Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Who did I piss off in this town?

That's what former Miami Commissioner Arthur Teele asked Herald columnist Jim DeFede over the phone last Wednesday afternoon. Not long afterward, Teele walked into the lobby of this newspaper and made a show of shooting himself.

For those who cared about him, and there were many, the grief is deep and scorching. It might seem a harsh time for blunt words, and there's no joy in delivering them.

But facts are facts. Teele was a complicated person who did many good things. He also veered disgracefully astray. Even through the tears and tributes, that cold truth looms. And although he's gone, it's not too late to answer his question: Who did he piss off?

He pissed off the law.

If the evidence is to be believed -- and there's a mountain of it -- he schemed, scammed and ripped off taxpayers. He took kickbacks. He lied. He stiffed the IRS. Worse, he betrayed the African-American community that he claimed to represent. It appears very much that he was corrupt, and that's why he got in trouble.

• Death of a local pol, part two
• Death of a local pol ... media overkill?

On matters of civil rights and affirmative action, there are several memos in which Roberts privately denounced a liberal program or position, but urged his bosses to try to avoid confronting the issue. In September 1982, for example, he wrote a memo preparing Smith for a meeting with Coretta Scott King, who wanted Smith to renew a $250,000 grant for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.

In reality, Roberts wrote, ''the only reason for the grant was the political ties" between Mrs. King and the former administrator of the grant program, and the money had been squandered by poor management. But in Smith's meeting with King, Roberts advised, the attorney general should praise the program's goals, express ''pleasure" that the federal government could be of assistance, but explain that no further funds were available.

And in a 1981 memo, Roberts wrote a deeply skeptical review of a report outlining the need for affirmative action. Roberts wrote that the report was the ''swan song" of the outgoing Carter-era chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights. ''The logic of the report is perfectly circular: the evidence of structural discrimination consists of disparate results, so it is only cured when 'correct' results are achieved through affirmative action quotas," Roberts wrote, later adding that a certain minority recruitment had failed because ''the affirmative action program required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates."

Nevertheless, Roberts wrote to Smith, there was no reason to be candid about that view: ''I have drafted an innocuous reply to [the civil rights commission chairman]. The report is attached, although I do not recommend reading it."

Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper decided his interests were not the same as those of New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It's true that Cooper cooperated about Libby early on, as did Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler, and then balked at getting a second subpoena for other sources. I've reported Judith Miller's take on that several times, most recently here.

The more I'm reading about Judy Miller and her actions leading up to and during the early days of the war, and then through the unfolding Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal, the more I’m struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about).

For starters, of course, we have her still unfolding involvement in the Plame leak. Earlier this month, Howard Kurtz reported that Miller and Libby spoke a few days before Novak outed Plame -- and I’m hearing that the Libby/Miller conversation occurred over breakfast in Washington. Did Valerie Plame come up -- and, if so, who brought her up? There is no question that Miller was angry at Joe Wilson… and continues to be. A social acquaintance of Miller told me that, once, when she spoke of Wilson, it was with “a passionate and heated disgust that went beyond the political and included an irrelevant bit of deeply personal innuendo about him, her mouth twisting in hatred.”

Miller’s special relationships go much further than Scooter Libby, Richard Perle and the rest of the neocon establishment. Take her involvement as an embedded reporter during the war with the Pentagon’s Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha -- the unit charged with hunting down Saddam’s WMD. As extensively reported by both Kurtz and New York Magazine’s Franklin Foer, Miller’s time with the unit was highly unusual.

First, there was the fact that she landed the plumb assignment in the first place. It would give her first dibs on the biggest story of the war… the hoped-for reveal of Saddam’s much-touted WMD (with much of the touting done by Miller herself and her special sources). Was this the reward for her pro-administration prewar reporting?

Foer cites military and New York Times sources as saying that Miller’s assignment was so sensitive that Don Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Once embedded, Miller acted as much more than a reporter. Kurtz quotes one military officer as saying that the MET Alpha unit became a “Judith Miller team.” Another officer said that Miller “came in with a plan. She was leading them… She ended up almost hijacking the mission.” A third officer, a senior staffer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha was a part, put it this way: “It’s impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better.”

What did Miller do to create such an impression? According to Kurtz, she wasn’t afraid to throw her weight around, threatening to write critical stories and complain to her friends in very high places if things didn’t go her way. “Judith,” said an Army officer, “was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat.”

In the Alice in Wonderland world of the Plame/Rove story, Judy Miller, who worked hand-in-glove with the Bush administration to publish bogus stories about Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear program, is a hero -- for going to jail to protect, once again, her friends in the administration. And Time-Warner, which turned over Matt Cooper’s notes (for the wrong reasons -- because of Time-Warner’s corporate interests -- but that’s another story) is the villain.

Yet it may be Cooper’s testimony that finally sinks Rove. So who’s the hero and what’s the public interest?

• Mining the Huffpo: Judy, Judy, Judy
• Leak, leak, leak, drip, drip, drip
• There's something about Judy

I once saw promotional material for my colleague, columnist Carl Hiaasen, in which Carl said -- and I paraphrase -- ''They don't pay me to hold hands with my readers and sing Kumbayah.'' That quote has always stayed with me.

Because he's right. It is not the news media's job to spare feelings. Rather, it is media's job to put the corrupt, the inept, the mendacious, the venal, the hypocritical and the plain stupid ''on blast,'' as the kids say, i.e., to publicize their sins and misdeeds broadly. To speak truth to power and truth about power. To call spades spades.

DEHUMANIZING OUR SUBJECTS

It is an unavoidable byproduct of that process that we make people piñatas, objects for others to line up and take a whack. It happened to Bill Clinton, happened to Robert Bork, happened to John Rocker, happened to Arthur Teele.

I intend no apology for, denial of or absolution of those men's sins, real or perceived. My only point is that universal derision has this way of objectifying people, making them not people anymore at all, but caricatures, symbols of this social failing or that human weakness. It makes them seem not quite flesh, not really blood, so that you and I can take our whacks without concern that the thing on the receiving end really feels the blows.

But every once in awhile, you are reminded -- brutally -- otherwise.

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.

Amazingly, however, even as her reporting has been debunked -- and her sources discredited -- Miller has steadfastly refused to apologize for her role in misleading the public in the lead up to the war. Indeed, in an interview with the author of Bush's Brain, James Moore, she, in the words of Moore, "remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed in the grandest of fashions", telling him: "I was proved fucking right."

As recently as March 2005, in an appearance at Berkeley, she stubbornly refused to express regret. Indeed, she showed that she shares a key attitude with the Bush administration: an unwillingness to admit mistakes when faced with new realities. She even compared herself to the president, saying that she was getting the same information he was getting… and suggested that since he hadn't apologized, why should she?

• Leak, leak, leak, drip, drip, drip
• There's something about Judy

President Bush postponed his visit to the Boy Scout National Jamboree in central Virginia until Sunday so that officials could be sure to make appropriate plans for handling any heat problems in the crowd, White House officials said today.


Officials said last night that Bush would come to the Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill today after storms that moved through the region forced him to cancel a planned appearance yesterday. But those plans were scrapped this morning as Scout officials dealt with the aftereffects from the weather. More than 300 Scouts had to be treated for heat problems, including dehydration and light-headedness, after waiting in the blazing sun for more than two hours in their dress uniforms to see Bush.

The Boy Scouts marched onto the field singing, plopping down in the grass to wait for President Bush. But hours later, the news that Bush couldn't make it was drowned out by sirens and shouts as hundreds fell ill because of the blistering heat.

... Despite temperatures in the high 90s yesterday, hundreds of Scouts stood in long security lines in the afternoon and then sat waiting in an open field for the president. Supplies of ice and water were provided to the Scouts, but still many succumbed to the heat. According to the AP, soldiers from the fort helped carry sick Scouts on stretchers to the hospital and emergency workers from surrounding jurisdictions were called in to help treat and transport them.

At the last jamboree four years ago, Bush's trip was also canceled because of bad weather, in which lightning strikes caused minor injuries to two Scouts. He spoke to the group a day later by videotape.

"It was the first thing that crossed my mind, that this was a response to our story, and it filled me with dread" New Times editor Jim Mullin said. "Who knows? It's all speculation."

The writer of the New Times story, Francisco Alvarado, told the Herald it was a "surreal coincidence'' that Teele shot himself the same day his article was published."I really feel bad,'' he said. "I would never want anyone to harm themselves over something I wrote, but at the end of the day, I was just doing my job.''

The one-time Reagan-era appointee at the U.S. Department of Transportation won two terms on the Dade County Commission in the 1990s -- and was elected its powerful chairman three times. He withstood a bitter loss when he ran for county mayor against a rising Alex Penelas, but staged a remarkable second act, rebounding as a Miami city commissioner -- powerful enough to survive an effort to recall him from office.

