Friday Night Open Thread

Threading towards the weekend. What's the latest? Read More......

Where's the Washington Post article with the charge that Bush's foreign policy is based on "geopolitical fantasy"?

Earlier tonight, the Washington Post had a pretty blistering article on Bush's foreign policy speech today to the American Legion. There was no question from reading that piece that Bush really thinks things are going well with his foreign policy. And, it left no doubt that Bush's optimism is not widely shared. I started to write a post because I was struck by this passage:

Outlining what he called a "forward strategy for freedom," Bush painted a generally optimistic picture of events overseas that have led critics to charge that his foreign policy is built largely on geopolitical fantasy.(my emphasis, not the Post's)

I cut and pasted the paragraph above and started to write the post. But, when I went back to the Post to get the link, the article was gone. The link is now to another story that incorporates Bush's foreign policy speech today in to the Iraq debacle.

So, where's the "geopolitical fantasy" article that was critical of Bush? It was there at 8:30 p.m. But now, it's nowhere to be found. Can't find that term using the Post's search engine...and it doesn't show up on Google. I'm not making this up. I cut and pasted that paragraph from the Post..and now, it's gone. It's probably the most accurate line that has appeared in the Washington Post about Bush's foreign policy. The Post editorial board were ardent supporters of the Bush Iraq policy. So, I just think it's curious, to say the least. Read More......

9/11 Commission Chair says UAE deal is mistake

Not that Tom Kean would know anything about terrorism besides the fact that he co-chaired the 9/11 Commission:

Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the bipartisan probe of the Sept. 11 attacks, said the deal was a big mistake because of past connections between the 2001 hijackers and the UAE.

"It shouldn't have happened, it never should have happened," Kean said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The quicker the Bush administration can get out of the deal, the better, he said. "There's no question that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from there and money was laundered through there," Kean said.

Do you think anyone in the White House read the 9/11 Commission Report? I'm just asking.

Almost surreal that Bush views UAE as his pals, but they laundered Al Qaeda money. It's good to be a friend of W. Read More......

A little more Amsterdam blogging

You never get old of each incredibly unique building bordering the canals.


Ce-ci n'est pas un coffeeshop.


A better view of the Cafe Americain and its art deco grandeur. The poseur in front is none of than busblog's Tony who is the most fun of anyone I'd never imagined hanging out with. (True, I couldn't quite get down the super secret jive handshake when we said goodnight.)

"I see Dutch People."

A little girl in the Rembrandt museum with the unspellable name.


Windows and windows and windows and windows along a canal.


Just a lovely canal view to make you feel historically pathetic.


And another lovely canal view. Read More......

Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 2/24/06

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

This week Republicans proved once again why they simply suck more than Dick Morris facing a pair of newly pedicured toes on national security. What do Iraq’s current eruption into Civil War and his plan—on hold—to turn port management over to some of Osama’s buddies in the UAE have in common? Namely that the same dolts are in charge who’ve been using candy cigarettes to “smoke” Osama out of his cave and think a PDB warning that “Bin Laden is Determined to Attack in the United States” should be archived alongside Bush bicycle mishaps and Ken Mehlman’s ABBA collection. You know, the Neocons, who know as much about national security as Mary Matalin does about not looking like you could pick her up under the Brooklyn Bridge for spare change. Let’s just say you know you’re fucking things up when putting Bernie Kerik in charge is starting to look good.

Face it: We’re all Brittany’s baby now.

Back to the situation in Iraq for a moment, if you’ll indulge me. Keith Olbermann— someone who actually thought up the novel idea of doing real reporting on his show each night about non-blonds not missing in Aruba—ends each broadcast by reciting the number of days since Colonel Klink put on a military suit for the first time since hiding from the Alabama Air National Guard and declaring “Mission Accomplished.” I think we’re somewhere around 1028 days or so. But hey, not all is lost. I mean Bush did get to pose for a photo-op next to a plastic turkey!

