Giuliani's terrorist ties

Giuliani's terrorist ties

Meanwhile, Barrett's latest article -- probing the lucrative relationship between Giuliani's security firm and the emirate of Qatar -- prompts questions that "America's Mayor" might have found truly hard to answer. With Qatar's troubling record as both an American ally and a longtime haven for al-Qaida terrorists, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or "KSM," the little Gulf sheikdom is a curious client indeed for Giuliani Security and Safety, a division of Giuliani Partners.

If Giuliani was unaware of the terrorism issues surrounding Qatar before he signed his initial contract with the emirate in 2005, then he must not be quite the expert he claims to be. And if he knew of those issues but signed up anyway, that raises other questions.

Certainly he should be asked to explain his connections with the emirate and especially with Interior Minister Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, who has long been suspected of harboring KSM and facilitating the travel of al-Qaida operatives to and from Qatar. Whatever reasons the United States may have for maintaining diplomatic and military ties with Qatar, the contradictions in doing business with that nation for a hard-liner like Giuliani should be explored.

Impeachment: If Not Now, When?

Impeachment: If Not Now, When?

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. – Article II, Section 4

On Nov. 6, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney on the floor of the House of Representatives. For one shining moment the will of the majority of Americans and the promise of this nation's founders were truly represented.

The detailed charges were solemnly read from the House podium and televised on C-Span. House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer made a motion to table the bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lobbied hard for votes to table.

In a stunning turnaround, House Republicans changed strategy and voted decisively to prevent tabling the impeachment resolution.

Pelosi was defied by 85 Democratic members who voted against tabling the impeachment resolution. This includes John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and six committee members. The resolution was quickly voted back to the Judiciary Committee, where it is not resting quietly.

Judiciary Committee member Bob Wexler wrote, "The American people are served well with a legitimate and thorough impeachment inquiry. I will urge the Judiciary Committee to schedule impeachment hearings immediately and not let this issue languish as it has over the last six months. Only through hearings can we begin to correct the abuses of Dick Cheney and the Bush administration."

Impeachment is squarely on the table, and momentum is building. A year ago, almost no elected official breathed the word impeachment. Now impeachment has hit the House floor, and our electeds have gone on record. Millions of Americans are demanding an end to executive abuse of power.

After six years of state of emergency, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, continual war and occupations, our Constitution is deeply in crisis. Americans are in danger of losing our system of government and civil rights if they do not roll back the Bush administration's assault on the rule of law.

Allowing Cheney and George W. Bush to finish their terms without being impeached means future presidents are free to copy their lawless behavior. Of course many important issues deserve the attention of Congress. But the Constitution is the foundation of our democracy, not just an issue. Without the Constitution, we have nothing.

Polls show that 74 percent of Democrats and the majority of American adults support impeaching Cheney. "Never in our history have the high crimes and misdemeanors been so flagrant, and the people of our country know it," writes local author Richard Behan.

Kucinich has targeted Cheney first, but investigations will implicate the president as well. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50 percent of respondents say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48 percent, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974. With these numbers, why aren't Bush and Cheney gone already?

Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) Thinks some Americans deserve representation and some don't

Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) Thinks some Americans deserve representation and some don't

Today, a majority of the Senate voted 57 to 42 to give DC congressional representation. But it failed to get the 60 votes needed to overcome Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) filibuster.

Doesn't the state of Kentucky deserve a Senator with something that resembles character or should they keep reelecting Mitch The Elitist.

Bush's outrageous neglect of Iraqi refugees

Bush's outrageous neglect of Iraqi refugees

One of the great looming disasters of the war in Iraq, a moral abdication of immense proportion, is the Bush administration's failure to help those Iraqis who have risked their lives to help us.

The Iraqi translators, drivers, and assistants of all sorts face near-certain death, at the hands of one militia or another, once U.S. forces begin to pull out (and, rhetoric aside, the pullout has begun). Dozens have been kidnapped or killed already. Whatever one's feelings about the war, it is beyond dispute that these people have earned our commitment to their safety. If they want to leave, we have an obligation to get them out.

[ ]...Helping them leave would also be an acknowledgment that Iraq holds no future for these people—some of whom are among the country's educated elite. And that would be tantamount to acknowledging that the war will not end in victory, at least not as the term was originally defined.

