Deja vu: John O'Neill: The man who knew.

{ 6:07 PM }

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Only translators know the whole truth. Thanks to Richard Clarke and the 9-11 Commission, the saga of Sibel Edmonds is being resurrected (Government Executive Magazine):

A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had "real, specific" information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.

Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.

Edmonds has testified before the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

Edmonds' story is fascinating and revelatory. See Gail Sheehy's lengthy report in the New York Observer, this article at www.tomflocco.com, and this from CBS News.

Story via xymphora.

{ 1:12 PM }

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"Nope, no weapons over there!" While Richard Clarke was making the first governmental apology to the families of the 9-11 victims, George W. Bush was making a disgusting ass of himself during his presentation at the annual Radio & Television Correspondents' Association dinner (WaPo):

Mostly, though, he put up dorky-looking pictures of himself. A recurring joke involved photos of the president in awkward positions -- bent over as if he's looking under a table, leaning to look out a window -- accompanied by remarks such as "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!" and "Nope, no weapons over there!" and "Maybe under here?"

Not mentioned in his hilarious monolog were the 607 US war dead in Iraq, or the 9-11 victims in whose name those nonexistent weapons were never found.

{ 8:24 AM }

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If it walks like a chicken....

{ 5:48 PM }

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Wal-Mart's private Republican tax. America's largest retailer takes its tidal wave to Washington by taxing its managers (Jeanne Cummings, WSJ, sub. req'd.):

In Washington, Wal-Mart has five lobbyists on its payroll, and a bench of hired guns led by Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., one of Capitol Hill's best-known lawyer-lobbyists. The company's political action committee was the biggest corporate donor to federal parties and candidates in 2003, with more than $1 million in contributions -- up from $182,000 during the 1997-98 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosure reports. Wal-Mart's PAC ranks as the second-largest in Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political giving.

"It's hard to go to a fund-raiser in Washington for a member of the [House] Financial Services Committee without running into one or two or three Wal-Mart lobbyists," says Ron Ence, a lobbyist for community bankers.

Unlike most corporations, which contribute to both parties in rough proportion to Congress's partisan split, about 85% of Wal-Mart's checks go to Republicans. And recently Mr. [Senior Vice President Jay] Allen was named a "Pioneer" by the Bush campaign, meaning he has raised at least $100,000 by getting friends and colleagues to make contributions of up to $2,000 each.

[...]

Congressional allies rushed to offer advice [on Wal-Mart's foray into banking], including Trent Lott, then Senate majority leader. Mr. Lott arrived in Bentonville in late 1999 with a simple message, according to a congressman who attended the meeting: Increase your profile and open your wallet.

So Wal-Mart executives set out to beef up their political action committee -- an account made up of voluntary employee contributions that executives use to make political donations. (Federal law prohibits direct corporate contributions to party committees and candidates.) At an August 2000 meeting attended by thousands of Wal-Mart managers, buckets were passed around for donations, as well as forms authorizing automatic paycheck deductions for the PAC.

For some employees, the pressure to contribute became a point of contention. "With my district manager sitting 3 inches over my shoulder, you think I didn't sign up?" recalls Jon Lehman, a Wal-Mart manager who quit in November 2001 and is now working with union organizers to enlist Wal-Mart workers. Current Wal-Mart employees, who asked not to be named, also report feeling pressured to give to the PAC.

Mr. Allen says Wal-Mart doesn't force workers to give to a PAC; such an action would be illegal. "I regret" that employees felt pressured, says Mr. Allen. "That is not the intent at all."

Wal-Mart managers boosted PAC contributions to $703,500 in the 1999-2000 election cycle from $230,800 in 1997-98. When Sen. Lott issued a call for help for Republican candidates in the late summer of 2002, Wal-Mart's PAC donated $50,000 in September and $101,000 a month later -- mostly to Republicans. "They came through, and people knew it," recalls a former Republican senatorial aide.

[...]

The support brought its own rewards -- including free publicity. In November 2002 the Bush administration proposed the removal of all tariffs on manufactured goods imported to the U.S. by 2015. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick stood on a stage before the news media with two identical baskets of baby goods, prominently marked as having come from Wal-Mart. The one without tariffs was $32 cheaper.

Wal-Mart's PAC today has swelled to nearly $1.5 million, according to its March 2004 report. Nearly 19% of the company's more than 60,000 domestic managers contribute, most through payroll deductions that average $8.60 a month, says Mr. Allen.

No wonder these people are against federal taxes. Wal-Mart managers are being forced into paying a private tax to support Republicans through automatic payroll deductions to Wal-Mart's PAC.

$100,000 in protection money is extorted from Wal-Mart managers every month, a pattern of coercion worthy of Tony Soprano.

{ 11:12 AM }

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Nine months before 9-11. Richard Clarke's problem was that his nonpartisan strategy to fight al-Qaeda fell into an inconvenient dip in the election cycle (Time, August 4, 2002):

As chair of the interagency Counter-Terrorism Security Group (CSG), Clarke was known as a bit of an obsessive -- just the sort of person you want in a job of that kind. Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000 -- an attack that left 17 Americans dead -- he had been working on an aggressive plan to take the fight to al-Qaeda. The result was a strategy paper that he had presented to Berger and the other national security "principals" on Dec. 20. But Berger and the principals decided to shelve the plan and let the next Administration take it up. With less than a month left in office, they did not think it appropriate to launch a major initiative against Osama bin Laden. "We would be handing (the Bush Administration) a war when they took office on Jan. 20," says a former senior Clinton aide. "That wasn't going to happen." Now it was up to Rice's team to consider what Clarke had put together.

December 2000 was a pivotal month.

Clarke was putting the finishing touches on his aggressive al-Qaeda strategy at the same time that Cheney's friend Scalia was putting Dubya in the White House.

If actions speak louder than words, then al-Qaeda was evidently not a Bush priority from the get-go — it would be another five months before Colin Powell delivered a $43 million grant to the Taliban.

While Clarke was completing the strategy that was soon to be disregarded by the Bushies, the World Trade Center was still standing and its occupants were still alive. Discrediting Clarke now doesn't bring those people back to life or make America any safer from repeat performances by the people who hate us.

Via Josh Marshall's excellent analysis of the White House's contorted attacks on Clarke.

{ 1:47 PM }

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The tax cut: it's a gusher. It's fairly common knowledge that most of Bush's tax cut went to the wealthiest Americans. What is only now becoming clear is that half of the tiny tax cut trickling down to the middle and lower classes is going to oil companies (Investor's Business Daily):

Merrill Lynch economists figure that a 1-cent rise in gas prices pulls roughly $1 billion a year from the pockets of American consumers. At that rate, this year's rise of 24 cents to $1.72 a gallon could "absorb almost half the expected $60 billion" of tax refunds, wrote David Rosenberg, Merrill's chief North America economist.

The net effect: $30 billion that would have supported a substantial social or educational or healthcare program (or even helped pay for a counterfeit war) will end up in Houston so some more Bush Rangers and Pioneers can build their new McMansions in River Oaks, down the street from the notoriously unindicted Ken "Kenny Boy" and Linda "Jus' Stuff" Lay.

{ 8:04 AM }

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Reading "The Pet Goat" and leading the counterterrorism failure. Take a look at this fascinating Flash show offering a minute-by-minute chronology of Bush's activity during the fall of the World Trade Center (4 MB) from Take Back the Media.

{ 12:26 PM }

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Worried about e-voting? If not, here's a good start: The Agonist's video of an internal Diebold meeting.

{ 9:02 AM }

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