Sen. Burns probably really appreciates the prediction.
From Oklahoma TV station KTEN ...
U-S Senator Tom Coburn isn't naming names, but he expects six congressmen and a fellow senator will go to jail.That's because he thinks they'll be facing corruption charges following investigations involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others.
Six from the House. That's quite a haul.
--Josh Marshall
The scope of the lying from Ken Mehlman's RNC on this immigration stuff really almost defies belief. I'm genuinely curious if any talking heads are going to call them on it. We'll be bringing you a bit more info on this shortly. But basically you have a bill that a Republican chairman introduced and one that was passed overwhelmingly by Republicans. Now the GOP is trying to find a way out from under their screw-up which they're afraid is going to damage them grievously at the polls among Latinos. So they're saying the Democrats are for making illegal aliens felons when they were the ones against making it even a misdemeanor. Mehlman's committee is running these ads. He was on CNN last night preening about how everyone knows how ethical he is and today he's caught in a flat out lie.
Note to Ken: If you run the ads in Spanish, it's still a lie.
Late Update: Here's some more on just the caliber of lies we're talking about.
--Josh Marshall
Larry Johnson gives us the run-down on the Throw Rummy from the Train movement.
Rummy's hour is growing nigh, says Larry.
--Josh Marshall
Emerging RNC bamboozle...
The RNC is running Spanish-language ads against Harry Reid arguing that Democrats were behind the bill the House passed to treat illegal aliens as felons.
That of course is the GOP-backed bill Republicans are now running away from in droves.
Figure the ad will get taken off the air? Will the cable nets feature the bamboozlement?
The argument is really pretty egregious even by GOP standards. House Republicans put up a bill to make being an illegal alien a felony. An amendment was proposed that would have made it a misdemeanor. As the AP reports, "Democrats, including members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, voted against the amendment, arguing they did not support criminal penalties. Nevada Republicans Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons also voted against the amendment, which failed. The felony provision remained in the bill, H.R. 4437, and it passed the House on a largely party line vote."
So Democrats wouldn't vote for criminalizing at all. Ergo, they're for making it a felony.
This sort of bald-faced lying really should be called out.
Late Update: Apparently the DC GOP is really in full bamboozle mode here. And the word has gone out to blame Democrats for the felony provision the GOP passed through the House like a week ago. I wonder if someone will ask Ken Mehlman about the ad he's running.
--Josh Marshall
The dirty truth comes out. Grover Norquist said he was trademarking the phrase 'K Street Project' and would sue anyone using it in an improper fashion. It turns out Norquist is just trademarking the 'K Street Project' logo. Norquist will be able to make exclusive use of the logo to produce "product ratings of the consumer goods and services of others in the field of posting the most recent job hires in Washington DC's premier lobbying firms, trade associations, and industries."
--Josh Marshall
Thank God they're on the case!
The Department of Homeland Security hasn't sent out any security "bulletins" on white supremacist organizations, whack-job militias, or violent anti-abortion groups. But they have prepared a new brand new security bulletin on how to protect yourself against animal rights groups and 'eco-terrorists'.
One form of eco-terror attack, according to the bulletin has eco-terrorists "sending continuous faxes in order to drain the ink supply from company fax machines."
"Flyer distribution" is another form of attack to be vigilant about.
Find out all the scary details here.
--Josh Marshall
Here's one element of the new wave of fear-mongering articles about the Iranian nuclear program that doesn't add up to me. It relates to Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
Here's a portion out of Sy Hersh's piece in the New Yorker which gives a sense of the line of reasoning ...
One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as "a white coup," with ominous implications for the West. "Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out," he said. "We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution." He said that, particularly in consideration of China’s emergence as a superpower, Iran’s attitude was "To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like."
What doesn't add up to me is that through much of the past decade we were told that the reformism of Ahmadinejad's immediate predecessor Mohammad Khatami was not that significant because the real power in Iran, the font of all fundamental decision making is in the Guardian Council and even more the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
Given how things developed under Khatami's presidency, that claim appears to have been borne out.
Now, Khamenei is no great shakes, on a lot of counts. But one mild consolation is that I think this logic applies as much to Ahmadinejad as much as it applied to Khatami. He may be a zealout where Khatami was a reformer. But aren't we still fundamentally in the same situation: that the key decisions in Iran are made by Khamenei?
