Break on Through

9/11 - September 11, 2006: Bush Administration Obstructed 9/11 Commission at All Turns

2006-09-11T09:11:00.000-04:00

Observing the 5th Anniversary of the day that changed everything, we can't bring back to life the thousands of victims and heroes in the States or the tens of thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon. Sorrow for those losses can only be quenched with time.

But the record of best efforts by those who tried to keep you from knowing why and how those thousands died should not be lost to the process of grieving.

For, within 8 hours of the attack, the creative destruction of 9/11/2001 inspired the Bush Administration to twist the horror of our national tragedy into the engine of their decade-long obsession, to invade Iraq:

from DOD Staffer's Notes From 9/11 Obtained Under FOIA

This note documents Donald Rumsfeld's 2:40 PM instructions to General Myers to find the "[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]" (as discussed on p. 334-335 of the 9/11 Commission Report and in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack).

-- link to image of FOIA-released notes

By reviving the archived Record of Bush Administration's Obstruction of Investigation of 911, we hope to ensure that Americans never forget. Remember who you're dealing with:

Bush Marks 9/11 Anniversary
September 11, 2006, Guardian Unlimited

"Laura and I approach tomorrow with a heavy heart. It's hard not to think about people who lost their lives on September 11 2001," Mr Bush said. "I wish there were some way we could make them whole."

The president called today's anniversary "a day of renewing resolve".

"I vowed that I'm never going to forget the lessons of that day. There is still an enemy out there who would like to inflict the same kind of damage again."

Osama's still out there?! How? Why?!

White House Press Conference
March 13, 2002, WhiteHouse.gov

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...

Terror is bigger than one person. and one hell of a marketing tool for selling an invasion. It would be a matter of criminal injustice to forget that President Bush and his New American Century cronies didn't want you to know how the tragedy of 9/11/2001 came to be.

Originally compiled to inform the American electorate in October 2004, the Record is currently being revised to accomodate changes in the database from which source records were drawn. And updated to reflect all the more that the regime occupying the White House undertook all means possible to thwart formation and function of the Independent 911 Commission. No matter how flawed it or the Final Report was, the Bush Administration did its utmost to ensure that you and I would be kept in the dark, if they could impact the process of investigation. And they could.

This article attempts to document the White House obstruction of that investigative effort. The new edition will reside at ePluribus Media.

This is a compilation of evidence originally made public by ‘mainstream media’, government, or other creditable sources as entered into the Complete 911 and Complete Iraq Timeline databases. The citations and commentary are as archived in the searchable database at the Cooperative Research website. There I searched for the term "commission". I then compiled only items related to formation or function of the Joint Senate Intelligence or Independent 911 Commissions having dates after 9/11/2001. This tragically clear delimiter was the obvious mark after which data related to formation and process of investigative commissions might follow. Finally excluded from the history-compilation were events that included ‘commission’ simply due to the record mentioning 'commission' in retrospective commentary, that is, the record had no bearing on the Bush Administration's obstruction of its formation or function.

The primary search query is :

'commission'

which currently (10/31/2004) returns 233 hits in total from throughout the several databases queried by CR's server. I believe the number was closer to 200 at the time I did the original query.

UPDATE: The record I’ve put together is as complete as the Complete Timeline database provided during the first week of September, 2004. This article, additionally, includes a number of entries that were not necessarily identified by the 'commission' string-query but which I observed that go to 'motive' while preparing the history of Bush Administration Obstruction for final presentation here.

The record of the 9/11 commissions' formation and investigative processes are clearly characterized by Bush Administration stonewalling and obstruction, stacking of the membership deck, attempts to control its function, conflicts of interest, attempts at budget-strangulation, restriction of results by security-classification, tactical delays, document-withholding, etc., ad nauseum. The Administration's attempts to portray their efforts as above-board, honest, and in America's best interests bear no relationship to the accounting done in the reality-based world.

To be sure, Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research deserve massive amounts of gratitude for their work to make such critical information easily accessible. Sincere thanks to these folks.

A note regarding source citation. I've included urls only for the date of the logged event item. Within each event may be found citation of one or more itemized source articles that may be accessed through the live hyperlinks found within each bracketed text item.

Mid-July 2001 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

John O'Neill, FBI counter-terrorism expert, privately discusses White House obstruction in his bin Laden investigation. O'Neill says: “The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” He adds: “All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.” O'Neill also believes the White House is obstructing his investigation of bin Laden because they are still keeping the idea of a pipeline deal with the Taliban open. [CNN 1/8/02; CNN 1/9/02; Irish Times 11/19/01; Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth]

August 22, 2001 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

Counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill quits the FBI. He says it's partly because of the recent power play against him (see August 19, 2001), but also because of repeated obstruction of his investigations into al-Qaeda. [New Yorker, 1/14/02] In his last act, he signs papers ordering FBI investigators back to Yemen to resume the USS Cole investigation, now that Barbara Bodine is leaving as Ambassador (they arrive a couple days before 9/11) (see October 12, 2000). He never hears the CIA warning about hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar sent out just one day later. Because he fell out of favor a few months earlier, he also is never told about Ken Williams' flight school memo (see July 10, 2001), nor about the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui (see August 15, 2001) [PBS Frontline, 10/3/02 (D)], nor is he at a June meeting when the CIA revealed some of what it knew about Alhazmi and Almihdhar (see June 11, 2001). [PBS Frontline, 10/3/02] The FBI New York office is eventually warned of Walid Arkeh's warning that the WTC would be attacked, but presumably not in time for O'Neill to hear it (see August 21, 2001).

May 23, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

President Bush says he is opposed to establishing a special, 9/11 Commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before 9/11. [CBS, 5/23/02] He later changes his stance in the face of overwhelming support for the idea (see September 20, 2002), and then sabotages an agreement that Congress had reached to establish the commission (see October 10, 2002).

May 30, 2002Complete 911 Timeline

FBI Agent Robert Wright announces he is suing the FBI over a publishing ban. He has written a book but the FBI won't allow him to show it to anyone. He delivers a tearful press conference at the National Press Club describing his lawsuit against the FBI for deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately he has been ordered to not reveal specifics publicly. [Fox News 5/30/02] Wright claims the FBI shut down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City (see October 1998). He uses words like “prevented,” “thwarted,” “obstructed,” “threatened,” “intimidated,”and “retaliation” to describe the actions of his superiors in blocking his attempts to shut off money flows to al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups. He also alleges that for years the US was training Hamas terrorists to make car bombs to use against Israel, one of the US's closest allies (see also June 9, 2001 and August 9, 2002 (C)). [LA Weekly, 8/2/02] [FTW]

August 11, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

A shocking Newsweek article suggests that some of Bush's advisors advocate not only attacking Iraq, but also Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, and Burma! One senior British official says: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.” [Newsweek, 8/11/02] Later in the year, Bush's influential advisor Richard Perle states, “No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” [New Statesman, 12/16/02] In February 2003, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton says in meetings with Israeli officials that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterward. This is not reported in the US media. [Ha'aretz 2/17/03]

July 12, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

A federal judge denies a motion to dismiss a lawsuit trying to force the release of documents relating to Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force (see May 2001 (G)). Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed the suit a year earlier. The judge rejects as “mischief”arguments that inquiry into the Energy Task Force would impinge on the president's constitutional powers. The judge further says the Bush Administration's “stunning” arguments “fly in the face of precedent” and are a “problematic and unprecedented assertion … of Executive Power.” He also accuses the Bush Administration of making purposefully misleading arguments in its case. [AP, 7/12/02] In March, the Bush Administration was forced to release thousands of documents after what the judge called ten months of stalling. [New York Times, 3/6/02] But a majority of documents were not released, and of the ones that were, most were completely blanked out. [AP, 3/25/02] The government continues to fight the release of these documents (see October 17, 2002, December 9, 2002 (B) and February 7, 2003 (B)).

July 10, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

A briefing given to a top Pentagon advisory group states, “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader … Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies.” They are called “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent.”This position still runs counter to official US policy, but the Washington Post says it “represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration.” The briefing suggests that the Saudis be given an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States . The group, the Defense Policy Board, is headed by Richard Perle. [Washington Post, 8/6/02] An international controversy follows the public reports of the briefing in August 2002 (for instance, [Scotsman, 8/12/02]). In an abrupt change, the media starts calling the Saudis enemies, not allies of the US. Slate reports details of the briefing the Post failed to mention. The briefing states, “There is an ‘Arabia,’ but it needs not be ‘Saudi’ ”. The conclusion of the briefing: “Grand strategy for the Middle East: Iraq is the tactical pivot. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot. Egypt the prize.” [Slate, 8/7/02] Note that a similar meeting of the Defense Policy Board appears to have preceded and affected the US's decision to take a warlike stance against Iraq (see September 17, 2001 (B) and August 6, 2001).

July 13, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

The US military releases a new Defense Planning Guidance strategic vision. It “contains all the key elements” of a similar document written ten years earlier by largely the same people now in power (see March 8, 1992). Like the original, the centerpiece of this vision is preventing any other powers from challenging US world dominance. Some new ideas are added, for instance, not just preemptive strikes but preemptive strikes using nuclear weapons. [Los Angeles Times, 7/13/02, Los Angeles Times, 7/16/02, Harper's, 10/02] David Armstrong notes in Harper's magazine, “[In 1992] the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.” [Harper's 10/02]

July 22, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

Three prominent members of the Saudi royal family die in mysterious circumstances. Prince Ahmed bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of the Saudi king, prominent businessman, and owner of the winning 2002 Kentucky Derby horse, is said to die of a heart attack at the age of 43. The next day, Prince Sultan bin Faisal, another nephew of the king, dies driving to Prince Ahmed's funeral. A week later, Prince Sultan bin Faisal supposedly “dies of thirst”in the Arabian desert. Seven months later, on February 20, 2003, Pakistan's air force chief Mushaf Ali Mir, dies in a plane crash in clear weather, along with his wife and closest confidants. Controversial author Gerald Posner implies that all of these events are linked together and the deaths not accidental, because of the testimony of captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. Supposedly, Zubaida confessed that he was working with all of the above individuals, and that they had foreknowledge of the 9/11 plot. The deaths all occurred not long after the respective governments were told of Zubaida's confessions. Only one other key figure named by Zubaida remains alive: Saudi Intelligence Minister Prince Turki bin Faisal. Posner says, “He's the J. Edgar Hoover of Saudi Arabia,” too powerful and aware of too many secrets to be killed off. Prince Turki loses his Intelligence Minister job ten days before 9/11, and is later made Saudi ambassador to Britain, giving him diplomatic immunity from any criminal prosecution. [Time 8/31/03]

August 2, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The Washington Post reveals that FBI agents have questioned nearly all 37 members of the Senate and House intelligence committees about 9/11-related information leaks. They have asked them to submit to lie detector tests but most have refused. Congresspeople express “grave concern” for this historically unprecedented move. A law professor states, “Now the FBI can open dossiers on every member and staffer and develop full information on them. It creates a great chilling effect on those who would be critical of the FBI.” [Washington Post, 8/2/02] Senator John McCain suggests that “the constitutional separation of powers is being violated in spirit if not in the letter. ‘What you have here is an organization compiling dossiers on people who are investigating the same organization. The administration bitterly complains about some leaks out of a committee, but meanwhile leaks abound about secret war plans for fighting a war against Saddam Hussein. What's that about? There's a bit of a contradiction here, if not a double standard.’ ” [Washington Post, 8/3/02] Later the search for the source of the leak intensifies to unprecedented levels as the FBI asks 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars and schedules that would reveal their possible contact with reporters. [Washington Post, 8/24/02] Most, if not all, turn over the records, even as some complain that the request breaches the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. One senator says the FBI is “trying to put a damper on our activities and I think they will be successful.” [AP, 8/29/02] In January 2004 it is reported that the probe is now focusing on Republican Senator Richard Shelby. There has been no further word or indictments since. [Washington Post 1/22/04 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36876-2004Jan21.html]

August 13, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

On the Donahue TV show, Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the WTC, says the following about Bush's behavior on 9/11: “It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk [Bush] out of that school? He was on live local television in Florida. The terrorists, you know, had been in Florida. I mean, we find that out now. He was less than 10 miles from an airport. And I am concerned. I want to know why the Secret Service did not whisk him away. I want to know why he is the commander-in-chief of the USA, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes.” She further states, “I don't understand how a plane could hit our Defense Department, which is the Pentagon, an hour after the first plane hit the first tower. I don't understand how that is possible. I'm a reasonable person. But when you look at the fact that we spend a half trillion dollars on national defense and you're telling me that a plane is able to hit our Pentagon, our Defense Department, an hour after the first tower is hit? There are procedures and protocols in place in this nation that are to be followed when transponders are disconnected, and they were not followed on September 11th.” [Donahue, 8/13/02]

August 15, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Deena Burnett speaks on behalf of the relatives suing the Saudis.
More than 600 relatives (later rising to over 2,500 out of 10,000 eligible [Newsweek, 9/13/02]) of victims of the September 11 attacks file a 15-count, $1 trillion lawsuit against various parties they accuse of financing al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. The defendants include the Binladin Group (the company run by Osama bin Laden's family), seven international banks, eight Islamic foundations and charities, individual terrorist financiers, three Saudi princes, and the government of Sudan. [CNN, 8/15/02, Washington Post, 8/16/02] Individuals named include Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan (see June 1998 (D), August 2001 (G), and August 31, 2001), former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal (see July 1998, August 31, 2001, and October 18, 2002), Yassin al-Qadi (see October 12, 2001), and Khalid bin Mahfouz (see 1988, , December 4, 2001 (B) and Early December 2001 (B)). [AP, 8/15/02, MSNBC, 8/25/02] “The attorneys and investigators were able to obtain, through French intelligence, the translation of a secretly recorded meeting between representatives of bin Laden and three Saudi princes in which they sought to pay him hush money to keep him from attacking their enterprises in Saudi Arabia.” [CNN 8/15/02] The plaintiffs also accused the US Government of failing to pursue such institutions thoroughly enough because of lucrative oil interests. [BBC 8/15/02] Ron Motley, the lead lawyer in the suit, says the case is being aided by intelligence services from France and four other foreign governments, but no help has come from the Justice Department. [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 8/16/02] The plaintiffs acknowledge the chance of ever winning any money is slim, but hope the lawsuit will help bring to light the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks. [BBC, 8/15/02] A number of rich Saudis respond by threatening to withdraw hundreds of billions of dollars in US investments if the lawsuit goes forward. [Telegraph, 8/20/02] Saudi businesses withdraw more than $100 billion from the US in response to the suit (see August 20, 2002), and the US government later threatens to block or limit the suit (see November 1, 2002).

August 25, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Former CIA agent Bob Baer says the US collects virtually no intelligence about Saudi Arabia nor are they given any intelligence collected by the Saudis. He says this is because there are implicit orders from the White House, “Do not collect information on Saudi Arabia because we're going to risk annoying the royal family.” In the same show, despite being on a US terrorist list since October 2001 (see October 12, 2001), Saudi millionaire Yassin al-Qadi says, “I'm living my life here in Saudi Arabia without any problem”because he is being protected by the Saudi government. Al-Qadi admits to giving bin Laden money for his “humanitarian” work, but says this is different from bin Laden's terrorist work. Presented with this information, the US Treasury Department only says that the US “is pleased with and appreciates the actions taken by the Saudis” in the war on terror. The Saudi government still has not given US intelligence permission to talk to any family members of the hijackers, even though some US journalists have had limited contact with a few. [MSNBC 8/25/02]

August 27, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Prince Bandar and President Bush meet at Bush's ranch in August.
Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the US, meets privately for more than an hour with Bush and National Security Advisor Rice in Crawford, Texas (see April 25, 2002). [Telegraph, 8/28/02] Press Secretary Ari Fleischer characterizes it as a warm meeting of old friends. Bandar, his wife (Princess Haifa) and seven of their eight children stay for lunch. [Fox News, 8/27/02] Prince Bandar, a longtime friend of the Bush family, donated $1 million to the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. [Boston Herald, 12/11/01 (B), Bush Library] This relationship later becomes news when it is learned that Princess Haifa gave between $51,000 and $73,000 to two Saudi families in California who may have financed two of the 9/11 hijackers (see December 4, 1999and November 22, 2002). [New York Times 11/23/02; MSNBC 11/25/02]

September 5, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, expresses doubts that the committee's investigation into 9/11 will be able to accomplish anything, and he supports an independent investigation. “Time is not on our side,” he says, since the investigation has a built-in deadline at the end of 2002. “You know, we were told that there would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that. I think that most of the information that our staff has been able to get that is real meaningful has had to be extracted piece by piece.” He adds that there is explosive information that has not been publicly released. “I think there are some more bombs out there … I know that.” [New York Times 9/10/02 (B)]

September 11, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the story of what Bush did on that day is significantly rewritten. In actual fact, when Chief of Staff Andrew Card told Bush about the second plane crash into the WTC, Bush continued to sit in a Florida elementary school classroom and hear a story about goats for about an additional 10 minutes, as video footage shows (see the Day of 9/11 for more). But one year later, Card claims that after he told Bush about the second WTC crash, “it was only a matter of seconds” before Bush “excused himself very politely to the teacher and to the students, and he left the Florida classroom.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/11/02] In a different account, Card says, “Not that many seconds later the president excused himself from the classroom.”[MSNBC, 9/9/02] An interview with the classroom teacher claims that Bush left the class even before the second WTC crash: “The president bolted right out of here and told me: ‘Take over.’ ” When the second WTC crash occurred, she claims her students are watching TV in a nearby media room. [New York Post 9/12/02]

September 11, 2002 (C) Complete 911 Timeline

On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, The New York Times writes, “One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of an ocean in the dead of night.” John F. Timoney, the former police commissioner of Philadelphia, says: “You can hardly point to a cataclysmic event in our history, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, the Pearl Harbor attack, the Kennedy assassination, when a blue-ribbon panel did not set out to establish the facts and, where appropriate, suggest reforms. That has not happened here.” The Times specifically points to a failure by New York City Mayor Bloomberg to conduct a real investigation into the WTC attack response. Bloomberg stated in August 2002, “Every single major event is different from all others. The training of how you would respond to the last incident is not really important.” [New York Times, 9/11/02 (B)] The Chicago Tribune made similar comments a week earlier, pointing out that despite the “largest investigation in history,” “Americans know little more today about the Sept. 11 conspiracy, or the conspirators, than they did within a few weeks of the attacks.” [Chicago Tribune 9/5/02]

September 12, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

For the first time, a mainstream US newspaper looks at the people who believe there was government complicity or criminal incompetence in 9/11 and does not immediately dismiss them (see September 23, 2001 (B)). The San Francisco Examiner quotes a number of 9/11 skeptics and lets them speak for themselves. “While different theorists focus on different aspects of the attacks, what they seem to have in common is they would like an independent investigation into 9/11.” [San Francisco Examiner 9/12/02]

September 18, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

The Congressional joint committee 9/11 inquiry hold its first public hearing. The committee was formed in February 2002 but suffered months of delays. The day's testimonies focuses on intelligence warnings that should have led the government to believe airplanes could be used as bombs (see the committee's complete 30-page report here: [Senate Intelligence Committee, 9/18/02]). However, the Washington Post reports, “lawmakers from both parties … [protest] the Bush administration's lack of cooperation in the congressional inquiry into Sept. 11 intelligence failures and [threaten] to renew efforts to establish an 9/11 Commission.” Eleanor Hill, the joint committee's staff director, testifies that “According to [CIA Director Tenet], the president's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this inquiry remains classified even when the substance of that intelligence information has been declassified.” She adds that “the American public has a compelling interest in this information and that public disclosure would not harm national security.” [Washington Post, 9/19/02] Furthermore, the committee believes that “a particular al-Qaeda leader may have been instrumental in the attacks” and US intelligence has known about this person since 1995. Tenet “has declined to declassify the information we developed [about this person] on the grounds that it could compromise intelligence sources and methods and that this consideration supersedes the American public's interest in this particular area.” [Senate Intelligence Committee, 9/18/02] A few days later, The New York Times reveals this leader to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. [New York Times, 9/22/02] An FBI spokesman says the FBI had offered “full cooperation” to the committee. A CIA official denies that the report is damning: “The committee acknowledges the hard work done by intelligence community, the successes it achieved… ” [MSNBC, 9/18/02] The complete open hearing transcripts: [Congressional Inquiry 9/18/02; 9/19/02; 9/19/02 (B); 9/24/02; 9/26/02; 10/1/02; 10/3/02; 10/8/02; 10/17/02]

September 20, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

In the wake of damaging Congressional 9/11 inquiry revelations, President Bush reverses course (see May 23, 2002) and backs efforts by many lawmakers to form an 9/11 Commission to conduct a broader investigation than the current Congressional inquiry. Newsweek reports that Bush had virtually no choice. “There was a freight train coming down the tracks,” says one White House official. [Newsweek, 9/22/02] But as one of the 9/11 victim's relatives says, “It's carefully crafted to make it look like a general endorsement but it actually says that the commission would look at everything except the intelligence failures.” [CBS, 9/20/02] Rather than look into such failures, Bush wants the commission to focus on areas like border security, visa issues and the “role of Congress” in overseeing intelligence agencies. The White House also refuses to turn over documents showing what Bush knew before 9/11. [Newsweek, 9/22/02]

September 26, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

A leaked August 16, 2002 report from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 is exposed. [UPI, 9/26/02] The board “recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at ‘stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction—that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces. Such tactics would hold ‘states/sub-state actors accountable’ and ‘signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk.’ ” [Los Angeles Times 10/27/02; Asia Times 11/5/02] An editorial in the Moscow Times comments: “In other words—and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan—the United States government is planning to use ‘cover and deception’ and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people.” It is further suggested terrorists could be instigated in countries the US wants to gain control over. [Moscow Times, 11/1/02] Could the US already be using this policy, and if so, since when?

