OK, I think his approach has been ham handed and he has been incredibly stupid and courted danger rather than preventing it, and just generally going about everything wrong, but this *is* a good speech. I did not see it on TV, I’ve only read it. But in that context it is good and makes his points well. It is almost convincing!

Iraq Policy at Whitehall Palace
President George W. Bush, 19 Nov 2003, Whitehall, London

Since the liberation of Iraq, we have seen changes that could hardly have been imagined a year ago. A new Iraqi police force protects the people, instead of bullying them. More than 150 Iraqi newspapers are now in circulation, printing what they choose, not what they’re ordered. Schools are open with textbooks free of propaganda. Hospitals are functioning and are well-supplied. Iraq has a new currency, the first battalion of a new army, representative local governments, and a Governing Council with an aggressive timetable for national sovereignty. This is substantial progress. And much of it has proceeded faster than similar efforts in Germany and Japan after World War II.

(via Dean’s World)

It is good news that the Supremes are hearing this. It will be awhile until it actually gets heard and a decision made, but at least it is something. Hopefully they will make the right decision… namely that of COURSE they should have access to civilian courts. There should be absolutley NOTHING that the executive branch does that in the end can’t be at the very least appealed in the normal court system. Our entire system of government is based on checks and balances. To have any area at all where there is no check at all to executive power is extremely dangerous, and should not be allowed.

Supreme Court to Hear Guantanamo Appeals
(Anne Gearan, AP on Yahoo)

The Supreme Court will hear its first case arising from the government’s anti-terrorism campaign following the Sept. 11 attacks, agreeing Monday to consider whether foreigners held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts.

The linked article below is a really good one on the whole debacle that represented the administration’s use (or non-use) of intelligence running up to the invasion of Iraq. It is all about how the top officials knew what they wanted to believe, and intentionally set things up to prevent themselves from hearing anything that would contradict their opinion. It is the exact same effect of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “Na Na Na!! I can’t hear you! Na Na Na!”. What a joke. I’m not sure if any of what happened is actually criminal. Probably not. But it is certainly incompetant and dispicable. What a complete bunch of clowns. And dangerous clowns. They have caused so much damage in the last few years it is unbelieveable.

Anyway, the article is a must read. Read it.

However, I want to point out a specific part near the end. I remember when I was reading about the forged Italian papers when that thing came out screaming to the TV “Follow the forger!!!” but I don’t think I ever blogged about it. It may even have been before I started the blog. But in any case, the quick summary is that an Italian reporter got handed to her (for cash) some documents claiming to back up the Niger Yellowcake connection, just in the nick of time for some of the discussions of the Iraq threat. She did some rudimentary research and quickly determined they were fake. But not before they got handed over to the Americans, and got up to the highest levels, where they were accepted as true.

I was seeing a lot written on who the US believed these, or what the failures were that led them to be accepted, etc… but I thought this was all missing a big point…

Who forged the documents in the first place, and why????

Knowing this would tell a lot. It would either document just who was “playing” us and was so successful into manipulating us (Chalabi anyone?) or perhaps it would lead back to someone in the Administration itself, which would be even more damning. Who knows.

Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, but I saw very little coverage of that aspect of the forged documents. But there is a decent bit about it here in this article. There is “no general consensus” on the origin of the documents, but several possibilities are cited and talked about. Other possibilities are not discussed, but are clearly possible. I quote a bit of that section below. But read the whole article, and pay special attention to that section.

Finding the true source of these documents should be SOMEONES priority right now. At worst there are serious criminal acts here. At best increadibly stupid intelligence failures. This needs to be followed up.

The FBI is looking, and is quoted in the article as saying “somebody’s hiding something, and they’re hiding it pretty well.”

The press should be all over this too. Much more so than they have been so far.

