Go read JuanCole's fascinating piece about Osama Bin Laden and the goal of Al Qaida in regard to 9/11.

A snippet:

Bin Laden hoped the US would timidly withdraw from the Middle East. But he appears to have been aware that an aggressive US response to 9/11 was entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan B: al-Qaeda hoped to draw the US into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan and do to the US military what they had earlier done to the Soviets. Al-Zawahiri's recent message shows that he still has faith in that strategy.

The US cleverly outfoxed al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, using air power and local Afghan allies (the Northern Alliance) to destroy the Taliban without many American boots on the ground.

Ironically, however, the Bush administration then went on to invade Iraq for no good reason, where Americans faced the kind of wearing guerrilla war they had avoided in Afghanistan.

The whole thing is a very informative read. Check it out.

Yesterday the AP reported that the military has "lost" key evidence in it's investigation into the death of an Iraqi, Nagem Hatab, who was beaten by Marine prison guards in a makeshift camp run by the Marines in Iraq.

Hatab, 52, died last year at a makeshift camp in Iraq that was run by Marines. He had been rumored to be an official of Saddam Hussein's Baath party and part of the ambush of a U.S. Army convoy that killed 11 soldiers and led to the capture of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and five others.

The missing evidence was to be used in the Court Marshal of one of the guards. Another guard has already been convicted of dereliction of duty and abuse of prisoners at the camp, but was cleared of assaulting Hatab.

Apparently the primary evidence that is holding up the current Court Marshal is the missing bones taken from the throat and chest of Hatab. And the presiding judge isn't happy about it.

"I'm looking at some extreme measures to make things right," said the judge, Col. Robert Chester. He did not elaborate.

He also called the missing evidence "serious problems that are interfering with a fair and just resolution in his case."

But The missing bones are just one of several "errors in the investigation" that came to light at Thursday's hearing. Here's what's missing:

* Hatab's neck and chest bones.

* Hatab's internal organs, "which were removed during autopsy, were subsequently destroyed when they were left for hours in the blazing heat on an Iraqi airstrip."

* A summary of the Marine interrogation of Hatab taken shortly before his death.

* A photo of Hatab that was taken during the interrogation.

What other evidence could there possibly be? It's as if someone or a group of someones systematically sought out and destroyed or otherwise hid all tangible evidence of Hatab's death which could in any way implicate the soldiers in his death. I have a hard time believing that this could have been done just by the accused or his friends.

Maj. Clarke Paulus, the Marine officer currently facing Court Marshal, is accused of ordering one of his men to drag Hatab by his neck after the Iraqi suffered a severe bout of diarrhea and lapsed into unconsciousness while in custody at the makeshift prison.

The convicted was Marine Sgt. Gary Pittman. So what we've got here is a convicted grunt and an officer who seems to be at the precipice of benefitting from what sure looks like a cover up. Sounds like Abu Ghraib to me.

The longest serving Republican in the House of Representatives is finding himself outhustled by an upstart Democratic challenger.

Representative Phil Crane, a hardcore conservative Republican is facing an unexpectedly spirited challenge from a young, bright Democrat by the name of Melissa Bean.

Apparently local Republicans have been concerned about Crane's race and have been pushing him to attend local events and have been dumping loads of extra cash into the Crane's coffers.

The 73 year old Crane complains, "I've been busting my hump for about five straight weeks,".

Just five weeks, Phil? You've been in Congress for 35 years and you're just now getting around to busting your hump?

Ms. Bean is a 42 year old technology consultant. Bean ran for Crane's seat in 2002, surprising the long time congressman by garnering 43% of the vote. This won Bean the attention of groups such as Emily's List, who work to support Democratic women running for office.

Republicans say that they don't consider Crane's seat vulnerable. However Illinois is a state expected to go heavily for the Democratic Presidential candidate and also heavy for the Democratic Senatorial candidate. Turnout may end up working in Bean's favor.

Our friends at Centerfield are having a discussion today about how the Presidential election seems to have gone "off topic". One of the speculations was that perhaps bloggers had contributed to the campaign moving in that direction.

I have maintained that blogging is the modern day equivalent to the political pamphlets that were popular during the Colonial/Revolutionary era. Back then, individuals with access to a printing machine, ink and paper could print off their thoughts and distribute them to the masses. Blogging (especially political blogging) is essentially the same thing...with pixels.

