Former Spook On Bad Guys' Friends In High Places

Montaperto apparently applied for an analyst position at the CIA. His pre-employment polygraph reportedly raised serious questions about his conduct, and suggested that he may have posed an esiponage threat. The CIA decided not to hire Montaperto and passed their concerns to DIA, which failed to follow up. Montaperto remained on the government payroll for another 13 years; there's no telling what he might have passed to Beijing in the years that followed. According to Scarborough and Gertz, prosecutors are convinced that he passed sensitive reports on Saudi and Iranian missile deals to Beijing. His information may have also allowed the Chinese to plug leaks that prevent us from tracking key Chinese arms deals...And for all this, Montaperto will spend three months in jail. Moreover, according to the Times, a number of current/former government employees wrote letters of support for Montaperto. There is something very distressing about the sentence Montaperto received, and his continued support in certain federal circles....Unfinished Business, Spook86, Formerspook.blogspot.com

We shouldn't be surprised, and I suspect Spook86 isn't either. Denmark isn't the problem nowadays; something's rotten in the District of Columbia and environs. Some of the political ops we used to run in the East might be better suited nowadays to Washington and its satellites. What he has to say about the National Intelligence Estimate cherrypicking is illuminating too.

In one of its early paragraphs, the estimate notes progress in the struggle against terrorism, stating the U.S.-led efforts have "seriously damaged Al Qaida leadership and disrupted its operations." Didn't see that in the NYT article...Or how about this statement, which--in part--reflects the impact of increased pressure on the terrorists: "A large body of reporting indicates that people identifying themselves as jihadists is increasing...however, they are largely decentralized, lack a coherent strategy and are becoming more diffuse." Hmm...doesn't sound much like Al Qaida's pre-9-11 game plan...The report also notes the importance of the War in Iraq as a make or break point for the terrorists: "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves to have failed, we judge that fewer will carry on the fight." It's called a ripple effect...More support for the defeating the enemy on his home turf: "Threats to the U.S. are intrinsically linked to U.S. success or failure in Iraq." President Bush and senior administration officials have made this argument many times--and it's been consistently dismissed by the "experts" at the WaPo and Times. (More Of What You Won't Read In The New York Times, Spook86 -- italics the author's)

You might link to Spook86's site daily. He's onto something and he's got the background to follow up.

Luther

A Democrat's Qualifications?

Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s possible pick of Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to become Chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence if Democrats win control of the House in the November 7 elections is a sure sign of Democrats’ true attitude toward the War on Terror. Pelosi is apparently planning to hand leadership and even more dangerous--access to America’s most sensitive secrets--to a man who has shown that he is a criminal who can be bought...The best evidence for that conclusion comes from Hastings’ articles of impeachment. Alcee Hastings is one of only 13 Federal Judges to be impeached in the entire history of the United States. In 1988 Nancy Pelosi joined in supporting the 413-3 impeachment vote by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Hastings was convicted in a Senate trial the next year —finally forcing him from the bench....Hastings: American Secrets For Sale?, Andrew Walden, Frontpagemag.com, 9/27/2006

Apparently, betraying clients or your country are standard qualifications for the "leadership" planned for us by the Democrats should voters be so stupid as to put them back in power in Congress in November.

Wise up, America.

Luther

Sabato's Secondhand "Eyewitness" Slander

On Tuesday, political analyst Larry J. Sabato said he didn’t personally hear Allen use the epithet when they were classmates at Virginia. In a television interview a day earlier he had said he knew Allen had used the word....Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press: “I didn’t personally hear GFA (Allen’s initials) say the n-word. My conclusion is based on the very credible testimony I have heard for weeks, mainly from people I personally know and knew in the ’70s.”...Va. Racial Politics Still Brewing, Bob Lewis, AP, 9/27/2006

As of yet, MSM has yet to pick up on the credible accusations (and associated lawsuit by women affected) against Jim Webb, Democrat, that he encouraged an atmosphere extraordinarily hostile to midshipwomen at Annapolis when he headed the institution. Instead, he and his organization have put this fantastic story in play, where a political "analyst" (one may fairly read Jim Webb supporter) has made wholly unfounded accusations against Jim Webb's opponent in 2006, Senator George Allen, Rep., of Virginia, claiming at first to have seen and heard the Senator make nasty racial remarks and do nasty racial deeds when he was at university. Oh, wait, he didn't actually see and heard those things. He heard tales about them from reliable friends (it's fair to read people who agreed with him politically).

In New York, we have the spectre of HillBill Clinton, the Liars Duet, haunting the electorate. In Virginia, it looks like HillBill's friend Jim is playing the same phantoms game. If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again.

Luther

Liars Duet: The Clintons On Stage Again

Responding to the HillBill Clintons and their charge that the Bush Administration hadn't done anything, and the carpetbagging Senator's charge that the 9/11 Commission report showed that her husband had a lot to do, the editors of The New York Post, the NYC heartland's newspaper, and what every NYC firefighter reads, had the following to say:

As the 9/11 Commission report details: Despite irrefutable evidence of the threat from Islamic terrorists, "there was no National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism [undertaken] between 1995 and 9/11. There was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew [about al Qaeda] and what it did not know and what that meant."...Indeed, the report concludes, Clinton's flaccid response may have led bin Laden to make the "inference that such attacks, at least on the level of the Cole, were risk-free."...In contrast, Bush - almost immediately upon taking office - "began developing a new strategy with the stated goal of eliminating the al Qaeda threat [to America] within three to five years."...Hillary's Hasty Rejoinder, The Editors, The NY Post, 9/27/2006

I'm guessing that was Bill's only flaccid response in eight years in office.

