HULK SMASH!!!
frist...lost?
Chalabi, bitch!
It's early here, but I can barely understand what the hell Marshall is trying to say.
Lying liars and the lies they tell, oh what a tangled web they weave......quite interested to hear the rest of the story from tpm, and, slightly OT, I love the statement Mr. Moore made thanking all those who so vehemently opposed his movie, thereby insuring scads of free publicity, and, with the purchase of Loews Theaters by the Carlyle Group, I suppose next time it will be harder to get a movie like F-9-11 out to the public, fuck em', we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Hard to imagine anybody worse than little georgie being foisted upon an unwitting public, but even if this administration goes down in flames, ala Nixon, it may not keep them down for long......*sigh*
The Financial Times article Marshall cites concludes: "However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made." It's a bit difficult to understand how that translates into Iraq seeking to purchase uranium. The flimsiness of this premise supports Marshall's hypothesis.
TO
The thing he was hinting at earlier, about the time of the vacation? Will this Friday be Typical (ie, will they drop a scandal then)?
I don't grok.
From what I read from Josh and the FT story, Tony Blair might have sticky situation on his hands in a few days. Thank goodness the Brits don't let him and his intelligence service off as easily as we let Tenet and Bush have their way.
Back on topic, Marshall is saying the provenance of the Niger forgeries is about to come to light. (OSP and Cheney's office?)
Chalabi, bitch? Mossad, bitch!
K&Y, yeah I know he's hinting at a big bomb he's going to drop. So what's going on here -- "Big Time" himself got out his crayons and forged the document?
Remember this was really pushed in the UK's glossy dossier, oh, and the State of the Union.
As NTodd says, of course Chalabi is the first name you think of when it comes to presenting phoney evidence for war. However, I wouldn't really call it earth shattering news. I mean he's already admitted his people lied and got what they wanted.
I have higher hopes for Josh's "tectonic plates" story. And while we may be interested in how the only remaining superpower got duped into somebody else's fight, I have serious doubts the media will want to spend too much time on the origins of a war they led the cheerleading for, and that they will claim is already over.
I suppose the history channel might need something to show after a special on Dragutin Dimitrijevic.
If this is what Josh was alluding to before he left on vacation, then it was definitely worth the wait. I've wanted to know the origin of those forgeries since I first heard of them. This is gonna be sweet.
Anyone else notice that the only intelligence agency mentioned in the FT was M16? Josh says:
Let's say that certain individuals or organizations are responsible for some rather unfortunate misdeeds. And let's further postulate that such hypothetical individuals or organizations find out that some folks are on to them, that a story is in the works -- perhaps more than one -- and that it's coming right at them. Those individuals or organizations -- as shorthand, let's call them 'the bad actors' -- might well start trying to fight back, trying to gin up an alternative storyline to exculpate themselves and inculpate others. If that story made its way into the news, at a minimum, it might help the bad actors muddy the waters for when the real story comes out. You can see how such a regrettable turn of events might come to pass.
So who's trying to muddy the picture via the FT?
If we knew, we'd scoop his ass. As would anyone else.
I agree with bunny; if it were just that Chalabi was behind the Niger forgeries this would hardly be earth-shattering news. It'd have to be somebody still in power in Washington.
From the FT article:
The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.
---
The UK eavesdropping centre GCHQ had intercepted communications suggesting Iraq was seeking clandestine uranium supplies, as had the French intelligence service.
The only other intelligence agency involved is the Italian's. So where's the bombshell, Italy, France, or the UK?
Back up Fibble, maybe the key is that Washington actually scootched away from the lie while the Brits held to it...
I am surprised that Josh Marshall continues to use commercial aircraft for travel.
Like the western european countries that lure unsuspecting south-east asians to their countries, kill them and call them al-quaida, some people will go to any length to prove their love for the united states. like a nation with number 2 status, just because number 1 says it is.
Being the confused little stuffed bunny that I am this morning, I have to ask what Tony Blair had to gain from this info? It came up before the war, and it would appear that it came in before he was in too deep. So was he already in too deep then, and why?
Perle.
Macaroni: does he have a choice? And wasn't Wellstone travelling nearly alone (as opposed to one a 747 full of strangers) in a near-private small aircraft? They wouldn't take down a liner for one guy, the worst among them wouldn't do that.
Let them eat yellowcake!
Hmmm, wonder what kind of document dump will land on the press on July 3rd at 6:30 PM?
July 3rd? Holy shit...
I'm betting this has something to do with imminent indictments over a certain blonde spy. And that MI6 is somehow hand-in-glove with our very own homegrown "bad actors."
I have printed out Josh's mysterious remarks, Sy Hersh's "Stovepipe" article, and the Financial Times piece (which, I assume, is the water muddying bit that Josh refers to). Then for good measure I'll be re-reading the fromthewilderness.com article called "Coup d'Etat" -- especially the bits about the Niger documents. This last article suggested the Niger forgeries were possibly supplied by our own spooks, as entrapment, for our very own greedy evildoers...um, I mean "bad actors"...to bring about their own demise.
That'll keep me busy. I hope all the pieces coalesce. I'm getting a bit anxious here. It seems there are potential take-downs in the works, and the slimy critters see it coming and hope to slither away.
What I'd really love to know is if the early "handover" somehow ties in. And I had been praying for indictments just as soon as the Emperor and his entourage return home.
Document dump plus high terra alert on a 3 day weekend equals zzzzzzzzz.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this, so I'll make an idiot of myself.
Bush was interviewed late last week in the Plame investigation. The yellowcake scandal was the genesis of the Plame affair. So......
Some of those muddying the waters may well be those who leaked Plame's identity in an attempt to show that they were right about the yellowcake (despite all the recantations since) and so Joe Wilson was a horse's ass and he deserved to have his wife's identity revealed.
It's an illogical, desperate stretch, but if you're lookin' at a stretch in a federal penitentiary, well, maybe you make that stretch.
Now, let's see how big a horse's ass I am. I'm gonna go read that FT piece now......
Thinking people, that were paying attention, knew this yellow cake business was a fraud before it was presented as "evidence" in the "16 words" state of the union address. (Along with several other lies)
It was googled a month before Mr. Bush presented it and found a fraud.
So, at this point, if Mr. Bush scribbled it on the back of a photocopied scan of his ass and said "f*ck off" to Daschle, would he really get in trouble?
I'm with Kate in printing out all the linked stories. Will be known hence as master master spook and crime buster. HA!
kei & yuri
You're right, it's far too risky to bring down a big jet. When they investigate airliner crashes, they don't screw around. So aside from ethical considerations, they wouldn't be willing to put their necks on the line by being discovered.
Hudson, you are on the very same trail I'm on. So of course I don't think you're a horse's ass!
Thanks, Kate. Your post beat mine by two minutes. Considering that I took 8 minutes or so in putting it together, um, I suppose that means it was I who tried to smuggle the uranium out of Niger......
(OSP and Cheney's office?)
I'm now starting to think it might have been MI6. Which would be really fucking embarrassing for Blair, since the British gubmint has clung onto the idea that there was 'additional' evidence. But, if there's a corner of Vauxhall devoted to creating fake Nigerien documents, then... woohoo.
So, exactly HOW MUCH yellowcake uranium will fit in packs strapped to a horse's ass?
MI6 is certainly a possibility, but I'm guessing they would have done a more convincing forgery.
Oh, and try this bit of googling. A few curious ones there.
Don't quite see how you can get to Palme from this, and Mr. Tomato makes a good point about Blair.
Taking that into consideration it all may lead back to one or more of our homegrown neocons, with the path starting here then going to Italy and then to England and, finally, back to here.
Damn, that Josh is a tease!
I'm thinking our own spooks arranged this forgery business somehow. Then after getting them delivered for analysis, said "Oh my, what's this?"
After analysis they then said to the sponsors of the basement Pentagon stovepipers, "Dear me, this is a FORGERY! Better not use it" This was to give them the rope to hang themselves with.
