But Did He BOW When He Said It?

The pace of mini-controversies coming from the right can now be measured in minutes. The day started with conservative bloggers freaking out about a Jeff Zeleny article claiming that Obama said America could be thought of as a Muslim country. Dhimmitude!!1! Get your burqas out! Except what he actually said was that America has a lot of believers in Islam inside its borders, and we could do with a better dialogue on these issues, using the example that there are more Muslim-Americans than the population of most Muslim countries. So that was a bust.

Then, apparently Obama uttered the Muslim world for "thank you" while accepting a compliment from King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, leaving Michael Goldfarb wondering whether Obama secretly speaks Arabic.

Seriously.

Obama gives his speech in Cairo tomorrow, so for the rest of the week we can expect hard-hitting analysis like "Is Obama Wearing a Djellabah in Private," "Did The President Have Shawerma Or Foul For Lunch" and "Is Obama's Smile 8% Brighter Now That He's On The Arab Street."

Fun, fun, fun.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

It's concerning enough that the Pakistani Taliban has responded to the offensive against them in the Swat Valley with bombings in Lahore and Peshawar. Clearly they are embedded enough in local populations to carry out attacks without a base of operations in Swat, even in cities like Peshawar which are not Taliban strongholds. Juan Cole makes the argument that this could all turn public opinion against the Taliban, which is possible.

While is is possible that the public will blame the government for stirring up so much trouble with the Swat campaign, it is also possible that the public will turn decisively on the Taliban. There are precedents for such loss of popularity. After the 1997 attack on innocent tourists in Luxor, Egypt, the Egyptian public turned against the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Grouping (al-Gama'a al-Islamiya), the two small terrorist groups that had committed many acts of violence in the 1970s and 1980s and had assassinated President Anwar el Sadat in 1981. EIJ declined into irrelevance in Egypt, and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya's leadership has renounced violence.

But what REALLY bothers me is the series of attacks over the border, in Iran. A Shiite mosque in Zahedan was struck earlier in the week, and yesterday, gunmen fired on a campaign office for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Preelection tensions rose Friday in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast after gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque the day before that killed up to 23 people and injured scores.

Iranian authorities blamed the United States for the violence in Zahedan, on the border with Pakistan.

"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran, referring to Thursday's bombing of a Shiite mosque. "Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafis were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else."

Wahhabi and Salafi are puritanical schools of Sunni Islam rooted in Saudi Arabia. They have inspired Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network, as well as the Taliban and other groups that denounce Shiite Islam, the majority sect in Iran [...]

Hours earlier, the Sunni militant group Jundallah, which is linked to Al Qaeda and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing on a Shiite holiday. It made the claim in a phone call to the United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite news channel.

The caller claimed that the victims were hard-line pro-government militiamen discussing the June 12 election.

Now, this province is basically lawless anyway, so I don't want to make too much of it. But I fear that this widens the larger Shiite-Sunni struggle inside Islam, but that hardliner cleric trying to push blame onto the Americans is a ploy to increase tensions and move away from any reconciliation and negotiation. You can clearly see the tensions between Shiite Iran and their Sunni competitors here. You can also see it in Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki throwing up his hands at any further gestures to the Saudis, accusing them of allowing Sunni insurgents to flow through their borders. This is something that many of us worried about at the start of the Iraq conflict, the spread of sectarian violence throughout the region. I really hope this is not the beginning.

World Report

• This Zimbabwean election is poised to end in violence and tragedy. The runoff between ruler Robert Mugabe and challenger Morgan Tsvangirai is set for later in the month. And already Tsvangirai has been arrested and detained before being set free, and US and British diplomats have also been detained. They're trying to suspend all NGO work in the country under the suspicion that aid workers are undermining the ruling party. This kind of paranoia combined with brute force never ends well.

• Speaking of fearful dictators, in Burma the military junta has rejected the aid of US Navy ships, leaving up to a million people still without adequate food or water in the wake of the cyclone. Meanwhile, the country has gone so far as to detain an activist comedian named "The Tweezers" for the crime of trying to help out cyclone victims. That's a humanitarian disaster beyond all reason, and a telling reminder of the tragic intersection between natural disasters and despotic governments.

• Here's a nice interview with the world's most notorious nuclear proliferator - A.Q. Khan, under the scourge of house arrest at his elaborate villa in Pakistan. He claims in the interview that he was doing the bidding of Pakistan by selling nuclear secrets to the likes of Libya and North Korea. That just shows the stupidity of trying to work with Pervez Musharraf, the head of the government during Khan's selling spree.

• I've been sitting on this one for a couple weeks, but haven't had the time to go into it. Basically, the British have been laundering money through a weapons maker called BAE and creating a giant off-the-books slush fund that has been used to finance covert ops with Britain and the United States in the lead. The Saudis were at the head of this, through former US Ambassador Prince Bandar. It's looking pretty clear that these bribes from the Saudis to BAE funded covert ops. The story is labyrinthine, but Marcy Wheeler's on it.

• There may be nothing sadder than the plight of the Baghdad Jews. This is a sect that has direct roots back to Abraham, and in the strife of the Iraq occupation they've been almost completely wiped out.

