A son’s pride and a nation’s loss.
A son’s pride and a nation’s loss.
ABC’s World News Tonight highlights an eight-year-old whose father died in Iraq.
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NYS legislature passes resolution against Iraq escalation.
NYS legislature passes resolution against Iraq escalation.
In a 94-34 vote, the New York State Assembly today passed the first state resolution “opposing the President’s escalation in Iraq and calling on President Bush to not veto the supplemental legislation that Congress recently passed.” (via Progressive States Network)
Inhofe: Media invented WMD excuse for Iraq invasion.
Inhofe: Media invented WMD excuse for Iraq invasion.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on Friday:
Inhofe, speaking to the press before Cheney’s arrival, lambasted Democrats for Thursday’s Senate vote to begin withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1 and the press for “mischaracterizing” the reasons for U.S. involvement.
“The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up,” Inhofe said. [...]
Pressed for an explanation, Inhofe said weapons of mass destruction were “incidental” to the decision to invade Iraq.
“The media made that the issue because they knew Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in August 2002:
Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction — I believe including nuclear. There’s not one person on this panel who would tell you unequivocally that he doesn’t have the missile means now, or is nearly getting the missile means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. And I for one am not willing to wait for that to happen.
Pump bid for New Orleans may have been rigged.
Pump bid for New Orleans may have been rigged.
When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, “it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract.” That manufacturer: MWI. “MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President George W. Bush’s brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.”
“Journalists of questionable patriotism.”
“Journalists of questionable patriotism.”
Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz on George Tenet’s criticisms: “So what’s interesting here is: This is no longer the liberal media saying this. This is no longer a bunch of journalists of questionable patriotism saying the Bush administration rushed to war; wanted to invade Iraq all along; didn’t have a serious debate. This is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Leahy Blasts Gonzales Over ‘Highly Troubling’ New Secret Memo
Leahy Blasts Gonzales Over ‘Highly Troubling’ New Secret Memo
Murray Waas revealed in the National Journal today that Alberto Gonzales “signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides” — chief of staff Kyle Sampson and counsel Monica Goodling, who have both since resigned — “extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.”
Waas says the memo “suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level”:
A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that — as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements — the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel’s office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. “It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on,” the official said. [...]
A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales’s delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.
In a new statement, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the secret order “would seem to be evidence of an effort to hardwire control over law enforcement by White House political operatives,” and demanded that it be turned over to congressional investigators immediately:
This memorandum should have been turned over to Senate and House committees as part of requests made in ongoing investigations. I expect the Department of Justice to immediately provide Congress with full information about this troubling decision as well as any other related documents they have failed to turn over to date.
UPDATE: More from NewsHog and Muckraker.
Read Leahy’s full statement below: More »
Perle Five Days After 9/11: ‘We Do Know Saddam Hussein Has Ties To Osama Bin Laden’
Perle Five Days After 9/11: ‘We Do Know Saddam Hussein Has Ties To Osama Bin Laden’
Conservatives appear to have correctly noted that George Tenet’s account of meeting Richard Perle at the White House the day after 9/11 was incorrect. Tenet has acknowledged the error, stating, “I may have gotten the days wrong, but I know I got the substance of that conversation correct.” Tenet says Perle told him, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”
The controversy over Tenet’s recollection has helped refresh the record about what Richard Perle was advocating in the days after 9/11. As ThinkProgress noted earlier today, Perle signed a letter addressed to President Bush on 9/20/01 that stated the following:
[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
Today, CNN provided further evidence that Perle was pushing for an attack against Iraq shortly after 9/11. The network re-aired footage of Perle on CNN five days after 9/11 claiming that Saddam was linked to bin Laden. Perle said at the time:
Even if we cannot prove to the standard that we enjoy in our own civil society they are involved, we do know, for example, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Osama bin Laden.
Watch it:
Transcript: More »
“‘Grrrl Power’ on the Pentagon Beat.”
“‘Grrrl Power’ on the Pentagon Beat.”
For the first time ever, “about a third of the historically male Pentagon press corps is female. The latest addition, Fox News Channel’s Jennifer Griffin, brings the number of regular female reporters to nine.”
Time Is Up On Rice’s ‘Two To Three Month’ Window For Escalation
Time Is Up On Rice’s ‘Two To Three Month’ Window For Escalation
On Jan. 11, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Bush administration would not “stay married” to its Baghdad security plan if the Iraqis do “not [live] up to their part of the obligation.” She said that “the most important thing that the Iraqi government has to do right now is to reestablish the confidence of its population that it’s going to be even-handed in defending it,” otherwise “this plan is not going to work.” Watch it:
Those two to three months are up, and recent troubling reports indicate that Maliki’s office has not been “even-handed” in defending the Iraqi population and has actually increased sectarian tensions:
– “A department of the Iraqi prime minister’s office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias.”
– According to a recent poll, Maliki inspires confidence in 72 percent of Shiites, but just eight percent of Sunnis.
