CBS News Says That a Former General that is Against the Iraqi Fandango Cannot be an Expert

Olbermann: General Batiste says he resigned because he couldn't stand what former secretary of defense Rumsfeld was doing to the military, and he is still paying the price. The general, who describes himself as a diehard Republican, has been asked to leave his position as a consultant to CBS News because of that ad. That means he is free to join us tonight for an exclusive interview.

And we're honored to have you with us, General. Thank you for your time.

Batiste: Thanks, Keith. Good to be with you.

Olbermann: From Eric Shinseki, the four-star general who was criticized by, of all people, Paul Wolfowitz when he said at the start that the war would require several hundred thousand troops, do these ads that you and General Eaton and General Clark have done for VoteVets.org, there seemingly has never been this much public friction between the military and the civilian leaders. What moved you to make these ads and moved you to make them now?

Batiste: Keith, it really is quite extraordinary. I was moved to make this ad working with VoteVets because I care about our country, and I care about our soldiers and Marines and their families.

I'm a patriot, as are the rest of us in VoteVets. VoteVets is not an antiwar organization. We're focused on what's best for this country. We're focused on being successful and winning the effort against global terrorism. And we're damn sure focused on doing what's right for our great military, which, by the way, is doing incredible work in Iraq and Afghanistan. God bless them all.

Olbermann: In a piece for MSNBC.com called "America's Angriest General," Mike Hirsch from "Newsweek" says that you wish more generals would speak out. But last year you had said at the end of the day, you either salute and execute, or you make a decision to retire or resign, that's the way it is. Is this what you're trying to change? What are you hearing from the colleagues of yours who are still in uniform?

Batiste: Keith, I'm in a very unique position. I have a platform upon which I can speak. I'm no longer wearing the uniform of our country. I have no ties to the defense industry. I can speak honestly. I have a duty to do so.

And I know there's other generals, both active duty and retired, that are doing all they can within their means. In my case, I'll continue to speak out.

Olbermann: You have said that it could take eight to 10 months to withdraw from Iraq in an orderly way once the president even agrees to that. This evening, the House rejected the plan to withdraw beginning in nine months. The military under such great stress. Is there a point at which any deadline, any time structure for this will be too late?

Batiste: Keith, this is less about deadlines and timelines than it is about coming to grips with the fact that we went to war with a fatally flawed strategy, flawed then in March of 2003, flawed today over four years later. This is all about a president who's relying almost solely on the military component of strategy to accomplish the mission in Iraq.

Sadly, we're missing the diplomatic, the political, and the economic components that are fundamental and required to be successful. We have an interagency process that has been dysfunctional during this administration. There's no unity of effort between the agencies.

It - the bottom line is, we have a failed strategy now, and our president has not mobilized this great nation to accomplish the critical work to defeat global terrorism. And until we get these two things right, we're wasting our time.

Olbermann: General, are you encouraged, are you disinterested in, are you interested in what happened Tuesday at the White House between these 11 moderate Republicans and the president, and this discussion of the political implications of this? Do you see this as some sort of watershed moment?

Batiste: Keith, I think so. Four of the 11 congressman were members that the VoteVets ad is targeting. I think that speaks volumes.

Olbermann: And lastly, sir, the benchmarks, the references continually made by those who went into the White House, that the words about this war have to now come from General Petraeus, that he is the one with the credibility, and the president is not the one with that, give us an honest assessment of his ability to give us an honest assessment of progress there.

Batiste: General David Petraeus is the best we've got. If anybody can pull this off militarily, he can. We have the best military this nation has ever fielded. But the president's strategy relies almost wholly on the military, and ignores the important components of diplomatic, political, and economic hard work.

If we don't get this right, we're going to break our Army and Marine Corps. And at this point in our history, that's the last thing we can do.

Olbermann: Well said, sir. General John Batiste. Great thanks for your time tonight, and, of course, great thanks for your service.

Batiste: Thanks, Keith.

Link.

The Windows Advantage: All that Malware not Availeable to Users of Other Operating Systems

"For some time now, searches have displayed 'this site may harm your computer' when Google has tagged a site as containing malware. Now the search engine giant is is further publicizing the level of infection in a paper titled: The Ghost In The Browser. For good reason, too: the company found that nearly 1 in ten sites (or about 450,000) are loaded with malicious software. Google is now promising to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious - with its powerful crawling abilities & data centers, the company is in an excellent position to do this. 'As well as characterizing the scale of the problem on the net, the Google study analyzed the main methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages. It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets. Widgets are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a webpage or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded form third party sites. The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found.'"

