Remember on tape when Prez Nixon asked Haldeman and Erlichman, “What’s the scenario for today?”

Same for Rove, Libby, Cheney, et al.

It isn’t what these guys say, it’s what they’re doing. And what they’re doing is lying. That’s obvious, not matter what they say.

I woke Jake up this evening to hear Frank
Rich’s take on Woody. Jake just can’t believe
Woody being portrayed as a sleeply old dog
of the Regime who couldn’t distinguish rat-shit from elephant shit. Jake tells me maybe
this the MSM’s attempt to add some dignity to the last rites of this “brain-dead dog.” Again
Jake reminds me that dogs can play tricks and
wait till Fitz finishes disposing of him–then and only then will we know in the end about
the state of his balls—can he still fetch and
get it up or is he truly an old old dog.

page two

Near the book’s end, Mr. Woodward writes of some “troubling” tips from three sources “that the intelligence on W.M.D. was not as conclusive as the C.I.A. and the administration had suggested” and of how he helped push a Pincus story saying much the same into print just before the invasion. (It appeared on Page 17.) But Mr. Woodward never seriously investigates others’ suspicions that the White House might have deliberately suppressed or ignored evidence that would contradict George Tenet’s “slam-dunk” case for Saddam’s W.M.D.’s. “Plan of Attack” gives greatest weight instead to the White House spin that any hyped intelligence was an innocent error or solely the result of the ineptitude of Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A.

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby are omnipresent in the narrative, and Mr. Woodward says now that his notes show he had questions for them back then about “yellowcake” uranium and “Joe Wilson’s wife.” But the leak case – indeed Valerie Wilson herself – is never mentioned in the 400-plus pages, even though it had exploded more than six months before he completed the book. That’s the most damning omission of all and suggests the real motive for his failure to share what he did know about this case with either his editor or his readers. If you assume, as Mr. Woodward apparently did against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the White House acted in good faith when purveying its claims of imminent doomsday and pre-9/11 Qaeda-Saddam collaborations, then there’s no White House wrongdoing that needs to be covered up. So why would anyone in the administration try to do something nasty to silence a whistle-blower like Joseph Wilson? The West Wing was merely gossiping idly about the guy, Mr. Woodward now says, in perhaps an unconscious echo of the Karl Rove defense strategy.

Joan Didion was among the first to point out that Mr. Woodward’s passive notion of journalistic neutrality is easily manipulated by his sources. He flatters those who give him the most access by upholding their version of events. Hence Mary Matalin, the former Cheney flack who helped shape WHIG’s war propaganda, rushed to defend Mr. Woodward last week. Asked by Howard Kurtz of The Post why “an administration not known for being fond of the press put so much effort into cooperating with Woodward,” Ms. Matalin responded that he does “an extraordinary job” and that “it’s in the White House’s interest to have a neutral source writing the history of the way Bush makes decisions.” You bet it is. Sounds as if she’s read Didion as well as Machiavelli.

In an analysis of Mr. Woodward written for The Huffington Post, Nora Ephron likens him to Theodore H. White, who invented the modern “inside” Washington book with “The Making of the President 1960.” White eventually became such an insider himself that in “The Making of the President 1972,” he missed Watergate, the story broken under his (and much of the press’s) nose by Woodward and Bernstein. “They were outsiders,” Ms. Ephron writes of those then-lowly beat reporters, “and their lack of top-level access was probably their greatest asset.”

INDEED it’s reporters who didn’t have top-level access to the likes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who have gotten the Iraq story right. In the new book “Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11,” Kristina Borjesson interviews some of them, including Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder, who heard early on from a low-level source that “the vice president is lying” and produced a story headlined “Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials” on Sept. 6, 2002. That was two days before administration officials fanned out on the Sunday-morning talk shows to point ominously at the now-discredited front-page Times story about Saddam’s aluminum tubes. Warren Strobel, a frequent reportorial collaborator with Mr. Landay at Knight Ridder, tells Ms. Borjesson, “The most surprising thing to us was we had the field to ourselves for so long in terms of writing stuff that was critical or questioning the administration’s case for war.”

Such critical stories – including those at The Post and The Times that were too often relegated to Page 17 – did not get traction until the failure to find W.M.D.’s and the Wilson affair made America take a second look. Now that the country has awakened to that history, it will take more to shock it than the latest revelation that the Defense Department has been paying Iraqi newspapers to print its propaganda. Thanks in large part to the case Mr. Woodward found so inconsequential, everyone knows that much of the American press did just the same before the war – and, unlike those Iraqi newspapers or, say, Armstrong Williams, did so gratis.

By FRANK RICH
Published: December 4, 2005

WHEN “all of the facts come out in this case,” Bob Woodward told Terry Gross on NPR in July, “it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great.”
Who’s laughing now?

Why Mr. Woodward took more than two years to tell his editor that he had his own personal Deep Throat in the Wilson affair is a mystery best tackled by combatants in the Washington Post newsroom. (Been there, done that here at The Times.) Mr. Woodward says he wanted to avoid a subpoena, but he first learned that Joseph Wilson’s wife was in the C.I.A. in mid-June 2003, more than six months before Patrick Fitzgerald or subpoenas entered the picture. Never mind. Far more disturbing is Mr. Woodward’s utter failure to recognize the import of the story that fell into his lap so long ago.

The reporter who with Carl Bernstein turned a “third-rate burglary” into a key for unlocking the true character of the Nixon White House still can’t quite believe that a Washington leak story unworthy of his attention has somehow become the drip-drip-drip exposing the debacle of Iraq. “I don’t know how this is about the buildup to the war, the Valerie Plame Wilson issue,” he said on “Larry King Live” on the eve of the Scooter Libby indictment. Everyone else does. Largely because of the revelations prompted by the marathon Fitzgerald investigation, a majority of Americans now believe that the Bush administration deliberately misled the country into war. The case’s consequences for journalism have been nearly as traumatic, and not just because of the subpoenas. The Wilson story has ruthlessly exposed the credulousness with which most (though not all) of the press bought and disseminated the White House line that any delay in invading Iraq would bring nuclear Armageddon.