– “The UN has sharply criticised the Iraqi government’s human rights record, in the two months since a security plan was launched in the capital, Baghdad. The UN mission for Iraq said Iraqi authorities had failed to guarantee the basic rights of about 3,000 people they had detained in the operations.”
– In its April 26 Iraq Index, the Brookings Institution found “no progress thus far” on four of Rice’s benchmarks: establishing new election laws, scheduling provincial elections, disbanding militias, or putting together a plan for national reconciliation.
Even though the Iraqi government has been largely unsuccessful in meeting its political benchmarks, the Bush administration refuses to change its plan in Iraq. Yesterday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rice said that the administration opposes imposing any “so-called consequences” on Maliki’s government “for missing the benchmarks,” and plans to veto any bill that does so.
UPDATE: Video of the hearing has been added.
Full transcript: More »
Mission Accomplished?
Mission Accomplished?
To mark the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s “victory” speech aboard the USS Lincoln tomorrow, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq and Americans United for Change joined Iraq war veterans and others today outside the White House.
You can watch the new Americans United ad on Iraq HERE.
Broder: Victory in Iraq ‘really doubtful.’
Broder: Victory in Iraq ‘really doubtful.’
David Broder, who has repeatedly attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for saying the Iraq war “is lost,” said today on XM radio that it is “really doubtful” President Bush will be able “to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq.”
UPDATE: Broder also responded to recent criticism of him online: “I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine.”
UPDATE II: Broder stands by his April 26 column on Reid, “The Democrats’ Gonzales”:
David Broder said he wouldn’t change anything in his April 26 column, which angered many readers and caused 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to write a letter criticizing Broder in Friday’s Washington Post. [...]
The columnist also said he was “not surprised” that his Thursday piece drew such a negative reaction from the 50 senators and most of the many readers who flooded WashingtonPost.com with comments. “This war is so unpopular and for very good reason,” said Broder. “I’ve written many columns critical of this administration’s actions in Iraq, and most of the response of readers to those columns has been: ‘Right on.’”
Greg Sargent has more.
Get paid to blog for ThinkProgress.
Get paid to blog for ThinkProgress.
ThinkProgress is launching a blog fellows program. It’s part time work (~20 hours/week) for six months, you receive a $3000 stipend, and you don’t have to live in Washington DC. The deadline for applying is this Sunday. Details HERE.
Lieberman: ‘Bloggers Have Added Another Dimension of Vituperation Toxicity’ To Politics
Lieberman: ‘Bloggers Have Added Another Dimension of Vituperation Toxicity’ To Politics
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) led a panel discussion today at the American Enterprise Institute discussing “options for restoring civility in American politics.”
Lieberman and Boehner both decried the harsh incivility in politics today while portraying themselves as paragons of independence and cordiality.
Lieberman described his own politics as “stand[ing] up for what I believe is right and…work[ing] across party lines to get things done.” As for the rest of politics, “The majority of people are sick of it. They think our political system is sick.” Lieberman blamed “attack ads, the kind of divisiveness of the cable news coverage of politics, talk radio,” and bloggers who “have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity to it.”
Boehner agreed, saying he has worked to “find ways of disagreeing without being disagreeable.” He asked innocently, “Where does all the partisanship come from?” and answered it by lamenting how blogs and other outlets have put “more information out in the public realm than there ever was, and some of it is to drive one point of versus other, dividing people more and more.” He called this the “breakdown of America.”
Watch it:
Iraq, more than any other issue, has contributed to the divisiveness in politics today. And on that issue, Lieberman and Boehner have acquiesced to a failing, unpopular Bush policy while demeaning those who sought to change it:
Lieberman:
Critics of Bush’s Iraq war strategy are engaging “in a kind of harassment.” [4/12/07]
Ned Lamont’s primary win “will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England.” [8/10/06]
Boehner:
[The war critics' plan] provides a road map for terrorists. … It is a danger to both our troops engaged in combat and to the long-term security interests of American families. [3/22/07]
Unfortunately, the Democrats latest plan is an old twist on an old adage: failure at any cost. … Democrats are using the critical troop funding bill to micromanage the war on terror — undermining our generals on the ground and slowly choking off resources for our troops. [3/8/07]
People who oppose escalation are taking the “bait” of “al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers” by using Iraq to “divide us here at home.” [2/13/07]
Transcript: More »
Robert Novak on Chuck Hagel:
Robert Novak on Chuck Hagel:
“Over a dozen years, I have had many such conversations with Hagel, but not for quotation. This time, I asked him to go on the record about his assessment of what the ’surge’ has accomplished. In language more blunt than his prepared speeches and articles, he described Iraq as ‘coming undone,’ with its regime ‘weaker by the day.’ He deplored the Bush administration’s failure to craft a coherent Middle East policy, blaming the influence of deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams.”
210:
210:
Number of lawyers and judges who have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, according to the Iraqi Lawyers Association. “Hundreds of legal workers have left the country because of threats and persecution. This is delaying judicial processes and denying thousands of people their legal rights.”
