Going by the track record of congress (Leaky Leahy et al. ), I don't blame them for lying to them.

Only RF Live has already decided that Congress was misled by the CIA. By all logical information available, Panetta will probably now release proof that Nancy Pelosi was definitely caught with her pants down.

The CIA told the truth to the Bush administration that Iraq was no threat to the United States and the Bush administration lied about WMD!

The CIA warned Bush to hunt down al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Waziristan, Yemen and Somalia!

President Cheney, Vice President Rummy and the Dummy Bush made the CIA lie to Congress for the next 8 years!

------------------------

The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/287t4u / January 28, 2007

Why Iraq Was a Mistake
By Lt. General GREGORY NEWBOLD, Retired
http://tinyurl.com/p4j93 Apr. 09, 2006


General Anthony Zinni, USMC, (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004 http://tinyurl.com/8ldmo

I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true.

So to say containment didn't work, I think is not only wrong from the experiences we had then, but the proof is in the pudding, in what kind of military our troops faced when we went in there.

The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=2208&from_page=../index.cfm

============================

Ex-CIA Official Paul Pillar Faults Use of Data on Iraq
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says
February 10, 2006 / http://tinyurl.com/azl6w

A Spy Speaks Out
Former Top CIA Official Tyler Drumheller On "Faulty" Intelligence Claims /
http://tinyurl.com/rle4x / April 23, 2006

"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."

======================

Ex-CIA Agent Melvin Goodman on Cheney Iraq Speech: “Longest Statement of Disinformation” Ever Fed U.S. Public
July 25, 2003 / http://tinyurl.com/5v8r8b

Charlie Rose - Sir Jeremy Greenstock: 'Tony Blair knew Iraq had no nuclear capability'
http://tinyurl.com/6bc7vn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE7aupmi2xA

How Tenet Betrayed the CIA on WMD in Iraq /
http://tinyurl.com/6xmjym

=====================

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic
Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story / http://tinyurl.com/zvy2o April 9, 2006

CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says
http://tinyurl.com/jkmzo

Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits
http://tinyurl.com/yvtw7 June 5, 2003

Paul Pillar served for 30 years as an analyst at the CIA, finishing his career as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/pillar.html


Bin Laden Expert Steps Forward
Ex-CIA Agent Michael Scheuer Assesses Terror War
http://tinyurl.com/4vms5 Nov. 14, 2004


America and Islam After Iraq with Ex CIA Michael Scheuer
http://tinyurl.com/6lghdh
http://fora.tv/2008/04/21/America_and_Islam_After_Iraq_with_Michael_Scheuer

--------------------------

Was Ending CIA Osama Unit A Mistake?
First Head Of Unit Tells CBS News Closing Was 'Questionable'
Michael Scheuer CIA Retired / July 5, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/f4bdu

(CBS/AP) The first head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Osama bin Laden-hunting unit tells CBS News that closing the unit was "a mistake" and "a questionable decision."

"Bin laden remains the single most important threat to the United States, and there's no way around that fact," Michael Scheuer a CBS News terrorism analyst said on The Early Show.
It was reported by the New York Times Tuesday that the CIA has closed the unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants.
Scheuer said bin Laden is unquestionably a threat to the United States.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/05/terror/main1776250.shtml

See, you should have all voted for McCain!


--------------------------------------

Obama’s Poll Numbers PLUNGE!:

Bad news for Barry. Barack Obama’s poll numbers have dropped to the lowest point in his relatively nascent administration.

Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll shows Obama’s Presidential Approval Index has reached -8% with more Americans (38%) holding a Strongly Unfavorable view of Obama’s job performance than who hold a Strongly Favorable (30%) view.

And the trend of diminishing support is also confirmed by the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll which shows Obama’s job approval ratings have reached their lowest point yet.

Americans are waking up to the fact that the nearly $1 TRILLION “Stimulus” package was a scam orchestrated by Obama/Pelosi/Reid to both advance pet projects of Congress that were in many cases previously rejected earmarks, or attempts to re-engineer American society to take more people out of the private sector and make them dependent upon government for their income and livelihood.

The government intrusion and takeovers of companies in the automobile and banking industries is quasi-socialism – if not full blown socialism.

The “Cap, Tax & Trade” fiasco is another attempt by government to control the lives of Americans, tell them how much energy they may or may not consume, and what kind of energy they may consume and from what source. And best of all, it comes attached with the largest tax increase in American history. All predicated on a manufactured crisis of “anthropogenic global warming” that posits a theory of rapid global warming caused by mankind, when evidence suggests there is no continued warming of the earth that is currently taking place, let alone that any activities by man has impacted the climate.

If that weren’t enough, the Obama/Reid/Pelosi regime is now trying to nationalize our health care system, having the government take over even more of the private sector and run our private lives and make our health care choices for us.

And finally, on foreign policy, the appeasement of evil, and the game of kissy-kissy Obama has played with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will soon weigh down on Obama’s administration — just as it did with Carter’s administration some 20 years ago.

The people are waking up. And Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid won’t be able to put them back to sleep under their spell. More and more Americans are realizing that Our Country Deserves Better.

Ohio too should have voted for McCain!
Oh well!

--------------------------------------

Obama's Popularity Plummets in Ohio as Residents Express Impatience:

Thursday, July 09, 2009

A new Quinnipiac poll shows the president's approval ratings from Ohio voters has dropped from 62 percent in May to 49 percent this month, making it the first state where President Obama's job approval has dipped below 50 percent.