“W.M.D. – I got it totally wrong,” Judy Miller said, with no exaggeration, before leaving The Times. The Woodward affair, for all its superficial similarities to the Miller drama, offers an even wider window onto the White House flimflams and the press’s role in enabling them. Mr. Woodward knows more about the internal workings of this presidency than any other reporter. He has been granted access to all its top officials, including lengthy interviews with the president himself, to produce two Bush best sellers since 9/11. But he was gamed anyway by the White House, which exploited his special stature to the fullest for its own propagandistic ends.

Mr. Woodward, to his credit, is not guilty of hyping Saddam’s W.M.D.’s. And his books did contain valuable news: of the Wolfowitz axis’ early push to take on Iraq, of the president’s messianic view of himself as God’s chosen warrior, of the Powell-Rumsfeld conflicts that led to the war’s catastrophic execution. Yet to reread these Woodward books today, especially the second, the 2004 “Plan of Attack,” is to understand just how slickly his lofty sources deflected him from the big picture, of which the Wilson case is just one small, if illuminating, piece.

In her famous takedown of Mr. Woodward for The New York Review of Books in 1996, Joan Didion wrote that what he “chooses to leave unrecorded, or what he apparently does not think to elicit, is in many ways more instructive than what he commits to paper.” She was referring to his account of Hillary Clinton’s health care fiasco in his book “The Agenda,” but her words also fit his account of the path to war in Iraq. This time, however, there is much more at stake than there was in Hillarycare.

What remains unrecorded in “Plan of Attack” is any inkling of the disinformation campaign built to gin up this war. While Mr. Woodward tells us about the controversial posturing of Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy, there’s only an incidental, even dismissive allusion to Mr. Feith’s Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. That was the secret intelligence unit established at the Pentagon to “prove” Iraq-Qaeda connections, which Vice President Dick Cheney then would trumpet in arenas like “Meet the Press.” Mr. Woodward mentions in passing the White House Iraq Group, convened to market the war, but ignores the direct correlation between WHIG’s inception and the accelerating hysteria in the Bush-Cheney-Rice warnings about Saddam’s impending mushroom clouds in the late summer and fall of 2002. This story was broken by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in Mr. Woodward’s own paper eight months before “Plan of Attack” was published.

see next post

Shez, I think you’re right. They probably created a lot of confetti, etc. in those 12 hours.

Good points justwondering. Plus we still have the fact of Abu Gonzo letting something like 12 hours or more elapse before the requests were formally submitted. God knows what was shredded or zapped until then.

Shez, the information on the White House computer system obviously extends far beyond communications on Plamegate. And also I note that we don’t seem to have heard of any e-mails on Plamegate other than the one Rove produced (?) It’s very hard for me to imagine the White House allowing the FBI or the DOJ to access its entire computer system without a court order. I also find it difficult to imagine a court allowing anything other than extremely limited access to that system. (And we’ve never heard of any such order.)

In my opinion, Fitz has always been walking a very fine line, keeping his investigation very focussed and being careful not to give anyone an excuse for trying to shut him down.

Jane –

I have not read Tierney’s column yet = but the part you quoted makes no sense -

The placement of stories WAS outsourced to the private sector – The Lincoln Group.

By the way, if you get a chance, make sure to watch Brent Bozell interview Mary Mapes on Book TV, either on c-span 2 or on the website.

justwondering, wouldn’t an acting AG with plenary powers such as Fitz investigating national security indeed have the right? Considering the ONLY place the original leak could have come from IS the White House?

dgo, again, sorry if the timing of our responses caused you to mistake thinking we were pointing you out when we weren’t. We’re just accustomed to that certain troll is all, and we’re in a good Saturday night humor. We do have both a Dub and a Dab here which can be confusing, all great people.

Me3-

Me with the fake nose and glasses on his face

Can a verdict be overturned if the defense lawyer can be shown to be in conflict of interest, or to have been incompetent in some way? Maybe with the result of killing time until a pardon might be on offer?

Yeah It’s ME ;)

Me3-
Is that you, Me?

Not to worry dgo ;)

If Luskin is doing so, he must resign as Rove’s lawyer.

Nope, Luskin will not resign. If he gets in any more trouble, Rove will claim he needs a mouthpiece with different expertise and he will release Luskin and hire someone else.

dgo,

trexing has occurred. Should make you feel better.
-

Since the FBI was on this case before Fitz was, could they not have obtained secure info in their sneaky, clandestine way of theirs?

Rayne, I don’t know if what you’re saying about the technical issue is right, but certainly have no reason to question that analysis. More fundamentally, however, I would not assume, that Fitz was given access to White house servers, hard drives etc.
Reportedly, the first search for e-mails was performed by the White House itself. The second search was apparently initiated by Rove. There’s no evidence that Fitz has had access to White House computer equipment. And, realistically, it seems to me that “national security/confidentiality” issues would likely prevent Fitz either from obtaining, or seeking to obtain, the kind of access to White House computers that you’re talking about. Indeed, if he had, I would expect that more than one indictment would be issued by now.

dgo,

definitely not you it was referring to somebody else who comes along here from time to time vomits an idiocy and then runs away.

dgo, we weren’t talking about you. You’ve been no problem, unlike another name that shows up.

Dgo-

They weren’t refering to you being the troll.

Shez and Dub or “Dab:”
Since you took from a comment of mine that I am a troll, I’ll tell you I thought I was just making a joke. You know, kind of variation on the theme of making a fetish certain body characteristics. Anyway whatever. Comment police can be kind of a drag too.

ccmask – Netflix is prettty amazing. Great selection and quick turn around. Mr and Mrs Smith on tap tonight. My better half gives it an 11 on 10 scale.

Rayne, I have been wondering about Ralston and the spy too. Something about forwarded emails keeps bugging me, and since the same crowd is involved in all the criminal acts (as we’re trying not to use ’scandals’ and call it what it is) it would be more sweet justice if an orginal copy just happened to be on all those computers that were hauled out of that office.

new thread (niblets only!)

I realize that discussions have moved on, but I do want to comment on this from the previous thread:

My guess is that Rove’s ass is already fried, and Luskin is trying to save himself here.

If Luskin is doing so, he must resign as Rove’s lawyer.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct, as passed by the American Bar Association, House of Delegates February 5, 2002 and amended in August 2002.