Long haunted by financial woes and improprieties -- he was once accused of putting a woman arrested on prostitution and grand theft charges on the city payroll to fetch him coffee -- Teele saw his troubles multiply in recent years.

As an attorney, Teele was an influential voice on the City Commission, serving as head of the Community Redevelopment Agency created to renovate blighted areas of Overtown and nearby neighborhoods. But it was the CRA that proved his political unraveling. He was under surveillance in an investigation of CRA-related corruption allegations when he chased and threatened a police officer. And Friday -- just four months after a felony conviction for assault -- his troubles snowballed: He was arraigned on federal charges of fraud and money laundering.

Osama bin usin'?

• June 16: Bo knows Idol
• May 19: Palast calls out Newsweek
• May 11: Fun with orange alerts
• May 9: Will you marry me Bill?
• May 9: Fast and loose Nancy Grace
• April 18: Reaching out to Muslims ...badly
• April 13: Hello Afghanistan, think we'll stay awhile

"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel," he said Wednesday. "The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe "this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."

We wrote Sunday about Dick Cheney's personal visits to the Hill to lobby against the inclusion of an anti-torture Amendment in the Pentagon's 2006 spending bill. Today, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist canceled the planned hearing on the bill.

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street. In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."

Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was
classified.

In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."

Earlier Tuesday, Holloway's stepfather, George Twitty, said two new witnesses had come forward with information about the night she disappeared. One witness told investigators that he saw Joran van der Sloot, the 17-year-old who has been detained as the main suspect, driving to a nightclub across the road from the Marriott Hotel around 2:30 a.m. the night Holloway disappeared, Twitty said.

The witness said van der Sloot tried to hide his face with his hands as he drove to the Racquet Club with two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, Twitty said. The Kalpoe brothers were detained as suspects and later released.

The stepfather said the account places the three individuals near the hotel beach where van der Sloot says he left 18-year-old Holloway alone the last night she was seen in public.

"What's interesting is the time — 2:30 a.m. — when the three were supposedly on their way home," said Twitty, referring to their previous accounts to investigators. The witness, a gardener whose name was not disclosed, gave his account to investigators on Friday, Twitty said.

A second new witness told a private investigator hired by Holloway's family that she saw van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers drive into the Racquet Club three times that same night. The woman, who lives near the nightclub, has not yet spoken with investigators, he said.

• Has anyone seen this girl?
  

A city press release that promised a ''Ghetto Style Talent Show'' and ''Watermelon Eating Contest'' during a summer camp picnic in the heart of Miami's black community drew sharp outrage on Monday from some Model City residents who live near the park where the events are scheduled.

The press release said, "campers who think they know the true meaning of ghetto style will take to the stage to prove just how ghetto they are.''

''We're not trying to be ghetto, we're trying to come out of the ghetto and be a civilized people,'' said Model City resident Grady Muhammad, who added that the billed talent show portrayed the neighborhood's youth as ''subhuman'' or "animals.'' Likewise, the watermeloneating contest echoes unflattering stereotypes and is ''an insult to black history and black pride,'' said Marvin Dunn, a Florida International University psychology professor and an expert on Miami's historically tense race relations.

• Do you find this racist?

Britons are ready to distinguish, as history will, between two largely separate threats to international security that have convulsed the world over the past four years. One, posed by Saddam Hussein until 2003, may have been exaggerated by the available intelligence but nonetheless left responsible leaders with difficult decisions. The other is the threat from terrorists, who claim to be Islamic, but are self-obsessed, nihilistic thugs. They are linked — but mainly by geography — in the continuing carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Baghdad.

The fact of Britain’s role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq clearly cannot be ignored as a consideration in this month’s bombings in London. But to see in them a simple, avoidable case of cause and effect — as some politicians who should know better, and others who plainly do not, have done — encourages in their listeners a grotesque confusion of reason and justification. It also bespeaks dangerous amnesia as to the recent, bloodsoaked history of terrorism carried out in the name of jihadi Islam.

During a 1972 trip to North Vietnam, Jane Fonda propagandized on behalf of the North Vietnamese government, declared that American POWs were being treated humanely and condemned U.S. soldiers as "war criminals" and later denounced them as liars for claiming they had been tortured. [Snopes.com]

The agreement between Fitzgerald and NBC avoided a court fight over a
subpoena for Russert's testimony about his July 2003 talk with Dick Cheney's top
aide, Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The deal was not, as many assumed, for Russert's
testimony about what Libby told him: it focused on what Russert told Libby. An
NBC statement last year said Russert did not know of Plame, wife of
ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, or that she worked at the CIA, and "he did not
provide that information to Libby."

This now appears significant: in pursuing Russert's testimony, Fitzgerald was testing statements by White House aides—reportedly including Libby—that they learned about Wilson's wife from reporters, not classified documents. Libby's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. A source close to Karl Rove, who requested anonymity because the FBI asked participants not to comment publicly, says the White House aide—who passed info about Wilson's wife to Time's Matt Cooper—only knew about her CIA job from either a reporter or "somebody" who heard it from a reporter; he can't remember which or who. Rove did not initially discuss his talk with Cooper with the FBI, but later volunteered info about it and called agents' attention to a subpoenaed e-mail he had written to national-security aide Stephen Hadley mentioning the conversation, the source said.

• What did the president know...
• What Gonzalez knew
• Did Rove or Libby (or both) lie to investigators?

GERGEN: I think this is a big, serious story and the interesting thing about this week...I think the story also started to move toward the President. What did Karl Rove know, what did Scooter Libby know, in the President's and Vice-Presidents office? But...in turn what did the President know and when did he know it?

... GERGEN: There are two things about this. One about the President...If Scott McClellan was misled by Scotter Libby and by Karl Rove, was the President mislead?...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Exactly...

GERGEN: ...Or if he was not mislead and he was told the truth, how do they let Scott McClellan go out there with that statement?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Or does he think this is okay?

GERGEN: Yeah...Or does he think it's okay?...So I think...that's why I think this is increasingly gonna be about the President over time.

"Can America compete?" is the nation’s new No. 1 anxiety, the topic of emotional debate in bars and boardrooms, the title of seminars and speeches offered by the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, the conservative economist Todd Buchholz, and countless schools and Rotary Clubs. The question is almost right, but not quite. We’re wringing our hands over the wrong thing. The problem isn’t Chinese companies threatening U.S. firms. It’s U.S. workers unable to compete with those in China—or India, or South Korea. The real question is, "Can Americans compete?"

The stakes are mammoth: Respectable analysts believe it’s possible—not certain, but possible—that the U.S. standard of living, after decades of steady ascent, could stall or even begin to decline. More worrisome is the chance that if the world’s most powerful nation finds itself getting poorer rather than richer, some kind of domestic or even global political crisis could follow.

Vandals Torch U.S. Flags At Slain Soldiers Home

David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being
slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians. I see it differently. I think the Martians symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood. Perhaps the normals went a bit too far in this easy-to-understand allegory, but think of the provocation. [John Leo]

...did Mr. Bush know in the fall of 2003, when he was telling the public that no one wanted to get to the bottom of the case more than he did, that Mr. Rove, his longtime strategist and senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had touched on the C.I.A. officer's identity in conversations with journalists before the officer's name became public? If not, when did they tell him, and what would the delay say in particular about his relationship with Mr. Rove, whose career and Mr. Bush's have been intertwined for decades?

Then there is the broader issue of whether Mr. Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the C.I.A. officer's identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program.

I voted for George Bush in November of 2000 because I was promised a President
who would bring a new tone and a new ethical standard to Washington.

So where are we? The President has flip-flopped on his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak. We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby are implicated in these leaks and may have lied during the investigation.

Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson.

This is wrong and this is shameful.

We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth.

(Note: Happy Jack was later led away by the Secret Service and
given a stern talking to by his irate mom... )

Can't get enough of Happy Jack (real name John, of course ... like F. Kennedy? Watch the video here! And who else loves Happy Jack?

• Glenn Reynolds!
• The Daily Kos! (come on, the kid's not gay, he's just creative!)
• Michelle Malkin! (lighten up girlfriend, I'm sure your son's not gay either)
• Confederate Yankee!
• The Narcissitic news blogger!
• Dawn's Early Light!
• ...and many others too numerous to name... right now...! Shake it, little man!

CHINA FLOATS, AMERICA SINKS
YUAN KICKS DOLLAR BUTT BY REJECTING "FREE MARKET"
Friday Jul 22, 2005, by Greg Palast

In case you haven't the least idea what the heck it means for China to "float"its currency, let me put it in the language we economists use: China's floatdon't mean squat.

