Bush Stands By His Turd: Rove Blames Journos

Here's Scott McLellan on board Air Force One today:

Q: Does the President believe it's appropriate for the RNC to continue to weigh in on this matter? They put out another memo today, with a top-10 Joseph Wilson lies. If indeed it's an ongoing investigation and it's improper for the White House to discuss it, does he think it's proper for the Republican Party to weigh in on it?

MR. McCLELLAN: You know, Geoff, I appreciate the question, and as you heard me say yesterday, we are not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation...

Yadda, yadda, yadda... Four (or is it five?) days running. Rove was aboard the same AF1 flight but stayed 1 million miles from reporters:

Rove, President Bush's deputy chief of staff, accompanied the president on a trip to Indianapolis -- both men walking together from the White House to the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn. Bush usually walks alone to the helicopter, and their public stroll was widely perceived as a presidential show of support.

And is this a real picture? Are protestors really gathering around the White House...?

And did you hear that 33 GOP Senators actually voted to support a blatantly partisan motion by Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), designed purely to stifle further democratic debate on the Rove case (at the cost of further erosion of your civil liberties)?

It seems the GOP has got "Democrats" confused with "democracy" - you don't have to be against BOTH of them! All 33 GOP Senators should be removed, one by one. And they will be! (anybody got a list, please send it to me...)

As one Republican Senator said:

"This is exactly why the American public holds Congress is such low esteem."

Damn right, lady.

Another GOP Senator declared: "I think he should resign." The Senator then joked nervously: "I hope Karl Rove doesn't come gunning for me."

Meanwhile (from the same report) "a survey of more than a dozen Republicans who live outside Washington found most siding with the White House." What? More than a dozen??? Gosh, what a representative sample!

I gotta tell you, when you go and look at a page like this today, you realise there is still some hope for the USA.

But meanwhile, civil war in Iraq is looking more and more inevitable. Remember when everybody was saying, "We can't pull out now or Iraq will plunge into civil war"?

BREAKING NEWS: Karl Rove apparently told the grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Is this an attempt to throw the spotlight back onto Novak, or even Miller?If it's true, it sound more like a plea bargain that a concerted defence. I mean, even if a journo told Rove about Mrs Wilson's identity, he still leaked it to journalists... and remember, others in the White Houser were involved!

SEND A PINK SLIP TO KARL ROVE!!!

DSM: Keeping The Story Alive

An article at "In These Times", A Dead-End In American Media, presents an excellent look at the go-nowhere history of the Downing Street Memos. For example:

Five main indictments emanate from this growing series of leaked documents. First, that the Bush administration decided to go to war earlier than was publicly stated. Second, that the reasons he gave for the war were bogus. Third, that Bush lied in saying that the war could have been avoided. Fourth, that the war actually began almost a year earlier than is assumed. And fifth, that the administration did almost no planning for the aftermath of the invasion.

The media's response to these allegations has been to ignore, distort, deny and denigrate them.

Why blow off such a huge story? ...

Bush said that war was to be his last resort, that Saddam could avoid it by telling the truth about WMDs, that he went to the U.N. to try to solve the problem peacefully, that Iraq represented such an urgent threat to U.S. security he could no longer wait for the inspectors to finish their work, that he therefore gave the order to attack in March 2003, and that U.N. resolutions gave him the authority to do so.

Not a single one of those assertions was truthful, as the Downing Street Memos prove.

This little section of the article is also worth noting for the records:

The nadir prize within mainstream American journalism probably goes to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post for his curled-lip rendering of Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) ad hoc hearing on the memos. It was ad hoc because the House Republican majority has every interest in burying this scandal, so much so that they wouldn't even give Conyers a conference room in the Capitol to use, despite the fact that several were available. (Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ultimately found him a stuffy basement room of about 20' by 30'.) To further stymie Conyers, the Republicans simultaneously scheduled important committee meetings and an astounding 11 floor votes--a House record.

Following Milbank's article, the autor informs us, the Post received a torrid of angry reader complaints, prompting the Post's ombudsman to admit the story was "a serious mistake." Meanwhile:

In June alone, Google hits on "Downing Street Memo" went from 250,000 to 1.5 million.

Guess who was sending those angry letters to the post? The same people Googling for news on this important issue. Somewhere in cyberspace, US Democracy is still alive...

Rove Death Watch: the Scandal Expands

I just loved waking up to this Asia Times headline today:

Bush's 'brain' leaked: Did Bush know?

You can just imagine the graphics at FreakingNews (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, read this excellent overview of the Rove-Plame scandal at Salon.com).

The GOP noise machine continues to thrash about, lashing out at anything and anyone - particularly their accusers - in an effort to undermine the allegations against them, or at least create enough confusion to throw most semi-interested spectators off-track. As Billmon suggests:

I won't be too surprised if we wake up tomorrow to find Bill O'Reilly claiming that Karl Rove used to be an undercover CIA operative (a kind of fat, ugly version of Keifer Sutherland) until he was outed by Valerie Plame...

Defensive offence, the favourite Rove fall-back play - works every time. Josh Marshall calls it "terror by grand moral inversion, the lie so total and audacious that it almost knocks opponents off their feet":

John Kerry decorated war hero? No, coward and showboat...

In one state supreme court race [Rove's] candidate went up against an opponent who'd developed an impeccable reputation on child welfare issues (he was a former family court judge). Once you understand the pattern, the strategy suggests itself. Rove orchestrated a whispering campaign to spread the word that the man was a pedophile. Like I said, audacious.

And so here now. Wilson, a whistleblower administration officials were trying to punish? A whistleblower calling out White House manipulated intelligence during the lead-up to war?

Not at all. Rove was the whistleblower trying to knock down a campaign of disinformation from Joe Wilson. The audacity of it is enough to knock some people off their feet.

But this time (so far) Rove's favourite tactic doesn't seem to be working. In fact, the White House silence on this issue is only encouraging more and more people to link the Rove-Plame scandal to the related, but much wider, scandal of the bogus reasons for invading Iraq.

For example, this from the Christian Science Monitor:

Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war...

The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.

Or this from Richard Cohen at the WP:

It was supposed to be additional evidence that Iraq had, in the memorable word uttered by Vice President Cheney, "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program. That, of course, is the real smoking gun in this matter -- the crime, if there is one at all, in what should now be called Karlgate. (It encompasses so much -- the outing of Plame, the jailing of reporter Judith Miller, the moral collapse of the press, the preening of Wilson -- that it sorely needs a moniker.) The inspired exaggeration of the case against Iraq, the hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda's links to Hussein, makes everything else pale in comparison. It was to protect those lies, those exaggerations, that incredible train wreck of incompetence, ideologically induced optimism and, of course, contempt for the quaint working of the democratic process, that everything else stems from. Wilson was both armed and dangerous. He claimed the truth.

Let's keep the pressure on, folks. This fool is in trouble!

And Let's Not Forget Rumsfeld..

Josh White reports that Abu Ghraib Tactics Were First Used at Guantanamo: "The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers..."

