Spin? CounterSpin! The Alleged British Airplane Bombing Plot, Counterclockwise

A Case Study in the Bush/Rove/Cheney Administration's Agenda, Priorities and Spin Tactics

What A Tangled Web They Weave -- But Not Quite Tangled Enough To Deceive!

Unless you've been under a rock for most of the past week, you already know that people have been arrested in Britain and Pakistan recently, in connection with an alleged plot to bomb flights from Britain to the USA. According to reports of the arrests, the alleged terrorists were allegedly planning to take down 10 or 12 airplanes at the same time, and this grand-scale planning allegedly points to al-Qaeda. You may know quite a bit more than this, of course. Or at least you may think you do. But in point of fact, most of us probably know quite a bit less.

This post attempts to dig beneath the surface, to look at various (mainstream and other) accounts of the events and to try to determine the nature, the scope and the scale of the manipulation that has been going on. It may not point us in the direction of greater truth, but perhaps it can help us to find a direction of fewer lies.

Let's start with a point of order: Chris Floyd, writer of the excellent blog Empire Burlesque, points out one of the most sickening aspects of the coverage these arrests have received:

The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned

In the oceans of newsprint and tsunamis of pixels expended on the London bomb plot stories over the last two days, I don't recall seeing -- anywhere, either in the US or UK media -- that one little word which differentiates honest journalism from the noxious regurgitations of state propaganda: "alleged."

Everywhere, you read that a "bomb plot was thwarted" -- not an alleged bomb plot. Everywhere, you read that the plotters (or most of them) have been captured -- not the "alleged" plotters. Everywhere, whatever line is being laid down by "intelligence officials" and government poo-bahs is accepted uncritically and megaphoned out to the public. Everywhere the presumption of innocence -- one of the bedrock liberties of the "way of life" that we are supposed to be defending -- is gleefully tossed aside.
...
The presumption of innocence -- like the Geneva Conventions -- is just another "quaint" relic of a bygone era.

I give Chris a lot of credit for saying this; I think it shows that he and I have been reading somewhat different sources. If we can judge by the presence of the magic word "alleged", I have found a few -- a very few -- "honest" mainstream news reports. Most of them have come from our Canadian friends.

Here's an example from the CBC (with my emphasis):

Juice, aerosols banned on Canadian flights:

Air travellers in Canada are no longer allowed to take aerosols or juice in their carry-on luggage, under new rules put in place on Sunday morning by Transport Canada.

The items join the list of things banned from carry-on luggage on airplanes under tighter regulations put in place on Aug. 10 after British police announced that they had foiled an alleged plot to bomb commercial aircraft with explosives smuggled onto planes in hand luggage.
...
At least 40 people have been arrested in the alleged bomb plot, including 24 detained in overnight raids on Aug. 9 and 10 in Britain and others in Pakistan.

As Chris Floyd almost said: the stories containing phrases like "alleged bomb plot" are few and far between. But even before I read his post, I had been looking for the exceptions. And that's probably why I found them. I even found a New York Times article with the word "alleged" in it. And we'll look at that article in more depth, later.

But at this point I want to emphasize how prominently these reports stand out -- because of their honest use of the language, because they imply that the presumption of innocence is not entirely lost, and because they are so few in number.

I must say this highlights the pathetic condition of the majority our so-called "news" services. And I can't say I'm surprised.

I was also not surprised to see a wide variety of articles questioning the timing of the arrests; some of which appeared more or less immediately after the first arrests were announced.

In a post I wrote last Thursday, I pointed out how convenient the timing was for the Republicans -- who were so busy bashing the Democrats because their favorite faux-Democrat Senator, Joe Lieberman, had lost Tuesday's Connecticut primary to Ned Lamont.

As usual, and possibly because I am almost always nearly frozen, my piece, An Avalanche of Bullshit, may have been too subtle about it (other than the title, perhaps). Some other writers were mincing their words a lot less than I was that day.

Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story, writing at Huffington Post, got my attention by her use of the magic word, and kept it for a long, long time:

Playing Politics with Our Lives

After learning of the London plot early yesterday morning from the television, which rarely tells me anything factual, I immediately began making calls to find out the details of what this alleged plot was, what experts believed, and so forth. I spent till roughly 7 PM EST running after this, until I was satisfied that, by all accounts, there was indeed a plot of serious consequence.

But what kept nagging at me was the sense that the White House was far too eager to exploit this, that despite having only learned of the details a few days back, they appeared to be aggressively using insider intelligence of forthcoming events to their own political advantage.
...
The one issue, the key issue for everyone I spoke with, mirrored my own concerns. The timing seemed terribly odd.

The arrests appeared sloppy. Scotland Yard was still involved in raiding and arresting suspects at the time the story broke, and the raids and arrests continued throughout the day and evening. The mastermind was still in Pakistan, when one would have hoped that authorities would have ensured his capture prior to the raids, as such a person could provide information about higher ups and financial backers. Why did the Brits suddenly move? This was the question that had experts completely confused.

Were the experts really "completely confused"? Or were they keeping something hidden?

If they were trying to keep it hidden, it didn't work. Larisa is a very good chess player.

My opinion on this whole timing issue is that the White House played politics with classified information, again.

Right. Exactly. Yes?

Larisa goes on to lay out a series of quotes and links that I find most convincing. I've been reading Larisa for a long time and it seems to me that she does not like to stick her neck out. She's usually entirely convinced of something before she even begins to write about it.

So when she writes stuff like this I tend to pay attention:

Is it possible that the White House, eager to score political points with the American radical right [...] actually blew yet another classified program by yapping to reporters and talking point crafters? In my opinion, yes.

In my opinion it was despite the Bush administration that the Brits managed to still secure the alleged plotters, not as a result of White House help in the matter.

The confusion around and skepticism of the alleged London bombings plot is understandable given the context of this week's events and the well documented past naked abuse of power by this administration in peddling fear for political points.

The mainstream media, however, cannot seem to separate two very specific issues: the actual London plot and the White House abuse of classified information to achieve political goals.

After an extended discussion, tracing the flow of information, Larisa writes:

We know that all agency heads were briefed by the White House and that Tony Snow knew, Dick Cheney held a private press conference with pet reporters, Karl Rove called Lieberman, talking points made their rounds via right wing outlets and mouths.

While all of this chatter is going on in the States, the Brits must have watched with horror. In my opinion, their move to arrest the suspects on Thursday was more about a sleazy White House political machine and the possibility that loose lips from the White House could jeopardize the investigation, which was nearing its end.

This again, is my own opinion. Is this cynical? Yes. But look who we are talking about after all.

Good point. I, like Chris Floyd, value the presumption of innocence very highly. But I don't see how it can apply to people who have long track records of breaking every law that cuts across their plans, and lying about virtually everything.

I would not put it past Cheney to do with this information what he did with the CIA leak case. There is no reason to give any of these people the benefit of trust, not after all of the lies, machinations, abuse of journalism, abuse of a world size platform, and all of the effort and funding that has gone into creating an image of competence, honesty, strength, and concern for American people. All of the effort toward the image and no effort toward national security.

Yes, Larisa! That's exactly the point, isn't it? No effort toward national security, which is supposedly the Republicans' best issue. How could this possibly make any sense, in the absence of a great propaganda machine?

Larisa then draws what seems like an obvious conclusion:

It appears that at the very least, this administration believes that our sanity as a nation is worth less than a GOP win. Has there ever been a time in US history when a campaign manager worked directly out of the White House, and had the highest security clearances? Now imagine a morally bankrupt, soulless, intellectually perverted campaign manager with the highest security clearances, working out of the seat of power, using government agencies and resources at his disposal.

How is this allowed?

That's another good question, is it not? Larisa and I might not have much in common -- and I'm sure she's a much better chess player than I am (which is probably why she won't play me!) -- but we do ask a lot of questions, don't we?

Watch how she asks and answers a question that is usually spun the other way:

Are we safer now than we were before September 11th?

No. We were not safe to begin with because this administration failed to do its job in preventing the attacks of that tragedy.
...
We are by far even less safe after the White House created torture camps all over the world
...
We have become even more unsafe because this administration spent all of our national security funding, that is, funding earmarked for securing our nation, on Halliburton and Blackwater contracts, and on building a big, palace like base in Iraq.
...
We have been at near zero safety since Bush and Cheney were appointed to their positions in 2000 and we will continue to have our safety downgraded with every passing second that this cabal has control over our precious, soon to be extinguished democracy. They are not strong on national security. They are strong on propaganda.

Bam! That's it, isn't it? Their one strong suit is propaganda! And Larisa nails them on it with a certain panache, don't you think?

What an essay! I urge you to read the whole thing. But then I always say that, especially when I'm talking about Larisa.