Patience may be wearing thin for President Obama's economic initiatives to produce results -- at least in Ohio -- as a new poll shows the president's popularity plunging in that critical swing state.

The president's approval ratings from Ohio voters dropped from 62 percent in May to 49 percent this month in a new Quinnipiac University poll, making it the first state in which Obama's job approval has dipped below 50 percent.

Unemployment in Ohio, at 10.8 percent, is well above the national average, and that appears to be having an impact on Buckeye residents.

"Early in the election period, people were very excited about the prospect of dramatic change and I think they were desperate for something different," said Karina Horton. "But now we are in the midst of this change -- it's a little more scary than they were ready for and I sense a noticeable shift with friends and co-workers' opinions about President Obama."

Others suggest that the Obama administration's actions don't match its words.

"Seeing a lot of words come out, lot of promises and I'm trying to do this or trying to do that but I'm not actually seeing it happen," Kathy Hartman said.

Bill F., you're right.

BARACKLASH has begun!

"The CIA told the truth to the Bush administration that Iraq was no threat to the United States and the Bush administration lied about WMD!"


Putting the stinking left's words in the CIA'S MOUTH AGAIN CASPIAN???


---------------------------------------

From CIA Home Page
Iraq WMD 2004

Regime Strategic Intent
Key Findings

Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

Saddam totally dominated the Regime’s strategic decision making. He initiated most of the strategic thinking upon which decisions were made, whether in matters of war and peace (such as invading Kuwait), maintaining WMD as a national strategic goal, or on how Iraq was to position itself in the international community. Loyal dissent was discouraged and constructive variations to the implementation of his wishes on strategic issues were rare. Saddam was the Regime in a strategic sense and his intent became Iraq’s strategic policy.
Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.
The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.
By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

Putting the stinking left's words in the CIA'S MOUTH AGAIN CASPIAN???

==========================

Bill these people are certainly not peacenik liberals against Un-American Bush Republican Neo-Confederates!

The words are theirs NOT MINE!

----------------------------

The Republican Noise Machine
right-wing media and how it corrupts democracy
http://tinyurl.com/jncdt
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html

=================================

General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.) Admiral Frank “Skip” Bowman, USN (Ret.)

Lieutenant General Lawrence P. Farrell Jr., USAF (Ret.) Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney II, USN (Ret.) General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.) Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, USN (Ret.)

Admiral Donald L. “Don” Pilling, USN (Ret.) Admiral Joseph W. Prueher, USN (Ret.)

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.) General Charles F. “Chuck” Wald, USAF (Ret.) General Anthony C. “Tony” Zinni, USMC

(Ret ) General John Batiste General William E. Odom Lt. General GREGORY NEWBOLD General Eric Shinseki General Paul Eaton GENERAL JOSEPH P. HOAR

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute General Brent Scowcroft

General Barry McCaffrey Admiral Tommy Fargo General Wesley K. Clark

Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Maj. Gen. John Riggs Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper

Colonel Sam Gardiner Colonel Ann Wright Colonel David Hackworth

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson Marine Major Scott Ritter

Paul R Pillar CIA Larry C. Johnson CIA Tyler Drumheller CIA Michael Scheuer CIA

Ray McGovern CIA Russell Tice NSA, Sibel Edmonds FBI, Valerie Plame CIA.

You paste a few retired military names up here when I could easily paste more than 10,000 top ranking military leaders who supported their country through the entire eight years of Bush presidency. Anyway, non of your pasted names have anything to do with your CIA lying statements.Caught you flim-flamming once again! Smokes screens and bullsh_it is all you you ever have to offer. Not one of these names would have opted to pull out of Iraq, especially after the surge.

Caspian:

This is just one of your posted names

______________________________________

Colonel David Hackworth comparing George Bush's service during Vietnam to John Kerry's:


"But although he had the luck and the connections to land a spot in the Air Guard, he did put his butt on the line flying a machine for which he was entitled to hazardous-duty pay – and that's because zooming around in a jet fighter was and still is highly dangerous. And sure, Kerry’s campaign push on how he Ramboed his way through the war – for four months – rubs a lot of vets the wrong way".

TRUTH BE TOLD BUSH LIED ABOUT WMD IN IRAQ!

Calling Marine Major Ritter
Like it or not, Marine Major Scott Ritter had it right all along.

By Colonel David Hackworth
http://tinyurl.com/zu8o7

Ritter, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, took us all on – virtually alone, against incredible odds – stating, "Iraq is not a threat to the U.S." and begging the American people to take charge and not "sit back and allow your government to go to war against Iraq ... [without all] the facts on the table to back this war up."

As per his reputation on training fields and battlefields, this granite-jawed former Marine stood his ground and never flinched. He reminds me of another two-fisted, tell-it-like-it-is Marine, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor, who was almost drummed out of the Marine Corps twice: Once in the 1930s for calling Benito Mussolini a "fascist," and once again a few years later when he rattled the military-industrial complex by daring to declare that "War is a racket."

Ritter, too, took serious punishment from his critics – and instead of doing proper due diligence or asking hard questions, the media quickly piled on. It was not Fox's finest hour when that network gleefully painted him as a 21st-century Benedict Arnold – not that he had many primetime advocates anywhere else. Even CNN's usually evenhanded Paula Zahn said to Ritter six months before America unleashed its miscalculated military solution on Iraq, "People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37043

======================================

Understanding the Roots of Terrorism: Iraq as a Case Study.
No WMD’s In Iraq: by Marine Major Scott Ritter
November 13, 2002
http://sass.caltech.edu/ritter/SASS-Keynote.mp3

The Myth of the Surge
Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it's already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the new Iraq / February 22, 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/222e3o
http://www.uruknet.org/?p=m41382&hd=&size=1&l=e

"TRUTH BE TOLD BUSH LIED ABOUT WMD IN IRAQ!"


