A few more thoughts on conspiracy theory

Since the previous piece on conspiracy theories received a fair amount of feedback, I suppose a few words of follow-up won't hurt.

First, I should clarify: I never set out to be one of those non-conformists who speak only to other non-conformists. I confess to being a partisan -- a fellow who combines (mostly) mainstream Democratic convictions with a few ideas that are, y'know, odd.

Second, many worry that "odd" speculations could discredit the larger cause. Will speculations injure those convictions? I'm not so sure.

During the 1990s, ultra-conservatives did very little aside from engage in conspiracy theories. For the most part, those theories were crap. Consider: Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Ron Brown, Vince Foster, the Clinton Death List, Satanic Ritual Abuse, the ever-imminent Great Gun Round-Up, the Russian soldiers massing on the Mexican border, and the incineration of seventeen little children at WACO as the first stage in KKKlinton's insidious Project TATTERTOT.

Remember those days? On the radio, in the bookstores, in various magazines, it was all conspiracy all the time.

Question: Did these theories -- bogus as they mostly were -- hurt the Republican Party? Or did they pave the way for the right-wing takeover of Congress?

Indulging in a certain amount of speculation cannot hurt Democrats. But I advise others to follow five provisos:

1. Speculation must be clearly labeled as such.

2. We must make an effort to seek better evidence than our rightist counterparts proffer for their theories.

3. Try to impact the larger culture. Many plot-besot theorists stay happily mired within an intellectual ghetto, which means they rarely speak to more than a few thousand of their fellow oddballs.

4. We should apologize when wrong.

The admission of simple human fallibility: That's our secret weapon. Psychologically, we can do that; the folks on the opposite team can't. If a guy steps on your foot and, instead of saying "I'm sorry," blames you for having your foot there, you can bet the rent money that he voted for Bush.

My last suggestion is the most important:

5. Stay human.

Cook up a pot of really good beef stew. Read scary stories to your kids. Watch the pooch piddle on a redwood. Go for a midnight stroll in the park with your lover. That's the important stuff. Yes, doing research is important, politics are important, writing is important, trancing out on the internet can be important -- but none of those things should ever become the pivot point of any human life.

Otherwise, you may end up acting very much like poor old Fintan Dunne -- who has not, I'm sorry to say, yet seen fit to include me on his list of CIA internet fakes. C'mon, Fintan. I'm waiting.

There's a phrase which used to have some currency among real spooks: Sick think. "Normal" paranoia leads people to suspect the worst of their enemies; a sick-thinker suspects allies of having a nefarious hidden agenda. Sick think is, in short, paranoia raised to DEFCON 4. In the Agency, the term was used to describe James Jesus Angleton, counterintelligence chief and sick-thinker extraordinaire. Many anti-CIA activists became fascinated with Angleton, perhaps because his psychological malaise mirrored their own demons.

Readers raised a few other points about 9/11. Perhaps I should respond.

My dismissive stance toward the "controlled demolitions" theorists angers many, but so far, I've seen no evidence to turn me around. One respondent put the matter well:

To the person who suggests that al qaeda members who rented offices at the WTC could have brought explosives up the freight elevators and installed them, why then did they bother with the hijacking of commercial airliners with the intent to fly them into the buildings?

To which I'll add: We have detailed information as to who rented which offices in that complex, and no-one -- to my knowledge -- has identified an al Qaida front group.

If a group other than al Qaida -- neocons, Mossad, the Illuminati, whatever -- planted bombs, what need of airplanes? Simply let the buildings go down and blame Osama. I still say that the horrific image of airliners hitting those buildings gave Bush (inadvertently or otherwise) sufficient cause for war in Afghanistan and Iraq; the collapses did not really help his cause.

Yes, the architects of the Twin Towers did attempt to create structures that would withstand the impact of the largest aircraft of the day. They knew all about the famous crash into the Empire State Building. But their calculations took into account only the direct force of a physical object's impact, not the additional explosive power of all that jet fuel. The fireproofing of the structural beams was, by all accounts, quite poor.

As for Building Seven: As it happens, one of the chapters I did complete (in 2003) addressed that very subject. I may post the piece somewhere, even though it is now a little out of date. The collapse initially seemed very suspicious to me. But there was much explosive material stored in several massive tanks within that poorly-designed building; any rupture of the gas lines could have caused all of that stuff to burn. (In recent times, reports have surfaced that owner Larry Silverstein said, shortly after the disaster occurred, that he "may have to pull" Building Seven. But did he mean to "pull it" that very day?)

A similar scenario may explain reports that some people heard subsidiary explosions within the Twin Towers.

For some reason, right-wingers have a special fondness for what I call "physical" theories, as opposed to "investigative" theories. For example: After Oklahoma City, right-wing conspiracists ballyhooed General Partin and his controlled demolition claims -- and they paid very little attention to McVeigh's links to Elohim City. Lefty researchers were more interested in the latter than in the former. Much the same history played out after 9/11. I'm not sure why this dichotomy exists, but I do note the pattern.

Am I a conspiracy theorist? Are you?

In the past few days, I've received maybe ten messages -- from friendly voices, mind you -- referring to this site as a "conspiracy" blog. I cringed every time I saw the word.

