And We're Supposed to Believe this WHY?

Pentagon Halts Feeding of Information to Retired Officer Pundits While Issue is Reviewed | Stars and Stripes | Jeff Schogol

"The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs. The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the Defense Department was giving information to retired officers serving as pundits for various media organizations in order to garner favorable media coverage.

The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the Defense Department was giving information to retired officers serving as pundits for various media organizations in order to garner favorable media coverage...."

This is pro-war propaganda at its most insidious. Make sure you take action: sign Free Press's petition and call on Congress to demand better media.

Also See:

• Pentagon Pundits | FAIR


• Military Pundits Videos | Brave New Films

Technorati tags: Propaganda, news, media, Pentagon, Military, Pundits

The Latest on Torture

As if this would surprise anyone:

Pentagon Releases '03 Memo Giving Green Light to Torture:

"In other words, torture is only torture when the torturer feels guilty about doing it afterwards."

Read more.

Photo Credit: Abu Ghraib. (�����The WE News Archives)���������

Technorati tags: Pentagon, Torture, Bush Administration, Bush

More Bush Lies to Ratchet Rhetoric for War with Iran

(U.S. Pentagon's version of the "confrontation.")

The following should come as no surprise to anyone who has witnessed Bush administration lies over the last seven years. The audio tape attached to the government released video of the recent "naval incident" in the Strait of Hormuz was almost laughable. The voice sounded like a bad American actor trying to sound like an Iranian terrorist speaking English.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I immediately said to my spouse that this looked like another lame attempt of the Bush administration to invent an incident to help make their case for war with Iran. They have been ratcheting up the rhetoric on Iran ever since the intelligence estimate indicated they were not an immediate nuclear threat to the U.S. or others in their region.

As ever, the mainstream spinmeisters cooperate by reporting whatever they are fed by the fed without digging to find out the real facts. Their complicity in the Bush agenda is, despite their apologies about their Iraq reporting, ongoing and completely irresponsible.

The 2008 election cannot come soon enough. I only hope we vote for our intereststhis time....


Iran's version of the incident.

Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel | By Gareth Porter | IPS:

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea", new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that U.S. officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a U.S. warship, as appears to do on the video.

Also unraveling the story is testimony from a former U.S. naval officer that non-official chatter is common on the channel used to communicate with the Iranian boats and testimony from the commander of the U.S. 5th fleet that the commanding officers of the U.S. warships involved in the incident never felt the need to warn the Iranians of a possible use of force against them.

Further undermining the U.S. version of the incident is a video released by Iran Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships.

The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then requests the "side numbers" of the U.S. warships. A voice with a U.S. accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters."

The dramatic version of the incident reported by U.S. news media throughout Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that Iranian speedboats, apparently belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy, had made moves to attack three U.S. warships entering the Strait and that the U.S. commander had been on the verge of firing at them when they broke off.

Typical of the network coverage was a story by ABC's Jonathan Karl quoting a Pentagon official as saying the Iranian boats "were a heartbeat from being blown up".

Bush administration officials seized on the incident to advance the portrayal of Iran as a threat and to strike a more threatening stance toward Iran. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley declared Wednesday that the incident "almost involved an exchange of fire between our forces and Iranian forces". President George W. Bush declared during his Mideast trip Wednesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Iran attacked U.S. ships and repeated his assertion that Iran is "a threat to world peace".

Central to the depiction of the incident as involving a threat to U.S. warships is a mysterious pair of messages that the sailor who heard them onboard immediately interpreted as saying, "I am coming at you...", and "You will explode after a few minutes." But the voice in the audio clearly said "I am coming to you," and the second message was much less clear.

Furthermore, as the New York Times noted Thursday, the recording carries no ambient noise, such as the sounds of a motor, the sea or wind, which should have been audible if the broadcast had been made from one of the five small Iranian boats....

Continue reading.

