MI5 To Mukasey: Profiling Doesn’t Work So Don’t Bother

With the frightening but not unsurprising news that Bush’s lickspittle Attorney General Michael Mukasey plans to spy on everyone for no legitimate reason other than collecting an enormous data base on every American’s activities, beliefs, spending, bowel movements and who knows what else just to be able to spot a terrorist, comes saner advice from Britain’s MI5: Don’t bother; profiling doesn’t work.

Given the comparative track records of MI5 and the FBI in catching real terrorists – the FBI seems to opt for goofballs who usually turn out to be extortionists or, like the Miami group, a bunch of scam artists who really only wanted new boots – I’m willing to take the work of the Brits over Washington’s.

Unlike the operating assumption of the FBI, MI5’s study concludes there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism, according to a classified internal research document.

The sophisticated analysis, based on hundreds of case studies by the security service, says there is no single pathway to violent extremism. It concludes that it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of a "terrorist" as most are "demographically unremarkable" and simply reflect the communities in which they live. The MI5 report takes apart many of the common stereotypes about those involved in terrorism and de-bunks the myth pushed by the Republicans and other right wingnuts that there’s a terrorist under every bed.

In fact, MI5 reports, would-be terrorists living in the West are mostly native born, not illegal immigrants and, far from being Islamist fundamentalists, most are religious novices. Nor are they "mad and bad." Those over 30 are just as likely to have a wife and children as to be loners with no ties. The security service also plays down the importance of extremist clerics, saying their influence in radicalising Western terrorists has into the background over recent years.

The main findings include:

 The majority are native born and the remainder, with a few exceptions, are here legally. Some immigrants fled traumatic experiences and oppressive regimes and claimed asylum, but more came West to study, or for family or economic reasons, and became radicalised many years after arriving.
 Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.
 The "mad and bad" theory to explain why people turn to terrorism does not stand up, with no more evidence of mental illness or pathological personality traits found among terrorism suspects than is found in the general population.
 British-based terrorists are as ethnically diverse as the UK Muslim population, with individuals from Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian backgrounds. MI5 says assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin colour, ethnic heritage or nationality.
 Most UK terrorists are male, but women also play an important role. Sometimes they are aware of the activities of husbands, brothers or sons, but do not object or try to stop them.
 While the majority are in their early to mid-20s when they become radicalised, a small but not insignificant minority first become involved in violent extremism at over the age of 30.
 Far from being lone individuals with no ties, the majority of those over 30 have steady relationships, and most have children. MI5 says this challenges the idea that terrorists lured to "martyrdom" by the promise of beautiful virgins waiting for them in paradise. It is wrong to assume that someone with a wife and children is less likely to commit acts of terrorism.
 Those involved in British terrorism are not unintelligent or gullible, and nor are they more likely to be well-educated; their educational achievement ranges from total lack of qualifications to degree-level education. However, they are almost all employed in low-grade jobs.

The researchers conclude that the results of their work "challenge many of the stereotypes that are held about who becomes a terrorist and why."

Crucially, the research has revealed that those who become terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism."

The security service believes the terrorist groups operating in Britain today are different in many important respects both from Islamist extremist activity in other parts of the world and from historical terrorist movements such as the IRA or the Red Army Faction.

The MI5 "operational briefing note" warns that, unless they understand the varied backgrounds of those drawn to terrorism, the security services will fail to counter their activities in the short term and fail to prevent violent radicalisation continuing in the long term.

It also concludes that the research results have important lessons for the government's programme to tackle the spread of violent extremism, underlining the need for "attractive alternatives" to terrorist involvement but also warning that traditional law enforcement tactics could backfire if handled badly or used against people who are not seen as legitimate targets, such as those who simply hold politically extreme views.

I doubt anyone inside the FBI or Justice Dept., let alone the White House, read the MI5 study; sometimes I wonder if anyone in those particular Washington bunkers know how to read, period, and even if they do MI5 so contradicts their perverted view of “justice” that they won’t pay heed anyway. But as Bush, Cheney, McCain and Mukasey try setting up one more permanent violation of the law before they’re kicked out of town still wearing the brown shirts and jackboots they seem to love, it behoves Congress to put a stop to this nonsense when it reconvenes in September.

As if it will.

A Brilliant Choice!

Although I’ve supported Barack Obama since he announced his candidacy, I've always been impressed with Joe Biden – as a candidate and as a Senator. I could not be happier that he’ll be the next Vice President of the United States of America.

I grew up in Minnesota where Hubert Humphrey was our summer neighbor for many years. As he often did on a Sunday afternoon when he was home while serving as LBJ’s vice president, he and Muriel invited our family and several others living nearby on the lake to a Sunday BBQ. Humphrey had read a lot about the vice presidency after taking office and when he, my Dad and I were talking with him one Sunday about the office he said (andI am paraphrasing; after all, it was 40+ years ago), “the best vice presidents have been the ones with the guts to say to the president, ‘That’s nuts! Don’t do it.’”

I am confident that Biden will be a superb complement and addition to the Obama White House, partly because I’m certain that there will be times when he will have the guts to say to Pres. Obama, “That’s nuts! Don’t do it.”

A Brief Word Of Caution To Hilary Die-Hards

John McCain is sneaking past on Barack Obama in the latest still-too-early-to-mean-much polls. What is meaningful is that around 30% of former Clinton supporters are still declaring themselves as undecided or supporting McCain.

To those people, I have three words to think about as the convention convenes in Denver: Supreme Court appointments.

If you sit out this election or vote for McCain and he wins, he will appoint at least one and possibly two people to Supreme Court of the United States during his first term. Think about it: I guarantee you he won’t be nominating people like Hillary or Barack. Instead, picture another Alioto or Scalia or Roberts sitting up there on the First Monday in October. And for 10 or 20 years thereafter.

