Knucklingunderheads
I don't know too much about the politics of the guy who runs The Daily Howler, but when I saw this post over at Eschaton ---and sniffed around the remarkably bitter comments that followed--- I knew I had to check it out:
First, Wilson never seemed to understand the simple logic of the Niger matter. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush uttered those famous sixteen words: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Six months later, Wilson published his famous New York Times op-ed piece—and quite literally, he didn’t say a single word about Bush’s actual claim. What happened on Wilson’s trip to Niger? “It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place,” he wrote—and his statement was surely right. But Bush never said a transaction took place; he only said that uranium had been sought. But from Day One, Wilson didn’t seem to grasp the logic of the claim he thought he was refuting. None of this stopped him from the grandiose, self-puffing claims that have characterized his woeful performance from that day to this.
Second, Wilson didn’t seem to understand the basic logic of his own report to the CIA. As Orin noted, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported on this matter last summer—and the unanimous committee (nine Reps, eight Dems) savaged Wilson’s performance (for example, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/20/04). Indeed, the committee found that Wilson’s report bolstered suspicion that Iraq sought uranium.
Now, in an update to his post, Bob Somerby acknowledges something that Eschaton's Duncan Black obviously regards as significant: in a 10 July 2004 Washington Poststory by Susan Schmidt that details the ways in which the Senate Intelligence Committee slams Joe Wilson as a liar, there is a correction, which the Committee's own Report (pp. 43-44) validates:
In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.
While it's important to get the facts straight, it's also important to not gloss over a very interesting concession here that Black is clearly making: Iran, too, has been seeking nuclear materials for many years now in contravention of the authority of the IAEA. Why would they be doing that? Were they doing something they knew would not be tolerated by the rest of the world?
And doesn't Black understand that his petty reminder of a correction in a single story published a year ago is irrelevant to the larger question of Saddam's interest in procuring uranium? The Committee's Report is clear about that.
Boldfaced Minds
Claudia Rosett, no slouch herself in making the connections between Saddamite Iraq and the al-Qaeda network, helps to spread the word of Stephen Hayes' and Thomas Joscelyn's crucial new NRO piece by talking it up in today's Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal.
It's really important for people who advocate war in Iraq to stand up and insist on its necessity to those who do not know the facts ---especially when this Administration so routinely fails itself at making that case to the public.
As Rosett recounts (with emphases added ---because I'm a didactic bastage):
Since the fall of Saddam, the U.S. has had extraordinary access to documents of the former Baathist regime, and is still sifting through millions of them. Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn take some of what is already available, combined with other reports, documentation and details, some from before the overthrow of Saddam, some after. For page after page, they list connections--with names, dates and details such as the longstanding relationship between Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Saddam's regime.
Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn raise, with good reason, the question of why Saddam gave haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the men who in 1993 helped make the bomb that ripped through the parking garage of the World Trade Center. They detail a contact between Iraqi intelligence and several of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia, the year before al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers. They recount the intersection of Iraqi and al Qaeda business interests in Sudan, via, among other things, an Oil for Food contract negotiated by Saddam's regime with the al-Shifa facility that President Clinton targeted for a missile attack following the African embassy bombings because of its apparent connection to al Qaeda. And there is plenty more.
Yep. But if we leave it up to the fucking [mainstream media], all we're going to hear about is missing and attractive white girls, shark attacks, and how awful Karl Rove's crime against Valerie Plame and our national security is. This issue of Saddamite Iraq's ties to the jihadists, however, is the real one ---and people need to be paying attention.
Get It Straight
As John Hinderaker at The Power Line reminds us, one of the lies that Joe Wilson told in his infamous op-ed in the New York Times was that he was sent to investigate the yellowcake claims in Niger by Vice President Cheney's office. That isn't true. Here's what Wilson wrote:
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. 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.
Hinderaker observes (with my emphasis):
This was another lie by Wilson, as Cheney pointed out at the time, and as the Senate Intelligence Report confirmed. Contrary to false statements made by Wilson and his wife, it was Valerie Plame who suggested her husband for the Niger venture, and the Vice-President's office had nothing to do with it. This is precisely what Karl Rove told Matt Cooper, but the Times demurely fails to quote Cooper's email to that effect.
As usual, the Times's editorial will sound plausible only to the uninformed.
If Karl Rove is the Devil, he is in the details.
Why does any of this matter? Because this wasn't just nepotism ---"just" a CIA employee getting her husband an assignment for which he wasn't qualified--- but a scandalous abuse of this Administration by a couple of disaffected partisans who wanted to manufacture their own angle on the question of this war. For fortune? Probably. For fame? You bet your ass.