Wilson Puts Pressure On Bush

THE BRAD BLOG has a scoop interview with Joe Wilson who says: 'The President should fire Rove'!.

Wilson also reveals that he has a letter from George Bush Snr, in which the former President said he shared Wilson's 2002 concerns about the pitfalls of Bush Jnr's approach to Iraq. The former President wrote that he had "read your article and I agree with a lot of it."

But wait, there's more:

Additionally, Wilson explained, Bush 41's own National Security Advisor, Brett Scowcroft had contacted him to ask whether he "could walk on over to the White House with the letter" at the time. Which apparently he did.

Wilson also had sent the article to Bush 41's Secretary of State, James Baker.

Wilson is also scheduled to appear on NBC's Today Show.

Calling All Editors...

Slate updates the Rove Death Watch:

Why aren't the major newspapers running editorials calling for Karl Rove's resignation? The Washington Post is silent. So is the Los Angeles Times. Maybe they're waiting for more information. But what more do they have to know? The White House deputy chief of staff revealed the identity of an undercover CIA employee to Time magazine. He did this solely for the purpose of attacking the credibility of an administration critic. He did not check first to find out whether said CIA employee was undercover. Or perhaps he knew and didn't care. Either way, such reckless behavior is a firing offense.

Doonesbury ventures into Rummyworld:

"Rummyworld has perfect conditions for Jihad... an invading infidel army, a weak central government, widespread chaos... Plus we know the culture, the language, the terrain - all the advantages in fighting American forces! And yet...

Howard Government Capitalizes on London's Horror

From Murdoch's The Australian:

Over the next three weeks, the government will spend about $2.2 million telling Australians to be vigilant but not alarmed about the terrorist threat.

That's my taxpayer dolllars being wasted, right there. And the fact that Aussie troops are being sent back to Afghanistan after 3 years of deterioration in that country is itself surely the most damning proof that all this money being spent on Iraq is a waste of frikkin' ... arrghhh!!! grrr!!! NOT HAPPY JOHN!!!!

George W. Bush: A Lying Bastard

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the percentage of Americans who believe Bush is 'honest and straightforward' fell to 41 percent from 50 percent in January, while those who say they doubt his veracity climbed to 45 percent from 36 percent. And this is before the Rove-Plame case blows up!

Getting Real About Rove: More From Marshall

More great reality checks at Talking Points Memo today.

Those trying to discredit Joe Wilson have always claimed that his trip to Niger was set up as a "boondoggle" by his wife. But Wilson is on record saying that the real impetus for his trip came from VP Dick Cheney himself!

They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.

And as the NYT says:

Why a mission to Niger would be such a plum assignment is still a mystery...

Of course, this whole line of argument is really just a distraction anyway. I mean, what would it matter if Wilson's wife had set up his trip to Niger? The fact remains that Wilson came back with claims that the Niger yellowcake intelligence was unreliable (which is was) and yet it went into Bush's State of the Union speech anyway. This was just one more brick in the wall of disinformation engineered by the White House to promote their pre-determined invasion of Iraq. That is they key to this whole miss, and that is where our focus should remain.

Also today at the TPM Cafe, a fellow CIA agent responds to the smear campaign against Plame:

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed...

As Olbermann puts it:

In his 'story guidance' to Matthew Cooper of Time, Rove did more damage to your safety than the most thumb-sucking liberal or guard at Abu Ghraib. He destroyed an intelligence asset like Valerie Plame merely to deflect criticism of a politician. We have all the damned politicians, of every stripe, that we need. The best of them isn't worth half a Valerie Plame. And if the particular politician for whom Rove was deflecting, President Bush, is more than just all hat and no cattle on terrorism, he needs to banish Rove -- and loudly.

Exactly. Which makes tame reports like the following NYT analysis seem more than a little flakey:

The entire contretemps at the White House this week centers on whether Mr. Rove tried to discredit Mr. Wilson by suggesting that his mission to Niger was the product of nepotism, and that Ms. Wilson had arranged for it.

No, you dummies, that's just a small part of the contretemps. As Bush continues to waffle and the White House Press Corps hammers Scotty McLellan for a third day running, the Carpetbagger looks at the best case scenario from a Bush point of view:

Under the best case scenario, if Rove's conversations about Joseph Wilson's wife were not technically illegal, we still have the president's top political aide covering up a White House lie by smearing an opponent, going after his wife, and in the process 'accidentally' exposing an undercover CIA agent. For the White House, that's the best case scenario.

Wonder what's going through Karl Rove's evil mind these days...?

And just to close this post on an appropriate note, this Wall Street Journal editorial should be enough to make you lose your breakfast, lunch and dinner:

In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

No, thank you, Wall Street Journal wankers.

UPDATE: A Kos reader compares the WSJ editorial with recently leaked GOP talking points on Rove-Plame and finds the WSJ has just re-hashed the GOP lies (which are presumably coming from Rove himself!)

CONCLUSION: They've got NOTHING folks!

Greg Palast argues that Judith Miller is not protecting a genuine source, but rather protecting her own cherished access to White House disinformation:

My mama always told me to 'compliment the chef' at dinner. But that doesn't apply when the chef pees in your soup.

Another Bingo! moment for Ted Rall .

From The Huffington Post: 'If two trains leave the White House heading in opposite directions, one leading to a Federal courthouse and the other to Political Siberia, can even a Boy Genius keep both of them from going off track?'

More Dots To Join...

In an excellent wrap-up of the reasons why Rove should be fired (well, don't hold your breath waiting for him to do the honourable thing and resign), Juan Cole ties the Rove-Plame scandal to Michael Ledeen, via the discredited Italian source of the discredited Niger uranium claim:

Ambassador Joe Wilson, who once dared Saddam to hang him while wearing a rope around his neck while acting ambassador in Baghdad in fall of 1990, was the first to let the American people know that the Bush administration lied about Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. Wilson went to that country, investigated the structure of the uranium industry (which is mainly in French hands anyway), and concluded it was impossible. Bush and Cheney had believed a set of forged documents manufactured by a former employee of Italian military intelligence. (In the US, the only major public intellectual with close ties to Italian military intelligence is pro-war gadfly Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute).

Over at Smirky's, Jack Dalton introduces some rigourous investigation with this choice quote from Ledeen:

"Good religion teaches men that politics is the most important enterprise in the eyes of God. Like Moses, Machiavelli wants the law of his state to be seen, and therefore obeyed, as divinely ordered. The combination of fear of God and fear of punishment -- duly carried out with good arms -- provides the necessary discipline for good government."

Dalton then does a good job of tying Ledeen's teachings to his disciples in the Bush White House:

G.W. Bush may occupy the 'seat of power' right now, but he is not the architect nor is he the actual 'head' of this 'radical revolutionary movement' of 'Straussian' pro-corporate, theocratic ideologues within the Republican Party--who are determined to forever change what this country is, does and represents. Bush is the 'poster child' for that 'movement.' He is the 'puppet' who has been allowed to pick his 'puppeteers.' To a large degree it is what Strauss taught that is the ideology driving Bush & Co.