Rule 1.7 Conflict of Interest: Current Clients

(a) . . . a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest. A concurrent conflict of interest exists if:
. . .
(2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited . . . by a personal interest of the lawyer.

Swopa has a fun post up about Bush’s Wednesday ruby slipper heal tapping.

http://www.needlenose.com

Lets pray Wednesday was 3 taps. Hate to think there are more such episodes coming…

Yeah, I was somewhat impressed with the column until I got past the lede and realized he was just attempting to be cute, as usual, and didn’t give a shit about the moral issues (beyond the need to trust the efficiency of the private market, which for him is the first of the Eleven Commandments) involved here. When you employ someone to be your full-of-shit in-house contrarian, that’s what they end up being.

I’m not going to spend any time thinking about possibilities of fake emails because the email does not help Rove.

cc – we’re netflix fans here since I tend to always have late fees plus I love being able to get films they would not have at my local video store. I’ve been a member since they started and always felt they were one of the few completely smart ideas for a web based business. (plus it’s so much fun to play with your film queue during boring business calls!)

have company this weekend so just trying to catch up reading fdl while my guest takes a walk

and just saw on local Chicago news the footage of the folks who took on Hilary during her speech here this morning – they did a good job of pushing her on Iraq – I hope the DNC takes the hint that Hilary is not the right candidate to annoint for 2008!

Colonel Pat Lang was in the upper echelons of intelligence functions in Vietnam and the Mideast; he’s quick, he’s honest, and he blogs. Here’s one of his posts on how Bushco is screwing up propaganda procedures in Iraq and in general:

http://turcopolier.typepad.com…..l#comments

Sorry if this has been posted before. I haven’t had time to catch up on all of the comments. Froomkin’s Dec. 2 column is a gem- http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..00961.html

1) Jane gets big kudos:

—After The Washington Post’s Jim VandeHei wrote on Tuesday that Karl Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, apparently considered Time reporter Viveca Novak’s upcoming testimony key to clearing Rove’s name, I asked in my column : “What could Novak possibly know that is exculpatory for Rove? I can’t even imagine.”

Yesterday, Jane Hamsher of the firedoglake blog floated a plausible scenario: “Rumor has it that in May of 2004 when Cooper and Russert were first subpoenaed, ‘inveterate gossip’ Viveca knew that Matt Cooper’s source was Karl Rove and she just happened to mention it to her buddy Luskin. Luskin is now claiming that this surprise revelation to his memory-challenged client is what prompted them to go hunting through his emails. . . .”

And by golly, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl write in today’s New York Times: “Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, spoke in the summer or early fall of 2004 with Viveca Novak, a reporter for Time. In that conversation, Mr. Luskin heard from Ms. Novak that a colleague at the magazine, Matthew Cooper, might have interviewed Mr. Rove about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the case, the people said. . . .—

2) Unfortunately, it looks like the bomb Al Jazeera memo is not getting much attention from the US press:

—–Reporters who have asked press secretary Scott McClellan to respond to the claim first published in the British Daily Mirror almost two weeks ago have gotten two crude non-denial denials. […] The next day, I predicted in my column that “nothing arouses White House reporters more these days than a non-denial denial.” But I apparently overestimated the mainstream press corps’ baloney detectors. Since then, McClellan has been publicly asked about the al-Jazeera story precisely once.—–

3) And Froomkin has a lot about the actual topic of Jane’s post above, including “Scotty says”:

—-The White House right now faces another media-related scandal, this one over multiple reports that the U.S. military arranged for positive stories about the war to be published in Iraqi newspapers under the guise of independent journalism.

McClellan dodged questions about that story yesterday by saying it’s too early to comment.

It’s interesting how quick the White House is to condemn its enemies based on whatever information is available. But when it comes to actions by the administration, the standard of proof is apparently quite high. Multiple media reports, or even an indictment, are apparently not sufficient to elicit anything even remotely like censure.—-
-

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12…..38;emc=rss is an interesting story about the Preznit’s “Victory in Vietnam” … ooops, sorry, IRAQ, booklet. It was a written by a specialist in P.R. in the NSC. By looking inside the Adobe Acrobat “internals”, Dr.Feaver was revealed as the author! It wasn’t a grand bureaucratic consensus but a propaganda piece. The Pentagon hadn’t even seen it when released! Amusing and infuriating…

dub, ROFL, yea I like that one. Hilarious and I don’t have to heed an unsafe work related warning. Heh.

Oh my, our Coulter-in-waiting trollette training bra is back. Just ignore and let’s carry on.

yeah, bkny. I know that will happen with me after a couple of times…..its too hard to pull myself away from here. But with plenty of pills, booze and self-help tapes, I hope to start doing other things soon.

Sonate — a reply to your question at 1:24p in the previous thread –

Waiver/Disclaimer: I’ve worked in IT, managed IT administrators, worked on a limited number of systems but not administered email systems. The following proposition is based on my limited understanding of email systems and is open to correction by anyone with greater expertise. By all means, have at it, tell us what’s wrong with this theory.

Assuming the DOJ or FBI subpoenaed the logfiles from the email servers (regardless of the type of OS or email client software), two days emails in the email log might look like this simplified example:

Sent – place in database – senderid – receiverid
010105-01-U12345-U222444
010105-02-U12345-U333555
010105-03-U12345-U444666
010105-04-U12345-U666888
010105-06-U12345-U555777
010205-01-U12345-U222444
010205-02-U12345-U666888
010205-03-U12345-U555777
010205-04-U12345-U333555
010205-06-U12345-U444666

Assume the sender “backdates” an old email; I believe the logfile would look like this:

010105-01-U12345-U222444
010105-02-U12345-U333555
010105-03-U12345-U444666
123004-04-U12345-U666888
010105-06-U12345-U555777
010205-01-U12345-U222444
010205-02-U12345-U666888
010205-03-U12345-U555777
010205-04-U12345-U333555
010205-06-U12345-U444666

Can you pick out the one that’s been altered? The double-digit sequential field may, in actuality, represent both a time and a sequential number, or time only. The database of emails is “set in stone”, from the moment the sent button is clicked; a single record may be changed, but the location of the email really can’t be changed without editing every single damned email after the altered email. Please keep in mind the manner in which I’ve depicted this only shows a single sender; a real logfile might be more complicated. A query for all emails by a particular sender might look more like this example.