October 6, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

60 Minutes airs a program on the religious support for Bush's expansionist Middle Eastern policies. [CBS, 10/6/02] A Guardian editorial from around the same time suggests that “Christian millenarians” who are “driven by visions of messiahs and Armageddon” have formed an alliance with “secular, neoconservative Jewish intellectuals, such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz” and are strongly influencing Bush's foreign policy. [Guardian, 9/17/02] A later Washington Post article also sees the support of evangelical Christians and right-wing Jewish groups as instrumental in defining US Middle East policy. [Washington Post 2/9/03]

October 10, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

A tentative congressional deal to create an 9/11 Commission to investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks falls apart hours after the White House objected to the plan (it appears Vice President Cheney called Republican leaders and told them to renege on the agreement [New York Times, 11/2/02]). Bush had pledged to support such a commission a few weeks earlier (see September 20, 2002), but doubters who questioned his sincerity appear to have been proved correct. Hours after top Republican leaders announced at a press conference that an agreement had been reached, House Republican leaders said they wouldn't bring the legislation to the full House for a vote unless the commission proposal was changed. There are worries that if the White House can delay the legislation for a few more days until Congress adjourns, it could stop the creation of a commission for months, if not permanently. [Washington Post 10/11/02; New York Times 10/11/02]

October 15, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

About 10 relatives of the 9/11 victims meet with lawmakers and two Bush administration officials in an unsuccessful attempt to break a deadlock over the establishment of an independent 9/11 commission. The Bush administration says it supports such a commission, but wants its allies to have more control over leadership and subpoena powers (see September 20, 2002 and October 10, 2002). [AP, 10/16/02] No agreement is reached before the 107th Congress ends a few days later, but the committee is established one month later (see November 15, 2002).

October 17, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club again win a ruling against Vice President Cheney (see July 12, 2002), and a judge demands that Cheney turn over documents relating to his Energy Task Force (see May 2001 (G)). [Reuters 10/17/02] But the Bush Administration continues to fight the release of these documents. A similar lawsuit by the General Accounting Office, the Congressional investigative body, is later dropped (see December 9, 2002 (B) and February 7, 2003 (B)).

October 27, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

The Observer reports, “America's most controversial writer Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W. Bush's Presidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of al-Qaeda's plans. Vidal's highly controversial 7,000 word polemic titled ‘The Enemy Within’ … argues that what he calls a ‘Bush junta’ used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a preexisting agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home. Vidal states, ‘Apparently, ‘conspiracy stuff’ is now shorthand for unspeakable truth’ ”(read a summary here [Observer, 10/27/02 (B)], or Vidal's entire essay here [Observer, 10/27/02], and an interview here [Salon, 4/24/02]).

November 1, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Some of the 9/11 victims' relatives hold a rally at the US Capitol to protest what they fear are plans by the Bush administration to delay or block their lawsuit against prominent Saudi individuals for an alleged role in financing al-Qaeda (see August 15, 2002). [Washington Post 11/1/02] US officials say they have not decided whether to submit a motion seeking to block or restrict the lawsuit, but they are concerned about the “diplomatic sensitivities” of the suit. Saudis have withdrawn hundreds of billions of dollars from the US in response to the suit (see August 20, 2002). The Guardian previously reported that “some plaintiffs in the case say the Bush administration is pressuring them to pull out of the lawsuit in order to avoid damaging US-Saudi relations, threatening them with the prospect of being denied any money from the government's own compensation scheme if they continue to pursue it. Bereaved relatives who apply to the federal compensation scheme must, in any case, sign away their rights to sue the government, air carriers in the US, and other domestic bodies—a condition that has prompted some of them to call the government compensation ‘hush money.’ The fund is expected, in the end, to pay out $4 billion. They remain, however, free to sue those they accuse of being directly responsible for the attacks, such as Osama bin Laden, and—so they thought—the alleged financers of terrorism.” [Guardian 9/20/02]

November 15, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Congress approves legislation creating an 9/11 Commission—the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States—to “examine and report on the facts and causes relating to the September 11th terrorist attacks” and “make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks.” President Bush signs it into law November 27, 2002. [US Department of State, 11/28/02] Bush originally opposed an 9/11 Commission, but he changes his mind over the summer after political pressure (see January 24, 2002, May 23, 2002, and October 10, 2002). The Democrats concede several important aspects of the commission (such as subpoena approval) after the White House threatens to create a commission by executive order, over which it would have more control. Bush will appoint the Commission chairman (see November 27, 2002) and he sets a strict time frame (18 months) for the investigation. [CNN, 11/15/02] The commission will only have a $3 million budget. Senator Jon Corzine (D) and others have wondered how the commission can accomplish much with such a small budget. [AP 1/20/03]

November 17, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

A Toronto Star editorial entitled “Pursue the Truth About Sept. 11” strongly criticizes the government and media regarding 9/11: “Getting the truth about 9/11 has seemed impossible. The evasions, the obfuscations, the contradictions and, let's not put too fine a point on it, the lies have been overwhelming. … The questions are endless. But most are not being asked—still—by most of the media most of the time. … There are many people, and more by the minute, persuaded that, if the Bushies didn't cause 9/11, they did nothing to stop it.” The article also mentions the Complete 9/11 Timeline website, calling it one of several “carefully considered, well crafted and very compelling” websites to look at for more information about 9/11. [Toronto Star 11/17/02]

November 22, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Newsweek reports that hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi may have received money from Saudi Arabia's royal family through two Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan (see August 1994, April 1998, and December 4, 1999), based on information leaked from the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry the month before (see October 9, 2002). [Newsweek, 11/22/02, Newsweek, 11/22/02, Washington Post, 11/23/02, New York Times, 11/23/02] Al-Bayoumi is in Saudi Arabia by this time (see September 21-28, 2001); Basnan was deported to Saudi Arabia just five days earlier (see August 22, 2002). Saudi officials and Princess Haifa immediately deny any terrorist connections. [Los Angeles Times, 11/24/02] Newsweek reports that while the money trail “could be perfectly innocent … it is nonetheless intriguing—and could ultimately expose the Saudi government to some of the blame for 9/11 … ” [Newsweek, 11/22/02] Some Saudi newspapers which usually reflect government thinking claim the leak is blackmail to pressure Saudi Arabia into supporting war with Iraq. [MSNBC 11/25/02] Senior government officials claim the FBI and CIA failed to aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the two hijackers to Saudi Arabia. This causes a bitter dispute between FBI and CIA officials and the intelligence panel investigating the 9/11 attacks (see December 11, 2002 (B)). [New York Times, 11/23/02] A number of senators, including Richard Shelby (R), John McCain (R), Mitch O'Connell (R), Joe Lieberman (D), Bob Graham (D), Joe Biden (D), and Charles Schumer (D), express concern about the Bush administration's action (or non-action) regarding the Saudi royal family and its possible role in funding terrorists. [New York Times, 11/25/02, Reuters, 11/24/02] Lieberman says, “I think it's time for the president to blow the whistle and remember what he said after September 11—you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.” [ABC News, 11/25/02] FBI officials strongly deny any deliberate connection between these two and the Saudi government or the hijackers [Time, 11/24/03], but later even more connections between them and both entities are revealed. [Congressional Inquiry 7/24/03]

November 27, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

President Bush names Henry Kissinger as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Congressional Democrats appoint George Mitchell, former Senate majority leader and peace envoy to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, as Vice Chairman. Their replacements and the other eight members of the commission are chosen by mid-December (see and December 16, 2002 (B)). Kissinger served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for Presidents Nixon and Ford. [New York Times, 11/29/02] Kissinger's ability to remain independent is met with skepticism (for instance, see Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/3/02, Washington Post, 12/17/02, Chicago Sun-Times, 12/13/02, CNN, 11/30/02, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/29/02]. He has a very controversial past—for instance, “Documents recently released by the CIA, strengthen previously-held suspicions that Kissinger was actively involved in the establishment of Operation Condor, a covert plan involving six Latin American countries including Chile, to assassinate thousands of political opponents.” He is also famous for an “obsession with secrecy.” [BBC, 4/26/02] Its even difficult for Kissinger to travel outside the US. Investigative judges in Spain, France, Chile and Argentina seek to question him in several legal actions related to his possible involvement in war crimes particularly in Latin America, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Chile and East Timor. [BBC 4/18/02; Village Voice 8/15-21/01; Chicago Tribune 12/1/02] “Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed.” [New York Times, 11/29/02] The Chicago Tribune notes that “the president who appointed him originally opposed this whole undertaking”(see January 24, 2002, May 23, 2002, and October 10, 2002). Kissinger is “known more for keeping secrets from the American people than for telling the truth” and asking him “to deliver a critique that may ruin friends and associates is asking a great deal.” [Chicago Tribune, 12/5/02] Both he and Mitchell resign a short time later rather than reveal the clients they work with (see and December 13, 2002).

Dec 2002 Speculation

Bush names Thomas Kean as the new chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Kean has business ties to Osama's brother-in-law, who is suspected to have funnelled millions of dollars to the Al Qaeda network and is named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept 11 victims. [Article; Article]

December 9, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

A federal judge rules against the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, in its attempt to force Vice President Cheney to disclose his Energy Task Force documents (see May 2001 (G)). The judge writes, “This case, in which neither a House of Congress nor any congressional committee has issued a subpoena for the disputed information or authorized this suit, is not the setting for such unprecedented judicial action.” [AP, 12/9/02] The GAO later declines to appeal the ruling (see February 7, 2003 (B)). In a similar suit being filed by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, the Bush Administration has successfully delayed deadlines forcing these documents to be turned over. That case continues, with another deadline avoided on December 6. [AP 12/6/02]

December 11, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry concludes its seven month investigation of the performance of government agencies before the 9/11 attacks. A report hundred of page long has been written, but only nine pages of findings and 15 pages of recommendations are released at this time, and those have blacked out sections. [Los Angeles Times, 12/12/02] After months of wrangling over what has to be classified (see January-July 2003), the final report is released in July 2003 (see July 24, 2003). In the findings released at this time, the Inquiry accuses the Bush administration of refusing to declassify information about possible Saudi Arabian financial links to US-based terrorists, criticizes the FBI for not adapting into a domestic intelligence bureau after the attacks and says the CIA lacked an effective system for holding its officials accountable for their actions. Asked if 9/11 could have been prevented, Senator Bob Graham (D), the committee chairman, gives “a conditional yes.” Graham says the Bush administration has given Americans an “incomplete and distorted picture” of the foreign assistance the hijackers may have received. [ABC, 12/10/02] Graham further says, “There are many more findings to be disclosed” that Americans would find “more than interesting,” and he and others express frustration that information that should be released is being kept classified by the Bush administration. [St. Petersburg Times, 12/12/02] Many of these findings remain classified after the Inquiry's final report is released (see July 28, 2003 and August 1-3, 2003). Sen. Richard Shelby (R), the vice chairman, singles out six people as having “failed in significant ways to ensure that this country was as prepared as it could have been”: CIA Director Tenet; Tenet's predecessor, John Deutch; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; NSA Director Michael Hayden; Hayden's predecessor, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan; and former Deputy Director Barbara McNamara. [Washington Post, 12/11/02; Committee Findings, 12/11/02, Committee Recommendations, 12/11/02] Shelby says that Tenet should resign. “There have been more failures on his watch as far as massive intelligence failures than any CIA director in history. Yet he's still there. It's inexplicable to me.” [Reuters, 12/10/02, PBS Newshour, 12/11/02] “A list of 19 recommendations consists largely of recycled proposals and tepid calls for further study of thorny issues members themselves could not resolve.” [Los Angeles Times 12/12/02]

December 11, 2002 (C) Complete 911 Timeline

In discussing the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 9/11 (see December 11, 2002 (B)), Senator Bob Graham (D), the committee chairman, says he is “surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the [9/11] terrorists in the United States…. To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing—although that was part of it—by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down…. It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. ” [PBS Newshour, 12/11/02] In March 2003, Newsweek says its sources indicate Graham is speaking about Saudi Arabia, and that leads pointing in this direction have been pursued. Graham also says that the report contains far more miscues than have been publicly revealed. “There's been a cover-up of this,” he says. [Newsweek, 3/1/03 (B)]

December 13, 2002 Complete 911 Timeline

Henry Kissinger resigns as head of the new 9/11 investigation (see November 27, 2002). [AP, 12/13/02, ABC, 12/13/02, Kissinger's resignation letter] Two days earlier, the Bush Administration argued that Kissinger was not required to disclose his private business clients. [New York Times, 12/12/02] However, the Congressional Research Service insists that he does, and Kissinger resigns rather than reveal his clients. [MSNBC 12/13/02; Seattle Times 12/14/02] It is reported that Kissinger is (or has been) a consultant for Unocal, the oil corporation, and was involved in plans to build pipelines through Afghanistan (see October 21, 1995, and August 9, 1998). [Washington Post 10/5/98; Salon 12/3/02] Kissinger claimed he did no current work for any oil companies or Mideast clients, but several corporations with heavy investments in Saudi Arabia, such as ABB Group, a Swiss-Swedish engineering firm, and Boeing Corp., pay him consulting fees of at least $250,000 a year. A Boeing spokesman said its “long-standing” relationship with Kissinger involved advice on deals in East Asia, not Saudi Arabia. Boeing sold $7.2 billion worth of aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1995. [Newsweek 12/15/02] In a surprising break from usual procedures regarding high-profile presidential appointments, White House lawyers never vetted Kissinger for conflicts of interest. [Newsweek, 12/15/02] The Washington Post says that after the resignations of Kissinger and Mitchell, the commission “has lost time” and “is in disarray, which is no small trick given that it has yet to meet.” [Washington Post 12/14/02]

December 16, 2002 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The ten members of the new 9/11 Commission (see November 15, 2002) are appointed by this date, and are: Republicans Thomas Kean (Chairman), Slade Gorton, James Thompson, Fred Fielding, and John Lehman, and Democrats Lee Hamilton (Vice Chairman), Max Cleland, Tim Roemer, Richard Ben-Veniste, and Jamie Gorelick. [New York Times, 12/17/02, Washington Post, 12/15/02, AP, 12/16/02, Chicago Tribune, 12/12/02] Senators Richard Shelby (R) and John McCain (R) had a say in the choice of one of the Republican positions. They and many 9/11 victims' relatives wanted former Senator Warren Rudman (R), who cowrote an acclaimed report about terrorism before 9/11 (see January 31, 2001). But Senate Republican leader Trent Lott blocks Rudman's appointment and chooses John Lehman instead. [St. Petersburg Times 12/12/02; AP 12/13/02; Reuters 12/16/02] It slowly emerges over the next several months that at least six of the ten commissioners have ties to the airline industry. [CBS, 3/5/03] Every commissioner has at least one potential conflict of interest.

Republican commissioners:

For Chairman Thomas Kean's conflicts of interests, see [commentary in note following this entry, below].
Fred Fielding also works for a law firm lobbying for Spirit Airlines and United Airlines. [AP, 2/14/03, CBS, 3/5/03]
Slade Gorton has close ties to Boeing, which built all the planes destroyed on 9/11, and his law firm represents several major airlines, including Delta Airlines. [AP, 12/12/02, CBS, 3/5/03]
John Lehman, former secretary of the Navy, has large investments in Ball Corp., which has many US military contracts. [AP, 3/27/03 (B)]
James Thompson, former Illinois governor, is the head of a law firm that lobbies for American Airlines, and he has previously represented United Airlines. [AP, 1/31/03, CBS, 3/5/03]

Democratic commissioners:

Richard Ben-Veniste represents Boeing and United Airlines. [CBS, 3/5/03] His law firm also represents Deutsche Bank, which have many connections to 9/11. [AP, 3/27/03 (B)] Ben-Veniste also has other curious connections, according to a 2001 book on CIA ties to drug running written by Daniel Hopsicker, which has an entire chapter called “Who is Richard Ben-Veniste?” Lawyer Ben-Veniste, Hopsicker says, “has made a career of defending political crooks, specializing in cases that involve drugs and politics.” Ben-Veniste has been referred to in print as a “Mob lawyer,” and was a long-time lawyer for Barry Seal, one of the most famous drug dealers in US history who also is alleged to have had CIA connections. [Barry and the Boys, Daniel Hopsicker, 9/01, pp. 325-330, ]
Max Cleland, former US senator, has received $300,000 from the airline industry. [CBS, 3/5/03]
James Gorelick is a director of United Technologies, one of the Pentagon's biggest defense contractors and a supplier of engines to airline manufacturers. [AP, 3/27/03 (B)]
Lee Hamilton sits on many advisory boards, including those to the CIA, the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, and the US Army. [AP, 3/27/03 (B)]
Tim Roemer represents Boeing and Lockheed Martin. [CBS, 3/5/03]

Note: in the iteration of the Complete 911 Timeline database in operation when I first ran the query, the following segment was part of the December 16, 2002 entry. It appears that entry has been revised in the interim and the segment no longer exists. It may be inadvertent as the current "Thomas Kean" reference, above, lacks a destination link (as of 10/31/2004). For that reason, I retain this segment as harvested in early September, 2004.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/item.jsp?item=a121602kean

President Bush names former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean as the Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, after his original choice, Henry Kissinger, resigned (see November 27, 2002 and December 13, 2002). [Washington Post, 12/17/02] In an appearance on NBC, Kean promises an aggressive investigation. "It's really a remarkably broad mandate, so I don't think we'll have any problem looking under every rock. I've got no problems in going as far as we have to in finding out the facts." [AP, 12/17/02] However, Kean plans to remain President of Drew University and devote only one day a week to the commission. He also claims he would have no conflicts of interest, stating: "I have no clients except the university." [Washington Post, 12/17/02] However, he has a history of such conflict. Multinational Monitor has previously stated: "Perhaps no individual more clearly illustrates the dangers of university presidents maintaining corporate ties than Thomas Kean," citing the fact that he is on the Board of Directors of Aramark (which received a large contract with his university after he became president), Bell Atlantic, United Health Care, Beneficial Corporation, Fiduciary Trust Company International, and others. [Multinational Monitor 11/97] Most disturbing is his Board of Director and Executive Committee positions at Amerada Hess, an oil company with extensive investments in Central Asia. [Amerada Hess, 2002] Fortune magazine points out that through this investment, "Kean appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror network he's investigating—al-Qaeda." [Fortune 1/22/03] In 1998, Amerada Hess created an alliance with the Saudi oil company Delta Oil, calling it Delta Hess. [Azerbaijan International, 2002] Delta Hess is invested in a number of oil field and pipeline projects in Central Asia (see for instance [Azerbaijan International, 1998]). Delta Oil has been one of the main financial partners in a controversial oil pipeline designed to go through Afghanistan. According to an article in Fortune Magazine, the company was financially controlled by Khalid bin Mahfouz, and is connected to Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi (see August 13, 1996) (However, a bin Mafouz family spokesperson denies that bin Mahfouzor Nimir ever had an ownership interest in the company [Fortune, 3/17/03]). Fortune calls it an "interesting coincidence" that three weeks before his appointment onto the 9/11 commission, Amerada Hess quietly severed its ties with Delta Oil. [Fortune 1/22/03] George Mitchell resigned from the commission a few days earlier in part because of ties with al-Amoudi (see December 11, 2002), yet Kean's conflict of interest with Amerada Hess and ties with al-Amoudi and bin Mahfouz have only been mentioned in a short Fortune article and briefly at the end of an AP article. [AP 1/20/03; Fortune 1/22/03]

January-July 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry is originally expected to release its complete and final report in January 2003, but the panel spends seven months negotiating with the Bush Administration about what material could be made public, and the final report is not released until July 2003 (see July 24, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/27/03] The Administration originally wanted two thirds of the report to remain classified. [AP, 5/31/03] Former Senator Max Cleland, (D), member of the 9/11 9/11 Commission, later claims, “The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaeda) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war. There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of bin Laden's terrorist followers … What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends. The reason this report was delayed for so long—deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created—is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over … before (it) came out. Had this report come out in January [2003] like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration.” [UPI 7/25/03]

January 13, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

The Guardian reports on the state of journalism in the US: “The worldwide turmoil caused by President Bush's policies goes not exactly unreported, but entirely de-emphasized. Guardian writers are inundated by e-mails from Americans asking plaintively why their own papers never print what is in these columns… If there is a Watergate scandal lurking in [the Bush] administration, it is unlikely to be [Washington Post journalist Bob] Woodward or his colleagues who will tell us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on the web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of American newspapers.” [Guardian 1/13/03]