Link. And more here.

A Brief Review of the Dishonesty and Exceptional Dishonesty of Our Leaders and their Enablers

Number of moderate Republicans who met with the president this week to give him a "blunt warning" about the need to change course in Iraq: 11

Number of those moderate Republicans who voted Thursday in favor of a bill that would require the president to show progress in the war before getting more funding for it: 0.

Link.

He's for it unless and until he's against it -- but if he's been for it and nothing has really changed, how can he be against it? Why it's politics, not principle!

George W. Bush, Jan. 10, 2007: In a speech to the nation, the president declares: "A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."

George W. Bush, Jan. 13, 2007: "America will hold the Iraqi government to benchmarks it has announced ... These are strong commitments. And the Iraqi government knows that it must meet them, or lose the support of the Iraqi and the American people.

Stephen Hadley, Jan. 23, 2007: Asked whether the president will set forth in his State of the Union address the consequences to be suffered if Iraqis don't meet the benchmarks set for them, the national security advisor says: "This has been a topic of conversation for the last two weeks, about linking and consequences for benchmarks. I think the Iraqi political system, the democracy you have on the ground there, as well as the democracy here, demonstrates that there will be consequences if these benchmarks are not met."

Condoleezza Rice, April 29, 2007: Asked whether the president will accept "any kind of conditions" on continued funding for the war in Iraq, the secretary of state says: "Why tie our own hands in using the means that we have to help get the right outcomes in Iraq? And that's the problem with having so-called consequences for missing the benchmarks."

Dick Cheney, May 10, 2007: Asked about the possibility of attaching consequences to benchmarks, the vice president says: "I'm always a little puzzled when we talk about consequences. I mean, these people, you've got to remember the consequences that the Iraqis have been faced with. I mean, in terms of casualties, they've suffered far more than we have ... So when we talk to them about consequences in some kind of bureaucratic sense or threatening them with a cutoff of funds, for example, if they don't do A, B and C, it strikes me as, you know, that's Washington talk but it may not have all that much relevance on the ground out there."

George W. Bush, May 10, 2007: Asked if he's willing to accept any consequences for benchmarks in the war-funding bill, the president says he's in favor of ... benchmarks: "One message I have heard from people from both parties is that the idea of benchmarks makes sense. And I agree. It makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward."

Tony Snow, May 10, 2007: Asked whether the president believes that there ought to be consequences for failing to meet any benchmarks that might be set, the White House press secretary says: "I'm not even going to bite on that."

Link.

Consistent in hypocritcial inconsistency -- or what you could call, if demonstrated by a Dem instead Our Beloved Resolute Leader:

That meeting in which moderate Republicans told the president this week that he's risking the future of the Republican Party by sticking to his guns on Iraq?

Here's how White House spokeswoman Dana Perino spun it in an interview with CNN's Paula Zahn last night: "They expressed displeasure to the president. They expressed frustration, because of a lack of progress. The president understands that. He's right there with them on that. And I think that, if you look at our party, we are ones that like a frank exchange of views. We have a big tent. And discussions like this are OK. They're good to have. And that's why the president was very happy to have them at the White House."

Yep, he was frickin' overjoyed all right -- and happier still to have word of the meeting leaked to the press. From today's Washington Post: "White House political adviser Karl Rove, furious that Republican moderates had divulged a confrontational meeting they had on Tuesday with Bush on the war, started yesterday with an angry conversation with the meeting's organizer, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), according to several GOP lawmakers. Dan Meyer, the White House's chief lobbyist, called the other participants to express the administration's unhappiness."

Link.

Link for photo.

Reminder

Link.

Countdown!

Link.

Your National Guard: Protecting You at Home

-- by being deployed in Iraq:

Responding to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' claim that the war in Iraq has left her state's National Guard underquipped to deal with the aftermath of deadly tornadoes there, White House press secretary Tony Snow is ... blaming Sebelius.

As the Associated Press reports, Snow says that Sebelius didn't follow the proper procedures for identifying National Guard equipment shortages and asking that they be addressed. "If you don't request it, you're not going to get it," he said.

Sebelius says she has, in fact, asked the Pentagon to replace Kansas-based equipment that's now in Iraq -- and that she spoke with the president himself about the issue in January 2006. "What the Defense Department said then and continues to say is that states will get about 90 percent of what they had," Sebelius says. "Meanwhile, it doesn't get any better. I'm at a loss."

A Kansas National Guard official says the state currently has about 40 percent of the equipment it's supposed to have; before the war in Iraq began, it had about 60 percent of its required equipment available.

