Updated video below

Funny coincidence about what I'm going to blog about here. I started rereading portions of the 9-11 Commission Report a couple of weeks ago after I discovered the real reason why Bush/Cheney ordered torture. All this time, I thought these draft dodging faux cowboys were trying to create an illusion that they were, you know, real rough and tough guys when they ordered torture. Bush/Cheney had not protected the country on 9-11, nor from the anthrax attacks…..the worst attacks ever in our history. Both those terrorist attacks happened on their watch. I just figured that they felt responsible, as well they should, and needed some made-for-teevee, warrior-like action to counter their utter failure.

However, even I couldn't think as cynically and twisted as Bush and Cheney were thinking. They actually ordered torture to produce false information tying al-Qaeda with Iraq. That was the very purpose of the whole Bush/Cheney torture agenda. It worked too. Bush and Powell used the bogus confession of al-Libi, later recanted, as part of a "marketing" blitz in September 2002 to scare Congress into passing the Iraq Resolution. Later, in February 2003, Colin Powell used the same bogus confession information in his failed attempt to "market" the fraud-up to the U.N.

Now, today we're finding out that the 9-11 Commission Report based some of it's most crucial findings on bogus confessions of tortured prisoners. Oh, my. Stop reading and go here.

I've blogged on several occasions that once the Iraq crime was fully understood for what it was…..then…..9-11 could be looked at more thoroughly. Perhaps that will happen eventually now because of the illegal and traitorous torture agenda of the last administration coming to light. We'll see.

But wait….there's even more.

Former chief of staff of the State Department under Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, wrote a blog piece. If you read it, you may find yourself saying, "well, hells, belles, Loretta….that's what The Reverend's been saying." You know, something like that. Here's a bit of it…..but you really need to read the whole thing.

"..what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop."

And I found this interesting….

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Bush administration officials are in trouble. In light of the spineless Democrats, especially in the Senate, I have my doubts whether the Terror and Torture Twins will ever be held accountable….the Village would have such a sh*t fit. Having said that, the slow drip, drip, drip has a genuine Watergate feel to it.

Update: Rachel Maddow had her best segment to date last night on Bush/Cheney crimes. It's well worth a look….

I'm sick to death of reading mindlessly written bullsh*t like this from todays' NY Times….

This extraordinary consensus (to torture) was possible,… largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

That is the biggest turd I've ever seen in the Times.

Consider: No one amongst the Bushies knew the origins in history of such torture techniques….and that made torture, "possible." No one in the bunch recognized that waterboarding Sheik Mohammed 183 times could be evil and wrong because they all slept during history classes in college.

Bullsh*t.

The top officials he (Tenet, CIA) briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition;……Others say that if they had known the full history of the interrogation methods or been able to anticipate how the issue would explode, they would have advised against using them.

The Times writers are tugging my root here. I'm supposed to believe that the Bushies lived in a vacuum, a vacuum about ethics, morality and….history. And THAT vaccuum is some kind of explanation or, worse, a justification, for why America secretly practiced savage and barbaric torture during Bush's regime. A simple brushup on the history of barbaric behavior was what was lacking. Horsepucky.

An aside: Last night on Rachel Maddow, lo and behold, Condi Rice's protector, Philip Zelikow, came out of his undisclosed location to help the now potentially endangered legal prospects of Ms. Rice. As I predicted months ago, the last administration's crimes are now leaking out from everywhere. And it's every ex-Bushie for himself. That's why Zelikow went on the teevee last night.

And that's why the NY Times, today, is writing bullsh*t….

After years of recriminations about torture and American values, Bush administration officials say it is easy to second-guess the decisions of 2002, when they feared that a new attack from Al Qaeda could come any moment.

I'm sick of hearing how the Bushies were so goddamn worried about ANOTHER attack…..when they were the ones who didn't stop, you know, the 9-11 attack. There were piles of material available pointing a curious and defense-minded Bush administration to the 9-11 caper before it happened. Yet, Bush's response in August, 2001 to the CIA briefer attempting to point him in that direction, was, "okay, you've covered your ass."

