My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

A Better Review of "United 93" Than I Can Do

        Here.

          Technorati tags: 9/11, movies, September 11th, 2001, terrorism, United 93, War with Jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:57 | link | comments (3)

A Liar in the Senate

        Tapscott points out why not to vote for John McCain:

         "He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform....I know that money corrupts....I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt.  If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government."

         As Glenn notes, this is from a guy who swore an oath to support the Constitution.

         Technorati tags: Senator John McCain, U.S. Constitution.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:01 | link | comments

Lest We Forget

        No matter what happens, Mickey shows there are always joys in Clinton-bashing.

        Read Kausfiles daily for your developing Clinton-scandals needs.

        Technorati tags: a        Technorati tags: Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Penis, Mickey Kaus, Kausfiles.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:43 | link | comments

United 93

        On the morning of September 11th, a planeful of people whose flight had been hijacked by Jihadi terrorists realized what was at stake, organized themselves, and acted.  Instead of dying like sheep as their plane was crashed into the Capitol or White House, they attacked their hihackerers and broke into the cockpit, forcing the pilot to crash the aircraft.

        Make no mistake: that was a victory.

        Yesterday, my wife and I saw United 93.  The film did those people justice.  Go see it, remember that day, and reaffirm your commitment to victory in our war with jihadism.

        Technorati tags: 9/11, movies, September 11th, 2001, terrorism, United 93War with Jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:05 | link | comments
movies, terrorism, war with jihadism

OOPS! They Got Caught (That's a Crime)

        Amnesty International, that is.  David T. (hat tip, Roger L. Simon) points out an AI release, saying that "at least" 2148 people were executed in at least 22 countries.  Of these 2148 known executions, 94% were put to death in four countries.

        The four countries in question are China, Iran, Saudia Arabia, and the U.S.A.  Only, when you click on the link for the U.S.A., it turns out that our execution total was . . . (wait for it) . . . sixty.

        So, 3% of the executions in the big four occured in the U.S., and 3% of known worldwide executions occured here too.

        Clicking other links, we find:

The Death Penalty in 2005: China

        In China - the country that accounts for around 80% of all executions - a person can be sentenced and executed for as many as 68 crimes, including non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drug offences.  1,770 executions were reportedly carried out in China during 2005.  However, a Chinese legal expert was recently quoted as stating the true figure for executions is more like 8,000.

        Hmm, so the total of executions in China is uncertain by a factor of about four-and-a-half.  Perhaps we should try to narrow that down a bit, AI?

        For Iran, we're told:

The Death Penalty in 2005: Iran

        Iran was the only country known to Amnesty International to have executed juvenile offenders in 2005.  Iran executed 94 people in 2005; at least eight for crimes committed when they were children, including two who were still under 18 at the time of their execution.

        While we hear in Saudi Arabia:

The Death Penalty in 2005: Saudi Arabia

        In Saudi Arabia, people have been taken from their prison cells and executed without knowing that a death sentence has been passed against them.  Others have been tried and sentenced to death in a language they didn’t speak or read.  Saudi Arabia executed at least 86 people in 2005.

        So, now that we've done the arithmetic, this is how an honest press release would have been written:

        There were somewhere between 2148 and around 8378 executions last year.  About 95% to 82% occurred in China, which executed 1770 to 8,000 people.  1% to 4% of world-wide executions occurred in Iran and Saudia Arabia (respectively, 94 and 86 executions), and 1% to 3% occurred in the United States (60 executions).  138 executions occurred in the other eighteen countries about 2% to 6% of worldwide executions.  Those executed in China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia were guilty of a wide variety of crimes, while those executed in the U.S. were exclusively murderers.

        But as Roger L. Simon points out, this wouldn't draw big donations from anti-death penalty Americans, and anti-Americans in Europe.  Also, if AI were forthright about the fact that 96% to 99% of executions take place outside the U.S., they might have to get all judgmental about non-Westerners.

        If you go here and here, and look in the comments, you can find the usual suspects arguing that the United States ought to be ashamed to be in the same group as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.  BFD, babe.  I bet they wear shoes in those countries too.  Should we therefore all go barefoot?  Argue whatever you wish about capital punishment (I'm in favor of it, for certain crimes), but don't waste my time with "such-and-such a country does this".  Especially when I don't see you picketing their embassies and consulates, carrying signs that call them uncivilized and barbarians, which is how the U.S. is described on this issue.

        But then, you should expect death-penalty opponents to be dishonest.  After all, they could probably get the death penalty banned, and certainly get it's use greatly reduced, if there were a sentence we might call "You will die in prison."  Someone sentenced to this would never be eligible for parole, ever.  They would not be eligible for a pardon.  The only way they could be realeased would be a retrial in which they would have to prove they were innocent.

        But although death penalty opponents sometimes pretend to support such sentences, when you read the fine print, there are always escape hatches.  The parole board will consider their cases, the President or Governor can release them.  That's because the real objective of anti-death penalty people is to let those sentenced to death out on the streets again.

        So the death penalty will remain on the books, and be carried out.  Good.

        Technorati tags: Amnesty International, capital punishment, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United States.

Posted by: saintonge at 17:13 | link | comments (2)

Unbelievable

        We Must Not Offend Muslims.  Like with the Muhammad cartoons (also available in two sets, here and here, if the first link doesn't work).  That would be a gratuitous insult to a religion.

        By contrast, this is perfectly acceptable.

        They said they wanted to "provoke dialogue."  Somehow, I don't think there will be any.

        Hat tip, the invaluable Pamela.

        Technorati tags: art, blasphemy, christianity, culture, Danish Muhammad Cartoons, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs.

Posted by: saintonge at 07:35 | link | comments
culture, leftists, danish muhammad cartoons, not satire, war with jihadism

Valuable Information

        Revealed at last: how computers really work.  Hat tip Van der Leun.

       Technorati tags: computers, Gerard Van der Leun.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:34 | link | comments
satire

Worth Reading

        This article from Commentary, on the Wall Street Journal's site.  It gives a clear idea of what we're up against — an Islamic empire that rules the world.

        Technorati tags: Commentary Magazine, Islam, al-Qaida, Wall Street Journal, War with Jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 10:37 | link | comments
sense, war with jihadism

Rebuild Them In All Their Ugly Glory

        Pamela points us to a good idea: rebuild the Towers.  Add your signature, pass the idea around.

        Technorati tags: 9/11, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, Twin Towers, War with Jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 09:09 | link | comments
courage, war with jihadism

Well, Knock Me Down With a Feather

        The UN has taken some sanctions against four Sudanese for their roles in the Darfur genocide.  Hard to believe, I didn't think they had it in them.

        Now, will someone tell me how you levy sanctions against an individual, rather than a country?

        Of course, the next question is, will this willingness to sanction carry over to Iran?  I certainly hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.

        Hat tip: Pamela.

        Technorati tags: Darfur, genocide, Sudan, UN sanctions, United Nations.

Posted by: saintonge at 09:00 | link | comments
darfur, iran, sense, war with jihadism

I Missed This One

        From Best of the Web Today, April 5th:

        John Kerry (Michael Dukakis's former lieutenant governor) has an op-ed in today's New York Times that isn't quite a suicide note but is certainly downcast.  "We find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war," he says, referring to Iraq, then invokes Vietnam, the war that was won thanks to Kerry's heroism:

        Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work.  It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.

        He urges that "we get tough with Iraqis," but he has an odd idea of what this means:

        Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military.  If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all.  The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.

        If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end.

        So Kerry's idea of getting tough is to threaten to run away.  No wonder he's depressed!

        Has there ever been a better description of modern Democratic military policy?  'When the going gets tough, the tough run away!'

        Technorati tags: Democrats, Iraq Campaign, John Forbes Kerry, War with Jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 06:43 | link | comments
iraq, democrats, war with jihadism, stupidity springs eternal

Diversity

        Pamela has a post on this, detailing yet another 'offended' Muslim group, who wants a University to include mandatory 'diversity training' for all students, and faculty.  The University is of course sympathetic to the Muslims.

        Actually, I could get behind that, if they also had mandatory training in being sensitive to the rights and feelings of majorities, so that Muslims were told of the respect they had to show Westerners.  For instance, it is wrong to rape women because of the way they're dressed, and beheading is a definite no-no.

        But in fact, 'diversity' is a code word for 'Western inferiority.'  So it would never happen.

        Technorati tags: dhimmitude, Islam, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs.

Posted by: saintonge at 02:03 | link | comments
culture, islam, reality, higher noneducation

Are We Winning in Iraq?

        An expert has weighed in: Osama bin Ladin.  Tigerhawk notes (hat tip: Glenn) what Osama doesn't say in his latest tape:

        Less than 2 1/2 years ago, al Qaeda broke the news to the Taliban that it was diverting resources to Iraq so as to humiliate the American "Crusaders."

        All this was on the orders of bin Laden himself, the sources said.  Why?  Because the terror chieftain and his top lieutenants see a great opportunity for killing Americans and their allies in Iraq and neighboring countries such as Turkey, according to Taliban sources who complain that their own movement will suffer... Bin Laden believes that Iraq is becoming the perfect battlefield to fight the “American crusaders” and that the Iraqi insurgency has been “100 percent successful so far,” according to a Taliban participant at the mid-November meeting who goes by the nom de guerre Sharafullah.

        Al Qaeda drew a line in the sands of the Sunni Triangle, and the United States Army and Marines walked right across it.  First, al Qaeda tried to kill Americans, per bin Laden's orders.  It largely failed.  Then al Qaeda went after America's allies, and succeeded only in turning public opinion against itself in every Muslim country it attacked.  After thirty months of battlefield defeats and political embarrassments, bin Laden won't even mention Iraq in one of his rare public utterances, and he rallies his troops to fight a war where American soldiers aren't.  How humiliating. How delightful.

         Al Qaeda has lost in Iraq, and bin Laden is desperate to change the subject.  He and his organization are at grave risk of being discredited, and when that happens it will be much harder for al Qaeda to attract recruits, raise money, or deal with governments.

        Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.  Meanwhile, as Tigerhawk alluded to and Austin Bay notes explicitely, what Osama did say was that jihadis should rally to Sudan, to defend against the coming latest 'Crusader invasion of Islam,' that is, the European Union's proposed peacekeeping mission to stop the genocide in Darfur.  As Bay notes, this is not a very bright move, as it means al-Qaida will once again be engaged in killing Muslims in the name of jihadism and wahhabism.

        What I find really interesting is the question: what will the European Union do?  If they carry out the "peace keeping" mission (and gee, but that's a stupid euphemism, isn't it?), they'll see their own troops dying at the hands of jihadis.  What will they do then?  But if they flinch, it will really encourage Islamofascist activity against them.

        The Axis of Weasels is going to have to make some tough choices.

        Technorati tags: Darfur, Europe, Iraq Campaign, Osama bin Laden, Sudan, United States, War with jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 01:22 | link | comments
iraq, europe, islam, terrorism, blowhards, al-qaida, war with jihadism

Why People Hate Insurance Companies

        Cathy Siepp explains it all here.  Hat tip, Glenn.

        Technorati tags: Blue Cross, fraud, Cathy Siepp.

Posted by: saintonge at 00:40 | link | comments
dishonesty

Lucy Snippet: An Interview With the Spymaster

        I have questions about the "secret CIA prisons," but I'm quite certain I'll enjoy Lucy's Blade when it get published.  Herewith another excerpt:

---

        The rain fell gently from the skies and dripped down The White Tower, the central keep of the great Tower of London .  The sun was already lighting up the wet ground in a blaze of pastel yellow.  Pretty soon it would stop raining for a while until the next shower caressed London .  Simon watched the English summer scene through an unshuttered window.  The fresh smell of wet grass blew gently in on the summer breeze.  Walsingham had an apartment in the buildings just inside the north curtain wall of the fortress.  Here he had an uninterrupted view of the execution block and the small chapel behind it.

        Walsingham threw down a letter angrily.  “My agent in the English Seminary in Rome tells me that another ten English Jesuits are ready to infiltrate into .  Most of them are Oxford educated.  We should have closed that wretched University down years ago, Tunstall.”  Walsingham, of course, was a Cambridge man.

        “There is some mischief in the wind.  Why now?  Why are they expending their assets so cavalierly?”

        “Surely we have their names?”  asked Simon.

        “Oh yes, but that won’t help us ferret them out from wherever they are hiding.  Most of them will come here to London .  It is far easier to escape notice in a crowd.”  Walsingham flung opened the door.  “Pooley.”

        “Yes, Sir Francis,” said a weasel-faced man.  He entered the room and hurriedly removed his cap.

        “You have Ridolphi kicking his heels in the Tower?”

        “Yes, sir, just as you ordered.  He didn’t want to come but me and the boys persuaded him, like.”  Pooley’s eyes seemed incapable of meeting Walsingham’s gaze.  They slid sideways, flickering around the room.  Pooley managed to look furtive even when in his master’s office.  Simon always had the urge to lock up the silver every time the man came.

        Pooley was a non-descript sort of fellow.  A few minutes after he left one would be hard pressed to describe his clothes or appearance.  That was one reason why he was such a successful spy; another reason was his utter lack of scruples or conscience.  Pooley’s eyes flickered to where Gwilym leaned nonchalantly against the wall by the door.

        “Very well.  He should have had long enough for his imagination to curdle his courage.  Come gentlemen.  Let’s throw a scare into our Italian rabbit.  And what does a frightened coney do Gwilym?”

        The bodyguard grinned.  “’Ee bolts for his rabbit hole, your ‘onour, to cuddle up to all his furry friends.”

        The group walked across the bailey to the White Tower.   Pooley had Ridolphi held in one of the lower windowless rooms that was lit only by flickering torches.  Ridolphi was sat on a bare wooden chair facing the two guards at the door.  He had arranged the chair so he had his back to the rack on the floor behind him.  The Italian jumped to his feet as Walsingham entered.

        “This is outrageous.  How dare you arrest me in this manner?  I have diplomatic status.  I am an emissary of His Holiness Pope Gregory XIII.  You have no right.”

        “I have every right,” Walsingham’s voice cut across Ridolphi’s like a whip.

        “You are the Pope’s banker in .”  Walsingham held out his hand to Simon who passed him a letter “This was found in your possession.  A letter signed by the hand of Pope Gregory, himself.”

        “You have no right to search my belongings, no right,” Ridolphi said, a whine entering his voice.

        Walsingham ignored him and began to read.  “Since that guilty woman who is the cause of so much injury to the Catholic faith,” Walsingham flicked down the next few lines.  “There is no doubt that whosoever sends her out of the world, hm ah yes, not only does not sin but gains merit.”

        Walsingham looked at Simon.  “Mark you well, Tunstall, ‘gains merit’.”  The spymaster continued to read, “and so, if those English gentlemen decide actually to undertake so glorious a work, your lordship can assure them that they do not commit any sin.”

        The spymaster looked up.  “What ‘glorious work’ Master Ridolphi and what are the names of these ‘English gentlemen.’”

        Ridolphi said nothing.  Gwilym walked behind him to examine the rack.  It was a different model to the one at Nonsuch being at floor level.  The victim’s feet were held in a clamp and at the other end was a small drum to which the wrists attached.  The drum had a series of slots drilled into it where a long lever could be inserted to put enormous torque on the drum.

        Gwilym picked up the lever and inserted it in a drum slot.  He waggled the wood and the drum moved with a loud creak.  “That’s the trouble with these wooden joists, ‘ighness.  They warp in wet conditions.  Still, a bit of goose fat on the bearing and I will have this device in tiptop working condition.”  He gave the smile of a man happy in his work.

        The banker turned white.  Walsingham examined Ridolphi the way a natural philosopher considers a new beetle that has crawled across his desk.  Simon saw sweat forming on the banker’s lip.  He was a moneyman, a coin counter who had never expected to be in a place like this or face a rude-handed man like Gwilym.

        “Please sir,” Ridolphi said to Walsingham.  “The letter is only a copy of one addressed from the Pope to his ambassador in Madrid .  I do not know what it signifies.”

        “I wonder what the Queen would make of it, Tunstall?”  said Walsingham.  “Do you recall the Jesuit who nailed a proclamation to the door of St Paul’s Cathedral.  The one denouncing Her Majesty as a bastard and no true Prince?”

        “Yes, Sir Francis,” said Simon, playing his part.  “The Queen is jealous of her bright honour.  When we caught him, she had him hung, drawn and quartered.”

        This was the English reward for traitors.  The victim was hung by the neck, until almost unconscious.  Then he was cut down, a slit inserted in his abdomen and his entrails pulled out and burnt in front of him.  Sometimes his genitals were likewise treated.  Finally, when he died, he was hacked into four pieces to impede the resurrection of the body on the final day of judgement.  It was a terrible punishment.

        “Please, Sir Francis.  I have done nothing,” said Ridolphi.

        “Very well, Master Ridolphi.  You may go,” said Walsingham.

        “What?”  said the banker, confused by Walsinghham’s abrupt change of tack.

        “You may go,” repeated Walsingham.  “At least for the moment.  Guard show him out.”

        A guard escorted Ridolphi from the tower.

        “Pooley, have your watchers ready,” said Walsingham as they walked out into the wet sunshine.  “I want to know every place our bold fellow goes and every pagan rascal he meets.”

        “I have three teams of six on him to give night and day coverage,” Sir Francis.  “I have street children, whores, peddlers and beggars to see his every encounter.  He shall not piss in the street but that I know what drain it ran in.”

        “See you do Pooley.  Now get you gone, why wait you here, man?”

        “There is another matter, sir.”  Pooley looked uncomfortable.

        Walsingham’s expression hardened.  “There will be no more money, Pooley.  Be sure of that.”

        “No sir, it’s not about the reward.  Your honour is more than generous.”

        Walsingham’s eyebrow lifted and Simon could well understand why.  A disinterest in money was most unlike Pooley.

        “Well then?”

        “The watchers are worried, sir.  Another whore has been found dead in Symmon’s Alley off Cheapside .”

        “Whores get killed, Pooley, it’s an occupational hazard,” said Walsingham.

        “Yes sir, but they don’t die with their entrails pulled out and eaten or all the blood drained from their bodies.  The watchers will only go out in twos.  Sorry, your honour.  The ordinary people are fair shook up by it.  Some people claim to have seen things.  There is talk of a demon stalking London at night.”

        “There is always talk, Pooley.  The people are superstitious.  They generally would have you believe some apparition is abroad.”

        “Yes, sir.”  Pooley did not look convinced, but he knew better than to push the matter.

        Lucy was positioned ready to sidle up to Sir Francis, the moment he was free.  “Uncle, I was wondering if I could borrow Master Tunstall?  I would like to go into London and need an escort.”

        “What on earth do you need in London , Lucy?”

        “To see the sites, Uncle, and to order a new dress in the latest fashion.  My dresses are out of date.  The other ladies at Nonsuch made sport of me.  If I am to get a husband…”

        “Not that again, Lucy.  Spare me the husband argument.  Tunstall, draw a suitable sum from my private chest for expenses.”

        “Thank you, uncle.”  Lucy clapped her hands in glee.  “I need to get some things before we go.”  She rushed back to her uncle’s apartments.

        “All this talk of monsters is rubbish of course but there may be some madman killing girls in London.”  Walsingham came to a decision.  “Gwilym, I want you to go with Master Tunstall and Lady Dennys, just to help carry things and so forth.  You will attend Lady Dennys until I say differently.”

---

        End of excerpt.

Posted by: saintonge at 14:56 | link | comments

Say WHAT!?!?!?

        According to this story, our CIA secret prisons may not have existed!

        I'm ticked.  How can I stand up for fascist oppression if it doesn't take place?

        Or are the Europeans lying about their aid to our concentration-camp regime?

        And what about that "damage to national security?"  Do you damage national security by revealing what doesn't exist?

         I want this issue cleared up, pronto!  Were we kidnapping people and holding them in secret prisons, or not?

Posted by: saintonge at 14:40 | link | comments

Today's Unimportant News

        The inventor of "global warming" says 'OOPS!  My bad.'

