Blow jobs are so totally worse than murder

Americablog is ON this weekend. They've posted a full transcript of this editorial by The Washington Post, and I am inspired to do the same.

I really wonder how big and horrible the lies have to get before this administration is finally taken to task for everything it is has done to undermine the credibility of our country. How many people have to die? How much more like the terrorists do we have to become? I mean, pardon me for breaking out in to Peter, Paul and Mary here, but come on!

So please read this. And e-mail it or link it to everyone you know, especially anyone who is still planning on voting for Bush. Then send them over here, and have them explain to me why this man and his cronies should still be running my country. I want a rational, educated, informed and completly serious argument as to why Bush is a good president. I don't want to start an argument but I really just want to know what the reasons are. Please, someone tell me why this man should still be president after everything that has happened.

And now, on to the story...

The Homicide Cases
Friday, May 28, 2004; Page A22

PRESIDENT BUSH'S persistence in describing the abuse of foreign prisoners as an isolated problem at one Iraqi prison is blatantly at odds with the facts seeping out from his administration. These include mounting reports of crimes at detention facilities across Iraq and Afghanistan and evidence that detention policies the president approved helped set the stage for torture and homicide. Yes, homicide: The most glaring omission from the president's account is that at least 37 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that at least 10 of these cases are suspected criminal killings of detainees by U.S. interrogators or soldiers.

The deaths reveal much about the true nature of the still-emerging prisoner scandal. First, only a minority of them occurred at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad; nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred elsewhere. Second, the administration has done its best to cover up the killings: They have been reported only after news of them leaked to the media, and details about most of them are still undisclosed.

No one has been criminally charged in any of the cases, even though some date to December 2002. Investigations have been shoddy and secretive. And no senior officer or administration official has accepted responsibility or been held accountable for allowing unlawful killings to take place under his or her command. Had it not been for the leak of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, which record less serious crimes, it is probable that none of the deaths in Iraq would have become public knowledge.

Take the case of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, the former chief of Iraqi air defenses, who died Nov. 26 at a detention facility at Al Qaim, northwest of Baghdad. After his death the Pentagon released a statement reporting that "it appeared Mowhoush died of natural causes." That was a lie. In fact, according to an autopsy report, Gen. Mowhoush died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression." According to documents first obtained by the Denver Post, two soldiers slid a sleeping bag over him and rolled him repeatedly from his back to his stomach; one then sat on his chest and covered his mouth. Only after the Denver Post's report last week did the Pentagon acknowledge the truth and say that a homicide investigation was underway.

Or take the case of two Afghan detainees who died at Bagram airbase in December 2002. In March 2003 the New York Times reported that their deaths had been ruled homicides; only then did the Pentagon say that an investigation was underway. But no further information became available about the case until this month, when the Times learned that the prisoners died while being interrogated by personnel from the same intelligence unit that later served at Abu Ghraib. After 17 months, no one has been charged or otherwise held responsible for the deaths, nor are Pentagon officials able to plausibly explain why there has been no conclusion to the investigation.

Nine of the 10 homicides acknowledged by the Pentagon occurred "either before or during interrogation sessions that may have led to the detainee's death," a senior official told a briefing last week. Those interrogations were conducted by various units; at least one was in the hands of the CIA. But all were operating under loosened rules for interrogations developed at the Pentagon after 2001, after Mr. Bush's decision that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to detainees in Afghanistan. Techniques approved for use, such as sensory deprivation and shackling, played a role in several of the homicides. For example, a detainee named Abdul Jaleel, held by Special Forces in Asad, Iraq, died on Jan. 11 after he was gagged and shackled by his hands to the top of his door cell.

It is horrifying to contemplate that U.S. interrogators have tortured and killed foreign prisoners and that their superiors have ignored or covered up their crimes -- and yet that is where the available facts point. Pentagon officials say they will pursue investigations vigorously and that those guilty of crimes will be brought to justice. It is essential to the preservation of this country's fundamental values that they do so. It is essential also to examine the consequences in the field of policy decisions made by the most senior officials in Washington. But the sorry record of the Bush administration -- and the president's own refusal to speak the truth about it -- suggests that justice will require vigorous and sustained intervention by outside parties, beginning with Congress.

