Secret Squirrels

I got this under the table from a 'source'.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering a plan to curtail the Pentagon's clandestine spying activities, which were expanded by his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, after the 9/11 attacks.

The undercover work allowed military personnel to collect intelligence about terrorists and to recruit spies in foreign countries independently of the CIA and without much congressional oversight.

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This is what got us into Iraq. While one of the main characters in my novels is a CIA operator who works without congressional oversight, it makes for a decent story, the lack of oversight, as we've seen over the past 6 years, is a bad thing.

While this all sounds good, the dismantling of Rummy's clandestine infrastructure, the guys running the operation are still there.

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It's been interesting to see that General Boykin, the architect of the unit along with Stephen Cambone, has not retired as quickly as many expected.

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You remember General Boykin, God's Christian Soldier, don't you?

So it seems Gates still has a use for these operators:

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Sy Hersh recently reported that the secret unit was playing a key role in the Administration's activities in Iran to undermine the government through covert support of certain ethnic groups. Its dissolution or downgrading would signal a change of course with Iran--and this might be just what saves the Squirrels. At the very least, Cambone's resignation is going to make Gate's job at the helm much easier. [my em]

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Now, you might think this is a good thing, but this unit can best be described thusly:

... The unit was supposed to show the guys in the CIA's Clandestine Services what can happen when real men spy, but their few publicly-known escapades have made them look more like snake-eaters in drag--you can shove them in a trench coat and gussy them up with lipstick, but as soon as they take a few telltale steps...

Not much is gonna change under Gates and Bush Inc. still has its collective eye on Iran.

Quote of the Day

From Rolling Stone:

"This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference." --General Tony McPeak(ret.) - former Chief of Staff of the USAF.

A tip of the Jersey hat to my good friend Dr. Ken. for the link.

R.

Is impeachment on the table now?

From Sen. Charles Schumer (via AlterNet):

"We now have direct evidence that Attorney General Gonzales was carrying out the political wishes of the president," Schumer noted, adding later that complaints from New Mexico Republicans that prosecutors weren't indicting Democrats quickly enough "were passed on to Karl Rove and to the president himself. The president weighed in with Attorney General Gonzales and within weeks, that U.S. Attorney, David Iglesias, was fired."

From Democratic Party Chairperson Howard Dean (via Democrats.org):

"The best way for Attorney General Gonzales to accept responsibility is for him to step down," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "The Bush White House has consistently put protecting the President and doing his bidding ahead of upholding the integrity of our nation's laws. Karl Rove should pack his bags and go too. His type of leadership doesn't belong at the White House.

America deserves better."

Let's see: A prominent Democratic Senator and the Chair of the Democratic Party are calling for Rove and the A.G. to resign because they were carrying out the criminal wishes of the president, but neither one of them is mentioning impeachment. Does that make sense to you? Doesn't to me. When are the Dems gonna come out of their coocoon and actually govern?

R.

Clarity ...

Listen, it's not anti-semitic to be opposed to the Israel lobbying groups in the U.S. Know why?

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One important clarification before we move on. These days the Israeli lobby no longer lobbies for Israel. They lobby for the most right-wing, war-mongering part of the Israeli government. They don't represent the Israeli people or the whole government. They certainly don't represent what's in Israel's best interest. They only represent hard right-wing, Likud politics.

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Why do you think the Chimp and Cheney are so deeply involved with them? Problem is, they have the Dem leadership by the balls too.

Amateurs:Strategy - Professionals:Logistics

I know it's my tired old screed you've all heard a lot over the last almost-3 years, but the pros didn't seem to get it:

... 'Iraq and Afghanistan are sucking up resources at a faster rate than we planned for,' one three-star general said ...

No shit, Sherlocks. The last real war you had to fight, and resupply, was Vietnam. Forgot how that went, didja? My dad was a defense contractor during that war and every subcontractor machine shop on Long Island during the 60s and early 70s was working 3 shifts supporting Grumman, Republic Aircraft, and the military spare parts system. The Chimp and Cheney wanted a war on the cheap and they've shortchanged every-fucking-body in the process. Our wounded vets got especially fucked, but it's across the board.

Big tip o' the Brain to Cdr. Huber.

Snowball

HuffPo

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly canceled travel plans Tuesday amid growing calls for his ouster over the firings of eight federal prosecutors during a White House-directed housecleaning of U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his top aide, Kyle Sampson, who authorities said failed to brief other senior Justice Department officials of his discussions about the firings with then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Miers resigned in January.

