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Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) Calls Out Cheney For Continuing To Push Faulty Intelligence

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 12, 2006 at 5:37 pm

cheney2.jpg The Bush administration continues to falsely link Saddam Hussein with the 9/11 hijackers. On Sunday, Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, asked Vice President Cheney if he still believed 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta ever met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Cheney replied:

We don’t know. I mean, we’ve never been able to, to, to link it, and the FBI and CIA have worked it aggressively. I would say, at this point, nobody has been able to confirm…

But in fact, we do know. Today Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) wrote to Cheney and pointed out at least four reports that have concluded the meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer never took place:

Just last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that cites multiple declassified intelligence assessments, some from as early as mid-2002, reporting evidence that the meeting did not occur. In addition, the 9/11 Commission concluded that “[t]he available evidence does not support the original Czech report” of a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi officer.

There are also classified assessments on this topic from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, dated 20 March 2006 and 27 April 2006, respectively.

The evidence is now public and the facts undisputed that the Prague meeting never happened. There was no provable link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda prior to 9/11.

During the same interview, Cheney also continued to falsely cite terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the link between pre-war Iraq and al-Qaeda.

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Yglesias

Crisis on Infinite Coffee Houses

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 12, 2006 at 4:38 pm

Now that I’m not at the Prospect offices, I tend to spend my days drifting from one WiFi enabled coffee place to another in search of variety, internet access, and caffeine. Today, I’ve been to three different spots — two independent outlets and one Starbucks — that were suffering coffee cup shortages. Two that didn’t have cups for large iced coffees and one that was missing medium-sized hot cups. What’s the deal? Is there some regional cup-shipment emergency? Can we blame al-Qaeda for this turn of events? I demand action!

Security

NEW POLL: Americans View Bolton As Symbol Of Foreign Policy Failures

By Amanda Terkel on Sep 12, 2006 at 3:45 pm

boltonbush.jpg Today the New York Sun reports that a new poll commissioned by the conservative Hudson Institute finds a majority of Americans believe if the United Nations is “no longer effective,” and if it cannot be reformed, it should be “scrapped altogether.” Frank Luntz, whose polling firm conducted the survey, said the results show Americans are “one scandal away from washing their hands” of the United Nations.

But an Aug. 25 Mellman Group poll obtained by ThinkProgress shows that Americans do support a strong United Nations, which has been consistently weakened by Bush’s foreign policy. Some highlights from the poll:

– 60 percent of Americans think it is better to work through the United Nations to share burdens and risks. (Compared with 31 percent who believe it is better to act decisively and alone.)

– 49 percent believe President Bush’s foreign policy has made the United States weaker. (Compared with just 28 percent who believe it has made us stronger.)

– 52 percent believe Bush’s foreign policy has made relationships with our allies weaker. (Compared with just 23 percent who believe it has made them stronger.)

– 61 percent believe that over the past few years, other countries’ images of the United States have become more negative. (Compared with just 15 percent who believe it has become more positive.)

– 55 percent believe it is time to change the course of Bush’s foreign policy. (Compared with 39 percent who want to stay the course.)

Luntz’s poll is an effort to boost Bolton’s prospects for confirmation in the Senate. But 64 percent of the American public view Bolton as a symbol of America’s foreign policy.

Yglesias

Photo of the Day

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 12, 2006 at 3:26 pm

MalikiAhmadenijad.jpgTake a gander at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shaking hands with Iranian President Mamoun Ahmadenijad (call it a fair use of ISNA‘s photo). Going to Teheran for the meeting is a sensible thing to do. After all, Iran’s right next door so they have plenty to talk about. But how can it possibly be that it’s both absolutely vital for the United States to make a massive, open-ended military commitment to one of these governments and also absolutely vital for the United States to refuse to sit down and attempt good-faith negotiations with the other? Is Maliki now part of the unappeasable Islamofascist menace? How does this fit in with the 1939 narrative?

We turn to the Corner to see what the conservative movement’s best minds have to say about these developments and find a multi-part series of posts where Rich Lowry and Kate O’Beirne just quote from a chat the White House seems to have organized between Bush and some friendly journalists about which our conservative analysts have no actual analysis to offer. We learn that, according to Bush, “The ideological struggle is being manifested as radicals attacking young democracies . . . the extremists and radicals are flocking to Iraq to stop the flourishing of democracy.”

Yglesias

Kaplan Stays the Course

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 12, 2006 at 2:59 pm

Lawrence Kaplan once again tries to makes the case in The New Republic against leaving Iraq. Rebuttals from Sam Rosenfeld and Kevin Drum get at most all of the key points.

I have to say that I’m starting to find the appeals to idealism here quite tiring. It’s worth going back and reading what the advocates of imperialism said during the high-tide of empire-building. They, too, were very idealistic. Having the right kind of wanting to help attitude just doesn’t do very much work in these kind of circumstances. The effort to have the US government in general, and the US military in particular, run the nation of Iraq is inherently problematic. Having worthy ideals doesn’t really make it less problematic.

Politics

Ignoring Senate Intel Report, Snow Repeats Lie That Saddam Had A Relationship With Zarqawi

By Judd Legum on Sep 12, 2006 at 2:41 pm

Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee — chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), one of the President’s most loyal allies — concluded that there was absolutely no relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Here’s the key quote from page 109:

Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and…the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.

Nevertheless, at today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow insisted Saddam that had a “relationship” because Zarqawi was in the country. Snow refused to “go into the vagaries of the Senate report.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/09/lie.320.240.flv]

This is the equivalent of saying that the United States government had a “relationship” with unibomber Ted Kaczynski because he was “operating” in the United States.

The White House’s insistence that Zarqawi had a relationship with Saddam — in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary — borders on pathological.

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Transcript: Read more

Politics

National Review Editor: ‘People Would React Favorably’ To Escalating Troop Levels In Iraq

By Faiz Shakir on Sep 12, 2006 at 1:38 pm

In a Washington Post editorial today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and National Review editor Rich Lowry call for an escalation in Iraq. Appearing on Fox News to reinforce the argument, Lowry claimed that if Bush were to say, “we’re going to send two more divisions into the city [Baghdad] and lock it down and secure it… people would actually react favorably to that.” Watch it.

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/09/lowryescalation.320.240.flv]

Kristol and Lowry state, “The bottom line is this: More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment.” Their argument is wrong on many levels.

First, there is no indication from public polling that there is any U.S. support for increasing troop levels in Iraq. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that only 17 percent of Americans supported increasing force levels, while 53 percent favored decreasing them.

Second, the argument wrongly suggests that violence in Iraq is constricted to Baghdad. In fact, as the senior Marine intelligence officer in charge of Western Iraq reported, the political and economic security situation there is — like Baghdad — rapidly destabilizing.

Third, escalation is the wrong remedy to the problem because it fails to understand the root cause of the problem. Increasing troop levels feeds the perception that the U.S. is in Iraq to stay, thereby fueling the insurgency. Moreover, the numerous increases in troop levels throughout the occupation have not improved security on the ground.

More from Glenn Greenwald and Matthew Yglesias.

Full transcript: Read more

Climate Progress

The Permafrost is not so Perma

By Joe Romm on Sep 12, 2006 at 12:12 pm

The future of the earth’s climate becomes more certain every day for two reasons. First, absent the leadership of the richest and most-polluting country, global levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming pace. This makes it more likely we will see the high end of current projections for both future greenhouse gas concentrations and climate impacts.

Second, almost every week we learn more about the dangerous positive feedbacks or vicious cycle in the climate system, whereby an initial warming causes changes that release more greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn causes more warming, and more emissions, and so on and on.

Perhaps the most dangerous vicious cycle is the melting of the Arctic permafrost, which contains more carbon locked away in frozen soil than the entire atmosphere holds today. Worse, thawed permafrost can release its carbon as methane, which is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

permafrost-better.jpg

New research finds that the Arctic contains far more carbon than previously thought (Science, subs. req’d) and that methane is bubbling up out of the tundra far faster than previously thought (Nature, subs. req’d). As the Associated Press put it, humans “may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb.”

We must all act to ensure that the President elected in 2008 has far more interest in stopping this time bomb than the current president who has none.

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