This means a lot to everyone, but it should have special meaning to women.

It will mean Roe v. Wade and a woman’s control over her own body will be gone, probably within two years.

It means that the growing backlog of lower court decisions on women’s rights in the workplace, especially those involving pay, promotion, discrimination and harassment will go against women in favor of corporate interests.

It means conservatives dominating the court will successfully dissemble the Bill of Rights as narrow minorities on the bench tried and failed to do – usually by one vote – in the Gitmo cases over the past two years.

Essentially, it means all of the gains in women’s rights over the past half-century will be at risk as a lop-sided, right wing court recasts the face of America into something not just you but your daughters and their daughters will be forced to live.

I understand you’re disappointed that your candidate lost, and sympathize with your angst; been there, done that myself. But more often than not, politics – like life itself – is disappointing. Had Hilary run a better campaign, had she better senior advisors, had Mark Penn not gone public with every internal dispute he was losing to Terry McAuliffe (and vice versa), if Penn and McCauliffe not suffered hubris and developed a post-Super Tuesday plan, if her staff with all of its pre-primary polling had understood that change trumped experience this time around, had she been a better candidate, had Bill stayed on message and not tossed out subtle racial smears, things might have been different.

Might-a. Could-a. Should-a.

Simply put, Obama was a better candidate with a better run, better organized, better funded campaign. Party insiders did not give Obama the nomination. Chris Mathews did not up-end Clinton. The news media did not have it in for her. It wasn’t sexism among voters; I promise you that people who would not vote for a woman would not vote for a black man, either.

I have covered state and national campaigns since Nixon beat Humphrey way back in 1968. I’ve learned in watching the best (and, more often, the worst) politicians is they remember the old saw about “politics makes strange bedfellows.” When they lose, they lick their wounds and then close ranks to win an election.

If you truly think John McCain would be better for America than Barack Obama, then vote for him. But if you’re voting for him out of spite, or not voting at all as an ill-advised and, frankly, churlish and petulant protest, keep another old adage in mind: Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

You won’t like explaining why you did that to your daughters and granddaughters and all the daughters after them.

A Sunny Summer Day, Aug. 2009

One sunny day in the summer of 2009 an old man approached the north gate of the White House from the park across Pennsylvania Avenue where he'd been sitting on a bench. He spoke to the uniformed Secret Service officer standing guard, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The old man replied, "Okay" and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same officer, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The man thanked him and, again, walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same uniformed officer, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard, somewhat agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the officer and with a wry smile said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The guard snapped to attention, saluted, and replied, "See you tomorrow!"

Hat Tip To Anner1

Fox Hoisted On Its Own Petard By American Trapped In Ossetia

WHOOPS!

Yesterday, Fox Noise interviewed an Ossetian-American 12-year old girl who was caught in the disputed region at the start of Georgia's war. She and her aunt, who was also caught, thanks Russian troops for saving her from Georgian aggression.

The squirming Fox anchor was not happy the way the interview was going because the child didn’t follow the McCain-Bush talking points about who is the aggressor. Finally, he cut the girl and her aunt off. Clearly, the girl forgot the master narrative being spewed by the McCain-Bush military-information complex.

The video is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XI2Chc6uQ

How The CIA Helped Make The “Obama Nation” Smear Book A Best-Seller

When Jerome Corsi’s newest distortion-and lie-packed smear book, Obama Nation, hit the best seller lists this week, Corsi and his Republican Party hack publisher can thank a precedent established by the CIA in the early 1950s.

Obama Nation owes its hit status to what The New York Times says are “bulk purchases” of the tome. In other words, right wing groups from the Republican National Committee to 501(C)(3) organisations to who-knows-which group of wingnuts bought boxes of Corsi’s deranged musings. What they do with the volumes is anyone’s guess: Hand them out to fellow travellers, distribute them to delegates in “welcome packages” at the Republican convention in St. Paul, or just stack the boxes in closets.

This is precisely how then-CIA director Allan Dulles made a national best seller out Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler’s sombre, brooding, anti-Communist fictional rant, in the early 1950s. The unintended consequence was to force millions of junior and senior high school students in the US to read the monstrosity.

How the CIA came to be a factor in the book publishing business in the America is a fascinating story, a historical footnote that shows Langley was interfering in domestic politics long before the Church Commission exposed Richard Nixon’s use of the agency to spy on anti-war activists during Viet Nam. In fact, the ploy traces its roots to the end of World War II.

When William “Wild Bill” Donaldson established and ran the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war, he worked closely with both Dulles and Koestler. Dr. Mark Levine, an English professor at the University of Toronto and noted Koestler scholar, has told me that after the war as Donaldson and Koestler shared a long boat ride home from Europe they talked about their belief that an OSS-like organisation should continue to play a role in intelligence gathering. By the time the ship docked in New York, they had conceived the structure, organization, duties and responsibilities of what would become the CIA. Donaldson presented Pres. Truman with his idea who sent a bill to Congress which quickly passed the measure into law. Dulles became its first director.

Spurred by the Soviet’s blockage of Berlin, by the late 1940s and extending into the Fifties the United States was gripped with Communist paranoia. The Red Menace everywhere: Politicians, statesmen, screenwriters and directors, maybe even grocery store bag boys all were suspected of being Commies or Communist “sympathizers” and countless Congressional committees obsessed on uprooting and exposing them.

In the middle of this national psychosis, Koestler – a long-time anti Communist who was imprisoned briefly by the French in 1941 – showed Donaldson a copy of Darkness at Noon, which he’d written in 1941. Wild Bill thought it ought to be one of those “must read” books and handed a copy on to Dulles, now ensconced as the CIA’s director. Dulles, no slouch himself in spotting the Reds In Every Bed, decided the best way to bring the 10-year old, inconsequential novel to America’s attention was to make it a best seller.

