It can be hard to tell these days if what you read in ABC News's The Note is true or a failed attempt at parody.

Dan Froomkin on the WaPo website today.

When Rumsfeld attempts to distance himself from it.

I also wonder what kind of message Congress is getting at home when all of a sudden the Republicans are tripping over themselves to act like Democrats.

Arianna Huffington sits down with Ahmed Chalabi for dinner (for real):

My cell phone rang at 12:30 a.m. It was John Cusack, who had come with me to the Council on Foreign Relations to hear Chalabi speak earlier in the day.  "What are you doing?" he asked.  "I'm having dinner with Ahmad Chalabi," I replied (not a line I get to use very often).  I turned to Chalabi and asked if it would be okay to ask Cusack to join us. "He's an American actor," I volunteered.  "I know, I know..." he interrupted, and went on to reel off a list of Cusack's movies, including Being John Malkovich and The Thin Red Line. I was going to offer up Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil but bit my tongue.

You simply cannot make this stuff up. 

Ron Suskind was told by a senior White House official that he was a member of "what we call the reality-based community . . . [people who] believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.  We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Kinda takes on a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?

Take a closer look at the denials of Stephen J. Hadley, the National Security Advisor in relation to the Niger Forgeries from November 2, 2005.

Q On September 9th, 2002, you met in Washington with Nicolo Pollari, the head of the Italian Intelligence Agency, SISMI. According to the Italian daily, La Republica, Mr. Pollari came to the meeting to discuss an alleged attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger. Is that claim false?

MR. HADLEY: We'd looked at this issue. We had both looked at our documentary record -- I have -- we have talked -- I've searched my own recollection; we have also talked to other people on the NSC staff at the time who might have a recollection of that meeting. I can tell you what that canvassing has unearthed. There was a meeting in Washington on that date. I did attend a meeting with him. It was, so far as we can tell from our records, about less than 15 minutes. It was a courtesy call. Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed. And that's also my recollection. I have very little recollection of the meeting, but I have no recollection there was any of that discussion, or that there was any passing of documents. Nor does anybody else who may have participated in that meeting. That's where we are.

Look quite closely--Hadley says there was no discussion of natural uranium.  The phraseology is curious, no?  Why is this important?  Because yellowcake is not natural uranium.  It is a milled and processed version of uranium oxide.  Check out this description from the wikipedia entry:

“It is created by passing raw uranium ore through crushers and grinders to produce "pulped" ore. This is then bathed in sulfuric acid to leach out the uranium. Yellowcake is what remains after drying and filtering. The yellowcake produced by most modern mills is actually brown or black, not yellow; the name comes from the color and texture of the concentrates produced by early mining operations.”

Not exactly “natural uranium” is it?  So did they discuss yellowcake processed ore? Indeed, look at the denial--it literally says nothing at all.  The question is, is the claim that Pollari came to discuss attempted uranium purchases false?  The answer: (1) I don't remember, nobody else remembers, (2) there was no discussion of "natural uranium" and (3) no documents were passed.

In short, Hadley does not say the published report is false.  Nowhere.

Let's look at a more specific question he answered:

Q Have you or any member of your staff met with Italian intelligence officials elsewhere, outside the White House, or at any other time, when the question of Niger and uranium was discussed? And if not, can you tell us how the fake documents came into the possession of the U.S.?

MR. HADLEY: I would, obviously, in answering a question like that, want to check records and all the rest. I can tell you my recollection. My recollection is, no, not here, not anyplace else. I asked that question on the documents to refresh my own recollection. My understanding is that they came to the State Department after the NIE of October 2002. But again, I don't want to mislead you; that's the answer I got from a staff person a few minutes ago to refresh my memory.

Here the question is (1) have you ever met with Italian intelligence officials at any other time to discuss the questions of Niger and uranium and (2) how did the U.S. get the faked documents?  His answer is (1) let me check my records, I'm not sure and (2) my memory is no--but I looked at the documents to refresh my memory of the meeting, so my answer might not be correct and (3) The documents came to the State Department after the NIE of 2002, but I don't even know that, because I got the answer from a staff person a few moments ago to refresh my memory.

