Tracking the ‘Torture Taxi’

Posted on Sep 19, 2006

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri

The authors of the new book “Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights” tell Truthdig guest interviewer Onnesha Roychoudhuri how they pieced together the first comprehensive look at the largest covert CIA operation since the Cold War—a program run not only by shadowy government contractors in the darkest corners of Afghanistan, but also by unassuming America family lawyers in places like Dedham, Mass.

When U.S. civilian airplanes were spotted in late 2002 taking trips to and from Andrews Air Force Base, and making stops in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, journalists and plane-spotters wondered what was going on. It soon became clear that these planes were part of the largest covert operation since the Cold War era. Called extraordinary rendition, the practice involves CIA officials or contractors kidnapping people and sending them to secret prisons around the world where they are held and often tortured, either at the hands of the host-country’s government or by CIA personnel themselves.

David Neiwert: Handmaidens to torture

Friday, September 22, 2006

Much is being said about Democrats' abysmal failure in stopping the White House's plans to proceed with torturing people suspected of being terrorists, and for good reason. As Digby (in a typically definitive take) points out, the supposed forces of liberalism have simply been rolled by the machinations of the Bush administration.

But equally abysmal has been the performance of the press in making clear to the American public just what is going on here -- from the get-go. Indeed, for the most part, the press has looked the other way, burying stories that should have been atop their front pages, and treating what should have been monstrous scandals as simply politics-as-usual.

Glenn Greenwald: Everyone -- including Democrats -- agrees to pretend that Bush "compromised" on torture

(updated below)

No matter where one stands on the ideological spectrum, there is nothing confusing or unclear or ambiguous about the so-called "compromise" on torture, nor is there a lack of clarity about who won. It couldn't be any clearer. On the interrogation issue, there was only one simple issue from the beginning -- the Bush administration, through the CIA, has been using an array of "interrogation techniques" (induced hypothermia, long standing, threats to harm families, waterboarding) which most of the world considers to be torture. The question was whether the U.S. would be a country that uses these torture techniques (as the administration wanted) or whether it would ban them. That was the only issue all along.

Just last week at his press conference -- does the media have any short term memory at all? -- the President said he cared about only one thing with regard to the torture legislation: "I have one test for this legislation. I'm going to ask one question, as this legislation proceeds, and it's this: The intelligence community must be able to tell me that the bill Congress sends to my desk will allow this vital program to continue. That's what I'm going to ask." By "this program," he means the CIA's torture program.

Digby: Unleashing The Beast

I have written often about how the Republicans are becoming what they railed against for decades: totalitarians. Unsurprisingly I suppose, it turns out that what they really hated about Soviet communism was the economics. The 50 years of ranting about personal liberty and anti-authoritarian government seems to have been mere political rhetoric. Now that they are in power themselves they have adopted certain Soviet values quite seamlessly.

Here's a former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, writing in this Sunday's Washington Post:

This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

Digby: "I Tried"

Oooh. Chris Wallace interviewed Bill Clinton today and sandbagged him with a question right out of the box about "why he didn't do more to stop bin Laden."

Clinton went ballistic. I just saw the excerpt on Fox:

At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did NOT try. I tried.

No kidding.

Digby: Tough and Smart

Democrats have put their trust in Senators Graham, McCain and Warner to push back against the White House, and Thursday they signaled that they intended to continue cooperating. “Five years after Sept. 11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve,” said the Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

Still, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he would press to change a provision in the proposal that would deny detainees a right to challenge their captivity in court.

If you'd like to ask your Senator to support the Specter-Levin Amendment to preserve habeas corpus, you can go here for information and directions.

Digby: Taking It Outside The Beltway

Here's some good news:

Congressional Democrats plan to hold Iraq war hearings on Capitol Hill and around the country, turning an election spotlight on an issue much as the GOP did with immigration during the summer recess.

The Democrats’ will highlight the fact that they intend to go toe-to-toe with Republicans on the issue of national security, believing that this election cycle it can play to their advantage rather than to their detriment as it has in elections past.

Digby: Speaking Of Torture

In the event of conflict, America also accepts our responsibility to protect innocent lives in every way possible. We'll bring food and medicine to the Iraqi people. We'll help that nation to build a just government, after decades of brutal dictatorship. The form and leadership of that government is for the Iraqi people to choose. Anything they choose will be better than the misery and torture and murder they have known under Saddam Hussein.

Uhm:

Torture in Iraq is reportedly worse now than it was under deposed president Saddam Hussein, the United Nations' chief anti-torture expert said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak described a situation where militias, insurgent groups, government forces and others disregard rules on the humane treatment of prisoners.

Billmon: Only the Beginning

One of my core assumptions about a U.S. sneak attack on Iran has been that the war would quickly spread -- to Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Lebanon, and to the rest of the world via terrorist attacks. This would give the neocons that third or fourth world war they’ve been looking for, although probably under conditions that would make it impossible for the United States to win.

But I’ve been having serious second thoughts about that assumption, in part because the Iranians simply aren’t acting as if they expect all-out war, or even a climactic showdown over their nuclear program.

Billmon: See No Evil

We are, in a sense, at the moment of truth. The sadistic and/or bizarre acts committed in Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons can be written off as the crimes of a few bad apples with names like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld -- or, more charitably, as the consequences of a string of bad and brutal decisions made under emergency conditions by men who were terrified by all the things they didn't know about Al Qaeda. Either way, they were not acts of national policy, endorsed and approved by Congress after open, public debate. But, thanks to the Hamdan decision, the question is now formally on the table . . . So now we'll find out, I guess, what we're really made of as a nation -- down deep, in our core.

Whiskey Bar
A Tortured Definition
September 15, 2006

Well, at least we now have moral clarity.

Billmon: The Hard Core

It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. For a start, the grey-bearded Afghan can barely walk, shuffling along on a three-wheeled walking frame. His sight is terrible -- he squints through milky eyes that sometimes roll towards the heavens -- while his helpers have to shout to make themselves heard. And as for his age -- nobody knows for sure, not even Nasrat himself. "I think I am 78, or maybe 79," he ventures uncertainly, pausing over a cup of green tea.

Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.

The Guardian
Three years on, Guantánamo detainee, 78, goes home
September 22, 2006

You gotta hand it to those terrorists: That's one fiendishly clever disguise.

Altercation: Why Read TIME?

I've got a new "Think Again" column here, called "Radio Marti: "Hecka of a Job, Kenny."

Brendan Nyhan is having his fifteen seconds of mini-fame over at Time.com, here, because he was let go by The American Prospect. He is posing as a martyr to free speech, but I don't think I've ever read a sillier argument for victimization.

The argument seems to be that The Prospect, a little liberal magazine of extremely limited means, should be compelled to support arguments that not only undermine the magazine's political commitments but do so on the basis of a mindless commitment to "on-the-one-handism" that currently dominates mainstream mores but has next-to-no basis in reality. Look, the far right is in control of this country's political institutions and much of the media. It is using those institutions to invade nations, shred the Constitution, declare war on journalism and free speech, torture innocent people and deny them due process, unleash unprecedented environmental destruction, and undermine the entire basis of empirical scientific inquiry when it conflicts with its ideological prerogatives (and funders' profits). The left runs a few faculty departments, a few cities (mostly in university towns), a few little magazines (of which TAP is one), and parts of Hollywood -- though not the part that, say, invests $40 million to lie to the American people, commercial-free, on behalf of the Bush administration's lies about 9-11 -- and not much else. But Nyhan expected to be paid by TAP to make arguments that implicitly argue that say, a silly statement by a Hollywood actor or independent director deserves the same scrutiny as a lie by the president, vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, or attorney general. It's like a doctor saying, "Well, you have liver cancer, but let's talk about that gut; you're three pounds overweight"; or a FEMA official saying, "Well, there's going to be a hurricane in New Orleans that will destroy all the levees, but it's also drizzling in my backyard and I can't decide if I need to water my garden." The archetype of this argument is something that almost all mainstream reporters appear to believe which is something like, "Yes, Bush misled the country into a dangerous, destructive war that is killing thousands, making us more insecure, costing us trillions and ruining our reputation around the world, but at least he's not lying about blow jobs."

Americablog: Clinton bitch-slaps FOX News and George Bush over September 11 lies

by John in DC - 9/22/2006 10:09:00 PM

Ok, wow. Just read this. ThinkProgress got the advance transcript.

Bill Clinton rocks:

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON:OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.

Michael Kinsley: Yrotciv in Iraq

Bush's backpedaling on the war.
Posted Friday, Sept. 22, 2006, at 7:38 AM ET

Harold Pinter wrote a play a while back called Betrayal. (Rent the movie: It's terrific.) The plot was a fairly mundane story about an adulterous affair among affluent London literati. What gives the tale its haunting magic is that Pinter tells it in reverse: starting with the couple breaking up and ending with that first, ambiguous flirtation.

[...]

So, it's been used by some of the masters. And it's a good trick: disorienting, as modern art is supposed to be, and with built-in poignance. But that doesn't mean that anyone can pull it off. Frankly, I would have pegged George W. Bush—whose awareness of his own weaknesses is one of his more attractive traits—as just about the last person in the world who would try this literary jujitsu. But in his own narrative of his own war (the one in Iraq), he has done it. If you trace the concept of "victory" in his remarks on Iraq, and those of subordinates, you discover a war that was won three and a half years ago, and today has barely started.

The Other 98 Percent of Iraq

This morning's Column One feature in the Los Angeles Times is a terrific first-person account of life in Baghdad. It is written by an unnamed Iraqi reporter for the paper, and reading almost any random paragraph shows why he had to go unbylined.

I see my neighbors less and less. When I go out, I say hello and that's it. I fear someone will ask questions about my job working for Americans, which could put me in danger. Even if he had no ill will toward me, he might talk and reveal an identifying detail. We're afraid of an enemy among us. Someone we don't know. It's a cancer.

It's a revealing look at the unspoken, and unreported, reality behind the news we do get from Iraq. Dexter Filkins, who has done terrific reporting for the New York Times from Iraq, recently said that 98 percent of Iraq, including most of Baghdad, is now off-limits to Western journalists, a startling figure that begs the question of why reports from Iraq don't include such a disclaimer

Paul Krugman: Insurance Horror Stories

--The New York Times, September 22, 2006

“When Steve and Leslie Shaeffer’s daughter, Selah, was diagnosed at age 4 with a potentially fatal tumor in her jaw, they figured their health insurance would cover the bulk of her treatment costs.” But “shortly after Selah’s medical bills hit $20,000, Blue Cross stopped covering them and eventually canceled her coverage retroactively.”

So begins a recent report in The Los Angeles Times titled “Sick but Insured? Think Again,” which offers a series of similar horror stories, and suggests that these stories represent a growing trend: more and more health insurers are finding ways to yank your insurance when you get sick.

Report: Hijackers Not ID'd Pre-9/11

Internal DOD Report Rejects Military Intelligence Unit’s 2000 Claim

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2006

(AP) A Pentagon report rejects the idea that a secret military unit had gathered intelligence a year before the Sept. 11 attacks that might have stopped the hijackers, a senior defense official said Thursday.

The Pentagon inspector general's office said Thursday that a review of records from the unit, known as Able Danger, found no evidence it had identified ringleader Mohamed Atta or any other terrorist who participated in the 2001 attacks.

Will The Next Election Be Hacked?

Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Post your thoughts about the threats to fair voting, in the National Affairs blog. Plus, read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" -- his report on Republican methods for keeping more than 350,000 Ohio voters from casting ballots or having their votes counted.

The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.

Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that can be recounted when equipment malfunctions - an omission that practically invites malicious tampering. "Every board of election has staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me. "Even one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to throw a presidential election."

Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass

The Bush administration’s pragmatic policy toward Pakistan suggests its foreign policy is less ideological than imperial.

