Iraq's Nuclear Capability: Cheney and Rice Deliberately Misled

Iraq's Nuclear Capability: Cheney and Rice Deliberately Misled

From a NYT article by DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH

"...In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon."

The United States intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. But as the vice president told a group of Wyoming Republicans that September, the United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges.

..."We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."....before Ms. Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the government's foremost nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear weapons at all, an examination by The New York Times has found.

...Ms. Rice's alarming description on CNN was in keeping with the Bush administration's overall treatment of the tubes. Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, The Times found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of their own experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.

I'm not certain why the New York Times has waited so long to say all of this out loud, but it's clear that most of the mainstream media is well behind the observations which have been made by the blogging community all along. I'm glad they are talking about it now, however. I certainly hope Senator Edwards will confront Mr. Cheney about this and all other of Cheney's lies and scare tactics on Tuesday evening.

A Game: Pick Out the David Brooks Line

A Game: Pick Out the David Brooks Line

In David Brooks' NYT column today, he translates what he believes Bush was trying to say in the debate Thursday night. I thought to myself as I read it, "Is this the way it will be for another four years if Bush is re-elected? Bush mumbles incoherently and the pundits and war-planners give their translation spin so this delusional president, along with the neocons, can more strongly affirm the hold they already have over our White House?"

I really like David Brooks. I think he's a very intelligent American. Yet, I believe he is deliberately reforming the reality we clearly observed in Thursday's debate. Brooks' spin decidedly casts Kerry as a man with no conviction. I find this to be much like an attempt to call a dog a cat after the dog has left the room and had proved, hands-down, that he was, indeed, a dog.

Perpetuating the lies? Is that really the best David Brooks can do for America?

Here's a little game. It's called "Pick out the David Brooks line."

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. The corners of Bush's mind must be incredibly dark places.
B. The atmosphere of Bush's mind is more creedal or ethical.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Kerry defined the enemy in narrow, concrete terms. He emphasized that it was Osama bin Laden who attacked us. He emphasized the need to defeat Al Qaeda's network. He called Iraq a diversion from defeating that network.
B. Kerry pointed out a brutal reality that Bush and the media have blurred for too long.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Bush's mind is less coldly secular than Kerry's, but also more abstracted from day-to-day reality.
B. When it comes to reality, Bush is delusional, and he gets really pissed off each time Kerry reveals him for who he is.


Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Bush sometimes acts as if it's enough for a president to profess his faith.
B. Bush acts as though God sanctions his mission and his fundamentalist leanings tinge his warped, stubborn, and disastrous policy.


Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Bush, by contrast, is steadfast and resolute.
B. Bush, by contrast, is steadfast and resolute about taking his nation down the path of political disaster.


Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Kerry gets twisted into pretzels.
B. Bush chokes on pretzels.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A.Bush launched a pre-emptive war even though his intelligence community was incompetent.
B. Bush is totally incompetent and should never have used known-to-be shaky intelligence to perpetrate his fraud on the American people.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Bush occupied a country even though he didn't really believe in, or work with, the institutions of government he would need to complete the task
B. Bush fucked up royally because of his dependence upon neocons and Chalabi-style crooks; and especially because of a lack of good character, wise leadership, horse-sense, and good faith.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. Bush's language has a resonance with people who know that he is not always competent, and who know that he doesn't always dominate every argument, but who can sense a shared cast of mind.
B. Bush appeals to the frightened, the willingly propagandized, the fundamentalists, the Loyalty-Oathers, the radical right, and the ones who refuse to choose American freedom and democracy over their preferred Armegeddon and Left Behind.

Pick out the David Brooks line:

A. When you see someone talking about crying with a war widow, you know that's Bush.
B. When you don't see any leader present at any of the dead soldiers' funerals, you know that's Bush.
C. When you aren't allowed to see their flag-draped coffins returning to Dover, you know that's Bush.
D. When you see statistical numbers of dead soldiers rising by the day in a war without a plan for the peace, you know that's Bush.
E. When you are called an enemy-emboldener because you think the soldiers are being abused and endangered by an incurious mind, you know that's Bush.
F. When you get a letter telling you you're being tapped for back-door draft reserve service after having served honorably, and when you have to kiss your wife, kids, career and very possibly your life goodbye to head off to a wicked hornet's nest "brought on" by a daft misleader, you know that's Bush.

Standing Up-Proud and Blue

Standing Up-Proud and Blue

The Daily Kos diarist known as kid oakland has provided us with some food for thought. The health of our democracy is suffering and it's been weakened by a groupthink that is steamrolling by intimidation. It reaches every one of us who live in the places that are labeled as "red".