Billions and billions of dollars just disappear in Iraq

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy Newspapers

Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags.

This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to Baghdad.

That's $12 billion in cold, hard American cash, and no one, especially Bremer, seems to know where it went.

It may be an urban legend, but the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, is widely quoted as saying: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." If he didn't say it, he should have.

Pentagon office produced 'alternative' intelligence on Iraq

By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A special unit run by former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's top policy aide inappropriately produced "alternative" intelligence reports that wrongly concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime had cooperated with al-Qaida, a Pentagon investigation has determined.

The Department of Defense Inspector General's Office found that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and his staff had done nothing illegal or unauthorized.

But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who requested the investigation, called the findings "devastating" because senior administration officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, used Feith's work to help make their case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq

The same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq war have been using the same tactics—alliances with shady exiles, dubious intelligence on W.M.D.—to push for the bombing of Iran. As President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran, is he planning to double his Middle East bet?

by Craig Unger March 2007

In the weeks leading up to George W. Bush's January 10 speech on the war in Iraq, there was a brief but heady moment when it seemed that the president might finally accept the failure of his Middle East policy and try something new. Rising anti-war sentiment had swept congressional Republicans out of power. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been tossed overboard. And the Iraq Study Group (I.S.G.), chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, had put together a bipartisan report that offered a face-saving strategy to exit Iraq. Who better than Baker, the Bush family's longtime friend and consigliere, to talk some sense into the president?

By the time the president finished his speech from the White House library, however, all those hopes had vanished. It wasn't just that Bush was doubling down on an extravagantly costly bet by sending 21,500 more American troops to Iraq; there were also indications that he was upping the ante by an order of magnitude. The most conspicuous clue was a four-letter word that Bush uttered six times in the course of his speech: Iran.

Meters Cost Iraq Billions In Stolen Oil

DALLAS, Feb. 8, 2007

---

(CBS) This story was written by Robert Riggs, chief investigative reporter for CBS station KTVT in Dallas.

---

Atop Iraq's al Basrah Oil Terminal, heavily armed anti-terrorism forces stand guard — while the theft of the century may be occurring right under their noses. Tankers berthed at the sprawling platform, located off Iraq's southern coast in the Persian Gulf, take on the oil that is the lifeblood of Iraq's war-torn economy.

Millions of dollars' worth of oil is stolen daily in Iraq because of the absence of oil meters, a basic tool for preventing corruption, according to estimates by classified CIA and State Department reports, the Iraq Study Group Report , a former consultant to a U.S. oil company and a former State Department adviser to Iraq's Oil Ministry.

A six-month investigation by KTVT found the annual thefts run into the billions of dollars and help fuel insurgents, sectarian militias and corrupt officials — as well as deprive the Iraqis of much-needed money to run their struggling government.

Paul Krugman: Edwards Gets It Right

What a difference two years makes! At this point in 2005, the only question seemed to be how much of America’s social insurance system — the triumvirate of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the Bush administration would manage to dismantle. Now almost all prominent Democrats and quite a few Republicans pay at least lip service to calls for a major expansion of social insurance, in the form of universal health care.

But fine words, by themselves, mean nothing. Remember “compassionate conservatism?” I won’t trust presidential candidates on health care unless they provide enough specifics to show both that they understand the issues, and that they’re willing to face up to hard choices when necessary.

TPM Muckraker: Senate Intel Chair: Pentagon Office DID Break The Law

By Spencer Ackerman - February 8, 2007, 6:14 PM

As vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) was often outmaneuvered by GOP chair Pat Roberts (R-KS), when it came to prewar intelligence.

Tomgram: Over the Cliff with George and Dick?

Thelma and Louise Imperialism

Over the Cliff with George and Dick?
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me make an argument about Bush administration Iran policy -- about the possibility that a regime-change-style, shock-and-awe air assault might someday be launched on Iranian nuclear facilities and associated targets -- based on no insider knowledge, just the logic of George-and-Dick's Thelma-and-Louise-style imperialism.