The contribution of blogs whether for good or bad (certainly not for indifferent) are for the time being, going to shape the political landscape in the United States. As we've witnessed, bloggers are a force to be reckoned with whether you're Trent Lott or Dan Rather.

Blogging is grassroots politicking at it's most fundamental level. It's information exchange, soapboxing and debate club all mixed up together in a frenzy of computer generated soup. Some of us are blowhards. Some of us are thoughtful and sensitive. Some of us are hobby writers or political junkies. We're liberals and conservatives and centrists and nutjobs.

In the end though it seems to me that bloggers don't drive politics per se. Certainly bloggers aren't the ones who've pulled the campaigns off of the rails from discussing issues to slugging it out in the mud. That's been going on since the inception of American politics. What pulls campaigns off topic are the candidates themselves. Why? It works. Name calling, obfuscation, unfounded accusations...all of it works. It won't end until people stop rewarding it with votes.

Walter Mondale tried to tell the American people the truth during his campaign. He lost all but one state in the Electoral College. Michael Dukakis also tried to stay above the fray and stick to issues and he was rewarded with a kick to the curb. I'm sure I'll get comments now about how Mondale is a Communist and Dukakis is a girlie man tank driver...but really that just proves my point.

In the end, it's up to the voters. Many say they want to hear about the issues...but they always seem to put the person in office who talks the least about them.

Sarah

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

My emotions range from sadness..to anger...to frustration. I hope it never happens again, but I believe something like it probably will.

I wish I had some eloquent or wise or supremely articulate thing to say on this.

I just felt it needed to be marked by us here at PK in some way.

Big Eddie's third rule on "Righties": They think you're stupid! That's not a figure of speech. It's literal. They literally think you and I are stupid.

Today Vice President Cheney sought to "clean up" his remarks from Tuesday. In the process he grossly insults the intelligence of all Americans.

In remarks to a group of supporters on Tuesday, Cheney said, "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Today he says, "I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack." That avoids being a bald-faced lie only on a technicality. On Tuesday he didn't specifically name John Kerry. But, it's patently obvious what he meant on Tuesday and who he was talking about.

In today's interview Cheney went on to say, "Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks." No shit, Mr. VP! But that is clearly not what you said on Tuesday, nor is it what you clearly meant on Tuesday.

This from the same man who lied in 2000 by claiming, "Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington."

I have been watching closely this evening the story on the Bush National Guard records and whether or not they're legitimate. It's been pretty darned entertaining, I must say.

Free Republic is in full and total meltdown. They're posting like crazy over there about the fact that the fonts dont' match up and the spacing is wrong and these documents just couldn't be legitimate. ABC News and the Washington Post are backing that part up. So it's possible there could be some funny business.

On the flip side, ABC News has reported that Killian's son has said that at least one of the memos appears to him to be legitimate (he only commented on two of them, he says the "sugarcoat" memo doesn't seem like something his dad would do). Mrs. Killian is apparently aghast, saying that her husband never kept papers and didn't type. To me her response seems a bit silly and shallow however, given that an official memo probably wouldn't have been handwritten and probably would have been typed by a clerk.

Of further interest, is the Washington Post reporting that CBS verified the content of the memos with Killian's former immediate superior,Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges. CBS contends that Hodges told them that, "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

The best place for current updates appears to be Josh Marshall, for the moment.

... that registered Iraqi prisoners were being abused in Abu Ghraib. Now we learn that apparently the CIA was keeping "ghost prisoners" in Abu Ghraib. Army Generals said that at least two dozen unregistered ghost prisoners were held there, and that there may have been up to 100 held there by the CIA. They're not sure because the CIA refuses to cooperate with the Army's investigation, according to testimony this afternoon before a Senate Armed Services committee.

Senator McCain made a colossal understatement when he commented, "The situation with the CIA and ghost soldiers is beginning to look like a bad movie."

My question is where in the hell is Bush? Isn't he in charge here? There is no way in hell that the CIA could get away with refusing to cooperate with an Army investigation unless they had Bush's tacit approval to do so.

I smell an attempted cover-up.

And these are the people who were supposedly going to restore honor and integrity to the White House?