Not long ago (like, throughout most of the Clinton administration), I told all inquirers that I wished every conspiracy theorist in the world had but one neck so I could slash it with a rusty steak knife. Those guys really, really irritated me. They spewed endless tripe about Roswell and Mena and Waco and the Freemasons and the Illuminati and Evil Hillary and, of course, the Great Gun Round-up -- which, they always insisted, was scheduled to take place "some time next year."

(You know when I first heard that "some time next year" line? I was eight. The folks who peddle this crap really ought to read their Aesop. The story about the wolf.)

These guys remained impervious to any facts which contradicted their paranoid mind-sets. They were infuriating.

On the other hand, I have long believed that a conspiracy killed JFK. And that belief hardens whenever a poser like Posner fills the media with provable lies.

And I've long been intrigued by the antics of the many intelligence agencies which infect this planet. Let's face it -- conspiracy is what they do. You can't talk about them without talking about covert schemes, because many of those people are paid to scheme covertly.

I don't know if the Tale of the Bulge, with brought this column some attention, counts as a conspiracy theory. Use of the word "conspiracy" usually implies criminality. If the bulge really was a communication device, Bush and his elves were not trying to circumvent the law; rather they hoped to make W seem less stupid than he really is.

(Many moons ago, Shrub told the press that he was reading a biography of Dean Acheson. During a debate with John McCain, W was asked a question about Acheson, only to reveal that he had no idea whatsoever who the man was; McCain, by contrast, could speak eloquently about Acheson. The bulge, I feel, had its origin in that embarrassing incident.)

The vote fraud which occurred in 2004 was a criminal conspiracy. No doubt of that in my mind.

Was 9/11 a conspiracy? Obviously. But what sort of conspiracy? Was the administration (or some faction thereof) complicit, as a growing number of people now allege?

I once intended to write a book on the various controversies to grow out of the World Trade Center attacks. My intention was to write a debunking work, since so many of the notions proliferating on the net a few years ago -- remotely-piloted jets, missiles striking the Pentagon, Jews warned not to show up for work at the WTC -- struck me as silly. I even wrote a few chapters, which may appear on the web somewhere one of these days.

But over the past few years, some non-silly facts and theories have come forward which threaten to put into rewrite the Orthodox Standard View of 9/11.

For example: We've learned a lot about the financial ties between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family. We have good reason to arch a skeptical eyebrow whenever representatives of the latter family insist that they have nothing whatsoever to do with Osama.

And no-one, to my knowledge, has knocked down Daniel Hopsicker's investigations in Florida. Those "flight schools" Mohammed Atta and friends attended were obviously as spooky as Caspar.

One could go on, citing G.O.P. ties to the Al Taqwa bank (which funded Al Qaida), the unnerving "Vigilant Guardian" coincidence, and much more.

So why didn't I finish that book? Because back in 2003, I ran face-first into the folks involved in the 9/11 "conspiracy" community. And to put the matter concisely, they pissed me off. I felt the same I felt when I confronted those plot-spotting wingnuts during the Clinton years.

To this day, whenever my monitor fills with prattle about robot airplanes or "controlled demolitions" of the WTC (Why? Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?), I find myself reaching for my trusty rusty steak knife while muttering: "One neck...if only these goons had but one neck..."

We now find ourselves confronting an administration -- and a larger neocon subculture -- which makes conspiracy its modus operandi. Look and see: Hackable vote machines, media manipulation, Rove-gate, fake documents, massive lies told to initiate war.

Yet if you discuss these things, people accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist.

Meanwhile, the rightists feel free to theorize all they want. Last I heard, Rush Limbaugh was still peddling stories about how Joseph Wilson was an operative of the Democratic National Committee. The egregious ACVR -- a fake grass-roots "non-partisan" group put together by known Republican operatives -- issued a fact-twisting report designed to convince reporters that Democrats perpetrate vote fraud.

Conservatives are allowed to make such accusations. When we do it, we are called "conspiracy theorists." Even when we put better evidence on the table.

The worst aspect of the plot-spotter mind-set is the tendency to denounce other theorists as "spooks." Xymphora wrote a column touching on this (scroll down to "CIA Disinformation Agents"), which derived, in turn, from this WagNews entry.

WagNews purportedly reveals -- or at least alleges -- that a number of well-known sites devoted to the afore-mentioned subjects are actually run by CIA disinformation agents. The spook list includes the Brad Blog, to which yours truly may soon contribute in a small way. (For shame, Mr. Friedman! How could you take that filthy CIA lucre?)

Also fingered: Daniel Hopsicker's "Mad Cow" site, Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now," RAW Story, Bellacio, al Jazeera, Anti-War, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Deep Black Lies, Xymphora, and -- well, every site on the internet that isn't WagNews.

Except Cannonfire. I'm not listed. Yet. Guess I'm not important enough to spook-bait.

Of course, spook-baiting is an old game in certain circles. The virus has plagued the JFK research community since the '60s.

Fingering the "false friend" -- beating the grasses for the snakes allegedly hiding therein -- fosters a pleasing (to some) aura of intrigue. Such allegations also function as a social control mechanism. In old Salem, people would cry "Goody Foster is a Witch!" to enforce conformity of thought and behavior. Now, some netizens feel no requirement to cite evidence before calling their neighbors "CIA disinformation agents." The more things change...