It occurred to me that there is one other way Fitz office could check this; the tags in the header/footer of the email might not match the content of the email, assuming Luskin turns over only a print copy of the email. It also wouldn’t skew properly with the log file.

The challenging part for Rove/Luskin/whomever might be trying this out: how do you figure out how get around this without involving more people, making the cover more complex, or tripping off some red flags? I’d have pulled all their internet usage records, too, if I were in Fitz’s shoes and had that option available to me. I’d also be checking for phonecalls to WH IT folks. The email in question may well have been known by Fitz, may have been identified by crossmatching queries for sent/Rove – rec’d/Hadley and vice-versa; if Rove “forgot” about this email after more than one visit in front of the GJ and Fitz, it looks a LOT like perjury and obstruction.

It’s CLEARLY both if a printed copy with jacked up header/footer is presented to Fitz upon a third or fourth visit. I think Luskin may have tried to fix a problem that didn’t occur to Rove/Luskin earlier, that the logfiles would be the Tell-Tale Heart; the fix could merely make the case worse if they didn’t know what they were doing.

One more thing, posted about this yesterday (I think, if memory serves; the linearity and pared features of Haloscan comments makes it tough to backtrack), that Ralston (of Filipina heritage) and the Philippine “spies” busted in Cheney’s office could be related. Any chance there a connection with either communicating back and forth between WH and Cheney’s office, or with this IT/email crap? Or was there something else interesting going on there (pssst…”old guard”)? Food for thought, and apologies for the length of this comment.

shez

I think you should:

1) Make sure you’ve no liquids in your mouth.

2) click the link

:-)

are you sure that was a troll? it was so extreme I thought it was one of ours parodying the jumbled confused mindset of a Coulter or that ilk…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..11640.html

Well I did not get graphic… And I don’t do humor or satire really well… But I did open up about Bush earlier today at HuffPo… It’s in the comments, you will recognize my post by the link ;)

Of course…with fame comes trolls.

Please don’t feed.

Perhaps a corollary to Liddy’s remark was Burt Convy when he said that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were “every woman’s dream and every man’s fantasy.”

Yes dub, a.k.a Dick Cheney before he dicks you.

Just thought you guys might want to know that David Corn has a new post about the VNovak situation on his website. It sounds as plausable as anything else, and I believe him. I also believe that this is her version of the way things went, and it’s far more believable than the obvious spin that Luskin is putting out, which makes her look really bad. I’d be interested in others take on the post.

The only reason Bush even has a little hole in his penis is to get oxygen to his little brain.
Shez | 12.03.05 – 4:57 pm | #

Bush has a penis? you mean the addadicktome was successful? Hang on …. brb …..

http://www.google.com search: “bush penis brain oxygen” WOW SHez you’re right

How dare the military pubish propaganda. Don’t they know that’s the job of the fine leftist media?

The Tokyo Rose media is determined that the Iraq liberation and the Global War on Terror be spun as negatively as possible.

You see, the left never recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union and they are determined to see a socialist US.

AND I’D WHUP YOU ALL TO KINGDOM COME WITH ONE HAND TIED BEHIND MY BACK, IF THEY’D JUST GIVE ME BACK MY POINTY SCISSORS, DAMN WHO STOLE MY CRAYONS…?

ccmask, yes. Netflix is great. Excellent service, lots of choices and no more late charges.

stacy, and in a related story, Firedoglake blog wins the fed 1 billion grant in a no brainer contest bid.

stacy – I emailed the lady in charge of that grant program and I am awaiting information in return.

Just one caveat… I told them I would not take on the job unless they stopped bombing and shooting at Iraqis, seems kinda pointless otherwise.

Since it is against the rules _NOT_ to bomb and shoot Iraqis, I am sure I will never qualify… But I did inquire and there is a pretty decent movement over at HuffPo to apply for that grant… I mean everybody ought to be offered the opportunity to steal this Billion dollars… The last 6-8 Billion were stolen so fast we never got a chance….

Maggie–I believe you are right.

Having served unofficially as a propaganda arm of the White House and Pentagon before and during the war on Iraq, the major US media networks, with the exception of CNN, have agreed to make their function official. In the name of providing Iraq’s people with a taste of a “free press,” ABC, CBS, Fox and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) have decided to provide content for a Pentagon-controlled television service in Iraq.

The five-hour-a-day program, called “Toward Freedom,” will consist primarily of repeats of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, The PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, NBC Nightly News and Fox News Special Report With Brit Hume. Confident that the content will serve the purposes of the US-led occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon has pledged to air the repeats unedited.

http://64.233.187.104/search?q…..#038;hl=en

sorry.. led to the indictment, trial and conviction

me3: I believe it was announced that patriot act provisions were used in the investigations that led to investigation, trial and conviction of 3 Democratic councilmen in San Diego in a bribery scandal earlier this year.

Re: size matters.
If that were true, Cheney would really be a stud.
Is that what Liddy thinks?
hmm.. I don’t want to know.

cc — at one time, i had a membership. it’s convenient and reliable as hell. i just always failed to ever getting around to watching the movies.

From the page Stacy linked to:

Strategic City Stabilization Initiative (SCSI*)

* Guide to the reader:

Pronounced: “scuzzy”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01749.html

We have made progress on the unPatriot Act. I hope everybody knows the FBI record access is not used to investigate terrorists. It is used to gather personal information for the purpose of discrediting political opponents… People like Me3 who have had used against them because of something I wrote and posted on-line which upset the powers to be.

30,000 investigative letters on Americans were issued last year, none of the information obtained was ever connected to any terrorist activity whatsoever. The information is gather upon a verbal request by someone in the WH, they have security clearance to review the gathered data, and it is leaked to the appropriate media source to be used in a public attack… Or, it is used to begin a criminal investigation unrelated to terrorist activity. Say you email your girlfriend and thank her for the joint she left you… That kind of stuff.

It’s a dangerous law… If you have not contacted your Senators and House Rep telling them to kill the unPatriot Act… I urge you to do so.

http://fusioner.proboards60.co…..1131129004

You will find links to Congress in the Media Resources link ^^^

Also, at Digby’s, someone asks the question: When the troops are pulled out, does that include the contractors?