Liars never stop lying. You only have to ask Argentinians who survived decades of the fascist Perons and their heirs among the Argentine military. The lies are bigger than a stain on a dress; they flood everyone who listens. As anyone who's had a toilet overflow knows, such floods require more than deodorant and looking the other way. Secretary of State Rice looks up to the task, as does the President, as does the editorial board of The NY Post.

Luther

NY's Bloomberg: Democrat in Republican Suit

Thousands of city eateries may have to revise their recipes for French fries, doughnuts, cookies, and other baked goods under a proposal by the Bloomberg administration to ban the use of trans fats in all restaurants across the five boroughs....City Wants to Ban Some Fatty Foods In Restaurants, Russell Berman, The NY Sun, 9/27/2006

Sanctimonious buffoons dominate the airwaves, Leftist politics, and New York City. The suit that the Marx brothers used to put on a pompous, WASP hotel manager in their comedies has become the standard cut for liberal politicians and their cohorts, such as Bill Gates, among businesspeople. Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire who flies his own helicopter to work on occasion, is a perfect example. His disdain for working people, revealed by a housing policy that favors the development of million dollar condos but not affordable rental apartments, suggests that he thinks a typical income is in the high six figures. His various public morals campaigns against cigarette smoking have sponsored the highest level of bootlegging (and associated crime) since the 1920s, not to mention cigarette prices almost double what they are in adjacent states. He publicly admits to disobeying federal law on illegal immigration, saying not quite the truth when declaring that enforcement would wreck NYC's economy. What's actually true is that people at his level would have to pay competitive wages to Americans for such services as nanny, gardener, chef, driver, nurse, etc. It's clear that Mayor Bloomberg's friends would rather fly helicopters than pay service people competitive wages, or pick up the employer tab for Social Security. His campaign to bar all citizens from 2nd amendment rights is well-known. His latest moral progress to bar what his class of people consider unhealthy food is just another slice of Waiting for Lefty Pie, a confection cooked by an arrogant chef. This is not a Republican's entree, except in New York. It's not surprising, coming from Bloomberg, who was a big money man in Democrat/liberal politics for years before he discovered the Republican light (i.e., he would be electable). Given a lot of money and considerable power, he's showing his roots, with a signature and vastly expressed sense of superiority, seemingly unable to understand why everybody isn't just like him. This kind of sanctimonious jerk is the paradigm of Left/liberal politics, the perfect personality for a politics that prefers controlled populations over free citizens. Why anybody would consider this person, or anyone like him, as a Republican candidate for President in 2008 is beyond me. Condi Rice would clean his clock in a primary or a general election. So would John McCain, if he would just let go of his fondness for George Soros's money.

Luther

Shocking Fact: Aggressors Fight

The summary did not reach a sweeping conclusion about the impact of the anti-Saddam invasion...Instead it said Iraq was "shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."...The increased role of Iraqis in running al Qaeda in Iraq might lead foreign veterans of the insurgency to focus on targets abroad, it said...But if the terrorists "leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight," the report concluded...The document, prepared in April, is out of date in one dire warning...
It said if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi continued to evade capture, the terrorist chief "could broaden his popular appeal and present a global threat."...But Zarqawi was killed when his safe house was blown up by U.S. jets in June....Secret Intel: Iraq War Not Only Reason For Surge In Terrorism, Niles Lathem, The NY Post, 9/27/2006

If the terrorists perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired. Okay, basic question: does this suggest that the Iraq war is the cause of terrorism? Did the Japanese fighting back when we retaliated for their 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor suggest that if only Americans had not counter-attacked all would have been well? The sophistry of the blank-faced idiots in MSM never ceases to amaze me. Of course, the terrorists are fighting like mad in Iraq. That's why our troops are there, to draw them in. The President and his administration associates have been saying this for three years. I hope someone else besides a NY Post reporter covers this story, but don't count on hearing it out of Katie Couric's well-paid mouth.

Luther

President Adopts Attacker's Own Strategy

President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. He said he was declassifying part of the report..."Some people have guessed what's in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree," Mr. Bush said...He asserted that portions of the classified report that had been leaked were done so for political purposes, referring to the Nov. 7 midterm elections...Mr. Bush announced that he was ordering parts of the report declassified during a White House news conference with President Karzai....Bush to Declassify Part of NIE, Barry Schweid, The NY Sun, 9/26/06

If the enemy uses quotes against you, provide your own, including your enemy's source. I'm not sure that's in The Art of War but it's possible that the President is adding a chapter of his own. Kudos to the White House! We sometimes go for long stretches in this administration where every liar, con artist, and thug is allowed to go on unrestricted by argument, where it seems that they have more rights than their target. This suggests that the President doesn't feel that way today. It's good to see Rudolf Giuliani's thesis of law enforcement applied by the Oval Office.

Luther

Making Hillary Disappear?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks..."The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that"....Rice Boils Over At Bubba, Ian Bishop, NY Post, 9/26/06

I'd hate to be Senator Hillary Clinton if Secretary of State Condi Rice were running against her in New York. The Secretary of State is not shy and retiring, unlike most of the "opponents" dished up for Hillary to gobble up by the chefs of the New York State GOP. I can imagine a lady-like shootout at a debate between these two. Both are very bright. The Senator's a tough character -- who wouldn't be after twenty-five years of husband Bill, not to mention six years of New York? -- but the Secretary of State looks a lot more like Harry Truman than Senator Clinton does. She also believes in defending the country from its enemies. As long as the wind is the right direction, so does the Senator, but that wind can change, in case nobody's noticed what's happened to other Democrat "leaders." The Secretary of State is more likely to increase the pressure on Islamic terrorists than negotiate for a meaningless peace. I can't say the same of Senator Clinton, especially with her friends in Hezbollah and Hamas. All of this might bode well for the United States in 2008 if the Secretary of State weren't so fond of football.