Of course, I'm just guessing, and there are oodles of details I can't account for yet, but then jeez, I haven't finished the articles yet! Give me time! I think it's part of a well-documented trail of info that will be used in INDICTMENTS. And that it's no coincidence that Tenet and the head of covert ops resigned just one day before Sonny Boy lawyered up. Remember, executive privilege DOES NOT extend to FORMER executive branch officials.
Throgg: because Plame was retaliation for the first debunking of this undying lie. Pretty clear that it might be the same guy both lying about yellowcake and leaking Plame, or the same office.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afric...ica/
2278019.stm
Niger's 2001 uranium production
3,096 tons.
(not weapons grade)
That's a few ass-loads.
MI6 is certainly a possibility, but I'm guessing they would have done a more convincing forgery.
Ah, but if it were designed not to convince, but to show up the political masters...? Hersh's 'Stovepipe' piece for the New Yorker floated the idea that it was retired CIA types, which was considered 'believable', whether true or not.
See, Josh? You're turning us all into tin helment types.
Oh, and let's all pray (or meditate, or send vibes, or observe a moment of silence) -- that the "bad actors" don't get to slither away!
I don't think the poor quality of the forgeries rules out an intelligence agency. These documents were not meant to convince anyone that uranium sales had really taken place. Their real purpose was just to be a timely excuse to invade Iraq. The fact that they were fakes was bound to be found out, because you can't just buy uranium from Niger, there is international supervision of every transaction to account for where such a sensitive product is going. So as soon as the claim was investigated (eg by Joe Wilson) the papers would be found to be phonies no matter how good they were. That didn't matter. They were only ever intended to give Bush the cover to invade. Whoever created them didn't care about shelf-life, so long as they got the invasion underway. After that, who cares if the rationale falls apart AFTER the invasion? "We're in Baghdad now" as Chalabi put it.
In fact, you could even argue that the poorer quality forgery is a good idea for an intelligence agency - if you produce something of professional quality, you are pointing suspicion back at yourself. But you can argue that anyone with a motive could have produced these documents. It widens the field to include non-government agencies too, people like Allawi and Chalabi.
whoooo-oooo...awfully spooky stuff first thing Monday morning.
Just a thought--Chalabi's involvement could cause those plates to shift if Iran is somehow involved in all this.
Hersh's most recent article comes to mind.
Did Josh really go on vacation? Or was he nailing down his story?
If the latter, then the answer to the question: "So where's the bombshell, Italy, France, or the UK?" is suggested in his going away post:
"I’ll be away tucked away on some island somewhere far, far away."
Just a comment regarding MI6: Don't forget that the MI6 was hammered by the press for it's appalling suckupery towards Downing Street during the run up to the War. Remember that famous Dossier which turned out to be mostly cribbed from a post-grad thesis of Iraq in 1991 which MI6 simply googled up fromthe internet, but didn't think anyone else would?
Remember who was largely responsible for that information, and testified before the Hutton Inquiry on said information? It was one John Scarlett. Who post Hutton was promoted to... Head of MI6 by Tony Blair. So don't underestimate the desire in MI6 to please Number 10, and just how much contempt there is for the British Public in their little wranglings. Forging documents would hardly be beyond them.
No, no, no, if I may say so, Jim-Bob Walton. I think their purpose (the forgeries) was to hang the neocons with their own rope. It was too glittering and promising of gazillions of dollars and mucho power for them to resist. Classic entrapment! The docs weren't supposed to be GOOD, they were SUPPOSED to be bad, so the US spook analysts could say, legitimately, "no, no, don't use these docs, they're bad" -- But the greedy evildoers...I mean "bad actors" just couldn't resist the goodies. The forger(s) presented them with a temptation. If they didn't give in to the temptation, they probably wouldn't have been able to go to war. There's nothing like visions of mushroom clouds dancin' in people's heads to get folks willing to invade. So the cabal just had to put those 16 words in. They failed the "test," and their own greed will bring them down. [I want indictments, and I want them NOW.]
I can think of one neo-con with extensive ties to the Italian intelligence community, lived in Italy at one time and has the means, motive and opportunity to provide the Niger forgeries.
I like Kate's theory.
I'm thinking that any MI6 revelations ain't shaking any techtonic plates in or around the greater DC area.
Josh's posts remind me of Ted Casablanca's celebrity gossip blind items on E! online.
CIA is already the great Iraq misadventure whipping boy, so I don't see how the CIA's being the "bad guys" would shift the tectonic plates, as Josh Marshall hinted.
The intelligence operations of Cheney and Rumsfeld have to be involved to have that kind of effect.
"I can think of one neo-con with extensive ties to the Italian intelligence community, lived in Italy at one time and has the means, motive and opportunity to provide the Niger forgeries.
"
That would be Mr. Michael A Ledeen, resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute
NTodd - 
And good morning to you!
One of the neat pieces of this theory is that it helps put in context the unbelievable animosity between CIA/State and the White House/OSP forces. Spooks don't get mad, they get even. Not just that, I think there has been genuine horror over just how much of a national security threat this administration has been.
Every time I hear yellow cake, i have this urge to say, "yes please", and I like my coffee with sugar and milk".
I don't know whether this yellow cake will destroy the Bush presidency. I mean how many lies have we uncovered and still he's even with Kerry. This requires a bold step from Kerry. I think he should make his VP bang. I vote for Michael Moore, he seems to have political ambitions or Hillary Clinton. I think they are negotiating today in SF
Josh's hints are at least 3 levels of indirection away from FT story. So hard to guess Hosh's upcoming story. But I am guessing the logistics of this first and then the content. I think it would probably come in wapo, for which Josh may be a consultant/stringer for the report. This story may break after indictments. The story wouldn't bring new indictments; it will only help understand the niger forgery.
Also, note that forgering Niger documents is not a federal crime by itself.
Okay, what Josh says is: FT story is a deflection plant by real culprits to muddy waters. FT said the Italian who gave the docs to ITalian reporter may himself have been the forgerer.
FT story source seems like M16.
So if this is a deflection, was M16 involved in the forgery? If that is the case (and if this is the thrust of Josh's story), that wouldn't shift tectonic plates in Wash. So it has to connect somebody to Wash.
1. Did Cheney-Feith group ask M16 to supply the docs? This is one plausibility.
2. The whole thing was done by ex and current CIA to dupe the war group and then expose them? So act 2 (exposing) is now happening. Yea, what about M16?
In this scenario, why would M16 now cooperate with FT and CIA gang just to deflect now? This doesn't sound right.
So it cannot be 1 or 2. Anything beyond this must be complex, because at every link up the chain, we have 2 or 3 paths to guess and guess wrongly.
Monica - suppose Tenet and what's-his-name (Pavitt?) are/have been testifying to the Plame grand jury? Suppose they've been carefully documenting information for Fitzgerald, such that it would be easy for Fitz to spot the Boy King in a lie?
The American press seems to be making a big deal out of how the Enfant Terrible was not "under oath" when questioned on Friday. But it doesn't FUCKING MATTER. Lying to a prosecutor is a big-time crime. Who was it this last week who said there will be two rounds of indictments? -- for the leaks themselves, and another set for lying about it to prosecutor/investigators.
freakin' c@$ktease!?!
ecoast - OK, I'm speculating here, but suppose MI6 is trying to muddy the waters, trying to help out Bushco, and in the process, Blair? Is that possible? Or does MI6 hate Blair the way that CIA folks despise Shrub and the neocon horse he rode in on? In which case, I'd have to re-think things...
Good for Josh M. Developing, I guess.
Don't drop that Yellowcake! Whatever you DO don't drop that damn Yellowcake!
I keep thinking of Eddie Izzard--"cake or death?"
"Hmmm....cake, please."
I think someone up above, said Cheney and OSP-
I would concur, and suspect State has their collective hands in pockets-
It has got to be a stressful work effort, manufacturing reality in a parallel, yet to materialize, universe.
I guess now we know why he may have been having such a "bad day",,, a "Go Fuck Yourself" sort of "Big Time" bad day-
Kate, please read what I posted above. Certain elements of MI6, John Scarlet in particular, loves Blair. The last head of MI6 resigned over political pressure on intelligence, so MI6 is probably divided all the way down... but whether the Niger memo came from the Pro- or Anti- Government side remains to be seen.