It was easy enough for Dulles to it pull off. With the CIA’s many secret operating funds, he sent agents fanning out across New York to order – it was barely in print in the States at the time – and buy up all of the copies of the book they could lay their hands on. The books were sent back to Dulles who ordered them stored in CIA vaults.

Because the CIA refused repeatedly over the years to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about its role in making Darkness at Noon a cultural phenomenon in the 1950s, it’s not known whether Koestler’s books are still collecting dust in the Company’s storage bins a half-century later. The University of Toronto’s Dr. Levine believes they remain buried at Langley.

So read the best-seller listing this week of Obama Nation with scepticism. Its sudden prominence owes a debt of gratitude to the CIA, Bill Donaldson and Allan Dulles.

Iraq Escalation Called A "Failure"

This won't make John McCain or Joe Lieberman very happy and the folks over at the White House must be positively fuming.

Colin Kahl from the Centre for a New American Security told a press briefing this week that things are not nearly as rosy as John McCain is portraying them on the campaign stump or Bush is saying in the Rose Garden.

Kahl reports that US civilian and military officials in Baghdad are genuinely worried that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has become "over-confident" about his military capabilities, explaining his demands to the US over the proposed status of forces agreement on the rules governing US troops in Iraq. Al-Maliki appears to have won some internal battles in the Iraqi government in the past six months, so he now firmly controls the intelligence apparatus and has military operation centres under his authority throughout the country.

Even worse, Al-Maliki is not only refusing to incorporate the Sunni Arab Awakening Councils or "Sons of Iraq" into the Iraqi security forces, he seems to be planning to fight them. These are Sunni Arab militias, many former Salafi or nationalist guerrillas, who act as US mercenaries by fighting Qutbist vigilantes who call themselves “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Kahl said of the 103,000 Sunnis belonging to those militias, the Iraqi government had promised to take only about 16,000into the security forces. But in fact, it has approved only 600 applicants thus far, and most of these turned out to be Shi’a, not Sunni militiamen.

The Awakening Councils are the biggest threat Baghdad faces and that after Americans are drawn down in Iraqi, al-Malaki’s allies say it will be necessary to "take care of them.”

Bush is so mad at al-Malaki’s stance on US troop restrictions and his demand for a withdrawal timetable that he sharply warned al-Maliki that without a SOFA he would have to pull out US troops by Jan. 1, 2009. US troops operating in Iraq with no agreed legal framework would be constantly open to murder and other serious legal charges.

Muqtada al-Sadr is turning his Mahdi Army into a civilian social-work force under strong Iranian pressure. The Iranians seem to be convinced that the Mahdi Army was becoming a pretext for the US to stay in Iraq – understandable since the Bushies are blaming Iran for everything Muqtada did. In fact, Iran is mainly allied with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his Badr corps paramilitary, which has become the backbone of al-Maliki's security forces; Iran thus has multiple reasons for trying to get rid of the Mahdi Army as a military force.

But there may be a third reason Iran pressured al-Sadr. Reports – rumours, mostly – keep circulating that there is a secret, informal agreement between Bush and Khamenei that if the Mahdi Army quietens down, the US will talk to Iran, refrain from bombing the nuclear facilities at Natanz and will forestall an Israeli attack, as well.

Kahl's information is another challenge to the propaganda that the Bush’s escalation "worked." Among the things that "worked" were Iran becoming even more influential in Iraq and al-Maliki getting hold of his own government.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Georgia and other allies with relatively large troop contingents in Iraq are leaving, making it difficult for the US to draw down its troops at the rate Petraeus originally envisioned for this year. US forces will likely have to step in to replace Georgian troops in Kut and British soldiers in Basra.

At the same time, the newspaper reports that the al-Anbar desert is still very dangerous and full of seedy operators including insurgents, thieves, highjackers and smugglers. This is one reason why a Marine was killed Thursday in al-Anbar. The mostly unreported return of violence in the big, dangerous province has delayed the planned turn-over of security duties to Iraqi security forces there by the US military.

Another GOP Voter Switches To Obama

When I logged into my e-mail this morning, I found a note from a friend who has voted Republican for years:

OK, so you got me to change my mind.

I changed my voter registration yesterday and am voting for Obama on Nov. 4.

Why? Because of two reasons.

First, I saw a truly reprehensible McCain ad on television that is nothing more than a carefully disguised racist smear. I don't remember if it was done by the McCain campaign or some outside group but it was disgusting.

Secondly, I read an excerpt from Obama Nation by the guy who started the whole Swift Boat shit back in 04. I didn't believe that crap then and now that what was once called The Grand Old Party is doing it again, I've had enough.

Between this stuff and what my kids have been telling me ... not kids, really, since one is at university and the other has her degree, and really thinking about what has happened to America under the GOP, I have no choice but to vote Obama.

Figured this will make you happy.

Grace

Obviously, it does make me happy but, more important, it shows the tiniest beginning of a trend of so-called "staunch" Republicans fleeing in horror from McCain and the Republican party. Maybe America is starting to wake itself up.

Edwards The Confessor vs. McCain’s Ongoing Philandering

New report on McCain affairs on the campaign trail shows the media’s uneven handling of sex and politics.

Frankly, for decades my view is that if someone wants to fool around on their spouse, it’s their business and we should all butt out. Even presidential candidates are entitled to a sliver of privacy. But we live in an age that craves mixing its puritanical attitude about sex with a voyeuristic demand for celebrity gossip: Don’t have sex but if you do, we want all the gory details.

So it’s not surprising that cable news outlets were obsessed on Thursday and Friday with a two year old story about John Edwards’ affair with a campaign staffer. It should have ended with Edwards’ heart-felt confession Friday night that he had, indeed, slept with Rielle Hunter, who directed video production for Edwards' political action committee. Sadly – but not surprisingly – the story lingered into the weekend with cable’s talking heads musing like the idiots they are, dithering over how the news would affect Obama’s candidacy.

