Cheney implies he declassified Plame's identity.

My thoughts this Election Day. Comment if you remember too!

I REMEMBER wars of aggression based on lies.

I REMEMBER The Patriot Act.

I REMEMBER "Free Speech Zones".

I REMEMBER the color-coded "traffic light of fear" the Bush Administration ratcheted up every time they felt themselves sinking in the polls.

I REMEMBER fake news reports being produced by the government using actors pretending to be reporters, using fake names, distributed to as if it were real news.

I REMEMBER the outing of an undercover CIA agent by our own Vice President, and the enormous cover-up to follow.

I REMEMBER that prior to the last Administration, gasoline had NEVER sold for more than $1.75/gallon, and was up over $4 before they were through.

I REMEMBER the collapse of Wall Street, mass foreclosures, and the bailout of thousands of banks across the U.S. in the greatest economic crisis since The Great Depression.

...and there's no way in hell I'm going back.
 

Bush White House admits Iraq nuclear claims were bogus two months after invasion (July, 2003).

Prior to Iraq invasion, Economist is ridiculed for predicting $2Trillion dollar war and $75 oil.

Dr. Hans Blix, former chief of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) between 1999 and 2003, was called to testify at the British Iraq War Inquiry board. He was discussing the findings of the inspection teams in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003 - findings that weren't released until June 2003, months after the invasion began.

Asked about the inspections he oversaw between November 2002 and 18 March 2003 - when his team was forced to pull out of Iraq on the eve of the war - he said he was "looking for smoking guns" but did not find any.

While his team discovered prohibited items such as missiles beyond the permitted range, missile engines and a stash of undeclared documents, he said these were "fragments" and not "very important" in the bigger picture.

"We carried out about six inspections per day over a long period of time.

"All in all, we carried out about 700 inspections at different 500 sites and, in no case, did we find any weapons of mass destruction."

Although Iraq failed to comply with some of its disarmament obligations, he added it "was very hard for them to declare any weapons when they did not have any".

It's a popular meme for the conservatives in our country to claim that Saddam didn't allow the inspectors back into the country prior to the 2003 invasion, but in fact he did. The teams had a little over three months before they withdrew, and they only withdrew because they were warned that Iraq was about to become a war zone. It's also a popular meme for the conservatives to even deny that WMDs were the principle justification for the US invasion. The record shows otherwise.

I'm not particularly thrilled by Blix's behavior in 2002-2003. I think he was extremely passive, that he could have done much more prior to the invasion to alert the media and other countries that Iraq really had no WMD program to either threaten Western interests or to arm terrorists. But, like many scientists, he preferred to wait until all the data were in and a full report could be staffed for the United Nations. Now he spends his time trying to make up for that lapse in judgment.

Interestingly, the New York Times covers the same Blix testimony without using the words "weapons of mass destruction" at all. The editors there must have forgotten the paper's history in that department. Or maybe they're just embarrassed by it all.

People often comment that the British government has one big advantage over the US government in running its operations. They have many more professional government officials rather than political appointees, which offers them a much more stable and consistent public service bureaucracy as administrations change. Certainly it seems to enable their public officials to be much more honest about, oh, say whether Saddam Hussein was a real threat to the West. Here's Eliza Manningham-Buller, a.k.a. "M" of MI5:

The former MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller today delivered a withering assessment of the case for war against Iraq, saying it had significantly increased the terrorist threat to Britian.

Giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Manningham-Buller said the threat posed by Saddam Hussein before the US-led invasion in 2003 was low.

But the toppling of Saddam allowed Osama bin Laden to gain a stronghold in Iraq and radicalised young Muslims in Britain, she said.

In evidence that undermined the case for war presented by the former prime minister Tony Blair, she was asked whether it was feared Saddam could have linked terrorists to weapons of mass destruction, facilitating their use against the west.

"It certainly wasn't of concern in either the short term or the medium term to me or my colleagues," she replied.