Note:  We now know that the U.S. originally received transcriptions of the documents which the Italians had altered to remove the tell-tale sign that the documents were forged--they changed the names of the Niger officials out of government on the forgeries for the transcriptions--putting in the correct officials.  So when did the originals with the obvious signs of forgery come over?  After the 2002 NIE.  As we are learning now, that NIE was the one which the Congress voted on.  Coincidence?  We report, you decide.  But remember that until the White House got the forged documents themselves, they would have plausible deniability regarding the authenticity of the documents--they could lie with a straight face.

Now let's turn to the President's State of the Union claim:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. 

Now that they have the forged documents which they really can't deny are forged, where is the Niger claim sourced?  Britain.  No mention of Italy, despite the fact that even the British claim is based on those documents.

Three years ago I would have discarded these thoughts as the product of an overactive imagination.  Now I parse every damn sentence that comes out of the White House.  Times have sure changed, haven’t they?  It gets curiouser and curiouser.  With denials like this, who needs Democrats.

Because, irony of ironies--the Plame case at this point actually takes the heat off of Bush.  How low he's sunk.

Now we have at least one more person giving out information identifying Plame to reporters in the White House, according to Bob Woodward, who suddenly appeared before the Grand Jury.  Seems Bob got a subpoena after his source spoke with Fitzgerald very recently.  What's that about White House cooperation?  Problem for Bush--Woodward usually interviews the big boys.  So who was it?

Democrats making sure that everyone knows exactly who was President and who was the majority party at the time we launched the Iraq war.  Republicans trying to make it seem like maybe it was Carl Levin who made the final call to invade and forgot to plan for the post-war situation.

You'll note that not a single word on the specifics of the pre-war intelligence has come out of Bush's mouth in the White House's new rollout campaign.  Nothing.  He doesn't really want to touch the nuts and bolts of the subject.  It's R-A-D-I-O-A-C-T-I-V-E. 

It is pretty much the core of his problem--he won't talk specifics because he doesn't want to be called on it.  Remind you of anything?  That's right--the Social Security rollout battle of earlier this year.  Expect the same results.  Perhaps we will be subjected to hand-picked "townhall" meetings with the words "Didn't Manipulate Intelligence" on a backdrop behind the President.  Regular people will come up to the podium to talk with the President and say "I thought those Niger documents in French were real too, Mr. President.  How was I to know that some of the signers of those letters were out of government over a decade?"

Froomkin, right on target:

President Bush on Friday launched his third presidential campaign -- this one to salvage his reputation, and what's left of his second term.

His goal this time is not to win an election; it's to gain back the public trust.

Amid all the tumbling poll numbers of late, Bush's biggest problem is this: A sizeable majority of Americans -- 55 percent according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll -- believe that he intentionally misled the American public in making his case for war in Iraq.

It don't stop there, people:

But Bush's argument is deeply flawed. Far from being baseless, the charge that he intentionally misled the public in the run-up to war is built on a growing amount of evidence. And the longer Bush goes without refuting that evidence in detail, the more persuasive it becomes.

Like other Bush campaigns, this one will inevitably feature the ceaseless repetition of key sound bytes -- the hope being that they will be carried, largely unchallenged, by the media -- and virulent attacks by the White House on those who dare to disagree, even going so far as to question their patriotism.

Wow.  He just lays it all out doesn't he?  Where were these people three years ago? 

You can't spend the first half of Bush's presidency crowing that the "MSM" doesn't get it when it comes to how good Bush is but that the polls show that Joe Average totally does get it and then turn around and say that Joe Average doesn't get it because he's being confused by the "MSM's" negative coverage of Bush when the polls drop like a rock.

I was just watching Ben Shapiro debate on Fox regarding censorship.  It came to my mind unbidden that there is a deadly error at the heart of the Bush worldview which has led us down this path--an error which we cannot afford to ignore.