Go read the rest. As a matter of fact, this thing has gained traction so fast you can just about push any button on your keyboard to read about it!

This could possibly bring down the fake AG we didn't want in the job in the first place. This is good.

Here's the funny part, to me at least: a good bit of this deal is a result of these U.S. Attorneys not investigating Democratic voter fraud prior to the November elections. Since most voter fraud is Repuglican, it's doubtful that they could actually find any, and some of the prosecutors weren't willing to manufacture cases like the WH wanted them to.

In the case of Ms. Lam, of course, it's because she went after Repuglicans. Prosecutors go where the crimes are, which is not Repuglican policy because they commit most of them.

Gotta go. Lurch just called to remind me that Tio Taco Gonzales is going to be on TV in a few moments. Later.

Update:

Well, that was more administration manure. Not worth watching except for getting to eat lunch.

Shorter AG TV appearance: the fox will investigate what happened in the henhouse so it doesn't happen again.

He's trying to defuse the situation and possibly get it off the front burner. I think - I hope - it's not going to work.

Cafferty: Alberto Gonzalez is a weasel.

One of my favorite curmudgeons is on the loose again at Crooks and Liars. Video.

Cafferty: And it's not enough that the Attorney General of the United States is a glorified water boy for the White House. The Bush administration also is admitting now that its #1 political HACK, Karl Rove passed along complaints from Republican lawmakers about US attorney's to the Justice Department and the WH counsel's office. A political advisor—playing a role in the hiring and firing of US attorney's. It's disgraceful.

Cafferty: If you look up the word weasel in the dictionary Wolf, you'll see Alberto Gonzales's picture there.

Wolf: You don't like him?

Cafferty: That is correct, I don't.

Cafferty has never been exactly a shrinking violet, but I am sensing a subtle shift away from fear of the administration on the part of others as well. Let's hope it continues and grows.

They have to go. All of them.

Let's review ...

Walter Reed

Alberto 'Abu Ghraib' Gonzalez and the FBI

The U.S Attorneys

For those of you who were alive at that time, does this week give you the same feeling Watergate did? Like the snowball has started downhill and it's getting bigger the farther down it rolls.

Is impeachment back on the table now?

Did we really gain anything in November?

The latest failure of intestinal fortitude by the Democratic majority, from Yahoo! News/AP: Dems abandon war authority provision

"WASHINGTON - Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran."

I really, really believe that we have to start working at the grassroots to replace the Democratic Party with a party that truly represents Progressive values. We might just be surprised at how fast it takes off. The time is now. The opportunity is now.

A tip of the Jersey hat to CorrenteWire for the link.

R.

You don't need to speak Spanish ...

To see how much they love our preznit.

Pic thanks to Watertiger.

Ain't no more ...

You've taken everything can wring out of us and now you don't want to pay taxes on it? Does anybody believe Iraq wasn't for Halliburton's benefit?

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"This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years," said judiciary committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

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Bush Will Do Anything to Avoid Admitting Failure

From Salon: The Army is ordering injured troops to go to Iraq

"As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the
Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with
serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said
are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor,
according to medical records. "

"Other soldiers slated to leave for Iraq with injuries said they wonder
whether the same thing is happening in other units in the Army. "You have to ask
where else this might be happening and who is dictating it," one female soldier
told me. "How high does it go?" "

More, much more in the full article.

Bush is afraid to even mention the word "draft". So he is digging deeper and deeper and essentially using America's youth as cannon fodder.

This administration needs to be removed. Fast. There is no reason in the world any more to keep impeachment "off the table." I only wish that there were a faster legitimate way to get rid of them. The Democrats need to find some cojones and pronto or we are going to be reading lots more headlines like this.

R.

Wisdom

Serious wisdom from Nicole at Crooks and Liars. I've said it many times myself:

Without question, the benefit I have received traveling around the world has far exceeded the education I've gotten in college or beyond. There is no textbook that can replace actually experiencing a country as a local would. And the more of the world you see, the harder it is to see differences and borders dividing us ...

Speaking of traveling, I'm taking Mrs. F to the Caribbean next month for her birthday. Yes, I'll take you all along as usual.

Overblown Personnel Matters

Paul Krugman

Nobody is surprised to learn that the Justice Department was lying when it claimed that recently fired federal prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. Nor is anyone surprised to learn that White House political operatives were pulling the strings.

What is surprising is how fast the truth is emerging about what Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, dismissed just five days ago as an "overblown personnel matter."