Luther

Those Spend-Crazy Republicans May Change

Republicans continued to blame the Clinton administration for the breakdown in budgetary discipline, but with Bush in the White House there are no more excuses left. With the GOP in control of the executive and legislative branches, government growth has only gotten worse...Slivinski detects patterns that might suggest potential cures for the Republican majority's Potomac fever. Reagan's popularity was partly a reaction to the spending habits of Nixon-Ford Republicans while Gingrich's rise was fueled by George H.W. Bush's 1990 tax increase. The current wave of big-government conservatism may spark the next budget-slashing insurgency....What Is The Cost Of Compassion, W. James Antle, III, TCSDaily.com

Americans don't like hypocrites. We make television entertainment out of them. Trouble is that the opposition is a known quantity in Washington's urge to grow and spend. We know that Democrats desperately want power back so they can increase the number of agencies, the amount of money spent, and level of control exercised over citizens. There are a good many House Republicans, and not a few in the Senate, who are sick and tired of their colleagues on their side of the aisle trying pass for Liberal. There may be many surprises ahead on this score. W. James Antle, III, a senior writer for The American Conservative has a thoughtful piece here and you should look at the whole thing.

Luther

Intelligence Betrayal Turning a Professional's Stomach

I`ve been a member of the Intelligence Community (IC) for just under 30 years. I too noticed the fact that individuals from the IC put their personal political views before the oath they took when the were hired....From 1993 through 2001, there were issues I was aware of that might have been embarrassing had they come to light. I did not feel compelled to find a reporter...Were I D/CIA General Hayden, I`d take a page from the Left`s book and conduct a rather exhaustive purge....Comment from the intelligence community, letter to David Horowitz, Frontpagemag.com

Perhaps national intelligence officers with a leftist bent (many, according to this letter at Frontpagemag.com) have been reading too many John Le Carre novels. You know the basic plot: bored, tragically-minded, sensitive, and spiritually weak intelligence agent falls in love and, to save his sense of himself, betrays his country. At least in Le Carre novels it's about loving another person, although it's fair to point out that standard NKVD practice was the "honey-trap", something not lost on a great novelist like Charles McCarry. In the case of the new national intelligence report and its reporters, however, it looks more like adoration of mirror images. This is the most likely picture today: a not-so-youngish, if fairly good looking, agent, stands nude before a mirror with a copy of The New York Times covering the part he or she is most ashamed of, the face.

Luther

Red Guards With An Academic Face? The Persecution of Mike Adams

Mike first made national headlines not long after 9/11, when he landed himself in some very hot water for daring to respond to a student’s e-mailed criticism of U.S. foreign policy...he forwarded it with a note that is worth reproducing in full:
"I will certainly forward this to others and I hope they will respond. My response will be brief as your “statement” is undeserving of serious consideration. Your claimed interest in promoting rational discussion is dishonest. It is an intentionally divisive diatribe. The Constitution protects your speech just as it has protected bigoted, unintelligent, and immature speech for many years. But, remember, when you exercise your rights you open yourself up to criticism that is protected by the same principles. I sincerely hope that your bad speech serves as a catalyst for better speech by others."
The student...threatened to sue. UNCW, Adams's university, launched a chilling investigation of Mike, including prying into his e-mails. In the wake of that imbroglio, Jonathan Garthwaite, the editor of Townhall.com, offered Mike a regular column on his very well-read site..He writes weekly or more, detailing the incredible political correctness emanating from his campus and others...His columns are funny, biting, and (not surprisingly) a big hit on Townhall...they are not such a hit among his colleagues. UNCW denied Mike a promotion to full professor last week, without explanation.Mike Adams, Campus Heretic, Charles Mitchell, Frontpagemag.com, 9/22/2006

If you read Mike Adams regularly on Townhall.com, you know he's feisty, is unashamed to be both a Christian and a demanding scholar, and that he doesn't hesitate to share his views. This is anathema to good, sophisticated Leftists, who tend to hide their true opinions behind elaborate rationales. This kind of Red Guard, unlike his or her counterpart in China 30-40 years ago, doesn't use bats, guns, and gangs to enforce its political views; instead, it uses shunning and denial of promotion. It is sometimes easier to recover from a physical assault than from either. Mike Adams, keep fightin'.

Luther

Hope for Ahmadinejad?

Human embryonic stem cells can partly restore vision in blinded rats, and may offer a source of transplants for people with certain eye diseases, researchers at a U.S. company reported on Thursday....Human stem cells help blinded rates, Maggie Fox, Reuters, 9/20/2006

Great news. If we could get a few rats to see where they're going, maybe we'd have a lot fewer of them at the UN.

Luther

PR, TV, War and Tyrants

It's a horror to imagine what would have happened had Hitler had the UN, modern PR, and TV reporting to assist him in the 1940s.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the U.N. in its current system "doesn't work" and is "antidemocratic." Chavez called for reform, saying the U.S. government's "immoral veto" had allowed recent Israeli bombings of Lebanon to continue unabated for more than a month...At UN, Chavez Calls Bush 'The Devil', Breitart.com

Chavez's remarks were greeted, as were the rants and ravings of the President of Iran, with thunderous applause. Imagine an alternative history where friends of Hitler came to a huge public forum, with a potential TV audience of hundreds of millions, to declare that the Allies were unfair to attack Hitler. Of the Holocaust, such a friend, such as the Prime Minister of Bosnia (then an ally of Germany), might say that Uncle Adolf was only cleaning house, pretty much what the President of Iran feels about nuking Israel. In the interests of objectivity, few MSM reporters noted these things.