Xymphora responded to this list of accusations by suggesting that Mr. WagNews -- his name, it seems, is Fintan Dunne -- may be the real disinformer. I doubt it. Still, I suspect that Mr. Dunne may be a denizen of Cucamonga (as Southern Californians used to put it).

Which brings us to the key problem. How can we confront the current political crisis without finding ourselves damned as "conspiracy" spotters?

And if we embrace that nomenclature -- if we boldly announce "Yeah, I think there are genuine conspiracies afoot" -- how do we avoid being lumped alongside the anti-illuminati freakazoids and the Protocols-peddling Jew-haters and the Dunne-esque ultra-paranoids?

Iran, Ledeen, Rove, AIPAC, and more

Remember the disinformation peddled by NBC news -- the story that Iran has supplied the Iraq insurgents with sophisticated new bombs? I registered my skepticism yesterday. That skepticism has been authoritatively confirmed by Juan Cole in his latest column.

Do you notice how there are 250,000 tons of missing munitions in Iraq, such that it is not necessary for the Baath military intelligence to import very many from elsewhere?

Damn straight. I should have made that point myself.

Jerome a Paris on Daily Kos has a fine run-down on the administration's attempts to foment a new war with Iran.

So far, we're missing one key element: The personal touch. The right-wing propaganda machine has yet to direct a great deal of personal invective toward the Iranian president -- the (ulp!) elected president -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Conservatives love to demonize. When the Murdochian hordes tell us the Ahmadinejad eats babies, when the tabloids "reveal" that he wears a dress, then you'll know that war is nigh.

By the way, my previous discussion on the forthcoming war with Iran elicited some intriguing discussion points. The Dark Wraith's analysis of neocon plans are surely worth reading (start here), even though I must repeat my fuddy-duddy unease with "cute" internet nicknames.

Unlike Mr. Wraith, I do not count out the possibility that the AIPAC scandal will link up with the Plame/Rove affair. Just such a linkage is a subtext of this Justin Raimondo column which cites a UPI story (yes, I know who owns UPI) as follows:

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

"According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, were the two Cheney employees. 'We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,' one federal law-enforcement officer said...

Hannah was the director for Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- euphoniously acronymed WINEP -- a think tank linked at the hip with AIPAC.

I have already taken note of this remarkable piece by Clayton Hallmark, which delves deeper into the role played by Italian wheeler-dealer Rocco Martino in the peddling of the Niger forgeries. (Josh Marshall was, I believe, the first to uncover Martino's part in this sorry matter.) The fakery -- and the forthcoming Iraq war -- were, according to Hallmark, discussed at a key meeting in Rome, held in December of 2001. Participants included:

1. Michael Ledeen, Karl Rove's foreign policy advisor and organizer of the meeting

2. Nicolo Pollari, head of the the Italian equivalent of the CIA, the SISMI

3. Italy's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino (no relation apparently to the spy Rocco Martino), Pollari's boss

4. Larry Franklin, an American who presently is being prosecuted in the US for giving classified information to an Israeli front group, AIPC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) -- which some would call "spying," even though he has not been charged with espionage

5. Harold Rhode: member of Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans, protege of Ledeen, go-between with Iraqi exile and CIA asset (at the time) Ahmed Chalabi.

Hallmark names the man he considers the likely actual forger: Francesco Pazienza, a long-time friend to Ledeen. A former SISMI spook (kicked out for criminal activity), Pazienza became a major player in P2, described by Hallmark as an underground intelligence agency.

Which is true enough. But P2 is much more -- it's a secret society devoted to the resurgence of fascism. P2 was founded by Licio Gelli, a former Mussolini "black shirt" who later functioned as an SS liaison officer.

If Hallmark's report is accurate (and at this point, I must withhold final judgment), then AIPAC has hopped into bed with a partner that would disgust most American Jews.

Gassing New York

Newsday reports that the Department of Homeland Security will gas New York's streets and subways. The intent is to use harmless substances to trace the potential damage of an airborne chemical attack. The test gases will include PFT, or perfluorocarbon tracer gas, and sulfur hexafluoride. I have no reason to doubt that these substances are benign.

Even so, let's keep in mind that this is not the first time New York has been gassed by the federal government. Exactly similar tests occurred in the 1950s, pursuant to the CIA's Project MKULTRA and cognate Defense Department programs. The simulated attacks were designed to test the spread of airborne biological agents and airborne chemicals. The tests in New York and San Francisco were quite extensive -- presumably more extensive than the three-week project about to get underway.

Back then, the vapors included "safe" bacteria such as Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescans. In later years, activists in San Francisco came to believe that these substances may not have been so friendly after all. A lawsuit against the government was attempted; it failed.

For a fascinating history of tests on unwitting American populations, see this page.

My question is this: Why bother?

Why conduct new studies when the data from the old ones should provide all the needed information ? Why not just call up the old files? Why re-invent the wheel?

Paranoid folk will recall that the World Trade Center attack took place during an exercise designed to test our air defense system. We now have similar exercises scheduled for the near future, in two separate areas: The threat of a ship-borne nuclear payload, and the threat of an airborne chemical attack...

Blame Iran!

