corrente

The Bush junta seems to be feeling the heat. Joe Klein has a nice summary in Time, which also includes new information on The Plame Affair:

The [1] torture investigation is one of four major defensive battles the Administration is facing. In the weeks to come, the White House will also have to deal with the [2] 9/11 commission's final report, the [3] congressional investigations into the CIA's bungled assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a [4] special prosecutor's hunt for the White House leakers who blew the cover of CIA secret operative Valerie Plame.

And that's not all:

Two other serious, surreptitious—and quite possibly unprecedented—battles are going on: [1] the intelligence community is at war with the White House, and [2]the uniformed military is at war with the civilian leadership of the Pentagon,. The first conflict went public last week with news of the impending publication of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, a book by an anonymous author who is known to be a senior CIA official and former chief of the agency's Osama bin Laden station. The invasion of Iraq was "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat," the author writes. "There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."

Michael Moore couldn't have said it any better—and this book was vetted by CIA censors. In fact, the views of Anonymous are an accurate reflection of the opinions I've heard from multiple intelligence sources. The spooks seem to believe that outgoing CIA Director George Tenet was strong-armed by Cheney and Rumsfeld into overassessing Iraq's WMD capacity. This may or may not be true, but it is the conventional wisdom in the intelligence community. Furthermore, there is intense anger over the White House's revealing the identity of Plame, who may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components.

NOTE: This "sting operation" is new information on Plame. Interesting!

Plame was outed in a White House attempt to discredit the finding of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that there was no evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger. "Only a very high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge that Plame was on the payroll" of the CIA, an intelligence source told me.

The military has made no secret of its fury with Rumsfeld and his coterie of neoconservatives at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld has been faulted for committing too few troops and too little planning to postwar Iraq. Returning National Guard leaders have been telling their congressional representatives about chaos in the field.

NOTE: If our Army was entirely professional (i.e., a sort of Praetorian Guard), the citizens in the National Guard wouldn't be bringing democratic checks and balances into play, as they are.

There is also some rustling among the brass about General Tommy Franks' memoir, to be published in August. Bob Woodward reported that Franks once called Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who was charged with postwar planning, "the [Cheney expletive] stupidest guy on the face of the earth," and some defense experts are wondering if Franks, who has a reputation for candor, will elaborate on that.
(via Time)

Pass the popcorn!

Oh, and "Dick"? Fuck you! There. I feel better already! (back)