Oh, and keep reading Hinderaker's post. It's got a juicy surprise on the back end.
The Lad Next Door Now Playing: "Manic Depression" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
Never mind all this horseshit about how the suicide bombers in London were just "lads" next door ---just your average, everyday young Brits, don't you know?
It's criminal what's happening in old Albion.
The sorrows are in the changing face of that great culture.
To put it no plainer.
I don't have to be told that religions are actually ideologies in another form. And no one anywhere needs to be told that the alien ideologies in our midst must stand or fall on their own merits.
Smash these psychopaths now or be smashed by them later. There is no choice in necessity, nor blame.
A Cheap (and Now Incredibly Disturbing) Form of Entertainment Mood: surprised
As everyone should know, the most entertaining thing on TV is comparing what people are actually saying to the weird, hyperhomophonically-misspelled words that appear in the closed-captioning mode. It is to snarf.
The second cheapest form of entertainment you can have in front of a screen is to read the details of your blog traffic ---especially the keywords typed into search engines that take the user to your site.
Yesterday, someone came across the list of my fifty most favorite movies (well, I've only bothered to getting around to entering 42 of them, but that's beside the point) in which I referred to The Empire Strikes Back as a movie that, in the summer of 1980, owned my "11 year-old ass."
Memory, Meet Hole Now Playing: "Never Been to Spain" by Three Dog Night
How many fucking [news reports] have I read today where the lies of Joe Wilson go unmentioned?
If you're thinking that's irrelevant to Karl Rove's Great Crime against Humanity, I guess that means you do concede that Wilson is a liar.
Go read the Butler Report. Go read the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report. Iraq did attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Once morons like David Gregory and Terry Moran get around to mentioning that inconvenient little fact, it'll make this whole witch hunt for Rove's head a lot more interesting.
Soulless Garbage Now Playing: "Starry Night" by Don McLean
Listen up, kaffir, and see if this don't piss you off some:
AMSTERDAM, July 12 - Breaking a self-imposed silence that had confounded court officials here, a young Muslim man coolly accepted responsibility Tuesday for the brutal slaying of a controversial Dutch filmmaker, adding that he would do it all over again if given the chance.
Shaken by the horrific death of the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch heard for the first time Tuesday the voice of his assailant, who spoke of the murder in the same matter-of-fact manner in which some witnesses say it was executed.
Bicycling to work last Nov. 2, Mr. van Gogh was shot at least six times before having his throat cut.
The defendant, Muhammad Bouyeri, the 27-year-old son of Moroccan immigrants, showed no remorse, saying he had killed Mr. van Gogh based on his religious beliefs.
"I acted out of conviction and not out of hate," Mr. Bouyeri told the court. "If I'm ever released, I'd do the same again. Exactly the same."
He added his actions were based on "the law that instructs me to chop off the head of everyone who insults Allah or the prophet."
On a related note, here is the story of the Portuguese encounter with the now-extinct dodo:
In the year 1598 AD, Portuguese sailors landing on the shores of the island of Mauritius discovered a previously unknown species of bird, the Dodo. Having been isolated by its island location from contact with humanity, the dodo greeted the new visitors with a child-like innocence. The sailors mistook the gentle spirit of the dodo, and its lack of fear of the new predators, as stupidity. They dubbed the bird "dodo" (meaning something similar to a simpleton in the Portuguese tongue).
"Apparently"
You're going to need to read this account of Byron York's interview with Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, at the National Review Online.
According to a report in Newsweek, Cooper's e-mail to Time Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy said, "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper said that Rove had warned him away from getting "too far out on Wilson," and then passed on Rove's statement that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor CIA Director George Tenet had picked Wilson for the trip; "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip." Finally — all of this is according to the Newsweek report — Cooper's e-mail said that "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly that there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger..."
I can't tell from this whether it was Rove or Cooper who used the adverb "apparently," but if it was Rove who did, I think that's some indication that he did not know for a fact that Plame was a CIA employee ---and certainly not an undercover agent, if she still was.
Don't forget: it was Cooper who initiated the phone call, not Rove. But that didn't keep Cooper from writing a story a few days later that suggested that Rove was out to smear Wilson or his wife.
Oh, and one more thing: Karl Rove has already testified before the grand jury three different times. He signed away any agreement of confidentiality with respect to any mention to any person of Valerie Plame's identity a year and a half ago. This is a guy with something to hide?
Go ask Judy Miller why she's cooling her heels in a jail cell. She's got a lot of shit to worry about right now. Imprisonment for her is the easy way out.