"NASCAR DAD" is advertising Ricky's Clinton Slander/Libel Project.
Kate - you are right. No oath required in front of a prosecutor. Indictment is the main story. But the prosecutor will limit himself to: Who leaked Plame's name? Who covered it up or who lied to investigators on Plame case? He doesn't really investigate Niger forgery, because it is not front and central to his case plus which prosecutor wants to get into spook territory? He will try to understand it just for the background. So Niger forgery has political dimension and no criminal (especially since so many countries are involved). So I am guessing this Niger story will come right after the Plame indictments, but put it in the Iraq war context.
Yes, earth-shaking, but only in the context of and in the aftermath of Plame indictments. Right after indictements, it will be the second wave and in the political context, it may be much more powerful. So the story is done, plot is laid out, graphics are done and the paper (whichever one that is - I suspect Wapo) is just waiting for the Plame indictments to come out.
can the investigation widen as new evidence is presented? Like Whitewater expanded to include Monica?
I'm skeptical of the forgery-to-entrap-neocons theory because the time to spring such a trap would have been a year ago, not now. In any case it's just too Hollywood; real intelligence types would not want their reputations destroyed by the knowledge that they are willing to dupe their bosses to make a point.
I am surprised that Josh Marshall continues to use commercial aircraft for travel.
This isn't 24, you know (although there's certainly enough torture going on for it to qualify); plus, Josh's messages have made it quite clear that this is a puzzle he is piecing together along with other people who were presumably not flying down to the Carribean with him last week.
"Throgg: because Plame was retaliation for the first debunking of this undying lie. Pretty clear that it might be the same guy both lying about yellowcake and leaking Plame, or the same office."
Except we're pretty sure who did Plame -- Cheney's gang -- and to me they don't seem to be the likely *source* of the Niger lie, though they were happy to be taken in. Also, it's not clear how the "goods" against the Plame leakers and Niger liars would necessarily come out at the same time if the perps were both the same. Even if one of the Plame perps flipped, they probably wouldn't have a clue who actually sold them the Niger story.
I'm also suspicious of Josh's vacation. You don't go on vacation before your major story breaks...you're working your ass off to finish it. You go after its out. I'm with oldtmr.
Maybe Saddam Hussein was behind this. He put together a false case in the expectation of being able to discredit other information from the same source that might have been true. Maybe it was just a matter of misdirection by Saddam. There are other tales of Iraq trying to acquire uranium ore in Africa, but nothing seems to have come of them.
Kate - If it hurts Bush, it hurts Blair.
Remember too, that Niger thing was not bought by CIA, then they (who? This is where Josh's story comes in) peddled it to M16 (with Blair's connivance, I would guess) and then recycled back to WH.
If this is the path, yes, that would hurt Blair. Also Guardian said couple of days ago, Burton (is that the name?) who is investigating intel failures in the UK is going to make it uncomfortable to Blair.
Maybe someone said this already upthread, but how about...
Michael Ledeen?
He's got a shady past, relationships with all sorts of "bad actors" here, in the UK, and in the Middle East, and Italian connections. He's also one of the most insane and arrogant of the neocons (and that's really saying a lot), so I can totally see him doing this if he thought it would get him his precious little war. And he's probably so arrogant that it never occurred to him that he might get caught, consequently he didn't do a very good job.
Josh mentioned something about being "abroad"--the Carribean isn't considered "abroad" is it?
n.b.: blockquote tags appear to fsck up Haloscan's justification and pagination, even if they are closed properly. I'll have to remember that for next time.
ecoast, the new inquiry is being chaired by former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler of Brockwell.
Um, if you were working on a story that would "shift the tectonic plates under Washington", would you go on a 10 day vacation before wrapping it up? Particularly after making a public statement that you were working on such a story, thus allowing your cat to be walked back, and giving the target time to mount a counterattack?
Cranky
And ah, (pant pant) some major, major indictments are coming up real soon. If not this week, then next week, or, surely the week after that...Just keep reading my fantastically exciting reports
ecoast - you mean Butler not Burton. Yesterday, there was an article in The Observer (part of Guardian group) about how Butler is focusing on the Niger uranium claim. It suggests that this could be very embarrassing to Blair:
The US administration has apologised for including the Niger allegation in President Bush's State of the Union address last January, but Blair has always refused to withdraw his claim, insisting that the UK had 'separate intelligence' about Iraq's quest for uranium.
This whole thing stinks of the work of SPECTRE's Plan Delta, involving blackmailing the United States with Saddam's WMDs, which they expertly moved out of the country to Iran (no wait, they have nuclear capacity) I mean Syria.
An important point is to remember that the 1999 Iraqi trade mission which set off this whole mess was designed to sell Iraqi professional services and agricultural products to Niger. The way I read the FT article, the subject seems to be that there is (unspecified) evidence that some in Niger were trying to smuggle out uranium from mines that were no longer commercially profitable. This seems to be another unsubstantiated "proof" that would seem easy to substantiate, at least in terms of Iraq, given that we now basically run the fucking place and have much of the former government in jail. All these prewar assertions should be provable. Why haven't they been?
And ah, (pant pant) some major, major indictments are coming up real soon. If not this week, then next week, or, surely the week after that...Just keep reading my fantastically exciting reports
You know, I am kind of with Breathless on this one. I really, REALLY want this story to be a bombshell but am a little pissed at the level of teasing and still of the opinion that the whole thing will be far too "inside" and obscure and not worth the wait.
I hope, hope, hope I am wrong. But if all of this is to do nothing but bring down some inside neacon like Ladeen, I franly could care less. I want A-list names, baby!
Kate -- my gut says you're on the right track. Why don't you try going back to those articles and try to match up the timing of how the phony Niger forgery developed with events related to the setting up and doings of the OSP.
As you noted, the Niger story has all the earmarks of a sting on the OSP, trying to see how far out on a limb they could be pushed in buying ideologically-driven intelligence that would stink to any experienced intel hand. Does the development of the Niger story match up with the aftermath of any egregious excess of the OSP?
(Not that it would have to exactly, because the experienced CIA folks would certainly be patient enough to bide their time and wait until a moment when the OSP coterie was most eager for tasty trash -- i.e., don't get mad, get even. But you might find something interesting and revealing from the timing.)
The thing I noticed about the Financial Times story (aside from its lack of actual corroborative detail) was that, even as iffy as the whole thing was Iraq seemed shoehorned in anyway. I mean, the article was full of vague and threatening generalities and speculation, but even so, that speculation went like, "Libya, Iran, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Libya, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, oh-yeah-and-also-iraq."
Of course, since we now know that Iraq's entire covert nuclear program was one centrifuge which had been buried in a garden for a decade, and a handful of childish doodles on a napkin somewhere, it's hard to imagine what Iraq would have done with their yellowcake.
"NASCAR DAD" is advertising Ricky's Clinton Slander/Libel Project.
I've noticed a "tell" with Ricky's deceptive blogwhoring: he likes to fawn on Clinton more than a Clinton supporter would. I don't need to check the URL anymore...
Wouldn't you love to see footage of the Dick and top Neocons frog marched out of the WH on fourth of July? I lead a rick fansasy life, of course.
A rich fantasy life, too!
Of course, since we now know that Iraq's entire covert nuclear program was one centrifuge which had been buried in a garden for a decade, and a handful of childish doodles on a napkin somewhere, it's hard to imagine what Iraq would have done with their yellowcake.
Bingo!
"But, if there's a corner of Vauxhall devoted to creating fake Nigerien documents, then... woohoo.
anonymous in nc "
Isn't that in the building where they put the IOLR?
You;ve got to say 'cui buono?' (or however it's spelled). Who benefited? Internationally, who benefited when we took our attention off of Pakistan, aside from Halliburton and AQ?
My theory is that it's Pakistan or Russia. I think y'all are thinking too Eurocentrically.
I'm leaning more towards Russia. Afghanistan is too close to them, physically and psychologically. Success there would put US forces way too close for comfort. They've got their own Chechen problems, and their own loose nukes issues. Putin is re-establishing a totalitarian society, and it's been all but ignored in the US press.
