John Warner makes it clear

An angry Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) summoned Pentagon officials for a briefing on the military's paying for favorable coverage in Iraqi newspapers.

[snip]

Was the distinction between propaganda and factual information blurred? "I don't have enough facts."

I fully agree with Senator Warner. It is absurd to even suggest that, in his press conference, the distinction between propaganda and factual information was blurred. It is obvious that he provided pure undiluted whitewash spin without a trace of fact.

I don't see how that rude journalist could possibly have hinted that Senator Warner allowed facts to influence his statements.

Steve Clemons notes the utter idiocy of US Iraqi development policy and very clearly explains how to do a much better job. I think Clemons is obviously right, but he really should have cited the much earlier statement of his argument by Michael Froomkin and "The Onion"

I am not at all joking. I think a policy proposal in "The Onion" is clearly vastly superior to that currently being implemented by the US government.

Ah Kinsley in the good old days


Michael Kinsley is arguing with Brad De Long about whether he said that the theory that "President Bush was determined to invade Iraq the year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions" was paranoid. Actually Kinsley didn't argue, he simply ignored the fact that he wrote "Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence." in the same column.

I attempted to defend Kinsley by arguing that the "paranoid theory" he was talking about was that the he Michael Kinsley was "personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office covering up the Bush administration lies." Ellen 1910 came up with the much more plausible argument that the "paranoid theory" was that the MSM was covering up Bush's lies.

All in all I am disappointed in Kinsley. I tried to restore my esteme for Kinsley by recalling the good old days in which Kinsley wrote roughly (I am quoting from memory)

"I love the snappy way The Economist writes "there are three things the government should do about this problem" although I sometimes wonder if The Economist decides that there are three things the government should do about this problem before they decide exactly which three things. In fact I sometimes wonder if The Economist decides that there are three things the government should do about this problem before they decide exactly which problem"

This was a disaster, since I now suspect that Kinsley decided to snear at a paranoid theory without deciding exactly which paranoid theory he was snearing at.

He voted for it before he spoke against it Or How the Hell did Bush get re-elected part N

The American people disapprove of the US involvement in the war in Iraq and of Bush and, especially of Bush policy in Iraq. Bush attempts to turn the tide with yet another speech. Democrats criticize this speech. Can Democrats shoot fish in a barrel ? Well some can but one can't. from the WAPO

"The president," Reed said, "failed to answer the question that all Americans are asking: how do we know progress is being made there?"

Kerry accused Bush of resorting to "straw man" arguments in denouncing his critics' calls for a drawdown of U.S. forces.

"This debate is not about an artificial date for withdrawal," Kerry said. He said a Nov. 15 Senate resolution, which called on the administration to hasten an eventual U.S. pullout by turning over more control to Iraqis, did not advocate "an artificial date for withdrawal" but sought to "set an estimated timetable for success which will permit the withdrawal of our troops." The resolution, which passed 79 to 19, said 2006 should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty," creating conditions for "the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq."

"No one has ever suggested or believes that we should run in the face of car bombers or assassins," Kerry said, referring to a passage in Bush's speech. "No one is talking about running in the face of a challenge. We're talking about how to win, how to succeed, how do you best achieve our goals? That's the choice here. And what the president did not do today again is acknowledge the fundamental reality of the insurgency."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called the resolution two weeks ago "a vote of no confidence in the president's current policy in Iraq" and said Bush in response today merely "recycled his tired rhetoric of 'stay the course.'"

In a statement, Reid said, "After nearly 1,000 days of war in Iraq, our troops, their families, and the American people deserve more than just a Bush-Cheney public relations campaign. They deserve a clear strategy with military, economic and political measures to be met in order to successfully complete our mission. The president's continued refusal to provide that plan does nothing to support our troops or their families. Simply staying the course is no longer an option, we must change the course."

The top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi of California, today threw her support behind a proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a prompt pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. Murtha, a former Marine with a reputation as a hawk on military issues, stunned Washington two weeks ago when he said U.S. troops have done all they can in Iraq and should be withdrawn within six months.

"We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable," Pelosi said in a news conference.