"This Lot" Mood: happy
I think it was Charles Krauthammer the other day who brought up a quote from an elderly Englishwoman who had survived the Luftwaffe's bombing of London some 60 years before. She had come to London last week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe and to see an unveiling of a memorial to women who served in that great conflict. So, thinking about it, I've just located her opinion of al-Qaeda. (My grateful emphasis added.)
Major David Robertson, the chairman of the Memorial for Women of World War Two Trust, said he had been inundated with calls from veterans asking if the event was going ahead.
"To a lady they said it would take a lot more than nasty terrorist bombs to put them off coming," he said.
The retired Royal Artillery officer added: "I think there is great resistance to what happened. I have no doubt that London and the rest of Britain will feel a determination to carry on with the freedoms that were won for us by the veterans of World War Two."
Edna Storr, 81, who served as an enemy aircraft height spotter in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) travelled from York to be at the unveiling.
"Hitler never stopped us and we aren't going to let this lot do so too," she said at King's Cross station yesterday.
"I was very frightened after what happened but I was determined that these few terrorists would not put me off. They won't keep us veterans away, they won't stop us having our day."
"This lot." Heh, heh. I love that. Thank you, madame.
Four Things That Assholes on the TV Aren't Telling You About Karl Rove's "Outing" of Valerie Plame Now Playing: "You'll Forget" by Neil Diamond One. The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act doesn't apply to Karl Rove because there's no evidence that he knew anything about Valerie Plame's undercover status with the CIA. He simply knew that she was with the Company as someone involved in investigating WMD programs. That isn't going to get him into the trouble that you wankers so desperately wish for him to be.
Two. Rove signed a waiver of confidentiality back in December of 2003, allowing any reporter who had spoken with him about Plame to say so. So this story about how Matt Cooper (and, presumably, Judith Miller) somehow needed Rove to hold their hands and stroke their shoulders and tell them it was okay to repeat what he said is just a lot of crap. They could have said so any time any where:
After the investigation into the leak began, [Rove's attorney Robert] Luskin said, Rove signed a waiver in December 2003 or January 2004 authorizing prosecutors to speak to any reporters Rove had previously engaged in discussion, which included Cooper.
"His written waiver included the world," Luskin said. "It was intended to be a global waiver. . . . He wants to make sure that the special prosecutor has everyone's evidence. That reflects someone who has nothing to hide."
But Cooper wants to stand around for the cameras and act like he was protecting somebody? Rove fucking told him he could tattoo that shit on his forehead 18 months ago!
Three. Joe Wilson is still a goddamned liar.
Four. There is no rational or even plausible reason why a member of this Administration would have deliberately exposed a CIA agent's identity as a means of retaliation against her husband, critic or not. Think about that. Just how effective is that supposed to be? There's only one dope who thinks that's what happened (see Item Three) ---and a whole pack of anti-Bush haters following along. If the Bush people had wanted to rat-fuck Wilson, all they would have needed was to quote him and his voluminous lies ---preferably while standing in line at one of his book signings.
"The Amnesiac American Press" Mood: special Now Playing: "There Goes My Everything" by Jack Greene
Whether you are an advocate or critic ---but most especially the latter--- of the War for Iraq, I daresay you have a moral obligation to read the new article in this week's Weekly Standard by Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn on the history of the Saddamites' relationship with al-Qaeda.
It is quite simply the most devastating array of facts yet brought together in proof of Saddam Hussein's terrorist ties to Osama and Zarqawi.
We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.
All of this is new--information obtained since the fall of the Hussein regime. And yet critics of the Iraq war and many in the media refuse to see it. Just two weeks ago, President Bush gave a prime-time speech on Iraq. Among his key points: Iraq is a central front in the global war on terror that began on September 11. Bush spoke in very general terms. He did not mention any of this new information on Iraqi support for terrorism to make his case. That didn't matter to many journalists and critics of the war.
If digesting the facts of this article were something that the American public, as a whole, could easily do, it would almost make up for the often miserable job that the President and his Administration have done in justifying the War for Iraq. They have failed at this task too many times and in too many ways for me to fully understand.
But this article... It's very long and detailed, so even if you have to print the damned thing out and lay back on the couch with a soda pop, do it. Read it out loud. Re-read whole passages to get it straight. Walk around the block and mull it over.
But don't ever say again that our men and women in uniform who are fighting and dying in Iraq aren't engaged in a necessary struggle for our peace and security. They are there for a reason, friend.
A Note for Morons Who Hate Christian Fundamentalists
Okay, so you hate the Bible-thumpers and the Fundies and the people who want the Ten Commandments in their public spaces and prayer in their children's schools. And you hate these Christians because you do not accept their culture ---even though it is yours. And I know you hate them enough to wish them harm because you see them as a threat to your own religious sensibilities, of which you have none. You see these good and decent people as the "American Taliban" ---because you are too intellectually stunted to acknowledge what Christian Civilization has done to liberate Mankind.