Needless to say, given much of the media’s gentle handholding of John McCain, no major media outlet ever linked the Edwards story to John McCain’s long-time habit of sleeping around on his various wives. After all, he began an affair with Cindy while still married to his former wife; knowing his proclivities may explain why Cindy barely lets him out of her sight since he began running for president.

Even still, in February, new stories of his on-going philandering appeared when reports showed up in The New York Times and elsewhere about McCain sleeping around on Cindy with lobbyist-cum-campaign staffer Vicki Iserman.

Now, new information indicates that Iserman is not the only fling McCain has indulged in while married to Cindy, including at least one that he had since locking up the Republican nomination months ago.

“It happens when Cindy returns to Phoenix for a few days,” a well-placed former McCain campaign advisor told me by phone on Aug. 10. “I know for certain he spent at least two different nights with a 30-something campaign worker because I saw the Secret Service trying to hide the woman when she left McCain’s suite around five one morning and they hustled her back to her own room.”

The Secret Service said it does not comment on security arrangements.

But the man’s account is supported by at least one additional, knowledgeable person who confirmed the incident by e-mail.

“It’s the fighter pilot mentality,” this person wrote in explaining McCain’s attitude about sleeping around. “They think they’re invincible and can get away with anything.”

Both sources requested and were given promises of anonymity in exchange for being interviewed.

During reporting for this post, it was impossible to verify numerous other accounts of McCain’s one night stands over the past two years. Reportedly, some of the travelling press corps on the Straight Talk Express jet knew of at least two other incidents.

The point is why do journalists feel that the sexual peccadilloes of Democrats – Bill Clinton comes first to mind – are fair game are waiting for McCain to be caught with a prostitute before giving equal time to his romps between the sheets?

McCain’s Spins More Lies On “Energy Independence“

John McCain keeps talking about making the US “energy independent.” Yet Robert Bryce – an energy industry expert and author of the new book Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence’, points out that it will be impossible for America to be energy independent with current technology. McCain says nuclear energy can make the US independent of "foreign oil." But the US imports 83% of the uranium it uses. And, by the way, if you built a lot of new nuclear reactors, it will cause the price of uranium to soar. There is only so much uranium in the world so we will have "Peak uranium" within a few years if we go that route.

McCain keeps saying that the US navy has run subs on nuclear power for years and there have been no leaks. Like much of what McCain says, it’s a lie: An American nuclear submarine making a regular stop in at a naval base in southern Japan leaked radiation earlier this year, according to a Japanese newspaper report published Monday.

McCain says drilling in the United States can make the US energy independent. This is utter and total claptrap. If drilled, all the offshore fields now known off the lower 48 states might produce 400,000 barrels a day, 10 to 15 years from now. Yet the US imports 13-million barrels a day of oil. The world produces 86-million barrels a day and wants 87. Offshore drilling in the US would yield a tiny drop in the bucket – less that 0.04% of the world’s total daily energy production.

Meanwhile, China's oil imports were up 12% last year over 2006. The extra oil from offshore drilling would get used up lickety split.

McCain calls "foreign oil" expensive. But it is all one global market. Once oil is pumped, it sells for the same price everywhere (except if there are government subsidies, a huge waste of money and bad economics). It doesn't matter if it is pumped in Oklahoma or Ahvaz, it is priced the same.

Moreover, getting more fossil fuels out of the ground will produce more global warming, ravaging the world's coastlines and their inhabitants. Again, it doesn't matter whether American carbon is put into the atmosphere or Chinese. It is all one atmosphere.

The only prospect for US energy independence is cheap and effective power generation from wind and solar energy, which needs new, cheaper and better methods of battery or other storage to be practical.

Obama’s promise to invest $150-billion in alternative energy is a promising first step. Look at it this way: It is no more than what the entire Apollo project cost the US in today's dollars. And putting a man on the moon was rather less important than, like, saving the planet.But the really disturbing question is this: If I can spend 30 minutes on-line and uncover this information, why can't one of the stenographers riding the McCain campaign plane disguised as reporters also use the information in their reports to unmask McCain's energy plan as a total scam?

A Smoking Gun Points Directly At Bush, Cheney, Maybe McCain

It’s too late for impeachment but a new book lays out a clear case for criminal prosecution of Bush and Cheney for launching the Iraq war, either by the US government (obviously after they leave office) or the International Criminal Court.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, whose new book The Way of the World, was officially released yesterday but available over the weekend (at least in my neighbourhood bookstore) contends that the White House obtained compelling evidence in early 2003 that Iraq possessed no significant stocks of nuclear or biological weapons but decided to invade anyway.

The book contends – using named sources and on-the-record interviews – that the Bush administration also orchestrated the forging of a document by Iraqi defector and former intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to create an after-the-fact justification for invading Iraq: That Saddam had WMDs and that Mohammad Atta, the lead 9/11 highjacker, trained in Iraq under Abu Nidal with Saddam Hussein’s blessing.

The forged document, purportedly signed by Habbus, was leaked to British tabloid hack Con Coughlin in December, 2003. Habbush was paid $5-million and re-settled in Jordan because of his cooperation.

The forgery creates legal culpability for Bush and Cheney because they violated two federal statutes.

The first is a bill in 1991 that amended the 1947 act creating the CIA. It states “No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, processes or the media.” Even worse, they could be charged under 18.USC.371 – the same law that hung most of the Watergate conspirators including Nixon – which makes it a crime to conspire to defraud the US government.

Suskind has written two previous books sharply critical of Bush administration policies. described the alleged forgery as one of the great lies in modern American political history, likening it to Watergate. Last night on Countdown, Nixon White House counsel John Dean agreed.

The allegations in the document are completely implausible.

