Now the Iraq/al Queda connection is exposed as the known manipulation of bullcrap claims by administration member's who knew better.

First Iranian spy/Jordanian embezzler Chalabi, then (LOL) "Curveball," now comes the "Alibi" -- Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

Smoking Gun on Manipulation of Iraq Intelligence? 'NY Times' Cites New Document

It shows that an al-Qaeda official held by the Americans was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the basis for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

* * *
Libi is in custody, apparently at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003. According to Jehl, Secretary of State Colin Powell relied heavily on Libi for his speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda." HT: Huff Post

And as for The Times' sourcing:

WHO:    Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

WHAT:   A newly declassified memo.

WHY:    To show what cards were on the table behind the closed doors of the Senate.

When and Where is really a question of how long until impeachment hearings and where will the criminals in the White House do their time.

JEBUS!  Atrios links an UPDATE FROM NEWSWEEK

They tortured the bastard into telling us what we wanted to hear.  Fuckers.

Juan Cole sheds even more light on why it was down right criminal for the administration war-mongers to shovel this shit:

Moreover, other high-level al-Qaeda operatives such as Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah, who were far more important and informed than Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, were telling the same interrogators that Bin Laden had forbidden al-Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the secular Arab nationalist, Saddam Hussein . Their credible information, which tracked with the reality visible in arrests and the money trail, was suppressed by Bush and Cheney, whereas they trumpeted al-Libi's tall tales to the US public in order to build their case for an Iraq War.

Indicted ex-White House aide Lewis Libby played a key role in an earlier case of slanting U.S. intelligence for political gain -- four years before the Iraq War when he was legal adviser to a House investigation into how communist China got U.S. nuclear secrets.

Reference:  Consortiumnews.com

I wanted to title this Wow, Just Wow, but that was taken.  There are still many Clinton bashers out there who simply can't forgive him for selling out to the Chinese.  I doubt these Kool Aid drinking Bush apologists will be disabused by the fact that Scooter Libby, then counsel for the GOP led investigation of "China Gate," cooked the official timeline of the spy scandal, but they should be.

This story has everthing, even Ollie North.  The principle misdirection was pegging the theft of our W-88 miniturized nuclear warhead on the Clinton administration, when it actually occured between 1984 and 1993, the Reagan-Bush years.

By 1984, Ronald Reagan’s White House had decided to share sensitive national security secrets with the Chinese communists as it drew Beijing into the inner circle of illicit arms shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

Reagan’s White House turned to the Chinese for surface-to-air missiles for the contras because the U.S. Congress had banned military assistance to the rebel force and the contras were suffering heavy losses from attack helicopters deployed by Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

Some of the private U.S. operatives working with White House aide Oliver North settled on China as a source for SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles. In testimony at his 1989 Iran-Contra trial, North called the securing of these weapons a “very sensitive delivery.”

For the Chinese missile deal in 1984, North said he received help from the CIA in arranging false end-user certificates from the right-wing government of Guatemala. North testified that he “had made arrangements with the Guatemalan government, using the people [CIA] Director [William] Casey had given me.”

You remember Casey, didn't he conveniently suffer a lobotomy brain embulism just before the Iran/Contra hearings really got going.

North said the Chinese communists saw the collaboration as a way to develop “better relations with the United States.” Knowing about the illicit shipments to the contras also put Beijing in position to leverage U.S. policy in the future.

It was in this climate of cooperation that other secrets, including how to make miniaturized hydrogen bombs, allegedly reached communist China.

Though the evidence of North’s secret contacts with Chinese intelligence had been public knowledge since the late 1980s, the “Chinagate” report in 1999 made no reference to this secret collaboration between Reagan’s White House and China.

The US Congress didn't know what was going on, and it didn't even seem like POTUS did, with "plausible deniability" and all, but the Chinese knew we were shipping missles and other weapons to the Contras illegally.  Unbelievable.

