I received this note the other day from someone. Normally I wouldn't run such a thing, but I figure I'll adopt the journalistic standards of the National Review.
Dear Atrios,
I want to tell you a story from my youth. I was 16 years old, an illegal immigrant, and working as a maid for the Bush family in Texas. Several times George Bush told me that I had to have sex with him or I'd be arrested and deported. I became pregnant, and Bush drove me across the border and forced me to have an abortion. He said if I ever told anybody he'd kill me.
Sincerely,
Maria
I cannot confirm this story, but it sure is interesting.
Increasingly Easterblogg finds that people and institutions can be divided into three fundamental groupings. They are:
1. Those who deny that they make mistakes.
2. Those who occasionally make mistakes, and admit them.
3. Those who constantly make mistakes.
You know, anyone who works at even the liberal New "andrew sullivan stephen glass ruth shalit michael kelly elizabeth mcCaughey" Republican and dares to criticize the BBC for mistakes which, while real, don't even come close to the regular gross NYT/WAPO/TNR-level errors sure has some nerve...
Increasingly it appears that Hans Blix was just a fictional character, a figment of our collective imaginations. There were no UN inspectors. It never happened. It was just a dream...
Reader eb writes in:
On Diane Rheem's show this morning, James Woolsey repeated Bush's lie that Saddam did not let weapons inspectors into Iraq before the U.S. started the war.
The other guest, Lt. General William Odom (ret) of the Hudson Institute, then said he agreed with Woolsey's statement.
Diane did not challenge them on the issue.
It took two callers to finally get Odom to remember the existence of Hans Blix. Woolsey never did acknowledge that he was wrong. Diane did not take a position one way or another.
I suppose it makes sense that he didn't exist. Otherwise, how could our media let Rumsfeld get away with claiming that he knew exactly where the WMDs were, while he refused to tell the UN weapons inspector this little detail. Well, he did say they were in "the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat," but that is somewhat less specific than would be useful.
What a bunch of clowns. I guess it's kind of funny but not, you know, Ha Ha funny.
Let's be clear: The failure of the administration's evidence on Iraq's WMD is not a case of 20-20 hindsight, as some apologists for Bush assert. The president himself was flat-out wrong when he said last week that Saddam Hussein refused to "let us in." Before the war, Blix's weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq examining the specific sites and looking for the precise materials mentioned in the brief Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council. And they were finding nothing. Very few people worldwide bought the American case for war -- before the war started.
I've been told that SC AM radio is encouraging their dittoheads to go vote for Lieberman in the primary. I hate open primaries. Can we just get rid of them? Want to choose who a party endorses as a nominee? Be a member of the goddamn party. What were people smoking when they decided it was "unfair" that independents couldn't vote in primaries. Want to vote in a primary? Don't register as an independent.
Coincidentally, that's who even the liberal New Republic encouraged people to vote for...
Well, no predictions from me. I sort of hope this thing stays alive for a few more weeks at least. As I've said before, I used to feel otherwise, but I tend to think the longer this drags on the better.
Plenty of people will have plenty to say about it, but Jack Balkin has the short and sweet version. Let me just add that it will also force the Democrats to defend the measly few million dollars in program cuts which will lead to more at risk and dead kids, making them look like the "big spenders." I'm sure the ontheonehandist media will give equal footing to "4 million dollars for blood transfusions for hemophiliac children"* and "50 billion dollars for Our Great Iraq Adventure."
*not, as far as I know, part of the Bush budget cuts.
Sept. 2002: The CIA is underrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.
Oct. 2002: The CIA needs to stop claiming that the White House is overstating the threat posed by Iraq.
Early 2003: In the battle between the White House and the CIA, the White House is right and the CIA is wrong: Iraq poses a far more serious threat than the CIA will admit.
Late 2003: Everyone agreed all along about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq. There never was a battle over the intelligence between the CIA and the White House.
Early 2004: The CIA overrepresented the threat posed by Iraq, overwhelming the White House in the battle over the intelligence.
We all know that US standards of decency - for TV, movies, and radio - are completely screwy. I remember when the FCC fined Howard Stern because on his show there was a man playing a piano with his penis. This was radio, remember. One iron rule is that erect penises are forbidden, unless pharmaceutical companies are discussing four hour erections in their ads, in which case it's okay.
