U.S. Generals To Quit If Bush Orders Iran Strike

From the Sunday Times:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them."

While Bush and Cheney are focusing on Iran and the escalation in Iraq, the folks who originally attacked us are getting stronger by the day. As Frank Rich points out in his latest column, Bush wasn't interested in hearing about the Al Qaeda threat a few weeks before 9/11, and his administration doesn't want to hear about the threat now:

That’s why terrorism experts are trying to get its attention by going public, and not just through The Times. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A. bin Laden unit, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann last week that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, having regrouped in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States” (the real United States, that is, not the fictional stand-in where this same scenario can be found on “24”). Al Qaeda is “on the march” rather than on the run, the Georgetown University and West Point terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman told Congress. Tony Blair is pulling troops out of Iraq not because Basra is calm enough to be entrusted to Iraqi forces — it’s “not ready for transition,” according to the Pentagon’s last report — but to shift some British resources to the losing battle against the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is why the entire debate about the Iraq “surge” is as much a sideshow as Britney’s scalp. More troops in Baghdad are irrelevant to what’s going down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surge supporters who accuse the Iraq war’s critics of emboldening the enemy are trying to deflect attention from their own complicity in losing a bigger battle: the one against the enemy that actually did attack us on 9/11. Who lost Iraq? is but a distraction from the more damning question, Who is losing the war on terrorism?

This is the kind of big picture stuff that the Democrats should be running with right now. Instead of merely focusing on whether or not to get out of Iraq, the Democrats should combine the idea of a withdrawal from Iraq with the need to increase our military presence in Afghanistan. Then, when BushCo resists such a proposal, the Democrats can attack Bush for being weak on national security, just like he was weak back in August 2001 when he didn't do shit to stop the 9/11 attacks even though he was warned that bin Laden was determined to strike inside the U.S.

Every time someone brings up BushCo's pre-9-11 incompetence, the Extreme Right always makes some comment about how such criticism is "old news." The Democrats can now counter this "old news" talking point with a "history is repeating itself" talking point. It's a perfect opportunity, and that's why I'm sure that the Democrats will fail to take advantage of it.

Oliphant

Some Must-See Videos

First of all, here is the most recent trailer for the upcoming Simpsons movie. It looks like it could be a pretty good film.

And here is George "Mr. Sulu" Takei's hilarious response to Tim Hardaway's recent anti-gay statements.

Finally, here is a sneak peak at a new television news show called Meet the Press For Idiots. Thanks for the links, Todd.

Treason

Members of the Radical Right have no problem using the "T" word when referring to Democrats, progressives, and other non-right-wing types. Indeed, extremist nutjob Ann Coulter actually called one of her books Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and a columnist at the New York Post recently had no problem labeling the Democrats' anti-surge resolution as an act of treason.

Democrats and progressives, on the other hand, don't like to return the favor. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) pointed this out in a speech on the House floor last week:

Members of the other side have questioned our side and they've said "whose side are we on?" and "how can we say that we support the troops?" and that we're somehow unpatriotic. And I would just like to say that when the Republican Party and this president didn't send enough troops, we didn't call you unpatriotic, and when you sent our young soldiers over there without the body armor, we never call you unpatriotic, * * * and when they didn't send enough up-armored humvees, we never called anybody unpatriotic and now when the next batch goes over without the proper jammers or up-armored kits, we don't call you unpatriotic.

Now we've called you incompetent -- we said you're incapable and we said you were derelict in your oversight responsibility -- but never, Mr. Speaker, have we called anyone in this House unpatriotic.

Congressman Ryan is right -- we never question the other side's patriotism, and I think we should start doing so. Sure, I understand that it is possible to be profoundly incompetent without being a traitor, but how incompetent can one group of people be? And I'm not talking about just the Iraq Debacle.

BushCo basically let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in December 2001. As Frank Rich wrote in The Greatest Story Ever Sold:

* * * [S]ources would repeatedly corroborate the [Washington Post's] initial report of the disastrous failure to nab bin Laden in Tora Bora that December, culminating with Gary Berntsen, a top CIA commander on the ground at the time and a leader in the brilliant campaign that undid the Taliban in Afghanistan. In his memoir Jawbreaker, published in 2005, Berntsen, a Bush loyalist, tells of how his teams found bin Laden and his remaining entourage in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistani border and begged Centcom for 800 U.S. Army Rangers to "block a possible Al-Qaeda escape into Pakistan." But instead he was ignored by Franks and the Pentagon, who inexplicably entrusted the job instead to Afghan warlords with agendas of their own. Bin Laden effortlessly slipped away while Berntsen fumed.

I wish I could tell you that the disaster at Tora Bora is the only example of Bush allowing enemies of America to escape, but it isn't (see here and here).

It would be one thing if members of the Bush Regime learned their lesson from what happened -- or, should I say, didn't happen -- at Tora Bora, but that clearly has not occurred. This is from today's New York Times:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan. * * *

All this is happening merely as a result of BushCo incompetence? I'm sorry, but nobody is that stupid.

I think the time has come for Americans to consider the possibility that Bush and his people don't want to stop Al Qaeda or capture bin Laden. They've certainly done a great job at not doing either.