January 27, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Commission, officially titled the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, holds its first meeting in Washington. The commission has $3 million and only until May 2004 to explore the causes of the attacks. By comparison, a 1996 federal commission to study legalized gambling was given two years and $5 million. [AP, 1/27/03] The Bush Administration later grudgingly increases the funding to $12 million total (see March 26, 2003). Philip Zelikow, currently the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and formerly in the National Security Council during the first Bush administration, is also appointed executive director of the commission. He is expected to resign to focus full time on the commission. [AP, 1/27/03] Zelikow cowrote a book with National Security Advisor Rice. [9/11 Commission 3/03] A few days later, Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton says, “The focus of the commission will be on the future. We want to make recommendations that will make the American people more secure…. We're not interested in trying to assess blame, we do not consider that part of the commission's responsibility.” [UPI 2/6/03]

January 30, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

Stephen Push, a 9/11 victim's relative, is putting 45,000 pages from the recent German trial of Mounir El Motassadeq onto computer disks for the 9/11 9/11 Commission. He is one of about 20 victims' relatives who joined that case as co-plaintiffs and got access to evidence that otherwise would be classified. [AP, 2/28/03] Push has quit his job to devote all his time and $100,000 of his own money investigating 9/11. Originally a Bush supporter, he now says, “Clearly the official government line [on 9/11] is a lie.” [Newsday 1/30/03]

February-March 20, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

With war against Iraq imminent, numerous media outlets finally begin reporting on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) think tank and its role in influencing Iraq policy and US foreign policy generally. PNAC's plans for global domination had been noted before 9/11 (see for instance, [Washington Post, 8/21/01]), and PNAC's 2000 report recommending the conquest of Iraq even if Saddam Hussein is not in power was first reported on in September 2002 (see September 2000 and [Sunday Herald, 9/7/02]), but there were few follow-up mentions until February (exceptions: [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/29/02, Bangor Daily News, 10/18/02, New Statesman, 12/16/02, Los Angeles Times, 1/12/03]. Many of these articles use PNAC to suggest that global and regional domination is the real reason for the Iraq war. Coverage increases as war gets nearer, but many media outlets still have not done any reporting on this, and some of the reporting that has been done is not prominently placed (for instance, a New York Times article on the topic is buried in the Arts section! See [New York Times, 3/11/03]). One Newsweek editorial notes that “not until the last few days” before war have many reasons against the war been brought up. It calls this “too little, too late” to make an impact. [Newsweek, 3/18/03] (Articles that discuss PNAC: [Philadelphia Daily News, 1/27/03, New York Times, 2/1/03, PBS Frontline, 2/20/03, Observer, 2/23/03, Bergen Record, 2/23/03, Guardian, 2/26/03, Mother Jones, 3/03, BBC, 3/2/03, Observer, 3/2/03 (B), Der Spiegel, 3/4/03, , Salon, 3/5/03, Independent, 3/8/03, Toronto Star, 3/9/03, ABC, 3/10/03, Australian Broadcasting Corp., 3/10/03, CNN, 3/10/03, Guardian 3/11/03, New York Times, 3/11/03, American Prospect, 3/12/03, Chicago Tribune, 3/12/03, Globe and Mail, 3/14/03, Japan Times, 3/14/03, Sydney Morning Herald, 3/15/03, Salt Lake Tribune, 3/15/03, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/16/03, Observer, 3/16/03, Sunday Herald, 3/16/03, Toronto Star, 3/16/03, Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 3/17/03, Globe and Mail, 3/19/03, Asia Times, 3/20/03, The Age, 3/20/03])

February 7, 2003 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, declines to appeal a case attempting to force Vice President Cheney to disclose his Energy Task Force documents (see May 2001 (G) and December 9, 2002 (B)). This ends a potentially historic showdown between the congressional watchdog agency and the executive branch. [Los Angeles Times 2/8/03 (B)] It is widely believed that the suit is dropped because of pressure from the Republican Party—the suit was filed when the Democrats controlled the Senate, and this decision comes shortly after the Republicans gained control of the Senate. [Washington Post, 2/8/03 (C)] The head of the GAO denies the lawsuit is dropped because of Republican threats to cut his office's budget, but US Comptroller General David Walker, who led the case, says there was one such “thinly veiled threat” last year by a lawmaker he wouldn't identify. [Reuters, 2/25/03] Another account has Senator Ted Stevens (R) and a number of other congresspeople making the threat to Walker. [Hill 2/19/03] The GAO has previously indicated that accepting defeat in this case would cripple its ability to oversee the executive branch. [Washington Post 2/8/03 (C)] A similar suit filed by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club is still moving forward (see July 12, 2002 and October 17, 2002). [Washington Post 2/8/03 (C)]

March 26, 2003 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

Bush signs an executive order delaying the public release of millions of government documents, citing the need to more thoroughly review them first. The government faced a April 17 deadline for declassifying millions of documents 25 years or older. [Reuters, 3/26/03] The order also treats all material sent to American officials from foreign governments, no matter how routine, as subject to classification. It expands the ability of the CIA to shield documents from declassification. And for the first time, it gives the vice president the power to classify information. The New York Times says, “Offering that power to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has shown indifference to the public's right to know what is going on inside the executive branch, seems a particularly worrying development.” [New York Times 3/28/03]

March 26, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

Time reports that the 9/11 Commission has requested an additional $11 million to add to the $3 million for the commission, and the Bush Administration has turned down the request. The request will not be added to a supplemental spending bill. A Republican member of the commission says the decision will make it “look like they have something to hide.” Another commissioner notes that the recent commission on the Columbia shuttle crash will have a $50 million budget. Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 victims' families, says the decision “suggests to me that they see this as a convenient way for allowing the commission to fail. They've never wanted the commission and I feel the White House has always been looking for a way to kill it without having their finger on the murder weapon.” The Administration has suggested it may grant the money later, but any delay will further slow down the commission's work. Already, commission members are complaining that scant progress has been made in the four months since the commission started, and they are operating under a deadline. [Time, 3/26/03] Three days later, it is reported that the Bush Administration has agreed to extra funding, but only $9 million, not $11 million. The commission has agreed to the reduced amount. [Washington Post, 3/29/03] The New York Times criticizes such penny-pinching, saying, “Reasonable people might wonder if the White House, having failed in its initial attempt to have Henry Kissinger steer the investigation, may be resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry.” [New York Times 3/31/03]

March 27, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

It is reported that “most members” of the 9/11 Commission still have not received security clearances. [Washington Post, 3/27/03] For instance, Slade Gorton, picked in December 2002, is a former senator with a long background in intelligence issues. Fellow commissioner Lee Hamilton says, “It's kind of astounding that someone like Senator Gorton can't get immediate clearance. It's a matter we are concerned about.” The commission is said to be at a “standstill” because of the security clearance issue, and cannot even read the classified findings of the previous 9/11 Congressional inquiry. [Seattle Times, 3/12/03] Already Hamilton has said that, “We will be short of time. It will be very difficult” to meet the deadline of May 2004, when the commission must complete its investigation. [UPI 2/6/03]

March 28, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

An article highlights conflicts of interest amongst the commissioners on the 9/11 Commission. It had been previously reported that many of the commissioners had ties to the airline industry (see December 16, 2002 (B)), but a number have other ties. “At least three of the 10 commissioners serve as directors of international financial or consulting firms, five work for law firms that represent airlines and three have ties to the US military or defense contractors, according to personal financial disclosures they were required to submit.” Bryan Doyle, project manager for the watchdog group Aviation Integrity Project says, “It is simply a failure on the part of the people making the selections to consider the talented pool of non-conflicted individuals.” Commission chairman Thomas Kean says that members are expected to steer clear of discussions that might present even the appearance of a conflict. [AP, 3/28/03]

March 31, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Commission has its first public hearing. The Miami Herald reports, “Several survivors of the attack and victims' relatives testified that a number of agencies, from federal to local, are ducking responsibility for a series of breakdowns before and during Sept. 11.” [Miami Herald 3/31/03] The New York Times suggests that the 9/11 Commission would never have been formed if it were not for the pressure of the 9/11 victims' relatives. [New York Times 4/1/03] Some of the relatives strongly disagreed with statements from some commissioners that they would not place blame. For instance, Stephen Push states, “I think this commission should point fingers…. Some of those people [who failed us] are still in responsible positions in government. Perhaps they shouldn't be.” [UPI 3/31/03] The most critical testimony comes from 9/11 relative Mindy Kleinberg, but her testimony is only briefly reported on by a few newspapers. [UPI 3/31/03; Newsday 4/1/03; New York Times 4/1/03; New York Post 4/1/03; New Jersey Star-Ledger 4/1/03] In her testimony, Kleinberg says, “It has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once. This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: they were lucky over and over again.” She points out the inside trading based on 9/11 foreknowledge, the failure of fighters to catch the hijacked planes in time, hijackers getting visas in violation of standard procedures, and other events, and asks how the hijackers could have been lucky so many times. [9/11 Commission 3/31/03]

July 24, 2003 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry's final report (see July 24, 2003) concludes that at least six hijackers received “substantial assistance” from associates in the US, though its “not known to what extent any of these contacts in the United States were aware of the plot.” These hijackers came into contact with at least 14 people who were investigated by the FBI before 9/11, and four of these investigations were active while the hijackers were present. But in June 2002, FBI Director Mueller testified: “While here, the hijackers effectively operated without suspicion, triggering nothing that would have alerted law enforcement and doing nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage. As far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States.” CIA Director Tenet made similar comments at the same time, and another FBI official stated, “[T]here were no contacts with anybody we were looking at inside the United States.” These comments are clearly untrue, because one FBI document from November 2001 uncovered by the Inquiry concludes that the six lead hijackers “maintained a web of contacts both in the United States and abroad. These associates, ranging in degrees of closeness, include friends and associates from universities and flight schools, former roommates, people they knew through mosques and religious activities, and employment contacts. Other contacts provided legal, logistical, or financial assistance, facilitated US entry and flight school enrollment, or were known from [al-Qaeda]-related activities or training.” The declassified sections of the Congressional Inquiry's final report show the hijackers have contact with:

Mamoun Darkazanli, investigated several times starting in 1991 (see September 20, 1998); the CIA makes repeated efforts to turn him into an informer (see December 1999, and Spring 2000).
Mohammed Haydar Zammar, investigated by Germany since at least 1997 (see March 1997), the Germans periodically inform the CIA what they learn (see January 31, 1999 Summer 1999). and
Osama Basnan, US intelligence is informed of his terror connections several times in early 1990s but fails to investigate (April 1998).
Omar al-Bayoumi, investigated in San Diego from 1998-1999 (see September 1998-July 1999).
Anwar Al Aulaqi, investigated in San Diego from 1999-2000 (see June 1999-March 2000 and March 2001 (D)).
Osama “Sam” Mustafa, owner of a San Diego gas station, and investigated beginning in 1991 (see Autumn 2000)
Ed Salamah, manager of the same gas station, and uncooperative witness in 2000 (see Autumn 2000).
Unnamed friend of Hani Hanjour, FBI tries to investigate in 2001 (see 1997-July 2001).
Unnamed associate of Marwan Alshehhi, investigated beginning in 1999 (see July 1999).
and more: Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who had contact with numbers 3-7 above, “maintained a number of other contacts in the local Islamic community during their time in San Diego, some of whom were also known to the FBI through counterterrorist inquiries and investigations,” but details of these individuals and possible others are still classified. [Congressional Inquiry 7/24/03] None of the above figures have been arrested or even publicly charged of any terrorist crime, although Zammar is in prison in Syria (see October 27, 2001).

July 24, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry's final report comes out (see the report here: Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03 and Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03 (B)). Officially, the report was written by the 37 members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, but in practice, cochairmen Bob Graham (D) and Porter Goss (R) exercised “near total control over the panel, forbidding the inquiry's staff to speak to other lawmakers.” [St. Petersburg Times, 9/29/02] Both Republican and Democrats in the panel complained how the two cochairmen withheld information and controlled the process. [Palm Beach Post 9/21/02] The report was finished in December 2002 and some findings were released then (see December 11, 2002 (B)), but the next seven months were spent in negotiation with the Bush Administration over what material had to remain censored (see January-July 2003). The Inquiry had a very limited mandate, focusing solely on the handling of intelligence before 9/11. It also completely ignored or censored out all mentions of intelligence from foreign governments. Thomas Kean, the Chairman of 9/11 9/11 Commission says the Inquiry's mandate covered only “one-seventh or one-eighth” of what his newer investigation will hopefully cover. [Washington Post, 7/27/03] The report blames virtually every government agency for failures:

Newsweek's main conclusion is: “The investigation turned up no damning single piece of evidence that would have led agents directly to the impending attacks. Still, the report makes it chillingly clear that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies might very well have uncovered the plot had it not been for blown signals, sheer bungling—and a general failure to understand the nature of the threat. ” [Newsweek, 7/28/03]
According to the New York Times, the report also concludes, “the FBI and CIA had known for years that al-Qaeda sought to strike inside the United States, but focused their attention on the possibility of attacks overseas.” [New York Times 7/26/03]
CIA Director Tenet was “either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of Intelligence Community resources necessary to combat the growing threat.” [Washington Post 7/25/03]
US military leaders were “reluctant to use … assets to conduct offensive counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan” or to “support or participate in CIA operations directed against al-Qaeda.” [Washington Post 7/25/03]
“There was no coordinated … strategy to track terrorist funding and close down their financial support networks” and the Treasury Department even showed “reluctance” to do so. [Washington Post 7/25/03]
According to the Washington Post, the NSA took “an overly cautious approach to collecting intelligence in the United States and offered ‘insufficient collaboration’ with the FBI's efforts.” [Washington Post 7/25/03]

Many sections remain censored, especially an entire chapter detailing possible Saudi support for 9/11 (see August 1-3, 2003). The Bush Administration insisted on censoring even information that was already in the public domain. [Newsweek, 5/25/03 (B)] The Inquiry attempted to determine “to what extent the President received threat-specific warnings” but received very little information. The was a focus on learning what was in Bush's briefing on August 6, 2001 (see August 6, 2001) but the White House refused to release this information, citing “executive privilege.” [Washington Post, 7/25/03 (B), Newsday, 8/7/03] Pressure builds to release more classified information, but it remains secret except for some media leaks (see July 28, 2003 and August 1-3, 2003). The report also causes pressure to reopen an investigation into Saudi connections to 9/11 and possible associates of the hijackers (see July 24, 2003 (B)), but a halfhearted effort to do so apparently dies in less than a month (see August 2003).

July 28, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

In the wake of the release of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry's final report (see July 24, 2003), pressure builds to release most of the still-censored sections of the report, but on this day Bush says he is against the idea. [AP, 7/29/03 (B), New York Times, 7/29/03] Though an obscure rule the Senate could force the release of the material with a majority vote [USA Today, /5/29/03], but apparently the number of votes in favor of this idea falls just short. MSNBC reports, “the decision to keep the passage secret … created widespread suspicion among lawmakers that the administration was trying to shield itself and its Saudi allies from embarrassment. … Three of the four leaders of the joint congressional investigation into the attacks have said they believed that much of the material on foreign financing was safe to publish but that the administration insisted on keeping it secret.” [MSNBC, 7/28/03] Senator Richard Shelby (R), one of the main authors of the report, states that “90, 95 percent of it would not compromise, in my judgment, anything in national security.” Bush ignored a reporter's question on Shelby's assessment. [AP 7/29/03 (B)] Even the Saudi government claims to be in favor of releasing the censored material so it can better respond to Saudi criticism. [MSNBC 7/28/03] All the censored material remains censored; however, some details of the most controversial censored sections are leaked to the media (see August 1-3, 2003).

August 1-3, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

In the wake of the release of the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry's full report (see July 24, 2003), anonymous officials leak some details from a controversial, completely censored 28 page section that focuses on possible Saudi support for 9/11. According to leaks given to the New York Times, the section says that Omar al-Bayoumi and/or Osama Basnan “had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials.” It also says that Anwar Al Aulaqi “was a central figure in a support network that aided the same two hijackers.” Most connections drawn in the report between the men, Saudi intelligence, and 9/11 is said to be circumstantial. [New York Times 8/2/03] One key section is said to read, “ On the one hand, it is possible that these kinds of connections could suggest, as indicated in a CIA memorandum, ‘incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists’ … On the other hand, it is also possible that further investigation of these allegations could reveal legitimate, and innocent, explanations for these associations.” Some of the most sensitive information involves what US agencies are doing currently to investigate Saudi business figures and organizations. [AP 8/2/03] According to the New Republic, the section outlines “connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family.” An anonymous official is quoted as saying, “There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities. They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government. … If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq to al-Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the 28 pages has linking a foreign government to al-Qaeda, they would have been in good shape. … If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight.” [New Republic 8/1/03] The section also is critical that the issue of foreign government support remains unresolved. One section reads, “In their testimony, neither CIA or FBI officials were able to address definitely the extent of such support for the hijackers, globally or within the United States, or the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature. This gap in intelligence community coverage is unacceptable.” [Boston Globe 8/3/03]

September 6, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

British government minister Michael Meacher publishes an essay entitled, “The War on Terrorism is Bogus.” Meacher is a long time British Member of Parliament, and served as Environmental Minister for six years until three months before releasing this essay. The Guardian, which publishes the essay, states that Meacher claims, “the war on terrorism is a smokescreen and that the US knew in advance about the September 11 attack on New York but, for strategic reasons, chose not to act on the warnings. He says the US goal is ‘world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies’ and that this Pax Americana ‘provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis.’ Mr Meacher adds that the US has made ‘no serious attempt’ to catch the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden.” [Guardian, 9/6/03] Meacher provides no personal anecdotes based on his years in Tony Blair's cabinet, but he cites numerous mainstream media accounts to support his thesis. He emphasizes the Project for a New American Century 2000 report (see September 2000) as a “blueprint” for a mythical “global war on terrorism,” “propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda—the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies”in Afghanistan and Iraq. Read Meacher's complete essay here: Guardian, 9/6/03 (B). Meacher's stand causes a controversial debate in Britain (see also BBC, 9/6/03, Telegraph, 9/7/03 (B)), but the story is almost completely ignored by the mainstream US media.

