Have you ever told so many lies that you find you can't get out?

Read the rest of this post...

This is the guy who brought down Nixon?

Woodward is pathetic. That story of his sure continues to evolve. Clearly, he is very worried about maintaining his access so he can write books. Truth be damned.

I had to laugh when he said the big mistake you can make is to think about yourself. He has made this all about himself. He did that by injecting his opinions all over the media before his involvement was known.

Woodward has an unwarranted air of sanctimony. He's protecting us, he thinks. It's like he sees himself as the news superhero here to save us from ourselves. It's hard to believe this is the guy who stood up to the entire Nixon Administration. His performance tonight was weak... and quite frankly, hard to believe.

He gives the impression that he's willing to destroy the Post's reputation for his own ego. Katherine Graham must be turning in her grave. And, if I worked at the Post, and realized that this was the paper's star who gets very, very special treatment, I'd be bitter.

And, who knew Larry King could actually do a real interview? Read the rest of this post...

Larry King Live blogging - Bob Woodward tries to save his ass

UPDATE: The transcript is already online here.

We're blogging it live.

Oh my, Woodward looks like he's waiting for the firing squad.

Larry is playing the Oct 27 episode where Michael Isikoff say Woodward has a bombshell to reveal, and Woodward says he has NO bombshell. Then he uses the rumor about him having a bombshell, which he says is wrong, as evidence of how out of control this investigation is.

Woodward: "I was telling the truth. I did not have a bombshell FOR THE NEXT DAY'S PAPER."

Now he's saying there was nothing wrong with him coming on the show and giving his opinion of the Fitzgerald investigation - saying it sucked - when he was involved in the investigation. So then why did he now apologize and say it was wrong for him NOT to tell his editor if he's still saying there was nothing wrong with what he did?

Why didn't he tell Downie? I was interested in getting the book done. Really, because before you said it was fear of Fitzgerald and getting subpoenaed and going t jail.

There was a sense before the indictment that what I knew was interesting but what did it mean? It was only after the indictment that he knew he knew something interesting that Fitzgerald would want to know.

BULL SHIT. Woodward knew he was the third person to be told that Valerie Plame was CIA by a senior administration official, and he didn't think that was important until the day the indictment came down? He's gotta be kidding. This has been THE story for months before the indictment came down.

Oh this is interesting. Leonard Downie, the Post's executive editor, they just showed a clip of him on Howie Kurtz's show on Sunday saying that it was wrong of Woodward to go on the news shows and give his opinion. But Woodward just said on Larry King that what he did was that everyone does when they come on the shows, they say things but at the same time there are secrets they can't tell. So Woodward is saying what he did was basically okay, it's what lots of people do. Downie seems to disagree. But since Woodward hasn't learned his lesson, what is Downie going to do now?

Oh Good God, now he's bragging about how he jumped on the story, all his "news juices" were flowing. Give me a fucking break.

And another thing - if Woodward is now saying how unimportant he thought the information he had was, how insignificant it was, how it was just some small aside the senior official threw into the conversation, and therefore it wasn't anything he gave a moment's thought to until Fitzgerald announced the indictments a few months ago, then why did Woodward say he didn't come forward over the past few years because worried about Patrick Fitzgerald subpoeanaing him? Woodward didn't even think the info he heard was important, didn't give it a moment's thought for two years, but at the same time he was so worried that he was going to get subpoenaed and thrown in jail for having information that he didn't think was important and never gave a moment's thought to. Huh? You don't worry about going to jail over something someone says flippantly in a conversation, something you don't even give a moment's thought to. And if you worry about going to jail, that means you worry that the info might be something the prosecutor wants and thinks he needs for the investigation. But even so, you still don't tell your editor because YOU don't think the info is important.

Woodward NOW SAYS that when he called Fitzgerald a "junkyard dog prosecutor" on a previous Larry King show, he now regrets having said it ONLY BECAUSE people took that quote out of context. Woodward says he often uses that quote as a COMPLIMENT! Jesus Christ.

How fascinating. Woodward says he remembers EXACTLY the words his source used two and a half years ago to describe Valerie Plame, even though he tells us that the source's mention of Plame was so flippant, so off-hand and so casual that he didn't think much of it. It was such an insignificant point, yet he now, two and a half years later, remembers the exact phrasing of the answer.

Funny, we're 40 minutes into the interview and Woodward is no longer saying that he didn't tell his editors because he was afraid of Fitzgerald. That WAS Woodward's number one talking point only two days ago. Now he isn't saying it at all. So has his reason for not telling his Post editor suddenly changed? If so, why? And why did Woodward give this as his reason only days ago? Was he lying then? Is he lying now?