Yet our President, a guy whose marks in Economics 101 are too embarrassing topublish here, ran out to hail the fact that buying Chinese money will now costmore dollars.

The White House line to the media, swallowed whole, is that by making Chinesemoney (yuan) more expensive to buy with dollars, Americans will buy fewercomputers and toys from China -- and US employment will rise. This will happen when we find Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Economics Lesson #1: You can't change the value of goods by changing the valueof the currency on the price tag. As my comrade Art Laffer wrote me, "If cheapcurrency makes your products more competitive, all automobiles would be made inRussia." Driven a Lada lately?

Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or MiltonFriedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big,hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation'sadopting free market economic policies.

If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China'seconomy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Marketmumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating theindustry.

China's announcement that it would raise the cost of the yuan covered over amore important notice: China would bar foreign control of its steel sector.China's leaders have built a powerhouse steel industry larger than ours bydirecting the funding, output, location and ownership of all factories. And rather than "freeing" the industry through opening their borders to foreigncompetition, the Chinese, for steel and every other product, have shut theirborders tight to foreigners except as it suits China’s own industries.

China won't join NAFTA or CAFTA or any of those free-trade clubs. In China,Chinese industry comes first. And it's still, Mssrs. Friedman, the Peoples’republic. Those Wal-Mart fashion designs called, chillingly, "New Order," aremade in factories owned by the PLA, the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army.

In an interview just before he won the Nobel Prize in economics, Joe Stiglitzexplained to me that China's huge financial surge -- a stunning 9.5% jump in GDPthis year -- began with the government's funding and nurturing ruralcooperatives, fledgling agricultural and industry protected behind high, hightrade barriers.

It is true that China's growth got a boost from ending the bloodsoakedself-flagellating madness of Mao's Cultural Revolution. And China, when itchooses, makes use of markets and market pricing to distribute resources. Thetruth is, Chinese markets are as free as my kids: they can do whatever they wantunless I say they can't.

Yes, China is adopting elements of "capitalism." And that's the ugly part: realestate speculation in Shanghai making millionaires of Communist party bossrelatives and bank shenanigans worthy of a Neil Bush.

It is not the Guangdong skyscrapers and speculative bubble which allows China tosell us $162 billion more goods a year than we sell them. It is that China'sgovernment, by rejecting free-market fundamentalism, can easily conquer Americanmarkets where protection is now deemed passé.

And that is why the yuan has kicked the dollar's butt. America’s only response is to have Alan Greenspan push up real interest rates sowe can buy back our own dollars the Chinese won in the export game. The domesticresult: US wages drifting down to Mexican maquiladora levels.

Am I praising China? Forget about it. This is one evil dictatorship which jailsunion organizers and beats, shackles and tortures those who don't kowtow to thewishes of Chairman Rob -- Wal-Mart chief Robson Walton. (Funny how Mr. Bushnever mentions the D-word, Democracy, to our Chinese suppliers.)

Class dismissed.

Today's big scoop came, not from the Wall Street Journal as expected, but from Bloomberg, whose breaking news story today confirms much of what was in Murray Waas' American Prospect scoop earlier this week (reported also by TalkLeft). Namely, that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, who the NYT reports were busy digging up dirt and talking points for a George Tenet rebuttal of Joe Wilson's Niger nukes op-ed, may have lied to investigators. According to Bloomberg:

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administrationofficials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

ThinkProgress adds more fuel today, wondering aloud whether former Scott McClellan Ari Fleisher could also be in the hot seat, since NBC News and others now confirm that he was reportedly seen perusing the State Department memo containing Valerie Plame Wilson's name and identity as a SECRET CIA operative.

The plot thickens...

Public execution for the teenagers convicted of rape

IRAN has publicly hanged two male teenagers convicted of raping a 13-year-old
boy at knifepoint. After the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of child rape, they were executed on Tuesday in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad. The British gay rights group Outrage! has accused Iran of torturing the two into confessing that they had homosexual sex. It believes that the assault charges were a smokescreen to justify killing homosexuals.

• The State Department memo discussing the Wilsons (and the agencies own doubts on the Niger uranium claim), which circulated aboard Air Force One referred to Valerie Wilson by name.
• The portion of the memo referring to Wilson and her work with the CIA was marked "SNF" -- secret, no foreign, meaning the information was not to be shared, even with foreign intelligence services
• Fitzgerald IS investigating the knowing outing of a secret agent, not just perjury and obstruction of justice (not that he's not investigating that, too).

Awaiting the latest push-back talking points to be distributed to faux maverick John McCain and other assorted GOP surrogates.

No Evidence Iraq Sought Foreign Uranium, ISG Says
By Mike Nartker

WASHINGTON — The Iraq Survey Group, the coalition unit that searched for evidence of prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts, has found no evidence that Baghdad sought to acquire uranium from abroad following the 1991 Gulf War, according to a report released last week by U.S. chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer (see GSN, Aug. 2).

Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. officials cited Iraq’s alleged attempts to obtain uranium as evidence of efforts by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to relaunch his nuclear program. Citing information received from sources such as the former head of Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, though, Duelfer dismissed allegations that Iraq sought uranium from Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — two countries cited as possible sources by U.S. intelligence. “ISG has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991,” his report states.

... In his report last week, Duelfer described the claims made by the former head of Iraq’s pre-1991 nuclear weapons program, Jafar Jafar, regarding Iraq’s two contacts with Niger after 1998. Neither involved discussions on uranium, according to Jafar.

... The purpose of one visit in 1999 by Iraq’s ambassador to the Holy See, Jafar claimed, was to invite Niger’s president to visit Baghdad. Duelfer’s report does not mention the possible purpose of the Iraqi invitation. Jafar also claimed, according to Duelfer, that a second contact between Iraq and Niger occurred when a Nigerien official traveled to Baghdad in 2001 to discuss purchasing petroleum products. The
trip did not involve, though, an offer by Niger to provide uranium instead of cash for the purchase, the report says.

... In addition, there is no sign that prewar Iraq sought to obtain uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it may actually have rejected an opportunity to do so, according to Duelfer’s report.

Bush accelerated his search for a Supreme Court nominee in part because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name, according to Republicans familiar with administration strategy.

Bush originally had planned to announce a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on July 26 or 27, just before his planned July 28 departure for a month-long vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, said two administration officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named.

The officials said those plans changed because Rove has become a focus of Fitzgerald's interest and of news accounts about the matter.

(Photo courtesy Crooks and Liars. Click here for the caption). The press corps is pissed, GOP "sources" feel burned by the white light of disclosure yet again, and you know that can only mean one thing: it's all going to be taken out on poor Scott McClellan.

...So who's leaking all this good stuff? Kos speculates that it's the CIA. But since the chain of custody for the memo went from the State Department to Air Force One (and where in between we don't know), don't rule out Foggy Bottom... Here's an interesting tidbit from TalkLeft:

Given that Colin Powell had the memo with him on July 7, 2003 on Air Force One when the President and his entourage left for Africa, and that Fitzgerald subpoenaed phone records for Air Force one during that period, Fitzgerald may be assuming that someone leaked information from the memo. So, who saw the memo on Air Force One besides Colin Powell?

Previous installments:

• Saving Private McClellan

In the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election, Judge Roberts played a key, if quiet, role in the Florida recount. ... Although his name did not appear on the briefs, three sources who were personally aware of Judge Roberts' role said he gave Republican Gov. Jeb Bush critical advice on how the Florida Legislature could constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner at a time when Republicans feared that if the recount were to continue the courts might force a different choice.

• Top ten reasons to be glad it's Roberts
• RoveGate Lives!

A classified State Department memo that may be pivotal to the CIA leak case made clear that information identifying an agent and her role in her husband's intelligence-gathering mission was sensitive and shouldn't be shared, according to a person familiar with the document.

Too Soon to Bash John G. Roberts

I think it's too soon to start opposing Judge John G. Roberts. Most of us knew nothing about him before tonight. He's only been a Judge for two years. Before that he was deputy solicitor general. The legal arguments he made while working for the Government or as a corporate lawyer may or may not reflect his personal values, or how he would rule as a Supreme Court Justice.

I'd like to know more about him before I make up my mind. I don't think it helps that liberal groups are coming out swinging so soon. It has the appearance that they would oppose anyone Bush would nominate.

It's obvious we're going to get a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Bush is President and the Senate is Republican-dominated. For now, I'm just happy it wasn't a rabid right-winger like Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Edith Jones (not to be confused with Edith Clement, who probably would have been okay,) Ted Olson or one of the Fourth Circuit judges that were reportedly under consideration.

I'm more worried about Bush's second pick, the one he will make when Chief Justice Rehnquist retires, when his key aides may be out from under the gun of, or already indicted by, Fitzgerald's grand jury.

