FBI Program Deputizes Corporations To Spy, Report On Workers, Among Others

If you haven't heard about InfraGard, a Bush Administration-FBI initiative to "fight the battle for homeland (in)security", you need to know. I've written about it in some detail at All Things Democrat, but you can also find the Democracy Now videocast of The Progressive's Matt Rothschild detailing it yesterday. Also, you can read his article here ("The FBI Deputizes Business").

At BEST, this is corporate favoritism and yet another program WE have to pay for with our tax dollars (many of these businesses involved with InfraGard not only pay minimal if any taxes, many are the recipients of huge rebates we also pay for).

At worst? Well, it staggers the imagination (like much of what the Bush Administration does).

President Bush: "(The Devil) Saddam Made Me Do It (Iraq)"

Well, we've heard every possible excuse from the president and the rest of the Bush Administration on how they could have been so terribly wrong about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the threat the Iraqi leaders presented to the U.S. So now, after a government audit documented 935 separate lies about Iraq - and the American economy affected by a war with Iraq - from the Bush Administration, what makes more sense than for the Bushies to turn around and blame Saddam? Well, that is, it makes about as much sense as anything else this murderous, greedy, deceitful crew does, anyway.

What marvelous timing that the FBI agent who supposedly was the one to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in Iraq in December 2003 picked NOW, in light of the lie report, to disclose highlights from his seven-month-long interrogation of the Iraqi dictator, hanged just before the end of 2006.

However, for the Bushies to quickly spread the story that it was Saddam who lied and fooled them does NOT appear to be a particularly flattering spin on events. For it to matter, we would have had to BELIEVE what Saddam was saying in the first place - and we had no reason to do that, did we? After all, we expect our enemies - and America's greatest enemy of all, President George W. Bush - to lie to us. So why did the Bushies magically choose to believe the WMD/threat lies (if Saddam told them rather than the U.S.)?

Also, according to Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney, et al, they had "military intelligence" and well more than ample evidence from "trusted sources" that WMD was EVERYWHERE in Iraq and that the nation, which could barely afford to operate at all, was ready to launch suicide camel rocket SCUBA divers to blow up the West Coast (remember?).

Well, as usual with the Bushies, the truth changes faster than Bush's "reasons" for going into Iraq in the first place, and none of the stories/versions makes as much sense as that we went in there for the oil, and got a lot more (and not in a good way) than we bargained for.

Why can't the Bushies do something truly unique just ONCE? As in, tell the truth? Wait. I know why. Because to them, the truth is just something to spin into something worse. Lessons we need to keep in mind as Bush keeps ramping us forward to war with Iran.

"America's Mayor" Campaign Going Boom DOT Bust?

For weeks and weeks, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been pouring all his time and resources (and we've learned that his campaign, even before Mike Huckabee's, has run out of money in ways that make it impossible to pay all staffers) into key primaries like Florida's after doing very badly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and others.

However, it's unlikely Giuliani, mayor of New York City on September 11th, 2001, will win even Republican voters when it's time for the Empire State to cast ballots. But if he does as badly in the upcoming Florida primary as polls suggest, how can the man who sold out the firefighters and other 9-11 rescue workers, who took billions in no-bid contracts not just from the Bush Administration but from our supposed sworn enemies, and who should have an in among Floridians who were former New Yorkers, stay in the race? Despite his focus down there, he's halved his polling numbers since November (from 36 to 18%).

The Republican debate in Florida is tonight on MSNBC. Urg.

Real ID: Another Bush Step In The War Against Americans

(Where's a graphic of an upraised middle finger when you need one?)

Our forefathers - and generations of leading minds since the nation known today as The United States was founded - held certain truths to stand above the will of capricious government. One was that we would never be required to proclaim our allegiance to the throne (in whatever form it takes, including the Bush White House) because they remembered how it would be abused, and one of the others was that Americans should not be required to prove they are, uh, you know, Americans.

Yet the Bush White House, under Major Demon Homeland InSecurity Secretary Michael Chertoff, has announced that really, they'd like you to pledge allegiance to THEM and, while you're at it, PROVE you're an American by signing up for one of the most invasive and yes, ridiculous, national ID systems we can imagine. And - oh yeah - according to Chertoff, if you don't want to have a national ID, you're either Osama bin Laden (or other terrorist), an illegal alien who wants to steal the job of toilet bowl brushing many other Americans choose not to perform, OR you're a criminal.

I guess the idea that a patriot, much less than a regular citizen, might balk at being FORCED to prove he or she was born here, isn't a terrorist (and according to the Bush White House, terrorism has repeatedly been expanded to mean ANYONE who does not agree 312% with some fascist program of the Bushies), and isn't a serial killer (like Bush, in many respects, isn't one of the world's WORST of those and now wants to expand his killing fields into Iran).

I'll fight this with everything I have. I hope you will, too. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Bush Declares New Threat On America: Zombies!

Gee, zombies. Sounds like much of his administration and loyal followers.

Keep watching this video to see the scariest zombie of all at the end. Please, make that zombie eat salt (the way to get a zombie to die or crawl back to his - or her, of course - grave).

Here We Go: Bushies Putting Fear In Voters Claiming Al Qaeda Targeting 2008 Prez Election

And it comes from the so-called Democrat Homeland Security Advisor (and such an incompetent brown noser that she's a perfect Bushie) Fran Townsend who, btw, resigned yesterday (years too late, if you ask me).

Personally, NOTHING Al Qaeda can do will amount to anything compared to what the Bushies have done to democracy since 2000.

"Out of The Mouths of Blabbering Boobs & Bushies"

With so much bad news - from the economy to the declaration that we're having our deadliest years E-V-E-R in both Iraq and Afghanistan to a host of other awfuls, the Bushies have made a few really TELLING declarations in the past week that are worthy of note.

First, there was Bush's insistence that anything Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf wanted to do to for his country was A-OK with Bush. But that's not quite the NEWS. Bush, when asked if it was appropriate for Musharraf to claim the presidency when he came to power through a military coupe with Musharraf heading the military at the time, Bush comes out with:

Can a leader run both the military AND be president of his country at the same time? Of course not!

Uh.... Houston to the president: YOU ostensibly run the military as commander in cheat.. uh chief WHILE you are also supposedly president.

Then there's White House spokesvermin Dana Perino, Tony Snow(job)'s even sorrier replacement who, when asked if it was appropriate for any country's leadership to choose arbitrarily to end his/her nation's democracy and civil liberties in the name of protecting its citizens from terrorism, said NO!

But all the Bushies have done, since even before Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, is spy upon us as its citizens without ANY proof any of us is jeopardizing national security, to wiretap and remove constitutionally protected liberties, all in the name of "homeland security." In fact, in the same week Perino uttered this startling declaration (and removing our liberties have NOT made us any safer, I must add), the Bushies had several new initiatives underway to snoop upon us without due cause.

Stop the insanity, people!

Rudy's Man In Stripes?

Considering Bernie's size, let's hope the prison stripes aren't horizontal.

Is it true? Is the man Rudy Giuliani tried to foist off on us as Department of Homeland Security chief, a man with a most checkered past and much of it tied right to Rude Rudy, former NYPD chief Bernie Kerik, about to be indicted?

A federal indictment against former police commissioner Bernard Kerik is expected as early as this Friday. Government sources say that if the indictment is unsealed on Friday, Kerik is expected to surrender at the Westchester Federal Courthouse in White Plains, N.Y.

The sources say Kerik has told his close friends and members of his legal team that he expects the potential indictment to come before the statute of limitations expires on Nov. 15 on charges that could include tax evasion and bribery.

If the indictment is leveled against Kerik, it will be the latest twist in the tale that began when the child of a prostitute rose to police commissioner of New York City, achieved heroic proportions in the shadow of the collapsing World Trade Center, was gifted a diamond-encrusted chief's badge, awarded millions of dollars in stun gun stock options by business clients and given the proffer of a presidential appointment by President George Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Is it just me or did some of the strangest and worst people benefit outrageously much from 9-11? Bush, included.

Maybe Pat Robertson can pray for him. God knows, I pray for Pat (to be delivered to hades where he belongs where he will fight the devil for dominance).

Rice/Other Bushies Subpoenaed to Testify

Secrets passed to pro-Israel lobbyists? Hmmm.

Our media pays little attention to this, but you can bet it's getting noticed elsewhere.

Tragedies Waiting To Happen: Yesterday Minneapolis, Tomorrow Your Town?

Right now, according to ABC News, the federal government acknowledges that about 35% of this nation's major highways are in desperate shape; this in addition to the tens of thousands of bridges, countless thousands of stretches of railway, and other parts of the infrastructure that have been left to decay and are now at best "structurally unsound" and more likely flat out very dangerous.

It's only a matter of time before we see the disaster on the I35W bridge in Minneapolis repeated, perhaps with far more deadly results.

Department of Homeland Security? I dunno; al Qaeda supposedly attacked us ONCE. But can these terrorists do anywhere near the damage our federal government has, just in its total irresponsibility regarding the failing infrastructure?

I think not. President Bush's plan? Why, to tell us to pray, of course.

Of Disasters And Playing The Fear Card: Did You Notice?

Wednesday night, as the tragedy of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis played out in prime time, gave what (at least for me) seemed a potent example of how badly the media, especially hopelessly partisan and misleading venues such as virtually anything and everything Rupert Murdoch owns like Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security, AND the Bush Administration serve us in times of tragedy.

I've addressed my complete disgust with the Bushies on this subject in earlier posts today, so let me turn to the rest, starting with the Department of Homeland (Incompetence and In)Security, which took rather long Wednesday night to say they doubted terrorism was at fault for the devastation.

From what I could tell, more than 90 minutes elapsed before the DHS managed to say that probably Osama bin Laden - or a liberal blogger, for that matter - was responsible. Now that might not sound too bad, but this message came SIGNIFICANTLY AFTER one cable TV news source, notably Keith Olbermann doing live coverage on MSNBC, bothered to check the Minnesota DOT's Web site and learned important details like the fact significant pile-driving, which can cause fierce vibration and therefore could be a major contributing factor to such a structural failure, was to take place that very night. I flipped between MSNBC, CNN, and Fox for the better part of three hours, and I have to say Olbermann's crew was almost always not just ahead of the game, but putting out important and verifiable details that put the disaster in much better perspective. For example, they seemed the first to report that this bridge had been considered at only 50% of its structural best several years ago and was on a list with tens of thousands of other bridges throughout the country in dire need of repair or replacement. In Bush's America especially, little things like basic safety take a huge backseat to getting Halliburton ever greater unprecedented profits thanks to no bid contracts awarded by the Bushies. Was this information magically available globally to the World Wide Web somehow not available to the idiot DHS director Michael Chertoff and his band of corrupt incompetents calling themselves by a department name they aren't fit to wear? So yes, I wonder if the slowness by them wasn't convenient to the fear campaign.

Fox, on the other hand, at best behaved almost hysterically and at worst... well, I have to say that I seriously wondered whether they were deliberately playing into the fear card as part of the great leadup to the nonstop terror scare fest we must expect as we edge closer to the 2008 presidential election. It seems to be part of the Republican playbook to scare the bejesus out of everyone with the silliest of potential terror events (exploding cheese and grandmas with bombs in their Reeboks, for example) while completely ignoring the gravest of present dangers like the Bushies and Fox News. At one point, Shep Smith filling in for O'Reilly was as breathless as a scared schoolgirl talking about explosions and all but suggesting that Osama bin Laden had decided that the way to hurt America most was to make it tough to get to Minnesota's Mall of America. They had a terror alert banner running that seemed suspiciously like something to be used to scare the not-so-bright into thinking al Qaeda wants to win its war one structurally unsound American bridge at a time.

Folks, we're being played and for far worse than mere fools. Fox plays us, the Bushies play us, and our own desire to not worry about all this "pesky political stuff" also plays us directly into the hands of those who want to peddle fear while reaping huge profits for doing nothing more than none too talented sleight-of-hand, hoping you're too busy watching American Idol or the latest ball game to notice.

As Rome And Bridges Burn (And Collapse), Bush Fiddles But Without The Talent of Nero

[Ed. note: For more on this issue, read my posts here and here.]

As a person of faith, I happen to believe in the power of prayer. I make no bones or apologies about this. I also have no desire to shove it in your face, whether we think alike or not.

However, when President Bush finally appeared, sandwiching in time for a comment about the tragedy on the I35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis Thursday evening - hard to schedule between his naps, bike rides, Condi Rice still helping him read "My Pet Goat" (he's still trying to finish it lo these six years since he began it on the morning of 9-11 but, written for small children, some of the words probably prove quite a challenge to him) along with (of course) his myriad lies and machinations - Bush was once again quick to cite that he was praying and telling us we should do so as well.

Now, I'm certainly not going to say it's inappropriate for the leader of the free world to pray. However, I rather expect that same leader to do MORE than pray. And I sure as hell don't need him telling ME to do so since the decision to pray, or not, is one that is intensely private and personal.

Time and again, whether on the subject of September 11th or the horror he's caused in Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and here, there, and everywhere), the U.S. Constitution he and pal Alberto Gonzales have used for toilet paper, or whether his favorite Texas team wins the playoffs, Bush shoves prayer at us like he's our moral compass (well, he does seem to believe he sits not just at the right hand of God, but on His - or Her - lap, fiddling dangerously with the control panel, wondering what happens if he presses that big red button - indeed, as Gonzales says he serves at the pleasure of the president, our president thinks God serves at the pleasure of Bush's "decider" omnipotence). Why bother to actually lead when you can just spout prayer and then return to his nap, right?

Let me suggest that Bush should be looking at the nation's infrastructure; for example, the thousands of OTHER bridges out there ruled as structurally questionable if not more so than the one that collapsed yesterday. And not just LOOK at the infrastructure and rush to award lucrative no-bid/no-work/no-good-results contracts to his bestest pals in exchange for money in Bush & Cheney's pockets, but start implementing a real plan to address these issues. The ever-accelerating decay of the nation's infrastructure did not begin with the Bushies, but in the name of the ridiculously incompetent "Homeland Security", everything thing else has gone to goo while he sees terrorists everywhere but where we have the greatest concentration of terrorists these days: namely, HIS administration.

Torture And The Laws Bush Won't Even Pretend to Follow

At the same time he stands by his unmitigated nerve to cry foul against Russia in 2001 for its human rights abuses (talk about the skanky pot calling the Putey-Put kettle black), Bush wants everyone to notice he's "making illegal" what was already illegal to do but which he practices with all the fervor of a Republican Christian moralist paying a dominatrix for kinky sex (can you say William "Morals Czar" Bennett, anyone?).

Thus, may we assume (oh, yeaaaaahhhhh!) that President Bush signed a new law designed to "stop" torture in interrogations used against detainees and so-called terror suspects using invisible ink, with his fingers crossed behind his hand, AND with a signing statement that says, "this law applies only to Democrats and others not named Bush & Cheney"?

Meanwhile, the CIA is now allowed to return to interrogating whoever the hell they want, after many appropriate (and too many unasked) questions arose about how they conducted them.

Al Qaeda Rising, Bush Spinning

Today may be Friday the 13th but, sadly, under the Bush 43rd Administration, every day feels like the world’s least fortunate day (that is, unless you’re a fatcat defense contractor, an energy company stockholder, or one of the hundreds of incompetent appointees of this president constantly rewarded for their grave failures). So I suppose it fits that we have been treated this week to the news not only that our Homeland Security czar decides terror levels based on his “gut” but that Al Qaeda has, after probably more than a trillion dollars (the Bushies hide so much) and countless lives have been expended “fighting” Osama bin Laden’s exclusive club, largely reconstituted itself to its “pre September 11th” strength.

Yet it’s not just al Qaeda here we need to worry about. Bush has made the world a far more scary and hate-filled place through his policies and pronouncements. There were, for instance, a number of Muslim-dominant countries that had “favorable” feelings toward the United States before Bush but almost none now.

While he’s spent more money than any other president EVER “reshaping” everything terror-wise, creating endlessly redundant agencies (for example, we have 4-5 people now who seem to be in charge of our wars, including our Commander in Cheat, Bush himself), removing civil liberties left and right as if the U.S. Constitution did not exist, restructuring spy agencies to make them “function better” only to have them work less well than ever before, what do we have?

We have NO greater homeland security than we had before. We are hated far more throughout the world than we have ever been before. We have done the almost impossible: made the Middle East far more dangerous and far less stable than it was before we went into Iraq.
But we also have a president who turned around and refuted his “intelligence experts” and his own gut-rumbling secretary of Homeland Security to claim al Qaeda isn’t restored AT THE SAME TIME Bush congratulated himself for keeping us so damned safe. This, the same man who, for his own political gain, quite obviously engineered the outing of a CIA operative directly involved in the search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as political payback because the woman’s husband exposed one of Bush’s flood of lies related to Iraq in the buildup toward war.

And we’re supposed to thank him. Right. Let’s hope he holds his breath until he receives our gratitude.

Chertoff Gets Gas; America Foots "Security" Bill

So we went from Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security spending billions to come up with a color-coded (and it was miscoded, actually) terror alert system that was held together with duct tape and chutzpah to Michael (Legion of Satan) Chertoff now putting us on alert because he has a "gut feeling" we're in for fresh terrorist attacks.

Yes, his gut feeling is that:

a) Bush wants to keep terrorizing the rest of the world and doesn't want to be told NO;
b) Bush wants to invade Iran now;
c) even rigged Republican-owned voting machines might not win the Repugs the 2008 presidential vote

Frank Rich: "Iraq Is The Ultimate Aphrodesiac"

I don't happen to quite appreciate how Iraq could give types like John "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb - Bomb, Bomb Iran" McCain a big stiffy, but here's what Frank Rich noted in Sunday, April 22nd's OpEd in The Times.

President Bush has skipped the funerals of the troops he sent to Iraq. He took his sweet time to get to Katrina-devastated New Orleans. But last week he raced to Virginia Tech with an alacrity not seen since he hustled from Crawford to Washington to sign a bill interfering in Terri Schiavo's end-of-life medical care. Mr. Bush assumes the role of mourner in chief on a selective basis, and, as usual with the decider, the decisive factor is politics. Let Walter Reed erupt in scandal, and he'll take six weeks to show his face - and on a Friday at that, to hide the story in the Saturday papers. The heinous slaughter in Blacksburg, Va., by contrast, was a rare opportunity for him to ostentatiously feel the pain of families whose suffering cannot be blamed on the administration.

But he couldn't inspire the kind of public acclaim that followed his post-9/11 visit to ground zero or the political comeback that buoyed his predecessor after Oklahoma City. The cancer on the Bush White House, Iraq, is now spreading too fast. The president had barely returned to Washington when the empty hope of the "surge" was hideously mocked by a one-day Baghdad civilian death toll more than five times that of Blacksburg's. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the death rate for American troops over the past six months was at its all-time high for this war.

At home, the president is also hobbled by the Iraq cancer's metastasis - the twin implosions of Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz. Technically, both men have been pilloried for sins unrelated to the war. The attorney general has repeatedly been caught changing his story about the extent of his involvement in purging eight federal prosecutors. The Financial Times caught the former deputy secretary of defense turned World Bank president privately dictating the extravagant terms of a State Department sinecure for a crony (a k a romantic partner) that showers her with more take-home pay than Condoleezza Rice.

Yet each man's latest infractions, however serious, are mere misdemeanors next to their roles in the Iraq war. What's being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.

Mr. Gonzales's politicizing of the Justice Department is a mere bagatelle next to his role as White House counsel in 2002, when he helped shape the administration's legal argument to justify torture. That paved the way for Abu Ghraib, the episode that destroyed America's image and gave terrorists a moral victory. But his efforts to sabotage national security didn't end there. In a front-page exposé lost in the Imus avalanche two Sundays ago, The Washington Post uncovered Mr. Gonzales's reckless role in vetting the nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security in December 2004.

Mr. Kerik, you may recall, withdrew from consideration for that cabinet post after a week of embarrassing headlines. Back then, the White House ducked any culpability for the mess by attributing it to a single legal issue, a supposedly undocumented nanny, and by pinning it on a single, nonadministration scapegoat, Mr. Kerik's longtime patron, Rudy Giuliani. The president's spokesman at the time, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the White House had had "no reason to believe" that Mr. Kerik lied during his vetting process and that it would be inaccurate to say that process had been rushed.

Thanks to John Solomon and Peter Baker of The Post, we now know that Mr. McClellan's spin was no more accurate than his exoneration of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Wilson leak case. The Kerik vetting process was indeed rushed - by Mr. Gonzales - and the administration had every reason to believe that it was turning over homeland security to a liar. Mr. Gonzales was privy from the get-go to a Kerik dossier ablaze with red flags pointing to "questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption," not to mention a "friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime." Yet Mr. Gonzales and the president persisted in shoving Mr. Kerik into the top job of an already troubled federal department encompassing 22 agencies, 180,000 employees and the very safety of America in the post-9/11 era.

Read the rest at Chez Rozius Unbound.

Rudy's Kerik Fiasco

Considering that 2008 GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani admits that he KNEW of Bernard Kerik's purported ties to mafia/organized crime back SEVERAL years ago, when Kerik was in the running for New York City's top cop appointment (which he got), it also means Giuliani knew of these and other substantiated allegations about Kerik's lack of character, lack of honesty, and many other lacks WHEN Rudy told President Bush to appoint the credibility-challenged Kerik as Tom Ridge's replacement as Director of Homeland (In)Security. [Mind you, Giuliani has some very questionable aspects, too, including some substantiated claims of his own ties to the mob.

From the Political Wire:

"Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping," the Washington Post reports."

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake."

WINS-AM reports Kerik rejected a possible plea bargain.

Indictment for Kerik currently looks like a most distinct possibility.

So More Than A Million Documents Go In The Deep Freeze?

Mind you, for the record amounts - in the hundreds of billions - spent on so-called homeland security, we KNOW we aren't any safer (in fact, with Bush's charge, likely far LESS safe) but these bozos pull all these documents anyway:

More than 1 million pages of historical government documents — a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol — have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old.

In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thorough audit."We just felt we couldn't take the time and didn't always have the expertise," said Steve Tilley, who oversaw the program. Archives officials are still screening records, but the number of files pulled recently has declined dramatically, he said.

The records administration began removing materials under its "records of concern" program, launched in November 2001 after the Justice Department instructed agencies to be more guarded in releasing government papers. The agency has removed about 1.1 million pages, according to partially redacted monthly progress reports reviewed by the AP. The reports were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The pulled records include the presumably dangerous, such as nearly half an enormous database from the Federal Emergency Management Agency with information about all federal facilities. But they also include the presumably useless, such as part of a collection about the Lower Colorado River Authority that includes 114-year-old papers.About 80 cubic feet of naval facility plans and blueprints — on microfilm, about 200,000 pages — were withdrawn since the agency said it didn't have time to go through each individual document.

Protein Psycho: What Happens When (If) America Suffers a Successful WMD Attack

The ever-sharp Cernig of Cernig's Newshog points us to Protein Wisdom's thoughts on what we'll see should a terrorist group (other than the Bushies, America's biggest terror organization?) succeed in launching a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack on our homeland (9-11 was NOT that; a major WMD attack would be huge orders of magnitude worse - and you know how scary our own country, in its hate and vengeance mindset, was after 9-11):

Protein Wisdom's "Bravo Romeo Delta" on what happens if (he writes "when") a terrorist group ever succeeds in a WMD attack on the US (graphics - the infamous pic of a naked, crying Vietnamese girl running down a road placed next to a pic of people fleeing the fall of the Twin Towers):

When we respond to the Big Terrorist Attack with a vengeance it’s not going to be the more familiar kind of rage that occasionally marks human affairs, because it will pop this boil and it’s going to be messy and foul. Our response will, at least viscerally, be a lot more like one of those very strange temper-tantrums that children occasionally have in which they exhibit hysteric, almost superhuman strength; the kind of apocalyptic anger where it takes four adults to wrestle down an uncontrollable, teary-eyed fury, a runny-nosed rage which has taken the form of a very hurt, very angry 8 year old kid. But make no mistake – it won’t be a childish response and won’t be amenable to ice cream or spanking.

...The rest of the world will gasp in horror at the terrorist attack, and shed its tears, and then give us the nod to retaliate. And we will. Again. And again. And again. And the rest of the world will start to look on in amazement and slowly, slowly turn away in abject shock and profound horror. We will make Curtis Lemay’s application of airpower against civilian targets look like Wesley Clark coordinating with NATO allies in the Kosovo Air War.

Our appetite for blood will be nigh well unquenchable. That’s what will kill us. We will drink and drink until we’re full and it won’t slake our thirst. And we’ll drink more until our organs burst and split and we start to hemorrhage internally. Then we’ll start throwing it all up – every last drop we drank. But because we’re bleeding internally now, we’ll continue to vomit up black blood until we die.

I agree with Cernig: you really should read the whole thing here at Protein Wisdom.

Iraq's Insurgents Get Their Weapons Not Just From America, But Largely From the Department of Defense

Read it and weep from Rosa Brooks (scroll down but I think the intro is well worth your time, too):

ACCORDING TO the defense lawyers at his trial, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby didn't lie to investigators about his role in outing covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. He was just so darn busy with pressing national security matters that he kept forgetting the chummy chats about Plame he'd had with NBC's Tim Russert and Time magazine's Matt Cooper — not to mention his two-hour lunch on the same subject with Judith Miller (late of the New York Times).

The ladies and gentlemen of the press appear skeptical about Libby's "bad memory" defense. But, personally, I find his claim entirely credible.

After all, in the run-up to the Iraq war, President Bush was so busy with pressing national security matters that he completely forgot to ask any questions about the gaping holes in the intelligence presented to him. Condoleezza Rice was so busy with pressing national security matters that she forgot to take false information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction out of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, even though the CIA told her that it was false. Dick Cheney was so busy with pressing national security matters (water-boarding prisoners; shooting small animals) that he totally forgot you're not supposed to pressure people to come up with bogus intelligence in the first place.

And the easily forgettable journalists mentioned above were so busy enjoying their access to administration national security officials that they forgot that journalists are supposed to actually investigate stuff, instead of just breathlessly repeating what an "anonymous source" told them over lunch.

Given all the forgetting that was going on back in 2003, why shouldn't we believe that Scooter had a faulty memory too?

Astute observers will have noticed that there's still an awful lot of national security-related forgetting going on today. The Bush administration, for instance, has already forgotten that relying on questionable intelligence can lead to disaster and has taken to announcing direct Iranian involvement in attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq as if it were incontrovertible fact.

According to some anonymous U.S. officials at a very secret, no-recording-or-photography-allowed session in Baghdad on Sunday, U.S. forces have discovered Iranian-made components in some of the bombs used by Iraqi insurgents. Naturally (having forgotten that there might be no war in Iraq at all if it hadn't been for excessive media respect for anonymous sources), every U.S. media outlet dutifully played along and reported the claims. Of course, those claims are hard to verify because both the evidence and the identity of the officials are secret.

Meanwhile, Bush, who keeps forgetting that our intelligence has at times been dangerously wrong, insists that he "can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops…. When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them."

Reinforce your bomb shelter, President Ahmadinejad.

Oh, wait; I forgot something too! (Just so you know, I'm also really busy thinking about pressing national security matters.) My fellow Americans, it is my duty to reveal to you that Iran is not the only powerful state that's arming the Iraqi insurgents. On the contrary. There's equally solid evidence that another major world power has been providing the Iraqi insurgents with thousands of new RPGs, machine guns, sniper rifles and other weapons.

Just who is behind this act of hostility? The United States — or anyway, the U.S. Department of Defense.

You heard me. According to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, about 14,000 of the weapons bought (with your tax dollars!) for distribution to Iraqi security forces got, um, misplaced somewhere between getting to Iraq and being transferred to the Iraqi army and police. Instead, analysts say, many of those weapons ended up in the hands of You Know Who.