'Strauss believed that the role of religion was indispensable to the political success of a nation. For a political society had to hold together and act as a unit in lock step with the leader. Strauss believed that religion was the means to inculcate the desired ideas into the minds of the masses. He didn't care what religion -- just as long as it was a religion that could link itself to the political order.' Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Don Rumsfeld and Michael Ledeen did their doctoral studies under the tutelage of Leo Strauss at Chicago and it is they who brought Straussian ideology to government and have wrapped their 'policies' around that ideology. It goes without saying Bush believes this...

All of which puts this quote from George Orwell's 1984 in perfect context:

"The essence of oligarchcal rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same."

So now we have Ledeen using his Italian military contacts to find some totally FUBAR guy, code-named "Curve Ball", who was willing to go on record with these phoney allegations of Niger yellowcake. We have John Bolton at the State Department relentlessly pushing for an investigation, despite widespread intelligence dismissing the claims, we have George W. Bush using those "twelve words" about Niger yellowcake in his State of the Union speech, and then we have Karl Rove bringing the whole machine down on the head of Joe Wilson when he dared say it was all a big lie.

Sack the lot of them. Demand impeachment now!

BushOut On BradBlog

Thanks to avid reader Winter Patriot, whose infectious enthusiasm for this blog has been a great encouragement, I have a post as a guest blogger at THE BRAD BLOG today. Does this mean my much-cherished obscurity is at risk???

Rove-Plame Scandal Linked To Bolton

Well, I told you Joshua Marshall was good, and he is sinking his teeth into this Rove case just as I hoped he would!

Today Marshall links Wilson's trip to Niger with the "invisible hands" of John Bolton:

If you go back and trace out just what happened as the phoney Niger papers, and the reports based on them, made their circuitous way through the executive branch -- and this using both public information and stuff from reporting -- an odd and at first hard to explain pattern emerges.

Confidence in the documents kept getting knocked down. But someone or some group kept giving them fresh life. And, improbably, those someones seemed to be at the State Department.

That's odd because, institutionally, State was the least hawkish in the lead up to the war and their in-house intelligence shop, INR, turned out to be the only outfit in the intelligence community that got most things right about Iraqi WMD.

And yet it was at State that the docs kept seeming to gain new life.

The evidence is circumstantial. But all of it points to Bolton's as, shall we say, the invisible hands...

Marshall also digs up some entertaining dirt on Rove's lawyer, Robert "Gold Bars" Luskin:

Luskin got paid more than $500,000 of his attorney's fees in gold bars from his client who was trying to appeal his conviction on charges that he laundered drug money through precious metals dealers. Who woulda thought that was drug money?

Luskin insisted that he "never have, and never would, knowingly accept a fee that was the proceeds of illegal activities."

But when federal prosecutors finally got a chance to depose Luskin and Saccoccia's other lawyers, they found that their lawyers' fees had come in forms "such as gold bars, cash that was dropped off at hotels and trunks of cars, and money transfers from Swiss bank accounts."

Eventually, in 1998, Luskin came to a settlement with the government in which he agreed to cough up $245,000 of the money...

Go, Josh, go!

If You Can Keep Your Head When All About Are Losing Theirs...

The Orwellian logic of the Bush regime is taking its toll on some liberal commentators, as latest postings at The Smirking Chimp confirm.

John S. Hatch admits he used to "believe all the crap America said it stood for" ...

I believed in the basic humanity of the American people, their kindness, decency, and tendency to do the right thing against whatever odds. I believed that the basic ideas of democracy and freedom were unassailable and would prevail no matter what might happen. I believed that Americans believed in basic human rights and human dignity, and that they would risk their lives to protect and preserve those values. Boy was I ever stupid!

But his grasp on reality is now slipping:

Armageddon is coming, so why give a shit about the environment? Jesus can't come until Israel is unified, so let's be nice to the murderous Ariel and help him get rid of those pesky Palestinians. Don't worry, Lamb of God will take care of the goddam kikes in good time. They either convert or they die and burn. It's God's plan. Aids is the Almighty's revenge on homos. Gay marriage is an abomination. Jerry Falwell is not. Rev. Franklin Graham is a saint. Islam is evil. George W. Bush is a deeply religious man who espouses torture, murder, and illegal war out of a deep love of the highest human values. The Prince of Light likes capital punishment, but will burn you forever if you have an abortion or help someone to die, but he wants you to kill people dead in Iraq, please, including 100,000 civilians. (When a guard at Abu Grahaib was asked how as a Christian he could participate in torture, he observed that as a Christian he knew it wasn't quite right, but given the opportunity to cause a grown man to pee his pants in fear, well, it was just no contest. God bless America.) Trust in Jesus. Up is down. In is out. Lies are truth. Fair is foul and foul is fair. We are not insane. We are not insane...

Sheila Samples asks whether the good times in the USA are over for good?

They applauded him. It was astonishing. They applauded, when they should have been wailing in anguish while collapsing under an unbearable sense of national loss. But no. Grinning like cartoon caricatures, they applauded an in-your-face war criminal -- a great deceiver who is openly intent on destroying everything that is, or ever was, good in their lives. Bush's mission will be over when the good times are over; when they're over for good -- when all that remains is broken. Broken families. Broken bodies. Broken societies. Broken cultures. Broken hearts. Broken world...

I wonder if Americans know just how close to the abyss we really are.

This follows recent posts by Riverbend and many other bloggers, asking whether we are the ones who do not properly grasp the new, FOX-sponsored, neo-conservative version of Bushworld reality. To confess, I myself have even questioned the very nature of this sick "reality" under Bush's bizarre regime. But the pendulum finally seems to be swinging, as the posts below show.

Now is not the time to waver, folks. Let's go for the jugular (metaphorically speaking, of course!).

NYT Front Page: Fire Rove!

Matt Drudge has tomorrows NYT front page:

'Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman, repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous assertions that Rove played no role in the matter or whether the president would follow through on his pledge to fire anyone in his administration found to be involved,' reports the NYT's David Johnston, Adam Liptak and Richard Stevenson in their front page lead.

'Democrats demanded the White House provide a full public explanation of any role played by Karl Rove in disclosing the identity two years ago of a CIA operative, turning up the political heat on a long-simmering case just as President Bush heads into a critical period in his second term. But the White House declined to answer any questions about Rove's involvement...'

Judith Miller: In Bed With The Neocons

Further to the post below and speculation regarding Judith Miller's role in the Rove-Plame saga, it's interesting to take another look at this Guardian article looking at some US think-tanks:

"An earlier book on Iraq Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf which Ms Mylroie co-authored with Judith Miller, a New York Times journalist, became the New York Times's No 1 bestseller.

Ms Mylroie and Ms Miller both have connections with the Middle East Forum. Mr Perle, Mr Rubin, Ms Wurmser, Ms Mylroie and Ms Miller are all clients of Eleana Benador, a Peruvian-born linguist who acts as a sort of theatrical agent for experts on the Middle East and terrorism, organising their TV appearances and speaking engagements.

