Sunday, October 30, 2005

who dunnit ?

large breasted "pretty-girl demonstrator" --as they have been called by western media , in beruit wearing ,"i love mehlis" t-shirt-- in english--obviously for western media consumption--ala "orange revolution" ala "rose revolution" that toppled regimes in former soviet republics that the west wanted replaced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Revolution




rafik hariri at his armored mercedes



last saturday i read the report by detlev mehlis summarizing the investigation commissioned by the Un into the assassination of former lebanese prime minister rafik hariri .

mehlis concluded that further investigation was needed ,but it appeared that all roads lead to damascus.

among other things , the investigation turned up cell phone records that led directly to syrian military intelligence officers and a syrian government official had recently committed 'suicide' , which led to speculation of syrian involvement in hariri's assassination going all the way up to syrian leader bashar al assad .

as said , we read the report ,which was online and consisted of about 60 or so pages of pretty damming information as far as syria was concerned--we could not help but think that --plainly speaking -- a clearer trail to assad's syria could not have existed if someone had deliberately planned it that way --and that is exactly how it seems .

these are syrian "intelligence officers" who are planning and carrying out the murder of a billionaire , very popular at home and internationally well-liked and well respected , recent head of state--a murder syrian intelligence will be immediately connected to and condemned for by the world--and especially by france whose leader was a personal friend of hariri --yet these syrian "intelligence officers" not only authorize for purposes of logistics and coordination of the murder, the purchase and use of phone calling cards that can be easily traced to someone connected to them---they also have the suspected assassins call them on their personal cell phones immediately after the explosion from near the site of the bomb blast to confirm that the nefarious deed has been done.

ok --makes sense--i guess ... while planning this complicated operation that had to thwart billionaire hariri's very sophisticated security measures--security measures that experts say were so sophisticated that they could only be breached by the resources and technology of an even more advanced , more sophisticated intel-agency of a national government --the assassins must have somehow forgotten about cellphone records and that these cellphone records would lead right back to them --ok makes sense to me--but i'm sometimes the gullible type.

but then soon after the bomb blast , an obscure , mysterious "terrorist" group supposedly based in syria--and of course with tendrils connected to --yup you guessed it --iraq , that no one in the region had heard much about before claimed responsibility for the hariri killing.

but get this , the "spokesman" for the mysterious group called in to the local offices of al jazeera to claim responsibility for the hariri bomb blast and made the phone call from a phonebooth located next to the building that headquartered syrian intelligence in lebanon --ok the intel boys were tired after a long morning of preparing and overseeing the blowing up of former prime minister's automobile entourage--they were hungry and it was past time for their lunch break --so these "intelligence" agents did what any one of us in their shoes would do--you're on the boss's clock so save time and make the mandatory , all-important , diversionary phonecall throwing blame for the crime onto some obscure, shadowy "terrorist" group from the nearest phonebooth --how about the one right next to your office building ? ---why not?

it's only an assassinated billionaire former prime minister-- no one will ever check to see where the call came from ---besides it's lunch time--gotta beat those crowds rushing out for cous cous, falafel , lamb kebabs ,tea and oranges--right? makes perfect sense to me .

then of course if you are a bunch of generals in syrian military intelligence ,naturally , you further implicate yourselves before the assassination , by making jokes in front of eyewitnesses that "rafik hariri is soon going bye bye " --so these same eyewitnesses can later testify against you to the international commission sure to be sent to investigate the murder of so internationally prominent an individual.

then as the 'piece d'resistance' or 'coup d'grace'-- however you want to look at it---allow there to be another eyewitness who claims to have personally seen in a syrian military camp , the now infamous white mitsubishi van being loaded with the 1000 kgs of explosives that investigators claim was the truck bomb that supposedly killed hariri and 20 others .

allow the person who claims to have driven the now infamous white van from the military base to the staging area not only to live --but to live to testify against you before the international investigative commission that is certain to arrive following the assassination in broad daylight of a billionaire former head of state--who is a personal friend of the leader of france --ok that makes sense too--i guess it does--some where...

