The Where, The Who And The How

August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing:

Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America."

After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a ... (redacted portion) ... service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an ... (redacted portion) ... service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.

The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack.

Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation.

Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997.

Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.

A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

And the when, without an exact date: Bin Laden's associates in this country were "prepar[ing] for hijackings or other types of attacks" on buildings in New York and were "planning attacks with explosives."

Amazingly, the NYT spins it this way on the front page of its website: "The memo, released Saturday, mentioned the threat of hijacking but did not give specifics or warn that planes could be used as missiles." The briefing didn't mention the threat of hijacking -- it was about the threat of hijacking.

The briefing was, by definition, the work of persons who distilled and summarized more detailed information. So who were those people and what source documents were they working with?

Not-So-Great Minds

This doesn't qualify as plagiarism, and it lacks the required intellect to involve theft of intellectual property, but I do notice certain similarities -- including the punch line -- in these two offerings from Gregg Easterbrook and Kitty Parker.

At the risk of being called a Saddam-loving French Islamofacist, might I point out that more measured, and rational, responses to the information Bush possessed -- like heightened precautions at airports and more careful review of existing information -- might have solved the immediate problem, whereas the responses imagined by our fantasizing friends -- "the bombing of Afghanistan" and "an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan" -- likely would not have.

Midget Mickey Kaus criticizes Bob Kerry for his "inability to frame his question clearly." Yet on the same date, Kaus writes incomprehensible crap like this:

I'm not saying that the unreasonableness of expecting any more significant "compassionate conservative" initiatives from Bush is a reason to support him. Quite the opposite. But we should be accurate: It's not that didn't follow through and give us all the C.C. goodies he could have--thus governing in a different way than we'd been led to expect. It's that his "compassion" closet was always mainly--visibly--empty. The few initiatives that were arguably part of the "compassionate conservative" agenda, he's pushed.

(And it's not out of context. The whole frickin' post is incomprehensible.)

* Originally said about Abe Rosenthal, in Spy magazine.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Lifestyles of The Rich and Heinous Edition

You are not the kind of guy who would be in a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details of the Raptor restructuring are becoming fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to an FBI agent with a shaved head. The club is either American Trash or the Voodoo Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip out of the country and into another where they don't have an extradition treaty. Then again, it might not.

Via Suburban Guerilla, we learn that former Enron president and COO Jeff Skilling is making a bid to become the Courtney Love of the securities fraud world:

Police found Skilling at 4 a.m. at the corner of Park Avenue and East 73rd Street and determined he might be an "emotionally disturbed person," said the source, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Police did not charge Skilling with a crime. They took him to New York Presbyterian Hospital for observation. Hospital officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

...

Skilling was at two bars in Manhattan -- American Trash and The Voodoo Lounge -- where he allegedly ran up to patrons and pulled open their clothes, the source said.

"He was shouting at them 'You're an FBI agent and you're following me,'" the source said.

Skilling allegedly did the same thing to people on the street, the source added. He was with his wife at the time.

Skilling was described as being intoxicated and highly uncooperative when he was approached by police, the source said.

Actually, the former Republican benefactor doesn't sound crazy; he sounds like just another drunk who needs to spend a day in the drunk tank. It would be good practice, Jeff.

Cliff May Need Some Remedial Education

Cliff May, the slack-jawed yokel charged with feeding slop to the readers of National Review Online, says this:

"President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor."

Here are the facts. I'll use bold so the typical NRO reader can follow along:

"JAPANESE ATTACK UPON PEARL HARBOR

JANUARY 23, 1942

[To] The PRESIDENT,
The White House


SIR: The undersigned were appointed by Executive order of December 18, 1941, which defined our duties as a commission thus:

'to ascertain and report the facts relating to the attack made by Japanese armed forces upon the Territory of Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

'The purposes of the required inquiry and report are to provide bases for sound decisions whether any derelictions of duty or errors of judgment on the part of United States Army or Navy personnel contributed to such successes as were achieved by the enemy on the occasion mentioned, and, if so, what these derelictions or errors were, and who were responsible therefor.'

The Congress speedily supplemented the Executive order by granting the Commission power to summon witnesses and examine them under oath.