Of the 28 clients on Ms Benador's books, at least nine are connected with the AEI, the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum.

Although these three privately-funded organisations promote views from only one end of the political spectrum, the amount of exposure that they get with their books, articles and TV appearances is extraordinary.

The Washington Institute, for example, takes the credit for placing up to 90 articles written by its members - mainly 'op-ed' pieces - in newspapers during the last year.

Fourteen of those appeared in the Los Angeles Times, nine in New Republic, eight in the Wall Street Journal, eight in the Jerusalem Post, seven in the National Review Online, six in the Daily Telegraph, six in the Washington Post, four in the New York Times and four in the Baltimore Sun. Of the total, 50 were written by Michael Rubin.

Anyone who has tried offering op-ed articles to a major newspaper will appreciate the scale of this achievement.

Time to play join the dots again. Plame... Rove... Miller... Wurmser... Perle... Mylroie... Chalabi... Pipes... Kramer...

Gotta say, this shady think-tank stuff all reminds me of my investigations into Spirit of America and the US thinktank that set them up, Cyber Century Forum.

Pressure Builds on Bush: Fire the "Turd Blossom"

As the Rove-Plame story heats up, it is important to remember that the central issue here is not simply that Rove and others in the White House have lied, or even that a CIA agent's cover was blown (however serious that may be), but that these lies all began with a deliberate attempt to discredit the genuine intelligence on WMDs that was being gathered by Joe Wilson, and that this was all part of a much broader pattern of deliberate, widespread deception on WMD intelligence. As the Downing Street Memos clearly revealed, the Bush White House decided a very long time ago to manipulate the intelligence to fit a pre-determined plan to attack Iraq.

The pressure on Rove inevitably puts pressure on Bush himself. As Joshua Marshall points out:

We don't know that the president knew about the decision to use Plame's work at CIA against Wilson in advance, though given the high-level working group assembled at the White House to go to war with Wilson, it's reasonable to suspect that he did. But at a minimum the president has known about this as long as the rest of us -- that is, almost exactly two years.

And he -- unlike anyone else in the country -- had the power to call Rove into his office and ask him whether he did this or knew who did?

Whether he knew before or after, he's known for a very long time. And pretty clearly he didn't want Rove held to any account. Indeed, he's gone to great lengths to prevent this from happening. And of course few reporters in DC have cared to press this essential point.

This from Slate:

Rove did not mention Plame by name, but that hardly matters (except possibly in a narrow legalistic sense, and I have serious doubts even about that). Merely saying that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA was enough to blow Valerie Plame's cover.

It's possible, even likely, that Rove didn't know Plame was undercover. But that distinction is relevant only to the question of whether Patrick Fitzgerald should prosecute Rove under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which requires that a covert agent be exposed "intentionally." For a White House official to be so reckless as to reveal, even unknowingly, the identity of an undercover CIA employee is a firing offense. Period. That Rove did so for the purpose of smearing a political enemy makes the whole episode even more distasteful. He's outta there.

And meanwhile there is still plenty of speculation surrounding other aspects of this case. This analysis of Judith Miller's role from Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch suggests Millar may be doing jail time for "protecting her source" so that she can avoid doing jail time for being the source:

Miller never actually wrote a story in the New York Times about Plame being in the CIA. So why has Fitzgerald been so eager to have her testify? The answer may lie in a paragraph buried in the Washington Post, reading as follows: "Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials ­- not the other way around -­ that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee."

We could conjecture that when Fitzgerald interviewed White House political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, one or other or both had said that they learned Plame was married to Wilson and in the CIA from Miller, who ­(again this is surmise)­ might well have learned this from one of her other sources, whether Perle or Chalabi or someone else in the intelligence world...

Blogenlust also thinks Miller may hold the key, then throws in this:

The question I want to know is whether a "special assistant" (David Wurmser) to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control (John Bolton) would be considered part of "my administration"? What exactly does a "special assistant" do?

Elsewhere, the LA Times' Michael Isikoff asks how how did Rove or any other White House insiders actually know that Valerie Plame, or "Wilson's wife", worked at the CIA?

What we do know is there was a classified State Department report that said this, that was taken by Secretary of State Powell with him on the trip to Africa that President Bush was then on, and many senior White House aides were on.

That classified State Department report appears to have been -- or may well have been the source for the information that Rove and others were then dishing out to reporters. And if that's the case, there still may be -- we don't know yet, but there still may be an instance where classified information was provided to reporters.

And in another line of investigation, it seems that Karl Rove's lawyer might have messed up and allowed Cooper to avoid jail time, by saying publicly what Rove himself would not:

"If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source," [Rove lawyer Robert] Luskin told The Journal, "it's not Karl he's protecting."

Josh Marshall has this analysis:

What seems to have happened is that Luskin availed himself of the opportunity to talk tough and categorically to the Journal at his client's apparent expense. The key of course is the second to last graf that I've excerpted, in which the Times author says Luskin was 'surprised' at what Cooper and his attorney read into his statement to the Journal. He had meant it only as a blanket restatement of their position to date.

Presumably, once Cooper and his attorney took this interpretation with the judge, there was no turning back for Luskin. What could he say?

Marshall is referring to this story from the New York Times, which graphically describes events on the morning Cooper was due at jail:

Mr. Cooper, it turns out, never spoke to his confidential source that day, said Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for the source, who is now known to be Karl Rove, the senior White House political adviser.

The development was actually the product of a frenzied series of phone calls initiated that morning by a lawyer for Mr. Cooper and involving Mr. Luskin and the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald...

What a can of worms!

UPDATE: AP digs up some choice quotes from Scott McLellan:

Sept. 29, 2003

Q: You said this morning, quote, "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved." How does he know that?

A: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. ... I've said that it's not true. ... And I have spoken with Karl Rove.

Q: It doesn't take much for the president to ask a senior official working for him, to just lay the question out for a few people and end this controversy today.

A: Do you have specific information to bring to our attention? ... Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that."

Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, "Did you ever have this information?"

A: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.

___

Oct. 7, 2003

Q: You have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby (Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff), Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams (National Security Council official) to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?

A: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team. And that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.

___

Oct. 10, 2003

Q: Earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

A: I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.

Q: So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

A: They assured me that they were not involved in this.

Q: They were not involved in what?

A: The leaking of classified information.

See the following post for today's clam-up.

Pure Farce

The Raw Story has an edited (Rove only) transcript of Monday's White House press briefing:

QUESTION: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don't think you should read anything into it other than: We're going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.

QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this"?

QUESTION: Do you stand by that statement?

MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.

QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk.

You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?

MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation...

QUESTION: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.

QUESTION: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything.

You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?

MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MCCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

QUESTION: You're in a bad spot here, Scott...

(LAUGHTER)

... because after the investigation began -- after the criminal investigation was under way -- you said, October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," from that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began.

Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation.

MCCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that.

We know each other very well. And it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation.

And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.

I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I'm just not going to do that.

QUESTION: So you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven't.

MCCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I'm just not going to respond to them. QUESTION: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?

MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.

QUESTION: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?

MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.

QUESTION: Well, we are going to keep asking them.

When did the president learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson's wife in the decision to send him to Africa?

MCCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.

QUESTION: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been...

MCCLELLAN: I've responded to your questions.

QUESTION: After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the president's word that anybody who was involved will be let go?

MCCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.

QUESTION: Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove's lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, here?

MCCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it's ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.

QUESTION: Scott, there's a difference between commenting on an investigation and taking an action...

MCCLELLAN: (inaudible)

QUESTION: Can I finish, please?

MCCLELLAN: I'll come back to you in a minute...

QUESTION: Does the president continue to have confidence in Mr. Rove?

MCCLELLAN: Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you've heard my response on this.

QUESTION: So you're not going to respond as to whether or not the president has confidence in his deputy chief of staff?

MCCLELLAN: You're asking this question in the context of an ongoing investigation, and I would not read anything into it other then I'm simply going to comment on an ongoing investigation.

QUESTION: Has there been any change, or is there a plan for Mr. Rove's portfolio to be altered in any way?

MCCLELLAN: Again, you have my response to these questions.

So is Karl Rove going down or not?

It's all the talk on the blogosphere, but as usual the supposedly pro-liberal MSM is woefully behind.

A lot of talk has focussed on the fact that Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper took place before Novak's column was printed. But it now seems the Novak column was written earlier and released to the White House (and others) for review. You have to wonder why that happens, eh? But anyway...

The key point could be buried in the fine print of the latest Newsweek article:

"Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. 'I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name,' Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. "

OK, maybe Rove didn't reveal her name, but he certainly did identify her and he certainly did reveal that she was a CIA agent:

Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."

It seems clear that Rove's main motivation was to discredit Wilson's intelligence because it didn't fit the "fixed" version of WMD intelligence that the Bush Gang were working on in their little Office Of Special Plans. It's worth noting that Wilson's wife did NOT, in fact, organise his Feb 2002 trip to Niger "as a boondoggle" (as the White House claimed), nor did she "authorize" it (as Rove told Cooper). So we have lies on multiple levels here.

Also interesting is this Editor and Publisher review of a recent story WP by Dan Balz:

Yesterday The New York Times reported that Cooper’s dramatic reprieve from jail, after his unnamed sourced freed him from their confidentiality agreement, came after he got a personal okay from Rove. At the same time, The Post reported that Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, denied that Rove had called him.

"Yesterday, however," Balz reports, "Luskin declined to comment on a New York Times report that the release came as a result of negotiations involving Rove's and Cooper's attorneys, nor would he speculate that Cooper was released from his pledge in some other fashion than a direct conversation with Rove. 'I'm not going to comment any further,' Luskin said."

Balz also noted that Luskin's previous confirmation that Rove had spoken to Cooper two years ago "appeared at odds with previous White House statements. In retrospect, however, these statements -- which some interpreted as emphatic denials -- were in fact carefully worded."

You can say that again. It seems increasingly likely that SOMETHING is going to come out of all this soon. But what? This comment via Atrios:

The only possible issue left is whether Rove knew Plame was a covert agent. The e-mail is silent on the matter -- although the fact that Rove didn't want his name connected to the leak strongly suggests his guilt in that regard.

This passage also illustrates the abuse of anonymous sources...

Yeah, kind of ironic seeing anonymous White House insiders being revealed, after these same people jumped all over Newsweek for using anonymous source in their Koran-flushing story.

I'm tipping Rove gets a wrist slap or, if it's anything worse than that, they will tie it up in the courts for the next three years, followed by a Presidential pardon when Bush leaves office. Ain't that the way it normally goes?

UPDATE: This Washington Post article is almost ridiculously tame. In fact, if could almost have been written by Rove's attorneys as a positioning article to establish public support for his legal case. What's going on here?

The reporter acknowledges that Karl Rove told Matt Cooper 100% fabricated lies:

In the conversation, Rove gave Cooper a "big warning" that Wilson's assertions might not be entirely accurate and that it was not the director of the CIA or the vice president who sent Wilson on his trip...

Well, guess what? Wilson's assertions were totally accurate, and it was not Wilson's wife who sent him on the trip, as Rove claimed. So here we have evidence of a top White House insider "FIXING THE INTELLIGENCE" - and the Washington Post not only ignores it, they actually struggle to justify it???

Besides which, well... to quote from the TPM cafe:

I'm not one to parse the judicial codes here, but I don't think anyone is going to see a difference between "Valerie Plame" and "Joe Wilson's wife, and here's a phone book if you can't connect the dots."

And here are a few other choice quotes courtesy of Think Progress...

From Scotty McLellan:

Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, “The President knows” that Karl Rove wasn’t involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I’ve made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it’s public knowledge. I’ve said that it’s not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove –

From George W. Bush:

This is a very serious matter. And our administration takes it seriously… this is a serious charge, by the way. We’re talking about a criminal action.

From George H. W. Bush, a former head of the CIA:

I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

Another Sunday, Another Leaked Document in the UK Papers

The most astonishing piece of news on the wires at the moment is surely the leaked UK government document (full text here) showing that the British and U.S. governments are planning to reduce their troop levels in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006.

The story has been covered by Reuters and the Washington Post among others. It says the UK has already made "commitments" to "hand over" provinces in southern Iraq, while the US is planning to reduce troop numbers from around 160,000 to just 66,000.

As Juan Cole asks, what in the world is going on?

In practice, I think the withdrawal plan implies a willingness to turn the five northern provinces over to the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary, and the 9 southern provinces over to a combination of Shiite militias and new Iraqi government security forces (Interior Ministry gendarmes and regular army). And, I think this obviously desperate plan really risks damaging the integrity of Iraq as a nation-state. But, it is unlikely that for the US to remain at its present force levels would help maintain that integrity, anyway.

This news comes just after the Italians have announced a troop withdrawal, and at the same time former CIA hitman and Iraq PM Iyad Allawi warns that Iraq is ready to disintegrate into civil war.

So what's the plan, guys? Cut and run?

And... how much longer can Tony Blair's government survive when every document marked Top Secret is fodder for an eager press?

Another day in Iraq, another batch of corpses...

Did you even hear this story on the news today: Suicide Attacks Kill at Least 48 in Iraq?

Or were the top TV stories still breathlessly talking about the 50+ dead from the London bombings?

Here in Australia, we have had saturation news coverage of the "worst ever terrorist attack on British soil". TV stations ran special two hour editions re-hashing almost meaningless "reporting" from earlier TV news editions. The PM made statements. Prayer vigils were held. In Brisbane, the Premier put the whole police force on High Alert without ever properly explaining why.

Yet we seem to have grown bored with the ongoing conflict in Iraq, even though the weekly body count (when the bodies are counted) is consistenly higher than London's casualties. And don't even talk about Afghanistan - we have completely forgotten it.

