No sir:

The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel.When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contradicted Pace, the general stood firm.  Rumsfeld told the general he believed Pace meant to say the U.S. soldiers had to report the abuse, not stop it.  Pace stuck to his original statement.  "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace told his civilian boss.  The unusual exchange occurred during a discussion at a news conference about the relationship between U.S. forces in Iraq and an Iraqi government considered sovereign by the United States.

Nobody should be on board with torture, torture-light, whatever you want to call it.  Its wrong.  End of story.

Boom.  Our very own 18 1/2 Minute gap:

But those close to the probe tell RAW STORY that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Rove’s office by the switchboard were logged. He then called Ralston back to testify.

Earlier this month, attorneys say Fitzgerald received additional testimony from Ralston -- who said that Rove instructed her not to log a phone call Rove had with Cooper about Plame in July 2003.

We shall see on this one.  This is so explosive that it might not be true.  Its almost too good to be true.

Wow.  Again.  Now Bush is touting his own withdrawal plan--despite the fact it called the author of a similar withdrawal plan as  "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party."

There is a strong consensus building in Washington in favor of President Bush's strategy for victory in Iraq. As the Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience, we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists. Today, Sen. Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the Administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror.

Looks like Bush is trying to work his way into the Cut and Run Crew.^TM  Wonder how long it will be before he's demanding that he turn over all of the documents on pre-war intelligence and demanding that Alito step down because of his "conservative views."

What's been going on here for some time now is a negative 100 days.  Political scientists have often looked to the first 100 days of a presidency as a barometer to what that presidency may become.  Here we have the opposite, an unraveling of almost everything that this president has done over the last five years in a similarly short period of time.  Few falls have been as precipitous.  None will ever be as memorable.  Our children will ask us about these days.

Seems like everyone is on the pullout bandwagon of late.  Obama, the Iraqis, you name it.

Update: 12:22 Wed: Jesus!  Bill O'Reilly joins the cut-and-run crew. 

Idiot.

PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

Bush disclosed his plan to target al-Jazeera, a civilian station with a huge Mid-East following, at a White House face-to-face with Mr Blair on April 16 last year.

At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.

Again, idiot.

Apparently the Iraqi government thinks that the insurgents have a right to target U.S. troops.

Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a ``legitimate right'' of resistance.

The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.

 The participants in Cairo agreed on ``calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation'' and end terror attacks.

Can't exactly say these guys are off the reservation, can we?

The conference was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers, as well as leading Sunni politicians.

In Egypt, the final communique's attempt to define terrorism omitted any reference to attacks against U.S. or Iraqi forces. Delegates from across the political and religious spectrum said the omission was intentional. They spoke anonymously, saying they feared retribution.

Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships,'' the document said.

On the one hand, it looks like they are rejecting the foreign fighters--a first step to unity.  On the other hand, they are saying its OK for the insurgents to attack American troops.  I'm so not for this.

Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to identify potential Democratic donors.  In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only 12 hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

The GOP's stunt against Murtha fools no one.

Fineman, no Democrat, tells it like it is:

An Ohio backbencher named Jean Schmidt, eager to demonstrate coldbloodedness, was given time by GOP leaders to relate a phone call from a Marine whom she said wanted "to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." Furious Democrats charged down the aisles, fists in the air, shouting that Schmidt's words had to be stricken from the record. "You guys are pathetic!" yelled Rep. Martin Meehan of Massachusetts, while Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee charged into the GOP side to confront them. The melee was so intense that it brought the soothing presence of Rep. Tom DeLay from his secure undisclosed location, and Schmidt eventually apologized. By a vote of 403-3, the House ultimately rejected a bowdlerized version of Murtha's resolution, which the GOP had crafted (without Murtha's permission) to sound as cravenly antiwar as possible. Seeing the obvious trap, virtually every Democrat, including Murtha, voted against it.

Nobody's buying what they are selling anymore.

The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.  

But there's more:

The White House, for example, ignored evidence gathered by United Nations weapons inspectors shortly before the war that disproved Curveball's account. Bush and his aides issued increasingly dire warnings about Iraq's biological weapons before the war even though intelligence from Curveball had not changed in two years.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, officials embraced Curveball's account even though they could not confirm it or interview him until a year after the invasion. They ignored multiple warnings about his reliability before the war, punished in-house critics who provided proof that he had lied and refused to admit error until May 2004, 14 months after the invasion.

After the CIA vouched for Curveball's accounts, Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had "mobile biological weapons labs" designed to produce "germ warfare agents." Bush cited the mobile germ factories in at least four prewar speeches and statements, and other world leaders repeated the charge.

CIA officials now concede that the Iraqi fused fact, research he gleaned on the Internet and what his former co-workers called "water cooler gossip" into a nightmarish fantasy that played on U.S. fears after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to start a war. He simply was seeking a German visa.

