Clinton, The Gorelick Memos And “Chinagate”
Via Rush Limbaugh, Front Page Magazine uncovers the connections between the intelligence wall erected between the CIA and FBI – and the investigation that was going on by those agencies into criminal Chinese involvement in Democratic campaign funding.
When Gorelick took office in 1994, the CIA was reeling from the news that a Russian spy had been found in CIA ranks, and Congress was hungry for a quick fix. A month after Gorelick was sworn in, Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 24. PDD 24 put intelligence gathering under the direct control of the president’s National Security Council, and ultimately the White House, through a four-level, top-down chain of command set up to govern (that is, stifle) intelligence sharing and cooperation between intelligence agencies. From the moment the directive was implemented, intelligence sharing became a bureaucratic nightmare that required negotiating a befuddling bureaucracy that stopped directly at the President’s office.
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The result was a massive bureaucratic roadblock for the CIA – which at the time had a vast lead on the FBI in foreign intelligence – and for the FBI itself, which was also forced to report to the NCOB. This hampered cooperation between the two entities. All this occurred at a time when both agencies were working separate ends of investigations that would eventually implicate China in technology transfers and the Democratic Party in a Chinese campaign cash grab.
A year after PDD 24, with the new bureaucratic structure loaded with administration appointees, Gorelick drafted the 1995 memo Attorney General John Ashcroft mentioned while testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The Gorelick memo, and other supporting memos released in recent weeks, not only created walls within the intelligence agencies that prevented information sharing among their own agents, but effectively walled these agencies off from each other and from outside contact with the U.S. prosecutors instrumental in helping them gather the evidence needed to make the case for criminal charges.
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It is no coincidence that this occurred at the same time both the FBI and the CIA were churning up evidence damaging to the Democratic Party, its fundraisers, the Chinese and ultimately the Clinton administration itself. Between 1994 and the 1996 election, as Chinese dollars poured into Democratic coffers, Clinton struggled to reopen high-tech trade to China. Had agents confirmed Chinese theft of weapons technology or its transfer of weapons technology to nations like Pakistan, Iran and Syria, Clinton would have been forced by law and international treaty to react.
Go read it all.
Beltway Traffic Jam
Revision Requested
I do believe that, at this very moment, the Democratic party is wrestling with an important script rewrite. From: “BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION !!!!!”
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Now, for today’s bonus feature: an insight as to why Canadians are generally misinformed about US politics:
Today, the RNC responded :
“Al Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole.
“Al Gore’s attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia.”
Now understanding that should be pretty easy. It’s short. To the point. Not a lot of big words. Devoid of nuance. A no-brainer.
Antonia Zerbisias simple.
But, failing that – in the unlikely event that there was a reporter on the planet with the intellectual incapacity to misread that news release, you’d think the fact that it’s quotable would save them. Surely, laziness accompanies stupidity in the way that gravy accompanies mashed potatoes? Laziness is a defense mechanism that has evolved to keep the stupid alive. Being lazy keeps the stupid out of dangerous situations. Being lazy means not getting noticed by predators. (Newborn fawns are stupid and lazy.)
So, it should follow that a person too stupid to understand the content, would be inclined to take the lazy way out and quote it directly. Shouldn’t it?
On local radio, just now….
…[begin audio of Gore] …”The unpleasant truth is that President Bush’s utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States.”
The news announcer continues;
“Today the Republican party responded, saying that Gore should watch what he says, since the 911 attacks happened while he was vice-president.“
I despair.
Alberta, Everyone’s Favorite Destination
Dean Esmay makes an interesting point about world population, and population density. In so doing, he moves everyone on the planet to Alberta.
Living in Saskatchewan, I have no problem imagining this.
hat tip – OTB
When A Correction Isn’t A Correction
I was planning to write on the recent New York Times faux “correction”, but Paul has done a fine job.
The Times, like many in the media, made numerous mistakes in its coverage of Iraq. Perhaps the most (in)famous of all was the series of “Strategic Pause” stories. The stories, which ran only a few days after the start of the war, claimed that American forces were bogged down in Iraq and were forced to pause for a few weeks to regroup. “The war plan had failed” was a favorite quote of the day. Apparently the Pentagon missed the stories because just 2 weeks later, Iraqis were dancing in the streets and pulling down statues of Saddam as American tanks rolled thru Baghdad. The Times never did explain how it blew that story.
