Whistle Ass / George Bush 2004

Karl Rove did it

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Karl Rove did it

According to Julian Borger, the Guardian's Washington reporter, reporters are privately, well, not so privately any more, saying Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media.
Well, all you have to do is check the phone logs and it's goodbye Karl. Well, it won't be that simple, since the next question is : what did the President know and when did he know it? Rove is his Stonewall Jackson. Bush is intensely loyal. Something will have to give and soon. Bush relies on Rove. Is it possible that he did this little deed and never told his boss and main client? Did he just think this was politics and oh, not treason.

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/

Bush's Unofficial Official Secrets Act:

How the Justice Department Has Pushed to Criminalize The Disclosure of Non-Security Related Government Information
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Sep. 26, 2003
...If Attorney General John Ashcroft has his way, we will see many more prosecutions of this ilk. Ashcroft has told Congress he wants a "comprehensive, coordinated, Government-wide, aggressive, properly resourced, and sustained effort" to deal with "the problem of unauthorized disclosures."

It's important to watch Ashcroft's lips here: He said "unauthorized" disclosure - not, say, disclosures of classified information relating to national security, which would be a very different matter. Plainly, he is targeting anyone who leaks information the Bush Administration would rather not have made public - even when security is in no way at risk...

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030926.html

Oil Drilling in ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Reserve) is Symbolic Goal for GOP

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's backroom talk about drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is distressing. In a closed-door meeting of GOP leadership, DeLay last week said the debate in Congress over oil exploration in the refuge was a symbolic battle to determine the future of oil drilling in environmentally sensitive regions.

It is the first time a prominent drilling advocate had openly acknowledged an intention to use the refuge as "precedent" for unbridled oil exploration. Until now, the debate has been framed around national security and reducing our need for foreign oil.

Some GOP colleagues claimed to be stunned by DeLay's comments, which curiously came just days after President Bush had hinted at a willingness to scratch the refuge oil drilling provision from his energy bill to improve its chances of passing.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/29/ED296184.DTL

White House Denies Rove Leaked Secret Information

Mon September 29, 2003 12:10 PM ET
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House denied on Monday that President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was behind a leak of secret information apparently aimed at discrediting a vocal critic of pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

The controversy centers on the public disclosure that the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he had spoken to Rove about the allegations and was assured that it was "simply not true" that Rove had anything to do with the leak.

McClellan pledged the White House would cooperate with the Justice Department if it investigated the leak, even as some Democrats called for a special counsel to be appointed to lead the probe.

"This administration has played politics with national security for a long time, but this is going too far," retired Gen. Wesley Clark told Reuters. The Democratic presidential hopeful suggested an independent commission look into the allegations.

http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3525621

Computer Voting: No Receipt to Prove Each Vote Even Happened

Agonist Exclusive

(ed.note: www.Agonist.org is an amazing source for current info, links, blogs)

Diebold Machines and Your Vote

While differing in various details, these systems share a crucial feature: all information about the votes is stored in exclusively digital form. The crucial difference with more traditional voting systems (e.g., punch card and optical scan machines) is that those systems keep the original vote in a physical form (usually paper) that can be directly verified by the voter and that can be used later during a recount, if the need arises. With direct recording electronic voting machines, such as the ones just listed, a recount is generally possible, but all that is recounted is simply what the machine recorded in the first place, which can be different from the intended vote. Discrepancies could arise through a number of factors: from machine malfunction to malicious tampering of the machine software. Without the hard-copy redundancy offered by traditional voting systems, it is impossible to perform an independent audit, if needed. The importance of having such audits is obvious, but is demonstrated in practice by cases where problems with voting and counting machines were suspected. For instance in a primary election in Clay County Kansas (August 2002) Roy Jennings defeated the incumbent, Jerry Mayo, by 22 votes. However, a hand recount, which was possible because of the use of optical scan machines, revealed that Mayo was the winner by a landslide: 540 votes to 175. In one ward, which Mayo carried 242-78, the computer had reversed the totals. Although this County used optical scan machines, the problem gets even more serious and insidious as voting systems become less transparent and more complex. With DRE voting systems there is no possibility of a meaningful recount. For instance, about 10% of the votes in the Oct 7 CA recall election are expected to be acquired by means of Touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines manufactured by the 3 main companies in the election business: Sequoia Edge Touchscreen (4.8%), Diebold Accu-Vote-TS Touchscreen (4.4%), and ES&S iVotronic Touchscreen (.6%) . The percentage is likely to rise in the near future. With many elections being close calls and falling within the statistical margin of error (Florida anyone?) a 10% deviation can make a huge difference.

http://www.agonist.org/archives/009016.html#009016

Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives Says WMD's destroyd in 1991

Gary Younge, New York
Monday September 29, 2003
The Guardian

America's intelligence community used outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida, according to the intelligence committee of the US House of Representatives.

After four months of poring over 19 volumes of classified material used by the White House to justify its case for war, senior members of the committee concluded that there were "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq. They said it had to rely on past assessments, dating to when UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence", both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter".

In a letter to the CIA director, George Tenet, that was leaked to the Washington Post, two committee members claimed: "The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist. The assessment that Iraq continued to pursue chemical and biological weapons remained constant and static over the past 10 years..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1051838,00.html

Bush Administration Is Focus of CIA Inquiry

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11208-2003Sep27.html

U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to White Collar Crime

By ERIC LICHTBLAU The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=68&u=/nyt/20030927/ts_nyt/ususesterrorlawtopursuecrimesfromdrugstoswindling&printer=1

THE shot heard 'round the world...

It's how America, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States--no matter what the people of the United States might want.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players--Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia--with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies--all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid--have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nation-wide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems--many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all--are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.

http://www.counterpunch.com/floyd09262003.html

'You lied, they died,' US parents tell Bush

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Saturday September 27, 2003
The Guardian

The father of a soldier killed in Iraq accused President George Bush yesterday of being responsible for his son's death.

Fernando Suarez, whose 20-year-old son, Jesus, was one of the first fatalities, said: "My son died because Bush lied."

Mr Suarez, from Escondido, California, speaking at a press conference to publicise tomorrow's anti-war demonstrations in eight US cities, said that about 1,300 parents of troops stationed in Iraq were involved in a movement against the oc cupation. "It is time for these troops to come home," said Mr Suarez. "Neither my wife nor my family want more children to die in this illegal war. We are no less patriotic for wanting peace. Bush wants $87bn [£52m] for this war, but what does he give us for our schools?" he asked...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1050949,00.html