It's more of a light organgish color, maybe like orange sherbet or sorbet. Peachy, maybe?

Why, exactly, does Ashcroft still have his job?

Gacked from Americablog:

Terror threat source called into question:
Ashcroft cites al-Qaida plan, but how credible is the information

Choice bits:

“This particular group is not really taken seriously by Western intelligence,” said terrorism expert M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, an international policy assessment group. “It does not appear to have any real field operational capability. But it is certainly part of the global jihad movement — part of its propaganda wing, if you like. It likes to weave a web of lies; it likes to put out disinformation so that the truth is deeply buried. So it is a dangerous group in that sense, but it is not taken seriously in terms of its operational capability.”

So basically, they are like that Iraqi information minister we so enjoyed making fun of when the war started.

“The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington,” said expert Roger Cressey, former chief of staff of the critical infrastructure protection board at the White House and now an analyst for NBC News. Cressey also served as deputy to former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.

*snerk*

A senior U.S. intelligence official previously told NBC News that this group has no known operational capability and may be no more than one man with a fax machine.

Ahhhhhhhh! Terrorist fax-spam!! Run for your lives!

Friday, Ashcroft's spokesman blamed the FBI, and the FBI admitted claims that terrorists were 90 percent ready to attack came not from al-Qaida, but from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades’ statements.

I love how no one claims responsibility for ANYTHING in this fucking administration. If you were sure the FBI had it right, WHY DID YOU HAVE A FUCKING PRESS CONFERENCE?!?!? Take a day or two to verify what you are saying, Asshat. Oh, right, you don't need to do that because as long as you can fool a few incredibly stupid and paranoid citizens, your work is done. And it's not like you will ever have to answer for your lies and misdirection, just like every other Bush cronie.

Senior intelligence and homeland security officials tell NBC News they were surprised by Ashcroft's claims and know of no credible intelligence that al-Qaida is 90 percent ready to attack. But all agree there is plenty of credible intelligence that al-Qaida has plans in the works, and they hope Ashcroft's use of questionable information doesn’t undermine public trust.

Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge issued an unusual joint statement Friday, assuring the American people that “we are working together" against terror. Some critics have suggested there's a disconnect, that the Justice Department did not collaborate with Homeland Security before issuing this week's terror warning.

These fucks wouldn't know credibility if it bit them on the ass. And please! They are working together? Maybe they should have thought about all this before the conflicting press conferences.

These people are responsible for the SAFETY of our NATION! And it doesn't matter how many times they screw up, they continue to hold their jobs. I know the theory is that making a change in the middle of a crisis is a risky thing to do but COME ON! There is obviously a giant power struggle going on between the FBI, the Justice Department and the Office of Homeland Security and it needs to be fixed NOW.

Feed me

Testing 1-2-11.

237 is the loneliest number

Iraq on the Record: a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice.

Rock the fuck on, Rep. Henry A. Waxman!

I'll post this choice one, since it was said on my 27th birthday:

Statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
"[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."
Source: Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Senate Armed Services Committee (9/19/2002).

Explanation: This statement was misleading because it suggested that Iraq posed an urgent threat despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community had deep divisions and divergent points of view regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. As Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet noted in February 2004, "Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs and those debates were spelled out in the Estimate. They never said there was an 'imminent' threat."

Jump ahead two years, and you get this:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
“Well, you’re the – you and a few other critics are the only people I’ve heard use the phrase ‘immediate threat.’ I didn’t. The president didn’t. And it’s become kind of folklore that that’s – that’s what’s happened."
Face the Nation, CBS (Mar. 14, 2004).