Related Articles:

• Preparations for War with Iran? | Bush's Mideast Visit and N. Korea Declaration Deadline | By William H. White


• Bush says US, allies must confront Iran | By Anne Gearan


• Israel Stressed to Bush that Iran is a Nuclear "Threat": General


• Gulf Shenanigans: No Laughing Matter | By Ray McGovern

Technorati tags: Iran, Pentagon, Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, YouTube, video, Strait of Hormuz, news

Beyond Imus: Drowned-Out News

Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law:

"The Bush administration yesterday asked Congress to make more non-citizens subject to intelligence surveillance and to authorize the interception of foreign communications routed through the United States...."

NIH Drops Contractor For Conflict of Interest:

"The federal government yesterday fired a contractor it had hired to review the safety of chemicals after discovering the company has been simultaneously working for the chemical industry...."

Rare Protests at Brigham Young Over a Planned Cheney Appearance:

"The invitation extended to Vice President Dick Cheney to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University has set off a rare, continuing protest at the Mormon university, one of the nation's most conservative.

Some of the faculty and the 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, who are overwhelmingly Republican, have expressed concern about the Bush administration's support for the war in Iraq and other policies, but most of the current protest has focused on Mr. Cheney's integrity, character and behavior. Several students said, for example, that they were appalled at Mr. Cheney's use of an expletive on the Senate floor in a June 2004 exchange with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont...."

Dollar Slide Accelerates:

"The dollar's slide against most of the world's currencies gained pace today as dealers worried over the outlook for the US economy...."

Pelosi: "The president is not king:"

"NP: The president is not king, the president is the president of the United States.� America is a democracy.� We have to make decisions based on our judgment.� Thus far, the president's judgment hasn't been good, in terms of say for example the war on Iraq.� So with all due respect to the president and the role he has, we want respect for the role we have.� And members of Congress have gone on fact finding trips since our country began.� We're not going to stop because the president wants to avoid the facts and doesn't want to engage in dialogue.� We had a bipartisan trip, interesting that the administration chose to ignore the trips of the Republicans who had been there in the week that we were there.�..."

A Bad Choice, a Quick Exit:

"The story of Eric Keroack's brief stint as director of family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services brings together three familiar Bush administration themes: a disdain for women's reproductive health and rights, the sacrifice of science to ideology and incompetence...."

Dodd Challenges All Presidential Candidates To Lead On Ending War:

"Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, gave an amazing speech last night in Iowa that discussed America's place in the world, the need to rebuild United States prestige in the wake of the George W. Bush presidency and the imperative to exit the Iraq civil war far sooner than later.'Our policy is not only failing to make Iraq more secure. By sapping our military of its strength and America of its leadership in the world, the Bush/McCain policy has made America less secure,' said Dodd of the ill-advised troop surge that has shown no results. 'The hour is late. It is time to begin putting our country on a more secure path. The moment has arrived for leadership that stands up and announces without equivocation that prolonging this war will not make us more secure -- ending it will....'"

A Hollow Army - How the Bush Regime Broke America's Military:

"Richard Blair: Four years and one surge into the occupation of Iraq, the Bush regime has broken America's standing Army...."

Kurdistan's Covert Back-Channels:

"How an ex-Mossad chief, a German uberspy, and a gaggle of top-dollar GOP lobbyists helped Kurdistan snag 15 tons of $100 bills...."

Najaf Estimates Split along Liberal/Conservative Reliable/Unreliable Divide:

"In the war of numbers, it's the Pentagon and the far right blogs against everyone else....

Rove and Co. Broke Federal Law With Email Scam:

"Not only were those emails were meant to be lost, but the whole deal was illegal....

Presidential Candidate: U.S. In Danger of Dictatorship:

"Presidential candidate Ron Paul has warned that the US is now at a crisis point because the people have been so neglectful of protecting their liberties and big government has been so effective in eroding them. He warned that the elite are prepared to concoct events to scare the American people and asserted that the 2008 Presidential election is a contest between the people who care about their freedoms and those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship...."

