When Bush apologists play the "Clinton Card," they ain't got nothin'.

Contrary to what my local Nazi promoting, Limbaugh wannabe, radio talker would have you believe, the Huffington Post is not the "wacko liberal KOS/MOVEON.ORG site" that he would have you believe.

Case in point, it features the ramblings of Carol Platt Liebau who quotes extensively from Stephen F. Hayes' Daily Standard piece.  She/He tries to explain away Sunday's NYT article about the tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi   A-Libi gave the warmongers in the White House a ficticious Iraq/al Qaeda connection -- exactly what they wanted to hear.  That gave them the wild goose chase they wanted to sell us based on intelligence they knew was not credible.

As Marty Kaplan said, also at the Huff, If that isn't fixing the intelligence to fit the policy (as the Downing Street Memo put it), what is?

Ms. Liebau seizes on Hayes' thesis that the Times article ignores Some Relevant Facts.  Specifically, that the Bush administration officials did not make up stuff on their own, but kept to the letter of the made up crap they beat out of their captives.  Somehow, this "proves" their good intent, or at least gives plausibility to their later denials.

That, and Clinton officials still claim the asprin factory in Sudan was connected to al Qaeda.

After striking pharmaceutical factories in Sudan back in 1998, the Clinton Administration justified the strikes by asserting both that they were suspected chemical weapons facilities AND that there was an al Qaeda presence there. As Hayes puts it, "These facilities, according to both Clinton administration spokesmen and senior intelligence officials, were the result of a collaborative effort between Iraqi scientists, the Sudanese Military Industrial Corporation and al Qaeda terrorists. Clinton administration officials stand by those claims today."

So someone tell me: Was the Clinton national security team "lying" too?

Seriously, is that all they got?

They weren't dead wrong go to war, kill tens of thousands, maim hundreds of thousands, destroy another country, bankrupt our own, wreck out standing in the world and completely abandon the moral authority this nation has always stood for -- because Clinton bombed a suspected munitions factory on intelligence of similar merit?

Explain to me when the Clinton administration was ever accused of torture.  And while we're at it, tell me just how many wars did Clinton sell the American people based on lies?

For The Record the reason there were no WMD's in Iraq for Bush to find, was because Clinton's containment refime and bombing campaigns wiped them out.

From Kevin Drum, who puts the al-Libi thing together so much better than I.

If conservatives dislike Dick Durbin's comparison of American practices to those of Hitler and Stalin, they should make clear to Dick Cheney that America doesn't condone the practices of Hitler and Stalin. Because apparently, the vice president of the United States does condone them. Vigorously. It's enough to make any decent human being puke.

Schadenfreude

n : delight in another person's misfortune

The GOP is truly unified.  Unfortunately it is in their belief that Shrub is indeed a miserable failure and that they will lose all they have fought for the last several decades, for the next several decades.

When a GOP strategist suggested last weekend that the President fire Rove, Bush exploded.

"You go to hell," he screamed at the strategist. "You can leave and you can take the rest of these lily-livered motherfuckers with you!" The President then stormed out of the room and refused to meet further with any other party leaders or strategists.

Bush's escalating temper tantrums and his intransigence on political issues increase Republican worries about the long term effects on both his presidency and the party's prospects in upcoming elections.

"Right now, George W. Bush is the Republican Party's chief liability," says a GOP strategist who has advised Presidential campaigns for 30 years. "The entire political future of the party and perhaps the nation now rests on the shoulders of a President that no one - Democrat or Republican - believes in or trusts."

There's even more, and it's most excellent fun.  The Bush era is effectively over.  My only regret is that is happened 12 months too late.

HT:  Avedon Carol

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.