This is the real tragedy of Bush's illegal and immoral wars: not that our leaders have lied us into such violence, but that we have so willingly accepted it. The latest news reinforces the fact: for most people in the Western world, a British, American or even Australian life is worth 100 or more Third World lives.

And we wonder why do they hate us?

From Bangladesh's The Daily Star: "It is not just the US that has changed irrevocably after the most horrendous attack on America on September 11, 2001. The whole world has changed since then, and yet many in the West have little idea about how much the change has been... The greatest tragedy of 9/11 is not what the US lost on that fatal morning, but what the world has lost since then -- which is a lot... "

The ghost at Gleneagles: "In Lewis Carroll's classic, Alice asked the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter to show her the way out of wonderland. They did, over and again, this way, that way, until she lost her temper and brought down her dream-world, waking her up. The people killed and maimed in Iraq and the people wilfully impoverished in Africa by our governments and our institutions, in our name, demand that we wake up."

What He Said...

From David Clark, a former Labour government adviser, writing in the Guardian:

It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing...

The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the start... It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the "terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism.

It should be clear by now that we cannot defeat this threat with conventional force alone, however necessary that may be in specific circumstances...

An effective strategy can be developed, but it means turning our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate. No sustained insurgency can exist in a vacuum. At a minimum, it requires communities where the environment is permissive enough for insurgents to blend in and organise without fear of betrayal. This does not mean that most members of those communities approve of what they are doing. It is enough that there should be a degree of alienation sufficient to create a presumption against cooperating with the authorities. We saw this in Northern Ireland...

In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was...

The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine...

The current approach is failing and it's time for a change.

London Bombings

Like many others, I have lived in London: I know those streets, those buses, those tube stops, and I know many people living there who I care about. I lived in London when the IRA was still exploding bombs on a regular basis: everybody in the city knew the risks they took every day, every time they stepped out the door. The resolute public attitude of those times continues today, typified in the following passage from Reuters:

At dusk, hundreds of thousands of Londoners began a long walk home, with the underground network that carries 3 million passengers a day closed at least until Friday.

Thomas Carr, a 63-year-old electrician who faced a two-hour walk home, said he would keep using the underground.

"It won't put me off using the Tube," he said. "You can't let them beat you."

Indeed, Thomas, you cannot. But you can at least know who is attacking you and why. Our governments have not been very clear on that point. In fact, they have been totally disengenuous.

Bush's response to the bombings is a shrug of the shoulders, an I-told-you-so comment:

"The War on Terror goes on..."

What is this "War on Terror", George? How do you win it? How do you end it? Is it really a war, or is that just a convenient political myth, designed to simplify the packaging of a complex problem for public consumption?

In response to the bombings, Juan Cole quotes Michael Scheuer's analysis de-bunking the Bush-Blair myth that Al Quaeda attacks the West because "they hate our values" ...

Scheuer believes that al-Qaeda is an insurgent ideology focused on destroying the United States and its allies, because its members believe that the US is trying to destroy them. Al-Qaeda members see the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, backed by the US; US support for military regimes like those of Pakistan and Egypt; and US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a US onslaught on Islam and Muslims aimed at reducing them to neo-colonial slavery. That is, specific Western policies are the focus of al-Qaeda response, not a generalized "hatred" of "values."

This analysis is further strengthened by the following (breaking) news article which suggests that former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu may have been the target of at least one of the attacks:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Mind you, other reports say the warnings went the other way, from the Israelis to the UK government:

The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7.

Bodies still rotting in the subways and already the politicians are playing pass-the-blame. Fact is, whichever way the warnings went, there wasn't enough last-minute information to stop the bombing. And there never will be a 100% secure way to stop such bombings, unless we turn all our democratic societies into police states.

So if we want this "War on Terror" to end, it's not enough to say that "we are fighting them abroad so we don't have to fight them at home." It's not enough to spend billions on a bloated military and intelligence system, to launch wars on country after country after country. Real solutions are needed.

And the only viable solution at this stage involves recognizing that at least some of the grievances of Al Quaeda are not without basis in fact.

Before you start shouting "We will never negotiate with terrorists!", consider this: the US has already admitted that previous US administrations made mistakes in their dealings with dictators like Saddam. So now it's time to look at the current administration's many, many mistakes. Most specifically:

- the illegal invasion of Iraq, based on proven lies, still with no declared intention of ever fully withdrawing US forces or dismantling US bases;

- double standards in defining a totally pro-Western version of "Democracy",

- woefully complicit support for Israel's rabid dog policies in the Middle East.

Until and unless our governments get serious about addressing these failures, I cannot see an end to atrocities such as those committed in London today. And the only way our governments will ever acknowledge these failings, or do anything to change these atrocious policies, is if we, the people, pressure them to do so.

In other words, it's up to you and me. Let's save the world, together.

Mixed Up, Messed Up, Holed Up

Latest on the DSM-Conyers actions here.

Matt Cooper agrees to testify in the Plame Case, apparently because his source has agreed to let him do so.

Josh Marshall specualtes that the original source might have been a reporter rather than a White House politician. Marshall has a discussion board here.

And while G8 gets going in the wake of Live 8, new UN figures show the USA spend 25 times their foreign aid allocation on military, while the average figure for Western Europe is about 8 times the foreign aid budget.

And The War On Ahem! was always kinda murky because Ahem! was never seriously defined. Now it has been re-defined:

There were nearly 3,200 terrorist attacks worldwide last year, a federal counterterrorism center said Tuesday, using a broader definition that increased fivefold the number of attacks the agency had been counting.

The National Counterterrorism Center's interim director, John Brennan, ... cautioned that comparing the new tally to previous ones was comparing apples to oranges.

In 2004, the counterterrorism center says, there were 3,192 terror attacks worldwide with 28,433 people wounded, killed or kidnapped.

In government numbers made public in April, using a more stringent definition of terrorism, the State Department and the counterterrorism center had tallied 651 significant international terror attacks with more than 9,000 victims...

Brennan and other government officials blamed human error and a definition of terrorism that had not been updated since the 1980s.

So that's about a 500% increase in terrorism, just be redefining the word. Imagine if they included US attacks on Iraqi homes, or US bombing of Afghan weddings...?

Be afraid. Be very afraid...

UPDATE: Judith Miller has now been jailed after refusing to reveal he own source. This would suggest, for starters, that Miller's source is not the same as Cooper's (which we now know was Rove).

Miller, in case you don't remember, was one of the most vocal supporters of Bush's invasion, and her hyped-up NYT articles on WMDs have been widely discredited. Could it be that Miller cannot reveal her own source because that would expose her as a CIA agent, or a neo-con plant? Remember, the CIA boasted long ago that they had a reporter in every news room in America...

This is kind of humbling: a Technorati Search reveals four pages of blogs linking to Bushout (by Gandhi). Hey, whatever happened to Jon Reimer, anyway? Guess he must've joined the Marines like he said he would one day...

Will Live 8 Make A Difference?

The BBC reviews the responses from the African press.

Stop, Look, What's That Sound?