Of course, we all know at least half the story by now. Is there anybody in official Washington -- other than our President, Vice President, the Vice President's secretive imperial staff, assorted backs-against-the-wall neocon supporters lodged in the federal bureaucracy, and associated right-wing think tanks -- who isn't sweating blood, popping pills, and wondering what in the world to do about our delusional leaders?

TPM Muckraker: Ex-Rice Aide: Memory Lapse on Iran "Really Quite Curious"

By Spencer Ackerman - February 8, 2007, 6:25 PM

I just got off the phone with Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Mideast analyst and National Security Council staffer during President Bush's first term. Leverett says he finds it "really quite curious" that Secretary Rice is pleading a memory lapse on an Iranian offer shortly after the Iraq war to, among other things, recognize Israel.

Leverett himself says he "saw the actual document" detailing the offer, which arrived at the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau via fax around late April or early May of 2003, when he had left the White House to return to his regular post as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bush Budget Delivers the Bacon

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted February 7, 2007.

Bush's outrageous military budget is a betrayal of the public trust. Will the Dems have the guts to stop it?

President Bush's outrageous military budget has nothing do with fighting terrorism but everything to do with pumping up the profits of the administration's generous political donors in the defense industry. So, the question is: Will the Democrats have the guts to stop this betrayal of the public trust?

Ever since some lunatics, mostly citizens of our longtime ally Saudi Arabia, used $3 knives to hijack four planes on the same morning, President Bush has exploited our nation's trauma as an opportunity to throw trillions of dollars at the military-industrial complex to build weaponry for a Cold War that no longer exists.

Drugmakers Hurry Sales, Delay Safety Studies

By Michelle Chen, The NewStandard. Posted February 9, 2007.

Fast-tracked pharmaceuticals are on the market for an average of almost two years without beginning required safety tests, and the FDA is letting it happen.

The federal government has admitted that pharmaceutical companies it is supposed to regulate have not yet made good on hundreds of promises to test the safety of drugs already approved for the market.

According to a notice published Friday by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), from October 2005 through September 2006, companies had yet to initiate 71 percent of outstanding "post-market" safety evaluations that companies have promised to undertake for currently approved products they are already selling to consumers.

Time's Joe Klein: a Supreme Suck-Up

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted February 7, 2007.

Joe Klein is the living incarnation of American "conventional wisdom" -- a spineless, slavish watcher of polls who has no problem whatsoever denying today what he said yesterday.

I have a personal connection to Joe Klein, the Time columnist and ex-anonymous author of Primary Colors. His son and I used to share an office at the Moscow Times

about 12 years ago. There were a couple of cute Russian girls in the office who were best friends and Chris and I each dated one of them. Chris ended up marrying his; my relationship with the other one didn't last very long, although she was one of the funniest people I've ever met: Tanya's big thing was crushing beer cans against her head and singing the Soviet national anthem naked. She was like John Belushi with tits.

I lost touch with Chris after I left the Moscow Times in 1996. Like most politics junkies I went on to read Primary Colors, and saw the movie (Emma Thompson's most horrifying role, with her terminal-cancer victim in Wit a distant second) and halfheartedly indulged in the literary whodunit over the author's identity. When Klein was outed as the writer there was a brief flurry of phone calls between Moscow Times vets chuckling over the news; I even seem to remember a couple of us using the occasion as an excuse to get together to get drunk one last time.

Digby: And The Hits Just Keep On Coming

It's so interesting that the NY Times is concerned enough with the use of "explicit and inflammatory language" and the huffing and puffing of a rightwing gasbag like William Donohue that they actually reported the phony right blogospheric brouhaha over the Edwards' campaign hiring Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare's Sister.

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

Digby: Libby Mania

I knew today's Libby testimony was good, but I didn't have time to give it the attention it needed. Luckily, Jane's posted the evening round-up and video run-down.Check it out.