Oh, and that whole Wen Ho Lee thing, happened in the 80's, and the Chinese tested their brand new nuke while Bush Sr. was still president in September of 1992.

“It’s like they were driving a Model T and went around the corner and suddenly had a Corvette,” said Robert M. Hanson, a Los Alamos intelligence analyst, in early 1995, the Times reported.

Bow From The Waist To:  The Smirking Chimp

"A man who avoided service in Vietnam is lecturing John McCain on the legitimacy of torturing military detainees. "

Three guesses who he's talking about.

John looks to be raising a million bucks this weekend (I guess he might be running for something), but Bab Douchebag Novakula calls that a "tepid response."

Nice work if you can get it.

Wouldn't it be sweet revenge if McCain someday has Shrub and Cheney hauled away for war crimes.  Hey, ya can't blame a guy for dreaming.

You mean that whole, "let's go to Mars" thing was just a canard.

NASA's big space dreams stumble on cash deficit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Nearly two years ago, President George W. Bush told NASA to help finish the International Space Station, return to the moon and then prepare for a manned space flight to Mars.

But that vision is crumbling as the U.S. space agency realizes it does not have the money it needs for the job.

How did that quote go again . . . "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

So, just what was going on then that the White House decided to come up with a distraction we all knew was a royal ruse:

• Howard Dean's campaign was grabbing headlines with his populist, anti-war message.
  
• We had just reached the 500 US Soldiers Killed "milestone."
  

Actually, I think they were much more concerned with Paul O'neil's book tour that started the week before.  Ahh, memories:

O'Neill said the Bush administration was eyeing an invasion of Iraq "from the very beginning" -- months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that administration officials said changed their strategic perspective.

He also compares Bush's presence at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people."

Some anonymous White House "senior official" called O'Neill's ideas "wacky."  Wacky?  What was "wacky," "Mr. A," was anyone actually buying Bush's pie-in-the-sky crap about going to Mars.

I'd love to go to Mars.  Awesome, cool!  But Jesus,  You can't do that when your major policy initiative is more and ever more shameless tax cuts  while once again screwing the poor.

I hate these guys.  They've got to go.  It's way too late for remedial ethics courses.

Even Scooter Libby was connected to the Oil For Food Scandal.  There will never be any indictments.

And then there's Marc Rich. Rich, a whipping boy of the right known for his last-minute pardon by Bill Clinton is actually close to influential figures on both sides of the aisle. Rich's lawyer, dating back to the 1980s was none other than recently indicted Cheney aide Irving "Scooter" Libby, who received over $2 million dollars in legal fees from Rich over the course of their relationship.

Rich -- through various French front-companies he established for the purpose -- not only lifted over eight million barrels of oil (paying around $1.5 million in bribes), but his companies financed over $430 million dollars in oil sales.

Reference: AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Quiet Oil-for-Food Scandal

It looks like the French connection in this case was only a red herring.

The $30 Billion Dollar Carlyle Group (the only large private equity firm located in Washington, DC., not New York. Corporate headquarters are on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol building) has two companies involved.

Carlyle Group, whose board used to include "W" and still retains Daddy Bush and Colin Powell -- and on the other side of the aisle, George Soros, had subsidiaries with contracts under the program and paid kickbacks to Sadaam's regime.

And don't forget Halliburton.  Don't ever forget Haliburton!

James Baker III, the former United States Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush, Staff member under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, is not only Carlyle's Senior Counselor, he's also represents the Saudi Royals and, of course, he's Halliburton's consigliere.

At least one Halliburton firm, Oil Tools International, is listed in the latest report as having made sales of spare parts under the program and paying kickbacks to the regime.

That's in addition to the $73 million in business Halliburton did with Iraq during the sanctions regime under Cheney's leadership, as previously reported by the Washington Post.

Dick Cheney has a history of lobbying to lift sanctions in countries where Halliburton was doing, or hoped to do, business. Those countries include Burma (he signed an amicus brief against the Massachusetts Burma Law), Libya, Iran and Azerbaijan. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he acknowledged that Halliburton -- through off-shore subsidiaries -- did business in those countries but insisted "Iraq's different."

