letters nobody will print

FEMA & Formaldehyde, Part 2

2008-02-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

CDC Confirms Health Risks to Occupants of Trailers

I remembering writing something about this...on 07/22/07. Maybe that suggests how long it takes a serious health hazard to poor people to get in the MSM: almost seven months.

Anybody But Obama!

2008-01-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

Obama: GOP was the "party of ideas" during past decade

According to Barack Obama, Republicans have been "the party of ideas" over the last ten to fifteen years because they were "challenging conventional wisdom."

"Obama's narrative about Ronald Reagan's presidency stars a government grown out of control, and a populace eager to emerge from two decades of social unrest. Against that backdrop, Reagan rose to victory by uniting the country behind his optimism and delivering transformative change."

Bleh. What planet does Obama live on? When I read this a few minutes ago I realized that he had played me, and millions of others. I feel a little queasy. I'm going to vote for Dennis Kucinich, who of course has no chance...but nothing I can do will matter. At least I can say I tried to do the right thing.

Nominate Obama

2007-09-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

Grim Old Party
By Steve Benen
Posted September 4th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

It’s not a bad landscape, is it? The Republicans have a huge field of unimpressive candidates; Dems have a smaller field of top-flight candidates; GOP voters are dejected; and Dems are thrilled to have so many strong choices.

*********************

I just thought of another reason for the Democrats to nominate Obama instead of Hillary. Without a focus for their hatred, the Republicans will be more than just demoralized. They will be immobilized by confusion.

Americans Have No Shame.

2007-08-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

AN APPEALING CHINESE IMPORT: ACCOUNTABILITY

Should Leaders Who Ruin Lives Go Unpunished?

Zhang was co-owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, the Chinese company that made toys for Mattel using toxic levels of lead paint. Mattel issued a recall expected to cost the company in the neighborhood of $30 million.

Poor guy--he probably didn't even know the paint his workers were slathering on nearly a million toys for preschoolers was dangerous. "The boss and the company were harmed by the paint supplier, the closest friend of our boss," reported the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper.

"It is not uncommon for Chinese executives to commit suicide after suffering damage to their reputation," noted the UK Telegraph.

Zhang's death followed the July execution of Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, head of China's State Food and Drug Administration from 1994 to 2005. Zheng was convicted of accepting $850,000 in bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies in exchange for approving fake and substandard drugs. An antibiotic involved in the case killed at least 10 people.

The Xinhua news agency didn't say how Zheng was killed, but most Chinese executions are carried out with a single gunshot to the back of the head. Shortly afterward a policeman notifies the condemned man's family by presenting them with a bill for the cost of the bullet.

Now that's accountability. Can we import some of that too?

The late Mssrs. Zhang and Zheng oversaw corruption and incompetence that pales next to catastrophes for which no American has yet been held to account. Thousands died in hurricane Katrina because officials all the way up to George "Heckuva job, Brownie!" Bush made a conscious decision not to help. Two years later, what's left of New Orleans is dying, murdered by an appalling political calculus: It is (was) black. It was Democratic. Shouldn't government officials face a firing squad for killing a major city?

Waziristan, Pakistan, Bin Laden and Nukes

2007-08-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

My husband just complained to me that Barack Obama is getting on the Go After The Terrorists bandwagon, which in my husband's opinion shows him to be just another opportunist, saying whatever will grab a few swing votes.

I pointed out to my husband that John Kerry during the 2004 campaign also urged pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, in the places where Osama Bin Laden hides, and that Obama's stance is not different.

And then I explained to my politically naive husband that there are problems nobody talks about in public. Everybody who was really paying attention knew in 2001 that the Taliban in Afghanistan had support in the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, and would take refuge there. All you had to do to know that was read Pepe Escobar's columns in Asia Times Online.

The US can't find Osama Bin Laden, and the US can't attack in the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan, because most Pakistanis are sympathetic to Bin Laden. If such an attack were made Musharraf's military dictarship would be overthrown...and atomic weapons, large ones, would be in the hands of Bin Laden.

British source tells of betrayal to CIA

2007-07-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Revealed: MI5's role in torture flight hell

David Rose
Sunday July 29, 2007
The Observer

An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.

In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan.

FEMA and Formaldehyde: "More Research Is Needed"

2007-07-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

FEMA knew about toxic trailers

By Spencer S. Hsu

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane evacuees living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said Thursday.

A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency's lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.

Bush's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2007-05-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

Basking in schadenfreude, I haven't been reading the news carefully, but this hit me:

Bush's Texas Chainsaw Massacre
…Or The Clock Ticks for Thee (in Baghdad and Washington)
By Tom Engelhardt

It had taken much thought and planning that wartime May Day four years ago when George W. Bush co-piloted an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, had "embedded" himself on that aircraft carrier days before the President landed. Along with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and lighting specialist, and Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer, he had planned out every detail of the President's arrival -- as Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times put it then -- "even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the ‘Mission Accomplished' banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call ‘magic hour light,' which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush."

John Warner, Eloquent Statesman?

2007-01-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Excerpts From the Petraeus Hearing

"We're not a division here today of patriots who support the troops and those who are making statements and working on resolutions that could be translated as aiding and abetting the enemy. We're trying to exercise the fundamental responsibilities of our democracy." _ Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who sponsored a resolution disapproving the president's plan.

