The Rant

And for those with a cynical point of view TreasonGate - What Did Bush Know, And When Did He Know It? by Thom Hartmann Political smears by right-wingers are nothing new. In the election of 1800, John Adams had a surrogate newspaper publisher write an article about "Dusky Sally," the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson's deceased wife, who was also one of the Jefferson family slaves. Jefferson succeeded in avoiding the issue, and his friends pointed out that it was merely about his personal life, not national security. George W. Bush may not be so fortunate. Today comes the revelation in The Wall Street Journal that "A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson's Niger trip was classified 'Top Secret,' and the passage about his wife's CIA role was specially marked 'S/NF' -- not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies." Perhaps even more damning are reports that the Top Secret-S/NF document was apparently first delivered to Air Fo...

From this week's New Yorker....GET OUT THE VOTE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq’s election?Issue of 2005-07-25Posted 2005-07-18The January 30th election in Iraq was publicly perceived as a political triumph for George W. Bush and a vindication of his decision to overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein. More than eight million Iraqis defied the threats of the insurgency and came out to vote for provincial councils and a national assembly. Many of them spent hours waiting patiently in line, knowing that they were risking their lives. Images of smiling Iraqis waving purple index fingers, signifying that they had voted, were transmitted around the world. Even some of the President’s harshest critics acknowledged that he might have been right: democracy, as he defined it, could take hold in the Middle East. The fact that very few Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein, chose to vote was seen within the Administration as a temporary setback. The sense of v...

In my effort to keep some perspective regarding the Rove debate, I read All the President's Men. That's right, Watergate.. I think any one who didn't live through Watergate ought to read this book. Not solely because it is a facinating story, but I don't think the average American knows or remembers the scope of the misdeeds of the Nixon Whitehouse. My sense of the signifigance of the book is to point out that our government has perpetrate huge, dissinformation campaigns to hide the truth before. The tactics used by the Nixon Whitehouse are no different than what we see in the news everyday- whether it is tearing down Joe Wilson, the disaffected FBI "deep throat", or even Ben Stein defending Nixon last week, it's always the same. Don't address the issue, change the subject by attacking the usual suspects, the whistleblower, the news media, the eastern elite...... Scott McClellan is a Ron Ziegler clone. His problem is that the Washington press corp...

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