Who's the Enemy?

Who's the Enemy?

Who is the enemy? Who, exactly, are we fighting in Iraq? Why are we there? And what's our objective?

Nearly five years into the war, the answers to basic questions like these ought to be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, they're anything but.

We aren't fighting the Sunnis. Not any more, anyway. Virtually the entire Sunni establishment, from the moderate Muslim Brotherhood-linked Iraqi Islamic Party (which has been part of every Iraqi government since 2003) to the Anbar tribal alliance (which has been begging for U.S. support since 2004 and only recently got it) is either actively cooperating with the American military or sullenly tolerating what it hopes will be a receding occupation. Across Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq, the United States is helping to build army and police units as well as neighborhood patrols — the Pentagon calls them "concerned citizens" — out of former resistance fighters, with the blessing of tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, and Salahuddin provinces, parts of Baghdad, and areas to the south of the capital. We have met the enemy, and — surprise! — they are friends or, if not that, at least not active enemies. Attacks on U.S. forces in Sunni-dominated areas, including the once-violent hot-bed city of Ramadi, Anbar's capital, have fallen dramatically.

Among the hard-core Sunni resistance, there is also significant movement toward a political accord — if the United States were willing to accept it. Twenty-two Iraqi insurgent groups announced the creation of a united front, under the leadership of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top Baath party official of the Saddam era, and they have opened talks with Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia who was Iraq's first post-Saddam prime minister.

We aren't fighting the Shia. The Shia merchant class and elite, organized into the mostly pro-Iranian Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the Islamic Dawa party, are part of the Iraqi government that the United States created and supports — and whose army and police are armed and trained by the United States. The far more popular forces of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army aren't the enemy either. In late August, Sadr declared a ceasefire, ordering his militia to stand down; and, since then, attacks on U.S. forces in Shia-dominated areas of Iraq have fallen off very sharply, too. Though recent, provocative attacks by U.S. troops, in conjunction with Iraqi forces, on Sadr strongholds in Baghdad, Diwaniya, and Karbala have caused Sadr to threaten to cancel the ceasefire order, and though intra-Shia fighting is still occurring in many parts of southern Iraq, there is no Shia enemy that justifies a continued American presence in Iraq, either.

Is a Democrat Bush's Best Friend on Telecom Amnesty

Is a Democrat Bush's Best Friend on Telecom Amnesty by Glenn Greenwald

Two months ago, Dianne Feinstein used her position on the Senate Intelligence Committee to enable passage of Bush's FISA amendments, granting the President vast new warrantless surveillance powers.

Last month, Feinstein used her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to ensure confirmation of Bush's highly controversial judicial nominee Leslie Southwick, by being the only Committee Democrat to vote for the nomination (The Politico: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein had emerged as a linchpin in the controversial nomination").

This week, Feinstein used her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to enable confirmation of Bush's Attorney General nominee by ensuring that the frightened Chuck Schumer didn't have to stand alone (Fox News: "Schumer's and Feinstein's support for Mukasey virtually guarantees that a majority of the committee will recommend his confirmation").

And now, Feinstein is using her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee -- simultaneously -- to single-handedly ensure fulfillment of Bush's telecom amnesty demands, as her hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, reports

Limbaugh joins other media in whitewashing Swift Boat Vets' falsehoods

Limbaugh joins other media in whitewashing Swift Boat Vets' falsehoods

On the November 7 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "were right on the money, and nobody has disproven anything they claimed in any of their ads, statements, written commentaries, or anything of the sort." Limbaugh made his comments on the same day reporter Tom Benner of The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, Massachusetts) revived baseless smears by the Swift Boat Veterans directed at Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) during the 2004 presidential campaign. Brenner wrote: "During the 2004 campaign, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused Kerry of embellishing his military service to further his political career, a view that seems right to Tom Mustin of Coronada, Calif., a former Navy lieutenant commander who says he has no involvement with the Swift boat group." In fact, most of the allegations the Swift Boat Veterans made about Kerry's Vietnam War service have been thoroughly discredited, often by official military records, but also by the Swift Boat accusers themselves, who struggled to keep their stories straight.