Bush, Cheney, and their ilk believe that our ancient liberties of freedom of speech and thought, of the right to recourse to the law, and our right to choose the nation's destiny based on a full appreciation of the facts make us weak in comparison to our enemies--those radicals, Islamic and otherwise who would destroy the freedoms which each American almost unconsciously believes to be his or her birthright.

To the current leadership, giving those we capture in this fight the recourse to law and freedom from violent interrogation makes us weaker.  They also believe as a matter of course that questioning a leader's decisions in wartime weakens the ability of the nation to fight our enemies.  They want to have the ability to look at what we choose to read when we check books out from our local library--thinking that we are weaker because we allow ourselves the liberty to do what we wish, read and say what we wish, live and love as we wish.  Bush and his administration also apparently believe that our right to see the actual facts upon which a decision to go to war is made and to use those facts to inform our elected representatives of what we think is the best course for the nation is also a weakness which could cause the country to shrink from a fight which they think to be important. 

In this they share a common worldview with the terrorists and others who seek to destroy what we hold dear.  The Islamic radical worldview held by Osama bin Laden and the others who seek to prevent the spread of liberty within the Islamic world holds that allowing people the liberty to make their own choices and to be able to seek redress from the government when we are harmed by that government makes a nation weaker.  I have little doubt that these radicals also believe that any nation which decides that violent interrogation is something beyond the power of the government is weak as well.

It is no surprise, then, that Bush, Cheney and bin Laden share a common method for pressing us to give up our rights and freedoms: fear.  Although the Vice President's references to smoking guns and mushroom clouds are a far cry from the deadly attacks of our enemies, both seek to use the same tool of fear for our own lives to influence us.  By presenting only the data which indicated that the nation was in deadly peril from Saddam Hussein, the Administration thought that they knew better than an informed public what was best for the country.  By hiding from us the techniques used to question those persons captured by our armed forces in this war, they think that they know better than us what is right for the nation--they think the country is stronger for not knowing what they are doing.

I hold a different view from Bush and Cheney and our enemies.  I think our rights and freedoms make us strong.  I see our right to recourse to the law, our right to choose the nation's destiny based on a full appreciation of the facts, and freedom from violent interrogation are freedoms which make us stronger than our enemies.  Because of these freedoms, each individual is more invested in the common good provided by a commonwealth based on rights and freedoms.  That is why we fight.  Our people also feel free to invent new solutions to problems not foreseen by those who would rule us absolutely.  They can draw upon the inherent wisdom a free people have to make the critical decisions about war and peace.  Similarly, our freedom from violent interrogation by our own government allows each citizen to walk free of fear and to do and say whatever one wants--a powerful weapon against those who would impose a monolithic worldview on us all.  Finally, our commitment to a universal application of these rights ensures that they will remain for all, and that those with designs on our liberty will not be able to argue that some among us do not deserve the same rights and freedoms that others hold.

These are the distinctions that every citizen should keep in mind in making the critical civic decisions upon which our political life rests.  Abraham Lincoln understood this when he said:  

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a Trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

When Americans decide what to do about the sad and frightening situation the nation finds itself in, they would be wise to heed his words.

The Washington Post takes us deeper into the background investigation into the CIA Leak scandal and tackles the pressing question--why did Scooter lie?

Why would an experienced lawyer and government official such as Libby leave himself so exposed to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald?

Libby, according to Fitzgerald's indictment, gave a false story to agents and, later, to a grand jury, even though he knew investigators had his notes, and presumably knew that several of his White House colleagues had already provided testimony and documentary evidence that would undercut his own story. And his interviews with the FBI in October and two appearances before the grand jury in March 2004 came at a time when there were increasingly clear signs that some of the reporters with whom Libby discussed Plame could soon be freed to testify -- and provide starkly different and damning accounts to the prosecutor.