The fall of Baghdad lead to perhaps the second biggest gaff of the Iraq war reporting- that the Baghdad museum had been looted. The Times breathlessly reported that the museum had 170,000 items looted or destroyed. They also reported that the administration failed to put guards at the museum but had placed guards at the Oil Ministry’s office. None of those stories were true.
Nope. What the Times decided to “correct” was its reporting on evidence of weapons of mass destruction – information provided by Iraqi defectors and the Bush Administration. In fact, it’s not a correction at all, but an transparent attempt to focus blame – “They lied to us, and we fell for it. We won’t let that happen again!”
In keeping with the tone and quality of the piece, they can’t even get the facts straight now. Look at this;
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with al-Qaida — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi “scientist” — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
A full year and a half into this exercise, and the editors at the New York Times still haven’t heard of UN Resolution 1441, which mandated Iraq to prove it had destroyed known weapons stocks. No proof that they existed was necessary. Not a single defector, not a single spy plane photograph was required to “justify” anything. The “justification” was contained in the wording of the resolution.
That some member countries of the UN Security Council, now found to have been profiting from illegal kickback schemes in the Oil-For-Food program, refused to participate in military action, and efforts were made to demonstrate that Iraq was not only not complying, but continuing a clandestine operation, was merely tangential to that resolution.
The resolution is here.
But, hey – let’s take the Times at their word. Write the ombudsman, Daniel Orkent – demand they put their money where their correction is, and fire those editors responsible.
update
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Super Proteinism Nursery Rhymes
In the long blogosphere tradition of stealing Jeff Goldstein’s best stuff;
Hickery, dickery, dock!
The mouse ran up the clock:
The clock struck one,
the mouse ran down…
Hickery, dickery, John Kerry is an opportunistic scumfingerer.
Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb.
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as the guest list at a John Kerry cocktail party. And snow.
… and considering the current election campaign atmosphere, I think we should launch the Canadian version of “Super Partisan Nursery Rhymes”.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses, And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t undo the royal screwing-over he got from that little prickstain from Shawinigan
Feel free to use the comments section to express your creativity. The Americans won’t get it, but that’s even funner. In a sad, self-important Rick Mercer-ish sort of way.
Just Making Ends Meet
Who best to grease the skids in your business dealings with totalitarian regimes? Why, the guy with the proven track record!
“Oil, I don’t know what for you talk for. Oil – I put that in my car.”
(The CEO of PETROKAZ has an interesting resume.)
Of course, this isn’t a full time gig. The dance card started filling a few months ago.
Mr. Chr�tien is expected to hold meetings with CITIC’s top executives, who plan to visit Canada this year. Chinese sources say he also has tentative plans to meet next week with top executives of Unicom, one of China’s two main cellphone companies.
He’ll be accompanied by his son-in-law, Andr� Desmarais, the president of Power Corp., who is a director of CITIC Pacific Ltd., the Hong Kong affiliate of the CITIC group.
The subject of their meetings is unknown. But Power Corp. has extensive business interests in China, including property development in Shanghai’s booming Pudong district and a joint venture with Bombardier to manufacture railway cars in the coastal city of Qingdao.
All in the family. (This is the Desmarais family with major holdings in PetroFinaElf .. the French oil company who had billions in contracts at stake in Saddam’s Iraq.)
Right after Chr�tien retired from the PM’s office, Warren Kinsella appeared on local talk radio. When a caller brought up the family connection between Chr�tien and Desmarais – he interrupted, threatened to sue the station, and the caller was cut off.
Nice touch and such a loving reminder of the old man.
Hey, maybe while he’s there, he can have someone dig up Zahra Kazemi and ship her home. It’s not like she has to stick around for the trial.
Crossposted at the Shotgun
Flames Girls
While I don’t endorse this behavior, I admit that hockey would be far more popular in the US if they knew about this. It is a strange hockey traditon, considering the weather.
Drop-D
One of my commentors left a link to his site.
I think you should go see it.
