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He basically tells C-Span what Dear Leader didn't want published in the New York Times.

Apparently the CIA had okayed it, but Bu$hCo didn't want that sucker out.

This boils down to

1. the previous reports of Iran offering to negotiate a comprehensive deal for peace in the Middle East, and,
2. The dialog that Iran had with the USA right after 9-11 and the lead up to Afghanistan.

9:07 PM

Engineering software is boring. Most of the people I know would better be porn actors. You Yankees are sick

Q: If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?

GONZALES: That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that -- and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." -- George W. Bush, January 28, 2003

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." -- Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003

and North Korea, which has killed millions of people by trying to take shortcuts to development..

Really, this is all about control.. God has little todo with it..

Also, read a bit about the rights war on education.. Here's a good web page on it..

http://billmon.org/archives/001752.html

Totalitarian regimes always are run by megalomaniacs and they tend to have grandiose plans for science.. preferring schemes that 'transform' society while neglecting the boring basics..

One example.. Mao didn't know anything about science, or industry, but he wanted to transform society.. He had the most power in the peasantry... so they had to do it..

Want to know more? Read Jasper Becker's 'Hungry Ghosts' - about the worst disaster in human history.. the huge famine he caused in 1958-1962, when many Chinese parents ate their children..)

But he knew he would need to depend on the intelligentsia to do it.. and he didn't want them to have that much power.. (thats what this is all about, taking power away from the nonbelievers..even if it means destroying society's means of living as a side effect..)
So, his suggestions resulted in bureaucrats trying to force people to plow fields six feet deep and have two harvests a year.. the end result? 30 million people died while food rotted in warehouses and was exported..

The Whiskey Bar is absolutely wonderful. Well written. Great op-ed. Fact checking up the wazoo -- something sorely missing from most blogs. The guy definitely knows what true journalism is. Unfortunately, the site's been silent for the last month.

Check the archives though. It's worth it. It'll take weeks just to read through it all and each one is as good as the last.

Atrios/Eschaton
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
Billmon's Whiskey Bar
Matthew Yglesias
Eric Alterman
Kevin Drum
Brad DeLong
Daily Kos
Digby
Mark Kleiman
Hesiod's Counterspin
Bob Somerby's incomparable Daily Howler

and the inimitable Bartcop
(and Fafblog)

I found that billmon was one of the best for attempting to make the liberal point of view in a solid, well-researched, essay style on a regular basis. He's done an excellent job particularly in media-related politics. He's been AWOL for a while, though.

Perhaps he was too effective?

[knock on wood]

I'll give you that this list is a list made by a liberal group and does display a leaning. But do they "have no basis in fact?" No. That's not why they were under reported.

As a person who used to work in a daily newspaper in a very conservative market (that I grew up in), I can tell you that large media corporations will skew the news to avoid upsetting the readers' world view so that they can make the guys in marketing happy. They want a good image with the public, and if you are in the center and the public is to the right, then you look like you're to the left. So then you move your paper to the right and suddenly everything is OK.

I saw the editor of our paper tell the entire staff that his goal was that he wanted his phone to stop ringing. He didn't want to have to deal with calls about our liberal rag, which wasn't liberal. Now, for critical thinking, you should RFA on all these stories so you know what you're talking about.

I'm glad the Army met it's 2003 recruiting goals, but that doesn't mean it has all the troops it needs - the goals were not moved to anticipate our current needs; Rumsfeld has lied before; and the instances of the Joint Chiefs of Staff changing its mind about what it wants.

But Congress did put forth two bills to reinstate the draft -- one a protest bill by Democrats.

And more troubling is why the White House increased the Selective Service budget by millions this year.

Regardless, I haven't read the article on the list (and neither have you) so there's nothing to argue about. But nothing you link to here displays any critical thinking, just lapping up the words of conservative mouthpieces.

In the right circumstances, I fully support preemptive war, just as I endorse police officers not waiting until they're shot at to shoot back (as a former SWAT officer, I've personal experience with this one).

I don't like the way you conflated preemptory bombing of another nation with police action on the street. Presumably the officer is in a situation where there is elevated tension and has to make split second decisions. I can't think of a single situation where we need to bomb another nation that hasn't made any offensive moves toward us where we need split second decision making. No, in the case of one nation making war on another, the utmost care and thought should go into this decision.

In the case of Iraq, what threat was being preempted?

Intelligence is often nothing more than a best guess.

No, actually, in the intelligence gathering community of the U.S. government things are a good deal more scientific than that. The problem is that the intelligence community was giving answers that the recipients didn't like. The administration had already chosen their objectives and were looking for anything to support this predetermined outcome. Intelligence doesn't work like that.

Avoid torturing? Good advice, and probably followed by the vast, overwhelming majority. But defining torture

No, actually, torture is very well defined by treaties of which the U.S. is a signatory, is illegal, and the MP corps is very well trained on what they are not allowed to do.

The US Justice Department, at the behest of the administration, was seeking legal justification to suspend those treaties. Donald Rumsfeld is of the opinion that authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Rumsfeld approved of 14 torture methods in various memos. Too bad that our 'leaders' are letting the peons in this situation take all the heat. What ever happened with the buck stopping at the commander in chief?

Now I don't know about you, but when the highest levels of our government are approving of torture and using the Nuremberg trials as precedent, it disgusts me. This shouldn't even be something that needs to be on the table. It certainly isn't something that I expect from the "leader of the free world".

Remember, my whole point was that we create more hatred for ourselves when we act badly. How many little Osamas have been created by our atrocities?

Read what Billmon has to say. He is one of the most insightful humans I have the pleasure to read on a daily basis.

Daily Kos
Atrios
Pandagon
Whisky Bar

Try the Whiskey Bar for starters. Best writing around.

This will suffice, never mind. Can someone please delete the above comment ^^;;

An interesting read concerning the US debt is on billmon.org. Powerfull stuff.

/ol