it just goes to confirm that no matter how low you set your expectations for the bush administration, it goes lower.

it's a kind of genius, i suppose.

I think a pattern of allegations is pretty meaningless. We ought to try to deal in facts.

Don't tell this to the truthers.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Slow leak of what really happened behind the scenes. When will the nation be moved to take all of this seriously?

A pattern that is continually ignored.

..................................................
Perhaps Clarke's most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here's how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: "The President dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this'.....the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this.'" After Clarke protested that "there's no connection," Bush came back to him and said "Iraq, Saddam — find out if there's a connection." Clarke says Bush made the point "in a very intimidating way." The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, Dick, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,604598,00.html
..................................................

Uh, I bet a certain somewhat lackluster unable-to-attack political campaign could push these stories into larger focus.

Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe all these sources are full of shit.

Here's a theory that is a little more appropriate to people like the Republicans: maybe some of 'em are true and some are false. Let's say your wife caught you cheating three times. You've already been caught cheating-- three allegations made against you have turned out to be true-- and the world didn't end, but what you really want her to believe is that you're leaving certain property in your will to her and not your son. So you let her find out you were cheating again, but you get the detail about the property included in the story. She's inclined to believe stories about you cheating now, because they turned out to be true three times before. So when you candidly admit, "Well, Candy came in the room, just about as I was changing my will to leave the vintage VW to Michael..." it adds an air of truth (in her eyes) to the detail you really want to get her to believe in what ostensibly is a statement you are making to admit guilt about cheating. The country is already ready to believe the Bush administration lied to get us into this war. That's a news story worth reporting. But maybe there is something else they want to get us to believe, too. They are wily enough to do it that way.

I'm not saying that this is what is happening this time, just that this is the level of "game" on which they operate-- this is the kind of media manipulation they do and are capable of. They are people who have been lying their whole lives and put some craft into it.

Let's say someone wants to get you to believe a lie about a specific person. They may first on a few ocassions report to the target of the lie that they saw the specific person engaging in certain activity that the target of the lie knows the specific person is capable of. From these reports, the target of the lie comes to believe that the liar supplies accurate information on the person. But then on the 10th ocassion, the liar reports the same behavior again plus something a little bit worse-- but it's an untrue allegation. The target of the lie is more likely to believe it, though, because of how they've been set up, and especially if the behavior lied about isn't so extreme that they could picture the person lied about engaging in it (sometimes that old saw about "the big lie" really doesn't hold water). Similarly, if the liars lie too big at first and can't get people to believe it, they may recognize their mistake and try again, accusing the target of more realistic (but still objectionable and still untrue) behavior.

CIA told to forge letter from Iraqi Intelligence to Saddam saying Mohammed Atta's learned to fly in Iraq. FBI pressured to link anthrax to Al Qaeda. Tonkin Gulf. The Maine. Operation Northwoods. False Flags. 9/11.

You don't need to see his identification. These aren't the droids you're looking for. He can go about his business. Move along.

"Well, Candy came in the room, just about as I was changing my will to leave the vintage VW to Michael..."

Or I guess this should say, he was leaving it to the wife, not the son. Ack! I messed up my own example...

OT: Here's a link to a burlesque performance about Dubya. Not workplace friendly! http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BIl2BdiGsSA

I think we are all pretty sure Dick Cheney order those fraud items and in a normal world that would get both Cheney and Bush impeached.

The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam

A house can't order anything, so who was it? Dick Cheney - or Bush. Ron Suskind knows who it was.

Remember too that Richard Clarke said it was Bush that wanted 9/11 to be treated as if Saddam did it.

It is good to air this story and keep it afloat. On the way home from work I caught democracynow with Amy Goodman--she discussed the topic with Glenn Greenwald, who observed about reporters that

"....they claimed that they were told by many sources inside the government that tests had found the presence of something called bentonite, which is the hallmark, they said, of the Iraqi biological weapons program. It turned out that claim was totally false. There never was any bentonite found in the anthrax, everybody now agrees, and yet, as you showed from the clip from John McCain—there was clips from Joe Lieberman several days later on Meet the Press—there was a concerted effort to try and link the anthrax in the public mind to Saddam Hussein and to Iraq, specifically, and Islamic radicalism, more generally."

"The FBI ultimately, through their tests, decided that all of the evidence was actually pointing to US government facilities and US government and US Army research labs, of the type where Bruce Ivins and Steven Hatfill worked at Fort Detrick. And so, they were aware from the start that it was almost certainly a domestic source, and yet all kinds of factions, within the government and out, tried continuously to depict it as something that was likely coming from Iraq, and they continued to do that for several years, even when it was clearly established that it was almost certainly a domestic source."

It was a great broadcast.
And it is unsettling what is still coming out about the pervasive, endless deception of the Bush/Cheney/McCain/LIEberman administration.