LOL dab, sounds like Liddy outed himself. Newsflash to Liddy: You’re not sexy, Bush is NOT sexy (shudder), and you’re all envious of the true sex appeal and good looks of Clinton, Gore, Edwards, etc., you know… most of the Democrats.

The only reason Bush even has a little hole in his penis is to get oxygen to his little brain.

Me
Murtha’s ammendment was Cut in a Republican end Run

Anyone here belong to Netflix? I just got a membership to it from my son for Christmas and it seems to be really good. The movies are delivered to your home. I just ordered my first three: Dr. Strangelove, NBK, and The Manchurian Candidate.

dubhaltach
aye aye

u have got to see this:

(sorry if its already been posted)

The govt is offering one billion dollars for someone who can stabilize iraq

http://www.fedgrants.gov/Appli…..Grant.html

The United States Agency for International Development is seeking
applications for an Assistance Agreement from qualified sources to
design and implement a social and economic stabilization program
impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States
Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq. The
number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time. USAID
plans to provide approximately $1,020,000,000 over two years to meet
the objectives of the Program. An additional option year may be
considered amounting to $300 million at the discretion of USAID. Funds
are not yet available for this program.

cathy, this is just speculation, but in Cooper’s statement, he said that one of his internal Time e-mails about the Rove conversation had been “leaked.” So perhaps that’s how Nvak knew.

I bet W had a lot of jocks.. in his frat room taking advantage of the drunken cheerleader George.

Me3?? lol ok Me3

…and it makes the best of his manly characteristic… He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars.
digby | Homepage | 12.03.05 – 3:26 pm | #
___________________

OMG – that’s priceless. I’m glad Liddy has such a high opinion of women. Personally, I wonder if he’s had experience on the other side of that “size matters” thing.

I do have a question – How many pairs of white athletic socks do you think Rove packed into Bush’s flight suit that day? Was it at the taxpayers’ expense?

dub,

me2, me2, me2!

I don’t understand how VNovak knew about Cooper’s source. If it was so confidential that he was going to jail for it, how does it come to pass that others knew who the source was?

TGL,

Yes I remember it’s the standard ploy.

dub

Me, me, me!

Agreed, this community is awesome.

semblance, that makes a lot of sense. After Rove was subpeoned to testify in May of 2004, Luskin was fishing to see what others at Time knew about any contacts between Rove and Cooper. One way to do that was for him to say something to Nvak that would invite contradiction (in the manner of one of my aunties).

David Corn has a fresh new post (about an hour ago) about his version on Novakaine. Bottom line, he claims she did not initiate the Rove mention. It came about as pushback to a comment from Luskin. This would imply she has no particular motivation. As to his objectivity, one must weigh it against his long acquaintance with her. You decide.
[snip]
“Viveca is not a gossip,” says one source close to her who’s familiar with what happened. “She is very discreet. She did not go running to Luskin. When Luskin said that there was no way Rove could be Cooper’s source, she called him on it. That’s all that happened.”
[snip]
I’ve known Viveca Novak for close to 20 years, and this all squares with my nothing-but-positive impression of her. (Interest disclosed: I used to regularly play basketball with her husband, a career labor lawyer, whom I always had trouble guarding.) Will Novak’s slip (if that’s what it was) of the lip end up bolstering Rove’s defense? If so, it’s not because she aimed to do that, and, it seems, it’s not because she did anything wrong.
http://www.davidcorn.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3395977/

Feedback form on the Iraq war… Full of distortion (propaganda)… Murtha advocating “Cut and Run” (he never did and his amendment was never voted on, “Cut and Run” is a gooper media ploy.

Send a message ;)

Maggie one of the things that I really like about here is the way everybody keeps each other up to scratch. Ekcentric caught a howling booboo of a typo that made something I was soaying completely incorrect in one of my posts last night. Pointed it out to me and spared me major blushes.

I particularly like the good natured way in which we do keep each other to a really good standard. I think we ought to pass a vote of thanks to our hostesses for setting the tone that makes that possible.

All in favor?

dubhaltach:
It’s no comfort for your head, but recall that even Howard Dean was attacked for being “anti-semitic” for just raising the question of US policy on Israel during the 2004 campaign.

New Corn article:

http://www.davidcorn.com/

Now, according to completely trustworthy sources close to Viveca Novak, this is what happened. Novak wasn’t trying to tip off Luskin or to help him. During a conversation, Luskin said to Viveca Novak that Rove had never spoken to Cooper about Valerie Wilson. Novak instinctively pushed back, in the way many a reporter would challenge a source whom he or she believes is spinning or lying. “She assumed that Luskin was giving her BS,” one close-to-Novak source says. “And she replied with something along the lines of, ‘This is not what I hear.’ She assumed that Luskin did know about the Rove-Cooper conversation and that she was not telling him anything he did not already know.”

I think I figured out why Bush wanted to bomb al Jazeera. They wouldn’t agree to run the fake propaganda news stories.

Pach — I so agree with your assessment of the DC press. The narcissism of minor differences explains why they considered Clinton a (psychological) threat. I think to a degree it extended to Gore as well.

Oh, BTW, speaking for myself, I was having fun last night kidding around about spelling errors. I ain’t got no PO-leese badge.

And, jane, I do apologize if I offended you. I recognize that keeping up this site cannot be easy by any stretch of the imagination.

To be honest, I had read and dissected Patrick’s briefs, I mean brief, earlier in the evening and when I read your assessment, I found it mirrored my own. His writing is a thing of beauty. I’m not a lawyer, but he makes everything so readable. I know technically that brief was signed by one of his deputies, but the language was so similar to other legal docs that either those were essentially Fitzy’s words or all of Fitzy’s brief are written by the guy that wrote yesterday’s filing. In any case, they are clear and straightforward and I can follow everything and understand it. I don’t know the depth behind the legal citings, of course, but I am always impressed how words flow right into his point. I have learned so much from them, plus the two plea bargains I have read at FindLaw for Scanlon and Duke.