Who, internationally, has gained the most from this bogus war? The more I think of it, the more I believe it was Russia.
And if so, if we went to war at the behest of the KGB... won't that make the freepazoid's little heads explode?
Um, if you were working on a story that would "shift the tectonic plates under Washington", would you go on a 10 day vacation before wrapping it up?
Cranky, Josh went on his vacation AFTER his part of the story was done. He was a bit reporter/researcher on that story for a major paper. I am saying this because he did say he was working with a team of colleagues and he himself doesn't have a major publishing outlet for such a big story.
OT:
You can vote on what the October Surprise will be.
But, if there's a corner of Vauxhall devoted to creating fake Nigerien documents, then... woohoo.
anonymous in nc
I believe you mean Whitehall, don't you?
Vauxhall is where the Oval cricket grounds are - no government offices in the area I'm aware of.
M -- Help! My brain has gone dead of something, but I can't find the sentence you quoted anywhere in the FT article. I linked via TPM and the concluding lines I read were:
"But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.
As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to."
Blowback, thanks for the headsup, and that's interesting. Little-known fact: Butler is the head of University College, Oxford (part of the University, confusingly), and got some stick from Univ denizens when it looked like he might be responsible for another whitewash a la Hutton.
And that's disappointing NTodd, about the pseudoClintonian blog thing.
Jac has it right.
The Cheney angle doesn't fit unless someone in his office was doing something under his nose without his knowledge. Despite all the malfeasance coming from the VP, he is not a dumb man. Why in THE WORLD would he send Joseph Wilson, who has a stellar reputation in foreign service, to check out a claim on a document if Cheney already knew the documents were forged? That doesn't make sense unless his arrogance superceded his duplicity.That dog don't hunt. Maybe Josh will prove me wrong.
Craig, I believe you have the operation codename wrong. It was SPECTRE's Plan Omega that used stolen nukes to blackmail the US.
If you go back and read the lengthy and detailed interview with Joe Wilson about yellowcake in Africa (dammit, WHICH BLOG had the link?), it seems quite clear that the whole idea is ludicrous no matter how you cut it. But what do you expect from an administration that announces Jose Padilla wanted to make a dirty bomb from uranium? (cesium? possible, uranium? no effin' way) It's evident this crowd has no clue about science or what it would take logistically to get yellowcake out.
Steady Eddie - yes, that's what I'll do. I want to think all this through. Damn, in a weird sick way it's actually fun to try to puzzle through this. Or it is until you remember how these bastards hijacked this country and wreaked havoc everywhere, and death.
However, for other reasons I wasn't able to go to bed last night. Even though here in the West it's not as late as it is in Philly, for example, at 6:45 AM I can feel my synapses shutting down. Time to at least take a nap. So, keep up the brilliant work, everybody, and I'll check up on what I've missed after I get up and play with yellowcake timelines. Good sleuthing!
P.S. WTF's up with this handover thing??? Does IT fit in? Lack of sleep is having me fantasize that, while reporters are scrambling to cover that, the Bushies will be getting on private planes and scooting, with their ill-gotten gains, to some long-prepared private island with no extradition. (Aha, maybe THAT'S where Josh went, to check it out!)
Other than the Plame affair, this whole yellowcake business wouldn't have mattered at all if they had managed to unearth credible stashes of WMDs. There was always a chance Saddam had some somewhere. Maybe they were banking on that, and they lost. Now everything else gets all the attention.
Why in THE WORLD would he send Joseph Wilson, who has a stellar reputation in foreign service, to check out a claim on a document if Cheney already knew the documents were forged?
Perhaps (and I mean this quite reasonably, not at all in a snide or cynical way), Cheney's arrogance has yet to be grasped by us all.
Cheney has doggedly insisted on facts that have been shown categorically to be false. He reminds me of Nixon in his tenacity in the face of reality. Given his public actions of late (including what he said to Pat Leahy, and how he all but bragged about it; yeah, Senatorial civility and privilege is "real" hypocritical....), I can easily employ the theory that Cheney has been his own worst enemy.
And as for the mentions of Chalabi, this has become a pet peeve of mine: why the hell isn't that man in custody? If he indeed sold secrets to Iran, gave away valuable U.S. intelligence, why isn't he in prison in the U.S. right now? I understand the press won't take up that cudgel by itself, but what haven't the Democrats demanded his head on a platter?
Is there a reason, other than spinelessness, that Democrats don't want to "go there"?
Because, damn, it seems like a slam dunk to me. We sent the military in to clean out this man's office; why didn't they arrest him, too? I suppose the argument could be, it would give Bush an excuse ("Chalabi made me do it! Blame him!"), but at this point it could easily be: "Why is Bush letting Chalabi run free after he sold out the U.S.?"
Seems pretty simple to me. So what's up?
The Russian Soul Mate has recently come out with a surprise and completely uncorroborated endorsement of the worst Iraqi lies.
NTodd is making a wee jokie, Thea/jac. Honest.
It'were da gummit! Da gummit forg-ed the docs. Flabberdasters all and to helk wit' 'em. Blarney a daster!
It'were da gummit! Da gummit forg-ed the docs. Flabberdasters all and to helk wit' 'em. Blarney a daster!
I do wonder if senior level people in the Bush administration may not have had a hand in the forgeries.
In the first Gulf War, there were several pieces of "evidence" that Saddam's men had engaged in atrocities in Kuwait that did a great deal to justify the war in the minds of many Americans, such as allegations that the Iraqis had thrown infants in hospital incubators onto the floor, killing them. After the war, it was revealed that these episodes were fabrications, and were likely known to be such, but no one was ever held to account for them, because the war itself was judged such a splendid success.
This could very well embolden politicos in the Bush administration to pull the same sort of trick in this war, on the presumption that this war too would be so clearly justified after the WMD were found that no questions would be asked.
Didn't some VERY senior member of the Bush administration say, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter"? Wouldn't it be like him to say, "The first Gulf War proved intelligence fabrications don't matter"?
Hope Josh stays off of small planes.
Here's what I think happened: according to Sy Hersh's article, a spokesperson for Cheney said that Cheney had seen a "piece of intelligence" about Iraq buying uranium from Niger. Now this is the interesting part in my opinion - he asks the CIA briefer if he has any intel on this. The CIA briefer gets back to Cheney with a SISMI (Italian intelligence) report that the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican had met with the heads of several African countries, Niger among them. He tells Cheney that not only is this report speculation on the part of Italian intelligence, but the report itself is raw and unverified. Obviously, Cheney was aware of the report before he asked the CIA if they had any information. Then the mysterious Niger documents show up at the magazine, "Panorama", a magazine owned by the PM of Italy. The editor of the magazine instructs the reporter to take the photocopies given to her by Burba (her source) to the American Embassy, which she does. The reporter goes to Niger to check out the story, and finds that the story could not be true and the documents are forgeries. The editor tells her to kill the story (which is itself an interesting twist). Before these documents were given to the reporter, it was reported that the Niger and the Iraqi embassies were burgled (gee, you think a few letterheads were stolen?) Now this Burba has ties to the Middle East, the Italian intelligence community and other nefarious characters. If a neo-con would be involved in this, who else but Michael Ledeen would have these same contacts, the motive to do this, and the brazenness to attempt it? He also is the only one who connects to both Cheney's office AND Italian intelligence.
NTodd is making a wee jokie, Thea/jac. Honest.
GWPDA
Let me guess - the docs were forged in the back seat of an Astra while parked at the New Covent Garden car park - fifth level, overlooking the railway line and Nine Elms?
That's about as Vauxhall as it gets, mate . . .
Vauxhall is where the Oval cricket grounds are - no government offices in the area I'm aware of.
Er, I was thinking of this, actually. And there are lots of people who 'work for the government' in Vauxhall who can't technically tell you their job description.
Sorry, I don't know how to encode the URL for Haloscan, but here it is in full:
http://news.ft.com/servlet/
Conte...p=1012571727085
You can get to it from Democratic Underground.
It's early here, but I can barely understand what the hell Marshall is trying to say.