When the Villagers at the NY Times seek to defend the indefensible, they go all in….

according to many Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and some intelligence officers who are critics of the coercive methods, the C.I.A. program would also produce an invaluable trove of information on Al Qaeda, including leads on the whereabouts of important operatives and on terror schemes discussed by Al Qaeda. Whether the same information could have been acquired using the traditional, noncoercive methods that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military have long used is impossible to say, and former Bush administration officials say they did not have the luxury of time to develop a more patient approach, given that they had intelligence warnings of further attacks.

Bush, The Dick, Condi and the rest, were warned repeatedly by Richard Clarke in early 2001 about the imminent danger of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. According to Clarke's warnings, warnings about "further attacks", there wasn't any "luxury of time" before 9-11…..yet the Bushies acted like they had all the time in the world. Didn't they? No principle's meetings on the threat of torture were held until just before 9-11. Clarke, unlike during the Clinton administration, was purposely kept out of the Bush Cabinet meetings. Bush, in 2001, apparently, had plenty of "luxury of time."

But AFTER we were hit….then, there was no "luxury of time" because of "intelligence warnings" about "further attacks."

This is all total bullsh*t.

With the torture memos being released, the evil of the Bush regime is now staring us all in the face. That evil must be dealt with now. That's why we're seeing this flurry of bullsh*t now. That's why The Dick runs to Fox News, that's why after never hearing, or seeing, Philip Zelikow ever asked questions from a liberal, he took questions from Rachel last night…..and that's why the New York Times published a bunch of Bush ass covering bullsh*t in their "liberal" paper today.

Update: Read a much more objective account in today's Washington Post.

Update #2: McClatchy is reporting that the pressure to use torture coming from Bush's White House was "in part to find evidence of cooperation between al-Qaeda and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime…"

"While we were there (at Gitmo) a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

EVERYTHING Bush and The Dick decided was about going to Iraq.

A brief review….

Since November 4th, last, the small group of Republicans left in Congress, their corporate media lapdogs leashed up tight, have gone about, non-stop, trying to diminish, discredit, and in some cases, delegitimize Obama's presidency and his larger Democratic majority in Congress.

It's been Governor Blago for weeks. The subliminal Sesame Street words each day have been "taint" and "dog", not-so-coyly suggesting that it was Obama who was tainted and would be dogged by reporters insisting he was….tainted. Simultaneously, came the rabid, mouthbreathing attempts to get the Supreme Court to rule that Obama was not really an American citizen and shouldn't be president, even though he won by nearly 10 million votes.

After the Hillary announcement for Sec. of State, it became balls-to-the-wall coverage of how she would run a parallel government, if confirmed. It would be too threatening for Obama…and then there's, you know, Bill. How would Obama guarantee that Bill would not have an erection during Hillary's stay at State? What would Obama do if Bill did, accidently or on purpose, sprout wood while he was carrying out his international charitable blackbag fund raising operations? Usual-establishment-suspects wrung their hands raw while speculating. Make your own mental pun….or perhaps not.

These are the same people, by the way, who automatically begin to clutch their pearls whenever a Democratic president is elected. These are the same people who told us for months on end that, "Obama has big trouble with white voters, Hillary voters, Pennsylvania voters, non-blues loving voters, midget voters, incest-victim voters, A-B positive blood voters, Bradley-effect denying voters and dead Appalachian voters."

Then came the "Obama is a centrist, almost conservative", horsepucky, after the president-elect kept Gates at Defense and invited Saddle-bareback, Rick Warren to offer a symbolic prayer at the inauguration. "The most liberal senator in the Senate", "a liberal's liberal", "a socialist", "a black liberation-theology Marxist"…..suddenly, and without warning or explanation….became a conservative centrist who realized that the nation was, in actuality, center-right.

Recently it's been brilliance-in-news-porn with tremendously responsible articles like, "What would Dick do?"…..instructing Obama on how he will have to keep some of The Dick's criminal policies on national and international activities…alive and well….if Americans are going to be kept, you know, safe.