Earlier in the day, without doing the same research, Buzzflash had come to the same kinds of questions from a slightly different angle:

U.K. Terror Plot Foiled Just a Day after Lieberman's Defeat. Coincidence?

The pattern continues. A terrorist plot is uncovered just as the masses start to question national security strategy. The day after Senate Democrats brought a vote to pull out of Iraq, we catch a few idiots in Miami who were supposedly trying to blow up the Sears Tower, despite the fact that they lacked the means and ability to do so. Then there were the guys busted for supposedly plotting to blow up a New York subway exactly a year after the London bus bombings. And don't forget the release of new Osama bin Laden tapes just before the 2004 election as well as the very day after the Supreme Court decision striking down the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals. And now today, a few men in England were arrested for a plan to blow up planes flying to America, just a day after Connecticut voters flatly rejected Joe Lieberman and the war in Iraq.
...
While the exact nature of today's arrests is still unclear, none of the plans seemed to have been immediate or imminent threats. The decision of when to intervene has been arbitrary, making the coincidental timings pretty convenient.
...
Imagine a conversation late Tuesday night between Bush and his British Prime Minister lapdog, just as Ned Lamont declares victory. "Yo, Blair," Bush says while scarfing down a dinner role. "I gotta to do something about this sh*t. Can you finally arrest those suspected terrorists you told me about? This election business is ruining my vacation! I know you're chillin' in the Caribbean yourself right now, but it sure would be great if you could make a few calls for me ASAP."

Don't buy it? Consider this quote from a Reuters article on the story: "President George W. Bush had known about the investigation for several days, was briefed about it regularly and knew the arrests were coming, a senior administration official said." Both countries are surely monitoring several terrorist leads that could lead to arrests at any time. The British group would have been stopped eventually, but there has been absolutely no indication why it had to be today.

The Buzzflash editorial winds its way through some thorny ground before coming to the following conclusion:

Terrorist threats may or may not be real. They may or may not be activated as a result of the Busheviks now becoming the motivational cause of terrorists at this point.

We will never know, as long as one-party dictatorship prevails and incompetence and unending war are the means of maintaining power.

But timing is something you can document. And this timing of the latest act of terrorism announcement appears more political than operational.

A senatorial candidate who questions the strategic value of the Iraq War is denounced by the top level of the Bush Administration as an appeaser of terrorists -- and then once again there is an arrest of people we are told intended to commit grievous acts of terrorism.

There appears to be a pattern here, and it's one employed by masters of tyranny, not democracy, to cover up for a failed war and a failed foreign policy.

I think you should read this whole piece too.

When I need a different -- calmer, clearer -- view of things, I try to consult Gwynne Dyer, who can be hard to find. Serious truth-tellers sometimes have difficulty getting published, and their readers sometimes have to make an effort. This time I found Gwynne Dyer in an Australian paper.

Who benefits from security hysteria?

Back in February 2003, when Prime Minister Tony Blair was trying to persuade a reluctant Britain that invading Iraq alongside the United States was a really neat idea, tanks suddenly appeared on the perimeter road around Heathrow to guard against an impending terrorist attack.

It wasn't clear what they were supposed to do — crush the terrorists under their treads? — and no actual terrorists ever showed up, but it helped to shape public opinion. So how different is it this time?

Well, that's the thing, isn't it?

How is this different?

What should we do about it?

Should we do anything different?

Strangely -- tragically -- these sorts of questions have been virtually off-limits, for almost five years.

Isn't it time we started talking about them? Apparently Gwynne Dyer thinks so.

[I]n the United States more people die on the roads every single month than Islamist terrorists have killed since the year 2000, and in Britain it's more people every week. Yet neither country has tried to restrict access to cars.

Maybe it's cynical, but there are strong grounds for suspecting that this is all a charade. If they infiltrated these terrorist cells many months ago and have now have arrested most of the members, then why would they institute drastic new security measures on flights at this point? And did they really only realise in the past few days that explosives come in liquid form as well?

One of the reasons I like Dyer so much is because he can always make me laugh, even in the middle of a very serious piece like this. But I also like him because he gets right to the point.

After the arrests in Britain on the night of August 9-10, Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, assured the media that "during the investigation an unprecedented level of surveillance has been undertaken ... We have been looking at meetings, movement, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people ... The investigation reached a critical point last night when the decision was made to take urgent action in order to disrupt what we believe was being planned."

Fair enough, although this is the same organisation that took "urgent action" to kill an innocent Brazilian called Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 "in order to disrupt what we believe was being planned", and earlier this year shot and wounded another innocent person in London in the course of a raid on a Muslim family in east London based on manifestly unreliable information.

So maybe 24 terrorist plotters have been arrested in Britain, or maybe 24 innocent British Muslims with full beards, or more likely some combination of the two. But whatever the truth of that, why the panic?

Exactly. We got 'em, right? So why were we acting like we didn't?

British Home Secretary John Reid boldly asserted that the "main players" had been accounted for, and Scotland Yard Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson proudly announced that "we are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder".

Well done, lads — but if you have them all locked up, why are you closing the airports and bringing in all these draconian security measures now? A couple of months ago, when you first uncovered this plot but didn't know all the "main players", I could understand such drastic precautions, but why now?

Very interesting twist here, no? Dyer asks "why now?" in a completely different way than Larisa did, for example. And the questions reinforce each other. Why now? Why now? Why now?

Maybe it was those explosive "liquid chemicals" they were planning to smuggle aboard the planes. After all, it's only 160 years since nitroglycerine was invented. It's a mere 11 years since al-Qaeda associate Ramzi Yousef plotted to blow up 12 airliners flying across the Pacific at the same time with nitro carried aboard in contact lens solution bottles. Who could have foreseen this? Quick! Bring in new security measures!

It's a great sytle, isn't it? Another joke and then -- kablam -- straight to the heart of the matter:

They really aren't that stupid. They have been checking liquids that people want to carry aboard flights at airport security checkpoints for years. There would be no need for drastic new security measures, even if the alleged British terrorist ring were still on the loose.

This is all hype, designed to frighten the British and American publics into supporting the wars of their deeply unpopular governments (and the war of their Israeli ally as well).

What a wonderful phrase: "Even if the alleged British terrorist ring were still on the loose."

As I've been saying, Dyer's a compulsive truth-teller, and he's been studying the various war machines for decades.

So his take on the events of last Thursday isn't very surprising. Worth reading? Sure. Always. Worth sharing? Yes, in my opinion. But not very surprising.

There was a big surprise, however, on Monday morning, and it came from NBC!

Source: U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests:
British wanted to continue surveillance on terror suspects, official says

LONDON - NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

British officials knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

Wow! That's a good one! I may be nearly frozen, but even I understand how tough it is to get aboard an international flight without a passport. Imminent danger, indeed!

At the White House, a top aide to President Bush denied the account.

Of course he did. He always does. But apparently not everyone got the memo:

Another U.S. official, however, acknowledges there was disagreement over timing.

And:

One senior British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the United States would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

Can you believe it's NBC saying this? Perhaps there's some hope for American TV journalism after all.

If you can call it that.

Or maybe I'm just hopeful. Frozen and hopeful, that must be it!

Are you with me so far? Good.

Now let's take a ride inside the Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine, courtesy of Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times:

In Wake of News, a Plan: Uniting Party and President

One week ago, President Bush and his political aides were facing the most daunting election-year landscape of his presidency.

Their party was splintered over Mr. Bush’s proposed immigration overhaul and uncertain about the political effect of violence in Iraq. Even with the White House working to bring Republicans together behind the president’s agenda, several candidates were making public shows of establishing their distance from him and his sagging approval ratings.

That picture of Republican disunity eased dramatically this week with the defeat on Tuesday of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut and the news on Thursday that Britain had foiled a potentially large-scale terrorist plot.

The White House and Congressional Republicans used those events to unleash a one-two punch, first portraying the Democrats as vacillating when it came to national security, and then using the alleged terror plot to hammer home the continuing threat faced by the United States.

Did you catch that? NYT said "alleged terror plot". Does that tell us something important? Is this article going to give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Well, not exactly. But watch this: If you read between the lines, you can see the whole gory plan laid bare -- from one end to the other. Strong on propaganda? Larisa sure had that one right!

By the time the president’s top political strategists met at his ranch on Friday for an annual summer fund-raiser, the events had given them an opportunity to pull together the Republican Party as it headed toward the home stretch of the campaign, rallying once more around Mr. Bush’s signature issue, the fight against terrorism.

Rallying around the signature issue. Imagine that.

None of it was accidental, was it? They try to spin it like it was just one of those fortunate coincidences that come along every now and then, just another "trifecta" ... But was it really? With all you've read so far, is there any question?

