The Political Chase

On the al-Jazerra Bombing Plan

There hasn’t’t been any discussion here on the allegations that Bush (and Blair?) planned or discussed bombing al-Jazzera, but this seems to be getting a bit deeper.

The first passages are primary - they actually are excerpts from the end of the piece; the second set of passages are supportive. From the Guardian:

"We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response," a White House official said.

A Downing Street spokesman added: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don’t comment on leaked documents."

The attorney general last night threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of a document allegedly relating to a dispute between Mr Blair and Mr Bush over the conduct of military operations in Iraq.

More info follows, but if it is was just a joking one-line statement by Bush, why are the Brits threatening enforcement of the Official Secrets Act? To enforce, there has to be a secret – very simple.

Claims that George Bush planned to bomb the Arabic TV news station al-Jazeera have fuelled concerns that an attack on the broadcaster’s Baghdad offices during the war on Iraq was deliberate.

An international journalists group today demanded "complete disclosure" from the British and American governments over reports that the US considered attacking the al-Jazeera HQ in the Qatar capital, Doha.

The International Federation of Journalists claimed that 16 journalists and other media staff have died at the hands of US forces in Iraq, adding that the deaths had not been properly investigated.

Al-Jazeera cameraman Tarek Ayoub was killed when the station’s Baghdad office was bombed during a US air raid on April 8 2003. On the same day a US tank shelled the Palestine hotel in the Iraqi capital, killing two other journalists.

"Reports that George Bush and Tony Blair discussed a plan to bomb al-Jazeera reinforce concerns that the US attack in Baghdad on April 8 [2003] was deliberate targeting of the media," said Aidan White, the general secretary of the IFJ.

"If that is the case then the US is guilty of a gross violation of international humanitarian law and on the face of it the murder of an innocent journalist.

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DCCC’s list of every seat

From Kos:

Sweet. The DCCC has delivered on our request for a listing of every congressional seat and currently announced candidates. As a quick perusal will show, there are still way too many Republicans running unopposed. Check your district if you are represented by a Republican. If we have a candidate, help out however you can. If not, do whatever you can to find a candidate.

The DCCC can do a lot, but we in the netroots number millions. We know lots of people who would never register on the DCCC’s radar. I’m not talking lawyers or career politicians — we’ve got more than enough of those — but teachers, firefighters, farmers, vets, etc. Real people that could be persuaded to make a run to help build clean house in DC and take power away from those utterly corrupted by it.

Collectively, let’s plug every hole on that list and make sure we have a Democrat challenging in every single Republican district in 2006.

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Cash Preferred

Finally, the Bush administration will provide some funding to assist with the increased costs related to the No Child Left Behind law.

The Bush administration has begun to ease some key rules for the controversial No Child Left Behind law, opening the door to a new way to rate schools, granting a few urban systems permission to provide federally subsidized tutoring and allowing certain states more time to meet teacher-quality requirements.

Ask a few teachers what they think about the No Child Left Behind law.

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Man Convicted in Plot to Kill Bush

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted in a plot to kill President Bush. What a fool. This guy obviously was not aware of the president’s modus operandi if you just disagree with him.

A federal jury convicted a Falls Church man yesterday of plotting to kill President Bush, concluding that Ahmed Omar Abu Ali joined an al Qaeda conspiracy to mount a series of Sept. 11-style attacks and assassinations in the United States.

Jurors convicted Abu Ali, 24, a U.S. citizen, on all nine counts against him, including conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy and providing material support to al Qaeda. He faces 20 years to life in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 17.

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Such a diplomat…

What a diplomat. Isn’t this just grand? How successful were we the last time we used this type of rhetoric?

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned Tuesday that the United States might bypass the United Nations to solve some of the world’s pressing problems if the organization is unable to make management changes that will make it more effective and prevent a recurrence of corruption.

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The Honorable Jean Schmidt

What a contrast. Jean Schmidt’s (R-OH) remarks the opening day of her first session of Congress.

Honorable people can certainly agree to disagree. However, here today I accept a second oath. I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character. It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate. Harsh words often lead to headlines, but walking this path is not a victimless crime.

Hat tip to TPM.

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Bush Protesters Arrested in Crawford, TX

Twelve anti-Iraq war protesters were arrested today in Crawford, TX – the president’s residence. Dede Miller, Cindy Sheehan’s sister, was  included in the group arrested by McLennan County sheriff’s deputies.

McLennan County banned parking near Bush’s ranch immediately after Sheehan’s month-long protest in the summer. 