• Maher Arar was a Canadian citizen who US officials detained after 9/11 and rendered to Syria, where he was tortured. Now the Justice Department is investigating the incident, but I hold little hope that they will reach any actionable conclusion. What's sad is how stories like Arar's are NOT the exception. Also sad is the number of investigations that this branch of the DoJ, the Office of Professional Responsibility, has on their plate.

• And the story of the day is the retelling of how the Defense Department was duped by Iranian intelligence into advancing the cause of exiles, which led to the Iraq war.

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The proper response to unbelievable misconduct of this kind is to stop any investigation into it.

You should read the whole sordid story. It involves neocon crackpot Michael Ledeen, an old Iran-Contra hand named Manucher Ghorbanifar, and basically a bunch of idiots at the Pentagon taking these stories at face value. The stories that have come out JUST THIS WEEK about the war are enough grounds for impeachment.
•

Win! Useless Gas Price Reduction Plan Enacted!

Just heard on the teevee that the Energy Department has decided to stop buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve starting in July. This will maybe take the price of gas down about a nickel. But the Senate and House both voted for it in record numbers, so Bush had to buckle.

Of course, the price of oil is still rising because Saudi Arabia again said they won't raise production, even after Bush offered them civilian nuclear technology.

So this is a shell game, maybe good in the abstract, but doing nothing near what needs to be done, which is actually wean us off of an oil-based economy.

...by the way, Saudi Arabia still funds terrorism all over the world, and Bush offered them civilian nuclear energy. Isn't that the textbook definition of appeasement?

...Saudi Arabia may simply be out of oil and have nothing left to give. The real story here is that Republicans and Democrats alike like to demagogue on the issue of gas prices, but there's very little we can do about it in the short term, and in the long term the goal has to be to abandon the oil economy in favor of something more sustainable.

World Report

If there's one thing the world needs, it's a report:

• Violence has once again sparked in Tibet, with at least eight dead in the latest round of clashes between protesters and Chinese police. Apparently you can be arrested just for being found with the Dalai Lama's picture. The government is planning 1,200 show trials for protesters and organizing what they call study sessions for residents, essentially to indoctrinate them into Chinese propaganda. Clearly the Chinese fear losing control of the situation, and now is the time for the IOC and the world community to increase pressure for reform. See also Matt Browner Hamlin's must-read demolition of "serious" thinker Nick Kristof's prescription for Tibet.

• If Tibet is bad, Zimbabwe may be worse, and it feels like we're headed toward a civil war or a brutal repression there. The reports are conflicting. The Guardian says that Robert Mugabe is negotiating a release of power in exchange for immunity from prosecution for past crimes, which the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) may not be willing to give. Morgan Tsvangirai is announcing that he has won the Presidency outright and that there's no need for a runoff through which "Violence will be the new weapon to reverse the people's will." Meanwhile Mugabe's ZANU-PF party is challenging the results of Parliamentary elections which resulted in an MDC victory. Prospects for a peaceful resolution look dim, frankly.

• Between the French offering a new battalion for Afghanistan and the United States vowing to add troops as well, it looks as if NATO is finally getting serious about the problem in the country, about 6 years too late. Democrats and Republicans basically agree about the need to increase our capacity in Afghanistan, though the Bush Administration has been asleep at the switch and has made the situation extremely difficult.

• Earlier this week I mentioned the growing world hunger crisis as food prices skyrocket and richer nations retrench and lower exports. The World Bank has recognized the scope of the problem as well.

The World Bank has called on the international community to co-ordinate its efforts in a "new deal" to fight global hunger and malnutrition.

A move was needed because of soaring global food and energy prices, said the bank's president, Robert Zoellick.

Mr Zoellick said the top priority was to give the UN World Food Programme an extra $500m for emergency food aid.

The World Bank estimates 33 countries face potential social unrest because of rising food and energy prices.

Unless we do something legitimate and globalized about climate change these resource wars are going to continue. In the case of the food crisis it's not the only cause, but it will be a sustained cause going forward.

• The fallout from having a Musharraf policy instead of a Pakistan policy continues, as we may have alienated the new Parliamentary players and sidelined our efforts at engagement and even counter-terrorism. Just another way Bush has harmed national security.

• Fighting the right enemies:

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday.

Stuart A. Levey, a Treasury undersecretary, told a Senate committee that the Saudi government had not taken important steps to go after those who finance terrorist organizations or to prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling extremism through charitable contributions, sometimes unwittingly.

I remember when the 9-11 Commission report blocked out references to Saudi Arabian involvement, as if they could possibly cover up the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. What could be more damning than "They did it"? Apparently this cover-up relationship with the Saudis continues, as they still fund terror and we still call them a great ally. How warped.

• Really interesting article on the Iranian blogosphere. The fact that an Iranian blogosphere is allowed at all shows that it is not quite the caricature our leaders would have us believe, though some topics are filtered (often in surprising and erratic ways). Many bloggers have been arrested and persecuted, but also many have thrived and criticized the official dictates of the Islamic Republic. Eventually, open-source communication does make an impact, and it's an honor to be working in the same medium as those in Iran.

