Yes indeed, the intel most certainly was "sexed up" to sell the war

Last month, an information tribunal in the U.K. ordered the Foreign Office to release an early draft of the dossier on Iraq's (non existent) weapons of mass destruction. That was the only way, the tribunal argued, to be assured that the intel used was solid, and to put to rest the charges that the intelligence had been 'sexed up' to help Tony Blair help George Bush sell the invasion of Iraq.

Today, the foreign office complied. And what do you know? The intel Blair touted was as cooked as a Christmas goose.

The 2002 document insisted Saddam Hussein's regime had acquired uranium and had equipment necessary for chemical weapons, but does not contain a claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes — an allegation crucial to Blair's push to back the 2004 U.S.-led invasion that later was discredited.

Campaigners allege that the 45-minute claim was inserted into later drafts of the document on the orders of Blair's press advisers, who were seeking to strengthen the case for invasion — a claim the government has strongly denied.

Mondays document release prompted Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Edward Davey to state that he believed the Williams Document was evidence that government press officers played a decisive role in drafting intelligence reports in the pre-war period. "A press official should never have been drafting a document that ended up being used as the justification for going to war. There has to be a clear distinction between those that offer impartial intelligence advice and the government's spin machine," Davey said.

A second document was published in February 2003, the month before the invasion. That second document was found to have repeated verbatim sections from an academic research study on Iraq's supposed WMD's and the concealment and destruction thereof.

Hans Blix, former UN chief weapons inspector, was quoted last year as saying he believed that Tony Blair had gone through the intelligence dossiers and replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" to sell the war.

The Brits have their own version of "sixteen words" and that is what all the fuss is about.

On September 24, 2002, Tony Blair presented a final draft of the first dossier, which contained the claim that Iraq not only had weapons but that they could be deployed in 45 minutes. This was a blatant lie, inserted by press officers, with the specific intent of whipping up support for the invasion of Iraq.

Lord Butler's 2004 official inquiry into intelligence on Iraq did not fault Blair's government, but criticized intelligence officials for relying in part on seriously flawed or unreliable sources.

Butler said the dossiers had pushed the government's case to the limits of available intelligence and left out vital caveats.

Government weapons scientist David Kelly killed himself in 2003 after he was exposed as the source of a British Broadcasting Corp. report that accused Blair's Downing Street office of "sexing up" intelligence to make a stronger case for war.

Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Williams acknowledged Monday that many within the government had failed to spot problems with Blair's case for joining the invasion of Iraq.

"Others were more perceptive, including one of the ministers I advised for a time, (ex-Foreign Secretary) Robin Cook," Williams wrote. Cook, who died in 2005, resigned from Blair's Cabinet in opposition to the war, claiming he could not support military action without international approval.

Now Blair is gone and Bush is going. They both blatantly lied, and they got their unjustified, illegal war that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and led to the premature deaths of perhaps a million more. Every one of those souls cries out from the grave for justice, that the feckless men, masquerading as leaders, who told the lies and sold the war be held accountable.

Playing Military Families Like Pawns - it's what aWol does best

Our military families also sacrifice for America. They endure sleepless nights and the daily struggle of providing for children while a loved one is serving far from home. We have a responsibility to provide for them. So I ask you to join me in expanding their access to child care, creating new hiring preferences for military spouses across the federal government, and allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children. (Applause.) Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them. --George W. Bush, 28 January 2008, State of the Union

That passage drew thunderous applause when the President said it during the State of the Union address. Yet a week later, when the current occupant sent his $3.1 trillion dollar budget to the congress for approval, there wasn’t a single dollar allocated for the program subscribed in the SOTU - even though the cost of the proposal would run between $1 and $2 Billion annually.

Congressional critics have pointed to the episode as a visual aid that illustrates precisely what they perceive as the slapdash, slipshod manner in which Bush threw together the legislative priorities for his final year in office limp toward the finish line. The idea Bush touted has actually been introduced as legislation by congresspersons of both parties. "It has some merit to it. I don't have any idea what it costs -- that's been one of the problems in the past," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), chairman of the House Budget Committee. "That's not the only inconsistency or contradiction in his budget by any means. The budget overstates revenues and understates expenditures in a big way."

