$andbagged

Of course, they'd never do this in 'Merika to the next $elected Preznit, either HHHillBama or GhouliAnnie:

...RU SIRIUS: Your book shows that there was a terrible relationship between JFK and some members of his administration and the entire National Security establishment. It's all of a piece, but I think the situation with Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military really stands out...

DAVID TALBOT: They were his nemesis.

RU: They were very frightening.

DT: Yeah. The Kennedy administration was beleaguered and besieged by its own government. That was a revelation for me. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when Kennedy refuses to reinforce the CIA with U.S. troops and the Air Force, the government was pretty much at war with itself. Up to that point, they believed that Kennedy was a weak President – he was in over his head. And they were determined to run the country the way they wanted to.

RU: They suckered Kennedy into letting this invasion happen. Apparently, there was a fairly recent revelation that the CIA knew the Bay of Pigs wasn't going to work and they were sure that Kennedy would be forced to mount an invasion.

DT: That's right. I think they were trying to sandbag him. They knew he was young and inexperienced. According to the CIA's own internal history of the Bay of Pigs, which was released and de-classified in 2005, they knew that it would fail. They knew that their own motley brigade of Cuban exiles weren't sufficient to defeat Castro, and they thought that Kennedy's hand would be forced to send in the Marines and Air Force once these guys were pinned down on the beaches. But he didn't. He was very loath to widen the war. He knew — as the CIA itself later determined in an intelligence estimate — that if we were to do that, it would end up like what we're seeing today in Iraq. U.S. forces would have quickly swept aside Castro's military, they'd have marched on to Havana and then they would've gotten bogged down in a long and bloody occupation...

[thanks to the heretik and John Amato]



Unlike the stories of Saddam being behind 911 and Al Qaeda everywhere except of course, Saudi Arabia, this is doubtless baseless conspiracy theory.

After all, the D.o'D. and their Company backers for Viet Nam would never have lied to LBJ about Viet Nam. Just ask 'em, they'll tell you.

Likewise, Carter had the best possible advice from Boykin and Ollie North during the Iran hostage crisis. They would never have manipulated the situation and placed American citizens' lives in danger. Or risked the lives of the soldiers who tried, and failed, with fatal results, to rescue the hostages.

And Bill Clinton's love life was certainly never targeted by some shadow government that brought him down because the average 'Merikan was too prosperous, or because he targeted the tobacco companies and Microsoft and wanted to tax the rich to promote education and health.



Such baseless conspiracy theories, unlike the current information about how the Shiite Iranians are using the Wahhabi Al-Qaeda to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan and building nukular missiles to target Peoria, Illinois, have no basis in fact.

Besides, who would profit from such actions?



Who, indeed?

Iran-Ho!

This week apparently our Imperial $enate voted that Iran has conducted acts of war against the U.S. of A., although you sure wouldn't have noticed it while Lou Dobbs was wringing his hands about Messicans and Skeletor was warning about Terra'ist attacks from Canada.

...Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran's doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault...

Oh, and for the record, HHHillBamaBiden and the rest of the DINOcrats played right along. The vote was 97-0.



Now that's an Imperial $enate for History!

Maybe it's part of the menu

Yesterday an old friend sent me this, which upon reflection may be related to Skeletor's Gut of Prophecy.

Apparently they obtained their license to by unlimited amounts of americium-241 and cesium-137 through a P.O. Box.



You know, all the Fourth Reich of government has to do to get a terrorist attack on American soil is simply stand down. If they do that, they don't really commit a crime they can be implicated in. No Special Ops or CIA-trained islamofascists are needed.

They let something like a small dirty bomb go off in an American city, and they get to implement everything they want. Kiss your Constitution good-bye. The Rethuglicans will follow lockstep with their Reptilican Party brethren. HHHillary will lead the way for the bipartisan DINOcrats.

Dear Leader will, of course, say I-told-you-so as he opens the work camps for the main course of the meal.

Ghouliani Makes the Gold Trains Run on Time

via Satyam at Think Progress:

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has regularly touted his leadership in the wake of 9/11 as one of his major selling points. A host of 9/11 responders have alleged, however, that Giuliani provided them with poor radios, misled them into working amidst toxic fumes, and most recently, hastily cleared out the rubble before bodies were all recovered.

Six weeks after 9/11, Giuliani abandoned efforts to recover remaining bodies and buckled to pressure from developers eager to “scoop” the rubble...