As I said, none of this is surprising. The Bush administration has been purging, politicizing and de-professionalizing federal agencies since the day it came to power. But in the past it was able to do its business with impunity; this time Democrats have subpoena power, and the old slime-and-defend strategy isn't working.

You also have to wonder whether new signs that Mr. Gonzales and other administration officials are willing to cooperate with Congress reflect the verdict in the Libby trial. It probably comes as a shock to realize that even Republicans can face jail time for lying under oath.

Another big loose end involves what U.S. attorneys who weren't fired did to please their employers. As I pointed out last week, the numbers show that since the Bush administration came to power, federal prosecutors have investigated far more Democrats than Republicans.

But the numbers can tell only part of the story. What we really need - and it will take a lot of legwork - is a portrait of the actual behavior of prosecutors across the country. Did they launch spurious investigations of Democrats, as I suggested last week may have happened in New Jersey? Did they slow-walk investigations of Republican scandals, like the phone-jamming case in New Hampshire?

In other words, the truth about that "overblown personnel matter" has only begun to be told. The good news is that for the first time in six years, it's possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings - or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

In related news:

Senator Schumer Says Gonzales Should Go

Washington - The Senate's No. 3 Democrat said Sunday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign because he is putting politics above the law. Sen. Charles Schumer cited the FBI's illegal snooping into people's private lives and the Justice Department's firing of federal prosecutors.

Schumer, D-New York, said Gonzales repeatedly has shown more allegiance to President Bush than to citizens' legal rights since taking his job in early 2005.

In coming hearings by the Judiciary Committee, senators plan to review whether it might be appropriate to scale back some of the government's law enforcement powers in light of the abuses.

"What we found in the Justice Department over and over again is a lack of respect for the rule of law," Schumer said. "There's a view that the executive should be almost without check."

"And that is so wrong," he said. "That's one of the reasons I think we need a change at the top in the Justice Department."

This administration isn't getting away with shit quite as easily as it used to.

Thank you, Democrats. Now speed it up.

Media whores ...

I'm running late so I'll send you to Digby:

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We watched the press behave like a bunch of lapdancers for the Republicans for well over a decade. They wrapped their legs around Republican power so strongly that it finally led us into a circumstance that is killing people in large numbers. They were angry at Bill Clinton for "trashing the place" and it wasn't his place. They took out their childish pique on Al Gore and stoked the fires that demanded Bush be seated in the white house no matter what the legitimate outcome of the election in 2000. After 9/11 they put on a modern martial pageant that would have made Joseph Stalin proud.

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If the trial did nothing else it showed the sickeningly parasitic relationship between many in the press and the Republicans. The Libby apologists in the media and the political establishment are screaming bloody murder about the trial because there was no "underlying crime" so Scooter shouldn't have even been been tried for lying to the Grand Jury. Forgetting their unbelievable gall in making this argument after their non-stop shrieking about the "rule 'o law" in the Lewinsky matter when the alleged underlying crime of sexual harrassment had been thrown out of court on the merits, their crocodile tears for the first amendment are especially rich coming from the people who wanted to jail reporters in stories that revealed current illegal and extra-constitutional policies on the part of the administration. Dana Priest and others are actually doing the work they are supposed to do which is overseeing government and they are vilified by the same Republican establishment that has otherwise wrapped itself in the first amendment to defend Tim Russert and Judy Miller and the Bush administration.

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See yas in the afternoon ...

Why Libby's Pardon is a Slam Dunk

Today's 'must read': Daddy Frank

EVEN by Washington's standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.

Cuts through the shit, don't he? That's our Pop!

A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by encumbering them with "signing statements" and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is "pretty much going to stay out of" the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.

Either way, the pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut. Cheney's Cheney knows too much about covert administration schemes far darker than the smearing of Joseph Wilson. Though Mr. Libby wrote a novel that sank without a trace a decade ago, he now has the makings of an explosive Washington tell-all that could be stranger than most fiction and far more salable.

Mary Matalin, the former Cheney flack who served with Mr. Libby on WHIG and is now on the board of his legal defense fund (its full list of donors is unknown), has been especially vocal. "Scooter didn't do anything," she said. "And his personal record and service are impeccable." What Mr. Libby did - fabricating nuclear threats at WHIG and then lying under oath when he feared that sordid Pandora's box might be pried open by the Wilson case - was despicable. Had there been no WHIG or other White House operation for drumming up fictional rationales for war, there would have been no bogus uranium from Africa in a presidential speech, no leak to commit perjury about, no amputees to shut away in filthy rooms at Walter Reed.