        Technorati tags: global warming, James Hansen, reality.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:15 | link | comments
reality

Reactions to the Mary McCarthy Story

        So far, I'm seeing two that are worth noting.

        Number one is 'Oh, gee, I can't believe that Mary would break the law.'  This is coming from friends and associates, and is typical when scandal hits (recall Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, both of whose friends said they couldn't imagine their buddy lying; and Alger Hiss comes to mind).  This New York Times story leads with that.  Note especially the last paragraph, which seems to say 'I don't care if Mary admitted doing it, I still don't believe it.'

        The other reaction to this is of course 'Well, she was justified.'  A former CIA employee named Larry Johnson, who wanted a Republican taken out and shot over the Plame case, is pushing that idea.  The evil Bush Administration had to be stopped, no matter the cost.

        This is important because it shows the way that people allow their loyalties to interfere with the evaluation of the facts.  That will be worth keeping in mind as this story unfolds.

        Technorati tags: CIA, Larry Johnson, Mary McCarthy, New York Times.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:47 | link | comments
politics, spin, leftists, bush administration, reality, intelligence, mary o mccarthy

Links of Saddam to anti-U.S. Terrorism, Including Al-Qaida

        A nice summary of recent developments, here.

        Update: more here.  Apparently, it was the official position of the Clinton administration that Iraq and al-Qaida were cooperating in the development of chemical weapons.

        Technorati tags: Richard Clarke, Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, Mary McCarthy, al-Qaida, terrorism, War with jihadism.

Posted by: saintonge at 10:51 | link | comments

Interesting CIA Case

        Take a few days off from news coverage and blogging, and stuff hits the fan.

        The CIA has fired one of its intelligence agents named Mary McCarthy.  She allegedly leaked classified information to The Washington Post, and possibly other news outlets.  The person named at the Post as a contact is Dana Priest, who wrote the "CIA secret prisons" story.

        What was McCarthy's motivation?  The Post's story is reticent, but it appears to boil down to 'McCarthy opposed the Bush Administration's policies.'  Unnamed people within the Agency allegedly sympathize, because she had ". . .'had nowhere else to go,'" in other words, because she was legally required to keep silent about classified policies she disagreed with.

        The Post displays it's "objective, unbiased journalism" credentials by dragging Scooter Libby into all this.  The fact that Libby is not charged with revealing classified information is beside the point, of course.

        The Post story says "The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials."  That might have been a good place to mention that McCarthy donated $7700.00 to Kerry's campaign for President $2000.00 to Kerry's presidential campaign, and another $5,000.00 to the Ohio Democratic party (and that her husband kicked in another $2500.00) but apparently the Post doesn't think that's important for us to know.  You have to get that information from other sources.

        "No decision has been announced on whether McCarthy might face further repercussions, such as a criminal prosecution.  That decision would be made by the Justice Department, and would force a trial that several former intelligence officials said could wind up airing sensitive information as well as policy dissents."  Well, I hope she does hard time.

        Technorati tags: bias, Bush Administration, CIA, CIA Prisons, MSM, Washington Post, Washington Post Story on CIA Secret Prisons.

Posted by: saintonge at 10:15 | link | comments
msm, democrats, bias, bush administration, intelligence

We're Not High Toned Enough

        Instapundit reader James Au asks: "My question is, why do anti-war liberals get so offended when people question their patriotism, when they spend so much time questioning it themselves?"

        We're too low class, I think.  We're giving ourselves air above our station.

Posted by: saintonge at 13:02 | link | comments
leftists

Yes Nukes

        Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace makes the case.

        Unlike Moore, I don't believe in man-caused global warming.  But if you do, nuclear power is the only way to stop it.

        Technorati tags: climate change, global warming, Patrick Moore, nuclear power.

Posted by: saintonge at 10:08 | link | comments (4)
sense, social policy

Betraying Free Speech

        Tigerhawk has a pretty good post about the recent self-censorship by Border's and Comedy Central.   (Hat tip: the Blogfather.)  The central idea:

        Now, businesses like Comedy Central and Border's Books and the major newspapers have every reason to want to avoid violence, so it is understandable that threatened or potential violence motivates them to censor themselves.  They are fiduciaries.  But they cannot also claim to stand for freedom of speech.  That requires courage, and above all the willingness to stare down the threat of violence.

        Bravo!  But I disagree with this:

       So I don't blame Comedy Central, or Border's Books, or the world's media organizations, for refusing to depict Mohammed out of fear of retaliation.  Their job is not to defend freedom of speech, but to earn profits for their stockholders.  Acting as a fiduciary, I would make the same decision.  But let us not tolerate these same organizations claiming that they also support freedom of speech.

       I blame them.  As Peter Drucker used to remind us, organizations are organs of society, whose purpose is to fill a social need.  They exist in the society, and they shouldn't undermine said society for their own short-term gain.  I've stopped buying books at Borders, and I'm not watching Comedy Central.  We shouldn't let them get away with this unpunished.

        Technorati tags: Border's Books, citizenship,Comedy Central, cowardice, Tigerhawk, War With Islam.

Posted by: saintonge at 08:39 | link | comments
culture, cowardice, citizenship, war with jihadism

A Response to a Critic

         I hadn’t checked the trackbacks at my old blog for a while, so I was unaware of someone named Joy-Ann Reid arguing with my “Plamegate Linkfest”, which was posted at the old blog.  But now that I am aware, I thought I’d go over her points, because they well illustrate the inability to reason so prevalent on the Left.  (Well, they do if Reid is being honest in her arguments; logically, I can’t exclude the possibility she’s aware of her fallacies, but posted them anyway.  And later I will present evidence that she is dishonest, at least some of the time).  Let the fisking begin.

        Big, fat factual errors on Plamegate

        You've got to love the consistency of the Bush cult.  They're still out there slogging away in the desperate belief that their beloved White House did nothing wrong as regards Valerie Plame.

        This ad hominem is typical of the left, in my experience.  It’s logical value in an argument is nil.

        Here are Fat Steve's spin points from Friday, along with the inconvenient facts that go with them:

        FAT STEVE: "The background of the story appears to be a dispute concerning whether Saddam should have been removed from power, with the CIA, and the State Dept. in the 'keep Saddam' camp."

        Wrong.  Elements within the State Department and individual analysts within the CIA and other agencies may have doubted the case being made for Iraq as a wmd/nuclear threat, but all of the evidence suggests that the CIA was a prime mover of neocon-friendly Iraq data.  Recall that it was CIA director George Tenet who vigorously backed Bush's claims on Iraq, calling the wmd case a "slam dunk" in meetings with the president.  As for the State Department, it may have been in the midst of a mini-war with the Pentagon over who would administer post-war Iraq, but it faithfully carried out administration policy on Iraq throughout the prewar period, whether by authoring the Future of Iraq Project — a muti-year plan for post-Saddam Iraq begun in 2002, but that wound up being shelved by the Pentagon just months before the invasion, or making the case itself, through the then Secretary of State, Collin Powell, before the United Nations.  So much for the "keep Saddam camp.

        Reid presents a non sequitur here.  Because the CIA said that it was a “slam-dunk” that Saddam had WMDs, they must be in favor of removing Saddam.  But prior to the invasion, all intelligence analysts believed Saddam had WMDs, as these posts show.

        Here is a statement from an opponent of regime change, in October of 2002, showing that he believed that Saddam still had WMDs:

 

        If history is any guide, “regime change” as a rationale for military action will ensure that Saddam will use every weapon in his arsenal to defend himself.  You need look no further for evidence than his use of chemical weapons to repel Iranian invaders during the Iran–Iraq war.  As the just-released CIA report suggests, when cornered, Saddam is very likely to fight dirty.

 

        . . . One of the strongest arguments for a militarily supported inspection plan is that it doesn’t threaten Saddam with extinction, a threat that could push him to fight back with the very weapons we’re seeking to destroy.  If disarmament is the goal, Saddam can be made to understand that only his arsenal is at stake, not his survival.

 

        The author of this article: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who failed to understand that Saddam believed that convincing people he had a WMD arsenal was necessary for his survival.

         Further, if the employees of the CIA or the State Department openly refuse to carry out Presidential policy, they can be fired.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t do the best to sabotage policies they disagree with.  And that appears to be the case with Iraq and Saddam.  Note how Wilson, in the quote above, uses the CIA report as an argument against invasion.  Although Reid conveniently forgets to mention it, one of the two links I put in that paragraph mentions CIA director George Tenet’s testimony that Iraq shouldn’t be attacked, in the CIA’s view, because Saddam had WMDs.

        In sum, the evidence is that quite a few members of the CIA and the State Department wanted to keep Saddam in power, while Cheney and his allies wanted Saddam removed.  Nothing Reid says or links to contradicts that claim.  Instead, she offers irrelevancies.  She also fails to point out what the sources I link to say, or where the arguments I make based on those links are wrong.  Throughout her piece, Reid ‘refutes’ my arguments by writing Wrong, boldfacing it, and then ignoring the substance of the argument.

        It’s also worth noting that the now-famous doubts about Saddam possessing WMDs didn’t arise till after W. made it clear he was ready to oust Saddam.  Before then, no one is on record as saying ‘Saddam no longer has WMDs.’

        Finally, from about 1995 onwards, the CIA had been saying that Saddam had a stockpile.  If they had said ‘We don’t think Saddam has any WMDs anymore,’ or ‘We don’t know,’ how could they have reconciled that with what they’d said in pre-2002?

        FAT STEVE: "Around the beginning of 2002, Vice-President Cheney heard that Iraq was trying to acquire Uranium, and asked the CIA what they knew about it.  The CIA wasn't sure about this, and told Cheney so.  Cheney dropped the matter, but on its own initiative, the CIA decided to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check into things."

