High flow rate
Spring-like flow at the Veazie Dam
After three more inches of rain during a wild wind/rain storm last Tuesday & Wednesday, the river is high. Sugarloaf mountain received four feet of snow during the storm. Meanwhile in the garden, frost has shut everything down for good. Not much left to do except dig out the last carrots.
Gotta watch the Daily Show
The fake news teaches us more than the real news. Take Stewart’s clips of former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s former deputy, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, broadcast on the Wednesday 10/26 edition of the Daily Show. Where else could a big section of the general public become informed of Wilkerson’s angry dissent from Bush administration policy given in a talk on October 19? (Video/audio links here, transcript here, additional links here, excerpts from follow-up oped piece here)
Many candid bombshells dropped in Wilkerson’s speech, for example, former Pentagon Policy planner, neocon Doug Feith, was “the dumbest man I ever knew…” and Feith got to “tell the State Department to screw itself in a closet….” Go download and listen to the actual speech to get the full flavor.
I just wanted to point out some insights Wilkerson communicated, mainly in the q&a portion of the October 19 program. At one point during the speech, Wilkerson gave this provocative remark:
We can’t leave Iraq. We simply can’t. I can make that case. No one in this administration has made that case. They have simply pontificated. That’s all they’ve done. Now, I’m not evaluating the decision to go to war. That’s a different matter. But we’re there, we’ve done it, and we cannot leave. I would submit to you that if we leave precipitously or we leave in a way that doesn’t leave something there we can trust, if we do that, we will mobilize the nation, put 5 million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade. That’s what we’ll have to do.
Later in the q&a, Wilkerson explains one of the reasons this is true:
The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption and, as one little girl said yesterday at the Yoshiyama Awards, do you know that we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources? We do; we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources. Well, we have an economy and we have a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation – and I don’t see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind – or we better be ready to take those assets. We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That’s how serious we thought about it.
If you want those resources and you want governments that aren’t inimical to your interests with regard to those resources, then you better pay attention to the area and you better not leave it in a mess. Now, people will say, maybe you, well, it won’t be a mess that they won’t handle themselves in the area. I don’t trust that to be a good outcome.
Wow. That’s the most candid policy statement you are likely to hear directly from a high-level planner. Despite Wilkerson’s care in explaining oil field seizure would occur under international auspices, neocon policy planning would have envisioned no such thing. Furthermore, even if the UN was to be involved, the US would exert far greater control than anyone else. So original Deep Blade Analysis concerning the background motivations behind the Iraq war is confirmed by Wilkerson’s remarks.
Post by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Republican of Texas
I’ll let the honorable Ms. Hutchinson post for me on this topic — by example.
From Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s closed-door January 7, 1999 impeachment statement, released into the Congressional Record, February 12, 1999:
If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of ‘lying,’ but would not be guilty of ‘perjury.’If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be ‘perjury.’ Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man’s injury or death.
Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.
The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.
Nearly every child in America believes that President Washington, as a child himself, did in fact cut down the cherry tree and admitted to his father that he did it, saying simply: ‘I cannot tell a lie.’
I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences to a successor President who may choose to ignore it.
Fast forward to Sunday October 23, 2005, when the senator responds to questions from Tim Russert on Meet the Press about possible perjury indictments of administration officials:
SEN. HUTCHISON: Tim, you know, I think we have to remember something here. An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty. And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.
I think we should be very careful here, especially as we are dealing with something very public and people’s lives in the public arena. I do not think we should prejudge. I think it is unfair to drag people through the newspapers week after week after week, and let’s just see what the charges are. Let’s tone down the rhetoric and let’s make sure that if there are indictments that we don’t prejudge.
MR. RUSSERT: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. And I’m not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process–and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn’t find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn’t a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that.[emphasis added]
Huh? “…some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime”???!!! Is not that the most amazing duplicity and double standard you’ve ever heard in your life?