She also sharply criticized Bush's speech, dismissing the "Plan for Victory" slogan that appeared behind him today as "no more accurate than the 'Mission Accomplished' backdrop he used two and a half years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln."

Which one here is not like the others ? Which one here just doesn't belong. Bush tried to make the argument about whether Democrats want an artificial date for withdrawal. That is he set up what he sees as a straw man (I bet polls will soon show a solid majority in favour of a arbitrary and date for withdrawal so long as that date is soon). Bush tried to get the Democrats to argue with each other, since most of the Democrats in congress aren't there yet. 3 Democrats as quoted in the Washington Post refused to fall for this and, instead kept on the attack. One said "This debate is not about an artificial date for withdrawal," and explained the nuances in the resolution for which he voted, whose meaning depends on the exact wording (it's not the impression the public has of a sense of the Senate resolution that matters but rather how it is interpreted in a court of law when ... hell freezes over).

Now Kerry might have hammered Bush in parts of his response which weren't quoted, but that's not winning according to the rules of the game. You don't speak so that some sound bites lead to victory, you have to speak so that all possible sound bites lead to victory. This means the full speach is dumb and repetitive. This is the way it is done. You have to make the same point again and again. You can't discuss anything else you find interesting. Politicians must not act like bloggers. Just say the same thing again and again so they have to quote that (rinse repeat).

How the hell did that guy get nominated? We should have put all our chips on Reid and rolled the dice.

The Kinsley Retort

Michael Kinsley responds (sortof) to Brad DeLong's criticism.

Brad,

Seems to me that you wildly misinterpret both of the columns that you say demonstrate my intellectual inconsistency. The column a few months ago about the Downing Street Memo didn’t reject the possibility that Bush & Co had “fixed the intelligence” in order to justify a war they were already committed to. It said that this particular document (the DSM) was not the smoking gun that proved the case. Tthe column yesterday did not assert that Bush & Co had fixed, etc etc etc. It said that the Bush administration now concedes that much of the intelligence used was wrong, and that this undermines the justification for the war whether or not the administration “fixed” it.

Where is the contradiction?

Ps Could you post this on your site? (And by all means reply if you wish.) Thanks.

Like Max, I am impressed by the power of Brad. Kinsley is much more important than the Weisman guy who ccd Brad an e-mail and is also slightly more polite. Brad slyly and effectively refutes Kinsley's claim that Brad misinterpreted Kinsley's original column by quoting the first two paragraphs of the column including "proof positive that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq the year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions. [snip] Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence..." My theory is that Brad is important enough for Kinsley to respond to his criticisms but not quite important enough for Kinsley to actually read those criticisms so that his response makes any sense at all.

I think my defence of Kinsley was much better than Kinsley's (except I wrote impossible when I meant possible)

Now I have a defence of Kinsley. My quote spliced two paragraphs. What if I had cut at the paragraph break ? Would this lead to a passage which made no sense ? Let's see

"Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the revival of the left. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence."

Without the preceding paragraph it appears that the paranoid theory is that Kinsley is personally responsible for leaving a proven war criminal in office. This would indeed be paranoid. Now I would say a rule of interpretation is that if a plausible referent can be found within a paragraph one shouldn't look for a referent in the paragraph above. I'd say that is a good bit of what paragraphs (and sentences) are for.

Now reading the column it seems impossible [oops I mean possible] that Kinsley was discussing the theory that he, Michael Kinsley, was the key link in the chain mail protecting Bush. I'd say if Kinsley can come up with a few e-mails saying such a nutty thing, then he is off the hook.

Just an unfortunate misunderstanding that arose because he appeared to claim that the theory that the inspections were kabuki was paranoid. He was not willing to quote crazy e-mails in dead trees and this lead to unclarity.

I'd bet on Kinsley if you gave me 10 to 1 odds.

A commenter who calls herself Ellen 1910 markedly improves my argument

Doesn't it all depend on what Kinsley claims is the subject of the "paranoid theory"?

If I recall correctly, the column was written as a defense to the left blogoshere's charge that the MSM had failed to give the DSM the coverage and publicity it deserved. That was the "paranoia" he was refering to.