Yesterday, Harold Schaitberger of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) — the nation’s largest firefighters organization, consisting of 280,000 members — assailed Giuliani, detailing how the mayor ditched body-recovery efforts only 24 hours after recovering the $230 million in gold. “He found the gold on October 31, and on November 1 is when he issued the order to remove the firefighters from their recovery mode...”

The IAFF has produced a video entitled “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend,” extensively documenting Giuliani’s negligence after 9/11, featuring “active and retired fire fighters, fire officers and families of the fallen speaking out about the ‘Real Rudy,’ his failed leadership and his disrespect for the recovery of those we lost...”

Now we know at least where some of the money went...

$urgin' Kings

Private enterprise like Cheneyburton. Like Atrios says, Entrepreneurs:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thieves have stolen nearly $300 million from a bank in Baghdad, police and a bank official said Thursday, in what is probably one of the biggest thefts in Iraq since the 2003 war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Police said the thieves were three guards who worked at the private Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad's Karrada district.

They said that when bank employees arrived for work on Wednesday they found the front door open and the money gone. The guards, who normally slept at the bank, had also disappeared, they said.

An official at the bank said about $300 million in U.S. dollars had been stolen, as well as 220 million Iraqi dinars ($176,000). He declined to give further details...

Synthetic By Design, Chaotic by Nature

Last Sunday's New York Pravda carried a pitch for investors concealed as an Op-Ed:

...Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., hope to take a giant stride in synthetic biology by creating a piece of DNA 580,076 units in length from simple chemicals, chiefly the material that constitutes DNA’s four-letter chemical alphabet. This molecule would be an exact copy of the genome of a small bacterium. Dr. Venter says he then plans to insert it into a bacterial cell. If this man-made genome can take over the cell’s functions, Dr. Venter should be able to claim he has made the first synthetic cell.

Such an achievement could suggest some new plateau has been reached in human control of life and evolution. But Dr. Venter’s synthetic genome will probably be seen to represent a feat of copying evolution’s genetic programming, not of creating new life itself.

Synthetic biologists, as they survey all the new genes and control elements whose DNA sequences are now accumulating in data bases, seem to feel extraordinary power is almost within their grasp.

“Biology will never be the same,” Thomas F. Knight of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote recently in describing the new engineering discipline he sees as emerging from it.

Adherents of the new discipline held their third annual conference last month in Zurich but their creations are still at the toy rocket stage. A dish of bacteria that generates a bull’s eye pattern in response to the chemicals in its environment. A network of genes that synthesizes the precursor chemical to artemisin, an anti-malaria drug. “The understanding of networks and pathways is really in its infancy and will be a challenge for decades,” says James J. Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University.

That hasn’t stopped synthetic biologists from dreaming. “Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

Most people in synthetic biology are engineers who have invaded genetics. They have brought with them a vocabulary derived from circuit design and software development that they seek to impose on the softer substance of biology. They talk of modules — meaning networks of genes assembled to perform some standard function — and of “booting up” a cell with new DNA-based instructions, much the way someone gets a computer going.

The first practical applications of synthetic biology may not be so far off. “The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research...

A great idea, that, but one that doesn't require making "new" cells from scratch. As I've written here before, the organisms already exist in nature.

Is this a pitch for investors, or an attempt to wake up the oil boys? But anyone who's seen Blade Runner and knows the mind of commercial science should know that making something as useful and mundane as gasoline from garbage is probably the dead last item on the list that any benefactor investor with deep pockets would promote.

The first item will be molecular and cellular barcodes to identify every piece of DNA or cellular product as proprietary.

The next item will be to engineer controls that keep it from reproducing under conditions that don't generate shareholder funds. Don't worry, the velociraptors or their equivalent will figure a workaround for that. Probably shortly after the Marines deploy them in the Middle East.

Planned obsolescence will likely also be genetically programmed. After all, we can't have things working too well for too long.



Oh yeah. And the final moneymaker?



I'll let you figure that one, but it will doubtless give a whole new dimension to the concept of labor.

Your Fourth Reich of Government at Work

Darth Cheney says he's not a member of the Legistlative, Executive, or Judiciary branch of government, and not subject to their rules.



Which branch does he say he's a member of? A fourth branch of government: the Fourth Reich of Government, where free enterprise takes over to do what must be done. Corporatism is the Fourth Reich for a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub, a government where the profit incentive takes care of the Right People.

