I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
He should resign . . ." Oh, I'm going to hurt myself if I laugh any harder.
Don beat me to it.
You can't expect people with no sense of shame to actually step up to the plate and do the right thing. And if there's anything we've learned over the past 3 years, it's that these guys have literally no sense of shame.
Exactly which Democratic Presidential candidate has denounced this appointment and which Democratic Party official has called for Silberman's resignation? Are they taking a poll before speaking out?
(h) The term "Intelligence Community" is given the same meaning as contained in section 3(4) of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended (50 U.S.C. 401a(4)).
I wonder if the Office of Special Plans is covered under this definition or if it's only the CIA.
if OSP isn't, why bother at all?
From the Globe and Mail:
Mr. Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search, has said he does not believe analysts were pressured. But he said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data.
"I think that is an important question that needs to be understood," he said Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
If you haven't read Kay's speech at the CEIP, give it a look.
http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/ka...pdf/
kay0205.pdf
"Exactly which Democratic Presidential candidate has denounced this appointment and which Democratic Party official has called for Silberman's resignation? Are they taking a poll before speaking out?
fyreflye "
well, why not go to their respective web sites and tell them?
Follow the links,(Neiwert to Orcinus to Conley) to Dan Conley's journal, regarding Chuck Robb. A true sleaze. Dems in Virginia voted for him only with a seriously large clothespin on their noses. He was virtually on the edge of political extinction but for the opposition (Oliver North).
Carl Levin has this posted on his website:
In a speech at Georgetown University today, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet made it clear that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD provided prior to the war in Iraq never said that there was an "imminent” threat. He stressed the uncertainty of intelligence, which stands in stark contrast to the certainty with which Bush Administration officials characterized the threat.
Director Tenet’s speech reinforces my concern that it was senior Bush Administration officials – not the intelligence community – who characterized Iraq as an imminent threat in order to make the case for going to war urgently and without the support of the international community through the United Nations.
Director Tenet’s speech makes it clear that any inquiry into the pre-war intelligence on Iraq must be broad enough to look at how Bush Administration officials characterized the intelligence, as well as the intelligence itself.
I guess Kissinger was too busy to serve...
First of all, I am delighted that the DNC's web log has spoken out. Hurray!
Now, if you think the candidates should call for Silberman's removal, well why not send them Niewert's link and tell them?
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
200...610489659604535
info@johnkerry.com
http://www3.clark04.com/forms/co...s/
contact.mhtml
info@johnedwards2004.com
http://feedback.deanforamerica.com/
--
and why not tell our fine friends in the news media that we know? and we think they should report? why not send them Neiwert's link?
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
200...610489659604535
evening@cbsnews.com
nightly@nbc.com
nightline@abcnews.com
info@ap.org
atc@npr.org
newshouronline@newshour.org
and be sure to send it to your local paper
show the Busheviki that releasing bad news on Friday afternoon will not protect them.
We could just call this thing the Intelligence White Wash Commission, and we going to need another commission someday to get story right.
McCain could go down in flames sitting on this thing so you would think McCain would have learned something about his Keating experience and Colin Powell's walk of self ruined enough to decline to serve on Bush's White Wash Commission.
McCain is not a straight shooter anymore but personally, I never thought McCain was to begin with.
McCain likes to stick out like a sore thumb but I never thought he ever had any real integrity. McCain's Keating and Phil Gramm connections show who McCain truly is as a person.
pie,
I wonder what Carl Levin's problem is?
I guess he has gotten Citizen Clinton memo yet.
The part that reads:
But Clinton also has chastised Democrats for dwelling too much on Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq.
"You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president," Clinton said in July on the CNN program "Larry King Live." "I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in a while. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think."
Levin needs keep his hand off any those PNAC letters that Bill Clinton receive prior to his run up speeches with regards WMD and regime change policies on (coup??) operations in Iraq.
Hm... do the records of the other members of the panel suggest that Silberman could be outweighed by saner voices? What do people think of/know about the other, Dem, co-chair, Dobb I think his name is?