• Finally, it appears that a liberal is a conservative who's been mugged by reality.

Conservative U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., joined some of his most liberal colleagues in the House of Representative on a recent trip to Africa. What he saw there changed him, at least a little.

Struck by the unrelenting poverty in a South African slum, Nunes this week joined Democrats in supporting a $50 billion global AIDS relief package. Most of his fellow Republicans opposed the bill.

“It’s one thing to hear about a problem,” Nunes said Thursday. “It’s another thing to see it for yourself. This was horrendous.”

Once you step outside that bubble, it's hard to ignore the truth and the suffering.

Let Us Rob You Or We'll Suicide Bomb The Place

It's really stunning that we still have this symbiotic relationship with Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, and they still harbor all kinds of terrorists and actually use them as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE*.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

Prince Bandar, incidentally, is known familiarly as "Bandar Bush" and is an unofficial member of that family, so maybe it's not so stunning.

So the President can claim to be acting on behalf of the families of the victims of the London train bombing, yet his good friend and pseudo-relative Bandar Bush is actually terrorizing Britain by threatening more attacks.

I knew that Saudi Arabia had us over a barrel, literally, when it came to oil, but apparently that's also true with regard to terrorism. Makes you wonder that if we actually try to get off the carbon-based economy, what they would do to ensure that doesn't happen.

* I've written about this Bandar/BAE thing previously, it's really one of the more devious "Syriana" type things that's been going on the past several years.

World Report

I've got a lot of international stories that probably aren't worth a full post, so here goes:

• Opium: it's not just for Afghanistan anymore.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad.

Failed states eventually become narco-states. It's a fact of life. And the real question is whether or not this money is flowing, like to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to insurgent and anti-government forces.

• By the way, Pakistan is a complete mess. A fort in Waziristan has been overrun by Islamists, and the intelligence service has lost control of the key elements of the militant networks there. At the same time, the United States is slowly creeping forward with a greater military role inside the country, leading us into yet another untenable conflict.

• In Kenya, amidst credible evidence that the election was rigged, the resulting unrest has once again turned violent, with riot police using live ammo and killing protestors. The anti-government forces are now looking to economic boycotts and other peaceful protests to make themselves heard. What is very worrisome is the continued tribal violence, which is not limited to Kenya inside the region. Just next door in Rwanda, the ideology of genocide is still being taught in schools.

• Nicolas Sarkozy is no longer the darling of the right, I'd gather, after the fairly trashy saga of marrying an ex-model months after a messy divorce, after his ex-wife called him "a man who likes no-one, not even his children." Of course, the Republicans are the party of Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston... so maybe it's not a big deal.

• The fallout from President Bush's "Ignorant Abroad" act through the Middle East is just starting to be felt. After a right-wing faction pulled out of Ehud Olmert's government because of the slightest hint of peace talks with the Palestinians, Olmert put his hawkish hat on.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to wage a "war" to stop Gaza militants firing rockets into Israel, despite warnings by Palestinian leaders that Israeli military strikes would harm peacemaking.

"A war is going on in the south, every day, every night," Olmert said in a speech.

"We cannot and will not tolerate this unceasing fire at Israeli citizens ... so we will continue to operate, with wisdom and daring, with the maximum precision that will enable us to hit those who want to attack us," Olmert said, minutes after the air strike.

Israel has a right to defend themselves, but it seems to me that the immediate fallout from Bush's visit was a break away from peace and talk of war.

• Elsewhere, the Ignorant Abroad talked about freedom and democracy in Saudi Arabia while not meeting any democracy activists or dissidents, claimed that Egypt is moving toward political reform when he has done nothing of the sort, and basically spent his trip lavishing gifts on the Gulf states in the hopes that they would raise production of oil. And by the way, got no concession for his efforts. So, lies, incompetence, and failure. Just like at home!

The Big Non-Furor In Congress

This is kind of interesting. The House gave in to Bush's demands and passed a defense authorization bill which fixes the one stated reason for veto in the first place, the opportunity for Americans to sue foreign governments for reparations in state-sponsored abuse. As far as I can tell they didn't change anything else in the bill, other than making the soldier's pay raise retroactive to January 1.

So, does this mean that the part of the bill banning funding for permanent military bases in Iraq is intact? And if so, how can a permanent status of forces agreement be funded?

In addition, let me say that it's an old story to call the Democrats weak and soft and unwilling to stand up to an unpopular President, but this is ridiculous. The President didn't even veto the bill properly. But instead of taking the opportunity to discuss a commander-in-chief vetoing a pay raise for men and women in battle, they just cede to his wishes as quickly as possible. Not only that, they're going to not raise a finger about billions in arms sales to the Saudis, including precision-guided bombs, as an opportunity to rake back in cash for the defense industry. You really have to believe that the Democrats aren't afraid of scary Bush, but think they're going to win by a mile this year, and just don't want to make waves. That, and that this leadership by and large shares the same goals of global hegemony as the Republicans.

UPDATE: In addition this absolves a torturer like Saddam Hussein for his crimes, which might be a nice thing to bring up if you ever get into an argument about "removing that brutal dictator".