To critics, the timing suggests an attempt to obscure Cheney's role, and possibly his legal culpability. The vice president is shown by the indictment to be aware of and interested in Plame and her CIA status long before her cover was blown. Even some White House aides privately wonder whether Libby was seeking to protect Cheney from political embarrassment. One of them noted with resignation, "Obviously, the indictment speaks for itself."

The difference in recollections between Libby and every single other person in the case is striking.  Take, for example, Libby and Bush's press secretary Ari Fliescher: 

Fleischer reportedly told investigators that, at a lunch on Monday, July 7, Libby told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and confided that the information was not widely known.

Fitzgerald, in announcing the indictment two weeks ago, called attention to this conversation with Fleischer to show how improbable he regarded Libby's account: "What's important about that is that Mr. Libby . . . was telling Mr. Fleischer something on Monday that he claims to have learned on Thursday."

More important is the telling way in which Fitzgerald pressed Libby to explain his story:

But when Libby was called to answer Fitzgerald's questions under oath before the grand jury on March 5 and again on March 24, 2004, he stuck to the story he had given in October. He repeated that he believed he had learned the information from a reporter and had forgotten Cheney had told him about Plame. He explained that he had not thought the material was classified because reporters knew it. But Fitzgerald pressed Libby -- and not so subtly raised the specter of a coverup. "And let me ask you this directly," Fitzgerald said. "Did the fact that you knew that the law could . . . turn on where you learned the information from affect your account for the FBI -- when you told them that you were telling reporters Wilson's wife worked at the CIA but your source was a reporter rather than the vice president?" Libby denied it: "No, it's a fact. It was a fact, that's what I told the reporters."

Anyone who wants to know anything about Fitzgerald and his methods should look at the way he dealt with a high-profile political prosecution in Illinois.  There, Governor George Ryan was accused of wide-spread corruption while holding the offices of Secretary of State and Governor.  The investigation began in 1998.  Ryan was indicted in 2003, five years later.  A single line at the end of the AP story shows exactly how Fitzgerald works:

Ryan became the 66th person charged in the investigation; 59 people and his campaign committee have been convicted so far.

Fitzgerald does not let go.  Ever.

It has been advanced in the comments that Bush's South American trade summit was a success.   Not so, says Robert Novak:

President Bush was furious with the staff preparation for last week's inter-American summit in Argentina where his trade proposals ran into unexpected opposition.

 The president was reported as particularly unhappy with the work by his National Security Council staff in getting ready for the meeting. That added to Bush's distress in Buenos Aires, dealing with violent street demonstrators and hostile fellow presidents led by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and including Argentina's Nestor Kirchner.

His foreign policy is reaping the whirlwind.

On another note, the thing that really stands out about these last three months is that the facts surrounding Bush's abysmal record and lying have always been out there.  Those closely following the Iraq war shill operation are well aware of what happened with the National Intelligence Estimate shenanigans.  Its been part of the public record for three years. 

But no one called Bush on it.  Reporters, patriotic like us all, didn't want to trip up the leader of the country while we prepared for the biggest military operation since Vietnam, the conquering of an entire country of twenty-five million people. 

But now, the collective judgment appears to be that Bush himself is dangerous and bringing him down to earth and to a more focused and reasonable foreign policy is more important than any negative consequences that might exist

A second judgment is also part of this view.  The idea is that by punishing Bush now, we are making the country better in the future because future leaders will think twice before treating the President's most important task, war leadership, as a political football to be carried accross a goal line to create a permanent majority for his own party.

It is this sentiment which is most dangerous, because it is exactly what led to Richard M. Nixon's impeachment.  The idea of Bush as an object lesson to future leaders gives much more credence to the idea that his removal or resignation is the most appropriate course of action.

Should the current new-found fascination with the old lead the press to more damning evidence, such as any evidence that the Vice President, the President or other members of the Administration were very much aware on any level that the Niger documents were forgeries, yet presented them to the people and Congress as authentic evidence of a nuclear weapons program Saddam did not have, such a scenario is far from fantasy.  Time will tell.