I also freely admit that I appreciate the quality of writing in terms of the English language and the rules of grammar that are supposed to be representative of our ideals of written communication. Yes, they are very difficult to master, sometimes don’t make a bit of sense, and a tiny percentage of us actually do conquer them, but should we belittle the striving toward that ideal?

Call me a sentamentalist, but Fitzy and his team represents my government and what it partially ought to stand for and I take a measure of pride when I read legal documents so well written, yet easily understood, and that carry such weight.

Now if I could just convince those folks who write software manuals that they could learn a thing or two from Fitzy. . .

Green lantern – I agree the thing that has me wanting to bash (somebody else’s) head against the wall is wondering just how bad it has to get before there actually is a debate.

Szabo, I love The Colbert Report too. The capital punishment segment in the last episode was particularly hilarious. It seems to me that John Stewart has gone downhill, or lost any edge, since Colbert left and started his show.

Thanks, Digby. That one’s going in the library.

dubhaltach : “Americans are ready to discuss the United States’ relationship with Israel. And America’s injustices towards the Arabs” (Robert Fisk)

Wish that were so. Fisk has his antennae well focused. But first we would have to break through the other propaganda machine working on the domestic front. And thatÂ’s another struggle thatÂ’s yet to be faced.

the best part was her quite detailed descriptions of what sort of documents approved all the way up the line would exist for a ‘planted propaganda’ action like this. very thorough her report. almost sounded as if she was an expert on the matter of how ‘planted propaganda operations’ are conducted. fancy that.

As if by accident, John Tierney almost writes a column worthy of reading today. He takes a swing at the Pentagon for planting articles in the Iraqi press, though with a Tierney twist: “the private sector could have done it cheaply and discreetly, but the Pentagon made a mess of it.”

—–

“almost writes..” haha, good one!

but this make no sense…i thought this was done by the ballyhooed private sector..in the form of something called the lincoln group.

on the other hand, that’s what i heard Andrea Mitchell claim and she wouldn’t be wrong would she.

that Mitchell piece on Tweety a few days ago was hilarious if you missed it. apparently, she tells the story with the fury of a terrior tearing into a pillow toy, head shaking back and forth, incredulous that whoever the wet behind the ears types (her spin) who ran Lincoln must have had ‘contacts’ to get the contract. Imagine that? I figured it was Andrea’s attempt to polish her long vanished aura as an investigative journalist in the wake of the relentless strings of humiliations she been thru lately. Even Tweety seem a little concerned that she was about to go postal.

Me
“Q They bomb them in Afghanistan then — their office.

“MR. McCLELLAN: I’m sorry? Whose offices? The terrorist offices.

“Q We bombed their office in Afghanistan, and killed their — some of their people in –

“MR. McCLELLAN: And the military talked about that. What are you suggesting? I hope you’re not suggesting that they’re targeting civilians, because that’s just flat-out wrong.”
Not more non-denial
The subtext is that if we bomb them, they’re terrorists.
THis correlates to the idea that al-Jazeera is made an enemy combatant by publishing material we find objectionable.
None of the more concrete claims (that al-Jazeera was transmitting al Quaida instructions sub rosa) have been borne out (squad squad safe spelling)
In fact, there has been good intelligence that al Quaida is now using teen chat rooms.

Think Progress points to this at the end of the WaPo Article.

“Randall Eliason, the former chief of public integrity prosecution at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, and another former prosecutor, David Schertler, speculated that Fitzgerald would not have considered charging Rove unless he had significant evidence from other witnesses that Rove mentioned the Cooper conversation to them. Now the prosecutor must check out the Novak conversation and weigh it against his other evidence.

“If you’re going to bring charges against the White House deputy chief of staff, you want to be absolutely convinced it was an intentional lie,” Schertler said. “I think Fitzgerald is looking at this so at the end of the day he can say, ‘I explored everything.’”

Digby-

Every time someone brings up Geoge II’s manliness, I have to laugh. Keep in mind that the guy was a cheerleader in college–not exactly where the jocks are normally found.

Oklahoma kiddo–

The best way to tackle this story may be to find out how Lincoln Group or its predecessor companies obtained the contract in the first place. Let’s start out by looking at what connections Christian Bailey established through the Republican convention in New York.

The issue of the use of propaganda during wartime is somewhat more problematic, at least to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..00879.html

Jane you made the White House Briefing _big time_ :))

Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn had a standing order with his staff that any constituent letter written in pencil on lined paper was to be brought immediately to his attention. He figured it was a genuine and urgent rare contact from a ‘common’ person…an authentic voice.

To elaborate, in the Helms scenario, we met with his aid on a Monday (this was a 7 years ago), who spent twenty minutes condescendingly lecturing us how how presumptious we were to comment on an issue we knew absolutely nothing about and who cited by name the “experts” (paid lobbyists) on the other side of the human rights issue in question. Our letters came in by Wednesday. On Thursday, Helms, acting as SFR chair, quietly but personally quashed the measure that he had openly supported for fast-track in the previous week, by directing it into a suicidal sequential referral path, which is exactly what he had promised the rethug lobbyists he would not do. The aidd called Friday and said that she was “directed” to advise us that the senator agrees that this issue is a more complex one than previously considered.

Thanks Jane, Redd and all the posters here. I spend too much time lurking at FDL since I discovered it a few weeks ago. Keep it up!

Incredibly, Senator Warner is quoted as saying “there had been no indications yet that paid propaganda had been false.” Huh?

Oklahoma-
Excellent grab. The powers that be are grooming Mr. Warner for the next president. In the same way that they did Mr. Clinton before he bacame a household name.
He recently attended a European Bilderburger meet just this last summer. The only way someone caught it was from a (discreet) hotel photo, that later identified him as (a yet unknown), the Virginia Senator.

Depends on the issue, including some important but relatively none-culture-wars-hot-button domestic policy issues, dozens of letters can sway a vote against a lobbyist. I know of one case where Helms withdrew support for a measure that he was intensely pressured on by Republican lobbyists and on which he made public statements, based on one grassroot org’s (ours) organization of 200 letters

Mostly US army officers are smart. There’s always one exception I suppose. Jesus weeping Christ.