The Not-So-Innocent Abroad

With the "Filipino Monkey" story starting to hit the major press, the Administration's credibility on this Straits of Hormuz incident is lessening even further. It's very clear that the audio threats, which set this apart from more routine incidents in the Straits, bore little relation to the incident itself and was likely to be essentially a crank call. And Cernig notes that the other threatening aspect of the early reports, those mysterious white boxes that the Iranians tossed in the water, were pretty much... white boxes.

The small, boxlike objects dropped in the water by Iranian boats as they approached U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday posed no threat to the American vessels, U.S. officials said yesterday, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged that the incident reflects Iran's new tactics of asymmetric warfare.

After passing the white objects, commanders on the USS Port Royal and its accompanying destroyer and frigate decided there was so little danger from the objects that they did not bother to radio other ships to warn them, the officials said.

"The concern was that there was a boat in front of them putting these objects in the path of our ships. When they passed, the ships saw that they were floating and light, that they were not heavy or something that would have caused damage," such as a mine, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf.

The Navy ships in the water appeared to take this incident in stride. Somebody in the upper echelons saw an opening and leaked this to the press, and blew it up out of proportion. When you have people like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen saying he's never seen such a provocative incident but then admitting he never saw the video, the suspicions grow. And the fact that it occurred at precisely the time when Bush was headed to the region with the intent of threatening Iran is no accident. If the dynamic between the US and Iraq was changed by the release of last year's NIE, Bush hasn't gotten the memo.

President Bush on Sunday called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror" and sought to shore up opposition to the government in Tehran throughout the Middle East.

But even as he criticized Iranian leaders, saying they were seeking to repress their citizens and cow neighboring countries, Bush appealed to U.S. allies in the region to open up their own political and economic systems to greater democracy.

Spotlighting a swath of the globe where U.S. diplomacy is built around seeking help for the administration's anti-terrorism effort, the president criticized only Iran by name. He avoided mentioning Egypt, his final stop on a six-nation Middle East trip, despite its long record of human rights abuses, limited political rights and economic disparity. Nor did he cite other nations across the region with similarly troubled histories.

Kind of a delicate subject in the Middle East, and the emirs didn't take kindly to it.

Even political analysts here who share Bush's democratic vision said that his speech painted over the daily reality for most inhabitants of the Middle East, an oil-rich region where power is largely inherited and human rights violations abound.

Whether chastising Iran or praising Palestinian elections, analysts said, Bush left out key facts that would have offered a messier — and more true-to-life — portrait of the modern Middle East.

"Iran is a neighbor, we have to deal with that," said Ambassador Ibrahim Mohieldin, director of the Arab League's Americas department. "The U.S. is thousands of miles away from Iran - it's OUR national security that will be affected" if leaders agree to keep Tehran isolated at Washington's request.

This is the result of an incurious man who is given a script without checking the facts. Bush can talk about democracy promotion, but when it comes down to it a substantial portion of US aid goes to undemocratic regimes, and little goes to actually strengthening the building blocks of democracy. Bush can praise the United Arab Emirates (!) as a model society because to him, it is; an obscenely wealthy oligarchy that practically enslaves immigrant labor to construct their opulent palaces. Bush can caution for stability in the region while selling $20 billion in arms to the Saudis, clearly as a counter-balance to Iran, which may increase tensions rather than diffuse them (Congress, by the way, has the ability to, and should, outright reject these sales). Bush can call for an end to the occupation of Palestine while failing to understand or even engage with the dynamics of the debate, seven years after ignoring the peace process and making the problem significantly more protracted. This is the "Innocent Abroad," only he's not so innocent.

In private meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week, Newsweek reports that President Bush disowned the U.S. intelligence community’s judgments:

"But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity."

This incident in the Straits was very orchestrated and very timed. Career staffers in the intelligence apparatus won the first round in the effort to halt a march to war with Iran, but that was only a round (that WSJ piece is really interesting, by the way, have a read). We have a President that is visiting the Middle East at the same time he is ignoring their wishes and making their region significantly less livable through saber-rattling and falsification.

World's Most Confident War Criminal

This is really unbelievable. Michael Hayden's whole weak excuse for his agency destroying tapes of torture interrogations was that he was looking to protect the identities of those agents involved. And then one of them comes out on national television and admits to it.

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline."

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

First of all, of course he broke in 35 seconds. You were drowning him. Not simulating drowning, but actually drowning.

Second, the idea that Zubaydah disrupted dozens of attacks can reasonably be called into question. Kevin Drum has led efforts to retrieve the truth about Zubaydah from the memory hole.

"The guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," [Dan] Coleman told a top official at FBI after a few days reviewing the Zubaydah haul....There was almost nothing "operational" in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn't one of them...."He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights....He was expendable, you know, the greeter....Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands."

....According to CIA sources, he was water-boarded....He was beaten....He was repeatedly threatened....His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights.

....Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda....Zubaydah said banks — yes, banks — were a priority....And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation's economy would be crippled. And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried.