Murray Waas Opens the Administration’s Kimono

On September 21, 2002 President Bush was told in a classified briefing that the US intelligence committee had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with al Qaeda.

On September 25, 2002, President Bush said, “You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.”

On September 26, 2002, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."

On December 9, 2001, Vice President Cheney said on NBC’s Meet the Press: "[I]t’s pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."

All of the above are from an 11/22 article in the National Journal by Murray Waas. While the above is quite revealing, it is just an appetizer.

Murray is drilling to the core of the Bush administration’s claims that intelligence information supported Bush’s decision (more like Cheney’s decision) to invade Iraq. There is an important word missing from that sentence – credible information. It has been widely reported that the administration, especially Dick Cheney, manipulated information to validate their reasons for going to war; the weapons of mass destruction and the ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The administration has continuously denied the allegations.

The administration is not lying when making those statements.  They had information, but the credibility – well, let’s say it’s questionable at best. The CIA repeatedly provided reports to the administration that did not support the administration’s public claims against Saddam Hussein, which has since been used as the administration’s scapegoat - the CIA got it wrong. No they didn’t. It is just a matter of how the administration reacted to the information.

In the September 21, 2001 “President’s Daily Brief” (PDB),

President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.

Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings.

The intelligence submitted in the September 21, 2001 PDB was incorporated with additional CIA intelligence, which further debunked the administration’s claims and was submitted to the President, the Vice President, Condoleza Rice (then the President’s National Security Advisor), Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials. Congress has since requested this report and the administration refuses to honor their request.

[In] July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its review of the CIA’s prewar intelligence: "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime’s possible links to al-Qaeda."

Summarizing, the Bush administration has pointed to the CIA as being inept and providing them misinformation, but it was actually intelligence supplied from a secret intelligence operation the administration created. If the CIA doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, you find someone who will, right?

One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

The secretive unit was set up because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby did not believe the CIA would be able to get to the bottom of the matter of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties.

At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks.

[N]either Maloof nor Wurmser had any experience or formal training in intelligence analysis. Maloof later lost his security clearance, for allegedly failing to disclose a relationship with a woman who is a foreigner, and after allegations that he leaked classified information to the press.

In January 2002, Maloof and Wurmser were succeeded at the intelligence unit by two Naval Reserve officers. Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda…

Murray goes on to provide significant reporting that information from this tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear intelligence group was broadly disseminated and served as the basis for many of the administration’s claims, which have since proven to be incorrect.

So, when the Veep made the following statements, and others like them in the past, he was, on a literal basis, stating the administration did indeed have information to support their reasons for going to war. That is not a lie.

I believe it is critical that we continue to remind ourselves why this nation took action and why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror and why we have a duty to persevere.

What is not legitimate and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence.

Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein.

These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities.

The Veep may want to reflect upon the attributes he indignantly employed: dishonest, reprehensible, and analytical capabilities.

Read the entire article.

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Rep. Schmidt is in a fog

Rep Jean Schmidt (R-OH): [Emphasis added.]

Judging by her words yesterday — the first after avoiding the public for three days — Schmidt doesn’t understand what the fuss is about, and sees herself more as victim than villain. "I am amazed at what a national story this has become," she said in a statement. "I have been attacked very personally, continuously since Friday evening."

Schmidt has obviously not watched the video of her remarks. Do people from her district want a Representative that is so oblivious or so blatantly fails to tell the truth?

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November Poll

Daily Kos has the straw poll  for November.  It’s not scientific, but there were 11,000+ respondents – probably fairly representative.

                           Nov    Sept   Aug    July   June

Clark           26  34  35  34  26
Feingold        19  19  16  10  10
Warner          14   4   3   5   5
Edwards         12  10   7   7   8
H. Clinton       6   8   9  10  10
No Freakin’ Clue 6   6   9  13  17
Richardson       5   3   4   4   4
Other            2   3   4   4   7
Kerry            2   2   1   2   2
Biden            1   3   3   3   3
Bayh             1   1   1   2   2
Vilsack          0   0   0   0   0

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Troop Reductions - Yeah Right

Pray tell, how many times have we heard Washington speculating on troop reduction? More Karl Rove spin machine.

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CNN Explains Cheney’s X

CNN just released a report explaining the "X" flashed across the screen during Cheney’s speech. The "X" appeared for one-seventh of a second - how anybody caught that by just watching the screen is beyond me.