If the mainstream media is so damned "liberal," then why has it become a dumping ground for neocon horsecrap? We all know the sad tale of Judith "Marionette" Miller of the allegedly leftish New York Times. But let's not overlook Jim Miklaszewski of NBC:

The massive roadside bomb that killed 14 Marines Wednesday flipped their 37-ton vehicle on its top and blew it some 40 feet down the road.

Tonight, there’s disturbing information that some of the most sophisticated of these deadly weapons are reportedly coming from Iran.

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.

S'funny -- not long ago we had a flurry of stories talking about the increasingly close ties between Iran and the Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi (installed, as Seymour Hersh clarified, in a U.S.-rigged election). Now we're told that Iran is providing bombs to the insurgents who hope to deep-six Allawi.

And who are Miklaszewski's sources for the Iran accusation? (I mean, aside from unnamed individuals.) One of them, it turns out, is none other than our old pal Michael Ledeen, which is worse than citing Machiavelli. Another named source is Donald Rumsfeld. You believe him, don't you?

A reader informs me that this isn't the only time NBC has recently cited Ledeen for the "inside dope" on Iranian perfidy. Said reader refers to NBC as the "Neocon Broadcasting Network."

Since the Iraq war was founded on a lie (hey, that's what the yellowcake scandal was all about ), and since lies have marked our "progress" over the past two years (remember the staged descent of the Saddam statue? Remember the supposed shipment of night vision goggles from Syria?), why should we trust the latest dirt on Iran? If the neocons were willing to fib us into the last war, they'll fib us into the next war.

One wonders just what Ledeen has to do to get himself discredited in the eyes of the mainstream media. Nobody considers him unbiased. Nobody thinks he doesn't have an ax to grind. And there are (let us try to put this politely) many excellent reasons to doubt his honesty.

Ledeen is a veteran Iran-contra schemer who was also tied, in many published reports, to P2, an infamous quasi-fascist secret society which had infiltrated much of Italy's government and intelligence services. Ledeen played a key role in spreading the proven lie that Bulgaria ordered the attempt to kill John Paul II. (Come to think of it, NBC also did everything it could to promote that hallucination.) Ledeen is still best buds with bank robber Ahmed Chalabi, and with the shadowy Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Despite Ledeen's pro-Israel -- no, let's be more precise: pro-Likud -- pronouncements, his real intellectual leanings go toward fascism, Italian-style.

(By the way, Ledeen's daughter Simone was part of the coalition authority in Iraq -- despite having very few qualifications. But she did have the right last name.)

Most spook-watchers believe that someone within Ledeen's "axis" cobbled together the yellowcake forgeries which rest somewhere near the origin point of the current war. As noted earlier, former CIA terror experts Vincent Cannistraro and Phil Giraldi credit those forgeries to "a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy." On further questioning, Cannistraro fingered Ledeen.

If that's true -- and the smart money's on Cannistraro -- then we can safely classify Ledeen as a man who values his sick ideology more than he values truth. So why on earth would a mainstream news organization such as NBC cite any of his manipulative spew?

By the way: If you want to know what the American military will face once Ledeen and his buds get the war they so obviously hope to ignite, check out this report in Asia Times. They now have lots and lots (and lots) of increasingly precise long-range missiles. It ain't gonna be so pretty this time, my friends. Very quickly, the nuclear option will become the only option.

Rove-gate: Did Shedd spread?

David Corn has found what may be an interesting new wrinkle in the case against Rove. Corn has had contact with (and once made oblique reference to) one David Shedd, a one-time CIA officer who did a stint at the National Security Council. Shedd, muses Corn, might well have been the fellow who breathed the words "Plame" and "CIA" in the same sentence, within earshot of Karl Rove. Or within earshot of someone who was later within earshot of Rove.

The concernancy (as Hamlet might have put it) is this: Proving that the info came from Shedd would also give the lie to the line that will almost certainly be used in Rove's defense: That he did not know Plame/Wilson was an undercover officer.

By the way, didja ever notice the dichotomy? On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Republicans try to claim that everyone knew Mrs. Wilson was CIA. Hey, it was no big secret! But on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, Republicans try to tell us that Karl had no idea -- none at all -- that Plame worked undercover.

You can't have it both ways...

Novak goes nuts!

Looks like the pressure finally got to him. (See also here.) And here, I thought Nixon -- or maybe Robert McFarland -- was the last Republican schemer to demonstrate something other than a superhuman degree of sang froid. Was his bizarre (and arguably illegal) outburst prompted by the lingering ghost of conscience? Or does Novak simply dread his future fate?

Urban legends: Weapons of war?

A few days back, my lady heard from an old friend who had read a disturbing email. Apparently, a marine in Iraq had asked Starbucks to send some coffee (unbrewed coffee, I presume!), only to be told -- in a very insulting fashion -- that the company did not support either the war or the troops.

"Is it true?" the friend asked. Perhpas the matter was worth discussing on my blog.

The story struck me as fishier than a can of jack mackerel. No representative of any sizable business enterprise would ever commit an anti-troops sentimant to paper, even if the CEO held such opinions.

I have no idea if the folks who run Starbucks vote Democratic or Republican, but I do know that lefties have consistently said they do appreciate and support the people in our military. We support them so much that we (most of us, at least) would prefer for them to come right home.