This is actually somewhat backed up by Kiriakou's account. He says that dozens of attacks were thwarted. But to believe that you have to believe that Al Qaeda had dozens of attacks ready, when 9/11 took 18 months to plan and years more to gestate.

Whatever the case, what was done to Zubaydah is obviously torture. And this guy Kiriakou is complicit, admitting that they waterboarded him, which has been in violation of international law for decades. He basically incriminated himself on TV. He's even admitting now that waterboarding is torture that shouldn't be used, although he sounds conflicted by it because he believes this mentally ill person accurately described dozens of attacks.

Kiriakou said the feeling in the months after the 9/11 attacks was that interrogators did not have the time to delve into the agency's bag of other interrogation tricks.

"Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time -- much of the time -- and we didn't have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming," he said [...]

Now retired, Kiriakou, who declined to use the enhanced interrogation techniques, says he has come to believe that water boarding is torture but that perhaps the circumstances warranted it.

"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique," Kiriakou told ABC News. "And I struggle with it." [...]

"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I've changed my mind," he told ABC News.

Part of his decision appears to be an ethical one; another part, perhaps, simply pragmatic.

"I think we're chasing them all over the world. I think we've had a great deal of success chasing them...and, as a result, waterboarding, at least right now, is unnecessary," Kirikou said.

Brian Ross: "Did it compromise American principles? Or did it save American lives? Or both?"

John Kiriakou: "I think both. It may have compromised our principles at least in the short term. And I think it's good that we're having a national debate about this. We should be debating this, and Congress should be talking about it because, I think, as a country, we have to decide if this is something that we want to do as a matter of policy. I'm not saying now that we should, but, at the very least, we should be talking about it. It shouldn't be secret. It should be out there as part of the national debate."

Honestly, this is someone who is conflicted because he was witness to madness and he wants to forgive himself. But what you have to ask yourself is, how can it be that Kiriakou feels completely able to come forward and admit to a war crime? It's clear that the CIA destroyed the tapes to avoid prosecution. But I have to say that the destruction is almost irrelevant now. You have a material witness on the record. All the DC-area Staples are probably out of shredders given the gap of several days between the revelation of the tapes and an order for preservation of documents, but again, it doesn't matter. Why is this guy so confident?

Of course, it's because the Bush Administration won't possibly prosecute, no matter who asks for a legal determination of the CIA program. The Democratic leadership and the leadership of the intelligence communities are ethically compromised on the issue as well, having learned of plans to enact torture and meeting them with silence. The US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court and would do anything in their power to avert prosecution on these grounds.

This is what happens in a country without the rule of law. Torturers can go in front of the cameras and casually admit their guilt. And absolutely nothing will happen to them.

UPDATE: Gerald Posner:

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

These three Saudi princes died within a week of one another under highly questionable circumstances, including one who died of "thirst."

UPDATE II: I almost forgot that the CIA was given blanket immunity as part of the Military Commissions Act. This guy is off scot-free. And as I excerpted, Kiriakou declined to use the "enhanced interrogation techniques," i.e. torture. Except he's at the very least an accessory to a war crime, and if he subjected the detainee to extended sleep deprivation, etc., he's complicit.

Self-Defense Apparently Now Unaceptable

Today Iran announced its intention to defend itself if attacked. Can you really not say that unless you're the United States?

The deputy commander of Iran's air force said Wednesday that plans have been drawn up to bomb Israel if the Jewish state attacks Iran, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

The announcement came amid rising tensions in the region, with the United States calling for a new round of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program and Israeli planes having recently overflown, and perhaps even attacked, Iranian ally Syria [...]

White House press secretary Dana Perino called Alavi's comment "unhelpful."

"It is not constructive and it almost seems provocative," she said. "Israel doesn't seek a war with its neighbors. And we all are seeking, under the U.N. Security Council resolutions, for Iran to comply with its obligations."

I wonder why Iran is so touchy? The US keeps blaming them for everything that goes wrong in Iraq, a prominent Senator last week openly asked a commanding general if it was time to infiltrate their territory, British troops have massed along the border... sheesh, you'd think we were deliberately trying to start a war or something! How could they get such a mistaken notion?

And then there's this Israeli airstrike on Syria. Now, the claim by the wingnut base is that Syria and North Korea were in a pact where the North Koreans were dumping the nuclear material in Damascus that they were supposed to remove as part of nonproliferation negotiations. The Israelis got wind of it and took the material out. Then there are corollaries that Turkey provided the intel and that Syria and Iran coordinated in a botched missile experiment that has left dozens dead.

This is mythology, as Joseph Cirincione notes, and it's designed to deliberately blur the differences between all of these states and make a throwback to the old "Axis of Evil" days.

This story is nonsense. The Washington Post story should have been headlined "White House Officials Try to Push North Korea-Syria Connection." This is a political story, not a threat story. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from the run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad commentary on how selective leaks from administration officials who have repeatedly misled the press are still treated as if they were absolute truth.

Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted "intelligence" to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria.

