Agitprop: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda

Posting this everywhere.

Steve Benen in The Washington Monthly: John McCain's top strategist has effectively told the New York Times that the Republican nominee for V.P. won't be ready on Day One, but that's fine, because McCain will probably live until 2013. Seriously. That's his argument.

Rendition Flights? What Rendition Flights?

Oy. [from UPI]

The British Foreign Office privately accepts that CIA rendition flights did pass through its territory, a diplomatic source told United Press International.

The well-placed source said the Foreign Office "totally accepts" that the United States used British airfields to transfer prisoners abroad for interrogation, and is "extremely worried" about the political consequences.

The revelation comes amid growing signs of divergence between London and Washington over the way in which the war on terror should be conducted.

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair learnt in April 2003 that the United States had bombed a Baghdad hotel in which several media organizations were housed, killing three journalists, he "literally jumped out of his chair," the source told UPI. The Foreign Office was "horrified," considering the attack to be "obscene," the source said.

London took the same attitude towards a U.S. suggestion that it would attack the Qatar headquarters of the Arabic language television al-Jazeera, the source said.

Foreign Office officials threatened to resign if the Americans went ahead with the attacks, revealed in a Downing Street memo leaked to the British media earlier this year.

Blair reportedly talked U.S. President George W. Bush out of the attacks, warning it could fuel a worldwide backlash. The Mirror newspaper quoted a source as saying: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

cross-posted at BlairWatch
tags: war on terror impeach bush george bush tony blair extraordinary rendition

EARTH TO SENATE: SHUT BU$HCO DOWN

In This Weeks Episode, We Learn More About
What the Dear Leader Knew Before the War

It is becoming increasingly clear that the cabal, including Bushie, knew in 2002 that the main source for Iraq intel in the leadup to the war was a serial fabricator. It's in today's NYT, and Raw Story, Kos, and countless other sources reported on that piece yesterday:

The New York Times starts to answer the question, with reporter Doug Jehl disclosing the contents of a newly declassified memo apparently passed to him by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It shows that an al-Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to this Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002.

It declared that it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons, Jehl reports.

"The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," Jehl writes. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as `credible' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

So Bush knew. It also appears he knew more than has been revealed about Plamegate and Rove's role. Add that to the fact that the Dear [Vice] Leader, whose poll numbers are around 19% and whose aide Scooter was indicted in Plamegate, continues to insist on being the official who determines the level of torture (lots) that so endears us to the Islamic world and replaced Scooter with an aid who authored torture memos and lobbied heavily in favor of torture.

And add to that the revelation that "ghost detainees" are taken to Europe to be tortured and yesterday's report on Brownie-of-the-Week Kenneth Tomlinson's "ghost employees" at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the depth and sweep of the Dear Leader's criminal enterprise can be seen.

It's time. Your senators must know that they must shut down the Senate a la Harry Reid - Bush, currently throwing a hissy fit because Scalito won't get a hearing until January, must be denied everything until he and the rest of his crooked henchmen confess and resign as appropriate. Enough is enough. Here are all the Senate email addresses - go git 'em.

firedoglake has more here.

tags: george bush dick cheney david addington iraq war on terror impeach bush abu ghraib guantanamo kenneth tomlinson ghost detainees

WMDs FOUND!

Dear Leader Should Have Been Looking off NJ Coast,
Not in Middle East or Oval Office

[via Raw Story] It looks like Shrub's search for WMD was a few thousand miles too far east ... it turns out that "millions of pounds of unused weapons of mass destruction were dumped in oceans before Congress banned the practice in 1972. The threat is still out there, and may be growing." This stuff includes nerve gas, mustard gas, and radioactive waste - which is washing ashore. And we here at Agitprop have every confidence that the DOA stopped this practice immediately when Congress banned it.

tags: environment new jersey

Missed It By THAT Much!

Brownie's Contract Renewed for Another Month!

An Agitprop Rant & Rave
Just announced on NPR! Why are tax dollars being use to pay this shithead's $145,000 a year salary? What could he possibly be doing there ... tearing the limbs off hurricane victims? He should have been standing on the street with a box full of his crap weeks ago.

MORE: Looks like Brownie's moonlighting as a conservative activist. [via TPM] Katrina Coverage dissects Chertoff's defense of Brownie here.

tags: michael brown hurricane katrina

An Agitprop Alert

This morning, Blogenfreude turned on NY1 to make sure the monsoons were over. Before the weather, there was a segment on the "art" of shaving. One of the must-haves is a proper brush ... made of one-hundred (100) percent (%) badger hair. And do you suppose they gently pluck these hairs from free-range badgers who are then released? We think not.

Now please understand - we at Agitprop are not above the occasional porterhouse. But New Yorkers in general are a spoiled lot, and stretch Hummers are a frequent site on Broadway. So can you imagine how many metrosexuals and nouveau-riche types will want $580.00 Classic Shaving Kits? Can't they produce convincing synthetic badger hair? What does this mean for the badger? What does this mean for Wisconsin, the Badger State?

This means dead badgers, that's what. Agitprop will investigate, and suggests that others ask these Art-of-Shaving types precisely where they get their brushes. It just ain't right.

tags: new york city wisconsin badger