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"The
Lie Factory"
by
IseFire
- Tue 02/10/04; 10:14 pm EST
The cover
story of the latest Mother Jones examines
the Bush administration's creation of a secret Pentagon unit meant
to craft evidence into a case for invading Iraq. Here's
a link to the an organizational flow chart relative
to the cell's work. [Excerpts below]
[O]ne day after President Bush took the oath of office in January
2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to [then
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill].... Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy
secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense
for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard
for regime change in Iraq....
.....
Called in to help organize the Iraq war-planning team was a longtime
Pentagon official, Harold Rhode, a specialist on Islam....Rhode
refused to be interviewed for this story, saying..., "Those
who speak, pay."
.....
The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode
was the American Enterprise Institute [(AEI)], a right-wing think
tank...in Washington....Just after September 11, 2001, Feith and
Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies
for AEI.... Wurmser
would be the founding participant of the unnamed, secret intelligence
unit at the Pentagon, set up in Feith's office, which would be the
nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign....While
the CIA and other intelligence agencies concentrated on Osama bin
Laden's Al Qaeda as the culprit in the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz and
Feith obsessively focused on Iraq.
.....
According to Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official and an intelligence
specialist at the National War College, the [secret unit] routinely
pushed lower-ranking staff around on intelligence matters. "People
were being pulled aside [and being told], 'We saw your last piece
and it's not what we're looking for,'" he says. "It was
pretty blatant." Two State Department intelligence officials,
Greg Thielmann and Christian Westermann, have both charged that
pressure was being put on them to shape intelligence to fit policy....
"The Al Qaeda connection and nuclear weapons issue were the
only two ways that you could link Iraq to an imminent security threat
to the U.S.," Thielmann told the New York Times. "And
the administration was grossly distorting the intelligence on both
things." [Please
read the
article in full for more important details.]
UNFOLDING
STORY
Another peace activist subpoenaed in Des Moines today.
by
IseFire
- Sun 02/07/04; 9:08 pm EST
 Read
more relative to this story here,
here,
and here.
(And also the below "FEDS SUBPOENA..." blog.)
Online
letter from Brian
Terrell, Executive Director
Catholic Peace Ministry, Des Moines, Iowa.
Detective
Jeff Warford of the Polk County Sheriff's Office-FBI-Joint Terrorism
Task Force came to Catholic Peace Ministry's office here in Des
Moines with a subpoena for me to testify before a Federal Grand
Jury next Tuesday, February 10. Mr. Warford also served papers on
Elton Davis at the Catholic Worker House and Patti McKee, who was
coordinator of Iowa Peace Network until last month. The Grand Jury
process is shrouded in secrecy. We do not know who or what the object
of this investigation may be, beyond "possible violations of
federal criminal law in the Southern District of Iowa."
The proceeding will be behind closed doors. We may not have an attorney
present. We have the right to plead the Fifth Amendment, refusing
the answer questions that might incriminate us. The government,
then, can offer us immunity from prosecution, in which case we will
obliged to answer under threat of contempt of court and could be
imprisoned for the length of the Grand Jury session, 18 months,
should we continue to refuse to answer. This immunity would be limited
to our own testimony and anything any of us say could be used against
the others.
Whatever
is going on, this is definitely an escalation on the part of the
government's war on dissent and clamp down on civil liberties. The
fact that anything that we three and the peacemaking communities
we represent could possibly attract the notice of a "Terrorism
Task Force" is reprehensible. Please spread the word, express
concerns you have with Federal and Polk County authorities. Keep
us in mind and prayer.
Corporations
use new Bush overtime rules to deny veterans' overtime.
by
IseFire
- Sun 02/07/04; 8:19 9m EST
[Excerpt from article]
Some companies are interpreting language in new national overtime
pay rules as possibly allowing them to exempt workers who have received
military training... Under federal law, workers who are 'learned
professionals' are presumed to have control of their own time and
are exempt from receiving overtime pay....In proposing changes in
the rules last spring, the Labor Department said in the Federal
Register that 'the exemption is also available to employees in such
professions who have substantially the same knowledge as the degreed
employees, but who have attained such knowledge through a combination
of work experience, training in the armed forces, attending a technical
school, attending a community college or other intellectual instruction.