Tomato Observer | Email | Homepage | 06.28.04 - 7:29 am | #
Same here. Maybe I'm just stoopid or something but I came out of that post of Josh's thinking "Did I miss something?" Because I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
But I haven't read all the posts above. Maybe someone has more.
MYOB'
.
From the FT article:
Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.
BFD. What does this mean? For all we know, Niger officials were talking to themselves and saying, "Gee, maybe we could sell some of this stuff to Iraq." That would be completely consistent with the above claim by "human intelligence" and would prove ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about Iraq. There is nothing of significance in the FT article as far as I can see.
old Slate (Timothy Noah) article from July 24, 2003:
Why did Cheney give the AEI speech? Chatterbox suspects Mary Matalin (a former Cheney aide who's helping the White House handle Yellowcakegate) advised him that the best defense was a good offense. By portraying curiosity about Yellowcakegate as unpatriotic, Cheney probably hoped to shake the inquiry off his tail.
Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, are suspected (and not just by Chatterbox) of being the Phantom Bigfeet who insisted that the erroneous reference to Saddam's African safari for uranium yellowcake be put into President Bush's State of the Union address. It's a logical suspicion because Cheney, a reformed Iraq dove with the fervor of a convert, has pushed the nuclear justification for the Iraq war harder than anyone else. He even said (of Saddam) on the March 16 Meet the Press, "[W]e believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Cheney was the first White House official to inquire into the yellowcake story (after reading about it in an intelligence briefing), and former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, in a July 6 op-ed for the New York Times, wrote that the CIA sent him to Niger in 2002 to check out the yellowcake story because "Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions." Libby, meanwhile was identified by U.S. News & World Report as having written a tendentious first draft of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council making the case that Saddam represented an imminent security threat.
This last charge isn't true, according to Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard. In an article in the July 28 issue ("The Phony Scandal"), Barnes writes that Libby merely "assembled three separate 'NSC/OVP [Office of the Vice President] working papers' on human rights, WMD, and terrorism for Powell, far more material than Powell needed." Barnes' qualification is probably correct, but it doesn't make much difference. The point is that Libby shoveled a lot of material to Powell that Powell found factually suspect and therefore left out of his speech.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086029/
wondering aloud if Halliburton's 180 million African bribery scandal in the news last week ties in at all with any of this...Cheney helmed Halliburton at the time
Bunny, not to quibble on finer points of SPECTRE operations, Omega was the plan to steal nukes to blackmail NATO not the US. Delta is another one of their plans.
Mind you, if you read bits of the FT piece, choosing the Italian to do the forgeries is a clever maneuver. If he does sing that one of the administration's poltroons, blowhards, or quislings is the man behind the curtain, then the freepers, radio talk show hosts and White House talking points consultants can point to his shady past and question the veracity of his story. It would probably work in a court of law too if it ever got to that point. Yet one has to question the judgement of the instigator seeing as how the job was so poorly executed. Not the go-to man if your looking for help with a check-kiting scam.
Same here. Maybe I'm just stoopid or something but I came out of that post of Josh's thinking "Did I miss something?" Because I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
MYOB
Shorter Josh Marshall: FT got played by the guilty party. We have the real story.
Anoninnc: gotcha.
And -I- was thinking of anonymous in nc..... Jeeze. Can't anybody take a joke any more?
s/Badfingers Tooearly
All this talk of Yellow Cake is making me hungry. I've got an appetite for destruction.
Incidentally, the old building was extremely Len Deighton, whom I really did keep expecting to see. The new one is obviously very secure - doubtful there's much interaction any more between the vetted and non-vetted folk. It makes you wonder how things get moved out into the public discourse any more.
M, better if you'd linked to the DU article, or fed your URL thru tinyurl.com.
Big web addresses make Haloscan cry.
My bad, anon in nc, I've not come across 'Vauxhall' as shorthand for mil. intel. before - I guess I just don't have my ear to the ground often enough whilst in Blighty...
Am I correct in feeling the FT article is pre-emptive spin? I mean - well, the document was a forgery but bad guys were trying to buy uranium from African nations.
I think we also should pay attention to who they are claiming was trying to buy uranium from whom. It could tell us a little bit more about the neo-cons state of mind. From the rational point of view, all this indicates so far is that we made a mistake in focusing on Iraq when the nuclear proliferation issue is much bigger than just Iraq. For instance, why has nobody done anything about China's own little nuclear whore, Pakistan?
< majorly paranoid tin foil hat thinking >
You're right, it's far too risky to bring down a big jet. When they investigate airliner crashes, they don't screw around. So aside from ethical considerations, they wouldn't be willing to put their necks on the line by being discovered. - Ibble Fibble
They don't screw around investigating airliner crashes? Methinks there has been a bit of screwing around in the investigation of 9/11 - I mean appointing Kissinger to the commission at the beginning, constant cries of partisanship re. the commission from some of the most hypocritically partisan voices out there.
I think there is plenty of screwing around with the 9/11 investigation. Which brings me almost to think of a point made earlier in some thread: who was on the 9/11 planes that someone could want killed; was 9/11 a "hit"?
< / majorly paranoid tin foil hat thinking >
One reason to handover early:
The Supremes are about to hand Bush and Ashcroft and Gonzales a setback. Today's the day that (odds are) SCOTUS tells Bush that even those accused of the worst crimes got rights.
they ruled Brian.
One of Drum's readers points to a post by Laura Rozen, a member of Josh's cabal.
http://tinyurl.com/2vy3z
I suspect the tectonic shift here will be less than advertised.
Unless it's the Saudis or Israelis.
Josh is in the heat of pinning down the solution to a mystery, and it's gained emotional significance to him beyond its plausible political effect.
I mean, there won't be any video.
I saw this movie last night.
It had a lot of bad actors in it.
And too much violence.
Shit, anon in nc.... that's some bad-ass building! Does anyone have a pic of The United States Embassy in Baghdad?
DAS,
you are hereby elected into the Tinfol Hat Hall of Fame.
Ceremony is on July 3. Location t.b.d.
Prepare a ten-minute speech.
You are scheduled to speak after Holden argues that it will still be "40 by the 4th".
smarty jones - I don't actually agree with the speculation I've made ... it's just that when real conspiracies abound, one's mind tends to forget about Occam's razor and begins to start weaving conspiracies and tall tales from anything the least bit suspicious. That it even seems plausible to me that 9/11 could have been a hit is testimony to the degree to which the 9/11 investigation has been flubbed and the admin has allowed itself to wallow in conspiracy and corruption to make any conspiracy and corruption seem plausible!
BTW - I wish I were a Rabbi. I am sure that one can make a Halachic (Jewish-legal) argument that Jews should not associate with conspiratorial organizations because the more conspiracies actually occur, the more likely people are to believe in any conspiracy-theories, including anti-Semitic ones. Thus, by serving in corrupt, conspiratorial organizations, Jews would be fomenting anti-Semitism and hence profaning God's name.
So when are Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, et al, going to be excommunicated?
So many scandals; so little time. The only problem is they tend to cancel each other out - ie the NG AWOL thingy and the Cheney’s energy papers stonewalling are old, composted piles that are buried so deep in steaming fresh shit that it seems petty to keep complaining about them. Note the developing “This is No Time for Angry Carping” meme from the GOP?
Bush may decide to pull a Bremmer and resign two days before the NY convention, claiming: “My work here is done.”
more important is HIGHLIGHTING the fact that the bushevics grabbed this forgery and RAN WITH IT.
big picture baby!
the sheeple don't give a shit about the little details.
Iraq HAD yellowcake already; it's still there, measured and tagged by the UN from long ago. They never needed to obtain any from anywhere else.
As the IAEA have said repeatedly.
They've also said Iraq didn't have any ability to convert the yellowcake, which we all know now was more than true, and bush never even bothered to order the nuclear factory (or anything else but the Oil Ministry and oil wells) guarded for over 6 weeks after the fall of Baghdad. SUUUUUUURE he cared about Iraq's "WMD".
My bet is on CheneyCo and his OSP having done the dirty.
DAS,
thanks for taking my post well... it was really more of a jest directed towards Holden.