and then allow that same explosive-laden , highly visible, attention grabbing ,easily remembered, white mitsibishi van --originally stolen from japan-- btw , to be photographed by bank surveillance cameras at the crime scene only minutes before the assassination ---driving five times slower than normal traffic--making absolutely certain that it gets picked up on that surveillance camera and recorded on film for posterity --and of course recorded permanently in the mind's eyes of any survivors at the blast scene (as in , "did you notice anything unusual before the explosion ,sir ? was there anything out of the ordinary that you remember before the bomb went off ma'm ? " )

then there's the blast site itself--photos show a huge, enormous crater---large jagged chunks of asphalt blown out and the dirt under the street revealed --photos that led many to believe that the bomb had to have been planted underground and detonated by wire--hariri's security included expensive electronic jamming devices to thwart an iraqi styled cellphone-triggered roadside bomb.



a shape charge could have been planted underground and detonated by wire or by laser

hariri's sophisticated electronic protection gear plus the the damage to the street led many to believe that the bomb had to have been planted underground and detonated by wire--it led some to believe that a shape charge had been planted there because the force of the blast has to be focussed in order to do that type of damage to the street and leave that deep a crater as a result. from photographs , the estimates of the depth of the hariri bomb crater were 12 to 14 feet deep and 32 feet in diameter

note that in this quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_terrorist_bombing a similar 1000kg bomb ,also left in a white mitsubishi van btw, in the infamous 2002 bali bombing , resulted in only a 3 foot crater
At 23:05 (15:05 UTC) on 12 October 2002, an electronically triggered bomb hidden in a backpack ripped through Paddy's Bar. The device was small and crude, but killed the backpack owner, likely a suicide operative. The injured immediately fled into the street. Approximately ten to fifteen seconds later, a second much more powerful car bomb of close to 1,000 kg, concealed in a white Mitsubishi van was detonated by remote control in front of the Sari Club. Windows throughout the town were blown out. The explosion left a three feet deep crater [1]. There were scenes of horror and panic inside and outside the bars. The local hospital was unable to cope with the number of injured, particularly burn victims. Many of the wounded, of all nationalities, were flown by the Royal Australian Air Force to hospitals in Darwin and other Australian cities.

Almost simultaneously, a third bomb detonated in the street in front of the American consulate in Bali. This bomb caused no injuries, and only modest damage.






yet in hariri's assassination in beruit , despite this huge crater that was reportedly so deep that the grey material seen at the bottom of it was said to actually have been flotsam carried in by seawater seeping in from below -- irish , italian and german bomb experts told detlev mehlis' Un commission that the hariri blast was caused by an above ground explosion

click for larger version

'Truck bomb' killed Rafik Hariri
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a truck filled with explosives, say UN investigators.

The head of the team, Detlev Mehlis, told reporters this contradicted widespread speculation that the explosives were buried under the road.

Some Lebanese believed recent road works near the attack site suggested officials may have been involved in a plot to assassinate Hariri.

His death led to protests calling for the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon.

Syrian troops withdrew last month following a wave of opposition protests blaming Damascus for the assassination.

Correspondents say the investigators' report opens up the field of possible suspects to beyond Lebanon or Syria.

Investigation continues

It is still not clear whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, Mr Mehlis said.

"The explosion was beyond any reasonable doubt above ground," he said. "There was no indication of an underground explosion."

Mr Mehlis, whose team arrived in Lebanon at the end of May, said he would question officials in charge at the time of the attack - including Syrians.

"We will of course investigate everyone who was in one way or another responsible for security in Lebanon at the time of the crime," he said.

Mr Hariri was killed in the bomb attack in Beirut on 14 February, along with 19 other people. Syria denies any involvement.