Did I mention the Downing Street Memo yet today? David Model puts Bush illegal behaviour in an historical context:

All of these revealing comments in the memo simply reaffirm that the United States is an Empire which does not accept boundaries including the American Constitution, the United Nations Charter, international law, or world opinion. President Bush is simply the current Emperor of the American Empire whose conduct is no different than any other American Emperor. When a candidate becomes president he accepts the role of emperor of the realm...

All these presidents are guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and maintaining the empire without concern for the cost in human life, human suffering and destruction of non-military targets.

Go, Josh, Go!

If you are not already familiar with it, the Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall is an invaluable blog by a Washington insider who has all the best attributes of a bull terrier (but he doesn't steal tennis balls from kids in the school playground).

Marshall was totally all over the top of Bush's fake Social Security crisis and deserves credit for helping ensure the whole thing was a dismal flop instead of an excuse to channel even more money into the Bush machine.

Now Marshall seems to be taking aim on a new target, the Rove-Plame scandal. In fact, Marshall was on top of this a long time ago:

I've gotten hints or suggestions from several sources over the last month that new information is bubbling to the surface, not about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but who was behind the underlying caper that started the whole drama afoot in the first place: those phoney Niger uranium documents.

As longtime readers of this site know, last year colleagues of mine and I were able to trace the documents back to a former Italian intelligence agent named Rocco Martino. Martino was the 'Italian businessman' who tried to sell the documents to Elizabetta Burba, the journalist who eventually brought them to the US Embassy in Rome.

We were able determine that the documents had been put into Martino's hands by a then-serving member of SISMI -- Italian military intelligence. And this SISMI colonel had done so using a women working in the Niger embassy in Rome, an Italian national, as a cut-out.

This was, as you might imagine, more than enough to make us want to know a lot more. But we were never able to develop any conclusive proof about who or what was behind the SISMI colonel or what the backstory was within SISMI.

Suspicions, we had plenty. But in terms of hard facts, we hit a wall just inside SISMI.

Just who forged the documents? And, more significantly, who put the whole process in motion? And why had SISMI or elements within it involved themselves?

Mashall thinks Fitzgerald is after Rove for some felony arising out of the case (perjury after the fact? conspiracy?) but not the immediate and original act of leaking the name. Explaining that special prosecutors like Fitzgerald shouldn't legally be pressing for the jailing of journalists unless this is en route to prosecuting a serious crime, Marshall has two more intriguing questions for the Rove case:

Would Fitzgerald have pushed to get Cooper and Miller in the slammer if some other party in the White House weren't in a lot of trouble?

And one last question: Cooper and Miller are very different kinds of journalists, swim in very different waters. Are they really in this jam for the same reasons?

I suggest you bookmark Marshall's site to keep up with the case.

Over To You, Mr Moore...

At the risk of alienating my vast right-wing readership, I am going to quote directly from Michael Moore, who has a good wrap-up of the US-talking-to-terrorist thread:

Ahead of George's Tuesday night speech there was a brief flurry of reports on American attempts to talk with Iraqi insurgents. The Washington Post had this:

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that his forces have been working to speak with Iraqis from several ethnic and political groups, largely aiming to reach those who say they are connected to the Iraqi insurgency. Casey said there have been no discussions with foreign fighters, including those linked to insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The London Times mentioned the group Ansar al-Sunna specifically:

The Iraqi sources, who have proved reliable in the past, said the American team included senior military and intelligence officers, a civilian staffer from Congress and a representative of the US embassy in Baghdad.

On the rebel side were representatives of insurgent groups including Ansar al-Sunna, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas.

For its part, Ansar al-Sunnah sent out a message to its supporters promising that victory is in the near future:

The message opens with a reference to the recent speech by George W. Bush admitting to having no clear time-table for a withdrawal from Iraq. According to the author, Bush was forced to make this admission because of the operations of Ansar al-Sunnah, which in turn “caused a change in all the communiqués that the prime minister of the apostate government (Ja’afari) had prepared to deliver,” to president Bush as evidence of Western victories.

And just for a sense of intrigue, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani denied outright that the Iraqi government played any role in any such talks:

"The Iraqi government has nothing to do with the negotiations with insurgents," Talabani told a press conference marking the anniversary. "If the Americans are negotiating with them, it's up to them."
....
"The Iraqis have a sovereign government," Rumsfeld said. "They will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time."

The Mujahideen Central Command, a resistance group, also deny negotiations:

The War Criminal Rumsfield has spoken of lies when he claimed negotiations, for he today curls in Pain.

We Rafidan, represent part of the resistance factions, confirm only to reinforce a driven nail in this war criminal's head, that there is no such word "negotiation" in our political agenda.

So is the Iraqi government lying? Is the American government lying? Are they simply trying to triangulate the insurgenterrorists, trying to sow distrust among the many anti-occupation factions?

The "fair and balanced" Washington Times looks at these events and spits out this interesting editorial in today's edition:

There are two absolutely mind-boggling aspects to this story. The first is that such meetings even took place. Aren't we the people who don't negotiate with terrorists? The ones who voted GeorgeW."You're-With-Us-Or-Against-Us" Bush back into office? Apparently not. Or, if we are, something has changed to the point where such lines in the sand don't matter anymore. Additionally mind-boggling is the fact that practically no one in the world has noticed the change, or considered its disastrous ramifications.

What do you think? Should America negotiate with insurgents and/or terrorists? What exactly would they negotiate for? Let us know.

Moore also has news on the latest poll from Zogby (no bounce for Bush from his recent speech) and a report from the intrepid Dahr Jamail on Iraq's faltering Health system.

US Casualties: 9,000 Dead In Iraq?

There is a time for sorrow and a time for anger. This article from MMN, The Extremely High Price of Bushism, packs plenty of pent-up anger:

Bush has greatly harmed the people, greatly harmed the environment, greatly harmed democracy, greatly harmed the constitution, greatly harmed the prestige of the nation, and he smiles and smirks and acts as if he is proud of himself.

The article also spreads this intriguing rumour:

Even today, word is out that the Bush administration is suspected of playing politics with the numbers of American soldiers killed in Iraq, and only listing numbers of soldiers who actually died in battle as war dead, but not including those who died in hospitals or from war wounds after being shipped to Germany or even to the United States. Some are saying that the Bush deception is concealing an estimated 9000 deaths of American soldiers in the Bush War of Aggression in Iraq, a much higher cost than the 1800+ deaths the Bushites are publicly acknowledging.

Is it possible? Anyone who has been paying attention knows it is all too possible...

Meanwhile, Back In Reality...

Riverbend at Baghdad Burning reacts to Bush's latest speech:

He was trying, throughout the speech, to paint a rosy picture of the situation. According to him, Iraq was flourishing under the occupation. In Bush’s Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an occupation) and there is democracy.

“He’s describing a different country…” I commented to E. and the cousin.

“Yes,” E. replied. “He’s talking about the *other* Iraq… the one with the WMD.”

... Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

Rove... Lying? Never!!!

