1 Boring Old Man

Gonzales Met With Advisers on Dismissals

Department officials said that the participants at the only formal meeting known to have been held to discuss the firings [11/27/2006] included:

• Mr. Gonzales [Attorney General]
• Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general;
• Mr. Sampson [Chief of Staff to the Attorney General]; resigned
• Monica Goodling, the department liaison to the White House; leave of absence
• William Moschella, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs;
• Michael A. Battle, then head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. resigned

I’m not exactly sure what to say about the revelation that Gonzales lied outright about the November 27th meeting, or that it explains the 18 day email gap. Are they so used to no oversight that they think they can get away with anything? But there’s more than that at stake here. They actually answer questions by starting with the conclusion they want, and then fitting the facts that get them there later. Gonzales isn’t just padding his story, telling it in a way that casts him in the best light – he’s lying on purpose. It’s a whopper, as they say. Scooter lied outright. Cheney and Bush lied outright in the lead up to the war.

This is beyond politics and skewed truth, this is outright conscious lying, skillfully planned to cherry pick through things until some story line can be developed that can’t be prosecuted, but is, in its essence, a lie. It’s lying as policy. It takes the fun out of sleuthing when they’re this flagrant. Alberto has fallen into it head first. May his colleagues follow shortly. That’s all I can think of to say…

Dems challenge Bush with Iraq timetable

Joined at the White House by veterans and service family members, Bush said: "A narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law and brings us no closer to getting the troops the resources they need to do their job.

"These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen."

from President Bush’s State of the Union Speech
January 28, 2003

Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.

…

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct — were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq’s regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

1. The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax — enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
2. The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin — enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn’t accounted for that material. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
3. Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He’s not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
4. U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them — despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
5. From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
6. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
7. The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.
8. Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families.

In the U.S., the Neoconservatives were beginning to push for a Regime Change [War] in Iraq and a group of them formed the Project for the New American Century. The P.N.A.C. sent a letter to then President Clinton to that effect. The assessments of the C.I.A. and the U.N. were that Iraq had been substantively disarmed, and so their responses were diplomatic pressures and warning military strikes. The U.N. disbanded UNSCOM and formed UNMOVIC, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, a reorganized monitoring group that responded to criticisms from from both sides in its structure.

Probably the best way to characterize this conflict would be to call it a pissing contest between the U.N. and Iraq. In the U.S., another pissing contest developed between the Clinton Administration and the Noeoconservatives over our post-Cold War foreign policy. For fifty years, our policy had been Containment. We had lived with the threat of "Gobal Communism" by fighting skirmishes like the Korean War and the Viet Nam War. The two "Superpowers" plotted and schemed in these lesser wars, while never coming to direct blows with each other. And, for fifty years, the American scene was dominated by conflict, Hawks and Doves. On a good day, the Hawks accused the Doves of being appeasers and perhaps cowards. On other days, they accused the Doves of being subversive. The Doves accused the Hawks of being pugilists who wanted to solve insoluable problems through war that were better left to evolve towards solutions using Containment.

In many ways, the dichotomy of the second half of the 20th century was a reaction to the events of the first half. The Kings and Rulers of Europe had reached the end of the viability of monarchy as a form of government, but didn’t know it. A War broke out [World War I] that was the biggest pissing contest of them all, and they fought a devastating and pointless war in the Trenches of France – a war we entered near its end bringing it to a premature closure. In our mythology, we see going "over there" as heroic. Winston Churchill saw it differently. He saw us as prolonging the war so that Lenin could take over Russia and Germany could be defeated with postwar reprisals that set the stage for World War II.

But, returning to the end of the Cold War, the Hawks saw the fall of Communism as the direct result of Reagan’s toughness. We saw it as in the cards, and a triumph for containment. Shortly afterwards, we fought the first Gulf War over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but in the process, learned that the C.I.A. had grossly underestimated Hussein’s weapons of Mass Destruction program. So by the 1992 election, the Administration had a get tough policy for penny-ante dictators, the nidus of what became the "Bush Doctrine," and as suspicious attitude towards our own C.I.A.

During the Clinton Era, things changed. Hussein continued to bluster around, but was basically defused. We had a new enemy, al Qaeda, and Clinton and the C.I.A. knew it, and were on top of it. But our Republican colleagues were in a time capsule in their think tanks, and had added the thirst for oil to the mix. When they took over, they picked up right where Papa Bush had left off, ignoring the facts of the intervening years. So they ignored al Qaeda, had disdain for our C.I.A. and the U.N. and set out to deal with [the now impotent] Iraq. I personally think it is reasonable to assume that they were after oil.

