In the spring of 2005 some documents dating back to July 2002 were leaked to the British press. The documents, which came to be known as “the Downing Street Memo,” reported on a “perceptible shift” in the attitude in Washington, saying that military action was now seen as “inevitable.” One memo records “C,” the designation the Brits use for the head of the British Secret Secret Intelligence Service, as saying that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Sir Richard later told me that he had been misquoted. He reviewed the draft document, objecting to the word “fixed” in particular, and corrected it to reflect the truth of the matter. He said that upon returning to London in July of 2002, he expressed the view, based on his conversations, that the war in Iraq was going to happen. He believed that the momentum driving it was not really about WMD but rather about bigger issues, such as changing the politics of the Middle East.
Dearlove recalled that he had a polite but significant, disagreement with Scooter Libby, who was trying to convince him that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qa’ida. Dearlove’s strongly held view, based on his own service’s reporting, was that any contacts between the two had come to nothing and that there was no formal relationship. He believed that the crowd around the vice president was playing fast and loose with the evidence. In his view, it was never about “fixing” the intelligence itself but rather about the undisciplined manner in which the intelligence was being used.
It all makes sense now! Richard Dearlove was misquoted, and corrected it in the final draft. But the British government never released the final draft, because…well, it’s not clear, but I assume because they’re shy and rather than speaking up would prefer to have a massive, incredibly damning falsehood be entered into history for all eternity. Furthermore, the Bush administration would never ask about this and certainly would never press the British to declassify the exculpatory draft. They’re very shy too.
Finally, don’t ever believe that “playing fast and loose with the evidence” is the same thing as “fixing” intelligence. Those are two totally different things and you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that.
Accounts of the Bush administration always speak of the “close bond” shared by George Bush and George Tenet.
With Tenet’s appearances surrounding his new book, we can finally see why: he and Bush both possess a love of taking personal responsibility, particularly when it involves giving clear, concise answers to tough questions:
TIME: How come the CIA trusted the source, codenamed Curveball, who turned out to be a fabricator? How does that happen? Did you know even who he was?
TENET: Well, I didn’t know his name, no. I mean, I know a lot about Curveball. So, you know, we’re working throughout this period. We’re trying to get direct access to him, and we can’t have direct access to him? But so you’ve got this, you know, indirect access, analysts doing the validation, lots of what he was saying made sense? The implication, of course, as you look at this, is this an organization in some sort of meltdown or something? Well, no, because the whole ethos of the place is report what you’ve got. If it’s not good news, when someone says fabricate in our business, you push it up, you stop the train. At the end of the day, we could have saved a lot of pain in the estimate. We could have saved the Secretary of State a whole lot of pain.
To be sure he had answered the question precisely, Tenet then added: “Fufffffffffffffffffffeeeefffffffffff.”
I wanted to commend you for your excellent comedy routine on the April 23rd edition of your show.
Your hilarious impersonation of a raving conspiracy-nutcase was spot on! You nailed it, sir!
Exposing “far-left billionaire George Soros” and his “radical left agenda” of “[b]uying political power” and “influence” “under the radar” by “set[ting] up a complicated political operation” to “smear people with whom he disagrees.” Priceless! I think the evil billionaire is a bogey-man that should get more play in today’s comedy routines. This reminded me of those hilarious Mike Myers/Austin Powers movies with the smirking, bald Dr. Evil. Is there anyway you can get pictures of George Soros stroking a white Angora cat, by any chance? Be honest, when you said “Soros … can raise millions for politicians, who will do his bidding” you were ripping off Dr. Evil, weren’t you? Even Kent said it; “George Soros is really the Dr. Evil of the whole world of left-wing foundations.” I knew it! “Do his bidding!!”
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The Bond villians always have those cartoonish, ridiculous goals, like stealing all the gold in Fort Knox or controlling the weather. So you riffed on that brilliantly by coming up with — “George Soros, an extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, legalized drugs, euthanasia, and on and on.” “And on and on” indeed! And all of this from his secret lairs hidden deep inside hollowed out mountains “in Curacao and Bermuda and France.”
Crowley got in some good lines too. I really liked this one! “This is an incredibly well-oiled, brilliantly orchestrated machine. And as you pointed out, it’s also a brilliant way to get around the campaign finance laws in this country.” To brilliantly “get around the campaign finance laws” by complying with them exactly, priceless! The irony! And the part where she says “all this power in the hands of one guy because he’s got a billion-dollar fortune, where he can put his money wherever he wants.” That is amazing. She almosts makes it sound like she is actually suggesting that for someone to openly and transparently put money in support of causes and candidates that they agree with is somehow “dangerous” or “illegal!” The subtlety! He can “put” “his money” “wherever he wants.” Astounding!
At the Republican convention in Philadelphia in 2000 I hung out with Dave Barry and his cartoonist posse (Mike Luckovich, Walt Handlesman, Chip Bok, and Rob Rogers). The thing about hanging out with Dave Barry is that he’s (a) famous and (b) innately likeable, and as a result you end up in some really odd situations. For instance: we were sitting in a hotel bar when we were introduced to Jack Valenti, who invited us to a party he was co-hosting with Mark Foley (yes, that Mark Foley). When we got there, we had some trouble getting in — since our convention credentials clearly marked us as “media” we were immediately corralled into a little media pen outside the party where we would be allowed to watch actual partygoers walk into the actual party. Mark Foley (yes, that Mark Foley) eventually intervened and we made it into the party — where we then realized we had just spent a lot of time and energy trying to get into a loud boring party full of Republicans. The party was divided into two rooms between which there was a connecting section with a small platform, maybe a foot up off the ground, some sort of DJ thing that wasn’t being used. I suggested we commandeer it and declare it our own VIP area, off limits to the hoi polloi. There was a handy orange traffic cone in the room for some reason, so we snagged that as a further indicator of the exclusivity of the cartoonists’ VIP platform, and stood up there, arms outstretched with palms out, announcing to befuddled Republicans, “Sorry, VIP room, no admittance.” At first they mostly ignored us, but the strange thing was that after awhile, they started playing along, coming up and begging for admission onto the platform. During the course of the night on our exclusive VIP platform we hosted (among others) Valenti (who I should note was not a Republican himself, but acting that night in his role as music movie industry lobbyist), David Horowitz (who told me his kids were “big fans”), Asa Hutchinson (who seemed rather uncomfortable with the entire experience), and Dick Armey (who made an off-color joke about his name involving Barney Frank, an incident that caused a minor media brouhaha a day or two later — possibly the only unscripted news to emerge from that convention).
