Author: Tex MacRae

Wonder what the heck is going on in Paris, with all the rioting? Skip the bigots and read lenin.

Micah Holmquist sends us linkage for the NYT bogus intelligence story: “You can read the actual document provided to the New York Times via Carl Levin’s webpage.”

Micah on on WMD, torture and Iraq.
Thanks, Micah!

Oh, and here are the Republican Talking Points on the NYT al-Libi story.

Laura Rozen on how the Republicans plan to spin the outrageous demand for the Phase II intelligence report to be produced, already.

Burning Tony Blair in effigy for Guy Fawkes –

• October 26, 2005 :: Burn Tony Blair in effigy this Guy Fawkes night
• October 28, 2005 :: The kindling takes shape
• October 31, 2005 :: Head finished. Body to follow.
• November 2, 2005 :: My, my… don’t we look relaxed?
• November 3, 2005 :: Stop! … Voodoo time!
• November 5, 2005 :: And at 7:10pm this evening… Tony Blair burns
• November 6, 2005 :: Can you guess what this is, boys and girls?

The Medium Lobster says: “Torture shouldn’t just be the tool of the CIA or even the armed forces. It should be the legal right – no, the duty – of every American citizen.”

Torture Dick.

Roderick Long: Antifascist Before It Was Cool

George and Condi in Argentina

Saddest Riverbend post ever.

The Rad Geek on FBI spying on Americans: “….the Washington Post is shocked! shocked! to discover that the FBI may have abused its undisclosed and unchecked powers.”

Dermot O’Connor on a heretofore untapped source of extra troops for the Iraq occupation.

Douglas Jehl’s revelations in the New York Times today:

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

And how was this garbage “intelligence” obtained? Well, we already know that al-Libi is practically a poster boy for the Cheney/Bush Torture Regime:

Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – Pakistan turns Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan national, over to US authorities. Libi is believed to have run the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. Interrogations start and a debate soon erupts with regard to which methods can be employed. The CIA advocates threatening him with his life and that of his family. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] The CIA’s actions are, according to Newsweek, facilitated by a February 2002 secret presidential order “authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities outside the US and to use extra harsh interrogation methods” (see After February 7, 2002). [Newsweek, 5/24/2004] Some time after his handover to the US, Al-Libi is rendered to Egypt. According to an ex-FBI official, the CIA “duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo. At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, ‘You’re going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I’m going to find your mother and I’m going to f*** her.’ ” [Newsweek, 6/21/2004] Al-Libi is said to provide the US with valuable intelligence including information about an alleged plot to blow up the US Embassy in Yemen with a truck bomb and the location of Abu Zubaida, who will be captured in March 2002 (see March 28, 2002). The FBI has thus far taken the lead in interrogations of terrorist suspects, because its agents are the ones with most experience. The CIA’s success with Al-Libi contributes to the shift of interrogations from the bureau to the CIA. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] Such methods as making death threats, advocated by the CIA, are opposed by the FBI, which is used to limiting its questioning techniques so the results from interrogations can be used in court. [Washington Post, 6/27/2004] “We don’t believe in coercion,” a senior FBI official says. [The Guardian, 9/13/2004]

Wolcott (here and here) is all over David Corn for agreeing to join the editorial board of the odious Pajamas Media, future web home for war hacks not yet indicted. Like Michael Ledeen. Corn’s response makes it clear that he has no idea what he’s getting into: “I look forward to a new Internet enterprise that seeks to promote varying views, even if the idea came from conservatives.” Well, as Wolcott says,

Does Corn really want to be associated with fun blogs like Little Green Footballs and Gates of Vienna (“At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war”)? I guess he does, because he’ll be appearing on a panel at Pajamas’ gala conference in November in Manhattan, where Roger L. Simon and company will break out the ginger ale and announce their new monicker. Then everybody will adjourn to invade Syria, if they can arrange transportation.