Technorati tags: Domestic Spying, Bush, NIH, Dick Cheney, U.S. Economy, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Military, Pentagon, Kurdistan, Ron Paul, Karl Rove, Abuse of Power

Proof of Pentagon Phoney Intel

Pentagon Office Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link

"Newly released documents confirm that a Pentagon unit knowingly cooked up intelligence claiming a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to win support for a preemptive strike against the country.
����
A report prepared by the Defense Department's Inspector General for Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, explicitly shows how former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith used his defense department position to cook intelligence claiming a connection between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein's regime...."

How much more will it take to throw these criminals out of office? How much more will it take to impeach these bastards and throw them all in jail where they belong?

Technorati tags: Truthout, Matt Renner, Pentagon, Phoney Intelligence, Carl Levin, al-Qaeda, Iraq, news

Scary Movie 2

It's another Bush-Cheney production most critics have panned. But there is evidence that it may be coming soon to a theatre near you ....

Scary Movie 2
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake, even if all the allegations now being made about Iranian actions in Iraq are true.

But it wouldn’t be the first catastrophic mistake this administration has made, and there are indications that, at the very least, a powerful faction in the administration is spoiling for a fight.

Before we get to the apparent war-mongering, let’s talk about the basics. Are there people in Iran providing aid to factions in Iraq, factions that sometimes kill Americans as well as other Iraqis? Yes, probably. But you can say the same about Saudi Arabia, which is believed to be a major source of financial support for Sunni insurgents — and Sunnis, not Iranian-backed Shiites, are still responsible for most American combat deaths.

The Bush administration, however, with its close personal and financial ties to the Saudis, has always downplayed Saudi connections to America’s enemies. Iran, on the other hand, which had no connection to 9/11, and was actually quite helpful to the United States in the months after the terrorist attack, somehow found itself linked with its bitter enemy Saddam Hussein as part of the “axis of evil.”

So the administration has always had it in for the Iranian regime. Now, let’s do an O. J. Simpson: if you were determined to start a war with Iran, how would you do it?

First, you’d set up a special intelligence unit to cook up rationales for war. A good model would be the Pentagon’s now-infamous Office of Special Plans, led by Abram Shulsky, that helped sell the Iraq war with false claims about links to Al Qaeda.

Sure enough, last year Donald Rumsfeld set up a new “Iranian directorate” inside the Pentagon’s policy shop. And last September Warren Strobel and John Walcott of McClatchy Newspapers — who were among the few journalists to warn that the administration was hyping evidence on Iraqi W.M.D. — reported that “current and former officials said the Pentagon’s Iranian directorate has been headed by Abram Shulsky.”

Next, you’d go for a repeat of the highly successful strategy by which scare stories about the Iraqi threat were disseminated to the public.

This time, however, the assertions wouldn’t be about W.M.D.; they’d be that Iranian actions are endangering U.S. forces in Iraq. Why? Because there’s no way Congress will approve another war resolution. But if you can claim that Iran is doing evil in Iraq, you can assert that you don’t need authorization to attack — that Congress has already empowered the administration to do whatever is necessary to stabilize Iraq. And by the time the lawyers are finished arguing — well, the war would be in full swing.

Finally, you’d build up forces in the area, both to prepare for the strike and, if necessary, to provoke a casus belli. There’s precedent for the idea of provocation: in a January 2003 meeting with Prime Minster Tony Blair, The New York Times reported last year, President Bush “talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire.”

In the end, Mr. Bush decided that he didn’t need a confrontation to start that particular war. But war with Iran is a harder sell, so sending several aircraft carrier groups into the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf, where a Gulf of Tonkin-type incident could all too easily happen, might be just the thing.

O.K., I hope I’m worrying too much. Those carrier groups could be going to the Persian Gulf just as a warning.

But you have to wonder about the other stuff. Why would the Pentagon put someone who got everything wrong on Iraq in charge of intelligence on Iran? Why wasn’t any official willing to take personal responsibility for the reliability of alleged evidence of Iranian mischief, as opposed to being an anonymous source? If the evidence is solid enough to bear close scrutiny, why were all cameras and recording devices, including cellphones, banned from yesterday’s Baghdad briefing?