The investigation continues as Lebanon holds staggered parliamentary elections over four Sundays with the last round being held this weekend.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4103374.stm

Published: 2005/06/17 12:21:22 GMT

© BBC



before the mehlis report , observers believed because of the size and depth of the hariri bomb crater that it had to be a planted bomb and possibly a shape charge which could be detonated by remote control device like a laserbeam which unlike cellphone signals , would not be stopped by hariri's security's electronic jamming devices --such bombs are the forte along with traceless poisons , of israeli mossad .

despite 20 years of israeli military occupation in southern lebanon and the open cooperation and collaboration of the lebanese phalangist parties and militias with ariel sharon and the israeli military during the decades of israeli occupation, and despite a bloody history of direct israeli interference in lebanese political affairs before , during and after lebanon's 15 year civil war-- the mehlis report seems to overlook the possibility of mossad still operating in lebanon carrying out tel aviv's and likud's right wing interventionist agenda and turns its full investigative focus on syrian and lebanese intelligence --focusses on truck bombs rather than below ground planted explosives and suicide truck-bombers rather than more sophisticated wire or laser detonation .



bashar al assad


syrian intel organizations these past decades have been characterized as cautious and meticulous --not prone to bold or foolhearty moves--like the cautious and meticulous bashar assad--syrian leader the past five years and his father the late hafez al assad , who ruled for decades before him .

the killing of hariri was a very bold move --the assads have always seemed cautious men --and as the younger assad himself and several other observers have pointed out ---killing hariri would not gain syria anything--in fact it would , and has, cost them much locally and internationally .

because of recent events forcing syria out of lebanon , hezbollah stands alone if israel decides to return to lebanon to extend israeli regional influence (google "greater israel"), to gain access to lebanese drinking water--water is almost as valuable as oil in the middle east --or to avenge the israeli's earlier defeat in lebanon at the hands of hezbollah , iran , the plo and syria , or to aid the neo-cons in placing a bush-friendly regime in power in beruit that would permit Us air and naval access to the country's ports and air-space making "unreliable" turkey much more of an obsolete ally in Us military planning for future operations in the middle east /western asia region.


as the cries for economic sanctions against syria along with the cries for regime change echo louder from washington , tel aviv , london and possibly paris , the question again must be asked who REALLY killed rafik hariri ?

and also the question must be asked , why would a cautious syrian regime that was bending over backwards to appease the americans --cooperating significantly with the bush administration in the "war on terror" and trying to cooperate in the "war in iraq" , risk everything--including its own existence, in a bold and equally foolish gamble to kill the popular hariri who was well-liked not only in the region but well-liked in the west--and then after killing this former head of state --leave a trail a blindman could follow right up to their own doorstep in damascus ?

again the most important question is still left unanswered --"who benefits?"

Saturday, October 29, 2005

scooter takes a 'bullet' for the team...

Morris: Libby Indictment Implicates Cheney

On Fox News, former presidential advisor Dick Morris says today’s events don’t bode well for Dick Cheney:

"JOHN GIBSON: How bad is this damage? And what does the president need to control it, Dick?

DICK MORRIS: Well, it depends on whether we are just talking about Libby. If the prosecutor is happy with an indictment of him, a conviction, and that scalp on the wall is sufficient for him, then it just goes away. It’s one bad chapter and it passes.

But it is very possible that the prosecutor looks up the food chain to Vice President Cheney. These investigations have a way of rising. And according to the terms of the indictment, Cheney told Libby about Valerie Plame and then Libby lied to the grand jury about how he found about it, saying that he got it from a reporter. Well, if that’s the case, the vice president knew that Libby was lying.

And it wasn’t like his grand jury was secret. It was all over the place, you could read it in any newspaper. So my question is, why didn’t the vice president say anything? Why didn’t he speak up? And when you’re out there committing perjury and your boss is silent, and your boss knows that you’re doing that, it’s [the silence is] a subtle signal from your boss to say, “I appreciate it.”

UPDATE: Crooks & Liars has the video."






libby resigns after indictment for lying to grand jury in the growing 'Plamegate' scandal








(...meanwhile ,back in the whitehouse war room,'the team' watches the 'faux news channel'...)
"wow ! look at that . old scooter took one for you ,dick ...now that's REAL loyalty !"

"loyalty my arse ,georgie --scooter's a smart boy --he knew it was either take one for the team ,or tomorrow's papers would read : 'disgraced former chief of staff suicides by taking six to the head from a muzzle-loading flintlock rifle' . scooter made the smart choice , georgie ..."

ashe mama rosa , ashe









rosa l. parks
*february 4 1913 +october 24 2005

Saturday, October 15, 2005

it says it all...