But what you don't see ---or won't admit--- is that there's a competing system of deleteriously fundamentalist ideology called Islam. And because so many of you are degenerates who are too weak-minded to pass judgement on anything, you will continue to deny the necessity of resolving the problem we face in abiding a religion that is inherently militaristic and xenophobic.
Mohammad was a tribal warlord who killed and conquered. Jesus was a storyteller who built things with his hands.
Start with that, assholes.
And then ask yourself why you're too weak to align yourself with the side you should.
You don't have to believe in God and the divinity of Jesus the Christ. But, if you're a Westerner privileged enough to live in a society where you may freely read these words and respond to them just as freely, then you are a hypocrite to damn what Christian Civilization has wrought ---but do nothing to damn the Mohammedan Menace.
Native Aliens Mood: don't ask
They're thinking now that the London bombings were done by homegrown Muslim fanatics:
Investigators have concluded that the bombs that ripped through three subway trains and a bus on Thursday were relatively crude devices containing less than 10 pounds of explosives each. That finding supports a theory gaining momentum among the authorities that the plot was carried out by a sleeper cell of homegrown extremists rather than highly trained terrorists exported to Britain.
Yeah? Well, giving these Mohammedan rats refuge is a cross that we in the West need no longer bear. Just round them up and do what needs doing. Abiding these aliens among us isn't going to win us any brownie points with anyone, anyway. And we just can't afford the luxury of pretending that they belong in our societies when their view of us is murderous and annihilatory.
Which Song from Holst's The Planets Are You? Now Playing: You know what time it is, beeyotch...
I've always wanted to ask that. It's a musical version of the mood ring.
Perversions
Are you loving this? The American Left are defending an agent with the CIA. And simultaneously trashing journalists.
These Bush-haters and Rove devotees don't actually care about the secret identity of CIA agents, but if there's some hay to be made out of this Administration, you know where they'll be.
How crushing it will be for them to finally accept that Joe Wilson ---and the New York Times itself--- were the ones who outed Valerie Plame. Karl Rove didn't have anything to do with it.
Relevant
The local FOX News affiliate here in Austin has obtained and broadcast surveillance camera footage from a local McDonald's restaurant showing Daniel Rocha ---the guy who was fatally shot by a cop last month during an arrest on suspicion of drug dealing--- snatching an old woman's wallet and running out the door.
It was for this crime that a felony theft warrant was issued for Rocha on 3 June 2005. Six days later, when he and some buddies are pulled over, he decides to fight the arresting officer. That's when he gets shot.
Since Rocha was apparently not high or drunk during his arrest, the natural question is what would have caused him to resist arrest. Because one of his friends had made off through the neighborhood and left him behind to take the rap? Maybe Rocha thought he could make a break for it, too.
After all, both he and the arresting officer knew that he was in trouble for the robbery at McDonald's. Maybe Rocha didn't want to do time for stealing from an innocent person.
I mean, you have to want to do that. You have to be standing there and thinking that you have some right to snatch an old woman's money and personal effects from her in broad daylight.
Quit making excuses for him. Quit acting as though the warrant wasn't relevant and neither was the underlying crime. That young man had a reason to run. Because he knew he was going to jail.
It's time to pass judgement, idiotas. Time to acknowledge that the cops aren't to blame; your shit parenting skills are.
Trouble on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
With a tip of the hat to Charles Johnson, read this breaking news story out of Damascus:
A SYRIAN policeman was killed and two militants captured during fighting on a mountain overlooking Damascus yesterday in a second day of battles between Syrian security forces and rebels connected with the war in Iraq.
The gunbattle, which allegedly involved former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein, came amid indications that the Syrian Government is increasing its efforts to capture militants who use Syria as a staging ground for attacks in Iraq.
Sana, the official Syrian news agency, reported: "The clash took place on Mount Qassioun with a group of people wanted for terrorist crimes, some of whom were former bodyguards. The gunbattle claimed the life of Ahmad Hijazi, a security forces officer, Sana said, which added that two police officers and two other security force officers were wounded.["]
This is very good news. If the Syrians start seeing the consequences of the crap they are permitting on their eastern border show up on the streets of their own capital, it may help to stanch the flow of arms and money into the Iraqi theater. And, as the story ends:
Syria faces pressure from the US to stop militants crossing into Iraq.
Yeah, well, there is that. Assad knows we're getting closer to acting against him.
surprised
happy
special
don't ask
on fire