Tomorrow is Tim Russert. Jane says:

There are three more hours of tapes to get through tomorrow, and then Tim Russert testifies. Fitzgerald could not have set the table for his appearance any better. Throughout the taped testimony, Libby repeats over and over again that he could not have heard about Plame from so-and-so, because he remembers being surprised when Russert told him. Well, Russert is going to show up and say he never told Libby about Plame, and if the jury were tempted to believe Libby over the endless parade of people who all would have had to mis-remember in exactly the same way in order for his story to hold up, the Russert testimony may strike the final blow. And while Russert no doubt dreads having to testify, he will probably use the opportunity to try and counter Cathie Martin's assertion last week that he was in the bag for Dick Cheney, ever the pliant administration propagandist.

Digby: The Song Remains The Same

This is interesting. From Queequeg the Harpooner:

In today's speech, Bernanke sought to explain why the rich have gotten so much richer in the last few decades, leaving the poor and especially the middle class behind. (The people in the middle quintile of the income scale have advanced the least, in relative terms.)

Digby: Viceroy Autoteller

The Bush administration went on a $5bn spending spree in Iraq in 2004 just six weeks before returning control of the government to Iraqis, according to a Democratic lawmaker investigating the payments.

Huge sums were doled out, sometimes in dollar bills from the back of pick-up trucks, it was alleged.

Digby: Ohfergawdsake

Chris Hayes finds the worst column of the week (and there are many contenders already.) Hayes writes:

One thing that was really amazing about Hurriance Katrina was the way it brought all these very, very old-school (a polite euphemism) racial attiudes front and center. I’d fooled myself into thinking they’d been largely banished from elite white opinion, but nope. Well, apparently the candidacy of Obama is playing the same role, giving a lot of really ignorant white folks ample opportunity to say some awesomely foolish things.

Digby: It's Giuliani Time

As often happens, Glenn Greenwald and I are walking a similar path today. Glenn writes about the possibility of Rudy Giuliani being accepted by the GOP base after all, and it's a fascinating analysis:

Giuliani's talent for expressing prosecutor-like righteous anger towards "bad people" -- as well as his well-honed ability to communicate base-pleasing rhetoric towards Islamic extremists -- are underappreciated. I don't think any candidate will be able to compete with his ability to convey a genuine hard-line against Middle Eastern Muslims (see here for one representative maneuver), and that is the issue that -- admittedly with some exceptions -- dominates the Christian conservative agenda more than gay marriage and abortion (concerns which he can and will minimize by promising to appoint more Antonin Scalias and Sam Alitos to the Supreme Court, something he emphasized last night in a highly amicable interview with Sean Hannity).

Digby: Hobgoblin Overload

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said it right after 9/11:

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

Digby: Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way

I know this has made the rounds of the blogosphere already, but I can't let it pass.We have got a lot of problems in this world. Islamic extremism is one of them, but despite what the right insists, it is not the equivalent of the martians in "War of the Worlds" landing and killing everything in sight. They are people and they can be dealt with as the world has dealt with crazy tribal, religious and ideological challenges since time began.

Ddigby: "Feels Good!"

We have talked a lot lately about Dick Cheney's delusional behavior and his childlike strategic foreign policy vision. It seems as if even the dunderhead Bush seems less threatening and freakishly out to lunch than Cheney. In fact, it's hard to find any Republicans wearing the fogged-up, rose colored glasses that Cheney sports these days. But there is one guy who equals Cheney for sheer magical thinking and schoolboy worldview; it's Holy Joe Lieberman, the Supreme Allied Commander of the War against Islamofascism.

Digby: The Drumbeat Gets Louder

It isn't just us dirty hippy bloggers or even magazine writer James Fallows who are suggesting strongly that the congress step in right now to stop an attack on Iran. Here's Leonard Weiss, senior science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution in today's LA Times:

Iran is still years away from being a nuclear threat, and our experience with "preventive war" in Iraq should teach us a thing or two. Launching another such war without international approval would leave us even more politically isolated and militarily overstretched. Attacking a Middle Eastern country — one much stronger than Iraq and with the ability to cut off oil supplies from the Strait of Hormuz — could inflame the region, intensify Shiite militia attacks on our soldiers in Iraq and stimulate terrorist attacks on Americans and U.S. interests worldwide.