While I wouldn't agree with the UK's TV standards, they at least reflect a more reasonable approach. They're more concerned with violence than sex - before a certain time even shows like Star Trek, or Buffy, get edited for violence. But, once the adult hour kicks in they aren't too disturbed by the display of a few boobs or the sexual content of a typical 'R' movie. On the other hand, pornography (which, again, seems to be defined as anything presenting an erect penis), is illegal so I'm not sure I'd swap.
In movies, here, a penis shot, erect or not, will almost guarantee an NC-17 rating.
What is it about the penis?
But, if you need your daily dose of Boobs there's always page 3 of this fine Murdoch publication, easily accessible by schoolchildren everywhere, to keep you happy. (not work safe).
...apparently things have changed since I was in the UK. Pornography is not quite as illegal as it once was. It wasn't as if it was commonly (successfully) prosecuted before that, anyway.
Some day our country is going to have to take a long hard look at itself and wonder why it tolerates massive amounts of violence on TV, but a single Boob is capable of driving us collectively insane. I just flipped between all the networks and the Boob was the story on every one, including CNN, except NBC. I'm sure they had it earlier.
When the administration promises much lower deficits in future years, remember this: two years ago it projected a fiscal 2004 deficit of only $14 billion.
Two years ago, of course, was after the Day That Justifies Everything.
Reader chuco wrote in about this little article [from the New York Times]. Nexis didn't have the entire original, but an abbreviated abstract.
Sen Select Com on Apr 26 discloses that CIA plans to continue to employ as agents more than 25 journalists or other reprs of Amer news orgns. Says those persons are not covered by public pledge made in Feb by CIA Dir George Bush that agency would stop hiring correspondents 'accredited' by Amer publications and other news orgns. Com staff member repts that many of individuals were in exec positions at Amer news orgns. Panel recommends enactment of law precluding agency's 'operational use' of any person regularly involved in writing, editing or setting policy for US news orgns. Says it is concerned that use of Amer journalists and media orgns for clandestine operations is threat to press integrity. Rept cites instances in which efforts of CIA agents acting abroad as journalists were printed in domestic publications. Says it is aware other countries made use of 'internatl media' for propaganda and that US public is not insulated from such efforts. Cites examples of work by journalist agents including: book about China written covertly by agent which was revd in NY Times by another agent. Agency paid $170,000 a yr for publication of magazine in S Vietnam in '74 and '75. 2 news services maintained by CIA in Eur were subscribed to by major Amer newspapers. Penkovsky Papers, book purported to be based on repts of executed Soviet spy, was actually written by CIA agents. Employment of news orgns and publishing houses by CIA appears to have been reduced in recent yrs. Com described catagories of journalists who have worked as agents: staff members of gen circulation Amer news orgns. Com said it had found only 2 individuals in this category and that their relationship with agency was being ended under Bush's Feb directive. Staff members of limited-circulation Amer publications. Com reptd that it had found fewer than 10 persons now in this category. Freelance writers, part-time stringers for newspapers, magazines and news agencies, propaganda writers and employes of Amer publishing houses. Com says this is largest category. Journalists with whom CIA makes occasional, informal contact during which information is exchd or verified (M).
...anyway, this isn't news to most of us but I'm curious how many "operatives" of one kind or another are working in our media.
I'm no prude, but I have to say the ads offended me a lot more than the nipple did. And, the "bodice ripping" and implied sexual violence offended me a lot more than did the nipple itself, which was not at all.
But, seriously, what was up with those ads? Completely crass without actually being funny.
Any time I hear reports of, say, other countries citizens believing that the "U.S. is to blame for problem X..." when it can't possibly be true, I just chuckle and think about the fact that even now, about 50% of our country believes the Evil One with the Moustache was directly behind the events of 9/11.
The poll also gave Bush an approval rating of between 45 and 48 percent, the first time his approval has dipped below 50 percent in a Quinnipiac poll.
What a weird way to report a poll.
...going to the original poll results page from Quinnipiac it gets even weirder. There we realize the news report just messed up, that it's 48 approval versus 45 disapproval. And, whoever wrote up the poll results thinks it's October.
Circulation Suffers as WaPo Makes Sharp Right Turn
Perhaps its readers are tired of being told that unemployment is a good thing, or being lied to regularly by its increasingly ridiculous columnists. But, in any case it perhaps all makes sense once you realize that the Washington Post Company exists not only to sell newspapers, but to make a killing in educational products through its Kaplan division.
Bush is incredibly vulnerable. It's going to be an uphill battle, given the media opposition, but any of the current Dem frontrunners can take him. Get ready for the battle ahead.
