Here's a little piece I sent out to my friends today:
There has been lot going on in the last few weeks. The war in Washington is just now becoming public. What war in Washington?
TIME magazine, JULY 4th issue:
"Two other serious, surreptitious - and quite possibly unprecedented - battles are going on: the intelligence community is at war with the White House, and the uniformed military is at war with the civilian leadership of the Pentagon." (link below)
Let’s take a look at the first: Intelligence Community vs White House. It starts with pResident Bush’s State of the Union address. Bush cited an intelligence report from the CIA, investigating claims that Iraq sought to purchase fissile material from the African state of Niger. The report concluded the allegations were NOT true. The evidence was found to be bogus – signatures on the Nigerian documents were from officials who hadn’t yet been in office at the time of signing. Despite the claims of the CIA, Bush painted a very different picture.
Former Ambassador to Iraq, Joseph Wilson, was the man sent to Niger to investigate these claims. Months after Bush’s speech, Wilson wrote in the NY Times,
"I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."A week later, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reported that part of the reason Wilson had been given the Niger mission was that his wife, Valerie Plame (CIA secret operative), recommended him. This report blew Plame’s cover, a very serious crime. Novak cited the White House as the source of the leak, but kept the specifics confidential.
It gets even weirder: quoting the Time article:
"Plame, ... may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components."It’s clear that the White House was sending a message to the CIA by outing Plame. That’s the way things work at these levels of power. Some are saying the resignation of CIA Director George Tenet was a strategic move by the intelligence agency. Mark Levey writes:
“Tenet will no doubt be pressed to truthfully answer what he said to George W. Bush in the weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Owing to his perjury before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet has also forfeited his qualified immunity on topics relevant to his meetings with the President in August and early September 2001. This will give potential prosecutors enormous leverage. In exchange for his true testimony about this, and what he knows about the Bush White House's illegal outing of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, we should expect Tenet to ask for and receive immunity from prosecution.”That’s what you get for messing with the CIA. We will see what happens in the weeks to come.
Uniformed Military vs Civilian Leadership of the Pentagon: The military is not happy for being used as a tool for Halliburton, The Carlyle Group, Unocal, etc. Soldiers are dying for corporate profiteering and they know it. Soon, even the public may weigh in on this battle. Paying $45 for a case of soda for the troops just seems absurd. How long can we be duped?
-Mike
Plenty More to Swear Abouthttp://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,658285,00.htmlTenet's Perjury And Resignationhttp://progressivetrail.org/articles/040615Levey.shtmlNew Halliburton Waste Alleged - $45 for a case of sodaDeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR. She claims there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers. She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud. The company's response, according to deYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody’s going to care."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5333896 : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
* Action Alert - Call for PATRIOT Review, Not Expansion
The USA PATRIOT Act is under more scrutiny than ever, but a few
congressmen are itching to expand some of its most troubling
provisions. The Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement
Act (H.R. 3179) would strengthen the government's already
overbroad authority to gain secret access to your personal
info - including your phone, Internet, and financial records.
It would also allow law enforcement to target domestic suspects
with no ties to any foreign government or terrorist group -
extending the reach of powerful surveillance laws originally
intended only for spies and other "agents of a foreign power."
Expanding PATRIOT now, without the Department of Justice
demonstrating that it is clearly justified, unnecessarily
threatens our most fundamental rights as U.S. citizens.
Congress shouldn't hand the DoJ any new investigative tools
until it has conducted a comprehensive and public review
of whether the current PATRIOT powers have been both effective
and adequately protective of our civil liberties. Ask
your representative to oppose H.R. 3179 and support PATRIOT
review today!
Make your voice heard:
<
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2925>Join EFF today:
<
https://secure.eff.org/> : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .
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