(click photo for larger image )

through foul up after foul up , bush and the REPUGNANTCANS have practically handed their own heads on a plate to the other party--"the other whitemeat"

what the hell is wrong with the DUMBOCRATS ???

Sunday, October 09, 2005

we called it 'treason' -- more than 6 months ago--

http://deskrat.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_deskrat_archive.html
* yeah i know it's probably a sin to quote yourself but we did call the outting of cia agent valerie plame by members of a "war president's" administration and /or staff --perhaps by the 'war president' and / or his vp themselves --during a time of war --treason --plain and simple--

now a member of 'veteran intelligence professionals for sanity'--"vips" calls plame's outting the treasonous act that it obviously was...i got slapped around and made to appear like a nut when i called in to some radio show hosted in a metropolitan area i was visiting last spring while seeking treatment for an old sports related injury. guess that ridicule goes with the territory when you criticize this administration but at least , i can say to that radioshow host and her guest who cut me off , "i told you so"



Author: d sekou
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 12:28 pm

[No profile available]

yeah , that's ...the guy i talked to yesterday...(* the guest that previous day on a radio call in show--DOUGLAS McCOLLAM, a lawyer/journalist whose article on the topic of valerie plame, judith miller etc. was published in the Columbia Journalism Review) they blocked everything i tried to say except my original question.

the callers after me weren't blocked ...one caller made two replies to the guest's reply... i tried for about five minutes to get a point across and they blocked every one of my rebuttal comments from going over the public airwaves...and then AFTER, the host and the guest pooh pooh my question and try to make me look like a wild eyed "jump to conclusionist"...

AFTER the guest finished his weak rebuttal of my question, the host says "thank you for your call diallo"- as if this guy refuted my question of whether "war president" bush and his people did a treasonable act in outting plame ---she (the host ) acted like her guest refutted my question so badly that i was left speechless...


it reminds me of the net noir type days when this nut i was debating in a room he was administrator of blocked my text so i could not respond to his ridiculous claims that there was no arab enslavement of blacks ... the dirty little neegrow then announced to the rest of the room over and over " you see! sekou has no response because he has no evidence ! he's too mentally weak to respond to my logic and truth "





on the plame thing , the only way to get the info that plame is covert cia is from someone with higest national security clearance. to get such clearance, that "someone" must first sign several agreements stating under penalty of law that classified information is kept secret .

whoever provided the information about plame had to have signed and then violated that confidentiality agreement .

back in the 70s or so ,a --quote unquote-- "left wing" type of publication somehow got a list of cia operatives over seas .

they published the list and one of the outted cia agents was kidnapped and killed -- i think his name was james buckley .

the law requiring prosecution and 10 years in prison for intentionally revealing this type of classified info and outting cia operatives was the direct result of the buckley killing...back then the rightwing screamed that the left wing "outters" committed treason by aiding the enemies of the Us and getting cia personnel killed .

in the plame case the 70 people under her in her covert network were rendered ineffective and some killed ...in a state of "war"...under a "war" president --as that idiot is so fond of calling himself , to knowingly reveal classified information --information that could help the so called "terrorists" --information that allowed "enemies" of the Us to kill covert assets who were operating for the Us --compromising an entire intelligence undercover network---in a time of war --is treason plain and simple.

what if plame's network was about to uncover plans of another 9-11 attack on the Us ?

if this had happened under clinton's administration , he and hillary would both be in prison...but of course we know the rightwing nuts selectively apply their "moral" standards .

free speech ? ...yeah right...whatever...
Author: d sekou
Monday, March 14, 2005 - 11:56 am

[No profile available]

wow ! i called in JUST NOW to the "radio times" show carried in syndication out here by npr .

the topic was freedom of the press --in particular they concentrated on the valerie plame case and a reporter's right to not have to reveal their sources . apparently the judith miller /matt cooper thing is an appendage to the valerie plame case --which was the core of the discussion...the guest's article in columbia journalism review was titled something like "the dangers in the valerie plame case"