White House protestations to the contrary, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in the wake of Hurricane Katrina concluded that a "major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq."

Link.

Quote of the Day

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. -- Publilius Syrus

George Tenet's Principals

If you go by the book jacket of his new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," George Tenet is enjoying the life of a retired government servant teaching at Georgetown University, where he was appointed to the faculty in 2004. The former CIA director played up the academic image when he kicked off the recent media blitz for his new book by doing an interview for CBS's "60 Minutes" from his spacious, book-lined office at the university. His academic salary, and the reported $4 million advance he received from publisher HarperCollins, should provide the former CIA director with more than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his days and leave a substantial fortune to his children.

But those monies are hardly Tenet's entire income. While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.

***

Tenets sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions, a major supplier of biometric identification software used by the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company recently acquired two of the CIA's hottest contractors for its growing intelligence outsourcing business. At the Analysis Corp. (TAC), a government contractor run by one of Tenet's closest former advisors at the CIA, Tenet is a member of an advisory board that is helping TAC expand its thriving business designing the problematic terrorist watch lists used by the National Counterterrorism Center and the State Department.

Tenet is also a director of Guidance Software, which makes forensic software used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence to search computer hard drives and laptops for evidence used in the prosecution and tracking of suspected terrorists. And Tenet is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc.

By joining these companies, Tenet is following in the footsteps of thousands of other former intelligence officers who have left the CIA and other agencies and returned as contractors, often making two or three times what they made in their former jobs. Based on reporting I've done for an upcoming book, contractors are responsible for at least half of the estimated $48 billion a year the government now spends on intelligence. But exactly how much money will remain unknown: Four days before Tenet's book was published, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence decided not to release the results of a yearlong study of intelligence contracting, because disclosure of the figure, a DNI official told the New York Times, could damage national security.

Tenets sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions, a major supplier of biometric identification software used by the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company recently acquired two of the CIA's hottest contractors for its growing intelligence outsourcing business. At the Analysis Corp. (TAC), a government contractor run by one of Tenet's closest former advisors at the CIA, Tenet is a member of an advisory board that is helping TAC expand its thriving business designing the problematic terrorist watch lists used by the National Counterterrorism Center and the State Department.

Tenet is also a director of Guidance Software, which makes forensic software used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence to search computer hard drives and laptops for evidence used in the prosecution and tracking of suspected terrorists. And Tenet is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc.

By joining these companies, Tenet is following in the footsteps of thousands of other former intelligence officers who have left the CIA and other agencies and returned as contractors, often making two or three times what they made in their former jobs. Based on reporting I've done for an upcoming book, contractors are responsible for at least half of the estimated $48 billion a year the government now spends on intelligence. But exactly how much money will remain unknown: Four days before Tenet's book was published, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence decided not to release the results of a yearlong study of intelligence contracting, because disclosure of the figure, a DNI official told the New York Times, could damage national security.

***

Last October, Tenet continued to profit from the defense industry by joining the board of directors of QinetiQ Group PLC. QinetiQ, whose name allegedly inspired that of the fictional British spook "Q," the gadget maker in the James Bond movies, moved aggressively into the U.S. market in 2003 after a majority of its voting stock was acquired by the Carlyle Group. (Carlyle sold off its remaining shares in February, making a $470 million profit on its original investment.)


Here, too, Tenet is profiting from involvement in Iraq and the broader war on terror. QinetiQ's recent acquisitions in the U.S. market include defense contractor Foster Miller Inc., which makes the so-called TALON robots used by U.S. forces in Iraq to neutralize IEDs. QinetiQ also controls Analex Corp., an information technology and engineering company that earns 70 percent of its revenue from the Pentagon. Among the clients listed on Analex's Web site are the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the nation's spy satellites, and the Pentagon's Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office -- a secretive agency that has been criticized by members of Congress for collecting intelligence on American antiwar activists. According to QinetiQ's Annual Report and Accounts for 2006, non-executive directors like Tenet are paid a minimum of $70,000, with some paid up to more than a quarter-million dollars.

At QinetiQ, Tenet is working with Duane P. Andrews, a former assistant secretary of defense who is QinetiQ's CEO for North America. Prior to coming to QinetiQ, Andrews served for 13 years as a senior executive with Science Applications International Corp. SAIC is one of the largest U.S. intelligence contractors and a major provider of private sector analysts to both the CIA and the National Security Agency. Vanity Fair recently referred to it as a "shadow government."