You know America, we really deserve this catastrophe of a presidency for not simply doing out homework and instead, buying the hype.

Gimme a break, is there no shame at all any more?

Fox News Paid for DeLay's Travel

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) "filed a report with the Clerk of the House of Representatives indicating he received free travel valued at $13,998.55 from Fox News Sunday for 'officially connected travel' on October 1-2, 2005, from Sugarland, TX to Washington, D.C. and back to Sugarland, TX. Rep. DeLay appeared on Fox News Sunday on October 2, 2005, the weekend after his indictment on September 28, 2005."

$14 Grand?!? Oh PuhLeeze.

Roundtrip, Houston - D.C. - Houston, First Class, one day notice.

Expedia gave me fares of $692.90, $920.90, or $1,120.90
One night at the Washington DC Ritz, $599.00
Luxury Rental Car, $213.92

Being able to pocket over Ten Grand and call it "expenses" AND being able to grin at softball questions aimed at twisting a potential jury pool in your favor -- PRICELESS!

Hat tip: Political Money Line

VIA: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

The beltway's talking point in The Fix about Ohio's Forth Congressional District, now an open seat with the departure of Rep. Mike Oxley (R) is that the area is too Red for any Democratic insurgency to take hold.

You can't win if you don't play!  I say they have no idea in Washington just how disgusted we Buckeyes are with the scandal ridden GOP here and in D.C.  Don't underestimate how badly "Coingate" has damaged the Republicans.

See my analysis below.  Scroll down a few posts or Click Here.

. . . Right Now!


Bloviating Nazi

Apropos my previous two posts below, I was suspiciously surprised to hear the Junkie Bigot characterize the secret detention camps we've set up throughout the world as "gulags," just like I did.  The absolutely insufferable thrice divorced blowhard did not disappoint.  He was using his unique gift for satire to attempt the point that folks like me are overreacting to the situation that has Soviet era concentration camps being refurbished, repopulated and used in my name to hide god knows what.

Rather, I should not be concerned that my President is a modern day Torquemada who has officially approved torture chambers, but that some traitor in the CIA must have leaked this fact to the Washington Post.

Gimme a break.  Do you think they'd leak this to Judy Miller at the New York Times?  The story would ever see the light of day? 

Try and fit this into your corpulent noggin Rush, it's all about motive.  When a leak is made to expose corruption, crimes, and just plain Un-American activity by members of our government, especially when there supposedly is an investigation (actually, 12 investigations) to police this activity, that is indeed a "good" leak.  Transparency in a democracy is a "good" thing.

On the other hand, orchestrating leaks based on lies to bolster your feeble rationale to make war and somehow give credibility to claims unsupported by available intelligence is a "bad" leak.  So is leaking the name of secret agents who, once burned, are put in jeopardy along with all their associates just to discredit an administration critic.

Got that you fucking idiot?

BONUS GOP TALKING POINTS THAT WON'T FLY:

I've heard a couple of times that we shouldn't be concerned with Scooter's indictment, after all, who can name the Vice President's Chief of Staff from previous administrations.

Actually, it is indicative of just how disproportionally powerful Dick Cheney is, and what undue influence he holds in this administration that not only was his office completely mired in pushing for war and spreading disinformation to the public, but that we DO INDEED KNOW LIBBY'S NAME.

Remember always, that when the GOPers have nothing, it's all Clinton's fault.  You know they have absolutely no substantive argument when they bring out old Slick Willie.  So when they tell you that Clinton had more scandals than Florida had hurricanes, take one look at the data:  According to the latest CBS Poll which pegs Bush at an all time low of 35% approval, they also ranked the relative importance of recent major scandals.