"Radio Times for Monday, March 14th
Hour 1
Should reporters be required to reveal their sources when the information is useful in prosecuting a crime? That's the question at the core of the case against New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matt Cooper of Time magazine. We'll explore the dilemma with DOUGLAS McCOLLAM, a lawyer/journalist whose article on the topic was published in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review."

they picked up on the second ring --indicating not an overflow of callers this morning

i gave my info-- name and where i was calling from ,explained what my question was and waited patiently on the phone for my turn . then i finally got on .

i brought up the jeff gannon /johnny gosch thing .{http://www.rense.com/general63/hey.htm} told them on -air that it's all over the internet ...the real issue is not "protect your sources/freedom of the press"-- the real issue was whether the bush administration used "freedom of the press/protect your sources" to hide the fact that they committed treason by DELIBERATELY releasing the CLASSIFIED "valerie plame is CIA" info to whitehouse phony 'reporter' jeff gannon as retaliation for plame's husband puncturing bush and blair's "saddam wanted yellow-cake uranium from niger to build a nuke" hoax .

the host-- marty moss-cowain-- asked me on-air where on the internet had i read this --i mentioned sherman skolnick's name --offered to give the web site address ---she IMMEDIATELY said "I'm NOT INTERESTED IN THE WEBSITE ADDRESS" --the guest immediately "pooh poohed" my statement by basically saying it a was a big exaggeration to call outting plame "treason" and went on to continue to his speil about "freedom of the press -quoting thomas jefferson-'i'd rather have A free press and no government than no free press and A government' blah blah blah...spin spin spin bulshit bullshit bullshit" ...

during this LONG speil, i politely kept trying to interject and clarify WHY it was treason, but i don't know if they had me on block and the listening audience could not hear me --i had my radio turned down very low and couldn't hear myself when i tried to speak the second time---BUT i believe they could hear me in the studio because the guy seemed to grow more and more irritated as i tried to respond AS he TALKED OVER ME AND NEVER LET ME GET ANOTHER WORD IN EDGEWISE.

when he finished his spin the host quickly said "we have another caller" and "free speech" was through with me...


interesting that the caller before me asked a question --remained on-air for the guest's reply and then was able to make another comment on the guest's reply...which happens often on these shows--i've heard the host at times ASK for a caller to respond to the guest's response to the caller's question --and appear SURPRISED that the caller did not hold on , and was not there anymore---so it's not unusual to be able to respond to the guest's response to your question --especially since time was not short -- BUT apparently NOT THIS TIME---or as the football player in that VISA commercial on tv says, "Not in OUR house buddy. Not today ! ...Not today... not tomorrow..."

so much for free speech...

" a case of treason"

A Case Of Treason
Larry Johnson
October 06, 2005

Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the fact that Valerie Plame, wife of former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA undercover operative, is nearing completion. Virtually lost in the recent spurt of press reporting is the fact that the compromise of Ms. Plame (and, as night follows the day her carefully cultivated network of spies) was unconscionable. Ms. Plame, a very gifted case officer, was a close colleague of mine at CIA. Her dedication and courage were clear in her willingness to assume the risks of an agent under non-official cover—meaning that if you get caught, too bad, you’re on your own; the US government never heard of you.

The supreme irony is that Plame’s network was reporting on the priority-one issue—weapons of mass destruction. Thus, it was made abundantly clear to all, including potential intelligence sources abroad, that even when priority-one intelligence targets are involved, Bush administration officials will not shrink from exposing such sources for petty political purpose. The harm to CIA and its efforts to recruit spies willing to take risks to provide intelligence information is immense.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Ambassador Wilson publicly exposed an important lie, and the president as liar, when he debunked the report that Iraq was seeking uranium in the African country of Niger. Still, as Wilson himself has suggested, the primary objective of leaking his wife’s employment at CIA was not to retaliate against him personally, but rather to issue a stark warning to others privy to administration lies on the war not to speak out. Administration officials felt they needed to provide an object lesson of what truth tellers can expect in the way of swift retaliation.