The entire effort was swiftly coordinated by the Republican National Committee and the White House, using the same political machinery that carried them to victory in 2004. It began in the days before the anticipated loss of Mr. Lieberman, a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq, to Ned Lamont, a vocal war critic whose victory Republicans used to paint Democrats as “Defeatocrats.”

That word originated in a White House memorandum by Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, suggesting ways to frame the debate, that was shared with officials, including Ken Mehlman, the Republican chairman, and Karl Rove, the president’s top strategist.

The effort continued with the news of the British intelligence breakthrough, with the message that the plot had highlighted the stakes of a fight that the Democrats, according to Republicans, were not equipped to face.

If the Democrats are supposedly not equipped to face this fight, does it make sense to ask: Why not? Is it because the administration has been confining all the top-level intelligence to a very small circle of "insiders", while giving everyone else, especially Democrats and the media, lie after lie after lie?

Maybe even despite all that, some Democrats are starting to wake up. Maybe they've been emboldened by the result from Connecticut. One can only hope...

But Democrats, seeing a political opportunity, began to focus on national security, making a vigorous case this week that the Republicans were mismanaging the war and making the country more vulnerable to attack.

“If the Republican Party thinks this is a good political issue for them, they are mistaken,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

We don't hear lines like this often enough.

I think every prominent Democrat should memorize it -- and five or six variations on the same theme.

And a top Republican strategist cautioned that the party’s candidates still faced serious challenges in states where the war and Mr. Bush were overwhelmingly unpopular.

But at the very least, news of the plot helped the White House and the Republican Party achieve something they have struggled to do all year: bring the party forcefully together with the president.

Wow! Think of that! Here were two events that should have fractured the party even further. Watching their favorite faux-Democrat lap-dog defeated, by a candidate they had done their best to smear ... and then this terror-plot spin-game, so blatantly obvious that even a frozen blogger couldn't help but notice it?

How sick can you get? This was helpful to the party? And what does that tell you?

The plan came together at the same time that Mr. Bush and his top security aides, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney, were being intensively briefed on the unfolding British investigation. That led Democrats to charge that the White House had actively used the plot to its political advantage.

It wasn't only Democrats making that charge, of course. Lots of other people noticed, too. The White House wasn't the only player actively using the plot to its political advantage, either. And I doubt Gwynne Dyer is a Democrat.

“For people to suggest there was somehow a larger, coordinated effort between the Lieberman loss and the disruption of the terror plot is just absurd,” said Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican Party.

Well... that's what they always say. Whenever an accusation is just too spot-on to refute, they call it "absurd".

Brian Jones is a spokesman for the Republican Party for a reason. He knows what to say when he's cornered.

The so-called president knows it too but he doesn't always get it quite right.

Remember when he was confronted about his alleged foreknowledge of 9/11? What did he say then?

"That's an absurd assinuation."

But I digress.

Administration officials said that those who had been briefed on the plot had not expected any arrests for several days, well after the initial political fallout of the Lieberman campaign would have played out.

What do you expect them to say? That those who were briefed on the plot demanded arrests as soon as they needed another smoke-screen to hide behind?

And why would they say that? Why would they start telling the truth now? They probably don't even know how to do it anymore, if indeed they ever did.

But every time they deny something, without really refuting it, the non-refutation denial goes halfway to confirming the assertion. And then there's the between-the-lines thing. Read very carefully, my friends.

But in several interviews, the officials said the attacks had reinforced arguments they had devised to meet Mr. Lieberman’s expected defeat.

Officials said they had identified a Lieberman loss as a potential watershed moment that could reinforce the Democrats’ antiwar message — and scare Republicans out of taking White House advice to embrace the war in Iraq and national security in general. That advice was wearing thin as the death toll in Iraq continued to climb.

No kidding. Not to mention the fact that the country is starting to wake up to certain other inconvenient truths.

At a Republican gathering in Minneapolis on Aug. 4, Duf Sundheim, chairman of the California Republican Party, said that national security had “been a great issue for the Republican Party over a long time, and there’s still a good choice between the two parties. But what changes the dynamic is the current situation in Iraq. It dissipates it.”

Still, last weekend, Republican officials said, as the Lieberman loss seemed a certainty, the Republican National Committee and the White House began working to bring the party together on a message that the Democratic Party was taking a hard turn toward the antiwar left.

As I oh-so-subtly pointed out last week, they could hardly admit that the Democratic voters of Connecticut had made a choice, could they? Oh no, this single electoral result had to be painted as a change of direction for the entire Democratic Party. And why? Because they can get away with any lie they choose to tell? Or because they think we're all so stupid we can't tell the difference between Connecticut and the USA?

The Republican talking points, reviewed by Mr. Rove and Sara Taylor, the White House political director, went out to state committees across the country, with statements like “Ned Lamont’s victory over a distinguished public servant like Joe Lieberman represents the end of a tradition of proud Democrat leaders in the mold of F.D.R., Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson and J.F.K.”

Right. And we believe this. Even though it makes no sense at all, and even though we know they despise all the great historical Democrats -- especially FDR and JFK -- whenever they’re not trying to use their names to dupe current Democrats. Sure thing, Mr. Rove. We believe you this time!

And Joe Lieberman is a distinguished public servant. Right. Gotcha, Karl.

It may not be within the NYT's jurisdiction to point out how little sense these statements make. Maybe the Times is content -- or compelled -- to simply lay Republican talking points on the table without comment, and allow you to draw your own conclusions. But in this case the conclusion is not too difficult to draw, is it?

Mr. Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, led the “Defeatocrats” charge in a speech on Wednesday in Ohio, a key swing state.

A key swing state? Is this 2004 again?

And really, "Defeatocrats"? Are we reduced to name-calling as a debating tactic now?

They might as well just shout "Your mother wears Army boots" and be done with it.

They might as well start throwing their shoes.

In Crawford this week, Mr. Snow told reporters there were two approaches to fighting terrorism: “And in the Connecticut race, one of the approaches is to ignore the difficulties and walk away.” He added, “Now, when the United States walked away, in the opinion of Osama bin Laden in 1991, bin Laden drew from that the conclusion that Americans were weak and wouldn’t stay the course, and that led to Sept. 11.”

Of course this is more manure than you can lift with a single pitchfork. There are more than two ways to fight terrorism. Only one of them has been tried in the last five years and it clearly isn't working very well. But then again they have changed the definition of terrorism so many times, it's hard to know what they mean when they say "terrorism" nowadays. A partially frozen and fully cynical mind might suggest that this was part of the plan.

Furthermore, we still have no idea what led to Sept. 11. We don't even know what happened on the day, much less what led up to it. Maybe if they ran a decent, open investigation -- dropped all the state secrets claims and rescinded all the gag orders -- maybe then we might find out some of the history behind it. But at the moment, we simply don't know. To pretend we do -- and to use this pretense to smear political opponents -- strikes me as the height of dishonesty. But then again what else is new?

Meanwhile...

As Republican officeholders echoed the talking points around the nation, Mr. Cheney set up an unusual conference call with reporters from his vacation home in Wyoming. He said Mr. Lieberman’s defeat had sent a signal to “al-Qaeda types,” who, he said, “clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said in a statement to supporters that it was “disgraceful” that Mr. Cheney’s comments had come after he had been briefed on the British investigation.

Cheney's comments were disgraceful, regardless of when he learned about the British investigation. But let's not dwell on that; there's plenty of spin still to come.

Mr. Snow said Friday: “He did not know that there was an operation that was to take place.”

Yet by Thursday afternoon Congressional Republicans had already issued a flood of e-mail messages hailing the breakup of the plot, and crediting the administration’s anti-terror effort.

Oh what a tangled web they weave ... and in my view, Jim Rutenberg has done a good job of bringing us through the tangled skein, so far.

The standard denials are printed verbatim, without comment, whether they make sense or not, whether they reflect known realities or not. So it's not as honest as it seems. But it's better than nothing. And it did say "alleged".

Congressional officials said they were acting on their own, not on guidance from the White House.

Oh yeah, Sure. Right. Spin me another one. We've just been reading about how the talking points were disseminated. Why do they keep lying about this? Are we really supposed to believe it?

And why does the New York Times print every lie that comes along? Are we supposed to laugh?

Some of these questions are rhetorical, of course, but others are serious. How do they decide how many lies to include? Do they count the paragraphs? Or do they count the lies? Do we need X lies for every X true assertions? Or is it X false-paragraphs for every X true-paragraphs?