Abu Nidal was a psychopathic and paranoid leftist with ties to East Germany and split with the PLO because it was too far right for him. Al-Qaeda, a far rightwing Muslim fundamentalist cult, would have wanted anything to do with him, nor he with it.

Hussein would never have allowed a loose cannon like Abu Nidal to run a terrorist training camp in Iraq. Excuse me? I mean, really: First Bush and Cheney accuse the Baath Party of being totalitarian, then they say Saddam let notoriously unstable people run around with explosives? Get real! Moreover, Jordanian intelligence never would have tolerated it and Saddam needed Jordan's smuggling trade to get around the UN and US boycotts. So, he could not have afforded to disregard Jordanian sensibilities completely. He could not have hidden a whole training camp from Amman.

Ironically, Habbush, who allegedly signed the forgery, was probably the man who killed Abu Nidal in 2002.

The letter also mentions, according to Coughlin, the purchase of uranium from Niger by Iraq and its transhipment across Libya and Syria.

Ayad Allawi, a long-time CIA asset, vouched for the forged document to Coughlin. That item is evidence for Suskind's narrative about Bush coercing George Tenet into manufacturing the letter. Allawi, based in London, had a special mandate from the CIA to cultivate ex-officers who defected from Iraq, so he was likely Habbush’s handler.

Now for the big mystery: Why bother to cook this up in September, 2003, after the US had already conquered Iraq?

It seems likely that the forgery was ordered by the White House as a direct response to former Ambassador Joe Wilson’s New York Times Op-Ed that revealed that the allegation that Saddam had recently bought yellowcake uranium from Niger was total bunk.

By September of 2003, a guerrilla war was raging in Iraq and it had become clear that there was no WMD. Shiite cleric Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim was blown up in Najaf on August 31. GIs were being killed in al-Anbar. Bush and Cheney needed to refute Wilson's allegation that they ignored his report on Niger uranium. They also needed a smoking gun to tie Iraq to al-Qaeda, without which their continued occupation of the country was on thin legal grounds.

Tying Atta to Abu Nidal would form an ex post facto justification for the war, something Bush desperately needed. Tying Syria and Libya to the alleged Iraqi nuclear program was also a way to set them up as the next targets.

Dean titled his 2005 book Worse Than Watergate. Actually, this is worse than anything the United States has ever experienced; it is even worse than Pearl Harbor or 9-11 itself.

Hersh: Cheney Considered Provoking War With Iran

Think Progress has an exclusive report on New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh's discovery that Dick “Shotgun” Cheney's office considered ginning up a provocation against Iran as a pretext for going to war.

The discussion in Cheney's office was provoked by the Iranian speedboat incident in January, 2008, in which the Bush administration alleged that five small unarmed Iranian speedboats accosted a US naval vessel.

One thing that Hersh, Think Progress and others have not mentioned is that the original incident was itself almost certainly a GOP provocation since unarmed speedboats do not actually pose a danger to US destroyers. Moreover, funny business went on with artificial matching of videotape to an audio transmission in English of undetermined origin. When I wrote about the Iranian video and audio at the time, wingnuts attacked me for allowing the other side to get a hearing. One technique of the right is to make sure only one voice can be heard, their own, and all other voices are condemned and marginalized as traitorous. It is so much easier to march people to war when there is only one public narrative available about its rights and wrongs.

The chief use of "patriotism" by the Right is for the sake of the Big Lie.

You wonder whether one of the side effects of the revelation of Operation Northwoods, when in 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon signed off on a plot to kill innocent Americans on American soil and make it look as though Cubans in the employ of Castro had done it, was to remind Cheney and Bush of all the low techniques whereby war could be gotten up.

Certainly, we know that Bush and Blair considered trying to get Iraq to shoot at US surveillance planes painted in UN colours as a casus belli for the Iraq invasion. As it turned out, Bush decided he did not need any rationale at all to invade a country for no reason.

McCain Blows The Dog Whistle

This is a lesson in how dog whistles work.

If you're not familiar with the term "dog whistle" in politics, here's a quick primer: As a literal dog whistle emits a pitch that only dogs can hear, a political dog whistle sends a message that only a particular constituency will hear or intuitively understand.

Thanks to his speechwriters, Bush has been dog whistling to his evangelicals for the past eight years; often, when we heathens think he sounds most nonsensical, it's because he's sending a coded message to his Jesus freak friends.

Often, dog whistles are merely a covert shout-out to a particular constituency – but sometimes, they're meant to be provocative, to quietly speak to subconscious (or conscious) biases and evoke a particular visceral reaction.

Such is the case with John McCain's campaign TV spot linking Barack Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. On its face, it's an obvious editorial on Obama's intelligence and competency, as his image is juxtaposed with two women alleged to be airheads while the voiceover somberly intones: "Is he ready to lead?" And thus there is an element of commentary on whether he is undeserving and entitled, with which Hilton and Spears are routinely charged. Famous for no reason, just a pretty face, the ad implies.

But loitering below the ostensibly substantive critique is something more nefarious. It's no coincidence that it wasn't vacuous tabloid fixtures such as American Idol punchline Sanjaya Malakar who appears in the advert – and it's not because he’s not famous enough. Nor was Scarlett Johannson chosen to be in the spot; she famously supports him, has campaigned with him and whose twin brother works for him despite her being arguably as recognisable as Hilton and Spears – and it's not because she's not young, blonde or beautiful enough.

It because neither Malakar nor Johansson have personas that are the perfect combination of no brains, no talent and all slut.

Obama, dog whistles the ad and hitting old racists in the sweet spot, could fuck these white girls – it's practically a Democratic tradition: JFK, Clinton, heck even Carter lusted in his heart, and we sure as hell don't want that, now, do we?

