Is anyone surprised that, with their record of ignoring intelligence information they didn't want to hear, the Bu$histas ignored intelligence information they didn't want to hear (or that savvy professionals who cared about their careers didn't let it come to their ears)?
Posted by shargash at February 6, 2006 03:52 PMNixon = BushLite
Posted by Sharon at February 6, 2006 03:55 PMI think a certain current preznit of the US of A is going to be deserving of a lot of apologies from the moonbats:
"The captured files of the Iraqi intelligence service, still mostly untranslated, could shed light on what did happen to Saddam's WMD.
John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, said a civilian contractor who has been among those examining the Mukhabarat files has found audiotapes of meetings in Saddam's office where WMD was discussed. The contractor, a former military intelligence analyst, will make the tapes public Feb. 17 at a conference sponsored by Intelligence Summit, a private group that Mr. Loftus heads.
Mr. Loftus wouldn't disclose the identity of the contractor in advance of the conference, but said his tapes have been verified by the National Security Agency. "This isn't a smoking gun. It's a smoking cannon," he said.
Those who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat."
Posted by dipshit at February 6, 2006 04:02 PM"still mostly untranslated" I wonder why!
HAHAAHAHAHAHAHA
Posted by Goose1 at February 6, 2006 04:25 PMHaving just heard the Linda Werthiemer "report" on the first day of the NSA hearings reconfirmed for me that my decision not to contribute to NPR anymore was the correct one. Senators from both parties who were critical of internal spying had their statements cut to terse one liners, whereas Gonzales' opening defense was aired uncut for several minutes. NPR is an uncritical cheerleader for unchecked executive power.
NPR=Bu$hco house organ.
Posted by rlp at February 6, 2006 04:34 PMFirst questions to ask why the fuck was a private contractor able to obtain intelligence materials?
If he she it was contracted to do that job, why is the Bush Administration outsourcing this work to private contactors instead of leaving it to the CIA or military?
Why is this private contractor not been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement when viewing materials that are important to the national security of the U.S.?
If he has signed one why is violating it by offering tapes of Sadaam purportedly talking about WMD?
Same questions for the former DOJ prosecutor Loftus who probably knows better?
Why is Loftus and his private contractor spilling information that could tip off the Islamofascists to what we know and how we might react (Republican excuse #23445 (b) in case you are keeping track).
Oh and what are dates on these documents and time frame of these tapes?
Maybe circa....1982?
Better an independent thinking moonbat than a bootlicking sheep. bAAAA, BAAAA.
Posted by j swift at February 6, 2006 05:12 PMThose who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat."
And who the hell would these people be? The ones who went after Saddam and his connection to terrorists...uhhh, WMDs...uhhh, Saddam is a bad guy...uhhh, bringing the Sand-Niggers (sorry, using your words) Towel-Heads (oops! Again, using your words) our little brown brothers the democracy that they have so long pined away for?
Everyone and their fucking dog knew Saddam had chemical weapons. For fuck sake we sold the stuff to him. My God, you dense sack of shit, we put him in power. The issue is that he had gotten rid of it before the invasion making the pretext for the oil grab was just that, a pretext for an oil grab. And it has worked as well as any event or policy in that morons life.
Posted by phidipides at February 6, 2006 05:24 PM"Digby brings up a good point, in that it seems the Democrats may know something about Bush's domestic surveillance that they are keeping under wraps for now."
Steve, I had that same feeling, especially during the questioning on other secret things this Administration may be actively pursuing.
Posted by Judith at February 6, 2006 05:37 PMit's hard to know what Lindsey Graham really thinks about anything.
He's thinking 'Only Nixon could go to China. And Lindsay Graham can be America's first gay president'.
Posted by Davis X. Machina at February 6, 2006 05:48 PMOh yeah, more "intelligence" proving that Saddam did have WMD. Now that the intelligence agencies have been purged of anyone who is not loyal to the President first and to the truth second has been sacked or has left on his/her own, their press releases have no credibility.
Just like our President.
Posted by brisa at February 6, 2006 06:14 PM"Our enemy is listening. And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the War on Terror."