Oh, check out this concluding remark from Woodward:

KING: In our remaining moments, do you think your reputation's been harmed?

WOODWARD: I mean, that's for other people to judge.

KING: Do you think so?

WOODWARD: You know, I -- I think the biggest mistake you can make in this sort of situation as a reporter is to worry about yourself. And the issue here is what happened, what can I aggressively push to get in the newspaper or a book, and then in the end, you can deal with this.

Someone get this man off of my TV set.

He's lecturing US about how reporters need to not worry about themselves. Uh, up until tonight, Woodward's number one defense was that he didn't tell his editor because he was worried he'd be subpoenaed and thrown in jail by Patrick Fitzgerald (even though Fitzgerald wasn't even on the case until 7 months later). Now when asked whether this scandal has harmed his reputation he gets all sanctimonious about how reporters have to stop worrying about themselves, when it was supposedly his worry about himself that stopped him from going to his editor?

Washington Post: I hope you realize what you just did to yourselves tonight. Read the rest of this post...

Don't forget - we're live-blogging Woodward on Larry King (CNN) at 9pm Eastern

In the meantime, we have a new t-shirt, etc., in the AMERICAblog store:



Just FYI - there is a Camp Gannon marine camp in Iraq. Seriously :-) Read the rest of this post...

Bob Woodward's latest tall tale to save his reputation

Oh, just read this.

From ThinkProgress:

CNN just offered a sneak preview of Bob Woodward’s interview with Larry King tonight on CNN. This is what Woodward says:

The day of the indictment, I read the charges against Libby, and looked at the press conference by the special counsel and he said the first disclosure on all of this was on June 23rd, 2003 by Scooter Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff to New York Times reporter Judy Miller. I went whoa whoa, because I knew I learned about this in mid-June, a week, ten days before. Then I say something’s up. There’s a piece that the special counsel does not have in all of this. Then I went into incredibly aggressive reporting mode…

There’s an easy explanation for why Fitzgerald didn’t know about this vital piece of information – because Woodward intentionally sought to keep it from him. The only person known to have had information regarding Woodward’s knowledge about Plame was Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. And Woodward specifically told Pincus not to reveal that information to anyone:

[Pincus] believed as far back as 2003 that Bob Woodward had some involvement in the case but he did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to. “He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that,” Pincus said today.

Let’s recap. First, Woodward told a fellow colleague about his information on Plame but instructed him not to share; then, he failed to disclose this information to his editors at the Post in order to — in his words — avoid a subpoena; then, he criticized Fitzgerald’s investigation; and finally, after failing to disclose his knowledge and realizing Fitzgerald was not aware of it, he sniffed a great story and went into “aggressive reporting mode.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you commit a “journalistic sin.“

JOHN'S NOTE: Funny that Woodward never went "whoa whoa" when the White House spent the last two years denying that they had any involvement in leaking Plame's identity and Woodward knew all along that this was a lie. He knew since Scott McClellan hit the podium in 2003 that the White House was lying and that there was information the investigators didn't have. But we didn't hear any whoa-whoa's out of Woodward for a good two years.

And the Washington Post expects us to buy this load of crap. Read the rest of this post...

NYT front page today

If after the Judith Miller fiasco the NYT thinks it's going to win us back with cheap stunts like this... they're right.

Read the rest of this post...

US kicked out of Uzbekistan

All the good coddling a vicious dictator got us. Read the rest of this post...

More anti-Democrat smears from the Washington Post

DailyKos reports about how the Washington Post editorial page editor recently slandered Democrats and everybody else who thinks the war is a disaster. You see, according to the Washington Post editorial page editor, we war critics aren't really sincere. We don't care about America, we only care about hurting George Bush. So the Washington Post has now picked up the McCarthyite cudgel that the Bush administration has been using since September 11.

What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.

You see, the Washington Post is more interested in currying favor with the Bush administration ever since Katherine Graham died. That's why Bob Woodward is allowed to get away with lying about his massive conflict of interest, why the Washington Post's executive editor said it was "ridiculous" that anyone should suggest Bob Woodward be disciplined, and it's why the Post continues to write such outright un-American lies about anyone who disagrees with the Post about their warped impression that the Iraq war is going so gosh darn well.

But you have to understand. The Washington Post endorsed this war, so now they have to do everything in their power to justify it and defend Bush, even if it means lying to the public and smearing anyone who disagrees with them.

The new Washington Post. Kind of like the old Washington Times. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Bush walk into any walls lately? Read the rest of this post...

Be your very own Bob Woodward lie detector, tonight at 9pm Eastern on CNN

As I mentioned yesterday, the Washington Post's walking conflict of interest, Bob Woodward, will be appearing on Larry King Live to try to make the world love him again.

