The Washington Monthly: "Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep"

...

"Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell."

Emphasis mine.

(Via Washington Monthly.)

Defense Tech: Feds Block Red Cross: "Un-fucking-believable:

'The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,' said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

'Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.'"

Which almost makes this colossal screw-up look good by comparison...

Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

(Via a DefenseTech.)

The Victims of Hurricane Katrina: "Numerous Nation readers have written us asking for suggestions on where they can send funds to help those devastated by Hurricane Katrina. For straight donations, the American Red Cross is probably as good an outfit as any in the field currently taking contributions. ARC volunteers have been deployed to the hardest hit areas of Katrina's destruction, supplying hundreds of thousands of victims left homeless with critical necessities. Click here to make a dedicated donation to this relief effort."

...

"It's also worth supporting a group of progressive congressional Democrats who have introduced legislation to protect the thousands of people left financially devastated by Hurricane Katrina from being penalized by anti-debtor provisions contained in the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. This unfair law, designed to protect the rich at the expense of the poor, is scheduled to take effect on October 17, 2005. Click here to let your own elected reps know that you expect them to support this bill."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Think Progress » President Bush Diverts Critical Resources For Photo-Op:

"Why are these helicopters being used as a backdrop for President Bush, instead of assisting the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

Why are members of the Coast Guard being used as a backdrop for Bush’s press conference? Don’t they have more important things to do?"

(Via Think Progress.)

Denny Hastert's Dark Calculus: "But in light of House Speaker Dennis Hastert's suggestion that rebuilding hurricane-ravaged New Orleans 'doesn't make sense to me,' it would not be a stretch to headline a report: 'Hastert to City: Drop Dead.'

Before the bodies had been pulled from the flood waters that have filled the streets of the Crescent City -- at least in part because of the failure of a Hastert-led Congress to allocate the funding needed to modernize the city's levees -- the Illinois Republican was displaying his brand of compassionate conservatism by saying of New Orleans: 'It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.'"

...

"Unlike New Orleans, a 300-year-old city with a rich history but not a particularly rich populace, some of the hardest-hit areas of Mississippi and Alabama were upscale waterfront communities that have been built up in recent years, as real-estate developers have claimed more and more coastal wetlands for their oceanview projects.

But those Republican-leaning areas, which are home to people like former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, were spared Hastert's talk of 'tough questions.'

Could the calculus really be this dark? Could the Speaker of the House really justify dismissing one community while caring for another for purely parisan purposes? Anyone who has watched this Speaker in action knows the answer to that question.

Hastert is about as crass a political player as you will find in Washington. Along with his political godfather, House Minority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the Speaker has made the House more partisan, and crude, than at any time in its history.

Hastert and DeLay keep vulture eyes on the political map. To the them, New Orleans is little more than a Democratic town full of African Americans, Latino immigrants, gays and lesbians and a few remaining pockets of southern white liberalism. Republican strategists have long been frustrated by New Orleans, a city so blue that it has often tipped the political balance in an otherwise red state."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

CNN.com - The big disconnect on New Orleans - Sep 2, 2005:
"Conditions in the Convention Center

• FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need. ...
• Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people. ...
• CNN Producer Kim Segal: It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw... people who are dying in front of you.
• Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure."

Hyperlinks to videos were removed, as they don't work outside of CNN's site (scripting issues). Hit the link up top to get to them.

(Via AMERICAblog.)

AMERICAblog: Bush faked levee repair for photo op yesterday : "But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment."

(Via AMERICAblog.)

The Blog | Harry Shearer: The Fear Factor | The Huffington Post: "New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas just asserted on WWL TV that a couple of hundred New Orleanians--and he named their professions, white collar all--have been denied refuge and put back on buses to go out of state without being told their destination. He quoted one of the women in the group as saying, 'If I'da been lucky, I would have died.' In a tear-filled monologue, Thomas said communities around Louisiana were refusing to accept refugees from New Orleans because of fear caused by media coverage of 'the same few looters--I see the same pictures over and over again'. 'I saw looting in (mainly white) Jefferson Parish when I was on my way back in bringing water,' he continued. And he said of a location in New Orleans where rumors of a 'riot' had spread through Jefferson Parish, 'It didn't happen. I was there. It didn't happen.' "

(Via Eschaton.)