I'm not the first nor hopefully the last to point this out, but I just want to restate that it's essentially the same folks, and/or their proteges, who accused the CIA of being too soft on international threats in the 70s who accused them of the same for the Iraq "threat."
It'd be sort of amusing, if they weren't now trying to pretend that it was the CIA mainstream who led them astray, and not vice versa.
What we discovered about the Soviet Union after the cold war was that it was every bit as evil as we had thought--indeed more so--but that it was a whole lot less powerful than we had feared. That is what we will probably discover about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Indeed.
And, for the record, Zakaria is not a "liberal." As Eric Alterman pointed out, being a sane intelligent neoconservative does not a liberal make, unless we're defining liberal as "sane" and neoconservative as "insane," which I'd be relatively happy to do.
I do wonder why such little glitches always seem to benefit Republicans. Of course, that's just irresponsible conspiracy theorizing. I mean, it's really complicated to program a computer to take a number and add "1" to it when the right button is pushed.
Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton.
Concerned that their new $12.7 million Diebold electronic voting system had developed a glitch, election officials turned to a company representative who happened to be on hand.
Lucky he was there. For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California.
...
Alameda County officials still don't know why the computer program failed on election night. In fact, they only discovered the malfunction because they could compare the paper absentee ballots the software was counting to the computer's tally. The rest of the county's voters cast electronic ballots. Nor were election workers aware at the time that their touch-screen machines were running unauthorized Diebold software in violation of California law, as a state investigation later discovered.
``There was something in the software,'' said Elaine Ginnold, assistant registrar of voters for Alameda County. Alameda County officials refused to allow the Mercury News to review the software code used to test its electronic voting system, saying it was a Diebold trade secret.
Don't forget to drop Ben Chandler, candidate for KY's 6th district, a few nickles. It's a special election, so every little bit helps. Add $.18 so they know it comes from my readers. Let's help defy conventional wisdom and pick up a RED STATE congressional seat.
There's nothing wrong with having been spectacularly wrong on Iraq. It's what the prowar crowd has done since April 9 that's unforgivable. As Jonathan Last, writing in the Weekly Standard wrote on 4/24/03:
SOMETIMES it's necessary to beat a dead horse. Many recriminations pieces have been written since the end of the war (here, for starters) and while they may seem like simple gloating, they're not. It's crucial to keep score on public commentators because if you bat .115 in the bigs, you get canned.
Powell and the CIA have come in for criticism in this column over the past two years for seeming to misjudge the dangers of Saddam Hussein's drive for weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's support for international terrorism and its links to al Qaeda in particular. But the secretary and the spies assembled as powerful a case as the most exacting critic could expect and backed it up impressively yesterday.
Speaking as "an old trooper," the ex-general showed, through technical detail, the illogic of Iraq's protestations that it has been importing aluminum tubing for short-range rockets and not for nuclear weapons. Nobody uses this kind of tubing for rockets, Powell said convincingly. He then made the obvious point that so many are intent on rushing past: In any event, the act of importing this specific tubing -- for any purpose whatever -- is illegal and further proof of Iraq's deliberate and material breach of sanctions and U.N. resolutions. How is that not a smoking gun?
The foreign ministers, U.N. senior officials and others in the Security Council chamber yesterday did not get there by being dummies. They already knew the grand outline of the evils and dangers that Powell was describing in compelling detail. They have been following the familiar pattern of reasoning backward -- of determining the political outcome they desire first and then choosing or ignoring the facts that fit that outcome.
Powell has made that callous approach much more difficult for them and for all others who have claimed not to see the threat that Saddam Hussein and his terrorist henchmen have become to international order, the United Nations and American citizens.
To continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most serious statement he will ever make, or was taken in by manufactured evidence. I don't believe that. Today, neither should you.
A sea change has occurred in official Washington since the president decided last summer that he would soon have to be ready to go to war against Iraq. Public attempts by officials to bury or explain away menacing information about Iraq have largely dried up or gone underground, although the CIA fights a rear-guard action. Now information and intelligence are marshaled to make the case, rather than deflect it.
This is, broadly speaking, political use of information -- no more and no less so than was the previous phase of denial and obfuscation. Bush mobilized facts on Monday to mobilize the nation for a challenge that is no less dangerous for being "largely familiar," as the New York Times labeled Bush's arguments in Tuesday editions.
