intelligence community

House Republicans Refuse To Vote On Resolution Honoring The Seals Who Killed Bin Laden

The measure already passed the Senate by a 97-0 vote and wouldn’t take much time to pass on the House floor either:

House Republicans say they have no plans to follow the Senate in passing a resolution honoring the military mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

The decision by GOP leaders follows new rules they enacted in January scrapping the tradition of congratulatory measures, which they complained clogged up the House floor.

The Senate on Tuesday passed a resolution, 97-0, commending “the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and the United States intelligence community for the tremendous commitment, perseverance, professionalism and sacrifice they displayed in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.” The measure commended President Obama and reaffirmed the Senate’s commitment “to disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda.” It also recognized former President George W. Bush’s efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The lack of House action drew criticism from some Democrats, who said an exception to the new rules was more than warranted for the killing of America’s No. 1 enemy.

Republicans had no problems a couple of years ago pushing a resolution to recognize “the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith”, shouldn’t the brave men and women who were in harms way deserve the same amount of attention? I guess not, especially since John Boehner considers every lost soldier a “small price to pay”. Absolutely disgusting.

Politics

Bring On Nick Fury And Iron Man!

The Wikileaks document dump is bringing some in the Senate to action:

Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) introduced a bill Thursday aimed at stopping WikiLeaks by making it illegal to publish the names of military or intelligence community informants.

Ensign accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his "cronies" of hindering America's war efforts and creating a "hit list" for U.S. enemies by outing intelligence sources.

“Our sources are bravely risking their lives when they stand up against the tyranny of al Qaeda, the Taliban and murderous regimes, and I simply will not stand idly by as they become death targets because of Julian Assange," Ensign said. "Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.”

And what’s the name of this bill?

The Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act (SHIELD) would give the government the flexibility to pursue Assange for allegedly outing confidential U.S. informants.

YES! This is a MARVELous idea. I bet Stan Lee can help come up with some new agents to go after Assange.

National Security

Republicans Show Their Disdain For The Constitution

With the arrest of a Pakistani born, U.S. citizen in connection with the failed car bombing on Times Square, the Republican members of Congress are starting to show that they have absolutely no respect for the Constitution of this land:

The morning after the arrest of 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad at John F. Kennedy airport on Monday evening, the usual suspects in the GOP took to print and the airwaves to whack away at the president and his top lawyer. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) mocked the idea that Attorney General Eric Holder might read the suspect his Miranda rights or consider trying him in a civilian court.

"I hope that [Attorney General Eric] Holder did discuss this with the intelligence community. If they believe they got enough from him, how much more should they get? Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still," King said.

Notorious for jumping into the political fray in the wake of attempted or successful terrorist acts, King was quickly joined in the ring by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who called the idea of reading Miranda rights a "serious mistake."

As matter of fact McCain has even gone to the right of Glenn Beck now:

"He is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens," the bombastic Fox News host said to the stunned co-hosts of "Fox and Friends". "If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution."

"We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular," Beck added. "We do the right thing."

How Bad Are Those Prisoner Abuse Photos?

When President Obama changed his mind and said he wouldn’t release those photos I figured it had to be something really bad.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Reading this I kept thinking back to 2003 when Bush and his ilk were out there saying “Saddam has these rape and torture rooms”. Well guess what? So do we..

As we continue to learn more about Gitmo and Abu Gharib its becoming harder to believe that Abu Gharib was just a few soldiers acting on their own ambitions. We already know that what we saw happening in the original Abu Gharib manuals pretty much mimic what the EIT memos were saying. That means someone either gave orders/guidance or we have just seen the king of all coincidences.

No matter what cause Abu Gharib to occur, one thing is for certain. We now need a full blown inquiry. It mustn’t be limited to one facility, but to the military and intelligence community as a whole. This is the kind of investigation that only Congress along with a army of prosecutors can delve into. Hopefully this latest report will put us closer to that reality, and that reality is that this happened at the hands of the U.S.:

(photos after the fold – graphic warning)

How Many Prisoners Escape Supermax Prisons?

Andrew Sullivan raises a great point by asking that very question. The right is in a frenzy over the article I posted earlier about the released Gitmo detainee that was involved in the U.S. embassy attack in Yemen. What they are trying to do is create a strawman here. If our prisons are so at risk for these people to escape, then we have much bigger problems. Terrorists go for these big glamorous attacks. They take a lot of planning and resources to pull off, meaning there is more time to catch them. That is actually a lot better than some serial rapist or mass murder who would escape and just go out and start doing his crimes all over again instantly.