I do not want to fall into the Administration's trap of getting so distracted by this judicial nomination that I don't pay attention to other injustices of the Administration, like the war in Iraq, the detainees, military tribunals, the potential abolition of habeas corpus in death cases, and Rove Gate, to name a few.

So, when there's something big to report on Judge John G. Roberts I will, but I'm done with the topic for now.

Raed of Raed in the Middle reports his brother Khalid Jarrar, the blogger who writes Tell Me A Secret , who had been missing, has turned up...in an Iraqi jail - jailed by the new Iraqi mukhabarat.

• Fighting Wizbang words

MOSCOW 'TRAINED' AL QAEDA NO 2
By United Press International

Russia's secret service trained Al Qaeda's Number Two, a Polish newspaper has claimed. The Russian Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, gave military training to Ayman Al Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's deputy, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported. Rzeczpospolita said that before deciding to join Bin Laden, Zawahiri received terrorist training in 1998 at a FSB camp in Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

Thereafter, he shifted his base to Afghanistan to become BinLaden's deputy, the paper quoted a former FSB agent as saying. The agent also claimed that Zawahiri was not the only link between the FSB and Al Qaeda, Asian News International said.

Disturbing enough for you? Read the rest here.

Russia has previously denied having trained Iraq's notorious Mukhabarat secret service organization, and many Bush supporters still blame Moscow for helping Iraq get rid of its WMD (which most experts now doubt they had...) before the March 2003 invasion. However if this latest development is true, it's yet another complicating mess in the GWOT (and another reason for George Bush to stop trying to read people's souls...)

Apparently, Tony Blair just doesn't get it. ... Like President George W. Bush, who stubbornly insists that waging war in Iraq will deter terrorists from targeting the West, Blair refuses to acknowledge that his dogged allegiance to America's self-styled "war president" has come at a price; that price was made frightfully clear, many Britons believe, with the July 7 London bombings.

Although some Britons believe Blair and his supporters "will find it hard to dismiss [the] report" because Chatham House is politically unbiased and widely respected, as recently as last Saturday, Blair was still insisting that the London attackers had been "driven by an 'evil ideology' rather than [by] opposition to any policy."

... Libby was in the thick of whipping up fear over the thinnest of evidence. The level to which Libby and Cheney stooped to get their war was highlighted by the momentous presentation of Saddam’s ‘‘threat’’ before the United Nations Security Council by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell gave a presentation six weeks before the war where he said, ‘‘every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions.’’ Those assertions resulted in grudging acceptance of the war from many Democrats.

Virtually all of Powell’s solid sources fell apart when the United States turned Iraq upside down, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians in the process. He would have looked much worse had he listened to everything Libby and Cheney tried to feed him. It was Cheney’s staff who wrote the first draft of Powell’s UN speech. It was Libby who suggested, in strategy meetings at the White House, playing up every possible, conceivable threat of Saddam — with the emphasis on the word ‘‘conceive.’’ A US News and World Report story in the summer of 2003 quoted a senior administration official as saying Libby’s presentation ‘‘was over the top and ran the gamut from Al Qaeda to human rights to weapons of mass destruction. They were unsubstantiated assertions, in my view.’ Powell, according to both US News and Vanity Fair, was so irritated by Libby’s hodgepodge of unsubstantiated facts that he threw documents into the air and said, ‘‘I’m not reading this. This is bull ...’’

Libby, whose nickname is Scooter, was particularly unhappy that Powell had thrown out sections of the presentation that would have attempted to link Al Qaeda to Saddam, including a discredited report that top 9/11 Al Qaeda airline hijacker Mohamed Atta had a meeting with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. According to Vanity Fair, ‘‘Cheney’s office made one last ditch effort to persuade Powell to link Saddam and Al Qaeda and to slip the Prague story back into the speech. Only moments before Powell began speaking, Scooter Libby tried unsuccessfully to reach [Larry] Wilkerson by phone. Powell’s staff chief, by then inside the Security Council chamber, declined to take the call. ‘Scooter,’ said one State Department aide, ‘wasn’t happy.’’’

Thus, and to begin with, Joseph Wilson comes before us as a man whose word is effectively worthless. What do you do, if you work for the Bush administration, when a man of such quality is being lionized by an anti-war press? Well, you can fold your tent and let them print the legend. Or you can say that the word of a mediocre political malcontent who is at a loose end, and who is picking up side work from a wife who works at the anti-regime-change CIA, may not be as "objective" as it looks. I dare say that more than one supporter of regime change took this option. I would certainly have done so as a reporter if I had known.

DENVER — A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons. Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically.

Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons. "Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.

"You're talking about bombing Mecca?" Campbell said.

"Yeah," Tancredo responded. "What if you said, we recognize that this is the ultimate threat to the United States, therefore this is the ultimate response."

The congressman later said he was "just throwing out some ideas" and that an "ultimate threat" might have to be met with an "ultimate response." Spokesman Will Adams said Sunday the four-term congressman doesn't support threatening holy Islamic sites but that Tancredo was grappling with the hypothetical situation of a terrorist strike deadlier than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We have an enemy with no uniform, no state, who looks like you and me and only emerges right before an attack. How do we go after someone like that?" Adams said. "What is near and dear to them? They're willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?" he said.

London Terror Inquiry Heads Secretly to the African Sahara
July 18, 2005, 3:05 PM (GMT+02:00)

The British authorities have mounted a tremendous publicity effort to emphasize that Pakistan and Egypt are the central areas of interest in their investigation of the July 7 transport bombings that killed 55 Londoners. This is a diversionary tactic.

Much of the intelligence offered to the media is irrelevant to the inquiry. There is nothing that was not known to British and US intelligence from early 2004 in the fact that three of the four bombers were of Pakistan origin and some studied at medressas run by Muslim extremists linked directly to terrorism. Even the fact that they visited Pakistan last year or were in contact with Muslims in Queens, New York, does not lead to the masterminds who sent them to their deaths on July 7. Even terrorists phone or visit relatives.

As for the Egyptian biochemist Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar from Leeds, the Egyptian security authorities who are not known for their gentle handling of al Qaeda suspects have found no ties between him, al Qaeda and the London bombers. There was seemingly nothing to find beyond the fact that he rented them his apartment after a meeting at a local mosque. Yet British detectives are in Cairo day after day waiting to be allowed to interview the scientist.

The British government is feeding the public with a daily dose of suggestive, diversionary data for two purposes. One is to stop the mouths of Tony Blair’s enemies and throw off their efforts to link the attacks to Britain’s involvement in Iraq alongside the United States. This ploy was set back Monday, July 18, when the influential Chatham House came out with a report claiming Britain had been placed at magnified risk of terror attack by its role in Iraq and cooperation in the worldwide US-led offensive against al Qaeda. This contention was fiercely contested by the British defense and foreign ministers.

The other purpose is to deflect attention from the leads followed by the inquiry to the real source of the attacks. Last Friday, July 14, DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed that a top-secret gathering took place Wednesday, July 13, in one of the most out-of-the-way towns in the world, Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania. It was attended by linchpins of the services responsible for the war on al Qaeda, the American Central Intelligence Agency, the British domestic and foreign secret services, MI5 and MI6, and the security chiefs of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Last week too, a senior British official who specializes in intelligence and terrorism Kim Howells was dispatched to Morocco. Add these moves to the earlier DEBKAfile finding that the explosives came from Serbia and it is clear that the real investigation is focused on West Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East – not Pakistan and Egypt.

I finally found something that I agree with California liberals on. ... Black kids are too stupid to learn english, we all know that. So why should we try to teach them? Let them stick to their own kind. If we teach them english then they'll be reading then the next thing you know they'll be taking our jobs and trying to move into our neighborhoods. I say we keep them stupid. If not, how will I ever get anyone to pick my cotton?

"Beginning in the 2005-06 school year, teachers will receive training on black culture and customs."

"For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. ... These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language."

Johansson, of course, was reportedly recently booted from the Mission Impossible 3 film by Cruise because she wouldn't convert to Scientology. Katie Holmes is now considered a shoo-in for the role.

• The Rob Thomas e-mail rumor
• The Matt Lauer cat-fight

FAT STEVE: "The background of the story appears to be a dispute concerning whether Saddam should have been removed from power, with the CIA, and the State Dept. in the 'keep Saddam' camp."

FAT STEVE: "Around the beginning of 2002, Vice-President Cheney heard that Iraq was trying to acquire Uranium, and asked the CIA what they knew about it. The CIA wasn't sure about this, and told Cheney so. Cheney dropped the matter, but on its own initiative, the CIA decided to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check into things."