Whatever they count, somebody (Rutenberg?) clearly decided they needed another lie at this point, so now he gives us this one:

“We really knew instinctively what we wanted to say,” said Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

Yeah, sure you did, Ron. We believe everything that Dennis Hastert says, and we believe everything that he tells you to go out and say too, Ron. Really. You're fooling all of us over here. You believe me, Ron, don't you?

Party officials said that they had no plans to issue statements about the plot until late in the day, after the Democrats had criticized the Republicans as mismanaging national security.

Finally! Here it is: the Republican strategy in a nutshell: Wait until the Democrats criticize the way you've been bungling national security, then deliberately bungle yet another national security threat, then turn around and claim that your opponents are soft on national security, weak on defense, friends of al-Qaeda, yada yada yada.

Do you see that? Do you understand how it works?

Spin it counterclockwise for a change and it all makes sense. Finally. Doesn't it?

We will never again be fooled by manipulations such as this one -- Never again, right?

If we shake ourselves out of our artificially-induced terror-stupor, we might just surprise a few Republican talking-point generators.

They're counting on this one working for quite a while.

Republicans said they expected their arguments to carry through next week — when Mr. Bush is to meet with counterterrorism and Homeland Security Department officials — and Democrats are girding for more of the same around the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

It looks to me as if they've got it all figured out: As long as we can keep worrying about the "alleged bomb plot" for the next few weeks, we won't have to worry about anything else until early next month, when we'll be able to start worrying about Osama bin Laden again for a while. And eventually we won't know anything about anything, but we'll all be worried sick. Or standing in long lines at airports. Or not!

The final paragraph shows a master spinner at work, for sure, for sure:

But even Republicans acknowledged that the climate was unpredictable. “When something like this happens it just sort of sweeps across the political landscape and changes things,” a senior Republican official said. “The pendulum can swing very quickly on it because there are events out of your typical political control.”

First of all, who is this "senior Republican official"? Could it be the master weaver himself, the spider in the middle of the tangled web? The one Larisa calls a "morally bankrupt, soulless, intellectually perverted campaign manager with the highest security clearances, working out of the seat of power, using government agencies and resources at his disposal"? Well, why not? It sure sounds like him, doesn't it?

And what does Rutenberg mean when he says "even Republicans acknowledged that the climate was unpredictable"???

To me, that final paragraph should say:

"Republicans, of course, claim the climate is unpredictable. They don't want us to notice how they manipulate everything, even risking our national security in favor of their own agenda. They don't want us to see arrests in "alleged terror plots" as being under their "typical political control."

But they admit these things in other contexts, as you can see -- if you pay attention to the true-paragraphs of this article, and if you ignore the false-paragraphs."

The New York Times would never say that, would they?

I say things like that all the time.

What's the difference?

Is it because my brain is nearly frozen?

Or is it just because the traitors have never threatened me with treason?

===

second in a series

An Avalanche Of Bullshit: Republican Attack Dogs Hit Democrats Nationwide Over Lieberman's Loss In CT Primary

Republicans suggest Democrats are soft on terror, weak on national security, friends of Al-Q'aeda, undermining the president, yada, yada

Got that? OK! Now: what -- if anything -- does this have to do with the 'Terrorists' arrested in England?

The Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine has shifted into high gear since Tuesday's Democratic Senatorial Primary in Connecticut, where the moderately anti-war Ned Lamont defeated the rabidly pro-war and pro-Bush "Democrat", Joe Lieberman, in a very close race.

What does this mean? Has the Democratic party eaten itself? Or has it been torn in half? Is this a victory for the liberal bloggers? Or a defeat for the pro-Israeli lobby? Is it a repudiation of everything the Bush administration has ever done or said? Or maybe ... just maybe ... did the Democrats of Connecticut look at the two candidates and decide they liked one just a bit more than the other?

If you listened to the words coming out of Republican mouths lately, you'd never even imagine that the result of the primary could possibly have been a reflection of the wishes of the voters:

White House tears into Dems over Lieberman loss

Quoting White House Press Secretary Tony Snow:

Key leaders in the National Democratic Party have made it clear -- no, let me back up -- this is a defining moment, in some ways, for the Democratic Party. I know a lot of people have tried to make this a referendum on the president. I would flip it. I think instead, it's a defining moment for the Democratic Party, whose national leaders now have made it clear that if you disagree with the extreme left in their party, they're going to come after you. And it is probably worth trying to trace through some of the implications of that position, because it is clearly going to be one of the central issues as we get ready for the election campaign this year, that is, the midterm elections.

First, let's think about Iraq. One of the positions is that we need to leave Iraq. We need to do it on a timetable, and we need to do it soon. It's worth walking through the consequences of that position.
...
[If we left Iraq, it] would create a power vacuum and encourage terrorists not only Iraq but throughout the region and throughout the world...
...
[I]t would create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East with the second-largest oil reserves in the world.
...
[I]t would inflict incredible damage on America's credibility.

Right. Let's walk through the consequences.

What has created a power vacuum in Iraq?

What has encouraged terrorists not only in Iraq but throughout the region and throughout the world?

What has created a failed state -- with a civil war raging -- in the heart of the Middle East?

What has inflicted incredible damage on America's security?

Is it not yet clear that all these things have already happened -- and that they were all caused by the same event?

This whole charade reminds me of the Aesop's fable Androcles and the Lion. Do you remember that one? The lion gets a thorn in his paw and he can't remove it by himself. The wound becomes infected and the infection begins to fester. The lion's paw gets more and more painful, swollen, bloody, hideous.

And what happens next? Does Androcles come along and say "We have to stay the course. We have to leave that thorn in your paw until the infection goes away and your paw is healthy again"? Does he say "We need to put more thorns in your paw! We need to bring some of our allies here and get them to put more thorns in your paw, too"?

Of course not! Androcles removes the thorn from the Lion's paw, and in the end this act of mercy -- and common sense -- saves Androcles' life.

It would only take a little common sense to realize that Iraq is the lion's paw and our troops are the thorn. But we won't be seeing any common sense from the Republicans anytime soon. No mercy either, unless I miss my guess.

Republican blitz tries to link nationwide Dems to Lieberman race

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has issued at least 10 press releases today, many asking whether particular Democrats—including Pennsylvania candidate Bob Casey, Arizona candidate Jim Pederson, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, and Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey—will "support fringe candidate Ned Lamont or the 2000 VP nominee Joe Lieberman."

Other Democrats, like Ohio's Sherrod Brown, are blasted for putting "far left politics on display in abandonment of Joe Lieberman."

"Fringe candidate"?? "Far left" politics?? They must be kidding!

They're not? Well then, they must be lying!!

What is Lamont's position on the War in Iraq? What is his position on the War in Afghanistan? What is his position on the War on Terror?

A true far-leftist would say that all these wars are illegitimate, that they are based on false-flag attacks and outright lies, that they were fabricated on flimsy and hopelessly transparent pretexts, and that their ultimate purpose is to further enrich the wealthiest segment of mankind -- at the expense of everyone else. And that's just for starters.

Is Lamont saying all of that? Is he saying any of it?

Of course not! Listen: There is no far left in American politics today, and there hasn't been one for a long time. But the Republican smear-meisters won't let that stop them:

Cheney characterizes 'disturbing' Lieberman loss as sign Democrats weak on terror

"The thing that's partly disturbing about [Lieberman's loss] is the fact that," Cheney told reporters from Jackson, Wyoming, "our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types--they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

Lieberman, Cheney went on to claim, had been "pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture" on terror.

Stay in the fight? Complete the task? Leave the thorns in the Lion's paw until the infection goes away?

Oh, wait! Guess what? We can't think about this anymore, even though it makes a lot of sense, because:

TERROR! TERROR!! TERROR!!!

Police probe flights terror plot

Homes and businesses across England are being searched and 24 people questioned after police say a plot to blow up planes from the UK to US was disrupted.

They say they are convinced they have the key players in custody, but a wider investigation is only just beginning.

Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said the network involved was large and global.

And US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot was "in some respects suggestive of al-Qaeda".

"Large and global"? "Suggestive of al-Qaeda"? Of course it was! Isn't it always? How extremely convenient!

There's more from Chertoff here:

Terror Plot's Sophistication Suggests Al-Qaeda, Chertoff Says

The 21 terrorist suspects arrested in the U.K. overnight had a "well-advanced plan"' to detonate electronic devices or liquid explosives disguised as beverages or onboard U.S.-bound aircraft, a sophisticated plot suggestive of al-Qaeda, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"We want to make sure there are no remaining threats out there,"' Chertoff said at a news conference in Washington.
...
"We believe that these arrests have significantly disrupted the threat,"' Chertoff said in a statement ahead of the briefing. "But we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted."

So ... What do we do about it? Here's an idea: Force passengers to stand in line for four or five hours, and -- just to make sure they don't underestimate the severity of what has happened -- throw in some extreme security measures as well.