There is an intriguing detail about SAIC buried in Tenet's acknowledgements in his new book: "Arnold Punaro of SAIC," he writes, "graciously provided me with a secure workspace to review and work with classified material." Punaro is identified on the SAIC Web site as the company's executive vice president for government affairs, communications and support operations, as well as general manager of its Washington operations.


Getting use of such a secure room is no small feat. In the intelligence business, such rooms are known as sensitive, compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs. To prevent eavesdroppers from picking up top-secret conversations, a typical SCIF has film on the windows, walls fitted with soundproof steel plates and white-noise makers embedded in the ceiling. Punaro must have had approval from SAIC and the CIA to allow Tenet such access. Harlow, Tenet's co-author, explained to Salon that Tenet could have used office space at the CIA to work on the book, but that he "believed it would be better not to be producing his memoirs at a government facility." It was "a matter of convenience" to use the room at SAIC, Harlow said.

In 2006, shortly after he joined TAC's advisory board, Tenet joined the board of directors of Guidance Software. One of Guidance's products, EnCase, has been used extensively by U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and military agencies to collect evidence in criminal and counterterrorism cases, including the prosecution of Enron executives and the British "shoe bomber," Richard Reid. Tenet's "years of experience fighting terrorism and extensive knowledge of potential and existing threats will expand Guidance's unparalleled expertise in computer forensics and network investigations," the company noted in a press release. According to SEC records, Tenet earned $58,112 in 2006 as a director and holds 9,700 shares of company stock. At its recent price of $12.85 per share, that would make Tenet's stock worth more than $124,000.

In his work at the Analysis Corp., Tenet has been reunited with John O. Brennan, his former chief of staff and, according to the book, one of his "closest advisers." Brennan spent 25 years in the CIA, and was deputy executive director at the time of the 9/11 attacks. In 2003, he was dispatched by Tenet to run the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center. It eventually morphed into the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center, which Brennan ran from December 2004 to August 2005, when he retired from government. (The center, which integrates intelligence from various agencies, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, is staffed primarily by contractors.) In November 2005, Brennan joined TAC, which has contracts with the State Department, Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Brennan, the company's CEO, also declined a request from Salon for comment for this report.

Link.

The Goddess of the Web

Link. Note: this is a humor piece and doesn't actually represent Xeni's actual position, I think, I hope.)

The Army's Threat to America: the Media and Knowledge

Link.

Our Leaders, Keeping Us Safe Through Selective Oppression

I’ve been meaning to post about Three Panel Soul, the new comic by Ian and Matt of MacHall fame- unfortunately I’ve got to do so under less-than-wonderful circumstances. I love this new strip because I’m finding it a lot more minimalist and relatable… also ridiculously funny.

Matt was working as a contractor for a branch of the government. He made the mistake of being interested in the hobby of paper target shooting at about the same time as the VA Tech shootings and talking to someone about this hobby at work. Keep in mind he wasn’t even talking about those shootings, in fact he was discussing how he wanted a gun which would make it difficult to kill someone.

He was promptly fired and not allowed back to work because people were scared of him.

To top it all off, he was later visited by police detectives for making a comic about his experience, because it was a “borderline terroristic threat.” (Is “terroristic” even a word? Did they get that from the Colbert report?)

I’m not a lawyer or a reporter or anything, but I would recommend anyone who was one of those things to contact Matt. ( machallboyd ATZORS gmail.com ) If you’re a cartoonist or a webcomics fan, spread his story around. The more people who know about this, the better. He’s a good dude who deserves your support.

Link.

The Genius of Our Beloved Leader

"I will veto any legislation that weakens current federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage," [Bush] wrote. (Link (emphasis added).)

So where does he really stand on the Iraq fandango? Is he coming out against this inexcusable tragedy he enabled in his stupidity and weakness? Is he going to veto the next spending bill for Iraq because it's "legislation that weakens encourages the destruction of human life at any stage"?

That's what I want to know: Exactly what does the idiot mean?

It's been Decided: Rudy's Our Next Beloved Leader

Eight more years of craziness and incompetence?

Link to the decision. May as well call off the election now and save all the money and stress and stuff.

Another Principaled, Principle-Free Rightist

George Tenet, enabler of the Iraq fandango, could only find his principles after he gets his book contract.

Morally-challenged, to say the least.

This guy agrees with me.

And Maureen, on one of her good days, says it all for me:

Instead of George Tenet teaching at Georgetown University, George Tenet should be taught at Georgetown University.

There should be a course on government called “The Ultimate Staff Guy.” A morality saga about how much harm you can do as a go-along, get-along guy, spending so much time trying not to alienate the big cheese so he doesn’t can you that you miss the moment where you have to can him or lose your soul.