And now, from the same bullies and hawks that brought you those fictions comes this idea that Iran asserting the right to defend themselves and make contingency plans in the event of attack, as all nations on Earth do, is somehow belligerent and provocative. This is almost certainly coming from hard-right Likudnik groups like AIPAC, who will enlist all of their allies to ensure unanimity among both parties on anything regarding Israel, despite the fact that, as Rep. Moran says at the link, they don't represent mainstream Jewish-American opinion whatsoever. So the clueless media will parrot this line that "Iran wants to attack Israel!!!" when it's really "Iran Announces They Will Defend Themselves If Israel Attacks." If you want to see belligerence, I'd invite you to read Bernard Kouchner's comments.

The process in the UN against Iran should go forward, though the inspections process should be allowed to go forward without disturbance, and I do agree with General Abizaid that the world can live with a nuclear Iran through threat deterrance. But let's not drop our handkerchiefs because another country asserts the right to self-defense. After all, shouldn't we be far more concerned that wealthy Saudis are still bankrolling Al Qaeda and the ruling sheikhs aren't doing anything about it?

Fourthbranch, Bandar Bush, and the 80 Billion Dollar Slush Fund

The WaPo series on Fourthbranch Cheney has given us a template for how this de facto chief executive likes to operate. We know that he likes to operate in the shadows, valuing secrecy above almost anything else. We know that he likes to be the filter through which all decisions are ultimately made. And we know, from today's third installment, that he likes to control the purse strings, and use that as a way to keep his subordinates in line (at least that's what I got from it. If he's in charge of the most minute of budget details, then the heads of NSA or State are going to want to stay on his good side).

We can put these known knowns (to borrow a Rumsfeldian phrase) to work in understanding Fourthbranch's involvement in the burgeoning scandal in Brtiain involving the Saudi Prince Bandar (a.k.a. Bandar Bush), a British defense contractor (oh wait, they're British - defence), and hundreds of billions of dollars - far more than is being discussed in most press reports.

Today BAE Systems announced that the US Department of Justice was investigating them:

BAE faces allegations that it ran a fund to help it win plane and military equipment orders from Saudi Arabia.

The allegations of illegal payments by BAE date back to the 1980s and the £43bn ($85bn) al-Yamamah deal that supplied Saudi Arabia with Tornado jets and other military equipment.

Earlier this month, the BBC and the Guardian newspaper reported that BAE had made payments worth hundreds of millions of pounds over a number of years to Prince Bandar, a leading member of the Saudi royal family.

According to the Guardian, the Department of Justice became interested because BAE used the US banking system to transfer regular payments to accounts controlled by Prince Bandar at Riggs Bank in Washington.

As a result, prosecutors decided that BAE could be investigated under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

OK, let's back up. But put that "al-Yamamah deal" in your back pocket.

What happened initially was that Bandar Bush was getting $2 billion dollar tips from BAE for helping push through enormous military aircraft deals between London and Riyadh. It was part of a large corruption investigation which was actually shut down in Britain by Tony Blair because it would potentially harm national security by damaging the fine reputation of Saudi Arabia (the 15 9/11 hijackers, apparently, didn't). Blair, I guess, got his payback by being named Mideast envoy. DoJ got involved because the tips were going into Bandar's account at Riggs Bank in Washington. This is VERY interesting, because Riggs Bank is a known launderer for dictators like Augusto Pinochet and others.

Riggs Bank courted business from former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and helped him hide millions of dollars in assets from international prosecutors while he was under house arrest in Britain, according to a report by Senate investigators.

The report also says the top federal bank examiner in charge of supervising the District's largest bank kept details about Riggs's relationship with Pinochet out of the Riggs case file. That happened a few months before the examiner retired from the government and joined Riggs as a senior executive. The examiner, R. Ashley Lee, denied the allegations to Senate investigators.

The Senate report also said Lee recommended, while still working for the government, that the bank not be punished for failing to take steps designed to prevent money laundering.

So we know that this tip money is going into a bank with a notorious history of money laundering and covering for dirty figures around the world (Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, also did business with Riggs Bank). We know that Riggs Bank was actually run by one of Bush's uncles along with another crony, Joe Albritton. Yet DoJ is focusing pretty much on the BAE's use of the US banking system to make these corrupt payments. By the way, BAE is effectively an American company these days, and they're trying to take over US arms companies and do lots of bsuiness with the Pentagon (now why would the former head of Halliburton have a problem with that?).

Could the Justice Department be deliberately focusing on one small part of the scandal in order to distract from the big picture:

Because we know that Fourthbranch and Bandar Bush have been in cahoots lately. Sy Hersh spelled it out.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda [...]

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)

One thing that struck me after reading that is, where is the money coming from for these clandestine operations in the Middle East? Is Congress appropriating it? Hersh says no. Is it part of the intelligence budget? Hersh says it's off-the-books money. So, is it coming out of Bandar Bush's tip jar? Marcy Wheeler:

Cheney and Bandar have been freelancing on foreign policy of late. Of course, Congress is not paying for that freelancing [...] So where do you think Cheney and Bandar are getting the money? [...] I can imagine how much easier it'd be to start a war with Iran if you had an independent source of funds for the propaganda to make your case for war.

Seriously though, this looks more and more like Dick Cheney, with his buddy Bandar Bush, has decided to relive both Watergate and Iran-Contra, all in one.

And apparently, there's more than just the $2 billion dollars in Bandar's tip jar. It could be up to $160 billion, and that brings us back to the Saudi-British "al-Yamamah deal". It was essentially oil-for-jet fighters, but a lot of that cash may have been skimmed into this Riggs Bank account to fund future wars:

While British news organizations, led by The Guardian and BBC have published revealing details of BAE bribery and slush funds, involving Prince Bandar, former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and the late Dutch Royal Consort, Prince Bernhard, none of the British media have touched upon the full magnitude of the scandal--the approximately $160 billion in secret oil revenues, generated by the BAE-Saudi Al-Yamamah deal, over the past 22 years (see accompanying chart for the year-by-year cash value of the Saudi oil shipments to BAE, through British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and the British government's Defence Export Sales Organization) [...]

British author William Simpson, who wrote the 2006 authorized biography of Prince Bandar, The Prince--The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, on the other hand, provided authoritative details "right from the prince's mouth" that should be of great interest to American Justice Department and Congressional investigators. What Simpson hinted at is perhaps the biggest covert Anglo-American slush fund in history --one that the author openly acknowledged had been used to fund clandestine wars, including the Afghantsi Mujahideen war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, and other covert military actions in Africa.

Managing cash in oil deals is apparently far looser in Britain than in the United States. The Saudis would pay into a fund, and in return they would get the weapons systems. But the value of the oil was about four times the value of the systems the Saudis got. That leaves hundreds of billions of dollars... unaccounted for.

Between the more than $80 billion in untraced funds generated through Al-Yamamah, according to EIR's conservative estimate, corroborated by U.S. intelligence sources, and the use of the project as a cover for covert activities around the globe and unauthorized weapons purchases, both the Justice Department and the U.S. Congress have a much bigger series of crimes to probe than the $2 billion in fees allegedly conduited through the Saudi accounts at Riggs Bank. The issue is the British corruption and subversion of American law on a grand scale.

Prince Bandar's ghost writer, William Simpson, has revealed that Al-Yamamah provided off-balance-sheet covert funding for the decade-long Mujihadeen covert war to drive the Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence sources have independently confirmed that at least some of those funds went to the recruitment and training of foreign Muslim fighters, who were sent to Afghanistan. Some of those fighters, following the Afghan War (1979-1990) would later surface in such far-away places as Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as Islamist insurgents, including members of Al Qaeda.

Which leads us back to Fourthbranch. We know that he has no respect for US law. If he wants to fund covert operations around the globe, he'll find a way to do it and he'll do his best to keep it a secret. This little kitty held by Bandar Bush and the Saudis is the perfect way to get the money where he feels it needs to go; we know he loves contorlling the purse strings. It appeared out of the reach of US justice system because it's a British/Saudi deal. But when Bandar got popped in Britain it threatened the whole deal. So DoJ is sent out to do a show investigation to divert attention away from this giant slush fund. I don't know exactly what's going on here, but there's a lot of strings that need to be pulled together.

Freedom's on the March

In Pakistan (you know, our great ally in the war on terror):

- A government-led crackdown against the news media and the political opposition intensified here Tuesday, with hundreds of party workers arrested and television stations bracing for raids.

The crackdown came as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, moved to limit the political fallout from his decision three months ago to suspend the nation's chief justice. Critics have accused the president of authoritarianism and said his tactics are an indication of his slipping grip on power.

In Saudi Arabia, another ally:

I'd heard about Saudi Arabia, that the sexes are wholly segregated. From museums to university campuses to restaurants, the genders live corralled existences. One young, hip, U.S.-educated Saudi friend told me that he arranges to meet his female friends in other Arab cities. It's easier to fly to Damascus or Dubai, he shrugged, than to chill out coeducationally at home [...]

I spent my days in Saudi Arabia struggling unhappily between a lifetime of being taught to respect foreign cultures and the realization that this culture judged me a lesser being. I tried to draw parallels: If I went to South Africa during apartheid, would I feel compelled to be polite?

The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.

In Iran, where our continuing belligerent talk has stifled efforts at political reform:

Tehran's jailing of Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year old grandmother who holds dual Iranian-American citizenship, as well as the interrogation of others with similar papers, is evidence that Washington's latest attempt to foist change on Iran is backfiring — as Iranian democracy advocates had warned. The Bush administration had trumpeted its $61.1 million democracy program, including Farsi-language broadcasts into Iran, education and cultural exchanges and $20 million worth of support for "civil society, human rights, democratic reform and related outreach" as an important effort. However, sources tell TIME that several key Iranian reformers had repeatedly warned U.S. officials through back channels that the pro-democracy program was bound to expose them as vulnerable targets for a government crackdown whether they took Washington's funds or not.

Iranian civil rights activists contacted by TIME say that the cases against the Iranian-Americans have fostered the most repressive atmosphere inside Iran in years, making democracy advocates terrified to work or even speak on the telephone. Many are deeply reluctant to leave or re-enter the country, fearing that they will meet the same fate as Esfandiari, who was initially detained while heading to the airport after an eight-day visit to Iran to see her 93-year old mother. She and at least two other Iranian-Americans were charged with espionage. Esfandiari is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mideast Program in Washington. The Wilson Center has strongly denied that she or the center has received any of the Bush administration's funds.