I still believe there is some serious questions regarding the detainee released from Gitmo. First and foremost, it really casts a dark shadow on the intelligence community that Bush was supposed to have overhauled. Why did they let him go if he was really such a bad man? There is also a chance that he wasn’t so bad when caught. Perhaps this guy was actually innocent, but the treatment he received at Gitmo forced him over to the bad side. I would love to see the Obama administration really dig into this to find out, as I wouldn’t be shocked one bit if that did happen. We have been warned that could happen for years.

But there is still something to think about here. This guy didn’t escape Gitmo, like Frank Lee Morris of Alcatraz fame. Instead he was released. That is a key word that seems to be missing from the wingnut argument, like this one from Gateway Pundit:

Again, there are at least 61 former Gitmo detainees who returned to terror.
Barack Obama wants to close Gitmo.

Or this one on Pajamas Media:

Closing Guantanamo and the court decisions granting enemy combatants access to the US legal system will jointly make it impossible for the US to detain prisoners again.

These people are so dunk on the Bush/Cheney era Kool-Aid that they can not comprehend the most serious issue here. Our military, under the command of George W. Bush, let this guy go into the wild. So I need to ask again – was this a failure in our intelligence and military court system, or did our system actually create this guy through the treatment he received? This isn’t an attempt to take a jab at the former administration or Gitmo, but rather it’s a very serious question that should be asked so it doesn’t happen again.

Obama in no way said he was closing Gitmo and letting everyone go. On the contrary, he wants to investigate every legal option we have available to bring them to justice. The report by the New York Times is not bad news for the Obama administration. On the contrary, it is supporting evidence that our system under George Bush was flawed – fatally flawed. Obama wants to overhaul that system, and this report is just the proof he needs that the system does need overhauled.

And I do stand by my former statement that having all these people in the same closed facility is much more dangerous than having them separate and spread throughout the world. People learn to communicate in prison, regardless of any rules or separation. That means again reaffirms my earlier notion that this detainee could have actually been innocent, but became a “product of the system”. In other words – we created this terrorist by the very actions President Obama wants to get rid of and the right wants to keep.

(Updated below the fold)

The Bush Administration’s Final Terror Threat

Here we go:

HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES STATEMENT ON POTENTIAL OBAMA THREAT -- 1030 AM ET -- Statement from a Department of Homeland Security spokesman:

"The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (including the USSS) and the intelligence community are coordinating with other law enforcement authorities to investigate and analyze recently received information about a potential threat on Inauguration Day. This information is of limited specificity and uncertain credibility. Authorities at all levels are vigorously pursuing any lead relating to this threat information. The Transition Team has been briefed and is fully integrated into the process.

There is an unprecedented level of security involving more than 58 federal, state and local agencies for this Inauguration, and related events. As we have previously said, Inauguration events could present an attractive target due to the large public gatherings and participation of many dignitaries. Authorities are constantly reviewing security measures in light of this threat information, as we would with any threat information.

We encourage the public attending Inauguration events to go about their normal plans. As always, we remind the public to be both thoughtful and vigilant about their surroundings, and to notify authorities of any suspicious activity. We also remind the public that they can expect very high levels of security at Inauguration events, and we ask for their patience and cooperation."

Is anyone surprised?

4 Years Later

And we finally get Phase 2 of the Iraqi pre-war intelligence report. This is the phase Republicans held up in 2004, because "it would effect the outcome of the presidential election". Would it? Hell yes it would. Here are some of the key findings:

* Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
* Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
* Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
* Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
* The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
* The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

With All The Success, Should It Be A Secret?

Officials are looking at keeping the next Iraq assessment a "secret":

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

Yes - nothing like transparency. So if things are going so great, why not share it with the people? Something sounds fishy here.

Lies - Nothing But Damn Lies!

Watching Bush's press conference and it's obvious he is on edge, but still he lies like crazy. Yesterday we found out he has been lying to this country and the world about Iran's nuclear weapons program. He is saying that this changes nothing in his assertions because they had a program.

Catch that - they had a program. I wonder how this will sit in North Korea. They stopped their program, will we still be threatening war with them?

He is also patting himself on the back saying this was because of his reworking the intelligence community. What reworking? Was it the exposure of the covert CIA agent who was working on Iran's WMD? Was it because his administration played politics with such a vital person in our intelligence community?

Congress needs to act now and shut this war mongering President up. We can't let him keep destroying America like this!

Bush Forcing Congress To Stay In Session

Because he doesn't get what he wants:

President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

"So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign," Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. "We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short."

The president said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."

Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said talk of him doing that is premature.

Sure Bush can keep Congress in session, but he can not demand what they do. Since he wants the debate on the warrantless wiretapping, I suggest Congress stay in session debating that - actually how Bush may have already broken the law. Then move on to impeachment.

Oh and let's remember that according to the White House it is fine for Iraq's parliament to take August off while our soldiers are dying, but our own Congress can't so that Bush can violate the Constitution. Yeah - that sounds really fair.

