Stephen Hadley, Rice’s deputy at the NSC and now her successor, was the man who chaired the Deputies Committee and failed to do the hammering. Ashcroft apparently thought the warnings solid enough to stop flying on commercial airliners, but not to increase the FBI’s counter-terrorism budget.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/05/rices_lost_credibility.php


CONTINUED...

Thanks for giving a damn, texpatriot2004. The Truth has these bums on the run.

[Nothing Without Hope]

29. K & R - puts it all together. One more piece: if they get just one more

judge onto the Supreme Court, the dictatorship of Bush through the "unitary executive principle" and the destruction of the Constitution will be "LEGALIZED" with a 5-4 vote when challenged. We're holding on by a fingernail. Never has it been more important to get a majority vote in the Senate. And remember, some "Democrats" - and not just Lieberman - voted to confirm Alito, with his known position supporting a "unitary executive," and would presumably do so again. Here is the infamous Senate roll call vote on Alito's confirmation:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00001

THAT'S their goal: "legalized" dictatorship with no recourse, and they're so very close to achieving it. Just ONE MORE SCOTUS JUDGE.



Edited to add: One more thing: the continual emergence of new scandals tends to strengthen my strong suspicion that one of the holds on the bushies' corrupt accomplices on all levels is highly organized BLACKMAIL. Surely collecting damaging evidence has been one of the main uses of the huge spying network? "Toe our line or have your career ruined." With a bunch as dirty as these are, it would be very easy to set up. They have the files of damaging information and they own the Justice Department and indeed all federal investigation agencies and can manipulate the compliant press to promote whatever end they desire. Information is power, all right. I'm actually wondering if Foley's and Ney's exposures might be deliberate at some level, to intimidate others into utter submission. And Hastert's too? (I also have a sort-of/shaky/maybe memory of Ney actually standing up to the Administration on some issue just before his downfall, but I can't recall on what issue - the war? global warming? something else? - and I may be misremembering. Does anyone else recall anything like this?)

[AntiFascist]

36. Ney lobbied to relax sanctions against Iran...

and the thinking is that the neocons wanted him out of the way:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_W._Ney

Corrupt actions to aid airplane sale to Iran

In January 2006, Newsweek reported that Ney's lawyer confirmed that federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records on an expenses paid February 2003 trip to London that Ney and a top aide took. The trip was paid for by "Nigel Winfield, a thrice-convicted felon who ran a company in Cyprus called FN Aviation. Winfield was seeking to sell U.S.-made airplane spare parts to the Iranian government—a deal that would have needed special permits because of U.S. sanctions against Tehran," and that "Ney personally lobbied the then Secretary of State Colin Powell to relax U.S. sanctions on Iran." <55> (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10857676/site/newsweek/).

Ney's plea agreement cites a "foreign businessman," who was identified by the Associated Press as Fouad al-Zayat. Al-Zayat is a Syrian-born partner in the Cyprus-based FN Aviation company, which also has offices in London. Al-Zayat is apparently a prominent gambler in Britian nicknamed "The Fat Man." <56> (http://www.forbes.com/infoimaging/feeds/ap/2006/09/15/ap3020959.html) <57> (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ney-fact-basis/?resultpage=3&) Al-Zayat had been trying to sell U.S.-made airplanes and airplane parts to Iran and, through FN Aviation, hired two DC-based lobbyists to seek an exemption from the Iran arms embargo to allow the sale and to gain a visa to enter the U.S. <58> (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ney-fact-basis/?resultpage=3&) <59> (http://www.forbes.com/infoimaging/feeds/ap/2006/09/15/ap3020959.html)

there were also rumors that Ney played a role with the CIA as a backchannel to Tehran and had been exposed to the same information as Plame and Brewster Jennings, which made him dangerous.

"The reasons for the mystery surrounding Ney's Middle East interlocutors are that they point to high-level corruption within the Bush Justice Department -- corruption that is tied to covering up the role of U.S. and Russian Mafia state and non-state players in assisting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East and South Asia. The Syrian, Fouad al Zayat, whose Larnaca-based company, FN Aviation (later changed to FAZ Aviation), is based in Russian-Israeli mobbed-up Cyprus and has an office in London, is known as a high-rolling gambler called "The Fat Man" in London gambling parlors. The London gambling dens are known to act as major money laundering enterprises for arms smugglers and other mob activities."