The Commission held three meetings in Washington, December 18, 19, and
20, and, on the latter day, proceeded to Honolulu, T. H., where the Commission arrived December 22 and held meetings December 22, 23, 24, and 26 at the headquarters of the Hawaiian Department, Fort Shafter, and December 27, 29, 30, and 31, 1941, and January 2 and 3, 1942, at the submarine base, Pearl Harbor; and January 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu. January 10 the commission left Honolulu for Washington, D. C.; held meetings January 12, 13, and 14; arrived at Washington January 15 and held further meetings January 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23.

The Commission examined 127 witnesses and received a large number of documents. All members of the Military and Naval Establishments, and civil officers and citizens who were thought to have knowledge of facts pertinent to the inquiry, were summoned and examined under oath. All persons in the island of Oahu, who believed they had knowledge of such facts, were publicly requested to appear, and a number responded to the invitation and gave evidence."

To summarize: By executive order dated December 18, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a commission to determine whether mistakes led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Is it possible to be more wrong in one sentence than Cliff May is?

Incredibly, there's a more fundamental mistake in May's sentence that I haven't touched on -- one that should be evident to any junior high school student in America. What else is wrong with this sentence?

President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor.

Fighting terrorism as well as rogue dictators requires a policy of pre-emption. During the 1930s, there should have been a pre-emptive strike on Nazi Germany. If Britain and France had the guts to do that, 60 million lives lost in World War II might have been spared. After World War II, when we held a monopoly on nuclear weapons, we should have told the Soviet Union that if it started making nuclear weapons we'd bomb its facilities. We would have avoided Soviet adventurism and trillions of dollars fighting a Cold War. Today, we should give axis-of-evil member North Korea notice to destroy its nuclear weapons or we'll do it for them.

It Depends On The Definition of History

The information on current threats in the briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," stands in contrast to repeated assertions by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials as recently as this week that the document is primarily historical and includes no warning or threat information.

The End of "History"

WASHINGTON, April 9 -- President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.

That doesn't sound like idle chatter to me. It sounds like the where, the who and the how.

And eleven days earlier, the Justice Department confirmed that Johnny Asscrack was no longer flying on commercial airliners due to an FBI "threat assessment." Who is looking into that connection?

Did Fat Tony Order U.S. Marshals to Violate The Law?

"A federal marshal who required two reporters to erase audiotapes of a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school on Wednesday may have violated the law, legal experts said yesterday.

Justice Scalia does not typically allow audio or video recorders at his speeches, though he often allows print reporters to attend and take notes. Imposing such conditions ahead of time for speeches in private settings generally creates no legal problems, the legal experts said. But seizing or destroying a reporter's notes or tapes afterward in the absence of an announced ban may violate a federal law and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches, they said.

The reporters involved in the incident at Presbyterian Christian High School in Hattiesburg had been invited. They openly taped Justice Scalia's speech and were confronted by a deputy marshal, Melanie Rube, during a question-and-answer session afterward.

The journalists and the United States Marshals Service, which provides security for Supreme Court justices when they travel, offered differing accounts of precisely what happened next.

Antoinette Konz, who covered the speech for The Hattiesburg American, adamantly denied having been told of a taping ban. Her tape would confirm her account, Ms. Konz said, had she not been forced to erase it.

Ms. Rube, the deputy who confronted the reporters, declined to comment.

Nehemiah Flowers, the United States marshal in Jackson, Miss., said the reporters had been advised of the ban 'intermittently, individually.'

'It is my understanding that Deputy Rube did not touch anyone and asked politely if they would erase the tape,' Mr. Flowers added.

He denied that such a request was coercive or unlawful. 'We do have that authority,' he said. 'This is a justice of the Supreme Court, and as far as we're concerned, we're following the court's orders.'

In a statement released by the Marshals Service in Washington, a spokeswoman said Ms. Rube's actions "were based on the justice's standing policy prohibiting such recordings of his remarks." -- New York Times, April 9, 2004

Will the Justice Department investigate this alleged violation of the reporters' civil rights and act of prior restraint under color of law, or does it believe that Scalia is above the law? Maybe Nino can rule on this one himself, saying that his ability to render an impartial accquital "cannot reasonably be questioned."

Ironically, during his speech, the thug railed: "I am here to persuade you that our Constitution is something extraordinary, something to revere." Here's the article by Ms. Konz, a courageous American. (She has filed a complaint with Ashcroft J.D., according to this article.) Ms. Konz's e-mail address accompanies her report, should you wish to show your support.