Yesterday, at Eric Holder's confirmation hearings to become Attorney General, there was a brief case study moment on how the corrupt game between, primarily, conservative politicians, and establishment media lapdogs….really works….the warp and woof, if you will….

For several weeks, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) has been feuding with Patrick Leahy (D-VT) about when Holder's confirmation hearings would be scheduled. Specter wanted a delay, and began suggesting that there were a lot of unanswered questions about Holder, including the Marc Rich pardon, the Elian Gonzalez saga, and other real old stuff that nobody cares about anymore….except for obstructionist-minded Republicans and their Knee Pad Media partners.

Politico, Knee Pad Extraordinaire Blogsite, led the way, starting December 10th….

Specter, a former prosecutor himself, said he was troubled that Holder did not stand up to President Clinton on the pardon of Rich, who was a fugitive living abroad at the time of the pardon.

…the Judiciary Committee Republicans are going to have a field day with the Rich pardon.

Following Specter's pulling of the Knee Padders chains about Holder early on in December, Padders went forward everywhere echoing Specter's deep and serious concerns.

Which led to Specter's comments at Holder's hearing yesterday….completing the Knee Pad Circle….

"Almost every major newspaper in the country has comment about the importance of questioning Mr. Holder. And as I said on the floor, I have an open mind but I think there are important questions to be asked and upon the questions to be answered.
The editorials have commented about the need for the questioning of Mr. Holder based upon some of the factors in his background. There's no doubt he comes with an excellent resume, but there are questions nonetheless. So says the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the Rocky Mountain News, and many other newspapers across the country." Link

The same lapdog, Knee Pad wearing, GOP appendages in the media who have been feverishly trying to discredit, smear, taint, and delegitimize Obama for months…..have their chains pulled by Arlen Specter, motivating them to stenographically repeat Specter's implications about Holder in newspaper columns and teevee news shows everywhere….resulting in Specter referring to those same Knee Pad pieces as the basis for why he has to be an asshole, challenging Holder as a matter of 'principle'.

A clearer example of how it all works couldn't be found. Republicans can't govern…..journalists can't report news…..but together they can mislead, manipulate, obstruct and propagandize with the best of them.

From an AP article dated October 23, 2001….

At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago.

On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved. Link

Anyone recall any of the 19 hijackers being accused of carrying, you know, anthrax with their, you know, boxcutters? Why Cipro? And why on the night of September 11? Why not a precaution for bubonic plague?

ABC News July 14, 2008….

In the days after 9/11, when fears of another terrorist strike were at their peak, Vice President Dick Cheney was convinced that he had been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax, according to a new book.

On Oct. 18, 2001, a White House alarm went off indicating that sensors had detected dangerous levels of radioactive, chemical or biological agents. According to Mayer, anyone who had entered the White House situation room, including Cheney, had been exposed.

"They thought Cheney was already lethally infected," said a former administration officer who had kept the White House secret until now, according to the book. Link

If, on the night of September 11, 2001, Cheney started taking Cipro….why did he believe he had been infected in the middle of October?

Slate.com piece, March 18, 2008, by Richard Cohen…..

The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it. Link

"Not entirely unexpected". Who told Cohen, before anthrax letters had been sent out, to start taking Cipro….and why? And what about the rest of Americans, between the time of the hijacking and the time the anthrax letters were sent out,….why weren't we all told to take Cipro? Who was the "high level official" who told Cohen about taking Cipro before any anthrax had been sent out?

January 26, 2002, Salon.com piece….

On Oct. 2, Ayaad Assaad, a U.S. government scientist and former biowarfare researcher, received a call from an FBI agent asking him to come in for a talk. It was well before anthrax panic gripped the nation — in fact, it was the same day that photo editor Robert Stevens, 63, was admitted to a Florida hospital. It wasn't until the next day that Stevens was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, and another two days later, on Oct. 5, when he would become the first of five eventual fatalities caused by the apparent bioterrorist attack.
They showed Assaad a detailed, unsigned, computer-typed letter with a startling accusation: that the 53-year-old Assaad, an Environmental Protection Agency scientist who filed an age discrimination suit against the U.S. Army for dismissing him from a biowarfare lab, might be a bioterrorist.