The news just doesn't get better for Bush.  A Newsweek poll sees him plumbing the depths at 36% approval rating.  More troubling must be the wording, showing that the press sees him as vulnerable and has become willing to treat him like other presidents before him:

In the wake of the bombings in Jordan by suspected followers of Iraq’s Al Qaeda chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the indictment of top White House aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby and the withdrawal of Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush is sinking deeper and deeper into political trouble, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Only 36 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, and an astounding 68 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country—the highest in Bush’s presidency. But that’s not the worst of it for the 43rd president of the United States, a leader who rode comfortably to reelection just a year ago. Half of all Americans now believe he’s not “honest and ethical.

Only 42% of Americans see him as honest and ethical.

Troubles also loom for Alito:

The good news for the White House is that 40 percent think Samuel Alito should be confirmed. Twenty-six percent oppose Alito and 34 percent remain undecided.

I guess they had to spin something as positive. 

America sees the CIA Leak Scandal as important and negative to Bush:

Fifty-two percent of Americans believe Cheney “deliberately misused or manipulated pre-war intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities in order to build support for war,” including 22 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents.

Most worrisome for the White House: the base seems to be cracking. When asked whether anyone in the administration “acted unethically” in the case involving the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name, a 54-percent majority of Americans said they did—and 30 percent of Republicans said they did. And 45 percent of Americans believe someone in the “Bush administration broke the law and acted criminally”—including 22 percent of Republicans.

Wow.

Dumber than a rock.  Don't stop Mr. Bush, you're sure to win back the trust of Americans by starting a big national discussion on whether you manipulated the Iraq war intelligence.  And get the Washington Post to publish articles like this:

Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

There were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote.

Keep talking, buddy.

Only the facts:

In the late summer of 2002, Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes. According to one congressional staffer who read the document, it highlighted "extensive Iraqi chem-bio programs and nuclear programs and links to terrorism" but then included a footnote that read, "This information comes from a source known to fabricate in the past." The staffer concluded that "they didn't do analysis. What they did was they just amassed everything they could that said anything bad about Iraq and put it into a document."

Graham and Durbin had been demanding for more than a month that the CIA produce an NIE on the Iraqi threat--a summary of the available intelligence, reflecting the judgment of the entire intelligence community--and toward the end of September, it was delivered. Like Tenet's earlier letter, the classified NIE was balanced in its assessments. Graham called on Tenet to produce a declassified version of the report that could guide members in voting on the resolution. Graham and Durbin both hoped the declassified report would rebut the kinds of overheated claims they were hearing from administration spokespeople. As Durbin tells TNR, "The most frustrating thing I find is when you have credible evidence on the intelligence committee that is directly contradictory to statements made by the administration."

On October 1, 2002, Tenet produced a declassified NIE. But Graham and Durbin were outraged to find that it omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war. For instance, the intelligence report cited the much-disputed aluminum tubes as evidence that Saddam "remains intent on acquiring" nuclear weapons. And it claimed, "All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge enrichment program"--a blatant mischaracterization. Subsequently, the NIE allowed that "some" experts might disagree but insisted that "most" did not, never mentioning that the DOE's expert analysts had determined the tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. The NIE also said that Iraq had "begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents"--which the DIA report had left pointedly in doubt. Graham demanded that the CIA declassify dissenting portions.

In response, Tenet produced a single-page letter. It satisfied one of Graham's requests: It included a statement that there was a "low" likelihood of Iraq launching an unprovoked attack on the United States. But it also contained a sop to the administration, stating without qualification that the CIA had "solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Graham demanded that Tenet declassify more of the report, and Tenet promised to fax over additional material. But, later that evening, Graham received a call from the CIA, informing him that the White House had ordered Tenet not to release anything more.

We report.  You decide.  This isn't going away. 

Josh lets out what may eventually turn into a bombshell in the Niger Forgeries story.  As you may know, one of the reasons the IAEA was able to determine the Niger documents were crude forgeries was that the persons whose signatures appeared at the bottom of the phony "Yellowcake deal" letter were persons who had been out of government in Niger for at least a decade.  For a while now, the Italian intelligence agency SISMI has put out conflicting stories about whether it ever touched the now-radioactive forgeries.  The latest claim is that they did not.