The poor chap only has 7 days to get Bush's approvals down into the 30's. Now that is some crazy thinking!
Maybe Bremer leaving early has more to do with this story than a strategy to avoid violence in Iraq.
Without understanding exactly what Josh is getting at, my thoughts are the following:
1) If it is really going to shift tectonic plates in Washington, then it has to directly involve somebody in Washington, and somebody important.
It may be true that what's bad for Bush is bad for Blair, but the reverse is hardly true (that is, what's bad for Blair barely registers here -- maybe those of us here at Eschaton are very much interested, but it's not going to register in any larger political sense);
2) The danger of this much hinting and promising on Josh's part about tectonic plates and whatnot is that he is creating enormous expectations about the effect this article is going to have.
it is interesting how these bogus stories keep getting into mainstream presses so the real bad actors can get away with treasons and crimes.
as the Plame-gate is getting closer to the WH and The Pentagon highups, we will be seeing these stories being planted with the help of real bad journalits.
it is not that hard really to figure out who leaked Plame's ID. the question is will the prosecutor uses perjury charges to dig the creature(s) out from a deep bunker.
Jac - I think GOVT OFF just to the left of Vauxhall is a bit of a giveaway. BTW, The Oval is in Kennington and not Vauxhall and I am not talking estate-agenteze here.
smarty jones - I'll gladly attend my induction ceremony. What time will it be at though? I am supposed to meet a friend for lunch that day (my birthday is the next week and 3 July is the best time for us to have a birthday lunch) - so midday is out.
Would prefer that the ceremony is after the Sabbath is over anyway, though I am not too terribly strict about such things.
OT, but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
FRIEDMAN IS GONE!!!!!!
On a three month "sabbatical" but I doubt he'll ever be back!!
He can spend his time making up the headlines he would like to see, (as he often does, and did for his last column) and trying to wash the blood off his hands.
Well, that's one damned spot out of the NYTs!
Oh yeah- see Enduring Friedman for confirmation.
If Josh Marshall has something to say, then say it. He does not work for the government. This is not some state secret he is protecting. As far as I know he is not bound by any "journalistic code" as a blogger. It sounds awfully sel-important so do this cloak and dagger routine.
Joe Fields
The Bird
http://www.roaringbird.com
First I'd like to thank "M" for posting this line from the ORIGINAL UNEDITED article.
I read the article last night but todays reading of the same article left me thinking I'd dreamt this last line!
""However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made."
Hey FT!
Did Bush or Blair order the article edited?
OT: kei and yuri- in another thread you brought up the meaning of al-Qaida, saying you heard it meant the "the toilet " place to sit". And wondereed if anyone could verify this. I had heard it meant base, or foundation. Indeed, the title of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novel when translated into Arabic was "Al-Qaida".
http://tinyurl.com/3am4g
Here there is specualtion that bin Laden read the novel and garnered some of his ideas from it. Bizarre.
Josh Marshall is also a journalist and there are any number of reasons why he won't or can't say what is really up. First if he outscoops the publication that is planning on running the piece by telling it to the blogosphere, not only does he let down the other journalist with whom he is working with, but he also devalues his product which gives the publication little interest in running the story, with the added misfortune of losing pay and his reputation, as nobody would seriously think about running his work again if he's willing to blab all for free.
This is not self importance. Also, if the story is even half as big as he suggests, I would imagine that he, his collegues, editor and publisher will have to do some arduous fact checking as well as consult their lawyers before they run with the story, just to cover everybody's ass.
So yes, he does have a "journalistic code" to go by. I know it may be hard to believe, but its true.
I remember hearing somewhere the connotation desired in naming the organization Al-Qaeda was that it was a kind of database for terrorist cells to coordinate their activities (how would one refer to a "database" in Arabic, btw?) - that it was a kind of decentralized, flexible organization from the get-go: you and your friends become an Al Qaeda member, you get instructions, support, etc. for how to carry out what terrorist attack, but your cell is kind of an independent franchise a la a MacDonald's restaurant.
D'oh - just read the article in the link:
With the coming of the computer age, it has gained the further meaning of "database": qaida ma'lumat (information base).
Joe Fields-- Read upthread. It sounds like Marshall is working as part of a larger team (perhaps the Post?) on a sensitive story. He can't discuss the particulars until this story breaks in its intended forum, which will not be the blog at TPM.
I just hope they don't delay too long now that the element of surprise appears to have been lost. Once powerful people know you're on to them, they tend to pull a lot of strings to blur the facts and sabotage the impact of your piece.
DAS-Yes, that's right. The database aspect of the name is mentioned in the article as well.
This FT story would look funny even without the heads-up from Josh/TPM.
I mean, is it really in the FT style to lay on the sarcasm with a trowel as Mark Huband does in his closing?:
"...Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.
"As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to."
That's a little bludgeon-like, no?
Please don't post long URLs in the comments section.
The blow out the Haloscan formatting and make it very difficult for others to read the comments.
It's VERY EASY to embed a URL link in your comments.
Please see the web pages I've set up at:
http://tinyurl.com/2bzyk,
or:
http://web.newsguy.com/christucker/tips.html
for details on how to embed a URL, use tinyurl.com or use the "URL" field above the comments box.
Thank you for your kind attention!
smkngman1 -- Thanks for clarifying M's quote from the FT article. I read the article after Atrios' post and could find the line nowhere. As I said upthread, I thought I was losing my mind and asked M to help save my sanity but s/he doesn't seem to have been around.
Now that I know for sure I read a re-edited version of the same article I'll have to give some thought to what the change might means.
I think we have the shape of Josh's story.
1. BevD, sourcing from Sy Hersh, gives the story on what happened in Italy.
2. route66, sourcing from slate, gives the origin of this - Cheney pushing CIA to give something.
Now we need to fill the gaps from 2 to 1. Since Cheney didn't get anything from CIA, neocons (now let us put Ledeen in the picture) went to Italy.
But how is M16 involved? From today's FT, M16 is pushing back, covering their tracks. Does it mean they are involved in the forgery? AnonNC upthread said that FT reporter has good M16 sources. So going from 2 to 1 above, when CIA wasn't buying it, the thing got cycled somehow through M16 to give some authenticity.
This may be the missing link between 2 and 1.
Re why Josh is not publishing what he knows, this story is not entirely his.
He is a contributing reporter and a heavy duty publication (wapo, as we are suspecting) owns the story.
Why Wapo? Wapo reporters (Walter Pincus and Dana Priest) have excellent
sources in CIA. Josh lives in DC and
has his own intel sources. I would think he hangs out with Pincus types.
Wapo has been much more aggresive than NYT in neocon/WMD/Plame stories.
As I wrote upthread, this yellowcake story is a corollory to the Plame indictment story. I think the paper is sitting on it, waiting for the Plame indictments to come in. It doesn't want to get in the prosecutor's way.
ecoast,
I don't think that this is a WaPo story.
if Josh is just a small part of the team, why wouldn't they beat the shit out of him for pissing all over the story?
what major paper would allow such a person to advertise on a personal blog a major story that is about to break?
If this is as big as many of us hope it is, Josh should have sat on this.
Our own speculation is in effect muddying waters.
It's not M16, it's MI6, got it? Sheesh.
From Jason Burke's primer on Al-Qaida at www.foreignpolicy.com:
"Al Qaeda Is a Global Terrorist Organization”
No. It is less an organization than an ideology. The Arabic word qaeda can be translated as a “base of operation” or “foundation,” or alternatively as a “precept” or “method.” Islamic militants always understood the term in the latter sense. In 1987, Abdullah Azzam, the leading ideologue for modern Sunni Muslim radical activists, called for al-qaeda al-sulbah (a vanguard of the strong). He envisaged men who, acting independently, would set an example for the rest of the Islamic world and thus galvanize the umma (global community of believers) against its oppressors. It was the FBI—during its investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa—which dubbed the loosely linked group of activists that Osama bin Laden and his aides had formed as “al Qaeda.” This decision was partly due to institutional conservatism and partly because the FBI had to apply conventional antiterrorism laws to an adversary that was in no sense a traditional terrorist or criminal organization.