[Nothing Without Hope]

45. Thanks. So Ney had to be discredited and removed from the Administration

He's corrupt to the core and has done much damage to our country, but it's been striking that, unlike so many others, he was actually prosecuted and some of his wrong-doings publicized in the Poodle Press.

[Octafish]

46. Foley, a Bush family friend since the early 1980s

I haven't liked SCOTUS since Thurgood Marshall passed.

Here's something Bush wants to keep from his base:

Foley, a Bush family friend since the early 1980s

WotIsItGoodFor
Friday, October 13, 2006

* this from the Miami Herald, 2005, is something i haven't seen reported of late:
"Hours before the House vote, President Bush called Foley, a Bush family friend since the early 1980s, and asked for his support."

* update: here's Bush, Oct 04:
"I want to thank my friend, Congressman Mark Foley, for joining us today."
FTR, this isn't boilerplate language, he's only used the phrase "I want to thank my friend, Congressman" seven times according to whitehouse.gov. (and 4 times with "Senator")

* and here's Laura Bush, Oct 04 (different event, different day): "
Congressman Mark Foley, thank you very, very much. Thank you for being here with me, and thank you for your service to your constituents and for your friendship. (Applause.)"

* updating again. Palm Beach Post :
(Jeb) Bush and Foley have exchanged about 100 electronic messages since 1999, according to documents Bush's office released Wednesday evening....

The e-mails show a friendly relationship between Foley and Bush, in contrast to Bush's recent characterization of Foley's behavior as "despicable" and "disgusting."

SOURCE: http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2006/10/foley-bush-family-friend-since-early.html

[robertpaulsen]

31. Thanks for putting things in perspective, Octafish!

Remember, Conyers has been chomping at the bit over the Downing Street Memos. Once we take Congress back, he will conduct a complete and thorough investigation of all of the BFEE crimes that occurred under Dumbya's watch.

If we can bring these bastards to justice on our own, maybe that will inspire the international community to bring these archcriminals to The Hague where they belong for the genocide of 600,000 and counting that is happening in Iraq.

[Octafish]

49. 655,000 Dead: Reporting the Reporting

Thanks for all the real work you've done in this fight, Robert-san.

DUer BurtWorm brought this to my attention. Burt and Alterman wonder where the shame is in this country.

Don't know where the shame is in others. I do know where the blame lies.

655,000 Dead: Reporting the Reporting

By Eric Alterman

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Bush's lies have killed not 30,000 innocent Iraqis, as the president not long ago estimated, but nearly 22 times that amount, or 655,000. Neither the Pentagon, nor much of the mainstream media have made much attempt to make their own counts -- it's just not that important to anyone.

So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings, based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing? The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849 Iraqi families -- 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims -- and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.

Well, Greg Mitchell has written two columns on the topic for Editor & Publisher and he finds, here and here, that:

* The Associated Press casts a very skeptical eye on the study, emphasizing the views of one "expert" Anthony Cordesman, (as the AP describes him) who charges that it is nothing but "politics," with the November election approaching.

* The Washington Post, meanwhile, interviewed Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years. He called the Johns Hopkins survey method "tried and true" and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

* Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, told the Post, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

* Frank Harrell Jr., chairman of the biostatistics department at Vanderbilt University, told the Associated Press the study incorporated "rigorous, well-justified analysis" of the data.

* Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report, told The Christian Science Monitor: "That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it."

* The sampling "is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets," said John Zogby, whose polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began. "It is what people in the statistics business do." Zogby said similar survey methods have been used to estimate casualty figures in other conflicts, such as Darfur and the Congo.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-alterman/655000-dead-reporting-t_b_32041.html

Thanks also for giving a damn. You've no idea how much your support means.

[reprehensor]

33. Crush them like bugs.

Squish.

www.911blogger.com

[Octafish]

50. Republican$ still in bed with Foley

Love the imagery, reprehensor. Couldn't happen to a lower class of criminal.

REPUBLICANS STILL IN BED WITH FOLEY

Disgraced GOP Congressman Mark Foley doesn't have many friends left -- except for his House colleagues and other Republicans to whom he has given nearly $800,000 in political contributions.

As the Center for Responsive Politics points out: "At the center of an online sex scandal involving teenage pages, Rep. Mark Foley is the latest disgraced member of Congress to see his contributions to other candidates turn politically radioactive. In the wake of the Florida Republican's resignation from the House of Representatives last week, other politicians have said they will get rid of at least $20,000 they received from Foley.