Wilma, Alpha join forces
High Wind Warning
URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
415 AM EDT TUE OCT 25 2005
…STRONG WINDS EXPECTED TODAY INTO TONIGHT…
.THE COMBINATION OF THE REMNANTS OF WILMA MOVING SOUTHEAST OF NOVA SCOTIA AND STRONG LOW PRESSURE MOVING FROM THE MID ATLANTIC COAST TO THE GULF OF MAINE WILL PRODUCE STRONG NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS ACROSS THE AREA TODAY INTO TONIGHT.
…HIGH WIND WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO MIDNIGHT EDT TONIGHT…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CARIBOU HAS ISSUED A HIGH WIND WARNING…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO MIDNIGHT EDT TONIGHT. THE HIGH WIND WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
EXPECT NORTHEAST WINDS TO INCREASE TO 25 TO 35 MPH BY NOON WITH GUSTS OVER 50 MPH. THE RECENT BOUT OF WET WEATHER HAS MADE MANY TREES VULNERABLE TO STRONG WINDS AND DOWNED TREES AND POWER OUTAGES CAN BE EXPECTED. WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO SLOWLY DECREASE LATER TONIGHT. CONTINUE TO MONITOR NOAA WEATHER RADIO ALL HAZARDS OR YOUR LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE LATEST FORECASTS.
And I’ll be out driving this afternoon. Joy. The good thing is they seem to have dialed down the rainfall forecast for us. However, an accompanying flood watch says “the east facing mountains of Penobscot and Piscataquis Counties” can expect more than two inches.
Coming Downeast?
Lower-probability track lands Wilma in Maine on Wednesday
We haven’t had a hurricane or tropical storm since Bob in August 1991. Before that, it was Gloria in 1985. Both of these came with 80+ mph winds and caused quite large messes.
One of these is not needed around here now. We are saturated as it is. Somehow, today’s rainstorm is missing the immediate area, but some areas to the north and east have received two or three more inches of rain with nowhere to go except except over the banks.
I’m hoping that whatever rain Wilma would bring stays well out to sea, as most of the weather people have been saying is most likely. But the map above makes me a tad bit nervous.
Update: Sunday evening…
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
415 PM EDT SUN OCT 23 2005
THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR NORTHERN AND EASTERN MAINE..DAY ONE…TONIGHT
A GALE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE COASTAL WATERS UNTIL 10 PM THIS EVENING.
.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN…MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY
AN INTENSE STORM SYSTEM ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANTS OF HURRICANE WILMA IS EXPECTED TO BRING WIND SWEPT HEAVY RAIN TO THE REGION DURING TUESDAY….
says the Weather Service.
American Conservative: “Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets”
This is far from a new story. Deep Blade Journal has for a long time been pointing out the enormous theft of Iraq’s oil-wealth surrounding the US occupation since 2003 (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). But the outright criminal taking of billions of dollars during the operation of the Coalition Provisional Authority from April 2003 to June 2004, followed by continuing pervasive corruption that today is “irreversible”, is brightly illuminated by CIA veteran Philip Giraldi.
Giraldi writes in the October 24, 2005 issue of The American Conservative:
The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.
If the scale of corruption surrounding the long gone Oil-for-Food program is of such concern to the likes of Senator Norm Coleman, Fox News, and Claudia Rosett of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, should not this be too?
Especially true, because the pervasive American-inspired looting of Iraq continues to this day:
A recent high-level investigation of the Iraqi interim government concluded that the corruption is now so pervasive as to be irreversible. One prominent businessman estimates that 95 percent of all business activity involves some form of bribery or kickback.
How is this different than the operations of Saddam that Coleman, Rosett et. al. so righteously decry?
You’ll just have to read Giraldi’s tales about how billions in the form of bales of cash have been thrown in and out of Iraq — all without the slightest attempt at recording the transactions or any accounting at all.