September 10, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

Slate reports that two years after the 9/11 attacks, neither the Chicago Board Options Exchange nor the Securities and Exchange Commission will make any comment about their investigations into insider trading before 9/11. “Neither has announced any conclusion. The SEC has not filed any complaint alleging illegal activity, nor has the Justice Department announced any investigation or prosecution. … So, unless the SEC decides to file a complaint—unlikely at this late stage—we may never know what they learned about terror trading.” [Slate 9/10/03]

September 12, 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

9/11 victim's relative Ellen Mariani sues the US government for what she claims is their foreknowledge of 9/11 (see ). “I'm 100 percent sure that they knew,” she says. In doing so, she is ineligible for government compensation from what she calls the “shut-up and go-away fund.” She believes she would have received around $500,000. According to a statement by her lawyer, the lawsuit against Bush, Vice President Cheney, the CIA, Defense Department, and other administration members “is based upon prior knowledge of 9/11; knowingly failing to act, prevent or warn of 9/11; and the ongoing obstruction of justice by covering up the truth of 9/11; all in violation of the laws of the United States.” As the Toronto Star has put this, this interesting story has been “buried” by the mainstream media. Coverage has been limited mostly to Philadelphia where the case was filed and New Hampshire where Mariani lives. [AP 12/24/03; Philadelphia Inquirer 9/23/03; Philadelphia Inquirer 12/3/03; Aljazeera 12/9/03; Toronto Star 11/30/03; Village Voice 12/3/03]

October 2003 Complete 911 Timeline

9/11 Commission staff director Philip Zelikow and several members of his staff visit Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries on a fact finding mission. While in Pakistan, they interview at least two senior members of the ISI. Whether or not this means they are investigating a possible ISI role in the 9/11 plot is unclear. [UPI 11/5/03]

January 11, 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

Paul O'Neill, Bush's Treasury Secretary from inauguration until early 2003, appears on CBS's 60 Minutes and on the front page of Time Magazine as a new book containing his criticisms of Bush is released. [CBS 1/10/04; CBS 1/11/04; Time 1/10/04] Amongst his many critical charges in the book The Price of Loyalty, perhaps the most controversial is the claim, as CBS puts it, that “The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001—not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported.” [CBS 1/10/04] O'Neill's book, written by Ron Suskind, is based not only on O'Neill's account, but also 19,000 government documents, including transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. [CBS 1/11/04] The Bush administration angrily reacts to O'Neill's charges, admitting they were targeting Iraq from the first days in office, but claiming they were merely considering different options. They open a probe into whether O'Neill was authorized to disclose the documents he released. O'Neill is later cleared. [Washington Post 1/13/04]

March 21, 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

Richard Clarke, counterterrorism “tsar” from 1998 until October 2001, ignites a public debate by accusing Bush of doing a poor job fighting al-Qaeda before 9/11. In a prominent 60 Minutes interview, he says, “I find it outrageous that the President is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11…. I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism.” He adds, “We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al-Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.” He complains that he was Bush's chief adviser on terrorism, yet he never got to brief Bush on the subject until after 9/11. [CBS, 3/20/04, CBS, 3/21/04, Guardian, 3/23/04, Salon, 3/24/04] The next day, his book Against All Enemies is released and becomes a best seller. [Washington Post 3/22/04]

March 21, 2004 (B) Complete 911 Timeline

The 9-11 Family Steering Committee and 9-11 Citizens Watch demand the resignation of Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission. The demand comes shortly after former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke told the New York Times that Zelikow was present when he gave briefings on the threat posed by al-Qaeda to National Security Advisor Rice from December 2000 to January 2001. The Family Steering Committee, a group of 9/11 victims' relatives, writes, “It is clear that [Zelikow] should never have been permitted to be a member of the commission, since it is the mandate of the commission to identify the source of failures. It is now apparent why there has been so little effort to assign individual culpability. We now can see that trail would lead directly to the staff director himself.” Zelikow has been interviewed by his own commission because of his role during the transition period. But a spokesman for the commission claims that having Zelikow recluse himself from certain topics is enough to avoid any conflicts of interest. [New York Times 3/20/04; UPI 3/23/04]

March 24, 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

Just a few days after releasing a new book (see March 21, 2004), former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke testifies before the 9/11 commission. His opening statement consists of little more than an apology to the relatives of the 9/11 victims. He says, “Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. For that failure, I would ask…for your understanding and forgiveness.” Under questioning, he praises the Clinton administration, saying, “My impression was that fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al-Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration—certainly no higher priority.” But he's very critical of the Bush administration, stating, “By invading Iraq…the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.” He says that under Bush before 9/11, terrorism was “an important issue, but not an urgent issue…. [CIA Director] George Tenet and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that intelligence reports on the al-Qaeda threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level officials. But although I continue to say it was an urgent problem, I don't think it was ever treated that way.” He points out that he made a proposal to fight al-Qaeda in late January 2001 (see January 25, 2001). While the gist of them were implemented after 9/11, he complains, “I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February [2001].” He says that with a more robust intelligence and covert action program, “we might have been able to nip [the plot] in the bud.” [Washington Post 3/24/04; New York Times 3/24/04; 9/11 Commission 3/24/04] It soon emerges that President Bush's top lawyer places a telephone call to at least one of the Republican members of the commission just before Clarke's testimony. Critics call that an unethical interference in the hearings. [Washington Post, 4/1/04 (B)] Democratic Commissioner Bob Kerrey complains, “To call commissioners and coach them on what they ought to say is a terrible mistake.” [New York Daily News 4/2/04]

Late March 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

Republicans attack Richard Clarke in the wake of his new book and 9/11 commission testimony, while Democrats defend him. [New York Times 3/25/04] Senator John McCain (R) calls the attacks “the most vigorous offensive I've ever seen from the administration on any issue.” [Washington Post, 3/28/04] Republicans on the 9/11 Commission criticize him while Democrats praise him. The White House violates its long-standing policy by authorizing Fox News to air remarks favorable to Bush that Clarke had made anonymously at an administration briefing in 2002. National Security Advisor Rice says to the media, “There are two very different stories here. These stories can't be reconciled.” However, in what the Washington Post calls a “masterful bit of showmanship” Clarke replies that he emphasized the positives in 2002 because he was asked to, but didn't lie. [Fox News, 3/24/04, Washington Post, 3/25/04, Washington Post, 3/26/04 (B)] Republican Senate leader Frist asks “If [Clarke] lied under oath to the United States Congress” in closed testimony in 2002. [Washington Post, 3/27/04 (B)] However, a review of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. [Washington Post, 4/4/04 (B)] Republican leaders threaten to release his 2002 testimony, and Clarke claims he welcomes the release. The testimony remains classified. [AP, 3/26/04, AP, 3/28/04] Clarke also calls on Rice to release all e-mail communications between them before 9/11; this is not released either. [Guardian, 3/29/04] Vice President Cheney calls Clarke “out of the loop” on terrorism. But Rice says Clarke was very much involved. [New York Times, 3/25/04 (D)] Clarke responds by pointing out that he voted Republican in 2000 and he pledges under oath not to seek a post if Senator John Kerry wins the 2004 Presidential election. [Washington Post, 3/24/04] According to Reuters, a number of political experts conclude, “The White House may have mishandled accusations leveled by their former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke by attacking his credibility, keeping the controversy firmly in the headlines into a second week.” [Reuters 3/29/04]

April 13, 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

In a press conference, President Bush states, “We knew he [Osama bin Laden] had designs on us, we knew he hated us. But there was nobody in our government, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.” [Guardian, 4/15/04] He also says, “Had I any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country.” [White House, 4/13/04, New York Times, 4/18/04 (C)] Two days earlier, he says, “Had I known there was going to be an attack on America I would have moved mountains to stop the attack.” [New York Times 4/18/04]

April 25, 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

It is reported that Allen Poteshman, a professor of finance at the University of Illinois, has confirmed that inside trading in options on United and American airline stocks indicates someone profited from foreknowledge of 9/11. Poteshman writes in an academic paper, “There is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to Sept. 11.” [Chicago Tribune 4/25/04; a link to his study]

May 2004 Complete 911 Timeline

The Justice Department retroactively classifies information it gave to Congress in 2002 regarding FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Senator Charles Grassley (R) says, “What the FBI is up to here is ludicrous. To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? This is about as close to a gag order as you can get.” The New York Times reports that some of the information discussed would potentially be very “damaging if released publicly.” Topics like what languages Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and where she worked is now classified, even though much of this has been widely reported on shows like CBS's 60 Minutes. [New York Times, 5/20/04 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/politics/20classify.html] In late 2002, the Justice Department invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to limit what she could say. [Salon 3/26/04 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/]

July 2004 Complete Iraq Timeline

The 9/11 Commission concludes that there was “no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States” and that repeated contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.” It also says that it did not believe the alleged April 2001 Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani (see 1999) ever took place. [New York Times, 7/12/2004]

9/11: Voices of Dissent to a Unanimous Bipartisan Consensus Report

2006-09-11T02:01:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE 9/11/2006 : moved from the archive September 11, 2006. Originally published November 11, 2004]

The 911 Final Report is a placebo for the truth

Our leaders carefully invented a drug delivery device of sufficient blandness that average American sheeple wouldn't be disturbed from their patriotic consumption cycle to notice that the truth placebo was in the form of a suppository.

Some definitions from the pharmacy:

unanimous - adjective: 1) acting together as a single undiversified whole; 2) in complete agreement
consensus - noun: agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole; verb: settle by concession
compromise - noun: an accommodation in which both sides make concessions

Complete political agreement in an equally divided commision requires compromise. Such a bipartisan consensus demands the exclusion of any issue with which one or more parties disagree. So, committee consensus is achieved by compromising or ignoring all points of dissent.

In this way, the Commission’s unanimous agreement enabled five Democrats and five Republicans to avoid the distasteful need to...assess blame, we do not consider that part of the commission’s responsibility (Lee Hamilton, Independent 911 Commission).

The Final Report was a consensus report. Because the goal of the Commission was to achieve unanimity, any report the American people ultimately saw was that which was agreeable to all ten members according to the facts as reported to them or following their compromised agreement on the facts.

Conversely, in accordance with the intent of a consensus, we Americans must NOT have seen reported any issue about which a SINGLE committee member disagreed.

To reiterate, any finding we see in the Final Report must have arrived there after careful vetting by five 'Independent' Democrats and five 'Independent' Republicans who unanimously agreed to its status as holy grail material. Perhaps this vetting process was taken exactly as prescribed by Sec. Donald Rumsfeld on March 25, 2004:

"...I would urge commission members to strive for agreement on their findings and conclusions. Sometimes agreement and consensus can dumb a decision down. And it isn't a good thing ...find out where there are, maybe, differences with respect to facts and pursue it long enough until everyone is working off basically the same set of facts. That can be done. I know it can be done. It has been done. And a unanimous final report that is based on a common understanding of the facts and is based on the investment of the commissioner's time, sufficiently, and is endorsed by every member of the commission in my view would have a powerful impact."

I wonder just what sort of impact Rummy was hoping to achieve that would be endorsed by an 'Independent' Bipartisan Commission? Dumbing down perhaps?

Final Report of the 'Independent' 911 Commission

VOICES OF DISSENT

"...Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions..."

9/11 Report is honorable but incomplete, Richard A. Clarke.

"Without dissent, five prominent Republicans joined an equal number of their Democratic Party peers in stating unequivocally that the Bush administration got it wrong…

Although the language of the commission's report was carefully couched to obtain a bipartisan consensus, the indictment of this administration surfaces on almost every page.

9/11 Commission Contradicts Bush At Every Turn, Robert Sheer, July 27, 2004. Los Angeles Times.

"...But insistence on unanimity, like central planning, deprives decision makers of a full range of alternatives. For all one knows, the price of unanimity was adopting recommendations that were the second choice of many of the commission's members or were consequences of horse trading. The premium placed on unanimity undermines the commission's conclusion that everybody in sight was to blame for the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
Given its political composition (and it is evident from the questioning of witnesses by the members that they had not forgotten which political party they belong to), the commission could not have achieved unanimity without apportioning equal blame to the Clinton and Bush administrations, whatever the members actually believe...
The 9/11 Report: A Dissent, Richard A. Posner

"...report holds no one accountable, stating instead "our aim has not been to assign individual blame". That is to play the political game, and it shows that the goal of achieving unanimity overrode one of the primary purposes of this Commission's establishment. The Commission, with its incomplete report of "facts and circumstances", intentional avoidance of assigning accountability, and disregard for the knowledge, expertise and experience of those who actually do the job, has now set about pressuring our Congress and our nation to hastily implement all its recommendations...

25 professional FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA and Customs Officials, Security Experts Blast 9-11 Commission in An Open Letter To The US Congress.

"There's little mystery about why the Commission is tongue-tied. It can't call a liar a liar.

...This document -- already elevated to iconic status -- qualifies, as I said at the start, as a weapon in a major domestic conflict: the war on incisive, sometimes rudely disruptive critical thought -- thought that distinguishes the democratic citizen from the idolatrous fool, the sucker, the clueless consumer, the ad person's delight.The hostility to critical thought is evident, of course, in the remarkable vehemence of the Commission's assault on the blaming sensibility -- its multifariousness, its canniness, the powerful synchrony between it and the nation's ever-increasing hunger for the upbeat and the positive. But almost equally telling is the decision not to treat the audience as citizens with minds to be challenged but -- regularly -- as children with a taste for fairy tales."

Whitewash as Public Service, Benjamin DeMott, October 2004. Article Not Available Online: Harper's Magazine

"...The whole name of the game is to exculpate anyone in the establishment," says McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a member of a group of former agents called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. " 'Mistakes were made,' but no one is to blame. Why is it that after all this evidence and months and months of testimony, the commission found itself unable even to say if the attacks could have been prevented?"...

9/11 Commission was simplistic and politicized, Willam Raspberry.

"...But it is too soon for President Bush to hazard a sigh of relief, because the committee plans a second report, to be completed next year, which will address additional questions including "whether public statements, reports, and testimony regarding Iraq by US Government officials...were substantiated by intelligence information." Put another way, the question is whether the President and his chief advisers in the run-up to war exaggerated, misrepresented, or ran on beyond the intelligence claims now shown to have been wrong..."

How Bush Got It Wrong, Thomas Powers.

Does anyone REALLY think that we Americans received the TRUTH, the WHOLE TRUTH, and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH in the UNANIMOUS CONSENSUS reported to us by the Bipartisan Commission!?

We have been robbed of the chance to accurately assess this administration's performance during what will probably be the most important election of our lives. In addition to whitewashing our currently campaigning elected officials other, recent evidence points to suppression key intelligence reports as to WHETHER, HOW, and WHO in the CIA and the Bush Administrations may be responsible for 911 and Iraq intelligence manipulation or failures. We have, therefore, been robbed of the fundamental American right: to hold Bush-Cheney 04 accountable in the most important election of the New American Century.

9/11: Coup d'etat 2004: GOP sits on 3 incriminating reports 'til reelection is a done deal

2006-09-11T01:24:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE 9/11/2006 : moved from the archive September 11, 2006. Orginally published November 1, 2004]

Suppressed CIA and SIC Reports Deny the Right to Hold the Bush Administration to FULL Account on Nov 2.

Knowing many of the published circumstances that led us to war in Iraq, I also knew that the Independent 911 Commission had issued a whitewash Final Report and simply laid the blame on hordes of nameless, faceless federal agents. Thus, the burden fell to those executing policy rather than those who created it. I concluded that this whitewash of the powerful would produce serious 'blowback'.

Much of the current leakage represents those hordes taking their due. As the issues evolve, I've been telling friends, "I think I'm falling in love with the CIA!"

But I've been unhappy for months with understanding that an enormous amount of political leverage had been applied to delay release until after the national elections of what I then knew to be the Second Report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I’ve known of this report for some time despite its scarce mention.

"But it is too soon for President Bush to hazard a sigh of relief, because the committee plans a second report, to be completed next year, which will address additional questions including "whether public statements, reports, and testimony regarding Iraq by US Government officials...were substantiated by intelligence information." Put another way, the question is whether the President and his chief advisers in the run-up to war exaggerated, misrepresented, or ran on beyond the intelligence claims now shown to have been wrong...
How Bush Got it Wrong, Thomas Powers.

'Did the Administration in any way manipulate intelligence.' Then we learn of another delayed SIC report:

"Two Senate intelligence committee investigations--into whether the White House misused prewar intelligence about Iraq and whether a special Pentagon unit manipulated intelligence about Iraq-Al Qaeda links--won't be finished until the end of the year at the earliest, say committee sources."

So the other Second Report addresses Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans. And knowledge of these two investigations comes in the context of CIA Director Goss withholding report number three,

"...a hard-hitting report about agency officials who might be held accountable for 9/11 intelligence failures. The report identifies a host of current and former officials who could be candidates for possible disciplinary procedures imposed by a special CIA Accountability Board...
But Goss shows no inclination to release the document any time soon. When an account of the suppressed report surfaced on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page last week, NEWSWEEK has learned, Goss's top aide ordered the agency's Office of Security to conduct a leak investigation. "Everybody feels it will be better off if this hits the fan after the election," said one agency official.
Accountability: The CIA's Secret, Michael Isikoff.

The delay in reporting ANY damning evidence has ensured crimes of this Administration will not be accounted as we complete the campaigns and go to vote on November 2. Republican treachery once again destroys the validity of our electoral process.

These delays constitute the fundamental abrogation of our rights as Americans to be a fully informed electorate. The information obviously exists NOW, before the election!. Clearly, our Republican-controlled White House and Congress have eliminated the possibility that we Americans can hold the Bush Administration fully accountable on November 2.

Accountability: ISN'T THAT WHAT ELECTIONS ARE DESIGNED TO PROVIDE?!

Do these people not work for US?! The bottomline is that our elected representatives did and do not represent OUR interests. The events occurring right now are said to implicate top level officials in the CIA while I suspect SIC's reports implicate those in the Pentagon's OSP and the VP's office.

WHY THE HELL ARE WE DENIED -- by design – full knowledge of the facts surrounding the performance of our top level Administration officials during what will most likely be viewed through history as the paramount events of the New American Century?!

I demand to know exactly who is represented by officials who engineered delays in release of these three reports. Who wants to keep us in the dark until after the Bush Administration is re-elected?! Exactly who is unwilling to be held to account?!

Thomas Powers again:

"…A president is not only the leader of the country, but the leader of his party as well, and a serious attack on a president concerning a substantial matter is an invitation to conflict of a kind that resembles civil war.. But the failure to act before September 11 and the unnecessary war with Iraq cannot fairly be blamed on intelligence organizations or anyone else. The White House is the problem, not for the first time. Iraq is President Bush's war. He insisted on it, and nothing can save us from the same again until we find the will to hold the President responsible."

This cynical denial of our rights is a criminal collusion. This election would not be a contest if Americans at-large knew the facts being withheld from us.

"Everybody feels it will be better off if this hits the fan after the election," Apparently everybody who counts is Republican.

What exactly is a coup d'etat anyhow?

..."A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder."
Normally, a coup does not seek to destroy the basic structure of the existing government, which is more typical of a revolution or a war for liberation. Instead, Luttwak explains, those undertaking a true coup d'etat "want to seize power within the present system, and [they] shall only stay in power if [they] embody some new status quo supported by those very forces which a revolution may seek to destroy." (Emphasis in original.)
In other words, the coup takes advantage of the governmental structure itself, as well as the bureaucratic nature of modern governments. There is an established hierarchy, an accepted chain of command, and standard procedures that are followed when instructions come down this pipeline. So long as the instructions come from the appropriate source or level of authority, they will almost always be followed even if from a new, and illegitimate, holder of that authority.
Luttwak explains that a coup "operates by taking advantage of this machine-like behavior: during the coup because it uses parts of the state apparatus to seize the controlling levers; afterwards because the value of the 'levers' depends on the fact that the state is a machine."
Thus, by gaining control over a few carefully selected pivotal points of power within the government bureaucracy, the plotters of the coup can effectively gain control over the entire "machine" of state.
During the presidential election [of 2000], the key pivot points proved to be quite limited in number, not to mention patently obvious. The first was the state government of Florida, the second the US Supreme Court....

In the yet incomplete coup of 2004, the pivots are once again, few: Republican control of Congressional Joint Inquiry and 9/11 Commissions and a hand-picked Director of Central Intelligence. In this version of the "October Surprise", Vice Chair Lee Hamilton ensured that Goerge Bush was washed clean of responsibility.

"The focus of the commission will be on the future. We’re not interested in trying to assess blame, we do not consider that part of the commission’s responsibility."

So, the Republican coup d'etat controlled the critical 911 Investigations who delayed any damning findings of the Administration until after their reelection. The hand of hand-picked Porter Goss weighs heavily on the suppressed reporting of high-level CIA findings. Should George Bush not lose this election, we know exactly who stood watch as the jewel thieves hightailed it.

Please take the time to sign the petition demanding pre-election release of the CIA report. It may be late but better than never.

UPDATE: Bob Kerrey swore to secrecy that he'd not talk about the Final Report during the campaign'! Christ, and we're worried about good ol' fashion vote-rigging?!?!

Impeach!

2006-09-02T01:34:00.000-04:00

Put Outta Reach!

For the Record: Jack Abramoff contributed no campaign money to Democrats

2006-02-18T19:09:00.000-05:00

[editor's note, by wanderindiana] At long last. Promoted. -wander
[author's note] cross-posted to dailykos and BooMan Tribune

To clarify discussion of Jack Abramoff's campaign contributions, our report wants to answer the still-debated but simple question,
'did Jack Abramoff act as a partisan with his own personal campaign contributions or did he make payments in a bipartisan way?
Look at our compilation and review of the complete FEC disclosure record and you can answer that question for yourself.

Jack Abramoff has achieved fame beyond the fortune that he and associated lobbyists have accumulated over a decade by leveraging his access to government officials to influence the decisions under their control and to favor paying customers. Abramoff's influence-buying network is complex and represented customers ranging from corporations to sovereign Indian nations while exerting his influence through far-flung access to Congress and the White House.

Though controversial, US regulations still permit 'legitimate' access to governmental officials by third-party advocates to influence outcomes of decisions that often effect interests of lobbyists' paying customers. Regulatory changes meant to eliminate campaign conributions as a means of buying access or influence have left loopholes open widely enough that congressional calendars often advertise such opportunities in terms of donation-dollars/PAC.

So, access to congressional members is legal, using campaign contributions to sway their decisions is not, and whether contributions influence legislation is often arguable. Recent reports from ongoing investigations are that Abramoff directed the timing and recipient of some of the large number of payments among Abramoff, his wife Pam and associates, lobbying customers, and elected officials. Whether or not decisions made by legislators were the product of specific contributions, by the lobbyist, his wife or associates, his customers, and many other questions are muddied despite the recent changes in campaign finance loopholes.

In addition, Jack Abramoff's long-term association with the Republican Party is well-known. But the once-traditional alignment of many native American interests to political priorities of Democrats has blurred in recent years and particularly as the K Street Project has approached establishment of a stranglehold by the GOP on lobbying opportunities in Washington. The resulting 'squeeze-out' of Democrats during this period that -- not a coincidence -- has seen Abramoff's meteoric rise has increasingly shifted tribal advocacy jobs to the Republican camp. So the interests of the Republican power structure are benefitted by intentionally 'blurring' the Abramoff corruption scandal as being one that's bipartisan in nature.

To clarify public discussion of Jack Abramoff's campaign contributions our report wants to answer one apparently still-open (Tracking 90% of Senate Dems (40) took Abramoff cash talking point) but simple question:

'did Jack Abramoff act as a partisan with his personal campaign contributions or did he make his payments in a bipartisan way?'

Our report allows you to answer that question clearly.

To enable the public to assess exactly who Jack Abramoff -- himself, alone -- made campaign contributions to, we obtained records from the Federal Elections Commission by directly querying the online disclosure database. Various first-last name combinations provide differing results but the most complete set was obtained by searching for "Abramoff J" and three irrelevant records were removed. Finally, for each candidate or committee reported, we looked at several independent sources (where available) to judge the political affiliation of those who received Abramoff's payments.