Dick Nixon first used the dog whistle in 1968, Reagan refined it and Karl Rove perfected it for Bush the Younger. Not coincidentally, a key Rove protégé is now a key McCain strategist.

It recalls the despicable “bimbo ad” used against black senate candidate Harold Ford in Tennessee in 2006, in which a white actress was hired to claim she'd met Ford at a Playboy party and asked the candidate to "call me," playing on deeply-ingrained and ancient biases about interracial sex. But the difference between the "bimbo ad," also a Republican production, and the McCain ad is that the former was explicit in its miscegenation message whereas the latter is more, well, dog-whistly. And its deliberate obliqueness has set in motion a series of events all too familiar to civil rights activists, feminists, LGBT activists and various other social justice advocates.

The dog whistle piques them with something the average person won't see as bigoted, but that the constituency for which they advocate (and which they're a part) will expect them to call out because they instantly spy it and recognize it for what it is; they've heard the tune of that particular string being plucked their whole lives. Then whoever calls it out is marginalised as a hysteric, over-reactionary, looking to get offended and so on ad naseum.

And that's exactly how the game played out. McCain piques Obama and his constituency, Obama responds, McCain and the rightwing accuse Obama of playing the race card, his opponents unleash their new favourite battle cry: "You can't criticize Obama without being called a racist." Clockwork.

See how that works? Wheeeee!

And well-meaning people who miss the low-flying racial message (which will be intuited precisely as designed by old racists) will insist it's just about Obama being ninny-brained and uppity, making the complex deconstruction so easy to dismiss – or, rather, making the people who do the deconstruction easy to dismiss.

Meanwhile, since when did implying a black man is uppity stop being examined for racist undertones? In America, African-Americans have been lynched for a lot less.

Woof.

The Bush to McCain to al-Qaeda Connection

If you didn’t see the New York Times this morning, intercepted communications between sections of Pakistan's military intelligence division, the ISI, indicate that it provided support to Pushtun guerrillas in bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul recently.

There have long been suspicions the Pakistani military was using Pushtun guerrillas to project power into Afghanistan, even as they fought them inside Pakistan itself. The Times was told by US officials that this intercept was the first smoking gun proving that active-duty ISI officers were complicit with violence in Afghanistan and therefore with attacks on US and NATO troops.

The Pakistani military has a very tight command and control system. ISI collaboration with the neo-Taliban and other guerrilla groups could not occur without the knowledge and acquiescence of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who was chief of staff until last fall. That is, Cheney, Bush and McCain have backed to the hilt a military dictator who has continued the old 1980s and 1990s policy of supporting Pushtun guerrillas as a way of dominating Afghanistan and training other guerrillas to hit Kashmir.

Yet this is what McCain said about “my good friend” Musharraf on Dec. 28 in New Hampshire during the primary campaign: "I continue to believe Musharraf has done a pretty good job, done a lot of the things that we wanted him to do . . . I would remind some of my fellow Americans that Benazir Bhutto and [former prime minister Nawaz] Sharif presided over failed states, there was corruption, there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf took charge...I would like to give Musharraf some credit for taking the measures that we asked him to do."

A “pretty good job?” Musharraf's “successful state” involved dismissing the Supreme Court, provoking massive and repeated demonstrations, violating the constitution, interfering with free and fair elections, and presiding over a virtual national meltdown on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto late last December.

It’s clear that McCain values nothing beyond sheer military might – even if it has shady contacts to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In other words, McCain’s so-called “experience” tells him that the US should give money to Pakistan so its ISI can fund Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that are killing NATO and US troops in Afghanistan.

So much for McCain’s campaign stump line, “I know how to win wars.” If this is how he wins, how much more of his incompetence will it take for him to “lose” one?

When the newly elected civilian government of Pakistan tried to put the ISI under the civilian Ministry of the Interior last weekend, it was quickly reversed by the generals. The US government should be supporting the elected civilian government in its efforts to get control of the ISI.

But this news is not rally about Pakistan, since most Pakistanis dislike al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is not about the elected Pakistani government. It is not even about the Pakistani military, which has fought hard battles against the Pakistani Taliban and suffered hundreds of casualties in doing so. It is about corruption in the Pakistani officer corps and the penetration of pro-al-Qaeda elements in the ISI.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani is in constant denial about the ISI/Taliban links, or perhaps he doesn't want to provoke an immediate crisis with the Pakistani military, which has been known to make coups. He said as much last week while in Washington during a meeting with Bush. His Pakistan People's Party has been reluctant to see Musharraf impeached, since de facto party leader Asaf Ali Zardari – Benazir Bhutto’s widower – has been corrupt in the past and would be at risk for some of the same charges levelled at Musharraf.

So exactly how much of the $10-billion in aid did Bush, Cheney and McCain gave to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf after 9/11 ended up being used to kill US, NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan?

You think you're angry? Talk to anyone in Delhi about all this right about now. And do two things right now: Spread the word about this and Obama’s position and, two, show up at a local McCain “town hall” armed with this information and confront him with it. Help derail the so-called “straight talk express.”

Can Climate Change Sell Candy? Should It?

It seems that ad agencies are glomming on to global warming as a cool new way to sell products.

I’m not talking about the oil company ads that want us to believe that ExxonMobil or BP or Shell are environmentally conscious and seeking non-fossil fuel energy sources even as they continue to pump out millions and millions of gallons of products that continue to pollute the planet each year, and generate record profits in the process.

Nope. I am talking about something completely different: Selling candy to babies (regardless of their age).

Imagine my surprise last night while watching the Red Sox-Angels game to see my screen suddenly turn a bright, glowing orange during a commercial break. Framed in a deep yellow, up came the words “Stop Global Warming Now” followed by a dissolve to a second screen in the same colors with the words “Or All The Reese’s Pieces Will Melt” appearing along with a shot of candy with the chocolate turning all runny and gooey.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before some 23 year old creative director earning a half-million dollars a year said to a client, “Hey! Let’s show the real impact of global warming. All the chocolate will melt!” And the idiot client clapped their hands together and shouted “Great idea! Finally something positive to come from climate change!”