The Kid Is Not His Son

Innocent child dodges bullet; still faces traumatic alternative holidays.

Wingnut Literature In Review

World Nut Daily is marketing a late April Fool's Day offering:

Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists

From her own "war room" in the White House, Hillary Clinton commanded a secret police operation dedicated to silencing dissent, muzzling media critics, intimidating political foes, whitewashing Clinton scandals, and obstructing justice. Hillary's operatives infiltrated every level of the news media, federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the federal court system.

They looked upon the "unregulated" datastream of cyberspace as a threat to their power, potentially devastating in its ability to bypass the controlled, corporate media. For that reason, Hillary's secret police persecuted Internet dissidents with special ferocity.

Mainstream news media spiked the story of Hillary's secret war -- and of the scandals she sought to conceal. But the courageous new journalists of the Internet underground defied the odds and exposed the shocking truth about history's most corrupt presidency. This is their story.

Also by the author: Hillary's Secret Mind Control Techniques And How They Cause Me to Expose Myself to Dogs and My Skin Is Crawling With Insects in the Pay of Janet Reno

And coming in May: Spank Me, Professor, by Ben Shapiro. "Fresh and bitterly funny, this book proves that the universities, far from being a place (sic) for open discussion, are really dungeons of the mind that indoctrinate students to become socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and narcissists. " Oooh, kinky.

(Don't forget to bookmark that page so you can review young Ben's work when he finishes it.)

My recommendation: Pass on those pathetic volumes and pick up The Exception to the Rulers by Amy and David Goodman.

Update (4/9): Amy Goodman's book has jumped to 105 in the amazon.com rankings, from somewhere in the 300s when this was first posted. Never underestimate the power of Roger.* *(The power to take credit for something I had nothing to do with.) The Virgin Ben's tome, Dungeons and Reagans, is still at 2,432,357.

Also note: You can support your local independent, instead of amazon, while still shopping online.

Left Coast Air

Bay Area residents and Southbayites may be happy to learn that Air America will be broadcasting from Berkeley and San Jose by the end of the month. According to the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal:

Air America Radio, the left-leaning talk radio alternative to conservative stations, will be broadcast in the Bay Area on two radio stations so both their signals cover more of the whole market.

The talk show network will air on KVTO (AM 1400) of San Francisco and KVVN (1430 AM), in San Jose sometime in April.

Both stations are owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corp., which also owns the network's flagship station in New York City.

Because KVTO has only a 1,000-watt transmitter, it can only cover San Francisco, San Mateo and East Bay communities such as Berkeley, Oakland and Concord. KVVN's signal will cover San Jose, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.

When Air America Radio premiered March 31 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other markets, the company was still in negotiations to secure a Bay Area outlet. While Air America says the network will begin airing locally sometime this month, it didn't provide a specific date. Harvey Stone, general manager of KVTO, says his station doesn't have the equipment to receive Air America's satellite feed to rebroadcast it.

Chatty Condi

I don't want to say that Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission was miserable failure but, coming home from work, I heard the local AM wingut and his guest, "Dr. History," play a clip of the following as their prime example of Rice's "excellent" testimony:

Let me read you some of the actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and summer.

Unbelievable news coming in weeks, said one.

Big event.

There will be a very, very, very, very big uproar.

There will be attacks in the near future.

Troubling, yes, but they don't tell us when.

They don't tell us where.

They don't tell us who.

And they don't tell us how.

And they didn't send an engraved invitation and a Mapquest link either.

I also heard "Dr. History" commit historical malpractice by repeating the canard (which he attributed to V.D. Hanson) that there were no commissions organized to investigate the attack on Pearl Harbor. Interestingly, the good doctor qualified his statement by saying there was no Pearl Harbor commission in 1943. (His statement was along the lines of "could you imagine if a commission was set up in 1943 to investigate Pearl Harbor?") I wonder he intended to decieve his wingnut listeners by selecting the only year from 1941 to 1945 in which there was no active investigation of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Trees Not Shaken

A threat emerged on August 6,
While George cleared 'way the Texas brush
I read the U.S. would be attacked,
And looked away quick as I could
While George vacationed at his ranch

The briefing did not speak of threats,
It spoke of history, so I claim
Though it said "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside [U.S.];"
I gave it not a passing thought
And I'm not about to take the blame

George met face to face with CIA,
They didn't pinpoint the attack,
So I ignored it for another day!
George didn't want flies shooed away,
That's a metaphor, if you must ask.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
"The structural problem was that we did not share domestic and foreign intelligence in a way to --- make a product people could depend upon"
And that shall be my best defense.