Of course, the right-wing propaganda machine very much wants you to believe otherwise. They want you to believe that we lefites instinctively hate everyone in the services. And that liberals burn flags and sacrifice babies to the dark god Moloch.

So I checked out this yarn.

Naturally, the whole concoction is pure myth, and was exposed as such months ago. Exposure hasn't stopped the lie from spreading. For a full report, go here.

In this case, the legend can be traced to one individual -- Sergeant Howard C. Wright of the 1st Force Recon Co., who, much to his credit, promptly issued a correction and an apology when he learned the truth. Wright may have been the first to put this myth into email form, but the legend appears to have originated with someone else. No one knows who started it.

Do Rovian manipulators intentionally spread political urban legends in order to spread certain ideas? I strongly suspect that the answer is yes.

Consider the urban legend as a form of psychological warfare. Consider the fact that the vast majority of politically-tinged rumors on Snopes and cognate sites tend to buttress far-right beliefs.

During the Clinton era, many a cyber-mailbox filled with ghastly -- and bogus -- tales of Clintonian perfidy. I recall many examples of the genre.

Most of them, alas, are not warehoused by the Snopes folk. You may scope out their selection here. Visitors will encounter a few classics of venality, such as the story that the post-presidency Clintons are charging the Secret Service rent equal to the Clintons' own mortgage payment. You will also learn of the day when that awful, awful Hillary snubbed the Gold Star mothers, a group of mothers whose sons were killed in combat.

David Emery has a wider collection of the type of fables I'm talking about. Here is his page devoted to the widely-circulated email -- I recall it well! -- which purported to prove that Hillary Clinton, while a student at Yale, functioned as a chief apologist for the Black Panthers.

Emery gives this yarn the correct label: Not rumor, not mistake, not legend, but "McCarthyism Redux."

"Urban legend" may be a misnomer. Legends make themselves. They are accidents.

The politically-charged emails described above should not be considered close kin to folkloric yarns about hitchhiking ghosts or the lady who sold the Cadillac for $50. These emails do not record yarns which grew as they passed from person to person. These texts did not arise from honest error. Most of them are not misunderstood attempts at satire. (In truth, a few of these political scare-stories did originate on humorous web sites, but most did not.)

Let's not be naive. The texts under discussion here were created deliberately, by skilled writers who hoped to use lies to change votes.

Look at the wording of the "Gold Star Mothers" hoax:

Bet this never hits the TV news!

Gold Star Mothers is an organization made up of women whose sons were killed in military combat during service in the United States Armed Forces. Recently a delegation of New York State Gold Star Mothers made a trip to Washington, DC to discuss various concerns with their elected representatives. According to NewsMax.com there was only one politician in DC who refused to meet with these ladies. Can you guess which politician that might be?

Was it New York Senator Charles Schumer? Nope, he met with them. Try again. Do you know anyone serving in the Senate who has never showed anything but contempt for our military? Do you happen to know the name of any politician in Washington whose husband once wrote of his loathing of the military?

Now you're getting warm! None other than the Queen herself - the Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton. She refused repeated requests to meet with the Gold Star Mothers.

Now - please don't tell me you're surprised. This woman wants to be president of the United States - and there is a huge percentage of the voters who are anxious to help her achieve that.

No author is listed. That's a key point.

Think about it. In your experience, how many non-professional writers could create a text of this sort? The style is punchy. Very readable. No obvious errors of spelling or punctuation. What amateur would cobble together such a piece and then refuse to sign it with either a real name or a nomme de net? Most unpaid, unpublished writers are quick to take credit for a literary accomplishment. So are most writers who do get paid and published.

Many such texts circulated during the Clinton years. Similar texts circulated during the campaign, and most of them spread nonsense about John Kerry. I quite enjoyed the fake newsclip of Kerry shaking hands with Anton LaVey, although I bet I could have done a better job on that photo.

Here's one in which Al Gore is alleged -- falsely -- to have denounced Christianity as a blight on the environment.

In recent days, I have encountered a few -- some might say too few -- texts targeting George W. Bush and his supporters. I must confess that I once fell for one of these falsehoods, and even helped to spread it -- quite unintentionally.

Which brings us to today's question of morality: May we fight fire with fire? Should we counter pro-Republican "urban legends" with pro-Dem counterpart legends? Or should we disdain the tactics of the enemy?

I vote for the truth.

We all make mistakes, of course, and even the best of us may be gulled by a skillful fake or a widely-circulated rumor. As noted above, I've made such mistakes, and probably will do so again. So will you.

But the country is finally learning -- I hope -- to distinguish between those who cop to their fallibilites and those who refuse to admit even the most obvious errors. Let's hope the average person will also learn to spot the work of those professional liars who have turned our political life into a surrealist nightmare.

Briefly noted (UPDATED)

ARRGH! I can't write about everything I'd like to write about!

Did Dennis Hastert take a bribe from Turks? We're starting to learn the things Sibel Edmonds has been wanting to tell us...

Much has happened on the vote fraud front. Looks like those ACVR disinfo experts are having a mainstream media impact -- dammit! Brad Friedman is a must-read: Go here and here. The Blackwellians may have rigged the key Ohio House race between feisty Democrat Paul Hackett and Republican robot Jen Schmidt; see also Billmon's commentary here as well as these observations. These recent doings remind one of this piece from last January: "Why were there stickers on ballots in Clermont County, Ohio?"

