More Downing Street revelations: In a confidential memo written in May 2003, John Sawers, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s envoy in Baghdad, characterized the U.S. postwar administration of Iraq as “No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis.” At approximately the same time, Bush was declaring “Mission Accomplished.”
Pakistan’s foreign office “paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the U.S. to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report,” according to foreign service officials in a Pakistani weekly.
Right-wing Christian evangelist Pat Robertson shows no signs of slowing down after losing his seat earlier this month on the Religious Broadcasters’ Board over a series of hate-filled comments. Robertson yesterday called Muslims “satanic” and distanced himself from Bush by declaring Islam is not a religion of peace.
$1.05 million: Amount taxpayers spent last year on leasing vehicles for members of Congress, including “Lexuses, Lincolns, Cadillacs, an Infiniti, even a BMW 530i.”
Abramoff probe deepens: Senate investigators are reviewing new documents subpoenaed from Abramoff’s former lobby firms, Greenberg Traurig and Preston Gates and Ellis. “To date, those firms have largely dodged the bullet, pleading ignorance of Jack’s misdeeds. But scandal-watchers say that’s hard to swallow.”
Debt clock retired too soon? “When it shut down, the federal budget was running a surplus. … The rising debt tally is a reminder, economists say, that the nation is on an unsustainable fiscal course.”
“Executives from six major oil companies will make what is expected to be a standing-room-only appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where lawmakers will push for an explanation of the companies’ huge profits and what they plan to do to ease consumers’ soaring energy costs.” Will Specter pull a Stevens, or will he swear them in?
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached “a new record level” and Arctic sea ice “has failed to re-form for the second consecutive winter, raising fears that global warming may have tipped the polar regions in to irreversible climate change far sooner than predicted.”
Morale is low at the Department of Homeland Security as “[v]acancies and personnel turnover have reached such high levels…that they may be hampering the agency’s effectiveness.”
And finally: Frederick Malek, the Advisory Committee member of Scooter Libby’s legal fund who infamously counted the number of Jews in a government agency, was arrested as a young man for killing, skinning, barbecuing, and eating a dog.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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