Foley's campaign and political action committee have contributed about $190,000 to more than 100 other Republicans since his first contributions in 1995, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. (He was elected to the House in 1994.) But Foley has given far more money in that time - $550,000, including $100,000 this past July - to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

NRCC chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) was among the first House members alerted when reports surfaced in 2005 of Foley's questionable e-mails with a 16-year-old former page, news accounts have said. Critics of the House leadership's handling of the Foley matter have questioned why Reynolds was told before board members overseeing the page program. According to CRP, Foley is ranked 23rd among the 27 politicians contributing more than $100,000 toward the Reynolds-led effort this year to maintain the Republicans' majority in the House.

A number of Republican candidates who have received money from Foley's leadership PAC and campaign committee have said they will donate the money to charity or return it. The top individual recipient of Foley's money is Rep. Heather Wilson, who is in a tight race this year in New Mexico. She has received $8,000 from Foley. The #2 recipient is Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who is leaving Congress after admitting to taking bribes from lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates. Ney received $6,000 from Foley.

CONTINUED...

http://www.americasdemocrats.org/republican_outrage.cfm

Cock-a-roaches. They scatter and hide when the lights come on.

[Initech]

34. Send the BFEE to the deepest depths of hell

They should not be running our country. They should all be behind bars, each and every one of them. Yes, that includes the criminal mastermind himself - Poppy.

[Octafish]

51. No Mushroom Clouds, Rice?

They appear to be traitors.

No Mushroom Clouds, Rice?

M.J. Akbar, [email protected]

EXCERPT...

Kim Jong Il, the not-so-mad dictator of North Korea, tests a nuclear device, his officials immediately begin threatening to use it, and President George W. Bush, the famed seeker of weapons of mass destruction, says that America’s “commander in chief must try all diplomatic measures before we commit our military”. Is this the same man who refused to give the United Nations time for more diplomacy, the weapons inspectors time for more probing and started a catastrophic war that has taken more than half a million lives in search of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who foresaw mushroom clouds in Iraq, grits her teeth in her best schoolmistress manner and threatens severe sanctions against North Korea. Is this the same administration that spat on sanctions as a pathetic UN-type wobbly-knee answer to dictators and demons?

Is this the Bush-Rice partnership that keeps threatening to go to war against Iran for enriching uranium — and urging multilateral talks when North Korea becomes a nuclear military power? Or shall we put it another way: In Bush’s mind, nuclear North Korea can be trusted because it is not a Muslim country and Iraq and Iran could not be and cannot be trusted because they are Muslim nations?

SNIP...

There is a simple explanation for what North Korea has done. It has called George Bush’s bluff. Three years ago Bush was not bluffing at the nuclear poker game. He had the strongest hand in the world, by all rules of this game an almost invincible hand. The United States had unquestioned military supremacy, in addition to the most powerful economy. One mistake, wrought by hubris, the stamp of one defect, has shackled American military’s ability and released competing powers to pursue paths that are alternative, if not hostile, to America’s.

It is foolish to think that North Korea was acting, or could have acted, alone. North Korea is a helpless non-entity without China’s support. China has been brilliant in the pursuit of its geopolitical interests while Bush rushed into Mission Self-Destruct. Look at the map of Asia . The two nations that can challenge China’s hegemony in Asia are Japan and India. China’s formal relations with both are worth of a place in the United Nations statute book. It talks trade and peace with India, raising border problems only when it seems that a problem-free relationship is too artificial a construct. Similarly, it talks trade and peace with Japan, dusting out memories of World War II only when it seems that a problem-free relationship is ahistorical.

CONTINUED...

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=88244&d=15&m=10&y=2006

China, a place of big Bush Crime Family business -- Unka Prescott was head of US-China Chamber of Commerce.

[chill_wind]

37. I live for the eventual justice. I really do.

And I hope every elected Dem will be comitted to it. Any one of them that balk or refuse to take a meaningul position when the day comes desrves to be purged from their seats and from our representation with a vengeance.

[Octafish]

52. Rice Cooker

There's plenty of blame to go around, so much so it'd be near-impossible to keep track without computers.

Rice Cooker

By Christopher Beam
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006, at 6:41 PM ET

Bloggers weigh Condoleezza Rice's claim that she doesn't remember a key 2001 meeting with George Tenet. They also predict ripples from Rep. Mark Foley's indiscretion.

Rice cooker: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has vehemently denied claims that CIA Director George Tenet warned her in July 2001 of an impending attack on the United States, as described in Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial. Transcripts of Tenet's 9/11 Commission testimony have since confirmed that the meeting took place, although commission members didn't recall being told. Bloggers' lie detectors are abuzz.

