Republican National Convention Schedule
Revised, July 2004 (sent to me by a good friend)
6:00pm - Opening prayer
6:15pm - Supplementary opening prayer
6:30pm - Prayer in thanks of first two prayers
6:45pm - New energy policy presented by Exxon
7:00pm - Canonization of Reagan
7:15pm - Additional prayers
7:30pm - Opening remarks by Halliburton
8:00pm - Prayer for the safety and well-being of Ken "Kenny-boy" Lay
8:15pm - Additional remarks by Halliburton
8:30pm - Stoning of the first homosexual
8:45pm - New healthcare polices presented by HMO leader, Kaiser Permanente
9:00pm - Invasion of Iran or North Korea (TBA)
9:15pm - Halliburton contributes 1.4 billion to Republican party
9:30pm - Reagan elevated to savior, Holy Trinity now referred to as "the quads"
9:45pm - Bush undergoes plastic surgery to look more like Reagan
10:00pm - Cheney runs into Ron Reagan, Jr. Tells him to go fuck himself
10:15pm - Recall of troops from accidental invasion of South Korea (Bush: "Damn, the SOUTH is our ally. My bad.")
10:30pm - Burning at the stake of 16 year-old Jenny Williams, who had an illegal abortion after being raped by her cousin
10:45pm - Dancing around the Granite Calf
11:00pm - Stoning of the partner of the first homosexual
11:15pm - New forestry policy presented by Weyerhaeuser
11:45pm - Thanking God for his wisdom in choosing Bush as president
12:00pm - Closing prayers (lasting until 2:00am)
2:00 am - Hookers arrive for all delegates
Bush's AWOL Scandal
The Crisis Papers
This humble blogger was mentioned again regarding my recent post on Bush's military record. I'm honored.
It's pretty shameful that Bush has the pitiful record that he does in the military, and can't find it within himself to condemn the Swiftboat attacks on John Kerry. But then again, he has no conscience about sending other reservists off to die for reasons best used as birdcage lining.
If you can, write a letter to your local editor about this subject. Kerry had his shipmates on stage at the Democratic convention, but no one could claim a $10,000 reward to prove that Bush served his time in the Texas Air National Guard. This attack on Kerry is a disgrace, and Bush can't even bring himself to call it off. Tell someone about this!
Juan Cole: Outing Khan Helped Al-Qaeda Members Escape
Informed Comment
First, the Bush Administration hammers Pakistan to capture a High Value Target from al-Qaeda during the Democratic convention. When they don't, the Bushistas released the name of an al-Qaeda operative captured two weeks before the convention, on the very day that John Kerry accepts the nomination.
Yet this operative had been turned. He was being used to ensnare an entire cell of terrorists in London. So when his name hit the airwaves, the cell began to scatter. British police have arrested thirteen men, but five remain at large.
Furthermore, the British police may not have gathered enough evidence to convict the men they have. Two have already been released, and two are no longer being questioned about terrorism offenses.
This. Is. OUTRAGEOUS.
George Bush and his gang of incompetents have sacrificed national and global security on the altar of their November election efforts. The blood from any act of terror committed by the escaped al-Qaeda cell members is on their hands.
How can these people sleep?
Kerry's Plan for America
John Kerry for President
Download the .pdf file (1.36 M) at the above link. It's a campaign document (read: full of high sounding rhetoric), but it also has specifics:
We will also enhance the capabilities of our own intelligence services. From the failure to uncover the September 11th plot to the deeply flawed reports about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, we have experienced significant intelligence failures in recent years. It is time for serious reform. This will require the kind of leadership that the president has not provided. We will strengthen our intelligence capabilities so that we can more effectively prevent another terrorist attack by:In other words, actually implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
★ Restoring the credibility of our intelligence community by ensuring the basic integrity of the intelligence process. We will make certain that our intelligence agencies are protected from political pressures and operate in a culture of diversity of thought, dissent, and forceful challenging of assumptions,
★ Strengthening accountability and leadership by creating a true Director of National Intelligence, a cabinet-level position with the authority to manage and direct all of the components of the intelligence community, including personnel and budgets,
★ Maximizing coordination and integration by structuring the intelligence community around key threats like terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and hostile countries, so that all available resources are brought to bear on addressing the most pressing threats,
★ Transforming our intelligence services to ensure that they have sufficient personnel with the skills, languages, training, and orientation needed to meet today’s threats. We will make sure that the FBI is fully prepared to perform necessary counter-terrorism intelligence operations and strengthen our capabilities overseas, particularly our clandestine services, so that we have our own robust human intelligence network.