By Lakshmi Chaudhry

Why wait?” asked William Kristol in a July 24 Weekly Standard op-ed calling for a preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later.” By August, the usual array of neoconservative pundits were chanting the “Why wait?” mantra, as their supporters within the administration, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, issued dire warnings against “appeasement.”

Yet in the midst of saber-rattling, the Bush administration was quietly doing its own share of appeasing—in the literal, if not historical, sense. In late July, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report revealing that Pakistan was building a heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The response from Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, was surprisingly mild: ”The reactor is expected to be substantially smaller and less capable than reported.”

French paper says bin Laden died in Pakistan

Is This the October Surprise? Will Rove and Company Produce the Body in October? (Unconfirmed Report.):"French paper says bin Laden died in Pakistan last month." 9/23--BUZZFLASH

Saudi Arabia is convinced al-Qaida leader died of typhoid, paper says

Reuters

Updated: 4:01 a.m. ET Sept. 23, 2006

PARIS - A French regional newspaper quoted a French secret service report on Saturday as saying that Saudi Arabia is convinced that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

L’Est Republicain printed what it said was a copy of the report dated Sept. 21 and said it was shown to President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France’s interior and defense ministers on the same day.

9-11 And The Smoking Gun

Smoking Gun Article from 2004: "Pakistani intelligence sources told Asia Times Online that on the afternoon of September 11 itself, as well as on September 12 and 13, Armitage met with Mahmoud with a stark choice: either Pakistan would help the US against al-Qaeda, or it would be bombed back to the Stone Age." A Must Read Article on 9/11, Loaded with Bombshells -- And It's From Two Years Ago! 9/23--BUZZFLASH

By Pepe Escobar

Part 1: 'Independent' commission

The 9-11 Commission, according to its own website, is "an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W Bush in late 2002". The commission is "chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks".

A key consequence of the political theater/media circus around former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke's revelations - in his testimony to the commission and in his best-selling book Against All Enemies - was to force the White House to "deliver" National Security Advisor Condoleezza ("Condi") Rice. She is due to testify to the commission on Thursday - just as the Iraq occupation is confronted to the ultimate nightmare: Fallujah as the new Gaza in the Sunni triangle, and an uprising by the millions of angry, destitute followers of firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Part 2: A Real Smoking Gun

If the 9-11 Commission is really looking for a smoking gun, it should look no further than at Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time.

In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh - the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida.

If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?

By Sarah Ruth van Gelder and Doug Pibel, YES! Magazine. Posted September 23, 2006.

The rest of the industrialized world gets universal health care. The U.S. gets limited access at a far higher cost. It's time for Americans to get the health care system they want, and the savings that go with it.

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them -- an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

What's Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?

By Jeff Cohen, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2006.

Conservatives were quick to lash out at Hugo Chavez for calling President Bush a "devil," but that's exactly what Rush Limbaugh was calling Democrats only a few years ago.

Across the U.S. political and media spectrum, there was wide agreement yesterday: Name-calling and personal attacks are bad for national and global dialogue. Prompting the unity were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' comments that President Bush was the devil incarnate, "El Diablo."

Among those exercised (and exorcized) about Chavez' name-calling were some of the loudest name-callers in American media today -- including Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing talk hosts. Limbaugh tried to equate Chavez' remarks with the alleged Bush-bashing that comes from top U.S. Democrats. In case you've forgotten, it was Limbaugh who ridiculed Chelsea Clinton, then 13, as the "White House dog."

Joan Didion: Cheney: The Fatal Touch

It was in some ways predictable that the central player in the system of willed errors and reversals that is the Bush administration would turn out to be its vice-president, Richard B. Cheney. Here was a man with considerable practice in the reversal of his own errors. He was never a star. No one ever called him a natural. He reached public life with every reason to believe that he would continue to both court failure and overcome it, take the lemons he seemed determined to pick for himself and make the lemonade, then spill it, let someone else clean up. The son of two New Deal Democrats, his father a federal civil servant with the Soil Conservation Service in Casper, Wyoming, he more or less happened into a full scholarship to Yale: his high school girlfriend and later wife, Lynne Vincent, introduced him to her part-time employer, a Yale donor named Thomas Stroock who, he later told Nicholas Lemann, "called Yale and told 'em to take this guy." The beneficiary of the future Lynne Cheney's networking lasted three semesters, took a year off before risking a fourth, and was asked to leave.

Freedom of Information Act overhaul approved by Senate committee

09/21/2006 @ 10:53 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

Congressional Quarterly reports that a Senate committee has approved a bill to overhaul the Freedom of Information Act.

By voice vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to the bipartisan legislation intended to overhaul the 1966 act, which makes government records "more accessible" to the public. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) developed the bill last year.

Robertson: "[A] holy war between Islam and Christianity" is "going to come"

During a segment on the September 19 edition of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club about Pope Benedict XVI's recent controversial comments about Islam and Al Qaeda's reaction, host Pat Robertson stated: "[W]e understand the leaders of Al Qaeda are calling for a holy war between Islam and Christianity. It's going to come, ladies and gentlemen."

As Media Matters for America noted, Robertson stated on the August 29 edition of The 700 Club that "Osama bin Laden may be one of the true disciples of the teaching of the Quran ... because he's following through literally word-for-word what it says." Robertson added: "Islam is not a religion of peace. No way."

Falwell builds his legacy

Fifty years behind the pulpit and 30 years in the political spotlight has not slowed the Reverend Jerry Falwell

After 50 years behind the pulpit at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and nearly 30 years in the political spotlight, the Rev. Jerry Falwell has a lot to be proud of. While he has never achieved the revered status of Rev. Billy Graham, and his books have not sold the millions of copies that Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels or megachurch Pastor Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," have, Falwell has been a major player in the changing political landscape over the past three decades. Now, though still a potent political figure, he has set about to solidify a permanent monument to his life's work; building a multi-million dollar endowment for his thoroughly Christian Liberty University.