Since Bush’s premature declaration we have seen roadside explosions, pitched gun battles and violent assaults on unarmed civilians. And that was just when Dick Cheney went hunting in Samarra. The sad truth is that in addition to an increased number of U.S. troops killed, kidnappings of Westerners, attacks on journalists, a complete lack of security, and a degraded infrastructure, all we have to show for our efforts is a few people with purple fingers. And you can achieve that by simply spending a night with Jeff Gannon.

But of course the worst is yet to come. Sectarian violence has now led to the bombing of a holy Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. At least 130 people have been killed. The Sunni bloc has suspended talks with the main Shiite alliance. In some countries they call this CIVIL WAR. Karl Rove probably calls it a consulting opportunity for those seeking office in Iraq. I mean just think of those weak-on-shrine-bombing attack ads he could put together.

Regardless, it makes you think that maybe all those voices in the military from General Zinni to General Clark may have had a clue what they were talking about when they said this war would lead to chaos and civil strife. Not to mention millions of other Americans who knew that Iraq and Afghanistan were different countries. One had terrorists that attacked us. The other had land that Richard Perle wanted to occupy (via cable modem).

Finally, what can we say about this whole UAE deal? It was sure a shock to find out the War President would let a company to manage American ports that is run by one of three countries to officially recognize the Taliban, whose banks laundered Al Qaeda money, whose capital is still considered an Al Qaeda hub where 11 of the 19 September 11th hijackers flew through to get to the United States and who sent some of its EMIRS TO VISIT BIN LADEN IN AFGHANISTAN before 9/11. But in Bush’s defense, his family does have financial ties to the ruling elite. I’m just surprised he hasn’t held hands with them at the ranch.

Yet, with Republicans in revolt, the deal is now on hold, at least until the UAE does something to push it over the top—like offer their best hookers for Neil. The ones missing their tongues for offering unsolicited opinions just aren’t in Neil's league. He’s been to Thailand.

So what are those wily Republicans going to do next, make Rick Santorum the point man on ethics? Oh, right. Read More......

"The Smiths" singer Morrisey reportedly questioned by FBI

He says it's because he criticized Bush and Blair. Read More......

IRS investigating religious organizations

I still hope that a few get slapped hard to prevent the events of 2004 happening again but I am not holding my breath. I've had it with the American Taliban who want to mix religion and politics.

The vast majority of charities and churches followed the law, but the examinations found a "disturbing" amount of political intervention in the 2004 elections, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said.

Read More......

Friday Squatter Blogging

No orchids on the traveling laptop, so we're squatter blogging this evening.

I took this photo tonight at a "squatter bar" in Amsterdam. What's a squatter bar? A bar that started by a bunch of squatters taking over some land, declaring it a bar, and well, I don't quite understand the rest, but there you have it. The bar has a restaurant as well, and it's apparently quite popular (you need reservations). The beers were good and cheap (organic beer only), and they didn't have Coke (too evil corporate, I suspect), but they had some great fruit-flavored sodas for 1 euro 20.

I did ask whether anyone had ever tried to squat in the squatter bar, but I'm not sure the joke went over real well.

Enjoy.

PS No, I didn't get high - not really my thing - but people were. Read More......

Another case where the White House leaked national security info. for political gains

That's the story Murray Waas has uncovered. Senator Rockefeller is making that claim in a letter to the White House (Think Progress has a pdf of the letter). Rockefeller points the finger at the Bush Administration officials for leaking national secrets to further their own political agenda :

Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.

At the center of the controversy is Bob Woodward who, you will recall, did not think the Plame leak was a big deal even though we all belatedly learned he had a central role in that scandal. This all starts to make sense once you read the post on Murray Waas' blog, www.whateveralready.blogspot.com:

Did the leaks to Woodward damage national security? Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, wrote in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror:

“After reading Mr. Woodward’s Bush at War, it seems to me that the U.S. officials who either approved or participated in passing the information—in documents and via interviews—that is the heart of Mr. Woodward’s book gave an untold measure of aid and comfort to the enemy.”