However, American sources say otherwise.  We now know that the evidence of the fake "yellowcake deal" first came to the U.S. from reports from SISMI which contained a transcription of what was actually written on the documents themselves.  Josh indicates that the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has revealed that:

The report sent over from Italy removed the out-of-date names (one of the key reasons they were spotted later as forgeries) and replaced them with the correct names. In other words, there seems to have been a conscious effort to cover up the fact that the documents were bogus, to clean them up, as it were.

That's right, the Italians knew the documents were forged when they sent the information over to the U.S.  Now why would they do that?  Italy had no agenda against Saddam and no reason to fake documents other than to get in good with the Bush Administration. 

It is also highly improbable that the Italians would send over deliberately fake material to the Administration without letting them know first that it was coming from forgeries.

You can start to connect the dots.  They lead to a government building just seven blocks from here.  1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.

GOP cannot get its budget bill through the House.  Moderate Republicans defecting.  From an observer cited by Josh Marshall:

Two important developments today point to the Bush administration’s collapse of support on Capitol Hill. The first involves the House dropping ANWR from their spending reconciliation bill because 22 moderate Republicans refused to support the measure on the floor if included (no telling yet whether it will pass even w/ ANWR dropped bc of food stamp and child support collection cuts). The next involves the postponement of the tax reconciliation mark up in the Senate Finance Committee, where Olympia Snowe (generally prone to caving after getting the call from Andy Card) refused to buckle and support extension of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts – a signature WH priority. Tax cuts used to be a cakewalk for the WH, now they cant even get them out of committee.

Wow.  As predicted by Mark Schmitt, the majority party normally loses control of the agenda in Congress right before it loses its majority.  This might just be it.

The GOP in flight from the field of battle:

House Drops Arctic Drilling From Bill

In seven words and two numbers, NBC defines the story Bush cannot escape:

Case for war:         

Accurate Information:   35%

Deliberately Misled:       57%

It gets crazy: Judith Miller gets a blog seconds after leaving the Times.

Do Republican Members of Congress want to have Bush run ads in their favor?  No, says J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) on Imus.

IMUS: Would you just answer my question, would you like [President Bush] to come to Arizona and cut campaign commercials and run them on those TV stations everywhere?

REP. HAYWORTH: In a word, no. At this time.

IMUS: That's being honest. J.D. Hayworth here on the "Imus in the morning" program.

Bad timing watch--after Berlusconi comes Chalabi.  Street theater, David Corn and Christopher Hitchens argue the CIA leak case outside the American Enterprise Institute.  Hitchens drifts from reality in postulating that Chalabi must have broke the Iranian codes himself, that is to say personally. 

Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend.  I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians.  "No," he insisted.  "It's possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes.  He is a mathematical genius.  His expertise is cryptology.  It is possible that he broke the codes himself."  (This is a paraphrase since I was walking down M Street and crossing Connecticut Avenue all while being amazed that I was having an actual conversation with Christopher Hitchens at the time).  Now, I don't believe this for one second.  Why would Chalabi be trying to break American codes in his spare time anyway?  Who does that if they are friendly to us?  Suspicious, I say.

The "new leak" investigation?  Full retreat.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence told Senate leaders yesterday that Congress should hold off on a probe of the disclosure of classified information on secret prisons to The Washington Post until the Justice Department completes its own inquiry.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said he will "respectfully" request that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) back off a strongly worded request that a bicameral investigation into the disclosure be convened immediately. Frist spokeswoman Amy Call said the majority leader had not decided how to respond. "He always takes what his chairmen say into consideration," she said.

Asked how long that could take, Roberts joked, "Decades," indicating he is in no rush to convene his own inquiry. Hoekstra said he has not decided how to proceed.