GOP Makes Nice With Harris in Florida

Why...does she know something damaging?--Dictynna

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON

AP

ORLANDO, Fla. (Sept. 21) - President Bush came to Florida on Thursday and publicly complimented Rep. Katherine Harris for the first time since she won the GOP Senate nomination over the opposition of her own party.

"I'm proud to be here with Congresswoman Katherine Harris, who is running for Senate," Bush told a crowd of about 400 people at a fundraising event in Tampa.

NYT Editorial: A Bad Bargain

Here is a way to measure how seriously President Bush was willing to compromise on the military tribunals bill: Less than an hour after an agreement was announced yesterday with three leading Republican senators, the White House was already laying a path to wiggle out of its one real concession.

About the only thing that Senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham had to show for their defiance was Mr. Bush’s agreement to drop his insistence on allowing prosecutors of suspected terrorists to introduce classified evidence kept secret from the defendant. The White House agreed to abide by the rules of courts-martial, which bar secret evidence. (Although the administration’s supporters continually claim this means giving classified information to terrorists, the rules actually provide for reviewing, editing and summarizing classified material. Evidence that cannot be safely declassified cannot be introduced.)

Déjà Vu on Iran?

Here we go again. The clichés come frighteningly easy when one ponders the recent efforts of the hawks to gin up the case for military confrontation with Iran. The playbook is familiar: Pump up the threat, use the media as a conveyor and watch public opinion swing toward war.

A campaign of this sort has been under way for weeks. In late August the staff of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee released a report on Iran that depicted it as a pressing strategic danger. Iran "probably" has a biological weapons program and "likely" has a chemical weapons research and development program, it said. More alarming, the report stated that Iran was definitely "seeking" nuclear weapons and enriching weapons-grade uranium. It conceded that US intelligence lacked crucial information on Iran's WMDs, but it warned intelligence analysts not to be wimps in reaching assessments about Iran's WMD capabilities and not to "shy away from provocative conclusions." That is, don't wait for hard-and-fast evidence before pronouncing Iran a nuclear threat.

Gonzales Wants ISPs to Save User Data

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.

Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller have met with several Internet providers, including Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Comcast Corp., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.

Think Progress: EXCLUSIVE: Agency Report Shows Secretary Personally Blocked Contracts To Democrats

In April, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson told a group of real estate officials that he once canceled a government contract because the contractor was critical of President Bush. Awarding contracts based on political leanings “violates federal law.” Jackson is a “longtime Bush friend” and former neighbor in Dallas, Texas.

The Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has conducted a detailed investigation and produced a 340-page report detailing his findings. The agency has given a copy to Jackson, but refused to release the report to the public.

Inside the Feds' Secret Wiretapping Rooms

By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, New America Media. Posted September 20, 2006.

Congress is considering three bills to "reform" massive surveillance programs. But secret facilities around the country are already eavesdropping on Americans.

Although it may appear as if Congress is about to put restraints on the Bush administration's wiretapping programs, the three "reform bills" now up for a vote all paint a deceptive picture of the massive domestic surveillance programs that the government has up and running. Because several ongoing invasion-of-privacy lawsuits could expose the extent of the illegal wiretapping, the administration is seeking via these bills to shunt the lawsuits into a secret court, where they will die.

Earlier this year Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) accused President Bush and the National Security Agency (NSA) of breaking the law by authorizing wiretaps without seeking a judicial warrant. Vice President Cheney quickly went to the Hill to work out a compromise with Sen. Specter. The so-called Specter-Cheney bill would give the president the option -- not the requirement -- to submit his electronic surveillance programs for review by the special secret court created by FISA, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Molly Ivins: The Presidential Three-Year-Old

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted September 21, 2006.

...Or the worst press conference in history.

Is it just me, or was that the worst presidential press conference in history? So I went back and read it over. Of course, in print you don't get the testy tone: I heard it on radio and thought the man was about to blow up -- not just because he was being questioned, which Bush appears to consider an offensive action in the first place, but because people continue to refuse to see things the way he does. How can they be so stupid or malign, he appears to wonder.

I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?

Digby: Punked

The "compromise" will, as I predicted, allow the "tough interrogations" by amending the war crimes act. And they will reportedly create a new JAG office to review classified information and determine if terrorist suspects can see it if it's being used against them in a trial. We already know they have devised some habeas corpus loophole to keep innocent people imprisoned without any due process.

Republicans are happy.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said..."If this language becomes law, the Congress will have given us the clarity and the support that we need to move forward with a detention and interrogation program that allows us to continue to defend the homeland, attack al-Qaida and protect American and allied lives," he said in a written message to agency personnel.

The Republicans are now standing shoulder to shoulder having worked this whole thing out --- they are strong, they are tough, they are moral, and they are willing to work together to form a compromise that they can all live with. Aren't they great? This is why we should vote Republican.

Digby: Breakthrough

I'm waiting on the edge of my seat to hear what the "bipartisan compromise" on the torture and detainee legislation between Rebel McCain and the white house is. The one thing I noticed in the tiny bit of the press conference I just saw on CNN in passing was that this great "deal" didn't include even one Democrat.

Digby: Thank You Big Gumint!

My internet service has been disrupted since last night and my laptop is on the fritz so I've been offline until this moment --- where I am blogging from the beautiful new Santa Monica public library.

The place is crammed full of people, in the stacks, online at the 50 or more modern computers that are available to the public or sitting comfortably in easy chairs in this free wifi environment with their laptops --- some of them ancient but still servicable. There are a whole bunch of kids in the great children's sections being taught how to read and love books. And there are a ton of elderly who are hanging out in a nice peaceful, comfortable environment in the presence of other people instead of sitting all alone.

Digby: Six Paks

So Blitzer interviews the codpiece today and actually makes some news.

But before that, here's what we heard:

Blitzer: Osama bin laden is still at large. Ayman al Zawahiri is still at large. What went wrong?