If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.

It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naïve president into invading Iraq with junk facts.

General Powell counted on Slam Dunk — a slender reed — to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage Mr. Cheney’s office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public.

Slam Dunk’s book tour is mesmerizing, in a horrifying way.

“The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing,” Slam said of Saddam on “Larry King Live” on Monday night, adding, “And he didn’t know we weren’t.” Mr. He-Man Tenet didn’t understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn’t take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?

If he was really running around with his hair on fire, knowing the Osama danger, shouldn’t he have set off alarms when W. and Vice went after Saddam instead of the real threat?

Many people in Washington snorted at his dramatic cloak-and-dagger description of himself to Larry King: “I worked in the shadows my whole life.”

He was not Jason Bourne, lurking in dangerous locales. He risked life and limb on Capitol Hill among the backstabbers and cutthroat bureaucrats — from whom he obviously learned a lot. He spent nine years on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, four as staff director. When Bill Clinton appointed him to run the C.I.A. in 1997, the profile of him in The Times was headlined “A Time to Reap the Rewards of Being Loyal.” It observed that old colleagues had said “he had an ability to make many different superiors feel at ease with him.”

Six former C.I.A. officials sent Mr. Tenet a letter via his publisher — no wonder we’re in trouble if spooks can’t figure out the old Head Spook’s home address — berating him for pretending he wrote his self-serving book partly to defend the honor of the agency and demanding that “at least half” of the profits be given to wounded soldiers and the families of dead soldiers (there needs to be a Son of Slam law). One of the signers, Larry Johnson, told CNN that Slam “is profiting from the blood of American soldiers.”

“By your silence you helped build the case for war,” the former C.I.A. officials wrote. “You betrayed the C.I.A. officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.”

They also said, “Although C.I.A. officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered Bin Laden an enemy & you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda.

“In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence.” They concluded that “your tenure as head of the C.I.A. has helped create a world that is more dangerous. & It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated.”

Thus endeth the lesson in our class on “The Ultimate Staff Guy.” If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off.

Link.

The Genius and Honesty of Our Beloved Leader

By the time the president wound his way back to the "consequences of success" in Iraq today, his goals seemed to be just a little more limited: "Slowly but surely, the truth will be known. Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success, as I described, is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."

Update: As Think Progress notes, the definition of success the president offered today sounds a lot like something John Kerry used to say -- that we'll never eliminated acts of terrorism, but that we've got to get to the point where terrorists are reduced to a "nuisance." Of course, when Kerry said that in 2004, Bush claimed that his challenger "fundamentally misunderstands the war against terror." "Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance," Bush said then. "Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying the networks, and spreading freedom and liberty."

Link.

What Wingnuts Think

According to my fan mail, it appears Sean Hannity criticized my essay on the Blacksburg massacre picked up by "CounterPunch," and his listeners somehow got my e-mail address. I have long wondered who Hannity's fans are, and at last I had the chance to find out. More than 150 emails arrived, most of which only cursed me or suggested I depart the country, preferably feet first. Others, though, suggested various tortures, including taking me apart with a pliers; and a few took the trouble to prescribe harsher punishments should I cross their path. One of the typical, albeit more profound letters, which I quote in its entirety, came from Ken Land of diceland@verizon.net, who said, "You are a piece of s---."(Note: as a believer in family values, I am not reprinting the s---- -word.)

Kenneth A. Ciullo, at kciullo@nyc.rr.com, wrote, "If I ever see you or hear you at a meeting, in public, at a private party, beware, I might be standing next to you, about to blow your f---ing twisted brains all over the wall." Other Hannity followers also explained why gun control won't work.

Some letters lifted my spirits. One from Noel Granite, at voyage923@yahoo.com, was cause to make me thank my lucky stars: "You are lucky I can't get my hands on you. Call it a threat, report it, do whatever you want but if you ever cross my path you will never be able to write again." (Noel, I am NOT reporting it. I like a guy who speaks his mind. Besides, the FBI must be so busy trying to find the perp of the 10/11 anthrax attacks on Congress, I don't want to hand them another tough nut to crack.)