Kinsley's argument was that the memo did not rise to the evidentiary level required to prove the MSM's culpability. He made no judgment about whether the memo was true or about whether the Bush Administration had, in fact, "fixed the intelligence around" the decision to go to war.

The two columns are apples and oranges.

Posted by: Ellen1910 | November 29, 2005 at 10:17 AM

In fact, I'd bet on Ellen's interpretation of "paranoid theory" if someone were to offer me 2 to 1 odds.

Raw Story (via Think Progress)

Huge if true

The attorneys say that Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston -- who was also a special assistant to President Bush -- testified in August about why Cooper’s call to Rove was not logged. Ralston said it occurred because Cooper had phoned in through the White House switchboard and was then transferred to Rove’s office as opposed to calling Rove’s office directly. As Rove’s assistant, Ralston screened Rove’s calls.

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.

[snip]

Two things are clear, the sources said: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak.

Ralston was Abramoff's gatekeeper before she became Rove's gate keeper. Fitzgerald seems to have caught her in a lie. Rove is not the only person in trouble, because of this.

Alito puzolente

Judge Alito was a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (and boasted of this in 1985)

In an unsuccessful effort to forestall this frightening development, the executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that affirmed unequivocally, "Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposes adoption of a sex-blind admission policy.""

Via Brad DeLong

in his confirmation hearings someone should ask Alito if he still favors gender discrimination and remind him that he is under oath if he tries to claim he never did so.

Wow I got a link from Malaysia. Thanks whoever you are (I can't figure out which words on the blog are the name of the blogger)

Long Suspected Now Proven

After the invasion the Ba'athists have allied with Zarqawi who has allied with Bin Laden

Police in the northern city of Kirkuk said they had arrested 10 men who had prepared car bombs and had written instructions from a former top deputy to Hussein to kill the judge who led the preparation of charges against the former dictator.

[snip]
the arrested men were identified as agents in the former government -- and al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, according to police Col. Anwar Qader Mohammed in Kirkuk.

One of the arrested men was the son of a Zarqawi deputy. Among literature and instructions from Zarqawi's group, Mohammed said, police found a letter and statements apparently prepared by Izzat Ibrahim Douri, Hussein's former vice president. Douri is said to be leading resistance by Hussein loyalists to Iraq's new government.

Gr8 WAPO Rticle !

Property Rights ?

One might imagine that property rights are human rights, natural rights, pre social rights like the right to freedom of speech. In this view, very well expressed by Locke, laws which violate property rights are unjust laws, bucause property rights are not established by laws but are rather recognised or discovered by just laws.

Another view, which I first read in "Just and Unjust Wars" by Michael Walzer is that property rights are only rights under the law and that different systems of property rights are to be judged by their consequences, that is as instruments. Shame on me for not having thought of it, but it seems obvious once it's mentioned that there are two kinds of rights natural rights and rights under the law, and that I personally agree with him that there are no natural property rights except as required to protect natural rights (it violates the moral law to seize printing presses because one doesn't like what was printed on them or to declare someone's car to belong to someone else ex poste facto and arrest him etc etc).

A third view is that property is theft and that alleged property rights do not and can not exist whatever is written in the law. The third view is not very popular these days and I won't discuss it further.

I think that, to this day, the best argument for natural property rights is due to Locke. Locke's argument is clearly invalid. He starts from assuming that we own ourselves and the fruits of our labor. He bases this on a very forced reading of a line in the old testament. There is no argument there of interest to people who don't accept the bible as authoritative. For this reason this claim is not contested. I think it is obvious that people do not have a natural right to the fruits of their labor, because this implies that it is just and fair to allow the unfortunate disabled to starve. To me rights must be equal and so one can not have the right to more because one was fortunate to be born able. Only if ability is the result of choices would I even consider the fruits of one's ability to be posessed by natural right. This would, of course, just shove the problemm back one step, since, for example, one's choice to learn a skill depends in part on ones ability to learn it and that depends in part on luck.