        Wrong again. Cheney did more than "hear that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium" and casually query the CIA.  The vice president affirmatively made the accustion that Iraq not only had acquired uranium, but that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted, first nuclear weapons themselves, and then his nuclear weapons program, which Cheney strongly suggested posed a clear and present danger to the United States.  And it appears that Cheney was bolstered in his assertions from the supposedly dovish CIA.  A 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report largely blamed the CIA for peddling bad intelligence on Iraq, stating that "Despite questions being raised by other U.S. intelligence agencies, the CIA insisted that Iraq was trying to import uranium ore from Niger and had tried to buy aluminum tubes to use in making a nuclear weapon" and that "the CIA repeatedly took interesting but ambiguous intelligence reports and punched them up into unqualified warnings about Iraq's alleged arsenal.” [USA Today 7/11/2004]

        This would be a valid argument if Cheney and the CIA had made those assertions around the beginning of 2002.  But the links Reid provides are to a March 2003 interview, and to a report discussing the October 2002 National Intelligence Evaluation.  Between the time Cheney first asked the question, and the time of the NIE and the interview, intelligence had come in supporting the idea that Saddam was indeed reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.  As Wilkerson said:

        The consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming.  I can still hear George Tenet telling me, and telling my boss [Colin Powell] in the bowels of the CIA, that the information we were delivering – which we had called considerably – we had called it very much – we had thrown whole reams of paper out that the White House had created.  But George was convinced, John McLaughlin was convinced that what we were presented was accurate.  And contrary to what you were hearing in the papers and other places, one of the best relationships we had in fighting terrorists and in intelligence in general was with guess who?  The French.  In fact, it was probably the best.  And they were right there with us.

        In fact, I’ll just cite one more thing.  The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges.  Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?  We were wrong.  We were wrong.

        The CIA, and the entire worldwide intelligence community believed Saddam had WMDs, as did many of his generals, right up to the invasion.  But believing Saddam had WMDs is not the same as wishing to see him removed.

        The “blamed the CIA” link of Reid’s refers to a USAToday article on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report.  The article in question says:

        The report pointedly clears the Bush administration of the oft-repeated charge that it pressured the CIA into reaching a worst-case assessment of Iraqi weapons to help sell the war.  None of the more than 200 intelligence analysts interviewed for the report said they were pressured to change their judgments.

         You can find the report itself here, and the specific conclusion of the report is:

G.  Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Pressure Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 83.  The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

PARAGRAPH DELETED

 

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(U) Conclusion 84.  The Committee found no evidence that the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.

        For Reid to use that story as a suggestion that Cheney pressured the analysts is a flat lie on her part.

        Reid continues:

        Why was the CIA pressing the case so hard?  It could be because of a high-pressure give and take with Cheney's office.  Both the vice president and his deputy, Scooter Libby, practically haunted the CIA in the period just before the war, looking for more evidence of Iraq's nuclear and biochemical threat — in repeat visits that career intelligence officials called unprecedented.  Could it be that Cheney was looking for more evidence to back up statements like this:

        March 16, 2003: "just three days before the war, [Cheney] zoomed far beyond the
evidence in telling NBC’s Meet the Press , “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Asked about ElBaradei’s report just nine days before that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program, Cheney said, “I disagree...I think Mr. ElBaradei is frankly wrong.” [TomPaine.com]

        So it seems that Cheney and the CIA were partners in pushing the Iraq case, not adversaries.

         The link about “haunting the CIA” refers to a version of a Walter Pincus/Dana Priest story originally in The Washington Post.  It states that anonymous CIA officials state that unspecified analysts may have felt pressured to deliver a certain output.  It also says that other officials did not feel pressured, a fact Reid fails to mention.  As noted above, not a single analyst has ever gone on record saying they felt pressured to twist intelligence to support a preconceived view.

        As for the claim that Cheney first said Saddam had “reconstituted nuclear weapons”, then a weapon’s program, Reid is flatly wrong.  In the source she cites, a transcript of Cheney’s interview on Meet the Press on March 16th, 2003, Cheney says four different times that Saddam is seeking nuclear weapons, and has been for a long time.  Then, Tim Russert asks about the claim of the International Atomic Energy Commission, and its chief El Baradei, which said Saddam didn’t have a nuclear weapons program.  Cheney responded that he disagreed, and so did the U.S. intelligence community.  Cheney makes three more remarks about Saddam trying to acquire nuclear weapons.  Then he says:

        We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts.  He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons.[my emphasis — St. Onge] And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.  I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.  And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing.  I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past.

         Then in the rest of the interview, Cheney makes three more remarks about Saddam’s so far unsuccesful pursuit of atomic weapons.

        Clearly, that one time when Cheney said “reconstituted nuclear weapons,” it was a slip of the tongue.  And after the war, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam hadn’t reconstituted his WMD programs, but that he intended to do so as soon as he got the sanctions against Iraq lifted.

        Question: is Reid lying about what Cheney said, did she just not bother to read her own source, or is she unable to understand what’s in front of her?

        FAT STEVE: "In February, 2002, Wilson went to Africa, and reported that a Niger official thought Iraq had tried to acquire uranium.  Wilson also reported his judgment that Iraq failed to get the uranium.  His reasons weren't very persuasive, in my arrogant opinion."

        Wrong again. Arit Fleischer and CIA director George Tenet tried to discredit Wilson by telling their friends in the press, including at WaPo, that Wilson's report had strengthened Bush's claims.  But their claim that a former Nigerian official had interpreted overtures by Saddam's government to "expand commercial operations" in 1999 as an attempt to purchase uranium conflict with what Wilson actually reported, which was that "the official in question was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary who inquired if the official would meet with an Iraqi about "commercial" sales — an offer he declined.” [Time, 7/17, 2003].  Very different from an attempt to buy enriched uranium, however Fleishcer and Tenet chose to spin it,

 

        Reid says “What Wilson actually reported,” but as you find if you follow the link she provides, it’s what Wilson told Time magazine he reported.  As the Time article she links to said (and by the way, I also linked to it):

        Government officials are not only privately disputing the genesis of Wilson's trip, but publicly contesting what he found.  Last week Bush Administration officials said that Wilson's report reinforced the president's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.  They say that when Wilson returned from Africa in Feb. 2002, he included in his report to the CIA an encounter with a former Nigerien government official who told him that Iraq had approached him in June 1999, expressing interest in expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger.  The Administration claims Wilson reported that the former Nigerien official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.

        And as the other link I provided said:

        The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.

         Reid isn’t bothering to report what my links said, and reply to the substance.  Instead, she argues in a circle: when Wilson’s credibility is challenged, she use’s Wilson’s statements to ‘refute’ said challenges.  Amusing, but illogical.

        Reid is also repeating some common lefty spin, namely that Iraq (which was under UN trade sanctions) at the time, was trying to sell something to Niger, or intended to buy some other Nigerien export than uranium.  But as the CIA World Factbook notes:

        Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking last on the United Nations Development Fund index of human development.  It is a landlocked, Sub-Saharan nation, whose economy centers on subsistence crops, livestock, and some of the world's largest uranium deposits.

        Iraq had nothing to sell except oil, under the Oil for Bribes program, and Niger was already buying all the oil it needed from its neighbor Nigeria.  As for other Nigerien exports, they consist of livestock products, cowpeas, and onions.  The CIA and DIA both interpreted the report as providing confirmation that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger, while the State Department’s INR ignored the question of whether the attempt had been made, and concentrated on Wilson’s conclusion that Iraq didn’t succeed in getting any large quantity.  They agreed, though, that Wilson’s report wasn’t very significant, because it added little new information to their store.

 

         The Senate Committee report just linked to also notes that what Wilson said he told the CIA differs from the CIA’s report of what he told them:

        ([blacked out]) When the former ambassador spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respects.  First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium.  The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rogue nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium [my emphasis —St. Onge].  Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction.  In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal.  The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki.  Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the [blacked out] intelligence service.  The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the IC [intelligence community] at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from [blacked out] intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal.  Meeting notes and other correspondence show that details of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report [blacked out]                  

(U) The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.’"  Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.  The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged."  He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself.

        So in addition to it being logically invalid to use Wilson’s statements as proof of Wilson’s veracity, the available evidence is that at best, Wilson’s memory is unreliable, at worst he’s a liar.

        FAT STEVE: "Wilson, a Lefty Democrat, and a former Foreign Service officer married to CIA employee Valerie Plame, was very much against removing Saddam from power, from the Gulf War till 2003.  Wilson and Plame seem to have been convinced the 'Iraq tried to buy Niger Uranium' reports were wrong before he visited Niger."

        Irrelevant.  Wilson's opinions about American domestic politics are as irrelevent as his opinion about whether or not Iraq had tried to buy Niger's yellowcake.  (Richard Clarke, another administration whistleblower the White House Rove squad tried to destroy, is a Republican.)  Wilson wasn't off on a mission of his own in Niger, he was going there at the behest of the CIA, which we've already established was predisposed to believe the Iraq-yellowcake claim.  His job was to assess, confirm, or dispel it.

       If it’s irrelevant for me to note Wilson’s political predilictions, it’s irrelevant for Reid to refer to “the Bush Cult” at the start of her post.

        And the CIA was not necessarily predisposed to believe the Iraq-yellowcake claim.  In fact, CIA employee Valerie Plame termed it “crazy” without bothering to investigate the question.

        At the beginning of 2002, the political question of what to do about Saddam was coming to the fore.  People like Wilson, opposed to the removal of Saddam, had a political motive for bending evidence to lower the threat Saddam represented.  Reid’s implicit position is that opposing the Iraq Campaign automatically guarantees the opponent’s honesty and judgment.  Feh!

        FAT STEVE: "By September 2002, the British government was convinced that Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa, though we do not know whether he has been successful.  On October 1st, 2002, a National Intelligence Estimate was issued saying that Saddam had sought African Uranium.  This represented the CIA's official position at the time."

       Yes and no.  A September 2002 British report on Iraq's wmd programs did float the Niger claim, accompanied by the equally bogus claim that Iraq was attempting to procure high strength aluminum tubes that then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said could "only be used to build nuclear centrifuges.” But by October, cooler heads within the CIA were raising doubts about the Niger story, and by July 22, 2002 some analysts had warned Rice that the info might not be accurate (though the CIA officially continued to stand by the estimate).  Also, the October NIE included dissents by the State Department's intelligence people, all of which were there for the gandering, should Rice, Cheney, Tenet and the other war-promoters cared to look.