"Dr. Assaad is a potential biological terrorist," the letter stated, according to Assaad and McDermott. The letter was received by the FBI in Quantico, Va., but Assaad did not learn from the FBI where it had been mailed from. "I have worked with Dr. Assaad," the letter continued, "and I heard him say that he has a vendetta against the U.S. government and that if anything happens to him, he told his sons to carry on." Link

I think it would be important to find out who sent that letter.

From an October 18, 2001 Letterman show….

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we’re doing fine …. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made. Link

"There is some indication." What was that indication? What was McCain referring to?

What's of intense interest to me right now is the lackadaisical attitude of the news media over this story. This was a terrorist attack on the United States. Not only that, but in many ways the anthrax letters were an even bigger threat to Americans than driving airplanes into buildings. So why then, when the alleged anthrax letter sender kills himself because he was to be indicted and charged with murder, is the media yawning?

Is f*cking everything about Brittney and Paris?

If you haven't read Part 1, do so now.

On October 12, 2001 ABC News reported this about the anthrax letter attacks…

"While investigators said a criminal attack would more likely have spread anthrax through the building, they also say the strain of lab-isolated bacteria found almost certainly rules out a lone crackpot."

On October 16, 2001 ABC reported this about the anthrax letter attacks….

Some of America's top biological warfare scientists are edging closer to a conclusion….. that the recent germ attacks involved an expertise only a government could provide.

The Russians have this know-how. So do the Iraqis, among others.

This is one reason why former UNSCOM chief Richard Butler has echoed Spertzel's (director of the U.N. Special Commission of biological weapons inspectors in Iraq) apprehension about reports from the Czech government that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Did the Iraqi provide Atta, the Egyptian pilot considered a linchpin in the World Trade Center attacks, with anthrax? "It's not yet concluded," says Butler, who says the United States is trying to answer this question with the help of the Egyptian government.

But if the agents used in the attack are found to contain the telltale presence of certain compounds used in a professional drying process, this could be a very revealing clue. For instance, the presence of aluminum clay, an anti-clumping agent employed in an air-drying process for anthrax, would point to professionals rather than amateurs, and narrow the field of possible suppliers.

On October 26, 2001 ABC News reported this about the anthrax letter attacks….

"Despite a last-minute denial from the White House, sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons — Iraq.

ABCNEWS has been told by three well-placed and separate sources that initial tests on an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have detected a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet.

An urgent series of tests conducted on the letter at Ft. Detrick, Md., and elsewhere discovered the anthrax spores were treated with bentonite,

As far as is known, only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.

"It means to me that Iraq becomes the prime suspect as the source of the anthrax used in these letters," former U.N. weapons inspector Timothy Trevan told ABCNEWS. Link

"three well placed and separate sources" allegedly told ABC News that "initial tests" detected bentonite. Bentonite was never found in any of the anthrax letters, yet 'three well placed" sources, says ABC, insisted they had found bentonite in the anthrax.

Americans need to know who those "three well placed and separate sources" were. Now that Bruce Ivins, apparently the real anthrax mailer, has killed himself, Americans need to know who was telling lies to ABC News, steering them to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the anthrax letters.

The reason this is important now is because of recent revelations by the Senate Intelligence Committee that, indeed, the Bush administration abused intelligence, propagandized and in some cases, outright lied, in order to lead America into the Bush-Cheney war of choice in Iraq.

Is it possible that Bush-Cheney lackeys informed ABC News about the "initial tests" on the anthrax? Is it possible that Ivins, himself, provided those "initial results" to three Bush-Cheney "well placed and separate sources" who passed the lies on to ABC?

With one of Bruce Ivins letters-to-the-editor that I posted yesterday, combined with the words printed on the anthrax letters themselves, it seems clear that Ivins wanted people to believe the anthrax letters were sent by Muslims. Did the Bush-Cheney administration want Americans to believe that too, so they could attack Iraq…..the alleged home of the phony bentonite?