It’s still hard to believe that they’re really planning to attack Iran, when it’s so obvious that another war would be a recipe for even bigger disaster. But remember who’s calling the shots: Dick Cheney thinks we’ve had “enormous successes” in Iraq.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Related

• Ray McGovern: Wake Up! The Next War Is Coming

  "There are second chances in life: Congress can stop Bush's Iran war plans...."

• TomPaine.com - Explosively Formed Distractions

  "Can the media make up for its Iraq sins by paying attention to the Bush Iran steamroller?"

• US baiting Iran retaliation, Former Security Official Says


• AlterNet: Bush's masked men make case for attacking Iran...

  "They refuse to be identified"

• 'NYT' Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims

  "Saturday's New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the 'deadliest weapon aimed at American troops' in Iraq.... What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than 'civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.' Sound pretty convincing? It may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion," writes Greg Mitchell.

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, Iran, Bush, US Foreign Policy, International Relations, news, commentary, op ed

Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites are well advanced

Ewen MacAskill in Washington for Guardian Unlimited reports:

"US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.
The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision...."

Read the whole article.

Related:

• NYT: Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability:

  "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accused the United States on Saturday of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, undermining international institutions and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war...."

• CNN Poll: Do you believe U.S. foreign policy is fueling a nuclear arms race?

Technorati tags: Iran, Pentagon, Bush, Democratic Party, Republican Party, news

Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel

Report Depicts Pentagon That Purposely Manipulated Intelligence Before U.S. Invasion of Iraq:

"A 'very damning' report by the Defense Department's inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

'That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war,' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He said the Pentagon's work, 'which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate ... is something which is highly disturbing.'

[...]

In a telephone interview Thursday, Levin said the IG report is 'very damning' and shows a Pentagon policy shop trying to shape intelligence to prove a link between al-Qaida and Saddam...."

"Highly disturbing" and "very damning," indeed. And yet not one Representative or Senator expressed real outrage over this: No one angrily demanded that Dick Cheney step down or that George Bush fire him or that those complicit in the manipulation of intelligence be held accountable to the American people for their duplicity.

What a bunch of wimps we have in government ... wimps with empty words, without conscience.

I also saw a piece on NBC news today where one of our soldiers currently executing the "new strategy" in Baghdad -- a desperately dangerous game of craps, basically -- actually said on and directly to camera that they are accomplishing nothing, and that it is time for them to go home. None of the other soldiers within earshot seemed to disagree.

How come I didn't hear any Congressmen address the concerns of these young men, sent into an unnecessary, bungled war by a bunch of ideological greedy jerks whose lies are responsible for untold death, injury, and destruction?

What a country we live in ....

Related:

• Molly Ivins (last column): Bush gave us war-- now give him hell for it


• 31 Days in Iraq:

  "In January more than 1,900 people were killed in Iraq, up from 800 in January 2006. This map, designed by Adriana Lins de Albuquerque and Alicia Cheng for the New York Times, shows the dates, locations and circumstances of deaths for the first month of the year."

• John P. Briggs, M.D., and JP Briggs II, Ph.D. | Why Bush's Inner "Reality" Has Poisoned His Own Troop Plan:

  "The president has included an extraordinary fatal flaw in his plan for additional US troops in Iraq, a fact that may not make much sense to his advisers and allies, but is psychologically understandable in terms of a mechanism that governs his inner reality. As with many other aspects of the president's sometimes odd behavior, the root of this new self-subverting plan lies not in political expediency, in the advice he's received, or in his intellectual abilities as such, but in a psychological twist that begins with his long and well-documented history of failure (and his sense of his own failure) within his family of origin," according to John P. Briggs, M.D., and J.P. Briggs II, Ph.D.

• No shame, no truth, no understanding, no nada....


• CIA Analysts: Over 50% Of Bush's Iraq War Justifications Untrue (LA Times)

Technorati tags: Pentagon, Intelligence, Iraq, Douglas J. Feith, Carl Levin, news, commentary