Those interested in the follow-up to yesterday's piece on Novak should scan down or go here.

I hope a few of you will take an interest in the post directly below, which offers still more evidence that BushCo plans to nuke Iran. Hey, it's only the most important story of our time...!

THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF OUR TIME: The forthcoming attack on Iran

Both Xymphora and an Indymedia contributor named Jebelia have argued that the Bush administration's next target will not be Iran -- as I have predicted -- but Syria. Their basic argument: The United States and Israel actually wanted the dissolution of a secular state in Iraq. They wanted a de facto alliance between Shiite theocrats in both Iraq and Iran.

(By the way, Jebelia's comment is attached to an extremely interesting piece by Clayton Hallmark, which ties Niger-gate ever closer to the P2 axis. More on that later, I hope.)

As Mr. X argues:

Israel's obvious enemies are mostly Sunnis. If you're going to be fighting Sunnis, the obvious trick is to create a new ally, a Shiite empire consisting of Iran and Iraq. The minor annoyance of Iranian support to Hezbollah is far outweighed by the advantages of creating a new and very powerful player in the Middle East, a player who, for religious reasons, probably hates your enemies more than it hates you.

Sorry, but I cannot agree.

It's all too easy for outsiders to work themselves into mental knots as they try guess the neocon game plan. As is often the case, those given to overly-complex hypothesizing run the risk of overlooking the obvious. Let's get back to basics.

Everyone in Israel understands that Arab antipathy toward the Jewish state will always outweigh any resentments between Sunnis and Shiites. I understand that Jews have historical ties to Persia -- ties which go back to ancient times, when quite a few Israelites hoped to replace the Romans with the more lenient Parthians. (Parthia, or Persia, was the empire next door -- the one they don't teach you about in school.) No doubt, many older Israelis long for the good relations their nation once had with the quasi-psychotic (but U.S.-friendly) Shah of Iran.

But those days aren't coming back any time soon. Not while the current government remains in power in Tehran.

The folks who run Iran now are heirs to the revolutionaries who ousted the Shah, a secular tyrant in the Saddam Hussein mold. From the U.S./Israeli point of view, problems with Iran began only after a Shiite theocracy seized control. If that theocracy metastasizes into Iraq, those problems will compound.

That's the reason why both Reagan and Bush wanted no clear winner in the Iran/Iraq war. That's also the reason why Bush the elder -- with uncharacteristic wisdom -- held back from toppling Saddam Hussein during Gulf War I: At that time, destroying a secular government in Iraq would have created a power vacuum, which, in turn, would have strengthened the forces of theocracy. Since Shiites are the majority in Iraq, any such theocracy would have allied itself with Iran.

That, of course, is the scenario taking place right now.

I disagree with the presumption that Israel's "obvious" enemies are Sunni. Such may be the case in the fairly near future; much depends on how the succession game plays out in Saudi Arabia. If that nation remains under the thumb of U.S.-friendly rulers, then Israel would have much more to fear from a potential Iraq/Iran Shiite "empire."

(Before continuing, I should mention two further points: 1. Since Syria and Iran have a defense pact, distinctions may be moot; any American attack on one country may well draw in the other. 2. Iranian theocracy is slowly sliding toward democracy, a process which may take another generation or two -- if the U.S. does not meddle.)

So the quandary comes down to this: If Bush the Elder understood the likelihood -- and the danger -- of a Shiite empire, why did the neocons push for the current war?

Upon taking office, Dubya reportedly did not even know that Islam had Sunni and Shiite factions. But Shrub is little more than a front man for his neocon advisors/handlers, who do know the relevant history. So why did they engineer the toppling of Saddam Hussein, despite the above-cited dangers?

I believe they did so because an attack on Iran was always Phase Two of the scheme -- a scheme the neocons concocted well after the conclusion of the first Gulf War. If America topples the government in Tehran, the threat of a spreading Shiite theocracy ends.

The very fact of the attack on Iraq has always presupposed the existence of a long-standing plan to attack Iran. Doing one nation requires doing the other. Once the United States gains control of both governments, Shiite fundamentalism will end and we will "own" oil reserves comparable to those in Saudi Arabia, a country which may soon lack stability.

Such was the plan. Such, I believe, is still the plan, despite the problems in Iraq.

The facts on the ground do much to justify this viewpoint.

We have already noted the uncontradicted report (authored by former CIA man Phil Giraldi) that Cheney tasked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a nuclear attack on Iran after the next major terrorist act -- regardless of Iranian guilt or innocence. Now we have Ray McGovern's latest column, which draws, in turn, from this Washington Post piece.

Whatever plans Dick Cheney and his neo-conservatives may have had to conjure up a nuclear threat from Iran as "justification" for military action have been sharply undercut by some timely leaks to the Washington Post. In a redux of President George W. Bush's spin on the "grave and growing" danger from Iraq, Cheney protege and newly appointed U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is on record warning that Iranian "deception" must not be allowed to continue much longer: "It will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons."