What was not known by Scheuer at the time was that officials on the “seventh floor” of the CIA were literally ordered by then-CIA director George Tenet to co-operate with Woodward’s project because President Bush personally asked that it be done. More than one CIA official co-operated with Woodward against their best judgment, and only because they thought it was something the President had wanted done or ordered.

One former senior administration official explained to me: “This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security—if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise—Woodward’s book.”

What is sickeningly clear is that Bush and his team leak classified national security information -- thus endangering the nation -- for blatantly political reasons. That's so far beyond the pale it really is almost incomprehensible. But, they've done it time and time again.

National security is nothing but a political football for the Bush team. They use it to their advantage in any way possible. The reality is that Bush is a failure when it comes to making us safer. Read More......

US Ambassador tells Iraqis to save their country

I'm sure the Iraqis appreciate being told to save their country by the ambassador of the country who destroyed their country:

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, made his remarks as sectarian fury in the streets appeared to ebb after two days of reprisals over the bombing of a major Shiite mosque. The violence prompted the most powerful Sunni Arab political group to suspend talks with Shiite and Kurdish politicians on forming a new government. "What we've seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone's attention that Iraq is in danger," Mr. Khalilzad said in a conference call with reporters.

The country's leaders, he added, "must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country."

Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Let's get it started...again.... Read More......

London mayor suspended for Nazi comparison

Ken Livingstone has been suspended for four weeks for an exchange last year with a Jewish reporter, comparing him to a Nazi camp guard. Livingstone's problem seemed to be his absolute failure to catch on to the mistake and move on. I really like certain aspects of Livingstone, his continuing fight against Blair for starters, but comments like this really have no place in public politics. Read More......

NYT: US port security under Bush is already such a joke, Dubai can hardly make it worse

Bush is telling us to trust him, he's got US port security under control and he's checked everything out and it's a go. So, just how good a record does Bush have verifying the security of US ports? According to the NYT article below, only 4 to 5 % of all containers coming into US ports are checked to see if, uh, they contain a frigging nuclear weapon.

In the political collision between the White House and Congress over the $6.8 billion deal that would give a Dubai company management of six American ports, most experts seem to agree on only one major point: The gaping holes in security at American ports have little to do with the nationality of who is running them....

The administration's core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards ? and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.

Only 4 percent or 5 percent of those containers are inspected. There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up. If a nuclear weapon is put inside a container ? the real fear here ? "it will probably happen when some truck driver is paid off to take a long lunch, before he even gets near a terminal," said Mr. Flynn, the ports security expert....

That is where concerns about Dubai come in. While the company in question has not been a focus of investigations, Dubai has been a way station for contraband, some of it nuclear. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer, made Dubai his transshipment point for the equipment he sent to Libya and Iran because he could operate there without worrying about investigators....

That port, along with the five others Dubai Ports hopes to manage, are the last line of defense to stop a weapon from entering this country. But Mr. Seymour, head of the subsidiary now running the operations, says only one of the six ports whose fate is being debated so fiercely is equipped with a working radiation-detection system that every cargo container must pass through.

So what this issue really is about is whether George Bush is serious about stopping a nuclear weapon from being smuggled into the US by terrorists and blown up in a major American city (our bets are on NY or DC). That's the issue here, folks.

The Bush team couldn't save New Orleans, bumbled Iraq, let Osama go, can't even shoot straight, and now they want us to trust them regarding the nuclear threat when we already know they've dropped the ball regarding setting up a plan to effectively stop terrorist nukes from being snuck into the US through our ports. So instead of coming up with a real plan to protect our ports, they're putting the foxes in charge of the hen house - the very country that has helped spread nuclear weapons to unsavory countries.

So what exact part of this fiasco screams "trust me"? Read More......

Open Thread

Thread through the night...or til John wakes up in Amsterdam. Read More......