Where in this "doctored" article does it say anything about, our president, George Bush, lied??????????????? That is, and will only ever be your take!
All by your lonesome.

Besides, you who prayed that America would lose in Iraq forever separates you as a trader from any of these American military personnel you dare to quote without their permission.

Powell on Iraq, Domestic Spying and Baseball:
Former Secretary of State Visits 'This Week'

Dec. 25, 2005

Pre-War Intelligence
Stephanopoulos: Last Sunday, the president, in the most high-profile way he ever has before, acknowledged that the intelligence going into the war was false and he took responsibility for it. Should he have done that earlier?

Powell: Well, I think it's been known for some time. And I've heard him express, not as clearly as he did last weekend, but I've heard him express responsibility for this.

But the reality is that some of the intelligence was right. There's no question that Saddam Hussein had the intention of having such weapons, and he was retaining the capability to have such weapons.

What we got wrong, dead-wrong, was that there were actual stockpiles of chemical weapons and biological weapons and the mobile labs that became so famous. And the reality is, all of that was gone.

Were we deceived in believing it was there by Saddam Hussein or those who had other motives for wanting us to believe that? I don't know. But it was something that we believed and our intelligence community believed.

The intelligence community made that case to me, to the president, to the secretary of defense, to the vice president, to all of us, to the Congress. And everything we presented was consistent with what the intelligence community was telling us.

Stephanopoulos: Granting that it was an honest mistake, had you known that no weapons would be found, would you have advocated invasion?

Powell: I don't know how to answer that question. I think it would have changed the basic calculus, because when the president went to the United Nations in September of 2002, that was the principal case he made.

But he also indicated, as I did, in my Feb. 5th presentation of 2003, that there were human rights violations, there were other violations of U.N. resolutions, there was terrorist activity.

So the case could have been made that Saddam Hussein...

Stephanopoulos: But realistically ...

Powell: ... had to be changed ...

Stephanopoulos:... there would have been less -- more opposition in the U.N. and more opposition in Congress.

Powell: I think it would have been a far more difficult decision for the president to make if it was certain at that time that all of the stockpiles had been destroyed and there were no stockpiles.

Stephanopoulos: And would your advice have been different?

Powell: I can't tell you that. I think I would have said to him, "You have a far more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the absence of those stockpiles."

But let there be no doubt where we are now is I'm very pleased that Saddam Hussein is gone and that regime is gone and these kinds of questions will never be discussed again. Because no matter how this political process unfolds over the next six to eight months, I don't see any outcome that will produce a regime that is going to be interested in weapons of mass destruction or threatening its neighbors or doing the kinds of things that Saddam Hussein had been doing for the last 20 or 30 years..

Besides, you who prayed that America would lose in Iraq forever separates you as a trader from any of these American military personnel you dare to quote without their permission.

===========================

You are delusional if you think I prayed for America to lose.

Rummy said in SIX MONTHS the USA will be out of Iraq!

Who lied? Me?

I THINK NOT!

----------------------------

False Pretenses
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. http://tinyurl.com/3az9ya January 23, 2008
By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

"You are delusional if you think I prayed for America to lose."

Six years of posting on RNN by you prove it without doubt! You still want Iraq to fail, just like the enemy. It won't because it has become Obama's pride and joy, handed to him on a silver platter by President Bush.

PROOF BUSH REPUBLICANS ARE UNAMERICAN AND TRAITORS TOO AMERICA!

Enclosed are court transcript testimony under oath!

Libby Trial Exhibits March 6, 2007
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0306/index.html

P R O C E E D I N G S Whereupon, I. LEWIS LIBBY was called as a witness and, after first being duly sworn by the Foreperson of the Grand Jury, was examined and testified as follows: EXAMINATION BY MR. FITZGERALD: Q. And Mr. Libby, if you could state your name for the record and spell your name? A. I. Lewis, L-e-w-i-s; Libby, L-i-b-b-y. Q. And do you have a nickname? A. I do. Q. Okay. And that is -- A. "Scooter".
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0306/gx1t.txt

P R O C E E D I N G S Whereupon, I. LEWIS LIBBY was called as a witness and, after first being duly sworn by the Foreperson of the Grand Jury, was examined and testified as follows: EXAMINATION BY MR. FITZGERALD: Q. Good morning, Mr. Libby. A. Good morning. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0306/gx2t.txt

Bill F. read the date the CIA came out publicly against the Bush administration!

July 25, 2003

Where were the mainstream media?

Only independent media reported the facts in the run up to the Iraq war.

==========================

Ex-CIA Agent Melvin Goodman on Cheney Iraq Speech: “Longest Statement of Disinformation” Ever Fed U.S. Public
July 25, 2003 / http://tinyurl.com/5v8r8b
Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday attempted to restate the administration’s case for war at a speech at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.
He repeatedly cited an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that warned Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

“Those charged with the security of this nation could not read such an assessment and pretend that it did not exist. Ignoring such information, or trying to wish it away, would be irresponsible in the extreme,” Cheney said. “And our President did not ignore that information--he faced it. He sought to eliminate the threat by peaceful, diplomatic means and, when all else failed, he acted forcefully to remove the danger.”
Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman responded on Democracy Now! by describing Cheney’s speech as the “longest statement of disinformation that I think the American government has distributed to the American people.”