In Cuba!

The continuing hostilities with the US have played into Castro's hands. It was as an embattled nationalist leader of a small island, standing up to an aggressive, neighbouring superpower, that Castro preserved his revolutionary credentials most effectively. The shortcomings of life under his regime were, he argued, attributable mainly to the US embargo. Many swallowed the argument. He knew, too, how to capitalise on the latent anti-Americanism in Latin America, Europe and Canada to give his struggle more universal appeal [...]

In fact, the regime seems to act with zeal to ensure that the embargo continues. When it looks as if the US government might consider ending it, some heavy-handed Cuban act ensues that the status quo prevails. In 1996, when Clinton was keen to initiate rapprochement, the regime shot down two US planes manned by members of a Cuban exile group rescuing those escaping the island on rafts. When, in 2003, an influential cross-party lobby in the US seemed set to dismantle the embargo, the Cuban government promptly incarcerated 75 prisoners of conscience and executed three men who hijacked a tugboat with a view to getting to Miami.

But don't worry, there's good news: turns out the Cold War is over!

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush emphasized as relations between Washington and Moscow fell deeper into an icy chill with Putin's threat to retarget rockets at Europe.

When the best foreign policy move all week is pleading with everybody that the Cold War is over, you know things are pretty bleak.

There's a very good reason for this rise of authoritarianism abroad. The neoconservative project to bully the world has produced an equal and opposite reaction. It's removed any moral authority from the United States to press democratic reforms because we refuse to set a decent example. So it gives allies a safety valve to rule with dictatorial means, or just to reject it since we don't have a real argument to make. It also forces other nations, like Iran, to crack down out of fear that they are being undermined and will be toppled in the name of democracy promotion. So you get a more repressive society while intending to get a less repressive one.

We need to relate to the world in a more honest and a less unilateral way. Unilateralism breeds unilateralism. And it makes this a far less safe world.

That Which Is Less Discussed

I was listening to David Sirota on Thom Hartmann for a little bit today, and Sirota made a great point, that what the media chooses NOT to report is often as much proof of subjectivity as what they choose to put on the front page. It's the sin of omission, and it's amazing how regular that sin is employed to protect the rich and confuse their motives.

For example, take the case of George Tenet. He's out there pushing a book which claims that there was no substantive debate leading up to the war in Iraq, that the architects of the war were ready to go in within days of 9-11, and that it was wrong to scapegoat the intelligence for what essentially was a political failure of unnecessarily hyping WMDs. To the extent that Tenet's motives for writing the book are discussed, and his willingness to come forward now instead of during the run-up to war when it would have counted, we hear about collecting a fat payday from his publisher, or his weak kowtowing to power, or maybe that setting the record straight is valuable. What we don't hear too much about is the fact that the war itself was financially profitable for him.

While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.

Tenet sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions, a major supplier of biometric identification software used by the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company recently acquired two of the CIA's hottest contractors for its growing intelligence outsourcing business. At the Analysis Corp. (TAC), a government contractor run by one of Tenet's closest former advisors at the CIA, Tenet is a member of an advisory board that is helping TAC expand its thriving business designing the problematic terrorist watch lists used by the National Counterterrorism Center and the State Department.

Tenet is also a director of Guidance Software, which makes forensic software used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence to search computer hard drives and laptops for evidence used in the prosecution and tracking of suspected terrorists. And Tenet is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc.

This never gets discussed on any of the talk shows on which Tenet has appeared. But surely he knew that he could board the defense/intelligence merry go-round after he left the CIA and reap untold fortunes.

Here's another example. A couple years back we heard a whole lot of chatter about this "UN oil-for-food" scandal, where Saddam Hussein was gaming the international community by bribing people and doing business outside the system to enrich his government's coffers. It was obvious then that the biggest malefactors in that scandal were corporations who ignored the UN guidelines and did business with the dictator while allowing him to get kickbacks worth up to $1.8 billion dollars. That was less remarked upon, even to this day:

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.

The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.

At the time, who sat on the board of directors for Chevron? The same person that has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron’s board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush.

These are the types of things that don't make the headlines. They would inform the public about decisions that are made affecting their lives and the lives of their families. But they're never at the top of the page. You hear about Fred Thompson but not that he's a career lobbyist. You hear about Condi Rice but not that she was on the board that allowed Saddam Hussein to enrich himself. You hear about George Tenet but not that he's making a mint off the Iraq war. You hear about the surge but not about the covert action that the US and the Saudis are sponsoring inside Iran, a cooperative effort against Shiite power maintained by the same strain of Wahhabist Sunnis that attacked us on 9-11.

These sins of omissions are debilitating to the public interest of making decisions about our future. Fortunately there's the Internet, so these sins are harder to hide these days. But as long as conglomerates run the traditional news, this is going to happen. And it's also a powerful argument for ensuring a free and open Internet that cannot be restricted for content of ability to pay off wealthy telecom companies.