AlterNet: 'I Need Reinforcements': "New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin lashes out at the incompetence of the response to the hurricane and pleads for help.

[This is a partial transcript of an interview between WWL Radio's Garland Robinette and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin gives the most candid, honest appraisal of the situation in New Orleans by any politician yet. At times pleading and often angry, Nagin's interview is a must-hear.]"

...

"We are getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, 'I've been in my attic, I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck, I don't think I can hold out.' And that's happening as we speak. You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, 'Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do, figure it out.'

Who'd you say that to?

Everybody, the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA, you name it we said it. And they allowed that pumping station next to it, Pumping Station 6, to go under water. Our sewage and water board people stayed there and endangered their lives. And what happened what that pumping station went down the water started flowing again into the city, and it started getting to levels that probably killed more people. In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city, that's a power station over there. So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parrish. A critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

[...]

In a state of emergency, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done. They told me they went overnight and they built 17 concrete structures and they the pulleys on them and were going to drop them, I flew over that thing yesterday and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening, and they're feeding the public a line of bull, and they're spinning, and people are dying down here."

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: Monument to a Rotten System: "There is nothing 'unnatural' about the disaster of New Orleans. When politicians smirk at global warming, when developers look at our wetlands and dream of mini-malls, when billions are flushed in the name of war and tax cuts, when issues of poverty and racism don't even register in presidential debates, all it takes is wind, albeit 145 mph wind, to expose a sturdy superpower as a house of cards.

Nowhere is this personified more painfully than in a monument to corporate greed that has rapidly become the earth's most damnable homeless shelter: the Louisiana Superdome.

The Superdome is perhaps the most unintentionally appropriate name since Mr. and Mrs. Cheney looked at their newborn son and said, 'Dick.' It was birthed in 1975 with pomp and bombast, as the largest domed facility in the world. It was also funded entirely on the public dime.

In a case of brutal foreshadowing that would shame a B horror flick, the dome was constructed on an old cemetery for the poor. The burial grounds were dug up and discarded with a promise that the Superdome would the centerpiece of a New Orleans Central Business District that would benefit all."

(Via AlterNet.)

The Counterterrorism Blog: Jihadists: "Allah punished New Orleans": "When I logged in to one of the ansar’s voice chat rooms, I kind of expected to hear some sort of ‘interpretation’ of the flood in Louisiana and Mississippi. I still remember the Jihadi elaboration on the south Asian Tsunami last January. Before I even listened to the self-declared ‘Imam-on-line,’ I almost predicted the words: It had to have ‘infidels,’ ‘Allah,’ and ‘punishments.’ And indeed these words and many others were there. Flooding the web with speeches, the voices of the ansars, close to al Qaida and the other Salafi Jihadists insisted with certitude that ‘Allah has punished America with winds and water.’ Strangely, I remembered online rhetoric from months ago, when couple Salafi clerics announced that ‘soon, inshallah, Allah and his angels are going to begin the tadmeer (destruction) of evil America.’ They repeated endlessly that ‘all what the mujahidin have to do is to fight and kill infidels wherever they can, and that Allah, pleased with them, will do the rest. He will destroy their cities, one after the other.’

In that ansar chat room today, it was a series of ‘I- told-you-so.’ The chief commissary was proud and assertive: ‘allahu daraba al kafireen wal fasiqeen fi new orleen.’ Which translate and rime well into ‘Allah hit the infidels and the depraved in New Orleans: Ironically, among the most cited cities on the list of satanic places in America, are Las Vegas, Manhattan, Los Angeles and New Orleans."

...