Bush: (agitated) A lot went right. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, if we can get a good bill out of the senate and the house is gonna go on trial. Ramzi bin al-Sibh. Abu Zubaydah

Blitzer: The main guys are still at large

Digby: A Liberal's Handbook

Bill Sher of Liberal Oasis has a new book and it's a great guide for those who are looking for common sense arguments to use as an activist and in your every day life.

Here's an example:

Promote the Three R's of Liberal Government

Don't refer to "the government" and feed the image of a distant, oppressive entity. Always speak of "our government," to accurately paint government as an extension of the people that we control and direct.

Don't accept that the core debate between Democrats and Republicans is whether government should be big or small. Define liberal government as representative, responsive, and responsible and conservative government as elitist, callous and reckless.

Digby: Running With It

A lot of people have questioned why I think the Democrats have decided to let McCain run with the torture issue. It's because that's what the press was reporting last week.

Here's one example:

So there you have the president's, perhaps, chief foe on this issue, again, as dug in as he is. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats, Wolf, have been pretty much trying to sit back and let John McCain and his colleagues fight it out for them. The senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, who is in charge of getting Democrats elected and reelected this Fall, here is what he had to say. He said "when conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is."

Digby: Boffo

My piece from earlier about why liberal hawks shouldn't have supported the invasion of Iraq on the merits, unfortunately comes to mind as I read Sam Gardiner's paper (pdf) at the Century Foundation that everyone's talking about. He's been convinced that the US has been preparing the ground in Iran for military action since last spring.

He writes this:

The real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime. It is hard to believe, after the misguided talk prior to Iraq of how American troops would be greeted with flowers and welcomed as liberators, but those inside and close to the administration who are arguing for an air strike against Iran actually sound as if they believe the regime in Tehran can be eliminated by air attacks....[But] no serious expert on Iran believes the argument about enabling a regime change. On the contrary, whereas the presumed goal is to weaken or disable the leadership and then replace it with others who would improve relations between Iran and the United States, it is far more likely that such strikes would strengthen the clerical leadership and turn the United States into Iran’s permanent enemy.

Digby: Torture Trap

Blow me over with a feather. It looks as if the White House may have "compromised" on the torture bill. Let's just say I'm not shocked.

A couple of days ago I quoted this MSNBC article

McCain and the other GOP senators have indicated they would be willing to amend domestic U.S. law, especially the War Crimes Act, to permit at least some "enhanced" CIA techniques. They are also willing to pass legislation that would deny many rights to detainees at Guantánamo Bay and allow them to be held indefinitely.

and then commented:

Bush has always said that he wanted to "clarify" Article III and I predict that they will soon have a "breakthrough" that says they have found a way to do just that --- by amending the War Crimes Act.

Digby: Cry Wolf

Here's our favorite pychotic diplomat talking about Iran today:

BLITZER: ... the International Atomic Energy Agency stops short of flatly saying they are building a bomb.

BOLTON: They have stopped short, but they've also refused to say that Iran's program is purely peaceful. It may just take one piece of information that the IAEA published. Iran has documents from AQCON[A.Q Kahn], the great nuclear proliferator from Pakistan about how to fabricate uranium metal into hemispheres. There's only one use of uranium metal formed in the hemisphere, and that's to form a nuclear weapon. But nothing to do with peaceful uses of nuclear power.

Digby: Bad Idea

The ongoing back and forth about why liberal hawks shouldn't have supported the invasion of Iraq because they should have known that the Bush administration was incompetent or known it was impossible to succeed continues. And all those things are correct. But I never hear anyone discuss why invading Iraq was a bad decision on the merits.

For reasons I've never been able to fathom, a whole bunch of liberal hawks accepted the premise of the Bush Doctrine without considering the ramifications of such a doctrine and whether it was wise to adopt it. Right after 9/11 the Doctrine was a simple formulation that if a government harbored terrorist enemies of the United States, they too were considered an enemy of the United States. That made some sense, particularly as it was applied to Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban didn't just have terrorists in its midst, it was actively working with them and supporting them. Deposing them was an obvious reaction to the terrorist attacks and very few but the purely pacifist (a thoroughly respectable but extremely rare principle in our culture) objected to it. Indeed, most Americans, hawk and dove alike, agreed after 9/11 that any government that would actively help such criminals as bin Laden had to be stopped.

Suits Say US Impeded Audits for Oil Leases

By Edmund L. Andrews
The New York Times

Thursday 21 September 2006

Washington - Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.

The accusations, many of them in four lawsuits that were unsealed last week by federal judges in Oklahoma, represent a rare rebellion by government investigators against their own agency.

The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Molly Ivins: A Tortured Debate

Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition told Sen. John McCain that he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote if he doesn’t support Bush’s torture bill. I’d like to see an evangelical vote on that one.

U.S. health care system falling behind

By LARRY WHEELER
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - The nation’s youngest and oldest citizens are suffering the most from a fragmented, wasteful and in some cases dangerous health care system, according to a new study.

When compared to nearly two dozen other industrialized countries, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy for people who have reached the age of 60.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 09/21/06

Frank Rich discusses his best-selling book, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold," in which he contends that "Iraq was just the vehicle to ride to victory in the midterms." But an otherwise rave review in Publishers Weekly, pooh-poohs Rich's notion that the invasion was motivated by electoral politics.

After comparing war critics to terrorists, MSNBC's Chris Matthews now claims to have been 'Against This Bullsh*t War From The Beginning,' adding that "the amazing thing is the President is winning now with a hand with nothing in it."

"Wolf, Wolf ..." After President Bush flip-flopped on sending troops into the "sovereign nation" of Pakistan, CNN's Wolf Blitzer failed to call him on the contradiction.

'Venezuelan strongman cites American leftist writer,' who gets top billing in a "Fox News Alert," amid a warning that "We could have another Cuban missile crisis in Venezuela."

Serious V.A. budget problems in fiscal 2005 and 2006 were caused by a persistent reliance on prewar data from the Pentagon, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In an article for the New York Review of Books, Joan Didion recounts how Vice President Cheney acquired 'The Fatal Touch' -- along with the habit of "leaving the cleanup to someone else."