Goodman went on to say, “For Dick Cheney to recite those charges we all know now not to be true adds to the terrible politicization of intelligence that’s created a scandal in the intelligence community unlike anything I ever saw in my 24 years in the C.I.A. that includes the period of Vietnam, the period of the intelligence failure on the Soviet Union, and the incredibly contentious disputes over arms control.”

Cheney did not discuss his role in the Iraq-Niger uranium scandal or the reports that he personally went to CIA headquarters to pressure the Agency on Iraq intelligence.
Senator Bob Graham of Florida yesterday called for a congressional probe to examine whether Cheney’s meetings with the CIA.
http://www.democracynow.org/2003/7/25/ex_cia_agent_on_cheney_iraq


------------------------------

Six years of posting on RNN by you prove it without doubt! You still want Iraq to fail, just like the enemy.

==========================

Read My Lips:

Iraq and Afghanistan are not winnable anymore because Bush and Cheney blew it big time!

Hearts & Minds!

Two very important words Hearts & Minds!

-------------------------

PROOF BUSH IS INCOMPETENT FIGHTING TERRORISM

HOW TERRORIST GROUPS END / Bush Fighting Wrong War On Terror
Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida / Rand Conservative Think Tank
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf

======================
How Terrorist Groups End
Implications for Countering al Qa'ida
The United States cannot conduct an effective counterterrorism campaign against al Qa'ida or other terrorist groups without understanding how such groups end. While it is clear that U.S. policymakers will need to turn to a range of policy instruments to conduct such campaigns — including careful police and intelligence work, military force, political negotiations, and economic sanctions — what is less clear is how they should prioritize U.S. efforts.

A recent RAND research effort sheds light on this issue by investigating how terrorist groups have ended in the past. By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.
These findings suggest that the U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts.
First Systematic Examination of the End of Terrorist Groups
This was the first systematic look at how terrorist groups end. The authors compiled and analyzed a data set of all terrorist groups between 1968 and 2006, drawn from a terrorism-incident database that RAND and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism jointly oversee. The authors used that data to identify the primary reason for the end of groups and to statistically analyze how economic conditions, regime type, size, ideology, and group goals affected their survival. They then conducted comparative case studies of specific terrorist groups to understand how they ended.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf

"PROOF BUSH REPUBLICANS ARE UNAMERICAN AND TRAITORS TOO AMERICA!

Enclosed are court transcript testimony under oath!"

More Flim-Flam from the master of deceit, Caspian. Have you no scrupples whatsoever???

You posted proof of what? That Libby went to trial. Tell us something we don't know. Evidently you don't know or care about the outcome of the evidence. Libby or no one else in the Bush Whitehouse was found to have outed Plame. It was found that her husband and his big lying leftist mouth according to the Washington Post Sept. 2006 was most responsible and of course lest we forget poor Armitage. Libby was convicted on charges completely unrelated to the CIA outing.

"Bill F. read the date the CIA came out publicly against the Bush administration!

Ex-CIA Agent Melvin Goodman on Cheney
Iraq Speech"
---------------------------------------

And according to you Caspian, EX-CIA Agent Melvin Goodman constitutes and justifies you stating that the CIA came out against Bush??????? As you know he wasn't speaking for the Agency he was speaking as a lone private citizen. This althought, does constitute about the 3,634th Caspian filthy lie. You are truly the RNN undistuted village idiot and prove it every time you set yourself up like this.

SEE BELOW FOR MY JUSTIFICATION IN CALLING MANY WHO OPPOSED FINISHING THE JOB IN IRAQ AS TRAITORS, AS THEY AIDED AND ABETTED THE ENEMY!!!

(Guess who'se name appears at the top of th list?)

---------------------------------------

December 28, 2007

A Fox News poll in mid- January revealed that a disturbing 49 percent of Democrats either wanted us to lose in Iraq or "didn't know" if they wanted us to succeed. All but two Democrats voted in the House to oppose the surge.

As our troops succeeded, these surge critics went from arguing against the strategy to arguing whether violence dropped in Baghdad - and then to arguing about why that decrease occurred.

Through it all, Gen. Petraeus and the troops serving under him have remained stalwart, candid and courageous.

Libby was found guilty in a court of law for lying to the FBI and Obstructing Justice!

It is "YOU BILL" who is the fabricator "NOT ME"!

=========================

JUDGE AGREED PLAME WAS COVERT
Was She or Wasn't She?
Arguing that Libby deserves jail time, Fitzgerald says Plame was a covert agent.
http://tinyurl.com/2o9dvj May 29, 2007

In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18927332/site/newsweek/

Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks
http://tinyurl.com/zgjtq April 6, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court [PDF] on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case. http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0406nj1.htm

Libby judge 'perplexed' by clemency
His 30-month sentence was appropriate for the former Cheney aide, he writes in his first public comments on the issue.
July 13, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2zduj8
WASHINGTON — In an unusual expression of frustration, the judge who sentenced former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to 30 months in jail, only to see the sentence commuted by President Bush, said he was "perplexed" by the act of clemency.

In his first public comments on the matter, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton took issue with Bush's statement that the prison sentence ordered for Libby last month was "excessive." Walton defended the sentence, saying that he followed established legal precedents as well as a strict interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines that has been supported by Bush's own administration.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/071307S.shtml

See Bill F. , only in your world Bush was right and Generals were wrong!

