There seems to be some further corroboration that Karl Rove was the leaker in the Valerie Plame case. Greg Mitchell writes for Editor & Publisher:

Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two authoritative sources have confirmed that one name is top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

This afternoon, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff confirmed that Cooper did indeed talk to Rove for his story, but Rove's lawyer denied he was the key leaker in the case.

"The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House," Isikoff writes on the Newsweek web site. "Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove."

Luskin the Lawyer says Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Further, Rove signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him.

 

Might Cooper and Miller have chosen to keep Rove's identity secret even after he had signed a waiver? Seems to me they might have.

 

Via News Hounds, Shepard Smith and Eric Burns discussed  the Rove/Plame connection on Faux Nooz and offered some speculation:

EB: ... did the story do anybody any harm? Yeah, Valerie Plame is no longer a covert operative. We tried to find out what happened to her. The CIA is notoriously unforthcoming. What we believe is she worked there until May. Is she still there? There's no way to know. Is she still a covert operative? Almost certainly not because her cover was blown.

Why would a journalist say 'I have a right to keep private sources which provided information for a story of this nature? I don't understand it. It's why people think journalists are arrogant (except for Fox, do they have journalists?) It's hiding behind a principle, when, in this case, the result of that principle is a story that did no good and some harm. (I think that is called freedom of the press)

SS: Of course, at the root of all of this is -- did the Bush Administration, or one person in the Bush Administration leak this as a gotcha and how dare you say bad things about this president. That's the root of it all.

EB: Yeah, but isn't that another reason why we should know the sources in this case. Not only is, perhaps, Valerie Plame worse off because of this story but there may be some important information about the motives of the leakers.

I mean, you know the journalist's augument here. If we're requested to tell people who our sources are, if we're required to tell a court who our sources are, well, maybe those sources won't talk to us in the future.

There is also some indication that Fitzgerald's investigation is no longer fixed only on who outed Valerie Plame

 

Talkleft: "What does the government really want from Miller and Cooper?" 

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has stated in court pleadings that he already knows the identity of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's sources regarding the senior white house official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

Miller did some reporting for a story but never wrote an article. She has maintained she intends to go to jail rather than reveal her source -- though Fitzgerald has indicated in court filings that he already knows that official's identity.

So, why is it so necessary for them to provide the information?

As the Wapo article suggests, the investigation has moved from one involving the identity of the White House official to one involving perjury - i.e., a cover-up. The source may have been questioned in front of the grand jury and lied.

Digby: "The Iraq Group"

Atrios links to this new E&P scoop that says the Plame Grand Jury just subpoenaed documents from the Iraq Group, which set off some bells. It turns out the Grand Jury has asked for documents from this group before and I wrote about it back in February of '04. (Good to know I haven't completely blown all my brain cells.)

Here's what I wrote at the time. Looking at it now it takes on some unusual (although likely completely coincidental) significance: ...

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq Group was, essentially, a propaganda arm of the White House. Fitzgerald's investigation may be going beyond Plame and into the whole fabric of lies that got us into the Iraq War. 

See also: Stirling Newberry, "On an Article Hangs Source X."

Update: Josh Marshall writes (emphasis added),

 Mike Isikoff's piece on Rove's role in the Plame case is now up on the Newsweek website. But the picture it paints seems a bit murkier than what Lawrence O'Donnel suggested. ...

...  What's implicit in Isikoff's report, however, and in the Tribune too, is that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald is after Rove for some felony arising out of the case (perjury after the fact? conspiracy?) but not the immediate and original act of leaking the name.

There's one other point worth noting here. As we've seen, federal law recognizes no reporters' privilege or confidentiality. But if recollection serves, there are DOJ guidelines which say that prosecutors should exercise a great deal of discretion when trying to compel testimony from journalists. They're not supposed to do it just to tie up a few loose ends, but only if there's real and significant crime they're trying to prosecute. And before they do so, they're supposed to have exhausted all other possible ways to get at the information.

Steven C. Day at PopPolitics makes a good argument that reporter privilege doesn't apply in the Plame case.

The attorney-client privilege, for example, has traditionally been one of the most broadly applied privileges, since clients need to feel free to communicate openly with their lawyers -- even about dastardly things. Yet, even this privilege is far from absolute. Of particular relevance here, the privilege (at least in most jurisdictions) doesn’t apply in any case where it is found that the communication in question was made in furtherance of a fraud or crime. In other words, the privilege protects communications about past criminal behavior, but, obviously, cannot properly be used to further the commission of future or ongoing crimes.