The weird thing about Pajamas Media is that it doesn’t even know what it wants to be when, if ever, it grows up. Originally, it was an idea for right-winger and warblogs to make money selling advertising, but they appear to have jettisoned their advertising guys — one of whom fortunately blogs so that we can read the entertaining story of that backstabbing. (Also see the links here – Blowing the cover off Top Secret Pajamas Media Foreign Correspondents.) They claimed to be the “New Media” but the keynote speaker for their New York City gala launch party is none other than Old Media icon Judy “The Aspen Roots of WMD” Miller, who possibly works for the New York Times, which last I checked, was almost the definition of Old Media, according to the New Media.

Well, PJM’s launch party is two weeks away, so they have plenty of time to decide what they are before that. Meantime, a competitor has apppeared on the blog-aggregation scene! Meet Lingere Media:

LINGERE Media is a new blogging venture designed to bring together some of the internet’s more obvious fast-buck artists and will hopefully cobble together a single source that will, in our dreams, complement and re-define journalism in the 21st century, which we can then unload on a gullible public via a stock offering. Upon its official debut in November 2005, LINGERE Media will feature content from over 300, no 70, no 150, no, make it 70 half-assed bloggers. The company was founded in 2004 by acclaimed accountant and blogger Dennis The Peasant and Cletus Barnwell, cesspool manager, hog calling champion, and author of the blog What Smell?

With that extensive roster of Quality Bloggers only thing Lingerie Media needs to catch up is to announce a grandiose launch party keynoted by a noted failure in their field! Maybe Scooter Libby is free.

Chalabi returns to the scene of the crime? What’s up with that?

Though his personal electoral base is limited he has forged links with fellow Shi’ite groups, including nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and there is speculation he will put himself forward as prime minister, as he did after January’s ballot.

Some U.S. officials have played down speculation, however, that the trip to Washington indicates an American willingness to promote Chalabi in that role.

“We’ve invited him to the U.S. I wouldn’t read more into it than that,” one official in Baghdad told reporters last week, pointing out Chalabi’s major operational role in handling Iraq’s budget and his position as coordinator of the oil industry.

“We have operational interests to discuss with the man and we’re going to do that,” the official said.

I hope Fitzgerald hands him a subpoena.

US Senate goes into closed session:

AMERICAblog: CNN just said that by invoking Rule 21, Reid just shut down the Senate, all 100 Senators are called to the Senate floor, they have to turn over their cell phones, blackberries, etc

Talking Points Memo: I’m told Sen. Reid has taken the senate into closed session to discuss the senate’s failure to “phase two” of the Senate Select Committee on Inteligence report on the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure. Phase two, you’ll remember, was to examine alleged administration manipulation of intelligence.

Reid’s statement.

Quick review on the Phase II report: The Report They Forgot

In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts — provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.

UPDATE – Daily Kos: As the post below notes, Reid asked the Senate to go into special session on intelligence — that is, a closed session — to discuss prewar intelligence. This mostion, along with a second (provided by Durbin), requires all Senators to report to the Senate floor. It is a non-debatable motion.[…]

Now, this is more than a temporary stunt. The Democratic leadership has promised to call a special session in the Senate every single day until Republicans alllow for a real investigation.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video up.

Special Counsel Fitzgerald’s investigation and ongoing legal proceedings are serious, and now the proceedings — the process moves into a new phase. In our system, each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial…..George W. Bush

In our system of government an accused person is presumed innocent until a contrary finding is made by a jury after an opportunity to answer the charges and a full airing of the facts. Mr. Libby is entitled to that opportunity…Dick Cheney

José Padilla was arrested by federal agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, and held as material witness on the warrant issued in New York State about the 2001 9/11 attacks. On June 9, 2002, President Bush issued an order to Secretary Rumsfeld to detain Padilla as an “enemy combatant”. He is currently being detained without charge in a South Carolina military prison under orders of President George W. Bush.