I think the claim that we have a natural right to the fruits of our labor is simply false. For the sake of argument I will concede it.

The problem for Locke is that, according to the existing laws, which he aimed to prove to be human rights, people owned things that they clearly did not produce, in particular land. Since Locke was aiming to advance the claims of the house of commons over the claims of the king, he had to focus on land ownership, since, when he wrote, the house of commons represented land owners. If there were a natural right to some property but not land, the house of commons would have no claim to rank above the tailors guild let alone the king.

Thus Locke claims that most of the value of land is the value of improvements in the land so that the value of unimproved land is neglegible. Here we see that Locke wrote before the dawn of economic theory. To anyone who keeps track, the claim is absurd. More importantly the relative value of unimproved land and improvements on land can not be the basis of a claim about human rights or natural law, since relative prices are clearly contingent on supply and demand. This was true in Locke's time. He simply chose to ignore this fact, that is, to lie.

Worse for Locke, he can explain how there might be a right to homestead so long as there is plenty of unimproved land available "as much and as good" but he refuses to notice that this can not in any way justify current land ownership. This is obvious. There was not "enough and as good" in England in 1683, therefore the last act of homesteading was imoral. But this means that no one could homestead after the second to last act of homesteading so there wasn't enough and as good after that and so by backwards induction all claims of property in land are, according to Lock, imoral.

Here I think he might have a real intellectual problem. I think he did not consider other legal institutions that freehold. For example, one could imagine a contract between a person and society in which society gives that person exclusive use of some land so long as there is enough and as good and, in exchange, the person allows society to redistribute the land with improvements when there is no longer enough and as good. This could lead to a distribution of rights to use land based on the scriptural principle that people have the right to the fruits of their labor so long as they don't sell them forward.

The principle of enough and as good does not imply that one has the right to land forever if there was enough and as good when you settled on it, thus it can not serve Locke's purpose.

Of course Locke new perfectly well that current land ownership had nothing to do with improving land and everything to do with being a decendent of an officer in the army of William the conqueror so the whole thought experiment is a utopian fantasy.

Now I might be wrong, it is possible that someone has come up with a better argument for the claim that there are natural property rights which are recognisably similar to current property rights under the law, but I doubt it, since Locke is still quoted.

I think the emotional power of the idea of property rights is (see post below) based on a failure to accept a difference between rights under the law and natural rights, so existing laws or laws from a century and a half ago are seen as descriptions of natural rights which can not morally be eliminated.

Also, I think, people switch back and forth between arguments based on respect for rights and consequentialist arguments without noticing. That is, a reasonable defence of existing property rights is that with such rights we have a prosperous society and countries which tried something very different ended up very poor. If one asks people to imagine a world in which collective ownership say leads to prosperity and decide if it would be just or unjust, they become irritated. Most people find the question of whether a law is a good instrument towards an aim or an expression of natural rights totally boring.

This it certainly is, but sometimes a refusal to consider the question leads to nonsense (see the post below).

Atrios and Yglesias agree that something is obvious

Record companies and their movie studio allies have managed to convince a shockingly large swathe of opinion that the purpose of intellectual property law is to prevent copyright infringement. In fact, the purpose is to advance the general welfare of society.

I would guess the average guy in the street would conclude that economists and philosophers are equally weird (as noted by Yglesias). Atrios notes that the constitution explicitly endorses yglesias's view.

Being brilliant as usual Yglesias has noted that people have trouble imagining laws different from current laws and that they tend to perceivel long established laws as moral principles and not as instruments to some other aim.

The law as it is establishes intellectual property rights. People confuse rights under the law with human rights and think that taking Mickey Mouse royalties from Disney is like torture. I can only mention that the confusion is even worse in countries were the word for "law" and the word for "right" are identical.

Another view is that there are some natural or human rights which have always been rights and were recognised not created when they were codified being nato non fatto (born not made) and that there subject to these rights laws are written to achieve some desireable consequence. Thus it is always necessary to decide it is morally acceptable to eliminate a right established by an existing law if that elimination serves some useful purpose.