Go play! It's fun! Type in Saddam and see how many times they state he has ties to Al-Qaeda! Type in "chemical and biological weapons" and read the FIFTY EIGHT statements about Iraq's "Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Activity Programs", of which we have found not one single shred of evidence. What about that sarin gas, you may ask. Oh, did the Bushies not mention that they tested to be manufactured before 1991, which of course means Rumsfeld probably brought it over to Saddam himself.

Pay no attention the monkey behind the curtain while I raise the terror alert to Yellower

What kind of moron breaks laws he fucking helped CREATE and then acts like he did nothing wrong?

Oh. Right. The ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. That's one special kind of moron, y'all.

My favorite part of the article....

Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Bush administration rules, only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can publicly issue threat warnings, and they must be approved in a complex interagency process involving the White House. Administration officials sympathetic to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said he was not informed Ashcroft was going to characterize the threat in that way -- an assertion that Justice officials deny.

Um. Is any one else a little nervous about the fact that the people who are supposed to keep us safe have NO EARTHLY idea about what each other are doing? Hellloooooooooooooooooo?

I mean, I think both of them are assholes, okay? But Asscroft is the surpreme RULER of assholes. It's just another incident that shows the arrogance and lack of respect this administration thrives on. Why in the world would Ridge have a press conference and say what he did if he knew Ashcroft was going to come out the next day and say something different? And the fact that the HEAD OF HOMELAND SECURITY was not invited to Asscroft's little spin stunt press conference makes his denial of the DHS claims he acted without their knowledge just ridiculous. They honestly believe they can get away with anything. And the sad thing? THEY DO!

HATE! THOUSAND BURNING SUNS!

You say tomato, I say grapefruit

I know Salon isn't exactly a bastion of objectivity, but I still find this article interesting. I'll post the full text in a cut so you don't have to look at the goofy commerical to read it.

Washington's Chalabi nightmare: One more headache for the besieged Bush administration: The FBI is now interrogating the neocon cronies of Ahmed Chalabi.
by Sidney Blumenthal

May 27, 2004 | At a well-appointed conservative think tank in downtown Washington and across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the U.S. government and military?

The Iraqi neocon favorite, tipped to lead his liberated country post-invasion, has been identified by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency as an Iranian double agent, passing secrets to that citadel of the "axis of evil" for decades. All the while the neocons cosseted, promoted and arranged for more than $30 million in Pentagon payments to the George Washington manqué of Iraq. In return, he fed them a steady diet of disinformation, and in the run-up to the war he sent various exiles to nine nations' intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. If the administration had wanted other material to provide a rationale for invasion, no doubt that would have been fabricated. Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse or he was the agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.

The CIA and other U.S. agencies had long ago decided that Chalabi was a charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis of his lies prompted their suppression by the Bush White House. In place of the normal channels of intelligence vetting, a jury-rigged system was hastily constructed, running from the office of the vice president to the newly created Office of Special Plans inside the Pentagon, staffed by fervent neocons. CIA Director George Tenet, possessed with the survival instinct of the inveterate staffer, ceased protecting the sanctity of his agency and cast in his lot with Cheney et al. Secretary of State Colin Powell, resistant internally but eventually overcome, decided to become the most ardent champion, unveiling a series of neatly manufactured lies before the United Nations. Last week Powell declared, "It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that I'm disappointed, and I regret it." But who had "deliberately" misled him? He did not say. Now the FBI is investigating espionage, fraud and by implication treason.

A former staff member of the Office of Special Plans and a currently serving defense official, two of those said to be questioned by the FBI, are considered witnesses, at least for now. Higher figures are under suspicion. Were they witting or unwitting? If those who are being questioned turn out to be misleading, they can be charged ultimately with perjury and obstruction of justice. For them, the Watergate principle applies: It's not the crime, it's the coverup.

The espionage investigation into the neocons' relationship with Chalabi is only one of the proliferating inquiries engulfing the Bush administration. In his speech to the Army War College on May 24, President Bush blamed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal on "a few American troops." In other words, there was no chain of command. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved a secretive policy calling for the use of harsh interrogation techniques in Iraq that had previously been used by the U.S. military on al-Qaida suspects in Afghanistan. The U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, reportedly briefed on the torture, has been summarily relieved without another posting. (There goes the Hispanic vote.)