October 26, 2001…Peter Jennings…

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.

November, 2001…conservative rag…The Weekly Standard…

On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq — and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type — is behind the germ warfare.

January, 2002….SOTU speech by George W. Bush…

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Glenn Greenwald's comment about the Bush "Iraqi regime" line….

Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq. Link

This story is not closed by any stretch of the imagination.

It appears that the George W. Bush rogue regime, at the very least, strategically propagandized the American public with lies and misinformation, to convince us we needed to attack and remove another rogue regime over in Iraq.

The anthrax letter attacks were used, very much as Judith Miller of the New York Times was used with the "Curveball" lies about Iraq, to advance the pre-inaugural Bush-Cheney neo-con plan……to invade and occupy a nation perched atop an ocean of oil.

USA Today, October 13, 2004….

Bruce Ivins was troubled by the dust, dirt and clutter on his officemate's desk, and not just because it looked messy. He suspected the dust was laced with anthrax.

It was December 2001. Ivins, an authority on anthrax, was one of the handful of researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., who prepared spores of the deadly bacteria to test anthrax vaccines in animals.

"I swabbed approximately 20 areas of (her) desk, including the telephone computer and desktop," Ivins later reported to Army investigators. Half of the samples, he found, "were suspicious for anthrax," betraying the clumpy brown appearance of anthrax colonies under a microscope.

Rather than reporting contamination to his superiors, Ivins said, he disinfected the desk. "I had no desire to cry wolf," he later told an Army investigator. Link

Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2004….

He (Ivins) detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach.

“I didn’t keep records or verify the cultures because I was concerned that records might be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,” he said in a sworn statement included in the Army report.

“I was also afraid that reporting would have raised great alarm within the institute, which at the time was very busy” working on the anthrax mailing samples. Link

Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2008….

The former Army scientist who was the prime suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings agreed Friday to take $5.82 million from the government to settle his claim that the Justice Department and the FBI invaded his privacy and ruined his career.

Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, 54, who was called a "person of interest" in the case by then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in 2002, said that label and repeated leaks of investigative details to the media damaged his reputation.

Meanwhile, the very likely anthrax culprit, Bruce Ivins, was writing letters to the editor like this one….

Originally published August 24, 2006 Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."

By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue." Link

And finally, this from today's Washington Post….

Authorities investigating the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings used previously unavailable techniques to trace the lethal powder to the office where scientist Bruce E. Ivins worked at the sprawling Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., according to sources briefed on the investigation.

Investigators were so certain about the connection that they had scheduled a meeting for last Tuesday with Ivins's attorneys to discuss a plea bargain that would have sent the scientist to prison for life but spared him a death sentence, according to sources briefed on the government's case. But barely two hours before the meeting was to occur, Ivins died of an overdose of Tylenol that he had ingested over the weekend, the sources added. The death was ruled a suicide.

Ivins, 62, a prominent researcher of inhaled anthrax bacteria who had personally tested the lethal powder as part of the anthrax investigation,

In March 2000, Ivins and other Army specialists filed to patent a method of making a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine. The patent was awarded in May 2002.

But the chief executive, James P. Panek, said in an interview last night that it would have been "very unusual" if Ivins and the other scientists had received a financial stake in the licensing deal.

Panek said that Ivins had no commercial arrangement with the firm.
Link

Despite the fact that Hatfill never worked with anthrax, ever, and Ivins did and had…..John Ashcroft and the boys pursued Hatfill for almost 5 years instead of Ivins. Ivins lone expertise appears to be anthrax. Ivins had a history of making homicidal threats. Ivins did not report what he called anthrax leaks within his own lab in 2001 because he didn't want someone filing a "Freedom of Information Act" request.

The vaccine motive, quickly latched on to by propagandists in American media, can be ruled out…..unless a monetary connection can be made. Something the chief executive of the vaccine maker says would be "highly unusual".

Comments anyone? Perhaps someone would like to take a stab at that letter to the editor that Ivins wrote.

More later.