Not for ten more years, report sources close to the U.S. intelligence community in yesterday's lead story in the Post. Several government officials with access to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran have told journalist Dafna Linzer of its main judgments. By doing so, Linzer's sources seem determined not to sit idly by as our country is misled once again into a war favored only by "neo-conservatives" in Washington and their counterparts in the far-right Likud government in Israel who share a vision of remaking the map of the Middle East.

The welcome rationalism of Linzer's sources will soon be forgotten.

Those Voices of Reason will lose their vocal chords in the aftermath of a major terrorist incident within the United States. Indeed, Linzer's intelligence contacts remind me of the "sober" intelligence sources who told the truth about Iraq to Robert Novak in October of 2001. (See the posts directly below this one.) Soon thereafter, Novak, the administration, and much of the nation decided to disdain sobriety.

If it happened in 2001-2002, it can happen again -- especially if a portable nuclear device demolishes a portion of Chicago or some other American city. Long time readers will know why I've predicted such an event.

In that light, it's worth noting that the United States Northern Command will be conducting drills for just such a nuclear attack in August. As you no doubt know, similar exercises were being conducted on September 11, 2001. Many have argued that "exercises" of this sort could provide cover for a real-world attack. (True, a few have mounted reasonable sounding counter-arguments; I would like to see a debate on this topic.)

There are also reports -- rumors, really -- that August leaves have been cancelled for an unnervingly large number of serving military personnel. Are these whispers true? I'd appreciate feedback from those in the know.

Incidentally, the current leaders of Iran must have come to conclusions similar to mine. The latest reports indicate that they have wisely backed away -- again -- from their nuclear program.

One wonders if this move will spare Tehran. Fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors did not save Saddam Hussein.

One final mystery remains. Just which Iranians were dealing with Ledeen and Chalabi? Ghorbanifar is one answer, but who else? Obviously, someone in Tehran hopes to function as the future puppet ruler of Iran -- presuming there's anything left of Iran to rule after Cheney & Co. finish with the place.

Robert Novak, prophet

Yesterday, I mentioned a strangely predictive -- and more-or-less honest -- piece by Robert Novak, published October 15, 2001. In this article, Novak quotes intelligence sources to the effect that a war on Iraq was already in the planning stages, and that the administation might justify an unprovoked attack with false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaida.

All of which, of course, stands in sharp contrast with the role Novak later played in the Wilson/Plame affair. In that ongoing scandal, Novak tried to buttress a forgery designed to make those WMD claims seem credible.

The question thus becomes: Who was Novak talking to in 2001? And who turned him around?

Several of you have asked to see the full piece. When I transfered this text to my hard drive a few years ago, I did not preserve the name of the periodical which originally published it. Since a number of newspapers carry Novak's column, finding the clip at your local college library should prove fairly easy.

Note, as you read, that Novak's sensible arguments would have earned him the "lying liberal" label if he had repeated them two years later.

Robert Novak
October 15, 2001
No Iraqi connection

WASHINGTON -- Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general, on his visit to Washington last week privately and individually briefed U.S. senators he has known since his days as British defense minister during the Kosovo war. He told them there is no evidence -- "not a scintilla," as quoted by one senator -- linking Iraq with the Sept. 11 attack on America.

That confirms what intelligence sources have told me. The relentless investigation of the terrorist assault has developed massive evidence pointing to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. No comparable links to Iraq have been found. The Iraqi connection, say these sources, is a matter of speculation. If nothing has been uncovered now, it is unlikely there ever will be compelling proof.

The long-range implications are profound. A few Bush administration policymakers argue that now is the time to complete unfinished business and get rid of Saddam Hussein. Lacking a tie to Sept. 11, however, a military assault on Iraq imperils the global coalition laboriously constructed by President Bush. Only Israel might remain at America's side.

Even steadfast Britain has signaled limits for the alliance. While U.S. officials declined to rule out an Iraqi role on Sept. 11, the British have come close to doing so. "I am not aware of any evidence pointing to Iraq's complicity in those outrages," Robin Cook, leader of the House of Commons and former foreign secretary, said Oct. 4.

Evidence of an Iraqi connection is less than circumstantial. Mohammed Atta, a Sept. 11 hijacker and an apparent leader in the terrorist conspiracy, met in Prague earlier this year with an unnamed Iraqi intelligence official. CNN's David Ensor last week quoted U.S. sources as saying the two men had an earlier meeting last year. U.S. intelligence officials are still investigating these meetings but stress they can draw no conclusions.

The principal justification for assaulting Iraq is the need to prevent Saddam from wielding weapons of mass destruction. Since Iraq does not have nuclear capacity and chemical weapons are not a threat, the concern is biological warfare. Here, too, there is no evidence.

"I don't see Iraq being able to do high quality production on a large scale of bio-weapons," former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter told Fox News Network last Tuesday. Larry Johnson, former State Department deputy director of counter-terrorism, on Thursday told CNN that the U.S. since 1990 has destroyed Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and Saddam has "not built back up to the levels he had prior to the Gulf War."

The final rationale for unilateral U.S. military action against Saddam is alleged Iraqi sponsorship of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. Intelligence sources told me this connection is hypothetical and certainly not proven. The only credible link is Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was indicted on 20 counts in the 1993 bombing and fled to Baghdad. Saddam's failure to surrender a fugitive to a country with whom he has very unfriendly relations is hardly surprising.