Powell lied
Meanwhile, let’s contrast pre-war administration pronouncements suggesting the good care that would be taken of the wealth that once rightly belonged to the Iraqi people. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered such remarks to reporters on January 21, 2003. In light of the complete and total looting of all accounts containing Iraq’s oil money that came after March 2003, it is amazing and instructive to review some highlights from the transcript of this press event.
QUESTION: Let me ask you about oil, which is of interest people –SECRETARY POWELL: Oil?
QUESTION: Oil, from Houston. There has been some reports there’s a dissension in the administration over what to do, say, after a war with the oil fields, with some people, such as yourself, saying, well, it should be under a UN guidance and –
SECRETARY POWELL: I said that?
QUESTION: Well, there have been some reports that you were on that side versus Eliot Abrams and others who want the US to take control and privatize them.
SECRETARY POWELL: No, no, no. There is no disagreement. This is speculation that has no foundation. If there is a conflict with Iraq and we and the leadership of the coalition take control of Iraq, the oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. And whatever form of custodianship there is, initially in the hands of, you know, the power that went in, or under international auspices at some point, it will be held for and used for the people of Iraq. It will not be exploited for the United States’ own purpose. We will follow religiously international law, which gives clear guidance with respect to the responsibilities of an occupying power, if it comes to that. Everybody speculates about what my views are, what Eliot’s views are, what somebody else’s views are. What I’ve just told you, you can take to the bank.
…
QUESTION: Who would operate the oil fields, I guess he’s asked?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don’t –
QUESTION: Chevron-Texaco, or would the Iraqi National Oil Company continue?
SECRETARY POWELL: We don’t have an answer to that question yet. It will be held. If we are the occupying power, it will be held for the benefit of the Iraqi people and it will be operated for the benefit of the Iraqi people. How will we operate it? How best to do that? We are studying different models. But the one thing I can assure you of is that it will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have.
…
QUESTION: Could oil revenues be used to finance some of the costs of the occupation?
SECRETARY POWELL: In order not to split hairs or pretend that I’m an expert, let me just rest on the argument, on the simple statement, that whatever we do will be consistent with international law with respect to the responsibilities of an occupying power.
And the oil belongs to the Iraqi people. How it will be used, how the funds generated by the oil will be fed back into the Iraqi economy, I can’t get into all of those issues. Whether or not it can be used to assist the occupying power in conducting activities that support the Iraqi people — for example, their humanitarian relief efforts, what it might cost us to deliver humanitarian relief to them — these are all issues that I just don’t have the expertise to get into.
But I know that in our conversations, and a lot of work is being done, in our conversations the overarching, guiding principle is we will be consistent with the requirements of international law. [emphasis added]
These utterly disingenuous remarks by Colin Powell certainly make the voracious looting that came with the occupation all the more damning.
New Iraq constitution makes it legal?
And here is where the American-driven constitutional process in Iraq comes into play — the idea that it will stamp an imprimatur of legality under international law upon the looting that has taken place is a driving force behind the eagerness of US officials to get the document in force. It’s a bit out of date now, but Naomi Klein did a fine piece on these machinations last year for Harpers.
Today, the piece-by-piece privatization of Iraq’s national oil company is already underway. With the US wielding massive unaccountable power behind this looting process, it is no wonder that Fox News and most of the rest of the US-based media need the Saddam-era Oil-for-Food program to kick around. That way, everybody’s attention is distracted from the man behind the curtain.
First frost
Only a light nip, but these are the very last tomatoes anyway
Finally, some color
Last weekend rain amounted to 3 inches more. Guess what? Yep, Saturday night through Sunday our Weather Service forecast calls for another 2-inch drenching.
Nixon fired his Watergate special prosecutor 32 years ago this week
As members of the American public were snuggling in front of their televisions to new episodes of Emergency!, Mash, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Saturday October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon was busy engineering a silencing of independent Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Because Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus had the conscience to refuse Nixon’s order to fire Cox, they resigned. The duty was left to the third in line, Solicitor General Robert Bork. In 1987, Bork finally was rewarded with a Supreme Court nomination — even though it was rejected by a Democratically-controlled US Senate.