Digby: Admirable Opportunist

This must be nipped in the bud, right now.

Joe Klein robotically parrots the conventional wisdom that McCain has been admirably consistent in his views and furthermore he says:

I admire McCain's honorable willingness to take this unpopular position into the 2008 election.

Nonsense. He is fighting with everything he has to get back to where he was before Bush joined his team.

Digby: CFB's

Memo to reporters: when George Will, Chris Matthews and other pundits complain that Clinton's major problem is being too "strident" it's a similar type of slur as saying Obama is "articulate." This is a dogwhistle term; in this case it means "castrating feminist bitch."

I've never heard any of them ever complain that tub-thumping, preaching Republicans, male or female, are "strident" even though they most certainly are if you look at the literal meaning of the word:

Digby: Fasten Your Seatbelts

Matt Ortega, posting at FDL writes:

From NBC Investigative Reporter Lisa Myers' report on MSNBC, entitled "Did Iraq contractor fleece American taxpayers?" The answer is, well, I'll let you figure it out. (Also, appended at the bottom of her report is a statement from Parsons CEO Jim McNulty.)

WASHINGTON - New revelations have emerged about how tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in Iraq. A new report by government watchdogs singles out a big American contractor — Parsons — for shoddy work. Investigators charge that Parsons managed to turn a flagship project to help train Iraqi police into a hall of horrors using taxpayer money.

Digby: A Fourth Branch?

We have all discussed the unprecedented power of Dick Cheney in this administration ad nauseum, but this post from David Kurtz at TPM introduced a whole new element I hadn't been aware of.

I assumed that Cheney believed the power of the Vice President (such as it is) derived from the executive branch. Apparently, however, he believes the office of the Vice President has power of its own that derives from both the legislative and executive branch:

Ted Rall: (and Why We Won't)

NEW YORK--In last week's column I marveled in passing that the rightie hawks who started the Iraq War with a myriad of excuses--fictional WMDs, delusions of spreading democracy, phony links to 9/11, Saddam's plot to kill Bush's dad--can't summon up a single compelling reason to keep fighting. They say we have to "finish the job." What job? They won't say.

We can't leave Iraq, Bush says, until we "win." But victory (finding a stash of rusty poison gas canisters from the Iran-Iraq War? setting up a Shiite theocracy? proving that Mohammed Atta was Iraqi?) remains undefined.

NYT Editorial: A Bleak Assessment on Iraq

Monday 05 February 2007

There isn't much encouraging news in the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Ethnic and sectarian identities are hardening and violence is spiraling, as shown again in Saturday's horrific Baghdad market bombing. Iraq's new governing institutions are weak and leading politicians have a "winner-take-all attitude" that can only make matters even worse.

The intelligence agencies see "real improvements" in Iraqi security forces. But those gains are strictly relative and the report still finds those forces unlikely to be able to successfully battle Shiite militias in the next 12 to 18 months.

A good example of this problem can be found in the accounts of last week's battle between the Iraqi Army and a mysterious group of armed religious extremists outside the Shiite shrine city of Najaf. Najaf is supposed to be a showcase province for the American-trained Iraqi Army. The Pentagon chose it in December for the first symbolic handover of security responsibilities.

The Pentagon's not-so-little secret

As the president and Republicans continue to hype the surge -- and stifle debate about it -- Bush's own war planners are preparing for failure in Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Feb. 08, 2007 | Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.

The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush. "He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Jan. 24 about the "surge" tactic. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.'" She repeated his words: "'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Digby: Getting It Right

John Edwards was clear and concise today about Iran on Meet The Press, saying explicitly that a military strike would strengthen Ahmadinejad and would be a mistake. When Russert pressed him about whether we could ultimately "let" Iran get a nuclear weapons, he said it would be a bad thing, but that there were many, many steps to take before we get to that --- and that he just didn't know at this point.