Two other topics were touched on in the speech and deserve to be funded: Child care for military families, and programs to help military spouses compete for government jobs. Think about it -military spouses are almost all, by definition, capable, reliable, top-shelf employees with valuable diverse experiences, and frequently they bring critical language skills. But they stagnate in careers because every two years it’s another entry level job that the spouse won’t be on long enough to become vested, or to advance up the corporate ladder. The portable nature of federal jobs from one billet to another is well known and many spouses have shrewdly finagled that set-up of their own devises.

It’s about time that the government got around to promoting a common-sense measure to help military families achieve economic parity with civilian counterparts that those of us who have lived it have known for decades and struggled to make work without any help from the military nor the agencies employing the civilian spouse.

But the feds aren’t going to employ all spouses, so once we get those ducks in a row, we need to talk about setting up federally administered retirement plans for civilian spouses of career military personnel that would encourage civilian employers, through the tax code, to match contributions and make exceptions for military spouses to the time-on-job rules that govern whether or not military spouses retain the employers matching contributions when they leave a job because the military spouse is transferred.

Military spouses do serve and sacrifice to support the mission. Recognizing this and greasing the economic skids a little by taking into account the professional price paid by the spouses would be a good start.

What if they staged a presser and no one even bothered to mock it?

So, the verbally-challenged nincompoop held a press conference this morning. Fox didn't even air the whole thing, cutting away to regularly scheduled programming about half-way through.

He stood up there, totally devoid of intellect, sentience and the ability to reason and put his pathetic version out there. At one point, he actually asserted that the pressure he has been applying to Iran recently - is why they stopped their weapons program in 2003!!!

Who knew that Mr. Peabody and his Wayback machine were serving in the Bush (mal)administration?

It amounted to a half hour of insisting that Iran is "still dangerous" and a "threat to peace" and can't be allowed the "knowledge" to make a noo-kyu-ler weapon. It was a fucking embarrassment.

They simply can't admit that they are wrong about anything.

And blogtopia™, (Yes! skippy coined that phrase!) didn't even show up to mock him.

Since our pathetic congressional Democrats don't have the political courage, nor the intestinal fortitude to impeach these lying, warmongering, pathetic excuses for Americans - will someone just escort them off the stage, dose, 'em with Haldol, and fast-forward the clock to January 2009?

Debunking a presidential budget myth

Everyone is focused on September right now – as well they should be – but everyone is focusing on a portion (Iraq) of the big picture.

The real fight is about the budget for FY 2008, which starts on 01 October. Let’s be kind in our assessment, and just say that the administration certainly seems to be embracing magical thinking where the nation’s checkbook is concerned. You see, if we aren’t kind, we have to say that the president is lying his ass off and pushing malicious propaganda. (The latter is likely true, but we are feeling inexplicably magnanimous tonight. If it persists, I'll get checked out.)

Last Thursday the president spoke to the American Legislative Exchange Council in Philadelphia, and his speech was so far divorced from reality that, frankly, it left me wondering what exactly was the combination of drugs he was enjoying at the time? I mean, the BS is so easily debunked that it seems like they aren't even trying any longer.

He boasted that he had overseen a budget deficit that has been declining in recent years, and that his policies would realize a surplus by FY12.

Problem is, he forgot a couple of really, really salient facts. (Or maybe they are inconvenient so he committed an intentional sin of omission?)

If he is going to take credit for reducing the deficit, he has to admit that he created it. Prior to his administration, there were four consecutive budget-surplus years, with a forecast of $5.6 trillion in continuing surpluses. This robust economic forecast was the justification for the Bush tax cuts, but even after the surpluses were revealed to be imaginary, massive, record-high deficit spending continued unabated. (Never before have we cut taxes in time of war.)