Maliki Disses Bush, Condi

2007-01-19T18:26:00.000-08:00

El premier iraquí dijo que Bush ya "perdió el control"

Inesperado y duro ataque del primer ministro de Irak, Nouri al Maliki, un aliado de EEUU, al presidente George W. Bush. "Me parece que Bush está capitulando bajo el peso de las presiones internas y es acosado por los medios de comunicación y los políticos. Quizás ha perdido el control de la situación", dijo en una entrevista al diario Corriere della Sera de Milán.

Lorenzo Cremonesi, el enviado del matutino de Milán, contó que la entrevista se celebró "en su oficina superforticada, en el corazón de la zona verde de Bagdad" controlada centímetro a centímetro por las fuerzas militares norteamericanas. "Nouri al Maliki ataca para defenderse de las crecientes críticas norteamericanas", explicó.

El primer ministro "no ha ahorrado palabras pesadas contra la administración Bush", comentó el enviado del diario italiano. El jefe del gobierno dijo: "Sé que hay una campaña de los medios de prensa en mi contra. Y comprendo que la actual administración norteamericana se encuentre en graves dificultades tras la derrota electoral de dos meses atrás. Nunca como ahora he advertido la debilidad de George Bush. Y lo lamento porque Bush en general tiene un carácter fuerte. Pero creo que ellos tienen más dificultades que nosotros aquí en Bagdad. Nuestro gobierno es capaz de funcionar mejor que tantos otros".

La secretaria de Estado norteamericana, Condoleezza Rice, declaró que el gobierno de Irak "está moribundo". El primer ministro Maliki responde. "Quisiera aconsejar a la señora Rice que evite declaraciones que pueden ayudar sólo a los terroristas. Ellos así se sienten más fuertes. Puedo agregar que quizás han derrotado a los norteamericanos, pero por cierto no al gobierno iraquí".

Castro Doesn't Have Cancer

2007-01-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

A pesar de las especulaciones Fidel Castro no padece cáncer

01/19/2007
Antonio Andraus

NUEVA YORK– “Los muertos que vos matáis… gozan de cabal salud…’’, como dice el refrán español y puede aplicarse estrictamente al estado de salud del mandatario cubano Fidel Castro.

Contra todos los pronósticos y especulaciones que no han creado ni científicos ni médicos, el eterno dictador de Cuba, no “padece una enfermedad terminal’’.

La información salió de boca del prestigioso médico José Luis García Sabrido, jefe de cirugía del hospital “Gregorio Marañón’’, de Madrid, España, luego de viajar hasta la isla antillana a practicarle varios exámenes al paciente de 80 años, tras solicitud del propio gobierno cubano.

Fidel Castro, que cedió el manejo férreo y gubernamental de la isla a su hermano Raúl, no ha aparecido en ningún acto público ni político, desde el 31 de julio del pasado año, cuando fue sometido a una severa y prolongada intervención quirúrgica intestinal, pero sí ha recibido visitas especiales y esporádicas de dirigentes políticos internacionales, como el presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías.

Para el distinguido galeno español García Sabrido, quien ejerce en el centro asistencial público madrileño, explicó que “hasta donde conozco la situación y el estado de salud de Fidel Castro, puedo asegurar que no padece enfermedad maligna alguna que se le haya detectado hasta el momento, y su proceso de recuperación está dentro de lo normal, dentro de un estado benigno pero con una serie de complicaciones que le prolongarán la convalescencia que está llevando a cabo’’.

García Sabrido, quien estuvo en La Habana, Cuba, el pasado 19 de diciembre, en una visita exclusiva al mandatario cubano, ya había concurrido a la isla caribeña en su calidad de conferenciante, al asistir al IX Congreso Internacional de Cirugía, que se efectuó en la capital cubana entre el 7 y el 10 de noviembre del pasado año.

El autorizado diagnóstico sobre el estado de salud del dirigente cubano por parte del galeno español, contradijo por completo las informaciones internacionales, por medio de las cuales varias publicaciones señalaban que padecía cáncer y en algunos otros medios, que sus días estuvieran contados.

Dos semanas antes de que se conociera el dictamen médico del doctor García Sabrido, el periódico “The Independent’’ de Gran Bretaña dijo en una de sus notas sobre su estado de salud, que “Fidel Castro lucha contra un cáncer terminal y podría morir antes de la Navidad venidera’’, porque aparentemente “se negaba a que le fueran practicadas sesiones de quimioterapia’’.

Mientras tanto, el director de Inteligencia de los Estados Unidos, John Negroponte, había sostenido el pasado 15 de diciembre a los periodistas que tienen a su cargo la cobertura de las informaciones de la Casa Blanca, que “todo lo que vemos sobre el estado de salud de Fidel Castro es que no hace falta mucho para su muerte, es cuestión de meses, no de años’’, lo cual podría ser cierto desde el punto de vista de edad y del cuadro clínico que tiene el mandatario cubano, pero alejado de la realidad sobre la inminencia de su fallecimiento como consecuencia de la intervención quirúrgica a la cual fue sometido y ante la posibilidad de que padezca cáncer.

García Sabrido explicó igualmente durante la conferencia de prensa que ofreció en Madrid, España, a su regreso de La Habana, para dar a conocer su opinión personal y científica sobre el estado de salud del mandatario caribeño que “me llamó poderosamente la atención su estado de ánimo, muy jovial por cierto, con gran sentido del humor y con su plena capacidad mental y espiritual de la que siempre ha hecho gala’’.

El distinguido médico español sostuvo que “me asombró su manera de actuar y de pensar, y mostró el dinamismo de un dirigente que tiene todavía muchas capacidades para afrontar sus labores habituales. Todo dependerá de él y de su proceso de recuperación que, desde luego, no será de un día para otro’’.