Bush's Latest Admission

After all the debate, arguments, investigations by foreign countries and other crap caused by the report of secret CIA prisons, it turns out that we do in fact have them and Bush admits it:

President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday the CIA has run a secret detention program for terrorism suspects overseas and said 14 of those held have been transferred to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

With human rights organizations suspicious about a program that has remained in the shadows, Bush strongly defended the detention and questioning of terrorism suspects through this method and said the CIA treats them humanely and does not torture.

"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives," Bush said in a White House speech nearly five years after the September 11 attacks.

Bush announced that the 14 suspects held by the CIA have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay for prosecution by military commissions he hopes the U.S. Congress will establish.

His administration has been forced to come up with a new method to try foreign terrorist suspects after the Supreme Court in June rejected the military tribunal system set up by Washington to try Guantanamo prisoners, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan.

Among the 14, Bush said, are the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two other al Qaeda leaders, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah.

See what happens when we have a President who has no oversight? I wonder how long now before another country goes after Bush for war crimes. I sure as hell hope they do.

Pat Roberts Puts Politics Ahead Of Lives

This is how incompetent the Republicans in Senate are:

When angry Democrats briefly shut down the Senate last year to protest the slow pace of a congressional investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) claimed a rare victory.

Republicans called it a stunt but promised to quickly wrap up the inquiry. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is overseeing the investigation, said his report was near completion and there was no need for the fuss.

That was nine months ago.

The Republican-led committee, which agreed in February 2004 to write the report, has yet to complete its work. Just two of five planned sections of the committee's findings are fully drafted and ready to be voted on by members, according to Democratic and Republican staffers. Committee sources involved with the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are working hard to complete it. But disputing Roberts, they said they had started almost from scratch in November after Democrats staged their protest.

This is playing politics with the war that has cost us the lives of over 2500 U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. With all the dangers facing the world today, we need to know what happened in our intelligence community so we don't repeat those deadly mistakes. Instead, Pat Roberts chooses to play politics. He chooses to protect the mistakes of his this administration in order to save his own party. Pat Roberts is as un-American as they come.

Bush Failing On Intelligence

Whenever someone brings up the intelligence failures that lead to 9/11, they always point the finger at "intelligence sharing". The administration has done the exact same thing. Now Bush has had the tools to correct those problems, yet he has failed to implement them:

A House subcommittee has concluded that the Bush administration has been slow to implement major changes in information sharing and other key provisions of the 2004 law that overhauled the U.S. intelligence community.

The Intelligence panel’s report, which is scheduled to be officially released Thursday, found that the administration has failed to revamp its approach to information analysis, neglecting large swaths of potentially useful data. The report also found that the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence has done a poor job of prioritizing key tasks.

Sources familiar with the contents of the report provided details of its findings late Wednesday, but requested anonymity because it had not yet been publicly released.

The report was produced by the House Intelligence Oversight Subcommittee, a panel that Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., formed after he became chairman of the overall Intelligence Committee in 2004. As its first job, the subcommittee reviewed how the 2004 intelligence overhaul (PL 108-458) was being implemented.

So when will Pat Roberts get around to releasing that report on the intelligence failures on the lead up to Iraq? It is only two years past due.

And We Got Another One.

How many more people must come forward before people start to listen? Here is the latest-

A CIA official who had a top role during the run-up to the Iraqi war charges the White House with ignoring intelligence that said there were no weapons of mass destruction or an active nuclear program in Iraq.

The former highest ranking CIA officer in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, also says that while the intelligence community did give the White House some bad intelligence, it also gave the White House good intelligence — which the administration chose to ignore.

Drumheller talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley in his first television interview this Sunday, April 23 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Drumheller, who retired last year, says the White House ignored crucial information from a high and credible source. The source was Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, with whom U.S. spies had made a deal.

When CIA Director George Tenet delivered this news to the president, the vice president and other high ranking officials, they were excited — but not for long.

"[The source] told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," says Drumheller. "The [White House] group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.' "

Why Not Say It In Early 2003?

Colin Powell has to be getting tired of the flip flopping:

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

The harsh truth is that this president cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. While the president and his top Cabinet officials were fear-mongering with stark images of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities, the leading experts on nuclear weaponry at the Department of Energy (the agency in charge of the U.S. nuclear-weapons program) and the State Department thought the claim of a near-term Iraqi nuclear threat was absurd.

What bugs the shit out of me on this is you got Powell, a ex officer in the military, who went to the U.N. and conveyed what he now admits to be "lies" in order to sell the Iraq war. He knew he was sending these young men and women into hell on a lie and did not do a single thing to stop it. If you ask me - he is worse than Bush. Bush could be crazy enough to believe he is right - Powell has now admitted he helped in a lie.