"To defeat that purpose, Americans, Iraqis, and the democratic societies around the world must come together and deflect the hallucinations of the Terrorists: Americans must pour all their support to the victims of the disaster so that no one is left behind. The country must be mobilized to help the aching part of the nation. Iraqis must absorb the pain and resume the process of inclusion and democratization. And the international community must continue in its solidarity with the victims of natural disasters and Terrorism alike."

(Via Salon.)

Defense Tech: DHS WTF?: "Damn right. And this Slate article on the Department of Homeland Security's underwhelming response to Katrina is absolutely dead-on. (Click here for ways you can help.)

How is it possible that with the fourth anniversary of 9/11 almost upon us, the federal government doesn't have in hand the capability to prepare for and then manage a large urban disaster, natural or man-made? In terms of the challenge to government, there is little difference between a terrorist attack that wounds many people and renders a significant portion of a city uninhabitable, and the fallout this week from the failure of one of New Orleans' major levees. Indeed, a terrorist could have chosen a levee for his target. Or a dirty-bomb attack in New Orleans could have caused the same sort of forced evacuation we are seeing and the widespread sickness that is likely to follow.

Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security demonstrated today that it could organize an impressive press conference in Washington, lining up every participating civilian or military service from the Coast Guard to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to promise its cooperation. But on the ground in Louisiana, where it counts, DHS is turning out to be the sum of its inefficient parts. The department looks like what its biggest critics predicted: a new level of bureaucracy grafted onto a collection of largely ineffectual under-agencies."

...

"Besides, the best on-air commentary of the flight came from Jack Cafferty, who's gone from local-news-stuffed-shirt to don't-give-a-fuck-TV-truth-teller:

I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one - no one - is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it's fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see."

Emphasis mine.

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Salon.com News | "With each day I feel less and less lucky": "While everyone here was hard hit by Katrina, not everyone was affected in the same way. The wealthy lost property on the seafront. But the lives and the livelihoods of the poor without cars with which to escape, sturdy homes to protect them and insurance to fall back on, were the most vulnerable.

In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension. 'People who live in poverty and don't have the means to evacuate were definitely more likely to perish,' said Michael Matthews, an African-American who was nudging his car slowly along the four-hour queue for gas in Lucedale.

'The president is flying down here tomorrow in a plane, to tell us we can only use 20 gallons of gas. I think they are taking advantage.'

In Yvonne trailer park in Lucedale, residents hold out little hope of speedy government help. 'I don't think we'll see any of that here,' said Raybelle Perrymon, sitting in the shade on her wheelchair, stricken by polio. She is an elderly black woman cared for by a younger white man, Charles Childens, who shares her trailer and her Kools.

She cannot get her disability benefit because the banks are closed. That means she cannot pay her rent or buy food. 'We need help, but I don't think we're going to get any, until everybody else has gotten theirs,' she said. Childens nodded. 'We need something to eat,' he said. 'We need it pretty soon.'"

(Via Salon.)

The Counterterrorism Blog: Security Chaos in Hurricane Aftermath – What Does It Mean for the Future?: "What is becoming increasingly clear, almost by the hour, is how the security situation, especially in New Orleans has become dire. The local and State police have been unable to control looting and what has become generalized chaotic violence in some parts of the devastated city. Reports of extreme acts of random violence, including shooting attacks against the police and rescue personnel, as of today are common in the media. The Administration has reportedly committed tens of thousands of National Guard and other military units to move into the area to reestablish security, law and order. They cannot get there fast enough. Given that this hurricane, with its strength and potential destructive power, was something public officials knew about well in advance, there might well be questions about why mobilization of sufficient manpower resources did not occur beforehand. But, those are questions for later. Establishing security and order and the safety of the survivors is the highest priority at this time."

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)

Defense Tech: Homeland Secure?: "We've all heard the term a zillion times. But what does 'homeland security' mean, really?