Baby milk under scrutiny as airport controls are tightened

The draconian security measures introduced at British airports in the wake of the foiled terrorist plot could be a taste of what is to come for the 21st century global traveller. For the first time ever in modern aviation history, the authorities imposed a ban on hand luggage being taken aboard.

The few items allowed - such as travel documents, wallets, baby food and nappies - must be carried in a transparent plastic bag.

Baby milk was being "tested" by staff at the security gate, while cleansing solution for contact lenses had to be placed in check-in luggage.

Well ... I'm glad that's settled. I sure wouldn't want to sit next to a passenger who actually had some cleansing solution for contact lenses!

Do I feel safer already? No!

I still have this nagging dread ... a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach ... that says the worst is yet to come.

As usual, Kurt Nimmo sums it up quite nicely:

Fake Terror Obfuscates Lebanon and Iraq Failures

In standard fashion, in order to apply the correct spin from the outset, we are told this latest operation has "global dimensions," that is to say it will be billed as not only an "al-Qaeda" operation but other designated "global" enemies will be fingered as well.
...
In the coming hours and days, we can expect the corporate media, eager stenographers for the neocon plan, to connect the dots—blame will be affixed to Iran, Syria, and their "proxy," Hezbollah, through "al-Qaeda," now dedicated (or scripted) to help Hezbollah, not that the homegrown resistance group needs any help, especially from a CIA-ISI engineered terror group.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

===

first in a series

Condoleeza Rice: There Is No Civil War In Iraq

Our 'Top Diplomat' Uses A Faulty Analogy To Make A Faulty Case: So what else is new?



As reported here last Friday, General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, sent shock-waves through the administration and the press when he admitted to Congress on Thursday that "Iraq could move toward civil war".

This nearly frozen blogger filled in a few of the missing details, explaining that there is already a civil war in Iraq, and that it is happening largely because the Pentagon has been so busy setting up death squads there. The Iraqi death squads are modeled after the death squads set up in El Salvador in the early 1980s, in what has been described -- I am not kidding -- as our "democratization" of that unfortunate Central American country. And now Iraq is unfortunate enough to be the newest victim of our so-called "democratization".

The administration is not about to admit that creating a Civil War in Iraq was part of the plan, nor will it admit that it never had any intention of winning a war in Iraq. But actions speak louder than words, and now it has become abundantly clear that their goal all along was to become embroiled in a long and difficult war there. In case you hadn't noticed, this is exactly what has happened.

But in the administration's eyes, there still needs to be a veil of propaganda thrown over the whole sordid tale, and our Secretary of State did her best to maintain that veil when she explained why -- in her opinion -- there is no civil war in Iraq.

"Our civil war began quite dramatically when the South opted out of the United States of America," Dr Rice explained in an interview with Time magazine.

"Well, the Kurds haven't opted out of Iraq. The Shia haven't opted out of Iraq."
...
She said the tell-tale sign of a civil war was a breakdown of "institutions of unity" and they, in her view, were still functioning in Iraq.

"People haven't opted out of a unified Iraq. People haven't opted out of the democratic institutions," Dr Rice said.

Let me get this straight: Since the Iraqi Civil War is not the same as the American Civil War, it's not a civil war?

How ludicrous can she get?

As a matter of cold hard fact, the term "civil war" refers to "a war between factions or regions of the same country". Nothing about secession. Nothing about the breakdown of "institutions of unity". Just "a war between factions or regions of the same country". Period.

Do you want an example of a civil war in which no side wanted to leave the country? There are plenty of historical examples to draw from, including Russia.

Why Russia? Condoleeza Rice is known as an expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union. She knows that nobody opted out during the Russian Civil War. And she knows that it was a civil war nonetheless. But this fact is mighty inconvenient for her nowadays. So she simply ignores it.

If she is willing to stoop this low to deny that there is already a Civil War in Iraq, how much lower will she go to deny that the USA started it?

We may never know. But maybe she was hinting at something important when she added:

"There are some people outside the system who seem to be intent on trying to cause the breakdown of those institutions."

"Outside the system"? Just exactly who is "outside the system" and trying to cause "the breakdown of those institutions"? Other than the "geniuses" in the Pentagon?

I can't wait to find out.

Sibel Edmonds Won't Deny It: Intelligence Intercepts Tied 9/11 Drug Money To U.S. Election Campaigns

The following article was published at TomFlocco.com on April 25, 2005. I blogged about it briefly at the time. Unfortunately it is no longer online, and the original link no longer works, so I have dug it up and reposted it here.

NB: Ms. Edmonds was/is under a gag order and could not speak freely, so she and Tom played a little game of "deny-it-if-it's-false": you see, she can't confirm any delicate assertions, because then she would be "giving away" "state secrets", but if she refuses to deny something ... well, that leaves you to your own devices, doesn't it?

(I have edited the text slightly for typography and layout; added bold to highlight direct quotes from Ms. Edmonds (or statements she wouldn't deny), and added italics to draw your attention to passages that seemed especially important to me. But what do I know? Maybe it's all important. Here, read!

FBI linguist won’t deny intelligence intercepts tied 911 drug money to U.S. election campaigns

by Tom Flocco

Washington --- Former FBI contract translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys were ordered removed from the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse so that a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel could discuss her case in private with Bush administration lawyers.

In an exclusive interview on Saturday, we asked Edmonds if she would deny that laundered drug money linked to the 911 attacks found its way into recent House, Senate and Presidential campaign war-chests, according to what she heard in intelligence intercepts she was asked to translate.

"I will not deny that statement; but I cannot comment further on it," she told TomFlocco.com, in a non-denial [non-]denial.

Edmonds is appealing the Bush administration’s arcane use of "state secrets privilege," invoked last year to throw out her U.S. District Court lawsuit alleging retaliation for telling FBI superiors about shoddy wiretap translations and allegations that wiretap information was passed to the target of an FBI investigation. Given our multiple reports and numerous other interviews, Edmonds heard much more -- but enough to warrant public suppression of criminal evidence by a wholly Republican appeals court panel?

"Tom, I’m telling you that not a single newspaper covered what happened to me on Thursday when I went into court," said the exasperated translator, adding, "[Judge David] Ginsberg kicked everyone out, cut off my lawyer’s arguments and told us

‘We have questions to ask the government’s attorneys that you cannot hear.’"

Criminal evidence in Edmonds’ explosive case is apparently getting too close to Washington officials, since the former contract linguist also told us she would not deny that "Once this issue gets to be ... investigated, you will be seeing certain [American] people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally", revealing the content of the FBI intercepts she heard indicates that recognizable, very high-profile American citizens are linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Edmonds implied that legislators and even lobbyists were benefiting from laundered narcotics proceeds in an earlier interview with the Baltimore Sun:

"... this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it’s getting into somebody’s political campaign, and somebody’s lobbying. And people don’t want to be traced back to this money."

So the Bush administration’s Department of Justice enlisted its taxpayer-funded lawyers to petition a Republican U.S. Appeals Court to suppress Sibel Edmonds’ criminal evidence -- allegations linked to a 3,000-death mass murder -- in the name of "state secrets."

When we asked how many Americans were named in the intercepts, Edmonds said: "There is direct evidence involving no more than 10 American names that I recognized," further revealing that "some are heads of government agencies or politicians -- but I don’t want to go any further than that," as we listened in stunned silence.

When asked in 2002 by CBS 60 Minutes co-host Ed Bradley, "Did she seem credible to you? Did her story seem credible?"

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said "Absolutely, she’s credible. And the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

Plaintiff and attorneys asked to leave courtroom

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said "the court orally instructed the clerk that the hearing would be open only to the attorneys involved in the case and Edmonds."

During Thursday’s arguments, the volatility of Edmonds’ charges and the high officials it may criminally implicate prompted what looked to be a one-sided hearing, reminiscent of a medieval kangaroo court where rights and precepts of justice are ignored and the outcome is usually known beforehand.

All three judges who removed Edmonds and her attorneys are Republicans: Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle, having been appointed by Ronald Reagan, and Karen LeCraft Henderson who was tapped in 1990 by President George W.Bush’s father, former President George H. W. Bush.

"Judge Ginsberg said ‘I am asking the plaintiff and her attorneys to stand outside;’ then they had government officers standing at the door to prevent anyone from listening.

And after about 25 minutes, they came out and said ‘we have finished questioning the government attorneys and we don’t need you anymore, so you are free to leave,’" said the crestfallen former translator.

"I cannot be present at my own hearing; and not a single paper was there Thursday to cover the story -- even though all of my allegations were supported by the FBI Inspector General’s report and my case involves 9/11 and national security," said Edmonds.

