Saving Private Lynch Installment of the Day

You knew you wouldn't get through a week of doublethink without another cliffhanger from the "Perils of Pauline" "Saving Private Lynch" story -- didn't you?

 

Oh, come on -- this stuff is not only excruciatingly embarrassing to the warhawks, but it's so absurd, it's downright funny (well, to everybody except that poor, exploited, 19-year-old kid):

 

Bravo, Kucinich!

 

Kucinich Seeks Videotape of Lynch Rescue

 

Rep. Dennis Kucinich called on the Defense Department on Tuesday to release the unedited footage of the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital and to answer questions about her injuries.

 

"Nothing the administration has said about Private Lynch has been verified by private news reports," Kucinich, D-Ohio, said Tuesday. "It's time to find out the truth."

 

Attention has been drawn to the April 1 rescue since a British Broadcasting Corp. report indicated the dramatics surrounding Lynch's rescue were unnecessary.

 

Reports of the rescue say the U.S. commandos broke down doors and went in with guns drawn, carrying Lynch out with helicopter and armored vehicle backup, even though there was no Iraqi military presence and the hospital staff didn't resist.

 

The hospital's staff has said they tried earlier to return Lynch to American troops but the ambulance carrying Lynch was fired on, so the driver sped back to the hospital.

 

Kucinich, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter to release unedited footage of the rescue and answer the following questions...

 

Kucinich Seeks Videotape of Lynch Rescue

Associated Press cia The Guardian

June 3, 2003

 

But, wait!  There's more! And it just figures that the ever-right-wing-drifting NBC would ignore the facts and stick with the "official" story:

 

NBC Still "Saving Private Lynch"

 

Never let it be said that TV executives let truth get in the way of good ratings. Today's case in point: the Jessica Lynch story.

 

Despite new information coming to light effectively contradicting the Pentagon's official version of events, NBC says it's proceeding with plans to shoot Saving Private Lynch, a TV movie based on the former POW's "dramatic" April 1 rescue from the Iraqi army.

 

Instead of scuttling the project, an NBC spokeswoman says network brass would "make the appropriate decisions" regarding the content of the telefilm as new details emerge. ...

 

NBC, not wanting to miss out on the action and get a jump on its rivals, immediately went to work developing a telefilm about the liberation, even though details of Lynch's capture and rescue were still murky...

 

Problem is, the gripping story was more Hollywood than Hollywood bargained for.

 

Investigative reports by the likes of the BBC, CBS' 60 Minutes and other news outlets have shown that the military version of events played up a drama that wasn't that dramatic.

 

Among the biggest revelations: Iraqi soldiers had abandoned their post at the hospital days before U.S. special forces moved in; American GIs were offered the use of a master key, but opted to kick the doors down Rambo-style instead; Lynch did not return fire at her Iraqi captors nor was she wounded or mistreated, as initially reported; and, perhaps the biggest surprise of all, days before her "rescue," Lynch's doctors attempted to take her via ambulance to American forces but were forced to turn back after being shot at. ...

 

Meanwhile, Lynch's family has remained mum on the conflicting reports.

 

"We're really not supposed to talk about that subject," Lynch's father, Greg, told the Associated Press. "It's still an ongoing investigation and we can't talk about nothing like that."

 

Lynch herself is reportedly suffering from memory loss and doesn't recollect anything about her ordeal. The West Virginia native is recovering at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.; while she wasn't shot or stabbed, she did sustain multiple broken bones, including a serious injury to her back, which will require months of therapy for her to walk again.

 

NBC Still "Saving Private Lynch"

E! OnLine via Common Dreams

June 2, 2003

 

Yeah, well, Greg Lynch did talk -- and in one short, off-the-cuff remark, demolished the "amnesia" story (as well as the English language):

 

"Her memory is as good as it was when she was home.

There really wasn’t no amnesia problems."

 

Posted 12:37:12 PM   Send comment

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Your Must-Read of the Day

Well worth the click to read the entire piece (and right in line with the question posed at the end of my post immediately preceding this one):

 

Where did the feisty Americans go?

 

It will be a question historians will debate perhaps for centuries to come.

 

How did a president remain solidly popular with the American people, even though:

 

• The economy stagnated during his watch;

 

• He turned a projected federal surplus of $5.7 trillion over the next decade into a projected $2 trillion deficit, fueled by huge tax cuts that enriched the wealthy and failed to stimulate the economy;

 

• He proposed and won more tax cuts, though most economists warned that they wouldn't likely create many jobs;

 

• His administration trimmed basic domestic civil rights, including the right to privacy, counsel and habeas corpus;

 

• He openly scorned relations with traditional allies and potential friends worldwide;

 

• He launched a war against a sovereign nation without establishing why it was urgent and necessary, and without achieving any of his stated goals for attacking, except regime change;

 

• The company once headed by his vice president landed a no-bid contract in Iraq far more lucrative than originally revealed?

 

There has never been anything like this in American political history. Despite a record of budget irresponsibility, international discord, warmongering and even scandal, the Bush veneer is hardly scuffed.

 

It isn't anything about Bush; it's about us. We've changed, and not for the better.

 

It seems only yesterday that the typical American took a delicious pride in holding the feet of political leaders -- even the ones we admired -- to the fire. Whether it was Nixon or Carter or Reagan or Clinton, presidents have had to endure the relentless heat of popular scrutiny. Until now.

 

Bush exists in a dimension far beyond having to fend off criticism. It's as if critical evaluation itself has gone into hibernation. Virtually nobody questions Bush -- not the opposition Democrats, not the bulk of the media, and by all reckoning, not the public.

 

There can be only one explanation: Sept. 11. That terrible day in 2001 transformed us in many ways, but the most subtle and insidious change was how it sapped our national confidence.

 

The terrorist attacks provoked in us not courage, but fear -- fear of being victimized again, as we were that day. We've reacted like the rape victim whose faith in human nature is crushed by anxiety and suspicion, rather than the one who fights back spiritually, refusing to be degraded by a degrading act. ...

 

When I press Bush supporters on his record, they invariably respond with general references to faith and trust: He has good reasons for what he has done. Time will prove him right. He's a good man.

 

That's no America I recognize. Some amount of faith is fine and healthy. But aren't we Americans supposed to be feisty, indomitable, demanding, assertive, skeptical?

 

Sept. 11 rightly made us more cautious and more vigilant. But it also diminished us. ...

 

It made us intellectually passive -- which frightens me much more than a hijacked airliner.

 

Robert Steinback

Where did the feisty Americans go?

Miami Herald

May 27, 2003

Posted 11:59:22 AM   Send comment

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Bush's Watergate, Waterloo? (Take Your Pick)

Skim the article if you must, but kindly read my comments at the end...

 

When all three major US newsweeklies - Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report - run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.

 

And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion - The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal - come out on the same days with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.

 

The controversy over whether the administration of President George W Bush either exaggerated or lied about evidence that it said it had about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before the US-led invasion has mushroomed over the past week.

 

"This is potentially very serious," said one Congressional aide. "If it's shown we went to war because of intelligence that was 'cooked' by the administration, heads will have to roll, and not just little heads, big ones."

 

The administration was already on the defensive last week as the controversy took off in Europe, particularly in Britain where Prime Minister Tony Blair found himself assailed from all directions for either willfully exaggerating the intelligence himself or being "suckered", as his former foreign minister Robin Cook called it this weekend, by Washington's neo-conservative hawks, who started agitating for war even before the dust settled in lower Manhattan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

Matters took a turn for the worse when the London Guardian reported the existence of a transcript, obviously leaked from a senior British official, of an exchange at the Waldorf Hotel in New York between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw just before Powell's presentation of the evidence against Iraq before the United Nations Security Council February 5.

 

It quotes Powell, whose forceful case to the council was decisive in persuading US public opinion that Baghdad represented a serious threat, as being "apprehensive" about the evidence presented to him by the intelligence agencies. He reportedly expressed the hope that the actual facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces". (At a Rome press conference on Monday, Powell insisted that he considered the evidence "overwhelming" when he spoke before the council.)

 

But it appears that Powell's musing was accurate, as, after almost two months in uncontested control of Iraq, US troops and investigators have failed to come up with concrete evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, let alone an actual weapon.

 

The scenario of an uneasy Powell received a major boost in the accounts of the three newsweeklies. US News reported, for example, that during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters on February 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point "tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this', he declared. 'This is bullshit'."

 

The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas".

 

The accounts of Newsweek and Time were similarly damning. One "informed military source" told Newsweek that when the US Central Command (CENTCOM) asked the CIA for specific WMD targets that should be destroyed in the first stages of the invasion, the agency only complied reluctantly. But what it provided "was crap", a CENTCOM planner told the magazine, consisting mainly of buildings that were bombed in the first Gulf War in 1991.

 

If true, that contradicts a series of bald assertions by administration officials and their supporters over the last nine months. "Simply stated," Vice President Dick Cheney declared in the first call to arms last August, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction".

 

"We know where [the WMD] are," declared Rumsfeld in a television interview March 30, well into the first week of the war. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." He has since retreated from that certainty, suggesting last week that the Iraqis "may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer".

 

There is also growing doubt about the evidence that Bush himself touted this weekend as proof - two truck trailers described by officials as mobile weapons-productions labs. According to a CIA report noted in the Slate Internet magazine, key equipment for growing, sterilizing and drying bacteria was not present in either trailer. Iraqi officials have said that the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.

 

Matthew Meselson, a Harvard University expert on biological weapons who 20 years ago single-handedly debunked reports by senior Ronald Reagan administration officials - several of whom hold relevant positions in the Bush government - about the use by Soviet allies of mycotoxins against rebels in Laos and Afghanistan, has also expressed doubts about the trailers' purpose, and called for the CIA to hand over the evidence to independent scientists to make an assessment.

 

Retired intelligence officials from both the CIA and the DIA are also coming out with ever-stronger statements accusing the intelligence community of twisting and exaggerating the evidence to justify war. They say that both agencies were intimidated by the political pressure exerted, in particular by neo-conservative hawks under Cheney and Rumsfeld, who even established a special unit in the defense secretary's office to determine what intelligence was "missing".

 

Much of the evidence on which the WMD case was based came from defectors supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi that has been championed by the neo-conservatives - including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney chief of staff I Lewis Libby and Defense Policy Board members Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman and James Woolsey - for more than a decade.

 

Retired senior CIA, DIA and State Department intelligence officers, including the CIA's former counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro and the DIA's former chief of Middle East intelligence W Patrick Lang, have also spoken bluntly to reporters about what they call the administration's corruption of the intelligence process to justify war.

 

Both the CIA and State Department have long distrusted the INC and Chalabi, in particular, although he remains the Pentagon's favorite for leading an interim government in Baghdad.

 

All of this has outraged the administration, which insists that the intelligence community was united in its assessment about the existence of WMD, and its neo-conservative defenders. The Wall Street Journal on Monday accused the "French and the European left" of trying to tarnish the US victory and charged that discontent among CIA analysts was spurred by resentment of Rumsfeld.

 

But even the Journal appeared to be moving away from its previous position that Iraq's alleged WMD constituted a threat to the US and its allies. "Whether or not WMD is found takes nothing away from the Iraq war victory," it said, citing the gains made in human rights by Saddam Hussein's demise.

 

Nonetheless, what the administration knew about WMD and when it knew it - to paraphrase the famous Watergate questions - are now claiming the limelight, to the administration's clear discomfort. On Sunday, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that he hoped to begin hearings - with the Select Committee on Intelligence - before the July 4 recess, while the ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has asked the CIA to produce a report by July 1 reconciling its pre-war assessments with actual findings on the ground.

 

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but...

Inter Press Service via Asia Times

June 4, 2003

 

Alternate link:

Credibility Gap, Anyone? [Yahoo! News]

 

 

This is exactly what I've been saying: The Disinformation Dam is bursting at the seams, folks! All the signs are there that the pretext of "weapons of mass destruction" as an excuse to invade Iraq was a lie -- as if you didn't know that already. What's really important is that the mainstream American media is finally beginning to swarm all over the story -- and better, the right-wing media (including righty bloggers) is absolutely livid about it.

 

The sheer outrage of the Right over any story is always an excellent indicator of how much credence the Right gives that story. In other words, the more pissed-off RW commentators get, the more you know they believe it's true, too -- and they're running scared. Equally as predictable -- and just as good an indicator -- is the sudden infiltration of left-wing message boards by right-wingers with a sudden, renewed desperation to attack the left (and defend Bush). Believe it -- I've seen it happen repeatedly, with monotonous regularity.

 

Now, listen: This is no time for you to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief because it appears the truth is finally coming to light. You have a job to do -- and that job is to make sure the truth is hammered home to the American people.

 

Why just the American people? Because Joe Sixpack is still in the throes of denial -- the last throes, mind you, but still stubbornly unwilling to see what's right in front of his Coors-guzzling puss.

 

And why is Joe Sixpack cowering in this cocoon of denial? Joe isn't stupid, and -- while I often allude to American laziness and media-medicated dullness -- the truth is that Joe knows in his gut that something is amiss, but (to lift a Jack Nicholson line), he can't handle the truth.

 

There's a most interesting thread going on at my favorite message board, which I recommend you read if you'd like to get a bead on why Joe Sixpack refuses to hear what we're trying to tell him.

 

Edjohn asks:

 

Why do most Americans approve of the President’s job performance?

 

Among the answers I favor:

 

"its a comfort thing... Is the pilot who is flying your plan competent? If your answer is no you are going to have a very unsettling, white-knuckle flight. Most people think the president (any president) is doing a good job because the alterative is just too terrible to contemplate."

 

"Inability to entertain the idea they've been played for fools ... But on a more personal and individual level (multiplied by millions), I'm afraid that a lot of Americans formed an emotional bond with [Bush] following 9/11. People were shocked, angry, fearful, and they needed reassurance and revenge. ... To many people [Bush] came to embody patriotism and American values. ... Psychologically and emotionally, it is nearly impossible for most people to admit to themselves that they were so profoundly deceived. By investing their trust and belief in [Bush], his agenda became theirs... Shrubco's war was America's war was THEIR war. To admit the war was a crime is tantamount to admitting being a criminal."

 

"...the country was put through enormous trauma in the build-up to the war; trauma that has not been healed by the disastrous post-war chaos and failure to find WMDs; trauma that will be exacerbated as the US KIA count continues to climb (it will be over 500 by election day). I believe many of those so angry about the anti-war voices were expressing cognitive dissonance; were/are fighting to drown out the truth in their own minds."

 

"Because they're stupid and too proud to admit they were wrong about him."

 

"Some people have a hard time admitting they are wrong. So they supported him and now they are stuck supporting him. Especially when they know people like me who won't hesitate to tell them 'I told you so.'"

 

Do read this thread -- particularly the posts from "Emillereid," discussing "cognitive dissonance" (which are much too long to quote here, but are absolutely fascinating if you have any interest whatsoever in the way the human mind rejects information -- and offer some ideas for combatting resistance).

 

Now, go spread the word! Blog, baby, blog!

Posted 9:47:13 AM   Send comment

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How do they know she doesn't just hate Tokelau?

Just as the controversy appeared to be dying down after the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines mildly ridiculed President Bush before the start of the Iraq war, country radio programmers are disappointed in the group once again.

 

This time, they take issue with the fact that Maines apparently chose to take a shot at fellow country musician Toby Keith during her May 21 performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

 

Maines wore a sleeveless shirt with the letters F.U.T.K. on the front.

 

Most viewers, including awards show presenter Vince Gill, interpreted the letters as an expletive aimed at Keith.

 

After opening the envelope that revealed Keith had won the night’s biggest award — entertainer of the year — Gill quipped, “I think his name was on someone’s shirt tonight.” ...

 

Dixie Chicks ruffle more feathers

Reuters/Billboard via MSNBC

June 2, 2003

 

You can read the rest of the article if you want, but it just goes on about how "disappointed" certain narrowminded D.J.'s are in the Chicks, yada, yada, yada... yawn.

 

Isn't it funny how the people most disturbed by both the time-honored American value of good, honest dissent and the mere suggestion of a word that predates the United States itself are invariably the most uptight, asexual, repressed, self-ordained thought police?

 

Isn't it also funny that the United States -- which prides itself on being the most freedom-loving nation in the world -- is the most uptight society in western civilization?

 

And isn't it downright hilarious that when right-wing celebrities make a political statement, they're "right-thinking" patriots -- but when left-of-center celebs do it, they're know-nothing traitors?

 

Hey, Chick-haters:  Get OVER it.

 

P.S. In case you're not a total Net geek, and you don't get the Tokelau allusion in the subject line, .TK is Tokelau's domain extension.

 

Hey, don't miss today's most important post!

 

Posted 12:47:31 AM   Send comment

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Midnight Miscellany

Make That the "Roadmap to Hell"

 

In Mideast, Bush presses Arabs on peace. In his first trip to the region, Bush meets today with Arab leaders to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian road map. [Christian Science Monitor]

 

 

Chirac:  Moufflarge!  Voulez-vous cesser de me cracher dessus pendant que vous parlez?

 

Dubya:  Thanks, Jack, you're a real swell guy, too!

 

U.S.-French Détente: Leaders Lower Voices. When the American and French Presidents met, they were polite in public and, by all accounts, even nice to each other in private. [New York Times]

 

 

Another chicken resigns from KFC

 

Mary Cheney ducks out of GOP gay group. Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, has resigned from the board of the Republican Unity Coalition slightly more than one year after taking on the largely honorary post with the gay-straight political alliance. [The Advocate]

 

 

R.I.P.

 

Burke Marshall, a Chief Official of the Civil Rights Era, Dies at 80. Burke Marshall, the government's legal strategist on civil rights in the era of freedom rides, the Birmingham church bombing and the March on Washington, died Monday. [New York Times]

 

Hey, don't miss today's most important post!

 

Posted 12:37:32 AM   Send comment

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Welcome to Right-Wing Radio: All Spin, All the Time

Bye-bye, last hope for responsible journalism!

 

FCC adopts media ownership rules. The Federal Communications Commission narrowly approved new media ownership rules Monday, allowing television broadcasters to expand their reach, despite fears the move may reduce the variety of viewpoints available to consumers. [CNN Money]

 

Vote to relax media rules sparks protest. The Federal Communications Commission on Monday approved controversial changes to the US's media-ownership rules that would allow large corporations to buy more local newspapers and television stations, in a decision that was greeted with anger on Capitol Hill. [Financial Times]

 

Will approval of more media mergers change TV? The prospect of radio, TV, and newspapers all being owned by a single company in a market drew fire from opponents, who argue local coverage will be compromised, as will ultimately the principles of free and diverse speech. [Christian Science Monitor]

 

Hey, don't miss today's most important post!

 

Posted 12:29:26 AM   Send comment

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Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled -- ah, screw youse!

U.S. Report Faults the Roundup of Illegal Immigrants After 9/11. The internal Justice Department report found that many people with no connection to terrorism were forced to languish in jails. By Eric Lichtblau. [New York Times: International]

 

Report: 9/11 Detainees Abused: Justice Dept. Review Outlines Immigrant Rights Violations. Authorities violated the civil rights of hundreds of immigrants detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and demonstrated "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" at a federal prison where 84 of them were held, according to a long-awaited Justice Department report released yesterday. [Washington Post]

 

Excerpt From Analysis of Detention of Foreigners After 9/11 Attacks. Following is an excerpt from the conclusion of a report by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, on the detention of hundreds of immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. [New York Times: Politics]

 

For Jailed Immigrants, a Presumption of Guilt. The aggressive tactics used against people held on minor immigration violations were, civil libertarians said, a natural result of the Justice Department's new approach. By Adam Liptak. [New York Times: International]

 

Hey, don't miss today's most important post!

 

Posted 12:23:43 AM   Send comment

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When they do it to us, it's 'terror'

Eight-man unit to be questioned over Iraqi PoW 'torture' pictures. Eight-man unit to be questioned over Iraqi PoW 'torture' pictures [www.indymedia.org:8080 newswire]

 

My horror at PoW sex abuse pics. The young mum who uncovered the Iraqi PoW sex snaps scandal said last night: “I felt sick to the stomach at those pictures.” Kelly Tilford, 22, called police after developing a film in her photo shop. The shocking pictures — revealed by The Sun yesterday — showed male Iraqis apparently forced into sexual positions by their British captors. In another a prisoner was suspended by rope from a fork-lift truck driven by a laughing Brit. Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 18, of Tamworth, Staffs, is being grilled by the Army’s top criminal investigator — amid fears the scandal is the tip of an iceberg. [The Sun]

 

Nerve Gas Exposure in Iraq in '91 Probed. The government miscalculated the number of U.S. troops who may have been exposed to nerve gases when Iraqi weapons were destroyed during the first Gulf War, congressional investigators say. The data indicate that initial reports that about 100,000 troops were exposed were wrong. The memo doesn't say whether more or fewer troops were likely to have been affected. [Associated Press]

 

Hey, don't miss today's most important post!

 

Posted 12:16:52 AM   Send comment

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Drip-Drip-Drip... Splash!

What's the news, across the nation?

We have got the information

In a way

We hope will amuse

Youse!

We just love to give you our views

La da de da...!*

 

Hi-ho, cats 'n' jammers!  I'm back momentarily, but will be heading out for another couple of days (don't ask where or why -- my life is a mystery, sometimes even to me).  So ready yourself for a blast of headlines and off-the-cuff, snarky remarks to tide you over 'til the coming weekend.

 

In fact, brace yourself for some really heavy stuff this weekend -- I've been spending my mini-vacation reading a lot of Noam Chomsky.  You know -- a little light reading. ;)

 

Here are just a few the tantalizing headlines sitting in my inbox -- I may get to commenting further on some of them tonight, or I may not.  It doesn't matter -- what matters is that you read them.  If you get to nothing else, make sure you dig into this first batch of articles -- I tell you, people, this is no longer a lousy drip-drip-drip kind of leak; the Disinformation Dam is about to burst wide open.  And it is up to YOU to pay attention, and make sure your fellow citizens (you know, the ones so doped up by Faux News and CNN that they've lost all capability of independent thought) hear about this stuff.  You've been shown repeatedly that you can't rely on anybody else to get the truth to the masses.  So BLOG it, people!  The health and welfare of the United States -- and the world -- depends on YOU!  (And I am not kidding!)

 

Truth and consequences: New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror. On the evening of February 1, two dozen American officials gathered in a spacious conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va. The time had come to make the public case for war against Iraq. For six hours that Saturday, the men and women of the Bush administration argued about what Secretary of State Colin Powell should -- and should not -- say at the United Nations Security Council four days later. Not all the secret intelligence about Saddam Hussein's misdeeds, they found, stood up to close scrutiny. At one point during the rehearsal, Powell tossed several pages in the air. "I'm not reading this," he declared. "This is bulls- - -." [U.S. News & World Report]

 

Transcripts raise alarm across Nato. Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into supporting the Iraq war. A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts" - after the New York hotel where the US secretary of state was staying before making a crucial speech to the UN security council earlier this year - is described by an official of one Nato country as "extremely useful". The description is used in a paper seen by the Guardian as part of an effort among Nato allies to "rein in some of the less acceptable policies of the Bush administration". [The Guardian]

 

US Senate opens WMD probe. A Congressional inquiry will examine possible misuses of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

 

Senate Panel Inquiry on Iraq Weapons. Senator John W. Warner said that the Armed Services Committee would conduct hearings this month on the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq. By The New York Times. [New York Times: International]

 

Where are Iraq’s WMDs? The message was plain: Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction made war unavoidable. So where are they? Inside the administration’s civil war over intel. [Newsweek]

 

Search for Guns in Iraq and Surprise Under a Robe. The surprise sweep and nighttime arrests produced bitter complaints, a few comical moments and only a handful of weapons. By David Rohde.   "We know the Western countries have democracy and liberty, and we want these things to be implemented in our country," said Raad Hadi, 38, a baker. "But we see around us that they are arresting our clerics." [New York Times: International]

 

Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq. The former civilian head of the Army said Monday it is time for the Pentagon to admit that the military is in for a long occupation of Iraq that will require a major commitment of American troops. Former Army secretary Thomas White said in an interview that senior Defense officials "are unwilling to come to grips" with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely. [USA TODAY]

 

'Dumb' bombs used to topple Saddam. A third of the bombs dropped on Iraq were old-style "dumb weapons" - despite suggestions from the Pentagon that 90 per cent of munitions used would be precision-guided. [The Age]

 

Standard Operating Procedure. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues from tax policy to the war in Iraq. By Paul Krugman. [New York Times: Politics]

 

Bush shines in the time of the lie. IT IS SAID that each of society's institutions is a crystallization of the dominant values of the culture. If so, we appear to be living in the time of the lie.  The military in the recent action in Iraq treated us to the Jessica Lynch POW rescue, which turned out to be an elaborate fabrication notable for its absence of enemy soldiers, not to mention the disappearing gunshot and stab wounds that she was alleged to have suffered. ... This cynical view appears to be implicitly endorsed by the current administration, which has so inundated us with lies that most of them pass unnoticed. Unlike the lies about sex that are the legacy of our previous president, the ones being perpetrated by Bush & Co. appear more consequential. [Baltimore Sun]

 

Meme Watch: A Unified Theory of Bush Lies? On April 26, President Bush said in his weekly radio address, "My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax." That turned out not to be true. [Slate]

 

 

* If you don't know where that jingle is from, you were definitely born after 1968.  First person to identify its source gets a great, big, imaginary cookie with a peace sign in Day-Glo^® green frosting on top.

 

Posted 12:06:09 AM   Send comment

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