The State Department and the CIA, institutionally wary and dismissive of the extensive intelligence about Saddam Hussein and his crimes provided by the dissidents of the Iraqi National Congress, had to listen Monday night to the president recite a dossier full of Iraqi National Congress information and insights that have filtered down over the years through the media, the government and academia to the skillful and alert speechwriters on Bush's staff.
Josh Marshall does it. This is going to be the easiest game in the world - Googlers, start your engines! For 18 months the conservative Borg blasted the CIA for not recognizing the true threat that was Saddam's moustache, and now we're going to hear them all tell us the complete opposite.
These people lie without regards for the consequence. Increasingly, they lie knowing that everybody knows they're full of it. No editor with any ethics should let this kind of crap through.
At a news conference yesterday, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the initiative was meant to compete with the CIA or other intelligence agencies. He said it was intended simply to assist policymakers in assessing the intelligence they receive. "Any suggestion that it's an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.
But the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.
"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."
...since the article Josh links to is temporarily (I hope) in the WaPo's memory hole, here are some excerpts:
Imagine that Saddam Hussein has been offering terrorist training and other lethal support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for years. You can't imagine that? Sign up over there. You can be a Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Or at least you could have been until recently. As President Bush's determination to overthrow the Iraqi dictator has become evident to all, a cultural change has come over the world's most expensive intelligence agency: Some analysts out at Langley are now willing to evaluate incriminating evidence against the Iraqis and call it just that.
That development has triggered a fierce internal agency struggle pitting officials whose careers and reputations were built on the old analysis of the Iraqis as a feckless, inert and inward-looking bunch of thugs against those willing to take a fresh, untilted look at all the evidence.
...
Their work is only one part of a monumental record of failure on Iraq by the CIA, which has at different moments sought to understand, support, co-opt and then overthrow Hussein. The agency succeeded in none. Considering the extent of that failure, it is no surprise that Bush has until now relied little on the Langley agency for his information on Iraq. There is simply no way to reconcile what the CIA has said on the record and in leaks with the positions Bush has taken on Iraq.
... Such misjudgments have continued until today. After four months of inconclusive debate following Sept. 11, the agency produced a new analysis last spring titled: "Iraq and al Qaeda: A Murky Relationship." It fails to make much of a case for anything, I am told. It echoes the views of Paul Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Middle East and South Asia, and other analysts who have consistently expressed doubts that Iraq has engaged in international terrorism or trained others to do so since 1993.
More damaging to their case than the accumulating new evidence to the contrary is "old" information long available in CIA files: Iraqi intelligence officers meeting in Khartoum and Kandahar with Osama bin Laden, the nonaggression pact Saddam and Osama reached in 1993, training in Baghdad for international terrorism and the multiple trips to Prague made by Mohamed Atta, the head of the Sept. 11 suicide squads, are all there. These specific reports and much more have been explained away and minimized rather than thoroughly investigated.
Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt. Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
The new revelation came as White House sources indicated that President George Bush was considering establishing an investigation into the intelligence, despite rejecting an inquiry the previous day.
The disclosure that US military survey teams sent to visit suspected sites of WMD, and intelligence interviews with Iraqi scientists and officials, had concluded so quickly that no major weapons or facilities would be found is certain to produce serious new embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.
According to the time-line provided by the US sources, it would mean that Number 10 would have been aware of the US doubts that weapons would be found before the outbreak of the feud between Number 10 and Andrew Gilligan, and before the exposure of Dr David Kelly as Gilligan's source for his claims that the September dossier had been 'sexed up' to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
It would suggest too that some officials who defended the 24 September dossier in evidence before the Hutton inquiry did so in the knowledge that the pre-war intelligence was probably wrong. Indeed, comments from a senior Washington official first casting serious doubt on the existence of WMD were put to Downing Street by The Observer - and rejected - as early as 3 May.
Oh this isn't good. This isn't good at all. Both main Kurdish nationalist parties hit.
One wonders if this is the result of the US's decision to move against the other Kurdish party, the PKK. (which may or may not be the correct thing to do, I have no knowledge in this area.)
Like Roger Ailes, I had conflicted views about Kristof's ego-boosting adventure in girl-purchasing. But, now that it's all over, I can say - Fuck you Kristof, you human scum.
The one sentence response to the right wing borg who has now decided that poor Bush was duped by the CIA:
But then why did Dick Cheney need to create an entire parallel intelligence apparatus under Doug Feith dedicated exclusively to explaining why the CIA was underestimating Iraq's WMD capacity?