Al responder inquietudes políticas sobre su presencia en La Habana, el galeno García Sabrido explicó que antes que todo se debe a su profesión, al de ser médico, y por lo tanto, “aun cuando Fidel Castro es un paciente excepcional en el sentido de sus calidades políticas, nada tiene que ver con mi presencia en la capital cubana, pues al fin y al cabo es un paciente, y como tal, lo analicé, lo traté y por eso puedo ofrecer el dictamen médico que les he dado a conocer. Y les aseguro que por el momento, Fidel no tendrá que ser sometido a otra intervención quirúrgica ’’.

En Cuba, nadie habla de la situación clínica y de salud de Fidel Castro, porque la isla, hasta el momento, sigue funcionando dentro del régimen sin complicaciones de ninguna naturaleza, y una representación del Congreso de los Estados Unidos que visitó a la isla a mediados de diciembre pasado, observó con algunos buenos augurios que podrían limarse las asperezas que existen entre los dos gobiernos.

A pesar de esto, en la propia Cuba hay escepticismo sobre las condiciones de salud y de la vida de Fidel Castro… los vientos que soplan no son buenos… y mucho menos, los murmullos de las esquinas, en donde se habla de él como el hombre que ya fue…

Bush Will Attack Iran by April

2007-01-16T17:25:00.000-08:00

US military strike on Iran seen by April '07; Sea-launched attack to hit oil, N-sites

KUWAIT CITY: Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add. Recent statements emanating from the United States indicate the Bush administration's new strategy for Iraq doesn't include any proposal to make a compromise or negotiate with Syria or Iran. A reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

According to the source, Vice President Dick Cheney highlighted the threat posed by Iran to not only Saudi Arabia but the whole region. "Tehran is not playing politics. Iranian leaders are using their country's religious influence to support the aggressive regime's ambition to expand," the source quoted Dick Cheney as saying. Indicating participants of the meeting agreed to impose restrictions on the ambitions of Iranian regime before April 2007 without exposing other countries in the region to any danger, the source said "they have chosen April as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it will be the last month in office for him. The United States has to take action against Iran and Syria before April 2007."
_________________________

This sounds very plausible. It sounds like exactly Bush and Cheney would decide to do.

Saddam Hussein, Martyr

2007-01-06T23:53:00.000-08:00

We're Losing the Infowar

Residents of Fallujah—the target of a multimillion-dollar hearts-and-minds campaign—renamed the city's main thoroughfare the Street of the Martyr Saddam Hussein.

Israel Preparing to Nuke Iran

2007-01-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

Was this leaked to pressure the Iranians? Even if it was, that doesn't mean they won't do it.

Report: Israel Planning Nuke Raid on Iran Uranium Enrichment Sites

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Turkmenbashi's Death Could Lead to Another War

2006-12-27T12:17:00.000-08:00

OUR NEXT BIG MESS
by Ted Rall

NEW YORK--Chances are that you heard more about Rosie O'Donnell's flame
war with Donald Trump than the passing of Sapamurat "Turkmenbashi"
Niyazov. As seems to occur with increasing frequency, America's media
ignored the most important story of the year.

A handful of news outlets that bothered to cover the 66-year-old
dictator's death wallowed in the humor inherent in the extravagant
personality cult he built up after Turkmenistan gained independence
from the Soviet Union in 1991. Cannier obituary writers noted that the
Central Asian nation "contains many of the world's largest natural gas
fields, and provides gas to Russian and European countries." (Actually,
the largest. Period.) But they missed the main point of the story, one
with dramatic short-term consequences for Central Asia and breathtaking
dangers to the United States during the first half of the new century.

The Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and--until now--Turkmenistan are all being ruled by the same former
Communist Party bosses who ran them in Soviet times. Niyazov's death
marks the beginning of the end for the post-Soviet authoritarian order
and the beginning of a period of increasing instability, as foreign
powers attempt to monopolize access to oil and natural gas resources
and pipeline routes. Kazakhstan alone may possess more untapped oil
reserves than Saudi Arabia and Iraq combined, and the politics and
economies of the Central Asian republics are closely intertwined. What
is at stake is nothing less than the security and control of the world
economy.

Unless you were one of the five million desperately poor Turkmen
forced to watch while your desert nation's gas wealth was systemically
looted and squandered on such vanity projects as the gilt statue of
Turkmenbashi that dominates the skyline of Ashkhabat and turns to face
the sun (local wags say the sun turns to face it), it was easy to laugh
at the ubiquitous trappings of unhinged egotism. Turkmenbashi's
moon-eyed mug glared from banners hung from the façade of every
government ministry and school, appeared on every denomination of
currency, even on his own brands of vodka and cologne. Everything was
named after him: the country's second-largest city, its airports, a
large meteorite, the month of January. His not-so-little green book of
aphorisms ("Time is a mace. Hit or be hit!"), the Rukhnama, became
required reading for schoolchildren and motorists who sought to renew
their driver's licenses.

Saddam Hussein's reputation for self-indulgence had nothing on
Turkmenbashi. Niyazov's megalomania ranged from the grandiose--at the
time of his death he had just completed the world's largest mosque
(featuring quotes from the Rukhnama, naturally) and had ordered the
construction of a man-made lake in the middle of the Karakum desert--to
obsessive micromanagement. Each Turkmen student's college application
was personally considered by the great man.