Sally Bedell Smith Renews Debunked Myths about President Clinton

Sally Bedell Smith Renews Debunked Myths about President Clinton

Smith rehashes the Monica Lewinsky year, and she's got some illuminating interviews with Clinton insiders who feel at last able to talk. There's John Podesta describing Bill angrily telling him that Lewinsky did not perform a sexual act on him and revelations from that keeper of the keys to Bluebeard's Cave, bimbo patroller Betsey Wright, on Bill's therapy, "addiction" and the no-longer-mystery woman who almost broke up the marriage. The details are riveting as ever. Who can get enough of POTUS sweating on the phone at 2 a.m. with a love-addled 24-year-old woman, placating her with job promises, knowing his world is about to explode as surely as a Sudanese powdered-milk factory?

Wow! Clinton insiders "at last" feel "able to talk"! Just imagine the pressure they must have been under not to talk all these years. Quick, grab a copy of For Love of Politics so you, too, can be riveted by these "illuminating interviews" that John Podesta and Betsey Wright at long last feel comfortable giving!

Well ... maybe you shouldn't bother.

That "illuminating interview" with John Podesta occurred a decade ago. And Sally Bedell Smith didn't conduct it; Ken Starr's office did. And if, for some reason, you still care after all these years what Bill Clinton said to John Podesta about Monica Lewinsky, you can save yourself the 20 bucks Smith's book would cost you by reading online the deposition Smith cites for her quotation of Podesta.

But if you do go to all that trouble, you'll find something curious: The deposition does not contain the quotation Sally Bedell Smith says it contains -- not even close. Smith quotes Podesta quoting Clinton as saying "I did not screw that girl" and "she did not blow me." Smith's endnotes claim these quotes come from "Grand-jury testimony of John Podesta, June 16, 1998, vol. 3, p. 3311." You can read that page for yourself here -- but you won't find anything like the words Smith says are there.

And what of Betsey Wright, the other "Clinton insider" who, according to the Post's Burleigh, was finally willing to talk to Sally Bedell Smith? If Smith and Wright have ever spoken, it isn't readily apparent from For Love of Politics. A few minutes with the book's index and source notes finds that quotes attributed to Wright are drawn from a 1992 Time article, a 1993 Washington Post article, 1994 articles in Time and The New Yorker, David Maraniss' 1995 book First in His Class, and James Stewart's 1996 book Blood Sport, among other previously published sources. None are attributed to an author interview of Wright.

In short, the "illuminating interviews" Burleigh touted turn out to have been conducted not by Smith, but by several other journalists (and independent counsel staff). And they aren't new details offered up by long-silent "Clinton insiders who feel at last able to talk." They have, in most cases, been available in published sources for at least a decade.

And, in at least one case, Smith quoted someone -- John Podesta -- as saying something that does not appear in the cited source material. That (alleged) Podesta quote is the first example the Post's Burleigh gave to support her contention that Sally Bedell Smith has "got some illuminating interviews with Clinton insiders who feel at last able to talk." Had Burleigh checked the book's endnotes, she would have known that this description was false, that Podesta's comments are quite old (if he said them at all). Had Burleigh taken five minutes to check Smith's endnotes rather than simply praising her for the supposed coup of getting Podesta to talk, she would have been able to tell Post readers that the words Smith quotes Podesta saying do not appear in the source material from which Smith claims to have quoted.

In addition to this rather obscure, if potentially revealing, mistake, Smith includes in her book at least two passages that ought raise immediate questions about whether it should be taken seriously.

On Page 288, as Bob Somerby first noted, Smith gratuitously includes Paula Jones' graphic description of the size and shape of the President's penis when erect. Jones description was contradicted by medical testimony; its inclusion in For Love of Politics serves only to satisfy the voyeuristic urges that cause journalists to continue obsessing over the decade-old Lewinsky saga in the first place.

On Page 101, Smith writes, "Bill was caught by White House reporters holding up traffic at Los Angeles International Airport for forty-five minutes while he got a two-hundred-dollar haircut on Air Force One from ... Hollywood stylist, Christophe Schatteman." In fact, Clinton's haircut did not delay air traffic. As I wrote when Ed Klein included this long-debunked anecdote in The Truth About Hillary, his 2005 attempt to swift-boat Clinton, "The incident, and the debunking of claims that he caused air traffic delays, are sufficiently well-known that it is nearly inconceivable that this is an honest mistake."