Dumbfuck Statement Of The Week

"But put all that to the side for a moment. What if, through no fault of the United States, this turns out to be Mission Impossible?"

The current situation in Iraq is the direct consequence of the United States' -- that is, the Adminstration's -- action. How can it not be the United States' fault? "The decision to go to war in the first place" is the cause of what exists in Iraq today. You can argue that what exists now is preferable to Saddam Hussein's regime, but you can't argue that what exists now is not the result of Bush's war.

And to say it was unforeseeable is equally absurd.

Tina Brown Is Smoking Crack

If anyone needed an editor (preferably Jim Capozzola), it's Tina Brown. Her most recent issue combines her usual bad writing (which is Noonanesque in style, though not in worldview) with what is almost certainly delusional thinking:

In this atmosphere of anticipation followed by revelation, the media classes are salivating at the prospect of investigative journalist Bob Woodward's latest tome, "Plan of Attack." Talk show producers I speak to are on steroids waiting for Woodward. They have always just heard from a D.C. insider who had lunch last week with a friend who ran into Woodward at the pharmacy/ grocery store/Blockbuster and reported breathlessly that "he didn't want to say anything but I hear it's going to blow the lid off all the stuff about why we really went into Iraq/who's really making the decisions/what Powell really believes/what the real hold is that Cheney has over Bush/what Condi will never say to the 9/11 commission."

Talk show producers "are on steroids waiting for" something? They "have always just heard from?" (And this: "'It's harder for the White House to manage the author's process than it is the reporter's process,' Ron Suskind, author of the O'Neill bestseller 'The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill,' told me. " Who is the book about, Tina? I didn't catch that.)

And does Brown really believe that the author of Bush at War is set to expose "what the real hold is that Cheney has over Bush?"

The Fix Is In

I was going to compose a post yesterday speculating that various wingnuts have already composed their columns and blog entries praising Condoleezza Rice's testimony later this morning as masterful, definitive, a bold refutation to the treacherous allegations of Richard A. Clarke, etc., because that is the only acceptable outcome in their desire to elect Bush. Given that Rice is only slated to appear for two hours with a twenty-minute opening statement, and that her testimony is not only rehearsed but already leaked to the press, it's nearly impossible that Rice will say anything unscripted or provide any information helpful to the Commission's mandate. All that the 'nuts would need to do is plug a couple of Rice's canned soundbytes into their scripts, and press enter. For the Pumpkinheads, Finemen and 'Crackers of this world, the outcome of this morning's testimony is not (and cannot be) in doubt.

Lest anyone think this view is too cynical, I give you Peggy "Deep Throat" Nooners as Exhibit "A".

And if the testimony doesn't go well, watch for the pre-packaged "Democrats are racist" macro to appear.

I know most television is crap, but -- a contest in which the winner is determined based on the personal preferences of a cretinous germophobe? And people watch it?

Hate and Hale

The trial of white supremacist Matthew Hale, which begins this week in Chicago, has gotten surprisingly little publicity.

Hale first gained national attention when the Illinois State Bar refused Hale a law license because of his racist beliefs and violent rhetoric. In 1999, a follower of Hale and member of Hale's World Church of the Creator shot five non-white individuals in a multi-state shooting spree. As a result, the FBI infiltrated Hale's organization. At the same time, Hale was involved a civil trademark lawsuit involving a dispute of the name of his organization. After an unfavorable ruling in the civil suit, Hale allegedly solicited an undercover FBI agent to murder the District Judge who ruled against him.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Hale's conversation with the agent was taped:

The tapes, expected to be played for the jury at trial, were made by the FBI informant a few weeks after Lefkow's order in the trademark case.

Prosecutors say Hale, in an email to the informant 10 days after that hearing, quoted "The White Man's Bible," written by his group's founder, as saying that if the government interfered with them, "they then are obviously the criminals and we can treat them like the criminal dogs they are and take the law into our own hands."