Case in point, from Justin Rood:

A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say.

The $5 million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter.

The project would involve "the development of data storage and retrieval systems...for at least two years' worth of network calling records," according to an unclassified budget document posted to the FBI's Web site. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The FBI is barred by law from collecting and storing such data if it has no connection to a specific investigation or intelligence matter.

In recent years the bureau has tried to encourage telecommunications firms to voluntarily store such information, but corporations have balked at the cost of keeping records they don't need.

"The government isn't allowed to warehouse the information, and the companies don't want to, so this creates a business incentive for the companies to warehouse it, so the government can access it later," said Mike German, a policy expert on national security and privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Before joining the ACLU, German was a veteran FBI undercover counterterrorism agent...

The FBI does not identify the firms in the document, a budget request to Congress, although it said it already has contracts with them to provide information on their customers. In March, an FBI official identified the companies as Verizon, MCI and AT&T.

MCI has since merged into Verizon; neither Verizon nor AT&T immediately responded to requests for comment for this story...

In March, the Department of Justice's internal watchdog was harshly critical of the FBI's partnership effort with Verizon, MCI and AT&T, because FBI agents appeared to routinely ignore laws and policies when accessing Americans' phone records.



Even the bureau's own top lawyer said she found the unit's behavior "disturbing," noting that when requesting access to phone company records, it repeatedly referenced "emergency" situations that did not exist, falsely claimed grand juries had subpoenaed information and failed to keep records on much of its own activity.

Yes, but what about the exigent circumstances.

[thanks to Buzzflash and Not Atrios]

Bad Polls

Frankly, I thought they'd wait until 2008:

WASHINGTON - U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region...

Of course, Pakistan is our "ally", and we control Afghanistan. Or at least, you know, its gas reserves.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a "gut feeling" about a new period of increased risk.

He based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," Chertoff said in his discussion with the newspaper about terrorists. "We worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Other U.S. counterterrorism officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared Chertoff's concern and said that al-Qaida and like-minded groups have been able to plot and train more freely in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border in recent months. Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged region.

"The threat coming out of there is very real, even if there aren't a lot of specifics attached to it," one of the officials said...

Skeletor just has to ask Darth Cheney. I'm sure he has all the details.

Finally Swinging the Other Way, Ya Think?

Pendulums are not the right analogy.

So Dear Leader's going to end this cash cow, just because we want him to? Not gonna happen.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion...

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said...

A trillion dollars buys some mondo lobbying power, not to mention all the corporate spooks stirring up the pot here and there. I expect Congress to lead some kind of dog and pony show to end it. Why? A whopping 70% of the $electorate is against it.

They'll "end it" without really, you know, ending it, because the other 30% has all the money. After all, the last man standing has the oil.

Apples and Oranges

Let's beat a dead horse once again, because it still runs faster than anything else.

I'm still wondering where all the money and financial records went...

The Professionals Take Care of Their Own. Not.

When four Blackwater USA security guards were ambushed and massacred in Fallujah in 2004, graphic images showed the world exactly what happened: four men killed, their bodies burned and dragged through the streets. A chanting mob hung two mutilated corpses from a bridge.

Since then, Congress and the families of the murdered private security contractors have been demanding answers: Why did the lightly armed and undermanned team go through the heart of one of Iraq's most hostile cities? Why did the two teams sent out that day have four members, not the usual six?

Some answers can be found in memos from a second team for Blackwater operating around Fallujah on March 31, 2004.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush.

The Bravo 2 team members had protested that they were not ready for the mission and had not had time to prepare their weapons, but they were commanded to go, according to memos written by team members. The team disregarded directions to drive through Fallujah and instead drove around it and returned safely to Baghdad that evening.

The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.

The Bravo 2 team memos, in emotional, coarse and damning language, placed the blame squarely on Blackwater's Baghdad site manager, Tom Powell.

"Why did we all want to kill him?" team member Daniel Browne wrote the following day. "He had sent us on this [expletive] mission and over our protest. We weren't sighted in, we had no maps, we had not enough sleep, he was taking 2 of our guys cutting off [our] field of fire. As we went over these things we new the other team had the same complaints. They too had their people cut."

The memos surface amid heightened congressional scrutiny of Blackwater, a private security firm based in Moyock, and the private security industry, which grows ever more valuable to the Pentagon. Reports last week indicate that there are now more private contractors than troops operating in Iraq. Blackwater has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts.