March 16, 2003: "just three days before the war, [Cheney] zoomed far beyond the
evidence in telling NBC’s Meet the Press , “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Asked about ElBaradei’s report just nine days before that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program, Cheney said, “I disagree...I think Mr. ElBaradei is frankly wrong.” [TomPaine.com]

FAT STEVE: "In February, 2002, Wilson went to Africa, and reported that a Niger official thought Iraq had tried to acquire uranium. Wilson also reported his judgment that Iraq failed to get the uranium. His reasons weren't very persuasive, in my arrogant opinion."

FAT STEVE: "Wilson, a Lefty Democrat, and a former Foreign Service officer married to CIA employee Valerie Plame, was very much against removing Saddam from power, from the Gulf War till 2003. Wilson and Plame seem to have been convinced the 'Iraq tried to buy Niger Uranium' reports were wrong before he visited Niger."

FAT STEVE: "By September 2002, the British government was convinced that Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa, though we do not know whether he has been successful. On October 1st, 2002, a National Intelligence Estimate was issued saying that Saddam had sought African Uranium. This represented the CIA's official position at the time."

FAT STEVE: "In January 2003, Bush's State of the Union message said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." When we invaded Iraq and didn't find the WMDs that Wilson believed Saddam had, he started talking to Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, and someone at The Washington Post. Wilson told them the pre-war intelligence had been distorted."

FAT STEVE: "On July 6, 2003, Wilson published his infamously dishonest Times op-ed. The MSM proved it can't read, by failing to notice Wilson's artful sliding from 'Iraq didn't buy Niger uranium' to 'Iraq didn't attempt to buy Niger uranium.' "

FAT STEVE: "After Wilson's op-ed, reporters called Rove and Libby, asking about Wilson. Apparently, the reporters told Rove and Libby that Plame was CIA. Most reporters didn't write anything about this, but Robert Novak revealed that Wilson's wife was CIA."

FAT STEVE: "The MSM then lied in their teeth, claiming that the White House had called reporters seeking to out Plame. These stories have now collapsed."

FAT STEVE: "The information Wilson gave for the two Kristof stories and the Post stories was at best wrong, at worst a lie. "

FAT STEVE: "Wilson's report strengthened the case that Iraq sought uranium. "

FAT STEVE: "Inquiries in Britain and the U.S. say the intelligence was well-founded, and the CIA still won't say Iraq didn't try to buy uranium. "

FAT STEVE: The Administration did not distort intelligence, or pressure the CIA.

• Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign. Iraq's three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center at Rashidiya.

• The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 cited new construction at facilities once associated with Iraq's nuclear program, but analysts had no reliable information at the time about what was happening under the roofs. By February, a month before the war, U.S. government specialists on the ground in Iraq had seen for themselves that there were no forbidden activities at the sites.

• Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment. By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government's assertion. The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible.

• The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

Two senior policymakers, who supported the war, said in unauthorized interviews that the administration greatly overstated Iraq's near-term nuclear potential. [Washington Post, August 2003]

FAT STEVE: "The MSM continues, its spin and bias, trying to claim Rove or someone, was attacking Plame, but all the available evidence is precisely the opposite."

FAT STEVE: "And despite claims that Plame was a covert officer, the evidence is that people all over Washington knew that Plame was working for the CIA. Meanwhile, the MSM keeps recycling their mistakes, and making new mistakes. "

A State Department memo that circulated on Air Force One shortly before Robert Novak wrote his infamous column naming Valerie Plame is the subject of the latest scrutiny over the Plame affair. According to the LA Times, prosecutors are looking into who on Bush's plane might have seen the memo, and how the information got to reporters.

Recall that last year, the phone records from AFO were subpoenaed by the special prosecutor, perhaps to try and figure out if the information was leaked to reporters from there. From NY Newday in March, 2004:

WASHINGTON -- The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday. Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

And of course, there was the confirmation today that Cheney's chief deputy, Scooter Libby, was Matthew Cooper's second source for his Time magazine story.

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors investigating whether Bush administration officials disclosed the name of an undercover CIA operative to news reporters have focused on a 2003 State Department memo that investigators believe might help point to the source of the leak, according to those directly familiar with the proceedings.The memo detailed how a former diplomat was chosen to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the African nation of Niger, and it included a description of the role that the CIA operative, who was the diplomat's wife, played in suggesting his name for the assignment.


... The memo was sent by State Department officials to then- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who according to news reports has testified before the grand jury. Powell had the memo with him on Air Force One when President Bush traveled to Africa on July 7, 2003, the day after Wilson's piece was published, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.


What happened on Air Force One has been of interest to prosecutors, who want to know whether anyone who saw the memo learned Plame's identity and told it to journalists.Telephone logs from the presidential aircraft have been subpoenaed. Among those on the flight was then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who has testified before the grand jury.Fleischer declined to comment for this article, referring all questions to prosecutors. But in a Sept. 29, 2003, e-mail to The Times, Fleischer denied he was the source of the leak. "I have no idea who told Novak, but it was not me," he wrote. [LA Times]

• There's something about Judy
• Cat in a tin foil hat, part deux
• Cat in a tin foil hat
• Robert Novak: Lord of the journo flies
• Wrong on Wilson
• You know you're in political trouble when ...
• Finemanly speaking ...

• Cat in a tin foil hat, part deux
• Cat in a tin foil hat (part one)

What happened? Probably the same thing that has happened to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of African American men who now file into coffee shops or bowling alleys or baseball stadiums on Sundays instead of heading to church, or who lose themselves in the haze of mowing the lawn or waxing their cars. Somewhere along the way, for us, for me, the church -- the collective of black churches of the Christian faith, regardless of denomination -- lost its meaning, its relevance. It seems to have no discernible message for what ails the 21st-century black male soul.

While there are still many black men who do go to church, any pastor will admit that there are far more who don't. Jawanza Kunjufu, a Chicago educator and author of "Adam! Where are You?: Why Most Black Men Don't Go to Church," contends that 75 percent of the black church is female. The church's finger seems farthest from the pulse of those black men who seem to be most lost and drifting in a destructive sea of fatalism and pathology, with no immediate sign of the shore or of search and rescue crews. Without the church, most of those men are doomed. But it seems clear to me that the church does not -- will not -- seek us black men out, or perhaps even mourn our disappearance from the pews.

Instead, it seems to have turned inward. It seems to exist for the perpetuation of itself -- for the erecting of grandiose temples of brick and mortar and for the care of pastors and the salaried administrative staff. Not long ago, a preacher friend confided: "The black church is in a struggle for its collective soul -- to find itself in an age when it is consumed by the God of materialism."

This preoccupation with the material world is pervasive, and has bred a culture that has left a trail of blood and tears in black neighborhoods across the country with little collective outcry from the church. Still, it's one thing for the world to be ensnared by the trappings of materialism -- but the church?

I am incensed by Mercedes-buying preachers who live in suburban meadows far from the inner-city ghettos they pastor, where they bid parishioners to sacrifice in the name of God. I am angered by the preacher I know, and his wife and co-pastor, who exacted a per diem and drove luxury vehicles, theirmodest salariesboosted by tithes and offerings from poor folks in a struggling congregation of families, a number of them headed by single women. This at a time when the church didn't own a single chair and was renting a building to hold worship services.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

• What's the gayest thing on TV?

A novel theme emerging in some press coverage of the Plame case raises the possibility of unnamed journalists being participants in a potential crime, and not just witnesses. Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post wrote on July 6: "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." Richard Schmitt wrote in the Los Angeles Times of July 9: "It appears clear that one possibility pursued by Fitzgerald is whether a journalist started a chain of conversations about Plame between reporters and White House officials."

This idea was first raised by me in an E&P column of April 7, based on conversations with legal sources, in which I suggested, among other scenarios, that Miller basically was a "carrier," around Washington, of the rumor about Plame's real identity, but not a reporter actively covering a story. She was "both a source for, and a witness to, disclosure by sources of Plame's identity."

She may have just been helping to spin the neo-conservatives' gossip. Her "source" is incidental, as she wrote nothing. No evidence has been presented that she even contemplated writing a story. .... But talking to someone at a high level somehow got her on Fitzgerald's list. She may have both received the information on Plame from a high official, who was trying to smear Wilson, and spread it as a "carrier" to another one. Or maybe she already knew what Plame's job was, as her government beat was WMD.

If this scenario is close to the reality of what happened, her "cover" is likely to be blown if and when the special prosecutor releases the information from those crucial redacted eight pages of court documents that persuaded one judge after another to hold her in contempt in the first place. What's in those pages is obviously key to the whole Miller case.

President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

• Rove's FBI problem
• Scootie Pie
• But enough about Judy... (media narcissim in the Miller jailing)
• Choice words (Fitzgerald goes off)
• Jailbait, Rall and Rove
• Conversations with Karl
• What about Bob?