Since 2001, when the phrase became part of our everyday vocabulary, homeland security has been shorthand for preventing, and responding to, terrorists. Now Katrina has struck in New Orleans and in Mississippi. (Click here for a list of ways you can help.) The results, in terms of lives and property lost, are in the same catastrophic class as 9/11.

But the government's reaction has been underwhelming, Eric Tolbert, FEMA's former disaster response chief, tells Knight-Ridder (via TP). 'Weakened by diversion into terrorism,' he says.

Federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget documents. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu requested $27 million this year.

Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine reported that the effects of the budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers were severe.

In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported..."

Emphasis Mine.

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Bush: Vacation Ruined By 'Stupid Dead Soldier' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "President Bush concluded his summer vacation by holding an informal press conference Monday to address grieving mother Cindy Sheehan, saying 'her damn dead son ruined my whole summer vacation.'

Bush addressed Mrs. Sheehan, who was not present, by saying 'a mother should not have to bury her son this way, by which I mean allowing her son's death to destroy his commander-in-chief's one chance to relax and unwind.'"

(Via The Onion.)

Martini Republic - Lead, follow, or have a drink.:

"When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it’s obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Waiting for a Leader - New York Times: "George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end."

...

"While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal."

(Via NY Times.)

Martini Republic - Lead, follow, or have a drink.: "Of course Bush doesn't like to read things like newspapers or Presidential Daily Briefings warning of imminent terrorist attacks, but he could have gotten the information, if he had cared at all about the peril facing New Orleans. If Bush had taken five minutes off from his vacation before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast to get briefed on the dangers, he would have known that a breach in the levees was specifically identified as a known danger and the worst fear. Hell, if he'd watched CNN, or checked out those internets, he'd have had a clue."

...

"The amazing thing isn't that Bush paid no attention to a category 5 hurricane approaching a heavily populate area of the coast. He doesn't give a damn about ordinary people. He did nothing to prevent the disaster, and in fact cut funding for hurricane hardening work requested by the Corps of Engineers. Hell, he had tax cuts to hand out and foreign wars to finance.

To me, the most amazing thing is that today, even after the greatest natural disaster in US history, this lazy, ignorant vacation-loving President doesn't care enough to educate himself on the issue. Anyone who gave a slightest damn about the devastation visited on New Orleans and had an attention span of longer than 45 seconds would be aware not only that the danger of breached levees existed, but that anyone with the slighest bit of knowledge knew the danger existed. You'd have to be purposefully ignorant, and ignore every newspaper article, television news show, and internet site in the known universe to preserve the level of know-nothingness Bush just demonstrated."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Salon.com | "No one can say they didn't see it coming": "In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war."

...

"The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. 'There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection,' said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as 'highly questionable,' and boasted, 'Everybody loves what we're doing.'"

(Via Salon.)

Defense Tech: Army Doc: "Bring Us Home": "In an e-mail to friends and family back home, Green says that it's time for U.S. forces to get out of Iraq.

I don't rightly know what your US news is saying, but here are a few of my own observations... The US Army is putting forth its main effort to train Iraqi soldiers... It will realistically take years before their Army and police are sufficient to protect the people and resist internal corruption. The reports that the commands are making to the higher-ups are biased and sugar-coated. The corruption is underplayed and the achievements/milestones exaggerated. The results however, may convince Congress and that a successful pull-out is close.

At this point I'd appreciate [it]. I've done my part. I've personally come to the law-of-diminishing-returns. The remaining process will be slow and arduous. Increasing financial expenditures and man-hours are going to be needed to sustain any significant growth.

It's similar to building a house. From the initial ground-breaking to foundation and framing, things seem to go remarkably fast, giving the home owners an unrealistic sense of impending move-in. Then the minor details like outlets, appliances, trim work, and cabinetry begin and little progress is noted after long periods. The tenants-to-be get anxious. The same is taking place here. The American public will not be able to consciously measure our productivity even with the best of media reporting."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Off the Front Lines and Forgotten: "Hammons says the claim he filed with the VA took 14 months to process; it took another four months to get into the VA medical system. 'My experience with the VA has been horrible. I go to a private doctor for pain meds. If I need to see a doctor here [at the VA], it takes three to four months to get an appointment,' he says. 'I took my son down a slide, which wasn't real smart, and I couldn't walk. I had pain shooting down my arm and leg. That happened in April. I got in the second week of July. That's how it is here.'