Is it so unreasonable to suggest that a similar dynamic applies in the case of the Valerie Plame investigation? The White House bad guy who dished the information about Plame being a covert CIA agent wasn’t merely acting as a source for a reporter, passing on info about a story; no, the bad guy’s contact with the reporters was directly in furtherance of the allegedly criminal plan to publicize Plame’s status in an effort to take political revenge against her husband.

Evidentiary privileges involve a balancing of conflicting interests: On the one hand, there is the interest in keeping the particular communication, in this case between a reporter and a source, confidential; on the other, there is the substantial interest in making relevant information available to the pursuit of truth in judicial proceedings.

What possible public interest is served by granting an absolute privilege to governmental agents to use members of the press to further a criminal enterprise?

Then, of course, there is the enduring mystery of why the Reptile, who is clearly in this up to his overgrown eyebrows, is getting a pass.

 

Clearly, Hillary hopes that by identifying herself with an organization devoted to bashing the Democratic base she can solidify her moderate credentials. "A senior Democratic aide suggested Clinton's involvement with the DLC is just another move toward expanding her political appeal as she ponders a presidential bid," Roll Call reports (subscription only). As recently as last March, Hillary was not listed in the DLC'sNew Democratic Directory of elected officials. Now she is.

For many politicians, joining the DLC offers supposed political cover. "It's the easiest, cheapest way for a politician who wants to be equated with 'different kind of Democrat,'" explains former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. (See "Going Nowhere: The DLC Sputters to a Halt.")

We need a "different kind of Democrat," all right. What we don't need are more posturing, calculating, packaged-to-appeal-to-swing-voter Dems like Hillary. We've got way too many of those now. That's why most of the public thinks Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view."

 

Be sure not to miss David Sirota's "Why the Public Believes Dems Stand for Nothing." And follow that up with "Democrats: The Party of Losers" by AaronBurrFan at BOP News. Among other points, ABF suggests that progressives stop working with the clueless and corrupt Dem insiders who keep marching the party off a cliff.

[Americans] are willing to accept progressive governance, but they do not consider Democrats a progressive party. Indeed, what has been going on for the past six months is that progressives within the Democratic Party have been fighting tooth and nail, this has hurt Bush, and conservative empty Democrats have taken credit for the victories. And progressives - as seen in their support for Hillary Clinton and Bob Casey - are quite willing to let this happen. The screeching 'we have to wiiiin' whining is drowning out the 'we have to improve the country', and they are different and often mutually exclusive ethos. For instance, the pro-life anti-stem cell Casey will give bipartisan cover to Republicans in the Senate, all the while taking advantage of progressive anti-privatization work to unseat Santorum.

In the comments, ABF asks that we "stop giving money to single-issue groups and Democrats in general elections and dedicate that money to progressives running in primaries." I hope that in 2006 the Left Blogosphere will seek out and promote progressive Dems running in primaries and help turn the party around.

  

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The similarity is most striking in the language the president used. First came the vast, insulting oversimplifications. The war in Iraq was tied over and over again to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, although that link was nonexistent. The Sept. 11 commission said in plain English that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Even a line such as we must "defeat them abroad before they attack us at home" had a musty, Vietnam-era sound to it. Whether it's true or not, it is an updated version of the domino theory: if not Saigon then San Francisco.

Second, just as Lyndon Johnson and others referred to communism as if it were a worldwide monolith, so Bush talks about terrorists. He mentioned "terrorists" 23 times, and while he also occasionally employed the word "insurgents," his emphasis was on the wanton murders of the former and not the political aims of the latter. He even cited the terrorist leader and al Qaeda associate "Zarqawi" by name, saying the United States would never "abandon the Iraqi people to men" like him -- strongly suggesting that he was the problem in Iraq. Abu Musab Zarqawi, though, is only part of the problem.

Yesterday, Eric Alterman posted a "Vietnam Preflight Check."