Even his commonsense dictates came with a bizarre twist. During the
1990s Turkmenbashi ordered that natural gas, as a national patrimony,
be supplied to Turkmen homes for free. Since most people were too poor
to afford matches, however, it became common practice to leave their
stoves on 24-7. Where foreigners saw hilarity, Turkmen seethed with
resentment; Ashkhabati motorists saved their household garbage so they
could chuck it on the lawn of one of Niyazov's pink pleasure palaces.

A power struggle is underway. Within hours of Turkmenbashi's fatal
heart attack his Constitutionally-mandated successor, Majlis (lower
house of parliament) chairman Ovezgeldy Atayev found himself behind
bars, arrested for an unspecified "criminal investigation." An obscure
deputy prime minister and former dentist, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov,
declared himself acting president and has arranged to have the
Constitution retrofit to validate his rule.

"Many Western analysts," reported The New York Times, "said the country
was unlikely to change and that authoritarian rule would continue under
any of Mr. Niyazov's successors." But Turkmen exiles who lead
opposition parties are itching to fill the vacuum, if not of power, of
charisma, left by Niyazov's demise. Leaders of the nation's five
biggest tribes are jockeying for advantage. And five million Turkmen
who can't afford matches want a piece of the action--and want to get
even with the government thugs who shut down the country's hospitals
and medical clinics.

Berdymukhammedov's regime may keep the lid on the pressure cooker of
Turkmen politics for a short time, but it isn't hard to imagine a
country of former (and present) nomads disintegrating into the chaos of
warlordism as a result of the venting of long-suppressed ethnic and
political rivalries. A Turkmen civil war would quickly turn regional.
Iran and Afghanistan, which share Turkmenistan's southern border, would
side with any faction that could guarantee continued trade, but any
instability would affect the refining of crude from Kazakhstan, a major
world supplier. It would probably end construction of the post-9/11
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline being built to carry Kazakh oil and Turkmen
gas between Turkmenistan and a Pakistani port on the Indian Ocean.
Everyone is betting that Turkmenbashi's foreign policy of "positive
neutrality" won't last long. Russia has already indicated its intent to
reassert itself in Turkmenistan. Here's where we come in: no American
president, Democrat or Republican, will allow Russia to gain control
over the world's largest energy reserves without a fight. Moreover,
neither Russia nor the U.S. will watch idly as Central Asia implodes
and takes the world economy along for the ride. U.S. troops, currently
based in Uzbekistan, could be sent in to restore order and keep the
Russians out.

Signaling renewed high-level interest in Turkmenistan, U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State Richard Boucher and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail
Fradkov both attended Turkmenbashi's funeral on Christmas Eve.
Uzbekistan's universally reviled despot Islam Karimov, who got away
with the 2005 massacre of at least 700 civilians at Andijon because of
his country's energy reserves, will almost certainly be an early
casualty of civil strife in Central Asia. A witch's brew of Stalin-era
ethnic gerrymandering and brutal suppression of a nascent Islamist
insurgency, mixed with the collapse of Karimov's Uzbek police state,
could easily take Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan--poor countries barely
recovering from civil conflict and dependant on the urban-based Uzbek
economy--with them. Even Kazakhstan, the most stable of a fragile lot,
is susceptible to an uprising; few Kazakhs have shared in the nation's
oil boom.

Whether or not Turkmenbashi's death directly affects its neighbors,
it's a reminder that Central Asia's autocrats aren't getting younger.
Laugh about the Leader of All Turkmen's excesses now. The storm is
coming.

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central
Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel
analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

COPYRIGHT 2006 TED RALL
DISTRIBUTED BY uclick, LLC/TED RALL

George W. Bush as Harrison Ford

2006-12-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

I've just decided that George W. Bush has been imitating the performance of Harrison Ford in the 1997 film Air Force One. In the opening scene of the movie, the US President portrayed by Ford abandons his prepared speech to declare that America will no longer tolerate bad governments in the world, will not be content with economic sanctions, and will not negotiate.

The power of Hollywood.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

2006-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld Waxes Emotional

Asked how he has found the motivation to press on in this tough environment, Rumsfeld answered with his tried and true "My goodness." He took a long pause as the audience laughed softly, then answered that he felt "so fortunate to have been able to participate and serve at important times in our country's history, and to do it with people like that," gesturing to the soldiers in the room. Visibly emotional, he looked off to the side as he composed himself.

******************************

"He's certainly a ruthless little bastard."

---Richard Nixon

******************************

The greatest evil is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

---C.S. Lewis

Makers of Bombs & Drugs a Little Worried

2006-11-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

What a Democrat Win Means for Defense Contractors, Drug Companies

Wednesday, November 08, 2006
FOX NEWS

WASHINGTON — By boosting the power of Democrats in Congress, voters likely set in motion legislative efforts that could lower the price of pharmaceuticals and cut defense spending.

But with the balance of the power in the Senate not tipping more than one or two votes, where it usually takes 60 votes to pass major legislation, companies such as Merck & Co. (MRK) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) may find themselves more the target of harsh political rhetoric than any hurtful changes in law.

**********

With many political analysts viewing the Democrats win of the House as evidence of waning support for the war in Iraq, some Wall Street analysts are bracing for the possibility that military spending may gradually slow.

Even if Republicans manage to maintain control of the Senate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, a frequent critic of free-spending defense programs, is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee after Sen. John Warner, R.-Va., steps down because of term limits. McCain has a history of being tough on the defense industry, forcing the Air Force to change the terms of a Lockheed cargo plane contract and helping to uncover wrongdoing by Boeing and a Pentagon official in a separate Air Force tanker contract.

