CQPolitics: You don't forget that your mother sued your ex-wife--unless your mind is going.

uggabugga: WaPo B.S.

GOPnot4me: Nebraska rethugs follow the playbook.

American Torture: Physicians, Psychologists and "The Dark Side"

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat asks: Will the credibility of a major publishing house be the last casualty of the Bush administration? Will a list of books make you a better citizen? Will Hanif Kureishi finally get the recognition he deserves? Will Ron Suskind be the reporter who finally gets the impeachment ball rolling?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: moose & squirrel, one good move, Walled-In Pond, The Whole American Hog

...albeit in a gentle, politically-correct way.

Investigative journalist Ron Suskind dropped by "The Daily Show" Monday night to talk about the blockbuster revelation in his new book, The Way of the World, in which he was able to confirm through high-ranking CIA sources that the Bush administration ordered US intelligence agencies to fabricate a letter justifying the invasion of Iraq after the original case was revealed to be a fraud.

"The White House is intensely interested because there may be a legality that has Constitutional consequences."

Unfogged: McCain has done the same thing Edwards did. At least Edwards isn't running for president anymore.

Chris Floyd: Marching through Georgia ll: The Kremlin Surge

Improvisations: This is our friend Blue Gal's favorite Olympic story

A Tiny Revolution: In NPR inbterview, Suskind says Bush jeopardized an airline terror case and deceived the British for political advantage.

Seeing the Forest: Trying to get conservative and corporate groups to obey the law.

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat: A dynamite week for progressive books! Thomas Frank shows why conservative governance is one long perp walk into history! Ron Suskind exposes forgeries and lies from the White House! Jane Mayer wonders: Where have all the wingers gone? Conservatives may try to bulk-order their books into heaven, but when it comes to ideas and substance, they're strictly sub-basement.

Raw Story:

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico's Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer's behalf. In it, Richer declared, "I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book."

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer's own remarks in the transcript.

"Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?" Suskind asked.

"No, no, no," Richer replied, according to the transcript. "What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'"

"Which is the White House?" Suskind asked.

"Yes," Richer said. "But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

"But he didn't say that specifically," Richer added. "I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president."

"But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president," Suskind continued.

"Nope," Richer said.

"It just had the White House stationery."

"Exactly right."

Later, Richer added, "You know, if you've ever seen the vice president's stationery, it's on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don't remember that, so I don't want to mislead you."

Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, "This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way." It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein.

But wait, there's more...

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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.

Incredible article by Ron Suskind

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . . read on

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

I don't know that the revelations from Ron Suskind's new book The Way of The World are truly bombshells, so much as confirmation of what we in the liberal blogosphere have always said: the Bush administration wanted to go to war in Iraq and were willing to do whatever they had to to sell it to the American people.

But what is key to me is that there is very little left to which people like Nancy Pelosi can hold on to claim that there is no proof of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the White House. John Dean--no stranger to impeachment proceedings--has been saying that this administration is worse than watergate for years. On Tuesday's Countdown, he confirms that Suskind's findings absolutely signal impeachable offenses on the part of the administration and why it is critical that Congress find their spines and pursue it:

OLBERMANN: The big picture question. As I‘ve been saying, you saw enough in Bush in malfeasance by the end of 2003 to have titled that book "Worse than Watergate." Suskind says in his that just the Iraq part is worse than Watergate. Do you concur with his assessment?

DEAN: Well, I do and I base mine largely on the excessive secrecy which he has only added more detail and information about and the consequences of that secrecy. And, of course, in Watergate, nobody died as a result of Nixon‘s so-called abuses of power nor was anybody tortured. So, we‘re playing in a whole different field and on a different level. So, I think he is right, it is worse.

OLBERMANN: The devil‘s advocate question in this one, John, is-the Bush administration ends in six months, presumably-why is simply, you know, getting the shovel, the historical shovel out and covering this up with as much clean and sanctified dirt as we can not enough? Why is forgetting this man and his presidency not enough?

DEAN: Keith, I think it‘s more than a devil‘s advocate question. It really is the central question in the 2008 campaign. If we have another Republican administration, we‘re going to see more of the same that this sort of material that‘s revealed by Suskind.

Full transcripts below the fold, including Olbermann's exclusive interview with author Suskind

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