End of opening statement from Gonzales. It says it better than I could ever attempt to.
While you guys think you are making progress towards getting rid of Bush, you're just sinking further and further in the quicksand.
Posted by David at February 6, 2006 06:31 PMI couldn't believe how stupid Gonzales looked during the hearing. He looked totally out of his league. If I was hispanic, I would be kicking his butt for making my race look like a bunch of boot licking idiots.
Posted by Ga6thDem at February 6, 2006 06:31 PMGa6thDem,
That's a good one. LOL!!!!
Posted by David at February 6, 2006 06:33 PMHow about John Dean on Keith Olberman's show saying when bushco finds someone they think is into terror, they just declare them an enemy combatant. They don need no steenkeeng courts.
Posted by TIKI AL at February 6, 2006 06:34 PMI wouldn't put it past Bush to plant "evidence" of WMDs in Iraq. He's lied about everything else. We need a President we can trust.
Posted by Cookie Monster at February 6, 2006 06:36 PMDavis X - brilliant, man!
Posted by Flamethrower at February 6, 2006 06:40 PMHas little Linda Grahamcracker ever come out of the closet, or does he just pass anti-gay bills undercover?
Posted by TIKI AL at February 6, 2006 06:54 PMYou guys want to know why dipshit doesn't give a link? It's because it's from a Jack Kelley piece full of wishful thinking. LOL! Bush won't be able to find those weapons in syria, iran or lebanon-each person jack quotes tells a different story as to what happened to those wmds! LOL!
Posted by Ga6thDem at February 6, 2006 07:04 PMGa6thDem, Believe me, he is a disgrace to his race, we like to say "relahan el punto"!
Posted by bbtb at February 6, 2006 07:12 PMGa6thDem, I had to look it up, too. My favorite line:
There are grounds for skepticism. Mr. Sada was deputy chief of the Iraqi air force during the first Gulf War, not the more recent one, and his account of the movement of WMD to Syria is secondhand.
Posted by ann at February 6, 2006 07:26 PMThose who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat."
Posted by dipshit at February 6, 2006 04:02 PM
*****
Uh, yeah...see, here's the problem. Everyone knew Saddamned had WMD (cuz we helped him obtain them so he could smoke Iran). Its just that the fucker didn't have them when when we invaded on the premise that he had them locked and loaded in ICBMs, which we now find out was manufactured bullshit and outright lies.
So once again, you're fucking irrelevant...and a plagarist to boot.
Posted by God Of War at February 6, 2006 07:31 PMJohn Loftus used to investigate Nazis in hiding for the Justice Dept. He's an interesting guy. In fact, he's done a lot of work on the Bush Family's long connection to the Nazis and Nazi money, including the sale of a Nazi bank that incredibly boosted the family's post-WWII fortune. He's also poked around looking into connections with the current administration and some of the money flowing into terrorist operations, and how the Bushies squelched Operation Green Quest because it was getting too close to Grover Norquist.
It's kind of hard to imagine BushCo wanting this guy anywhere near a microphone.
So I wouldn't dismiss anything that Loftus does out of hand, but before I buy any of it I'd like to see all the facts. At this late date it seems damned unlikely. He could be snookered too.
And, of course, Saddam talking about WMDs doesn't mean he had them. Maybe he was just wishing that that he had them, knowing that Bush was about to invade. And saying that this tape has Saddam on it doesn't mean that it's Saddam.
Posted by Bob in Pacifica at February 6, 2006 08:00 PMBack to Digby, I got the feeling that maybe the Bush boys were doing a little breakin' and enterin' like Nixon did on Ellsberg's place, and someone may have a clue about it.
Posted by Bob in Pacifica at February 6, 2006 08:03 PMNPR anymore was the correct one. Posted by rlp atIt certainly is the correct decision. NPR is just another propaganda arm of the RNC. Tell 'em personally, tell 'em often:
ombudsman ombudsman@npr.org
edition morning morning@npr.org
nation talkofthe totn@npr.org
radio national public atc@npr.org (w)
Those who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat.Posted by dipshit
… It says it better than I could ever attempt to. … Posted by David
I guess everyone went to sleep. Loftus hasn't posted anything on his website about recently discovered documents and Saddam and WMDs, dipshit.