As with conspiracy theories, the lies of politicians (and their ambitions) are spread like a prairie fire fanned by the hot winds of an unquestioning press whose reporters seem to be more concerned with their hairdos, their poltitical correctness, and their clubability with the Left than with telling the truth.

Luther

Intelligence in Short Supply?

The FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies continue to struggle to plant agents in, or recruit them from, deadly Islamist terror organizations here and abroad.
The FBI, for example, did not have under way a single active investigation this past spring of al Qaeda or any Islamist group anywhere in the United States...Enemies, by Bill Gertz, , Washington Times, 9/20/2006, an except from Enemies, How America's Foes Steal Our Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen

It's no wonder Charles McCarry's latest book, Old Boys, depicts the retired generation as the heroes, and the new generation in American intelligence as more interested in protecting their asses than winning the intelligence war. He must have taken his lede from stories like Bill Gertz's, a depressing excerpt from the investigative reporter's new book.

The FBI and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community was woefully unprepared after September 11 to track down terrorists by penetrating the dark world of al Qaeda.
The nation had extremely limited capabilities in human intelligence-gathering -- the real stuff of spying. These shortcomings remain five years later...(Gertz, continued)

Satellites and drones are amazingly proficient technologies, but you can't substitute for an agent inside. Of course, that might muss somebody's hair, and someone might have to learn another language.

Luther

Socialists in Europe: 5th Columnists for Islamists

Nothing changes. Socialists then and now seem to love allying themselves with tyrants and terrorists.

Moratinos (of Spain) and Donner (of Belgium) are part of a large group of leftist politicians who—it could be argued—have joined forces with the enemies of the West. British MP George Galloway is the most well-known of those cheering for the other side. To Saddam Hussein he once said, “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” He has accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of “waging a war on Muslims…at home and abroad.” Such rhetoric is a blessing to radical Islamists who seek to divide the West. American al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn said in his latest message: "Escape from the unbelieving army and join the winning side. As for those who have expressed their respect and admiration for Islam, and acknowledged that it is the truth and demonstrated the support and sympathy for the Muslims and their causes like George Galloway, Robert Fisk, and countless others, I say to them, isn’t it time you stopped sitting on the fence and came over to the side of truth?"
The support and sympathy Gadahn seeks are not lacking. In June 2003, historian Lin Silje Nilsen defended a proposal to establish a Shari’a court in Norway....Allah's Socialists,Aaron Hanscom, Frontpagemag.com, 9/20/2006

Much the same kind of thinking prevails among Leftists in the United States. Seeing a tyrant (of the variety they would like Hillary Clinton to be) overthrown in Iraq, they came out against the war. They didn't say that of course. They said instead that the United States and Britain and our other allies were engaged in evil practices, a few dozen sexual insults at a prison, a few people shot. They neglected to recall that their favorite Socialist Tyrant, which Saddam was, managed to kill half a million Iraqis, not to mention several million others in various wars. But of course they were Iraqis and foreigners who hadn't seen the Socialist light.

Luther

WTC Paranoid Theory: Barnum Was Right

Is there a sucker born every minute? With TV, it might be faster.

Conspiracy theorists allege that the events of 9/11 are not adequately explained by the "official story" fingering Osama bin Laden and his network as the culprits. What really needs explaining, though, is not 9/11, but the existence of such conspiracy theorists themselves, whose by now well-known speculations about what "really happened" that day are - not to put too fine a point on it - so mind-numbingly stupid that it is mystifying how anyone with a functioning cerebrum could take them seriously even for a moment..."We The Sheeple? Why Conspiracy Theories Persist", Edward Feser, TCSDaily.com, 9/10/06

Feser goes on to spell out the truly fantastic convolutions required for 9/11 theories to approach the truth. And it's not unique to that story. A Pope is misquoted in a lecture to a university and a million Muslims start screaming about a Catholic Hitler. A document describing a wacky theory about Jews, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is written by the Czar's Secret Police in the 1890s, is published by their press, and by the start of the 21st century, half the world starts blaming the Jews for trying to rule the world. Like the Czarist Cheka, though, Feser has a pretty good idea why these hallucinatory, transparently false, and, in his words, "mind-numbingly stupid" stories are seized upon by the press, by gang leaders, by religious fanatics, by Art Bell listeners, as the secret truth. It's not surprising. Why?

The world's an intricately complicated, mysterious place, even with the advent of mass media (perhaps even more so because of MSM). A lot of us, maybe most of us, would like to believe that all of the amazing complexity of even a single event is explicable by a simple answer. Human beings are astoundingly smart, but on this, we are depressingly, mind-numbingly stupid; and politicians and terrorists exploit this relentlessly.

Wise up!

Luther

One of Bill Clinton's Proteges?

[Jim] Webb’s bad week just got worse and it is only Wednesday...Five female graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy have come forward to accuse Jim Webb of creating a pervasive air of sexual discrimination at Annapolis in the early 1980s...Not really surprising since Jim Webb did write that admitting women to Annapolis would turn the dorm into “a horny woman’s dream” and he referred to the Tailhook sexual harassment scandal as a “witch hunt.”....Female Annapolis Alums Blast Web,The A-Team, by Riley not Reilly

Jim Webb is the Democrat candidate for the US Senate from Virginia. It's good to know that hypocrisy isn't a problem only in New York and California! Sadly, Senator George Allen, with his 'macaca' moments, has made a race out of what should have been an easy victory.