But after 911, they saw their chance to deal with Iraq. I completely agree that it was time to force the issue of inspections. Bush did that – going to the U.N. threatening war. And it worked! The U.N. inspectors were back in Iraq. He’d won. But he didn’t stop and this 2003 SOTUS speech purports to say why. Unfortunately, it’s essentially a lie, and a conscious lie at that. The first four items are guesses, and bad guesses at that. They are based on mathematical estimates. Iraq had the raw materials or the production capacity to make X amount of these weapons. The inspectors had found Y amounts. So X – Y = Z, some theoretical number which represents what would be missing if Iraq had operated full time at maximal capacity with 100% efficiency. All three are unlikely, and, as it turns out, untrue. So what Bush is calling real, is a figment of the imagination of some mathematician somewhere – not factual intelligence. Number five came from a shaky defector with Chalabi’s INC. Number Six has been heavily studied and is a massive exaggeration of a forged document – a distortion of a known lie. Numbers seven and eight are probable partial truths, proving what we already knew – Hussein was a sleaze bag. Duh!

So, the point is, Bush pushed the issue of the Iraq inspections. He won, but then he kept going. Whether he was motivated by the lust for oil or an anachronistic Hawkish foreign policy is not the central question. It was probably both. The point is that this whole section of the 2003 SOTUS was a boldfaced lie – presenting shaky conjecture and guesstimates as facts. He was going to "solve" the problem of Iraq once and for all, by force, and he lied to get us to go along with it. No matter what his motive, one doesn’t act definitively just because there’s a problem. One acts when there’s a problem and you have the solution. He had no viable solution. So, he lied to allow him to do something really stupid and harmful. He betrayed us and he betrayed the U.N. charter in the process. That is treason by my definition.

Another piece of things. He went for blood. They had a deck of cards of the whole government. They hunted them down, killing some outright, executing others. He didn’t go there after weapons. He didn’t just go there for a regime change. He went there to kill the Iraq government. Kill the Iraqi government. We invaded a country, threw it into chaos, and killed their government based on unsubstantiated guesstimates and known untruths, in order to deal with a hypothetical danger. That is treason by my definition.

and What was true? None of it that really mattered. None of it at all…

I’m a retired Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, and I sort of left that behind me as much as possible when I became a regular retiree. But occasionally, I have set-backs. 

This Justice Scandal is one of those times when I find myself thinking like a Psychiatrist. The Valerie Plame Affair was another. If Cheney were a sane person, he would’ve let Wilson’s Oped go. All he had to do was say, "I wasn’t aware of his report so I can’t really comment," and it might’ve just blown over. We didn’t know who Wilson was. But he didn’t do that. He and his fellows so over-reacted as to actually keep it on the front burner for years, and make it into a cause celebre` for their adverseries. That is the action of a sick man, a man who would be disgnosed as having a Narcissistic Personality Disorder with Paranoid Features in clinical practice.

Since the 1970’s and the work of Heinz Kohut and others, this group of conditions has been an increasingly recognized and understood set of Personality Disorders with definied diagnostic criteria. The patients are arrogant, insensitive to others, given to rage or temper attacks, and regress when criticized or slighted, becoming openly paranoid and vindictive. One of their characteristic ways of being is contemptuousness – that negative emotion in which the "other" is deemed to be without any value.

At least five of the "men at the top" show clear signs of this disorder – Bush, Cheney, Rove, Bolton, and Rumsfeld. They can’t be wrong. They can’t be criticized. When they are criticized, their response is to hold their critics in contempt, and retaliate – often vicously. They cannot take advice. To need advice is to be flawed, and that’s intolerable. Their response to criticism is to become irritated and insensed, as if the critic just doesn’t get it [because of their own intrinsic inferiority]. Compromise is a non-issue. A good example was Karl Rove’s speech to the New York Conservatives, in which his premise was that Liberals were to become extinct because of their wrong thinking. Conservatives and Liberals, Right and Left, have been the stuff of America since its inception. Back and forth, debate, compromise is how we do things. But with this Administration and it’s equally disturbed mouthpieces, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, there’s a new music in the air – extinction. To be honest, it sounds like the "final solution" in Mein Kampf. They scoff at being called Nazis, but it’s a very apt moniker.