Jack Abramoff's influence-buying agenda has played out over many years and is vast in its size. In fact, the first attempt to present our results here in the Scoop publishing environment exceeded the capacity that could be handled by ePluribusMedia's Community Forum. So our results are distributed across four posts that are linked below.

We ask our readers to use their own judgement after looking at the most recent (1/30/2006) and complete record we could assemble. Then, if you please, answer our poll question:

Did Jack Abramoff make his personal campaign contributions in a bipartisan fashion?

kfred, Wanderindiana, standingup, and Cho contributed subtantially to making this work.

Complete Record of Jack Abramoff's Campaign Contributions (1/30/2006)

Note: links take you to the ePluribusMedia website
Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

The Gun is Smoking - 2004 Ohio Precinct-Level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount

2006-01-22T05:12:00.000-05:00

The Gun is Smoking - 2004 Ohio Precinct-Level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount: "
The Gun is Smoking - 2004 Ohio Precinct-Level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data. NEDA's analysis provides virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.

(PRWEB) January 17, 2006 -- There is significant controversy about whether the 2004 presidential election was conducted fairly and its votes counted correctly. According to results of the major national election exit poll conducted for the National Election Pool by Edison/Mitofsky (E/M), Kerry won Ohio's pivotal vote, though the official tally gave the state, and thus the presidency, to Bush. The conduct of Ohio's election was formally debated by Congress in January 2005.

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data 'The Gun is Smoking: 2004 Ohio Precinct-level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount' available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/OH/Ohio-Exit-Polls-2004.pdf. NEDA's analysis provides significant evidence of an outcome-altering vote miscount.

The analysis is based"

Beware of Neocons Bearing Gifts

2006-01-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

referred by Jeff Huber @ ePluribusMedia Community

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

-- WaPo: Father of hero Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II

Looting Cronies and the Making of DHS

2005-12-23T15:54:00.000-05:00

also posted to ePluribus Media

ePluribusMedia's consideration of the post-Katrina era has good company this week.

A look forward by our Journal piece on What Will Happen to FEMA?

Spurred by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, both the House and Senate have drafted bills with the same goals: removing FEMA from the grip of DHS and restoring its independent agency status.

takes context from recent commentaries

Homeland's "2SR" reorganization about domestic spying?
- Heritage Foundation-inspired DHS reorganization plans for homeland insecurity;

VIPRs Among Us?
- Twelve DHS surveillance programs may deliver more than you know

Congress Responds to Katrina: Five Bills to Take FEMA Back
- Rundown of five legislative alternatives for splitting FEMA back out of DHS

Scenario 10: Chertoff's Hurricane Scenario That Didn't Exist
- HSC readiness-test begs whether 2SR-advocate was uninformed or consumed by anti-terror.

These should elicit a sense of unease that some things have gone really wrong! Impending changes to these institutions that protect and rescue us that are coming down the pipe, do so in an atmosphere of paranoia and denial or delusion. Those planning the changes must do so with the bigger picture in mind.

Retrospectives of DHS formation and its historic Katrina-dysfunction that are linked from Rolling Stone and Washington Post, below the fold, may cause the revision of preconceptions that seem firm on this side of the fold. Though not reversed entirely, it is warning that at least one notion of mine has shifted with this reading.

The kleptocratic reflex of those who control American government is evident in the story The Rolling Stone rolled out as Looting Homeland Security

Katrina may have been a natural disaster -- but President Bush created the bungled response by gutting FEMA and turning the nation's security over to corporate cronies and for-profit contractors

And the Washington Post published the second in a series covering a history of DHS with bright backlighting by the 'catastrophic response' to Hurricane Katrina. The first in WaPo's series, Department's Mission Was Undermined From Start probes the Caesarian birth of DHS following 9/11,

...Chertoff said he concluded that Ridge's pet project would be a "disaster," further dividing a fragmented DHS into regional silos. But Chertoff agreed with Ridge that DHS needed to be much readier for the next catastrophe.
"I wasn't happy about where we were on preparedness," he said.

while today's installment (Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength) opens with a tantalizing suggestion that Michael Brown was not as clueless as imagined in Katrina's wake.

In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
The inevitable result, he wrote, would be "an ineffective and uncoordinated response" to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

The second article gives me pause despite Brown's email begging "Can I quit now?"..."Can I go home? since WaPo details a great deal of reason for the resignation seeming to be implied in the FEMA Director's infamous rhetoric.

Whether or not he was clueless, it's not Michael Brown making the plans on which we'll base future American emergency response policy.

We citizens must discipline ourselves to such substantial reading as we understand the designs impending change for structures that are supposed to both protect us in DHS' mandate against man-made havoc and supposed to rescue us from the second-thought natural disasters that were once FEMA's specialty.

In light of ongoing and overt agency budget-looting at the hands of Bush Administration cronies, we should be absolutely sure that any plan finalized by amendment of Chertoff's 2SR also accounts for

the DHS chief's blindness to existing exercises and scenarios foretelling the catastrophe Katrina delivered;

Heritage Foundation's ideology-bound exclusion of human death and suffering or the continuity of government services from the shortlist of vested federal interests.

Whatever foundation produced the catastrophic response to Katrina or the narrow considerations flawing DHS 2.0/2SR, we must be sure that the literally fatal prospects forwarded by cronyist elites and ideologues don't establish long-term institutions just as their culture of corruption implodes from the weight of blind, gluttonous self-interest.

Be sure to do some substantial reading this holiday season. Then speak out since it may just save your life!

Special Note: Carnivales Extraordinaire

2005-12-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

Deadline is ASAP!

Carnival of the Liberals #2

http://carnivaloftheliberals.com/topics/call-for-submissions/2005/12/05/official-call-for-submissions-for-cotl-2
http://www.neuralgourmet.com/carnivaloftheliberals/cotlhelp

Carnival of Bad History

http://www.neuralgourmet.com/badhistory/4/callout
http://www.neuralgourmet.com/badhistory/4/reallybegginghere

Culture of Corruption: a Plan to Take Lobbying Shops Public

2005-12-14T00:41:00.000-05:00

Another of an infrequent series to document the increasing irrelevance 'of the people, by the people, for the people' to these United States. Originally posted to ePluribusMedia

Commitment Levels: Co-Chair ($25,000 per PAC) 5 Photo Opportunity Tickets/10 Reception Tickets Vice Chair ($10,000 per PAC) 2 Photo Opportunity Tickets/4 Reception Tickets Individual ($2,500 per Individual/PAC) 1 Reception Ticket

Venture Capitalist Has a Plan to Take Lobbying Shops Public

-- Where there's an ill, there's a play.

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

Monday, December 12, 2005; D01

Kenneth P. Ducey Jr. is the mystery man of K Street.
Downtown D.C. has been buzzing for weeks about a venture capitalist who's been secretly trying to buy a bunch of lobbying shops, tie them together and take them public. Well, the gossip is true, and the 41-year-old, Connecticut-based Ducey is that man.
I don't know whether he can pull it off; he won't identify his financial backer and the history of such ventures is abysmal. But investors have been digging deep lately in the belief that so much money can be won in Washington that lobbying companies are no-lose propositions.
"They're excellnt businesses," the gregarious Ducey effused in a telephone interview. "At least the lobbying firms I've been talking to have been growing substantially over the past five to 10 years, are earning money and have a very loyal clientele."
In other words, manipulating government has developed into a reliably high-margin -- and thus high-rate-of-success -- enterprise.
...

jump ....

into the abyss

National Republican Congressional Committee Calendar of Events

If you would like to submit an event for the Member Calendar of Events, please call 202-479-7000.

-----
December 12, 2005
6:00p.m-7:00p.m
Hon. Rudolph W. Giuliani & House Majority Whip Roy Blunt Cordially invite you to An Reception Honoring Charles Boustany, Tim Murphy, Mike Fitzpatrick, Chris Shays, Jim Gerlach, Rob Simmons & Mike Sodrel

The Grand Havana Room 666 5th Avenue New York City

Commitment Levels: Co-Chair ($25,000 per PAC) 5 Photo Opportunity Tickets/10 Reception Tickets Vice Chair ($10,000 per PAC) 2 Photo Opportunity Tickets/4 Reception Tickets Individual ($2,500 per Individual/PAC) 1 Reception Ticket

For More Information, contact Amanda Mayer at The Bellwether Consulting Group (703) xxxxxxx or RSVP@...
-----
December 13, 2005
8:00 9:00 a.m.
Graves for Congress cordially invites you to an Agriculture breakfast with CONGRESSMAN SAM GRAVES

Capitol Hill Club 75 Room 300 First Street, S.E. Washington, DC 20003

Suggested Contribution: PAC $1,000 Individual $500

R.S.V.P to Mike Britt at (202) xxxxxxx or e-mail, brxxx@...
-----
December 13, 2005
8:30 am
Steve Perry ~ Dutko Worldwide & Stephen Sayle ~ Dutko Worldwide Cordially invite you to an End of the Year Round Table Breakfast in honor of Congressman John Shimkus

Dutko Worldwide 412 First St, SE ~ First Floor

Breakfast: $1,000 per PAC or $1,000 per Individual

Please RSVP to: Mike Gula at 703-xxxxxxx or email info@...
-----
December 14, 2005
12:00 PM
*NEW DATE * Please join Ashley Basquin - BNSF Railway & Tom Jensen - UPS In Honor of Congressman Jim Gerlach for his Last Luncheon of the Year

AGC Townhouse 53 D St, SE

Suggested Contribution: $1,000 per PAC or $500 per Individual

Please RSVP to Mike Gula at 703-xxxxxxx or email info@...
-----
December 14, 2005
12:00 PM
*LAST 2005 EVENT* Please join Congressman Tim Murphy For his End of the Year LUNCHEON

NRA Conference Room ~410 First, SE Second Floor

Suggested Contribution: $1,000 per PAC or $500 per Individual

Please RSVP to Mike Gula at 703-xxxxxxx or email info@...
...

Executive Summary of the Report

Over the past year, the issue of Congressional ethics has taken on new resonance. Where questionable conduct was once shrugged off as "business as usual," now both the public and the press are demanding greater accountability from Members of Congress. At a time when a recent Gallup Poll reports only that 36% of those polled express approval of Congress, people are taking a harder look at the actions of their representatives.

The ethics issues surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay are well documented and frequently reported. In fact, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been one of Rep. DeLay's harshest critics. Nonetheless, we recognize that Rep. DeLay is not the only Member of Congress whose behavior merits scrutiny. There are a significant number of other members who have engaged in similarly egregious conduct, thus the name of the report: Beyond DeLay.
...

Beyond Delay: Report Summaries

* Executive Summary of the Report

* Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)

* Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-CA)

* Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)

* Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)

* Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)

* Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)

* Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)

* Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)

* Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)

* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

* Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)

* Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)

* Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

Ohio First: a story of Croney Kickbacks and Bush Pioneers

2005-11-06T23:13:00.001-05:00

Ohio First: The links to Householder Scandal

Following the links in the chain discovered by luaptifer in Cronyism: Bush Pioneer Behind Attacks on Reform Ohio Now, we found.....

The main opposition to Ohio reform, Ohio First Voters Education Fund, has very strong ties to Bush Pioneer and lobbyist, Tom Whatman.

Whatman is the owner of Whatman Associates and its public affairs affiliate, Strategic Public Partners.

Ohio First's website ProtectYourVote.org was registered by Brandon Lyndaugh, Vice President of Strategic Public Partners. The phone number and address for ProtectYourVote.org is the same as Strategic Public Partners.

The Ohio First articles of incorporation name Whatman Associates President Darren Klinger as secretary.

Look below the fold as we continue to follow the money. Maybe we'll find another Pioneer....

Reports by Ohio First to the Ohio Secretary of State show $27,000 in payments to Strategic Public Partners for "campaign staff."

The same report shows a payment of $18,625 to Majority Strategies for "literary production."

Majority Strategies owner Sam Van Voorhis was subpoenaed in the investiagation of alleged campaign finance violations by another Bush Pioneer, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder.

J. Matthew Yuskewich, Treasurer for Ohio First, also received a subpoena. He was the treasurer of the Ohio House Campaign Committee when the alleged kickback scheme occurred.

Wait, one more subpeona worth noting was issued to Tom Whatman. Whatman was the treasurer of the fund Informed Citizens of Ohio, started by Householder, which was also under investigation.

How many more links are there in the chain and where do they go?

and

Cronyism: Bush Pioneer Behind Attacks on Reform Ohio Now

first posted @ ePluribusMedia

By now it is apparent to most that cronyism is the engine that drives the Bush empire.

In a Halloween article, the Toledo Blade writers identify two Republican lobbyists who hand out donations to influence polices, and in return, seemingly net 6 million in federal contracts.

What isn't included in the Blade's article is that one of those lobbyists, Tom Whatman, has his hands in the GOP attack against the Reform Ohio Now's effort to clean up Ohio elections after the rumored voter disenfranchisement and vote stealing that occurred in the 2004 election.

{snip}

Let's follow the money:

4. And who might just be the president of Strategic Public Partners? President of Strategic Public Partners who hosts the form accepting donations for the Educational arm of the Ohio First group attacking Reform Ohio Now (the grassroots organization trying to clean up Ohio election law)?

Tom Whatman

Yes, that Tom Whatman. The lobbyist whom the Blade exposed on Monday as the channel for 6 million dollars in federal contracts to clients.

Congress Had the Same Intelligence I did

2005-11-01T19:01:00.000-05:00

BULLSHIT!

Since I knew of the FIRST THREE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS DELAYED TIL AFTER THE ELECTION, I've tried to make the point that the lies of this administration sold to the American people misled not only us little janes and joes, it misled our leadership! Since awareness of those FIRST THREE DELAYED REPORTS, TWO OR THREE OTHER DELAYED REPORTS have come to light!!!

For so long, Bu$h claimed he had the same intel that Congress had. THAT IS BULLSHIT! I've tried to make people aware of the fact and cited the relevant pieces wherever possible.

This history retells the story, that the SIC Democrats were sworn NOT TO TELL what they'd learned in Committee by the thugs towing the line of this Administration.

With backbone finally showing up among the Democrats, I think it's essential that the history be revisited!

Please reread the excerpt @ePluribusMedia, The Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty while keeping in mind just how many reports were withheld from the American people that would have indicted this Administration in time for us NOT TO REELECT them, if we really have, had we been told of their findings.

HOORAY for Harry Reid and the post-nuclear option! Send a note to think him for demonstrating that Democrats may be reclassified, once again, as Vertebrates under the Endangered Species Act:

http://reid.senate.gov/email_form.cfm

Five of the nine Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Graham and Durbin, ultimately voted against the resolution, but they were unable to convince other committee members or a majority in the Senate itself. This was at least in part because they were not allowed to divulge what they knew: While Graham and Durbin could complain that the administration's and Tenet's own statements contradicted the classified reports they had read, they could not say what was actually in those reports.

Much more of the same intelligence at ePluribusMedia

Daily Kos: The Great Remaking

2005-10-31T16:56:00.000-05:00

The Great Remaking
by Stirling Newberry [Subscribe]
Mon Oct 31, 2005 at 07:15:51 AM CDT

They are at it again. You know who I mean, the people who thought that 2000 was a "tie election" and that now that Bush is in trouble he needs to be nice to them, the moderates and sensible people. This isn't going to happen. Instead what is going to happen is more inflationary pressure and Bush is going to go back to his base, betting that the Democratic Party will round heel once more.

[The Background to this article is The Fourth Republic.]

* Stirling Newberry's diary :: ::
*

George Bush represetnts an impulse among one of the groups of elites of America to remake America in their own image. This impulse is to create a top down society, run by economic elites, supported by a wall of true believing retainers, and one where the rest of us grind along making enough to keep us from getting too unhappy, And if we do get too unhappy, then fear can be used to keep us in line.

What old line academic, media and other technocratic elites - the people who ran the Liberal Democracy - don't realize is that this impulse to remake society extends even to those who seem more reasonable. They see Bush as incompetent or bumbling. He is bumbling, but he is, like many would be remakers of society, relentless in his pursuit of the cause. His recent troubles stem both from his own incompetence, and from a wavering belief in the other people who want to remake the society that he is useful to that project. The first year of his second term has been one failure after another.

The appointments of Alito and Bernanke are intended to get the remaking back on track. In the world view of Bush and those like him, this decade represents the 1930's, a time of such profound crisis in the old order, that a new order can be imposed, even if it is not effective at first. As far as they are concerned Bush is the reactionary FDR.

The basic paradigm of technocrats, even ones who should know better, is that George Bush is incompetent at handling the delicate mechanisms of power built up over a century and a quarter since the Federal government and society came to be bureaucracy's, that is rule from the office. In their view, eventually the unravelling nature of his incompetence would eventually force their return to power, as Bush would be forced to accept their advice as all other holders of power had been forced to do so in the past. In essence, all they needed to do was to wait him out. There are some that are angrier with him than others, and feel that more active opposition to his incompetence was needed, but fundamentally, sooner or later, there would be a "problem" and they would be asked to do what they had done for all of the decades since 1933 - find a way to manipulate the rules, numbers and forms of society so as to solve that problem.

This is why there is tremendous praise for Bernanke - the court system of flattering colleagues in hopes they will listen to you later is back in place, as is the confusion of formal skill with ideological acceptance of the technocratic order. The contrary is the case, the reactionary revolution depends on people who were successful technocrats, but who hate the technocracy and want it replaced with something else.

Bernanke is part of the paradigm that says that the Great Depression was made worse by the New Deal, and that if the old Hoover Administration had simply understood monetary policy better, it would never have been necessary to have FDR. FDR's New Deal represented, not a saving of America, but a shock that slowed down a neo-classically predictable recovery. Bernanke's important work is in how to make monetary policy solely a servant of propping up a reactionary order, without giving it any ability to act in any other case. He believes in inflation targetting, ultra-modelling of the economy, and the theory that if only the Fed had "run the printing presses" from 1928-1932, there would have been no Great Depresssion.

These views are ahistorical, the neo-classical economy's requirements weren't in place until after World War II, and the government has, in the present, a huge stabilizing role. In one sense the technocrats are right, the old order could be maintained with effort and intelligence, however, Bush represents, not an extreme deviation from it, but a concerted and deliberate attempt to break it.

::

One of the keys is economic, to the techocrats - for example, Dr. Paul Krugman and Stanley Roach - the current account deficit, budget deficit and spiralling trade deficit represent a weakness. To Bush and his ilk, it represents a strength. The rest of the world will go out of their way to allow him to do what he wants, and will prop him up, because otherwise the US will topple, and with it their store of wealth. The US owes the world trillions, and if it were to collapse, all of that debt would be very hard to collect on.

Hence, Bush will continue to press, and after him the next reactionary will, until the old order tips over. In their view there are a few key points that have to be taken. One is getting a firm 5 votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the New Deal. We forget that the key elements New Deal was originally declared unconstitutional, and that the far right still believes it is. Their idea is right wing socialism - a big military budget to support corporate feudalism, but otherwise the government has its hands tied. The second part is social security. Social Security is what prevents the government from just being able to inflate its way out of problems, because Social Security is tied to the inflation rate. If the government inflates, it shows up as a Social Security "crisis".

Alito is clearly intended for the first of these tasks, he is in the mold of Clarence Thomas, itching to overturn the evils of Liberalism. Bernanke is the key to the second, by continuing to follow an inflationist path - an inflation that is localized to groups that Bush is one of, namely energy companies - he incrementally will raise pressure on Social Security.

What will make this ultimately fall apart is not some crisis where the technocrats will be brought back into fix it. Neither Bush, nor any of his successors will, now or ever, backtrack. Intsead, each crisis will come with a demand for even more power. What they are betting on is that America will simply move to the next blank slate conservative hoping that this time borrow and squander will work differently than it has in the past.

Daily Kos: The Great Remaking

With friends like the press, who needs a dictator?

2005-10-30T16:27:00.000-05:00

Can there be an explanation for this...[WAPO decriminalizes Cheney]?

I once asked rhetorically, whether it could be clear against whom any modern-day revolution would present, should such an action ever become necessary.

- ePluribus Commentary

Conyers: No Pardons for Treasongate

2005-10-26T10:03:00.000-04:00

Sign My Letter to Bush Demanding No Pardons for Treasongate

by Congressman John Conyers
Tue Oct 25, 2005 at 03:26:39 PM EDT

Cross-posted at Huffington

As the Fitzgerald investigation nears its conclusion, I am becoming increasingly concerned that Bush will prevent the exposure of wrongdoing in Treasongate by pardoning any indicted members of his administration before trial. I wrote a letter in July asking the President to pledge not to pardon these persons. I have yet to receive an answer so I have organized a letter writing campaign demanding an answer. Over 4,000 people have already signed so I'd like to generate at least 10,000 letters to Bush.

As some of you may recall, the President's father, President George H.W. Bush, pardoned officials under indictment in the Iran-Contra scandal. Some of those pardoned by Bush Sr. include officials in the present White House, like Elliott Abrams, as well as others who have been purportedly linked to the falsification of the Niger documents. Those previously indicted and pardoned seem to be nearby when further crimes are committed against our country.