Naturally, Watergate ranked as the worst one with 53% saying that it was of "Great importance,"  But it was followed closely by the CIA Leak Case currently gaining steam at 51%.  Whitewater and Lewinsky ranked well below those or Iran/Contra on the disgrace parade.  Fittingly so, since the Clinton "scandals" were private, personal incidents while the others involved official abuse of power.  Is it really just coincidental that the GOP scandals were all cases where White House operatives thought they were above the law?  Haven't they figured out that there are so many checks and balances in our system precesely to prevent their kind from taking over?

William F. Buckley, Jr., the godfather of modern American conservatism, keeps his eye on the ball.

Essentially (and in verbiage that doesn't require the mandatory dictionary usually needed to interpret a Buckley screed) he says hangin's too good for whomever was involved in burning Valerie Plame.

Meanwhile, Arianna tracks Tweedy, who learned everything he knows about propaganda from Vice President Cheney.

Chris Matthews has fixated on the events of September 8, 2002, the day Judy Miller's aluminum tube story hit the front page of the New York Times, conveniently planted by Scooter Libby to give the V.P., Condi, Colin and Rummy their "smoking gun = mushroom clouds" talking points to all the Sunday talk shows. He's been repeating this story again and again and again.  Keep at it Chris, and let's make it stick.

Ever vigilent, Josh Marshall questions what National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was doing in Italy the very next day, Monday, Sept. 9, 2002, as all of us were trying not to go into a deep funk over the 1st anniversary of 9/11 and awaiting the live broadcast of the media pilgrimage to the scene of the crime, another was perpetrated.

That was the most likely day the Niger fogeries were passed from Nicolo Pollari, the head of the Italian Intelligence Agency, SISMI, to Hadley, the man who ultimately took responsibility for those "16 words" that ended up in the next SOTUA which ignited the witch-hunt against the Wilsons. He's also seems to have instigated the bogus claim that Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in the Czech Republic.  Now he's trying to sell the snake oil that just because we're running secret internment camps in at least three different countries, doesn't mean we've been torturing anybody.

Who could honestly believe such drivel?  If our intentions are so pure, why on earth would these camps need to be secret, and on foreign soil no less.  Jesus I'm tired of this administration and their apologists pissing on us and saying it's just rain.  Trickle down this, you miscreant assholes!

For the remaining 35% of you out there who actually approve of the wholly unethical and downright criminal behavior of this administration, I delight in informing you that one-by-one, the leakers and the liars will be gone sooner than you think.

That's what it is, that's what we're doing.  You've heard about them before, the secret CIA rendition jets, the archipelago of secret prison camps around the world so we can torture and even kill undocumented and ill defined prisoners.

Hell, were even using the U.S.S.R.'s old concentration camps.

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

I'm sorry, but what the American government is doing is down right . . Un-American.

The Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal simply cannot be allowed to continue this repugnant practice, period.  Even the Mooney Times has had enough.

But an interesting question arises about just what one particular prisoner knew, and when did he know it, and why he was allowed to escape.  Especially now, since he was expected to testify against his interrogators.

I never in a million years thought that the country I grew up to love and respect so much could sink this low.  I only hope that eventually Colin Powell's prediction that the world could watch us and see how a free and democratic people clean up our own mess.  It sure is taking longer than I would like.

If it takes ten years, everyone, and I mean everyone from Bush on down must be made to pay the price or this gift of freedom Washington, Jefferson and Madison handed down to us and for which so many courageous men and women sacrificed their lives will indeed perish from the Earth.

Oh, there'll still be a nation-state called the USA here in the center of North America, but it will be unrecognizable to those of us who remember what America used to stand for:  Fairness, equal opportunity, ruled by laws not men.  A place where the foot of the wealthy and greedy didn't stomp on the necks of ordinary folks trying to make a better life for their families.  A place where we all could own guns, but didn't need guns.

A place where our leaders were accountable and all human beings were treated with dignity and the presumption of innocence applied to everyone, not just the party faithful.  A place that had no place for fascists, even if they do look like the Olsen twins. A place where we didn't steal elections or work so hard to divide so many.