BellGlobe Media: The UnNews Network
Stephen Den Beste examines some recent examples of biased reporting by the AP. More here on “reconstructed” quotes being used by the Globe and Mail (BellGlobe), NYT, Reuters, The Guardian…
To those, I add this. CTV’s National News trailers of last night mentioned the Bush speech. About halfway down the newscast, they got around to footage of Bush approaching the podium…. a few shots of the crowd.. and then … a clip of a single sentence.
Begin voiceover:
Cut to photos of naked prisoner in Abu Graihb.
Cut to Alan Freyer in Washington and his “analysis”.
Cut to interview with someone from the Brookings Institute
Cut to Janis Mackey Frayer in Baghdad. Is that Baghdad? Same backdrop every day.
Cut to film footage of “wedding party”. No coverage of the contradictory evidence.
Cut to interviews with unnamed Iraqis.
Cut to footage of burning car in Baghdad.
Turns out, the speech “coverage” really wasn’t coverage at all – just another excuse to recycle past negative events and political criticism. We heard reporter analysis of Bush’s poll fortunes, assertions that Iraqis are ovewhelming opposed to “the occupation”, were informed of the unstable security situation. Who knew? The razing of Abu Graihb was mentioned in passing.
It’s like this, night after night, and has been since the first days of the war. – and this is the network we turn to in order to escape CBC bias?
Well, this to Lloyd Robertson, Alan Freyer and Janis Makey Frayer: if this is the best you can do, if this is indicative of the level of respect you hold for the intelligence of your viewers, if you can think of nothing better than to replace the content of a speech made yesterday in Pennsylvania with the opinions of your Washington bureau chief, and 6 month old photos from a prison in Iraq, then thanks – but no thanks. You promised you would cover the speech, and when I gave you the chance to follow through on that, you didn’t. You wasted the opportunity code-talking to Canadians about what you think about Iraq.
So, I shall simply go read it for myself. I do not require your opinions about what it says, or what you think it says. I will form those on my own.
But unlike years past, I do not need you, Lloyd Robertson, Alan Freyer or Bell Globe Media. In fact, following is more information about the speech, and about the future plan for Iraq than you have provided in the past month. And I have provided it to my readers.
There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom: We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government; help establish security; continue rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure; encourage more international support; and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people.
The first of these steps will occur next month, when our coalition will transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens who will prepare the way for national elections.
On June 30th, the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist and will not be replaced. The occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs.
America’s ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, will present his credentials to the new president of Iraq. Our embassy in Baghdad will have the same purpose as any other American embassy: to assure good relations with a sovereign nation.
America and other countries will continue to provide technical experts to help Iraq’s ministries of government, but these ministries will report to Iraq’s new prime minister.
The United Nations special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is now consulting with a broad spectrum of Iraqis to determine the composition of this interim government. The special envoy intends to put forward the names of interim government officials this week.
In addition to a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister, 26 Iraqi ministers will oversee government departments from health to justice to defense. This new government will be advised by a national council which will be chosen in July by Iraqis representing their country’s diversity.
This interim government will exercise full sovereignty until national elections are held.
Now, did you read my opinion? Did I rewrite it for you? See any prison photos or burning cars?
No? Is that so hard?
Outside The Beltway has aroundup of links about the speech and reactions.
Liberal Party Slogan: “Not the US!”
“Stephen Harper has been clear about his plan for Canada. He has said over and over, and again this past week, that his intention is to reduce taxes until they are lower than those in the United States.” — Liberal Leader Paul Martin, Rideau Hall, May 23, 2004.
Safety In The Garden
Over the past couple of days I’ve been preparing my garden and tending to some badly needed yard work. In so doing I’ve had a epiphany or two.
Have you ever wondered what special kind of idiot loses a finger to a lawnmower?
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Well, spend three goddamn days trying to start the thing. By “thing”, I mean an ancient, 40 lb gas mower with a pull cord and a throttle spring that’s so worn that it requires a flat end screwdriver stuck between the air filter and the motor to keep the fuel flowing. Then, wait until the moment arrives that you are faced with the decision to turn it off – and restart it – to fix something down there… |
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I also learned that a Black & Decker electric whippersnipper works just as well with the rear plastic guard removed. Indeed, customized in this manner, Whippersnippers are capable of 360 degree weed whacking. Just wear your boots. |
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De-Suffrage Me
Elizabeth Eve never thought of herself as an exhibitionist. But these days, the 33-year-old history professor with the gold nose ring can barely contain the urge to lift her skirt and flash her skivvies.