How about healthcare?
Our plan starts by providing health insurance for every child in America. Under the Kerry-Edwards plan, the federal government will pay the full costs for the 20 million children in the Medicaid program. In return, we will ask states to expand coverage to children in families with higher incomes than are currently eligible, as well as low-income adults. This plan will expand coverage to millions of people and provide much needed relief for states that are struggling under persistent growing budgetary pressures.Every child in America covered by health insurance - that's a good start. They're also advocating opening the Congressional Medical Plan (the health plan for members of Congress) to all Americans, offering tax credits to help ease the sting of the premiums. 27 million Americans (including all children) could be covered by this plan - that's another step in the right direction.
The plan will also simplify the health care system so we can prevent children from falling through the cracks. Right now, there are millions of kids who are eligible for federalstate health insurance programs but are not signed up. There are lots of reasons—sometimes the enrollment forms require the skills of an accountant to figure out. Some states make parents sign up every six months in person, making it virtually impossible for a parent who cannot get time off or afford to lose a whole day of work. Some parents do not even know these programs are available.
Under our plan, kids will be signed up automatically at hospitals, community health centers, and schools. And $5 billion in enrollment bonuses will be available to states as an incentive to find uninsured children and keep them covered. Children do not choose their parents. They do not choose whether to have health insurance. Children deserve a good start—with both high quality education and health care. Under our plan, every child in America will have health insurance, and every parent will have a little more peace of mind.
Tell your friends and neighbors - this is the sourcebook for Kerry's positions on the issues.
Bush's Military Past
The Nation
Ian Williams does a great job in summing up the current state of understanding Bush's National Guard. To my immense surprise and pleasure, I'm cited in the article. The post that he uses can be found here: The Guard Record Bush Doesn't Want You To See.
Thanks for the nod, Mr. Williams. My momma can finally be proud of me.
Forged Niger-Iraq Documents Traced Back To Italian Military Intelligence
Talking Points Memo
Josh Marshall gives a few more hints on his big story about the Niger-Iraq forgeries, and one big promise. The forged papers were given to the American government by an Italian journalist. She got them from a source, a security consultant, who was accused recently of being the actual forger.
This isn't true. The security consultant, a former Italian intelligence agent, recieved the document from an current Italian military intelligence agent, whom Josh promises to name in his upcoming article. I'll bet that guy isn't too happy right now.
The agent had hooked the consultant up with a source in the Nigerian Embassy in Rome. In fact, the agent had only established this relationship with the consultant in order to pass the forgeries to him. The agent then gave the forged documents to the embassy source, who provided them to the consultant in the course of their business.
Furthermore, these documents were used by Italian intelligence to create the widespread impression that Iraq was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium. Italian intelligence must have known the documents to be forgeries - wherever they got the documents from, they would have checked up on the veracity of the information, and the documents reveal themselves to be forgeries very easily. Why did they use them to create the widespread impression that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake? Why did they work carefully to get these documents into American hands?
Why did Italy want us to invade Iraq?
UPDATE:
Seymour Herch has already reported on a source that told him the documents were forged by former CIA agents to sting a stovepiping of intelligence info by the Vice President's office. In this case, they would only have wanted the Italian intelligence agency to pass the documents onto the stovepipe as quickly as possible.
So did they pass the documents onto Italian military intelligence directly? Could they have given actual instructions or did they foist the documents onto the Italians the same way the Italians foisted them off onto the security consultant?
I think the second is the most likely. Choosing the first means that Italy definitely knew the documents were forgeries, yet used them throughout Europe to flog the idea of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa, finally leaking copies of the documents themselves to the Italian press. Could that have been the intent of the CIA forgers? I don't think so: for their stated objective, all they would want is the documents to get into Cheney's hands as soon as possible.
Yet if the documents came into Italian hands as though authentic, then can we speculate that Italy didn't factcheck the document? Seymour Hersch lays the groundwork for saying yes:
One former senior C.I.A. official told me that the initial report from Italy contained no documents but only a written summary of allegations. “I can fully believe that SISMI would put out a piece of intelligence like that,” a C.I.A. consultant told me, “but why anybody would put credibility in it is beyond me.”The investigative diligence of the Italian military intelligence leaves something to be desired, evidently. Coming upon these documents, they did more than the forgers expected. They gave details of the documents to other European countries, so that when Cheney got those documents, they were riding a wave of complementary reports from other countries.
So the Administration seized on these documents and pumped the information long and loud. From the Hersch article:
The State of the Union speech was confounding to many members of the intelligence community, who could not understand how such intelligence could have got to the President without vetting. The former intelligence official who gave me the account of the forging of the documents told me that his colleagues were also startled by the speech. “They said, ‘Holy shit, all of a sudden the President is talking about it in the State of the Union address!’ They began to panic. Who the hell was going to expose it? They had to build a backfire. The solution was to leak the documents to the I.A.E.A.”This is why Josh is using the techtonic plate imagery in regard to this story: the CIA's version of an interoffice prank became a serious part of the Administration's case for going to war. And when the Administration became aware of the forgery, they burned a CIA deep cover agent in retaliation.
That, I think, is what Josh is getting at. Valerie Plame was burned, not to punish Joe Wilson alone, but the CIA as well. This administration bypassed important vetting procedures in order to find any pretext to invade Iraq. They obtained some forged documents and used them indiscriminately as part of the evidence they needed. And when their folly was exposed, they struck out at an important part of America's national security process out of spite.
They aren't fit to govern.
"Cleared Of All Wrongdoing"
KYW Newsradio 1060 - News
Sandy Berger did nothing wrong. No stuffing papers into his socks or pants, nothing. You have my permission to pelt the next rightwinger who says differently with whatever food product you have at hand.
One Note on Day Two
I didn't get to see much of Day Two.
But I found myself in a local bar watching Obama with the sound down. It was electrifying. Don't even get me started on what I felt when I got home to read the transcript.
Ladies and gentlemen, the first African-American Democratic senator will also be the first African-American President of the United States. He's got my vote right this minute.
Random Notes On Day One
The Democrats handed the "Bush hatred" football to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. They spiked it beautifully, I feel. They stated the issues plainly, but I also felt a challenge to the Bush haters in the party: it's about making America great again, not stomping on Bush. Class acts, every one.
Did anybody else see Mattie Stepanek's hand on Jimmy Carter's shoulder tonight?
Bill Clinton quoting Jesus: "Be not afraid." The Big Dog claimed Jesus for our side again, while simultaneously giving a nod to a major Michael Moore theme: The Bush party needs us to be afraid. Also, the "strength and wisdom" line was worth the price of admission.
Hillary Clinton was the only female senator wearing a yellow suit. How about that?
Later on Larry King, Mo Rocca wore a cool yellow suit. How about that?
Ben Affleck and Tucker Carlson: the new Carville and Matalin? Just kidding, folks...
Fox had much worse technical problems than CNN. Poor little Sean Hannity out in a tiny little corner of the floor, with mike problems and even a complete loss of picture at one point. Aww....
Which allowed Howard Dean to get in a plug for OutFOXed in the middle of Hannity and Colmes...the only time I actually jumped up and cheered while watching the evening's events. He may have lost the nomination, but he's far from done in politics.
On to Day Two.
On Edit: Wait a minute, I knew I forgot something. Jimmy Carter called out the Vice President's office as a source of the lies and misinformation that led us into the war with Iraq. Then he repeated it to Lehrer on PBS - twice. Let's hear it for the boy!
The Mighty Wurlitzer on Powerpoint
NYTimes.com
This is an incredible article. I want to see the Powerpoint file in question; does anyone know how to get a copy?
Once Were Lost, But Now They're Found
The press continues to be blind, however.
They found those missing records. The records gave us no new information about Bush's attendance as I said they wouldn't. And you can see that the press is screwing up with these papers still:
Those records did not provide new evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972...And they never, ever will. The redundancies in the records tell us that Bush showed up (probably in Alabama) late in October and four days in mid November. That's it.
We have all the records necessary to say what Bush did during that time. We have a clear picture of what happened.
What we don't have is documentation that must exist given the attendance record that Bush displayed in his fifth and sixth years of service. Where is the Flight Inquiry paperwork? Where's documentation on Bush's late April jumpstart? Where's the paperwork that should have labeled Bush a deserter when he left for Harvard Business School?
It's so frustrating to see the press lagging behind in this story. And then there's this - the take from Talking Points Memo:
Of course, the fact that the White House has wrangled this issue down to poring over a million different records that I myself can hardly keep track of means they've largely neutralized this issue through that classic Washington method of the death of a thousand docs.That's pretty much what BushCo has done. There's so much Bushista blood in the water that the press corp doesn't know which way to turn.
Another "Oh Boy, They Found Saddam's Nukes, Oh, Wait A Second" Story
Blogs For Bush, that round table of right wing bloggers, took a little time out of spreading lies about Sandy Berger to trumpet the latest non-discovery of WMD in Iraq.
This is desperation at its sweatiest. "We'll have to wait and see," indeed.
Somerby on Wilson
I never claimed to debunk Bush's claim, Wilson says. We warned you about this last year:
Go read. Somerby has Wilson's number.
Powell's "Four Sourcemen" Hobbled By Senate Intelligence Report
When I was a kid, I loved logic problems. You'd get a few statements about a situation and a grid. By matching up the information in statements, you could eventually develop a complete picture of the situation.
So when I started reading the Senate Intelligence Committee report - which I quoted below - I was excited to find a small logic problem buried inside the report. The report is minutely concerned with the several major products of American intelligence that sold us on the Iraq war, one being Secretary Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 speech to the United Nation.
According to the Senate report, Secretary Powell went in with guns blazing against "single source" intelligence - intelligence based on the word of a single person. One particular "single source" is singled out for immense contempt by the Senate report - a source codenamed CURVEBALL (CB). This source was never in US custody and met with a US intelligence agent only once before Operation Iraqi Freedom, yet he became the backbone of one particularly damning claim in Powell's speech: that Iraq had produced several mobile biological weapons laboratories. Why? Because this source was backed up by three other intelligence sources. Powell gives us the details in his UN speech:
Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.You will note that CB isn't mentioned by name in this quote, nor are any of the other three sources that Powell uses. That's as it should be. I don't care to know any actual names.
The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eyewitness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier.
But by comparing this section of Powell's speech to pages 152 - 161 of the Senate report, we find an astonishing theory: the Senate report may have singled out this particular part of the Powell speech and repudiated every source that Powell relied upon. It did it under the guise of repudiating an important portion of an earlier National Intelligence Estimate released in October 2002, but the information given by the Senate report is enough to reasonably conclude that Powell's four sources were quite impeachable, and should have been.
First, let's do a short list of Powell's four.
- an Iraqi chemical engineer with very detailed information
- an Iraqi civil engineer who spoke of mobile BW production labs in trailers
- a completely anonymous source from the summer of 2002 who spoke of mobile BW production labs in trailers and on railcars
- an Iraqi major who confirmed mobile BW research labs (not the same as production)
IV. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ANALYSIS OF IRAQ'S BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM 143In section 2-5, the Senate report discusses four human intelligence sources.
A Background 143
B. Baghdad Has Transportable Facilities for Producing Bacterial and Toxin BW Agents 148
1. Other Sources 150
2. CURVE BALL 152
3. [censored] 157
4. INC Source 160
5. [censored] 161
6. Intelligence Community Mind Set Concerning Mobile BW Programs 161
- CURVEBALL (CB) who gave detailed information
- An anonymous source who seems to have flunked a polygraph
- An Iraqi National Congress(INC) source who spoke of mobile BW research labs
- a June 2001 informer
A large part of the NIE's discussion of the alleged mobile BW production units was based on information provided by a source described in the NIE as "a credible source" and "an Iraqi defector deemed credible by the IC." The source was an Iraqi defector who had been the subject of debriefings [Like Powell's engineer, CB sprung onto the scene in the year 2000.censored] since 2000. He was believed by the IC to have been a project engineer involved in the design and production of [censored] biological production facilities in Iraq. [Entire sentence censored.] The source is hereafter referred to by the codename he was given [phrase censored] "CURVE BALL".
Also, the only US intelligence officer who had direct access to CB emailed this statement after reading a late draft of Powell's UN speech: "I believe I am still the only [United States Government] USG person to have had direct access to him. There are a few issues associated with that contact that warrant further explanation, in my opinion, before using him as the backbone for the Iraqi mobile program." He went on to list his concerns about CB - his only interview with CB occurred while CB had a hangover, that the people protecting CB were having handling issues with him, and had not yet determined that CB was who he said he was! He concluded, "These issues, in my opinion, warrant further inquiry, before we use the information as the backbone of one of our major findings of the existence of a continuing Iraqi BW program!"
Only one of Powell's sources could be considered the backbone of this assertion about mobile BW labs: the first one. The others are only cited for details. He, then, is CURVEBALL, the "single source to whom the Intelligence Community did not have direct access."
CB is Powell's first source. Are there any more direct matches?
One must. According to the Senate report, their third HUMINT source, the Iraqi National Congress (INC) source, is one of Powell's four sources (page 161). In logic problems, that's a major find. We know for certain that the INC source is one of the remaining three. Which one?
The INC source could only be Powell's fourth source (the Iraqi major), because both spoke only about mobile BW research labs. Both Powell's civil engineer and anonymous summer 2002 source speak to production labs. The INC source gave his info in March 2002, which further rules against him being Powell's anonymous source.
So Powell's Iraqi major is the Senate report's INC source.
Powell's other two sources are harder to reconcile with the Senate's remaining two sources. But they do fit together pretty well.
Let's look at the Senate's June 2001 informer. This source couldn't be Powell's anonymous summer 2002 source because of the dates. If the Senate's fourth source is present on Powell's list, then that source can only be Powell's second, the civil engineer. No information separates them, and both sources did talk about production labs in trailers. Also, the same agent who had the one interview with CB shared his reservations about this informer as well when he emailed about Powell's UN speech in January 2003. It's only logical that this informer was included as one of Powell's sources, and thus could only be the civil engineer.
This leaves Powell's anonymous source in the summer of 2002 as a possible match for the Senate's completely redacted source who evidently failed a polygraph. Is it arguing from silence to note Powell's reluctance to identify a single fact about his source in the same sentence as the Senate's reluctance to say anything at all about their second source? Probably so, but since we are 2 for 2 on Powell's sources, and most probably 3 for 3, this fourth match is plausible.
So we have two direct matches, one most probable match, and a plausible match. Barring further revelations, I think it's safe to conclude that the Senate report specifically examined the four sources used in the Powell UN speech and found them wanting.
Only once was a US intelligence agent granted direct access to CURVEBALL, and he found the source troubling enough to fire off an email in January 2003 (after reading Powell's speech) to share his deep concerns.
The "INC source" was found to be coached into embellishments of his data. His information was "accessed as unreliable and, in some cases, pure fabrication."
The anonymous source evidently failed a polygraph.
The June 2001 informer had never been vetted, according to the same agent who raised questions about CB:
The detailee also expressed concern about this source in his e-mail concerning Secretary Powell's UN speech. He noted that the source was "[The Senate's point is that each of these four sources were impeachable. There was a corruption of the analytical processes of the American IC, one that overwhelmed even Colin Powell's vendetta against "single source" information. Why were these four sources considered reliable at all, even when specific information existed to impeach them all?phrase censored], but one whose reliability nor reporting has been evaluated," and said the reporting had inconsistencies that needed further checking. The detailee added, "we sure didn't give much credence to this report when it came out. Why now?"
It couldn't have anything to do with this, could it?
Kevin Drum's Contest: Explain CEO Pay
The Washington Monthly
Kevin wants to know how CEO pay (which rose 27% in 2003) fits into the law of supply and demand. Here's my entry:
CEOs who can supply large profit margins are in great demand, hence their pay is skyrocketing.
By "supply large profit margins", I mean "ax enough laborers without endangering productivity". This floods the labor market with more unemployed (greater supply), which lowers the demand for higher wages.
CEOs with the requisite lack of a soul are in short supply. That's why they're getting paid so well.
Single Source
I have a lazy summer Sunday afternoon in which to do nothing but look for interesting angles on public documents. Wouldn't you know that I might find one?
I started reading the US Senate Intelligence Commitee report on the handling of Iraqi WMD information. I didn't get very far before I ran across the phrase "single source to whom the Intelligence Community did not have access." That's one heck of a phrase to find, don't you think? And since Josh Marshall was kind enough to give a link to a searchable pdf file of the report, I searched for the phrase "single source" in that document to see if the report referred to this single source again.
There are ten hits. Here they are:
Page 23 (pdf 33): Similarly, the IC based its judgment that "all key aspects - research & development (R&D), production, and weaponization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons (BW) program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War" primarily on its assessment that Iraq had mobile biological production vans. While this assessment was based on direct intelligence that indicated Iraq had mobile biological production units, the reporting was largely from a single source to whom the Intelligence Community did not have direct access. The Committee believes that the IC's expectation that Iraq would move to mobile biological weapons production, focused their attention on reporting that supported that contention and led them to disregard information that contradicted it. This exemplifies Dr. Kay's concerns that the IC made large new conclusions based on only a few pieces of new evidence that were joined to previous conclusions and that pieces that did not fulfill its expectations tended to be thrown aside.The report itself is pretty harsh on the IC, and they certainly share any blame for the sorry state of intelligence about Iraqi WMD. But there's a trail here to follow, and this search gave me a method of focusing on it. Still working on that post, but it will be out soon. In the meantime, chew on those quotes.
Page 67 (pdf 77): According to the CIA's former ADDI for Intelligence for Strategic Programs, who was the point person for coordinating the [Powell UN] speech, the CIA removed some of the information that the White House had added to the speech, gathered from finished and raw intelligence, because the information was single source and uncorroborated.
Page 144 (pdf 154): Quoting the December 2000 ICA on Iraqi WMD - We cannot confirm whether Iraq has produced ... biological agents, although in the case of biological weapons, credible reporting from a single source suggests it has done so on a large scale and had developed a clandestine production capability.
Page 145 (pdf 155): Quoting the December 2000 ICA on Iraqi WMD - According to [censored- as above, was this word "credible"?] reporting from a single source, Iraq has constructed seven transportable - via trucks and rail cars - plants, some of which have produced BW agents. Although the information is unconfirmed, it tracks with UNSCOM evidence acquired in the mid-1990's that Iraq was considering such a program.
Page 156 (pdf 166): Because of Committee staffs concerns about the IC's reliance on a single source and questions about CURVE BALL'S reporting, the Committee requested an IC assessment of CURVE BALL and his reliability. The DHS provided the Committee with an information paper on December 17, 2003 that stated ". . . the Iraqi design engineer [CURVE BALL] is not a biological weapons expert nor is he a life science expert. Source simply designed [censored] production facilities. He never claimed that the project he was involved in was used to produce biological agents." The DHS assessment also noted that "the source's reporting demonstrates a knowledge of and access to personalities, organizations, procurement, and technology related to Iraq's BW program." Concerned that the assessment had said the primary source behind the IC's assessments of the Iraqi mobile BW production program had "never claimed that the project he was involved in was used to produce biological agents," Committee staff asked DHS to clarify what appeared to be a serious discrepancy. The DHS was unable to respond to the request for several weeks, noting to Committee staff that the matter was being handled by the DCI's staff. The DHS then issued a correction to the Committee on January 15, 2003 that stated the information in the December 17, 2003 paper contained several errors and [about two lines censored here - the ellipses and quotation mark following is part of the report] . . . ." The DHS correction also stated that "by virtue of his position, and as reflected in the published Intelligence Information Reports, the source demonstrated extensive knowledge of Iraq's BW program. As the project manager, he had intimate details of the mobile BW program." The author of the December 2003 DHS paper which stated that CURVE BALL "never claimed that the project he was involved in was used to produce biological agents" was the DHS intelligence officer who had primary responsibility [censored] for collecting and reporting the intelligence from CURVE BALL'S debriefings. In an interview with Committee staff, the DHS officer stated that in his haste to provide an assessment of the source to the Committee, he had misread some of the intelligence reports from the source.
Page 241 (pdf 251): According to a State Department foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Nonproliferation and the NIO, the general operating principle set by Secretary Powell in preparing his presentation was that any intelligence that was included had to be corroborated. The foreign affairs officer told Committee staff that "single source information did not go in the speech." CIA analysts who participated in these meetings told Committee staff that the Secretary only wanted to use solid intelligence in the speech and wanted the language carefully reviewed by the analysts. One CIA analyst and one official told the Committee they were not aware of any guidance that single source information should not be used in the speech. The NIO for Science and Technology, who also worked on Secretary Powell's speech, told Committee staff that DCI Tenet specifically told him to check the speech for classification issues and to "back [] up the material and mak[e] sure we had good solid stuff to support everything."
...CIA analysts told Committee staff that during the coordination meetings on the speech, information was removed in some instances because Secretary Powell was not comfortable with it and because some information was based on single source raw reporting which the CIA could not corroborate.
Page 366 (pdf 376): According to State Department officials, the general operating principle set by Secretary Powell in preparing his presentation was that any intelligence that was included had to be corroborated. The official told Committee staff that, "single source information did not go in the speech." The CTC analyst interviewed by Committee staff indicated that in the final weeks leading up to the February 5 presentation, the CIA analysts responsible for preparing the terrorism portion were heavily engaged with Secretary Powell on "... everything from substance to style to Secretary Powell's personal 'I don't like that' . . . ."
Page 450 (pdf 460): When United Nations inspectors departed from Iraq in 1998, the Intelligence Community lost a major source of information on the ground and failed to take remedial actions to replace it with a human intelligence collection program essential for understanding the clandestine nature of proliferation activities and Saddam Hussein's intentions. As a result, the intelligence collected in the intervening period was primarily through overhead imagery and signals intercepts of limited value and from Iraqi defectors, often single sources of unknown credibility that were provided by the now suspect Iraqi National Congress, a group promoting the use of U.S. military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Things to remember while chewing:
- Powell went gunning for single source information when prepping for the UN speech.
- Several "single sources" of unverifiable info came from the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi's group.
- One crucial single source, the source codenamed CURVEBALL, was only interrogated by an American intelligence agent once. All other information from this most prolific sources was obtained at secondhand by US intelligence.
I'll be back later...
What Bush Is Not: His Own Words
Negative Capability (Harpers.org)
The President of the United States is not a fact-checker.Some enterprising young blogger should locate all these video clips and build a great complilation.
I’m not a statistician.
I’m not a numbers-cruncher.
I’m not one of these bean counters.
I’m not very analytical.
I’m not a precision guy.
The President is not a micromanager.
I’m not a member of the legislative branch.
The President is not a rubber stamp for the Congress.
I’m not a censor-guy.
I’m not a lawyer.
I’m not a doctor.
The President is not an economist.
I’m not a stockbroker or a stock-picker.
I’m not a forecaster.
I’m not a predictor.
I’m not a pollster, a poll-reader guy.
I’m not a very good prognosticator of elections.
I’m not a committee chairman.
I’m not of the Washington scene.
I’m not a lonely person.
I’m not a poet.
I’m not a very good novelist.
I’m not a textbook player.
I’m not an emailer.
I’m not a very long-winded person.
I’m not a very formal guy.
I am not a revengeful person.
I’m not an Iraqi citizen.
I’m not a divider.
I am not a unilateralist.
I’m not a tree, I’m a Bush.
I'm trying to lose some weight, and have set up a website to provide a little accountability. It's called Big Belly Burnoff. There's no need to go there unless you care to. Now on with the show...
Journalists' Death Make It Harder To Excuse Putin's Excesses
On Friday night, I got a call from Moscow: my friend Paul Klebnikov, the editor in chief of Forbes Russia, a Russian version of the American business magazine, had been fatally shot as he left work. Paul's wife, Musa, was in Italy with their three children and had just spoken to him on the phone before he was shot. She was heartbreakingly brave the next day. Please gather articles about her husband, she asked, for his boys.Liberal Oasis points out that "Bush's curtailing of support for democracy is worsening the situation".
Then the anger rose. I am among those former Moscow correspondents, and those people of Russian descent, who have tried to stay optimistic about today's Russia and President Vladimir Putin, even in the face of all the distressing reports about Chechnya, the Yukos oil company, the media clampdown and the swelling powers of the Kremlin. You have to remember where they were a scant 15 years ago, I would argue: Mr. Putin has to restore control over the government and economy, and the oligarchs have to be reined in.
It will be far harder to argue this, now that someone has pumped four bullets into a journalist who earnestly thought that he could help Russia make it by writing the truth about its dark underside. It's tough to continue pretending that Russia is just in transition, struggling to emerge from Communism's rubble. Twenty journalists have now been assassinated in Russia for their work; 14 since Mr. Putin became president. Not one of the murders has been solved.
Juan Cole: Arguing With Bush Yet Again
America isn't safer as a result of Bush's military action
So, no, Americans are not safer, Mr. Bush. They face the threat of substantial narco-terrorism from Afghanistan. Iraq is a security nightmare that could well blow back on the American homeland. Pakistan remains a military dictatorship with a host of militant jihadi movements that had been fomented by the hardline Pakistani military intelligence. Saudi Arabia is witnessing increased al-Qaeda activity and attacks on Westerners. And the Israeli-Palestine dispute is being left to fester and poison the world.The Republicans aren't fit to govern.
These are not achievements to be proud of. This is a string of disasters. We are not safer. We face incredible danger because of the way the Bush administration has grossly mishandled the Middle East
Bush's Plamegate Lawyer Is A Part of Ken Lay's Lawyer Brigade
BeatBushBlog
Bush consults a criminal defense lawyer in the ongoing inquiry into the outing of Valerie Plame. It turns out that this same lawyer, Jim Sharp, is representing Ken Lay in the Enron debacle.
They don't even pretend anymore, you know?
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