The aftermath of the killings shows one difference between contractors and the military. Had an officer sent four lightly armed soldiers into Fallujah, he would likely have faced public scrutiny in the military justice system. In this case, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been trying to get documents such as these memos from Blackwater without success.

The families of the four men killed in the ambush -- Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston and Michael Teague -- sued Blackwater in Wake County Superior Court in an effort to find out what happened. Blackwater countersued the estates of the four men in federal court, successfully arguing for arbitration, in which the proceedings are closed to the public and the investigation of the incident can be much more limited.

Powell, the site manager, left Blackwater shortly after the Fallujah incident. He will not discuss the event while litigation is pending, said his attorney, Clifford Higby of Panama City, Fla. Efforts to reach the other Blackwater contractors for comment were unsuccessful.

Blackwater, owned by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, did not respond to requests for comment starting in early June. A company lawyer, John W. Phillips of Seattle, sent a letter protesting the paper's possession of the memos and suggesting possible legal action if they were used in a news report.

Is there some sort of criminal action we the people can use against Blackwater for fomenting the Iraqi insurrection? Because this incident was the first.

Nietzsche for Preschoolers and the Market

Via uggabugga:

This week, Fox and Friends had on a guest (the "expert" in these matters, a finance professor at Louisiana State University) who was arguing that Fred Rogers was a blight on society. part of the discussion included this:



"Mr. Rogers had an optimistic message where everyone was special even if they didn’t deserve it."

Better very young children should learn what is good in life.



To crush your, enemies, to drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their mommies.

Now just wait until these guys (i.e., Murdoch) control the Dow. All Bull, all the time. Even when it's bear. You don't want all those girly facts confusing your investment decisions, do you?

At Last It's Come to This

The editiorial staff at The New York Pravda advocates redeployment. Sensibly. With a plan.

It's not gonna happen with Bu$hCo in charge.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit...

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda...

The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.

The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest...

Would, should, could. Good luck airlifting out of Kurdistan if the Turks declare open war. Which will happen if Big Time Dick's Company ops have anything to do with it.

Back to the crow-eating at Pravda:

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

The irony behind that statement is almost too hard to bear.

Chaos is the plan.

Expect chaos to destroy any sensible plan to extricate ourselves from the abyss.

The Real and Present Danger

R.J. Hillhouse breaks The Washington Pravda:

Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.
By R.J. Hillhouse
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page B05

...The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today.

Surprised? No wonder. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune, I'm told, of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

These firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and control the movements of CIA case officers. They also provide case officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional desk officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As the Los Angeles Times first reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations in the fight against terrorism -- Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance.

Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been outsourced to private industry. These branches are still managed by U.S. government employees ("blue badgers") who are accountable to the agency's chain of command. But beneath them, insiders say, is a supervisory structure that's controlled entirely by contractors; in some cases, green badgers are managing green badgers from other corporations.

Sensing problems -- and possibly fearing congressional action -- the CIA recently conducted a hasty review of all of its job classifications to determine which perform "essential government functions" that should not be outsourced. But it's highly doubtful that such a short-term exercise can comprehensively identify the proper "blue/green" mix, especially because contractors' work statements have long been carefully formulated to blur the distinction between approvable and debatable functions...

as the center of gravity shifts from the public sector to the private, more than one independent intelligence firm has developed plans to "raise" succeeding generations of officers within its own training systems. These corporate-grown agents will be inculcated with corporate values and ethics, not those of public service.

And the current piecemeal system has introduced some vulnerabilities. Historically, the system offered members of the intelligence community the kind of stability that ensured that they would keep its secrets. That dynamic is now being eroded. Contracts come and go. So do workforces. The spies of the past came of age professionally in a strong extended family, but the spies of the future will be more like children raised in multiple foster homes -- at risk.

Today, when Booz Allen Hamilton loses a contract to SAIC, people rush from one to the other in a game of musical chairs, with not enough chairs for all the workers who possess both the highest security clearances and expertise in the art of espionage. Some inevitably lose out. Any good counterintelligence officer knows what can happen next. Down-on-their-luck spies begin to do what spies do best: spy. Other companies offer them jobs in exchange for industry secrets. Foreign governments approach them. And some day, terrorists will clue in to this potential workforce.