Assistant Director Dale Watson: FBI's Mr. Fix-it?

Edmonds told another paper "I took the allegations to higher levels all the way up to assistant FBI director Dale Watson and Director Robert Mueller. And, again, I was asked not to take this any further and just let it be. And if I didn’t do that they would retaliate against me," according to the Baltimore Sun.

Despite the court’s unprecedented actions, the Inspector General said Edmonds’ allegations to her superiors about a co-worker "raised serious concerns that, if true, could potentially have extremely damaging consequences for the FBI," having also concluded that the Bureau did not adequately investigate the allegations and that Edmonds was retaliated against for speaking out to protect the United States.

The former FBI translator had already linked laundered illegal narcotics money and terrorism to recent U.S. political campaigns in an earlier statement made to the Baltimore paper,

"... You have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one ... they are citing ‘Foreign Relations’ which is not the case ... we are not talking about only government levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money."

When we pressed Edmonds as to whether she would deny that FBI Assistant Director Dale Watson had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, she quickly said, "No Comment," carefully adhering to her judicial gag order -- and not revealing all she knows.

Watson came under scrutiny when we attended one of the 9/11 Commission Hearings when Richard Clarke, former Bush Administration National Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council (NSC), was asked "Who gave the final approval for the bin Laden family to leave the country without being interviewed?"

Clarke answered that it could have been the "Inter-Agency Crisis Management Group, but most likely it was the White House Chief of Staff's office or the State Department." [according to this writer's notes / Commission transcripts for March 23 - 24, 2004 are available at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/index.htm]

When Commissioner Tim Roemer asked "Why the Saudis were allowed to leave the country, who was on the planes, how many, and why the decision was made," Clarke said the government "Feared for their lives ... some of them were bin Laden family members, and the Saudi embassy requested their evacuation."

During testimony Clarke told Roemer "I refused to approve the [Saudi] request. I passed it on to [FBI Asst. Director] Dale Watson and the flight was approved....I don't think they were ever interviewed in this country." Only subpoenaed transcripts and/or video would negate Clarke's assertion.

Dale Watson, who Clarke intimated as the sponsor of the FBI-approved flights and the decision not to interview bin Laden family members and other Saudi royals or citizens, was the former FBI Executive Asst. Director for Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence.

Interestingly, Watson led controversial investigations of the first World Trade Center attack, Oklahoma City bombing, East Africa Embassy bombings, Khobar Towers bombings, USS Cole bombing, the September 11 attacks and the anthrax attacks, before retiring in 2002 to assume a position with Booz Allen Hamilton.

Democrats in Congress have been strangely silent regarding the actions of the Republican court toward Sibel Edmonds; and she won’t reveal which politicians and high government agency officials were named in the intercepts -- potentially linked to laundered 9/11 drug money which was likely used in U. S. political campaigns.

Uncomplicated drug money laundering

"It’s so simple," Edmonds told TomFlocco.com. "Nobody is looking at the Department of Defense aspect of the whole 911 cover-up. The FBI is citing two reasons for my gag order: to protect 'Sensitive Diplomatic Relations' and to protect foreign U.S. business relationships."

TomFlocco.com broke the story of Sibel Edmonds' first public press conference on March 24, 2004, when over 50 reporters and 12 news cameras did not publish the story for days.

This, despite Edmonds' allegations that she was offered a substantial raise and a full-time job to encourage her 'Not to Go Public' that she had been asked by the Department of Justice to Adjust Translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA. Kristen Breitweiser, 9/11 family member and spokeswoman, arranged to have Ms. Edmonds address the media in a public press conference for the first time, right after Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before the 9/11 Commission.

In attempting to let the American people how close the 9/11 cover-up comes to home, Edmonds told us,"I will say this: the FBI is only a mouthpiece for the State Department.

The State Department is the main reason for the cover-up. It has to do with foreign business relationships and who they are ... Pakistan, Turkey ... espionage in the State Department preventing an ... investigation."

The former FBI translator has implicated everything "from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism," adding "they don’t deal with 1 or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions."

In an interview with the website Antiwar, Edmonds cryptically pronounced

"As for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions -- legal and illegal, declared and undeclared."

Espionage and Treason?

Edmonds has reported information about an FBI translator named Jan Dickerson whose husband, U.S. Air Force Major David Dickerson, belonged to a Turkish organization which was an Investigative Target of the FBI’s own counter-intelligence unit.

Edmonds said Jan Dickerson told her husband that "All you have to do is tell them where your wife works and what she does, and they will let you in like that ... They wanted to sell me for the information I could provide, basically."

Jan Dickerson insisted to Edmonds that she be the only one to translate the FBI’s wiretaps of a Turkish official, according to CBS 60 Minutes, which added that Edmonds revealed that Jan Dickerson told her, "Why would you want to place your life and your family’s lives in danger by translating these tapes?"

CBS host Ed Bradley said Edmonds found that "Dickerson had left out information crucial to the FBI’s investigation; information that Edmonds says would have revealed that the Turkish intelligence officer had spies working for him inside both the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense at the Pentagon."

After reporting evidence of espionage in December, 2001 -- right after the 9/11 attacks, Edmonds told an FBI special agent who had also harbored suspicions about the Dickersons and they pursued the issue; but Bureau heads said they were never notified despite Edmonds’ proof to the contrary.

She said the FBI permitted other targets of the investigation, key people ... foreign nationals based in the U.S. ... to flee the country "right up through January and February, 2002 -- five months after the 9/11 attacks."

Edmonds has said in the past that "I reported some of the suspects’ names higher up as I came across them in our investigation. And you know what? Within two weeks, they had all left the country. Just vanished."

Given the astonishing allegations, the strange actions of the appeals court and congressional silence on the current matter, questions can be raised as to who is on which team.

According to Edmonds, only two weeks after the Air Force convened a formal investigation, Jan and David Dickerson were permitted to leave the country on September 9, 2002 -- about a year after September 11.

Edmonds also said during the whole month the Dickersons were being subpoenaed, starting in June, 2002, Jan Dickerson continued to work in the FBI translations department -- with a top-secret security clearance; and even though the Bureau admitted to a congressional committee that Jan Dickerson worked for the suspect organization in the past and had maintained ongoing relationships with at least two individuals under investigation, according to her interview with
Antiwar.

Protecting high government officials

Special agent John Roberts, a chief of the FBI’s Internal Affairs Department told CBS 60 Minutes that "I don’t know of another person in the FBI who has done the internal investigation that I have and has seen what I have and that knows what has occurred and what has been glossed over and what has, frankly, just disappeared, just vaporized, and no one disciplined for it."

When asked by Bradley whether he had found cases since 911 where people were involved in misconduct and were not, let alone reprimanded, but were even promoted, Roberts replied, "Oh, yes. Absolutely."

In October, 2002, former Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the court to dismiss Edmonds’ case on grounds 'It would Compromise National Security'; and the FBI declined to discuss the specifics of her case on grounds that it would harm National Security.

Attorney General John Ashcroft testified that he flew on a private jet to Milwaukee on the morning of September 11. Earlier reports indicated that he changed from a commercial jet to a private one due to reported terrorism "threat assessments" which government officials refuse to make public simply by redacting the "sources and methods" used in obtaining the intelligence.

Commission members failed to ask Ashcroft to explain the contents of the threat assessments and why they influenced his decision to use a private jet.

911 Insider Trading subject to "National Security" restrictions?

We also wanted to know whether Edmonds thought the 3 Republican appeals court judges were taking drastic steps to clothe their private talks with Bush administration attorneys in secrecy for the purpose of conspiring to shield members of the President’s hierarchy from criminal prosecution and Possible Treason linked to the events of September 11.

So we ended the interview with a question dealing with the only area of 911 evidence not subject to the standard but evasive invocation of "national security," the secret "control list" of all stock trades -- both puts and calls -- and the master list of those individuals and entities making insider stock market trades prior to the 9/11 attacks about which the same FBI said "We didn't find anything incriminating."

While only a subpoena, testimony and questioning by non-political, career prosecutors will properly answer the insider trading question, we asked Sibel Edmonds the big question anyway -- given the above FBI track record implicating espionage:

Do you deny that the FBI intercepts you translated indicated that financial arrangements were in place well before the 9/11 attacks to both fund and profit from the World Trade Center and Pentagon "terrorism" while also facilitating the laundering of drug money into recent congressional and presidential campaigns?

"I cannot comment on that, Tom. You know I’m under a gag order," she said.

That should tell the American people all they need to know.

Mayor Mark Jenkins: Loss of 2004 GC Election Started as 'Personal' Battle, Quickly Turned Political

Originally published by virginiastar.net. (All rights reserved.)
But they don't have it online anymore. Well, it's still available here.