Really?

• Funny that Rove has so little knowledge of the existence of his fellow Virginia area Episcopal churchmates, Wilson and Plame, if not from personal experience, at least from the same media he's now blaming for the leak. Has he never heard of "Bush's Brain?" ...

• Funny that Rove was just passing on widely known, unimportant flotsam to Matt Cooper, but felt the need to do so on "double super secret background" ...

• Funny that Rove's so-casual leak was peddled not from Novak to Rove and then innocently to Cooper, but to a total of six journalists. According to Harper's in September, 2003, "An unnamed administration official told the Washington Post that two White House officials had revealed the agent's identity to at least six journalists. 'Clearly,' the official said, 'it was meant purely and simply for revenge.'" ...

• Funny that if the story is so inocuous, Rove, Scott MClellan and others felt compelled to lie ... er. ... stonewall the press about it...

• Funny that if this is such a non-story, a special prosecutor has convened a grand jury and jailed a reporter in the course of investigating it ...

• And there's still the question of whether Mr. Rove, like Martha Stewart before him, failed to tell the truth to federal investigators ...

There is no solid information that Rove, or anyone else, violated [the] law designed to protect covert CIA agents. There is, however, evidence suggesting that other laws were violated. In particular, I have in mind the laws invoked by the Bush Justice Department in the relatively minor leak case that it vigorously prosecuted, though it involved information that was not nearly as sensitive as that which Rove provided Matt Cooper (and possibly others).

The Jonathan Randel Leak Prosecution Precedent

I am referring to the prosecution and conviction of Jonathan Randel. Randel was a Drug Enforcement Agency analyst, a PhD in history, working in the Atlanta office of the DEA. Randel was convinced that British Lord Michael Ashcroft (a major contributor to Britain's Conservative Party, as well as American conservative causes) was being ignored by DEA, and its investigation of money laundering. (Lord Ashcroft is based in South Florida and the off-shore tax haven of Belize.) Randel leaked the fact that Lord Ashcroft's name was in the DEA files, and this fact soon surfaced in the London news media. Ashcroft sued, and learned the source of the information was Randel. Using his clout, soon Ashcroft had the U.S. Attorney in pursuit of Randel for his leak.

By late February 2002, the Department of Justice indicted Randel for his leaking of Lord Ashcroft's name. It was an eighteen count "kitchen sink" indictment; they threw everything they could think of at Randel. Most relevant for Karl Rove's situation, Court One of Randel's indictment alleged a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 641. This is a law that prohibits theft (or conversion for one's own use) of government records and information for non-governmental purposes. But its broad language covers leaks, and it has now been used to cover just such actions.

Randel, faced with a life sentence (actually, 500 years) if convicted on all counts, on the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to violating Section 641. On January 9, 2003, Randel was sentenced to a year in a federal prison, followed by three years probation. This sentence prompted the U.S. Attorney to boast that the conviction of Randel made a good example of how the Bush Administration would handle leakers.

The Randel Precedent -- If Followed -- Bodes Ill For Rove. Karl Rove may be able
to claim that he did not know he was leaking "classified information" about a "covert agent," but there can be no question he understood that what he was leaking was "sensitive information." The very fact that Matt Cooper called it "double super secret background" information suggests Rove knew of its sensitivity, if he did not know it was classified information (which by definition is sensitive).

• Cat in a tin foil hat
• Robert Novak: Lord of the journo flies
• Wrong on Wilson
• You know you're in political trouble when ...
• Finemanly speaking ...

"If there's any single thing that I hold against George Bush more than any other, it's the way that, with almost animal instinct, he decided within days of 9/11 to use it as nothing more than a routine opportunity to destroy his domestic enemies, rather than as a unique and fleeting chance to unite the country and destroy our foreign enemies. That tawdry instinct came from Karl Rove and people like him, and it's that instinct that is destroying the modern Republican party. Someday the few remaining grownup conservatives will figure that out." --Kevin Drum WashingtonMonthly.com

"It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services who will defeat terrorism, it is communities who will defeat terrorism," Metropolitan Police Commission Ian Blair told a gathering at the Minhaj-ul-Quran Mosque. "We must seize this moment, this weekend, next week, we have to seize a moment in which the Muslim communities of Britain, helped by everybody of good will, changes from a current position of shock and disbelief into active engagement in counterterroism."


Blair told Muslims that "I need you."


"We've got nearly a million Muslims in London ... I've only got 300 Muslim police
officers in London. I'm afraid that's not good enough. "I need your mothers and your fathers, your brothers and your sisters, your sons and your daughters."

Blair urged the Muslim community to change its attitude toward radical clerics such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is in prison awaiting trial for allegedly encouraging the murder of Jews and other non-Muslims, and Syrian-born Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, spiritual leader of the radical Muslim movement Al-Muhajiroun. "You're going to have move away from the very understandable position that lunatics like Bakri and Hamza are just lunatics and they're not important," Blair said.


"The trouble is, they only need to be important for half a dozen people. You have to find ways of identifying those preachers of hate and who they're talking to. We have to find ways in which we identify the young men and sometimes women who are vulnerable to extremism. That is a great challenge."

Blair said there was "nothing wrong with being a fundamentalist Muslim," or a fundamentalist of another faith. "The key issue is the slide into extremism," he said.

Reports from US intelligence sources quoted in London suggest that Britain was warned two months ago that Al-Qaeda was planning a “Madrid-style” attack on the London transport network. Captured Al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, who was arrested in Pakistan and who is now in the custody of the Americans, has apparently briefed US intelligence interrogators to this effect.

According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

According to Brisard, the arrested man lacks the global reach of Al-Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s number two, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, or Anas al-Liby. Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda’s commander of operations in Europe, as reported. The only operations in which he is known to have been involved are two attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, in 2003. Last year he was named Pakistan’s most wanted man with a $350,000 (£185,000) price on his head.

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

THE fast-moving inquiry into the London bombings took a further twist yesterday when the terrorist on the Piccadilly Line train was identified as a Jamaican-born Muslim convert.

Lindsey Germaine, who was believed to be in his late 20s, was said by security sources last night to have died when he detonated his rucksack bomb as the southbound train pulled out of King’s Cross, killing at least 26 people and himself.

... Mystery surrounds Germaine. Police were uncertain about how he spelt his name and what or how many names he may have used. He had been living in a rented house in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for only a short time before embarking on
what he will have believed to be his martyrdom mission. His wife, who is believed to be called Samantha, is a white woman said to have converted to Islam in the past two years. She is thought to have changed her name to Sherafiyah [and according to another source, was always seen wearing flowing abaya-type robes]. The couple had a young daughter.

But his appearance in the jigsaw of how this terrorist operation was planned and executed also answers some questions. It explains why the three bombers from Leeds travelled south by car instead of taking a train directly to King’s Cross. Germaine’s home in Aylesbury is 20 miles from Luton, where the West Indian Muslim met his Pakistani co-conspirators early last Thursday morning. Their controllers will have wanted the four to meet, to say a prayer, strengthen each other’s resolve and synchronise their watches before setting off to London.

Germaine, who is believed to have Islamicised his name after his religious conversion and to have called himself Jamal, was said to have been seen in Leeds with some of the other bombers. ... Security sources said last night that they were investigating the likelihood that Germaine first met his Leeds contacts during a trip to a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan.

Efforts to contact the president of the Islamic Council of Jamaica, Mustafa
Mohammed proved futile, but one high-ranking member who requested anonymity told The Gleaner that "Islam is a religion of peace, we do not agree with violence committed against innocent people". There are reportedly 4,000 practising Muslims in Jamaica. [Out of a total population of some 2.7 million people]

"No, I'm not surprised that a young Jamaican male may be involved. People don't understand the Koran but there are clear verses that instruct Muslims to destroy the opponents of Allah. The new radical Islam is spreading all over... and it is spreading all over the world so it is not surprising that a Jamaican may be involved, " Lloyd Cooke, a lecturer at the Jamaica Bible College in Mandeville, told The Gleaner yesterday. "Nationality has nothing to do with it, it has everything to do with conviction."

One neighbour said: "They are a couple, a black man in his early 30s and a woman in her 20s who has converted to Islam. They have a little boy who's about 18 months old.

"They moved into the house about six months ago. They were just about to renew the contract, I think."

ver the past several years, maritime attacks have become more violent, more frequent and clearly more organized. It is believed that militant groups, particularly in South East Asia, are practicing hijacking ships for their possible use as weapons. Of all types of vessels oil and chemical tankers are perhaps the most attractive targets for terrorists. These vessels are manned by smaller crews and loaded with volatile substances that could potentially cause significant damage. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) attacks against tankers are growing at an alarming rate.

