Month: October 2005

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos, my blog and My Left Wing)

First a disclaimer.  It is pretty much assumed that Bush cannot hand me a SCOTUS nominee with whom I will be happy.  Therefore, it’s imperative, for me, to try to get someone who doesn’t make my skin crawl.

Having said that, I’m torn on Miers.  I’ve seen all of the speculative arguments about whether or not she is a raging far-right evangelical wingnut and then further speculative argument about why she is not a raging far-right evangelical wingnut.

So I took a time-consuming approach.  I researched public statements made by Republican Senators and the Independent Senator from Vermont in a effort to get a feel for which way the wind was blowing.  Upon reading their statements, I cam up with the following regarding the Miers nomination (purely subjective): Opposed, Neutral and Favorable.  Unknown was assigned if I simply couldn’t find a public statement by a Senator.  Below the fold is my analysis of these statements and perhaps some conjecture as to what it all means.

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This morning on Meet The Press with Tim Russert, Condaleezza Rice unwittingly blew Bushco’s cover by asserting the real reasons the hawks decided to invade Iraq. It is, of course, what we all suspected for a very long time. But, having Rice admit it publicly adds a lot more fuel to the fire of those who do not support this illegal war.

But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East.

The fix was in. Every attempt made by the Bush administration to tie Saddam Hussein to Al Quaeda was just a smokescreen. They had already made the decision to invade Iraq.

You can view the video at Crooks and Liars or read the transcript here.

more…

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After reading the two NYT articles about Judy Miller’s involvement in the Plame Leak investigation, I came away with one significant question:

Who was Judith Miller’s real source as to the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative?

Miller’s putative source was Scooter Libby, but Miller claims Libby didn’t provide her with Valerie Plame’s name or undercover status. If Judy’s telling the truth about that (and while the article in the NYT indicates that wagering on Judy’s truthfulness may be a sucker bet), then who did?

I suspect the answer to that question might provide enlightenment as to many of the strange twists and turns in Judy’s Magical Mystery Tour.  It might also might also lead us back to one of the earliest and most perplexing questions about Bob Novak’s original leak: why did he refer to Wilson’s wife as Valerie Plame?

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Many have been asking ‘Why there doesn’t seem to be much reporting on what is going on in Afganistan, the Original War of the So Called War On Terrorism!’.

This may explain some of the Surpression!

There is Was another Diary today, over at KOS [it Quickly has Disappeared] touching on this Very Subject:
What’s more important? Condi’s opinion or dead U.S. soldiers?
by peirone [Subscribe]
Sun Oct 16, 2005 at 08:24:18 AM EST

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[Cross-posted @ ePM. If there is another diary on this let me know in comments and I’ll dissappear this one.]

TomDispatch has announced a new project, and requested submissions for Casualties of the Bush Administration:

“The Fallen Legion
Casualties of the Bush Administration
[edit]
Nick Turse has created the beginnings of a “wall” to quite a different legion of the fallen; in this case, the governmental casualties of Bush administration follies, those men and women who were honorable or steadfast enough in their government duties that they found themselves with little alternative but to resign in protest, quit, or simply be pushed off the cliff by cronies of this administration. [emphasis mine]”

The “wall” they are attempting to create may eventually stretch a very long way, given that Executive Branch appointments number close to 7000.  [See the Forward [.pdf] to the Plum Book].

I think patterns will emerge from the raw data. [cont’d below]

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