An interesting nugget from today's misleader.org piece:

Bush Attacked Nat'l Guard Service of Others


The White House is currently attacking those who raise questions about President Bush's National Guard record. They say the questions about Bush's failure to fulfill his commitment are "dirty politics."1 Yet a look at the record shows that it was President George H.W. Bush - and his top campaign strategist George W. Bush - who tried to smear the National Guard and military record of their opponents.

As reported in the August 23, 1988 Los Angeles Times, then Vice President George H.W. Bush's campaign co-chairman John Sununu went on national television to impugn an opponent's dealings with the National Guard during Vietnam. Sununu specifically claimed Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) had improperly helped get his son into the Texas National Guard during Vietnam. Bentsen's son served in the very same National Guard unit at the very same time as George W. Bush. The Bush campaign's attacks came just days after Bush's allies on Capitol Hill launched a vicious attack on Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) for receiving a draft deferment during the Korean War.2

At the time of the coordinated attack, George W. Bush was serving as a senior adviser to his father's campaign.3



Sources:
1 "New Questions On Bush National Guard Duty ," CBS2Chicago.com, 9/08/04.
2 "Report that Bentsen Got Son into National Guard Also Denied; Dukakis Angry about Charge of Avoiding Korean War," Los Angeles Times, 8/23/88.
3 GeorgeWBush.com, 9/04.

With Freepers going into apoplexy over the Killian Memos released last evening by CBS' 60 Minutes, there's now an effort to discount the memos as a forgery.

The rightie blogosphere is practically in a meltdown:

INDC Journal insists they're fake based on typeface and other forensic type stuff.(thanks Mathew)

Powerline(via Kevin Drum) appears to be the place for one stop shopping on the forgery front.Most believe it's a forgery but at least one contributor says that the typeset was available during that time.

It's noteworthy that the White House accepted the documents as real, even releasing the copies of them they received from CBS.

Weirdly, the thing I thought would be the most howled about part of this are the allegations of former Texas Lt. Governor Barnes, a Democrat. Barnes gave his story to 60 Minutes last evening, saying he helped Bush get into the Guard and offering him special treatment at the request of a (now deceased) Bush family friend. Josh Marshall has some telling analysis on this including the fact that noone is coming forward to refute Barnes' story. Further Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett has been sticking to the story that Bush didn't have to follow the direct order given him by his superior.

The White House for now at least, appears to be conceding that the memos are accurate and that Barnes is telling the truth. Either that or they're going to let their surrogates fight it out for them.

But according to Drum's sources CBS is very, very confident that the documents are genuine.

From last Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich writes what I consider the the best analysis of the Presidential campaign so far:

But with the high stakes of an election at hand, it's not enough to stuff socks in the president's flight suit. Mr. Kerry must be turned into a girl. Such castration warfare has been a Republican staple ever since Michael Dukakis provided the opening by dressing up like Snoopy to ride a tank. We've had Bill Clinton vilified as the stooge of a harridan wife and Al Gore as the puppet of the makeover artist Naomi Wolf. But given his actual history on the field of battle, this year's Democratic standard bearer would, seemingly, be immune to such attacks, especially from the camp of a candidate whose most daring feat of physical courage was tearing down the Princeton goalposts.

That's just a small excerpt, obviously. This piece is incredibly well written, acerbic, funny and dead on correct.

Check it out.

Kos and Kevin Drum have all the scoop that's fit to print on the Bush Guard Duty scandal.

The bottom line...BC04 has been lying about having released all known paperwork on Bush's service. They lied about him not having to report to his physical. They've been lying about Bush completing his service. They've been lying about noone pressuring folks to sweeten up Bush's Guard record to make him look good. It's not just the word of Ben Barnes or a few people who were there. It's all on paper.

And not just from 60 Minutes/CBS. The White House released some of the memos a few hours after 60 Minutes aired.

Update: The memos released by the White House were apparently copies sent to them by 60 Minutes, not ones they'd been sitting on. Apologies.

"F#ck yourself."
—Vice President Dick Cheney, June 22, 2004; to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in the Senate chamber during an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton.

"Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington."
—Candidate Dick Cheney, Aug. 4, 2000; during a campaign speech

Why should we trust him on anything else?

.....unless you count Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq,"insurgents" control Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength. American generals are saying they'll have these areas under their control by the time Iraqi elections are held in January. Other American officials are pessimistic, noting attacks on American forces rose to 2,700 in August, from 700 in March.

In Afghanistan, American forces are coming under increasing attack from Al Qaida and Taliban forces.

Surprise! The Taliban isn't defeated and Al Qaida isn't in check.

And Bush wants to be hired for another four years because he couldn't manage to do the job in the first four?

Now this looks like a job for me so everybody just follow me cuz we need a little controversy, cuz it feels so empty without me


Even Howard Kurtz couldn't believe he'd heard what he just heard:

"Vice President Dick Cheney suggested Tuesday that electing the Democratic presidential ticket would make the United States more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," says the Los Angeles Times. "Cheney's comments came on a day when President Bush escalated his efforts to paint Sen. John F. Kerry as wobbly on the war in Iraq and the Democratic challenger continued to more harshly criticize the incumbent for the way he orchestrated the attack. "After Cheney's controversial remarks, aides to the vice president sought to clarify them, saying he was referring to the terrorist threat that would face any administration elected in November."

What the vice president really meant to say...

Okay, so what did he actually say?

"'If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that'll be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set that these terrorist attacks are criminal attacks and we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us,' Cheney told the supporters."

Nice little country you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

Even Kurtz can see it. The Vice President of the United States is threatening the American people if they don't vote for Bush.

Now weren't these guys in charge on 9/11?

Ruy Tiexiera has the latest on Gallup and Zogby showing Kerry's lead in battleground states widening, despite the media trying to swoon over Bush's alledged Convention "bounce". The information Ruy provides on the indepth Gallup results is fascinating and well worth the quick read.

Rasmussen gives Bush a 48.2% lead over Kerry's 46.5%. This gives Bush roughly a 2 point Convention "bounce".

After Cheney's whacky statments yesterday on how we must all vote for Bush or be murdered by terrorists...it puts these poll numbers into an interesting perspective. The Bush Campaign is starting to panic because they're not getting the numbers they hoped for.

1002 US military deaths in Iraq.

Bush to Iraqi insurgents: "Bring 'em on."

Everyone understands that being a member of the military is inherently dangerous. But, the first priority of EVERY commander is to never, EVER needlessly risk the lives of the troops under his or her command. Yet that is precisely what President Bush did when he taunted the Iraqi insurgents to "bring 'em on."

Our soldiers deserve better! They deserve a Commander in Chief who won't needlessly risk their lives just to make himself appear to be tough.

...but if this gets any play at all relative to the "Don't vote for Kerry or you'll burn in Purgatory" headlines, I'll be stunned.

Good news for all you Catholics out there who want to vote for Kerry but are concerned your priest will force you to wear the scarlet "K", Cardinal Ratzinger says you can vote for Kerry.

And if you're not sure which candidate stacks up best with your Catholic beliefs, try this quiz.

I took the quiz myself and was a bit surprised at how much the Catholic Bishops agree with Kerry, and disagree with Bush. Only on the issue of "Promoting Family Life" (aka gay marriage) do Kerry and I diverge from the Catholic Bishops and Bush agrees.



FYI: I blatantly stole these links from Amy Sullivan at Washington Monthly.

Atrios has posted a digestion of the 9/11 Commission Report. It highlights a lot of the questions surrounding 9/11 itself and outs the chaos of the Administration in the early awakenings of what was really happening. There is also a discussion of possible lying to the Commission by Bush and Cheney themselves...saying that Cheney's order to shoot down Flight 93 came from the President, when in fact noone else can testify that they saw or heard any conversations between Bush and Cheney before the order was given.

Atrios posts an excerpt but the entire thing is well worth the read.Powerful stuff.

This week I'll be doing some guest blogging for one of the women in the Progressive Women Bloggers Webring (see bottom of this blog).

Rox Populi is one of the busier bloggers in our ring. (Hopefully it will still be after I've guest blogged..LOL) Please come on over and visit,give me some pointers on using TypePad, and heckle me if you must.

Tricky Dick Cheney pushes the Fear Factor:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,"

Man...these guys are getting desperate.

....as as Kevin Drum reports.

Iraq has some very serious problems (including daily mounting casualties), Afghanistan is a heartbeat from total meltdown and the 9/11 Commission recommends a complete revamping of our intelligence infrastructure.

And what's Congress gonna talk about?

Abortion, gay marriage, tort reform and flag burning.

Deliver me from Republicans.

...it's a bitch.

Dan Froomkin as the skinny on the latest about Bush's missing Guard records.

Froomkin also delivers the stuff that will hit the fan this week regarding revelations that former Texas Lt Governor Barnes helped get Bush into the Guard, leapfrogging over other folks in line. And evidence that Bush 41 made calls to get 43 onto that Senate campaign in Alabama...which contradicts the campaigns statements that 43 did it on his own.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks ruled today that the banning of gay marriages in the State of Washington is a violation of the state's Constitution.

This is the second ruling by a state judge on the matter. A King County judges ruled in favor of gay rights in a separate ruling last month. Both cases will now be consolidated and move to the State Supreme Court where they are expected to be considered.

In his ruling Judge Hicks said, "For the government this is not a moral issue. It is a legal issue". Many judges who've ruled on this particular issue have issued similar opinions in their rulings.

That said, I submit that in fact it is a moral issue as well. This is an attempt to deny civil rights to a select group of people and using religion as the impetus and excuse for the action. Much the way slavery and civil rights for blacks was handled decades earlier.

Kudos to the judge for following the law. I'm sure we'll hear gnashing of teeth by the right on "activist judges". But the "activist" ones on this matter are those upholding these laws, not overturning them.

caught in a landslide, no escape from reality....



The core of the Bush Campaign is to present Bush as a strong and effective war President who can keep Americans safe from the scourge of terrorism. Using their considerable marketing skills, the GOP have very much worked to paint their guy as the steward of an America who fights evil on every shore with the backing of the Almighty. Powerful images indeed.

Unfortunately, those images don't stack up against reality.

Bush's stump speeches often include diatribe about how he has seen to it that the Taliban are gone. But reality has very little in common with Bush's speeches invoking the Taliban.

The problem is essentially identical with Al Qaida.

Bush's policies are also helping to recruit more members for Al Qaida.

The "tough on Terror" president has little to do with the actual reality when it comes to bringing the bad guys to justice. This is the same group that whines about President Clinton treating terrorism as a crime rather than a war. It would seem that the Clinton style of justice is not only less costly in lives and dollars, it's much more effective.

The long term infomercial that is the Bush Campaign is selling a slickly packaged bill of goods to an American electorate whose fears are easily played into. It's fascinating in a macabre sort of way to watch people being talked into voting against their own self interest.

This appears to be a pretty interesting week in the book world.

Retiring Florida Senator Bob Graham's new book entitled Intelligence Matters is hitting the shelves today. Graham's book claims several important revelations about 9/11 and the situation involving Iraq:

Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida Democrat wrote.

Graham's book also goes into a conversation that he personally had with General Tommy Franks on February 19,2002. Franks told Graham that resources were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for Iraq four months after the invasion of Afghanistan.


Author Kitty Kelley has turned her unauthorized pen toward the Bush family. The most "shocking" observation from Kelley is that W did cocaine at Camp David. I write "shocking" because it's fairly common knowledge that W has a checkered past and hasn't done much to deny it. His response to reporters about whether or not he could have passed a drug test to work in his father's White House is parsed all to hell.

What's unfortunate about the timing of these two books is that Kelley's will undoubtedly receive the most press time. Her allegations are the most explosive and several have already been debunked. Graham on the other hand is highly credible, well respected and undoubtedly telling the truth. He'll most likely be shoved under the rug.

This post is for those Kerry supporters who are fit to be tied over the recent polling numbers that have been all over the news. As Mark Twain famously stated, "reports of my demise have been greatly exagerated."

Of the four most recent major polls, only two are getting any real mention by the allegedly liberal media. Time had it Bush 50, Kerry 42. Newsweek had it Bush 54, Kerry 43. But there are two other major polls out which give a very different picture. ARG had Kerry on top 48 to 46. While Zogby showed a slight bounce for Bush, 46 to 44. The Zogby poll is of "likely" voters and thus has a greater margin of error than the "registered" voter poll numbers cited here.

Interestingly, the Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows that the largest that Bush's post convention bounce got was Bush 49.1, Kerry 44.7. But today it's already swung back to basically where it was before the RNC with Bush @ 47.6 and Kerry @ 46.4 - a statistical dead heat.

What we have here folks is a horse race.