That's the second Democrat press release you've reproduced in two days. Pretty soon you'll be able to replace this whole miserable blog with an http redirect.
Remember boys and girls, "atrios is not a hyper-partisan".
Point of clarification -- is it:
Office of Special Plans
or
Office of Special Projects?
.
Wow.
I knew Georgie would pick someone awful, but I never imagined he would dredge up somebody who helped Oliver North get away with treason.
And I just sent an email to my other Senator, Debbie Stabenow, since she hasn't posted a statement as yet.
hat, what are you whining about now?
Never mind.
Bob Graham of Florida (retiring D-Senator and former chair of SenIntelCommittee) was THE obvious choice. Instead, he's asked by the NewsHour what he thinks of the commission. And has to essplain that, no, he wasn't asked, thank you very much.
I'd ask what they are trying to hide, but I have a pretty good idea, and to the extent that I don't know, I pretty much don't want to know.
I need a shower.
Press releases are all fine and well, but they're not nearly assertive enough. Like I said eleswhere, corporate bureaucratese is not going to cut it. The Dem frontrunners really need to be shouting their displeasure from the tallest buildings. This is a major scandal, not penny-ante bullshit. If Kerry is serious about winning the White House, he really has no choice but to hammer away at this at every given opportunity. God help us if the Dems just roll over and play dead.
On another note altogether, John McCain's eager participation in this affair is sickening to watch. I know McCain was, in all probability, never really the "political maverick" he was made out to be by the media, I know that he is, afater all, a Republican & that there's such a thing as unpleasant political realities people in his position have to deal with, but still. It just saddens the hell out of me to see him prosititue himself on behalf of the opportunistic lightweight who tried to fuckin' DESTROY him in 2000.
McCain is not a straight shooter anymore but personally, I never thought McCain was to begin with.
McCain likes to stick out like a sore thumb but I never thought he ever had any real integrity. McCain's Keating and Phil Gramm connections show who McCain truly is as a person.
Cheryl
Hear, hear. He's a pasteboard cut out they pull out of props when they need a "man of itegrity", then the media has their cue to react with that particular thread of ritualized response.
This thing will only turn into a millstone around their necks if we keep on everyone's backs. Congress, senate, media in all its species. E-mails and letters and even those vulgar call-in show calls. That's where the Republicans spread most of their lies in the 70s - 90s. Maybe still.
McCain on TV interviewed in Europe: the President "did not intentionally milead the american people", and that he thought he never would.
that's "mislead" of course.
actually, I believe McCain when he says Bush did not intentionally mislead the American people.
I think he actually believes the BS he's feeding us. It's the puppetmasters, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, et al, who are the ones deceiving us.
Charming that McCain has already made up his mind. He's such a partisan maverick.
Apart from the promise of whitewash and the "fuck you" to the rest of us, is the appointment of Silberman designed to shore up the boy king's anti-Clenis, pro-Ollie North base? Does the Republican base recognize Silberman's name in those contexts?
How many Independents know about Silberman's ideological past?
Silberman is a relentless bully and hack. It's hard for sane voices to outweigh him because he is so overbearing. Pat Wald won't be fooled but I am not sure that she can negate Silberman's influence.
I think he's there because he will work hard to pin the tail on the Clenis even if Bush is voted out. Everyone else may say screw it, who cares, but not old Larry.
I would add that Silberman recently decided a case as a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. First appeal that court has ever heard. Tells you something, doesn't it?
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/
do...iscr111802.html
Not surprisingly, the decision reversed a set of restrictions that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had decided were needed to be consistent with the constitution. The Larry Commission is not a judicial proceeding, so the judicial recusal rules would not apply to his membership. But still, I have trouble seeing how he can possibly be objective about intelligence issues (as if) when he has, in effect, set important current intelligence policies. Might this not be a legitimate objection?
that is to say, the puppetmasters who are intentionally deceiving us. Bush is deceiving us as well, but he's too stoopid to know he's doing it intentionally.