Extradition often is difficult even for countries with friendly relations. Saudi Arabia has been pressing Britain for the return of Mohammed Masari, a foe of the Saudi royal regime. The Saudis regard him as a terrorist, and his approval of the Sept. 11 attacks adds support for that description. Nevertheless, British law has foiled efforts to deport him over the last six years.

The real reason why hawks inside and outside the government want to assault Iraq is the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime: tyrannical, anti-democratic, brutal to its own citizens, menacing to its neighbors, intransigent against Israel's existence. President Bush would be acting against Saddam not as part of a war against terror but as a superpower avenger against governments of the world that fail to meet minimum standards of human decency.

That role would isolate the United States as lone-ranger global protector, accompanied occasionally by Israel. In his press conference last Thursday night, Bush called Saddam an "evil man," adding: "We're watching him very carefully." Sober officials inside the administration believe the president should do no more than watch Iraq, unless and until it is clearly implicated in the murderous events of Sept. 11.

ACVR stands for Asshole Conservatives and Vicious Republicans

Brad Friedman exposes the latest propaganda blitz by the allegedly non-partisan Republican front group AVCR (AMerican Center for Voting Rights), which is trying to blame vote fraud on the Democrats. Typical Rove tactic: Always play offense, never play defense.

I guess the mainstream attention devoted to the outrages perpetrated in November 2004 must be taking a toll. Consider ACVR a marker of sorts: When that machine activates, that means our side is doing something right.

On a side note: You know who else we may use as a marker for success? Left-wing gadfly Marc Cooper.

In this week's L.A. Weekly, Cooper denounces the After Downing Street movement as "masturbatory." I know Cooper and his brand of leftism of old. When he cries out against a grassroots movement, that means the movement has done something worthwhile. Keep it up, Downing Streeters!

Novak, then and now (slightly updated)

Old newsclips have few fans, but sometimes you can find interesting nuggets in them thar archives. Today, I ran across an old piece loitering around my hard drive -- a column dated October 15, 2001, little more than a month after the tragedy.

The author: Robert Novak.

I can't quote it verbatim (I'm not writing from home) but the gist is this: On that date, Novak claimed that he heard whispers that the Bush White House planned to use the WTC attacks as a reason to begin a new war with Iraq. Even then, the writing on the wall was unmistakable.

Novak made clear to his readers that his "intelligence sources" had made clear to him that such an attack would be unjustified.

Saddam had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, said Novak. Saddam also had no ties to Al Qaida.

ALl in all, not a bad column. Sounds like Novak's "intelligence sources" were sensible folk of the Valerie Wilson sort.

One thinks fondly of those precious few months back in 2001 when the newspapers printed real news, not neocon propaganda.

Just a few years later, Novak became part of a White House scheme to punish an "intelligence source. Why? Because said intelligence professional had committed the crime of not going along with a neocon-approved forgery -- a fraud designed to prove the very Saddam/WMD link Novak had once described as non-existent.

Wonder how much he was paid to change his stance?

UPDATE: A reader has asked me to reprint the full piece from 2001. If fate is with me, I'll do so tomorrow. As you'll see, the distinction is striking: The Novak of 2001 was very different from the wildly self-contradictory Novak of today:

In the August 1 column, Novak stated that the "unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report ... said that Wilson's wife 'suggested him for the trip.'" But in a July 15, 2004, column, Novak clearly recognized that the committee did not reach an official conclusion about how the CIA made the decision to hire Wilson...

This case proves, once again, that certain "journalists" have no scruples, and no deeply-held personal opinions -- just a selling price.

A new culprit in the Ohio vote-rigging scandal?

Raw Story points the finger at Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, embroiled in money laundering probes related to "Coin-gate." The scandals come together! To paraphrase Flannery O'Connor, everything that sinks into the morass must converge. Also check out what Brad Friedman has to say...

You'll also want to read John Conyers' blog for other recent devlopments on the coin-gate scandal -- which, I confess, I should have covered earlier.

Bob Fitrakis is, as always, on top of the story...

But Noe was more than a mere fundraiser. The New York Times dubbed him Toledo's "Mr. Republican," the GOP "man to see" in northwest Ohio. While Tom chaired the regional Bush-Cheney campaign, his wife Bernadette chaired the scandal-torn Lucas County Board of Elections that played a key role in caging votes to put Bush back in the White House.

Noe's fortune came in part from charging the Bureau of Worker's Compensation (BWC) $12.6 million in coin-fund related expenses for managing the $50 million investment between 1998 and 2004. Federal and state officials are now investigating these expenses.

A "Ponzi scheme" is what Ohio's Republican Attorney General Jim Petro calls the method by which Noe may have stolen millions of dollars from the state of Ohio's Bureau of Worker's Compensation (BWC).

Best news I've heard all day...

The Murdoch dynasty may soon end. It seems that bad Bob's eldest son Lachlan has decided to split from the empire, and so the whole thing might be up to a board of directors. It is, after all, a publicly-traded company.

Is it still possible for the neocon propagandists to maintain a stranglehold on the operation? Yep. So let's not dance in the streets just yet. Although the passing of Murdoch the Elder will, in and of itself, be worthy of a jig or two.