He later asked the FBI informant for the addresses of Lefkow and three attorneys involved in the case, and then met with the informant, who secretly taped the conversation, prosecutors say.

On the tapes, the informant asks: "Are we gonna exterminate the rat?"

"Well, whatever you want to do, basically," Hale says.

As the article suggests, the issue is whether Hale solicited a murder or acquesieced to participation in a crime actually suggested by the FBI agent. There's also an obstruction of justice charged based on the allegation that Hale urged his father to lie to the grand jury investigating the solicitation allegation.

I don't know why this case hasn't gotten more attention. As far as I can tell, Hale hasn't become a hero to the black helicopter crowd, ala Weaver, Koresh and McVeigh. The issues certainly are more interesting those in most of the front-page crime fodder these days.

Friedman States The Obvious

April 8, 2004 -- .... From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party -- let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."

From the day the looting started in Baghdad, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops to create a secure framework and to control Iraq's borders. As a result, local militias began to spring up everywhere. If you turn on your TV, you can see how well armed they became while Donald Rumsfeld was insisting we had enough troops there to control Iraq.

That's "elected wartime president" to you, Tommy.

Bob Somerby just keeps getting better.

Of course, I'll have to imagine it, since Air America still isn't broadcasting in my neighboorhood yet. But it should be good.

"Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance, and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives."

This calls for a dance mix of Let The Eagle Soar, complete with a sample of Elvira from the now-defunct Singing Senators.

Porno For Rangers

Cable television, meanwhile, which has found late-night lineups with "adult programming" highly profitable, is unlikely to budge, and such companies have powerful friends.

Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, which offers "hard-core" porn on the Hot Network channel (at $11.99 per film in Baltimore), was co-chair of Philadelphia 2000, the host committee that brought the Republican National Convention to Philadelphia. In February, the Bush campaign honored Comcast President Stephen Burke with "Ranger" status, for agreeing to raise at least $200,000 for the president's re-election effort.

And they left out Rupert Murdoch, whose holdings include a satellite television network offering a wide variety of (hetero-only) porn.

I guess this is understandable, since the "adult entertainment" business is capitalism in its purest form.

The Pot Calling The Toe-Sucker "Hack"

Mickey Kaus calls Dick Morris's unsolicited advice to George Bush on Iraq "deeply cynical." And who can argue with the proposition that Dick Morris is a scumbag? But Kaus's own advice to Bush on soldiers killed in Iraq is equally, if not more, cynical and scummy:

The PR solution for Bush seems obvious: He should go to the memorial for a soldier killed in Iraq, take the pulpit and deliver a eulogy about why this was a sacrifice worth making. ... Elegies are easy! Bush's doesn't have to be the Gettysburg Address or touch the face of God. If it's memorable at all it will help Bush immeasurably and put an end to the Kerry camp's latest victimhood play. (First the 9/11 families get painted as Bush victims, now G.I.s.) ... And if the eulogy's not memorable ... well, it won't be remembered! A can't-lose proposition. ...

A can't lose proposition except for the dead soldier and his or her family and friends -- but all up-side for Bush's campaign P.R. Of course, Kaus wouldn't know sacrifice if it bit him on the ass.

Unification

This doesn't sound like civil war... It's much worse:

BAGHDAD, April 6 -- On the streets of Baghdad neighborhoods long defined by differences of faith and politics, signs are emerging that resistance to the U.S. occupation may be growing from a sporadic, underground effort to a broader insurrection by militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name of their common faith, Islam.

On Monday, residents of Adhamiya, a largely Sunni section of northern Baghdad, marched with followers of Moqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose call for armed resistance was answered by local Sunnis the same afternoon, residents said.
...

Like complaints about home searches that leave Iraqis feeling defiled and humiliated, disappointment with the Governing Council is a grievance that binds many Iraqis. The panel is widely condemned as dominated by exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader far better known and loved in Washington than in Baghdad. The complaint gained new energy when Shiite clerics began a campaign against sections of the basic law the council produced with U.S. oversight as a basis for a constitution.