Additionally, the word “debt” never fell from his lips during the entire speech. He either doesn’t realize, or again opted to willfully omit, that while the deficit is falling, the debt is climbing. In fact, his term in office will realize a $3 trillion increase in the national debt.

But it gets better! He said we have a responsibility to fix our problems! It wouldn’t be fair to pass these problems off "to future Congresses or future generations." All the while ignoring that the interest payments on the debt will be crippling for the next three decades, thanks to that $3 trillion dollars added to the debt. Oh – I almost forgot! There is a hell of a lot of short-term borrowing that is coming due and we don’t have the cash to satisfy the debt. So we have to refinance. (We all know someone who got in trouble with a payday loan that took on a life of its own. This is like that, only on a national scale and its trillions instead of hundreds.) The ghost of the George Bush presidency is going to haunt this nation for years to come.

When he bragged that the current (FY 2007) deficit would be "lower than the national average over the last 10 years."

There is only one way to make that statement true: omit the years FY98-01 and still call it a decade. When FY98-01 are included, the average deficit drops to 0.9% of GDP, but the number that the president cited for FY08 was significantly higher, 1.5% GDP.

Translation: He wasn’t really saying this years deficit represents the lowest percentage of GDP in a decade, it will just be lower than any of the six consecutive deficits he has presided over. (Doesn’t sound quite so sexy that way, though, does it?)

He went far afield and insisted that congress should send him budget appropriations individually, not in a combined omnibus spending bill, and not in the form of continuing resolutions, but individual appropriations bills. (This has never been asked before, and is quite baffling in the petulant audacity it takes to even ask.) Not once in the past six years has the White House expressed any concern whatsoever Interesting, given that FY01, 03, 04, and 05 were all funded by omnibus spending bills, and the entire government has operated on continuing resolutions this year, FY07, because the republican rubber-stamp 109^th congress failed to pass a budget.

But the coup de grace of unmitigated gall was the proclamation that the Congress was obligated to, “in a time of war” pass the Pentagon budget before the August Recess! (Isn’t there something happening in September that makes that suggestion especially off-putting?)

Out understanding is not so stunted as the president prefers to think it is, apparently. For instance, we know that the fiscal year does not start until 01 October, and that any funds appropriated for FY 2008 now would not be available for dispersal until then, no matter when the Pentagon appropriations are passed! His petulant, pandering insistence is disingenuous at best. Or maybe he just forgot…

His credibility on this issue is suspect in any case. Over the past six years, Congress has adopted the Pentagon appropriation by the start of the summer recess only once (FY05). Twice (FY04 and 07) it was enacted in the last days of September. Three times (FY02, 03 and 06) it was enacted well after the fiscal year began. At no time during this period did the White House ever call on Congress to adopt the bill beforethe August recess or criticize it for not getting the work done before the fiscal year began.

Also casting a cloud on his credibility is his complete and utter refusal to criticize the Iraqi parliament for taking an August recess. Again he strikes a disingenuous pose. That “time of war” he referenced is taking place in their country and they are off on holiday after accomplishing exactly nothing.

Now, analytical disagreements are par for the course when budget and appropriations projects are debated. But the president’s statements about the budget are so patently and obviously false that they read much more like propaganda than policy differences. The mind boggles at the audacity. It really truly boggles.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]

It’s beginning to look a lot like perjury

Senate Democrats hit the ground running this morning and immediately fired off a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement demanding the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Attorney General. "It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote.

They asked Clement to immediately appoint an indepedent counsel from outside the Justice Department to determine whether Gonzales "may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress."

"We do not make this request lightly," wrote Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

A draft copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press shortly before a news conference planned by the senators.

Neither Gonzales nor the Justice Department had immediate comment about the letter. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he supports the request.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont, in a separate letter Thursday to Gonzales, said he would give the attorney general eight days to correct, clarify or otherwise change his testimony "so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth."