The Stovepipe
(Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker)

Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has been published speculation about the intelligence services of several different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome, is that sismi produced the false documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.'” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—’Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.'” These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

“They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go—to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,” my source said. “They thought it’d be bought at lower levels—a big bluff.” The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration, who would be unable to resist flaunting them at a press conference or an interagency government meeting. They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. “It got out of control.”

(via Just One Minute)

Of course, I should have written about this back in July when I was first thinking “Follow the Forger”, but I think it was before the blog. Speculation is starting to bubble up in the Blogosphere now prompted by the New Yorker article. Lets see it hit the mainstream press in a few days… I hope. It really needs more attention. The whole intelligence mess in general, but this forger link specifically. I think it is potentially very important.

I’d pretty much ignored the stories about Al Gore starting up a new cbale news network, until this caught my eye…

New Al Gore TV Hopes To Avoid ‘Liberal’ Label (Richard Linnett, AdAge)

The Gore-led group of investors is about two weeks away from forming an agreement with Vivendi Universal Entertainment to acquire Canadian-based cable network Newsworld International for about $70 million, said an insider at Universal Television Networks, the Vivendi unit that currently operates the network.

(via WSJ Opinion Journal Best of the Web)

He is going to do it by taking over NWI!!! Now, I can’t say that I watch a LOT of NWI. OK, I can’t say I’ve ever watched a full 30 minutes straight of NWI. But I do flip past it sometimes, and look at the listings for it on my Tivo. It is a quirky little news channel with half hour news shows from a variety of different countries and perspectives. They have some of their own shows too (Canadian based I gather) but then they also have news from ITV in the UK, NHK in Japan, DW in Germany, etc…

I’ve been meaning for awhile to check out more of their news programs. Guess I’d better hurry. Even though it wasn’t much watched by me (and I gather not by too many folks) it will be a shame to lose an outlet where you can easily get those varied perspectives.

Before I watch or listen to any of the pundants and get “spun” here are my initial thoughts on all nine candidates in the debate. This is NOT about how much I agree or disagree with any of them, or who I might consider voting for if I were to vote in the Democratic primary (which I will not, I am a vehement independant). These are just my short summary thoughts on the impressions they left after the debate:

Here are my overall thoughts of all nine:

Mosely-Brown: Came off as a nice lady, but too mushy to be president. Not of any substance or weight.

Kucinich: What a joker. Get him off the stage. He has no grip on reality at all.

Kerry & Gephardt: Almost like twins. Both came off as pompus blowhard assholes.

Sharpton: Was fun to watch. Not a serious candidate in the end, but came off like he thought he was, not like a joke. Made some good points where others were afraid to go. Not having watched the last debate yet, he came off a lot better than I expected.

Clark: Took a couple hits, did not rebutt them well, did not bring anything new to the table, or show anything of his own. He didn’t do anything horribly bad, but gave absolutely nothing on the positive side to speak for him. He didn’t seem really comfortable with himself either.

Leiberman: Personable and serious. Knew what he was talking about. Seemed to have weight behind him. Was a little whiny and annoying, but not too bad. Did not quite pull off the “presidential” vibe, but I’d say he came in 3rd.

Dean: Came off second best behind Edwards. Came off serious and presidential for the most part. Knew what he was talking about. Was sure of himself. But he came off a little, um, I dunno… twitchy… So I don’t think he did quite as well as Edwards, but between them it was close.

Edwards: Best of the bunch I think in terms of performance. Was sure of himself. Knew what his message was. Serious and presidential. And also likable. I’m surprised actually. Hadn’t spent much time looking at Edwards before. I’ll pay a little more attention to him now.

Anyway, the only two of them that left me with a really solid and positive impression where Dean and Edwards. I got very negative impressions from Kucinich, Gephardt and Kerry. The rest were just neutral.

Now, again, this is soley based on how they came off in the debate to me. An evaluation of the actual issues and their positions on them is a completely seperate exercise which I have not looked at in the slightest yet.

[Edited to fix problem pointed out by mithras in the comments.]