From b.it@comcast.net came advice to "open my carotid artery and suck on a barrel for being such a piece of s--- low life that would write such a thing. ...Die filthy America hater. Just die." (Please note: this is NOT a death threat, merely a suicide suggestion, so I am only forwarding it to the State of Oregon.) Not one to be left out, Jeff Slegaitis at mtn_man_98034@yahoo.com, wrote, "Just quit breathing! Lick the snotty-end of my f--- -stick BITCH! (Note: as a believer in family values, I am not reprinting the f-word.)You live under the freedom provided by soldiers of past and present who served and DIED so you can write the S--- you write! Respect that or GET THE F--- OUT of our country." Actually, Jeff, I learned to write contributing to the Lackland Air Force Base "Tailspinner" during my military service. If my prose is insipid, blame them!

A number of readers objected to the fact I said negative things about the compassionate conservative in the White House. Jeff Geslison of Salt Lake City, Utah, Jgeslison@aol.com, put it bluntly: "WHAT THE F--- IS WRONG WITH YOU? (Again, as a believer in family values, I am NOT spelling out the f-word.) How dare you attack President Bush as you did. You are one sick mother f----r. You need to wake up and smell the coffee a-- hole. I've got a serious problem with you and the s--- you spew out of your mouth...! Grow up ass f---! Get a life and quit harassing our President." (Relax, Jeff, a president who won't heed Jim Baker won't listen to me.)

Anyway, the above should provide a representative sampling of the mental apparatus of Hannity's listeners and if that's what Hannity's advertisers want, as a believer in free enterprise, that's okay with me.

Link.

Mission Accomplished! A Blast from the Past

Four years ago, we were victorious. Our Beloved Leader told us so:

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment -- yet, it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it. Your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other, made this day possible. Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free. (Applause.)

Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect, and the world had not seen before. From distant bases or ships at sea, we sent planes and missiles that could destroy an enemy division, or strike a single bunker. Marines and soldiers charged to Baghdad across 350 miles of hostile ground, in one of the swiftest advances of heavy arms in history. You have shown the world the skill and the might of the American Armed Forces.

This nation thanks all the members of our coalition who joined in a noble cause. We thank the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, who shared in the hardships of war. We thank all the citizens of Iraq who welcomed our troops and joined in the liberation of their own country. And tonight, I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks, and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done. (Applause.)

The character of our military through history -- the daring of Normandy, the fierce courage of Iwo Jima, the decency and idealism that turned enemies into allies -- is fully present in this generation. When Iraqi civilians looked into the faces of our servicemen and women, they saw strength and kindness and goodwill. When I look at the members of the United States military, I see the best of our country, and I'm honored to be your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent. (Applause.)

In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom. Decades of lies and intimidation could not make the Iraqi people love their oppressors or desire their own enslavement. Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear. (Applause.)

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq. (Applause.)

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed. (Applause.)

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a Special Operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun. (Applause.)

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al Qaeda killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al Qaeda's senior operatives have been captured or killed. (Applause.)

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. (Applause.)

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got. (Applause.)

Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of American justice. (Applause.)

Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -- and will be confronted. (Applause.)

And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States of America. (Applause.)

Our commitment to liberty is America's tradition -- declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan's challenge to an evil empire. We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty. (Applause.)

The United States upholds these principles of security and freedom in many ways -- with all the tools of diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, and finance. We're working with a broad coalition of nations that understand the threat and our shared responsibility to meet it. The use of force has been -- and remains -- our last resort. Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our nation has a mission: We will answer threats to our security, and we will defend the peace. (Applause.)

Our mission continues. Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland. And we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike. (Applause.)

The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory. (Applause.)

Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight. (Applause.) After service in the Afghan -- and Iraqi theaters of war -- after 100,000 miles, on the longest carrier deployment in recent history, you are homeward bound. (Applause.) Some of you will see new family members for the first time -- 150 babies were born while their fathers were on the Lincoln. Your families are proud of you, and your nation will welcome you. (Applause.)

We are mindful, as well, that some good men and women are not making the journey home. One of those who fell, Corporal Jason Mileo, spoke to his parents five days before his death. Jason's father said, "He called us from the center of Baghdad, not to brag, but to tell us he loved us. Our son was a soldier."

Every name, every life is a loss to our military, to our nation, and to the loved ones who grieve. There's no homecoming for these families. Yet we pray, in God's time, their reunion will come.

Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and bring liberty to others. All of you -- all in this generation of our military -- have taken up the highest calling of history. You're defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope -- a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' -- and to those in darkness, 'be free.'"

Thank you for serving our country and our cause. May God bless you all, and may God continue to bless America. (Applause.)

Link.

Olbermann Shows Rudy the Love -- NONE

Since some indeterminable hour between the final dousing of the pyre at The World Trade Center, and the breaking of what Sen. Barack Obama has aptly termed "9/11 fever," it has been profoundly and disturbingly evident that we are at the center of one of history's great ironies.

Only in this America of the early 21st century could it be true that the man who was president during the worst attack on our nation and the man who was the mayor of the city in which that attack principally unfolded would not only be absolved of any and all blame for the unreadiness of their own governments, but, moreover, would thereafter be branded heroes of those attacks.

And now, that mayor -- whose most profound municipal act in the wake of that nightmare was to suggest the postponement of the election to select his own successor -- has gone even a step beyond these M.C. Escher constructions of history.

"If any Republican is elected president -- and I think obviously I would be best at this -- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it."

Insisting that the election of any Democrat would mean the country was "back ... on defense," Mr. Giuliani continued: "But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have. If we are on defense, we will have more losses and it will go on longer."

He said this with no sense of irony, no sense of any personal shortcomings, no sense whatsoever.

And if you somehow missed what he was really saying, somehow didn't hear the none-too-subtle subtext of "vote Democratic and die," Mr. Giuliani then stripped away any barrier of courtesy, telling Roger Simon of politico.com:

"America will be safer with a Republican president."

At least that Republican president under which we have not been safer has, even at his worst, maintained some microscopic distance between himself and a campaign platform that blithely threatened the American people with "casualties" if they, next year, elect a Democratic president -- or, inferring from Mr. Giuliani's flights of grandeur in New Hampshire -- even if they elect a different Republican.

How ... dare ... you, sir?

"How many casualties will we have?" -- this is the language of Osama bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability -- and worthiness -- to decide who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion -- rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications -- you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right ... but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic "softness" from a delusional vice president.

This is casualties on a partisan basis -- of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani's party knows all and will save those who have voted for it -- and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the messiah-of-the-moment.

Even to grant that that formula -- whether posed by Republican or Democrat -- is somehow not the most base, the most indefensible, the most un-American electioneering in our history -- even if it is somehow acceptable to assign "casualties" to one party and "safety" to the other -- even if we have become so profane in our thinking that it is part of our political vocabulary to view counter-terror as one party's property and the other's liability ... on what imaginary track record does Mr. Giuliani base his boast?

Which party held the presidency on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party held the mayoralty of New York on that date, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party assured New Yorkers that the air was safe and the remains of the dead recovered and not being used to fill potholes, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party wanted what the terrorists wanted -- the postponement of elections -- and to whose personal advantage would that have redounded, Mr. Giuliani?

Which mayor of New York was elected eight months after the first attack on the World Trade Center, yet did not emphasize counter-terror in the same city for the next eight years, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party had proposed to turn over the Department of Homeland Security to Bernard Kerik, Mr. Giuliani?

Who wanted to ignore and hide Kerik's organized crime allegations, Mr. Giuliani?

Who personally argued to the White House that Kerik need not be vetted, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party rode roughshod over Americans' rights while braying that it was actually protecting them, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party took this country into the most utterly backwards, utterly counterproductive, utterly ruinous war in our history, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party has been in office as more Americans were killed in the pointless fields of Iraq than were killed in the consuming nightmare of 9/11, Mr. Giuliani?

Drop this argument, sir.

You will lose it.

"The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us," Mr. Giuliani continued to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner last night. "Never, ever again will this country be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us, if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense."

There is no room for this.

This is terrorism itself, dressed up as counter-terrorism.

It is not warning, but bullying -- substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country's survival and the freedom of its people.

No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans' flat-footedness of Sept. 11, 2001. None has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming ambition. None is willing to say "I accuse," rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor.

And if it is somehow insufficient, that this is morally, spiritually, and politically wrong, to screech as Mr. Giuliani has screeched, there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Giuliani's argument of "Republicans equal life; Democrats equal death."

Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but last fall the electorate called them on it.

As doubtless they would call you on it, Mr. Giuliani.

Repeat -- go beyond -- Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006.

Call attention to the casualties on your watch, and your long, waking slumber in the years between the two attacks on the World Trade Center.

Become the candidate who runs on the Vote-For-Me-Or-Die platform.

Do a Joe McCarthy, a Lyndon Johnson, a Robespierre.

Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that "terror" is not just a matter of "casualties." It is, just as surely, a matter of the promulgation of fear.

Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival -- and you do bin Laden's work for him.

And we -- Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between -- We Americans! -- are sick to death of you and the other terror-mongers trying to frighten us into submission, into the surrender of our rights and our reason, into this betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight.

And, clarified and amplified, they are just as current now as they were when first he spoke them, 74 years ago.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" -- and those who would exploit our fear, for power and for their own personal, selfish, cynical, gain.