The four senators said that Gonzales' testimony last year that there had been no internal dissent over the president's warrantless wiretapping program conflicted with testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey and with Gonzales' own statements this week before the Judiciary Committee.

They also said Gonzales falsely told the panel that he had not talked about the firings with other Justice Department officials. His former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, told the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity that she had an "uncomfortable" conversation with Gonzales in which he outlined his recollection of what happened and asked her for her reaction.

"The attorney general should be held to the highest ethical standards," the senators wrote.

Yes, the chief law enforcement officer in the land should absolutely be held to the highest of ethical standards. Unfortunately, when we are talking about the Bush Organized Crime Syndicate; that ideal just doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to you and me (presuming you view the Rule of Law and the Social Contract as more than mere technicalities.)

How Feckless Spent his Fourth

The resident appeared before a captive audience with no choice but to cheer and clap politely for his obligatory Fourth of July speech. He appeared before National Guardsmen and their families, and all but told them they were expendable. He appeared before about 2000 pre-screened guests (only Albanians have unfettered access to the American president) mostly from the 167^th Air National Guard Wing.

He said not one word about the Air National Guard duty he skipped out on and is aWol from to this day.

Bush said victory in Iraq will require "more patience, more courage and more sacrifice."

"If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms. They would follow us here," Bush said at the West Virginia Air National Guard.

He was, of course, lying. There is no evidence that the terrorists would follow us here. In fact, every expert who actually understands the dynamics at play has flatly stated that the president is wrong at best and a filthy liar more likely.

As to the part about more courage and sacrifice - that just pissed me off - he and his have not sacrificed a damned thing, and won't. In fact, just the opposite. How dare he??? He didn't even finish his weekend warrior duty in a champaign unit and remains to this day Absent With Out Leave, because he was afraid to piss in a cup with all that South American vitamin C in his system.

After speaking to a group of people who have no option other than to be polite, he returned to the White House, where his service-age daughters (who likely couldn't pass the requisite drug screen anyway) have joined him to celebrate his 61^st birthday on Friday. There he will eat barbecue and watch fireworks and not think another thought about the hell he has wrought to better Americans than he can ever hope to be.

BREAKING: No Stay of Sentence for Scooter

A glimmer of Justice was seen flickering in the sunlight today when the three-judge appeals panel unanimously rejected the plea by Scooter “Treason” Libby to remain free on bond while appealing his sentence. Instead, he will have to report to prison in just a few weeks to start serving his much-to-short sentence.

Look for the apparatchiks who place Party over country and the rule of law to turn up the volume on their bleating about dedicated public servants. (Who happen to commit treason and successfully obstruct justice!)

And when they start in, call them on it. Mock them, ridicule them, and question their patriotism. At least with them and their ilk it’s justified, because they do excuse treason. (Fred Thompson, I'm calling you out right now.)

Scooter, one word of advice. Don’t drop the soap, lest what happened to our country with your mendacious assist, could very well happen to you.

A sorry showing

Faux News isn’t even trying to pass itself off as serious news anymore, so lets just call them what they are – the propaganda catapult for the Re-Thug-Lickers.

Yesterday was a really sorry showing for the fools at Faux. First, they showed video of John Conyers at a House Judiciary Committee meeting.

They imply it is video of the recently indicted Bill Jefferson, and the protesters in the gallery are calling for his resignation. We call bullshit - the "Resign" sign is being waived at Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales. But propagandists don't worry about a little thing like FACTS.

Then last night on the O’Reilly factor, Bill O flat-out LIED about the New York Times and the recently-foiled JFK Airport terror plot.

This is the front page of the Times that Bill O-LIE-ley chose to show.

And here is the full front page. Bill LIED. (And Think Progress has the video)

I guess he thinks that his viewers are such stupid sheeple that they wouldn’t actually look at the paper in question (and he is right, of course -they are if they are serious Faux watchers) but we keep an eye on the mendacious bastards, too. The idiots they cater to may be easily led about by the nose, but we call a moron a moron and a lying sack a lying sack. Bill O is a lying sack.