While the White House had publicly promised its full cooperation with the investigation, their strategy has been attack, attack, attack -- most significantly on Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, the prosecutor, the Central Intelligence Agency and the press. Let's make sure that while the administration tries to divert attention away from its culpability,
they are forced to pledge that those indicted by Fitzgerald will not be pardoned by the President.

What Indictments?!

2005-10-25T22:43:00.000-04:00

It's Fitzmas Time, do you know where your children are?

Accidental Invention Points to End of Light Bulbs - Yahoo! News

2005-10-22T14:46:00.000-04:00

The main light source of the future will almost surely not be a bulb. It might be a table, a wall, or even a fork.
ADVERTISEMENT

An accidental discovery announced this week has taken LED lighting to a new level, suggesting it could soon offer a cheaper, longer-lasting alternative to the traditional light bulb. The miniature breakthrough adds to a growing trend that is likely to eventually make Thomas Edison's bright invention obsolete.

LEDs are already used in traffic lights, flashlights, and architectural lighting. They are flexible and operate less expensively than traditional lighting.

Happy accident

Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, was just trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals generally only a few nanometers big. That's less than 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

Quantum dots contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 electrons. They're easily excited bundles of energy, and the smaller they are, the more excited they get. Each dot in Bower's particular batch was exceptionally small, containing only 33 or 34 pairs of atoms.

When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant color. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened.

"I was surprised when a white glow covered the table," Bowers said. "The quantum dots were supposed to emit blue light, but instead they were giving off a beautiful white glow."

Then Bowers and another student got the idea to stir the dots into polyurethane and coat a blue LED light bulb with the mix. The lumpy bulb wasn't pretty, but it produced white light similar to a regular light bulb.
White light from Bowers' lumpy new bulb. Credit: Vanderbilt University

The new device gives off a warm, yellowish-white light that shines twice as bright and lasts 50 times longer than the standard 60 watt light bulb.

This work is published online in the Oct. 18 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Better than bulbs

Until the last decade, LEDs could only produce green, red, and yellow light, which limited their use. Then came blue LEDs, which have since been altered to emit white light with a light-blue hue.

LEDs produce twice as much light as a regular 60 watt bulb and burn for over 50,000 hours. The
Department of Energy estimates LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025. LEDs don't emit heat, so they're also more energy efficient. And they're much harder to break.

Other scientists have said they expect LEDs to eventually replace standard incandescent bulbs as well as fluorescent and sodium vapor lights.

If the new process can be developed into commercial production, light won't come just from newfangled bulbs. Quantum dot mixtures could be painted on just about anything and electrically excited to produce a rainbow of colors, including white.

Accidental Invention Points to End of Light Bulbs - Yahoo! News

Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to hit the US

2005-09-08T17:22:00.000-04:00

originally posted by jaywillie @ dkos, since gone MIA from that location.

"Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney!" - LIVE on CNN

2005-09-08T14:38:00.000-04:00

FOX News
(click video) has posted the whole video of Cheney's news gaggle, BUT HAS EDITED THE SHOUTING SEGMENT COMPLETELY OUT AT 7:18.

>>>VIDEO<<<
(thanks to Think Progress)

>>>VIDEO<<<
(thanks to Crooks & Liars)

>>>AUDIO<<<
(thanks to Mustang dvs!)

I'm not kidding you. In Mississippi, during a press conference, after telling the press that what needs to be done, gets done. A resident walked up to the gaggle and said this:

"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney!! Go fuck yourself!!!
Cheney looked pissed. Really pissed.
A reporter then asked him, "Do you get that a lot, Mr. Cheney?"
He replied, "That's the first time I've heard it. Must be a friend of John er.. uh.. never mind."

It sounded as though he was pushed away (probably by the secret service). CNN would not show this guy.

Many thanks to STOP-George!!

the Bu$h Katastrophe: spin Hurricane Katrina at max political speed!

2005-09-04T13:28:00.000-04:00

[cross-posted from ePluribusMedia and dailykos

Hurricane KissYourAssGoodBye: New Orleans, September 2002

WALTER MAESTRI: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evident that we were going to lose a lot of people we changed the name of the storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody who was here as that Category Five storm came across... was gone.
- Daniel Zwerdling interview

i just can't stop the cancer that's transformed my anger to terminal OUTRAGE!!

-Fake Levee Repairs for Bu$h Photo-op
-Fake Food Distribution Centers for Bu$h Photo-op
-Grounding of Helicopter Food Delivery for Bu$h Photo-op
-Disabled Cajundome Comm Ctr 8 hrs for Laura Bu$h Photo-op

you know how much is already missing from the growing list...

every single fucking day of last year my first or second cup of coffee correlated with onset of the twitch. not the nervous, involuntary type that proves bothersome exactly because you can do little to stop it. rubbing or stretching the limb suffering a microspasm makes it go away only rarely.

no, the twitch always preceded a muscle problem that, by lunchtime, would became a full-blown side-to-side shake of my head lasting, off and on, until i killed the computer and any broadcast media for the day. living through incomprehensible events does this to me.

no guarentee of it stopping even in sleep although on Nov. 2, 2004 there were several early hours during which the twitch was absent.

it's a tremor now, i'm shaking all over.

just FUCK these criminals, FUCK 'EM! no more bullshit!!

we must use anything and everything that can be grabbed from the political armory.

ballistic is something i'd have been happy being since the election if resignation to the theft had not left me desperate for ANYTHING to exposing the criminal sham. ePluribus has been an EXCELLENT channel for transforming depression to an obsessively hopeful hunt for something that might crack the foundation of the CONjob. the shellgame is not confined to DC so i've kept busy, for sure.

but the ABSOLUTELY CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATHY of these fuckers' non-response to Hurricane Katrina, i mean, i just don't know how to control apoplexy.

i hate propaganda but we've got to cement the Bu$h criminals' image into the destruction delivered by their insane, malicious handling of Katrina. before and after it hit.

-- i want to create something that is a permanent, inseparable welding of "Bu$h criminal" to "Louisiana Holocaust". i want an obligatory symbiosis -- that has no meaning if one is separated from the other -- to be the emblem of the Bu$h Katastrophe.

and i want the snuff gang emasculated. NO! i want to strangle it in the bathtub that people still call New Orleans.

Invasion of the Isolationists - New York Times

2005-09-01T14:31:00.000-04:00

Invasion of the Isolationists - New York Times

Great Salt Lake II, Lake Dubya: levee breaches 'hadn't been anticipated'

2005-09-01T10:07:00.000-04:00

Bush warns against looting, gas price gouging

...He defended the federal government's response so far to the growing crisis amid urgent pleas for help from stranded victims. He said the breach of the levees that led to the submerging of much of New Orleans had not been anticipated...

- Fox News: Oil-Service Company Stocks Continue to Rise

He also defended his own decision to wait until Wednesday to return to Washington and cut short by a couple of days a four-week working vacation at his Texas ranch.

My Pet Goat loves salt!

Destroying FEMA

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support.

New World Order Requires New Maps

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."

1) (In early 2001) the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.

2) For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.

3) New Orleans has 22 pumping stations that need to work nearly continuously to discharge normal storm runoff and seepage. But they are notoriously fickle. Efforts to add backup power generators to keep them all running during blackouts have been delayed by a lack of federal money.

What Noble Cause?

2005-08-24T22:38:00.000-04:00

"When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened -- we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It's a big disappointment."

-Safia Taleb al-Souhail, Iraq's ambassador to Egypt, Reuters interview, August 24, 2005

Iraq: The unseen war

The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. This photo gallery reveals the war's horrible human toll.

Aug. 23, 2005 This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see. From the beginning, the U.S. government has attempted to censor information about the Iraq war, prohibiting photographs of the coffins of U.S. troops returning home and refusing as a matter of policy to keep track of the number of Iraqis who have been killed. President Bush has yet to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq...

- Salon.com

Who Will Say 'No More'?

...History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on?
...
The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war. The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating "Stay the course" even when the course, whatever it now is, is light years away from the one originally undertaken. The truth is we're way off course. We've stumbled into a hornet's nest. We've weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began.

Who now has the courage to say this?

- Gary Hart, Washington Post

Dear Mr. President

...Mr. President, the United States Armed Forces should never be committed to wartime operations unless the following conditions are fulfilled:

That there be a clear statement by the President of why it is in our vital national interests to be engaged in hostilities;

Guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy;

That there be support of the mission by the U.S. Congress and the American people; and

That it be made clear that U.S. Forces will be commanded only by U.S. officers whom we acknowledge are superior military leaders.

It is the opinion of The American Legion, which I am sure is shared by the majority of Americans, that three of the above listed conditions have not been met in the current joint operation with NATO ("Operation Allied Force'')...

Sincerely,
Harold L. "Butch'' Miller,
National CommanderAmerican Legion
Letter to President Clinton
May 5, 1999

- Billmon

Sheehan & the Exploitation Charge

2005-08-19T00:04:00.000-04:00

by SusanG
Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 11:40:13 PM EST

The shameless opportunist exploiting Casey is his own mother, Cindy Sheehan.

One of the oddest accusations to come out of the Sheehan phenomenon is that this mother is "exploiting" her son's death and her own grief. I've thought about this for a couple of days, and the illogic of this argument is not settling down. In fact, it's becoming more crazy-making the more I think about it.

The logic (if you can call it that) in this "exploitation" argument is thus: If a tragedy befalls an individual and the individual decides to devote every action of her being to ensuring no other human being suffers this same tragedy, she's ... exploiting? Huh?

By this analysis, Christopher Reeves was "exploiting" his injury by advocating for cures for spinal injuries. MADD members are "exploiting" the deaths of their children by pushing for stronger punishments and deterrents of drunk drivers. The Susan G. Komen Foundation is "exploiting" a sister's death by raising money for breast cancer research through its highly successful Race for the Cure series. And so on. You get the drift.

Conversely, it's always represented to me the height of maturity and courage to be able to take a private grief and turn it into something public, something bigger, something more heroic and true than a personal, massive sorrow. I know that I simply will not be able to survive the death of one of my children in any sort of shape that will allow me to become a spokesperson for a cause, no matter how righteous that cause is. As it is, I have trouble sustaining discipline and energy for something as straightforward as blogging a couple of times a week. If one of my kids goes, I assure you that I will crawl into a corner of the universe and emotionally die. You will not hear from me again; I know this well because for 16 years I've had a child living on the edge of this life-death deal with a congenital heart defect and numerous (mostly unsuccessful) surgical interventions. Sorry, I've looked into my soul and I cower in the dark of night. You won't find me as a poster woman for the American Heart Association any time soon. Just breathing will be considered a victory.

How many of us, if faced with the death of a child, would be able to muster the courage, grace and energy to make public appearances on behalf of other people's children? And how many of us could do so while being demonized relentlessly and our private lives examined in detail? Sheehan's words and acts are never going to bring her son back. She knows that. This is by no means a silly woman.

But my God, she's a heroic one. As surely every thinking parent on this planet knows, deep in their hearts.

"I find it ironic that some of these people scrutinize everything I said, but they don't scrutinize everything that George Bush has said," she said
She reopened debate about war, and, boy, is she hearing about it

and, from Camp Casey, there's no way you'll want to miss this exquisite piece, The President & The Minister

by ePluribus Media
Wed Aug 17, 2005 at 11:02:18 PM EST

Part Three in a Series of columns by Brian Keeler ePluribus Media

The Nature of Fear

2005-08-10T23:23:00.000-04:00

Fear and anxiety are two of the oldest, most instinctual emotions we possess. Survival depends on both. One of the oldest structures in our brain is the amygdala:

Located in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, the almond-shaped amygdala (in Latin, corpus amygdaloideum) is believed to play a key role in the emotions. It forms part of the limbic system. In humans and other animals, it is linked to both fear responses and pleasure.

Fear overrides both reason and logic, which are two reasons why it is such a powerful tool. In the hands of a fanatic, this tool can be used to change the direction of entire governments. In the hands of a government, this tool can be used to change the direction of an entire people. In the hands of a people, this tool becomes the foundation of majority oppression. Today we see more fear in everything - from television to the economy to political campaigns.

{snip}

So what is a person to do when society is so desensitized, cheap rubber masks and equally cheap campaign commercials no longer scare us? Simple: saturation.

9/11 was a turning point in our history, but not for the reasons we once believed. We are a people who no longer believe in no fear. This government and its supporters use this weapon, and not just a fear of terrorism, or death, but everything. We have promoted so much fear, so much distrust, so much hatred, it has become impossible to rely on reason or logic. Instead we maintain one, long stream of anxiety which permeates our lives to every extent the opposition can reach.

{snip}

for the whole piece see It Affects You: The Nature of Fear after first taking a look at The Third World Traveler's

Consent, American Style

Many cultural critics, such as Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, and Ben Bagdikian, have pointed out that in order for American power to carry out the atrocities it has perpetrated abroad, it needs to "manufacture" the consent of the American people. That is because America must at one and the same time carry out the appearance that it is the freest society in the world (true, to a degree, as Chomsky acknowledges) while tyrannizing much of the rest of the world. The democracy of the U.S. is managed, while the democracy of the rest of the world is deterred, as a host of militaristic and authoritarian national governments point to themselves as "allies" of our great nation. Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators." Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?

{snip}

So you want to stop the suicide bombers?

2005-07-25T11:59:00.000-04:00

Asia Times Online
Jul 12, 2005
SPEAKING FREELY
By Toni Momiroski

...a book called Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, by Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, and it presents some compelling explanations for acts of terrorist violence...

Pape's study looks at 462 suicide-terrorist attacks between 1980 and early 2004 world-wide. The research finds that in over 95% of the cases the "central objective" of this form of terrorism was the eviction of foreign troops from occupied countries or regions that were considered by the terrorist groups to be occupied. Therefore, perceptions were a crucial indicator of reality articulated in acts of terror. What this means is that since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism, "the use of heavy military force to transform societies over there ... is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us".

Some of the chief findings that Pape reached include:
# The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.
# The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territories that the terrorists view as their homelands.
# Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies "over there" is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists "coming at us".
# It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces in the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.
# Two-thirds of Al-Qaeda suicide terrorists from 1995 to early 2004 were from countries where the US had stationed combat troops since 1990.
# Before the US invasion, Iraq had never had a suicide-terrorist attack. Since the invasion, suicide terrorism has escalated rapidly, with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004 and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the US has stationed combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.
# Of the terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission (actually killed themselves) most were walk-in volunteers. Very few were criminals, and few were longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack.
# There is no evidence that any suicide-terrorist organizations were lying in wait in Iraq before the US invasion - the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion.
# Al-Qaeda certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack, and in fact it has made over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than all the years before September 11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now, it's stronger.
# Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. This is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community.
# When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied, this enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier in especially vicious ways.
# Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop - and often on a dime.
# The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not so much to die as to kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target society to compel that target to put pressure on its government to change policy.
# If the government is already changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at least the way it has been used for the past 25 years, doesn't come up.
# The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear to be much more based on operational rather than normative criteria. They appear to be looking for targets where they can maximize the number of casualties.

What does all this mean? Acts of terrorism and suicide are not random acts, but have clear strategic objectives. They can be political, but they are political only in terms of seeking to influence governments with respect of strategic interests related to occupation. While lobby and interest groups seek to influence democratic governments by words and electoral power, terrorists seek to do this through the only political means available to them. In their acts of violence, they seek to redress a power imbalance, that is, if the occupation ends, then so does terrorism.

Pape's findings point to the succinct view that the occupiers should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and quickly. Their presence invites more violence. More violence leads to additional violence from all sides. This provides the perfect conditions for "a new kind of war" - an "endless" war...

...Pat Robertson says he warned President Bush before U.S. troops invaded Iraq that the United States would sustain casualties but that Bush responded, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Iraqis, Sistani Stunned by the Violence of a Bombing - New York Times

2005-07-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 17 - Even in Iraq, where shocking killings have become part of daily life, some acts are so profoundly violent that the country seems to pause, trying to fathom what happened.

That was the case on Sunday, after a suicide bomber appeared in Musayyib, a poor town just south of Baghdad, and blew himself up under a fuel tanker on Saturday night, igniting a fireball that engulfed cars, shops and homes. At least 71 people died; 156 were wounded. Some bodies were badly charred, making identification difficult.

Some senior elected officials and civic and religious leaders spoke out on Sunday, condemning the attack, one of a wave of suicide bombings that has shaken the greater Baghdad area in the past eight days. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, asked the government "to defend this country against the mass annihilation," according to Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, who led a delegation that visited the ayatollah on Sunday.

But nothing has stopped the bombings. In Baghdad, four suicide bombers struck within a span of four and a half hours on Sunday.

An Interior Ministry official listed the attacks: at 8 a.m., a car exploded at a checkpoint guarded by ministry commandos, killing three of them and wounding 10 civilians. Another car bomb killed a police commando and a civilian and wounded five civilians at 9:45 a.m. A third detonated near an office of the High Electoral Commission in Baghdad at 11:10 a.m., killing three and wounding one. The fourth struck at 12:30 p.m., killing one civilian and wounding another.

The surge of suicide attacks torturing the capital has seemingly confounded Iraqi and American forces, which have focused their Baghdad security efforts on stopping the bombers. Attacks are often undetectable until the last seconds before detonation, especially in the case of moving car bombs, and nearby civilians can slow the reaction of security forces.

Additionally, no obvious pattern has appeared in the recent string of attacks except that, like the scores of others that have made suicide bombs a prominent feature of this war, they have often singled out Shiites in large numbers or Iraqi and international security forces.

The National Assembly called for three minutes of silence nationwide on Wednesday to commemorate the Musayyib victims, as well as those in a suicide attack last Wednesday in Baghdad that killed more than two dozen people, mostly children.

Early leads in the investigation into the Musayyib attack suggest that insurgents had carefully planned it for maximum civilian casualties.

Several days earlier, the truck, which belonged to Iraq's Oil Ministry, had been hijacked by armed insurgents and the driver kidnapped en route from Baghdad to Falluja, according to an official at the Interior Ministry, who requested anonymity for fear of administrative punishment or reprisals from the insurgents.

"The only explanation the Interior Ministry has now is that the whole operation was arranged, and an insurgent was waiting in Musayyib to blow himself up at the location," the official said in a telephone interview.

"The situation is not good, and not what we hoped for," Hussein al-Shaalan, a member of the National Assembly, said in a telephone interview. The National Assembly intends to question the interior and defense ministers in the coming days about ways to improve the nation's domestic security.

Since the insurgency coalesced in the months after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the level of guerrilla violence in Iraq has been cyclical. Mindful that rebel activity sometimes spikes in the weeks or days leading up to specific political events, including elections and transfers of power, military officials predict a rise in insurgent attacks between now and the mid-August date set for the constitutional convention, and again before the mid-October constitutional referendum and in advance of the national elections in December.

The current guerrilla campaign comes several weeks after the American authorities announced what they said was a successful effort to severely reduce the ability of insurgents to launch attacks in the capital - timing that suggests that the bombings may be a response to the American command's claims.

The attacks also come as most of the country's major Sunni Arab communities have begun to coalesce around a commitment to get out the Sunni Arab vote in the December elections for a full government, a decision the government views as a further step toward solidifying a political process that the insurgency has been trying to undermine.

Military analysts say that although it is difficult to assess the insurgency's organization, they believe that the attackers have a flat structure without complicated hierarchies. Much of the violence is carried out by independent cells that may communicate on certain occasions with high-level leaders but mostly take broad guidance from Web sites and videos, and set up their own attack schedules within their own regions.

According to military analysts, insurgents have learned in recent months that while attacking Iraqi or the American-led coalition forces has a certain propaganda payoff, it is much easier to strike civilian targets that have far less protection than troops or installations. And such attacks have the side effect of sowing chaos and distrust within the government.

Nabeel Muhammad, senior lecturer in international relations at Baghdad University, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that the insurgency was "desperate to start a sectarian unrest in the country."

"They keep looking for new methods to attack, and the Iraqi people are the only victim."

The insurgents have shown a keen ability to adapt and strengthen their tactics. Saturday's attack in Musayyib may be a case in point.

Adnan Ahmed, 35, a local government official who saw the bombing, explained that a man wearing a body belt of explosives dove underneath a propane fuel tanker and detonated himself shortly after 8 p.m. as the street teemed with pedestrians, including Shiite worshipers heading to the mosque and shoppers in the nearby market.

The explosion appeared to blow a hole in the bottom of the tank and ignite the fuel inside, officials say. Yet the resulting fireball left the huge fuel cylinder mostly intact.

All night, rescuers and relatives rushed survivors to hospitals around the region and carted bodies to morgues, and others battled the fires that gutted buildings and left behind a junkyard of blackened cars.

By late Sunday afternoon, an eerie, haunting quiet descended over the site. Few spoke at all.

It was the most deadly suicide bombing since Feb. 28, when a driver detonated his sedan full of explosives in a crowd of Iraqi police and army recruits in Hilla, killing at least 122 people.

Iraqis Stunned by the Violence of a Bombing - New York Times

there's a difference between VISION and DELUSION.