What do you call it again when you provide aid and comfort to the enemy?

The Hilarious Death Throes Of The Extreme Right

It took a little time, but it looks like folks have finally seen the light and have come around to accepting the truth about George W. Bush, namely, that he is the worst president in American history. Indeed, merely calling him the worst doesn't begin to address the scope of Bush's failure as president, but there it is.

One person who has seen the light is Al Neuharth, the founder of USA TODAY:

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying "this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst."

"She's wrong," I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. "It's very unlikely Bush can crack that list," I added.

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.

I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this kind of stuff in the months to come. This is because BushCo has apparently lost the ability to do what it used to do best. As Frank Rich points out:

Maybe the Bush White House can't conduct a war, but no one has ever impugned its ability to lie about its conduct of a war. Now even that well-earned reputation for flawless fictionalizing is coming undone.

Watching the administration try to get its story straight about Iran's role in Iraq last week was like watching third-graders try to sidestep blame for misbehaving while the substitute teacher was on a bathroom break. The team that once sold the country smoking guns in the shape of mushroom clouds has completely lost its mojo.

But don't worry, everyone. There are still a few idiots out there who are more than happy to drink the kool-aid, like this guy from the New York Post:

PROVIDING aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime is treason. It's not "just politics." It's treason.

And signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win isn't "supporting our troops."

The "nonbinding resolution" telling the world that we intend to surrender to terrorism and abandon Iraq may be the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.

The vote was a huge morale booster for al Qaeda, for Iraq's Sunni insurgents, and for the worst of the Shia militias.

The message Congress just sent to them all was, "Hold on, we'll stop the surge, we're going to leave - and you can slaughter the innocent with our blessing." * * *

This kind of stuff used to piss me off. Now it just makes me laugh.

The Youth Of Today Are So Lucky

I get a kick out of articles like this:

Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use Wikipedia in preparing class papers.

The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it can't be cited as an authoritative source by students.

The policy says, in part, "Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source." * * *

Wikipedia? On-line research?

Looxury.

Kids these days. When I was in school, I had it tough. We didn't have Wikipedia. We didn't even have the internets. In fact, electronic legal research was just getting started when I was in law school (it was very primitive by today's standards), and my big law school paper was actually prepared by using a typewriter. Remember those? If not, Wikipedia has a good description of them here.

Yeah, things are definitely much easier now. But you try telling that to the young people of today, and they won't believe you.

Oops

Lou Dobbs has been apoplectic over this story for the last week or so. Now it looks like old Lou might owe Pelosi an apology:

The Air Force transport plane decried by Republicans as an extravagance for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was requested by the House sergeant-at-arms as a matter of security, he said Thursday.

“I regret that an issue that is exclusively considered and decided in a security context has evolved into a political issue,” Bill Livingood said in a news release. He said because Pelosi lives in California he was compelled “to request an aircraft that is capable of making non-stop flights for security purposes, unless such an aircraft is unavailable. This will ensure communications capabilities and also enhance security.”

Republicans had taken issue with the size of the plane Pelosi would need to fly in to reach her hometown of San Francisco without refueling. There are three Air Force airplanes that have the fuel capacity to make the trip nonstop, with the largest being a C-32 plane, a military version of the Boeing 757-200.

So the GOP was just basically politicizing a security issue? I find that hard to believe.

It's About Time

OK, so it's four years too late, but better late than never:

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."

An unclassified summary of the full document is scheduled for release today in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs. In that summary, a copy of which was obtained from another source by The Washington Post, the inspector general concluded that Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship" was not fully supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers. * * *

The Inspector General, although not labeling Feith's actions as unlawful, did -- in perhaps the greatest understatement of the millennium -- call them "inappropriate."

Feith's response to this report is also one for the ages. He denied that what he was doing was an alternative intelligence assessment, and responded that "[i]t was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."

OK, that's fine. But tell me, Doug -- don't you think it might have been more helpful to the whole process if you would have told us that four fucking years ago?!

Mission Accomplished

From the New York Times:

One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual."

Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition. * * *

Well done.

Have You Forgotten?

Now that the GOP is out of power in Congress and things seem to be getting better, it is important that we never forget what it was like in this country just a few short years ago. One thing I'll never forget is a song called "Have You Forgotten?" It was written by Darryl Worley and was released on the eve of Bush's invasion of Iraq. Worley obviously wrote it in response to all the folks who opposed the invasion, and the song started out like this:

I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

No Darryl -- I haven't forgotten about Osama, but you and the rest of your neo-fascist buddies apparently have. And by the way, how does it feel now that you know you were just acting as a propaganda tool for the Bush Regime? I'm thinking that you probably feel the way Colin Powell feels right now.

And speaking of Powell, today is the fourth anniversary of the speech he made to the UN during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle, and Atrios marks the day with this must-read post.

Death Bowl '07

Maybe I don't watch enough televised sports and all commercials on these programs are like this, but death seems to be a major theme in Super Bowl commercials this year. First you have a guy getting vaporized by a meteor on the moon (don't meteors need an atmosphere to glow like they do?), then you get a car-making robot deciding in a dream to kill himself by jumping off of a bridge (which he does). But those commericals are peanuts compared to the one where a dozen office workers fall to their deaths lemming-style. And that's just the first half.