A dose of ones own medicine is a bitter pill to swallow

[This post rated R]

I would have let it pass, because frankly, she is inconsequential. She just doesn’t matter. The bloom is off the rose. Maybe finally the she crossed the line and will be forced off the public stage. Better late than never.

In case you missed it, a week or so ago, the harridan-of-fading-significance, getting ready to address a group of military spouses (mostly wives) said she was tired of hearing military wives “whine.”

I rolled my eyes because I have never taken the stupid bitch seriously, nor do I give any measure of credence or respect to anyone so weak-minded and gullible as to follow the “advice” rendered by the haranguing harridan. I let it pass, because she is just not worth my time.

But my sisters got pissed. She got barraged by angry emails sent by pissed-off military wives.

So now, she is doing the whining. And I have to twist the knife. She has pushed people to tears for years. Fuck her and her hurt feelings. Good. I hope her feelings are hurt. I hope it changes her. It won't, but hey. At least she had to swallow one of her own bitter pills.

“It broke my heart. I cried.” She whined in a phone interview on May 14^th. And she insisted that her saying she was tired of hearing military spouses whine was taken out of context. “I felt [that] if one family was in any way hurt, I had to do whatever I could to help repair that,” She whined . “My job is to set the record straight. My reputation with respect to the military is very important to me. I’m part of the family.” Schlessinger’s son is an Army paratrooper deployed to the Middle East.

Yep. Saying you are tired of hearing somebody whine is pretty vague and statements like that get taken out of context all the time. Whiner.

She has sure flogged that shamelessly. And she has lied about him too. She said he has had his tour extended because the congress won’t give the Useless Tool™ a blank check. That is a lie. No tours have been extended because of the funding fight. She lied about her son in uniform. That’s low.

She also has delusions of grandeur. She actually said she would not reveal the region where his team is operating because he might be a target “like Prince Harry.”

Bitch – do you think the average insurgent even knows who the fuck you even are? You think that you are that fucking important, that your kid would be a prime target of Iraqi insurgents because you have so much fucking influence?

If I could give her some advice it would be "Seek help, Toots. I mean it. You’ve been a danger to others for years. Now I fear you have crossed into territory where you are a danger to yourself."

How much longer do we have to abide this joker?

Of course we know why AGAG is still on the job...Anyone Bush found acceptable would not get past the confirmation process, and anyone the Democratically controlled congress would confirm...would burn the Bush maladministration to the ground.

It sure looks to me like the Attorney General of the United States should face perjury charges for lying to the House Judiciary Committee last week when he told the committee that the firing of U.S. Attorneys for political purposes was limited to the eight attorneys in the original inquiry.

The Washington Post reports this morning that he was lyin’ like a rug when he told that (tall) tale. It turns out that fully 25% of the U.S Attorneys were considered for dismissal.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

They amounted to more than a quarter of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. Thirteen of those known to have been targeted are still in their posts.

I can’t see Representative Conyers having much of a sense of humor about it all. Senator Schumer does not appear to be mollified. "When you start firing people for invalid reasons, just about anyone can end up on a list," he said. "It looks like the process was out of control, and if it hadn't been discovered, more would have been fired."

At least one of the targeted attorneys is not going to be placated by platitudes. Christopher J. Christie, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and a major GOP fundraiser, is steamed about his name appearing on Mr. Sampson’s hit list.

He has a stellar record and is not accepting apologies. "I was completely shocked. No one had ever told me that my performance had been anything but good," Christie said. "I specifically asked him why he put my name on the list. He said he couldn't give me an explanation." (Because there was no legal one to offer, perhaps?)

Have we seen enough of this guy yet? Good lord – just this week we have learned about more than enough stuff to meet the burden of proof to initiate impeachment proceedings of the Attorney General.

The removal of Gonzales from his post is mandatory if we are to restore the concept of justice to Justice.

[Cross-posted from the blog you should be reading, Watching Those We Chose]