Yglesias is quite firm in his view that there is no natural or human right to intellectual property. I would strongly suspect that he feels that there are no natural property rights and that absolute restrictions on taking of property only exist if they are necessary to protect some natural right. That is, I would say he finds taxes in general permissable but doesn't hold for seizing the printing presses of a newspaper whose editorial line displeases the authorities.

The really interesting thing is not that people disagree about which rights are rights under the law and which rights are rights above the law, but that they don't even consider the distinction.
Now one can say that the distinction is useless because there are no rights above the law, that is no human rights, for example if one is Thomas Hobbes or for another if one is a utilitiarian who can think straight. It is quite another matter to not grasp that there could be such a distinction.

I don't want to be rude, but I see a connection between thinking "file sharing might be good for society but it is wrong" and thinking "Torture is wrong but it might be good for society." The absurd extension of the idea of natural rights weakens it. We won't decide everything on the basis of respect for rights and damn the consequences, so if we don't declare some legal rights to be mere instruments of policy, we will not consider other rights to be absolutes which we must respect.

Certoriore dovrebb'essere certo


The Bush administration shifted Jose' Padilla from the brig where he was held as an enemy combatant under the "commander in chief" clause of the constitution which clearly states that the rest of the document is all a big joke and the President has absolute power to do whatever he wants so long as he says "wartime". Clearly they have done this to avoid review of this novel theory by the supreme court. They will argue that the case that Padilla has, you know, rights and stuff, is now moot.

They will be lying.

Mr. Freiman said he, too, had been told that the government reserved the right to detain Mr. Padilla again should he be acquitted.

I suppose the Bush administration will deny this, but I don't think such a judicial decision can be made on the basis of a disputed fact. The fact that the administration reserves the right to lock people up without trial even after they have entered the justice system is not in dispute

Indeed, the plea agreement Mr. Lindh signed contains an unusual provision. "For the rest of the defendant's natural life," it says, "should the government determine that the defendant has engaged in" one of more than a score of crimes of terrorism, "the United States may immediately invoke any right it has at that time to capture and detain the defendant as an unlawful enemy combatant."

The Supreme court may, in an act of depraved submission, refuse to hear the administrations absurd claims and note that they are absurd. However, I hope that this assault on the constitution will fail, because the assailants are too stupid to hide their determination to destroy it.

Also note there is still someone captured in the USA and held as an enemy combatant and note that the 5th amendment doesn't refer at all to the concept of citizenship.

Also note that, not only may we be in Iraq because we tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, but we may be witnessing a direct assault on the constitution for the same reason

In the indictment unsealed Tuesday, Mr. Padilla was not charged with some of the most serious accusations against him, including plotting to explode a radioactive device, because the evidence needed to prove the case had been obtained through harsh questioning of two senior members of Al Qaeda, current and former government officials have said. The statements might not have been admissible in court and could have exposed classified information, the officials said.

Wow that use of "might" might be the most absurd in the history of the English language, as in two plus two might equal four. Let's try to count the reasons why such statements would not be admissible. First torture is wrong and must not be condoned or accepted. Second statements made under torture prove nothing accept a strong desire that the torture end. Admission of such evidence would ally the court with torturers and would interfere with the quest for the truth. Therefore, the court might not admit such evidence.

The courts have made clear, to people who can't read the constitution, that you can't lock someone up, because of something someone else said whle being tortured. As a result, the Bush administration concludes that they can do whatever they damn well please and can lock up anyone they choose.

Personally I'd call it kidnapping which is a high crime and an impeachable offense.

More information retrieval

The ex editor of Panorama Carlo Rossella is speaking in public about new information technology and journalism.

I hope to have a chance to ask him why he didn't google "Allele Habibou" before handing the forged Nigerien Uranium dossier over to the US embassy. One proof that the dossier was forged that someone signed a page of it Allele Elhadj Habibou , foreign minister and it was dated October 10, 2000.
Habibou was foreign minister of Niger from 1988 to 1989.
(sad to say this page has a build date of December 17 2003 and so it might not have been available when Mr Rossella was applying new technology to journalism).