UPDATE: More on this here.

More Evidence That The Times Are A-Changin'

Last month, Charles "Cully" Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, suggested that U.S. companies boycott law firms that represent Guantanamo detainees. Had Stimson made his remarks two years ago, he would have probably gotten a raise and been given the Medal of Freedom.

Those days, however, are apparently over:

The Pentagon official who criticized law firms for defending detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has resigned due to the backlash over his remarks, a Defense Department spokesman said on Friday.

Charles "Cully" Stimson, deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, last month called it "shocking" that major U.S. law firms represented Guantanamo detainees for free and said they would likely suffer financially after their corporate clients learned of the work.

"He made the decision based on the current controversy," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters. "He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position."

Stimson, himself a lawyer, submitted his resignation on Thursday and his last day in the position would be Friday, Whitman said, stressing Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not ask him to resign.

The Pentagon disavowed his remarks and Stimson apologized, saying he supported pro bono work and that the legal system worked best when both sides had competent representation.

And speaking of changing times, Bush made a surprise visit to a diner in Peoria last Tuesday, and his reception there wasn't exactly what he expected:

[T]he surprise was on Bush. In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”

Looks Like The Intel Leading Up To The Iraq Debacle Wasn't So Faulty After All (Re-Posted)

[The following post first appeared last April on this blog. I'm posting it again for four reasons: (1) I've got the flu right now and am too sick to come up with anything new, (2) this recent interview of Tyler Drumheller in Spiegel Magazine reminded me of this post, (3) the current U.S. administration is so thoroughly corrupt that details like this tend to get lost in all the muck, and (4) I think the issue of BushCo intel manipulation will become newsworthy again now that the Democrats control Congress. Anyway, here is the post from last April.]

* * *

If you missed the 60 Minutes interview of Tyler Drumheller last night, you can read all about it here. Drumheller, a 26-year veteran of the CIA and that agency's top man in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq War, dropped a bombshell during the interview:

[T]he CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq’s nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

"This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would know what he was talking about," Drumheller says.

"You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked.

"We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.

According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."

What did this high-level source tell him?

"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," says Drumheller.

"So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked.

"Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was no doubt in his mind at all.

"It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff were telling us," Bradley remarked.

"The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from the Iraqi foreign minister.

But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

"And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that," Bradley asked.

"The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say — that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in the intelligence."

The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri’s role, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his information wasn’t reliable.

"They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium, on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all and so you can’t say you only listen to one source, because on many issues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller.

"So you’re saying that if there was a single source and that information from that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then that single source was ok, but if it didn’t, then the single source was not ok, because he couldn’t be corroborated," Bradley asked.

"Unfortunately, that’s what it looks like," Drumheller replied.

This is a pretty amazing revelation, particularly given that the Bush Regime and its co-conspirators in Congress have been claiming for the last two years that the Iraq Failure was due to faulty intelligence. Now we know that a high-ranking Iraqi minister -- a member of Saddam's inner circle no less -- was telling us one year before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD and that Bush, Cheney, and Rice had direct knowledge of this.

No wonder Drumheller felt compelled to come forward with this. He supervised a major intelligence victory for the CIA with regard to Iraq, only to have the White House (1) disregard it because it didn't fit in with BushCo's plans for regime change and then (2) blame the CIA for "faulty intelligence" when everything started to go sideways. It makes me wonder how many other Drumhellers are out there with a similar story to tell.

What I find particularly remarkable is that the folks planning the invasion of Iraq didn't want to talk to Foreign Minister Sabri about anything, despite the fact that he undoubtedly had extensive knowledge with regard to Iraq's military capabilities. Sabri could have given these planners information that might have saved American lives during our invasion and subsequent occupation, but for some reason these planners weren't interested in saving American lives.

But it gets worse. Josh Marshall did a follow-up on all this:

Drumheller's account is pretty probative evidence on the question of whether the White House politicized and cherry-picked the Iraq intelligence.

So why didn't we hear about any of this in the reports of those Iraq intel commissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health on distorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew about Iraq's alleged WMD programs?

Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on a slew of levels.

Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protect sources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqi regime, that that guy had said there weren't any active weapons programs, and that the White House lost interest in what he was saying as soon as they realized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about the Niger story?

Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had to say? What about the Roberts Committee?

I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early this evening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-Silbermann Commission. Three times apparently.

Did he tell them everything he revealed on tonight's 60 Minutes segment. Absolutely.

Drumheller was also interviewed twice by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they released their summer 2004 report.

Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that those reports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why we were so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none of Drumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think, speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports were pursuing.

"I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had told the commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in their reports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little of what they related ended up in the reports either.

What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of what happened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is that none of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goal is not covering for the White House.

My conclusion from all this? Expect massive GOP-fueled election fraud this Fall. There is no way the Republicans can afford to lose either the Senate or the House in November. The last thing Bush needs is someone doing a real investigation into these issues.

Crooks and Liars has video of the Drumheller interview here.