Lawrence O'Donnell at The Huffington Post suggests Rove's lawyer is lying:

"If what I have reported is not true, if Karl Rove is not Matt Cooper's source, Rove could prove that instantly by telling us what he told the grand jury. Nothing prevents him from doing that, except a good lawyer who is trying to keep him out of jail."

Plame Case Cracks Open: IT WAS ROVE!

The source who leaked the identity of CIA Agent Valerie Plame to Time reporter Matt Cooper has been revealed - and as Joe Wilson suspected, it's Bush White House svengali Karl Rove.

Editor and Publisher has the breaking news:

Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two authoritative sources have confirmed that one name is top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

This afternoon, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff confirmed that Cooper did indeed talk to Rove for his story, but Rove's lawyer denied he was the key leaker in the case.

You can see the germ of Karl Rove's defence right there - his lawyers will argue that he was "A" source, but not "THE KEY" source of the story. So will Rove name names and identify the KEY source of the story? Or will he invoke his Consitutional rights and do jail time instead? Oooh, the irony....!

Funny how things change, eh? One minute there are two reporters facing jail time for refusing to disclose their source in the case, the next thing you know their source himself is the one facing jail time. And how ironic that Karl Rove, a man who helped create the environment where these reporters' Constitutional rights are ignored, should himself now become a potential victim of the same Draconian laws he helped implement.

And remember, Rove habitually assaults others for not supporting the troops, or for endangering the lives of US servicemen by not adequately supporting his dirty little war, yet he himself is now proven to have endangered the life of a CIA Agent and her lifetime of contacts (in the WMD field, no less).

Newsweek breaks the story here, including background info and quotes from Rove's lawyers.

There's still much more to come on this intriguing case. Kos has this timely reminder from last year's news:

Adding to the growing intrigue in the Plame case, the grand jury investigating the leak of the covert CIA operative's name has subpoenaed a wide range of White House documents, including records of telephone calls from Air Force One and information relating to an internal working group dealing with Iraq, government sources confirmed to CNN on Friday.

Bush's USA: Internationally Isolated

Bush's coalition buddies are starting to realize they've been had.

With Italy pursuing the CIA's abduction of an Islamic cleric in Milan, PM Silvio Berlusconi has angrily demanded "full respect for Italian sovereignty".

But Tony Blair's latest moves on climate change are more indicative of a global shift that leave's Bush's USA isolated on an increasing number of major issues. Blair is pushing the G8 to isolate the USA on climate change after the Americans refused to endorse the following key passages in a declaration:

Climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring and that human activity is contributing to this warming.

... we know that we need to slow, stop and then reverse the growth in greenhouse gases to reduce our exposure to potentially serious economic, environmental and security risks.

Now, that is hardly explosive stuff. It is the basic premise stating that man-made climate change exists. Bush refuses to acknowledge even that, not because it isn't true, but because it would be bad for business:

"Kyoto would have wrecked our economy. I couldn't in good faith have signed Kyoto," Mr Bush said.

So once again, in Bush's USA, business comes before truth. Viva el Fascismo! Viva El Busho Loco!

PS: My own part of the world has just been hit by massive flooding, even though we are still in the grips of the longest drought in over a hundred years. But who are you gonna believe - the world's #1 criminal or your own lyin' eyes?

Downing Street Memos: The Next Stage

From Raw Story:

Representative John Conyers, Jr., (D-MI) House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member, along with 51 other Members today submitted a broad and comprehensive FOIA request to the White House, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State seeking any and all documents and materials concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the lead up to the Iraq war, RAW STORY has learned.

In addition, the Members also formally requested that the House Committees on Judiciary, Armed Services, International Relations, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence commence hearings on the Downing Street Minutes.

"Chimpeachment" Looms

The latest figures from Zogby International are more than a little interesting:

President Bush's televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the latest Zogby International poll. And, in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq...

While half (50%) of respondents do not hold this view, supporters of impeachment outweigh opponents in some parts of the country.

Among those living in the Western states, a 52% majority favors Congress using the impeachment mechanism while just 41% are opposed; in Eastern states, 49% are in favor and 45% opposed. In the South, meanwhile, impeachment is opposed by three-in-five voters (60%) and supported by just one-in-three (34%); in the Central/Great Lakes region, 52% are opposed and 38% in favor.

Impeachment is overwhelmingly rejected in the Red States—just 36% say they agree Congress should use it if the President is found to have lied on Iraq, while 55% reject this view; in the “Blue States” that voted for Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry in 2004, meanwhile, a plurality of 48% favors such proceedings while 45% are opposed.

A large majority of Democrats (59%) say they agree that the President should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, while just three-in-ten (30%) disagree. Among President Bush’s fellow Republicans, a full one-in-four (25%) indicate they would favor impeaching the President under these circumstances, while seven-in-ten (70%) do not. Independents are more closely divided, with 43% favoring impeachment and 49% opposed.

Thanks to Atrios for the link and the new word, "chimpeachment" - catchy, no?

Sing It Like You Care

I don't often go off-topic (click here for the latest Downing Street Memo news!), but I was surprised to read the other day that Bob Dylan has signed a deal for an exlusive CD release via Starbucks. Dylan, one of the heros of the 60's anti-war movement, signing up with a global franchise that is forcing countless local, family-owned cafes out of business. Sellout?

Last night I watched the first half of a recent movie featuring Dylan, "Masked And Anonymous". It has Dylan's fingerprints all over it and the whole strange plot (so far) is built around his character. There are lots of philosophical lines hinting at where Dylan is coming from these days.

For instance, one character says something like: "There are only two classes of people in the world - the bosses and the workers." The general feel is a tired cynicism with all sides of politics: you can't trust anybody and even those with good intentions end up becoming corrupted. The woeful state of supposed "opposition" parties in the US, UK and Australia confirms this sad prognosis.

Cynicism has its place is such a world, and if that's what Dylan wants to articulate, maybe an exclusive deal with Starbucks is the perfect way of doing it. Hopefully he planning to do something worthwhile with all the profits...

But somehow you have to get beyond cynicism if you want to make this world a better place, with or without you in it. Coming to work today after yesterday's floods, I listened to Neil Young's recent album "Willowvale". Still strange, still laced with cynicism, but somehow a lot more relevant to today's world:

And we'll be watching you
No matter what you do
And you can play your part
By watching others too...

And here's another great line from the same album:

...this must too be told
Some folks are getting rich
By turning bullshit into gold.

The one things that characterized the 60's - before all the dope and commercialism took over - was idealism. Dylan, Young and others from the 60's helped wreak massive changes that transformed societies around the world. Wherever they may be at these days, they once helped stop the Vietnam War and even brought down a president (remember Young's line: "Even Richard Nixon has got soul"?). Big respect, man!

One can only imagine how they might feel today, seeing the world in the grip of another criminal US president, whose administration is a hundred times worse than Watergate. But that's no reason not to keep pursuing the truth, saying it like it is, and pushing and pushing - in whatever small ways we can - for a better tomorrow.

So my message today is what? Stay idealistic. If you believe that you can change the world, you are well on your way to doing so.