Madison Avenue has never been loathe taking the low road to sell anything. But the destruction of the planet probably is going too far, even for the vast bulk of the advertising industry.

This Is A War Hero?

For decades, John McCain actively cultivated the image of a “warrior” and “war hero,” the genuine article, toting that carefully crafted impression around like a Louis Vittuon carry-all. The problem is that the supposedly genuine Vittuon actually is a cheap knock-off, a piece of counterfeit luggage that has no more in common with the genuine article than I have with McCain himself.

After years of McCain perpetuating the myth, it’s time someone publicly calls McCain what he is: An exaggerator of his military experience and fabricator of his status as war hero.

To bastardize a distasteful line he unwrapped this week, McCain would rather win a campaign than be honest about his wartime experience.

In fact, the record shows that the Man Who Would Be President was a not-very-good Naval Academy student who preferred parties to studying and graduated in the bottom five of his Annapolis class; a mediocre pilot who crashed three jet fighters during training before being shipped out to ‘Nam where he crashed a fourth; an insubordinate junior officer who got shot down over Hanoi because he disobeyed direct orders to abandon his 23rd mission and return the A-4 Skyhawk he flew to the USS Forrestal; and, as a POW, willingly provided so much intelligence – admittedly, bits of it false – and co-operated so extensively with the North Vietnamese in exchange for favourable treatment over a three year period that his fellow prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton gave him the derisive nickname “Songbird.” In propaganda aimed at the US, the North Vietnamese even used his nickname in a news release about McCain, not understanding it was an insult by prisoners who were disgusted with his behaviour.

Put bluntly, the closest John McCain has ever come to a war hero was when he sat on his grandfather’s lap as a child. The first John McCain commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. The candidate’s father, also an Admiral named John, commanded American forces in Vietnam for a time.

In other words, John McCain III (or “Johnny Three Sticks” as a Republican Senate aid called him when being interviewed for this post) not only changes his positions on substantive issues in the campaign, he totally changes the reality of his “service to my country.” No wonder he seems to have so much trouble staying on message as a candidate; he can’t keep the story of his life straight.

In the process of repeatedly violating the Military Code of Conduct while a POW, he placed other naval airmen in jeopardy. Unclassified North Vietnamese and Pentagon records confirm that he provided Hanoi with detailed information about the number of airplanes on the Forrestal, flight paths into and out of North Viet Nam, how targets were selected, the positioning of rescue ships and the success rate of attacks from fighter-bombers based on his carrier. As far as can be discovered, the only thing he deceived the North Vietnamese about was the names of the pilots with whom he flew, for which he substituted the names of the Green Bay Packer’s offensive linemen. McCain has dined out on the Green Bay Packer story for decades, omitting the other, less noble, portions of his captivity.

If the fact that his father and grandfather were Annapolis grads kept him from being booted out of the Navy, then his family background also contributed to McCain being awarded 28 medals including a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze stars, two commendation medals, and a dozen other service medals. But he only flew 23 missions – which amounts to a medal-and-a-half for roughly every hour he flew in combat.

“There were infantry guys – grunts on the ground – who had more than 7,000 hours in combat,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs – the first official US representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon.

“I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison,” Bell states. “But the question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

Eventually, even the Navy was on to McCain. He left the service after being told twice that he would not be made an Admiral like his father and grandfather.

For years, McCain has been an unchecked master at manipulating an overly friendly and oft-times biased news media. The former POW turned Congressman, turned U.S. Senator, turned Presidential candidate, has managed to gloss over his failures as a pilot and his collaboration with the enemy to become America’s POW-hero presidential candidate.

UPDATE: To see what would happen, I posted this as a comment to a posting about McCain's war record at RedState.com, the conservative blog. Not surprisingly, my comment was deleted (and my account closed) within 90 minutes of when it first appeared on RedState.

This says mountains about the right wing.

Why do we see conservative rebuttal comments on sites such as Huffington Post, AlterNet, Daily Kos etc., but conservative sites censor anything that factually challenges their unfounded rants?

Oh, wait. In the question lies the answer.

Viet Nam Veterans Against McCain provided some research for this item.

British Parliament Calls Bush, US, Liars

Hear that tearing noise? It's the so-called “Special Relationship” between the US and England being torn to shreds. Why? Because Britain says it no longer believes what the American government says about torture. In other words, to England our government is run by liars.

That’s the remarkable conclusion of a Parliamentary committee’s report published today in London. It also calls for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government “outsourced” torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used “waterboarding,” unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who called it torture.

A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured.

The committee report said there were 'serious implications' of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. “The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,” the committee said. “We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.”

It also urges the government to press the US authorities for information on whether any American military flights landing in the UK were part of the 'rendition circuit', even if they did not have detainees on board at the time.

The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that UK territory has not been used for rendition, the extra-judicial transfer of suspects between countries. But in February, Miliband told the Commons he was told by the US that two rendition planes refuelled on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The MPs also urged the Foreign Office to investigate a report in The Guardian that six British nationals claimed to have been detained and tortured by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, where they were also interrogated by British intelligence officers.

It’s not so much that someone else has joined the long queue of people who know that George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and their friends in high places are liars; it’s that another country, an ally and close friend, has figured it out and said so publicly.

What, oh what, have we become?

Please, Not Another "C" Student In The White House!

John McCain believes that Czechoslovakia is still a country, despite the fact that it has not been for 15 years. Actually, he believes it so earnestly he’s repeated it twice in less than a week. This makes him the type of person that one might charitably describe as a dum-dum.