But the story had holes.

"His information to us was very vague," said the senior German intelligence official. "He could not say if these things functioned, if they worked."  

But the CIA and the White House overlooked the holes in the story.

In a February 2003 radio address and statement, Bush warned that "first-hand witnesses have informed us that Iraq has at least seven mobile factories" for germ warfare. With these, Bush said, "Iraq could produce within just months hundreds of pounds of biological poisons."

They were warned:

Tyler Drumheller, then the head of CIA spying in Europe, called the BND station chief at the German embassy in Washington in September 2002 seeking access to Curveball.

Drumheller and the station chief met for lunch at the German's favorite seafood restaurant in upscale Georgetown. The German officer warned that Curveball had suffered a mental breakdown and was "crazy," the now-retired CIA veteran recalled.

"He said, first off, 'They won't let you see him,' " Drumheller said. " 'Second, there are a lot of problems. Principally, we think he's probably a fabricator.' "

Other warnings poured in. The CIA Berlin station chief wrote that the BND had "not been able to verify" Curveball's claims. The CIA doctor who met Curveball wrote to his supervisor shortly before Powell's speech questioning "the validity" of the Iraqi's information.

"Keep in mind that this war is going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," his supervisor wrote back, Senate investigators found. The supervisor later told them he was only voicing his opinion that war appeared inevitable.

And who was Curveball?

One CIA-led unit investigated Curveball himself. The leader was "Jerry," a veteran CIA bio-weapons analyst who had championed Curveball's case at the CIA weapons center. They found Curveball's personnel file in an Iraqi government storeroom. It was devastating.

Curveball was last in his engineering class, not first, as he had claimed. He was a low-level trainee engineer, not a project chief or site manager, as the CIA had insisted.

Most important, records showed Curveball had been fired in 1995, at the very time he said he had begun working on bio-warfare trucks. A former CIA official said Curveball also apparently was jailed for a sex crime and then drove a Baghdad taxi.

Its not like they weren't warned:

In December 2003, Kay flew back to CIA headquarters. He said he told Tenet that Curveball was a liar and he was convinced Iraq had no mobile labs or other illicit weapons. CIA officials confirm their exchange.

The article is the single most damning thing I have seen on this matter yet.

The hits just keep on rollin'.

It's almost comical when you take a moment to think about it. President Bush has spent most of his presidency swinging around the cudgel that he has the character and the strength to defend the country when his political opponents don't. Now suddenly we learn that all the Democrats he's run against for four years as not tough enough to defend the country actually supported all of these decisions and would have done everything the same way had they been in power. What an extraordinary development.

 

The real answer, I think, is as banal as it is devastating: I don't think they ever gave it much thought -- not in the sense of trying to get to the heart of the matter. A lawyer assembles a case. Whether his client is innocent or not is sort of beside the point. He's trying to get him acquitted. Very similar here. The point was to invade. Non-conventional weapons made it a real possibility. A connection to 9/11 would make it a slam dunk. Some of each might get you just past the goal line. And if that didn't something else might. 

 

Thinking through these points would be and someday will be an important, critical conversation for this country to have. Because it is a toxic approach to governance which has suffused this administration.

Yep.

They can't hide anymore:

Q Were you the administration official who talked with Bob Woodward about the identity of a CIA operative?

MR. HADLEY: I have seen press reports that -- and only press reports -- that Bob Woodward has talked about, I guess, three sources from the administration that he had. I've also seen press reports from White House officials saying that I am not one of his sources. As you know, there is an ongoing investigation of this matter. We have all, at the White House, been instructed to cooperate with that investigation, as we are requested to do so, and to not talk about it. And that's all I can say.

And the AP adds this tidbit:

Leaving the room, Hadley was asked if his answer amounted to a yes or a no. "It is what it is," he said.

That, readers, is the single most pathetic non-denial denial I have ever seen.  Bar none.

General Scotty "Little Mac" McClellan was sent into the front lines against the roving marauder Murtha, who called for a withdrawal from Iraq.

Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party.

But Scotty's problem is that it turns out that approximately 65% of Americans belong to the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party:

Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Nov. 10-11, 2005. N=1,002 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (for all adults).

"We'd like your opinion of the way George W. Bush is handling certain aspects of his job. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq
Approve Disapprove Unsure11/10-11/05
30%     65%        5% %  

As Atrios says: We're all Michael Moore now.

Abramoff bagwoman Italia Federici melts in front of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Typical of the many requests Abramoff made to Federici was an e-mail dated Dec. 2, 2002, in which he sought Griles's help in scuttling a casino plan by the Jena Band of Choctaw, a Louisiana tribe seen as competition by his clients: "It seems the Jena are on the march again. if you can, can you make sure Steve squelches this again? thanks!!"

Asked to explain Abramoff's request and what she did with it, Federici responded: "We work with people every day with varying levels of decorum." It was a response that drew a puzzled scowl from McCain, who said at one point: "Your answers are so bizarre."