If he had googled habibou might have found, as I did some time ago, that Habibou is not to be found in www.cia.gov which publishes the names of all cabinet ministers in the world regularly (the Nigerien Foreign minister as of July 12 2005 is, of course, Aichatou Daoudou) . Sad to say, the CIA does not keep back issues of Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments on its web page.


Just googling Allele Habibou has become much more difficult now, since the web is full of references to the obviously forged dossier which displayed the signature dated October 10.
Searching for habibou niger -October seems to work generating this link as number 10.

Build date November 24 2005, so it has been revised since Panorama got the dossier.
Contemporary Africa Database writes " On July 24th 2001, we uploaded the first version of People." so it should have been there. I can see why they might suddenly add Habibou more recently, but I don't see why they would have added his predicessor and immediate successor.

Poking around the rubbish heap of history for Mr Habibou (who's career is much more successful that mine Mr Habibou sir just kidding about rubbish) I also found that the same forged document referred to "

"Allele Elhadj Habibou" of the Conseil Militaire Supreme.

What Google has to tell us is that the Conseil was abolished eleven years before the date on the document, and that Habibou was Foreign Minister in the eighties."
That is, it identified Niger as a military dictatorship when it is, at the moment, a more or less functioning Democracy (functioning better than the USA anyway).

Also the London News Review gets a probabionary bookmark.

Estimates of the percentage of priests who are gay have varied from as low as 10 percent to as high as 60 percent.

Wow. I had only heard of the lower estimate. Of course, since priests are supposed to be celibate, this is supposed to describe orientation not action. Still who came up with this 60% estimate ?

Blair Government Sacrifices Freedom of the Press to Hide the fact that they have allied themselves with an Insane Idiot.

Britain's attorney general yesterday told the Daily Mirror and other newspapers not to publish further details from a top-secret memo that detailed a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in which Bush expressed a desire to bomb an Arab TV station.

The attorney general would be the Lord Goldsmith who concluded that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal before he concluded that it would be legal. His lordship might contemplate his place in history.


The Daily Mirror however, shows Judith Miller's Times and Bob Woodward's Post what a serious newspaper looks like

One long national nightmare is over

Daniela Deane reports in the Washington Post that

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held by the Bush administration for three years without charges as an enemy combatant plotting a "dirty bomb" attack in the United States, has been indicted on charges unrelated to any potential terrorist attack in this country.

Thus there are, at the moment, no US citizens arrested on US soil held indefinitely in prison without trial as a result of a decision made by the US president. The executive branch continues to hold non citizens without either trials of the Geneva convention protection for prisoners of war and the Senate has decided to restrict their right of habeus Corpus, but one bright line has been crossed heading towards the rule of law.

The optimistic can hope that in the not so distant future the USA will become again a free nation under the law.

Newly awakened from the nightmare of absolute presidential power, I fear that, if Padilla is acquited, he will be locked up again as an "enemy combatant" and the bill of rights will fall back into a coma troubled by the nightmares of arrogance and hypocricy.

Howdo I surf with no direction home ?

Alarmed by the Judith Miller fiasco (and greedy for technorati track backs) I recently switched my Netscape home from www.nytimes.com to www.washingtonpost.com. Then I learned about mr Run Amok. Now where can I go for excellent news and information. I feel like Rolling Stone.

Keep it up and I will drop our journals of record for the journal of records

(dumb pun due to Michael Kinsley some time ago).

I learn

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

[snip]

as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.

Miller also continued to promote al-Haideri's tale of Saddam's villainy. In January 2003, more than a year after her first article appeared, Miller again reported that Pentagon "intelligence officials" were telling her that "some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri." His interviews with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Miller added, "ultimately resulted in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and purchases, officials said."

Finally, in early 2004, more than two years after he made the dramatic allegations to Miller and Moran about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, al-Haideri was taken back to Iraq by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. On a wide-ranging trip through Baghdad and other key locations, al-Haideri was given the opportunity to point out exactly where Saddam's stockpiles were hidden, confirming the charges that had helped to start a war.

In the end, he could not identify a single site where illegal weapons were buried.

neglecting to mention a failed lie detector test would seem to render moot the distinction between deception and cherry picking no ?