Dear 51% of the USA - this is what you get for electing people solely on the basis of your irrational fear of homosexuals.

Those damn dirty hippies would have totally ruined the country.....

IMPEACHMENT INVESTIGATIONS will give us those ellusive answers as to who sold US out and how they did it. Call Pelosi @1-202-225-0100 and DEMAND IMPEACHMENT.

Many of the hardcore right-wing websites, like NewsMax and WorldNetDaily, pushed the lie that the 9-11 hijackers trained at Salman Pak, a small town north of Baghdad. After the invasion of Iraq, an airplane fuselage was found near there, which cinched this misbegotten theory in their tiny little brains. Now, we may know where they got this cockamamie notion.

Irony alert: am, of all people, complains about "wilful ignorance and general stupidity."

And I see brian, everyone's favorite faux-reasonable Republican concern troll, is back saying "We ought to try to deal in facts." Alas for you Republicans, Brian, facts have a liberal bias.

am,

rather than respond with sneer and smear, provide specific and documented support of uh, whatever point it is you're trying to make - in this case it seems to be a simple case of 'shoot the messenger.' Seriously, I hope you don't go about your business in the world in such a garbled and incoherent manner. Outside of authoritarian-wing 'think'tanks it doesn't get you very far. I mean it's kinduva totally failed drive-by shooting when bystanders don't even realize that's what you're trying to do. Anyway, just thought I'd toss you some pearls.

The Saddam/anthrax connection never made any sense whatsoever for the same reason the Chechen separatists/apartment bombing in Moscow connection made no sense. Cui bono? Would that more reporters would ask the simple two word questions.

The NSA is constructing a series of unimpeachable letters and cell phone logs showing Obama communicated with al Qaida operatives in the months leading up to 9/11. Just sayin'........

Here's a fact. One inexperienced analyst, outside his field, thought the aluminum tubes had something to do with a centrifuge. They didn't release the dismissals of the idea. Suppressing evidence is a lie, too.

But even if we accept the fact that the Bush administration was willing to fabricate a pretext for the war in Iraq, it still does not explain why. And the simple answer "oil" is not sufficient.

Because there's no other way to kickstart the economy. The banks are _broke_ and it's not just the oil that's in the Middle East, it's the money.

---------

24. There is roughly $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits. $2.60 Trillion of that is uninsured. There is only $53 billion in FDIC insurance to cover $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits. Indymac will eat up roughly $8 billion of that.

25. Of the $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits, the total cash on hand at banks is a mere $273.7 Billion. Where is the rest of the loot? The answer is in off balance sheet SIVs, imploding commercial real estate deals, Alt-A liar loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, toggle bonds where debt is amazingly paid back with more debt, and all sorts of other silly (and arguably fraudulent) financial wizardry schemes that have bank and brokerage firms leveraged at 30-1 or more. Those loans cannot be paid back.

What cannot be paid back will be defaulted on. If you did not know it before, you do now. The entire US banking system is insolvent.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

That stuff's not important. Any right-minded person knows that what's important is tire gauges, and the surprising fact that apparently only elitists recommend using them.

Yawn.

Democrats better wake up. The electorate is sending a very loud message: Bush is gone, what do YOU have to offer?

Once again, the Democrats are fighting the last election.

McCain is the candidate now. And as badly as he is doing personally, his campaign is killing Obama's right now. They control the message.

And Obama's message of "forget about the primaries, I'm more right-wing than you think," is hardly inspiring.

The polls are not lying: the Democratic base has buyer's remorse -- and the Republicans are on the attack.

And then there is the forgery they really used: The Niger yellowcake letter.

Yeah, how's the investigation coming into the source of that?

And yet... The White House immediately corrected ABC's bentonite stories, pushing back loudly -- even calling on ABC to name their sources.

Maybe this is because Army Maj. Gen. Parker was already too involved in the investigation for the WH to get away with fudging (he was part of the second WH press briefing, on October 29 at which it was asserted that no bentonite or aluminum had been found in the samples; the previous one was on the 25th. Parker from Army and Meehan from CDC were made part of the briefing exactly because on the 25th Ridge had used careless phrasing that took reporters beyond what was actually known in a couple of cases.) From the transcript:

MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: ...There seems to be a lot of questions about bentonite. I'm not sure where they're coming from, or their importance. But if you ask what is bentonite, it's a volcanic clay. And one of its principal ingredients is aluminum. And it varies in percentage of aluminum. And we have subjected the New York Post sample and the Daschle sample to very high energy x-ray studies, and I will say to you that we see no aluminum presence in the sample.

And, therefore, if you go back to the definition, MERK Index, the Internet, and geology centers all over this country, we can say that there is no bentonite in the New York Post sample or the Daschle sample.