        Of course, I never said that the NIE didn’t include dissents.  It did.  But the official conclusion of the NIE was as I stated.  Reid for some reason can’t stand to admit that.  Instead, she implies that the fact that there was dissent should automatically have led the Bush Administration to conclude that the NIE was wrong.  No argument for this position is given, because none can be.  She is once more arguing in a circle, using her belief that Saddam didn’t try to buy uranium as proof that Saddam didn’t try to buy uranium.  And the dissents, to repeat myself, centered around the position that Saddam couldn’t have succeeded in buying uranium from Niger, and therefore he didn’t try.  No matter how many times the statement is repeated, it’s still logical nonsense.

        FAT STEVE: "In January 2003, Bush's State of the Union message said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” When we invaded Iraq and didn't find the WMDs that Wilson believed Saddam had, he started talking to Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, and someone at The Washington Post.  Wilson told them the pre-war intelligence had been distorted."

        Wrong.  The administration acknowledged on July 7, 2003 (the day after Wilson's op-ed ran) that Mr. Bush should never have made the African unranium claim in his January SOTU speech (it had been deleted from Bush's infamous "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 and Collin Powell considered the claims so dubious, he refused to present them before the U.N.), particularly after the British government backed away from the claim after a parliamentary panel, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee , "said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a 'bald claim' that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa.  It noted that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence, and questioned why an official British government intelligence dossier published four months before Bush's speech included the allegation as part of an effort to make the case for going to war against Iraq.” (And by "someone" at WaPo, I think you mean Walter Pincus...")

        The only sentence in this paragraph that has any relationship to what I wrote is the last one, where Reid says the “someone” Wilson talked to was Pincus.  She cites no evidence that it was Pincus who spoke with Wilson.  Pincus was the author of the story in question, but reporters sometimes have others doing background research.  In the absence of a statement from Pincus or Wilson saying that Wilson spoke directly with Pincus, I used the formulation I did.

        As for the rest of Reid’s paragraph, it consists of second guessing from after the invasion.  The CIA did not “debunk” the intelligence that Saddam had sought to buy African uranium.  It couldn’t, because it lacked information.  It’s also wrong in that the link saying the British government had backed off the claims refers to a Washington Post story saying the White House had backed off the claims in July of 2003.  The British government, to the best of my knowledge, has not backed off the claims that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.  The link Reid provides is to a British House of Commons committee report, and it too consists of second guessing.  Following up the link, and going here reveals that the committee didn’t know what evidence, if any, the British government had for its statement.  A confession of ignorance by the committee, and their judgment that the government may have been wrong, do not constitue “backing away.” The Butler Report deals with this issue on pp122 – 125 (pp 136 – 13 of the PDF), and says:

 

        499.  We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded.  By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

 

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

 

was well-founded. . . .

503.  From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

a.  It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b.  The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.  Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c.  The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d.  The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

        FAT STEVE: "On July 6, 2003, Wilson published his infamously dishonest Times op-ed.  The MSM proved it can't read, by failing to notice Wilson's artful sliding from 'Iraq didn't buy Niger uranium' to 'Iraq didn't attempt to buy Niger uranium.' "

        Huh?  There was nothing artful about it.  Iraq didn't buy Niger uranium, as every credible intelligence assessment now acknowledges.  Wilson's report stated that the former Niger official interpreted 1999 overtures by Iraq as an attempt to score uranium — the key words there being "interpret" and "attempt.” But even any thought of an attempt to purchase uranium has since been debunked, including by the aforementioned British parliamentary report of July 3, 2003 (three days before Wilson's op-ed).  Four months before that, in March, an IAEA report concluded that the Niger uranium story was based on forged documents — crudely forged, at that.  An FBI investigation in 2003 probed whether the forgeries came from the Pentagon pets in the Iraqi National Congress, particularly since the documents were thought to have been key to fooling the CIA into strongly believing in the Iraqi nuclear program claims.
        By the time Joe Wilson published his op-ed, on July 6th, he had good reason to wonder why Cheney had continued to make the nuclear claim even after the forgeries had come to light (the forgeries were announced March 7, Collin Powell acknowledged the fakery on March 8, Cheney had his MTP moment March 16, "shock and awe" commenced March 19), and to believe that the administration should have known that its wmd claims were dubious.  Interestingly enough, days after Wilson's op-ed ran, a CIA source pushed the story of Wilson's March debunking of the Niger story to the BBC, perhaps in an attempt to shift blame for the wmd blunder away from the agency

        Reid apparently can’t read or think.  Bush stated that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Africa.  Wilson’s report stated that the Nigerien officials he, Wilson, spoke with thought Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger.  Wilson said he thought they hadn’t succeeded in buying uranium from Niger.  How does that in any way undermine the assertion that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger?  Only if ‘Iraq didn’t suceed in obtaining uranium from Niger’ means ‘Iraq didn’t even try to get uranium from Niger, or from any other African country,’ does Wilson’s op-ed in any way challenge Bush’s ‘State of the Union’ speech.

         And the claim that the Parlimentary report showed that Iraq didn’t even try to buy uranium is false, as we have seen.

        As for the forgeries, as the Butler report passage quoted above makes clear, the forged documents were in no way part of the evidence that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger and other African countries.  Stories in the Washington Post and New York Times before Wilson’s op-ed said that the then-unnamed Ambassador, Joe Wilson, had told them the initial report was based on the forged documents, and that he, Wilson, had proven in his March 5th oral report to the CIA, that the documents to be forgeries.  In fact, Wilson had never seen the forged documents.  Nor did they come into U.S. hands until October 9th, seven months after Wilson’s report.  So either two different papers got what Wilson told them completely wrong, independently making identical mistakes, or Wilson was telling people that he’d shown the documents he’d never seen or heard of were forgeries.  You'll have to make your own mind up on that one.

        FAT STEVE: "After Wilson's op-ed, reporters called Rove and Libby, asking about Wilson.  Apparently, the reporters told Rove and Libby that Plame was CIA.  Most reporters didn't write anything about this, but Robert Novak revealed that Wilson's wife was CIA."

        Wrong yet again. Let's recall the timeline once again.  The forgeries emerge March 7, are acknowledged by Powell March 8.  Wilson goes on CNN that same day to say the administration was sitting on infomation that should have alerted them to the bogus nuclear intel.  Condi Rice and other officials spend the next two months trying to explain the administration's position.  The British explode their own prior Iraq claims on July 3, Wilson's op-ed runs July 6, the White House retracts Bush's SOTU remarks on July 7.  It was that same day that the "war on Wilson," as Time's Matt Cooper later wrote (in the article he almost went to jail over), begins.  There's even some speculation that Wilson may have been tipped off, possibly by a reporter, that the WH would be "coming after him" after his op-ed ran...
        On July 11, Cooper writes an email saying he had spoken on "double super secret background" with Rove (he also apparently talked to Scooter Libby) about Plame.  Yes, Cooper called Rove, but not "about Wilson" as you say.  We now know from Cooper himself that in that conversation, Cooper first learned that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative from Karl Rove, not the other way around.  Rove brought it up during a conversation about Bush's SOTU speech and how it was vetted.  That same day, Tenet issues a statement falling on his sword over the "16 words" in Bush's SOTU and clarifying the fact that the CIA sent Wilson to Niger.  Novak's column outing Valerie Plame dropped on July 14.  Clearly, someone was circulating this information before Novak's column ran, and before Miller talked to Rove.  Novak is the one who called Rove (and someone else) to confirm it.

        First, note that Reid doesn’t mention what’s in the eight sources I linked in the paragraph she quoted.  Second, note that I never said Cooper told Rove about Plame being Wilson’s wife.

        What the sources I linked to say is that reporters called Rove and Libby, and asked about the Wilson op-ed.  Rove was called by Novak, who said he’d heard that Wilson’s wife sent him to Niger, and Rove said he’d heard the same thing.  Three days later, Rove told Cooper something like ‘don’t get too far out’ on Wilson, because he was wrong about various things, for instance, ‘Vice President Cheney didn’t send Wilson to Africa, his wife did.’  It was a very brief conversation, it was initiated by Cooper, and Cooper brought up the subject of Wilson.  Then Cooper called Libby and said ‘I heard that Wilson’s wife works for the CIA,’ and ‘Libby replied ‘Yeah, another reporter told me that too,’ or words to that effect.

         Cooper’s piece “A War on Wilson?” (note the question mark please) was posted on the web on July 17, 2003.  The money graf:

         Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson raised the Administration's ire with an op-ed piece in The New York Times on July 6 saying that the Administration had "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the Iraqi threat.  Since then Administration officials have taken public and private whacks at Wilson, charging that his 2002 report, made at the behest of U.S. intelligence, was faulty and that his mission was a scheme cooked up by mid-level operatives.  George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took a shot at Wilson last week as did ex-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.  Both contended that Wilson's report on an alleged Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger, far from undermining the president's claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq sought uranium in Africa, as Wilson had said, actually strengthened it.  And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.

        Wilson’s report was arguably flawed; it did, in the minds of most analysts, strengthen the case that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa; it was indeed “cooked up” by mid-level operatives; and Plame was involved in the decision to send Joe to Africa.  The so-called ‘war’ consisted of responding truthfully to reporters’ questions about Wilson’s op-ed.

        As for Wilson’s claim on CNN that the Administration was “sitting on” information that should have alerted that the “nuclear intel” was bogus, well, as we’ve seen, Wilson’s report was thought by most analysts to bolster the case that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium ore from Niger.  If Wilson had some other information that was relevant, I’m not aware of it, and Reid doesn’t link to it.

        As for what we know “from Cooper himself,” it was that the White House had said ‘the story about Saddam seeking uranium was probably true, but the evidence was weak enough that we shouldn’t have included it in the President’s speech.’  Cooper also told the Grand Jury he found it “odd and unnecessary” for the Administration to object to Wilson’s accusations of “twisting” and “distorting” intelligence in the op-ed.  Apparently, in Cooper’s world, a politician accused of dishonesty shouldn’t defend himself.  Cooper himself says he believes he brought up Wilson, saying something like “I’m writing about Wilson,” to which Rove replied "Don't get too far out on Wilson."

