The Raw Story | Bloomberg reveals Rove, Libby gave false testimony

The Raw Story | Bloomberg reveals Rove, Libby gave false testimony: "Bloomberg's Richard Keil will reveal tonight: 'Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to persons familiar with the case.' The story reflects one given written by Murray Waas for the American Prospect.
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Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.
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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.

These discrepancies may be important because one issue Fitzgerald is investigating is whether Libby, Rove, or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a CIA agent."

We have now expanded the leak investigation to include Lewis Libby. This might very well go all the way to Dick Cheney! I would not be at all surprised at this point if Cheney ended up on the witness stand!

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

Yet more evidence Rove screwed up!

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret: "Plame's Identity Marked As Secret Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 21, 2005; A01

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret' level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret."

Government Abandons Children to Big Food

Corporate cronyism in the Bush era. FTC holds workshop on marketing junk foods in the schools then stacks it with corporate propagandists.

Government Abandons Children to Big Food: "The food industry works hard to keep the focus on self-regulatory mechanisms such as the Children's Advertising Review Unit, the industry-supported 5-person shop that cannot possibly monitor all the ways that children are bombarded with food marketing these days. Yet, Elizabeth Lascoutx, director of CARU, presented her organization as doing a stellar job of monitoring food ads, making several misleading statements in the process (which seems ironic for the head of an organization charged with monitoring deceptive advertising). For example, she said that McDonald's had agreed to alter an ad campaign to show healthier choices in their children's ads, when in fact, the company disagreed with CARU's determination that the commercials were misleading.

Coca-Cola also took the opportunity to misrepresent itself. Abigail Rodgers, vice president of 'Wellness Strategies and Communication' claimed that the company does not sell soda in elementary schools. Trouble is, a survey of Kentucky schools revealed that soda is sold in 44 percent of elementary schools. And Coca-Cola was a powerful lobbying force against four legislative attempts to pass a state bill to get soda out of schools. But Ms. Rodgers forgot to mention that, along with the other state bills Coca-Cola has helped kill or weaken, including those in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, and Oregon.

There was precious little opportunity for advocacy representation or public participation. Only a handful of panel slots were allotted to public health or children's advocates. Even then, their voices were drowned out by the likes of PepsiCo and Kraft, who were each given two separate opportunities to speak, an honor not bestowed on anyone else. Moreover, questions from the audience were tightly controlled by government officials, pre-screened by moderators. Only in response to pressure from advocates did the FTC alter the agenda at the last minute to include a brief 'open forum' at the very end of the day, after all the reporters and most attendees had already left. Clearly Uncle Sam was not interested in hearing from the public on this matter."

These people also falsely, appeal to the idea that their is something even remotely traditional about selling candybars and chips pop at school. Vending machines weren't there when I was a kid. Why assume children are educated about food nutrition? I would have had a candy bar every day if my parents or the schools would let me.

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?"

Columnist Christian Christiansen takes the Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx to task for hypocrisy on the New Latin American network Telesur.

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?": "Nor, for that matter, does Marx explain why having leftist governments involved mean that the channel could not be of high quality. I spent a great deal of time in Sweden, where a 'leftist' (by U.S. standards)state has indirectly supported radio and television for the past 75 years. The last time I checked -- which is every day -- those news programs were objective and of a very high standard, unlike the consumption-cheerleading celebro-porn produced by many 'news' organizations in the United States. We ignore genocide in Darfur in favor of 24-hour Michael Jackson and The Runaway Bride, yet have the gall to critique the journalism of other nations?

Where Marx really makes his best joke, however, is when he asks whether or not Telesur will be able to criticize the Chavez government since the operation will be based on the grounds of Venezuela's state-run television station, Channel 8. In other words: will their journalistic integrity be compromised by political and economic pressures?

That a journalist from the Chicago Tribune would worry about conflicts of interest at Telesur -- or any other media outlet, for that matter -- really shows some major-league chutzpah. Perhaps it would benefit Marx to come back to the United States and do a little investigative reporting on the political economy of his own employer: the Tribune Company.

Let's start with what the company controls (from the Tribunecorporate website): 'Tribune Broadcasting owns and operates 26 major-market television stations and reaches more than 80 percent of U.S. television households. The group is anchored by Superstation WGN, which can be seen in more than 57 million homes outside Chicago via cable and satellite services. Nineteen Tribune stations are affiliates of the growing WB Television Network, in which Tribune holds a 22 percent equity investment.'"....

She is too nice in my view. This paper like most other mainstream outlets promoted the Iraq War an refused to criticize George W. Bush over it. It ignored the obvious lies and support the war through a pro war leaning editorial policy. The mainstream media in this country has no credibility, what so ever, when it comes to objectivity. In fact these slights at the new Telesur pretty obviously represent hawking the Bush administrations foriegn policy. That foreign policy includes hostility to social democratic regimes like Venezuela and Uraguay as well as authoritian Communist ones like Cuba. You can get put on Bush's hit list for destruction for persuing the same policies as Roosevelt and Kennedy. Furthermore if the corporate media is so free to criticize the President how do you account for the purging of Dan Rather?