He has a unique, outside of the box idea to get the Iraqi Army trained up to the proper standards to fight the insurgency on its own. Instead of using the MITT model, where small teams are embedded into Iraqi battalions to provide assistance, he would transplant the staff of a Marine battalion and graft it onto an Iraqi battalion. The staffs would team up, man for man, and act as advisers down to the company level, in the areas where the Iraqi military needs it most: logistics, heavy weapons support and air support. When finished, the embedded staff would leave the equipment behind for the Iraqi Army to carry on the fight.

full story here

Here’s a quote from an article in slate.com which shows why Me wants us to write letters:

“Perhaps conceding more than he intended, former Democratic Sen. John Breaux, now on K Street, told the New York Times that a member of Congress will be swayed more by 2,000 letters from constituents on some issue than by anything a lobbyist can offer. I guess if it’s a lobbyist versus 1,900 constituents, it’s too bad for the constituents. That seems fair.”

Every time I see one of those codpiece pictures I’m reminded of G. Gordon Liddy on Chris Matthews:

LIDDY: Well, I– in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know — and I’ve worn those because I parachute — and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

Well.. we could always scour the world’s publications for some real headlines as counter-propaganda. Here’s some of my favorites, on just one issue… satire has become reality:–

Thursday, July 25, 2002 at 14:30 JST JAPAN TIMES “U.S. fails to block U.N. anti-torture vote
UNITED NATIONS — The United States failed to block a U.N. vote Wednesday on a plan to strengthen a treaty on torture, and was widely criticized by allies for trying to do so.
The United States argued that the measure, known as a protocol, could pave the way for international and independent visits to U.S. prisons”

Goodness forbid. We obviously are learning from despotic China, which after all won’t let independent human rights groups into its nasty jails. Oooops, but wait:—

Wednesday, November 23, 2005
BBC News “China ‘more aware’ of torture use”
“The UN special envoy on torture has said that his invitation to visit China indicates growing awareness in Beijing that the practice is still widely used.
“Manfred Nowak told the BBC he had been promised the freedom to see prisoners and investigate claims of torture.
“The United States had refused the minimum conditions required by the special envoy for investigation into the allegations of abuse…”

OK. I take that back. UN CAN visit Chinese prisons. Just not ours. But the State Dept has a different perspective….

Washington, DC, Feb. 28 (UPI)

“The U.S. Human Rights Network, a network of more than 160 U.S.-based human rights organizations, criticized Monday’s [US State Dept human rights] report, saying the United States did not have the authority to issue such a document with its record of the past year.

“It is the height of hypocrisy for the US government to issue a report condemning human rights abuses in other countries at a time when it is violating these very same standards at home and abroad,” said Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the organization, in a statement.

“Kozak [State dept official] acknowledged the problems and said the United States was taking steps to address them.”

..but not with them pesky independent human rights people looking over our should. Um.. isn’t that what the world’s tin-pots usually say in response to such criticism?

My.. how far we’ve come.

Speaking about propaganda, CNN on TV has a cool segment today exposing FEMA’s taxpayer funded propaganda network, which they use to interview fake hurricane victims who give glowing reviews of FEMA’s performance.

Ron Martinez — that was funny :)

I thought the timeline might make a good a good set of bullet point for a “me” letter.

The full text of the Robert Fisk article is linked at the concluding paragraph.

2strange – I was so sorry to read your posting. I’ll add that family to my prayers

Me – letter off to latimes.

CHRONOLOGY-Deadliest incidents for US troops in Iraq
02 Dec 2005 16:29:35 GMT
Source: Reuters
Dec 2 (Reuters) – Ten U.S. Marines conducting a foot patrol outside the Iraqi city of Falluja were killed in the explosion of an insurgent bomb on Thursday, the U.S. military announced on Friday.

Here is a short chronology of the deadliest incidents for U.S. forces since the start of the war.

2003:

Nov 2 – Chinook helicopter shot down near Falluja. Sixteen U.S. troops killed and 21 others on board hurt.

Nov 15 – Two Black Hawk helicopters collide under fire in Mosul, 17 soldiers killed.

2004:

Jan 8 – Black Hawk helicopter shot down near Falluja, killing all nine soldiers aboard.

April 29 – Car bomb near Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, kills eight U.S. soldiers.

Dec 21 – Suicide bomber in Iraqi uniform walks into mess tent at Mosul and kills 21 people, 18 of them Americans, including 14 U.S. troops.

2005:

Jan 6 – Seven soldiers killed when a roadside bomb destroys their Bradley fighting vehicle in Baghdad.

Jan 26 – U.S. Marine transport helicopter ferrying troops comes down in western desert, killing 31 aboard.

June 23 – Seven troops, three of them women, killed in Falluja when a suicide car bomber detonates by a Marine truck.

July 24 – Four soldiers killed when a Humvee patrol vehicle is destroyed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, and four killed when a Bradley fighting vehicle is hit by another bomb in the city.

Aug 3 – Fourteen Marines killed in a roadside bomb blast on a Marine amphibious assault vehicle near Haditha, northwest of Baghdad. A civilian interpreter was also killed.

Dec 1 – Ten U.S. Marines are killed near Falluja in an insurgent bombing.

America slowly confronts the truth
Saturday, 3rd December 2005, by Robert Fisk

The old media dog sniffed the air, found power was moving away from the White House, and began to drool

Â… Â… Â… Â…

Americans are ready to discuss the United StatesÂ’ relationship with Israel. And AmericaÂ’s injustices towards the Arabs. As usual, ordinary Americans are way out in front of their largely tamed press and television reporters. Now we have to wait and see if the media boys and girls will catch up with their own people.

I wonder how many Secret Service guys they had to tie to the wings and body of that airplane so Georgie Boy could do his “fly in” trick???

What a cynical crew. Here’s a photo accompanying one of the articles, taken at great personal risk by one of the team’s intrepid photographers. Show some respect!

Should be possible for the Govmint to come up with a list of the articles and “journalists” in question (without USG attribution). If they can’t, well…

So they just need to produce that list and let the American people decide whether their dollars are being well spent.

Well, BushCo does the same thing here, so why not in Iraq?

I’m know I’m a bad person for saying this, but I thought this is what they should have thoroughly planned for before going into Iraq. After the cruise missiles, the next weapon they should have sent in was Karl Rove, with an army of Iraqi Rush Limbaugh’s to take over the media there and manipulate the wacko Muslims just like they manipulate the wacko Christians here.