        (Reid’s link to “Cooper himself” no longer works, but this one should.  Otherwise, search on 'Matthew Cooper "what i told the grand jury"')

        Reid’s claim that:

Clearly, someone was circulating this information before Novak's column ran, and before Miller talked to Rove.  Novak is the one who called Rove (and someone else) to confirm it.

is not supported by any evidence that I have seen, or any she cites, except what she terms the “speculation” that the White House decided to ‘out’ Plame’s employment at the CIA in March of 2003 (and there the source she links to is apparently relying on Wilson’s unsupported word.) The veifiable evidence is all the other way: after the “forged documents” story appeared, Wilson was telling the press publicly and privately that his trip to Niger somehow proved that Iraq hadn’t sought uranium from Africa.  Reporters raised the subject with government officials, and they responded to the reporters, as I said originally.

        Oh, by the way, Novak talked to Rove on July 8th, telling Rove that he’d heard that Plame was a CIA employee, and the resulting Novak column was circulated on the AP wires on January 11th, the day Cooper talked to Rove.  So Rove knew, three days before he talked to Cooper, that at least one member of the press already had the story of Plame suggesting Wilson for the trip.

        Of course, we now know that Bob Woodward of The Washington Post heard about Plame’s CIA employment in “mid-June” of 2003, when someone he was interviewing mentioned it.  Woodward said his impression was that this information was neither classified or sensitive.  Woodward remembers telling Walter Pincus about Plame’s CIA job.  Woodward was asked if he discussed Plame’s employment with any other government official before Novak’s column appeared, and replied that he didn’t remember doing so.  Woodward didn’t definitely rule it out, either, and various notes for other interviews in late June show “Wilson’s wife” as a possible subject of conversation.

        Bottom line: the knowledge that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA seems to have circulated casually in Washington circles before Wilson’s op-ed, but no one cared.

        FAT STEVE: "The MSM then lied in their teeth, claiming that the White House had called reporters seeking to out Plame.  These stories have now collapsed."

        You wish. The whole genesis of this story, and the grand jury investigation, is the fact that one or more White House officials (not Pentagon, not CIA, not anybody else...) contacted at least six reporters, including Cooper, Judy Miller, Novak, and NBC's Tim Russert, pushing the Plame info.  Novak was simply the only one who used it.

        Reid apparently believes that repeating an allegation somehow proves it is true.  Wrong.  There was a story in the Washington Post that claimed that an anonymous “administration official” had claimed that “two top White House officials” had called “at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife,” with, very conveniently, no names given for the reporters called or the officials.  No reporter has said anything like ‘The White House called me and told me Wilson’s wife, whose name is Valerie Plame Wilson, works at the CIA.’  Everyone who has gone on record has said that reporters called government officials to ask about the Wilson op-ed, and that, in the course of explaining why Wilson shouldn’t be relied on, they said things like ‘Wilson claims Cheney sent him to Africa, but it was really Wilson’s wife who did it.’

        Reid:

         We also learned on Sunday that also on July 7 (seven days before Novak's column ran), a state department memo to Collin Powell, discussing "Wilson's wife", was circulated on Air Force One (it along with the plane's phone records, were subpoenaed last March).  That sounds like a group of people in the White House were looking for "pushback" against Joe Wilson, dos it not?  Naming his wife as the one who caused him to go to Niger was that pushback.

        No, it doesn’t — or at least, it doesn’t when you know the facts Reid leaves out.  According to The Washington Post, the memo was written in June of 2003.  It mention in passing (two sentences in one paragraph of a three page memo) that Wilson had gone to Africa for the CIA, and that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.  In fact, the memo was reported to be almost entirely about the various INR judgments that Saddam hadn’t reconsituted his nuclear program, and had been drawn up to brief then Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman on the INR’s position.

        Then, Wilson published his op-ed.  The then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, asked the then director of the INR, Carl W. Ford Jr., to “explain” Wilson’s remarks.  Ford printed out a copy of the memo to Grossman and gave it to Powell.  What it looks like to me is the State Department getting ready to respond to question about Wilson’s op-ed.  In order for it to be “pushback,” INR would have had to known about Wilson’s op-ed a month before it was published.
        Reid:

        Yes, there is a question of whether one of the original sources of the Plame info was a journalist (maybe even Judy Miller), and apparently, neither Rove nor Libby used Valerie Plame Wilson's name, at least with Matt Cooper, but that doesn't take away from the legal jeopardy in this case.  The statute doesn't require Plame's name to be used.  Divulging secret info could be a crime unto itself, not to mention possibly lying to investiators or puerjury, both of which are still hanging out there...  If these facts have collapsed, why hasn't the grand jury collapsed with them?  And BTW don't you mean "through their teeth...?"

        Ah, at last a valid criticism.  I did mean “through their teeth.” But the rest of what I wrote stands.  Fitzgerald has not brought any indictments against anyone for the alleged crime of revealing the identity of the alleged covert agent Valerie Plame.  Although relatively recent court documents make clear that Fitzgerald knows who told initially told Novak that Plame was a CIA employee, Fitzgerald apparently doesn’t intend to indict the source for doing that, or even publish the source’s name.  The story that the White House was calling reporters to out Plame has collapsed, just as I said, because everyone willing to go on record says that the reporters called the White House and asked about Wilson on their own initiative.

        FAT STEVE: "The information Wilson gave for the two Kristof stories and the Post stories was at best wrong, at worst a lie."

        Wrong. Kristoff and Pincus' stories were based on the facts as most of the reality based community now knows them, along with Wilson's reporting to the CIA; findings which were almost universally upheld by the Senate panel that investigated them.  What the committee concluded was that Wilson's findings did not change minds on either side of the Iraq nuclear issue.  Also, Wilson never claimed that Cheney's office sent him to Niger.  He always state that he was sent at the behest of the CIA.  The worst that critics can say about Wilson is that he minimized his wife's role in recommending him for the job.  However, Bush defenders are equally incorrect in stating that Plame "sent Wilson" to Niger.  She certainly lacked that kind of authority

        Again, Reid reveals her inability to read and understand.  If you go to the three articles I linked, you find that Kristoff and the Post reporting that the original intelligence of Iraq seeking African Uranium was based on the forged documents; that Wilson was sent to Africa because the Vice President’s office requested an investigation of the report; that Wilson, proved those documents were forgeries in March of 2002; that Wilson’s report proved that Iraq hadn’t attempted to buy uranium from Niger; that Wilson’s conclusion were passed on to the Administration, and his debunking of the forged documents was shared with the Vice President’s office and the National Security Council.

        The truth is otherwise.  The Senate Committee report stated that the original report was based on information from “a foreign government service;” Wilson did not debunk the forged documents, as neither he nor any other USAmerican had yet seen them; and the CIA’s report on Wilson’s trip most explicitely did NOT say that Wilson’s report debunked the notion that Iraq had sought uranium, only that Wilson’s report showed that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for Niger to actually deliver uranium to Iraq secretly; the CIA did not circulate Wilson’s report to administraton officials or brief the VP’s office or the NSC about Wilson’s trip and conclusions; Wilson not only didn’t debunk the forged documents, the CIA report of his debrief showed no mention of any documents whatsoever.

        Wilson, admitted to the Senate Committee that he was a source for the June 12th Pincus story, and Kristoff has confirmed Wilson as a source for his two stories.  What Wilson told them wasn’t true.

        In a speech on June 14th, Wilson said “American ambassador” who went to Niger did so “on behalf of the government, not of the CIA, but of the government.” He also mentions the stories in the Post and the Times in that speech, and didn’t dispute their characterizations of him as having debunked the documents as forgeries.

        Later, when he wrote the op-ed, Wilson said that the CIA sent him to Africa, but implies that the Vice President’s office was behind the CIA’s action, when in fact Cheney’s people knew nothing about the trip, which was authorized by mid-level CIA agents.   (Here, in fairness, I’d like to say that Wilson is probably not lying, just honestly wrong about it; it would be easy to hear the CIA say the VP was interested in a report, and conclude that he’d asked for an investigation, and knew what was being done).  Wilson said his report would have been circulated to the VP’s office.  It wasn’t.  Wilson says he was told by someone he doesn’t name of a memorandum of agreement between Iraq and Niger for a uranium deal, while the CIA notes on the pre-trip meeting with Wilson, as well as the recollections of the intelligence people involved, say they never told Wilson anything about the source of the reports.

        After the op-ed was published, Wilson claimed that his wife had nothing to do with sending him to Africa; that she wasn’t at the meeting where he agreed to go to Africa; that his report didn’t support the idea that Iraq had sought Niger uranium.  The Senate Committee found that his wife wrote a memo supporting the idea of sending Joe to Niger; that she was at least briefly present at the meeting where he was selected to go to Africa; that an INR analyst’s notes of the meeting say the group that decided to send Wilson was “apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue;” that Wilson’s report was that the Nigeriens believed Iraq wanted to buy their uranium.

        It’s worth noting a pattern here: what Wilson says he was told, or says he found out, differs significantly in almost all cases with contemporaneous documents and the recollection of other participants.  It’s the opinion of such as Reid that Wilson is always right in these cases, everyone else is always wrong.  I disagree.

        FAT STEVE: "Wilson's report strengthened the case that Iraq sought uranium. "

        Nope. Wilson's report didn't move experts either way.  The "case-strengthening" argument you're putting forward is pure White House/George Tenet spin, was made solely by George "slam dunk" Tenet and Ari Fleischer.  The Senate intelligence panel investiation largely upheld Wilson's claims that Iraq sought no such thing.  However, a correction to the WaPo article referenced above and so prized by the Bush-cult ran with the following slightly embarrassing correction the next day: "In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998.  In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.” Iraq, Iran, potatoe "potahto"...

        Here we must agree to disagree.  I say that when the CIA hears that Iraq is trying to buy uranium from Niger, and sends somewhere there to check, and the someone’s report says that Iraq had approached Niger to expand trade, and the Nigeriens he talked with thought that Iraq wanted to buy uranium from them, clandestinely, then the original report that Iraq attempted to buy Niger uranium is strengthened.  Reid judges that it isn’t.