Elizabeth never thought of herself as an exhibitionist, because she isn’t one. “Exhibitionist” would be dignified in comparison. Exhibitionists have the good sense to run away before they’re caught.
No, Elizabeth is no exhibitionist – she’s a walking twat joke.
“There is something so liberating and exciting about it, you’ve got to try it out,” she said recently as she fidgeted, fully clothed, on the couch in her friend Tasha’s Manhattan apartment. “I was teaching a class on imperialism, ” she continued, “and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy,” she said with a throaty giggle.
There’s a better solution. It’s called Monistat.
That’s because she wasn’t wearing just any panties. Elizabeth is part of Axis of Eve, a fledgling group of rabble-rousing feminists and anti-war activists who have taken to flashing their undies as a form of political dissent. The Eves, as they call themselves, are on a mission to sex up protest. They take to the streets wearing “protest panties” which come emblazoned with anti-Dubya double-entendres like “Expose Bush,” “Lick Bush,” “Give Bush the Finger” and “Drill Bush Not Oil.” When the Eves flash them at rallies, the effect is somewhere between a 1970s’ love-in and George Bush’s worst, frat- addled nightmare of a panty raid gone awry.
No, it’s somewhere between complete idiocy and total embarrassment.
If this is considered newsworthy political speech, carried out in the name of my gender, please, make it stop. Revisit this women’s suffrage thing. It’s not working. I know that some perfectly reasonable, sensible women will be hurt, but there’s a greater good to consider – I’ll gladly sacrifice my vote to save others.
UN Condemns Demolitions
Hot on the heels of UN condemnation of Israel for the destruction of homes of these refugees …
Bob Tarantino on the Sunday Toronto Star;
Anyways, on to my main man, Haroon Siddiqui. Haroon was very angry yesterday. He’s very grumpy about Israel destroying Palestinian homes. Now, personally, I think that imposing collective punishment on a group for the actions of individuals is, in most circumstances, grotesque. That being said, taking Hamas and Hizb’Allah at their word, Israel is in a state of war, so where the lines are drawn on these sorts of things gets moved around a bit. Besides which, I prefer to take the Naomi Kleinian view of the destruction of private property: it’s just legitimate resistance against globalization. What’s that? You don’t see the connection between Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes and opposition to corporate globalization? Funny, I don’t see the connection between a bunch of upper- middle-class white kids breaking McDonald’s windows while wearing their Nikes and opposition to corporate globalization, so I guess we’re about even.
Anyhoo, Haroon declares that Bush is supporting Israel in an effort “to win as many Jewish votes and donations away from Democrats as he can”. You know I can never keep this stuff straight: I thought the Jews ran the US government. If so, why does Bush need to win their votes? I’m so confused.
Go read the rest, he’s stringing them up, left and left – even the “Ombud”. That’s right – in the interests of stretching political correctness well past the point of absurdity, the Toronto Star has dropped the “man”.
The Trust Meme
A year or so ago, I was talking provincial politics with a friend in the Saskatchewan government. She made what I thought was a strange statement – that women in Saskatchewan didn’t “trust” the conservative SaskParty leader Elwin Hermanson. There was no further attempt to explain what this meant – just a blanket statement that he wasn’t “trusted”.
I wondered, trust as in “trust to do”? Trust not to do? Trust with your wallet? Trust in a dark alley? I didn’t ask at the time, and I should have – how do you even know this? Polling? And what prompted the governing NDP to ask such a undefined question in the first place?
The NDP had been push polling, of course – seeding a meme into the voting public, to draw upon later during a campaign. When the election was called, the local media fell in line, making the never defined “trust” question part of their own coverage of the election.
Well, the trust meme has already surfaced in the federal election, and on cue, it’s being pushed by the media.
It’s astonishingly counterintuitive – in view of the arrests and premature shutdown of the ADSCAM hearings, the biggest scandal in Canadian government history. Yet it doesn’t stop CTV’s Lloyd Roberston and Tom Clark from raising the “do Canadians trust” question when referring to Conservative Stephen Harper, in the guise of political analysis.
Harper is going to have to find a way to respond to this without defensiveness, that throws attention back on the question itself – to draw a white hot circle around the bigotry of a media and Liberal default position that suggests that “Western Canadians can’t be trusted”.