All Based On A Forgery

Indictments or no, the mainstream media will continue to play down this key aspect of the story, and—equally important—prescind completely from the event that started the whole business—the forging of documents to feed the spurious report that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger for its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Together with other circumstantial evidence, the neuralgic reaction of Vice President Dick Cheney to press reports that he was point man for promoting the bogus report suggests that he may also have been its founding father, so to speak. We do not rule out the possibility that he and his chief of staff Lewis Libby may have had a hand in commissioning the forgery, as a way to come up with an “intelligence report” with “mushroom cloud” written all over it, in order to deceive Congress into approving an unnecessary war.

These are the key neglected issues underneath the superficial who-said-what-to-whom-when press reportage. Small wonder that many of those following this story are missing the forest for the trees. It is important that a fuller story be available to citizens of this country, to enable us all to judge the enormity and significance of what happened. Accordingly, my Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues and I thought it would be useful to boil down some key facts in digestible form:

Feb. 13, 2002: According to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” of July 2004 (pp 38-39), Vice President Cheney asked his CIA morning briefer for the Agency’s analysis of a report he had seen in a Defense Intelligence Agency publication that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) issued an intelligence assessment with limited distribution. It said, “Information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.” The assessment also noted, “Some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the U.S. Embassy in Niamey. U.S. diplomats say the French Government-led consortium that operates Niger's two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production." The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President’s office, which differed only in that it named the foreign government service. Officials from the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) told the Senate Intelligence Committee that, in response to questions from the Vice President's Office and also the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, all were told that the Agency would look into it further.

Feb. 19: CIA operations managers—not Valerie Plame—decide to send Joseph Wilson to Niger to make immediate inquiries, according to CIA officials. Wilson, who was acting ambassador in Baghdad when the 1991 Gulf War began, had also served in Niger before becoming ambassador to Gabon. After meeting with DO managers and other intelligence community officials at CIA headquarters on Feb. 19, Wilson was commissioned to go to Niger and investigate.

Feb. 26: Ambassador Wilson arrives in Niger. He determined during the course of his visit that there was no substance to the allegation that Iraq was trying to procure uranium in Niger. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger told the Senate Committee that Ambassador Wilson’s conclusion was the same as that reached earlier by the U.S. embassy in Niger.

Early March: Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue: According to the Senate report on intelligence prewar performance, Cheney had not forgotten his original request. And so CIA officers immediately debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up his report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report).

Fall of 2002: CIA officials repeatedly warn Administration and Congressional officials not to accept as fact the claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium: According to the Senate report (p. 54), the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency told Senator Kyl that the CIA did not agree with the British view that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. On Oct. 6, 2002, CIA Director Tenet called Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley and warned him not to use the information in a presidential speech the next day (three days before Congress voted to authorize war). Hadley removed the passage from the speech (p. 56).

Jan. 28, 2003: In his State of the Union Address, the President includes the (in)famous bogus “16 words.” The President says, “The British government has learned (sic) that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

May 23: Vice President Cheney’s office reacts neurologically to May 23 report by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof regarding the mission of a “former US ambassador” to Niger, and in particular to Kristof’s assertion that the Vice President had instigated the trip: According to former senior CIA officials, Cheney’s aides were ”very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way.”

June: The White House, with the participation of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby (and, according to one recent report, of the president and vice president themselves), conceives and then executes a plan to discredit Ambassador Wilson. A variety of reports from journalists and others show that as early as the end of May, White House officials were trying to dig up dirt on Ambassador Wilson. And the State Department reportedly drafted a top-secret memorandum that identified Valerie Plame by her maiden name and made the connection.

July 13 : Robert Novak, citing two Administration sources, identified Valerie Plame by name as a CIA operative. Plame was still undercover when Novak published her name and thus compromised not only Plame, but also the many agents she had recruited—to provide information on weapons of mass destruction, for example. She had conducted several overseas missions as part of her cover job.

Betrayal. There is no other word for it. Except, some might call it treason.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy
Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.

By Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey
Times Staff Writers

September 27, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La. — Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

"It doesn't take anything to start a rumor around here," Louisiana National Guard 2nd Lt. Lance Cagnolatti said at the height of the Superdome relief effort. "There's 20,000 people in here. Think when you were in high school. You whisper something in someone's ear. By the end of the day, everyone in school knows the rumor — and the rumor isn't the same thing it was when you started it."

Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.

Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.

Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."

The New York Times repeated some of the reports of violence and unrest, but the newspaper usually was more careful to note that the information could not be verified.

The tabloid Ottawa Sun reported unverified accounts of "a man seeking help gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and "a young man run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer."

London's Evening Standard invoked the future-world fantasy film "Mad Max" to describe the scene and threw in a "Lord of the Flies" allusion for good measure.

Televised images and photographs affirmed the widespread devastation in one of America's most celebrated cities.

"I don't think you can overstate how big of a disaster New Orleans is," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for professional journalists. "But you can imprecisely state the nature of the disaster. … Then you draw attention away from the real story, the magnitude of the destruction, and you kind of undermine the media's credibility."

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city's two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports. Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

Of the 841 recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said. One victim was found in the Superdome but was believed to have been brought there, and one was found at the Convention Center, he added.

Relief workers said that while the media hyped criminal activity, plenty of real suffering did occur at the Katrina relief centers.

"The hurricane had just passed, you had massive trauma to the city," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard.

"No air conditioning, no sewage … it was not a nice place to be. All those people just in there, they were frustrated, they were hot. Out of all that chaos, all of these rumors start flying."

Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron, who headed security at the Superdome, said that for every complaint, "49 other people said, 'Thank you, God bless you.' "

The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.

Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

"We had to convince people this was still the best place to be," Bush said. "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people."

But, Bush said, those stories received scant attention in newspapers or on television.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

so why did media and government officials feed us images demonizing blacks as criminals and animals ?







Lurid reports of rape, murder in Katrina’s aftermath exposed as frauds
By Joseph Kay
30 September 2005



A series of articles over the past week have confirmed that the widespread reports of massive looting, murder and violence in hurricane-devastated
New Orleans were either concocted out of whole cloth or grossly exaggerated. In the first several days after New Orleans was inundated, these stories were disseminated by government officials at the federal, state and local level, and trumpeted by the media in banner headlines and lurid TV accounts.

Now that officials have been forced to admit that they had little or no evidence of armed thugs roaming the devastated city and mugging, raping and killing tourists and stranded residents, they and their media accomplices are seeking to explain away the disinformation campaign as the inadvertent result of confusion, fear and the breakdown in communications in New Orleans.


In fact, the picture of rampant lawlessness and violence conjured up by the government and the media served definite and entirely reactionary political purposes. President Bush himself picked up the theme of “lawlessness” shortly after he curtailed his Texas vacation—well after the city had been inundated and the dimensions of the human disaster had become clear—and returned to Washington.

In an interview on ABC Television’s “Good Morning America” program on September 1, he said, “[T]here ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this.”

In making these comments, Bush was continuing a theme already developed by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, both Democrats. On August 31, just two days after the hurricane passed over the city, Nagin declared that gangs of looters “are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas—hotels, hospitals, and we’re going to stop it right now.” He moved to shift virtually the entire police force from search-and-rescue to anti-looting duties.

Governor Blanco announced the same day that “we will restore law and order.” She bemoaned the fact that “disasters like this often bring out the worst in people.” A day later, she announced that a force of National Guard troops was entering the city: “They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded,” she declared. “These troops know how to shoot to kill... and I expect they will.”

Nagin, together with Police Superintendent Edwin Compass III, sounded an even more sensational note the following week. The two appeared on the “Oprah” television show on September 4. Compass declared, “The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they’re being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them on the streets.” He repeated accounts of “little babies getting raped” in the Superdome, where thousands of stranded hurricane victims had been left by the authorities to suffer in sweltering heat for days on end without food, water or electricity.

Nagin spoke of an “almost animalistic state” inside the Superdome, where, he claimed, “hooligans” were “killing people, raping people.”

There is no evidence that these horrible events took place. According to a September 26 article in the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, “the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.”

The Times-Picayune noted that during early September, the media in the US and internationally was reporting widespread killings and rapes by gangs in both the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center. However, an investigation by the newspaper found that just 10 bodies were recovered from the two venues. Of the six found in the Superdome, “four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide,” the newspaper wrote, citing Louisiana National Guard Colonel Thomas Beron.