        But it’s not all a judgment call.  The INR and others said that Iraq couldn’t have succeeded in buying Niger uranium in secret.  That doesn’t show that that Iraq didn’t try, which was all the “16 words” said.  Nor did the Senate Committee largely uphold Wilson.  They said that it was reasonable to conclude that Iraq was seeking Niger uranium at least through early October, 2002, when the forged documents came into the hands of the United States.  (After that, the Committee apparently thinks that the fact that those documents were forged somehow indicates that Iraq didn’t try to buy Niger uranium.  But the Butler report, as we have seen, unequivocally states that British intelligence was never based in any way on the forgeries, and so is not invalidated by them.)

         And I knew that THE WASHINGTON POST confused Iran and Iraq, but I didn’t confuse them, or base any points on the Post’s confusion.

        FAT STEVE: "Inquiries in Britain and the U.S. say the intelligence was well-founded, and the CIA still won't say Iraq didn't try to buy uranium."

        Wrong. Tony Blair may have continued to stand by the Iraq wmd/nuke claims, even after the forgeries came to light (in March 2003) and a key document used to sell the war in Britain (the memorable "dodgy dossier") was found to (in February 2003) to have been cribbed from a graduate student's years-old paper, but Blair's determination to stand by the Iraq project wasn't shared by British intelligence or by members of his own cabinet.

        Yet AGAIN, the British intelligence conclusion that Iraq was seeking African uranium was based on several reports, NONE OF WHICH WERE THE FORGED DOCUMENTS, and the British government stands by it.  As for the “dodgy dossier,” I’m not sure what Reid is referring to, as the link was broken.  It appears to be a report published in January of 2003, that referred to Iraq intelligence agencies’ attempts to interfere with UNMOVIC inspections.  Is Reid suggesting Saddam’s intelligence agencies didn’t interfere with UNMOVIC?  If so, she should present evidence to that effect.  What she does, instead, is present evidence that some of the dossier’s passages concerning Iraqi intelligence agencies were cribbed from a student’s thesis.  But the thesis, and the “dodgy dossier” don’t address or have any bearing on the question of whether Saddam tried to purchase African uranium.

        Ried:

        By April 29, 2003, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was dropping the bomb that Iraq's wmd would never be found.  In May, the bio-trailers story fell apart, too.  By September, the U.N. issued a report saying Iraq's wmd program was "in disarray" and that Saddam had lacked the capability to pursue a nuclear weapons program since the 1991 war.  Also in September, 2003, Voice of America reported that “a senior official in Iraq's new science ministry says the country never revived its nuclear program after inspectors dismantled it in the 1990's. ... The scientist, now a member of the U.S.-backed administration in Iraq, 'says Iraqi scientists had no way to re-start the program because the inspectors took away all the necessary resources.'" Even the White House's own investigation found the nuke claim to be without merit.

        Now, an honest person might have told you that the story about Jack Straw said that Saddam had possesed WMDs until “recently;” that the bio-trailers story was still controversial well after May 2003; that the weapons inspectors continued to turn up banned weapons and equipment through the mid-1990s; that pre-invasion, everyone thought Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs; that the post-invasion inspection said that Iraqi WMD manufacturing equipment was mostly broken, but that Iraq intended to reconstitute the program as soon as possible.

        Only the last link refers to the African uranium story, and it doesn’t say that the reports were “without merit.” It does say there was “no deliberate effort to fabricate a story.” And the Senate Committee noted that the CIA did not object to that section of Bush’s speech.

        FAT STEVE: The Administration did not distort intelligence, or pressure the CIA.

        Okay, now you're doing comedy.  Here's just one example: In an August 2003 story in WaPo, intelligence source cite "a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates — in public and behind the scenes — made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support.  On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views.  The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied..."

        • Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign.  Iraq's three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center at Rashidiya.

       
• The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 cited new construction at facilities once associated with Iraq's nuclear program, but analysts had no reliable information at the time about what was happening under the roofs.  By February, a month before the war, U.S. government specialists on the ground in Iraq had seen for themselves that there were no forbidden activities at the sites.

       
• Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment.  By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government's assertion.  The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible.

       
• The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

       
Two senior policymakers, who supported the war, said in unauthorized interviews that the administration greatly overstated Iraq's near-term nuclear potential.  [Washington Post, August 2003]

        As for Cheney pressuring hte CIA, it's treated earlier in the post, as well as here.

        ‘No pressure to distort intelligence’ was the conclusion of the Silberman-Robb report, the Senate Committee, and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.  The article Reid prints the long excerpts from doesn’t say that the Administration pressured the intelligence analysts to distort anything.  The second story Reid links to (“as well as here”) says that Cheney “ questioned” people at the CIA.  No evidence is offered that Cheney pressured them.

        In all cases concerning alleged pressure, the sources are anonymous, the allegedly pressured analysts are unnamed, and the stories carefully hedged and qualified in language, saying the alleged pressure may have been unintentional.  I have yet to see a story that says anything like ‘An intelligence analyst who worked for the CIA confessed to slanting intelligence to please the White House.’  It’s always somebody else who was pressured, not the anonymous source of the story.

        FAT STEVE: "The MSM continues, its spin and bias, trying to claim Rove or someone, was attacking Plame, but all the available evidence is precisely the opposite."

        Yaaaaawn... sorry, got a bit bored with all the spin and bias stuff...  By opposite, do you mean that the White House was trying to help and support Ms. Plame by blowing her cover?  Of course Ms. Plame was not the target of the administration: Joe Wilson was, and this case was all about the administration's intense desire to discredit him.  And another thing, if this case is so inocuous, why have so many administration officials, including Mr. Rove, felt the need to lie about their involvement?

        Sorry you’re so easily bored that a single sentence puts you to sleep.  I suggest consulting a physician about narcolepsy.

        As for your questions, we still don’t know if Plame’s cover was any good, or that anyone at the White House blew it.  Joe Wilson was attacking the administration, charging them with lying about pre-war intelligence, and White House officials were responding by telling people why they thought Wilson was wrong and dishonest.  And after all these months, the only person charged with lying is Libby, which suggests Reid’s confidence that Rove lied may be a tad misplaced.

        FAT STEVE: "And despite claims that Plame was a covert officer, the evidence is that people all over Washington knew that Plame was working for the CIA.  Meanwhile, the MSM keeps recycling their mistakes, and making new mistakes."

        Wrong. People inside the Beltway knew Plame worked for the CIA because she had long since moved to headquarters at Langley.  But during the bulk of her career, she was thought to be a private consultant when she was in fact a clandestine officer — working secretly for a CIA front company (and very much on her own if caught by an enemy).  She was sufficiently valuable to the agency that it was the CIA which demanded an investgation into the leak.  Blowing her cover might not have endangered her at this point, but it did blow the front company the CIA had carefully worked over decades to construct, jeopardizing all of her contacts and an important CIA operation in the process.  How the Bush cultists can defend that, I'll never know

       The evidence that Plame was clandestine is thin, and even if she was once, her cover appears to have been blown almost a decade before Novak’s column.  The CIA requests an investigation in the case of all possible leaks of classified material.  And if you follow the links I posted, you’ll find former covert CIA agent Fred Rustmann says Plame’s cover was extremely thin.  And Novak said that when he called the CIA to ask about Plame, no one said that revealing that Plame was a CIA agent would harm national security in any way.  Currently, Libby is trying to find out if the CIA ever conducted any sort of damage assessment concerning Plame’s “outing,” and Fitzgerald is saying ‘You don’t need to see that, it’s not important.’  Such behaviour strongly suggest that the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA official had little impact.

         As for the front company,supposedly carefully constructed over decades, it was actually just “a telephone and a post office box”, apparently without any physical presence at its alleged address, and only set up in 1994, less than one decade before its exposure.  Dun and Bradstreet records showed it as having one partner, “Victor Brewster,” one employee, and annual revenue of $60,000.  That’s not a very convincing cover for Plame when traveling overseas.  The exposure of Brewster Jennings as a CIA front, by the way, came partly from Plame, who listed it as her employer in a campaign finance document.  But then, it was also alleged that when Plame worked overseas, she didn’t use the Brewster Jennings front as a cover in any case.  As David Armstrong told the Boston Post, "A cover that falls apart on first inspection isn't very good.  What you want is a cover that actually holds up . . . and this one certainly doesn't."

        Joe Wilson decided to attack the Bush Administration.  The things he told reporters and said in public were almost completely untrue.  If he hadn’t outed himself with his op-ed, there’s no evidence that his wife’s CIA employment would ever have become public knowledge.  I think Novak made a mistake in publicizing Plame’s name, and in identifying her as Wilson’s wife, but there’s no evidence that anyone involved intended to hurt her career, or punish Joe Wilson.  As Woodward said, her CIA employment didn’t appear to be secret.

        Once Wilson’s attacks started, the White House defended itself against his falsehoods.  How do the Bush haters defend that?  Dishonestly.

Posted by: saintonge at 11:37 | link | comments

The Foreign Aid Swindle

        Betsy Newmark links to a Michael Barone post about foreign aid, and the statistics that are designed to show mostly government aid, and not private charity.  Worth reading, but I find it somewhat off the point.  As I said in a comment there:

        If I had my way, we'd give zero percent of our GDP in foreign aid.

        The way "foreign aid" works is that the money is specified to be spent with U.S. companies for things to be shipped overseas, or with U.S. firms that do contract work overseas. Thus it's in large part a welfare program for business.

        And as others noted, a large part is stolen by foreign governments.

        And a huge percentage goes to funding the foreign aid establishment.

        The end result of governmental foreign aid is to keep the foreigners from developing. There shouldn't be any at all.

          Technorati tags: Michael Barone, foreign aid, Betsy Newmark, policy, United States.

Posted by: saintonge at 19:12 | link | comments

Mark Steyn Lays It On The Line

        In the latest City Journal.  Our alternatives are surrender to militant Islam, or fight back against Iran.

        As Steyn points out, since the Ayatollahs took over, Iran has been pushing its religion on other countries, by force.  When they get nukes, the smart bet is they'll use them.  So, how long do we wait?

        Technorati tags: City Journal,Iran, nuclear weapons, Mark Steyn, War with Islam.