The trials and investigations surrounding Abu Ghraib raise the question of whether it was an extension of the far-flung gulag, built after Sept. 11, that has been operating outside the Geneva Conventions. Documents have surfaced showing that the office of legal counsel in the Justice Department created the rationale for breaking out of the Geneva Conventions. Those memos were reflected in a memo to the president from the White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, calling the conventions "quaint." Such memos are not spontaneously generated, autonomous pieces of paper, but produced as part of an elaborate process that almost certainly involves in the end a presidential finding: that is, a signed directive authorizing special operations or secret action. Will the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is investigating, now demand to see that finding, establishing the president as having approved the policy?

The fallout from the Chalabi affair has also implicated the nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times, which published on Wednesday an apology for running numerous stories containing disinformation that emanated from Chalabi and those in the Bush administration funneling his fabrications. The Washington Post, which published editorials and several columnists trumpeting Chalabi's talking points, has yet to acknowledge the extent to which it was deceived.

Washington, which was just weeks ago in the grip of neoconservative orthodoxy and absolute belief in Bush's inevitability and righteousness, is now in the throes of agonizing events and being ripped apart by investigations. Things fall apart; all that was hidden is revealed; all sacred exposed as profane: the military, loyal and lumbering, betrayed and embittered; the general in the field, Lt. Gen. Sanchez, disgraced and cashiered; and the most respected retired generals training their artillery on those who have ill-used the troops, still dying in the field; the intelligence agencies, a nautilus of chambers, abused and angry, its retired operatives plying their craft with the press corps, seeping dangerous truths; the press, hesitatingly and wobbly, investigating its own falsehoods; the neocons, publicly redoubling their passionate intensity, defending their hero and deceiver Chalabi, privately squabbling, anxiously awaiting the footsteps of FBI agents; Colin Powell, once the most acclaimed man in America, embarked on an endless quest to restore his reputation, damaged above all by his failure of nerve; everyone in the line of fire motioning toward the chain of command, spiraling upward and sideways, until the finger pointing in a phalanx is directed at the hollow crown.


And in an effort to be fair and balanced, I searched *shudder* Fox News *shudder* to see what the other side had to say about the issue. And yes, I had to search for anything on him because, well, it's not really big news, right? It's not like the guy might have sold secrets to China or anything.

Right. Anyway. Here is what the dark other side has to say:

Transcript of a report by Brit Hume
JIM ANGLE, GUEST-HOST "Now, obviously, we'll get to the investigation in a minute, and there are a lot of allegations about corruption. But I think we should say at the outset, he does deserve some credit for having been in the wilderness all those years, fighting and trying to organize defense Saddam Hussein."

DENNIS ROSS, FMR. U.S. ENVOY "Well, there's no question that he was a focal point of resistance to Saddam on the outside. He organized not just the United States, but also many around the world to focus on the evils of the regime, the need to take it on. Some people now want to say he fed us a lot of bad intelligence. In the end, you can't blame him for the bad intelligence. You know, the fact of the matter is we had to evaluate it."

ANGLE: Right. And a lot of peep -- people do say that he saved a lot of lives.

ROSS: I suspect that certainly is the case. If he is the one who helped to produce the change, which in some sense, I'd think you'd have to say that probably is the case, there are a lot of people who are alive today who might not have been alive were it not for him.

*blink* There are so many things I could say here. He was organizing with IRAN! You know, those dudes we invaded and shit? That we have, like, economic sanctions against and therefore cannot translate their poetry?

Some people say he fed us bad intelligence? Like, you know, some losers and shit who hate America. And who, exactly, CAN we blame for the bad intelligence? None of the people who used it as justification for war, that's for sure.

Those people are on TELEVISION, while I sit in my cubicle. That is so wrong, yo.

She's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

Testing 1-2-3