Month: October 2005

As we ruminate over Larry Johnson’s analysis- and fact-rich post here last night (“Mambo Italiano and Plame Gate“) … as we read USA Today‘s piece today on Fitz (“Investigator of CIA leak seen as relentless,” via Salon‘s Daou Report) … and as we wish we were quiet little flies on the walls of Fitz’s office (shhh, stop the buzzin’, Catnip!) as he talks to Judith Miller today* — here’s a list of journalists called before the CIA Leak grand jury, as of 2004, from Newsday (article not available any longer) via JustOneMinute blog:

• Robert Novak, “Crossfire,” “Capital Gang” and the Chicago Sun-Times
  
  
• Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, Newsday
  
  
• Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post
  
  
• Matthew Cooper, John Dickerson, Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney, Time magazine
  
  
• Evan Thomas, Newsweek
  
  
• Andrea Mitchell, “Meet the Press,” NBC
  
  
• Chris Matthews, “Hardball,” MSNBC
  
  
• Tim Russert, Campbell Brown, NBC
  
  
• Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, The New York Times
  
  
• Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal
  
  
• John Solomon, The Associated Press
  
  
• Jeff Gannon, Talon News

Also tantalizing is a partial list of documents subpoenaed:

• “[R]ecords of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer’s name was published in a column in July
  
  

• “[R]ecords 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.”
  
  
• “[A] transcript of a White House spokesman’s press briefing in Nigeria”
  
  
• “[A] list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president”
  
  
• “[R]ecords of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets”
  
  
  
• “[A] complete transcript of a July 12 press “gaggle,” or informal briefing, by then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer while at the National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria. That transcript is missing from the White House Web site containing transcripts of other press briefings. In a transcript the White House released at the time to Federal News Service, Fleischer discusses Wilson and his CIA report.”

More at the JustOneMinute blog.

See also: ThinkProgress’s list of the 21 administration officials involved in the CIA leak case.

………………………………………………

*The Last Hurrah‘s emptywheel is speculating about today’s twosome of Judy and Fitzie: “The Theory of the Two Notebooks.” See below:

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Original on Daily Kos.

The old guy wasn’t drunk.  And he was a retired New Orleans schoolteacher.

Robert Davis said he had returned to New Orleans to check on property his family owns in the storm-ravaged  city, and was out looking to buy cigarettes when he was beaten and arrested Saturday night in the French Quarter.

Police have alleged that the 64-year-old Davis was publicly intoxicated, a charge he strongly denied as he stood on the street corner where the incident played out Saturday.

“I haven’t had a drink in 25 years,” Davis said. He had stitches beneath his left eye, a bandage on his left hand and complained   of soreness in his back and aches in his left shoulder.

New Orleans cops, imho, have issues.  And that is putting it mildly.

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This is fun.  I promise.  I think.

I’ve been reading the great “Are Americans war criminals” debate diaries and feeling kind of bad.  I’ve even felt compelled to jump in with my take here or there.  And that is no fun.  I am not much for conflict.  I know.  Strange trait for a lawyer.  But that’s why I’m in mid-career change, I suppose.  Also why I am at Booman Tribune, I suppose.

So, while I really think the ideas being discussed are important, I am hating the process.  And I thought of this diary as a way to 1) discuss the ideas further, 2) in a fun way, that will hopefully 3) unite us and not divide us (can’t believe I’m using his phrases).  Read on, if you’re interested.

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[Promoted by susanhu. Colman is one of the best writers at EuroTrib.com]

Crossposted from EuroTrib : One of our aims is to stand against the cascade of corporate capitalist propaganda that constantly floods over Europe. This article is part of that effort, and might be useful to American progressives when this nonsense comes up.

One of the key complaints levelled against the European social and economic model by corporate capitalists is that it causes high unemployment. The examples chosen are generally France and Germany who are compared against the US.

Before we concede that EU unemployment is substantially higher than in the US we need to examine the numbers cited. Often the official national numbers are used despite the fact that they differ fundamentally on what they measure and how they measure it. Reporting the German rate as 12% and the US rate as 5.1% is either lazy, clueless or dishonest. The official German rate includes people working less than 15 hours a week but who want a full-time job as unemployed while the headline US figures count anyone who works for even one hour a week as employed.

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by Patrick Lang

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

There are going to be some new categories on this blog (Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005). Film (reviews), prose and poetry will be among them.

I am lucky enough to know a lot of gifted people and have asked them to contribute their gifts to this site.

This story is the work of Brigadier General Alan Farrell who is a distinguished professor of French at my alma mater [West Point]. Dr. Farrell served as a sergeant in USMACVSOG in Vietnam after receiving his doctorate from the Sorbonne. His mastery of the Montagnard French spoken by the hill people of SE Asia is remarkable.

I am not Major Greunwald.

Download The Major Won the Croix de Guerre. (16 pages, PDF format). An excerpt:

“Putain dgieu de merde de bordel de dgieu de merde de bordel de dgieu de merde de merde et merde!”

Nhiao-A, the montagnard platoon sergeant, lets loose his best string of genuine strung-together French invective, then punctuates it with a Vietnamese: “dix mille fois!”

This singing indictment of divine justice, Nhiao has picked up from some tirailleur colonial in the 50’s: the savory art of expletive, wherein all the dark terror and somber joy of a soldier’s life commingle brutally: God, shit, whore. … Continued below:

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