Luther

Colonel Fries Clinton, Berger

But retired Air Force Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson says his former boss had several chances to nab terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. 'In fact, Clinton did sign the presidential finding saying that we needed to either kidnap him or kill him," Patterson recalls. 'But just signing a piece of paper didn't result in any kind of action, because every time it came down to it and we had a chance to get bin Laden dead or alive, President Clinton chose not to.'...Former Clinton Aide Critical of Attempts to Shut Down ABC 9/11 Special, Chad Groening, Agape Press

Maybe Hamburger Bill was just doing PR for ABC.

Luther

Light Blogging for a Bit

Since Wonker still has to work for a living, blogging will be light for a day or two more. But I plan to return as soon as possible to aggregate some interesting info that's appeared in the blogosphere that tries to consolidate various thoughts on the Post 9/11 era as it continues to unfold. Most pertinent are commentaries on how frivolous and childish the contemporary left has become and how it is weakening us badly against a relentless and determined foe.

Stay tuned.

Hardball: Chris Matthews Whiffs on Plame-gate

I just discovered a site called NewsBusters which seems to be in business to expose leftist bias in the MSM. Good gig. These days, it's full time employment. NewsBusters has an interesting bit today on TV's most obnoxious gasbag, MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

Matthews has been fulminating for what seems like years about the perfidious Bushies and their vicious outing of the not-so-secret Valerie Plame, who in turn has been promoted 24/7 by blabbermouth hubby Joe "Face Time" Wilson—when he's not busy trashing the Bushies, anyhow. In the past, Wilson was a frequent feature on Matthews' inaptly-named "Hardball," providing lively (and false) information as he fed Matthews' (and others') feverish interest in flogging the fake-but-accurate Plame-gate scandal. Who knows? Maybe Matthews, a former Tip O'Neill flack, thought he could help the Dems by piling on and destroying another Republican presidency, a la The Trickster.

But now, the fun is over. Plame-gate has been exposed as nothing more than a crock of crappola, a scandal based on precisely the same kind of manufactured "facts" that got Mary Mapes and Dan Rather canned.

So, is Hardball's pit-bull interested in pursuing the "rest of the story" as feverishly as he fed the media frenzy that was built on lies? Matthew Shepherd of NewsBusters had a chance to ask Chris just that. Here's what he got:

Q: So I've noticed you haven't done anything on the whole Valerie Plame story since the Armitage story broke. Why not invite Joe Wilson on the show to defend himself?

A: Because he'd say basically the same thing he always says. 'My wife had no involvement in getting me the mission.' He'd just repeat it over and over.

Q: Maybe, but isn't it at least worth showing your viewers that this guy has no credibility considering how much you talked about the story before? Shouldn't he be held accountable for wasting all our time? Why not invite one of his representatives or defenders on the show?

A: Well, the story's just gotten so complicated. I mean, it's just such a mess. Because what if it's true that Armitage was the source, but those other guys [presumably Rove and Scooter Libby], also were leakers, what then?

Q: Isn't that a question worth exploring on your show?

A: It could be but the problem is that Dick Cheney has so many apologists it's ridiculous. So many journalists like Bob Woodward will say or do anything just to get access to him. And then all the people in the administration too.

Q: I don't see why this is stopping you from mentioning the story at all. The viewers at least need some sort of closure don't they?

A: Hey listen I need to get out of here. I have to get back home.

After that remark, Matthews left the conversation. He stuck around for about 15 minutes before leaving.

When it feeds BSD (Bush Derangement Syndrome), any story is HOT HOT HOT.

But when it's exposed as essentially a pack of lies, all interest dies and the MSM moves on.

Remember: Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry.

Scott Ott on Dems and ABC

If you don't know about Scott Ott's Scrappleface.com, you might want to try him. For years he's hammered the weird Left with satires. Click here to read Scott Ott's latest on the Reid/Schumer Gang and ABC.

Luther

Democrat Senators Show Their Courage re 9/11

Who in the press will stick up for ABC's right to air this miniseries without having its broadcast license threatened?...National Review,"Senate Dems Threaten Disney's Broadcast License," Stephen Spruiell Reporting, 9/8/2006, National Review Online

What's he talking about? Showing perhaps a preview of their plans for foreign policy, Democrat Senators Schumer, Durbin, Reid, and Dorgan sent a message to ABC with a thinly veiled threat.

"We write with serious concerns about the planned upcoming broadcast of The Path to 9/11 mini-series on September 10 and 11. Countless reports from experts on 9/11 who have viewed the program indicate numerous and serious inaccuracies that will undoubtedly serve to misinform the American people about the tragic events surrounding the terrible attacks of that day. Furthermore, the manner in which this program has been developed, funded, and advertised suggests a partisan bent unbecoming of a major company like Disney and a major and well respected news organization like ABC. We therefore urge you to cancel this broadcast to cease Disney’s plans to use it as a teaching tool in schools across America through Scholastic. Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation....The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest....("Senators Threaten..., continued)

So, heroic Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Dorgan have a new foreign policy: censor anyone who disagrees with their version of the truth. We've had experience with people like this in the past, such as George the Third, not to mention Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, the usual lot. There's a marvelously classic use of the word "free" in the Democrat Senators's broadcast.

"We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program..."(Senators Threaten..., continued)

To Lefties, of course "free" has only to do with money. Freedom is an alien concept to the Left, as it presupposes the autonomy of citizens.

There's no reason to discuss the cowardice of ABC in already caving in to the fatuous lies of Bill Clinton about this program; that's the norm in network television. But this kind of threat, if ABC folds, tells us all we need to know about the Democrat Party's notion of national security: better not to know an inconvenient truth.


