just about Intelligence Critical Thinking.

PBS's "Frontline" series, as well as the Boston Globe, are reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, set up shop and used Pentagon resources, where they manufactured shaped intelligence to persuade the American populace that war in Iraq would be a GOOD thing.

Flashback...

For those nations and individuals who were somehow able to suppress their gag reflex when Bush announced his horrific "Pre-emptive Doctrine", there was only one logical alternative -- monkey see, monkey do.

As expected, Bush's demonic doctrine inspired others to follow:

RUSSIA: Russia assured the world that it's prepared to make 'pre-emptive' strikes on "terrorist bases" across the globe. Russia's Chief of Staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky said:

"With regard to preventive strikes on terrorist bases, we will take any action to eliminate terrorist bases in any region of the world."

NORTH KOREA: In February of 2003, North Korean officials argued that they have the right to a pre-emptive attack on the U.S. as the Bush Administration was preparing for the invasion of Iraq.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", said the deputy director Ri Pyong-gap, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US."

INDIA: Back in April of 2003, India, a nuclear power, called on the US to preemptively invade and conquer Pakistan, a neighboring nuclear power. They cited the opinion that given the Administration's own lax criteria for invasion, Pakistan is a far more dangerous and legitimate target than Iraq.

According to the External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha:

"I genuinely believe that if possession of weapons of mass destruction, absence of democracy and export of terrorism are the criteria, then no country deserves more than Pakistan to be tackled."

JAPAN: In May of 2003, Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi claimed that:

"Japan has the right to make a preemptive strike on any country preparing to attack it."

Koizumi, using fashionable "Bush-speak", cited justification for pre-emptive action because "We could not just let the Japanese people be harmed by doing nothing."

Interviewer: Mr. Helpmann, what would
you say to those critics who maintain
that the Ministry Of Information has
become too large and unwieldy ...?

Helplmann: David ... in a free society
information is the name of the game.
You can't win the game if you're a man short.

-- From "Brazil"

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh makes this chilling assessment:

The Bush administration calls the war on terror "the long war." But if we are to take the president and his aides at their word, it is more like a permanent war, one that by definition can never end.... And that means the extraordinary powers that George W. Bush has arrogated to himself "during wartime"--including the surveillance of Americans--could become permanent as well. It all sounds frighteningly Orwellian.

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

And no, the answer is not because you're blogging here, though I'm sure all of us have wondered as much recently.

An official disclaimer, before I begin.  I do not hold a security clearance.  I have never held a security clearance.  To my knowledge, no one has ever disclosed classified information at any level to me.  Having said that, I have been around the technological side of the law enforcement and intelligence communities long enough to have a picture of the technology behind intelligence and investigative analysis and the laws that back it up.

Want to know why you might be under surveillance?  Make the jump.

From Law.com's newsletter:

Buchanan Lawyer Leaves for Key Homeland Security Position
Gina Passarella
The Legal Intelligencer
01-04-2006

The recently added co-chairman of Buchanan Ingersoll's national security practice group will spend just one more week with the firm before his new role in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security begins.

Jack Thomas Tomarchio will resign from the Pittsburgh-based firm on Monday to take the newly created position of deputy director of intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security.

[edit]

Tomarchio said he had been offered several different government positions during the past year and a half, but turned them down because they did not fit with his background and experience.

[edit]

Legal recruiter Frank D'Amore of Attorney Career Catalysts said . . .  it would be a boon for (Tomarchio's) career in the long run and for Buchanan Ingersoll if he chooses to return to the firm.

BushCo's 2nd term:  Reach out and beg someone?  

Yesterday Senator Dianne Feinstein released a Congressional Research Service report answering the question:

Limitations on Congressional Access to Certain National Intelligence

By virtue of his constitutional role as commander-and-in-chief and head of the executive branch, the President has access to all national intelligence collected, analyzed and produced by the Intelligence Community. The President's position also affords him the authority - which, at certain times, has been aggressively asserted - to restrict the flow of intelligence information to Congress and its two intelligence committees, which are charged with providing legislative oversight of the Intelligence Community. As a result, the President, and a small number of presidentially-designated Cabinet-level officials, including the Vice President - in contrast to Members of Congress - have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods.

Apparently including intel on his own citizens.  I feel ever so much better now.  After all, the Constitution is "just a piece of paper."  

The Washington Post editorial by William Raspberry spells it out explicitly.

It's clear enough what the administration would have you believe: that congressional Democrats, privy to the same information then possessed by the administration, voted to go to war in Iraq. Now that the war has proved difficult and unpopular, they want to lay the whole burden for it on the president -- a latter-day version of John Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it."

The characterization seems wrong on virtually every count.

as bush starts yet another speechifying sales job on iraq to the american people, let's reflect on reality and truth, commodities not in evidence in the current presidential administration... scot lehigh's boston globe editorial discusses the difference between "lying" and "misleading" and cites a valuable research document from the carnegie endowment for international peace..."

Cross-posted everywhere, but primarily at Daily Kos)

My last post was generally about the ratcheting-up of defensive rhetoric by the President in two recently-delivered speeches (on Veteran's Day and on a stopover in Alaska). Vice President Dick Cheney's speech last night, then, wasn't shocking given the new "strategy" to defend the war in Iraq. The "strategy" seems to be:

• Deny and decry the allegation of misleading America into war.
• Claim that a Congressional investigation cleared the Administration of manipulating intelligence - be sure not to mention that the investigation itself was about whether or not the Administration pressured intelligence analysts and agents to deliver specific content - the current allegations are about whether that intelligence was misused.
• Attack specifically the Democrats who voted for the Iraq war authorization.

Now that that recap is out of the way, I caught something a bit curious in Cheney's remarks at the Frontiers of Freedom Institute 2005 Ronald Reagan Gala last night. Read on.

When Senator Reid pulled the Senate into a closed session, you could practically see the smoke coming from Bill Frist's ears.  The Republicans were caught absolutely flat-footed.

In a town where every third word is hyperbole, this time they really seemed angry.  Frist's immediate reaction was to call the whole thing "a stunt."

Know what?  He was right.