2005-07-19T11:35:00.000-04:00

White House ruled the "Election" in Iraq (4.00 / 3)
How absolutely stupid can people be, to think that there were "free and fair" elections in Iraq?

Voter registration was the hardest part of that operation, as you can see here:

First of all, the Coalition Provisional Authority had passed a number of laws that totally placed Iraq, as a polity, in the hands of the Coalition and the White House. The Iraqis are not sovereign, nor do they exercise any real power inside their territory. What happens, happens because the White House wants it to happen. (Which is why the rising resistance movement is gaining ground. When you disenfranchise a people, through an illegal occupation, shit stuff happens).

The U.S. applied overt and covert influence on the election, seeking to sponsor and aid favorites, while making it harder for opposition voices to be heard. There are many ways of providing assistance, for instance by allowing your favorites to operate under the protective umbrella you otherwise reserve for your own, inside the Green Zone. That protection can also be extended, when required, outside Fort Apache, while it can also be withdrawn from those not toeing the line.

The Iraqi elections were a sham - the conclusion was foretold. The Shi'ites would have run away with it, if it had truly been free - but then they would have lost the protective umbrella supplied them by the U.S.

Thus the Shi'ites were smart enough to recognize that they now had a shot at some real power, and of possibly creating a Shi'ite southern stronghold, in line with what the Kurds managed in the north, under Garner, before the war. They went along with getting a result just short of a majority - good enough to make them feel powerful, and sufficietly "small" to not make Bush and Cheney look like idiots for handing Iraq to Iran.

The fact that it took forever to resolve the distribution of actual power, after the election, clearly reflects how rigged the entire affair was.

Or how about the post-rigging of the result? The fact that the U.S. suddenly realized that the Shi'ites could run off with the south, and possibly the country, anyway? Which led the White House to suddenly "demand" that the Sunnis should get representation, and the Coalition to begin negotiating with the resistance.

I'd say that's pretty much rigging the election, post-factum, isn't it?

What if an entire group chose to not participate in a national election, as a protest, in a European democracy? Then, once the election was over, the E.U. enters into the picture, and demands that the group that voluntarily disenfranchised itself should get a significant portion of the seats in parliament, in spite of not having participated? Uproar would ensue.

So - please, lets stop the pretense. The White House manipulated the world, in order to get its war. Once inside Iraq, do you think it would stop short of rigging what required rigging, in order to try and get what it came for?

Fortunately, there's a difference between VISION and DELUSION.

Vision is tested by time, and grows in legitimacy as its predictions are borne out.

Delusions, likewise, are also tested by time, and are revealed for what they are. In the case of the White House on Iraq, the stark, raving, mad ramblings of people who think they can create reality.

Now, that's a delusion of the first order. And the Cheney administration is fast approaching its last throes, because of that delusion.

That's why the GOP is panicking, and the White House is battening hatches now. This is much, much bigger than the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson - the proper name for this scandal is Iraqgate.

"I don't do quagmires, and my boss doesn't do nuance."

by SteinL on Mon Jul 18th, 2005 at 03:15:06 CDT

Daily Kos :: Comments Open Thread: "there's a difference between VISION and DELUSION. "

Karl Rove's America

2005-07-19T03:46:00.000-04:00

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 15 July 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the CIA for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the CIA for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

Honest Dreams come True!!

2005-06-27T01:17:00.000-04:00

...the community for judicious study glimpsed the future for just a Zen moment when the Dudehisattva showed the way.

enlightenment is known in hearing the sound of one hand slapping but true wisdom of the neoCONned variety comes only through 'creating your own reality'.

as wingers know, getting to the other side takes hard work and bricks of Adobe Photoshop to build such a durable figment!

but could there be a sweeter thing than to live as One with Bu$h's Brain subject to the discipline of your wil?! Dudehisattva leads us down this path, to the enlightenment of 2007!

i dare say it's valued beyond the riches of the Middle East, and more, to achieve that which only blind faith can deliver: on the other side, there will be no casualties.

well, except for Condi and Donald, maybe ;-)

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

back to that basis in reality, but thanks for the hand Dude!

CONYERS MAKES HIS MOVE ON GWB

2005-06-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

BREAKING ! CONYERS MAKES HIS MOVE ON GWB June 16

by

Apian's diary

Thu Jun 9th, 2005 at 16:11:53 EDT

For Immediate Release: June 9, 2005

Congressman John Conyers (D. - Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary
Committee, working with AfterDowningStreet.org, has scheduled hearings
on the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence to be held on
Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 16 (time and place to be determined).

Numerous Congress members will take part, along with an ambassador, a WMD expert, a CIA analyst with 27 years experience, parents who have lost sons in Iraq, a constitutional lawyer, and other witnesses.

Following the hearings, Congressman Conyers will attempt to deliver to the President a letter signed by 500,000 Americans asking him to reply to questions raised by the Downing Street Minutes. Supporters will rally in Lafayette Square Park. (Time to be determined.)

ADS is a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May 26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.

Members of the media with inquiries should write to David Swanson at david[at]davidswanson[dot]org and Jon Schwartz at jonrschwartz[at]yahoo[dot]com; for urgent inquiries, phone David Swanson at 202-329-7847 or Jon Schwartz at 301-928-7579.

afterdowningstreet.org

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO SUPPORT THIS EFFORT:

1. Support MoveOn.org. Spread the word. Get as many people to sign Conyers' letter as you can between now and the 14th of June. Target number is 500,000 signatures.

2. JOIN THE AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.ORG COALITION SEEKING A RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY.

3. WRITE TO YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS. Tell your representatives that you support Congressman Conyers. "Backbone" postcards available at AfterDowningStreet.org

4. Put up notices and flyers in public places, directing people to Conyers' letter at MoveOn.org. Move On.org Aims to Get 500,000 signatures by June 14, 2005. Move On Org. TELL THE TRUTH

5. Flyers available at AfterDowningStreet.org. FLY, KOSSACKS !!

Join the AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition Seeking A Resolution of Inquiry

check out the comments following on Apian's diary here

Nader: The 'I' Word: Impeachment

2005-05-31T16:17:00.000-04:00

Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States.

The 'I' Word: Impeachment
by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese

The impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.

Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.

President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.

Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''nonthreatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States...

go to The 'I' Word: Impeachment

Letter to Pres Bush Concerning "Downing Street Memo"

2005-05-31T16:03:00.000-04:00

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Mr. President:

We the undersigned write because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war.

Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."

In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Please go to the Conyers blog and sign this letter!

Downing Street Minutes: Apian's Record @dKos

2005-05-31T15:38:00.000-04:00

1. The Downing Street Minutes -- TAKING IT TO COURT
posted by Apian on 05/31/2005 06:52:24 EDT
108 comments (108 new)

2. Memorial Day -- A Military Woman Speaks Out
posted by Apian on 05/30/2005 17:09:40 EDT
22 comments (22 new)

3. The Game's Afoot, Watson DOWNING STREET DOSSIER
posted by Apian on 05/30/2005 04:55:59 EDT
80 comments (0 new)

4. Mad As Hell And Not Going To FAKE It Anymore
posted by Apian on 05/28/2005 22:07:59 EDT
81 comments (81 new)

5. ON MINUTES & MINISTERS Legal Considerations Downing St. Minutes
posted by Apian on 05/28/2005 15:58:35 EDT
15 comments (15 new)

6. A Matter of Minutes -- DOWNING STREET DOSSIER
posted by Apian on 05/27/2005 09:55:44 EDT
90 comments (90 new)

7. Downing Street Minutes -- COALITION SEEKS INQUIRY
posted by Apian on 05/27/2005 01:12:13 EDT
36 comments (36 new)

8. Amnesty Report -- How YOU Can File A War Crimes Complaint
posted by Apian on 05/25/2005 17:26:14 EDT
21 comments (21 new)

9. dKos Coverage Downing Street Minutes -- A Resource
posted by Apian on 05/25/2005 11:24:56 EDT
37 comments (37 new)

10. Meet Ben Ferencz
posted by Apian on 05/24/2005 20:02:57 EDT
12 comments (12 new)

11. Wait, A MINUTE !! More Evidence From Downing Street
posted by Apian on 05/23/2005 23:05:41 EDT
157 comments (157 new)

12. Spies Coming In From The Cold -- With Evidence of War Crimes
posted by Apian on 05/23/2005 22:41:49 EDT
107 comments (107 new)

13. Dissident Kossacks Take On MSM -- NO MORE BUSHSPEAK !!
posted by Apian on 05/23/2005 12:37:30 EDT
33 comments (33 new)

14. Minutes not Memo -- Editor Gets It -- No More Bushspeak!!
posted by Apian on 05/22/2005 15:16:08 EDT
195 comments (195 new)

15. Too Many Cooks Spoil the Intel -- ILLEGAL WAR IRAQ
posted by Apian on 05/22/2005 06:46:38 EDT
9 comments (9 new)

16. What I Did On dKos Impeachment Action Day
posted by Apian on 05/21/2005 19:58:51 EDT
6 comments (6 new)

17. BAN THE BITCH COMPLAINTS DESK NOW OPEN
posted by Apian on 05/19/2005 18:22:57 EDT
323 comments (323 new)

18. Mea Culpa -- How Do You Update A Diary?
posted by Apian on 05/19/2005 15:20:11 EDT
53 comments (53 new)

19. BBC TRANSCRIPTS -- MORE EVIDENCE ILLEGAL WAR IRAQ!
posted by Apian on 05/18/2005 11:54:27 EDT
145 comments (145 new)

20. Meet The People Who Will Stop This War
posted by Apian on 05/17/2005 10:02:40 EDT
164 comments (164 new)

21. dKos Takes On Washington Post And Wins!
posted by Apian on 05/15/2005 23:38:55 EDT
153 comments (153 new)

22. BREAKING!!! Conyers Goes After Gonzales
posted by Apian on 05/14/2005 11:27:03 EDT
225 comments (225 new)

23. George Bush Is An Insane Serial Killer
posted by Apian on 05/13/2005 01:33:41 EDT
5 comments (5 new)

24. Breaking News! Georgian Says Grenade Was Real
posted by Apian on 05/12/2005 21:01:57 EDT
29 comments (29 new)

25. Author of Iraq Invasion Ruling Resigns in the UK
posted by Apian on 05/12/2005 19:43:37 EDT
7 comments (7 new)

26. Letters to Woodward -- Downing St. & WaPo
posted by Apian on 05/11/2005 21:11:34 EDT
11 comments (11 new)

27. Downing Street Evidence -- Washington Post Refuses to Cover Story
posted by Apian on 05/10/2005 18:17:37 EDT
265 comments (265 new)

28. The Course is Set for Impeachment
posted by Apian on 05/08/2005 20:33:44 EDT
462 comments (462 new)

29. Impeachable Offenses
posted by Apian on 05/06/2005 07:10:07 EDT
17 comments (17 new)

The secret Downing Street memo - UK EYES ONLY

2005-05-13T23:31:00.000-04:00

Just where are choreporate media on a topic of as utmost importance as this?!

--> they're still selling you Michael Jackson, aren't they?

The secret Downing Street memo - Sunday Times May 1st 2005

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

To: DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)

"Military action was now seen as inevitable,"

2005-05-13T22:53:00.000-04:00

"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, the British intelligence service, who had just returned from consultations in Washington, along with other senior British officials. Dearlove continued, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and (weapons of mass destruction). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

New light on Bush's war plans
By July '02, U.S. set on invasion, British intelligence reported

- Walter Pincus, Washington Post
Friday, May 13, 2005

Eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that U.S. intelligence was "being fixed around" that goal, according to notes of a 2002 meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, the British intelligence service, who had just returned from consultations in Washington, along with other senior British officials. Dearlove continued, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and (weapons of mass destruction). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The notes were first disclosed on May 1 by the Sunday Times of London, triggering criticism of Blair on the eve of the May 5 British parliamentary elections that he had decided to support an invasion of Iraq well before informing the public of his views.

The Sunday Times article described minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of Blair and his intelligence and military chiefs, a briefing paper for that meeting, and a Foreign Office legal opinion prepared before the summit of Blair and Bush in Crawford, Texas, on April 6-7, 2002.

The notes of the Blair meeting, attended by the prime minister's senior national security team, also disclose for the first time that Britain's intelligence boss believed that Bush had decided to go to war in mid-2002, and that he believed U.S. policymakers were trying to use the limited intelligence they had to make the Iraqi leader appear to be a bigger threat than was supported by known facts.

Reverberations from the report blew over quickly in Britain, where Blair won a third term as prime minister, although with a smaller majority for his Labor Party.

But in the United States, there has been a growing groundswell of indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents helped prove Bush and Blair settled on the invasion nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

Both Blair and Bush have denied a war decision was made that early. The White House and Downing Street maintain that they were preparing for military operations as one option, but the option to not attack also remained open until the start of the war on March 20, 2003.

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats, including seven from the Bay Area, asked whether the memos proved that the White House had already agreed on an invasion months before seeking authorization from Congress.

[more at referring link, above and the title-linked google news headline search, much more.]

Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Right-Wing Reasoning Chip

2005-03-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

Understanding the Conditioned Reflex

i've long been advocating that those capable of reason step across the line into the wild red yonder. folks have seen me recommend frequent visits to the freeple zone or to hold the nose and ponder knee-jerk ranting of rush, et al.

for good liberal reason, i think they've realized.

for one thing, it's an inherent requirement of our kind to reach out to the less fortunate. it's a more deeply-seated motive, however, that says go and understand what drives those unable to understand themselves. it's become essential to the health of our nation that the reality-based community give up newtonian reflex as strategy and to use our natural advantage, the capacity for independent thought so distinct from the herding reflex of wingers.

'liberal' or 'educated elite' or 'academics'...just consider what stands as an 'epithet' to a knee-jerker. it makes sense that blind faith in village idiots is the hallmark of their worst as it comes from brain-envy! in this sense, rush may actually serve the country since he sets a heavy anchor for a demographic lacking other direction.

just consider the chaotic potential of twenty million sheeple suddenly absent the shared brain!

long preface to my point: in understanding the denialists, the 'create your own reality just by thinking it over and over' flock, we may not be able to establish a capacity for independent thought but we may -- through knowing how they're conditioned -- to at least replace the rush-rant stimulus of their reflex with something less likely to drive them (and us) off the cliff.

i've been so pleased, therefore, with the Confessions of a Former Dittohead series advisorjim's blessed us with since he replaced the defective chip! it's exactly the recipe i've been advocating but having less tendency to produce nausea since there's no risk of 'getting some of it on you'.

beyond the significance of his message, he delivers with great style and humor and i've been even happier with response of my fellow lefties: since he published the first Confessional, his diaries of experience as a one-time sheeple have educated millions who'd not have stepped near freerepublic or listened to a hannity-hurl!! the diary series is linked below, couched among the month and half record of his diaries and comments consistently placing in the dkos top 25 every week since!!

so not only is advisorjim delivering but our comrades-in-brain are receiving! i've regained faith that we'll soon be able to put a driver back in the seat whose actions are directed by forces greater than the strings of a marionette!

Read, learn, and act locally!