This corruption by corporate money sadly extends to the modern Democratic Party, so many Democrats will parrot the antiChavez baloney as well.

George W. Strangelove and the Triumph of Nuclear Faith

According to Norman Soloman of FAIR Bush has agreed to share nuclear technology with India.

It was a gift worthy of hell. "President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons," the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The lead was more understated in the New York Times: "President Bush, bringing India a step closer to acceptance in the club of nuclear-weapons states, reached an agreement on Monday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let India secure international help for its civilian nuclear reactors while retaining its nuclear arms."

No matter how the story was spun, it could only be read in the world's capitals as further proof that U.S. nuclear policies are grimly laughable -- thanks to policymakers in Washington who simultaneously decry and promote nuclear proliferation. And nowhere will the hypocrisy-laced ironies be more appreciated than in Tehran. .............

Touting the use of nuclear fission to generate electricity, American presidents have strived to make sharp rhetorical distinctions between atomic power and nuclear weapons technologies, despite their extensive overlap. Such reassuring distinctions now have wide credibility in Iran, as I found last month during conversations with Iranian political campaigners, clerics, bazaar merchants, shoppers, teachers and students. Almost all gave notably similar responses when asked whether their country should acquire nuclear energy.........."

A civil atomic pact, signed in 1957, initiated nuclear assistance from the United States to Iran. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged the Shah to build nuclear power plants. The Shah fell in 1979, but after many delays the Islamic Republic resumed work on the nuclear plant near Bushehr, a project that is currently being denounced in Washington.

Isn't it kind of stupid to get after the Iranians, for developing nuclear technology when we are arming their regional enemies to the atomic teeth?

My Left Wing :: Part II: Women in Iraq: We invade and they lose their freedom

SanJoseLady from "My Left Wing" asks what our invasion has done for Iraqi women. The answer may disturb you!

My Left Wing :: Part II: Women in Iraq: We invade and they lose their freedom: "The draft constitution emerging in Iraq will tie the rights of women to Islamic Law. What exactly does this mean? From the LA Times:

Under Islamic law, daughters inherit a lesser share of their fathers' wealth than sons do, and divorce is easy for men, who can simply say three times that they divorce a woman to accomplish it. Women, on the other hand, must go through an elaborate and often embarrassing presentation of domestic circumstances with a cleric.

Worse, this draft constitution seeks to remove the requirement that women hold at least a quarter of the seats in the National Assembly. Women now make up 31 percent of the seats, and if the 25 percent requirment is lifted there is a strong possibility that there will be few if any women elected to office in the new 'Democratic Iraq.'

If that isn't alarming enough, the Times article also points out that the emerging Iraqi government is theocratic, and there are clear indications that both Sunni and Shiite are comfortable with removing the secular laws that protected women under Saddam. Here is more from the Times article:


Some women in the assembly have begun to circulate a petition to change the new language, and Iraqi women's groups have begun to lobby to change the provisions. But they are expected to meet substantial resistance from clerics, both Shiite and Sunni, who have long wanted to reinstate the practice of resolving domestic matters in religious courts. Men on the committee supported the changes, arguing that it was more fair to eschew percentages. Some argued, somewhat disingenuously, that they would prefer a 50% quota but no one would accept that, so why have any number at all?

And then this:

Similar language on Islamic law is being added to every provision in the constitution after a push by Muslim clerics to emphasize Iraq's identity as an Islamic state.

There can be no 'Democracy' in Iraq if over half the population sees their rights reduced under a 'constitution.' Our invasion of Iraq has created the means to destroy secular law and replace it with religious law which will have grave effects for the women of Iraq and all of the Middle East.

From the International Herald Tribune:

If it holds, the shift away from the more secular and equitable language of the interim constitution would represent a victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who now wield enormous power and had chafed at the influence exercised by the Americans over that earlier document.

The Americans had insisted that Islam be designated as just 'a source' of legislation, for example. Several writers of the new constitution say they intend to, at the very least, designate Islam as 'a main source' of legislation..................................."

Crooks and Liars

and remember when Bush and Rummy used to think leaks were bad because they endangered troops?

Crooks and Liars: "Members from both parties objected strongly to Bush's highly unusual step of ordering that briefings with sensitive information be limited to eight of the 535 members of Congress. The memo cuts off numerous lawmakers cleared to receive classified information; it was signed by Bush on Friday following a report in The Washington Post that intelligence officials told lawmakers there was a '100 percent' likelihood of further terrorist strikes.

Bush, appearing in the Rose Garden with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, gave Congress a stern lecture. 'I understand there may be some heartburn on Capitol Hill,' he said. 'But I suggest if they want to relieve that heartburn, that they take their positions very seriously and that they take any information they've been given by our government very seriously.' He continued: 'I want Congress to hear loud and clear, it is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk.'

The tension between the two branches of government began last month, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that those who divulged classified information could endanger the lives of American troops. The remarks were an apparent rebuke of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said he had permission to reveal the information. At the same time, intelligence committee members were complaining that the administration's briefings were inadequate."