It's like fundie creationists - I don't believe they are, for the most part, intentionally deceiving people. They really believe the crap they are spouting.
I heard Silberman give a speech about a dozen years ago. He's a loathesome partisan.
It's the puppetmasters, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, et al, who are the ones deceiving us.
The spat seems to be turning into spy vs. spy: CIA vs. OSP.
If the issue of tainted and politicized intelligence stays in the news through the election cycle, I think the boy king will have Chenron step down -- because of health reasons -- and tell the public that the OSP was long ago disbanded, thereby trying to distance himself from the lies and policies of their failed Iraqi adventure.
But still, I have trouble seeing how he can possibly be objective about intelligence issues (as if) when he has, in effect, set important current intelligence policies. Might this not be a legitimate objection?
I imagine that Silberman's supporters would just quote from the conclusion of the court's finding:
FISA’s general programmatic purpose, to protect the nation against terrorists and espionage threats directed by foreign powers, has from its outset been distinguishable from “ordinary crime control.” After the events of September 11, 2001, though, it is hard to imagine greater emergencies facing Americans than those experienced on that date.
... Our case may well involve the most serious threat our country faces. ...
Silberman just wants to work with "Theodore B. Olson, Solicitor General ... John Ashcroft, Attorney General, Larry D. Thompson, Deputy Attorney General, David S. Kris, Associate Deputy Attorney General, James A. Baker, Counsel for Intelligence Policy, and Jonathan L. Marcus, Attorney Advisor" to protect us all from terra.
"This is a major scandal, not penny-ante bullshit. If Kerry is serious about winning the White House, he really has no choice but to hammer away at this at every given opportunity. God help us if the Dems just roll over and play dead."
I see milquetoast-ism creeping into the Kerry campaign as well, under the guise of "electability". Kerry should stop studying Judge Smales' christening poem and review Ribicoff's '68 Chicago speech. Such are the times.
McCain, despite the appearance of appearing a moderate, is a a dyed-in-the-wool superhawk. He's been an unquestioning supporter of the Iraq War. His only beef is that there was no post-war planning, plus we should have brought in 500 thousand troops. No one that's questioned this war is part of the Commission. People like Zinni, Albright, Kay would have been fine choices. Those chosen will all be excellent yes men.
P.S. Based on 56k's suggestion, I emailed the Democratic contenders about the Commission. My hat's off to you 56k for your listings of whom to email on particular issues. I follow your lead the majority of the time.
The funny thing is that we all really shouldn't care who Chimpy appointed to this worthless Chimpaganda committee. Everyone here knows exactly what happened already. We knew it when it was happening. The commission was worthless to begin with, the rest is kind of like details, ornaments on the Christmas tree: the members, its charter, its reporting after the election, etc..
However, in terms of partisan cutthroat politics, the naming of Silberman is one of the biggest FUCK YOUs this treasonous rethuglican monstrocity has ever aimed at the Democrats.
Sadly, there are such a small number of us who know exactly who Silberman is, and what he and his slimy sleazy wife have done over the past few years. I wonder if the depth of their amoral scumminess can be conveyed to non-blog addicts without their eyes glazing over...
Beyond fucking belief...
I'm actually intrigued by the presence of Yale President Rick Levin on this commission. I know Ivy League presidents often get put on blue-ribbon panels like this (Princeton's Harold Shapiro was on the genetic-research panel, I think), but this one is especially interesting given Bush's complicateds ties to New Haven (the city of his birth, as Karl Rove doesn't want you to know). In June 2001, Levin practically fellated Bush in order to have him deliver the commencement address at Yale (which, as we all remember, was as an appalling anti-intellectual travesty as Dubya crowed before the proud Yale parents about how he was proof that "you can get C's at Yale and still become President").
Apparently the relations between the Bush family and Yale had become very strained because of (I think) Yale's refusal to invite Bush Sr. to speak while he was president, igniting one of those famous Bush family grudges about being disrespected. So Levin saw it as his job, after Dubya was elected, to win back the favors of the Bushes and lobbied heavily to have Bush speak, and succeeded. So is this some kind of payback?
