Torture memo attorney Jay Bybee is pretty far gone on his way toward resignation or impeachment from his federal judgeship. This is reflected in the "LIBERAL" NYTimes Editors calling for Bybee's impeachment on April 18. They wrote in reference to the torture memos,"These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution."
Did you hear that White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley disputed the accuracy Monday morning of an editorial that ran in the Sunday New York Times?The truth is that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been chafing to attack Iraq before Sept. 11, 2001... They justified that unnecessary war using intelligence reports that they knew or should have known to be faulty. And it was pressure from the White House and a highly politicized Pentagon that compelled people like Secretary of State Colin Powell and George Tenet, the Central Intelligence director, to ignore the counter-evidence and squander their good names on hyped claims of weapons of mass destruction.
Tribune Company Declares Bankruptcy
In media news, Monday was a turbulent day for the newspaper industry. The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy. The company’s holdings include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, twenty-three television stations and the Chicago Cubs. Meanwhile, the McClatchy Company has put the Miami Herald up for sale, and the New York Times Company has announced plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building to ease a potential cash flow squeeze.
The following is a revised version of my June 7, 2008 post.The unemployment rate does not count people who have given up looking for work. Over all, the percentage of working age Americans employed dropped to 62.6 percent in May from 63 percent a year earlier.
[This blog entry is still under development]From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. [Pentagon assistant secretary of defense for public affairs] Victoria Clarke's team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.
“We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said senior Clarke aide Brent Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004.
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret, is one of the Fox News participants who is speaking out against the Pentagon's domestic propaganda operation. “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’ ” More: Bevelacqua comments on WMD.
James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over a conference call with analysts following the death of 14 Marines on August 3, 2005. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths further erode support for the war.“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”
William V. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group (More). At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body a
Wayne A. Downing (deceased), one of NBC’s most prominent analysts, was on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein. He also had his own consulting firms and sat on the boards of major military contractors.
John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq. His promotional materials state he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,”
David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst.
Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons.
Barry R. McCaffrey, one of NBC’s most prominent analysts, was on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein. He also had his own consulting firms and sat on the boards of major military contractors. He was also involved with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Jeffrey D. McCausland, appears on CBS TV and radio. He is a defense industry lobbyist. He has been a frequent commentator on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for CBS since 2003. In this capacity he has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor. He has appeared on the CBS Evening News, Morning Show, and Up to the Minute. He has also appeared on CNN Morning Show, CSPAN Booknotes, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera. [1]
“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”
Montgomery Meigs, a retired Army general and NBC analyst, appeared on “Today” after being flown to Guantanemo by the Pentagon. “There’s been over $100 million of new construction,” he reported. “The place is very professionally run.”
William L. Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst, with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, was reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” he said. “It is my life.” However, in April 2006, after an emergency briefing of seventeen analysts with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the midst of the "Generals' Revolt," Nash was repulsed. “I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions."
Joseph W. Ralston is a retired Air Force general. Soon after signing on with CBS, General Ralston was named vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by former defense secretary William Cohen.
Carlton A. Sherwood executive vice president the wvc3 Group. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. (See William Cowan)
Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio, heads a consulting company that advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq. He exchanged e-mail messages with the Pentagon that reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. “Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.”
Donald W. Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, was flown to Guantanamo Cuba to tour the prison after abuse claims were raised. He reported live on CNN by phone from Guantánamo stating that “The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false.”
Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare. “We lost the [Vietnam] war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.” (At least he's willing to admit we lost the Vietnam War.)
Victoria (Torie) Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.”
Lawrence Di Rita, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s closest aides, said in an interview that a “conscious decision” was made to rely on the military analysts to counteract “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq.
The Pentagon’s inspector general office has announced an internal probe into the military’s domestic propaganda program. Last month, the New York Times revealed the Pentagon has used retired military officers to generate positive news coverage and push for the war in Iraq. The move comes one day after the House approved a measure ordering investigations by both the inspector general and the congressional investigative body, the Government Accountability Office. The House probe will focus on whether the program violates laws barring government funding of domestic propaganda.
To the editor:
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm (“You Are What You Spend”, Feb. 10, 2008) do an admirable job of proving the very point they wish to skewer. Those of means, by the authors' very own measures, spend far less of their worth on what have come to be seen as life’s necessities. Moreover, using consumption as a surrogate for wealth is flawed logic; many of our society’s problems, whether related to health, economy, national security or environment, stem from our insatiable appetite. Equating consumption to wealth while ignoring savings and security is simply absurd.
Looking at a far more direct measure of American families’ economic status — household consumption — indicates that the gap between rich and poor is far less than most assume, and that the abstract, income-based way in which we measure the so-called poverty rate no longer applies to our society.
It’s true that the share of national income going to the richest 20 percent of households rose from 43.6 percent in 1975 to 49.6 percent in 2006, the most recent year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has complete data. Meanwhile, families in the lowest fifth saw their piece of the pie fall from 4.3 percent to 3.3 percent.
The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year.
sales of property, like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts.
if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to 1. If we turn to consumption, the gap declines to around 4 to 1.
The bottom 20 percent basically have zero wealth. They either have no assets, or their debt equals or exceeds their assets. The bottom 20 percent has typically accumulated no savings.[2]
The top 1 percent of families hold half of all non-home wealth. The richest 10 percent of families own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth.
Maybe my blog entry title is the headline Dan Eggan of the Washington Post would really have liked to use for his recent article. He and his editors settled on the title "Grand Jury Subpoenas Times Reporter Over Book Sources."A federal grand jury in Alexandria has issued a subpoena seeking information about the confidential sources of a newspaper journalist who wrote in a 2006 book about alleged CIA efforts to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program.
The [Somali] parliament will approve the new oil laws in two months.
this was a very unfortunate incident because the person who did this is a lovely person, but clearly inexperienced about the tenets of basic journalism.Jadegreen points out the obvious, if one stops to think about it; how is it that a person who attains the privilage of writing for the CBS anchorperson is "inexperienced about the tenets of basic journalism"? The answer lies in the thesis that America is in decline, which was my initial reaction to the Couric scandal and the general point of this essay, with superficial NYC insiders providing more evidence.