Posted by: saintonge at 03:48 | link | comments
iran, war with jihadism

A Good Point From Slate

        Betsy Newmark points us to an entry in Slate, where they calculate that there about four thousand seven hundred retired general officers.  Therefore, the six retired generals who called on Rumsfeld to resign are about one twelfth of one percent of the retired generals.

        That reminds me that, during Viet Nam, a magazine named "Science and Mechanics" ran an article by about fourteen generals, 12 retired, two serving, criticizing Viet Nam policy.  So six generals criticizing Rumsfeld is half the criticism from then.

Posted by: saintonge at 01:28 | link | comments
iraq, war with jihadism

The MSM is Stupid as Well as Dishonest

        Detroit News has a story about "plug-in hybrids," and it repeats the lie that they get "the equivalent of" 100 miles per gallon.

        No, they don't.  They get the equivalent of an average of what they get on their engines, and what they'd get if their engine was maybe 80% as fuel efficient as the local electric utility.  Just possibly, the same as a good diesel engine at cruising speed.

        Refusing to count the energy the utility uses to create electricity is not the same as getting it for free.  I'm surprised I still have to point this scam out.

        Technorati tags: dishonesty, MSM, plug in hybrid automobiles.

Posted by: saintonge at 22:49 | link | comments
msm, stupidity springs eternal

The Washington Post Story Was Worse Than I Thought

        Yesterday, I wrote about a Washington Post story concerning alleged mobile biowar weapons labs found in Iraq.  Two teams of experts had gone to Iraq to examine them, and concluded they were indeed biowar laboratories.  A third team concluded that they were not.  I called the Post's attempt to play this story up "pathetic."  The Post's story suggested that the moment the third team spoke, everyone should have bowed down and immediately decided they were right, while the rest of the world was wrong.
        Well, it was worse than I thought.
        First off, the Post tended to ignore the fact that all this happened months after the start of the Iraq campaign.  The intelligence that was used to justify the attack came before the war, and as Kenneth Pollack and Lawrence Wilkerson said, everyone believed then that Iraq had a WMD program.  Wilkerson is especially eloquent:

       And remember the "secret Downing Street Memo"?  Paragraphs 5, 15, 17, 19, explicitely assume that Saddam's Iraq had WMDs, while paragraphs 22 and 27 implicitly assume WMDs.  "Curveball," the famous Iraqi defector who gave information on mobile labs, was heavily promoted by the German Foreign Intelligence Service.  For that matter, "Curveball's" design for a mobile bioweapons lab was built in the U.S., and it worked.  It was only toward the end of 2002, when war was obviously on it's way, that some people began expressing doubts about "Curveball" and his information.  Note well: As long as there seemed to be no possibility the information would be acted on by Washington, every intelligence agency believed that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction.  It was only as it became clear that President Bush would act against Saddam's regime that the intelligence doubts emerged, as part of a political campaign to save Saddam.
        The bottom line is that everyone thought, pre-invasion, that Saddam had WMDs, including some of his generals, and the definitive answer still isn't out there.  The Post story suggests (without actually being explicit) that Bush personally analyzed all the raw data from Iraq, picked out with 100% accuracy the data that would be supported by the Iraq Survey Group after the invasion, correctly judged that Saddam had no WMDs then, and then somehow managed to convince the entire U.S. intelligence community, foreign intelligence communities, UN arms inspectors, and civilians into believing that Saddam had his WMD program up and running.  I guess Bush used psychic crosstime  long-distance hypnotism for this, since the conclusions all the intelligence analysts reached in 2002 were the same ones everyone reached during the Clinton Administration.  Or was gubernatorial candidate Bush already planning on crushing Saddam's regime ten years down the road?
        Next, the Post story was presented as  some kind of  great  scoop.  But Seixon points us to an article on this very subject in The New York Times on June 23, 2003, six days after the initial skeptical report.  (And thus inspired, I managed to find two additional articles in the Times.  You can read all three here.)  The Washington Post is just recyling old news (hat tips, the Blogfather and Confederate Yankee).
        In his original article, Joby Warrick plays "We'd like to tell you about this, but the details are still classified."  Oh, really?  Judith Miller was still embedded in Iraq, and thus subject to military censorship, and her story with William Broad had lots of details on the trailers that Warrick allegedly can't find anyone to tell him about (and the military didn't censor her any, either).  It's pretty bad when a staff writer on a page one story for the country's premier newspapers hasn't learned to do a web search, no?
       The Post article is also fairly dishonest.  Warrick's apocalyptic page one story says, in paragraph three:


       The trucks weren't for weapons, they were for producing hydrogen gas for peaceful weather balloons.
       This story is 42 paragraphs long, and contains 2224 words (according to word).  You have to read through more than three fourths of it to reach paragraph 28, which says:

        In other words, they weren't unanimous.  Maybe they became so later, but Warrick gives me no reason to believe it.  And the Miller-Broad article of June, 2003 says the May team of civilian analysts were "divided sharply."  I call this unanimity stuff a flat lie.
       A side note on another thing Warrick doesn't mention, at all: Saddam definitely bought trucks in 1987 to produce hydrogen gas for weather balloons.  But the people using them were the Iraqi artillery.  At any but the shortest ranges, you need information on weather conditions to correctly aim your guns.  So even if the trucks were used sometimes or all the times for hydrogen production, they weren't "peaceful," as Warrick and the Post want you to believe.
        As for the reasons the May team said the trucks weren't for bioweapons, the June 3rd, 2003 New York Times piece by Miller and Broad lists some the objections Warrick can't discover: the trucks lacked steam sterilization equipment, necessary for bioweapons production; the trucks could only produce small amounts of biological material at best; the germ-laden fluids produced would need processing at other facilities; and there's no "easy" way to remove fluids from the processing tank.
        Interesting, but intelligence analysts in Washington didn't ignore the May team's findings, they actively rejected them.  They had answers for all the objections: the tanks could have been sterilized with chemicals, and then washed out; or there could have been a steam sterilizer in a seperate truck, equipment Iraq was know to possess; the Washington analysts believed the germs could have been bred in high concentration, allowing good production; and they said the fluid could be removed in ten to twenty minutes through a drain in the bottom of the tank.   It was a bit small, they said, but the truck had an air compressor.  Use the compressor to force air into the tank, and drainage would speed up nicely.  In sum:


       I'll add something  I know from  reading history: one way sterilize is with flame.  You can heat a surface very hot, very quickly, and kill anything on it, without any important damage to the whole.  Of course, it helps if you have a fuel gas for this, since it requires some precise control.  A gas like hydrogen, for instance.
        Seixon has good stuff on the hydrogen issue too.  He notes that the British artillery balloon system the Iraqis were known to have bought from Britain didn't produce hydrogen on site.  Instead, they carried storage tanks around with them.
        Seixon also quotes from UNMOVIC.  The Iraqis had provided the arms inspectors with information on six different types of mobile labs, plus pictures and videotapes of the same.  The six types of labs had been made in two different state factories. None of the six known types,  said UNMOVIC, were for producing hydrogen for balloons.  Further, none of the known types matched the two the U.S. and Kurdish forces had captured.  Not only that, but the two trucks contained equipment made in a third state factory, one that wasn't declared to UNMOVIC.
        Assuming Seixon is correct in his information, then the only conclusion I can come to is that the two trucks were being used for something that Iraq didn't want to admit to the UN.  Since the purchase of the artillery balloon system was long known, (it happened in 1987), it's quite unlikely that the trucks were exclusively used to fill balloons with hydrogen.
        By the way, the UNMOVIC report that Seixon referenced (here, PDF) has references in the following pages to Iraq's refusal to comply with disarmament requirements, import forbidden technology, and otherwise build a capability for producing WMDs in the future that would be hidden from the outside world.  The Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam's WMD capability had been severely degraded by the sanctions, but that Saddam intended to rebuild it as soon as he could, and that he had a limited dual-use capacity which could be converted to small scale biological and chemical weapons production on short notice.
        The history of Iraq between the end of the Gulf War and the beginning of the Iraq campaign was unequivocal: Saddam's regime would never comply with the UN resolutions against him manufacturing and possessing WMDs, resolutions he'd agreed to as the price of ending the Gulf War.  The difference between W. and most of the rest of the world is that he was willing to fight to stop Saddam.
        Try as Warrick and the Post might to convict Bush of surpressing information, the record is clear on this subject.  In the '90s, Saddam's continued rule of Iraq was guaranteed by the lack of determination shared by Bush Sr. and Clinton.  During this period, and continuing into the end of the anti-Taliban campaign, no one in any intelligence community anywhere is on record as doubting that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and was building more.  Then, in 2002, Dubya started saying that Iraq had to comply with the UN disarmament resolutions, or else.  Suddenly, some people began recording doubts about the intelligence concerning Iraq's WMD program.  But the vast majority of all intelligence analysts said what they'd always said: Saddam had WMD programs.  A year of political manuvering went on, in which the French, the Germans, the Russians, and various anti-American groups stalled for time as they tried to fool Bush and put together a political coalition that could stop a U.S. attack.  Finally, the invasion happened.  No WMDs were found, either because they were destroyed, or because they were hidden/smuggled out of Iraq.  His political enemies started yelling  "Bush lied, people died," and they've been yelling it ever since.  But they're the liars, not Bush, and not the Bush administration.
        Which also explains why Warrick's followup story, in which the Administration severely criticizes Warrick and the Post, was relegated to p. 18.  Wouldn't want to confuse the proles, now would we?
        Technorati tags: bias, biological weaponsPresident Bush, Bush Administration, George Bush Sr., CIA, President Clinton, "Curveball", dishonesty, Saddam Hussein, "intelligence community", Iraq, Iraq Campaign, Iraq invasion, Iraq's Weapons of mass destruction program, Iraq Survey Group, Judith Miller, Kenneth Pollack, Seixon.com, Silberman-Robb Commission, War with Islam, Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Lawrence Wilkerson, WMDs.

Posted by: saintonge at 08:39 | link | comments
iraq, politics, bias, bush administration, george w bush, intelligence, war with jihadism

Font Experiment Four

         This is the way I want it to look.

Posted by: saintonge at 16:57 | link | comments