Although bin Laden and his partners were able to create a structure in Afghanistan that attracted new recruits and forged links among preexisting Islamic militant groups, they never created a coherent terrorist network in the way commonly conceived. Instead, al Qaeda functioned like a venture capital firm—providing funding, contacts, and expert advice to many different militant groups and individuals from all over the Islamic world.
Today, the structure that was built in Afghanistan has been destroyed, and bin Laden and his associates have scattered or been arrested or killed. There is no longer a central hub for Islamic militancy. But the al Qaeda worldview, or “al Qaedaism,” is growing stronger every day. This radical internationalist ideology—sustained by anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric—has adherents among many individuals and groups, few of whom are currently linked in any substantial way to bin Laden or those around him. They merely follow his precepts, models, and methods. They act in the style of al Qaeda, but they are only part of al Qaeda in the very loosest sense. That's why Israeli intelligence services now prefer the term “jihadi international” instead of “al Qaeda.”
Actually, Smarty, I think they should, even though he said precious little on his website. But if his editors/colleagues see this thread, they will shut him up. I have a feeling Josh might be reading this thread too and he will keep quiet now. Let this be a test.
If he keeps quiet now for a few days, then we can say it is wapo.
If he keeps blabbering, then we know it is not that big a story and will probably come out in The Hill or something.
Berlusconi, puttana!
Chalabi, (arabic for bitch)!
Michael Ledeen acting for Dick Cheney, bitch!
Those are my suspects. The initial infection point is in Italy. A complicit neo-fascist government with longstanding CIA relationships, and Iraqi exiles on permanent holiday.
The magazine Elizabetta Burba works for is part of Berlusconi's media empire. I wouldn't trust that storyline. My understanding is that the fake docs were spread around to anyone who would take them *well before* Burba handed them to the US embassy. Most intelligence services were able to tell the docs were crap, including MI6.
By citing British intelligence in the SOTU speech, the Bush admin could say they never saw the obviously forged docs but could still make the claim.
Cheney: We need some evidence
Chalabi: I can get you some Iraqi letterhead
Ledeen: Let's do an op in Italy, I've got contacts there.
Berlusconi: I can get you some Niger letterhead.
Blair: the evidence is crap but we'll cover for you.
See my translation of a Repubblica article from last year:
http://www.shystee.com/
shysteebl...025.html#000025
I apologize in advance for the blogspam in the comments on my site. Blogspammers are truly the scum of the earth.
DAS
So when are Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, et al, going to be excommunicated?
Doesn't that do them too much honor by ranking them with Spinoza?
Wile E. Odyssseus -
you do have a point.
http://warincontext.org/
editoria...ogusdossier.htm
it may well be 3 allies, US-UK-Italy, were involved in producing the bogus dossier.
smarty jones: the MI6 building looks like the Ministry of Love from 1984, yeah. Though the US Embassy in Grosvenor Sq. also looks pretty Orwellian, especially with the new concrete cordon and razor wire. Fucking ugly.
(Apparently, the US Embassy in Baghdad is the entire Green Zone. That is, it's lots and lots of Saddam's palaces. Fuck knows where the Iraqis will actually govern from.)
But anyway, from what I know, most of MI6 is underground. There's no visible entrance, so the assumption is that there are, um, 'routes' from surrounding buildings. I do know that there are quite a lot of grace-and-favour flats by the river in Vauxhall inhabited by people in their late 20s and 30s who couldn't ever afford them on 'Civil Service' salaries. (Not that MI6 pays well; it just has a few nice perks.)
If Josh Marshall has something to say, then say it. He does not work for the government. This is not some state secret he is protecting. As far as I know he is not bound by any "journalistic code" as a blogger.
You really don't know how investigative journalism works, do you? For stories like this, you have to get them completely. locked. down. (I dunno if any of you have ever seen 'State of Play'. While it's a bit overdone, they had good advisors from Fleet Street who managed to capture a lot of what happens when a big investigative story's about to break.)
DAS- How the heck does a Jew get excommunicated? (not that I don't think a few of the neo-cons who are Jewish deserve it) As far as I know, there is no central religious authority with such a function. (I don't belong to an organised religion, I'm Jewish)
HERE's my favorite theory:
That Valerie Plame, in her role as a CIA Operative working on WMD intel, somehow created the forgery as part of her clandestine operations. Then, it gets out of the CIA-front hands and peddled back to separate intel channels. Then the U.S. admin picks up the forgery to push their war.
Mmmm... Josh IS a tease.
I am a bit puzzled. There are posts above claiming that the article has been edited. I can see two articles posted by the same author at the same time. They are Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium and Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'.
The former contains the quote 'However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made.' while the latter ends with 'As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.' Strange!
Alright, who in this pool is bribing Fitzgerald to hold the indictments until next week? Did you offer money, sex or both? How much, or how hot?
Polling through the 4th won't come out until next week, and there is still time to release Fitzgerald from your web of iniquity and have a fair fight.
This suspense is interfering with my work, with increasingly frequent 'intrusive thoughts' interrupting my testing and debugging processes. And every time the thought of BiggerThanWatergate takes hold, the face of the traitor on the roasting spit changes with each rotation.
Enough! Gimme eat!
-
"DAS- How the heck does a Jew get excommunicated? (not that I don't think a few of the neo-cons who are Jewish deserve it) As far as I know, there is no central religious authority with such a function. (I don't belong to an organised religion, I'm Jewish)" - Mooser
I too "don't belong to an organised religion, I'm Jewish". I am not sure how the process works. I think if a Rabbi issues a writ of cherem (excommunication) it would apply for the community, over which the Rabbi excercizes authority - the broader the community which follows the Rabbi, the broader the application of the writ of excommunication (note - an excommunication doesn't make someone not Jewish anymore ... it just cuts them off from the organized Jewish community until such time as they repent from whatever caused the excommunication in the first place - of course, you cannot live properly as a Jew outside of the Jewish community, so as far as Jewish law is considered those who are excommunicated are sinning so long as they do not repent and rejoin the community).
Of course the decision could be appealed. And anyway, no Rabbi would make such a ruling for fear of alienating his/her congregation - remember, Rabbinical authority, while it is obtained from other Rabbis/by ordination, can only be excercized with consent of the congregation/community - Judaism is fundamentally democratic even if Rabbinical rulings are, to some degree, considered infallible.
The analogy is with a secular court. A judge's ruling stands so long as it is not reversed on appeal - similarly a Rabbi's decision stands so long as it is not reversed on appeal. However, in Judaism there is no "supreme court" anymore, so stare decisis always is a concern (at least to the Orthodox). OTOH, Rabbis are freely engaged and disengaged by the community. While the Rabbi may be ordained by a larger or specific organization (e.g. a seminary), the Rabbi excercizes his/her authority in a community/congregation by virtue of the fact that the community/congregation consents to that authority.
Thus, if a Rabbi makes bad decisions, the Rabbi will loose the consent of the congregation/community and can no longer function as a Rabbi.
Hope this doesn't confuse more than it clarifies!
Nope, DAS, that didn't clarify. I think in practical terms, the process just don't exist. The point is important to me because I bump up against the assumption that Israel is equivalent to the Vatican, and the leader of Israel equivalent to the Pope, all the time. Very difficult for non-Jews to understand the decentralised nature of Judaism. Thus, for instance, some Gentiles can only understand not being a Zionist in terms of being a "bad" Jew. And referring to Jews being ex-communicated reinforces that confusion. But this is all so OT, so let's drop it for now. Shalom.
Whoops- meant to say your answer did describe the process as I understand it, but in practical terms...
Sorry. Preview is a good thing, but we ain't got it here.
Mooser - I see your point and, of course, agree with it. The State of Israel as it exists today has no standing in Jewish law anyway (what with the Messiah not yet arrived and all). I do know that there are non-Jews that equate Israel with the Vatican. How they can manage to do this is beyond me. To some degree the hard-core Zionists are running somewhat of a disinformation campaign here ... what disturbs me is the degree to which religious Jews, who should be protesting this campaign, are swalling it - hook line and sinker.