Well, looks like a look into intel manipulation won't be decades away.  From the Nelson Report:

Scandals..on the torture scandal part of the ongoing psychodrama called America, the political theme is that the Republican Leadership continues to trip all over itself, contradicting each other, insulting each other, and generally looking like incompetent fools. This is almost too much for the Democrats, who can hardly believe what they see unfolding, and who thus, so far, remain in something of a comic stupor, pending an organized, coherent attack.

But things are happening, and Senate Dems are coalescing around efforts to force real hearings on the misuse of Iraq war intel, and the torture scandal...even as the Republicans flounder between trying to deny everything, while simultaneously excusing or explaining it away. Latest example...former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, whom, you will recall, was forced to resign for insensitive racial remarks, is clearly revenging himself with comments that it was a fellow Republican who leaked the “CIA torture” story to the Washington Post last week.

‘Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a ‘state of public emergency’) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.’ (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)

Note the language -- as is in the Convention's title -- about other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. It's not merely torture....” (End of comments by our source.)

Josh's comment?  They've brought us very, very low. Yes they have, sir, yes they have.  But its only up from here.

Heady days, my friends.  Heady days.

Lobbyist Sought $9 Million To Set Bush Meeting.  The Abramoff investigation moves slowly towards the President of the United States.

Well, well, well.  Despite its earlier denials, the Army did use White Phosphorus as a weapon at Fallujah as claimed by the Italians.  From The Fight For Fallujah an article in the March-April 2005 edition of Field Artillery Magazine, an official publication of the United States Army:

b. White Phosphorous. WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.

c. Hexachloroethane Zinc (HC) Smoke and Precision-Guided Munitions. We could have used these munitions. We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions.

Is there anyone who hasn't figured out why we are not winning in Iraq?

In reply to comments--I suggest our commenters read Kevin Drum's debunking of Podhoretz's Commentary piece saying that Bush did not lie.

Kaine a winner, and Corzine leading.  Now we wait for Cali.

Bubbling up from the CIA Leak case is the underlying story: Did the Administration lie in its presentation on the WMD threat posed by Saddam?  The answer is yes.  Whether or not the Administration was aware of the fact that it was basing parts of its case on forged documents or not, Bush lied by presenting a mixed case as an absolutely sure thing.  It wasn't a sure thing.  That's lying.  Everyone knows it.  That's why a majority of Americans believe Bush lied--they heard him say Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa in a definitive statement, when the fact was that there was no definite intelligence on that point.  That's lying to Joe and Susan America.  That's lying.

From the Independent (UK):

Tony Blair's government, which first made the allegation public in its September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, still insists it was supported by "separate intelligence".  Britain has always refused to disclose the nature of this information, even to the IAEA, because it was provided by a "foreign service".

But Vincent Cannistraro, a senior former official with the CIA, told The Independent on Sunday that "some of the text of the 2001 report showed up in the later [forged] documents.  "There seems to be a common source ... it seems that the [separate] British intelligence came from the same false and discredited source."

Daily the press reports inch closer to the center of the decision to go to war.  The operative question still remains--Did the Administration know the claims were bogus before it publicized them?  They sure seem to have spent a whole bunch of time and energy and broke some laws to hide the answer to this question.  Why would they do that?  If they are innocent they need to come clean now, regardless of their desire to keep the inner workings of the White House secret from view.  The Administration is backing its way towards a cliff that could effectively end its ability to govern effectively.  They need to stand up.

The NYT hits it directly on the head--George Bush is in a deep crisis and shows no signs of getting out of it:

After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.

The central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.

The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration's most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation. Right now, the vice president is devoting himself to beating back Congressional legislation that would prohibit the torture of prisoners. This is truly a remarkable set of priorities: his former chief aide was indicted, Mr. Cheney's back is against the wall, and he's declared war on the Geneva Conventions.

Before I hear one word about the "librul" NYT, let's see some solid admissions here that Bush's presidency is in deep, deep trouble.  It is time for the Right to play defense for real, not just attack the messenger.