Digby: Real America

In contrast to the hysterical, rock star reaction Bush received at the NY Stock Exchange:

On Tuesday, President Bush popped in for a surprise visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant, a homey diner in Peoria, Ill. It’s a scene that has been played out many times before by this White House and others: a president mingling among regular Americans, who, no matter what they might think of his policies, are usually humbled and shocked to see the leader of the free world standing 10 feet in front of them.

More Deception from the Bush White House

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The state of the union is disastrous. By its naked aggression, bullying, illegal spying on Americans, and illegal torture and detentions, the Bush administration has demonstrated American contempt for the Geneva Convention, for human life and dignity, and for the civil liberties of its own citizens. Increasingly, the US is isolated in the world, having to resort to bribery and threats to impose its diktats. No country any longer looks to America for moral leadership. The US has become a rogue nation.

Digby: Impressive And Gratifying

I don't know how many of you saw the giddy reception that President Bush received on the floor of the NY stock exchange last week, but it was one for the books. It was captured best by CNN, which carried it live.

Digby: Bad Consequences

Further to my post below, you should read this new interview with John Edwards by Ezra Klein at TAPPED on the topic of Iran. He tries to clarify his remarks on Iran and they are satisfying in some respects but not so in others.

Here's the part I find interesting:

So, I just want to get it very clear, you think that attacking Iran would be a bad idea?

I think would have very bad consequences.

So when you said that all options are on the table?

It would be foolish for any American president to ever take any option off the table.

Digby: Stop It Now

James Fallows:

Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard — on the merits, and in the politics. It’s hard on the merits because whatever comes next, from “surge” to “get out now” and everything in between, will involve suffering, misery, and dishonor. It’s just a question of by whom and for how long. On a balance-of-misery basis, my own view changed last year from “we can’t afford to leave” to “we can’t afford to stay.” And the whole issue is hard in its politics because even Democrats too young to remember Vietnam know that future Karl Roves will dog them for decades with accusations of “cut-and-run” and “betraying” troops unless they can get Republicans to stand with them on limiting funding and forcing the policy to change.

Digby: Bad Move

I am starting to get agitated about our Democratic leaders' approach to Iran. John Edwards' recent comments while in Israel were disturbing enough. Now Hillary Clinton has used the same language.

Government by Control Fraud

In recent years, America has seen the implosion of several major corporations in a seeming explosion of corruption and fraud. Worldcom, Global Crossing, Tyco, and, of course, Enron have become watchwords for corporate corruption, and capitalism as a white collar crime. Few people understand how these frauds were perpetrated and, more importantly, why. The leaders of these companies had already reached the pinnacles of their professions, and would have made sums unimaginable to most people if they had run their businesses honestly and competently. Why did they throw it all away when the surety of eventually being caught and called to account seems, in hindsight, so obvious?

I can't really speak to the psychology of control fraud; I don't know that the psychology at its core is well understood, other than to posit elements of sociopathic behavior by the perpetrators. However, the methodology of white collar crime on the scale of these recent scandals is well documented and is known as control fraud. Control fraud occurs when conspirators are able to take control of an institution in order to exploit the trust and authority of the institution to convert its assets to personal use.

Pentagon Inspector General to release investigation into secretive pre-war Iraq intelligence group

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Wednesday February 7, 2007

Former Undersecretary Feith says he hasn’t seen report

A long awaited Pentagon Inspector General's report into the Office of Special Plans and its activities surrounding pre-war intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war has been completed, RAW STORY has learned.

According to sources close to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the classified version of the Pentagon IG's report will be released to committee members Friday. Two to three declassified pages may also be concurrently released to the public.