War Stories

The Toledo Blade's Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the Tiger Force unit in Vietnam is very important reading. Not because there are parallels to between the events reported in the series and the current military activities in Iraq. But because it demonstrates that American soldiers are not always virtuous because they are American, that the American government often does not tell the truth about the wars it fights, that secrecy leads to abuses, that dehumanizing others leads to inhuman acts, and that questioning the conduct of the military and its civilian leaders can be an act of patriotism.

(Link via Altercation.)

More Clowning From Kaus

The wingnuts are usually on the lookout for a supposedly liberal press misquoting the beloved Bush. In his latest drivel-filled epistle, however, mental midget Mickey Kaus bashes the press for quoting Bush accurately.

The question asked of Bush -- which Kaus omits -- was this:

Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline, is there a chance that that would be moved back?

Bush said this:

THE PRESIDENT: No, the intention is to make sure the deadline remains the same. I believe we can transfer authority by June 30th. We're working toward that day. We're, obviously, constantly in touch with Jerry Bremer on the transfer of sovereignty. The United Nations is over there now. The United Nations representative is there now to work on the -- on a -- on to whom we transfer sovereignty. I mean, in other words, it's one thing to decide to transfer. We're now in the process of deciding what the entity will look like to whom we will transfer sovereignty. But, no, the date remains firm.

The Washington Post, which Kaus criticizes, used the following headline to summarize Bush's remarks:

Transition Date Still Firm, President Says

To recap: Bush states the June 30 transfer date "remains firm." In response to the question of whether there is any chance that the June 30 deadline would be moved back, Bush says "No." The Post reports that Bush said the "transition date still firm." Seems entirely accurate to me.

The pint-sized pundit, however, disagrees. He thinks Bush's words mean that Bush is "considering postponing transition." Kaus sees equivocation because Bush used the words "intention" and "I believe we can" in his answer. He ignores the first word out of Bush's mouth -- "no" -- and the last words --"no, the date remains firm." And there's really no contradiction: A person who "intends" to stick to a deadline and "believes" the deadline can be met can state, without contradiction, that the deadline is firm.

Of course, the other alternative is that Bush is "flip-flopping," that is, he knows the deadline is bullshit and intends to weasel out of it without clearly saying so. But Kaus would never impute such actions to his fearless leader.

The Post chose to report Bush's actual words, while Kaus plays a mind-reading game where he can divine that Bush meant the exact opposite of what he said. And some people actually respect Kaus.

Regrettably, and through no merit of his own, Kaus isn't the biggest embarassment on Slate this week. The honors go to Tim Noah, who devotes an entire column (and was presumably paid for writing it) to the question "Why did Jenna Slosson read her book upside-down?" (Answer: She didn't, and Noah is an idiot.)

Frum Smear to Eternity

Howie Kurtz permits David Frum to smear Richard Clarke by innuendo on CNN's Reliable Sources.

FRUM: It [administration criticism of Clarke] was prolonged but it was not intense. There were a lot of things that they could have said that they did not say.

KURTZ: What are you suggesting by that?

FRUM: I'm not going to say. But you can imagine....

(Bracketed material added.)

No follow up from the Putz, demanding that Frum either explain or retract. Maybe it has something to do with the unique nature of the relationship between Howie and Frum, which I'm not going to elaborate on.

Use your imagination.

The Loosest Slots on Your A.M. Dial

For those of you dying to wake up with former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, have I got a radio show for you. It promises "important guests, high production values and non-stop fun!" And Vin Weber.

World O' Crap reports that Big Bill Bennett is bringing his highly selective morality and dangerously clogged arteries to a radio too close to you. His guests today include/included Rummy, Big Pharma, Pumpkinhead Tim, the old ball-and-chain, Bill Clinton's underperforming defense counsel (Bennett's brother), the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mario Cuomo and Pat Sajak. Tomorrow is Vin Weber, Naomi Judd and "attorney Bob Barnett," (aka Bill Bennett's own attorney).

The gaming industry's loss has become the gain of every Beltway righty who can't hear himself speak often enough.

My advice to Bill: don't burn through your Rolodex so fast. You'll be interviewing your hairdresser by Week 5.

But the "News" link to Drudge is very smart. You can never have too much insurance.