--------------------------

General Sanchez: US will not win in Iraq
Sanchez, former U.S. commander in Iraq, calls war 'a nightmare with no end in sight' / October 13, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2qobka
ARLINGTON, Va. – The former top commander of U.S. troops in Iraq slammed the handling of the war and gave a bleak assessment of the current situation in Iraq.
“There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a convention of military journalists on Friday.
Sanchez commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. His controversial tenure saw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi government, but also the rise of the insurgency and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56997&archive=true

Someday Bill you will realize Bush was the worst president in all of American history!

----------------------

HALLIBURTON CHENEY, OLD MAN RUMMY AND DUMMY BUSH LOST TWO WARS IN AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ WITH THE BEST MILITARY ON EARTH!!!

THESE THREE STOOGES LOST THE HEARTS & MINDS OF THE WHOLE MIDDLE EAST!!!


Military can't win in Iraq: General Petraeus Says
March 10, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2n3l43
AS THE new US commander in Iraq warned there was no military solution to the conflict and the US needed to talk to insurgents, the US Democratic Party leadership has finally bitten the bullet and proposed a deadline for the withdrawal of US combat forces by October next year.
"There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," General David Petraeus said. "Military action is necessary to help improve security … but it is not sufficient."
Addressing massed ranks of reporters in Baghdad's fortified green zone, General Petraeus said Iraqi leaders would eventually have to sit down and talk with some of the violent factions tearing the country apart.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/military-cant-win-in-iraq-general/2007/03/09/1173166991655.html

General Norman Schwartzkopf : Iraq Quagmire For USA
http://tinyurl.com/ymngms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jteZR77knz4&eurl=

General Norman Schwartzkopf : Iraq Quagmire For USA
Iraq Quagmire: That, George Bush, knew!
http://tinyurl.com/2q9ex6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mO4UCYyef8

Report: Wiretaps risked a crisis
The Bush program's secrecy - only three Justice lawyers knew of it - nearly brought mass resignations. Jul. 11, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/nkog4q
WASHINGTON - The Bush White House so strictly controlled access to its warrantless-eavesdropping program that only three Justice Department lawyers were aware of the plan, which nearly ignited mass resignations and a constitutional crisis when a wider circle of administration officials began to question its legality, according to a watchdog report released yesterday.
The unclassified summary by five inspectors general from government intelligence agencies called the arrangements "extraordinary and inappropriate" and said White House secrecy "undermined" the ability of the Justice Department to do its work.
The report is the first public sign of a long-running investigative review of a program that provoked fierce conflict within the highest levels of the Bush administration in 2004.
At the time, Justice's second in command and the FBI director both vowed to resign if President George W. Bush continued with electronic intelligence-gathering that they believed was outside the boundaries of the law.


http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090711_Report__Wiretaps_risked_a_crisis.html

Report: Bush-era surveillance went beyond wiretaps
A government report raises new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice officials in the dark about the post-Sept. 11 program.
July 11, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/mudoz6
Reporting from Washington -- The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers.

The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.

In a move that it described as "extraordinary and inappropriate," the report said the White House relied on a single, lower-level attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for assessments about the programs' legality.

The attorney, John Yoo, a young George W. Bush appointee with close ties to the president's inner circle, wrote a series of memos legally blessing the program even though his superiors and most top officials were uninformed about it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-wiretap11-2009jul11,0,1989283.story

Report: Bush Administration Surveillance Program Legally Questionable
11 July 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/mdt6bx
A review by top U.S. government investigators says a secret surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 terror attacks got too little legal review when it started.

The program included wiretaps without court approval and some unprecedented intelligence collection efforts. News accounts say it is not clear how effective the highly controversial program was in producing useful intelligence.

The report was published Friday by five inspectors general of agencies with intelligence responsibilities: the Defense and Justice Departments, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-11-voa3.cfm

Report: Bush surveillance program was massive
July 10, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/kum6v4
The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.
The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."
The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos under girding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEr2O_sANlmWwPWdPygTxCbq1_bQD99BT5BO0

Demonizing Panetta’s CIA:

Friday, July 10, 2009

The letter signed by seven members of the House Intelligence Committee is at once blatant lobbying for an amendment that would expand Congressional access to classified intelligence and a potent example of its dangers. When the majority of Democrats on the most sensitive committee in Congress are disposed to leak a briefing in order to stigmatize the CIA, it is a harbinger of more dangerous leaks to come. Should the amendment pass, among those with access to state secrets are a congressman who went on a high-profile propaganda trip arranged by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service, a former federal judge impeached for bribery, and a Democratic Socialist whose husband spent time in prison for check-kiting.

The Left’s assault on the intelligence is both the cause and effect of this letter. Defending himself from Pelosi’s allegation that the CIA lies to Congress “all the time,” CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a statement May 15 declaring, “It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.” The newly leaked letter, which was not sent on official letterhead, claims Panetta told the committee on June 24 that “top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.” It enjoins the director, “In light of your testimony, we ask you publicly correct your statement of May 15, 2009.”

Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes went further in a separate letter to Republican colleague Pete Hoekstra, insisting the CIA “affirmatively lied” to him and he is considering an investigation.

The CIA and the committee’s Republicans moved to shoot down the story. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on Wednesday, “The CIA and Leon Panetta are not acknowledging, in any fashion, that he testified that there was any misleading of Congress. That is not true.” CIA spokesman George Little said any assertion of lies is “completely wrong.” On Thursday, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-TX, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, denied the letter accurately represents Panetta’s June 24 briefing. Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Rep. Darrell Issa of California said Panetta merely told them the CIA failed to adequately inform them about a classified program that never became active. Rogers insisted, “There was not this pattern of not telling us things.”