Huffington Post: Jane Hamsher--Scooter Agonistes

While tomorrow's release of the Scooter Libby grand jury tapes will no doubt be fodder for endless blog posts, they will be of no less interest to shrinks and dramatists. Over five and a half hours of the tapes played in court today, and although Libby's endless network of obfuscations at times became impenetrable, it was fascinating to watch his gradually dawning realization under Patrick Fitzgerald's relentless and dogged questioning that he was in fact screwed.

Paul Krugman: The Green-Zoning of America

The New York Times

Monday 05 February 2007

One of the best of the many recent books about the Iraq debacle is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." The book tells a tale of hopes squandered in the name of politicization and privatization: key jobs in Baghdad's Green Zone were assigned on the basis of loyalty rather than know-how, while key functions were outsourced to private contractors.

Two recent reports in The New York Times serve as a reminder that the Bush administration has brought the same corruption of governance to the home front. Call it the Green-Zoning of America.

USDA Faulted On Oversight Of Test Crops

Associated Press
Wednesday, February 7, 2007; Page A07

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct more detailed reviews of applications to plant experimental plots of genetically engineered crops.

In a ruling made public yesterday, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. said the department should have more thoroughly reviewed an application by the Scotts Co. to plant more than 400 acres of grass in Oregon. The grass was genetically engineered to withstand a popular weedkiller.

Wal-Mart bias case to go to trial

Wal-Mart will face a lawsuit claiming pay discrimination against more than a million female US employees after a court approved the action.

A federal appeals court upheld a 2004 ruling giving the lawsuit class action status, sanctioning claims from up to 1.5 million current and former staff.

Rove associate got help with job

Dan Eggen, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department removed a prosecutor in Arkansas without cause to make room for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, a senior Justice official conceded in testimony Tuesday.

But Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told senators that the new interim prosecutor in Little Rock, J. Timothy Griffin, has more experience as a prosecutor than the U.S. attorney he replaced.

Scooter Libby and the media debacle

by Eric Boehlert

The New York Times made headlines last week when it tapped a new D.C. bureau chief. But if the paper of record really wanted to jump-start its Beltway news operation, maybe it should have tried to lure Patrick Fitzgerald away from the Department of Justice.

Let's face it, as special counsel in charge of investigating the Valerie Plame CIA leak, and now the lead prosecutor in D.C. federal court methodically laying out the damning evidence of perjury, obstruction, and lying against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Fitzgerald has consistently shown more interest -- and determination -- in uncovering the facts of the Plame scandal than most Beltway journalists, including the often somnambulant D.C. newsroom of The New York Times.

PM Carpenter: Coming soon to an arrogant government very near you: Fiscal Armageddon

The president's nearly $3 trillion, 2008 budget proposal reads like a happy "how-to" manual for what Chalmers Johnson, the East Asian historian and thoughtful author of the eye-opening "Blowback" series, unhappily surveys:

We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.

TPM Cafe: About that Bush Family Ranch in Paraguay...

By truthista

A government office forbidden by law from disseminating information domestically was the mouthpiece of choice for the administration to deny rumors that the Bush family purchased thousands of acres in a remote portion of northern Paraguay.

According to CNN, the State Department's USINFO Counter - Disinformation / Misinformation Team, led by Todd Leventhal, "helps U.S. embassies identify and rebut other nations' disinformation, most often fabrications about the United States planted in foreign newspapers or television shows and, these days, on the Internet."

Court Hears Libby Describe Cheney as 'Upset' at Critic

Grand Jury Tapes Bolster Case Against Former Aide

By Amy Goldstein and Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 7, 2007; Page A03

Vice President Cheney and other senior White House officials regarded a former ambassador's accusations that President Bush misled the nation in going to war in Iraq as an unparalleled political assault and, early in the summer of 2003, held daily discussions about how to debunk them, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal grand jury.

In grand jury audiotapes played yesterday during Libby's perjury trial, the vice president's then-chief of staff said Cheney had been "upset" and "disturbed" by criticisms from former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that Bush had twisted intelligence to justify the war. And Libby said that Karl Rove had been "animated" by a conversation with Robert D. Novak, in which the conservative columnist told Rove he "had a bad taste in his mouth" about Wilson and was writing a column about him.