Q: To follow up, what does that say about the level of sophistication, and obviously connected to that, the level of expertise needed to --
for something like this, if it doesn't have --

MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Bentonite is a lubricant. That's all I know about it by reading, just like you read. It's a hydroscopic compound. I don't know what its significance is, and I've been asked to study the samples thoroughly, from A to Z, to know what's in the sample, what's the character of that anthrax, what its family lineage is, and what it's antibiotic sensitivities are. And I feel very strongly that
the scientific data that I'm giving to you this morning is all I know.

Q: Does that suggest then that there was no additive, there's been nothing in the spores to make them more -- or nothing added to the
spores to make them more easily aerosolized?

MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Complicated question. We do know that we found silica in the samples. Now, we don't know what that motive would be, or why it would be there, or anything. But there is silica in the samples. And that led us to be absolutely sure that there was no aluminum in the sample, because the combination of a silicate, plus
aluminum, is sort of the major ingredients of bentonite.
...
Q: Would further tests show whether bentonite was there? Ari earlier suggested there may be other tests would identify it. Does this, what you're doing rule out bentonite, in your opinion?

MAJOR GENERAL PARKER: Sir, in my opinion, it rules it out. If I can't find aluminum, I can't say it's bentonite.

Clearly there were people in the White House who wanted to push an Iraq+alQaeda connection to the anthrax, and even more in the VP's office, but at a crucial moment, at the height of the scare, they were telling the truth about the anthrax in the letters.

DicksKnee ---- "Once again, the Democrats are fighting the last election.

McCain is the candidate now."

And don't forget that McCain actually ran against GWB 8 years ago. McCain is moving towards his base. Obama seems to be moving away from his base. Wonder if the super delegates having second thoughts?

Obama 08 oh no

DicksKnee ---- "Once again, the Democrats are fighting the last election.

Frankly, it seems as if the Republicans are fighting the last election. Mainly because Republicans fight all elections in exactly the same way - their opponents are effete, French loving flip floppers who embrace the homosexual agenda, are secretly atheists, hate our brave troops and want to raise your taxes.

Their solutions are always the same too: tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.

I used to keep believing that eventually these tactics would stop working. Not anymore. At some point the Democrats need to learn to start hitting below the belt. Frankly, that is why Clinton would have been a much more effective nominee.

Yeah, funny how the country only cares about gay marriage every four years.

Just to refresh my memory: What were the motives (top 5? top 10?) for going into Iraq? Every crime has to have a motive.

I've long suspected that both the Italian yellowcake forgeries, and the "forged" GW Bush TANG documents that were used to take down Dan Rather and discredit the AWOL story even though it is true, will eventually be traced to the same source : Karl Rove.

The Republicans have an incentive to make it look like the FBI and the CIA are nonpartisan. The Republicans' ultimate goal is one-party rule. But people distrust and dislike their government when they feel like political orthodoxy is being enforced on them-- like they are being oppressed.

We hear a lot about the CIA and the FBI resisting pushy partisan behavior by the White House, but that doesn't mean that's really the way it happened. And the most persuasive lie is the one that is as close to the truth as possible, except for the point you really need to lie about. Lie about whether Bush would lie about the Iraq war? Maybe. Lie about it if the CIA and FBI are almost in absolute lockstep with the White House on issues like torture and lying to start an Iraq war? Absolutely.

DicksKnee ---- "Once again, the Democrats are fighting the last election.

As opposed to McCain running against Jimmy Carter?
.

"And the most persuasive lie is the one that is as close to the truth as possible, except for the point you really need to lie about."

Some people might say this flies in the face of what has become conventional (I would call it banal) "wisdom" about "the big lie," but my answer is that if a little lie is something that sounds plausible to people who are ignorant enough to believe it, and something that people want to believe-- like that the CIA, NSA, FBI or the Air Force isn't about as ideological as Jesus Camp-- then the lie is a believeable one.

The Republicans-- people whose goal is one-party rule (basically destroying or outlawing opposing parties like the Democratic party, not just beating them in a lot of elections)-- also have an incentive to intentionally leak details about the WH forging documents or otherwise lying to get into the Iraq war, when the time is right (that is, when they don't think the President or the party will get into trouble because of it). This is because they want to build a movement characterized by beliefs like the belief that it was ok to lie to the nation to go to war in Iraq. If you always hide it, you can never start that movement. I guess you could have some measly pundit make the case, but it's a lot more persuasive and dramatic if someone like a Republican President just leads by example.

When does the mendacity get serious enough that Bush and company get prosecuted for murder?

Yeah, funny how the country only cares about gay marriage every four years.

It takes that long to get a date, line up the hall, check out the caterers, pick a DJ, choose an invitation....