As the Washington Post is intent on defending Woodward's lies, and not even challenging them one bit, the job now rests with us.

Please watch Larry King Live tonight on CNN at 9pm Eastern. We'll be live blogging the show, and I'd like you to guys to point out every lie, half truth, or sin of ommision Woodward makes. There's no chance in hell Larry King will call Woodward on anything. But we can, and will.

Just a few pointers as to Woodward's biggest, and most obvious, lies that the Washington Post refuses to even address:

• Woodward was afraid of Patrick Fitzgerald, afraid of being jailed, afraid of being subpoenaed. Woodward was leaked the Plame info in June 2003. Fitzgerald wasn't hired until December 2003. So his fear of Fitzgerald doesn't explain why he didn't tell his editor about the leak from June to December when Fitzgerald didn't even exist.
  
  
• Woodward says journalists were getting subpoenaed and that scared him. Well, journalists weren't getting subpoenaed until May of 2004. So what's Woodward's excuse for not coming clean to his editors from June 2003 until May 2004?
  
  
• Woodward claims he told Post colleague Walter Pincus about the leak. But why would Woodward tell Pincus if he was afraid of being subpoenaed, and thus wouldn't even tell his own editor? Not to mention, Pincus says this is absolutely untrue, Woodward never told him anything. So which Washington Post journalist is lying, Pincus or Woodward?
  
  
• If Woodward was so afraid of Fitzgerald, then why did Woodward publicly take Fitzgerald on for two years? Hardly the moves of someone who's mortally afraid of catching Fitzgerald's interest.
  
  
• If Woodward was afraid of being jailed, then why did he offer, this past July on Larry King, to be jailed instead of Judith Miller? And if he no longer was afraid to be jailed or targeted by Fitzgerald at that point, then why didn't he come clean to his editor then?
  
  
• Woodward would like us to believe that he, the guy who kept Deep Throat's identity secret for over three decades, the guy who took down Richard Nixon of all people, was now mortally afraid of some government bureaucrat trying to force him to divulge a source?

If the Washington Post thinks we're going to give up on this story, they have another thing coming. Read the rest of this post...

Hey MSM, when do you plan on asking Cheney about HIS lies about Iraq?

It's nice that Reuters and the rest of the mainstream media is reporting Cheney's remarks attacking Dems for calling him and the administration liars.

"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."

But the mainstream media knows Cheney did distort the truth in the lead up to the war, so why aren't they reporting on it? Reuters does a big story on Cheney's accusations against Dems, yet doesn't bother mentioning Cheney's various comments that, at the time, had no substantiation whatsoever?

So let's take a trip down memory lane, a trip that Reuters and the rest of the mainstream media seems afraid to take:

Cong Henry Waxman has a document online detailing 51 times that Cheney misled the country about Iraq! (The Cheney stuff begins on page 26 of the document, which is actually page 32 of the pdf file.)

Do you remember the one where...

1. Cheney Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recanted

or the one where...

2. Cheney claimed Saddam was harboring Al Qaeda? He wasn't, and there was no credible evidence saying he was.

or the one where...

3. Cheney claimed Saddam gave Al Qaeda bomb-making expertise and trained Al Qaeda terrorists how to use chemical and biological weapons? Saddam didn't.

or the one where...

4. On Sept 14, 2003 Cheney claimed, for the second time at least, that there was evidence suggesting Mohammad Atta visited the Iraqi embassy in the Czech Republic? He didn't, and Cheney knew the supposed evidence had already been debunked, yet repeated the charge on Tim Russert's show as a justification for the war.

With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack

or the one where...

5. Cheney lied during the VP debates last October, saying that he NEVER had publicly connected Iraq and 9/11. Of course, he did on Meet the Press a year before:

Cheney: "If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

or the one where...

6.Cheney outright lied, denying he linked Atta to the Iraqis - of course, he did link the two:

June 17, 2004. Vice President Cheney talking to CNBC's Gloria Borger:

Borger: 'Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' '

Cheney: 'No, I never said that.'

Borger: 'Okay.'

Cheney: 'Never said that.'

Borger: 'I think that is . . . '

Cheney: 'Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.'

On Dec. 9, 2001. Cheney talking to NBC's Tim Russert (this is perhaps the first time he made this lie):

Cheney: 'Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

'

Read the rest of this post...

ACLU sues over White House banning Dems from Bush's townhall meetings

From the Rocky Mountain News:

President Bush came to Denver March 21 to speak about Social Security...Alex Young, 26, Leslie Weise, 39, and Karen Bauer, 38, say they were ejected from the event even though they had done nothing disruptive. Young and Weise are suing.

All three had tickets to the public event, which was sponsored by the White House and paid for by taxpayers.