Federici said she learned later about Abramoff's lobbying practices now under investigation. "I didn't know he was doing the things he was doing," she said.

"I come from a pretty small town, but I think I can spot a pretty big lie," Dorgan told Federici.

The problems go deep on this one:

Much of Abramoff's effort against the Jena tribe involved getting members of Congress to weigh in. At least 33 lawmakers who wrote letters to Norton opposing the Jena casino received more than $830,000 in Abramoff-related donations from 2001 to 2004, according to an Associated Press tally. Many of the lawmakers sent letters within days of receiving contributions from tribes represented by Abramoff or using the lobbyist's restaurant for fundraising, the AP found in its review of campaign records, IRS records and congressional correspondence.

Among those who wrote letters was House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who held a fundraiser at Abramoff's Signatures restaurant on June 3, 2003, that collected at least $21,500 for his Keep Our Majority political action committee from the lobbyist's firm and tribal clients. A week later, Hastert wrote Norton to urge her to reject the Jena casino.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002, also signed by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev). The next day, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana issued a $5,000 check to Reid's tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second Abramoff tribe also sent $5,000 to Reid's group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations from 2001 to 2004.

The lawmakers contacted by the AP said their intervention had nothing to do with Abramoff's fundraising, but reflected their long-held concerns about expanding tribal gambling.

Shouldn't have taken that money.  Its time to shut down the PAC system.  Real campaign finance reform is critical to changing the climate here.  Even the Democrats get hurt.  Even putting the best face on it--that two Nevada senators worked together to shut down the biggest competitors to their state's biggest industry (wrong itself), they should have never taken that money.  Never.  Of course, with McCain, its pot, kettle, black.

From National Review Online's blog The Corner:

GOP SOUR MOOD [Rich Lowry ]
From Hotline synopsis of its new poll:

GOP Cold Front

For months, Pres. Bush has been plagued by polls showing his lowest ever approval rating. But what hadn't faltered was Bush's support among GOPers, until now. The latest Diageo/Hotline poll (conducted by Financial Dynamics) reveals some cracks in the GOP foundation.
-- 60% of voters think the nation is on the wrong track and 41% of GOPers agree; that GOP "wrong track" number is the highest we've recorded. The previous GOPer "wrong track" high was 29% in Oct.
-- GOPers "strongly" approving of Bush's job has dropped to 37%, the lowest since this poll began, in Jan., down from 59% in 3/05.
-- Asked why voters disapprove of Bush, the top reason is Iraq. This is also the top reason among GOPers (34%).
-- Pluralities agree both Cheney (49%) and Rumsfeld (46%) do more to hurt Bush than help, 72% say Rice "mostly helps."
-- This admin-wide disapproval is seeping into Congress w/26% saying they will replace their current Rep., up from 19% last month. Among GOPers alone it increased from 10% to 26%.

Posted at 12:36 PM

That number on changing your current representative is the most chilling wind of all for the GOP.  Dissatisfaction with Congress means very little, unless it is hooked in with a desire to remove your own representative. 

MURTHA BREAKS [Rod Dreher]
Don't know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha's very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn't air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he's a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we've had enough, it's time to come home. He was hell on the president too.

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to -- and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who's about the same age, and his hunting buddies -- then the president is in big trouble. I'm sure there's going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.
Posted at 11:27 AM

Some on the Right are starting to get it.  They know what's coming.  Others, not so much. 

I think a better title for this article would be, "Republicans once again fail to pass budget".  Yes, it is miraculous to watch the Democrats hold their troops in line, but if I'm not mistaken, the Republicans have a majority of the seats in the House.  The real story is that the Republican leadership was unable to get 20 of its own House members to vote for this turkey.

Woodward's source?

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet and his deputy John E. McLaughlin.

A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.

Vice President Cheney did not join the parade of denials.

Do the math.

I'd also like to put this out there--Libby's lawyers and right-wing bloggers see this as somehow having an effect on the case because Fitzgerald was wrong.  They wonder how he couldn't have looked at phone logs, and the like and not seen that Woodward might have gotten passed the information.  Something tells me that he might have had a pretty good idea whose been at the center of this from day one.  First, he was clear about what he knew about the leaks:  

Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

That's right, the first person known.  The first person he could say for sure had leaked. 

Second, he was clear that he would speak on nothing more than the indictment.

 I can't give you answers on what we know and don't know, other than what's charged in the indictment.

I would suggest that this was less of a surprise for him than it was for us.

Andrew Sullivan on the Perfesser's willful blindness:

One day, denial and distraction from reality will finally collapse at Instapundit. And it won't be pretty.

That day is coming sooner rather than later.  And the Instapundit won't be the only one who will be affected by the collapse of denial and distraction from reality.  I'm looking at you, Powerline.