Posted by Bob in Pacifica at February 6, 2006 08:08 PMAnd I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place,
Well, it would be a problem if everyone and their fucking dog didn't know about it many years before, and foreign governments weren't complaining about, again, many years before. God, you people are fucking stupid. What is your problem? Lead in the water? Morons! The whole lot of you are morons. Shit, if Popular Mechanics knew it in 2001, everyone knew it.
Jesus...stupid, stupid, stupid. Is the far right of the republi-con party solid tard, or are you just representative of the majority of those gits? If you breed, please abort the child. There is only so much stupid I can stand.
End of opening statement from Gonzales. It says it better than I could ever attempt to.
Because you are a mankey republi-con idiot. That's why you can't say it better, or understand that Abu is a fucking liar. Hurry! Turn on FOX and get your next talking point!
Posted by phidipides at February 6, 2006 08:14 PMwhat continues to fascinate me is how the realities of echelon are avoided.
no fisa needed for actions of this program.
and echelon can intercept everyone. and has been doing that for at least a decade. probably 3 decades.
and the intercepts can all be sheepdipped through the other echelon partners, so that the usa doesn't have to be in violation of us law.
the most amazing aspect of this brohaha to me is that the realities of echelon, even the existence of echelon, go unmentioned.
why is that do you think?
"Our enemy is listening."
David, what are they listening to? Do you think that they had no idea that there was a possibility their conversations were being monitored? Let me take a wild guess and say that these people are a little more intelligent than you believe.
Posted by Judith at February 7, 2006 03:21 AMI think y'all might want to do searches for recipes to prepare the crow y'all are gonna be eating when that report is released on the 17th.
Oh yeah, y'all might want to stock up on wash cloths for all the egg you're gonna have on your faces.
Looks like Jay Rockefeller has some 'splainin' to do. Why did he go to Syria? Why does everyone in the intelligence community believe he is the seditious dork who leaked the NSA spy info?
Posted by dipshit at February 7, 2006 03:44 AMGONZALES: Well, Senator, I would first refer to the experts in the Intel Committee who are making that statement, first of all. I'm just the lawyer.
And so, when the director of the CIA says this should really damage our intel capabilities, I would defer to that statement. I think, based on my experience, it is true -- you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance.
But if they're not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget.
So, basically, the enemy is listening, but sometimes they forget. Abu, this is al-Qaeda, not the Keystone Cops.
Posted by ann at February 7, 2006 05:37 AMDoes a single day go by where some troll doesn't try to slip Echelon in as a program just like Bush's warrantless wire tapping? The problem, AbuFan, is that Echelon did comply with FISA, Bush's program ignores FISA.
Posted by ann at February 7, 2006 06:37 AMJesus, dipshit. If you were any more irrational I could get an EOD and have you medicated.
Posted by phidipides at February 7, 2006 07:00 AMGee, p-dippy, you say that like you're surprised!
Posted by iamcoyote at February 7, 2006 07:42 AM"Our enemy is listening. And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would be so scared as to put aside the rule of law in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now eliminate the freedoms our forefathers fought for or even unilaterally dismantle the system of checks and balances that distinguish the United States among nations."
Posted by tom paine at February 7, 2006 07:44 AMdurbin seemed to have a somoking gun (along the lines of feingold's question during abu's confirm hearings). i havfen't seen it reported, but durbin had a visual aid (big card) that quoted abu saying that the chimp didn't order such searches (not, as in feingold's case, that it was "hypothetical)
in case of feingold, abu went all slippery: "i said the president didn't break the law and he didn't." only problem is abu said there was no such program, its legality notwithstanding.
Posted by benjoya at February 7, 2006 07:58 AMGee, p-dippy, you say that like you're surprised!
Sometimes my loon-meter goes berserk.
Posted by phidipides at February 7, 2006 08:03 AMIs it just me, or does Gonzales look like Bush's love-child? He wears the same smirk!
Not to mention, "Junior" looks like a doting father!! I swear, it's true!!
Posted by Dishwashing Engineer at February 7, 2006 09:05 PM