We ought to try to deal in facts.

how's the investigation coming

The W. Bush regime has done everything in its power to prevent and obstruct investigations of 9/11 and the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Americans do not wonder why, but they do respond to the oil companies' spokespersons (Congresspersons) to issue more drilling permits.

Motive for tricking the country into the Iraq invasion?: Primarily, to prove GWB's manhood.

I wonder if our friends on the right would concede, IF the story is true about ordering a forgery (or knowingly using a forgery) in order to create public support for the invasion, that would be grounds for impeachment. Or is forgery, like torture, within the discretion of the Executive?

"I think a pattern of allegations is pretty meaningless. We ought to try to deal in facts."

Brian,
Allegations of this nature would lead any investigator to conclude that there is sufficient merit, based on the plethora of sources revealing a pattern of behavior, that possible crime(s) has/have been committed.
In short, this would be called the beginning of the investigative phase, after which if there is sufficent evidence, circumstantial or directly linked, would lead to indictments.

The ever-insightful Juan Cole reminds us that the provenance of the anthrax in the letters sent to Daschle et al. could have been traced to Iraq, since those stupid, traitorous motherfuckers in the Reagan Administration sold anthrax to Saddam in the first place!

Go to www.juancole.com

I wonder if our friends on the right would concede, IF the story is true about ordering a forgery (or knowingly using a forgery) in order to create public support for the invasion, that would be grounds for impeachment.

No mere human delict would ever serve as warrant for, nor could a merely human body like Congress be capable of, overturning the judgment of Almighty God, who from the beginning of all time selected George Bush as a special dispensation to rescue the nation, in its hour of greatest need, from the twin scourges of oral sex and slightly higher marginal rates of income tax.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord:

Why swallow every "Bushlied" one sided story whole?
Saddam's goons were assisting al Qaeda and they've admitted in custody and on jihadists forums...see www.regimeofterror.com.

Anti war and anti Bush somehow became anti all the facts to "some" people. Shameless....

If W. Bush was interrogated with the same techniques used on jihadists in custody, the president would have confessed to being the perpetrator of 9/11 and the killer of JonBennet Ramsay.

Is there any doubt that impeachment and criminal prosecution is the warranted? Nancy Pelosi and others who oppose impeachment and prosecution really do deserve to lose their positions of power. At this point their inaction is at best cynical political calculation, at worst smacks of casual collusion. Nancy Pelosi and others in positions of leadership in the Democratic party who oppose impeachment should lose their positions of power. If you aren't enforcing the laws and safeguarding Constitution you're not fulfilling your oath of office.

Reading the recent comment about the potential forgery of documents concerning anthrax, it reminded me of the forged document put forth by Dan Rather concerning GWBush' service in the Texas Air National Guard. If I remember correctly, the Texas Air National Guard document was presented by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes, then w/in a few days people began to notice the font on the document wasn't available when the document was supposedly written. That lead to widespread condemnation of Rather (and by extension the MSM) w/ the end results being the effective death, once and for all, of this story.

I've always believed the Air National Guard document was actually forged by the Republicans (Rove), and while it was a forgery, it was a replica of the actual document. What better way to kill a story than humiliating the national media into submission? After Rather got creamed, who the heck would pursue the Air National Guard story? Rove is famous for aggressively attacking an opponents strength. In my mind it follows that he would aggressive defend an allies weakness by bringing that weakness out in some very subtle way that would be beneficial to his ally.

Maybe I'm nuts, but if you believe the anthrax letter was forged by the Bush White House, I think it's a short leap to believe the Air National Guard document was forged as well.

Where's the document? Without it this is a worthless allegation.

Where's the document? Without it this is a worthless allegation.

You don't need a document. All you need to do is consider how mathematically improbable it is for this story not to be chance considering all of the other outright lies disseminated by this administration.

You know, like this:

I can't prove that God created the world. I just do things like consider how mathematically possible it is to eventually create a human being by chance processes, and I come to the conclusion that there is not enough time, and that the unguided processes could not have done it.

Posted by: John Hansen on May 7, 2008 at 4:20 PM | PERMALINK

Or is the creation of the world by a supreme being just a "worthless allegation"?

so the White House communicated a written(!) instruction to Tenet to forge a critical document and sent this on embossed White House stationery? And just happened to throw Niger into it as well? And the letter's existence wasn't learned until after the war began, making it useless as propaganda to go to war in the first place.God, how bad can you want something to be true that's patently ridiculous? If CIA inside sources are now peddling this crap to Suskind, no wonder our intelligence is crap.That agency needs to be blown up for incompetence.

hansen: Where's the document? Without it this is a worthless allegation.

where was the proof of this claim...

.."we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons..." - Dick Cheney March 2003...

where was the proof of this claim...

..."we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons..." - Dick Cheney March 2003...

Oh, nice! And mr. irony wins the thread!

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