Lockheed Chief Financial Officer Chris Kubasik tried to ease jitters recently, saying the company has "worked well with both parties" and that its business, mostly long-term big ticket contracts, can withstand periodic political changes in Washington.

Maureen Dowd Meets Stewart and Colbert

2006-11-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

I thought Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert might be a little nervous to meet with me. I was the real news commentator, after all, and they were the mock. They threw spitballs at presidents; I interviewed presidents before throwing spitballs at them. I had crisscrossed the globe to cover news stories, while these guys just put on dark suits and threw up imported backgrounds on a green screen. No doubt they would try to impress me with some weighty discussion about world affairs or the midterm elections. But when I walked into Colbert's office at The Colbert Report, just off Tenth Avenue in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, the two barely acknowledged me. Stewart, rumpled in a gray tee over a long-sleeved shirt, khaki cargo pants, black Timberland boots and a Mets cap, was sprawled in a chair with takeout coffee. Colbert, neat in a long-sleeved navy shirt, blue pants and wire-rimmed glasses, was sitting up straight next to him, holding a paper plate of fruit. They were already deep in a weighty discussion.

COLBERT: If honeydew is ripe, I think it's the king of melons.

STEWART: Nah, I think given the choice of melons . . .

COLBERT: You'd go cantaloupe.

STEWART: Oh, I don't think there's any question. The cantaloupe is far superior to the honeydew.

COLBERT: No, every night I hunt for the honeydew.

STEWART: The honeydew is almost a coconut; it's barely even a melon. I think you're making a huge mistake.

COLBERT: No, I don't care for it.

STEWART [in a stentorian announcer's voice]: Colbert and Stewart came to blows over the melon.

At last, they turn their attention to me. Their gazes are not, as I'd expected, full of respect. They regard with amused disdain the old-fashioned, phone-book-size Radio Shack tape recorder I'd put on the floor between them.

"I had one like that in 1973,'' Colbert notes.

"I thought it was a chaise,'' Stewart says. "I was going to lie down on it. I suppose there are two gerbils in there slowly paddling, and that's moving the wheel." He asks if I also brought a calligrapher.

GOP Candidates in 2006 Elections

2006-10-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Saddam Death Sentence November 6!

2006-10-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Why won't the media cover this outrageous October Surprise?

Well, Karl Rove is back to being diabolically clever. The death sentence of Saddam Hussein will be broadcast in the media on November 6, the day before the US midterm elections. Bumps in the polls from stories like this don't last long, which accounts for the extraordinarily tight scheduling of the announcement.

Why won't the media cover this outrageous October Surprise?
by Joshua Holland

Earlier in the week I wrote about the likely death sentence to be handed down in Saddam Hussein's show trial just two days before the mid-term elections. If you missed it, read it here.

When I wrote that, I didn't know for a fact that most observers expected the trial to take far longer. But, according to Scott Horton, an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Law School who has visited Baghdad several times, that does appear to be the case.

According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, Horton said yesterday:

"Most observers expected the date would be much later, but it seems to have been moved up. It will be front page news in the papers on Monday -- the day before the election. This is designed to show some progress in Iraq. The American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing.

When you look at polling figures, there have been three significant spike points. One was the date on which Saddam was captured. The second was the purple fingers election. The third was Zarqawi being killed. Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this."

I'd add that these have been short-lived spikes. Longer than two days, but short-lived.

"In my experience, everything that comes out of Baghdad is very carefully prepared for U.S. domestic consumption. … There is a team of American lawyers working as special legal advisers out of the U.S. embassy, who drive the tribunal. They have been involved in preparing the case and overseeing it from the beginning. The trial, which is shown on TV, has mild entertainment value for Iraqis, but they refer to it regularly as an American puppet theater."

Cheney: We Waterboard, Waterboarding Isn't Torture

2006-10-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like

This painting of waterboarding was made by a victim who survived it--under Pol Pot's Khymer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

Waterboarding, by David Corn

As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?

Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities. Blank, an anthropologist and former Senior Editor of US News & World Report, is author of the books Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Mullahs on the Mainframe. He is a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has taught at Harvard and Georgetown. He currently is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic staff in the Senate, but the views expressed here are his own observations.

His photos show one of the actual waterboards used by the Khymer Rouge.

Most of us have never seen an actual, real-life waterboard. The press typically describes it in the most anodyne ways: a device meant to "simulate drowning" or to "make the prisoner believe he might drown." But the Khymer Rouge were no jokesters, and they didn't tailor their abuse to the dictates of the Geneva Convention. They-- like so many brutal regimes--made waterboarding one of their primary tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms of torture ever devised.

Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they're also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn't a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it's sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.

51% Support Impeachment of Bush

2006-10-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Inconspicuous in the last paragraph of a story called Are the Faithful Losing Faith?, and divided into two parts, is a startling statistic: 51% of respondents in the latest Newsweek poll support impeaching President George W Bush:

"An overwhelming majority says allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies should be a top priority for a Democratic Congress (74 percent, including 70 percent of Republicans); 68 percent want increasing the minimum wage to be a top priority, including 53 percent of Republicans; 62 percent want investigating impropriety by members of Congress to be a top priority; and 58 percent want investigating government contracts in Iraq to be a top priority. Fifty-two percent say investigating why we went to war in Iraq should be a top priority (25 percent say it should a lower priority and 19 percent say it shouldn’t be done.)

Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a 'top priority,' but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.)"

Who Is Manucher Ghorbanifar?