Still more sureal, John Rendon, the founder of the Iraqi National Congress campaigned for McGovern before he campaigned for Chalabi (and they called Kerry a flip flopper). It doesn't look like the whole Rendon family has flipped since

Rendon's brother Rick serves as senior partner and runs the company's Boston office, producing public-service announcements for the Whale Conservation Institute and coordinating Empower Peace, a campaign that brings young people in the Middle East in contact with American kids through video-conferencing technology.

The flip flopper and they guy who loves flipper are brothers under the skin

More seriously the article shows, not only, that the Bush administration supressed key information when selling its war, but also that contracted out propaganda is official US policy and that, when it is denounced, only the acronym of the publicly funded propaganda agency is changed.

Swinging at a curveball

The Los Angeles Times has a huge article on Curveball. Any reader who is unfamiliar with mr Curveball should not bother reading on. The article is absolutely awesome and proves that intelligence was massively distorted. It is also, as mentioned massive. Kevin Drum, has, as usual selected the most informative bits. Achieving brevity, he had to leave out lots of really striking stuff. I will aim for a middle road and present a broader selection of the proof of gross misconduct. Also I will mention which bits are new. Obviously we now know curveball is a total liar, so I won't bother with the overwhelming proof of that.

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'
# The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches.

By Bob Drogin and John Goetz, Special to The Times


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.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

[snip]

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

[snip]

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview ... the German officials who handled his case

[snip]

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.

[snip]

The senior BND officer who supervised Curveball's case said he was aghast when he watched Powell misstate Curveball's claims as a justification for war.

"We were shocked," the official said. "Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven…. It was not hard intelligence."

[snip]

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.

[snip]

Since the Iraqi had arrived in Munich, U.S. liaison with German intelligence was assigned to the local DIA team.

[snip]

In DIA files, Iraqi sources were listed as "red" if U.S. intelligence could interview them. Curveball was a "blue" source, meaning the Germans would not permit U.S. access to him.

Curveball said he hated Americans, the Germans explained.

This is important because the DIA flagged curveball as a fabricator, while the CIA did not. The fact that the chain of communication was BND DIA CIA makes this a refusal to accept the conclusion of the people closest to the case.

In an e-mail to The Times, Robin Butler, head of the British inquiry into prewar intelligence, said "incomplete reporting" by the BND misled the British to assume the trucks could produce weapons-grade bio-agents such as anthrax spores. But Curveball only spoke of producing a liquid slurry unsuitable for bombs or warheads.

I note that the difficult step in weaponizing anthrax is grinding the clumps of spores into a very fine powder without killing them. Fermentors are easy and can be made as large or small as one likes. It is only because the step allegedly done on trucks is trivial that it was not obvious that it wasn't happening.

Curveball said he had helped assemble one truck-mounted germ factory in 1997 at Djerf al Nadaf, a tumble-down cluster of warehouses in a gritty industrial area 10 miles southeast of Baghdad. He helped the Germans build a scale model of the facility, showing how vehicles were hidden in a two-story building — and how they entered and exited on either end.

[snip]

Curveball's reports were highly valued in Washington because the CIA had no Iraqi spies with access to weapons programs at the time.

One detail particularly impressed the CIA: Curveball's report of a 1998 germ weapons accident at Djerf al Nadaf. Powell cited the incident in his prewar U.N. speech. An "eyewitness" was "at the site" when an accident occurred, and 12 technicians "died from exposure to biological agents," Powell said.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, then Powell's chief of staff, said senior CIA officials told Powell the "principal source had not only worked in mobile labs but had seen an accident and had been injured in the accident…. This gave more credibility to it."

But German intelligence officials said the CIA was wrong. Curveball only "heard rumors of an accident," the BND supervisor said. "He gave a third-hand account."

[snip]

The BND, insisting Curveball spoke no English and would not meet Americans, introduced the doctor as a German. The CIA physician remained silent, because he was not fluent in German. He was surprised, he later told others, that Curveball spoke "excellent English" to others in the room.