An Entreaty for Institutional Hara-kiri

After spending six years accusing the president and the CIA of lying, one can hardly be surprised by the Democrats cynically twisted Panetta’s words. Treating the CIA as a pariah has been de rigueur since the days when Democrats stopped following the Church Committee hearings long enough to watch Three Days of the Condor. Rep. Rush Holt, the New Jersey Democrat who leaked the letter according to the New York Times, confessed on Countdown with Keith Olbermann Thursday, “The point we are trying to make was there was a pattern of denial and deception, a pattern that ultimately affects the security of Americans…over not just the months but the years and the decades.” He generously allowed that “many” CIA agents “are patriotic” – presumably Valerie Plame and Mary McCarthy.

However, the letter demands something at once absurd and perilous. In response to an incomplete briefing (concerning a program about which Panetta himself had just learned), the Democratic majority did not demand an apology, or full briefings in the future; they asked the director of the CIA to tell the world it is CIA policy to mislead Congress. The letter is an entreaty for institutional hara-kiri. The political benefits, particularly to Nancy Pelosi, are as obvious as the damage it would do to CIA morale, citizens’ confidence in their government, and America’s prestige and trustworthiness around the world. The Left’s anti-CIA mania is underscored by the hardball these members are willing to play with a former Democratic Congressman appointed by a leftist Democratic president.

Scapegoating, Blame-Shifting, Conspiracy-Mongering

The political motivation and desire to vindicate Nancy Pelosi’s tarring of the CIA have been lost on no one. Andrea Mitchell observed the signatories “are very close allies of Speaker Pelosi.” Holt seemed to admit the connection. “If people are saying, ‘Heaven forbid the speaker said the CIA deceived Congress’ – anyone who has served any time on these committees and is straightforward will say, ‘Yes, of course.’”

Others prefer to see Bush-era machinations at work. Lanny Davis asked if Dick Cheney (who else?) were involved, calling his baseless rumination “an important subject for a 9/11-type bipartisan commission.” Jack Rice, a commentator for Air America, agreed.

However the breach came about, everyone acknowledges it concerned neither waterboarding nor interrogations – leaving the left-wing imagination free to till its most fertile fields: imagining the evils of the United States. The Huffington Post speculated the program in question was an “Executive Assassination Ring,” a program whose existence is predicated on the reporting of Seymour Hersh. Since no one can legally identify the classified program, the ill-advised letter has touched off waves of speculation – and if it succeeds in its larger design, it will be the first of many.

The Shape of Leaks to Come

The letter’s deeper goal was to bolster the amendment pending before the House to open CIA briefings to all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, expanding the hearings to 40 people instead of eight. Andrea Mitchell called the letter little more than “a lot of posturing” on the eve of the vote.

Obama Doesn’t Trust These People…

President Obama, a leftist committed to national security “openness,” has threatened to veto the measure if it passes, saying it would run “afoul of tradition by restricting an important established means by which the President protects the most sensitive intelligence activities that are carried out in the Nation's vital national security interests.” The media report the White House also worries “briefing more lawmakers might compromise the most sensitive U.S. intelligence operations.”

Why is that? The House is Democrat-controlled. As head of the party, Barack Obama knows those who would be briefed better than anyone else. And that is why he is restricting their access to material that could get Americans killed.

The cavalier attitude the Gang of Seven took toward releasing this letter about a classified CIA briefing is an argument they should not be entrusted with national security. Holt told Politico,“It seemed to us that we weren’t getting the response to the letter that it deserved…After weeks of no response and no action, what were we going to do?” Holt, et. al., argue that since the Director of the CIA did not throw the entire national security apparatus under the bus within nine days, it justified leaking the letter and touching off endless speculation. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democratic signatory, has told The Huffington Post the seven released the letter because their lawyers “made a determination recently that it did not need to be classified so we made it public.”

This begs the question: what else will their unelected staffers determine “need not be classified” if they receive regular CIA briefings?

…Would You?

If the amendment passes, classified CIA briefings will be open to all House Intelligence Committee members. Examining the records of but a few of the letter’s signatories chills the reader at the prospect.

· Mike Thompson, D-CA. If allowed to sit in on CIA briefings, Thompson would be the first Congressman to my knowledge to receive classified information after having been manipulated by the intelligence agency of a foreign government. Thompson went to Iraq with Rep. Jim McDermott and former Congressman David Bonior in September 2002, on the eve of war. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) reportedly bribed Muslim activist and former Michigan CAIR organizer Muthanna al-Hanooti to arrange the trip. As intended, the trio toured carefully selected areas of the nation – the mass graves of children were not among them – then recycled Iraqi propaganda on U.S. television. Thompson insists he did not know he was being manipulated, which is itself an argument he has not business receiving classified information.

· Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL. In addition to being a member of the House Progressive Caucus, Schakowsky was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Socialists of America’s 46th annual Debs-Thomas-Harrington dinner and an early outspoken supporter of Cindy Sheehan (she who met with Iraqi parliamentarians who supported killing American GIs in battle). Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, was convicted of check-kiting in 2006 as head of the Illinois Public Action Council, on whose board Schakowsky sat. (He is now a blogger for The Huffington Post.) Such material would provide blackmail to foreign intelligence agents, if her extremist ideology did not place her in their orbit. Now that Roland Burris has declared he will not run for election, Schakowky is a likely candidate for Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.

· Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-FL. Pelosi’s original choice to chair the House Intelligence Committee was impeached for bribery as a federal judge. More lucrative funds could come his way after a CIA briefing. Hastings has already shown his unwillingness to get serious about his role in leaking intelligence. When Darrell Issa suggested those who drafted the letter take polygraph tests, Hastings, replied, “Cut me some slack.” (National security by J.R. “Bob” Dobbs.)