The director of national intelligence has put our security at risk by classifying the study on outsourcing and keeping the truth about this inadequately planned and managed system out of the light...

Dr. Hillhouse has an excellent blog and has provided some of the most interesting information I've found on the web regarding the intelligence community. I certainly can't agree with everything she says: let's take the example of John Negroponte, an adept manipulator, the kind of classic spook Dr. Hillhouse seems to hold with some regard because of his distaste for letting the Company run the Agency. To me, he's a bad guy: slicker than most, and his politics put him in the Shadow side of the Force.

But there is one thing I agree with her, and apparently, John Negroponte on: the commercialization of the CIA is a serious threat to national security.

He has always been there...

call him the Highlander.

And watch it.

Is there a "Cheney" listed?

And more importantly, which Cheney is it? There are at least three on record that seem to like girls... not that there's anything wrong with that...

аппара́тчик or a member of the номенклату́ра?

So the Regentization of the government continues to pay off for Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton:

A divided federal appeals court yesterday dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down.

The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue.

Because it may be impossible for any plaintiff to demonstrate injury from the highly classified wiretapping program, the effect of the ruling was to insulate it from judicial scrutiny. Thus, the program’s secrecy is proving to be its best legal protection...

Over at Correntewire, Lambert calls this Government by Catch-22, and chicago dyke makes the connection to the style of the old Soviets.

From Wikipedia:

Apparatchik (Russian: аппара́тчик, IPA: [ʌpʌˈraʨɪk] plural apparatchiki) is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management.

Members of the "apparat" were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or "agent of the apparatus" was usually the best possible description of the person's profession and occupation.

You could safely assume, for example, that the Regent University kids installed in upper management levels at NASA to keep the scientists mum on global warming are аппара́тчик.

At the level of the Judiciary, this is a little different. These are trivial installations of mindless toads singing the Company song. These are hard-nosed intelligent minions of Saurons who cope with the evil of the Valley of the Shadow by being some of the biggest mofos in the darkness.

номенклату́ра

Wikipedia, again:

The Russian term nomenklatura (Russian: номенклату́ра, IPA: [nəmʲɪnklʌˈturə]) derived from the Latin nomenclatura meaning a list of names...

The nomenklatura were a small, élite subset of the general population in the Soviet Union who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of the Soviet Union: in government, industry, agriculture, education, etc. Without exception, they were members of the Communist Party.

Nomenklatura had more authority and claimed higher privileges as precisely the same kind of ruling class which Communist doctrine denounced in the "Capitalist" West. Some authors defined them as a new class. Trotskyists preferred the term caste rather than class, since in Marxist terminology nomenclatura was not technically a class...

The nomenklatura referred to the Communist party's authority to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system, as well as throughout the party's own hierarchy. Specifically, the nomenklatura consisted of two separate lists: one was for key positions, appointments to which were made by authorities within the party; the other was for persons who were potential candidates for appointment to those positions. The Politburo, as part of its nomenklatura authority, maintained a list of ministerial and ambassadorial positions that it had the power to fill as well as a separate list of potential candidates to occupy those positions.

Coextensive with the nomenklatura were patron-client relations. Officials who had the authority to appoint individuals to certain positions cultivated loyalties among those whom they appointed. The patron (the official making the appointment) promoted the interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons, such as the members of the Politburo, had many clients. Moreover, an official could be both a client (in relation to a higher-level patron) and a patron (to other, lower-level officials).

Because a client was beholden to his patron for his position, the client was eager to please his patron by carrying out his policies. The Soviet power structure essentially consisted of groups of vassals (clients) who had an overlord (the patron). The higher the patron, the more clients the patron had. Patrons protected their clients and tried to promote their careers. In return for the patron's efforts to promote their careers, the clients remained loyal to their patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron could advance his own power...

It's always good to be as precise in your terminology as possible.

You have a right to know, but if they tell you they have to kill you.

Spotted last night first by xan at Correntewire, a story that raised hackles over at The New york Pravda:

WASHINGTON, July 5 — A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three events in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress.

After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory’s license and said the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes.

But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped “official use only,” meaning that it was not publicly accessible.

“Official use only” is a category below “Secret.” Documents in that category are not technically classified but are kept from the public.

The agency would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were it not for the efforts of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the five commissioners. Mr. Jaczko identified the company, Nuclear Fuel Services of Erwin, Tenn., in a memorandum that became part of the public record. His memorandum said other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services.

