Month: October 2005

Please note, I’ve changed the heading to be inclusive of all animals, after some of the cats’ staff complained about the exclusion of their masters.

I thought this image was timely.  Our Pale Sundews ( carnivorous plants) are blossoming, and somehow, this closeup of a fly being eaten by a sundew made me think of  some Whitehouse staffers.  

(… more after the break …)

Other issues have fallen by the editorial wayside During the Fitzmas season.  This is understandable.  I am no fan of this administration in any policy area.  Domestically, they have done little to meaningfully grow the economy or unite the country.  Internationally they have alienated traditional allies and lowered US credibility in the court of world opinion.  

THE NIGER FORGERIES

How Did Allegations from Discredited Documents End Up in a State of the Union Speech?

By Richard Sale, Intelligence Correspondent
(Originally posted at Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005)

DOUG FEITH’S BACKCHANNEL

In December 2001, there was a secret meeting in Rome attended by MICHAEL LEDEEN, a paid consultant to Panorama, the Italian magazine that first broke the story of the Niger documents, Defense Department official, LARRY FRANKLIN, since indicted for passing classified information to Israel, the classified documents outlining US policy towards Iran and U.S activities in Iraq.

HAROLD RHODE, another DOD official was there, and, like FRANKLIN, was from the office of DOUG FEITH, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Also attending was Iran-Contra figure MANUCHER GHORBANIFAR, an Iranian fabricator of intelligence about whom the CIA had issued a “burn notice” that the man and his information were not reliable and to avoid employing him.

According to former and serving U.S. intelligence sources, the secret meetings between Pentagon officials and associates of Ghorbanifar in Europe had been going on for almost two years, a full year longer than the Bush administration acknowledged.

Ghorbanifar told Laura Rozen of the Washington Monthly about three meetings, but U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed to this reporter that, while the Pentagon originally told the Washington Post that Rhode had simply run into Ghorbanifar in Paris in June 2003, Ghorbanifar told Rozen that the two men spent weeks planning the meeting.

Further, U.S. intelligence officials said that the Italian military intelligence organization, SISMI, provided logistics and security for the December 2001 Rome meeting.

Continued below:

Someone said it again today. Invading Iraq was a mistake. Every time it gets said, I grind another layer of enamel off my teeth. Nancy Pelosi says it. John Kerry says it. Mikhail Gorbachev says it. Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says it. Even the occasional Republican says it. And recent polls indicate 55% to 59% of Americans think it.

Every one of them is wrong. Invading Iraq was no mistake. It was bloody treason. And the traitors still rule us instead of breaking rocks at Leavenworth.

They knowingly, willingly, unhesitatingly pronounced what they knew to be lies and marginalized, denigrated and smeared contrary-minded people, manipulated real evidence, concocted fake evidence, tricked an American population traumatized, fearful and furious about terrorism and sent young men and women off to a war at the tip of a bayonet named “9/11.”