In the Senate, the amendment would open the doors to far-leftists Russ Feingold, D-WI; Ron Wyden, D-OR; Barbara Mikulski, D-MD; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI. It was a staffer of Chairman Jay Rockefeller who produced an infamous memo suggesting Senate Democrats politicize the committees investigations. Rockefeller has testified to his loose lips abroad, saying, “I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.”

Increasing the number of people who have classified intelligence inevitably invites greater leaks – especially in a party that glorifies “white-blowers” and justified the media’s destruction of Homeland Security programs after 9/11.

This widening of the net affects the intelligence services of our allies, as well. In the post-Church Committee CIA, foreign nations declined to share information with us for fear of leaks. William F. Buckley Jr. noted, “they did not wish to risk their own assets by letting the CIA, whose secret information, post-Church, was available to as many as 36 U.S. legislators, have knowledge of them.” Among the members of the House Intelligence Committee at one point was Castroite Ron Dellums. The current letter demonizing the CIA is intended to open the gates to as many as 40 Congressme, some of whom have proven themselves Dellums’ worthy successors.

About that CIA 'Lie':

House Democrats play politics with national security to protect Pelosi.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
JULY 10, 2009

As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring Congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren't potentially so damaging for national security.

The latest episode comes courtesy of Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In a letter leaked to the press on Wednesday, he claims the agency "misled" Congress about its activities after 9/11. Recall that this all started when Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about aggressive interrogations during her time on Intelligence earlier this decade. CIA Director Leon Panetta in May said the agency didn't, as policy or practice, "mislead Congress." Briefing notes from the time showed Mrs. Pelosi was told and didn't object to waterboarding. The CIA this week felt compelled to issue another denial in response to the Reyes letter.

Mr. Panetta must feel burned. After the Pelosi blow-up, he has tried to repair relations with his own party's Congressional leaders, and last month he reached out to the Intelligence Committee. On June 24, in a classified hearing, Mr. Panetta produced so-called new information about CIA counterterrorism efforts in the months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We're told that he informed the Members that the agency had considered, then abandoned, a major covert antiterror program. (Our sources wouldn't say what it was.) Bush-era CIA officials didn't tell Congress because it never got off the ground. But this is the "at least one case" Mr. Reyes claims his committee was "lied to" about in the Bush years.

There's apparently no limit to how far Speaker Pelosi's friends on the Hill are willing to go to salvage her reputation. The intentions are transparent enough. The Reyes letter was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on Intelligence. Mr. Hoekstra yesterday said the media received the missive before he did. And two days after the Panetta testimony last month, six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to "correct" his statement in May that the CIA doesn't lie to Congress. He didn't. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing -- and poll numbers -- have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.

To his credit, Mr. Panetta sees the obvious danger to morale at the agency and its ability to perform its essential job, and is standing up for his troops. But the Democratic attack isn't limited to bad-mouthing America's intelligence professionals. As dangerous is the intelligence authorization bill before Congress.

House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi's insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information to the so-called Gang of Eight -- the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairmen and ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn't at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

The original sin was President Carter's for conceding so much intelligence supervision to Congress in the 1970s. The Obama White House is right to resist giving away any more, and on Wednesday it threatened to veto the Democratic bill. House Members who are willing to put the politics of protecting their Speaker above national security can't be trusted with adult decisions on intelligence and war-fighting.

Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance
http://tinyurl.com/l9s7oo / July 11, 2009
Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.
The Bush White House pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.
The report, mandated by Congress last year and delivered to lawmakers Friday, also says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.
On the subject of oversight, the report particularly criticizes John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos defending the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.
The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEr2O_sANlmWwPWdPygTxCbq1_bQD99C4KI00

The Liberal Press acknowledged when it was dead wrong why can't you?????????????

---------------------------------------
End of an Affair:

It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.

WASHINGTON POST

Friday, September 1, 2006; Page A20


WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage..

Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey


Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.

That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Caspian:

Exactly who'se delusional???
---------------------------------------

"The Myth of the Surge
Hoping to turn enemies into allies"

MYTH, what myth???

BYE-BYE, BABYLON
EXITING IRAQ'S CITIES, VICTORIOUS:
June 30, 2009
OUR effort in Iraq passed a major milestone today: Our troops are leaving the cities.

Advisers remain in place. Joint patrols will still occur. And our forces will wait nearby to respond to Iraqi calls for support. But the last of the bases and US-only outposts within Iraq's urban centers will be vacated.

Terrorists have already begun testing the new security arrangements. Iraqi forces won't always pass with flying colors.

Yet this situation seemed a pipe dream not so long ago: Iraq's security forces, serving an elected government, assume primary responsibility for the good order of their own country.

We all recall the delighted leftist claims that Iraq had entered a hopeless civil war. Wrong. That Iraqis preferred al Qaeda to us. Wrong. That Shia militias represented the people. Wrong. And that Iran would seize control. Wrong again.

Looking back over six years of good intentions, tragic errors, generosity, arrogance, partisan vituperation, painful deaths and ultimate vindication, two things strike me: the ever-resisted lesson that human affairs are more complex than academic theories claim, and the simple truth that most human beings prefer a measure of freedom to immeasurable repression.

Now the symbolism of our troops withdrawing from Iraq's cities is richer than Washington grasps. Mesopotamia created urban culture: Ur, Babylon, Nineveh and countless lesser-known sites are where humans first worked out ways to live together in close quarters in large numbers. The coming wave of terror will strike cities that make Baghdad seem a youngster.

