That's former State Department intelligence officer Greg Thielmann talking to Inter Press Service News Agency about Douglas Feith's leaked briefing papers on Saddam's links to al-Qaeda. Feith's Office of Special Projects was installed by the Bush administration inside the Pentagon and tasked with inventing reasons, propaganda, and evidence to justify invading Iraq.

[The briefing] consisted of 50 excerpts taken from raw, mostly uncorroborated intelligence reports from sources of varying reliability from 1990 to 2002, which purported to show an operational relationship between the captured leader and the group.

But when it was published, former intelligence officials dismissed the work as amateurish, unsubstantiated and indicative, even if most of the allegations were true, of the absence of any operative relationship.

"This is meant to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated." I repeat the quote because it's so true.

A few weeks ago the briefing was displayed as indisputable proof that Saddam dang near was Osama after all. Nobody bought it- except those referred to in that quote.

...and Kerry's weak on defense???

Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A04

President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."


In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting.

The $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on unspent, secret funds that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress." The NRO, which designs, builds and operates spy satellites, had accumulated that amount of excess funds.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush campaign is demanding an apology from Sen. John Kerry after the presumptive Democratic nominee called his Republican opponents the "most crooked ... lying group of people I've ever seen."

A Kerry spokesman later said the senator wasn't referring to the president but to those behind what he characterized as a GOP attack "machine."

I would urge Kerry to apologize if what he said wasn't true. Unfortunately for the Bush campaign, they probably are the most crooked group Kerry's ever seen. See an example here.

"We call on Senator Kerry to apologize to the American people for this negative attack," Racicot said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

We call on Marc Racicot to go fuck himself.... and stop lying about your guy's military record.

In a word- Blogs.

The media stuck with the Bush bandwagon through the first three years of his term, through a disastrous war and one tax-cut-motivated lie after another (tax cuts create jobs! said the Republicans after presiding over the loss of 2.4 million jobs).

But something funny happened in 2003. The media landscape shifted. Suddenly, the Internet became a 24/7 oppo research and fact checking tool. The Republicans remain wilfully ignorant of their online would-be allies. The Democratic Party -- outgunned, outmanned, outfinanced, and out-of-power -- was not so myopic.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a blog-inspired email blasted out by some party functionary, be it the DSCC, DCCC, DNC or affiliated organizations. Those institutions -- the very core of the "Democratic Party Establishment" -- are linking to blogs at increased rates. And the results speak for themselves.

Check out Sean Hannity closing out his "fair and balanced" show. What a joke.

President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Rove, through an aide, declined to comment for this story. The White House also declined comment, referring any further inquiries to the Department of Justice because of the ongoing criminal investigation.


Oh, now it all makes sense. Silly me, I thought it was illegal to discuss covert CIA agents with journalists and political consultants. I must have forgotten the "legitimate-means-to- counter-politically-motivated-criticism-of-the-Bush-administration" exception in our laws on international espionage. My bad.

Krugman has this one:

Brad Delong has this:

Who says the predictions have been wildly optimistic? Oh yeah... everyone.

I wonder if this one is as easy to violate as ours is...

Senator John McCain wants Bush to grant subpoena powers the commission investigating September 11th intelligence failures and he wants to investigate how the intelligence was misused by those rushing to war. That's two things Bush doesn't want- and doing things that Bush doesn't want gets you shit-canned. (See Howard Stern.)

Now the Republican smear machine is after him, calling his quest for a thorough investigation, "sour grapes" from the 2000 primaries where Bush's campaign against McCain turned negative. Damn these people are evil.

Meanwhile Chuck Robb (Democrat) apparently promised Bush before he was appointed that he wouldn't allow the commission to look at how the administration misused the intelligence to justify invasion. Maybe it was a compromise to get on the commission, maybe not- what the article makes clear is that Chuck's position on the commission is tenuous- he is in an incredibly weak position. If he were bringing up any of these issues himself he'd be stripped of his appointment immediately.

I disagree with McCain's politics. It's been sickening these last few years watching him be a toady for Bush, but in the end I know he's an honorable man who knows what's right and what's wrong. I just hope he's got enough steam to see this through.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The serious news of the day - from Saddam Hussein's spider hole to Medicare to gay marriage - served as fodder for song, dance and silly dress-up Saturday night in the Gridiron dinner, a 119-year tradition of Washington journalism.

In the most unusual turn of this year's satirical script, syndicated columnist Robert Novak - who sparked a federal investigation by printing the name of an undercover CIA officer - was taking the stage as that CIA officer's disgruntled husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Dressed as Wilson in top hat and cutaway coat, Novak sings of himself: "Novak had a secret source ... so he outed a girl spy the way princes of darkness do. ... Now John Ashcroft asks Bob who and how, could be headed to the old hoosegow."

A federal grand jury is probing whether someone in the Bush administration leaked the CIA officer's identity, possibly a felony. Novak hasn't commented on the investigation - until the Gridiron, in song.


What a fucker ... I wonder if he sang these lyrics (to Under the Bridge):

Sometimes I piss off really powerful people
Sometimes I just have to tell the truth
But I never suspected that the motherfuckers
Would go after my wife, reveal her name so she'd die

Another brilliant cartoon by Robert Smigel played on SNL last night. The guy's a genius, what more is there to say?
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