1. Cabal of oldsters who won’t listen to outside advice? Check.
2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
3. Imposing country boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
4. Unshakeable faith in our superior technology? Check.
5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
8. SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
9. Fear we’ll look bad if we back down now? Check.
10. Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
11. Land war in Asia? Check.
12. Right unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
14. Soldiers about to be dosed with *our own* chemicals? Check.
15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
17. B-52 bombers? Check.
18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
19. In-fighting among the branches of the military? Check.
20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
21. Local experts ignored? Check.
22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
23. Locals used to conflicts lasting longer than the USA has been a country? Check.
24. Against advice, Prez won’t raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don’t go our way? Check.
27. Unpopular war? Check.

Yet there are differences, and today on Salon Sidney Blumenthal described the biggest difference:

In his call for "sacrifice," Bush strove to sound somber, but his tone was more gladiatorial than anguished. His speech superficially recalled the Vietnam speeches of Lyndon Johnson, another president who tried to muster public support for a war that increasingly resembled a quagmire. But Johnson's speeches were filled with a sense of the sobriety of the venture and moment. Even as he urged patience, as Bush did, and said the nation was being tested in Vietnam, as Bush did about Iraq, he spoke of moral ambiguities. In his State of the Union address of 1967, for example, Johnson said of the Vietnam War: "No better words could describe our present course than those once spoken by the great Thomas Jefferson: 'It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater.'" And Johnson warned the country against "arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in time of war."

Johnson was an anguished president, a reluctant warrior, personally devastated by the loss of life and fully aware of the tragedy of the war to himself, his presidency and the nation. Vietnam was a war he inherited; he had made no single decision to go to war. From the beginning, he knew he presided over a disintegrating policy. He believed that if he withdrew from Vietnam, he would provoke a right-wing backlash as virulent as McCarthyism and sacrifice the Great Society. Johnson grappled with bad and worsening prospects. He was always skeptical about the war and tended toward pessimism. He gathered as much information as he could and reached out to the most informed people he could. He especially sought out senators he respected who had serious reservations, like Richard Russell and Mike Mansfield.

"You can't listen to those tapes of Johnson without hearing a man in utter agony, knowing he's trapped," Leslie Gelb, director of the Pentagon Papers project inside the Defense Department during the Johnson administration, and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. "Bush doesn't think he's trapped. Bush has reduced everything to will. I've never seen any self-doubt or agonizing, or anyone who works with him suggest that."

From the thoroughly favorable political position of national unanimity after 9/11, Bush pursued a war of choice in Iraq, relying on shaky, distorted and false intelligence. Skeptics were driven into a corner and punished. The administration became an echo chamber.

Narcissistic personality disorder, anyone?

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One of the cornerstones of the Republican attack on liberals as "weak on terrorism" -- voiced most notoriously by Karl Rove last week, but really a constant and building theme since 9/11 -- is the notion that the Bush administration has been aggressive and "resolute" in tackling this threat.

Like most Republican themes these days, it is unadulterated bullshit. It pretends that the arrogant imposition of a long-planned policy is the same as resolve, and that the careless use of military power is the same as aggressiveness. It also pretends that all of these, somehow, are an adequate substitute for real competence.

The reality is that the Bush administration has foregone a serious and effective campaign against terrorism by pursuing an unrelated military misadventure that will, in the long run, weaken our national defense -- especially against terrorist attacks.

The war in Iraq has in fact made America's terrorism problem worse. The CIA reached that judgment in a recent report, and any fair-minded person would come to the same conclusion. By toppling the cruelly repressive regime of Saddam Hussein, the United States turned Iraq into a new breeding ground for jihadists.

That doesn't mean the war was wrong, but it does make it hard to justify as an anti-terrorism stratagem.

We all hope American and Iraqi forces will contain the insurgency there, but what happens then? The answer, unfortunately, is that the terrorists go elsewhere -- as did Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan recruits. I'm told the intelligence community speaks of this problem as "bleed out" -- a graphic metaphor for how terrorist cells would seep into neighboring countries and conduct operations there and, indeed, around the world.

The administration seems to have learned nothing in the past two years. Dick Cheney, who told us the troops would be "greeted as liberators," now assures us that the insurgency is in its last throes. And the president, who never listened to warnings that he was going to war with too few troops, still refuses to acknowledge that there are not enough U.S. forces deployed to pacify Iraq.

The Times's Richard A. Oppel Jr. wrote an article recently about a tragically common occurrence in Iraq: U.S. forces fight to free cities and towns from the grip of insurgents, and then leave. With insufficient forces left behind to secure the liberated areas, the insurgents return.