The "cradle of civilization" is rising from the grave again.

Yes, sectarianism, old grievances and the greed for power may deliver future crises -- even an eventual civil war. An unnatural state with grossly flawed borders, Iraq has more obstacles to overcome than any of its neighbors except Lebanon.

But our achievement remains profound: We gave one key Arab state a chance at freedom and democracy. We deposed a monstrous dictator who butchered his own people and invaded two foreign countries. And we didn't quit, despite the scorn of the global intelligentsia.

Human events aren't linear, nor do they conform to political programs. In Iraq, the unintended consequences ultimately gave us an unexpected victory.

We botched the occupation early on, which seemed to create an opportunity for our enemies. As a result, al Qaeda declared Iraq the central front in its war on civilization.

Thus, it set itself up for a massive strategic failure, alienating the people of Iraq and exposing itself as a fraud. Al Qaeda may limp along for decades, lashing out now and then -- but its high watermark occurred in 2006 in Anbar Province.

That single development made Iraq worthwhile.

But other gains, too, emerged from the vilified Bush administration's actions: As we just saw in Lebanon and Iran, democracy now seems possible to populations that had almost given up.

Iran will be free one day, the only question is when. And it won't be because of President Obama's grotesque Cairo apologia.

The problem for presidents is that great changes don't conform to our political calendars. Derided for his "axis of evil" remarks, Bush now looks far wiser than Obama in the wake of North Korean threats of nuclear devastation and Iran's savage crackdown following a wildly fraudulent election (and Tehran's attack on Obama's "interference," even though our president initially defended the election results).

There is evil in the world. No matter how resistant Obama may be to learning that basic lesson, our enemies will hammer it into him.

As our troops leave Iraq's cities today, their commanders know that still more bloody trials lie ahead. Now and then, the Iraqis will "shoot the red star cluster," calling for our help. But today isn't just a day for Iraqis to celebrate -- it's a good day for us, too.

And it's a day of vindication for a former president who saw clearly, but spoke poorly (to the delighted mortification of the media).

Now we have a president who expresses himself beautifully, but seems blind to international reality. And it's up to him to determine whether Iraq was a new beginning or a dead end.

The Great Betrayal :

We won the war in Iraq. It's time to look at those who tried to lose it

Thursday, March 19, 2009

On this sixth anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq, there is finally a consensus among supporters and opponents that we’ve won the war. The surge that Bush launched and Democrats opposed has been successful and, as a result, Iraq has become a Middle Eastern democracy, an anti-terrorist regime, and an American ally. It would be hard to imagine a more remarkable turnabout or a more comprehensive repudiation of conventional political wisdom. Yet this has not led to a comparable reappraisal by critics of the war of their previous attacks, or to any mea culpas by Democrats who launched a scorched earth campaign against the president who led it, and continued it for five years while the war dragged on.


The Democratic attacks on the war described America’s commander-in-chief as a liar who misled his country and sent American soldiers to die in a conflict that was unnecessary, illegal and unjust. This made prosecution of the war incalculably harder while strengthening the resolve of our enemies to defeat us. It is time to re-evaluate the words and actions of the war’s opponents in the stark light of a history that proved them wrong.


In the fall of 2002, a majority of Democrats in the Senate joined Republicans in voting to authorize President Bush to use force to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein. In July 2003, only three months after Saddam had been removed, the Democratic National Committee launched a national campaign which accused President Bush of lying in order to trick Democrats into voting for the war. It was the beginning of a five-year campaign designed to paint the president as the liar-in-chief and America as a criminal aggressor, and the military occupier of a poor country that had not attacked us.


What had changed in the intervening three months to turn Democrats so vehemently against the war they had authorized? The answer can only be found in domestic politics. In those three months, an unknown antiwar candidate named Howard Dean had taken the lead in the primary polls and was looking like a shoe-in for the Democratic presidential nomination. As a result rival candidates who had voted for the war, including eventual nominees Kerry and Edwards, changed their positions 180 degrees and joined the attacks on President Bush. Naturally, the Democrats couldn’t admit their attacks were motivated by crass political calculations. Instead, they claimed that they had been deceived by the White House which had manipulated the intelligence on Iraq, persuading them to support the war on false premises.


This allegation was in fact the biggest lie of the war, since Democrats had full access to all U.S. intelligence on Iraq through their seats on the congressional intelligence committees. This intelligence was available to them, in advance of their vote to authorize the use of force. In the months and years that followed, the Democrats added other false charges -- that troops “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” were “terrorizing kids and…women,” and had committed atrocities comparable to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime.” They rejoiced when news reporters leaked information about national security programs designed to combat the terrorists – and thus destroyed them. They held up funding for American soldiers on the battlefield, attempted to cut off all funding, and when that failed, tried to tie funding to a timeline that would ensure America’s defeat. They openly accused uniformed officers like General David Petraeus of lying about conditions on the ground and hoped against hope that “this war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything.”


Dissent is legitimate in wartime, but the Democratic Party’s opposition to this war went far beyond dissent into unprecedented territory. Fortunately, the Bush administration was able to retrieve its own mistakes and its domestic opponents to win a war that Democrats said was unwinnable and (despite their own authorization) shouldn’t have been fought in the first place. But it was no thanks to the Party that now occupies the White House that this American war was won.

Bill F. the joke is on you!

There is no such thing as liberal mainstream media in America!

MEDIA OWNERSHIP
http://tinyurl.com/d1x0
http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
July 11, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/lqy8g9
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12intel.html?hp