The man who forced them to leave was wearing a radio earpiece and a lapel pin that functioned as a security badge…

His identity is known to the Secret Service and the White House, but both have repeatedly refused to reveal it. The three say they were told by the Secret Service later that the man admitted ejecting them because they arrived in a car with a bumper sticker that read, "No more blood for oil."…

"Casper had an earpiece," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Denver ACLU office. "It appeared that he let them in, and then he came back and said, 'You can't be here.' "

"We're going to follow the earpiece," Silverstein said. The lawsuit will be used to discover who gave orders to Casper and "who set the policies, who directed that people who appear to have viewpoints in opposition to the president couldn't attend a publicly funded town hall meeting."

The "Denver Three" - the three people who were kicked out of the meeting - have a Web site up now. Read the rest of this post...

Front page of the most-read paper in Portugal

(Hat tip to Joseph in Porto) Read the rest of this post...

Charlie Rangel smacks "draft dodger" Cheney

Go Charlie:

The feud between Vice President Cheney and Rep. Charlie Rangel reignited as the Harlem lawmaker ripped the veep as a draft dodger who found it "easy to fight [a war] with other people's children."

The decorated Korean War veteran took aim at Cheney after the White House put Vietnam War hero Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) in its cross hairs for recanting his support for the Iraq war and calling for the troops to return home.

"Cheney is like a chess player; he likes to move other people's pieces. In this case, it's sending other people's kids to war," Rangel told the Daily News.

Murtha had made a similar assault on Cheney's toughness, saying, "I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war."

Read the rest of this post...

GM closing 9 plants, canning 30,000 workers

Happy Thanksgiving from the Bush economy:

General Motors Corp. will eliminate 30,000 manufacturing jobs and close nine North American assembly, stamping and powertrain plants by 2008 as part of an effort to get production in line with demand.

The announcement Monday by Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO of the world's largest automaker, represents 5,000 more job cuts than the 25,000 that the automaker had previously indicated it planned to cut.

Read the rest of this post...

Cheney provided "philosophical guidance" for torture

Powell's former chief of staff and retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson spoke out on CNN's Late Edition yesterday about Cheney's guidance for the use of torture. The Bush team is really stuck in a media slump right now and those easy days of 2002-2004 are over. It's pile on time.

"There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."

At another point in the interview, Wilkerson said "the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Let's get it started... Read the rest of this post...

How did your trip to China go Mr President?

I'm sure you just can't wait to tell us all about your countless success stories about human rights and democratic improvements not to mention big concessions by China on the yuan and free trade. All of us are very, very excited to hear all of the news so be sure and tell us everything and give us the complete details on his you pistol whipped China into agreeing to everything you raised with them. Go ahead, tell us more. We're on the edge of our seats so don't leave us waiting. Read the rest of this post...

"Unique" but not torture

Interesting to hear that Goss is saying that the CIA has received valuable information from the "unique" methods which the McCain bill would make illegal but that it's all legal and above board. Why do I not believe Goss or trust the judgment of any of the pro-torture GOPers? Oh that's right, because they lie every chance they have and all of their stories surrounding the failed war have been proven to be false. Read the rest of this post...

Mongolia? Are you kidding me?

So this is how desperate Bush is to prop up support for his failed adventure. Sure, it's nice that Bush is visiting Mongolia but to try and make a splash in the news for a country that sent 120 people to Iraq tells me that this is a team eager to grab onto anything. Then again, he might as well enjoy what little pocket of support he has over there because he's coming home to an increasingly annoyed American public who doesn't share the same enthusiasm for his war and lies. Read the rest of this post...

Washington, DC is run by incompetent morons

I sometimes wish I lived in a real city.

The District government significantly underestimated the price of a state-of-the-art stadium for the Washington Nationals and as a result has been forced to shift $55 million set aside for infrastructure improvements to cover escalating costs.

City officials had included money to repave roads and expand a Metro station near the stadium in the $535 million budget approved by the D.C. Council last year. Those funds now will go instead toward labor and building materials and to cover the cost of land for the stadium, which also is more expensive than anticipated.

This may come as a surprise, but our dear mayor promised the new stadium for the new baseball team would have no cost overruns, wouldn't break the bank, blah blah blah. We all knew there would be cost overruns and the thing would probably screw us in the end, but the mayor who doesn't care about much more than his legacy wanted a baseball team. What's a ridiculously high violent crime rate when you got baseball, right?

Well, guess what? The price of stadium has now soared and we have to divert money from roads to go the damn stadium.

The mayor is an idiot. But the city council that went along with this idiot is just as much to blame. Maybe we should pay for this out of their salaries. Read the rest of this post...