If that's true, then Ahmadinejad really is a secondary player. And building him up as the bogeyman doesn't really add up.
--Josh Marshall
President Bush has 15 days to decide on whether to let a Dubai-based company buy the outfit that helps make America's tanks. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Liddy Dole tries new spin on GOP meme: Dems can't beat Republicans on the issues so they have to rely on inexpensive advertising rates in Montana!
Liddy on Dems targetting Sen. Conrad Burns: "This is very unfair, it's very offensive, I think it's outrageous. But, you see, they can't beat him on the issues and ideas, so they're trying to put all this money in here because advertising is inexpensive."
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) denies everything in new DeLay-Buckham earmark back scratch imbroglio.
--Josh Marshall
Tom DeLay may get a job at the White House. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Here's another question on those bio-weapons mobile trailers that never were.
When did the administration let Congress in on the fact that those mobile weapons labs weren't bio-weapons labs at all and that we'd just been conned by some emigres on the make?
We're focusing now on the president's flogging of this bogus story shortly after the Defense Intelligence Agency gave a definitive verdict on the falsity of the claim. But when did they tell Congress? And how late did other administration heavies continue to make this claim?
My recollection is that with most of these stories like the trailers and the tubes and the nuclear this and that, most of this stuff wasn't definitively knocked down for many, many months after the war. Like old soldiers these fables didn't die so much as they faded away. The certainty diminished. More doubts were raised. But for what always struck me as deeply cynical reasons, the White House never publicly pulled the plug on any of these tales because as long as they kept some level of uncertainty hanging in the air they didn't have to address the fact that the central argument for the war had turned out to be false.
Hell, you've still got Hitchens publicly holding out for the Niger canard. And that's just an example of the fact that you can always find folks deep enough in the tank to churn out tall tales for the true believers to eat up.
Anyway, when did the White House tell Congress that the mobile weapons story was bunk?
A reader pointed me toward this portion of the congressional record from July 17th, 2003 in which Senators Durbin and McConnell discuss then heated WMD debate. They both discuss the mobile bio-weapons trailers with the assumption that that was what they were. And this was the day after then CIA Director George Tenet gave five hours of closed door Senate testimony on the WMD debacle. That certainly suggests that Tenet didn't knock down the mobile lab fable in that lengthy session dedicated to the topic of pre-war WMD intelligence.
What does Durbin say?
And how late were administration figures pushing the mobile bio-labs story?
Here's what Vice President Cheney said to Juan Williams on January 24th 2004 ...
In terms of the question what is there now, we know for example that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program. Now it's not clear at this stage whether or not he used any of that to produce or whether he was simply getting ready for the next war. That, in my mind, is a serious danger in the hands of a man like Saddam Hussein, and I would deem that conclusive evidence, if you will, that he did, in fact, have programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney's persistence in lying to the public about al Qaida and WMD claims is almost the stuff of legend. So even though the baldness of this lie still sort of grabs me, I can't say it's exactly shocking.
But again, Congress. For how many months did the White House continue to tell the Congress that the mobile bio-weapons story was true even while they knew it was false? For months? Or was it more like a year?
--Josh Marshall
I guess the folks at the Pentagon didn't get the Pentagon memo on the phony bio-labs either.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, we may not be able to stop or counter the cresting wave of Iran nuclear bamboozlement. But we can at least give you the play-by-play along with color commentary that we can refer back to when we're discussing possible Iran disengagement strategies in 2010.
Here's a gem just out from Bloomberg, courtesy of TPM Reader TB.
Headline: "Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says"
And the first couple grafs ...
Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said."Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow. "Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days."
Now, I'm pretty new to this issue. But even I can spot that Stephen Rademaker works for Robert Joseph. And that's the same Bob Joseph who was charged with muscling the CIA into letting President Bush use the Niger bamboozle in the 2003 State of the Union address. And he actually managed to get it done, even after the Alan Foley and others at the CIA told him repeatedly they didn't think it was true. So he certainly speaks with a lot of credibility on this issue.
Like I said, we may not be able to stop our march toward destruction. But we can at least have some fun with it as we swirl down history's drain.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, aside from the bamboozlement on Iran talk, I think I've found the real gem in Scott McClellan's comments today in the gaggle.