2006-10-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

Intelligence laundry: To Paris again

Manucher Ghorbanifar (Wikipedia)

Manucher Ghorbanifar (nickname Gorba) is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer best known as a middleman in the Iran-Contra Affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency. He re-emerged in American politics during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq during the first term of President George W. Bush as a back-channel intelligence source to certain Pentagon officials who desired regime change in Iran.

In the 1980s, Ghorbanifar's principal American contacts were National Security Council agents Oliver North and Michael Ledeen. Ghorbanifar also tried to get the US to support the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) opposition to the Khomeini government of Iran. Ledeen vouched for Ghorbanifar to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. Oliver North later claimed that Ghorbanifar had given him the idea for diverting profits from TOW and HAWK missile sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Ghorbanifar's suspected duplicity during the Iran-Contra deal led CIA Director William Casey to order three separate lie-detector tests, all of which he failed. Iranian officials also suspected Ghorbanifar of passing them forged American documents. The CIA issued a burn notice (or "Fabricator Notice") on Ghorbanifar in 1984, meaning he was regarded as an unreliable source of intelligence. A 1987 congressional report on Iran-Contra cites the CIA warning that Ghorbanifar "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance".

In December 2001 Michael Ledeen organized a three-day meeting in Rome, Italy between Manucher Ghorbanifar and Defense Intelligence Agency officials Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode. Also present were two officials from Italy's SISMI. In addition to a position at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen was working as a consultant to then U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who oversaw the Office of Special Plans. The 2001 meeting took place with the approval of then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.

Yellowcake?

Former CIA counter-terrorism officer Philip Giraldi recently stated in The American Conservative:

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress. It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case. The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.

[Wikipedia's article about the yellowcake forgeries is being considered for deletion, so I'm copying it here.]

The term Yellowcake Forgery refers to falsified classified documents initially "uncovered" by Italian intelligence which depicted an attempt by Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime to purchase yellowcake uranium from the country of Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis.

On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the United States and United Kingdom governments asserted that Iraq had attempted to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating "weapons of mass destruction", in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

This claim was one of the political justifications for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and led to considerable embarrassment when discredited.

Yellowcake, a mixture of different uranium oxides and other uranium compounds, is an intermediary stage in the production of enriched uranium for use in a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon.

Iraq and WMD

In late 2002, the George W. Bush administration was soliciting support for a policy of military force to disarm Iraq of weapons. The U.S. government had for some time alleged that Iraq both possessed and was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, biological, and chemical arms. Among the allegations was that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake. In particular, CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited an attempted yellowcake purchase from Niger in September testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At that time, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an unnamed African country. In December, the State Department issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council".[1] In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush repeated the allegation, citing British intelligence. The administration later conceded that evidence in support of the claim was inconclusive and stated "these 16 words should never have been included" in Bush's address to the nation, attributing the error to the CIA.[2]

Initial doubts

The classified documents, which appeared to depict an Iraqi attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, had allegedly been suspected by some individuals in U.S. intelligence as fraudulent according to news reports. According to other news accounts of the classified situation, by early 2002, investigations by both the CIA and the State Department had found the documents to be inaccurate. Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cast doubt on the documents to the U.N. Security Council. An FBI investigation into the provenance of these documents has been reopened.

Oblique reference in Bush speech

During the 2003 State of the Union speech, U.S. President George W. Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The British claim could not be substantiated with evidence. The Butler Report is believed to be the source for the claim and the British Government continues to believe it is accurate.

Critics claim the statement in the speech was a reference to the documents.

However, a more direct reference to Iraq reconstituting its nuclear program may be found in the transcript of President Bush's Cleveland speech on October 7, 2002. [1]

European and British intelligence reports

However, the front page of the June 28, 2004 Financial Times had a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. [citation needed]

The Sunday Times of London of August 1, 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source regarding his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence. [2]

Though British intelligence report's claims regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the United States' CIA and Department of State could not verify or thought the claims were "highly dubious". [3]

US doubts

Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of U.S. Armed Forces Europe, Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford, went to Niger and met with the country's president. He concluded that, given the controls on Niger's uranium supply, there was little chance any of it could have been diverted to Iraq. His report was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, was also present at the meeting and sent similar conclusions to the State Department.

Wilson and Niger

At roughly the same time, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate the claims himself. Wilson had been posted to Niger 14 years earlier, and throughout a diplomatic career in Africa he had built up a large network of contacts in Niger. Wilson interviewed former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who reported that he knew of no sales to Iraq. Mayaki did however recall that in June 1999 an Iraqi delegation had expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations", which he had interpreted to mean yellowcake sales.[3]

Ultimately, Wilson concluded that there was no way that production at the uranium mines could be ramped up or that the excess uranium could have been exported without it being immediately obvious to many people both in the private sector and in the government of Niger. He returned home and told the CIA that the reports were "unequivocally wrong". The CIA retained this information in its Counter Proliferation Department, and was not even passed up to the CIA Director, according to the bipartisan, unanimous findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report.

CIA doubts

In early October 2002, George Tenet called Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, asking Hadley to remove reference to the Niger uranium from a speech Bush was to give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. This was followed up by a memo asking Hadley to remove another, similar line. Another memo was sent to the White House expressing the CIA's view that the Niger claims were false; this memo was given to both Hadley and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

IAEA analysis

Further, in March 2003, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released results of his analysis of the documents. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerien officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic." The U.N. spokesman wrote:

The I.A.E.A. was able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of Niger and to compare the form, format, contents and signature of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation. Based on thorough analysis, the I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.[4]

Wilson and Plame

Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, in a column by Robert Novak, the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed. The Senate Intelligence Committee report and other sources seem to confirm that Plame gave her husband a positive recommendation. However, they also confirm that she did not personally authorize the trip (and in fact did not have any authority to do so).