Good night, and good luck.

Link (emphases added for EZ reading :))

Life in These United States

So kids aren't allowed to have strong opinions anymore....

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

The youth's father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now.

[more]

Old News: Big Media Journalists Keep Dropping the Ball -- But in the 21st Century, that's their Job, not Reporting

Greg Palast:

IN AN E-MAIL uncovered and released by the House Judiciary Committee last month, Tim Griffin, once Karl Rove's right-hand man, gloated that "no [U.S.] national press picked up" a BBC Television story reporting that the Rove team had developed an elaborate scheme to challenge the votes of thousands of African Americans in the 2004 election.

Griffin wasn't exactly right. The Los Angeles Times did run a follow-up article a few days later in which it reported the findings. But he was essentially right. Most of the major U.S. newspapers and the vast majority of television news programs ignored the story even though it came at a critical moment just weeks before the election.

According to Griffin (who has since been dispatched to Arkansas to replace one of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department), the mainstream media rejected the story because it was wrong.

"That guy is a British reporter who accepted some false allegations and made a story up," he said.

Let's get one fact straight, Mr. Griffin. "That guy" is not a British reporter. I am an American living abroad, putting investigative reports on the air from London for the British Broadcasting Corp.

I'm not going to argue with Rove's minions about the validity of our reporting, which led the news in Britain. But I can tell you this: To the extent that it was ignored in the United States, it wasn't because the report was false. It was because it was complicated and murky and because it required a lot of time and reporting to get to the bottom of it. In fact, not one U.S. newsperson even bothered to ask me or the BBC for the data and research we had painstakingly done in our effort to demonstrate the existence of the scheme.

The truth is, I knew that a story like this one would never be reported in my own country. Because investigative reporting — the kind Jack Anderson used to do regularly and which was carried in hundreds of papers across the country, the kind of muckraking, data-intensive work that takes time and money and ruffles feathers — is dying.

I've been through this before, too many times. Take this investigative report, also buried in the U.S.: Back in December 2000, I received two computer disks from the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Analysis of the data, plus documents that fell my way, indicated that Harris' office had purged thousands of African Americans from Florida's voter rolls as "felons." Florida now admits that many of these voters were not in fact felons. Nevertheless, the blacklisting helped cost Al Gore the White House.

I reported on the phony felon purge in Britain's Guardian and Observer and on the BBC while Gore was still in the race, while the count was still on.

Yet the story of the Florida purge never appeared in the U.S. daily papers or on television. Until months later, that is, after the Supreme Court had decided the election, when it was picked up by the Washington Post and others.

U.S. papers delayed the story until the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report saying our Guardian/BBC story was correct: Innocents lost their vote. At that point, protected by the official imprimatur, American editors felt it safe enough to venture out with the story. But by then, George W. Bush could read it from his chair in the Oval Office.

Again and again, I see this pattern repeated. Until there is some official investigation or allegation made by a politician, there is no story.

Or sometimes the media like to cover the controversy, not the substance, preferring an ambiguous and unsatisfying "he said, she said" report. Safe reporting, but not investigative.

I know some of the reasons why investigative reporting is on the decline. To begin with, investigations take time and money. A producer from "60 Minutes," watching my team's work on another voter purge list, said: "My God! You'd have to make hundreds of calls to make this case." In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that.

Are there still aggressive, talented investigative reporters in the U.S.? There are hundreds. I'll mention two: Seymour Hersh, formerly of the New York Times, and Robert Parry, formerly of the Associated Press, who uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. The operative word here is "formerly." Parry tells me that he can no longer do this kind of investigative work within the confines of a U.S. daily newsroom.

One of the biggest disincentives to doing investigative journalism is that it jeopardizes future access to politicians and corporate elite. During the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, the testimony of Judith Miller and other U.S. journalists about the confidences they were willing to keep in order to maintain access seemed to me sadly illuminating.

Expose the critters and the door is slammed. That's not a price many American journalists are willing to pay.

It's different in Britain. After the 2000 election, when Harris' lawyer refused to respond to our evidence, my BBC producer made sure I chased him down the hall waving the damning documents. That's one sure way to end "access."

Reporters in Britain must adhere to extraordinarily strict standards of accuracy because there is no Bill of Rights, no "freedom of the press" to provide cover against lawsuits. Further, the British government fines reporters who make false accusations and jails others who reveal "official secrets."

I've long argued that Britain needs a 1st Amendment right to press freedom. It could, of course, borrow ours. We don't use it.

Link.