Living the American Dream ... in a One-Bedroom Apartment

By Andrew Lam, New America Media. Posted February 7, 2007.

The middle class is clinging to its precious status by contending with far smaller living spaces than those of previous generations.

In my apartment building people of various income levels are stacked on top of each other. The architect and the teacher occupy one-bedroom apartments on the floor above me. They are considered middle-class and, for that matter, so am I. An affluent, well-traveled couple lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. A poor Chinese immigrant family of five is crammed into the converted storage room where half a dozen bicycles were once kept, their children often turning the foyer into a makeshift playground strewn with plastic toys.

This is typical of the way we live in urban areas around the world: People of various classes live right next to, if not on top of, one another. We share the same address, practically, but occupy a very different sense of space. And just like those in the middle of my building, the middle class everywhere is feeling the pinch.

How parents react to material hardship found to be key to how income affects children

Research drawing from the "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999" challenges the accepted finding that family income is directly associated with parental stress. The study found that parents who make more money can better provide more cognitively stimulating materials, and that material hardship can lead to parental depression and conflict. These effects in turn may cause parents to show less affection towards children, who then may become depressed or misbehave.

Bush's Religious Right Swat Team Takes Aim at Methodists

By Frederick Clarkson
topic: Battle For Mainstream Faith
section:Front Page

It seems that whenever the Bush administration has a religion problem, a special political swat team turns up to handle it.

When the National Association of Evangelicals were preparing a statement expressing concern about global warming the Institute on Religion and Democracy helped lead a campaign of religious right leaders to derail the statement. When gay families, organized by Soulforce, planned to participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll, an IRD staffer published a shrill "expose" in the neoconservative Weekly Standard. And when Methodist ministers and Bishops organized a campaign to stop the placement of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and related Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, (including a petition signed by 10,000 Methodists so far including 14 bishops and 600 clergy) -- IRD once again stepped in on behalf of Team Bush, issuing a press release denouncing the effort, and organizing a letter-writing campaign in support of the complex.

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Fueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director

As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Military waste under fire

$1 trillion missing -- Bush plan targets Pentagon accounting
- Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 18, 2003

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

The Pentagon's unenviable reputation for waste will top the congressional agenda this week, when the House and Senate are expected to begin floor debate on a Bush administration proposal to make sweeping changes in how the Pentagon spends money, manages contracts and treats civilian employees.

The Quiet Plan to Kill Medicare

Posted by Elana Levin at 11:34 AM on February 6, 2007.

The press has failed to notice that the President's proposed 2008 budget includes a plan to do away with Medicare.

(My esteemed colleague Amy Traub wrote this post for us so I can't take credit). President Bush's new health care proposals have so many destructive features it took DMI nine pages to outline them all in our State of the Union rapid response last month. And we were really trying to brief. But it appears that the President didn't even mention all of the harmful plans he has in store for the nation's health care system. Like getting rid of Medicare as we know it.

You read that correctly. The President's proposed 2008 budget includes a plan to do away with Medicare.

test

test

Digby: Her Legacy

Molly Ivins: Stand up against the surge

January 11, 2007

(CREATORS) -- The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that WE simply cannot let it continue.

Digby: Real Men Go To Tehran

Accidental? Really?

Andrea Mitchell just said:

As the civil war grows deadlier by the day, the Bush administration is increasingly blaming Iran.

I feel, once again, as if I'm watching this take place under water. It's all there, I can see it, but it's all a bit distorted and everything is moving in slow motion. I'm screaming, but it comes out muffled and imprecise. The Bush administration is provoking a war with Iran, in real time, on television and we are just watching it happen.

Digby: Clean And Bright

The other day I wrote about Marty Peretz's not so unconscious racism toward African Americans. And lo and behold along comes Joe Biden and he sticks his big white foot in the same stupid mouth. Apparently, a lot of privileged white people really believe they aren't racist when they separate "the blacks" between the "articulate, bright, clean" kind and "the others." (Peretz calls the others four-flushers and race hustlers. A member of my family used to call them "The Ubangis." You get the drift.)