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report also claimed that when Wilson briefed the CIA on his trip to Niger, CIA analysts felt the claim that Iraq sought WMD from Africa was further substantiated, though the State Department thought Wilson's findings refuted the claim.[citation needed] But the CIA had warned the President in March 2002 that Wilson's trip had concluded the claims were unsubstantiated.[5]

The "Plame affair" (aka. "CIA leak scandal"), which ensued as a result of the unauthorized disclosure of Plame's identity, is an ongoing political scandal and criminal investigation into the source of the leak which "outed" Plame, and whether or not that person committed a crime.

The actual words President Bush spoke: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" suggests that his source was British intelligence and not the forged documents.[6]

However, the Administration has admitted that the claim was "a mistake." [citation needed]

Butler Report

The Butler Report issued after a review by the British government concluded that the report Saddam's government was seeking uranium in Africa appeared credible. Nevertheless, the Butler report fails to advance any evidence to substantiate this conclusion. Furthermore, the Butler report concluded that "The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it,"[4] which again could not be verified. In some ways the Butler Report does dispute the findings with this statement in the review. [5] "authorship of the dossier was a mistaken judgement".

European intelligence services

In June 2004, The Financial Times reported that they had "learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001, [and] human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq." The article stated that "human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger, [and that] one of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."[7]

In any case, French intelligence had repeatedly warned the Bush administration a year before his State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with evidence.[8]

More doubts

In January 2006, the New York Times revealed the existence of a memo which stated that the suggestion of uranium being sold was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles. The memo, dated March 4, 2002, was distributed at senior levels by the office of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.[9]

Statements by Wilson

In a July 2003 op-ed, Ambassador Wilson recounted his experiences and stated "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."[10] Although the president had cited "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," British intelligence have failed to show any other source of information.

Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on the forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip. Wilson had to backtrack and said he may have "misspoken" on this.[11] The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports."

Origin

By late 2003, the trail of the documents had been partially uncovered. They were obtained by a "security consultant" (and former agent of the precursor agency to SISMI, the SID), Rocco Martino, from Italian military intelligence (SISMI). An article in The Times (London) quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy, after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. [6] Martino later recanted and said he had been misquoted, and that SISMI had not facilitated the meeting where he obtained the documents. It was later revealed that Martino had been invited to serve as the conduit for the documents by Col. Antonio Nucera of SISMI, the head of the counterintelligence and WMD proliferations sections of SISMI's Rome operations center. [12]

Martino, in turn, offered them to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba. On instructions from her editor at Panorama, Burba offered them to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in October, 2002. [13] Burba was dissuaded by the editors of the Berlusconi-owned Panorama from investigating the source of the forgeries.

An August 2004 Financial Times article indicated French officials may have had a role in the forged documents coming to light. The article states:

According to senior European officials, in 1999 [Rocco Martino] provided French officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been planning to expand 'trade' with Niger. This trade was assumed to be in uranium, which is Niger's main export. It was then that Mr Martino first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger's uranium exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing 'market' in documents. He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency by US diplomats.

The Times article also stated that "French officials have not said whether they know Mr Martino, and are unlikely to either confirm or deny that he is a source."[14]

It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the U.S. In 2005, Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians: "The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein ...." [15]

According to a 2003 article in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, the forgery may have been a deliberate entrapment by current and former CIA officers to settle a score against Cheney and other neoconservatives. Hersh recounts how a former officer told him that "somebody deliberately let something false get in there." [16] Hersh continues:

He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

"The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney," the former officer said. "They said, 'O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.'" My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. "Everyone was bragging about it—'Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.'" These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

In an interview published April 7, 2005, Cannistraro was asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the source of the forgery was former National Security Council and State Department consultant Michael Ledeen. (Ledeen had also allegedly been a liaison between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI two decades earlier.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you'd be very close." [17] Ledeen has denied this - see [18] - an article which mentions, though, that he has worked for the aforementioned Panorama magazine.

In an interview on July 26, 2005, Cannistraro's business partner and columnist for the "American Conservative" magazine, former CIA counter terrorism officer Philip Giraldi, confirmed to Scott Horton that the forgeries were produced by "a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy." When Horton said that must be Ledeen, he confirmed it, and added that the ex-CIA officers, "also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing." [19]

In a second interview with Horton, Giraldi elaborated to say that Ledeen and his former CIA friends worked with Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. "These people did it probably for a couple of reasons, but one of the reasons was that these people were involved, through the neoconservatives, with the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi and had a financial interest in cranking up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and potentially going to war with him." [20]

The suggestion of a plot by CIA officers is countered by an explosive series of articles [21] in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.[22][23][24] Investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. What may be most significant to American observers, however, is La Repubblica's allegation that the Italians sent the bogus intelligence about Niger and Iraq not only through traditional allied channels such as the CIA, but seemingly directly into the White House. That direct White House channel amplifies questions about the 16-word reference to the uranium from Africa in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address -- which remained in the speech despite warnings from the CIA and the State Department that the allegation was not substantiated. [25][26][27][28]

Butler Report

While some officials in the CIA were skeptical of the Niger documents, President Bush relied mainly on intelligence from Britain for his State of the Union message and used the Niger documents for confirmation. Britain had multiple sources for the intelligence that Iraq sought uranium from both Niger and the Republic of Congo. Here are some conclusions from the Butler Report (which was very critical of other aspects of intelligence findings on WMD in Iraq) found on pages 122-125.[4]

Conclusion 494. There was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached.