The AP reports that GOP lobbyists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed "landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House," while "simultaneously supporting the president and assisting" their friend and colleague Jack Abramoff.

TPM on Bush and Pakistan

(September 20, 2006 -- 07:31 PM EDT)

It's hard to know where to begin in trying to disentangle the knot of jingoism, recklessness, bad faith and bamboozlement that is President Bush's latest boast that if he had good intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts he would send US troops into Pakistan to catch him whether the Pakistanis agreed or not.

On Friday he suggested that he wouldn't because "Pakistan is a sovereign nation." And, yes, not invading other countries is a good rule of thumb in most cases, if one this president has tended to honor in the breach. But I think that given the unique history, most presidents and most Americans would be willing to violate another country's sovereignty if they had actionable intelligence that gave a good chance of successfully capturing OBL.

The Bushes & the Truth About Iran

By Robert Parry
September 21, 2006

Having gone through the diplomatic motions with Iran, George W. Bush is shifting toward a military option that carries severe risks for American soldiers in Iraq as well as for long-term U.S. interests around the world. Yet, despite this looming crisis, the Bush Family continues to withhold key historical facts about U.S.-Iranian relations.

Those historical facts – relating to Republican contacts with Iran’s Islamic regime more than a quarter century ago – are relevant today because an underlying theme in Bush’s rationale for war is that direct negotiations with Iran are pointless. But Bush’s own father may know otherwise.

Hell of a TIMES

Max Blumenthal

These are edgy times at the Washington Times.

Still one of the most important right-wing organs in the nation, the paper has a circulation base of around 100,000. According to a source close to senior management, in the past two decades it has burned through far more than the $1.7 billion previously reported. During that time its editorial stance has consistently leaned to the hard right, as its favorite targets have ranged from liberal comsymps to President Bill Clinton to, most recently, "illegal aliens" and their allies in the "open borders lobby." Throughout, the Times has served as a major key on the conservative movement's Mighty Wurlitzer.

Gene Lyons: George W. Bush and the inner punk

Generally speaking, the more people tell you how tough they are, the harder they’re working to convince themselves. George W. Bush is no exception. The president’s authoritarian impulses, on display during an amazingly petulant Rose Garden press conference, so clearly derive from his own fundamental weakness of mind and character that it’s become increasingly embarrassing to watch him perform. The more strenuously he struggles to hide his inner punk, the more clearly it emerges. Consider his childish response to NBC News’ David Gregory’s question about the administration’s pre-election efforts to legalize torture. Bush’s testy attitude toward the tall newsman he calls “Stretch” goes back a long way. After Gregory, covering a joint news conference in Paris in 2002, asked President Jacques Chirac a question in French, Bush sneered, “The guy memorizes four words and he plays like he’s intercontinental.” Last week he mockingly told Gregory, “You’re looking beautiful, Dave.”

Gregory’s challenging questions seemingly set Bush’s teeth on edge.

'Imported' pollution tied to poor air quality in Texas in 2004

Scientists using NASA satellites and other data including computer models and ground sensors have demonstrated that pollutants traveling even thousands of miles can impact air quality. The study concludes that ozone pollution levels increased significantly in the air above Houston on July 19 and 20, 2004.

New research detects human-induced climate change at a regional scale

Canadian and British climate scientists have clearly detected human-induced climate change at a regional scale in Canada, southern Europe and China. This new research is the first to combine the results from several climate model simulations, increasing scientific confidence in these findings.

Billmon: Garbage In, Garbage Out

To bolster Iraqis’ confidence, American generals are spending money on quick reconstruction projects like trash pickup as the military goes through troubled neighborhoods of Baghdad.

New York Times
Doubts Rise on Iraqi Premier’s Strength
September 20, 2006

"We don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."

Condoleezza Rice
New York Times interview
October 21, 2000

From crossing guards to trash collectors seems like a demotion to me -- especially when the trash includes things like dead dog carcasses with IEDs stuffed inside them. But, hey, be all you can be.

We'll never know if this kind of stuff -- nation building as an exercise in court-ordered community service -- has made any difference in Iraq, or could have made a difference if more of it had been done more competently. I tend to doubt it, but then in the failure-was-inevitable vs. we-coulda-been-contenders debate, I tend to come down firmly in the inevitability camp.

PBS set to reveal 'stealth campaign' to cut healthcare, education

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday September 20, 2006

PBS newsmagazine NOW this week plans to target what producers are calling, "a stealth campaign for deep cuts in social services," RAW STORY has learned.

The program is to examine ballot initiatives across the nation that it will characterize as deceptively-titled attempts to slash funding in health care and education. "Initiatives with titles like 'Taxpayers' Bill of Rights' and 'SOS - Stop Over Spending'" will be the focus of the segment.

ExxonMobil Stops Funding Competitive Enterprise Institute

In response to an inquiry from the Guardian, Exxon announced that the company “stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.” Also, Exxon promised the Royal Society in July that they would “not be providing any further funding” to groups that distort global warming science.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 09/20/06

'Before You Enlist' A new video urges high school students and their families to learn 'The Real Deal on Joining the Military."

As the White House releases a 'Fact Sheet' on 'Iraq's Links to Al Qaeda,' Ted Turner echoes a prominent historian in calling the decision to invade Iraq, "one of the dumbest moves ... ever made by anybody."

Although the Iraq Study Group that he co-chairs has 'Nothing to Report,' a "legendary fixer for the Bush family" says he has been "cleared" to meet with a "high representative" of the government of Iran.

Dick Morris attributes "a spike in Bush's approval ratings and ... in Republican chances" -- in no small part -- to "the ABC-TV docudrama exposing the failure of Clinton's efforts to get bin Laden," as the film's writer invokes the Salem witch hunt and "the Rashomon effect."

Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell points out what was missing in a Washington Post editorial arguing that "the case of Maher Arar shows why the Bush administration's secret detention program is wrong."