While all eyes are placed on the area surrounding the Malacca Straits, the world oil bottleneck, and on the Indonesian coast off Aceh, very little attention is placed on the U.S. underbelly of the Caribbean and the softer targets in the region closest to America's back yard: Trinidad, Venezuela and the Bahamas. These Caribbean countries are among the short list of natural gas producing countries and liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exporters. Trinidad and Tobago alone account for 80% (1st quarter 2004) of all U.S. LNG imports, up from 68% in 2002. Therefore, any incident involving an LNG tanker along the Caribbean routes could harm not only U.S. energy security but also the economies of the Caribbean islands, affecting tourism and other industries.

Trinidad and Tobago is a beautiful country in the Southern part of the Caribbean. It is in fact the southernmost of the Caribbean islands and the last island before Venezuela. It is one of the most affluent of the Caribbean islands with, for several years, the highest foreign direct investment per capita in the entire western hemisphere except for Canada. The home of tourism, steel band, calypso and carnival is unfortunately also the home of one of the first attempts at violently establishing a modern Islamic extremist state in the region after the attempted Islamic coup in July 1990. 15% of the island's population is Muslim.

"By the way, let me just tell you who Matt Cooper is married to just so we can connect all the dots here. Matt Cooper is married to Mandy Grunwald, and Mandy Grunwald is one of these high ranking Democratic Party operatives, and she currently is on Hillary's staff. So Matt Cooper married to Mandy. An incestuous bunch up there..."

back at Disinfo Central...If you missed the Rush Limbaugh show this morning, you missed quite the lolapalooza. He's become positively unglued vis a vis the Plame/Rove affair. And it was a hoot!The "theory" that Rush has been pummelling his Ditto Heads with all day: Joe Wilson has been a part of a double super secret background conspiracy with the DNC since day one, well before he was sent by the CIA to Niger.Yes, that's right. According to Rush, the entire plan to send George W. Bush's own father's Man in Iraq -- a decades-long expert in African and Middle-Eastern affairs to Niger -- was all just a ploy by Democrats "to undermine the War in Iraq and the Bush Presidency," as Rush repeatedly described it.

We suppose then, that Bush 41's letter sent to Wilson saying that he concurred with much of the article that Wilson wrote prior to the war in the San Jose Mercury News was also part of that conspiracy.Why is Dubya's own father trying to destroy Dubya's own "Presidency", dammit?!Rush's final words at the end of the show (referring to the Press Conference scheduled by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to happen shortly): "Chuck Shumer is Joe Wilson's 'handler' in this agency plot to bring down the President."Good lord, these Right Wing Tin-Foil Hat wearers never fail to entertain.

The first charge that the Bush administration "outed" Wilson's wife in order to "punish" him comes in a piece by David Corn in The Nation on July 16—a scant two days after Novak's piece appeared. Titled, "A White House Smear," the piece begins with a suitably inflammatory Leftist spin:

"Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security-and break the law-in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?...It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted."

Of course, Novak neither said nor implied any such thing, but pointing that out wouldn't suit Corn's purpose. Instead, without a shred of evidence, Corn claims, "Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer." Corn then takes the Wilson statement about it "not being about me," and turns it into, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech." In quotes, no less. So was this a new quote directly from Wilson to Corn, or did Corn deliberately rephrase the original quote in Novak's piece to make it stronger from Corn's point of view? In other words, is Wilson embellishing his tale, or is Corn lying?

...Rather than lumbering into free-fire zones of public exposure, White House officials are now practiced hands in message discipline and Clinton-style semanticizing. That's why the press corps sniping at White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Monday--putting no fewer than 35 aggressive (and unanswered) questions to the doughy apparatchik--signified very nearly nothing. Mr. McClellan is the public point man for such questions precisely because he can offer no informed opinion. Indeed, in past exchanges on Mr. Rove's role in the Plame affair, he was reduced to lying as mind-reading-by-other-means: "I've known Karl for a long time, and I don't even need to go and ask Karl, because I know the kind of person he is."

Hounding a suit as empty as Mr. McClellan's into submission is far from a ringing vindication of the press' power. Indeed, like virtually everything else in the ghastly, backwards-spooling Plame saga, it exposes the press' sallow, retiring weakness in affairs of state. Just consider the other damning revelations in the e-mail from Mr. Cooper to his editor: the routine deference that a correspondent for one of the nation's largest-circulation weeklies shows in toeing the administration's line as it sets about its routine course of casual character assassination--even to the point of inadvertently compromising national security by exposing the identity of a C.I.A. operative. ...

• You know you're in political trouble when ...
• Finemanly speaking ...

• The main points of Wilson's article have largely been substantiated by a Senate committee as well as U.S. and United Nations weapons inspectors. A day after Wilson's piece was published, the White House acknowledged that a claim Bush made in his January 2003 state of the union address that Iraq tried to buy ``significant quantities of uranium from Africa'' could not be verified and shouldn't have been included in the speech.
  



• Republicans are attempting to defend Rove by discrediting Wilson, saying the former ambassador misled the public about why he was sent to Niger and what he found there. ... [But] Wilson never said that Cheney sent him, only that the vice president's office had questions about an intelligence report that referred to the sale of uranium yellowcake to Iraq from Niger. Wilson, in his New York Times article, said CIA officials were informed of Cheney's questions. "The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office,'' Wilson wrote.
  



• The ``Wilson/Rove Research & Talking Points'' memo distributed by RNC Director of Television Carolyn Weyforth contends, ``Both the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the CIA found assessments Wilson made in his report were wrong.'' Yet the Senate panel conclusions didn't discredit Wilson. The committee concluded that the Niger intelligence information wasn't solid enough to be included in the State of the Union speech. It added that Wilson's report didn't change the minds of analysts on either side of the issue, while also concluding that an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate ``overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.''
  



• Wilson is vulnerable to some criticisms. The Republican talking points say Wilson has lied about the role his wife played in his trip. In his memoir, ``The Politics of Truth,'' Wilson asserted his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. ``Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,'' he wrote. ``She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.'' The Senate Intelligence Committee report states that a CIA official told the panel that Plame ``offered up'' Wilson's name for the Niger trip and later sent a memo to a CIA official saying her husband had good relations with leaders in Niger. [But no information that she "sent him" or "authorized the trip, as the GOP TPM says...]
  



• Finally, in July 2003, after Wilson's piece was published, the White House conceded that the uranium assertion should not have been included in the president's speech. Several administration officials have accepted responsibility for allowing it into the speech, including Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser and now secretary of state; Stephen Hadley, then Rice's deputy and now the national security adviser; and then-CIA Director George Tenet.

Wilson is right, John Fund and his friends in the GOP (apparently Fund is on the same mailing list as the Fox anchor crew...) are wrong. Bush should get on with it and fire Karl Rove.

Update: MarkInMexico couldn't be more wrong, either, but his daily breakdown of the percentages in the daily press beating Scott McClellan are both entertaining and informative. Yesterday's percentages:

The issues that the MSM should be asking about:

1. Terrorism/GWoT
2. Our troops in Iraq
3. Supreme Court justices
4. G8 / African hunger/debt
5. HIV/AIDS
6. Social Security
7. Oil prices
8. Nuclear proliferation in Iran and Korea
9. A bloated, corrupt, inefficient United Nations
10. Economy

... The issues in which the MSM actually has great interest in the order in
which the questions are asked. ...

Karl Rove: 35 questions - 59%
Iran and Korea: 5 questions - 8%
Terrorism/GWoT: 9 questions - 15%
Supreme Court justices: 2 questions - 3%
Social Security: 2 questions - 3%
Economy: 2 questions - 3%
China: 2 questions - 3%
Space: 2 questions - 3%
Our troops in Iraq: 0 questions - 0%
G8 / African hunger/debt: 0 questions - 0%
HIV/AIDS: 0 questions - 0%
Oil prices: 0 questions - 0%
A bloated, corrupt, inefficient United Nations: 0 questions - 0%

Good points on the media's failure to tackle the myriad important issues of the day, but I have to disagree that the outing of Valerie Plame isn't a top drawer issue, since it goes directly to the credibility of the president, his staff's penchant for political blood sport at the expense of national security, and possible obstruction of justice by a -- if not the -- key Bush aide. In other words, real "cancer on the presidency" issues as opposed to Oval Office hand-and-mouth-jobs...

Miami club impresario Tommy Pooch, who played next to Van Der Sloot for more than two hours, tells us the Dutch-born youth "was as nice as can be, but he was a terrible poker player.

"He kept buying back in, and finally he got knocked out when they stopped buy-ins," Pooch said. "He was a terrible bluffer . . . He was a young, excitable kid. He wore the sunglasses and the baseball cap like they do on TV, but even that didn't help."