He went part way yesterday with his response to the media questions after the election call, and is being widely quoted;
“You know, in this country, you can be a Canadian without being a Liberal. The government seems to forget that. That’s why they need to be defeated. “It’s that kind of arrogance that leads to the waste, mismanagement and corruption we’ve seen.”
Not a bad start. We’ll need more of this.
Affirmative Action
Paul at Wizbang offers a solution for the lack of diversity in the media, that should make any liberal feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I wonder what a survey of Canadian news outlets would reveal?
White House Rift?
Not a bike fall??
Via Drudge.
Hope For Paraplegic Mice
Facetious subject line aside, this looks promising.
MIAMI (Reuters) – Rats with spinal cord injuries regained 70 percent of their normal walking function with a three-part treatment hailed as a breakthrough in paralysis research at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
The study at the university’s Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, due to be published on Monday in the June issue of the journal Nature Medicine, produced results “by far greater than what we’ve seen in anything else,” said the principal researcher, Dr. Mary Bartlett Bunge.
“It opens up a potential new avenue of treatment for human spinal cord injury,” said Bunge, who declined to speculate when human trials might be attempted.
Zinni Plays the Jew Card
Joining the parade is former head of CENTCOM under Bill Clinton, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni.
CBS 60 Minutes – Accusing top Pentagon officials of “dereliction of duty,” retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni says staying the course in Iraq isn’t a reasonable option.
“The course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it’s time to change course a little bit or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course,” he tells CBS News Correspondent Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen, says Zinni, because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along.
“There has been poor strategic thinking in this…poor operational planning and execution on the ground,” says Zinni, who served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000.
Zinni blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. [emphasis mine]
This is the same Zinni who masterminded the Clinton reprisals to terrorist attacks on the WTC and targets overseas. Among his achievements:
the strategy that destroyed a drug factory in Sudan in reprisal for the 1998 bombings in Africa that killed over 80. the single day missile attack on a nearly abandoned al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, killing 20 wanna-be terrorists. He himself has since called it a “million to one shot”, in contradiction to Clinton’s claim that they missed Bin Laden by hours.
“In weighing that out, without great intelligence, it’s a million-to- one shot,” he says. “Should you take it? Yes. You might get something, but in the absence of that, you can send [bin Laden] a message, maybe cause him to go off balance and set him back a little bit.”
Zinni is flogging a new book – “Chicken Soup For The Terrorist Soul – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Unbalance Bin Laden”.
Global Warming And Asthma?
About a week ago, news shot round the world that a spike in asthma rates has been attributed to global warming and rise in CO2 emissions:
New Jersey Star Ledger
The third-grader at the East Orange Charter School was diagnosed with the life-threatening condition when she was just a year old. Predictions of higher pollen counts and rising temperatures exacerbating asthma in America’s cities is a scary prospect for her.
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A report recently released by researchers at Harvard University predicts that poor and minority children in America’s cities will experience worsening asthmatic conditions due to global warming and air pollution. As the climate warms up, allergens such as pollen and mold will flood the air, interacting with urban pollutants such as ozone and soot to fuel an already growing epidemic of asthma.
“The combination of air pollutants, aero-allergens, heat waves and unhealthy air masses increasingly associated with a changing climate causes damage to the respiratory systems, particularly of growing children, and these impacts disproportionately affect poor and minority groups in the inner cities,” the report says.
America’s cities, blanketed with smog and climate- altering carbon dioxide, have become cradles of ill health and are fostering an epidemic of asthma, according to a report yesterday from a leading group of Harvard University researchers and the American Public Health Association.
Except that…. it’s not what the report says.
Cantstats surveyed the actual report;
The focus of the Harvard report is not the relationship between asthma rates (in children or adults) and increased levels of CO2 or global warming.
It had a larger purpose. “This report examines the direct impacts of CO2, as well as climate change, focusing on urban centers; examining synergies between air pollution and climate change and connections between climate change and emerging infectious diseases � in particular, West Nile virus, a disease carried by urban-dwelling mosquitoes that presents new problems for public health and mosquito control authorities.” (Epstein, pg. 4)
In fact, they revealed (exerpts):
They have more. And footnotes, too!