This week rumors have been flying over possible indictments coming down from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame investigation. One rumor has it — as promulgated by US News and World Report — that Vice President Dick Cheney will resign as a result of the probe. (Can you say, “Vice President Rice”??)
In Thursday’s edition of Counterpunch, former intelligence professional Ray McGovern has an excellent, concise summary of the entire probe. (See 16 Fatal Words: Chickens Come Home to Roost on Cheney) McGovern adds this salient point that I do not see too many indictment-salivators in the blogosphere making:
Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald’s dismissal.Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?
This Bush impunity constitutes a huge difference with the Clinton prosecution engineered by the untouchable Kenneth Starr. And it’s laughable to think that current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has one-tenth the conscience either Elliot Richardson or William Ruckelshaus had in 1973.
So the question is, will the plug be pulled on Fitzgerald before the veep goes down? Chances are good it will, McGovern thinks, if the investigation begins to reach that high — towards Bush himself.
Was intelligence “exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials? Republican burial of answer not total, yet.
Beyond the Plame investigation — always framed in terms of the “outing of a CIA agent”, even on our media, like Democracy Now! — always there has existed a much bigger scandal about just how the Bush administration’s Iraq weapons of mass destruction fraud was generated. It appears the Fitzgerald investigation may be reaching beyond the narrow issue of revealing an agent’s name to a panoply of possible illegalites surrounding the Iraq weapons propaganda operation. I say good, but I am not drooling over narrow Plame-outing indictments like much of the rest of the blogosphere.
In the midst of all this, thanks to A Tiny Revolution for refocusing on the bigger picture and reminding us of just how badly the Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has failed in its job of oversight with respect to the weapons fraud. Deep Blade carried an item on the official whitewashes underway last spring.
So, since last spring, what has happened to that Senate “Phase II” report on intelligence exaggerated and misused by Bush, Cheney, and other administration officials? Jonathan links to a new piece at The American Prospect Online (Laura Rozen, “The Report They Forgot”, The American Prospect Online, Oct 19, 2005). This piece offers some explanations about what is now happening given the pressure surrounding the Fitzgerald investigation.
Rosen includes this juicy detail about the late-2001 operations of Cheney operative Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin (who recently plead guilty in another investigation), and former Pentagon policy deputy Douglas Feith, a key player in the rogue Pentagon intelligence shop called the Office of Special Plans, among others:
a cable the CIA station chief in Rome sent to Langley expressing concern that members of Feith’s office were involved in an unauthorized covert action. The committee also has Franklin’s Rome report, which, according to sources, revealed that the meeting included the discussion of possibilities for engaging a network of Ghorbanifar associates to pursue action against Tehran.
Of course, besides plotting the next war with Iran, these guys also appear to have concocted the now-infamous Iraq-Niger-uranium forgeries.
And yep, that’s Manucher Ghorbanifar, a long-time US-friendly arms dealer who played a big role in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Senator Pat Roberts is Chairman of the SSCI. He exudes Kansas credibility but in fact has played the role of Chief Whitewasher. (Our own Olympia Snowe, SSCI committee member, is a player in this coverup too.) Rosen’s posting in her own blog explains Robert’s role:
Roberts has literally been coordinating with Senate majority leader Frist and Cheney’s office very closely on many aspects of the Senate Intelligence committee’s supposed investigation of the intelligence, and in particular, working closely with Cheney’s office on crafting the language defining the terms for the as-yet unfinished Phase II report.
Again, I’m not holding my breath that these Republicans will be able to investigate themselves to the point that any justice is done at all. It will be to my surprise if the near-dead Phase II report revives, and if Fitzgerald brings forth any truth while proceeding with prosecutions of the rogue officials that lied us into war.
He’s often wrong about all matters economic, but he has backhandedly acknowledged peak oil.