Luther

Scholastic Publishers' Cowardly Cave to Clintonistas

ABC's upcoming documentary film on 9/11 is generating a ton of "controversy" because it doesn't assign the entire blame for that day's terrorist attacks entirely to Chimpy BushMcHitler. In fact, the Clintonistas, who largely ignored the growing Islamofascist threat throughout the 1990s, have been leading the charge. Apparently, it's okay to whale on Bush, but to dump on the Clintonistas for their not inconsiderable sins of omission, not to mention their evisceration of the military throughout the previous decade.

The Scholastic publishing enterprise has just decided to cave to the Clintonistas' propagandists, according to a report viewed on the Web today:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Children's publishing company Scholastic said that it is removing materials from its Web site originally created for use in conjunction with ABC's "The Path to 9/11" amid growing controversy over the docudrama.

The company said it will create a new classroom discussion guide for high school students that focuses more specifically on media literacy, critical thinking, and historical background.

Scholastic is removing materials from its site that were created for classroom use in conjunction with ABC's docudrama, "The Path to 9/11."

"After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues," Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic said in a statement.

A thorough review, eh? Who reviewed it? Let's find out:

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band all wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co. (Charts), to express concern over "The Path to 9/11."

Ah, let's see. The complainants were, in order: the most embarrassing and ineffective Secretary of State ever to occupy the office, who embarrassed the nation by cozying up to nice, peace-loving guys like non-nuclear proliferator Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il and Palestinian thug-ocrat Yasser Terrorat in the process; the former National Security Advisor who recently made off with, and destroyed, priceless (and probably incriminating) pre-9/11 documents from the National Archives by stuffing quantities of them in his pants before illegally carrying them out; and two of the Billmeister's most partisan advisors. Might this obviously nonpartisan quartet not be interested, like all doctrinaire lefties, in altering historical truth just a bit? Perish the thought.

Meanwhile, the heroes at Scholastic have apparently pulled an all-nighter to create new "study guides" geared toward completely ignoring the serious implications that, by all indications, will be aired in this broadcast.

If Dick had substituted the term "high standards" in his statement above with the phrase "always pro-Democrat, pro-left standards," his statement might have been a bit more honest. Can we seriously imagine that any mainstream publisher of educational material, already beholden to the lefty, all-Democrat teachers' unions, would have been equally industrious in censoring anti-Bush material at the administration's request?

But wait, Dick has more:

"At the same time, we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today's society in order to participate fully in our democracy and that a program such as 'The Path to 9/11' provides a very 'teachable moment' for developing these skills at the high school level. We encourage teachers not to shy away from the controversy surrounding the program, but rather to engage their students in meaningful, in-depth discussion."

What a nifty sidestep. One major "teachable moment," we'd imagine, might involve developing student's "media literacy skills" by pointing out how this film might be in error if it implies anything nasty about a do-nothing Democrat administration that could have knocked off Bin Laden before he even had a chance to put 9/11 into motion.

Covering their collective tush further,

Scholastic's new guide states that it had no involvement with developing the ABC docudrama and that the company is not promoting the program.

In a way, this whole episode of self-censorship, lashed on by the always vigilant history re-writers on the Clinton team, is highly instructive. The Democrats' earnest desire in the Global War on Terror is, in the end, to "cut and run." Just the way Scholastic cut and ran when the now-emeritus but always alert Clintonistas cranked up their negative PR machine and who knows what else. Hopefully, voters will finally begin to notice this kind of historical whitewashing before they start showing up at the polls this November. Folks need to buckle down here vote for their own self-preservation and not for the interests of the value-less and cowardly party situation-ethicists that feels they should be in power now, well, because they should.

This incident also highlights the relentlessness of the left in its continuing effort to weaken American culture by destroying any attempt by educators, artists, writers, or filmmakers to articulate objective truth over anti-American, leftist propaganda. It will be interesting to see if ABC caves over the next 24 hours and re-edits the program—to be aired Friday—to exonerate the very individuals who, by their political cowardice, opened the way for 9/11 to occur.

Can you imagine the MSM howling if the Bushies ever tried anything like this?

BTW, note the source of this largely approving report: CNN. Or, as Rush Limbaugh would have it, the "Clinton News Network." Indeed.

UPDATE: ABC has apparently edited out at least a portion of its 9/11 film under pressure from the Clintonistas:

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton's national security advisor, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

"That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said, adding: "These are very slight alterations."

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply "based on" the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film's version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries "is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews."

In other words, ABC is caving, just like the Scholastic Press. Meanwhile, the lefties are now clamoring for the entire film to be spiked. I'll lay 50-50 odds right now that the project gets scrubbed. The left has been unable to stand up for Amerikkka after 9/11. But when their own do-nothing cowardice is exposed, they sure as hell have the guts to stand up for their own collective and worthless tushes. Citizens, take note. And remember this the next time you hear another anti-Bush fusillade from the usual suspects.

Say, what ever happened to First Amendment Rights? Guess some animals really are more equal than others.

Balky Blogger

FYI. Over the last 2-3 days it's been difficult at times, at least at HazZzMat, to access and/or put up posts on Blogger. We see that the Blogger dudes are apparently beta testing a new version of the user interface, so perhaps that's part of the problem. In the meantime, don't be surprised to see the occasional late post, or the occasional duplicate post which happens when the Blogger software craps out and hangs in mid-blog-upload. Irritating, but it's part of the cost of doing business with Blogger. Which, of course is free. Which is why it's probably churlish to complain. But we thought you'd like to know.

