Libby caught red-handed

And the Daily News has done a MUCH better job of reporting on Plamegate than the compromised New York Times.

Scooter notes ID'd CIA spy
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Handwritten notes taken by the CIA show Vice President Cheney's top aide knew the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame a month before her cover was blown.

It appears to be the first known document in the hands of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that directly contradicts Lewis (Scooter) Libby's claim he learned from reporters in July 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee.

Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff, has been indicted for perjury in the CIA leak investigation.

Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, was a Bush critic dispatched to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to see if Iraq had shopped for uranium. "A CIA employee assigned to provide daily intelligence briefs to the Vice President and Libby has handwritten notes indicating that Libby referred to 'Joe Wilson' and 'Valerie Wilson' by those names in conversation with the briefer on June 14, 2003," Fitzgerald wrote in a recently unsealed brief.

The filing suggests Cheney may have been present when Libby griped to his CIA briefer about agency officials slamming the veep in the press.

Seven officials have testified that Libby raised the CIA spy with them before columnist Robert Novak outed her. In the filing, Fitzgerald also revealed that his investigators also confiscated computers.

Meanwhile, a judge overseeing Libby's perjury trial ruled yesterday that Libby won't get any copies of the secret daily intelligence briefings for Cheney and President Bush.

The Wide World of Sports

Not political, but too good to resist:

A Romanian Soccer Club has traded a player for 33 Pounds of Meat.

It gets better. The team that traded the guy for the meat got gypped, because he retired immediately after the trade:

Romanian second division soccer club UT Arad sold a player in exchange for 33 pounds of meat, local sport daily Pro Sport reported on Monday.

However, the deal turned out badly for fourth-division Regal Horia, because defender Marius Cioara decided to end his soccer career and find a job in agriculture or construction in Spain.

“We are upset because we lost twice — firstly because we lost a good player and secondly because we lost our team’s food for a whole week,” a Regal Horia official was quoted as saying by the daily in its electronic edition.

I guess when your team trades you for 33 pounds of meat, it's probably a hint that it's time to retire.

34%

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high. - CBS

He's looking up at Richard Nixon.

I suspect that the media pundits are actually having a hard time getting their collective little brains around that. They are so wedded to the script that "Bush is a popular wartime President" that they just can't process the fact that that he is one of the most UNpopular President EVER.

Why doesn't Bush support the troops?

A Kos diary draws attention to a New York Times article (which plebes like you and me are no longer allowed to see) about an actual poll of the soldiers:

A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq -- and soon.

The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"

Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."

By a two-to-one ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.

This first systematic look at the views of the U.S. troops on the ground suggests that our present strategy in Iraq is failing badly. The troops overwhelmingly don't want to "stay the course," and they don't seem to think the American strategy can succeed.

Short story: EVERYBODY knows that Bush's policy is a total failure, with the sole exception of a handful of pathetic sycophants for whom Tin God Bush can do no wrong.

Atrios sez:

It's not racist to object to us cozying up with truly shitty governments. I imagine the people of the UAE might be fine people. But the people who run the country are just a bunch of shitty human rights abusing suffrage opposing terrorist hanging out with assholes. The relevant question is whether these people should be running significant port operations. Link.

But we don't DO that.

We don't torture. We just pay 300,000 grand to settle lawsuits about. Because we don't torture.

The federal government has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who was among dozens of Muslim men swept up in the New York area after 9/11, held for months in a federal detention center in Brooklyn and deported after being cleared of links to terrorism.

The settlement, filed in federal court late yesterday, is the first the government has made in a number of lawsuits charging that noncitizens were abused and their constitutional rights violated in detentions after the terror attacks. - NY Times

Happy Fat Tuesday.

Send good thoughts out to New Orleans today. And even better, some money.

Come on and rise up.

1300. One week.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 -- Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

This is sickening.

And what's most sickening is that the Bushites were told that this would happen and refused to listen.

Poor planning

Iraq - brought to you by the same incompetents who watched New Orleans drown.

WASHINGTON - Poor prewar planning left the United States without enough skilled workers to efficiently rebuild Iraq's economy and public works, according to a report issued Monday.

Thanks to inadequate planning, the report said, early occupation officials lacked enough reconstruction staffers who knew what they were doing.

"The U.S. government workforce planning for Iraq's reconstruction suffered from a poorly structured, ad-hoc personnel management processes," the report said, calling hiring practices "haphazard."

Coast Guard warned Bush

WASHINGTON - Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration weeks ago that it could not determine whether a United Arab Emirates-based company seeking a stake in some U.S. port operations might support terrorist operations.

Well this shows - AGAIN - that Bush doesn't care about what the experts have to say, and he doesn't care about the facts. He just cares about doing whatever he damned well pleases. And facts, sense and logic be damned.

And ALSO remember - Bush claimed that HE DIDN'T KNOW about the port deal.

A question

IF - as the conservatives keep telling us - the media are liberal...


...then how come the conservatives think that reinstating the fairness doctrine will lead to LESS conservative programming?

Should Republicans be allowed to adopt?

Since Republican State Senators in Ohio are proposing a ban on allowing gay people to adopt kids, State Senator Bob Hagan has a bill of his own:

Memo from Hagan to Senate
To: All Senate Members
From: Senator Robert Hagan
Re: Co-Sponsorship Request
Date: February 22, 2006

I intend to introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents. Policymakers in Columbus have ignored this growing threat to our communities for far too long. My legislation is modeled after a bill recently introduced in the Ohio House by Rep. Ron Hood (R-Ashville via Carrollton), which would prohibit homosexual, bisexual and transgender people from adopting children. It is unclear at this point whether Rep. Hood supports my legislation, though I remain hopeful.

Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves, and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.

In addition, I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that, ``Well, it's just plain boring most of the time.'' In fact, one adopted child raised in a fiercely partisan Republican household in suburban Cincinnati described his upbringing as ``18 years of hellish terror.'' ``A nightmare I haven't yet awoken from,'' said a 25-year-old Republican adoptee that chose to remain nameless.

If you are interested in co-sponsoring this legislation, please feel free to contact my office.

My kind of Senator.

Heh.

Thank you, Harper's

Found it on kos. I intend to buy the magazine, to help give them a circulation boost, and I suggest that you do, too. This is their website, and it tells you where you can buy it, or you can order one if there's no place close.

For those in the New York Area, Harpers' editor Lewis Lapham will be holding a forum on the question of impeachment, with John Conyers, John Dean and Elizabeth Holtzman, on Thursday, March 2, 8:00 p.m. at the Town Hall 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10063. Ten bucks.

The UAE - a country we can trust.

From the comments:

I can't understand why you would question the pres on this one, after all the UAE government has always been forthright and honest with the USA, especially concerning our laws.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050303-123758-6645r.htm

Monty Python's The Meaning of Bush

by David W. Jenkins III, from Project for the Old American Century. Go ye and read.

Excerpt:

Admit it. You laughed and you stood up and clapped or you thrust your fist in the air saying “yes!” while you watched that funeral. One by one, they came to the front of the church and unleashed upon the Boy King a most brutal verbal beating. People in that church and those watching on television rose to their feet in approval as the man who would be king was beaten to a pulp.

“Is he dead yet?”

“Well, he’s not dead but he’s not at all well.”

Abortion

You've probably heard that South Dakota is about to pass a law banning ALL abortion, with the sole exception of the necessity to save the life of the mother (there is NO exception for rape or incest). The idea is to set up a Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade.

I doubt that such a challenge will be successful, simply because the lunatics in South Dakota have made the law so extreme that even many abortion opponents would reject it.

But the Democrats have got to step up and attack the issue because THEY ARE THE MAINSTREAM on it. MANY people have reservations about abortion. But relatively FEW think it should be illegal. Because making something illegal is NOT the same thing as making a statement that you don't approve of people doing something. It's a statement that you think people should be thrown in jail for doing something.

And we should ask all lawmakers - Republican and Democrat - if they believe that women who have abortions and doctors who perform abortions should be thrown in jail. Because that what it means to make it illegal means.

If the right-wingers want to play games with the abortion issue, force them to say EXACTLY what they mean and EXACTLY what they think should be done about it.

Make them stop playing games.

Delay. Not the repulsive Texas Senator - a TIME delay.

Dubai Company Delays New Role at Six U.S. Ports

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — The Dubai company at the center of a political furor over its plans to take over some terminal operations at six American ports said Thursday night that it planned to close the deal next week, but that it would "not exercise control" over its new operations in the United States while the Bush administration tried to calm opposition in Congress.

Note: This does NOT mean that they gave up. Bush and the UAE are just buying time, and hoping for a another opportunity in the near future.

Bush considers it URGENT for these guys to run our ports. He doesn't think it's "acceptable" - he thinks its a MUST.

I'm not sure EXACTLY why he thinks that (although I have theories), but this deal is for the purpose of benefitting HIM, not America, and when it comes to lining his own pockets and empowering himself, Geroge W. Bush has NO principles and NOTHING that he will stick at.

NY Port Authority will SUE

Well, THIS should tighten the elastic on George W.'s shorts:

NEW YORK -- The Port Authority said Thursday it has security concerns over a plan for a Dubai-based firm to take over operations at a Port Newark container terminal and it will file a lawsuit to terminate its lease at the port.

Better and Better

Bin Laden May Have UAE Ties
Thursday, February 23, 2006


(AP) WASHINGTON — The United States raised concerns with the United Arab Emirates seven years ago about possible ties between officials in that country and Usama bin Laden, according to a section of the Sept. 11 commission's report that details a possible missed opportunity to kill the Al Qaeda leader.

Republicans and Democrats alike are raising concerns this week about the Bush administration's decision to let a UAE-operated company take over operations at six American ports, in part citing ties the Sept. 11 hijackers had to the Persian Gulf country.

President Bush has called the UAE a close partner on the War on Terror since Sept. 11, and his aides have listed numerous examples of the country's help.

The Sept. 11 commission's report released last year also raised concerns UAE officials were directly associating with bin Laden as recently as 1999.

The report states U.S. intelligence believed that bin Laden was visiting an area in the Afghan desert in February 1999 near a hunting camp used by UAE officials, and that the U.S. military planned a missile strike.

Intelligence from local tribal sources indicated "bin Laden regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis," the report said.