1. Dkos attack politics: chip busting (Diaries, Diary)posted by mikepridmore on 03/12/2005 18:43:34 EDT2 comments (2 new) Rank: 0.00
2. Newsie's Week In Reviewsies: Clinton Steals the Show; Dubya Flounders (Diaries, Diary)posted by Newsie8200 on 03/12/2005 13:09:16 EDT2 comments (2 new) Rank: 0.00
3. Top 25 recommended diaries - Mar 10, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/11/2005 11:25:26 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
4. Evil too great to fight (Diaries, Diary)posted by thereisnospoon on 03/11/2005 06:10:09 EDT8 comments (8 new) Rank: 0.00
5. This Week in Fascism 03-10-05 [Time to do Something] (Diaries, Diary)posted by Tomtech on 03/10/2005 22:56:42 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
6. How many new vs. lifelong Dems are here? (poll) (Diaries, Diary)posted by chantedor on 03/09/2005 12:38:11 EDT18 comments (18 new) Rank: 0.00
7. Top 25 recommended diaries - Mar 7, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/08/2005 12:13:15 EDT12 comments (12 new) Rank: 0.00
8. John Perkins & Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Diaries, Diary)posted by profmarcus on 03/08/2005 11:31:44 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
9. Today's 17 Best-Rated Comments, so far (Diaries, Diary)posted by social democrat on 03/08/2005 00:38:30 EDT2 comments (2 new) Rank: 0.00
10. Political Deprogramming Website: An idea whose time has come (Diaries, Diary)posted by librarianman on 03/07/2005 23:02:45 EDT5 comments (5 new) Rank: 0.00
11. Stress Reduction edition of Poetry Monday (Diaries, Diary)posted by Steven D on 03/07/2005 22:23:48 EDT12 comments (12 new) Rank: 0.00
12. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Right-Wing Reasoning Chip (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 03/07/2005 19:04:53 EDT371 comments (0 new) Rank: 0.00
13. This Week in Fascism 03-06-05 [Major Announcement] (Diaries, Diary)posted by Tomtech on 03/07/2005 00:47:19 EDT52 comments (52 new) Rank: 0.00
14. Most highly ranked comments 2/26/2005 - 3/4/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/06/2005 16:52:19 EDT12 comments (12 new) Rank: 0.00
15. Newsie's Week In Reviewsies: Republicans Lie About Social Security (Diaries, Diary)posted by Newsie8200 on 03/06/2005 15:45:55 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
16. Most Recommended Diaries 2/26/2005 - 3/4/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/06/2005 13:53:25 EDT9 comments (9 new) Rank: 0.00
17. Secret Bush Directive Gives C.I.A. Wide Rendition Powers (NYT Sun) (Diaries, dKos)posted by SusanHu on 03/06/2005 01:57:29 EDT20 comments (20 new) Rank: 0.00
18. Top 25 recommended diaries - Mar 3, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/05/2005 14:29:16 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
19. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Alan Greenspan-A Model of Consistency (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 03/04/2005 18:18:51 EDT20 comments (20 new) Rank: 0.00
20. Marginal comments and signal-to-noise: recouping from a flame war (Diaries, dKos)posted by Aaron on 03/04/2005 13:28:56 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
21. Top 25 recommended diaries - Mar 3, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/04/2005 12:02:53 EDT8 comments (8 new) Rank: 0.00
22. Meta Meta Diary (Diaries, Diary)posted by Ugluks Flea on 03/04/2005 10:47:03 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
23. We've grown weak as a party, forever 2nd place. (Diaries, Diary)posted by jammin90mph on 03/04/2005 10:26:36 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
24. This Week in Fascism 03-03-05 [Advise Requested] (Diaries, Diary)posted by Tomtech on 03/04/2005 00:46:51 EDT14 comments (14 new) Rank: 0.00
25. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Weak Faith of the Religious Right (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 03/03/2005 16:11:51 EDT263 comments (263 new) Rank: 0.00
26. Bush's own "Vince Foster" story (Diaries, Diary)posted by lawnorder on 03/03/2005 02:24:43 EDT8 comments (8 new) Rank: 0.00
27. The Pathology of the Corporation. (w/poll) (Diaries, Diary)posted by skrymir on 03/02/2005 13:28:56 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
28. Top 25 recommended diaries - Mar 1, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/02/2005 11:33:20 EDT5 comments (5 new) Rank: 0.00
29. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Abortion Story (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 03/01/2005 12:47:24 EDT263 comments (263 new) Rank: 0.00
30. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 28, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 03/01/2005 11:20:15 EDT1 comment (1 new) Rank: 0.00
31. Putin to Bush: You Fired Dan Rather didn't you? (Diaries, Diary)posted by Magorn on 02/28/2005 15:59:34 EDT123 comments (123 new) Rank: 0.00
32. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Beating the Gay Drumhead (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/28/2005 13:55:49 EDT126 comments (34 new) Rank: 0.00
33. When I Was Young (Diaries, Diary)posted by GDoyle on 02/28/2005 01:55:28 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
34. I'm not what I didn't used to not be. (Diaries, Diary)posted by pyrrho on 02/27/2005 23:40:18 EDT40 comments (40 new) Rank: 0.00
35. Most Recommended Diaries 2/19/2005 - 2/25/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/27/2005 14:32:16 EDT6 comments (6 new) Rank: 0.00
36. Drug Prohibition: It's the Economy, Stupid. (Diaries, Diary)posted by nephalim on 02/26/2005 18:35:10 EDT75 comments (75 new) Rank: 0.00
37. Newsie's Week In Reviewsies: The Chicken Has No Lips Edition (Diaries, Diary)posted by Newsie8200 on 02/26/2005 13:28:52 EDT9 comments (9 new) Rank: 0.00
38. Iraq TV: The reality of torture by Iraqi police (Diaries, Diary)posted by SanJoseLady on 02/25/2005 23:24:09 EDT0 comments (0 new) Rank: 0.00
39. How To Take Power, Step 2, Friend Partiot Project (Diaries, Diary)posted by starvin on 02/24/2005 23:20:21 EDT15 comments (15 new) Rank: 0.00
40. Full Ali Abi Story (Diaries, Diary)posted by jakal on 02/24/2005 20:33:08 EDT2 comments (2 new) Rank: 0.00
41. Does anyone see the ghost of Office of Strategic Influence here? (Diaries, Diary)posted by casualworker on 02/24/2005 11:57:11 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
42. BREAKING: Gannon in my Bedroom!!! (Diaries, Diary)posted by gnat on 02/24/2005 00:48:49 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
43. Fighting Indoctrination (Diaries, Diary)posted by CrazyModerate on 02/24/2005 00:06:06 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
44. Dear Former Dittohead (Diaries, Diary)posted by elveta on 02/23/2005 23:34:11 EDT26 comments (26 new) Rank: 0.00
45. HHS Secretary Spellings to Call for War on Animation (Diaries, Diary)posted by tiponeill on 02/23/2005 00:44:48 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
46. U.S. Citizen "Ghost Detainee" Accused of Bush Assassination Plot, But ... (Diaries, Diary)posted by SusanHu on 02/22/2005 14:44:46 EDT127 comments (127 new) Rank: 0.00
47. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 21, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/22/2005 09:40:05 EDT1 comment (1 new) Rank: 0.00
48. CNN ANCHOR DARYN KAGAN SEXING RUSH LIMBAUGH (Diaries, Diary)posted by Newdemo12 on 02/21/2005 20:42:29 EDT24 comments (24 new) Rank: 0.00
49. Are We the Real Axis of Evil? Whistleblower Exposes US Crimes Against the World (Diaries, Diary)posted by TocqueDeville on 02/21/2005 18:37:07 EDT150 comments (108 new) Rank: 0.00
50. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Evolution of a Wedge Issue (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/21/2005 17:27:59 EDT125 comments (125 new) Rank: 0.00
51. Most Recommended Diaries 2/12/2005 - 2/18/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/20/2005 12:46:00 EDT5 comments (5 new) Rank: 0.00
52. Take a sneak peak at a campaign website (Diaries, Diary)posted by ttagaris on 02/20/2005 03:03:06 EDT32 comments (32 new) Rank: 0.00
53. Newsie's Week In Reviewsies: Almost Gannon-Free Edition (Diaries, Diary)posted by Newsie8200 on 02/19/2005 15:41:13 EDT14 comments (14 new) Rank: 0.00
54. Torture Unmakes the World (Diaries, Diary)posted by lorraine on 02/18/2005 15:09:59 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
55. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 17, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/18/2005 11:30:58 EDT5 comments (5 new) Rank: 0.00
56. Confessions of a closet snob (Diaries, Diary)posted by Devilstower on 02/18/2005 05:56:36 EDT11 comments (11 new) Rank: 0.00
57. This Week in Fascism" 02-17-05 [I need your help!] (Diaries, Diary)posted by Tomtech on 02/17/2005 22:34:40 EDT75 comments (75 new) Rank: 0.00
58. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Expanding Mushroom Cloud of Democracy (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/17/2005 18:14:36 EDT113 comments (113 new) Rank: 0.00
59. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 15, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/16/2005 11:59:33 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
60. Today's 17 Best-Rated Comments, so far (Diaries, Diary)posted by social democrat on 02/15/2005 16:35:52 EDT10 comments (10 new) Rank: 0.00
61. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 14, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/15/2005 12:36:12 EDT11 comments (11 new) Rank: 0.00
62. Confessional of a Former Dittohead: The Soft Racism of Personal Responsibility (Diaries, dKos)posted by advisorjim on 02/15/2005 12:18:19 EDT170 comments (170 new) Rank: 0.00
63. Today's 17 Best-Rated Comments, so far (Diaries, Diary)posted by social democrat on 02/14/2005 18:06:16 EDT11 comments (11 new) Rank: 0.00
64. What did James Watt Really Say? (Diaries, Diary)posted by gothamite on 02/14/2005 13:53:50 EDT2 comments (2 new) Rank: 0.00
65. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: ...And Knowing Is Half the Battle (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/14/2005 13:15:25 EDT122 comments (122 new) Rank: 0.00
66. Most Recommended Diaries 2/5/2005 - 2/11/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/13/2005 22:45:54 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
67. U.S. Torture Gulags: "I want to die" (Diaries, dKos)posted by SusanHu on 02/13/2005 07:34:33 EDT72 comments (72 new) Rank: 0.00
68. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 11, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/12/2005 12:05:48 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
69. Another Glaring Omission by Bushco (Diaries, Diary)posted by Inverted on 02/12/2005 03:23:42 EDT170 comments (170 new) Rank: 0.00
70. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: To the Pitchfork Wielding and Torch Bearing Kossaks (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/11/2005 18:43:17 EDT18 comments (18 new) Rank: 0.00
71. Good to see Reagan in the news again (Diaries, Diary)posted by goplies on 02/11/2005 17:37:16 EDT1 comment (1 new) Rank: 0.00
72. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 10, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/11/2005 12:29:34 EDT11 comments (11 new) Rank: 0.00
73. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Love Story (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/10/2005 22:12:32 EDT122 comments (98 new) Rank: 0.00
74. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 8, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/10/2005 13:28:02 EDT12 comments (12 new) Rank: 0.00
75. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Why We Hated Clinton...So Very, Very Much (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/09/2005 14:13:01 EDT178 comments (178 new) Rank: 0.00
76. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 8, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/09/2005 12:32:05 EDT9 comments (9 new) Rank: 0.00
77. Why dailyKos is Worse than Heroin (Diaries, Diary)posted by gnat on 02/08/2005 19:51:16 EDT92 comments (92 new) Rank: 0.00
78. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 7, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/08/2005 13:05:04 EDT7 comments (7 new) Rank: 0.00
79. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Beating the Dead Horse. (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/08/2005 12:12:59 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
80. Bribery Based Initiatives (Diaries, Diary)posted by dhonig on 02/08/2005 12:08:18 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
81. Outsourcing Torture: Secret History (FBI v. CIA) (Diaries, Diary)posted by SusanHu on 02/08/2005 11:41:21 EDT42 comments (42 new) Rank: 0.00
82. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: The Whole Made Up Social Security Thing (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/07/2005 15:06:20 EDT113 comments (113 new) Rank: 0.00
83. This Week in Fascism 02-06-05 (Diaries, Diary)posted by Tomtech on 02/07/2005 01:51:08 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
84. Most Recommended Diaries 1/29/2005 - 2/5/2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/06/2005 14:58:54 EDT13 comments (13 new) Rank: 0.00
85. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 3, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/04/2005 11:27:59 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
86. Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY! (Diaries, Diary)posted by Bill in Portland Maine on 02/04/2005 11:02:36 EDT480 comments (480 new) Rank: 0.00
87. Today's 17 Best-Rated Comments, so far (Diaries, Diary)posted by social democrat on 02/03/2005 16:37:35 EDT4 comments (4 new) Rank: 0.00
88. someone should respond to an attack of dailykos (Diaries, Diary)posted by virginia4kerry on 02/03/2005 13:46:57 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
89. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 2, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/03/2005 13:16:35 EDT1 comment (1 new) Rank: 0.00
90. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Why We Hated Sean Hannity (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/03/2005 12:15:50 EDT103 comments (103 new) Rank: 0.00
91. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Firing AK-47s in the Glass House (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/03/2005 01:53:34 EDT111 comments (111 new) Rank: 0.00
92. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Rush Limbaugh--Hypocrite (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/02/2005 19:28:18 EDT52 comments (52 new) Rank: 0.00
93. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: Watching Them Make Sausage (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/02/2005 16:24:31 EDT117 comments (117 new) Rank: 0.00
94. Top 25 recommended diaries - Feb 1, 2005 (Diaries, Diary)posted by jotter on 02/02/2005 16:20:26 EDT1 comment (0 new) Rank: 0.00
95. Does My Dittohead Conversion Tactic Stand A Chance? (Diaries, Diary)posted by dmauer on 02/02/2005 14:59:32 EDT20 comments (20 new) Rank: 0.00
96. Confessions of a Former Dittohead: How to Annoy a Conservative (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/01/2005 17:25:45 EDT282 comments (56 new) Rank: 0.00
97. Today's 17 Best-Rated Comments, so far (Diaries, Diary)posted by social democrat on 02/01/2005 16:59:14 EDT3 comments (3 new) Rank: 0.00
98. Confessions of a Former Dittohead (Diaries, Diary)posted by advisorjim on 02/01/2005 12:15:41 EDT271 comments (10 new) Rank: 0.00

Ooh I get it 'global war, MORE Terrorism'

2005-03-11T06:31:00.000-05:00

or was it global war FOR terrorism>?

who cares, we've lit a fire in the minds of men
Militants Scour Europe for Iraq Fighters

Sun Mar 6, 5:27 AM ET

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

BERLIN - Islamic terror groups are becoming increasingly active in Germany and coordinating with militants across Europe to recruit fighters to join the insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites), equipping them with fake passports, money and medical supplies, security officials say.

One of the best examples of the cross-continent cooperation involves an Algerian man arrested in Germany and now on trial in Italy for allegedly helping Muslims from Somalia, Egypt, Iraq and Morocco recruit some 200 militants from around Europe to fight in Iraq.

Many in Germany's Islamic communities have shown sympathy for Muslims fighting jihad, or holy war, in places like Chechnya (news - web sites) or Bosnia, but authorities say a growing number of sympathizers are taking an active role themselves since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"The war in Iraq has somehow mobilized this scene so that people who before just had some sort of contact or sympathies with extremist groups now think they have to do something," Manfred Murck, deputy head of the Hamburg government agency that tracks extremists, told The Associated Press.

"It's a main topic that brings people to action that they otherwise might not have taken. In past years they were talking about jihad, but not doing anything."
"By our efforts, we have lit a fire, as well — a fire in the minds of men," he said. "It warms those who feel its power. It burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."
-- George W. Bush

"The big threat is that they will eventually come back to European countries and they will come back with an image, with a reputation as heroes who fought the unbelievers, as it was in the war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan," he said.

"If they do, they come back from Iraq trained, they know how to fight, they know how to do an ambush, how to make a bomb, and so on, and intelligence is afraid of these developments."

Saddam capture a fake

2005-03-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

AlterNet: Peek: Blog

Compassionate Corporatives Banking on Bankruptcy

2005-03-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

how long will it take for them to kill it?

March 9, 2005
Bankruptcy Bill Set for Passage; Victory for Bush
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, March 8 - The Senate assured final passage of the first major overhaul of the nation's bankruptcy laws in 27 years on Tuesday, when it took two votes that cleared the remaining political obstacles to a measure that the nation's credit and retail industries have sought for years.

The bill would disqualify many families from taking advantage of the more generous provisions of the current bankruptcy code that permit them to extinguish their debts for a "fresh start." It would also impose significant new costs on those seeking bankruptcy protection and give lenders and businesses new legal tools for recovering debts.

when you own the companies that have already outsourced avg joe's good jobs cause you've already globalized to newly freed markets in the Middle East,

when you're CEO of the companies that file four times the 'junk lawsuits' than average joe does

“We think lawsuit abuse is a serious problem in this country," proclaimed Dick Cheney while debating John Edwards in early October. The"runaway lawsuits" theme is repeated at almost every Bush/Cheney campaign stop.

Knowing the record of his own company, I can't help wondering whether Cheney is like an alcoholic seeking help, for during his five-year reign as CEO, Halliburton and its subsidiaries filed more than 150 separate court actions (documented by Halliburton Watch). Those lawsuits pursued injunctions, evictions, and attempted to collect alleged debts from other corporations and individuals, sometimes for as little as $1,500.

But Halliburton is just part of a larger pattern. A recent study by Public Citizen indicates that the 7 million U.S. corporations file four times as many lawsuits as the 281 million individual Americans, so corporations are 160 times as likely to sue as an average person.

and take the biggest awards

National Law Journal reported that eight of the year's 10 largest awards to date involved corporations suing each other.

and when the idiots who narrowed the margin needed for you to resteal the office actually thought they were opting for 'moral values' as they bent over for the ballot

So far, Earle has obtained indictments against eight corporations, in addition to the three people close to Tom DeLay. The charges include multiple counts of money laundering and the illegal use of corporate contributions.

while the 'believin' CEO plays coy verbal footsy with a Faux reporter-cum-prestitute

when it comes to considering just these itty-bitty little things, why should you ever DOUBT that Americans would not be fools?!! again...

"We are a compassionate nation but we should not be fools," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who has fought for the measure for eight years. "We want to give our neighbors who get in over their heads a chance to get out of their financial troubles. But for some it is a way to avoid personal responsibility. There is something inherently unfair about denying full restitution to creditors."

who the hell needs a fresh start anyhow, the idiots?!?!? nuh-unHHn, the idiot-in-chief has already shepherded the flock:

"We'll All Be Dead"

we're living out the reality version of 24, one more episode of the saga known as the death throes of America. stayed tuned to the Comfortably Numb Broadcast Network and you'll be just fine!

US Civilization in Death Throes: Iraq Intel Committee to Avoid Blame

2005-03-07T05:11:00.000-05:00

Probe of Iraq intelligence won't assign blame: Commission keeps focus on policy issues

Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers

Sunday, February 6, 2005

Coup 2004 continued, GOP sits on 4 reports til reelection is a done deal. then the machine takes care of repercussions.

In this version of the "October Surprise", Vice Chair Lee Hamilton ensured that Goerge Bush was washed clean of responsibility.
The focus of the commission will be on the future. We’re not interested in trying to assess blame, we do not consider that part of the commission’s responsibility.

"Everybody feels it will be better off if this hits the fan after the election,"

In other words, the coup takes advantage of the governmental structure itself, as well as the bureaucratic nature of modern governments. There is an established hierarchy, an accepted chain of command, and standard procedures that are followed when instructions come down this pipeline. So long as the instructions come from the appropriate source or level of authority, they will almost always be followed even if from a new, and illegitimate, holder of that authority.

Washington -- The White House-ordered inquiry into the intelligence failures about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction won't blame individual officials for the errors that contributed to President Bush's decision to start the war almost two years ago.

Instead, the nine-member commission will emphasize how the United States should deal with future threats, according to commission spokesman Laurence McQuillan.

Critics of the White House investigation say this approach is a prescription for a whitewash -- avoiding accountability by failing to delve into who was behind the wrong intelligence assessments that lie at the heart of the controversy over whether the invasion of Iraq was necessary to protect the United States and whether it was worth the lives of more than 1,400 GIs and the cost to taxpayers of more than $300 billion.

The commission, led by former Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, faces a March 31 deadline to complete its report to Bush. A version of the report is expected to be made public.

"The commission's job is to assess the massive effort to collect intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to make sure it is as reliable and efficient as possible," McQuillan said. "The commission wants to look into shortcomings, find specific reasons for any intelligence failures and provide recommendations on how to fix it. The commission's job is not to figure out who was to blame for Iraq intelligence."

The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction may identify some government positions by title but not individuals by name, McQuillan said.

The panel includes Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Yale President Richard Levin; former Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Charles Vest; former Pentagon officials Henry Rowen and Walter Slocombe; former Deputy CIA Director William Studeman; and former federal appeals court Judge Patricia Wald.

Joseph Cirincione, a weapons-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who wrote "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," said the White House is focusing on institutional problems rather than individual culpability.

"The administration is protecting itself by narrowing the inquiry to avoid any investigation of any administration official when we need to understand the causes of one of the greatest intelligence failures in U.S. history," said Cirincione. "If you want to change the way a bureaucracy works, hold people accountable the way that the military and corporations do."

John Prados, author of "Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War," said the focus on prospective threats rather than errant Iraq intelligence amounts to "a classic bait and switch."

"It is perfectly reasonable for a presidential commission to offer guidance on future collection of intelligence for counter-proliferation purposes, but to make that the main focus is to switch from the public's understanding of the purpose of the investigation," Prados said.

The WMD commission's report is expected to echo last summer's report by the five-member British government commission that exonerated British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"No single individual was to blame," concluded Robin Butler, the retired senior British civil servant and Whitehall insider who served five British prime ministers. "There was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead. It was a weakness on the part of all those who were involved."

The Senate Intelligence Committee's unanimous, bipartisan assessment of prewar intelligence in Iraq last July also avoided naming names in favor of blaming "group think" for erroneous conclusions about Iraqi weapons.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the House and Senate might not have authorized going to war in Iraq had lawmakers known that crucial intelligence findings were so "flawed" and their assessments so "wrong."

Bush named the first members of the WMD panel last Feb. 6 amid a mounting election-year furor over the absence of suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush announced the U.S. invasion on March 19, 2003, as an effort "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger" posed by "weapons of mass murder."

Yet no chemical or biological weapons, or the active nuclear weapons development program, cited by Bush administration officials as justifications for the invasion, have been discovered.

"We are determined to figure out why," Bush said last February as he named the WMD inquiry after chief weapons inspector David Kay reported that no weapons had been found.

Critics claim Bush never wanted the commission to pinpoint individual blame because that could besmirch officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney as well as trigger recriminations and bureaucratic retaliation.

The White House "clearly does not want to hold people accountable," Cirincione said, adding: "In order to protect the president, they protect everybody and nobody is at fault."

Prados said: "To point fingers at this point runs the risk of an outraged intelligence specialist leaking more evidence that they had been under White House pressure on Iraq."

Many of the officials who might have been blamed already have left the federal government. CIA Director George Tenet, who reportedly told Bush the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was "a slam dunk," resigned last July shortly before the Senate Intelligence Committee's scathing assessment.

Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin and a number of senior intelligence veterans in top posts also have stepped down.

The WMD commission's decision to avoid casting blame parallels the approach adopted by the independent inquiry into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The 10-member, bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ended its 17-month inquiry last July with a riveting 585-page narrative of the attacks and extensive recommendations about how to improve intelligence for the future.

"Our aim has not been to assign individual blame," the report said. "Our aim has been to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify lessons learned."

The approach contrasts sharply with military-style accountability meted out by U.S. authorities in response to the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Within 10 days of the Japanese attack, Navy Secretary Frank Knox had relieved Navy Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Army Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short of their respective commands in Pearl Harbor.

A five-member panel appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt and led by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts advised the White House seven weeks after the attack that the local commanders failed to take "appropriate measures of defense required by the imminence of hostilities," concluding, "These errors of judgment were the effective causes of the success of the attack."

David Flitner Jr., author of "The Politics of Presidential Commissions," says panels that avoid naming names and instead approach controversies more broadly have paved the way for changes ever since President George Washington dispatched a commission to look into the western Pennsylvania farmers' grievances about the federal excise tax on spirits that triggered the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

"History suggests we not count (commissions) out before they've even begun their unique journey across the American political landscape," Flitner contended.

Presidential scholar W. Craig Bledsoe, now provost at Lipscomb University in Nashville, said chief executives often are accused of appointing commissions to "avoid confronting an issue, to delay action or to divert public attention."

But Bledsoe says research into more than 200 presidential commissions shows that "most presidents heed and act favorably on the reports they receive from their commissions."

McQuillan, spokesman for the WMD commission, said commissioners hope their findings will help implement the most sweeping overhaul of the nation's intelligence apparatus since 1947 signed into law by Bush on Dec. 17.

"The law sets the stage for change," said McQuillan. "The hard part will be implementing the overhaul, and the commission report will offer information that could be useful."

Nader: Support Rep. Conyers Call for Bush Impeachment Inquiry

2005-02-28T01:11:00.000-05:00

Nader: Support Rep. Conyers Call for Bush Impeachment Inquiry

By Don DeBar, WBAI

Calling Bush "the most impeachable President in US history," former presidential candidate Ralph Nader called for nationwide support of Rep. John Conyers effort to open an impeachment inquiry into the "lies and deceptions" which led to the invasion of Iraq.

See links to video and audio of Nader's appearance last night in NYC.Video of Nader's speech (56 minutes) at www.regionalroundup.org/video/nader022505nyc.rm

Audio at www.regionalroundup.org/nader022505audio.mp3

In addition, Nader called for a referendum in Iraq on the occupation, which also appears at the Democracy Rising website, www.democracyrising.us as follows:

Dear Friends: Since freedom and democracy are such a good thing, why not put it to the people of Iraq – in a national referendum – whether or not they want us to leave? Why not give the Iraqi people the right to exercise their “democracy” and vote whether or not they want “freedom” from our military and corporate occupation? Why not? Because eighty percent of Iraqis want us out. So do a majority of Americans. Why? Because the occupation of Iraq is not about freedom and democracy. It is about oil and military occupation.

More and more Americans know the nature of the disaster that the Bush government, in our name, has created in oil-rich Iraq – over 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives lost (according to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), over 1,400 American lives lost, and thousands more seriously wounded and sick. People see the news stories describing the U.S. corporate takeover of Iraq through insider-deal corporate contractors with Bush administration donors.

Through the Democracy Rising Peace Project we will help ignite the American people to say – Bring the troops home, it is time for a responsible and rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Enough lives lost, enough billions spent – it is time to leave Iraq to the Iraqis.

The case against the war and occupation of Iraq, and the corporate takeover of our democracy is well documented. People want to know – what are we to do?

Now is the time to act. It is time to organize to end the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.

The U.S. corporate and military forces will end up pulling out of Iraq. The question is – when? Months? Years? Decades? After how many more preventable deaths, debilitating injuries and diseases? After how much destruction?

That's up to us. Together we can end the occupation and bring the troops home safely.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader