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Dog Bites Man

INTENSITY!

peter gabriel – solsbury hill

WOW!

B O N U S

Wilson challenges subpoena in CIA leak case

 WASHINGTON – Former ambassador Joseph Wilson asked a federal judge Wednesday not to force him to testify in the CIA leak case and accused former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of trying to harass him on the witness stand.

Libby, who faces perjury and obstruction charges, subpoenaed Wilson as a defense witness this month. Libby’s attorney, William Jeffress, said in court Tuesday that was a precautionary move and he did not expect to put Wilson on the stand.

Libby is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding Wilson’s wife, outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame and Wilson have sued Libby and other Bush administration officials, accusing them of plotting to leak Plame’s identity as retribution for Wilson’s criticism of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

“Mr. Libby should not be permitted to compel Mr. Wilson’s testimony at trial either for the purpose of harassing Mr. Wilson or to gain an advantage in the civil case,” Wilson’s attorneys wrote.

While Wilson and Plame are at the center of the CIA leak scandal, Wilson is a minor figure in Libby’s perjury trial. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has sought to keep much of the back story of the leak out of the case.

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The Soggy Biscuit Award:
A) Lee Seigel and “sprezzatura”, The New Republic “Lee Siegel is a genius”
B) Asorted, “Glenn Greewald is eeeeeeevil”
C) The Wingnutosphere, “James Webb writes kiddie porn!”
D) The Washington Post, “stop being mean to Deborah Howell!”
E) The Wingnutosphere, “John Kerry sez our troops are stoopid!”
F) Assorted, “Bush is a liberal!”
G) The Wingnutosphere, Slightly-more-smokegate
H) Everybody, the great conservative victory in 2006

I’m getting very excited!

New Statesman

Is there to be no honest accounting for the events in Basra? Do we simply accept John Reid’s customary arrogance?

Here are questions that are not being asked. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS men “rescued” from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British army put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

According to the head of Basra’s governing council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event? Do we simply accept the customary arrogance of the Defence Secretary, John Reid? “Iraqi law is very clear,” he said. “British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process.” He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq’s occupiers.

Watching “embedded” journalists in Iraq and London attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime’s “writ” did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and that the “British-trained” police in Basra might be “infiltrated”. Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two British soldiers – in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury – could possibly be arrested by Iraqi police. “Aren’t they supposed to be on our side?” he demanded.

Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men’s unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the “radical” cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “Radical” is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the “rescue”? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr’s followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival.

“When the police tried to stop them,” he said, “[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing – weapons, explosives and a remote-control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists.”

The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the “coalition” is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq – which it is, overwhelmingly – and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information” programme, set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans’ single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi.

Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis’ right to resist an illegal invasion – a right enshrined in international law – has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shias and the Sunnis. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh, said last month: “There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other. The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will try to start an internal Shia incitement.”

The Anglo-American goal of “federalism” for Iraq is part of an imperial strategy of provoking divisions in a country where the communities have long overlapped, even intermarried. The Osama-like promotion of al-Zarqawi is integral to this. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he is everywhere but nowhere. When the Americans crushed the city of Fallujah last year, the justification for their atrocious behaviour was “getting those guys loyal to al-Zarqawi”. But the city’s civil and religious authorities denied he was ever there or had anything to do with the resistance.

“He is simply an invention,” said the imam of al-Kazimeya Mosque in Baghdad. “Al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north. His family even held a ceremony after his death.” Whether or not this is true, al-Zarqawi’s “foreign invasion” serves as Bush’s and Blair’s last veil for their “war on terror” and botched attempt to control the world’s second-biggest source of oil.

On 23 September, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, an establishment body, published a report that accused the United States of “feeding the myth” of foreign fighters in Iraqi, who account for less than 10 per cent of a resistance estimated at 30,000. Of the eight comprehensive studies into the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the “coalition”, four put the figure at more than 100,000. Until the British army is withdrawn from where it has no right to be, and those responsible for this monumental act of terrorism are indicted by the International Criminal Court, this country is stained.

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Odor Attracts Attention Of Cablers

The cable nets “are making more of this NYC odor than the NY locals,” an e-mailer remarks.

MSNBC was apparently the first to mention the smell at 9:29am. “There are numerous reports at this hour of a gas odor all the way from Battery Park up through midtown,” the anchor said.

But there’s no way to show a smell, so the cable nets tried a variety of tactics. CNN used satellite pictures from Google Earth and wind data from its weather center. MSNBC used a map of New York City. All the cable nets used their standby live shots of the Big Apple. At various points, FNC, CNN and MSNBC each boxed three live shots on screen… as if three pictures were better than one.

FNC was the first net to use the word “terrorism,” at 9:58am, but a guest quickly called it “unlikely.” A graphic on screen later said: “U.S. official: no sign of terrorism at this point.”

On CNBC, Mark Haines on Wall Street asked Liz Claman in Engelwood Cliffs if the odor had reached New Jersey. “Not yet,” she said. “It hasn’t passed the GW bridge yet.”

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FakeYourSpace: The Blog Herald 

MySpace and Facebook are great social tools that enable people to socialize, meet up, plan events or just find out about what is happening in their best friends life. But for some being inside a social network is a chance to actually become popular, something that is actually harder to do online than off.

But for those whose vanities exceed the realities of online life, and desire to “look cool,” FakeYourSpace can help you out–for a price.

(FakeYourSpace About Page) FakeYourSpace is an exciting new service that enables normal everyday people like me and you to have Hot friends on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. Not only will you be able to see these Gorgeous friends on your friends list, but FakeYourSpace enables you to create customized messages and comments for our Models to leave you on your comment wall. […]

Our basic plan starts at only $.99 This will give you 2 messages per week for 4 weeks.

Although sites like these will probably be ignored by the vast majority of users, there are enough users who can not thrive outside of MySpace or Facebook who will sign up for the service, enabling FakeYourSpace to generate some serious cash on the despair of others.

Since disclosure is not encouraged with this type of business, I wonder if PayPerPost will consider acquiring this vanity affair?

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National Review Online

The Cowboy Way

 In search of a preemption metaphor.

ne of my favorite cartoons in the wake of the 9/11 attack was a picture of a giant Uncle Sam standing against the New York skyline, brushing himself off and rolling up his sleeves. He’d clearly been knocked down by a cheap shot and he was mighty angry about it. If memory serves, he said, over his shoulder and through gnashed teeth, “You shouldn’t have done that.” The meaning was obvious. America was going to the pantry and clearing the shelves of every case of whup-ass in our larder (24 cans per case).

People forget now, but it took awhile to get the cases from the top shelf. We didn’t begin bombing Afghanistan forward into the stone age for about six weeks. And yet, critics of the president were already calling him a cowboy, as if cowboys usually take 45 days to return a punch.

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The Washington Monthly

If an already unpopular President escalates this already unpopular war and the escalation fails… Well, that isn’t political good news for the Republicans.

 Nor is it good news for Democrats who enable them. It isn’t enough to give them the rope to hang themselves, so to speak. That rope is our own brothers and fathers and husbands. (Not to mention all of our money.) In the end, when it comes time to assign blame for the disaster, people will rightly want to know who opposed this mess? Who tried to stop it, and who let them get away with it?

I mean, if you’re really willing to let this horror continue, with more multitudes dying and suffering, just so that the Democrats MIGHT gain some political benefit in the future, then you are just as bad as the warmongers, cynically using the military and the war for your own domestic politics.

Morality? As Kevin said, Bush is Commander in Chief. We can’t stop it anyway. Moral culpability for this war stays with its prosecutors.

No, it does not. It also belongs to those who permit it to happen.

Look, the biggest criticism of the Democrats in DC(per the conventional beltway “wisdom”) is precisely their failure to provide any meaningful opposition to disastrous policies. In particular, the accusation that we don’t believe in anything, and we are willing to go along with anything Bush does because we give up too easily.

You think that throwing up our hands and saying, “well, we can’t stop it, so let’s let them do it some more” is going to magically make people see us as NOT responsible for this mess?

I call bullshit.

Don’t give them an inch. Oppose escalation. Demand withdrawal. Remain consistent, and clearly establish that there is a moral difference between the GOPers who cry for more war and the Dems who oppose them.

And if you waver on this because you are unreasonably afraid of paying a political price, (I say unreasonably because there is NO price to pay opposing an unpopular war) you prove THEIR point that we have no spine and no moral beliefs… and therefore we have no moral basis to criticize the GOP’s future wars.

Again, if domestic politics (and not basic human decency) is the only thing that motivates you, consider that constant opposition to the war and its expansion or escalation IS the smart move politically. Take a moral stand now, so that you can in the future.

Why do you think Hillary’s lost so much support from rank-and-file Dems? Why was support for Kerry so lukewarm? It’s the war, and their initial support for it making their later/future opposition look like so much opportunism.

What was that line about the only way for evil to triumph? Something about the good doing nothing?

If the Dems let them keep doing what they’re doing, KNOWING that it is futile, then they ARE just as culpable. Even if you really can’t stop it, people will remember that you didn’t even try. I sure will.

Take a stand. Show some guts, fercryinoutloud. Nobody respects a quitter- you don’t quit a political fight just because you think it’s unwinnable in the short term because in the long run you’ll lose even bigger. You’ll lose the respect that people have for those who stand up for the right thing, even when they know they’ll lose. Especially then.

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