"We have a finite number of troops," said Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country."

The reality: When liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attack, they wanted to prepare an effective, nimble response combining military action with intelligence-gathering and law enforcement, as well as addressing the root causes of terrorism; conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and simply prepared to sell George W. Bush as a "war president."

Turns out they were pretty good at that. But fighting terror? These guys make Larry, Moe and Curly look like icons of competence.

The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.

Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.

The steady stream of violence has dealt a new blow to this still traumatized nation of 25 million. In dozens of interviews conducted in recent weeks around the country, Afghans voiced concern that things were not improving, and that the Taliban and other dangerous players were gaining strength.

It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.

NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. ...

 

...  Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

Bush invoked Sept. 11 five times in his speech and referred to it by implication several more times. Although he has previously agreed with investigators that there is "no evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein's government and the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, he used much of his speech to depict the militants in Iraq as the same breed of Islamic terrorist who struck the United States. The White House titled his remarks a discussion on the "War on Terror," not Iraq.

"This war reached our shores on September 11th, 2001," Bush said. "The terrorists who attacked us -- and the terrorists we face -- murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom." He added that many of the insurgents in Iraq "are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania."

The address continued a shift in the administration's emphasis as it has justified the Iraq war, beginning with the threat posed by Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction, continuing to the need to promote democracy in the Middle East and now suggesting a more seamless link to the attacks on American soil.

"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden," Bush said Tuesday night, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the insurgent leader in Iraq. Bush quoted bin Laden calling the Iraq conflict a "third world war" and added that terrorists "are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11th, 2001."

More than two years ago, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's control over Iraq could make the nation a haven for terrorists. But in his nationally televised speech, Bush asserted that the tumult that has followed Hussein's removal created the same threat. ...

 

... By completing "the mission," Bush declared, "we will prevent Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban — a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends."

That argument drew instant scorn from some Democrats, who argued that Bush was defending the continued military operations on the basis of a threat that did not exist before the invasion. ...

What the president said about 9/11 wasn't false, exactly; White House speechwriters are better than that. The president talked about the war that "reached our shores" on 9/11, the speech that he gave after 9/11, the Americans who died on 9/11, the "lessons" that we learned from 9/11, the way that the terrorists tried to "shake our will" on 9/11 and, once again, the speech that he gave after 9/11.

Bush didn't say Tuesday night that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, but he didn't have to, either. His administration has spread that phony story so many times before -- sometimes explicitly, more often through the sort of guilt-by-association game the president played at Fort Bragg -- that the president's supporters have long since internalized it.

Ellis Henican, New York Newsday:

In his prime-time talk, the president did finally acknowledge a growing public distaste for his war: "I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it, and it is vital to the future."

But he pinned his defense of the war policy almost entirely on a single, discredited connection, the claim that Iraq was tied to Sept. 11.

He cited the terror attacks repeatedly. He even quoted Osama bin Laden, who had about as much connection to Saddam Hussein's Iraq as Pancho Villa did to Imperial Japan.

"We are fighting against men with blind hatred - and armed with lethal weapons - who are capable of any atrocity," Bush told 750 soldiers and airmen in the base gymnasium. "They are trying to shake our will in Iraq - just as they tried to shake our will on Sept. 11, 2001. They will fail."

They? Well, you know, whomever.

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking.

Editorial, New York Daily News:

The only other arrow in Bush's quiver is the support for his handling of the overall war on terror. That explains why he frequently linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. He didn't come out and say Iraq was directly involved; rather, he said "the only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of Sept.11 - if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi - and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden."

That's a slick phrasing that aims to remind people why they initially supported the war. But the burden now is a litany of false claims that, at best, make the war's execution look inept.

Start with the "Mission Accomplished" banner of May 1, 2003, when the President jauntily declared an end to major combat operations. At that time, 140 American troops had been killed. Or consider Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's claim six weeks later that only "dead-enders" were obstructing us. Some 200 were dead then. Then came Vice President Cheney's recent foolish claim that the insurgency is in "its last throes."

None of those things turned out to be true. And unless Bush can soon show major, clear progress, last night's speech will either be forgotten or become one more mark against him.

Leader, The Guardian:

Vietnam is often mentioned. If there have to be comparisons, Malaya might be a better one, although it was far less violent. But Vietnam is relevant in the sense that, although no politician, official or soldier would ever use the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel", that is beginning to be the message from Washington. Again and again the administration has proclaimed that the war would be over once some necessary stage was passed, whether it was the formation of a government, the drafting of a constitution or the completion of some phase in the training of Iraqi forces. Yet the bombs keep on going off, the mortars keep on coming in, and the bullets keep on finding their marks, often enough in the bodies of Sunni moderates. Now George Bush and his associates are using different words, long haul words, tunnel words. General John Abizaid, the US commander in the Middle East, stated in congressional evidence that the insurgency was just as strong as it was six months ago. A CIA report has suggested that Iraq is training a new generation of jihadists. And Donald Rumsfeld now says, with the assumed wisdom that is his stock in trade and without admitting for one moment that he has ever said anything different, that everybody knows that insurgencies go on for years. President Bush, making yet another speech on Iraq yesterday, is emphasising the themes of endurance and patience.

President Bush's pep talk to the nation Tuesday night was a major disappointment. He again rewrote history by lumping together the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the need for war in Iraq, when, in fact, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda. Bush spoke of "difficult and dangerous" work in Iraq that produces "images of violence and bloodshed," but he glossed over the reality of how bad the situation is. He offered no benchmarks to measure the war's progress, falling back on exhortations to "complete the mission" with a goal of withdrawing troops "as soon as possible."

Bush continued to maintain that Iraq is "a central front in the war on terror." How did he prove this case? He quoted Osama bin Laden, who once said, "This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war." You see, Bush attacked Iraq (which had no weapons of mass destruction and no operational ties to the terrorists who mounted the horrific attacks of 9/11), a war ensued, Islamic fundamentalists rushed to Iraq to do battle with the Americans, bin Laden welcomed this opportunity to have his followers kill US troops (who might otherwise be coming after him or securing Afghanistan), and that is Bush's proof the war in Iraq is "a central front in the war on terror." In essence, because bin Laden said so after Bush invaded Iraq.

The first major British cabinet discussion on Iraq took place March 7, 2002, according to the memoirs of Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who quotes several senior cabinet secretaries as raising questions about the war. "What has changed that suddenly gives us the legal right to take military action that we didn't have a few months ago?" demanded David Blunkett, one of Blair's closest political allies.

 

Blair defended his approach, Cook reported, by saying Britain's national interest lay in staying closely allied with the United States. "I tell you that we must steer close to America," Blair said, according to Cook. "If we don't, we lose our influence to shape what they do." ...

 

... A U.S. official who observed the process said British objections followed a traditional path. "To some extent the mandarins were playing the role they were acculturated to play in the Washington-London dialectic, which is always to play devil's advocate," he said. "I'm not saying they were sanguine -- they weren't -- but since time immemorial they have always played Athens to our Rome, working hard to remove us from a tendency toward what they consider impetuosity or misguided idealism."

Other issues: The Reptile wrote more than a week before the invasion,

A senior Bush official privately admits what his administration cannot declare publicly. The stagnant economy, a dagger aimed at the heart of George W. Bush's second term, will not immediately respond to the president's economic growth program. The economic engine will not be revived until the war against Saddam Hussein is launched and won.

Military victory is anticipated inside the Bush administration as the tonic that will prompt corporation officers and private investors to unleash the American economy's dormant power. Although it is impolitic to say so, the fact that the United States will be sitting on a new major oil supply will stimulate the domestic economy. That puts a high premium on quickly gaining control of Iraq's oil wells before they can be torched--a major uncertainty in an otherwise strictly scripted scenario.

''This is Texas poker, with the president putting everything on Iraq,'' a Republican senator (who thoroughly approves of this policy) told me. The extraordinary gamble by Bush leads to deepening apprehension by Republican politicians as they wait for the inevitable war. They consider the Democratic Party divided, drifting to the left and devoid of new ideas. Yet, Bush's re-election next year is threatened by two issues: the economy and the war on terrorism. Success on both is tied to war with Iraq. [Robert Novak, "Playing Texas Poker, Bush Bets All on Iraq," The Chicago Sun-Times, March 6, 2003]

If anybody in Washington knows where all the bodies are buried, it's the Reptile. And you'll remember that in 2003 U.S. troops quickly secured the oil fields, if nothing else. 

Finally, there's nothin' like a war to enable big, lucrative contracts for business cronies in the defense industry. You might remember the pre-invasion scene in Farhenheit 9/11 in which the cronies were practically drooling over the profits to be made. By mid-April 2003 the private contractor brigades were ready to go:

A U.S.-financed bonanza of reconstruction and nation-building work is about to roll across Iraq, and U.S.-based firms with close links to the Pentagon and State Department are cashing in.

School systems, textbooks, airports, police operations, local government, water plants and sewers will be overhauled and in some cases created from scratch by U.S. contractors, paid out of U.S. funds.

The initial round of contracts totals about $1-billion (U.S.). Independent analysts say the cost of rebuilding Iraq could reach $20-billion a year over several years. [Paul Knox, "White House Fast Tracks Tenders to Rebuild Iraq," The Globe and Mail, April 19, 2003]

And, finally, what was going on in March 2003 that persuaded the Bushies they had to act immediately? The answer to that is obvious. By March 2003 they weren't dealing with a defiant Iraq and new revelations of WMDs. They had to act quickly because Saddam was being reasonably compliant with the inspections, and the inspectors weren't finding WMDs. If they had waited much longer, the Iraq hysteria would have ebbed, and the opportunity would have been lost.

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Sixty years ago, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the World War II director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, proved that there are some things that government-university partnerships can do better than any private-sector entity. In just 27 months — from April 1943 to August 1945 — Oppenheimer and his team of scientists produced a combat-ready atomic bomb. The military head of the Manhattan Project, Gen. Leslie Groves had awarded the contract for the new laboratory to the University of California because he understood that no private corporation was capable of attracting the talented scientists needed to meet this challenge.

Important lessons for our national security are implicit in this history, lessons the Bush administration ignores as it prepares to turn over much of the management of the Los Alamos lab to a private defense contractor. Everything we know about the Manhattan Project and the subsequent history of the lab suggests that this is a mistake and a lost opportunity.

Most people still think of Los Alamos as strictly a weapons lab. But since the end of the Cold War many of the lab's scientists have been doing research on fuel cells, solar energy, fusion and other cutting-edge technologies. It is not an exaggeration to say that the viability of our nation's economic and environmental future depends on achieving breakthroughs in these fields.

This is not work that can be done most effectively by a defense contractor. History suggests that only the government can marshal the commitment of will and resources necessary to effectively combat global warming. Only the government can inspire scientists with a sense that this is a national mission. And only a great university can create a research atmosphere that will attract the talented scientists needed to get the job done.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration has decreed that the University of California must partner with a defense contractor if it is to bid to manage Los Alamos. UC's partners are Bechtel, BWX Technologies and the Washington Group. This partnership will compete against one made up of the University of Texas and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The administration will award the contract in December.

Astonishingly, the government's bidding criteria amounts to a corporate giveaway.

The UC administrators have been operating the $2.1-billion lab for $8.7 million in management fees. By next year, according to the terms of the Bush administration bidding criteria, this management fee will escalate to between $63 million and $79 million a year.

All of this smacks of another corporate boondoggle. Worse, it is likely to destroy an institution that has the potential to extricate us from our growing environmental quagmire. To ensure that the work at Los Alamos continues at the highest level, the facility should be divided into two separate entities: a weapons laboratory run by a defense contractor and an unclassified environmental research complex managed by a university.

The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material. The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.

Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.

"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview.

He vigorously denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.

Plutonium 238 is not used to make weapons, Broad writes. Instead, it is used as a long-term power source in places where other power sources may fail, like outer space or deep under the ocean. The Cassini space probe is powered by plutonium 238. The domestic stockpile is running low. So it's not unreasonable to plan on making more.

 

On the other hand the chuckleheads in Washington shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects, let alone plutonium. I can just see Dick the Dick and Rummy planning secret nuclear-powered spy missions because, you know, that's what cool tough guys like them do.

 

And if you've never been to Idaho, go now. Might be your last chance.

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.

The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

We're not just talking about wussy, Frenchified international law here. We're talking about violation of all-American, red-white-and-blue constitutional law; a bare-assed usurpation of power that the Constitution says belongs to Congress. If that's not an impeachable offense, then nothin' is.

 

Also via Shakespeare's Sister, Robert Steinback of Knight Ridder writes,

Do you want to know?

That's the only popular division that matters in the United States today: Those who want to determine once and for all if President Bush knowingly ``fixed the facts'' regarding Iraq, thereby misleading Congress and the American people into supporting an unnecessary war, and those who will cover their ears and hum loudly in order to maintain their belief that Bush and his advisors remain above reproach.

You're in one camp or the other. Either you want to know if you've been lied to, or you don't.

The denial of some righties has gone way off the pathology scale. It's a terrible but fascinating thing to watch, and a powerful affirmation of the fact that nobody can bullshit us better than we can bullshit ourselves. If you are absolutely determined to see UFOs in the sky, the face of the Blessed Virgin on a cheese sandwich, proof that Saddam Hussein was a threat to America, or great leadership in George W. Bush, then you will see them. 

 

Steinback continues,

The American public is inching tentatively toward a reckoning unlike any this nation has ever experienced. The oh-so-clever Bush administration strategists and their quasi-media acolytes, who have kept the reckoning at bay with a deft combination of we're-at-war patriotic fervor and fear-the-evil-liberals rhetoric, are running out of parlor tricks.

Karl Rove is still pullin' that ol' liberal boogyman rabbit out of his hat, but is anyone but die-hard Kool-aiders impressed? Here in the one of the bluest parts of Blue Nation it's hard to tell. New Yorkers are no rubes, and the Bushie bag of tricks never fooled them. But Steinback thinks the public is growing tired of BushCo's act. "More and more Americans are tiring of the bluster and blather that had entertained them like an endless summer action flick," he writes, and I hope that's true.

Regarding last weeks' effort by John Conyers to get the White House to respond to the Downing Street Memos, Steinback writes,

After the briefing, Conyers carried a letter to the White House, signed by more than 120 House members, asking for answers to questions provoked by the Downing Street Memo.

Not only was Conyers rebuffed, he was slighted.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, in a press briefing that day, dismissed Conyers as ``an individual who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed.''

Did you catch the irony? Conyers has no credibility to challenge the president's actions toward Iraq, the White House argues, because Conyers has opposed the war from the beginning. Yet just a few months ago, the Bush people ridiculed Sen. John Kerry because Kerry allegedly supported the war before being against it - remember all the giddy supporters chanting ``Flip-flop! Flip-flop!''

Clearly, whether you've always opposed Iraq or recently reached that conclusion, Team Bush thinks you're irrelevant.

That's not leadership; that's obstinacy.

I think it may be more than obstinancy, but let's continue...one of the several reasons we can't have a serious national debate about Iraq is that the hawks simply discount any opinion but theirs as irrelevant. And it's not just the rightie hawks guilty of this. Somehow, lefties who supported the war originally but now realize they were wrong still seem to think their opinions should carry more weight that the opinons of people who opposed the Iraq war all along. Very odd.

And, of course, debate is short-circuited by the false dichotomy that to oppose the Iraq War is to be "soft" on terrorism. There are nominal "liberals" guilty of that one, too.

Over on the Kos Diaries, QWQ writes that the Bushie War on Reality may be in its last throes. "The Bush Administration's effort to silence Iraq critics by rewriting the history of 9/11 has reached new levels of desparation," QWQ says, pointing to Dick the Dick's recent slander of Chuck Hegel.

The sad thing is that if we had the same level of television coverage of Iraq that we had of Vietnam, the whole Bush White House would be impeached next week. As long as Iraq is, to most Americans, a fantasy war going on in another time-space continuum, all of the evidence of BushCo dishonesty will wash over much of the public like so many Tom Cruise interviews.

I wonder what would happen if someone with deep pockets could buy 30-second television spots that simply provided Iraq headline news: This American soldier died in Iraq today. These were severely wounded. Today, approximately $x tax dollars will be spent on the Iraq effort. Etc. Bring the true cost of the war into public consciousness. Then let's see how much they enjoy the BushCo magic act.

Update: Be sure to read "The Tipping Point" by Gary Younge in today's Guardian.

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Hours after the Daily News disclosed that a museum set to rise on the site had displayed kooky and anti-American art, the governor said there can be no place where nearly 3,000 innocents died for an institution that attacks the United States and the heroes of 9/11.

The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit institution in the country to focus on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. It was established in 1977 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognized artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on the issues of art and culture.