All of us knew it but couldn't prove it. Now we can prove it. Newly declassified documents published at the National Security Archive prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bush administration planned to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq as early as January, 2001, and were making strategic plans and resource allocations as early as November, 2001.

January 30, 2001 – Bush administration principals (agency heads) meet for the
first time and discuss the Middle East, including Bush’s intention to disengage from the Israel-Palestine peace process and “How Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush directs Rumsfeld and JCS chairman Hugh Shelton to examine military options for Iraq; CIA director George Tenet is directed to improve intelligence on the country. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke are both struck by the emphasis on confronting Iraq, an aim consistent with Rumsfeld’s hiring of Wolfowitz and later Feith, well known for their bellicosity on the issue, for high-level Pentagon
positions. (Source: EBB/Franks Timeline (PDF))

When did we invade Afghanistan? Oh, that's right...it was October 7, 2001.

Walking through these documents makes it clear that the Bush Administration -- from Day One -- intended to invade Iraq at some point in their reign of terror. Here is a memo (PDF) dated January 23, 2001 outlining the "Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy". This was requested by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney before taking office, presumably as a way to justify policy formation around aggressive US efforts for "regime change" in Iraq.

This memo (PDF) written on November 27, 2001 should send cold chills up and down your spine. It is a list of talking points from Rumsfeld to Franks about how to handle a run-up to a full-scale Iraq invasion. November 27th, 51 days after Afghanistan was invaded. And check this talking point:

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UPDATE: Google says the Times (and Bloomberg, and the WSJ) is wrong and they remain committed to an open internet. The Times says they stand by the story.

Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil"? You can forget about that:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service.

Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals court decision in April.

This will have huge ripple effects on the netroots, because how are we going to compete with million-dollar astroturf organization when they have to money to push activist blogs into oblivion?

Washington Post Does First Hit Piece On Rice

In an unusually pointed critique of Rice's failings as a NSA and her management shortcomings, check out this story in Tuesday's Washington Post by Glenn Kessler and Thomas Ricks. What is interesting here is that Ricks covers the Pentagon, while Kessler gets stuff from Bob Woodward, who is close to Powell. And note that George Tenet may be trashing Rice in his upcoming memoirs.

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This is a block buster. Former Sen.(D)Bob Graham, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee told David Shuster that he never was briefed about waterboarding by the CIA on MSNBC. He also said that he was never allowed to take real notes about the CIA briefings, but he did log the topics and the amount of times he was briefed. They don't match up with the CIA's version. And of course, George "Slam Dunk" Tenet's outfit never was wrong or misled us before. James Fallows backs up Graham's honesty and integrity by the way. And Graham also sees the real motives behind the smearing of Pelosi. As he says it's an attempt to shift the blame away the Bush administration and their use of torture.

Graham: David, when I was briefed about three weeks after The Speaker, the subject "waterboarding" never came up. Nor did the treatment of Abu-Zubaydah or any other specific detainee.

Shuster: And that's significant because by the time of your briefing and the Speaker's briefing we now know that Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times, so again was their a requirement, was it incumbent on the CIA to tell you as the Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee or a ranking member, was there an obligation on them to tell you what was going on?

Graham: Yes, they're obligated to tell the full Intelligence Committee not just the leadership. This was the same time, within the same week in fact that the CIA was submitting their National Intelligence Estimate or NIE report on WMD's in IRAQ which proved so erroneous that we went to war and that have had thousands of persons killed and injured as a result of misinformation.

David, I think fundamentally what's happening is there's an attempt underway to try and shift the discussion away from what's really important and that is did the US use torture? Was that within the law? Who authorized and what were the consequences of that. Those are the important issues. Whether The Speaker or anybody else knew about it is frankly sort of off on the edges.

Graham blasts the CIA for also misleading us in the IRAQ WAR, but they would never try to mislead Pelosi or smear her now. He also calls for a Truth Commission on Torture. Can Republicans now keep denying that we need a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of all this torture business?

Greg Sargent broke this story:

Former Senator Bob Graham, who received a classified briefing on terror detainees during the same month in the fall of 2002 as Nancy Pelosi, was not briefed about the use of either waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques during the meeting, he claimed in an interview with me.

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Following up on the Ron Suskind bombshell in his new book, I think the Medal of Freedom winner, you know -- the Slam Dunk King -- wouldn't forget this kind of information.

SUSKIND: What we now know from this investigation is that a secret mission was conducted in which a British manager, intelligence agent, met with the head of Iraqi intelligence in a secret location in Amman, Jordan. And what the Iraqi intelligence chief told the British-and essentially the Americans, because we're all in this together-is that there were no WMD in Iraq. And what that meant is that we knew everything that became so obvious by the summer after the invasion. And the president made a decision essentially to ignore that intelligence...

NPR: We have called key players in Ron Suskind's account...George Tenet says the Iraqi failed to persuade, and a White House spokesman adds that any information the Iraqi may have provided was, quote, "immaterial."

Jonathan has much more in the post.

Today through Wednesday, progressive talk show host Stephanie Miller gets her chance to shine in Imus's old slot on MSNBC. If this morning's show was any indication, she could easily impact their ratings in the same way Keith Olberman has.

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Former CIA officer Larry Johnson was Stephanie's guest this morning to give his reaction to George Tenet's appearance last night on 60 Minutes. Larry and a group of former intelligence officers have written a letter to Tenet demanding that he donate a portion of the proceeds from his new book to the families of soldiers who have died in Iraq and to give back the Medal of Freedom he was given by George Bush.

Watch the clip and if you like what you see, send a note to General Manager Dan Abrams and VP Bill Wolff at MSNBC. Let them know that you'd like to see Stephanie Miller on MSNBC in the mornings instead of another Fox wannabe like this guy. Remember, be polite. Personally, I would tune in five days a week....

Think Progress :

Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." And most Americans have also heard of the so-called "Phoenix Memo" that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the "possibility of a coordinated effort" by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward's new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001:

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and "sounded the loudest warning" to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.

Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, "They felt the brushoff."

Read on...

(h/t DtMP)

Instead of watching the fiction known as Path to 9/11 last night, I opted for something a little more realistic last night – the FOX Sunday night line up. Even though I didn’t watch it, C&L contributor Mike did and he has supplied us with the big scene that tries to put all the blame for Osama on Sandy Berger.

Download | play – WMV Download | play – QT

As Mike writes:

I think ABC forgot the "docu" part of the "docu-drama." The only documentary footage is of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. If part two follows suit, we should expect to see a "dramatization" of President Bush grabbing Tenet by the shoulders and shaking him while screaming, "I WILL NOT REST UNTIL WE GET BIN LADEN!"

I did end up watching the opening credits to see what kind of disclaimers ABC put out, and it was very vague. ABC basically went ahead as scheduled and proceeded with their political smear.

One interesting point I did notice was the lack of any sponsor mention at the beginning. This was not the first time a network ran a show uninterrupted, but when they have done this in the past they made damn sure you knew who was footing the bill. Path to 9/11 – nothing. So who is footing the bill for this $40 million production and why don’t they want to be mentioned?

Can you believe this? The man who George Bush pleaded with to go to the UN to sell them and us the war.

Robert Sheer:

"On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department’s top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us....read on"

Jane says:

Everyone in the administration knew as of January, 2003 that the claim was hogwash. George Bush knew the truth when he authorized Scooter Libby to leak classified information to mislead Judy Miller into believing it was true. It took Joe Wilson’s editorial to force George Tenet to finally admit, on July 11, that the eleven words should never have been included in Bush’s speech. ---Powell needs to be telling us why he didn’t have the courage to say what needed to be said, what Joe Wilson finally did....read on

David Shuster reported this morning on MSNBC that George J. Tenet said he didn't tell the Vice President or the VP's office about Wilson nor was he asked about this by investigators two years ago. Who is lying and who is telling the truth? I do know that there is a lot of lying going around and it's apparent they are turning on each other.

Merry Fitzmas!