Listening to Ms. Matalin and her fellow apparatchiks emote publicly about the punishment being inflicted on poor Mr. Libby and his family, you wonder what world they live in. They seem clueless about how ugly their sympathy for a conniving courtier sounds against the testimony of those wounded troops and their families who bear the most searing burdens of the unnecessary war WHIG sped to market.

As usual, Mr. Rich nails it.

A tip 'o the Brain to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

Bush Gets Warm Welcome In São Paulo

The Guardian

Some arrived clutching banners telling "Mr Butcher" to go home. Others brought effigies of "The Warlord" dangling miserably from a hangman's noose. A handful dressed up as the grim reaper, while some women paraded through the streets with stickers of George Bush and Adolf Hitler placed tastefully over their nipples.

Lemme guess: Bush's Pinocchio nose stuck waaaay out...

There was none of the famed Brazilian hospitality. Even before Mr Bush arrived in Brazil on Thursday to begin a six-day tour of Latin America the protesters were out en masse. "Persona non grata" read one placard. "Get out you Nazi" said another. In case the message still hadn't hit home, there was one other taunt - this time in English: "Bush, kill yourself."

There was even a special group formed by students to track down the president, calling itself the Bush Hunt Command. The group gathered yesterday morning in Sao Paulo's Ibirapuera Park with the aim of chasing Mr Bush through the streets and forcing him to listen to their message.

The hunt began with a version of If You're Happy and You Know It with doctored lyrics. "Good morning President Bush, how's it going?" the crowd screamed, before the unmistakable chorus of "Filho da puta" - son of a whore.

Colorful, these Brazilians, eh?

A massive security operation involving hundreds of police, military and intelligence agents from both countries meant the president was completely shielded from any kind of protest.

His security people are well practiced in shielding him from reality, as we know.

That, however, did not stop people trying. In Ibirapuera Park the hunt's leaders herded protesters into a fleet of coaches to begin their pursuit. The first stop was the Hilton, where Mr Bush was staying in the £3,200-a-night presidential suite.

Now that pisses me off! I think that's about $5600. A night. He's not worth that, and it's our money.

On the eve of his trip President Bush told CNN's Spanish language channel he hoped to show South Americans the US "cared" about the region. Based on this showing, they will take a lot more convincing.

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still gonna be a pig. I would like to see Bush's bacon fry.

"Scoop 'n Dump" Juliannie

TalkLeft

Rudy Giuliani takes more heat, this time from the bipartisan New York firefighters union which blasts his "egregious" treatment of them after 9/11.

In a letter to its members Friday, the International Association of Fire Fighters, excoriated Giuliani for his November 2001 decision to cut back the number of firefighters searching the rubble of Ground Zero for the remains of some 300 fallen comrades.

The 280,000-member union accused him of carelessly expediting the cleanup process with a "scoop-and-dump" operation after the recovery of millions of dollars in gold, silver and other assets from the Bank of Nova Scotia that had been buried.

"Scoop and Dump" Rudy, it kind of has a ring to it, doesn't it?

Us dog owners are familiar with 'dump 'n scoop', but I think this fits Rudy to a T.

Civility ...

Thers via Atrios:

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"Civility" for people like Kopel is a trick, a lie, a maneuver, a weapon. It's corrupt and debased.

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About damn time ...

Much as I'm still pissed at the Edwards camp for the way they handled the Shakes/Amanda thing, I've got to hand it to 'em for standing up to Fox:

You may have heard by now that John Edwards was the first candidate to officially say no to the Fox News debate in Nevada -- and because of the hard work of so many grassroots and netroots Democrats, news is breaking tonight that Fox is out.

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Enough is enough. It's time to send a clear message to Fox News and their allies that their right-wing talking points and temper tantrums won't go unchallenged anymore - when it comes to what Democrats should do in the Democratic primary, we'll decide - no matter what they report:

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The truth is, Fox News can "report" whatever they want. And when it works for us, we'll deal with them on our terms. But this campaign is about responsibility and accountability, and we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along.

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Excellent and I hope other Dem candidates (and Independents other than Lieberman) adopt this posture toward Fox until they clean up their collective act or go out of business.

Great thanks to C&L.

Update:

More from Booman:

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And if we can slice FOX News off the right-fringe of the corporate media, making them look disreputable and biased, we will have done a great deal to move the overall debate back a little to the center.

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