More Plame for the MSM

The Washington Post, no bastion of conservatism, continues to score points against the NYTimes and their fantasy world, fessing up about the Plame-gate non-event that has unfolded over the past week. Vociferous and obnoxious in its hyping of lies and half-truths as they searched for another Watergate to bring down Bush and satisfy their Bush Derangement Syndrome cravings, the MSM has been very timid with the mea culpas you'd think would be necessary at this point to reclaim at least some credibility. But generally, that's not been the case.

On the other hand, Post columnist David Broder, an absolute and longstanding liberal with no love for this administration, jumps on his colleagues today with some telling criticism, in a column entitled "One Leak and a Flood of Silliness":

For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition.

Now at least one count in that indictment has been substantially weakened -- the charge that Rove masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by "outing" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame.

Broder, whom I read regularly and sometimes with distaste (although he's vastly more of a gentleman than his fellow columnist, the virtual Marxist E. J. Dionne), establishes quickly that he didn't get much involved in this obvious non-brouhaha—stirred up by an obnoxious, self-serving former ambassador looking to discredit Bush, gain a slot on the Kerry campaign staff, and, Jesse Jackson-like, grab a chunk of undeserved face-time on the cable talkfests:

I have written almost nothing about the Wilson-Plame case, because it seemed overblown to me from the start. Wilson's claim in a New York Times op-ed about his memo on the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger; the Robert D. Novak column naming Plame as the person who had recommended Wilson to check up on the reported sale; the call for a special prosecutor and the lengthy interrogation that led to the jailing of Judith Miller of the New York Times and the deposition of several other reporters; and, finally, the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- all of this struck me as being a tempest in a teapot.

Broder unfortunately lumps all the players, including Rove and Libby, into a relativistic and unfortunate observation:

No one behaved well in the whole mess -- not Wilson, not Libby, not special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and not the reporters involved.

And he next serves up a brief, somewhat self-serving commercial for his own integrity:

The only time I commented on the case was to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources' names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.

Yecch. Yet, I can verify that this observation is true in my reading of Broder's columns over the years, although I reject the moral relativism of his previous statement. Broder next arives at his preliminary, and excellent, initial conclusion:

But caution has been notably lacking in some of the press treatment of this subject -- especially when it comes to Karl Rove. And it behooves us in the media to examine that behavior, not just sweep it under the rug.

Indeed. Broder next goes onto describe trash-talking administered to the Bushies by the despicable Sidney Blumenthal, who rivals and generally exceeds James Carville in sheer partisan obnoxiousness and demagoguery. One would expect no less from the Prince of Darkness who once tried to drive Matt Drudge out of business.

Broder concludes his piece with two similar citations from other sources and offers his final conclusion:

Blumenthal's example is far from unique. Newsweek, in a July 25, 2005, cover story on Rove, after dutifully noting that Rove's lawyer said the prosecutor had told him that Rove was not a target of the investigation, added: "But this isn't just about the Facts, it's about what Rove's foes regard as a higher Truth: That he is a one-man epicenter of a narrative of Evil."

And in the American Prospect's cover story for August 2005, Joe Conason wrote that Rove "is a powerful bully. Fear of retribution has stifled those who might have revealed his secrets. He has enjoyed the impunity of a malefactor who could always claim, however implausibly, deniability -- until now."

These and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.

And so, a reluctant but well-deserved hat-tip to Tom Broder. At these troubled times it's almost a relief to see that one can still occasionally find an honest liberal. We thought you'd like to know.
(BTW, links to Post sites often require a free log-in.)

More Plame to Go Around at the NY Times

Instapundit steers us today to a few choice words on Plame-gate over at the Captain's Quarters. Unlike the Washington Post, which—though equally guilty in trumpeting this phony story for what seems like forever—fessed up like an adult in its editorial comments a couple of days ago. Not so the New York Times (or, the New York Slimes as Mark Levin likes to say on his radio show). Captain Ed quotes a bit of the paper's latest smarminess:

It’s time for Mr. Fitzgerald to provide answers or admit that this investigation has run its course. Otherwise, he risks being lumped in with the special prosecutor who spent a decade investigating the former Clinton cabinet member Henry Cisneros, and wound up with nothing more than his conviction that he had yet to get to the bottom of things.

Whereupon the Captain observes:

Well, it's a start, as is the Gray Lady's avoidance of Joe Wilson's lies in this latest editorial. For the first time in memory, it states that Plame did get Wilson his assignment, which they have not admitted until now, and they also stop themselves from claiming that Wilson found no evidence of an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium...

[Richard] Armitage's role in providing the information to Novak has sucked the life out of the Times' jeremiad against Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. It has begun to dawn on the editors that the failure to indict either man on any charges, let alone anything related to the actual revelation of Plame's identity, strongly suggests that their assumptions about vendettas and conspiracies have been exposed as baseless. It also may occur to them that their lack of support for Judith Miller may reflect badly on them. Small wonder that they want Fitzgerald to come clean and get this story buried as quickly as possible.

The Times scolds Fitzgerald for his lack of response, but they still have not taken responsibility for their own role in this witch hunt. These men and women led the public charge for the investigation to be wrested from the DoJ and assigned to a special prosecutor accountable to no one except a panel of judges, also accountable to no one but themselves. They reversed their own stand on special prosecutors taken during the Clinton administration and demanded this appointment, and they made sure enough Democratic politicians spoke up to get it. Now that the case has utterly collapsed, the Gray Lady acts like a prim schoolmarm, wagging her finger at little Patrick for mischief she thoroughly endorsed.