It wasn't political, it was personal. I want to get that straight right off the bat. No matter what you may think or have heard, this is the truth.

I took it very personally when I lost the May 2004 Gate City Election well aware that criminal activities had gone on to control the outcome of the election.

I took it personally when honest people came to me and told me I couldn't do anything about what had happened in the town election because of all the political connections and family relations and all the back scratching that goes on. It seems that those who might be able to correct the situation "owed" those that created or continued in the corrupt election procedures taking place in Scott County. This is what I was told by many good citizens.

I took it personally when Charles Dougherty made the comment that "we had run a good clean race" when I knew only one of us had. I took it personally when I was told by two candidates that I could not get elected because "I didn't know how to vote headstones."

And yes, it would have been in the best interest of a few people if I had dropped this and just "moved on" as Jerry suggested, but this was personal. And also we're talking about everyone's basic right to fair elections.

I took it personally when I called the Registrar's office on May 5, 2004, the day after the town election, and was told I would have to wait until November of 2004 because the Election Board did not meet again until then. Thank you, Les Free, for being there to take the phone from Willie and for providing me the correct information to proceed with the recount and contest of the election. You are an honest man.

I took it personally when people came to me and told me they had actually been threatened harm because they had openly shown support for me in my bid for Mayor.

I took it personally when Charles Dougherty told me I wasn't going to get this thing to go anywhere because he had talked to the Attorney General and it would be stopped.

I took it personally when Tom Keller waived the 40-foot constraint at the polling place and then didn't have the guts to admit it.

I took it personally when I heard people swear under oath that inappropriate, if not illegal, activities never happened and then saw that they most certainly did happen as I watched the DMV surveillance footage.

I took it personally when Jerry Kilgore, while serving as Virginia's Attorney General, publicly made the comment that nothing was intentionally done wrong in the Gate City Election when I knew differently. In my opinion, he was trying to stop any possibility of an investigation into this matter. If I had not continued to push, I believe that is exactly what would have happened. In my opinion, just the unusual high percentage of absentee votes alone would suggest an impropriety to anyone of marginal intelligence.

And yes, it would have been in the best interest of a few people if I had dropped this and just "moved on" as Jerry suggested, but this was personal. And also we're talking about everyone's basic right to fair elections.

I took it so personally that I addressed the grand jury requesting that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the botched election. By doing so, the court had no choice but to honor the grand jury's request and finally after many months of frustration, Joel Branscom from Botetourt County began an investigation that resulted in Charles Dougherty being indicted on 37 class five felonies. Finally!

I took it very personally when Martha Bledsoe attacked and accused me of signing my name to comments and articles published in the Scott County Virginia Star and elsewhere saying that they were not written by me but by Rex McCarty. I had worked long and hard before submitting these to the newspaper and yes, Martha, I wrote them. And anyone who knows me knows I don't need someone else to speak for me. I have no problem in that area.

I also took it personally when Martha told me that I needed to get out of the Republican Party if I couldn't get behind and support the Kilgores. In effect, I think she told me that there was no longer a true Republican Party in Scott County but that it was now the "Kilgorian Party."

I took it personally when some of the "Kilgorian Party" attacked Republicans, who are close to me and have worked so hard for the true Scott County Republican Party, just because they have tried to help me in my efforts to straighten out the mess I walked into when I was appointed interim Mayor of Gate City.

I took it personally having to fight tooth and nail to keep this thing alive when we have people in elected and appointed positions charged with the responsibility to investigate and prosecute those involved in illegal activities no matter the last name or whose back is being scratched by the guilty parties. At least that's the way it's supposed to work, isn't it?

I took it personally having to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to see to it that everyone didn't just "move on." Again, there are those that I and all the tax payers of Scott County pay to do such things.

I took it personally when I learned that someone having been involuntarily committed to a mental institution was employed in a position that required and allowed them to carry a firearm. That's really scary folks! And then I learned that when the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) found out about it they sent a gentle warning of "you'd better quit that."

I took it personally when the accusations began about my questioning the legality of the activities of the 2004 Gate City election as being a political attack on the Kilgore boys' mother. I could care less whose mother she is because to me it was the "person" filling the Registrar's position and that was all.

I took it personally when Tom Baker sent the note that I was just a "pawn" and hoped I realized that. No, Tom, I am no one's pawn. That is unless I do so gladly and willingly.

I took it personally when a Judge stopped by my home to tell me that I had better be careful of crossing the Kilgores because they would "grind me up and spit me out like they had done him before he learned to play their game."

I hope that care is taken to find the person's hand that appeared to have scribed so many of the signatures on the ballot requests. I hope that Charles Dougherty is not the scapegoat for all those who are guilty in this matter...

I took it personally when strategic rumors got started that Rick Boucher was funding my whole effort of getting this stirred up for political reasons. As of today I have never even talked to the man. I do hear he is coming to Gate City near the end of the month to assist with technology funding though. I look forward to meeting him - if he is willing to help Gate City.

I take it personally knowing that the criminal actions of those involved in what I feel is an election fraud conspiracy will end up costing us the taxpayers thousands of dollars. I think care should be taken to ensure that all involved are charged and that an attempt is made for full restitution to the good people of Scott County for the cost of the investigation and prosecution.

I take it personally when I see people elected or appointed to positions, having the responsibility to make sure laws are followed to support the working of a free system, abuse the system for their personal gain.

I think "dirty politics" may be construed as getting dismissed from an appointed position and then suing to get the job back that you evidently are not capable of performing. And with back pay!

I am tired of hearing the "political whining" every time something happens that reflects badly on one's political career that is in fact only being used as a personal endeavor.

I am tired of hearing the idiotic cries of a bunch of people who lose touch with what is political and what is personal. Political is not, or at least should not be, for personal gain but should be taking a personal responsibility for those you represent in your political position.

I hope Joel Branscom is not finished with the indictments of the crimes committed in the May 2004 Gate City election. I appreciate the good work Jeff Lewis and Mr. Branscom have done to date. The evidence I have seen proves Charles Dougherty was not the only one involved. I hope Mr. Branscom will look again at the depositions that were taken last fall and again compare it to events that were captured by the DMV surveillance cameras and the findings from Jeff Lewis' investigation and that charges will be filed accordingly which may include perjury charges. I hope that care is taken to find the person's hand that appeared to have scribed so many of the signatures on the ballot requests. I hope that Charles Dougherty is not the scapegoat for all those who are guilty in this matter.

I hope now that there is hard evidence of blatant abuse of the voting system in our county that the electoral board will be diligent in ensuring that proper voting procedures as mandated by the Commonwealth of Virginia are followed. And I trust that they will no longer trust anyone who was involved in the past elections in this county. It is vital to this county that they get to the root of the problem. I like the suggestion the Kingsport Times News made to secure an independent auditor. I hope they will strongly consider this possibility and act on it. How else are the citizens of Scott County ever going to feel that their vote really counts?

I hope the absentee ballot applications I gave to Jeff Lewis from the recent Scott County Primary will be acted upon. In my opinion these few applications prove without a shadow of a doubt that no amount of training will correct the blatant errors of the Registrar's office. By the way, I don't believe Charles Dougherty was involved in this matter.

I took it personally… but it turned political.

Down By The BRAD BLOG

I don't have time for more than a quick note, to say:

I'm blogging like a madman again, on behalf of my favorite invesitgative blogger, Brad Friedman, who's trying to experience something resembling a vacation.

The current arrangement may remain in place for several weeks!
We'll see ... in the meantime:

If you wanna meet me, if you wanna meet me baby ...
I said: if you wanna meet me, if you wanna meet me baby ...
Hey! if you wanna meet me, if you wanna meet me baby ...

Just come on down, come on down, come on down ...

Down by The BRAD BLOG ...
Down by the sea ...
At the green and yellow blog, baby ...
That's where I'll be ...

Cynthia McKinney Is Getting Robbed And Nobody Is Even Blogging About It

Yesterday in Georgia, Representative Cynthia McKinney, whose reputation -- for speaking truth to power, asking tough questions, and refusing to back down when she's right -- is entirely deserved, went through the first stage of the primary elections leading up to November, when she hopes to retain her seat in Congress.

The Democratic candidate is expected to win easily in November, and McKinney was expected to win easily yesterday. But then a funny thing happened.

What happened? Nice question! Voters who were trying to vote for McKinney on on Diebold touch-screen machines saw their votes flipped to her strongest opponent, Hank Johnson, as they looked on in disbelief!

It's as if the clerk at a McDonald's pressed "McChicken", and the screen lit up where it says "Quarter Pounder" ... and it kept happening over and over and over ...