You probably saw the Post piece today that says the DIA had decided definitievely that those 'mobile labs' trailers were not for bio-weapons a couple days before the president went before the public and presented them as the conclusive evidence that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. McClellan seems to imply that the president and the White House is so fastidious about the proprieties of declassification that the president wasn't at liberty to tell the public that he was lying (emphasis added to main bamboozlement passage) ...
I think the CIA will tell you -- and I spoke to them earlier today -- that a finished product like this, a white paper like this, takes coordination, it takes debating, it takes vetting, and it's not something that they will tell you turns on a dime. It's a complex intelligence white paper and it's ... one derived from highly classified information takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate and to run through a declassification process. And they will tell you this. And the intelligence comes in many different forms -- human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source -- and it's not a trickle, it's a constant flood, is what they told me this morning. And weighing and assessing it is something that takes a lot of time and is a technology-intensive process. So you're making an assumption that something is immediately taken and assessed by your comments.
You can see the rest of what he said this morning here.
(ed.note: Fred Hiatt take note -- this delay related to declassification angle might be good material for a future Post editorial.)
--Josh Marshall
Hotline: RNC funds phone-jammer's legal defense out of generosity of spirit.
--Josh Marshall
The Muckrakers lament that they won't have Howard Kaloogian to kick around anymore -- after he managed a feeble fourth place in yesterday's open primary to succeed Duke Cunningham. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
Actually, just kidding. Here's a photo from Howard's victory celebration.
--Josh Marshall
I find more and more that the only place I get to read for any length at a time without distraction is at the gym. So it was this evening that I finally got down to reading Seymour Hersh's much-discussed article on Iran in the New Yorker.
Like many Hersh articles, it was studded with many glowing quotes and very few names attached to them. But I have to say that in the actual reading I found the article a good deal more alarming than the advance billing suggested.
Perhaps Hersh is totally out to lunch on this issue and talked to all the wrong people. But given the subject matter and the sort of sources he cultivates, I doubt that. And if he's anywhere near right about his portrayal of the current thinking inside the Bush White House we're in a lot of trouble.
President Bush's dimwit megalomania seems to have survived the disaster of his Iraq adventure wholly intact.
Consider this passage ...
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb' if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
Takes your breath away, doesn't it?
I have to say, I can totally imagine the crackpots and sycophants around the president (many of them, no doubt, 'consultants' and 'contractors') stoking up his grandiosity along these lines. The world really didn't know how easily it was getting off when President Clinton settled for the national conversation about race being his legacy, did it? (For you younger folks, you sort of had to be there.)
Here's the graf that comes after that one.
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "i was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, 'What are they smoking?'"
This is what I was getting at. If this is an even remotely accurate reflection of what these clowns are thinking ... well, you can finish the sentence.
I'm going to try to write in a more considered and detailed way about this tomorrow. But for the moment I'd refer back to a point I made a couple weeks ago and say that the biggest folly would be to engage the administration on the particulars of their fantasies and delusions about foreign policy in the Middle East.
They appear to have learned almost nothing from the last three years in Iraq. The only sensible expenditure of energy is to find ways to hem these guys in or constrain them before they do even more damage to this country.
--Josh Marshall
WaPo: More evidence they knew they were lying when they were lying, Mobile Bio-weapons lab edition.
--Josh Marshall
Below I posted the statement RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman released this evening on the latest news about the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scandal. Mehlman was White House political director in 2002. 
And in his statement he says that "none of my conversations nor the conversations of my staff, involved discussion of the phone-jamming incident."
I'm quite happy to believe that. Heck, it may even be true.
But Mehlman knows, and I hope those in DC won't forget, that he's dodging the real question. Is he ready to issue such blanket denials on behalf of the Republican National Committee, the organization he now runs. And how about the NRSC?
Let me fill in some of the details here before we proceed.
In 2002, the recently convicted James Tobin worked in a dual capacity for both the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the organization in charge of electing Republican senators. Principally, though, he worked for the latter group, which happened to be chaired that year by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN). Now there is ample evidence connecting Tobin's bad acts up the chain at both committees -- a fact hinted at in the government's witness list in the Tobin trial.
You get another hint of this in the fact that the RNC has to date spent almost $3 million on Tobin's legal defense. -- despite the fact that Tobin's defense didn't deny his involvement in the phone-jamming case.
So let's have it.
Will Ken Mehlman make a similarly categorical statement about the involvement of the Republican National Committee? And will he address his organization's continuing bankrolling of Tobin's defense -- given that Tobin doesn't actually deny his role in the scheme? If he wants to toss in a blanket denial on behalf of the NRSC, great. But I'll settle for one and two.
DC Republicans have been covering up their role in this caper for years -- abetted, admittedly by the national political press's almost total lack of interest in the case. Now Mehlman seems to think the standard refusals to address the question won't wash any more. So here's a chance for reporters to ask some key questions.
--Josh Marshall
This really is too funny. But I guess it's appropriate that a 
would-be avatar of free markets and unbridled libertarianism finds himself applying to the government for restrictive monopoly rights to a phrase so that others can't use it in ways he's doesn't like.
What am I talking about?
Grover Norquist is trying to trademark the phrase "K Street Project."
I guess in the application to the trademark office his lawyers may ask for exclusive rights to engage in organized corruption under this title in the environs of Washington, DC. Of course, the scope has reached worldwide. So they may not settle for the geographical restriction.
Norquist told the Hill: "We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money."
--Josh Marshall
RNC Chair Ken Mehlman responds to the new phone-jamming records ...
"As White House political director during the 2002 election cycle, my staff and I regularly communicated with competitive Congressional campaigns and Republican Party organizations. One of the most competitive was the Senate race in New Hampshire and throughout the election season and Election Day, Alicia Davis, my deputy responsible for the Northeast, frequently communicated with the New Hampshire State Party, the RNC and others."To be clear, none of my conversations nor the conversations of my staff, involved discussion of the phone-jamming incident. While I have profound policy disagreements with Chairman Dean, I have always tried to maintain what he and I discussed when we were first elected: keep it to the issues."
That's his story. Let's see if he can stick to it.
--Josh Marshall
Did Patrick Fitzgerald come close to hitting Dick Cheney with a conspiracy charge? David Corn sifts through the new evidence.
--Josh Marshall
Chris Bowers has an advance read of the tea leaves in the primary election being held today to select the successor to Duke "felon" Cunningham in California's 50th congressional district. If Francine Busby, the Democrat in the race, can get over 50%, she's in. If not, she'll go up against the Republican who gets the most votes.
There's little doubt she'll get near 50%. Whether she gets over 50% is the question of the night.
Howard 'You say Istanbul, I say Baghdad, let's call the whole thing off' Kaloogian is in the race. But now he seems like a longshot. Also in the race is former Rep. Brian Bilbray, lobbyist and former Abramoff buddy. His idea for cracking down on lobbying is preventing the state of California from calling him a lobbyist. He has a decent shot at getting the chance to run against Busby in the run-off.
There's also a self-financing gazillionaire named Eric Roach in the race. He's the other contender to take on Busby in the run-off. But he doesn't seem to be as good a material for humor as Bilbray and Kaloogian, so you're on your own with him.
Chris has more details.
--Josh Marshall
President Bush speaks to hand-picked hall of Republicans about the wonders of his prescription drug bill.
Says the AP: "The audience of several hundred people consisted largely of Bush supporters who had received tickets through the Republican party, the chamber of commerce or a Lutheran senior's home that Bush visited earlier in the day.'
Question: Why do your tax dollars go to fund these Republican party campaign events?
--Josh Marshall
Interns!
We're taking applications for our summer internships for two more weeks . We've already got a great crop of applicants. But if you're interested in interning at TPM Media and writing and researching for blogs like Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe and TPMmuckraker, drop usfor our summer internships a line.
TPM is taking applications for summer internships working out of our office in New York City. You'll gain real world experience for a career in journalism, blogging, research and writing or for a job in the political world.
Most of all, you'll be right in the midst of the action as we dig into and report on all the news coming out of this year's elections, the expanding DC corruption scandals and much more.
If you're interested, send us an email on the comments link with the subject heading "Summer Internship." Include a brief letter explaining your interest, your resume, when you'll be available to begin, and contact information.
--Josh Marshall
Employees at the Department of Labor get the 'opportunities in Iraq' email ...
As you may know, in previous years some DOL staff volunteered and were deployed to Iraq to help rebuild the country's government and infrastructure. The Department is again looking for volunteers to assist with the Iraq reconstruction efforts, which are so vital to building stability and democracy in that country.Specifically, the Department of Labor has been asked to provide detailees for two positions at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The first position requires labor law experience and a background in pension and labor law reform and government employment restructuring. This position is a one-year assignment in the embassy in Baghdad.
The other position requires public affairs experience and this person would work as part of a team assisting journalists covering the Iraq reconstruction. This position is typically a three-month assignment in the embassy in Baghdad.
Individuals volunteering for service at the U.S. Embassy would continue to be employees of the Department of Labor during their service and would retain all current pay and benefits. Additional compensation may also be authorized. Assignments would probably begin this Spring or early Summer, but dates certain have not yet been set.
If you are interested in this opportunity or would like more information, please contact ******* by email no later than COB Friday, April 14. During the week of April 17, those who have contacted Leon will be invited to a State Department briefing during which there will be an opportunity to meet with DOL employees who have been to Iraq. There may be additional volunteer opportunities in the future, so please indicate whether you are interested in an immediate assignment or a later date. Please contact Leon ******* if you would like to attend.
Additional general information about working and living in Iraq can be found on the Department of State website.
Thank you for your cooperation.
See the earlier emails to the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Commerce here.
--Josh Marshall
Paul Kiel finds another damning clue in those records of the calls that the NH phone-jammers made to the White House on the day the scheme went down.
--Josh Marshall
Now that Romano Prodi's election in Italy appears to have been confirmed, many readers have written in to ask whether I think the impending change of government in Italy is likely to shake free any of the secrets about the Niger forgeries.
A colleague and I spent the better part of two years working on the forgeries story. In fact, we still are. As recently as a couple months ago we were meeting with US government officials about the US government's intentionally moribund investigation into the forgeries' origins.
In any case, much of my reporting on the case amounted to an education of just how little I knew about the inner-workings of Italian politics. We learned a lot. And much of it I've reported in these pages.
One might imagine that since the Italian center-right is implicated in the forgeries scandal, that the center-left would be eager to get all the facts out. But that wasn't our experience at all. We found fairly consistently that there was a surprising amount of collusion across the ideological spectrum when it came to keeping the wraps on this affair. For that reason, I would not be expecting any sudden revelations just because voters now appear to have turned Berlusconi out.
That is not necessarily the end of the story though. The international situation is quite different than it was in 2004 -- when we did the majority of our reporting. President Bush was riding high. And his reelection campaign was underway. Also, in recent months, I've picked up some hints that elements in the Italian government wanted to get this whole mess behind them, and that the election was what had everyone frozen in place. Once the election was out of the way, whoever won, but especially if Prodi did, things might change.
These two points, I know, rather contradict each other. But they are the sum of what I know. Will things change? Maybe. There are some hints of it. But I remain skeptical.
--Josh Marshall
Fitzgerald says Bush put the 'bully' in 'bully pulpit'. That and other news in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
In Seymour Hersh's much-discussed new article on President Bush and Iranian regime-change there's this graf (emphasis added)...
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'"
This claim is certainly ambiguously sourced. But if true, it suggests that our nation's fate is again in the grip of George W. Bush's grandiosity. And if so, no eventuality is too far-fetched. Nothing can be ruled out.
--Josh Marshall
The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin is going to be doing a book reading/signing/talk about her new book Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives tonight at 6:30 at the Strand Bookstore at 828 Broadway here in New York. I'll be on hand to moderate and lead the Q&A.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader AB writes in to say that there's no way President Bush will launch a war against Iran. At most what we're talking about is aerial bombing to eliminate or seriously degrade the Iranian nuclear program.
To this a couple responses.
I don't see the logic of reserving the noun 'war' for full-scale invasion and regime change. A bombing campaign to seriously degrade or eliminate the Iranian nuclear facilities would mean bunker-busting bombs to destroy buried and heavily reinforced facilities. It would hit a lot of places. Something of that caliber amounts to war. And not just by some rhetorical definition. It's something that wouldn't end after a few days or after the last US bombers and fighters return to their bases and ships.
Second, AB suggests that what's going on here is not actually preparations for war, but saber-rattling to keep the Iranians off balance and give them an added incentive to reach a diplomatic compromise.
With any other administration, I'd agree with that. Hinting at a potential military option would actually make sense as a backdrop to serious diplomatic discussions. It would make sense for an administration that wanted a diplomatic solution.
But this isn't any administration. This is an administration that demonstrated in a fairly analogous situation a preference for war over diplomatic solutions. So the 'threats as a way to spur diplomatic flexibility' argument makes perfect sense in the abstract. But there's no reason to assume it applies to this situation.
For myself, I still find it really, really hard to believe that the adminstration is seriously considering military action against Iran. At one level, I don't believe it. But I've thought the same thing with these guys too many times and been wrong. It's a situation where I set logical analysis aside and rely on experience and the administration's track record.
We know these guys. Why get fooled again?
--Josh Marshall
This post is, hopefully, nothing more than stating the obvious. But let's just put down for the record that when President Bush calls recent reports of White House plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" that means absolutely nothing.
It's not just that the president has now earned a well-deserved reputation for lying. It is because he and his chief aides lied to the country about a more or less parallel situation -- the build up to war on Iraq -- only four years ago. We now know that the fix was in on the Iraq War as early as September/October 2001. And the president and his crew kept up the charade that no decisions had been made long after those claims became laughable.
Yes, I know, President Bush gets called a liar on center-left and left-wing blogs all the time.
But I think those more genial sorts in the press and policy community in DC need to be honest enough with themselves to recognize that on this issue of all issues President Bush is unquestionably a liar.
It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces -- hawks in the administration's Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president's chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?
--Josh Marshall
In this morning's White House 'gaggle' Helen Thomas got things started with a simple question: "Is the U.S. going to attack Iran?"
See the entire exchange, with Libby/leak questions too, here.
--Josh Marshall
If you're really, really guilty, be sure to get a really, really good lawyer.
Richmond Times-Dispatch profiles DeLay lawyer Richard Cullen.
(ed.note: To TPM Lawyer-Readers, yes, I know. Everybody needs a good defense. It's a joke. Next.)
--Josh Marshall
The DOJ slow-rolls the Guam-Abramoff-Rove investigation. And Sen. Burns may be the new Tom DeLay. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Editorial pages are for opinion. But legitimate opinion journalism is constrained by facts, as nearly as we can know them as we put pen to paper. And by that measure, the Washington Post's editorial page has skidded outside the boundaries of journalistic legitimacy on any number of issues but most glaringly on our involvement in the Middle East. Today's editorial on the Bush-Cheney-Libby leak of classified portions of the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate is a case in point.
One might simply say that presidents play hardball; and they play politics. And President Bush or his untethered vice president played hardball against a prominent critic by releasing information the law allowed them to release. And get over it. Politics, like life, isn't fair. And if you swipe at the president, expect to get hit back.
You may not agree with that. But it's an opinion. And it contains an uncomfortably large element of fact.
But the authors of this editorial don't appear to read the news pages of their own paper or their best competitors. The clock has simply run out on any attempt to claim the president and his key advisors weren't acting in bad faith with their constant advocacy of an alleged traffic in uranium between Iraq and Niger. It's over.
As consistent reporting both from within the executive branch and the intelligence agencies has shown, the only reason this canard ever caught any life outside the vice president's office was not because of its credibility but rather its irrelevancy. By the time Libby came to leak more information about it months after the war, it had been still further discredited within the administration.
The Post also sticks to the up-is-down claim that Wilson's trip to Niger supported rather than undermined the Niger-uranium claim. That is a viewpoint that can only be maintained if you are willfully ignorant of the backstory to the Niger canard. Wilson's report didn't add a lot to what most in the intelligence community already thought about the pretended Niger story. But that was because it tended to confirm the reasons why most in the intelligence community didn't find the story credible in the first place.
For whatever reason, the Post has chosen to throw in its lot with the flurry of mendacious rhetoric and the white-washed investigations, all of which amount to a grand pen and paper and word game truss barely holding together the body of official lies that is still governing the capital.
They've made their deal with power. They should justify it on those grounds rather than choosing to mislead their readers.
--Josh Marshall
There's a lengthy oped piece in Sunday's Post by Tom DeLay's former Communications Director John Feehery. The opening blurb doesn't inspire a lot of confidence: "Tom DeLay had great strengths, and one great weakness - a willingness to let his staff members run amok."
When I read that I thought it was going to be another version of that silly DeLay whitewash Michael Barone just wrote. But it's not.
It's actually well worth your time to read. And though it plays to the good man brought down by bad staffers story line, Feehery only takes that so far. The really bad ones -- like Buckham and Rudy and Scanlon -- rose to the top because DeLay naturally gravitated toward them and heeded their advice. And he gravitated toward them because ... well, because they were bad. And he liked that.
No, Feehery doesn't use those words. And, yes, I'm making a bit more black and white. But not much. DeLay, Feehery explains, was attracted to these three because of their willingness to cut corners, to ignore limits, to do anything to win.
The overwhelming majority of DeLay's staffers were professional, honest and working in Congress for the right reasons. But Tom prized the most aggressive staffers and most often heeded their counsel ... A former hockey player, Tony Rudy was DeLay's enforcer; he wasn't evil, but lacked maturity and would do whatever necessary to protect his patron. Ed Buckham, DeLay's chief of staff, gatekeeper and minister, constantly pushed DeLay to be more radical in his tactics and spun webs of intrigue we are only now beginning to unravel. And Michael Scanlon, who, in my experience, was a first-class rogue and a master of deception. People like Rudy and Scanlon pleased DeLay because they were always pushing the envelope ... I don't know if Tom always knew what his staff was doing -- I know that I didn't. But I had my suspicions, and now I have seen them borne out.
This one's worth a read.
--Josh Marshall
This new article on the Niger forgeries is now up online in Sunday London Times.
The claim actually isn't a new one. It's been rattling around Italy for at least a year, and reported in a few Italian publications aligned with the current government. The basic argument is that the Niger forgeries were the work of two employees at the Nigerien embassy in Rome, the consul, Adam Maiga Zakariaou and Laura Montini, his assistant. And the motive was money.
How did these two come to forge the documents?
According to the story in the Times, Montini was put together with ex-Italian intelligence agent Rocco Martino by a serving SISMI Colonel named Antonio Nucera. After putting the two together, Nucera fades from the scene. But Montini goes to work for Martino providing purloined documents from her place of work.
Then Montini and her boss, the Nigerien consul, learn that Martino works for the French and there's a lot of money in it for everyone involved if they can 'find' documents shedding light on Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger. Thus the forging begins and the rest, as they say, is history.
That is, needless to say, a very condensed version of the story. So read the piece in the Times for the full details.
Now, remember, this version of events is the work of an Italian government 'investigation'. And all evidence suggests that the Italian government has very dirty hands in this whole affair, acting at least as the purveyor of the forgeries and possibly their creator as well.
There are a slew of holes in this story; and you don't need to be too deep into the arcana of the story to see them.
First, consider Nucera's role. He's a colonel in SISMI, Italian military intelligence. He puts the two key players together. They're also former SISMI employees. But that's just a coincidence. Neither Nucera nor SISMI have any role in what happened. He was just trying to help out a couple old friends.
Montini actually says different. She gave an as-yet-unpublished interview in which she alleges that Nucera provided her with the forgeries, with the instructions to turn them over to Martino.
Here's another point to consider. If the Italians really have this all figured out, and if the Italian government isn't implicated in any way, why have Montini, the Nigerien consul and Martino never been arrested or accused of any crime? Each is now in Italy. No charges have ever been brought against any of them.
There are various other holes and contradictions in this story. But there's one big one that you only need to read the papers to see. According to the story in the Times, the documents go from the Nigerien Embassy to Martino, to the French and then to the UK. Martino later sells them to an Italian journalist just a few months before the war.
Only, that's not how it happened. It's a simple chain of custody issue. Read up on the story and you'll find that the US didn't get the documents from the British or from the French. They got them from ... right, SISMI. The Italians sent details of the documents and then text transcriptions of them to Washington in late 2001 and early 2002. And everyone else got them, either directly or indirectly, from the Italians as well.
Once you add that fact to the mix you realize the story in the Times just doesn't add up.
This is the cover story concocted by the Italian government. It wasn't a very good one eighteen months ago and it's no better now.
--Josh Marshall