It is believed that only one of the deaths in the Convention Center may have been a murder. The reports of widespread sexual assaults were likewise unfounded. According to a New York Times article of September 29, “During six days when the Superdome was used as a shelter, the head of the New Orleans Police Department’s sex crimes unit, Lt. David Benelli, said he and his officers lived inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. In the end, they made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other attacks had not happened.”

New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said that in the city as a whole, only four murders had been confirmed during the week after the hurricane hit, which is about average for the city.

These findings expose the utter falsehood of the stories that were floated at the time, particularly by police officials. Compass spoke of residents toting weapons in crowds, shooting at each other and at police.

“People would be shooting at us, and we couldn’t shoot because of the families,” Compass told Chris Elsberry of the Connecticut Post as late as September 19. “All we could do is rush toward the flash.”

But Jeff Winn, the leader of the SWAT unit that Compass said had seized 30 weapons in this way, denied that anything of the sort happened. According to the Times-Picayune, Winn “said his unit saw muzzle flashes and heard gunshots only one time. Despite aggressively frisking a number of suspects, the team recovered no weapons.”

The numerous reports of people shooting at helicopters that were trying to rescue people have likewise turned out to be untrue. As for the massive looting that was supposed to have occurred, this too was exaggerated. Most of the looting that did occur was directed at gaining access to food and other necessities. In at least one case, in which a Wal-Mart store was looted, the removal of goods was begun by police, under instructions from their commanders to take what they needed.

As always, the US media has played a despicable role. AP reporter Michelle Roberts noted in an article on September 27, “Many news organizations, including the Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.”

Both right-wing and “liberal” news sources took the rumors and government statements at face value. The New York Times recorded in an article on September 19 some of the statements made by television commentators. On September 1, Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were “all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews.” Later that night, MSNBC talking-head Tucker Carlson declared hysterically that “People are being raped. People are being murdered. People are being shot. Police officers are being shot.” These are only a sample of the sort of comments that were ubiquitous at the time.

On September 2, in a banner headline that stretched across the entire front page, the Washington Post declared New Orleans to be “A City of Despair and Lawlessness.” The newspaper’s lead editorial of that day bemoaned the fact that “looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant.”

Given the inhuman and life-threatening conditions in which tens of thousands of New Orleans residents were left, and the incompetence and indifference of the authorities at all levels of government, the wonder is not that looting occurred, along with some acts of violence, but that they were relatively limited.

What accounts for these extraordinarily exaggerated accounts? They served three interrelated purposes. First, to counter and blunt the enormous outpouring of sympathy for the victims of the hurricane, accompanied by public outrage at the government’s lack of preparations and inept response. This sympathy was felt particularly strongly for the impoverished and largely African American section of the population that was left stranded in the city, either in the squalid conditions of the Superdome and Convention Center, or trapped on rooftops of homes engulfed by the flood.

By criminalizing the population, the government, at a local and national level, sought to draw attention away from its own responsibility. The implication was that the victims themselves were to blame. The idea was promoted that those who remained in the city did so because they had willfully refused to follow evacuation orders, even though it had long been known that tens of thousands would be unable to follow these orders for lack of transportation. This attempt to paint the victims with the brush of criminality had more a hint of racism.

Second, the government and the media attempted, in the first days after the hurricane, to blame hooligan violence for the failure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other official bodies to mount rescue and relief operations. In particular, the reports of helicopters being shot at as they attempted to bring relief were hyped for this purpose.

The media line in these first critical days was that rescue efforts were rendered impossible by the lawlessness that had seized hold of the stricken city. “Law and order” had to be restored before starving and dying people could be helped.

Finally, the sensational accounts paved the way for the transformation of New Orleans into a militarized city. As has become increasingly clear, the Bush administration is seeking to use the hurricane disaster as a pretext for the elimination of remaining restrictions on military involvement in domestic missions and law enforcement. Plans to increase the power of the military within the US have long been in the works, institutionalized in the Department of Homeland Security and the US Northern Command, but the devastation of New Orleans has provided an excuse for their realization.