Well, yeah.

Plame Game in Flames; or, Never Mind...

Luther reported here on the Washington Post's unusual editorial about-face on the rapidly fizzling Plame-gate non-controversy so beloved of Amerikkka's non-patriotic leftists. Well, leave it to America's REAL paper, the Washington Times, to give the full, sordid history of this scandalous smear campaign. The opening grafs provide a nice summary:

The expectation on the left that the Valerie Plame affair would blossom into another Watergate, bringing down a second Republican presidency, has fizzled.

Liberals expected that convictions of one or more persons in the Bush administration for leaking or confirming to columnist Robert Novak that Mrs. Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an undercover CIA operative. Echoing Mr. Wilson's claims, prominent liberals and leftists, most of them in the press, accused the White House of orchestrating a smear, and sought to drive Karl Rove either out of office or into prison, or both.

Three years on, none of that has happened, and the "scandal" is played out.

For those wanting a dense, detailed recap of this "scandal," this article, by Rowan Scarborough, will do the trick. Yep, there was a "scandal," all right. A scandal involving the MSM, the Democratic Party, and the vile leftwing blogosphere (along with the usual suspects, like Howard "The Duck" Dean) in an attempt to bring down a sitting, duly elected Republican president. Already drunk with re-living the glory days of the Vietnam debacle, whose embarrassing and tragic ending they did much to bring about, the American left thought they'd manufacture another dubious triumph by toppling Chimpy BushMcHitler and his evil crew, just the way they torpedoed Nixxon. Too bad it didn't work. (But they're still working on trying to get us defeated in the Middle East.)

These people like to brag about their "patriotism." But they never tell you where this "patriotism" is directed. But we will. Like their Marxist forbears, their "patriotism" is not directed toward their own country, but toward some vague world order that will supplant Amerikkka and the Republicans and bring about (somehow) world peace and justice. (And publicly-funded dachas for the Marxists.) Too bad these clowns forgot about the Islamofascists just around the corner who have pretty much the same idea, except that it involves a lot more beheadings.

Isn't it funny? Now that Plame-gate has turned out to be a non-event, we are already hearing orchestrated calls from lefty Dems for the firing of Rummy as Secretary of Defense. And over-eager Dems in the House are already assembling a committee to impeach President Bush the moment they win control of the House. That's today's Democratic left. Serial political terrorists, always ready with another manufactured smear campaign to roll out the moment the current one collapses. Always full of themselves, as usual, or perhaps full of something else.

The terrorists might as well take a holiday. Their leftist stooges in the West continue to do their work for them. Blissfully unaware that their godless, infidel heads are the next ones on the chopping block.

AP Endorses Abortion in Style Guide

The Language Police in the MSM are always careful to craft messages that favor their leftist political leanings and their Gramscian desire to undermine common decency in the U.S. Take, for example, this subtle piece of news, buried in the AP style book, the stylistic "bible" of most American print media:

Abortion: Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice. Avoid abortionist, which connotes a person whoperforms clandestine abortions.

RedState explains it all for you, with great clarity:

So what exactly have the folks at Associated Press done? In the firstplace, they've done a great "framing" favor to the pro-choice side by casting the pro-lifers as the "anti-abortion" side in the debate. As any "framing" person will tell you, labeling any cause as "anti-" anything will make it less appealing than labeling it "pro-" something else, even if they are functionally equivalent(pro-freedom sounds more attractive than anti-slavery; even the Democrats are slowly understanding that just being "anti-Bush" is an electoral loser; almost nobody votes for anyone whose main claim on your vote is being against something.) By contrast, the new AP style manual does the pro-choice side a huge favor; being associated with "rights" is an even greater boon than being the "pro-" side in a debate; the concept of "rights" strikes a powerful chord in the psyche of the average American. The AP could not have created a greater "framing" disparity if they had tried. I sort of gather that that's the point.

And further, how about their little two-step around the term "abortionist?" RedState sorts it all out for you:

The other ridiculous portion of this "guideline" is the treatment of the word "abortionist." Personally, it seems like a handy word to describe someone who performs abortions, but even if I were to grant that the word has pejorative qualities, the AP's explanation of why it should be avoided is laughable: it connotes someone who performs clandestine abortions?? In case the good folks at the Associated Press haven't been paying attention, there is, as far as I know (and I follow this issue pretty closely) no such person who exists in the United States. Given that current Supreme Court precedent mandates the legality of abortion at literally any stage of pregnancy, the AP has apparently concluded that the use of the most common word for someone who performs abortions connotes a person who doesn't exist and for whom there is no demand. Notably, the Associated Press does not offer a substitute word for "person who performs abortions" as there simply isn't one. I guess that we're all just supposed to forget that there are people in this country who perform abortions. There are people out there fighting for "abortion rights" (notice how they still avoid implying that anyone is pro-abortion per se) but no one actually performing them.

This is one of the best posts we've yet seen on the manipulation of language to favor anti-U.S., anti-Western positions. This is the kind of verbiage we see every day, 365 days a year in the leftie media. Once it's repeated long enough, whether true, or valid, or no, it starts becoming the perceived truth. And in such a manner, again and again, in issues ranging from abortion, gay marriage, and Bush Derangement Syndrome, the left chips what's left of our proud national heritage and cultural traditions away. Which precisely plays into the hands of our current enemies in the volatile Middle East.

Quote of the Day: Plame Flamed Out

It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously....,End of an Affair, The Washington Post, September 1, 2006

Readers of Hazzzmat knew this two years ago. Now, the newspaper that gave credence to Ambassador Wilson's charge reports that it was all untrue. Enough said.

Luther