The "X" image, a place-holding marker used by technicians to cue up graphics, is not supposed to be visible to viewers but was inadvertently projected onto the screen by a malfunction in a "switcher" device, they explained.

Certainly other broadcasters employ the same technology and can call CNN’s bluff if their explanation is not technically accurate - they can’t be that stupid.

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Huffington on Woodward

Arianna is in a huff over Bob Woodward’s appearance on Larry King’s show Monday night.

Bob Woodward’s patronizing haughtiness was everywhere last night on Larry King. I haven’t been talked down to that much since I was introduced to Shaquille O’Neal. I get it now: we all just don’t get it. The heroic Woodward wasn’t trying to hide anything or maintain his access, he was just too busy doing “incredibly aggressive reporting” on “immense questions” about Iraq to be distracted by “a casual, off-hand remark” that, even on the eve of the Libby indictment, as Plamegate threatened to paralyze the White House, didn’t strike the legendary reporter as even “a firecracker” of a story.

I agree with Arianna to an extent…It’s rather hard to rip someone up, when you don’t have all the facts. Very few people know the facts. That doesn’t mean we sit around like a lap dog waiting for the facts to come in either.

I think Arianna needs to lighten up a bit on this:

Woodward’s performance was, to borrow a phrase, “laughable” — particularly the way he kept tossing in references to Watergate, strapping on those glory days like a protective armor. Over the course of “the full hour,” he mentioned Watergate four times, Ben Bradlee three times, Deep Throat twice, Carl Bernstein twice, and Richard Nixon and Katharine Graham once each. Memo to Bob: we get this, too. Your reporting once brought down a president. But that only makes your “journalistic sins” on Plamegate all the more appalling and disappointing.

I watched the interview and there is a bit of hyperbole in Arianna’s critique. Second, and more importantly, referring to Watergate is appropriate simply because we really do not have any real precedent to serve as a reference. If we don’t draw on historical experience, then we’re a bit lost. Trying to argue against that is like saying you know everything as a teenager. There have been other scandals, but using them as a gold standard would be pure stupidity.

And, as for this, Arianna has just gone too far.

I also found it really interesting that King’s interview with Woodward, like his recent interview with Judy Miller, was pre-taped — making it impossible for either of them to have to interact directly with the public and deal with viewer calls and questions. Could it really be a coincidence that these two star reporters both took no viewer calls on a show famous for them?

If King is not a strong interviewer, then don’t watch the show. Who is responsible for and will most likely ask the tough questions, the redneck from Norwich, CT or KIng? How many Sunday news magazine shows are taped?

And, this could have been left out completely.

Which raised the question: who had the scheduling conflict, Woodward or King? I doubted it was Larry’s since I had been at the party at the Mondrian Hotel’s Skybar to celebrate the release of his wife Shawn’s new CD, “In My Own Backyard”.

Okay, everyone knows now that Arianna was being a social butterfly; pinky raised appropriately. This is not a salient point.

Arianna does great reporting and is a ball of fire, but a little more objectiveness and little less “see my party invitation” would have been a better approach.

Drudge: CNN subliminal images over Cheney

Drudge has this piece about CNN repeatedly flashing a big X across the screen and over Cheney’s face during his speech to the AEI.

Click to enlarge

Drudge alleges the X was flashed frequently and briefly (<1 sec), as if it was meant to be subliminal - provided his report is accurate.

This sounds too bad to be true. Hardball is one thing, but this is another. I may be naive, but I can’t imagine CNN doing something like this intentionally with a harmful objective - too easy to get caught.

Drudge needs to provide more facts.

Take a look for yourself, click on the picture. Notice the banner at the bottom.

More on Schmidt

Josh at TPM on Schmidt saying she did not know Murtha was a Marine:

Jean Schmidt’s excuse for disparaging Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) as a coward on the House floor is apparently that she didn’t know he was a Marine.

I’m not sure I knew that Murtha was a Marine. In fact, though I certainly knew who Murtha is, I’m not sure I’d ever given it a lot of thought. But since Washington had been plastered with a day or so’s worth of wall-to-wall coverage which mainly boiled down to "Murtha, Marine, Wants out of Iraq" she’s obviously a pretty big fibber or a pretty big fool.

Actually, scratch that — probably both since she was probably fibbing but still also a fool for coming up with such a moronic excuse.

Add to this the fact that the night before Schmidt had a starring role in the official House GOP game of Whack-a-Murtha, the trancript of which is here. So Schmidt is dug in so deep on this one her head is barely peering up over the ground.

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