The CVAF receives 95 percent of its funding through grants. 'If the American public actually knew of the deficiencies in VA healthcare, they would be outraged,' says David Gorman, executive director of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), a 1.2 million-member group that represents disabled veterans. 'It's really changed to become an us against them-type mentality on Capitol Hill. Right now the Republicans have the majority and they flex their muscle whenever they have a chance. It doesn't do the country any good and doesn't do the vets any good.'

In April, Republican senators, including Rick Santorum, R-Pa., John McCain, R-Ariz. and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., voted to defeat a Democratic effort to add $2 billion to the 2005 VA healthcare budget. The only Republican who voted in favor of the bill was Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

'Democrats are the ones supporting the troops. Republicans aren't supporting us,' says Bill Huber, Disabled American Veterans Hospital Coordinator in Muskogee, Oklahoma and Korean Veteran. 'I'm 71 years old and I've been around a while. The problem is, veterans don't protest. We take what we get. I'm the president of our DAV chapter and I tell my people to write to their congressmen. They just sit back and let our lobbyists do it. They can't do it by themselves; we have to help them.'"

(Via AlterNet.)

Rove's role - The Boston Globe: "Rove's record has been consistent. Over 35 years, he has been a master of dirty tricks, divisiveness, innuendo, manipulation, character assassination, and roiling partisanship.

He started early. In 1970, when he was 19 and active as a college Republican -- though he didn't graduate from college -- Rove pretended to volunteer for a Democratic candidate in Illinois, stole some campaign stationery, and used it to disrupt a campaign event. Later, in Texas, he gave testimony in court that was embarrassing to an opponent of one of Rove's clients, even though it was not true, according to the book ''Bush's Brain,' by two veteran Texas newsmen, James Moore and Wayne Slater.

Negative attacks have often been the center of Rove's strategies. In a race between Texas Governor Mark White and his Republican opponent, Bill Clements, Rove wrote in a memo: ''Anti-White messages are more important than positive Clements messages.'

Often Rove has skated on the edge of being identified with certainty as the author of dirty tricks. In 1986, the discovery of a planted listening device in Rove's own office was widely publicized, damaging the Democrats. Many suspect that the source was Rove himself. This was never proven, but Moore and Slater say, ''Karl Rove remains a prime suspect.' In 1989, Texas populist Jim Hightower was damaged by grand jury leaks for which, Moore and Slater say, ''Rove remains the most likely source.'"

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com - War Room: "We reported earlier this month on some Muslim men from China who have been held in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay for three years. They're being held there still, despite the fact that a U.S. Combatant Status Review Tribunal has concluded that they're not enemy combatants and were seized by Pakistani forces -- and then turned over to the United States -- in error.

At a hearing in Washington yesterday, government lawyers said that the United States has moved the men to a less restrictive part of Guantánamo, but that it still isn't setting them free. The U.S. won't send them back to China for fear that they'd face religious persecution there, and it says it hasn't been able to find anyone else to take them in. As the Washington Post reports, attorneys for the men argued that the United States must set them free now, and that putting them into a less restrictive area at Guantánamo simply amounts to 'fluffing the pillows' when they're still locked up behind a fence. The men could be released into the United States population as seekers of political asylum, attorneys said."

(Via Salon.)

The Counterterrorism Blog: Diamonds...Counterpoint....II: "I’m not going to comment about the information flow in other agencies other than to say, at the time this investigation was conducted, no other agency presented information to support the allegations. This matter rose to the National Security Counsel level in attempting to determine if any agency had information to support the diamond allegations. "

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)