Digby: Hearing From Our Betters

Money in politics better than some people in it

From Darren McKinney

The Jan. 24 letter to the editor from Nick Nyhart and Chellie Pingree (“Full public funding of elections proven to work in states, cities,”), respective presidents of Public Campaign and Common Cause, lament the lack of public financing for all American political campaigns: “A democracy should be about all of us and not just about those who can write huge checks.”

Digby: Snake Bit

We always figured that "media strategist" and WHIG member Mary Matalin was one of the authors of the Plame smear. She's one of Cheney's intimates, she was hired to do damage control and is a mean and nasty person. Exposing "the wife" has her style all over it.

Digby: Believe Your Eyes

I think the thing I hate the most about Republicans is how they insult your intelligence and then dare you to challenge them on it. They installed that silly, little boy in the white house and forced us all to pretend that he was a competent leader for years or risk being called a traitor or worse even as we watched him drive the country into the ditch. They lied right in our faces about the "gathering threat" of Iraq and now they are trying to shove this bucket of swill down out throats:

Digby: Fighting Words

Free Republic posted a YouTube video of their counter-protest on Saturday. Judge for yourself. It runs about 9 minutes, but it's worth looking at. Clearly there was some point when people were able to walk closely by the counter-protesters on the sidewalk and it's possible that somebody spit on Sparling during that period. It's not captured on this film. Police are casually walking through and people are lolling about with baby strollers, so it doesn't appear to be a very dangerous scene. (You can see a woman dressed in black who appears to be interviewing Sparling at one point. Perhaps she is the NY Times reporter who observed that he was spit on?)

Digby: Kewl Kid High

John Kerry is a decent man and he doesn't deserve this kind of treatment by the low-life little creeps who make up the DC press corps. This snotty derision from a bunch of overpaid, useless, psychologically stunted twits is a new low.

Digby: Yes, Yes, Yes

Obama makes the bold move and it's very smart. Not only is it the right thing to do (yes, that should enter the equation) I think it's the savvy political move.

When the AUMF was being debated and all the presidential club members voted for it, I wrote that it would do them no good. If the war went well, they didn't have a chance. If it didn't their vote would hang around their neck.

Digby: Why Don't We Just Crown Him King

...and get it over with:

President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

Digby: "They Tried To Kill Me"

So apparently the NY Times journalist who reported the spitting incident apparently personally saw Cpl. Joshua Sparling getting spit upon.

Hughes for America has the story:

The latest in a long line of controversies surrounding veteran Joshua Sparling, who lost part of a leg in Iraq, started with this New York Times article penned by Ian Urbina, with help from Sarah Abruzzese and Suevon Lee. "There were a few tense moments, however," the story read, "including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration's policies in Iraq. Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back."

Digby: America In The Balance

The right has a new obsession with "balance" just like the news media. This even translates into teaching schoolchildren crackpot science so that their cretinous parents aren't offended by the truth:

Frosty Hardison is neither impressed nor surprised that An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination last week for best documentary.

"Liberal left is all over Hollywood," he grumbled a few hours after the nomination was announced.

Frank Rich: Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up

In the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation’s armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of “enormous successes” in Iraq and barked “hogwash” at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago.

The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney’s former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq.

Disaster: Bush Says He’ll Continue Meddling in Middle East After His Presidency

Posted by Jon Ponder | Feb. 4, 2007, 2:33 pm

Geogre Bush has informed his inner circle that after he leaves office he plans to invite leaders from Middle East to his think tank, which will be part of his $500 million library, where he will give them guidance on the finer points of democratic governance:

Indeed, senior officials close to Bush [say] that Bush’s plan after he leaves the White House is to continue to promote the spread of democracy in the Middle East by inviting world leaders to his own policy institute, to be built alongside his presidential library.