Simon Rosenberg at progressive NDN thinks Condi's "don't recall" excuse is the last straw: " response is so insulting, full of lies and ass-covering that she must resign." Independent Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice writes that the latest report "confirms that (a) the warnings were given and (b) Ms. Rice perhaps needs to take a few herbs for her memory."

Conservative McQ at QandO argues that Tenet's warning may not have been so different from past briefings: "Bin Laden was gearing up for another attack. What's new? WTC, embassies, Cole, Kobar Towers. He'd already done it 4 times previously that we know of. There should be no reason to suspect, given his success on 3 of the 4, that he wouldn't attack again." Anderson at Thus Blogged Anderson agrees: "(I)t's far from demonstrated that Tenet said anything to her about an attack inside the U.S. (as opposed to an attack on assets outside the U.S., as with the African embassies and the Cole)."

Prominent liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias underhandedly gives Condoleezza the benefit of the doubt: "But maybe she forgot. Maybe this is just a government composed of extraodinarily thoughtless people who never took a minute to look back at their pre-9/11 behavior and see if anything might have gone wrong. Maybe she's not lying and she's just incredibly irresponsible."

9/11 Commission members have said Tenet never gave them the impression he felt "brushed off" by Rice, and Tenet has since challenged Woodward on that point. Liberal Craig at Donkey Path points out that Tenet had every reason to paint Condi's response in a positive light before to the 9/11 Commission: "(H)e was still very interested in keeping his job … I'm sure it was quite a balancing act for administration figures to testify that they were paying attention to terrorism at the same time that they avoided blaming other administration figures for their lapses."

CONTINUED...

http://www.slate.com/id/2150941/?nav=fix

When the facts are in, the calculus becomes: Indict. Convict. Imprison.

[glitch]

39. The tragedy-farce of the BFEE. Who will be the Joseph Heller, or Ken Kesey

to write their lurid saga? (no offense to Kitty Kelly or Kevin Phillips)

[Octafish]

55. No one wants the job as it makes those who try dead.

Remember James Hatfield? Author of "The Unauthorized Biography of George W Bush," he was found suicided a couple weeks after this piece was published in July 2001:

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

I knew that bombshell would whip your heads around. So here's the straight scoop, folks.

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

Another person is Mark Lombardi, who detailed BFEE social network diagrams, including ones describing the same relationship as Hatfield above: Bush - Bath - bin Laden. Lombardi was found suicided in summer 2000.





Danny Casolaro and Gary Webb are just two others.

These are real patriots.

[Old and In the Way]

40. Condi's the weak link......put her under oath and a serious investigation

with a threat of serious jail time if she perjure's herself....and she sings the complete Cheney-Bush catalog of Egregious Hits. Then the dark history of the BFEE is exposed for all to see. No more faux investigations, run by faux Democrats like Lee Hamilton, for public show.

Great thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

48. She'd sing like a canary.

Then she'd cry like a baby.

So would Shrubler.

Back when Condescenda went before the 911 Omission, she seemed pretty nervous:

In rush to defend White House, Rice trips over own words

Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Friday, March 26, 2004

(03-26) 04:00 PDT Washington -- This week's testimony and media blitz by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has returned unwanted attention to his former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The refusal by President Bush's top security aide to testify publicly before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks elicited rebukes by commission members as they held open hearings this week. Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor Bush named to be chairman of the commission, said: "I think this administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public."

At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before Sept. 11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats. And Rice's assertion this week that Bush had told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she had retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.

National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack defended many of Rice's assertions, saying that she had been more consistent than Clarke.

SNIP...

In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."

CONTINUED...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/26/MNGSR5RPMV1.DTL

Wonder what she'd be like if she was going to be asked some questions based on what we now know?

She'd drop a dime on the whole bloody lot of them: Liars. Cheats. Thieves. Murderers. Warmongers. Traitors.

Thanks for standing up to them, Old and In the Way-san.

[lonestarnot]

47. Hell yeah! Always love an Octafish post! Thanks Fish!

:P

[Octafish]

57. Hey, lonestarnot! Didya hear the thugs are talking about gay marriage?

Not that gay marriage isn't an important issue, but it's not what's ripping this country apart. Incompetent gangsters, at best, traitors, most likely are.

Thanks for giving a damn. Truly appreciate your Friendship.

[G_j]

53. great

selection there!

saving...

[Karenina]

56. HI G_j!!!

:hi: