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.

The Horror in Iraq - The Huh? Factor At Home

Strangely, there was fairly little coverage over the long weekend of a single suicide bomb that took out no less than 104 people - and desperately injured hundreds of others - in the Diyala province of Iraq. What mention it did get blamed Iraq again for its troubles, as if the Bush invasion and occupation - a debacle that has now surpassed the evil of Saddam Hussein - has not created the entire four-plus-year nightmare there. (And, oh yeah, the media noted, too, parenthetically, we're seeing a huge surge in American soldier deaths in just the first week of July - happy Fourth! Yeesh.)

Instead, we heard about President Bush's birthday plans, how easy it was for Scooter Libby to fork over a quarter million dollar "nuisance" fee for obstruction of justice in the PlameGate affair (actually, much of the MSM barely questioned how Libby came to have so much in his coiffers, largely put there by Bushies), and how First Lady Laura says that creating hope in others is a wonderful thing. [Unfortunately, since we're under the oppressive, tyrannical rule of her husband, we wouldn't know one damned thing about inspiring hope.]

Our founding fathers - and mothers - would have their heads explode.

The Indefensible and Olbermann's Call For Bush-Cheney To Resign

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had very strong words for the latest corrupt, self-serving, indefensible, protect-the-elite-Bushies-while-screwing-everyone-else action on the part of President Bush: commuting the sentence of convicted liar and former Cheney chief-of-staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby so he does not have to serve a single day in prison for outing former CIA operative Valerie Plame in the scandal known as PlameGate.

Olbermann called Bush gutless, that Bush proved beyond all doubt that he is not the leader of the United States but the titular head of a small and very elite group for whom their protection and profit is all that matters to this White House, and more than merely suggested that not even disgraced former president, Richard Nixon, would have dared pull such a nasty trick.

Yet, as Olbermann also announced on Monday, tonight (Tuesday) he will deliver one of his scalding and scalpel-sharp Special Comments in which he calls for (demands?) the resignation of both Bush and Cheney. You should watch (8 PM ET, MSNBC).

In the meantime, even the often far-too-Bush-defensive Washington Post editorial page today calls Bush's action indefensible (meanwhile, everyone else connected with the case, including the Justice Department, rushed in to claim Bush came up with this terrible deal mostly on his own, without their consultation):

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. But reducing the sentence to no prison time at all, as Mr. Bush did -- to probation and a large fine -- is not defensible.

Mr. Libby was convicted in March on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff had told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists, but after hearing abundant testimony and carefully deliberating, a jury concluded that he lied. As we wrote at the time of the conviction, lying under oath is unacceptable for anyone, and particularly for a government official. As Mr. Bush said in his statement yesterday, "our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable."

Bush: The "Gutless" Wonder

Virtually no one - except perhaps President Bush and Vice President Cheney - expected that this White House would rush in so soon to keep a convicted liar and obstructor of justice, former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, from having to pay any real penalty for his role in outing CIA covert operative Valerie Plame in the debacle known as PlameGate.

That Bush would subvert justice should not be such a surprise; after all, making a mockery and laughingstock out of the United States, its system of laws and government, and endangering the very people "charged" with protecting us while maximizing corruption to the great advantage of his pals is what he does best.

Yet even Bush reached a new low by delivering this announcement not in person, not on camera, not by official White House press conference, but by a press release delivered over what many are taking as a 10-day-long July 4th weekend. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted Monday night, the way Bush did it proved he is entirely "gutless"; he hopes no one will notice because he expects them to be too busy drinking beer and swilling hotdogs.

Fred Thompson: If Smug, Self Righteous, Sneering, Blimp-Sized Ego Can Win A Presidency, Say Hello to Fred-In-Chief

Did you know that former Tennessee senator and now a former Law & Order cast member (he played Branch, the latest lead D.A. whose character seemed to parallel Thompson's inflated sense of self-worth), not only wants Scooter Libby pardoned for his key role in PlameGate**?

No, Fred's such a pal he helped lead fundraising for the Libby defense fund so that Libby, formerly Cheney's #2 man, already a millionaire many times over, would not have to spend a cent of his own money (considerable fortune) defending the charges.

Apparently Thompson sees nothing improper about loudly defending a man convicted of a quite-near-treasonous act. You can read more about Thompson and Libby here.

[PlameGate refers to the deliberate outing of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as "payback" because Joe Wilson, her husband, not only found that the documents proclaiming Iraq bought nuclear equipment like tubes were faked, he told the press what he had already told Bush and Cheney. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of and sentenced for his role in the matter while Bush and Cheney walked.]

What Punishment/Reward Will Scooter Libby Get?

Tuesday is I. Lewis Libby's sentencing day for his role in PlameGate.

What do you think he'll get, if anything?

Missing Rove Emails Show How The Bushies Hijacked American Democracy And Accountability to Citizens

Here's the piece at Truthout, but I'd call it more like treason that a mere violation of the records act.

Three years ago, Robert Luskin, the attorney who defended White House Political Adviser Karl Rove in the CIA leak case, made a startling discovery: a July 2003 email Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that proved Rove was far more involved in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and the campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, than he had let on during interviews with federal investigators and in testimony before a federal grand jury.

Curiously, the email Rove sent to Hadley that Luskin had found never turned up during an exhaustive document search ordered a year earlier, in September 2003, by Alberto Gonzales. At the time, Gonzales, who was White House counsel, enjoined all White House staff members to turn over any communications pertaining to Plame Wilson and her husband, a vocal critic of the Iraq war, who had accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war Iraq intelligence. Gonzales's order to turn over documents and emails came 12 hours after former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had informed him that the Justice Department was launching an investigation into the leak.

The order Gonzales sent to Karl Rove and other administration officials demanded "documents that relate in any way to a contact with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency."

The Rove/Hadley email was not included in the thousands of pages of documents turned over to the FBI. The reason? Apparently the "right search words weren't used," Luskin told Newsweek in October 2005. The email Rove sent to Hadley in July 2003 has never been released publicly. It's unclear whether the email was sent via the White House computer system or from Rove's email account maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which, according to the National Journal, is what Rove uses to conduct 90 percent of his White House business, in what would appear to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Valerie Plame: "I Was Outed For Purely Political Reasons"

If you didn't happen to catch former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - the woman Scooter Libby and perhaps also Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush's Brain, Karl Rove exposed by leaking her identity to the press - testify on Capitol Hill today, you can read the transcript at Think Progress which also has the video of Plame's testimony (I'm sure Crooks and Liars also has the video available - yup, click here).

Here's a sniplet:

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States, until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by an administration official.

Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program.
While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

Meanwhile, far right wing and rabid anti-Clintonite Victoria Toensing (the voice of authority pretty much exclusively for Geraldo) is pissing all over herself insisting that even the head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, is wrong to admit Plame was a covert spy. Toensing has the ethics of a Bushie and is truthful just about as often (meaning, less than 0%). However, Henry Waxman was ready to grill her most ably.

Valerie Plame: "I Was Outed For Purely Political Reasons"

If you didn't happen to catch former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - the woman Scooter Libby and perhaps also Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush's Brain, Karl Rove exposed by leaking her identity to the press - testify on Capitol Hill today, you can read the transcript at Think Progress which also has the video of Plame's testimony (I'm sure Crooks and Liars also has the video available - yup, click here).

Here's a sniplet:

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States, until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by an administration official.

Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program.
While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

Meanwhile, far right wing and rabid anti-Clintonite Victoria Toensing (the voice of authority pretty much exclusively for Geraldo) is pissing all over herself insisting that even the head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, is wrong to admit Plame was a covert spy. Toensing has the ethics of a Bushie and is truthful just about as often (meaning, less than 0%). However, Henry Waxman was ready to grill her most ably.

Yet More Damned Lies The White House Told Us: Bushies Never Investigated PlameGate

Remember how many times they told us that the White House was aggressively investigating the CIA covert operative leak case and would FIRE anyone they found culpable? Well, as always, this was another lie the White House told us, just like the leak of Plame's name was NOT political playback for the exposing of earlier lies by Plame's husband, former Iraq ambassador Joseph Wilson. From Think Progress:

Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed today that to his knowledge the White House has never ordered a probe, report, or sanctions as a result of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he was “shocked” by Knodell’s testimony, adding that the White House’s lack of action was a “breach on top of a breach.”

Knodell claimed the White House did not investigate because there was an outside investigation taking place. But Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) noted that the investigation “didn’t start until months and months later, and [only] had the purpose of narrowly looking to see whether there was a criminal law violated.” Waxman asked, “But there was an obligation for the White House to investigate whether classified information was being leaked inappropriately, wasn’t there?” Knodell answered, “If that was the case, yes.”

So nobody got investigated there and sure as hell, no one was ever fired for it.

Also, the White House SAID it was investigating BEFORE the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation and THEN, when the Fitzgerald probe came about, tried to STOP it.

Bush's Personal Goon Squad

As raised here, in Paul Krugman's op/ed in The Times on Monday, and throughout hundreds if not thousands of blog entries around the blogosphere, virtually no one is surprised by the revelations that Bush and his henchhog, Karl Rove, have basically used U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the entire (In)Justice Department as their personal goon squad: wiping out any federal prosecutor who would not bend to their will, who refused to "invent" indictments against Democrats (not that Dems don't engage in bad behavior, mind you, but it's clear the Bushies and Republicans were willing to resort to fiction here) or continued - damn them! - to investigate the many abuses by Republicans who took their Congressional majority as a license to loot and plunder and rape American laws, American taxpayers, and whoever else they could.

But we need not only to look long and hard at what the Bushies did with these fired federal prosecutors - and what Scooter Libby and his pals did to CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - but also beyond to the many other means and agencies have been called upon to serve the dark masters of the Bush Administration. Agencies like the IRS (whose mandate to go after ever smaller taxpayers often means creating fear in such taxpayers to speak out) and others. I suspect we'd be bowled-over by what they find even if they just rub a tiny bit at the surface. After all, the Bushies have been so certain of their "mandate" that they rarely have bothered to hide their tracks well, since they felt assured they were in control of those who would investigate.

Neat trick.

Thoughts On The Right's Huge Concern For Poor Scooter Libby While They Yawn At Abuse of Troops

If there's one thing we've all witnessed over and over and over again this week - besides the clip of the Florida medical examiner hinting we're not done with the titillating details of Tits-for-Brains Anna Nicole Smith - is that the far right Bushie loyalists have sobbed over poor, poor, poor Scooter Libby. They wail about:

• What a terrible miscarriage of justice has been done to him
• How a great patriot like Libby should never have to spend a moment in jail
• That the American people owe Libby a momentous debt of gratitude and that they should demand the jury's guilty verdicts against him be set aside, then carry the man in their arms to the White House where the Medal of Freedom can be bestowed upon him
• That the jury is treasonous for what they did
• That this is all the result of an evil plot hatched by Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame themselves and it's Wilson-Plame who deserve to spend the rest of their lives in jail
• Bush should pardon Libby immediately because it's what God wants

Gag me with a spoon! To say this again and again and again while they yawn and ignore the travesty of troop care by the Bush Administration - insisting only that this is hardly Mr. Bush's fault but taking no interest in the matter beyond that - while they work themselves into a righteous frenzy about poor millionaire Scooter Libby is really too much.

Go back and read the piece from Bob Herbert - "Lift The Curtain" - I just snipped from as well as some of the other posts I've had up in the last few weeks on the subject of troop care and abuse (and I first started posting about this more than two years ago; amazing that I could know about it while the Bush Administration and Pentagon and those heading Walter Reed, right there in Washington and their job TO know, did not...).

Then tell me which is the more important situation: poor Scooter Libby or men and women who have lost brain function, limbs, organs, and their lives for a cooked war and then rate nothing but squalor and poverty once they return home.

More On PlameGate: Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up, Plame To Testify Before Congress

With a nod to Buzzflash for the links, I point you to this piece by former CIA biggie Ray McGovern's explanation for why Vice President Dick Cheney cracked up when former Iraq Ambassador Joe Wilson spoke out against the Bush Administration's lies and cooked evidence in the leadup to war in Iraq as well as the announcement that Wilson's wife, former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame (the one "outed" by Cheney and his second-in-command, Scooter Libby, the latter just convicted of lies and obstruction of justice related to the CIA leak from the White House), will testify before Congress related to this issue.

Maureen Dowd: "My Very Own Juror"

MoDo "does" the Scooter Libby/PlameGate trial and most notably, the juror Denis Collins who just couldn't shut up after the multiple guilty verdicts; read it all at Rozius or satisfy yourself with my big snip-snip-snip:

When the Scooter Libby trial ended, the media was found guilty. By the media. Which likes to obsess on itself. In the media.

The press gave short shrift to poor Scooter, whose downfall came from doing Dick Cheney’s bidding with “canine loyalty,” as Chris Matthews told Don Imus yesterday morning. Scooter’s facing hard time, even though others in the administration also spread the word about Valerie Plame.

But let’s get back to the media decrying the media, and the incestuous Beltway relationship between journalists and sources. Listening to all the lamentations, I excitedly realized I had a potentially incestuous relationship with a source inside the Beltway.

I went to Nativity grade school in D.C. with Juror No. 9, Denis Collins. I had an unrequited crush on his brother when I was in seventh grade. His dad was my dad’s lawyer, and both were Irish immigrants. My brother Kevin coached his brother Kevin in touch football. Our moms were in the Sodality together. His mom once chastised me for chatting up a little boy in church. We started in journalism together, Denis at The Washington Post as a sportswriter and Metro reporter, and me at The Washington Star as a sportswriter and Metro reporter.

This was a sure thing. I could get him to come over to my house and spill all the secrets of the jury that had convicted the highest-ranking White House official to be found guilty on a felony since Iran-contra days.

Unfortunately, Denis spilled them on the way over. By the time he got to my house, he was already so overexposed he announced, “I’m sick of hearing myself talk.”

From the moment he stepped out of the courthouse and into the press mob in his green Eddie Bauer jacket, Denis became the unofficial jury spokesman, bouncing from Larry King to Anderson Cooper and “Good Morning America.” I thought there still might be enough jury dish for me until I heard him say “Huffington Post blog.”

“Blogs are the future, right?” he said, explaining that he’d already posted his diary of adventures in federal court — right down to our incestuous Catholic past, which came up in the voir dire, when he also mentioned living across the alley from Tim Russert and working at The Post for Bob Woodward, and his nonfiction book about spying and the C.I.A.

“I was the perfect storm,” he said. Instead of me milking him for information, he tried to milk me for information. He asked about the pitfalls of being in a media maelstrom.

“Somebody called me up today and said: ‘Turn on Rush Limbaugh. He’s saying terrible things about you.’ ”

I empathized. One of my brothers always used to call Mom and tell her: “Turn on Rush Limbaugh. He’s saying terrible things about Maureen.”

Also, Denis’s wife, Pam, told him gleefully that someone on TV was making fun of his jacket. “Somebody said, ‘What’s with the green coat? It looks like something he got in high school.’ ” I asked him if he’d used any lessons from the nuns. “Accountability,” he said. “Do the right thing or get whacked over your head with the bell by Sister Mary Karen.”

Was Scooter’s fall Shakespearean? “He’s too many steps away from the king,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Libby: Guilty On 4 of 5 Counts in CIA Leak/PlameGate Case

Yesterday, as I sat pondering how long the jurors in the CIA Leak/Valerie Plame case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former top assistant, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, I very nearly posted here saying I was concerned that, if the jury did not deadlock, it was likely they would find him Not Guilty on most if not all charges.

So color me somewhat pleasantly surprised when the jury returned with a guilty verdict on four of the five charges from against Scooter by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. I was neither surprised NOR pleased to hear the cable news networks reporting the verdict as if they felt sorry for the man who - not alone - endangered the life of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame as political payback for her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, going public with how the Bush Administration "cooked" a story of aluminum tubes and yellow cake in Niger as part of the case to go to war in Iraq. More than Plame was endangered; she was part of a large team working on WMDs that were endangered.

Libby deserves no sympathy. He simply doesn't. The far rightwing, in fact, have given him so much money for "defense" that he has not had to spend a cent of his personal fortune (and all the Bushies appear very wealthy).

But the one member of the jury who spoke out also seemed to hint at "poor Scooter", saying the jury felt like he was the fall guy for a whole network of wrongdoers. I, too, believe this. But it in no way lessons Libby's culpability.

Now, while he could face years in prison because of these convictions, I doubt the White House will waste any time whatsoever in pardoning Libby. It would be wrong for them to do so, but since when do the Bushies care about justice? And besides, they want to give Libby a reason to "shut up" because, now convicted, he might be more spilling to tell on Cheney and Rove and company for their role in a crime for which only Libby was charged.

You may want to check out the Citizens for Ethics & Responsibility in Washington's (CREW) blog statement on the Libby guilty verdict today ("No man is above the law") while Rolling Stone magazine's National daily blog refers to Libby as "the fall guy" and breaks down the verdicts:

Obstruction of justice: Guilty

False statements to FBI (about conversation with Tim Russert): Guilty

False statements (conversation with Matt Cooper): Not Guilty

Perjury before grand jury (about Russert conversation): Guilty

Purjury before grand jury (about Cooper conversation): Guilty

Libby has been found decisively guilty of a coverup — although he was found not guilty of one count of lying to the FBI, he was found guilty of perjuring himself about that same conversation before the grand jury.

What happens to Scooter, is of course, less interesting. The storm “cloud” over the Vice President, to quote prosecutor, is now darkening. The vital thing going forward is whether the prospect of a few years in club fed is enough to make a loyal footsoldier like Libby rat out his old boss.

Naturally, since the Bushies' abhor justice, Libby is already demanding a new trial.

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.