Iraqi refugees not welcome in U.S. post-9/11.
Iraqi refugees not welcome in U.S. post-9/11.
“Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States accepted several thousand Iraqi refugees a year; since then, and amid heightened security requirements, that number dropped to several hundred. So far this year, just 68 have been resettled.” In total, “an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes during the four years of war.” (via CQ, sub. req’d)
Foreign Service Morale, Effectiveness Plunged Under Tobias
Foreign Service Morale, Effectiveness Plunged Under Tobias
On Friday, Randall Tobias, the Bush administration’s senior foreign aid coordinator, stepped down after revealing that he had “been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.”
On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that one person close to Tobias said, “I’m sad today. … The president loves him and Condi absolutely loves him.”
But that love was not shared by the employees who worked under Tobias at USAID. A Dec. 2006 poll of 368 USAID foreign service officers found that just “21 percent thought Tobias had been doing a good job in getting resources for the agency and its workers”:
The agency also suffered under Tobias’s leadership. Zero percent said morale was “excellent” under Tobias, and just 12 percent said it was “good.” Sixty-eight percent said that overall conditions for the foreign service are worsening:
Tobias also oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any U.S.-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.” Aid groups bitterly opposed the policy, charging that it “was so broad — and applied even to their private funds — that it would obstruct their outreach to sex workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus.”
Tony Snow Returns: ‘There Has Been No Attempt To Try To Link Saddam To 9/11′
Tony Snow Returns: ‘There Has Been No Attempt To Try To Link Saddam To 9/11′
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow returned to the job this morning and hit the ground running. In his first interview with CBS’s Early Show, Snow declared that the White House never tried to link Iraq and September 11.
Snow was asked about former CIA Director George Tenet’s remarks from 60 Minutes:
TENET: We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction, and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.
Snow responded, “Wait a minute, Chris. The president has been saying exactly that all along. I don’t know what the headline is.” He insisted “there has been no attempt to try to link Saddam to September 11.”
Watch it:
In fact, the supposed Iraq-al Qaeda links formed the basis of the administration’s rationale for war. Here’s what the resolution authorizing force against Iraq said:
Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq
Snow also claimed today that President Bush “made it clear before the State of the Union in 2002 that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and September 11.” Here’s Bush during his major Iraq policy speech, just prior to Congress’ vote on the Iraq authorization in Oct. 2002:
We know that Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
Transcript: More »
‘They’re Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe.’
‘They’re Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe.’
A forthcoming biography of Condoleezza Rice, excerpted by Newsweek, examines the ties between President Bush and Condoleezza Rice:
Rice was drawn to Bush. “First of all, I thought he was wonderful to be around,” she recalled, sitting on the couch in her State Department office. “He was warm and funny and easy to be around. I thought he had just an incredibly inquisitive mind … You could barely finish an explanation before he was digging into it.”
Bush was also a bad boy. And Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys…
Rice’s friends insisted the attraction to Bush was platonic, but Brenda Hamberry-Green, her Palo Alto hairdresser, who had spent years commiserating with Rice over how hard it was for successful black women to find a good man, noticed a change when Rice started working for Bush. “He fills that need,” Hamberry-Green decided. “Bush is her feed.” …
“There was this connective stuff–that was really fully under way by the summer of 1999,” said Rice’s friend Coit “Chip” Blacker. “There’s a funny kind of transfer of energy and ideas that’s almost–not random, but unstructured. It’s as though they’re Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe.”
Tenet On Perle Conversation: ‘I May Have Been Off By A Couple Of Days But The Encounter Occurred’
Tenet On Perle Conversation: ‘I May Have Been Off By A Couple Of Days But The Encounter Occurred’
On 60 Minutes last night, George Tenet claims he ran into Pentagon adviser Richard Perle at the White House on the day after 9/11. Tenet says Perle was already urging at attack on Iraq:
“He said to me, ‘Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.’ It’s September the 12th. I’ve got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I’m about to go brief the president, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” Tenet remembers.
Leaping to his fellow neoconservative’s defense, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol challenged Tenet’s account as “an imaginary encounter.” Kristol writes, “Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15.”
This morning on the Today Show, Tenet was confronted by Tom Brokaw about this contradiction. Tenet said, “I may have been off by a couple of days. The encounter occurred. The conversation occurred. … So I may have gotten the days wrong, but I know I got the substance of that conversation correct.” Watch it:
Perle has told The Weekly Standard that he “categorically denies” ever having mentioned Iraq to Tenet in the days after 9/11. But Tenet noted that his recollection matches what Perle was saying publicly soon after 9/11 — that Bush should take action against Iraq.
On September 20, 2001, Perle signed a letter — along with 40 fellow participants of the Project for the New American Century — addressed to President Bush that stated the following:
[E]ven if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
Another co-signer of that letter? Bill Kristol. Read it here.
UPDATE: Weekly Standard’s blog points to Tenet’s quote from his book:
On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”
Transcript: More »
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