I don't know much about Levin's personal politics, only that he is an economist, and hardly an expert on covert intelligence systems. But, judging from the vigor and glee with which Levin has engaged in union-busting and strike-breaking at Yale over the last decade, and his efforts at ingratiating himself with the Bushes, I'd venture to guess that his interests don't exactly lie in exposing Dubya's failures and criminality.
When I saw the header "The Dems on the Commission," I thought you might be about to critique to Democrats on the commission. Guess I was wrong.
Here's some material from Left I on the News about the #1 Democrat on the commision (co-chair Chuck Robb):
Washington Post:
"In 1991, Robb was among only 10 Democrats who voted for to give then-President George H.W. Bush authority to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait."
Knight-Ridder:
"Robb...long has advocated a tough policy toward Saddam. As a member of the Senate in 1998, Robb advocated lifting an executive order banning political assassinations, as a warning to Saddam."
Yeah, he should be a fair impartial member of the commission.
Another blog has more about Robb, but I can't remember where I read it. Maybe at DeLong's site ...
Larry Silberman: "Anyone who questions my committment to the truth, should assume otherwise. I am not biased and will put forthe the best efforts to ensure that the American people get the answers they need. I also want them to know that 1 = 2, up is down, Dracula was a mistunderstood serbian, and that no conservative could ever do something wrong or immoral. Hitler was a liberal."
.
I guess Kissinger was too busy to serve
AHAAAAA ... good one!!
Two days to ready the slings and arrows, and contact your congress critters. Then, come Monday, hammer away at this daily until it explodes like Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond.
My 2 cents Wendell,
I know Levin to be a pretty straight shooter.
I saw Judge Silberman once, on a judge's panel speaking to a group of criminal defense lawyers. He made the claim that he left out all personal inclinations in considering a case, and was "pure grey matter", that is, all mind, not, heaven forbid, private preference, in deciding cases.
He then chastised the lawyers for including in their appellate briefs an account of the defense case in a trial, since, he claimed, the court had to consider only the evidence in the "light most favorable to the prosecution" on a criminal appeal. One lawyer present pointed out that the court was only required to consider the evidence favorably to the prosecution in one kind of claim (sufficiency of the evidence for conviction), but not on other claims, where the court had to consider defense evidence in deciding whether a judge or prosecutor's error at trial was "harmless" or not. Silberman seemed nonplussed, as if he had never even considered, after years on the bench, that an error at trial might require reversal, or that evidence presented by the defense might be weighed in determining whether an error had an effect on the outcome of the case.
I have never known quite what to make of this. Did Silberman as a Judge automatically discount any evidence presented by a criminal defendant?
Was he, a reputedly intelligent judge, really stupid, not even knowing how the harmless error rule is supposed to work?
His comment was particularly startling in light of his prior claim to complete impartiality, since an impartial person should clearly consider all the evidence in a case that he was legally required to consider.
Perhaps the most that can be said is that Silberman's claims of impartiality should be take with a large grain of salt. At best, he does not even realize the depth of his bias towards certain parties, in criminal cases, the government. At worst, he has no real principles guiding him. But I only know what he said; draw your own conclusions.
"hank essay" (comments above) got it exactly right.
Are we supposed to believe that GWB would appoint anyone who might cause him any grief? Not on your life. It is amazing that the media hasn't made more of this self-serving attempt at political salvation.
We have a First Amendment in the US which protects the right of the free press to report the truth. Not that it does us much good. :-(
If the major media were anything more than extensions of their owners, then this matter could never have happened to begin with. There were plenty of warnings before the invasion of Iraq took place that it was based on smoke and mirrors. How did the major media overlook them all?
Periodically, throughout American history, the "establishment" becomes so embedded with the ruling elite that both begin to stink to the high heavens.
I think we need a new "establishment."
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