Van Der Sloot must have had a habit of losing money in the poker room of the Holiday Inn-Aruba. "It seemed like everyone knew him there," Pooch said. "It was his hangout. He knew all the dealers by name. He was a local yokel."

SCARBOROUGH: Now, friend, let me tell you, I’m going to give you some information right now. It’s information that you’re not hearing on TV. It’s information that you haven’t heard certainly in the court system. Inside sources in this investigation tell me and have told me—and I found out earlier today that there are reports from people who are inside the bar that, actually, Natalee Holloway was approached twice by Joran van der Sloot.

Twice, he made passes toward her. Twice, she rebuffed him. The second time, she pushed him away. And a friend of hers from Birmingham from the school hit him with a closed—or, I’m sorry—Joran hit Natalee Holloway with a closed fist. Then this
friend tried to walk in between the two and tried to stop him from aggressively going after her and suggested that he take it outside. If he wanted to fight somebody, he should fight somebody his own size.

It’s going to be very interesting to see if that information comes out tomorrow in the court hearing, whether we find out, again, two times—and I’ll tell you what. This information, when I learned it today from somebody very close to the case, this information certainly changes what we’ve heard, which, early on, we heard, of course, that Natalee just jumped in the car and drove away.

... and your side's best defense is to try to recast you -- the seasoned, ruthless, political operative -- as a poor, hapless whistleblower.

Several media, political and Washington vectors intersected to create an explosive Rove Reaction.

Third thoughts on pre-Iraq reporting

Take my word, there has been a lot of soul searching in the so-called Main Stream Media (MSM) over its performance, or lack of performance, in the months leading up to the American-led ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Specifically, did we replace what should have been professional skepticism with a certain mindless credulousness in assessing the reality of the Bush administration’s claims of imminent danger to the country and the world from Saddam’s supposedly vast stash of weapons of mass destruction, including — only months away, it was said — the nuclear kind?

If we failed, was it out of a misplaced sense of patriotic duty, or political cowardice or sheer incompetence — or all three?

The press corps was spring-loaded with self-doubt over the WMD issue, and ready to snap over any story that would allow it to revisit what now looks to have been a massive — and embarrassingly successful, from the press’ point of view — propaganda campaign. So Rove was a spinner on the WMD front? After him!

"We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters..." -- John Stewart on "The Daily Show," July 13, 2005

SCARBOROUGH: The last thing you want to do at a time of war is reveal the
identity of undercover CIA agents.

KING: No. Joe Wilson, she recommended ... his wife recommended him for this. He said the vice president recommended him. To me, she took it off the table. Once she allowed him to go ahead and say that, write his op-ed in “The New York Times,” to have Tim Russert give him a full hour on “Meet the Press,” saying that he was sent there as a representative of the vice president, when she knew, she knew herself that she was the one that recommended him for it, she allowed that lie to go forward involving the vice president of the United States, the president of the United States, then to me she should be the last one in the world who has any right to complain. And Joe Wilson has no right to complain.

And I think people like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove. Listen, maybe Karl Rove was not perfect. We live in an imperfect world. And I give him credit for having the guts. And I really ... I tell you, Republicans are running for cover. They should be out attacking Joe Wilson. We should throw this back at them with all the nonsense that has been said about George Bush and all the lies that have come out.

SCARBOROUGH: Well...

KING: Let's at least stand by the guy. He was trying to set the record straight for historical purposes and to save American lives. And if Joe Wilson's wife was that upset, she should have come out and said that her husband was a liar, when he was.

There are two issues here, it seems to me. Legally, what Rove said to Matt Cooper on "double super secret background" (according to this Mike Isikoff piece) may or may not have violated the law against identifying intelligence agents. There are questions about whether Rove knew that Plame was undercover, whether he was "knowingly" outing her, and so forth.

But politically, this is a bombshell. Rove, who has insisted he did not leak Plame's name, had something to do with this effort, even if he didn't "name" her. ( The defense: It all depends on the meaning of the word "leak?") He was attempting to undercut Wilson when he told Cooper that wifey had helped set up Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger (where Wilson didn't find the facts the administration wanted on Saddam seeking uranium) and that the uranium business could still be true (it wasn't). And didn't the White House promise to fire anyone involved in the leak?What does Rove do now? Give a couple of interviews and explain his role? Or remain in the background while his lawyer issues carefully parsed statements?

• Tough crowd
• Karl Rove's FBI problem
• Scootie Pie
• But enough about Judy... (media narcissim in the Miller jailing)
• Choice words (Fitzgerald goes off)
• All in the family (Goldberg says he knows the name...)
• Jailbait, Rall and Rove
• Conversations with Karl
• And the leaker is...
• What about Bob?

MR. McCLELLAN: ...May God bless the people of the Balkan region, and the souls of the departed. And with that, I will be glad to go to your questions. Terry.

Q Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I've previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren't going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

Q Excuse me, but I wasn't actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the President said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak, to press of information. And I just want to know, is that still his position?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that's why I said that our policy continues to be that we're not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium. The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium. And so that's why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation, or questions related to it.

Q Scott, if I could -- if I could point out, contradictory to that statement, on September 29th, 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one who said, if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired. And then on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation is when the President made his comment that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved. So why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you've suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, "We're not going to comment on an ongoing investigation"?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States. And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. That's something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow. And that's why we're continuing to follow that approach and that policy. Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.

Q So could I just ask, when did you change your mind to say that it was okay to comment during the course of an investigation before, but now it's not?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think maybe you missed what I was saying in reference to Terry's question at the beginning. There came a point when the investigation got underway when those overseeing the investigation asked that it would be their -- or said that it would be their preference that we not get into discussing it while it is ongoing. I think that's the way to be most helpful to help them advance the investigation and get to the bottom of it.

Q Scott, can I ask you this; did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to an 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.

Q Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003 when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliott 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" -- do you stand by that statement?

MR. 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.

Q Scott, I mean, just -- I mean, 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 decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, 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 --

Q Why are you choosing when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish --

Q 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 out 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?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

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

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question. Go ahead, Terry.

Q Well, you're in a bad spot here, Scott, because after the investigation began, after the criminal investigation was underway, 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?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization Terry, 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.

Q Do you recall when you were asked --

Q Wait, wait -- 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?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation, and I'm just not going to respond any further.

Q When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?

MR. McCLELLAN: Back at that time period.

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

MR. McCLELLAN: John, I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response. Go ahead, Dave.

Q We are going to keep asking them. When did the President learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with the President -- with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson's wife and the decision to send --

MR. McCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.

Q When did the President learn that Karl Rove had --

MR. McCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions, Dick.

...the new costume of normalcy can't mask the underlying derangement of the Bush-haters. They can put items like these away when the Washington Post photographer comes to visit, but they're not fooling anyone.

Still, coupled with the move by the Daily Kos over the weekend to put leftist conspiracy-mongers on notice, it's an interesting sign that some liberals realize that the public face of the hate-pockmarked Left is in need of some heavy-duty concealer.

Muslims out of civilized countries. Get them out now. New Zealand needs to send them back where they came from. Muslims bring nothing but trouble to the countries they move to. Islam is a disease and should be treated as such. -- Posted by: greyrooster at July 10, 2005 07:35 AM

A few clerics strung up from light poles might send the right message, then watch the goathumpers leave in droves. Muslims have well demonstrated cannot live among civilized people. -- Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at July 10, 2005 10:22 AM

Well Dave, I think they should be expelled by force, because that's the only thing they understand. To muslims, if you don't fight back, you're weak and deserve to be conquered, but if you do fight back, you're against islam. They are a viral plague, plain and simple, and must be eradicated. -- Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at July 10, 2005 10:42 AM

Best time to hit is when the hive is full.
posted on 07/10/2005 9:20:55 PM PDT by ncountylee (Dead terrorists smell like victory)


The Muslim version of the "Reichstag Fire."
posted on 07/10/2005 9:21:56 PM PDT by dfwgator

We're taking up a collection to help the moslems with their burning mosques. How much do you have so far ? About 10 gallons so far........
posted on 07/10/2005 9:25:01 PM PDT by festus (The constitution may be flawed but its a whole lot better than what we have now.)


I was hoping the headline would read: "Ghurkas attack UK Mosques While Mosques are Full of Virmin Attending Prayer"
posted on 07/10/2005 9:26:31 PM PDT by ArmedNReady (Demand That Your Congressmen Declare islam a Terrorist Organization)

CHICAGO Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of "profound importance" because they are based on illegally leaked documents -- and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities. "They've said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you'd lose," Clifton said in an interview Friday afternoon."The reporters say, 'Well, we're willing to go to jail, and I'm willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'" Clifton added, "but the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail. That's what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation."