George Bush, Liar
Ever since they took office, the Busheviks have painted a bullseye on the back of Saddam Hussein's uniform, aiming squarely to take out the Iraqi dictator no matter what. We now know this, of course, through the infamous Downing Street memos, firsthand testimony of former terrorism czar Richard Clarke, and other accounts of those early Bush days made public by various sources. The Bushies wanted Saddam and they wanted him bad. All they needed was a reason. Any reason. In 2001 Osama bin Laden gave them Christmas in September. And so began what is now a four-year campaign of lies and deception; a well-oiled, highly effective propaganda machine that was never more evident than in Tuesday's Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC.Discussing the controversy surrounding several U.S. generals' demand for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, Matthews interviewed the mothers of two soldiers killed in battle in Iraq. Defending Rummy was Deborah Meyer, whose stepson, PFC Jason Meyer, 23, was killed in action three years ago. Her son Jonathan will be deployed to Iraq this Fall. She is a member of Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission. Taking the opposing position was Rosemary Palmer, who with her husband founded Families of the Fallen for Change. Her son, Lance Corporal Edward "Auggy" Schroeder, 23, was killed in August.Palmer stated what was obvious: that Rumsfeld has grossly miscalculated the war effort and the insurgency, and should be removed from his cabinet post. She simply stated the facts. No spin, no truth-stretching. Just a grieving mom trying to understand how our government, and those in charge of the war, can screw up so badly.Turn to Meyer, another unfortunate victim of this tragic war to whom our collective hearts go out. As expected, she offered some of the standard pro-war, everything is wonderful rhetoric, reading from notes: "Well I think Sec. Rumsfeld has served our country with incredible distinction and commitment to the defense of our country. He's been confronted with some incredibly challenging circumstances, and he's met and continues to meet those challenges. He has the full confidence of the president, and his steady leadership is exactly what we need in Iraq right now."Ok, we can certainly accept this highly partisan support, and even excuse it, coming from the mouth of someone who's experienced heartache. But then her comments started to get less partisan and more convoluted as Matthews asked if we should've gone into Iraq."I think we didn't have a choice. I believe that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein had power, and under Sec. Rumsfeld's leadership our military have liberated millions of people. There are many improvements happening in Iraq on a daily basis and I don't feel we had a choice." The Taliban? I guess I must've missed that memo.And finally, Meyer's response became downright bizarre and highly strained when a polite and deferential, yet noticeably frustrated, Matthews asked, "A simple question: why did your son and all those hundreds of thousands of troops get sent to Iraq? What was the reason for going to Iraq?" Appearing like a deer caught in the headlights, Meyer hesitated and began to answer the question, peppering her reply with long, uncomfortable pauses and much stammering: "Um...we went to Iraq, in my estimation, to, um, fight against the terrorism that is invading our country. We were attacked. It was on 9/11 and many times before that. Um...we needed to (long pause) help the Iraqi people free themselves and, um, free themselves from Saddam Hussein's regime, um, and the terrorism that we're living under. I would rather be fighting them in their backyards than having them come to my backyard and fight here." There is just so much wrong with what this poor woman has said, and with what she believes. Listening to her made me angry. Not merely angry that a mother had to experience the loss of a child, which is the worst possible thing a parent can go through, but moreso how this grieving woman has been lied to and manipulated by a callous, war-mongering administration. And it scared me to see someone so clueless and ignorant of the facts desperately trying to defend something of which she doesn't even have the slightest understanding.It's truly unfathomable to think that in 2006 someone can still believe that the Taliban was in Iraq, that Iraq and Al Qaeda were the same, that Saddam caused 9/11, and that we invaded Iraq to fight the terrorists who attacked us. But she's not alone. There are millions and millions of misguided, gullible souls just like her who've been brainwashed by the Busheviks' highly orchestrated propaganda machine. It's shameful, and an utter disgrace. Perhaps people like Meyer, in order to get through each day, need to believe that their sons and daughters did not die in vain, and thus cling to the Bush rhetoric for dear life. That the Bushies still feed them this pack of lies knowing this is even more reprehensible.
A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story
By Barton Gellman and Dafna LinzerWashington Post Staff WritersSunday, April 9, 2006; A01
As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.
Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.
Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.
One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.
United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."
It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.
The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."
Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.
At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.
In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.
Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.
Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.
But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller -- but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.
Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.
The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.
Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus. A Bush-appointed commission later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."
On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House -- weeks after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.
Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."
They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."
At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official," speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.
Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's speech a few months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.
Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the Niger remarks.
In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention of Niger or uranium.
On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Just Whose Back Is It Bush Has Got?
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
April 20, 2006
A blog recently noted that the United Arab Emirates, who Bush gave a six billion dollar "port security" contract to (and then pulled back on, for the moment) is very cozy with Iran. In fact, they are the best of friends and swear mutual allegiance and support, as well as ongoing commerce and trade.
Okay, so that means Bush was going to give a contract to protect Americans to a country that is best buddies with the country Bush wants to nuke. Doesn't that strike even some Republicans as odd?
The reality is that the Bush Administration has long been playing a double game with the American people, as if they had two different sets of playing cards.
For domestic consumption, Bush has trumpeted (as scripted by Rove) a fierce nationalism and sense of nationalist fear. He has played the "patriot" card to the hilt.
But on foreign policy, what is most important to the Bush Administration is not what is in the best interests of the United States; it is what is in the best interests of large multi-national businesses, which is to say Republican contributors.
In short, we have entered an age when multi-national corporate financial interests supersede our national interest. This is something the Busheviks won't tell the American people, and it is why the negotiations and details of the United Arab Emirates/Dubai deal are still being kept secret.
Bush goes to war to allegedly protect us (while enriching the defense industry who are Republican campaign contributors) -- and then cuts financial deals that undercut our security and sovereignty.
He's doing the same thing with China right now.
Besides which, we, as a nation, are in hock to so many countries that Bush has to cede sovereign interests at times, because otherwise these countries can request the payment of their loans and the U.S. would go bankrupt.
Funny that we don't read about such things in the daily papers or see them on television news.
Wonder why?
Gangster government: a leaky president afoul of 'Little Rico'
by Greg PalastApril 10, 2006
It's a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual. 'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President. Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you. OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a BIGGER crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse. Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail. Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con. On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it." Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice. If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system. Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.) Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe: "Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts." Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment." Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase. Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise." So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights. After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war. I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home. And if justice is to be done we will will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government. ---Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. 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Fitzgerald will seek new White House indictments
by Jason LeopoldMarch 29, 2006
It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials. These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation. In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation. The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government's case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence. In addition to responding to discovery requests from Libby's defense team and appearing in court with his attorneys, who are trying to obtain additional evidence, such as top-secret documents, from Fitzgerald's probe, the special prosecutor is also prosecuting Lord Conrad Black, the newspaper magnate, has recently charged numerous individuals in a child pornography ring, and is wrestling with other lawsuits in his home city of Chicago. Details about the latest stage of the investigation began to take shape a few weeks ago when the lead FBI investigator on the leak case, John C. Eckenrode, retired from the agency and indicated to several colleagues that the investigation is about to wrap up with indictments handed up by the grand jury against Rove or Hadley or both officials, the sources said. The Philadelphia-based Eckenrode is finished with his work on the case; however, he is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution next year against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators regarding his role in the leak. Hadley and Rove remain under intense scrutiny, but sources said Fitzgerald has not yet decided whether to seek charges against one or both of them. Libby and other officials in Cheney's office used the information they obtained about Plame Wilson to undermine the credibility of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He had alleged that President Bush misspoke when he said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium, the key component used to build a nuclear bomb, from Niger. The uranium claim was the silver bullet in getting Congress to support military action two months later. To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the country barely had a functional weapons program, according to a report from the Iraq Survey Group. Wilson had traveled to Niger more than a year earlier to investigate the yellow-cake claims and reported back to the CIA that intelligence reports saying Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were false. On Monday, though, attorneys close to the leak case confirmed that Fitzgerald had met with the grand jury half a dozen times since January and recently told the jurors that he planned to present them with the government's case against Rove or Hadley, which stems from an email Rove had sent to Hadley in July of 2003 indicating that he had a conversation about Plame Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. Neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the existence of the email when they were questioned by FBI investigators or when they testified before a grand jury, the sources said, adding that Rove testified he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters and Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column. Rove testified before the grand jury four times. He did not disclose the existence of the email during his first two appearances before the grand jury, claiming he simply forgot about it because he was enmeshed with the 2004 Presidential election, traveling around the country attending fundraisers and meetings, working more than 15 hours a day on the campaign, and just forgot that he spoke with Cooper three months earlier, sources familiar with his testimony said. But Rove and Libby had been the subject of dozens of news stories about the possibility that they played a role in the leak, and had faced dozens of questions as early as August 2003 - one month after Plame Wilson was outed - about whether they were the administration officials responsible for leaking her identity. The story Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, provided to Fitzgerald in order to explain why Rove did not disclose the existence of the email is "less than satisfactory and entirely unconvincing to the special counsel," one of the attorneys close to the case said. Luskin did not return numerous calls for comment. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation and has vehemently denied that Hadley was involved in the leak "because Mr. Hadley told us he wasn't involved." In December, Luskin made a desperate attempt to keep his client out of Fitzgerald's crosshairs. Luskin had revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak - a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case - inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status. Novak - who bears no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington DC in 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak. Luskin had assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said. According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove had sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately after Rove's conversation with Cooper, and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald. "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper on July 11, 2003. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Luskin wound up becoming a witness in the case and testified about his conversation with Viveca Novak that Luskin said would prove his client didn't knowingly lie to FBI investigators when he was questioned about the leak in October 2003, just three months after Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. The email Rove sent to Hadley, which Luskin said he found, helped Rove recall his conversation with Cooper a year earlier. Rove then returned to the grand jury to clarify his previous testimonies in which he did not disclose that he spoke with journalists. Still, Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he had described in his email to Hadley, according to an email Cooper sent to his editor at Time magazine following his conversation with Rove in July 2003. "It was, KR said, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized [Wilson's] trip," Cooper's July 11, 2003, email to his editor said. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The email characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... " It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told their staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims. But Fitzgerald's investigation has turned up additional evidence over the past few months that convinced him that Luskin's eleventh-hour revelation about the chain of events that led to the discovery of the email is not credible. Fitzgerald believes that Rove changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source - Rove - who revealed Plame Wilson's CIA status to him, sources close to the case said. If any of the people named in this story believe they have been unfairly portrayed or that what was written in this story is untrue, they will have an opportunity to respond in this space.
United States is no help to Iraqi women
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
By BONNIE ERBEGUEST COLUMNIST
A new poll of leaders of Iraqi women's-rights groups finds that women were treated better and their civil rights were more secure under deposed President Saddam Hussein than under the faltering and increasingly sectarian U.S.-installed government.
This is doubly troubling. It's troubling first because the Bush administration used the issue of women to justify its now widely criticized invasion of Iraq in part by promising to improve the situation of women.
It's troubling second because the administration has issued news releases, held public meetings and tried to gain media attention (as well as U.S. public support) for all the "good" it's supposedly doing the women of Iraq via this invasion.
The poll was released last week by the Integrated Regional Information Networks, a U.N. news agency covering sub-Saharan Africa, eight countries in central Asia, and Iraq.
IRIN reports the survey findings as follows: " ... women's basic rights under the Hussein regime were guaranteed in the constitution and more importantly respected, with women often occupying important government positions. Now, although their rights are still enshrined in the national constitution, activists complain that, in practice, they have lost almost all of their rights."
Moreover, leaders of women's groups say that in Iraq's new government, more men in power follow conservative Sharia (to wit, Islamic law) on women's rights and on their role in society. Senar Muhammad, president of the Baghdad-based non-government organization Woman Freedom Organization, is quoted by IRIN as saying, "When we tell the government we need more representation in parliament, they respond by telling us that, if well-qualified women appear one day, they won't be turned down. ... Then they laugh at us."
The report says more men are ordering women to "take the veil" (wear coverings from head to toe), and fewer women are working in professional jobs than when Saddam was in power.
Why did we not hear this news first from the Bush administration? Perhaps because the administration is too busy trying to put a positive "spin" on the situation in Iraq. A quick tour of the White House's own Web site reveals the administration has plenty of time to promote the kind of Iraqi women's events that make it look good. In November 2003, President Bush's public-relations personnel staged a photo op with female members of Iraq's Governing Council.
Bush is quoted as saying, "It's been my honor to host one of the most extraordinary meetings I've had as the president of the United States. I'm seated here with five courageous, brave Iraqi women who believe in the people of Iraq, believe in the future of Iraq, who love their freedoms, who look forward to working to see that their nation is a free and peaceful country." Seems this item is in need of a bit of updating.
Please don't take this news as an endorsement on my part of Saddam's regime. He was a bloodlust-ful dictator who deserves the same treatment he visited on dissidents: torture and death. But, that does not mean that some things were not better for Iraqis while he was in power.
He ran a functioning government that put down civil strife, kept basic services in place (water, sewer, electric), and he gave women more freedom than they've had since the U.S.-installed government took over.
Oh, and I'm sure the black-helicopter types (the guys who go rabid at the mention of the United Nations) will have a field day discrediting IRIN's report. But given that anti-U.N. types were the same guys who got us into the Iraq invasion in the first place, who has more credibility now? I vote for IRIN as the lesser of two evils.