FEDS
SUBPOENA WAR PROTESTORS' RECORDS.
by
IseFire
- Sun 02/07/04; 8:39 am EST
This
is horrible. [Excerpt] In what may be the first
subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university
to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.
In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were
served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov.
15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury
Tuesday, the protesters said.
Federal
prosecutors refuse to comment on the subpoenas.
In
addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders
the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter
of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization
that sponsored the forum.
.....
It
also asks for campus security records "reflecting any observations
made of the Nov. 15, 2003, meeting, including any records of persons
in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees
of the meeting."
Awesome chart.
by
IseFire
- Fri 02/06/04; 11:49 pm EST
Check out this chart.
(Click chart to enlarge it.)
Democratic
leaders speak out on Clark.
by
IseFire
- Fri 02/06/04; 11:29 pm EST
Clark has beat Edwards in 8 states' primaries,
but Edwards is getting a lot more press, it seems to me. Here's
a chance to revisit what leading Democrats have said about Wes Clark.
Nominee = Kerry...for better or worse.
by
IseFire
- Fri 02/06/04; 7:29 am EST
Gephardt's
endorsing Kerry and bringing union support with him.
Not that those unions did much for Dick G. in Iowa! (Kerry's already
got potentially
the most
positively-spun national union out there: America's firefighters.)
Clark's going negative (90%
of the time a sign of desperation). Dean's
broke. Clark could be fairly soon, too; however;
a Clark campaign staffer revealed
to me yesterday that Clark is still planning on a February
New York City appearance (I won't give the date right now; though
invites will probably go out early next anyway), which clearly reflects
a commitment to carry on at
least through March 2's "Super Tuesday" primaries.
Also, Clark's campaign has been more frugal in general (no pun)
than Dean's campaign has been. (Maybe too much so. Clark used to
have a vibrant Washington state base that Little Rock has completely
ignored.)
Clark noted in TN this week that Kerry has voted in line with
Bush 70% of the time. I saw this said by Clark on the television,
as part of a longer stump speech clip, but I can't find a link to
any story about either this comment or the substance behind it.
I find such missing coverage to be more evidence of media laziness.
If this stat is true, Dems need to know this about their front-runner!
Conversely, if it proves that most of those votes alongside Republicans
were procedural--like voting for adjournment, skipping the reading
of minutes in committee or something--Clark should be called on
it. Either way, where's the media on this?
Kerry does need to pay close attention to the
parts of the Clark and Edwards message(s) that polls show many Dems
like.
But
the stories of Kerry's
connections to donations that can easily be spun as suspicious (a
la Gore and the "damaging" Chinese contributions that
he actually had no direct connection with) show the sort of obvious
negatives Kerry brings to the Dem ticket: INSIDER, SPECIAL
INTERESTS, UNINSPIRED, BUSINESS AS USUAL, etc. Anyway, I hope these
donations stories are the
tip of a tiny ice flow, not an iceberg.
Kerry will have to win in large part by letting the Bush
administration hang itself, by stressing but not over-stressing
his accomplishments (which are few relative to his years in DC,
but hugely more than GW Bush had as Gov. of TX!), while at the same
time continuing to reinvent himself as a regular [very tall] guy,
a vet who secretly really doesn't like wearing a tie or sipping
cocktails, honest. In fact, after he got back from Vietnam, he was
a firefighter, right? Or was it a farmer? Maybe a machinist. I forget
which.
Reagan
turns 93 today. Nancy, surely,
is not surprised; it was no doubt all in the stars.
The war cost clock
by
IseFire
- Wed 02/04/04; 8:59 pm EST
Remember the debt clock in New York City? Clinton
conquered the debt; the clock was stopped. Under Bush it's had to
be reactivated. Now there's an online Cost
of War in Iraq clock, now at about $99,366,000,000
and climbing.
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