I mean, it’s just as unethical there as here, but I thought the main idea was to get the Islamic fundamentalists to stop attacking us. (silly me). My complaint about this Iraqi newspaper scandal is that it’s too little, two and half years too late.

That’s the most galling thing about RoveCo. They were so slick, ruthless and effective at taking over this country — how could they have been so frikkin’ inept when it came to taking over Iraq??

The amusing part comes when Tierney quotes one of the articles written by the Pentagon that they tried to have placed, which includes the line that soldiers “fight for freedom, wherever there is trouble.”

Can’t these bukkake buckets realize that the iraqi insurgents see themselves as “fighting for their freedom” in a country where “there is trouble”?

As far as I am concerned, she is responsible for thousands of deaths. And that’s just in her hands. Multiply that with all the families and friends and lovers….I’d like to wipe that smile right off Judy’s face……..her co-workers who still have a conscience, must despise her big time.

It’s not stealing. It’s called “sampling”, yo.

It’s Propaganda Time !!

That needs to be stamped out.

letters@latimes.com

What a cynical crew. Here’s a photo accompanying one of the articles, taken at great personal risk by one of the team’s intrepid photographers. Show some respect!

2Strange – Sorry to hear about the funeral understand your anger.

Re My last post

t’s very convienent how all the spin moves the conversation to others behaviour in this. Millar, Woodward, Novak. So much of the time is spent discussing the MSM and not Rove directly.

It seems to me that in Rove’s world Rove is No 1 and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt or defamed or lambasted to cover his ass.

This doesn’t mean I think the MSM is innocent in all this just that I feel maybe all the discussion about them suits Rove down to the ground.

This really kills me:

Senator John Warner was briefed by the Pentagon yesterday, according to todays New York Times, on the planting by U.S. military troops of pro-U.S. articles in the Iraqi media concerning the war. Apparently the Pentagon has been running a program to pay”monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists.”

Incredibly, Senator Warner is quoted as saying “there had been no indications yet that paid propaganda had been false.” Huh?

At the risk of shameless self-promotion (is the term “blogwhoring?”) I invite you to read DB’s rebuttal to bad arguments like Tierney’s.

Oh, I forgot. Redd you were great on the radio show. However, I wanted to reach out and put a cork in the host.

Cheney hunched over the large table with maps
of the Iraqi oil fiedls spread out. There’s that
wicked crooked smile on his face as the oil
executives surrounding him nod in complicity.
“We are going to war for the oil. That simple
boys”. All else is propaganda. Texas oil grab.
Our Borgia Justice Scalia helping cover up
the records of this criminal energy task force.

The whaling ships were one large oil factories
with their red hot furnaces melting the blubber
and bringing them back to light up America.

Send the President out to proclaim The War is
Over on the flight deck. May the oil and money
start flowing.

What we have instead is a lot of death,injury,
destruction, propaganda, Nationalism, lies,
cover-ups, Torture, secret gulags,obscene
deficits and no competent governance.

JUSTICE IS COMING TO THIS COMMANDER IN CHIEF WHO HAS HIJACKED THIS NATION.

Lurker Szabo here. If you guys haven’t yet found it check out the Cobert Report (slient t’s) after John Stewart. Truely the funniest stuff on tv by a long shot. Dwarfs Stewart work. Unbelievably smart and clever. Cobert plays a O’Rielly clone, bombastic and super smug. The Cobert Report completly deconstructs the way the MSM covers the news. Tivo this bad boy.

Szabo

Re Grampa’s comments on last thread. I also have been wondering how much Luskin and Novak are to blame here. It’s very convienent how all the spin moves the conversation to others behaviour in this. Millar, Woodward, Novak. So much of the time is spent discussing the MSM and not Rove directly.

It seems to me that in Rove’s world Rove is No 1 and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt or defamed or lambasted to cover his ass.

I do have a question – forgive me if it’s been answered before.

How much does a client tell his lawyer about his GJ testimoney? Could Rove have been playing Luskin too for his own political reasons.

Well, BushCo does the same thing here, so why not in Iraq?

Anybody think that Judy and Matt (and their newspapers) didn’t benefit financially from the bs/spin they called “reporting”?

I just got back from the first funeral our small community had for a soldier who was killed because of Bush’s blunders. I am so angry I can hardly bear it. Full military service, “freedom isn’t free”… Almost a military recruiting event. Bush HAS to pay for inflicting so much pain on so many people.

Trying to find Barber’s name I came upon this link I haven’t seen before, nice little scroll through it.

http://tvnewslies.org/html/lapdog_press.html

Everything is piling on more and more that our modern press has no ethics, how could they possibly be a role model for Iraq?

It’s Propaganda Time !!

“But in my opinion, it’s about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long — to its own detriment — ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well-suited to the globalized Information Age.”

you gotta hold your nose for this la times oped. they must be hovering on the darkside….

Fewer words this time, Jane, which leads me to wonder of the spellcheck police are forcing you to present a smaller target?

;-]

If Honest Abe were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave!

When Rove & Luskin are dead, they’ll still be spinning in their graves…

I thought the problem was precisely that the Pentagon *did* privatize this propaganda scheme: the Lincoln Group. If Honest Abe were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave!

Lame plagerism from a cartoon theme song, and paid for with our tax dollars. Nice.

“the private sector could have done it cheaply and discreetly, but the Pentagon made a mess of it.”

How charming. The only problem Tierney sees is that they didn’t *privatize* propaganda distribution, like they do in the US with Faux News.

marky, maybe Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary is more like it? LOL

It must have been hell translating “Kung Fu Grip” into Arabic.

Treasongate encompasses a multitude of Republicans and their actions, IMO.

http://fusioner.proboards60.co…..1131129004

^^^ Media Resources ^^^

Keep the letters coming!!! :)

Oops. That should be (and all …

See we do discuss world events and current affairs, not just Treasongate. ;)

I expect the subtlety of a Karen Hughes, at a minimum.

Fitz, (?!)

Thanks, Jane and Redd 9and all the commenters). I spend WAY too much time lurking here.

Keep it up.