ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon hopes to pull 30,000 troops out of Iraq if conditions are right on the ground. The condition that most matters most to the White House and our President, “the decider,” is the proximity to election day on November 7, 2006.
(European Parliament Member Cem Oezdemir) Cem Oezdemir, a former German Bundestag Member and now a Member of the European Parliament, will be coming to Washington soon to press the matter of the CIA’s kidnappings, rendition program, and secret prisons in Europe — which may still be operating there.
Natan Sharansky must be sad that April has rolled along and Dubya has not invited him over to the Oval Office for lunch and a chat. So, Sharansky has written as obseqious a letter to the President as one can imagine via the Wall Street Journal.
(Joseph Cirincione) Wow. I’ve just confirmed that nuclear non-proliferation giant Joseph Cirincione is moving out of his long-time nest at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is moving to the Center for American Progress. Cirincione is easily the country’s leading progressive voice on nuclear non-proliferation and is widely respected on defense policy issues.
Senior CIA official Mary McCarthy has denied leaking information to Dana Priest about the CIA’s secret Eastern European prisons. She has argued that she did not have access to intelligence about these prisons, though seems to be admitting to unauthorized discussions with journalists. A couple of comments.
Yesterday, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson offered another installment in his own “straight talk express” in an article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun. He opens with a powerful blast that articulates what true nationalists in this country are feeling: In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W.
Another new tape. Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda were always the ball George W. Bush, the Congress, and the Pentagon should have had their eye on. Saddam Hussein — though a thug who needed serious supervision — was a contrived, self-damaging distraction for this country.
Last night, in a speech before a Washington power crowd, Hu Jintao mentioned democracy nine times. Nine times — and his security team and intelligence/police forces did nothing about it. Jiang Lijun, however, mentions democracy in a draft, unsent email and is sentenced to four years in prison.
THE DECIDER IS DOWN TO 33% APPROVAL, and in a Fox News poll no less. Rumsfeld is down. Condi Rice is up. The good thing about new Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten is that I’m sure he can count.
The last time I invested some serious time in what was percolating in the Fitzgerald investigation of the White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA role, the best I was able to get was to confirm that Karl Rove was “enthusiastically” cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation and to confirm that Rove had helped lead…