"Many times, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were in the room together during much of the events, much of the briefings, much of the lead-up that the commission is looking at. And so I think it's appropriate that they appear together and discuss how they saw the events leading up to September 11." -- Karen Hughes, Meet the Apologist, April 4

Top Five Other Things That Bush and Cheney Can Do Together

5. Play Keep Away from Colin Powell.

4. Tandem cycling on Cheney's cardiac stress test.

3. Joint going away party, January 2005.

2. Two words: Santorum sandwich.

1. Finish each others' (prison) sentences.

(Thanks to a reader for the link.)

According to Plan

WASHINGTON - Despite escalating violence that killed 10 U.S. service members over the weekend, the Bush administration is sticking with its timetable to turn over power in Iraq. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sunday raised the prospect of extending the Bush administration's June 30 deadline for turning over power in Iraq, questioning whether the country would be ready for self-rule.

Sen. Dick Lugar said security is a shambles in some cities, and Iraqi police forces are not prepared to take over.

"The United States and our coalition partners are continuing to work closely with Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi people on our plan to meet the June 30th deadline," White House spokesman Brian Besanceney said Sunday.

Under current plans, Iraq would no longer be under U.S. political control on June 30, but more than 100,000 American troops would remain in the country. U.S. officials have said the Army is assuming it will have to keep roughly 100,000 troops in Iraq for at least another two years.


White House spokesman Besanceney said Sunday: "The United States will stay in Iraq until the job is done and there is a free, peaceful and democratic Iraq for the Iraqi people. A free and peaceful Iraq is critical to bringing about greater stability in a dangerous region of the world."

...

Lugar, who plans committee hearings on Iraq this month, said there remain far too many questions about what will happen after installation of an interim government, whose composition has yet to be decided.

He said the administration has not told his committee its plans for an ambassador, who the 3,000 embassy staff will be and how they and the embassy will be protected.

"This is a huge new exposure of Americans," Lugar said. "At this point, I would have thought there would have been a more comprehensive plan."

So does this mean 100,000 U.S. troops will be under the control of the Iraqi government in less than three months? A government that doesn't even exist yet (except perhaps on paper, in Karl Rove's office safe)?

It takes a better person than me to ignore this sentence:

"But we can say this: Deep Throat was an answer, and ... alas, Noonan beat Woodward to the buzzer."

I'm sure she did.

Roger's Sneak Previews

Now this is the kind of movie I want to see:

In addition, this film's script portrays General Sam Houston, the military victor at the Battle of San Jacinto which allowed Texas to gain its independence from Mexico, as a venereal diseased drunkard; Colonel William Barret Travis, commander of Texan forces at the Alamo, as a dead beat dad and serial adulterer; Colonel James Bowie, the Alamo defender famous for his knife fighting skills, as a land swindling, slave trader; and Davy Crockett, the king of the wild frontier, as a war criminal, who participated in a My Lai style massacre in the Creek Indian War and was captured and executed at the Alamo. By contrast, Manuel Castrillon, a Mexican General who attacked the Alamo, is portrayed as a flawless, noble, and brave hero.

It's funny that a group called "The Freedom Alliance" is apologizing for slaveholders. And that it considers these folks "American heroes" when Texas wasn't a part of America in 1836. The Freedom Alliance even generously upgrades one of William Travis's slaves to the status of "African-American," even though he was considered chattel at the time, both by "American hero" Travis and the United States Constitution at the time.

When it comes to history -- and war -- some people just can't handle the truth.

Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating has teetered around 50 percent for months now, and in the latest CBS News poll it was 49 percent. Only 37 percent of those polled said they approved of his handling of the economy, 42 percent approved of his handling of foreign policy and 44 percent approved of the way he is handling Iraq, down from 49 percent in early March.

In the recent Los Angeles Times poll, Mr. Bush's overall job approval was 51 percent. And in the Gallup poll taken a few days earlier, it was 53 percent.

The public has growing doubts too about the Iraq war. Just 37 percent of the respondents in the CBS News poll said the war had been worth the loss of American lives and other costs, while 54 percent said it had not. Only 36 percent said the United States was more safe from terrorism as a result of the war against Iraq; 22 percent said the United States was less safe; and 38 percent said the war had made no difference.

These numbers -- especially the ones on the economy and Iraq -- are likely not going to change no matter how many feel-good ads Bush buys with his record warchest. If Bush wants to be elected in November, he's either got to (1) do something right or, more realistically, (2) go negative and attempt to smear Kerry as even a more of miserable failure than he (Bush) is.