The U.K.'s leading scientists are demanding that Exxon 'stop funding' "a ten-year campaign of disinformation" by 'climate change deniers,' and an e-mail trail exposes a 'Climate-Controlled White House,' as it's reported that "Siberia is melting."

A foot race in Virginia takes "another unexpected turn," as Sen. George Allen goes public over an "aspersion," after a Jewish weekly probed his "African heritage."

Thanks to the gerrymander effect, it's reported that "not a single one" of California's 53 congressional contests is really competitive ... "in one of the most volatile, anti-incumbent seasons in years."

Keith Olbermann: Bush owes us an apology

The President of the United States owes this country an apology.

It will not be offered, of course.

He does not realize its necessity.

There are now none around him who would tell him or could.

The last of them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the President into the conduct, for which the apology is essential.

Crooks and Liars: Why doesn’t the IRS investigate James Dobson?

By: John Amato on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 2:12 PM - PDT

When I read this article in the LA Times I wasn’t surprised at all.

Antiwar remarks at All Saints in Pasadena were made two days before the 2004 election. The church is ordered to hand over records. The IRS investigation was triggered by an antiwar sermon delivered by its former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, at the church two days before the 2004 presidential election.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who unsuccessfully tried to launch a Government Accountability Office investigation into the IRS’ probes of churches nationwide last year, called the summons "a very disturbing escalation" of the agency’s scrutiny of All Saints. "I don’t want religious organizations to become arms of campaigns," he said. "But they should be able to talk about issues of war and peace without fear of losing tax-exempt status. If they can’t, they’ll have little to say from the pulpit."

Defense Contractors Gone Wild

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted September 19, 2006.

The billions we're spending on the worthless F-22 fighter plane is just the latest taxpayer rip-off. When will the military-industrial complex get the smackdown it deserves?

There are small news stories, there are really small news stories, and then there is "Defense Institute Head Resigns," a little maggot of a news item that blipped into the "D" section of the Washington Post last Wednesday. 356 words in all, about half the length of an AP NFL game account, and the Post was the only paper in the country that ran the story. So how important could it have been?

Actually, the Post item about the resignation of Dennis C. Blair from the federally-funded Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) spoke volumes about the utter insanity of the modern American media landscape. In a month when Katie Couric redefined the "scoop" as an advance glimpse of celebrity idiot-spawn Suri Cruise, and investigative journalism according to muckraking icon 60 Minutes meant sappy profiles of Howard Stern and Bill Romanowski, it made all the sense in the world that the denouement of a spectacular tale of massive government waste and fraud would go completely unnoticed by virtually the entire journalism community.

Military operations in Iran already in progress

Terrible, if true...--Dictynna

"The order has been given"

Retired Air Force General Sam Gardiner tells an astonished Wolf Blitzer that "the evidence is overwhelming" that military operations in Iran have been going on for 18 months already.

To Wolf's argument that the US has a plan for everything (should the US be invaded by Canada, we have a contingency plan...), Gardiner has "two differences..."

Fruit Fly Aggression Studies Have Relevance to Animal, Human Populations

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of 'fruit fly agression.'--Dictynna

Even the tiny, mild-mannered fruit fly can be a little mean sometimes – especially when there’s a choice bit of rotten fruit to fight over. And, like people, some flies have shorter tempers than others.

Researchers in the North Carolina Sate University genetics department have identified a suite of genes that affect aggression in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, pointing to new mechanisms that could contribute to abnormal aggression in humans and other animals.

Huffington Post: Second Secret Study Surfaces at FCC

Here we go again.

Another Federal Communications Commission study on the negative impacts of media consolidation came to light Monday after being buried at the agency for at least two years -- the second suppressed FCC ownership study to surface in as many weeks.

It's clear that FCC's top brass are willing to deep-six any research that contradicts the media industry's pro-consolidation claims.

Bradley Foundation trying to shape school teaching on 911

Milwaukee was not a center for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is strongly tied to a national debate over what to teach students about 9-11

Two prominent voices in that debate - one on the conservative end of the political spectrum, the other more liberal - have Milwaukee ties.

David Neiwert at Media Transparency: Conservatives Without Conscience

Current conditions in US seem to align with Robert O. Paxton's nine "mobilizing passions" of fascism

Review of Conservatives Without Conscience
By John W. Dean
Viking, New York, 2006

The title of John Dean's exegesis on the conservative movement in America is obviously meant to ring a few bells of recognition, being as it is an obvious play on Barry Goldwater's touchstone book, The Conscience of a Conservative. It's clear that Dean hopes to reclaim the good name of conservatism, and in exploring as he does the stark contrasts between modern movement conservatives and the ideals of movement founders like Goldwater, he does so admirably.

The denial industry

For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story

Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian

ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?

Paul Krugman: King of Pain

A lot has been written and said about President Bush’s demand that Congress “clarify” the part of the Geneva Conventions that, in effect, outlaws the use of torture under any circumstances.

We know that the world would see this action as a U.S. repudiation of the rules that bind civilized nations. We also know that an extraordinary lineup of former military and intelligence leaders, including Colin Powell, have spoken out against the Bush plan, warning that it would further damage America’s faltering moral standing, and end up endangering U.S. troops.

But I haven’t seen much discussion of the underlying question: why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture?

The Senate must not pardon President Bush for breaking the law

This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans. So far, Democrats and some Republicans are holding strong against the bill, and there are good chances to stop it if enough of us speak up.

Swift Boat' Money Man Has New Target

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (Sept. 19) - A group behind automated phone calls attacking Democratic congressional candidate Baron Hill is being funded by the Republican donor who helped bankroll the Swift Boat attack ads on Democratic Sen. John Kerry's war record.

George Lakoff: Twelve Traps to Avoid

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 09/18/2006 - 1:46pm. Guest Contribution

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute

For progressives to succeed in taking back this country, we need to stay true to our values and communicate them effectively. To accomplish this mission, we need to be aware of the traps that have often tripped up progressives in the past.

In this preview of the new book, Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, A Progressive's Handbook by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute, we present twelve traps to avoid as we make our case to restore an America that is true to its best principles.