I know what some readers are thinking: "Hell, I didn't know Czechoslovakia isn't a country anymore, either – and, darn it, I'm no dum-dum!" Well, maybe you are and maybe you aren't, but it's rather beside the point since you're not running to be the President of the United States, the most globally important job on the planet.

Unfortunately, for a whole lot of reasons, McCain is – and that means he probably ought to have a passing familiarity with the goings-on in Europe over the last couple of decades. After all, it's a rather important continent and serious stuff happens there. It's totally in the Top 10, at least.

So what's he been spending his time learning these last 15 years?

Surely not how to navigate the internets – despite how remarkable they are – given that he's a self-described computer "illiterate who has to rely on [his] wife for all of the assistance that [he] can get" and doesn’t do e-mail. And he definitely hasn't been spending time boning up on the economy or foreign policy (he still can’t keep Shiia’s and Sunni’s straight despite Joe Lieberman’s whispered explanations) or basic sex ed. I'm just not sure exactly what his feisty little noggin's been up to with the exception of learning during his thwarted presidential run in 2000 that, when Karl Rove trashes your family, the only appropriate response if you want to be president some day is, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

By this point, perhaps some of you are thinking: "Oh, big deal. So he doesn't know Czechoslovakia doesn't exist anymore. Whoopty-doo. Not everyone's an A student, you brown-nosing geography nerd."

True, not everyone is.

The thing is we've given the leadership-of-the-nation-to-the-C-student thing a try. And it didn't work out so well. Maybe we could try shooting for something a little higher this time?

My fellow Americans, let's have a little dignity and expect more of our president than we expect of ourselves.

It's really OK if you didn't get the memo about Czeko, although a daily dose of international news never hurt anyone, with the possible exception of Archduke Ferdinand. But it's really not OK that John McCain didn't – and it's alright to hold him to a higher standard. In fact, I firmly support the idea that, at least once in awhile, the president should be the smartest person in the room.

BREAKING NEWS: US-Iran Re-establishing Diplomatic Ties

A breaking report from Ewan MacAskill, Washington, DC, bureau chief for The Guardian, claims that the United States and Iran are in the process of establishing formal diplomatic relations - a distinct turnaround of Bush administration policy regarding Iran. The report does not cite a source for the information, but claims that, within a month, there will be an announcement of an agreement to "establish a US interests section in Tehran," a major step toward establishing a full embassy.

The Associated Press and The Washington Post have apparently received similar information, but have not yet named a source.

This is the very same policy Barack Obama has urged all along and Pres. Bush dismissed as "appeasement" not six weeks ago.

McCain Loses Lead Among Men, Is 7 Points Down

As the economy worsens and people are increasingly concerned – even frightened – about their financial future, Barack Obama is the clear political benefactor.

Just as Bill Clinton benefited in 1992 from a feeling of economic malaise in the country, Obama is gaining an advantage from the public’s telling pollsters the economy is their number one worry. Of course, the vast majority of Americans are convinced that the Iraq War has worsened the country's economic posture, so the two are not unrelated.

A new Reuters/Zogby poll reports today:

“Dissatisfaction with U.S. economic policy continues to increase, with 89% who now view the nation’s economic policy as fair or poor, up from 84% who said the same last month – 55% now give U.S. economic policy a “poor” rating. The vast majority of Democrats (96%) and political independents (91%) have a negative view of the nation’s economic policy, while 80% of Republicans now share those feelings, an increase from 71% who said the same in June.”

Republicans who think the relative decline in violence in Iraq will save their bacon should remember that the Gulf War was an unambiguous win for Bush Sr., but he still lost to Clinton. A disaster following upon a major catastrophe is a much worse platform on which to campaign than the one Bush Sr. had. Of course, the crisis in the Gulf was politically ambiguous because it had put back up petroleum prices from $9 a barrel in 1986 to over $40 in 1991.

In any case, in 1992 the American public was just not that concerned with the victory over Iraq in Kuwait; they were worried about a real estate bust and a recession. The S&L scandal, which cost the public $100-billion and occurred because the Republican had fired the auditors of these financial institutions and coddled the white collar criminals who funded their campaigns, was fresh in people's minds. McCain, of course, was close to a major figure in that S&L scandal.

The current bank scandals, stemming in no small part from the Republican Party's tendency to weaken or ignore regulations constraining corruption in big business, thus promoting fraud on a vast scale, coupled with the spike in oil prices and anxieties around recession all must strike anyone who lived through 1992 as eerily familiar.

There is even a third party challenge by Bob Barr that may take votes away from McCain just as Ross Perot took them away from Bush Sr. rather than Clinton on a 2-to-1 ratio.

The Zogby/Reuters poll confirms why voters are moving towards Obama and away from McCain.

“Obama continues to maintain his lead over Republican John McCain in the race for U.S. President and is viewed as the candidate who could best manage the U.S. economy – even as nearly half of likely voters list the economy as their top election issue . . . Obama leads McCain, 47% to 40%, with 13% saying they prefer someone else or are not yet sure about their selection in the race — just a slight shift from June’s survey, when Obama led McCain 47% to 42%. While Obama maintains a significant lead among women, among men the candidates are now deadlocked at 44%, erasing the six-point lead among men McCain held in June.”

A seven point lead is well beyond the margin of error. And so is the erasure of McCain's lead among men. If the men are splitting their vote, Obama will win, since the women favour him by a significant margin. Again, something like that happened with Clinton.

Clinton and Obama are both policy wonks, seen as people they could trust to handle the economy – unlike Bush and McCain, who are seen as all about giveaways to the rich, their own social class. But Clinton and Obama are also hunks, whom men admire for their lithe physical stature and over whom women swoon.

In a bad economy, Americans seem to want to be led not so much by a man on a white horse as by a brilliant hunk from the party that didn’t make a mess of the family finances by destroying the economy.