Conclusion 499. We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded.

Conclusion 503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British Government did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

Although sources other than the Niger documents are mentioned, no evidence of this is advanced directly within the Butler Report itself.

Aftermath

In March 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed not to open a Congressional investigation of the matter, but rather asked the FBI to conduct the investigation.

In 2003, unidentified "senior officials" in the administration leaked word to columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. The CIA requested an investigation into whether this public disclosure was illegal, thus the Niger uranium controversy spawned an on-going legal investigation and political scandal.

In September 2004, the CBS News program 60 Minutes decided to delay a major story on the forgeries because such a broadcast might influence the 2004 U.S. presidential election. A CBS spokesman stated, "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election." [29]

Nicolo Pollari, director of the SISMI intelligence agency,[30] told an Italian parliamentary intelligence committee that the dossier came from Rocco Martino, a former Italian spy.

The Los Angeles Times reported on December 3, 2005, that the FBI reopened the inquiry into "how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion." According to the Times, "a senior FBI official said the bureau's initial investigation found no evidence of foreign government involvement in the forgeries, but the FBI did not interview Martino, a central figure in a parallel drama unfolding in Rome."

On May 11 2006, New American Media reported how pre-Iraq War Italian forged documents were delivered to the White House alleging that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium ore from Niger. New links implicating Italian companies and individuals with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now raise the question of whether Berlusconi received a payback as part of the deal -- namely, a Pentagon contract to build the U.S. president's special fleet of helicopters.

Christopher Hitchens has suggested that the forged documents were made to be such bad forgeries in order that they would be "discovered" in short order.[7]

The irony is that the Tuwaitha facility south of Baghdad already possessed yellow cake uranium. This factory contained the remains of nuclear reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. The facility was monitored and frequently inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency after the 1991 Gulf War. About 1.8 metric tons of "yellow cake" and 500 tons of unrefined uranium went missing as the Iraqis left Tuwaitha unattended during the war.[8]When the facility was first encountered by U.S. Marines, they thought they had stumbled upon an illegal weapons cache; according to nuclear experts, however, they actually wound up breaking the IAEA seals that are "designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands."[9] The Pentagon dispatched a team to survey the site "after a month of official indecision," finding it heavily looted.[10]

Footnotes

1. ^ CNN.com Inside Politics website, October 8, 2002, "Bush: Don't wait for mushroom cloud"
2. ^ The Sunday Times of London, August 1, 2004, "Italian spies ‘faked documents’ on Saddam nuclear purchase"
3. ^ Time Magazine, July 21, 2003, "A Question of Trust"
4. ^ a b Butler Report
5. ^ Butler Report Launch Statement
6. ^ "Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004.
7. ^ "Wowie Zahawie: Sorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger." (Slate, 4.11.06) by Christopher Hitchens.
8. ^ "Missing Iraq uranium 'secured'" (BBC, 6.21.03)
9. ^ William J. Kole, "Experts Say US 'Discovery' of Nuclear Materials in Iraq was Breach of UN-Monitored Site," Associated Press (10 April 2003).
10. ^ Barton Gellman, "Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted," Washington Post (4 May 2003) A1.

See also

* Downing Street memo
* Plame affair
* Movement to impeach George W. Bush
* 2003 invasion of Iraq
* Iraq disarmament crisis
* Aluminum tubes

External links and references

* Niger-Iraq Yellowcake documents
* Plame's Lame Game: What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife forgot to tell us about the yellow-cake scandal, from Slate
* Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced in by By Laura Rozen October 25, 2005 American Prospect Online
* Italian Faces Pre-War Intelligence Probe October 25, 2005 By ARIEL DAVID in the Guardian
* "Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying" - FactCheck
* "Senate Report on PreWar Intelligence on Iraq" - US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
* "Report on Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction" - Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell
* "Transcript of UN speech by Colin Powell" - CNN, February 6, 2003
* Detailed timeline of Africa-uranium allegation - Center for Cooperative Research
* "Who Lied to Whom?" by Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 31, 2003.
* "Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S." CNN, March 14, 2003.
* Joseph Wilson. What I Didn't Find in Africa, New York Times, July 6, 2003.
* "Who Forged the Niger Documents?" interview of Vincent Cannistraro by Ian Masters, Alternet, April 7, 2005.
* "Cheney's Plan to Nuke Iran" interview of Philip Giraldi by Scott Horton, WeekendInterviewShow.com, July 26, 2005
* "Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France" by Bruce Johnston, News. Telegraph, September 19, 2004
* "Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim" by Bruce Johnston, The Telegraph, 05/09/2004
* The Plame Game: Was This a Crime? By Victoria Toensing and Bruce W. Sanford. Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A21

Another Pretty White Girl Missing!

2006-10-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

Missing Vermont Women, Man Caught on Surveillance Video

Just in the nick of time--maybe--Fox News has found a distraction from real news: a pretty, white Vermont coed has been abducted.

Now that the tainted spinach scare has subsided (V For Vendetta, anyone?), the Foley Fallout situation demands a new and different diversion. It seems the right wing realizes it can't just give American voters the same kind of phony story over and over again--they must have a list of categories and a schedule for rotating them.