Such secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential members of Congress. These lawmakers argue that the agency is withholding numerous documents about nuclear facilities in the name of national security, but that many withheld documents are not sensitive...

Well, maybe not for national security, but that company would have gotten in all kinds of trouble! Good thing Bu$hCo looks out for the rights of its ba$e!

...Additional details of the 2006 event are coming to light now because of a letter sent Tuesday to the nuclear agency by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee chairman, Representative John D. Dingell, and the chairman of the oversight subcommittee, Representative Bart Stupak, both Democrats of Michigan, say the commission “went far beyond” the need to protect security information by keeping documents about Nuclear Fuel Services, a private company, from the public.

The agency, the congressmen said, “has removed hundreds of otherwise innocuous documents relating to the N.F.S. plant from public view.”

Mr. Jaczko, in a telephone interview, said, “Ultimately, we regulate on behalf of the public, and it’s important for them to have a role.” He said he thought other information about Nuclear Fuel Services that should be public had been marked “official use only.”

With a resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year hiatus, agency officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between winning public confidence by regulating openly and protecting sensitive information...

Balance, that's what's needed to safeguard the rights of Free Enterprise. Just ask Fox News, the Fair and Balanced mouthpiece of Sauron.

As laid out by the commission’s report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a “glove box,” a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided it was ordinary uranium.

In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor.

In a puddle, the uranium is not particularly hazardous, but if it formed a more spherical shape, the commission says, it could become a “critical mass,” a quantity and shape of nuclear fuel sufficient to sustain a chain reaction, in this case outside a reactor.

According to the letter sent by the lawmakers, the puddle, containing about nine gallons, reached to within four feet of an elevator pit. Had it flowed into the pit and reached a depth of several inches, it would have been in a shape that might have supported a chain reaction. The letter from the congressmen says the agency’s report suggests “that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur.”

If the material had gone critical, “it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death,” the commission said...

At least. Not to mention the solution might have heated to boiling, concentrating the solution even further, increasing the intensity of the chain reaction...

You normally find highly chemically enriched uranium in yellowcake, but this wouldn’t usually be isotopically enriched for the fissile isotope, nor hot enoguh to be alarming.

Oxidized uranium behaves somewhat like oxidized lead. It really likes biological matter- in fact, uranyl acetate is a standard tissue stain in electron microscopy. It’s quite reactive chemically. But it’s not fissile.

For a liquid solution of uranium to be isotopically enriched and high enough chemical concentration to have the potential of going critical… my gawd, that stuff was hot!

I’ll wager the flooring, the door, and the walls of the entire room it leaked from are now cooling in pieces in a radwaste pit somewhere in Tennessee, possibly on site, because they’d be too damned massive and hot to cart off anywhere else.

An anonymous commenter at Correntewire notes:

Savannah River Site in SC ships weapons surplus uranium to Erwin, TN for use in TVA reactors:

http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/speeches/2006/speech_Brooks_Up-and-Atom-SRS...

But note that in that speech the highly-enriched uranium is supposed to be diluted to “low enriched uranium” at SRS before shipment.

A ppt at:
http://www1.y12.doe.gov/community/NMA/0405NEWS02/NMA%2008_31_04%20(final).ppt

shows that SRS down-blends solution & alloyed metal material, while NFS in Erwin down-blends metal and alloy compounds (slide 11)...

Incidently, it looks like the Powerpoint link has been taken down. Need to know and all of that.

Seething Cauldron of Hell Calls Kettle Black

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday made fun of former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby...

You make it easy, Pony.

Clinton lied once about a blowjob.

The Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton organization lies virtually every time anyone of them takes a breath about virtually everything that has happened since January 20th, 2001.

Some incidents that are particularly jarring include the largest terrorist attack in history in America and a War against a nation totally uninvolved with that attack that has cost us our Constitution, upwards of a trillion dollars, nearly 4000 American lives, tens of thousands of American wounded, tens and likely hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead (it depends on whom you ask), hundreds of thousands of Iraqi injured, and millions of Iraqis displaced.

And Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton, along with Bu$hie's base, has profited nicely from it all.

Universal health care breeds terrorists.

Via Think Progress. Read it and laugh, or cry. I won't give Faux the link; no sense in encouraging the idiots with traffic.

And the trolls come out of the woodwork to comment...