And it shouldn't have been of concern to the United States leadership. Some people think I'm a broken record on this topic. But until the CheneyBush administration officials admit that invading Iraq was a complete boondoggle and the Republican party admits that it was not an adventure for democracy and glory, then I'm going to keep on saying it. The US invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with WMDs, although that was the main drum being banged by CheneyBush officials (and yes, some misguided Democrats) between June 2002 and March 2003.

The BBC has a longer article on this same story.

R. James Woolsey, former CIA director, neocon, and now director of a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (yes, it's as Orwellian as you think it is), is joined by Rebeccah Heinrichs, a congressional staffer and long time missile defense proponent, as they take to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to warn us that President Obama's $4 billion missile defense NATO shield, planned to be located in Poland and the Czech Republic, will not shield U.S. territory from the Iranian nuclear ballistic missiles (that don't exist yet). He warns, "If Tehran were to achieve a nuclear missile capability, it could hold American cities hostage—unless, that is, the U.S. builds a robust and comprehensive ballistic missile defense." (unfortunately behind the WSJ subscription page)

Now, for some reason, Woolsey doesn't think that Iran's leaders either understand or follow the whole "overwhelming and devastating response" part of our rather large nuclear arsenal, but wait! There's another reason why we need that U.S. missile defense shield!!

If Iran were to launch a nuclear-armed missile from a ship near one of our coasts—say a primitive SCUD from a fishing boat—we would have very little warning and no protection. Defending the homeland against this threat would require a substantial deployment in and near the U.S. of the type of mobile systems that the administration plans to deploy in Europe.

Further, if the Iranians were to detonate even a primitive nuclear warhead over the United States, it could send out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) destroying the electric grid and electrical systems across a wide swath of U.S. territory. Iranian military writings show the mullahs recognize the potential of this kind of attack. Depending on where it occurred and how large the warhead was, an EMP attack could cause large-scale fatalities and unimaginable economic devastation. Defending against this kind of threat requires defensive systems that can intercept an attacking ballistic missile while it is still ascending. But the Obama administration has no specific plans to develop and deploy ascent-phase interceptors in Europe.

Wow, if Missile Defense Agency hadn't been developing boost/ascent, midcourse, and terminal defense segments of its $9-10 billion/year ballistic missile defense system, I might be concerned, but in fact it is. The Obama plan is in fact to position SM-3 missiles in Europe as part of the NATO theater missile defense plan, which is all that Iran can threaten, assuming that it does in fact develop a nuclear weapon, minaturize it to fit on a ballistic missile, test it, and then launch it toward Europe in a state of suicidal vengence. It's all open-source, Mr. Woolsey, so please, reposition the tin-foil cap and take another slug of whiskey to steel your courage.

But really, here we go with the "Iranian nuclear missile being fired from a ship off the United States, resulting in the Collapse of Civilization As We Know It." Honestly, it smacks of the most ignorant, fear-based attacks on the American public that I know. It's an argument that's all too easy to counter, and yet the conservative Repubs delight in pulling this one out of their arsenal. Or is it just arse?

UPDATE: Wisco helpfully provides a public link to the WSJ article.

For some strange unexplicable reason, Thomas Donnelly (AEI defense analyst, former PNAC deputy executive director) felt compelled to endorse Sarah Palin's insights on national security issues in an article in the Washington Post Thursday. I resisted the urge to ruin a casual Friday, so here it is today. Tom, what the HELL where you thinking? Were you in fact thinking at all?

"In the conservative ranks and within the party, she's really quite a crucial piece in this puzzle," said Tom Donnelly, a defense fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "She's got both political and tea-party/small-government bona fides, but she also has a lot of credibility in advocating for military strength."

This was in response to Palin's commentary on SecDef Gates' attempts to control a defense budget that has doubled over the past decade, that has seen acquisition projects skyrocket in terms of cost and schedule delays, that (combined with combat operations) has limited our ability to modernize the force.

"Something has to be done urgently to stop the out-of-control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine, and no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny," she said. "We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military. If we lose wars, if we lose the ability to deter adversaries, if we lose the ability to provide security for ourselves and for our allies, we risk losing all that makes America great. That is a price we cannot afford to pay."
-------------
"Secretary Gates recently spoke about the future of the U.S. Navy. He said we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers. He went on to ask, 'Do we really need . . . more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?' " Palin said. "Well, my answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and yes, we do, because we must."

Honestly, this level of rhetoric might not sound foolish coming out of the mouth of a 12-year old, but this is someone who purports herself to be a national leader in the conservative movement. The ignorance involved in her statement should clang like lead weights in any serious defense analyst's mind. America's greatness isn't solely based on its military power - we've been able to succeed as a nation despite setbacks like Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, and yes, Iraq and Afghanistan today. But really, what puts the icing on the cake is that simplistic mush "we can and yes, we do" spend billions of dollars on modernizing military forces "because we must."

If anything disqualifies Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for national office, it ought to be that statement, that she cannot fathom a situation where we have to reduce the defense budget from $700 billion a year back down into the $300-400 billion a year range. She must have no understanding about the need for defense acquisition reform or to develop a defense budget while recognizing the need to fund the rest of the federal government, because no one who has seriously examined defense issues would make such an idiotic statement.

So, Mr. Donnelly, when you say that Sarah Palin has "a lot of credibility in advocating for military strength," were you misquoted, drunk, half-awake, or merely being a syphocant for the current darling of the Tea Party movement? Do you want to lose all of your own credibility in discussing defense issues within the context of the conservative movement? Or were you just reinforcing the Republican party's usual lack of seriousness when it comes to discussing national security issues?

The DOD's press service announced that former SecDef Rumsfeld was honored last Friday with a ceremonial portrait that will hang in the halls of the Pentagon, warning all future SecDefs about the dangers of arrogance and hubris. Okay, I made that last part up. But I couldn't help a slight reflex gag as a bit of vomit threatened to back up into my mouth as I read SecDef Gate's praise of his predecessor.

Both of his official portraits will hang in the Pentagon. The newest, painted by Steven Polson and unveiled today, shows Rumsfeld at his stand-up desk with a picture of first-responders and soldiers unfurling the flag over the still-burning Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001.

The unveiling ceremony was a veritable who’s who. Former defense secretaries William Cohen and Frank Carlucci attended. Retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers and retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace – who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff alongside Rumsfeld - were there with their wives. Former deputy secretaries Paul Wolfowitz and Gordon England, retired Air Force Gen. Joe Ralston, retired Navy Adm. Vern Clark, retired Navy Adm. Ed Giambastiani, former senior Pentagon correspondent Charlie Aldinger, and many more friends attended the event.

As one wise old man once said, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." I'll spare you my usual angy, spitting diatribe about how Rumsfeld ruined the Army's force structure, wripped apart its modernization efforts, fed its troops into the sausage machine we lovingly call "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and kept yammering about how the WMDs were "over there, north, south, west, somewhere in Iraq." History will define what a villain this man was, and make an example of his insanely poor dictatorship of US defense efforts.

But I do take exception with the poor research of Jim Garamone, writing for the American Forces Press Service. The photo of the Army soldiers and workers unfurling an American flag against the side of the Pentagon was not taken on September 12, 2001. It was unfurled in a ceremony on October 11, 2001 (see the photo in the Wiki site). I know that because I was there in the bleachers along with a few thousand others, trying to understand what just happened a month ago. I was there on September 12, 2001, also. They were still a little busy that day, searching for bodies and putting out fires, to be unfurling huge flags on the sides of the Pentagon. The failure of this DOD news service to catch this error really kind of pisses me off.

But no, we have to smile fake smiles and pretend that we honor this jackass, this "honorable man," because of the "heroic" efforts he undertook after terrorists hit the Pentagon. Enough said. I'm wasting time on this ass and I have better things to do. "The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, So let it be with Caesar."

UPDATE: I can be a real asshole sometimes. Let me apologize to Jim Garamone for failing to do the necessary research on the photo in the Rumsfeld portrait. Had I spent a few minutes more on this post, I would have found out that, yeah, they did hang the flag on Sep 12, 2001. My irrational anger at Rumsfeld blinded me to this obvious point.

Talking Points Memo notes that former SecState Condi Rice and former NSA Stephen Hadley are joining forces to create a" strategic consulting" firm. May I suggest that this is probably an even bigger farce than former FEMA Director Michael Brown's decision to start a consulting firm on disaster preparedness following his stellar performance during Katrina?

I really want to know what clients these two take on, so that I can relentlessly mock their stupidity for hiring the dynamic duo who brought us into the adventures of invading Iraq and Afghanistan without any idea of the resources required or any form of an exit strategy.

UPDATE: In the comments, jenne corrects me:

I think the Cheney "Keep America Safe" Institute is a bigger farce than both Brown and Condi's thingies put together.

OUCH. And touche'

SHORTER Bob Kagan: "Obama's being a pussy about confronting China's massive military build-up."

China's defense budget in 2008 was $57 billion, or just under one-tenth of the US defense budget. In 2009, China will spend around $70 billion - or just over one-tenth of the US defense budget. It's a funny thing, Bob - when nation-states have a booming economy and a large geographical area with lots of well-armed neighbors, they tend to buy more weapon systems (the US government being the exception, we buy more weapons whether or not the economy is good). Neocons view this as "threatening" and want to negotiate over the barrel of a gun. Realists understand it as a natural progression of an evolving superpower and want to negotiate as a potential partner.

The thing that's been completely left out of the Dick Cheney "how dare anyone dither when it comes to blowing up our enemies and rewarding our torturers" speech is the context in which that speech was given.

The Villagers don't like to talk about specifics when it comes to the beltway dinner circuit at which so many of them feed.

This dinner, minimum $500.00 a plate, was to given by the self-described, and I am not making this up, "non-partisan organization" The Center for Security Policy. Dick Cheney was speaking at their 20th anniversary dinner, at which he received the, hold back your breakfast now, "Keeper of the Flame" award. Cheney was introduced by, among others, Don Rumsfeld, a former awardee himself. You know who else has this prize sitting on a shelf in their well-appointed Georgetown dens?

Joe Lieberman

Duncan Hunter

James Inhofe

Paul Wolfowitz

Newt Gingrich

Ronald Reagan

Jon Kyl

Caspar Weinberger

Okay, then. So why would anyone not expect a bowl full of neocon crazy in his acceptance speech? He's among friends.

Why can't the press be honest? And how, at this point in history, has that become a completely rhetorical question?

crossposted from Blue Gal

As the United States ponders its next steps following this week's multiparty talks with Iran over its nuclear program, many of the cast of characters from Tehran fiascos past are coming out of the woodwork to weigh in once again. On Friday, the pardoned Iran/Contra architect Elliot Abrams emerged on Fox News to suggest that Iranians "would not rally around the flag" in response to a U.S. military strike. Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen surfaced on the pages of the Wall Street Journal to warn "change in Iran requires a change in government." Of course, Ledeen conveniently omitted his own nefarious role in the Iran/Contra scheme of the Reagan administration, a which policy consisted of giving the mullahs in Iran a cake, a Bible - and U.S. arms.

The Iran-Contra scandal, as you'll recall, almost laid waste to the Reagan presidency. Desperate to free U.S. hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon, President Reagan provided weapons Tehran badly needed in its long war with Saddam Hussein (who, of course, was backed by the United States). In a clumsy and illegal attempt to skirt U.S. law, the proceeds of those sales were then funneled to the contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And as the New York Times recalled, Reagan's fiasco started with an emissary bearing gifts from the Gipper himself:

A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.

According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.

The rest, as they say, is history. After the revelations regarding his trip to Tehran and the Iran-Contra scheme, a disgraced McFarlane attempted suicide. After his initial denials, President Reagan was forced to address the nation on March 4, 1987 and acknowledge he indeed swapped arms for hostages (video here):

"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."

Of course, the sad saga didn't end there.

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