insights from the digital future
Olbermann’s blog posts the extended transcript of this brilliant piece of journalism.
In a 13 minute segment on his MSNBC program, “Countdown,” Olbermann goes through details of no less than ten specific dates in which a “terror alert” was released by DHS or the White House within days of breaking controversy or bad news from the Iraq front.
Watch it here or below.
As if it wasn’t obvious enough that it must be a joke, when FoxNews actually posted it as a downloadable .pdf on their website.
On the subject of fakes, MSNBC reports of CNN’s Allison Barber admitting that she drilled President Bush through questions before his Pentagon teleconference briefing (VIDEO – .wmv, QT .mov.
Olbermann on the photo-op (video – .wmv)Could the CIA’s new clandestine spy operation already have revealed a product of their own fraudulence?
Al Gore!!! Gore has nothing but nice things to say about Mr. Prez on his trip to Sweden.
What would be happening if he won in 2000?
“We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people,” Gore said. “We would be a different country.”
David Brooks finds written material from Harriet Miers. Imagine non-lucid statements such as this from the pen of a Supreme Court Justice:
“We must end collective acceptance of inappropriate conduct and increase education in professionalism.”
Fafblog gets the beef on Harriet Miers straight from Georgie’s mouth (satire).
Today’s doofus column (although I like it in principle)… Richard Cohen in WaPo, pleading Patrick Fitzgerald to please just let it go!
Fitzgerald might not indict anyone for the illegal act he was authorized to investigate, but some other one — maybe one concerning the disclosure of secret material. Here again, though, this is a daily occurrence in Washington, where most secrets have the shelf life of sashimi.
In other words… who cares anymore (these 9 major publications think “scooter cares about miller“) – there are much ways we can nail Rove, Cheney Rumsfeld et al. So Ms. Huffington, if you would please stop bashing and get on with the matters at hand?!? I mean, perhaps we can all justify retirement after a couple months in jail because we got fucked over by the administration. Some have gotten much worse for buying into the government’s leaks and the pentagon’s leads.
Perhaps the NYC subway plot was a hoax. How would Dan Rather report this? Isn’t just about everything that pops up on the front page (ahem… Iraqi constitution?). What Sunnis agreed to what now?!?!?
Lets get into the recent university campus terror scares and bomb squad / FBI events. First, we had the Oklahoma suicide-by-exploding-backpack outside the football game. This week in bombs on college campuses: UCLA, Georgia Tech. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is thinking conspiracy, and a corporate law professor at UCLA is glad the FBI is chillin in Westwood.
Unicef bombs the Smurfs gets an internet home. Here’s the video, from CrooksandLiars.
Like a box of chocolates … Marc Cooper‘s on the week gone by in LA Weekly:
President Bush?s much-vaunted ?big speech? on Iraq last week went over like a Mars bar in the diabetes ward.
Now at the bottom, the TOP STORY in world news today – the suicide of Syria’s former top man in Lebanon… just before he’s investigated for the assassination of the Lebanese P.M.
Bush: Syria may pose risk to ‘peace in the Holy Land’
Cover your eyes – the poll of polls reveals that only 30% of Americans feel the country is headed in the “right direction.”
The Shi?ite militias infiltrating the Basra police force are dominating coalition troops and the Iraqi government as they execute violent and murderous acts at will. Its still hard to forget the brutal murder of five schoolteachers last month in front of hysterical children.
A suicide car bomb outside an apartment building containing members of the Iranian backed Badr brigade killed one child on Sunday. Among those who escaped the attack were wanted Shi’ite leader Hassan al-Rashid.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred in the wake of Tony Blair’s claim last week that Iran and Lebanon?s Hezbollah are supplying high-powered roadside bombs to the Badr militia. Hezbollah issued a statement denouncing Blair’s assertions as “excuses to justify the inability of the occupation to confront the rise of resistance inside Iraq.”
Civil unrest in the area has spiraled out of control since September, when British troops were mobbed by 1,000 to 2,000 people wielding homemade bombs and grenades in a seemingly coordinated attack on the Basra streets.
“This was not a spontaneous public action,” said Maj. Andy Hadfield, a British company commander in the New York Times. “It was closely organized and closely coordinated by a series of agitators.”
The Jameat, who control the powerful internal affairs unit of the Iraqi police force, “consider themselves the No. 1 power in Basra,” according to one police commander. “They are policemen but they kill people,” Hakim, a Basra businessman told the Independent. “The British must bear much blame, they let these people into the police and then for a long time did nothing.”
Governor al-Wa’ili said Saturday that British forces continue to compromise security in the region by conducting raids and arrests on local police and militias without coordinating with Iraqi security forces. Basra citizens are now echoing his call for the removal of British troops.
Basra has only 2,500 to 3,000 police officers to augment an estimated 13,000 militiamen from the Iranian-backed Badr brigade, the SCIRI supported Fadila party and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia. There are 8,500 British troops in Iraq and 500 will be cut in November according to a statement by the British defence secretary, John Reid in Monday’s Guardian.
Recent polls show that over half of the British population would like to see the immediate withdrawal of British troops in Iraq. The rapid degression of the peaceful, British controlled Basra province into a flashpoint battleground for sectarian militias combined with the removal of troops would only open the door for continued torture and violence against civilians. “Combating the killing of innocent civilians is now the nation’s number one challenge,” Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kuba told The Independent. “This terrorism must be stopped and it is our right to protect ourselves and innocent citizens,” said Brig. John Lorimer, commander of the 12th Mechanised Brigade in southern Iraq.
Daily Telegraph reporter Adrian Blomfield has filed critical assessments of British troops in initial reports since recently becoming one of the first British reporters sent to Basra. “The Brits have done some great work but they’ve also misread the situation, which is kind of inexcusable?. We have raised our concerns [about Jameat] repeatedly and haven?t had the response we require,” said one diplomat.
Iraqi and British officials expect violence to escalatein advance of the October 15 constitutional referendum.
For intense analysis of this mess, read Gilbert Achcar’s editorial at Informed Comment.