These are sick men. They are not to be dealt with, because frankly, they’re too sick to deal. How we long for a good old sane Conservative force in our political dialogue. What we have now is a group of Narcissistically disturbed, often Paranoid men who justify their underhanded and often illegal shady ways of doing things by their delusional belief that "Liberals" are subversives who want to destroy our way of life. In fact, it is increasingly true that the opposite is the case. My point is that there is no other recourse than to remove them from power. They are too rigidly entrenched in a pathological group to change, and they are becoming more and more dangerous as they are "cornered." 

Take no comfort in the fact that they’re on the run. Challenging such people just makes them sicker. We are so not out of the woods so long as they’re in Washington.

Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case

03/22/2007 

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government’s racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s office began micromanaging the team’s strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government’s claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

In Retiring, Lead Attorney in Tobacco Suit Cites Bosses

12/01/2005 

The lead attorney in the government’s landmark racketeering case against the tobacco industry retired from the Justice Department yesterday, saying her politically appointed bosses showed little support for her or her team’s work on the case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks had led a group of career government lawyers who this summer recommended a $130 billion penalty against the tobacco industry, in part to fund smoking-cessation programs for millions of Americans. Her supervisors, appointees at the department, scaled back the proposal to $10 billion.

The shift triggered an uproar in Congress during the closing days of the tobacco trial in June, when requests from lawmakers prompted an investigation into whether there was political interference.

So, I was sitting around thinking last night, why do I think this Attorney firing case "has legs" [to use Mary Matalin’s phrase]? I thought it from the start, as did a lot of other people. Is it because it has to do with trying to subvert justice? Is it the straw that broke the camel’s back? Is it because Gonzales has been such a company man, defending legal positions that fly in the face of common sense? Thinking back on it, I think I started thinking that right after reading the very first emails that were released. They sounded "chronic" – like they were doing something that was standard operating procedure.

We know this Administration Manipulated the Intelligence System. We know that this Administration manipulated the  Press. We suspect strongly that they manipulated the Voting System. We’ve seen them manipulate the Justice System in Judicial Appointments. But, now, it appears they have "chronically" manipulated the Justice System at the level of the Prosecutors.

High-ranking Justice Department officials said there was no political meddling in the case, and the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concurred after an investigation.

Well Tony Snow has become a lost soul – lecturing the Press and spouting Republican shill. I kind of miss old Scott McClellan who said absurd things, but at least it looked like it hurt. Snow looks like he enjoys it. This is a career ending job, Tony. There’s no comeback from this. Get out while you still have your looks.

And then there was a re-run of last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart and John Bolton. Remember how they used to come out in force with Talking Points – Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell. There ranks are thinned or discredited now, so they role out John Bolton who at least left office without being shamed. Otherwise, Bolton’s spending time with his usual – fomenting war with Iran. They’re digging pretty deep. Pretty soon, they’ll be down to Laura Bush and… Well they’ll be down to the faithful few.

I was surprised Jon had Bolton on the show. The point of the Talking Point system isn’t to be agreed with, it’s just to get the message out to the faithful. I think it’s remarkable that they think the faithful might be watching the Daily Show! And, what a dumb Talking Point it is. They’re saying that Rove and Miers are close advisors to the President and they wouldn’t be able to give good advice if they had to testify to Congress and by the way, Bush doesn’t recall knowing about the Attorneys being fired. Ergo: his non-advice giving advisors wouldn’t feel free to advise him which, by the way, they didn’t do in the first place unless, of course, they did advise him but he doesn’t recall that they did it – blah blah blah.

 

Gingrich Speaks About 2008 Race In Nashville

Mar 21, 2007 9:55 AM EST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in Nashville that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.

Earlier this month Gingrich said he was seeking forgiveness for his own extramarital affair committed while he pursued President Clinton’s impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. 

Since the announcement, Gingrich said he’s received a positive response from colleagues and others. 

He’s considering a race for the presidency. Gingrich was in Nashville Tuesday night to speak at Vanderbilt University.

Oh look. It’s America’s Most Dangerous Man claiming that the candidates private lives shouldn’t be an issue in the 2008 campaign. He was busy impeaching Clinton for lying about his [Clinton’s] private life while he [Newt] was lying about his [Newt’s] private life, but now he thinks that the private lives of candidates shouldn’t be an issue in the next campaign.  But never count America’s Most Dangerous Man out of the running. He’s a great orator and a slick liar. Always know where Newt is. He’s the kind that can jump out of the shadows and sting you to death before you even see him…

The Attorneys were from States that hang between Republican and Democrat!