I think I might have joined the dots. There is an 'October Surprise' but it will not work to the benefit of George W Bush. Instead, it will damage him. My guess is that the source of the Niger Yellowcake document was Manucher Ghorbanifar. He was allegedly involved in the meeting in Paris which led to the original October Suprise where George Bush asked the Iranians to hang on to the hostages until after the election. Now that George W Bush has dumped on Ahmed Chalabi, Manucher Ghorbanifar is going to dump on George W Bush via his father.
Thanks DAS. I certainly agree with you. It is a bad situation and makes discussion of Israel and Zionism very difficult.
94 tons of yellowcake at Tuwaitha. Hmm, I know...let's buy some more!!!
Then we can stack it up and have the IAEA come over and count it for us. Can't do a damn thing with it. It won't make dirty bombs; it won't blow up; we don't have any centrifuges; but we just like the color.
So much like gold, eh, you know, golden--which if you ask me, is something oil ain't got.
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With the spec being not one, but multiple indictments and offenses, that gives some room to fit top choices into the conspiracy, without having to be zeroed on the one, main perp.
So, I predict for indicteehood: Robert Joseph in the NSC with a leak/lie.
Gimme eat!
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Call it wishful thinking (hoping?) but Josh M's latest post seems to be a huge hint that the Yellowcake forgery story that's brewing will somehow ensnare "Big Time."
If it does, we're looking at a gargantuan scandal. It’ll be something approaching Watergate proportions. All I can say, light the torches and pass the pitchforks we're heading to Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://
www.talkingpointsmemo.com...6_27.php#003105
Call it wishful thinking (hoping?) but Josh M's latest post seems to be a huge hint that the Yellowcake forgery story that's brewing will somehow ensnare "Big Time."
If it does, we're looking at a gargantuan scandal. It’ll be something approaching Watergate proportions. All I can say, light the torches and pass the pitchforks we're heading to Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://
www.talkingpointsmemo.com...6_27.php#003105
Call it wishful thinking (hoping?) but Josh M's latest post seems to be a huge hint that the Yellowcake forgery story that's brewing will somehow ensnare "Big Time."
If it does, we're looking at a gargantuan scandal. It’ll be something approaching Watergate proportions. All I can say, light the torches and pass the pitchforks we're heading to Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://
www.talkingpointsmemo.com...6_27.php#003105
Actually, I think I've figured out what Josh was talking about: When he said that there would be a shift in the tectonic plates, he meant it literally! The real culprit in all of this is -- wait for it -- The US Geological Service!
They forged the documents to cover up the fact that they were buying yellowcake from the black market to replace the nuclear waste which has been disappearing into a hitherto undiscovered geological fault under Yucca Flats! And since the fault also runs under Teapot Dome, it explains why we haven't been tapping the SPR -- our strategic reserve is now radioactive!
The real reason why Paul Bremer left Baghdad two days early was to begin negotiations with the radioactive mutant nuclear Iguana Men who have been pouring forth from their now-irradiated caverns near the earth's core. They're here, they're pissed about the secret medical experiments we've been performing on them at Gitmo, and, according to Ipsos and Zogby, they're increasingly likely to vote Democratic in the coming election. Something must be done before they overwhelm the earth and steal our women.
Josh isn't really saying anything. Spell it out!
last week, on atc, don gagme[sic] was reporting on the interview of the unelected concerning the valerie plame outing.
i did not catch the name of the bunt who was questioning him, but it was an astonishing revelation of either real ignorance or invented ignorance.
what was especially astounding to me was how gagme related joe wilson's mission to niger.
i don't know if these people are inadvertantly ignorant or deliberately ignorant.
but gagme related wilson's mission to niger. without relating what a joke that mission really was. without relating how the united states of amerika press avoided the real story. any journalist with any brains would have known that the innuendoes concerning saddam's iraq attempting to acquire fissionable material floated by the bush regime were monstrous prevarications. to wit....
1. niger produces a low grade form of uranium. know as yellowcake. furthermore, the production of this yellowcake is controlled by a USA-friendly consortium and its production is contracted for years in advance[i.e., there isn't a lot of yellowcake available to any spot market purchaser].
2. yellowcake is such a low grade of fissionable material that it must be enriched. for pounds of fissionable material thousands of tons of yellowcake must be processed.
3. delivering thousands of tons of yellowcake, even if the niger consortium could have/would have sold it, would require hundreds of ocean freighters. the presence of all these boats would have been noticeable to all the intelligence and freighting agencies of the world. this could not have been hidden.
4. even if the yellowcake could have been acquired and loaded in niger, the freighters would still have had to sail to iraq. and upon reaching iraq, they would have to be unloaded.
can you imagine that a country under the constant control of the air forces of the usofamerika and britain could have constructed the port facilities to handle these thousands of tons of yellowcake? could have docked the freighters and unloaded them without the noticing of the airborne surveillance of the usofamerika and britain?
5. anyone ever been to oak ridge, tn? observed the acres of facilities that have been constructed to process yellowcake into fissionable material?
anyone out there understand that the tva was essentially created to provide the high levels of electricity that are required to power the yellowcake enrichment process?
6. suffice it to say, when you want to understand how much your press are agitprop agents, just reflect on these realities and how you read no one mentioning them. then or now.
7. saddam's iraq never had facilities for the handling of yellowcake at any port.
8. saddam's iraq never had any transport facilities from any port to any oak ridge-like processing[enrichment] facilities.
9. saddam's iraq never had any enrichment processing facilities.
10. saddam's iraq never had the electrical generating capacitie
10. saddam's iraq never had the electrical generating capacities for powering any enrichment facilities.
to summarize, that the usofamerikan press ever supported the illusion that saddam's iraq could produce nuclear weapons is proof positive that the usofamerikan press is just a part of the USG.
Minds like a steel trap dept. (from the FT article):
But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.
As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.
Minds like a steel trap dept. (from the FT article):
But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.
As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.
>Something must be done before they overwhelm the earth and steal our women.
Thank you, Ray Radlein.
Too many comments to read them all, but ...
On the theory that disgruntled US spooks cooked up the Niger forgeries to lay a trap for the neocons ... um. Is anybody else a little concerned that the price paid for that little gambit could arguably be 12,000 or so Iraqi, US and other dead?
Or am I completely missing the point here?
Demogenes -
Sy Hersch's piece quotes an ex-spook who says it indeed was cooked up by (mostly ex-)spooks, but that it backfired on them. That they expected to simply embarrass the administration when everyone eventually recognized the fraudulency of the documents. They didn't expect the gov. to run with them, unopposed. I'm speculating that after that little dilemma, it was subsequently discussed as a means of bringing the bastards down. And I'm hoping that's true (that the bastards will, indeed, be thereby brought down).
Blind Man's Bluff, with precipice?
HITCHENS was the Plame leak.
AEI-CIA-M16 needs a source that knows both sides of the ocean!!!!
Hitchens even quotes Blair in his arguments in support of Bush... go to finheaven.com war foum and there is a running argument in the political/war section about it...
Some freep used 'Bush is right' lines based on Blair statements that Hitcens regurged as RNC talking points.
He is not a US citizen so inserting information could somehow vaguely define him as an "outside independent source".
Aside from this would be any journalist at g8 location meetings and especially the Italy session (seventh gathering?).
The only country whoch could have verified niger/nigeria were french and german firms that ran the facilities for those countries , niger's facility was not listing as running full capacity at the time the rumors happened and the embassies of those nations could damn well verify the extent of their capability.Their no confidence vote on the leak is a solid confirmed vote. britain had no embassy at Niger during said time. Leave it to a person such as Hitchens to sepculate.
Hitchens needed a place to stay for a few nights, Mylroi and Miller obliged and helped implant story leads perhaps? A big OSP/AEI/MIller&Mylroi/Hitchens gangbang. The asses of evil...
Maybe, on a different note, the yellowcake story is a red herring aimed at sending the "bad actors" in the wrong direction.
Kate -- also, the Frontline story on the Intel Wars quoted an anon source who also gave the "trap" stoy.
Kate -- also, the Frontline story on the Intel Wars quoted an anon source who also gave the "trap" stoy.
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