Twelve Traps to Avoid
(Excerpted from Chapter One of Thinking Points)

1. The Issue Trap

We hear it said all the time: Progressives won't unite behind any set of ideas. We all have different ideas and care about different issues. The truth is that progressives do agree at the level of values and that there is a real basis for progressive unity. Progressive values cut across issues. So do principles and forms of argument. Conservatives argue conservatism, no matter what the issue. Progressives should argue progressivism. We need to get out of issue silos that isolate arguments and keep us from the values and principles that define an overall progressive vision.

2. The Poll Trap

Many progressives slavishly follow polls. The job of leaders is to lead, not follow. Besides, contrary to popular belief, polls in themselves do not present accurate empirical evidence. Polls are only as accurate as the framing of their questions, which is often inadequate. Real leaders don't use polls to find out what positions to take; they lead people to new positions.

Cable News Confidential

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted September 19, 2006.

FAIR co-founder, media critic and former Fox News commentator Jeff Cohen explains the importance of independent media and what it'll take to outfox Rupert Murdoch.

Having worked for all three major cable news channels, Jeff Cohen has witnessed firsthand how corporate media conglomerates are killing our democracy. He talked to AlterNet's executive editor Don Hazen about his experiences and his new book "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media" (PoliPoint Press, 2006). Two video clips of his appearances with Robert Novak on CNN's "Crossfire" in 1996 are also available: "For Vengeance" and "Feminist Weenies."

"Safe" blood levels need redefining, Tulane University study says

Blood lead levels currently considered safe by the U.S. government have been found to be associated with increased risk of death from many causes, including heart disease and stroke, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Study assesses impact of economic status for racial and ethnic minorities in US

A new study with direct implications for the politics of immigration and minority groups in this election year finds that improved socioeconomic status among racial and ethnic minorities generally diminishes racial and ethnic group consciousness across a variety of public policies. However, African-Americans are more likely than Latinos and Asian-Americans to retain their racial group consciousness regardless of improvements in their economic circumstances because they are more likely to face discrimination in their everyday lives.

Glenn Greenwald: Shrill, hysterical lefty partisan blogger

I began writing a post in response to this truly ridiculous Op-Ed by John Yoo in this morning's NYT -- in which Yoo gleefully celebrates every authoritarian transgression of the Bush administration, from torture and pre-emptive wars to endless invocations of presidential secrecy, the issuance of "hundreds of signing statements" declaring laws invalid, and even what Yoo calls the President's assertion of his power to "sidestep laws that invade his executive authority" (what we used to call "breaking the law") (emphasis added in all instances).

Digby: Nutty Buddy

I had read excerpts of Fred Barnes' column describing his meeting with the president and fellow conservative sycpophants, but I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing until today. The codpiece is full to bursting even as the mind is shrinking.

Inside the Oval Office President Bush gives journalists a "heads up" about the mid-term elections, among other things.
[That's the real headline, I swear --- d]

WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn't made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism. Here's how President Bush explained this Tuesday: "This thing about . . . let's put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work."

Digby: Tortured Compromise

The outlines of the torture debate kabuki emerged this morning with the interviews with John McCain and Stephen Hadley on This Week. It is actually quite straightforward. McCain was very optimistic they could reach a compromise and Hadley said that the three conditions for compromise are this:

1. they must be able to keep the program (which is, of course, entirely up to Junior who stomped his little feet until he turned blue at his press conference, threatening to allow terrorists to kill us all in our beds if he doesn't get his way.) It's entirely within his power to "keep the program."

Billmon: Looking for a Dictator

Before the invasion, there were hints from some of the less wooly-minded neocons that a second-best alternative to "democracy" in Iraq would be a secular military junta and/or dictator -- with Turkey cited as the example of how such a regime could eventually (as in, over many decades) morph into a pro-Western parliamentary "democracy."

Democracy Boy basically blew that option out of the water with his impassioned speeches about freedom and McDonald's french fries being the inalienable rights of all mankind, but the idea still appears to be percolating below the surface, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Should a second government fail, it would not only raise questions about Maliki's effectiveness but might indicate that anyone would have difficulty leading Iraq. Few in the U.S. government so far have suggested anything as drastic as another change in the leadership, although some, frustrated by the lack of progress, have voiced a private view in recent weeks that Iraq might be better off under a traditional Middle Eastern strongman. (emphasis added)

The Left Coaster: Torture - Shocking the conscience

In one of his best performances for telling outright lies, Bush yesterday claimed that the new bill concerning torture was needed because the GCs were "vague". Repeating this claim over and over, about 15 times. Bush is clearly back in fine form "catapulting the propaganda" with renewed vigor. Lenin and Goebels are in hell smilling approvingly.

Well what is the source of the vaguenss? From today's WaPo:

A senior administration official, authorized to speak with reporters about the legal issues behind the administration's strategy yesterday on the condition that he not be named, said the CIA interrogations at issue are in "the gray area on the margins -- that ill-defined boundary -- of Common Article 3." He was referring to a Geneva Conventions provision that bars cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as "outrages upon personal dignity."

[emphasis mine]

Americablog: Jim Webb explains the real Iraq-terror connection

by Joe in DC - 9/17/2006 02:36:00 PM

One of the best explanations I've seen given:

(go to site to see YouTube video--Dictynna)

In a replay of Iraq, a battle is brewing over intelligence on Iran

By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a high-stakes struggle is brewing within the Bush administration and in Congress over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism.

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July.

The struggle's outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'

Just in time for the election !--Dictynna

The Independent (London)
September 17, 2006
Geoffrey Lean

President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say.

After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.

EPA plans to close labs, drop scientists and reduce oversight

By David Goldstein

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency intends to close labs, cut its cadre of upper-level scientists and reduce regulatory oversight, according to an internal agency document.

In a memo dated June 8, a top agency official outlined "a set of proposed disinvestments, innovations, efficiencies and consolidations" for the upcoming 2008 fiscal budget.