It was my finest, and only, public work of performance art, the unwitting patron of which passed away yesterday at the age of 85.
(The photo above is from the hotel bar — Franken was there but didn’t tag along for the real fun of the evening).
After seeing the news that Wiccan pentacles are now on the approved symbols for soldier’s headstones, I tracked down the official list of approved symbols on the Department of Veterans Affairs website. Needless to say, none of the thirty eight other symbols can compare to the coolness of the atheist symbol :
Why go with a cross or a star when you can have a gravestone that reminds people of this?
First they came for the bobbleheads, but I did not speak up, because I was not a bobblehead
All right. I’m getting a little pissed off by all the criticism of Tim Russert. Everyone’s jumping on him for saying this on Bill Moyers’ show about the performance of the press on the WMD story:
RUSSERT: …there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
And of course it seems easy to make fun of him here, given that he’s the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC. But what none of these people apparently understand is that Russert doesn’t have a phone that makes outgoing calls. It’s unfortunate, but NBC and GE simply can’t afford it. It’s so very easy to miss that when you’re sitting pretty atop your lucrative blog empire. But every night in America, some gigantic corporate conglomerate is choosing between buying food for its anchors and making outgoing phone calls.
And what this means is, Russert’s job is to show up at 9 am, and wait until somebody calls him and tells him what’s going on. And he does it very well. He sits by the phone all day, because if he misses a call, he has to wait until they call him back.
Also, keep in mind that these “other government officials” to which he refers are sealed in a titanium vault at the center of the earth. So how exactly would Russert get access to them? I’d like to see you try it, all you big shots.
On the Bill Moyers documentary last night, he pointed out that Oprah Winfrey did a show about Iraq on October 9, 2002. Her two guests were Judith Miller and Kenneth Pollack. They said things like this:
MILLER: The US intelligence community believes that Saddam Hussein has deadly stocks of anthrax, of botulinium toxin, which is one of the most virulent poisons known to man.
POLLACK: And what we know for a fact from a number of defectors who’ve come out of Iraq over the years is that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is building them as fast as he can.
Has she had them back on to explain how they got things so completely wrong? No.
That’s interesting, because when James Frey turned out to have made things up for his book A Million Little Pieces, she made him come back on so she could shame him in front of America:
OPRAH: James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it’s such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly.
Pretty strong language, which Frey certainly deserved. But he didn’t actually help start a catastrophic war.
So, I think progressive organizations should get together and ask Oprah to invite Miller and Pollack back on the show…along with someone like Scott Ritter or British expert Glen Rangwala. I suspect it would be quite an enlightening program.
(Thanks to Sam Husseini for pointing out the Frey parallel.)
Sacramento stalwarts CAKE are finally taking things into their own hands. Since breaking on to the music scene in the early nineties, CAKE has not only survived, but thrived in a tumultuous industry where major labels have continued to merge themselves out of existence, indies are regaining power, and the average band’s life span is a meager two albums. CAKE’s distinctive brand of music has transcended scene and genre alike for over a decade, garnering the band several platinum records and a dedicated following. The band now brings forth a unique collection of “b-sides and rarities”, their first release since 2004 studio album “Pressure Chief”, signifying a momentous step in a new direction for them. While most of their contemporaries have long since packed it in, CAKE has decided to part ways with their label Columbia Records, forging out on their own with a full slate of releases planned via their own label Upbeat Records. In addition to the “b-sides and rarities” compilation, the band also plans to release a live album “Live At The Crystal Palace”, during Autumn 2007, and their sixth studio album, due out in early 2008.
Inspired by the passionate individuals who have continued to support and appreciate them over the years, the band is thrilled to give something back to their listeners with this exclusive compilation. CAKE’s John McCrea elaborates “We were all quite surprised how cohesively these songs fit together into one album, they seemed to just belong together.” McCrea continues “Aesthetically, many of the songs hadn’t quite worked on previous albums and for years they lacked proper homes. Now they all have a home. It is good to have a home”. CAKE’s Vince DiFiore adds, “These songs were recorded at times when we wanted to extend our idea of what the band could do stylistically. It was good to see that the recordings worked as a collection, and I’m glad we can offer it to listeners.” Songs on the album were originally sung by legendary singers such as Frank Sinatra, Barry White, Buck Owens, George Jones, Ozzy Osborne, and Kenny Rogers. The band has used these songs to find new creative elements within themselves, producing eloquently accomplished tracks that simultaneously maintain the band’s own unique stamp.
CAKE’s “b-sides and rarities” comes complete with a collectible “scratch and sniff” CD package, embodying five different CD cover color/scent variations (including red/fresh cut roses, yellow/banana, brown/leather, green/fresh cut grass and purple/grape). The album features re-mixed and re-mastered tracks, plus an exclusive live bonus track of “War Pigs” with Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips. The package is available for pre-order on their website.