Moreover, Curveball was "very emotional, very excitable," the doctor told one colleague. And although it was early morning, Curveball smelled of liquor and looked "very sick" from a stiff hangover.

German intelligence officials said Curveball didn't have a drinking problem.

this is interesting because it is evidence of BND deception. I'm sure they will argue with this CIA doctor, but the question whether someone is an English speaking drunk or not does not seem technical or open to various interpretations.

MI6 cabled the CIA that British intelligence "is not convinced that Curveball is a wholly reliable source" and that "elements of [his] behavior strike us as typical of … fabricators,'' the presidential commission reported.

British intelligence also warned that spy satellite images taken in 1997 when Curveball claimed to be working at Djerf al Nadaf conflicted with his descriptions. The photos showed a wall around most of the main warehouse, clearly blocking trucks from getting in or out.

From context this seems to be in early 2001, but the article is not clear. In any case there was proof curveball was a liar long before the Bush administration began presenting his claims as known facts.

More problematic were the three sources the CIA said had corroborated Curveball's story. Two had ties to Chalabi. All three turned out to be frauds.

The most important, a former major in the Iraqi intelligence service, was deemed a liar by the CIA and DIA. In May 2002, a fabricator warning was posted in U.S. intelligence databases.

Powell said he was never warned, during three days of intense briefings at CIA headquarters before his U.N. speech, that he was using material that both the DIA and CIA had determined was false.

[snip]

In December 2000, after a year of Curveball's reports, another national intelligence estimate cautiously noted that "new intelligence" had caused U.S. intelligence "to adjust our assessment upward" and "suggests Baghdad has expanded'' its bio-weapons program.

But the caveats disappeared after the Sept. 11 attacks and the still-unsolved mailing of anthrax-laced letters to several U.S. states.

Iraq "continues to produce at least … three BW agents" and its mobile germ factories provide "capabilities surpassing the pre-Gulf War era," the CIA weapons center warned in October 2001.

[snip]

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.

[snip] 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.' "

The above has been reported already. Notice this is before the NIE was sent to congress and before the vote. Did anyone say "hold the presses." Yes

Drumheller, a veteran of 26 years in the CIA clandestine service, said he and several aides repeatedly raised alarms after the lunch in tense exchanges with CIA analysts working on the Curveball case.

"The fact is, there was a lot of yelling and screaming about this guy," said James Pavitt, then chief of clandestine services, who retired from the CIA in August 2004. "My people were saying, 'We think he's a stinker.' "

This is the first time I read this. Until now, I couldn't rule the possibility that Drumheller kept the news to himself.

On Feb. 8, three days after Powell's speech, the U.N.'s Team Bravo conducted the first search of Curveball's former work site. The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. It was long enough to prove Curveball had lied.

[snip]

Curveball had said the germ trucks could enter the warehouse from either end. But there were no garage doors and a solid, 6-foot-high wall surrounded most of the building. The wall British intelligence saw in 1997 satellite photos clearly made impossible the traffic patterns Curveball had described.

Thus there was positive proof that curveball was lying before the invasion.

On March 7, 2003, Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, told the Security Council that a series of searches had found "no evidence" of mobile biological production facilities in Iraq. It drew little notice at the time.

The invasion of Iraq began two weeks later.

Soon after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the discovery of two trucks loaded with lab equipment in northern Iraq brought cheers to the CIA weapons center.

[snip]

The DIA then ordered a classified review of the evidence. One of 15 analysts held to the initial finding that the trucks were built for germ warfare.

[snip]

"Jerry had become kind of a nonperson," Scheuer recalled of their meeting.

Jeesus at the CIA they don't even know decent newspeak the word is "unperson" not "nonperson". Double plus ungood Mr Scheuer no wonder you had to resign.

The CIA had advised Bush in the fall of 2003 of "problems with the sourcing" on biological weapons, an official familiar with the briefing said. But the president has never withdrawn the statement in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq produced "germ warfare agents" or his postwar assertions that "we found the weapons of mass destruction."

A Feature not a Bug

Read it here now. You probably didn't read it here 6 days ago.

Atrios seems interesting in a theory which I mentioned and described as crazy