July 15, 2003
404 page for the New York Times
Sheila also points to The New York Times story cannot be displayed, brought to us by Anthony Cox, and fills us in on how the "weapons of mass destruction" page came to be.
Taxes, Indians and violence in R.I.
This dispute in Rhode Island didn't make the news here in northern California (then again, I don't watch the local TV news). But Sheila's all over it:
Spread the "sin taxes" around -- tax fast food, SUVs, guns, not just cigarettes -- including a photo of the R.I. State Police's raid on the Narragansett Indians' new tax-free tobacco shop.
Listening in on the Supreme Court
Katie Dean in Wired News: File sharing is usually considered the province of music, but more substantive files are available to be shared. Thanks to the Oyez project, you can download MP3s of Supreme Court arguments.
The strange changing of the guard at the NYT
The LA Times' Tim Rutten dissects the odd circumstances surrounding Bill Keller's appointment as the New York Times' new executive editor.
Limbaugh as football analyst
Talk about brain-dead decisions: Right-wing talk radio's Rush Limbaugh has been hired to make weekly appearances on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown "to provide the voice of the fan and to spark debate on the show."
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Studios fight Internet bill in California
Jon Healey in today's LA Times: Studios Stage Fight Against Internet Bill.
These weapons of mass destruction cannot be displayed
Check it out: Go to Google, type in "weapons of mass destruction," and select the top link.
Twisting our intelligence
Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times:
After I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know.Yup. And now it's coming out.
Based on conversations with people in the intelligence community, this picture is emerging: the White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit. The Central Intelligence Agency objected, and then it and the National Security Council negotiated a new wording, attributing it all to the Brits. It felt less dishonest pinning the falsehood on the cousins.
What troubles me is not that single episode, but the broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess ó and that created the false expectations undermining our occupation today. Some in the administration are trying to make George Tenet the scapegoat for the affair. But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation. ...
While the scandal has so far focused on Iraq, the manipulations appear to be global. For example, one person from the intelligence community recalls an administration hard-liner's urging the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research to state that Cuba has a biological weapons program. The spooks refused, and Colin Powell backed them. ...
Paul Krugman in the Times adds:
More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence.
Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from "people around the White House" urging him to link that assault to Saddam Hussein. His account seems to back up a CBS.com report last September, headlined "Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," which quoted notes taken by aides to Donald Rumsfeld on the day of the attack: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." ...
Also check out this RealAudio snippet featuring Ray McGovern, a member of the CIA for 27 years who served as the ìAll Intelligence Agentî during the Reagan administration. Heís now part of a group of former intelligence agents who are so dismayed with the intelligence used to support going to war against Iraq that they formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Ray McGovern says the Bush administration slanted intelligence information prior to the Iraq war. He points to an unsual pattern on the part of Vice President Dick Cheney, who visited CIA headquarters 27 times prior to the invasion.