Does this sound strange? Well it shouldn't. It's such a common phenomenon that it's already got at least two names: it's commonly called either "vote-flipping" or "vote-switching". And there's even a long history of similar incidents.

It's a shame that this doesn't get much coverage in the big media. But don't get me started on the failings of the big media: That's another story -- a long sad one. Instead let's concentrate on what happened in Georgia yesterday.

Guess what? Vote-switching was only one of the many so-called "irregularities" that the McKinney campaign has reported. None of which have made a single dent in a single big media outlet; and there are precious few other sites covering this story either.

I gave up blogging almost a year ago, or at least I thought I did. Now I can't believe I'm blogging again -- and even more bizarre: I can't believe I'm the only one on the whole internet who is blogging about this today.

Well, maybe I'm not the only one, but if any other blogger has posted anything at all about this story, I sure can't find it.

I will post some more details here when I can, but in the meantime you can read all about it at The BRAD BLOG, where this lowly and nearly frozen blogger is guest-hosting for a while.

Wouldn't you know it? He leaves me in "the chair" and within 24 hours all what-cha-ma-callit breaks loose!

Yesterday
REPORTS: GA Dem Primary Votes Flipping from Cynthia McKinney to Opponent Hank Johnson

Today
Atlanta Progressive News covers McKinney Vote-Flipping Claim

'Amazing' Progress: Death Squads Spreading In Iraq!

Presidential bullshit notwithstanding, there is no "amazing" progress going on in Iraq, unless you happen to favor clandestine rule by Death Squad.

We're not supposed to know about all this: that's covered by something called "perception management".

But this cat seems to have got out of the bag!

In his most recent so-called major speech on Iraq, the so-called president said:

We will help the Iraqi people lay the foundations of a strong democracy that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. And by laying the foundations of freedom in Iraq, we will lay the foundation of peace for generations to come.

And maybe I'm a bit short-sighted or something, but I find it impossible to imagine how the foundation of peace for generations to come can be built by roving squads of kidnappers, torturers, and cold-blooded killers. Chris Floyd seems to have the same problem:

The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

What do you know about the Death Squads which are making such "amazing" progress in Iraq?

Who do you think they are?

How do you think they got started?

I'll give you four links. Four different points of view; all good-to-excellent articles in my humble and slightly frozen opinion. I'll include a brief passage from each article but I encourage you to click the links and read the originals:

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq by Chris Floyd:

We first reported here in June 2003 that the U.S. was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and re-opening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias - including Talibanic religious extremists armed and trained by Iran - were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.

Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs - who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports - with American advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again - unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.

Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman - an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

I urge you to read the entire piece, when you're through with this one. It's beautifully written, extremely well-documented. Click on Chris' links for an education you won't soon forget.

At least that's what happened to me. Here's my biggest problem: I can't forget.

Mike Whitney seems to have the same problem. He refers to Chris Floyd's work in his recent column, "Riding with the Bad Boys": The rise of Iraqi death squads

The New York Times confirmed today that the "Iraqi (security) forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunnis neighborhoods." Hundreds of men have been taken from taken from their homes by men in Iraqi uniforms and either "found dead in ditches or fields, with bullet holes to their temples, acid burns to their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electrical drills. Many have simply vanished". (Dexter Filkins, "Sunnis accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings" NY Times)

The Times merely reiterates what has been echoing through internet for some time now, that the Iraqi Interior Ministry is using lethal force to undercut the Sunni-led resistance and terrorize the public. The plan was first uncovered in an article by Seymour Hersh in January 2005. Hersh reported that the Pentagon was intending to trigger "The Salvador Option"; a strategy which involves the training of "death squads" to execute a bloody secret war against "alleged" insurgents.

"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" one official asked Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want."
...
The genocidal attacks reported by the New York Times are the predictable upshot of a process that was initiated by the Pentagon to destroy the Iraqi resistance through violence alone.
...
The death squads and the intentional destruction of the Sunni heartland comprise the first two parts of the three-pronged strategy to defeat the Iraqi resistance. The final leg on the stool is the propaganda war that is being directed against the American people to conceal the details of the military's war crimes.

Yes, concealing the details of the war crimes, that's very important. It's so important that we can't let them get away with it!

No matter how hard they try. And they will try very very hard. The prospect of concealing their crimes is, after all, their only hope. Robert Parry has more on this, and much else, in his most recent article, Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide:

For his part, Bush reiterated that he will only be satisfied with "complete victory," which suggests he is resolved to break the back of the Sunni resistance at whatever cost.

The Bush administration also wants to keep a tight hold on information that might put the U.S. war effort in a negative light. That means the American people can expect to be shielded from many of the worst secrets in Iraq, much as the White House has continued to fight release of video showing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

According to U.S. military experts I've interviewed, a great deal of emphasis in the future will be on "perception management," the concept of shaping how both Iraqis and the American people perceive the events in Iraq.

This media manipulation, combined with secretive "death squads," adds even more to the recipe necessary for war-time atrocities that might cross over into genocide.

Chris Floyd calls Bob Parry a "wise man", by the way.

Takes one to know one, I'd say.

Meanwhile, I've been enjoying Bob Harris more and more lately, and he has a good recent piece on all this as well. Bob often says what I'm thinking, and in this case he [also] focuses for a while on the word "amazing" [isn't that amazing?] but then he gets around to what so many of us must be thinking: "Death squads" in the Iraqi police:

To those who repeat the current GOP spin that opponents of the war are motivated by a hatred of Bush or a desire to see America disgraced, I would like to respond:

I can speak for no one else, but it seems obvious to me that it is the war which disgraces America. It is the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people which disgraces America. It is torture which disgraces America. It is imprisonment without trial which disgraces America. It is the use of chemical weapons which disgraces America. It is disdain for international law, the use of military power as a first resort, the intentional confusion of the Iraqi people with terrorists thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, and the corruption of the very word "democracy" which all disgrace America.

As an opponent of the war, I am trying to stop my country from being disgraced any further.

Pardon me? Disgraced any further? How could our so-called "leaders" disgrace us any further? More death squads? More torture chambers? More "perception management"?

Eternal darkness is upon us.

And it truly is "amazing".

Read 'em and weep, my friends.

Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq by Chris Floyd

"Riding with the Bad Boys": The rise of Iraqi death squads by Mike Whitney

Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide by Robert Parry

"Death squads" in the Iraqi police by Bob Harris

Life In The Air Age

For the last several months, I've been meaning to share with you a song that changed my life profoundly. Unfortunately, I've never found the right time, or the right place.

But recent events have forced me to consider abandoning this lowly and nearly frozen blog. And having considered it, I now find myself embracing [or embraced by] the idea.

So it's now or never... One last song before I go... And a fond farewell to all four or five of my regular readers...

Bill Nelson wrote this and recorded it with his band, "Be Bop Deluxe", in the early 1970s. It could have been written yesterday.

Life In The Air Age

Beneath the stars there are the bars
that serve the bitter drink
the barman smiles at me,
his wife she gives a secret wink ...
They listen patiently to me,
my story I unfold.
I see their faces change,
the lights grow dim, I'm losing hold...

I used to be a boy,
my heart was young and supple then
Now it's stoney cold,
I'm old and I could use a friend...
My world is not like yours,
I come from somewhere long ago
Now there's no way back,
I'm lost and I feel so alone...

You can leave me in the air age if you like
but I'd dearly love to go back to my own time

Life in the Air Age
isn't all the brochures say
Life in the Air Age
it's too dangerous to stay
Life in the Air Age
airships crashing every day into the bay

Life in the Air Age
it's all highways in the sky
Life in the Air Age
all the oceans have run dry
Life in the Air Age
it's grim enough to make the robot cry

Chavez Takes Another Bold Step

Eyes turn to Venezuela as Hugo Chavez announces:

Venezuela to seize 'idle' firms

The Venezuelan government has warned it will confiscate hundreds of private companies that are lying idle if they fail to re-open.

President Hugo Chavez said the firms' workers would be given help to set up co-operatives and re-start production for the benefit of the community.

He said the move was needed to fight poverty and end Venezuela's dependence on "the perverse model of capitalism".

That's one way of putting it!

Some business leaders fear it may lead to a wider attack on private property.

They're worried about their property, of course. None of them are worried about indigenous Venezuelans, though. Are they? Of course not!

But back to Chavez:

"It's against our constitution," he said. "Just as we cannot permit good land to lie uncultivated, so we cannot allow perfectly productive factories to stay closed."

Who could argue with such a sentiment?

The owners of land that's not being cultivated; the owners of factories that are not being used. That's who! And how much power do they have? How much influence?

Something tells me we are going to find out. Soon.