Bad Deeds for: 6-7-2008

 

Tom Delay Says That Barack Obama is a Marxist – Tom Delay launched a fringe attack on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) by claiming that he is a Marxist. “I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist,” DeLay declared.

 

Administration Presented Unsubstantiated and Contradicted Items as Fact Part 1, Part 2 – In a sweeping, 200-plus page review of the administration’s pre-war case for invasion, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that in making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. The Committee’s report cites several conclusions in which the Administration’s public statements were NOT supported by the intelligence. They include:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

• The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

“This report again demonstrates how President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others made repeated assertions about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein that were not supported by, and at times outright contradicted, the intelligence available at the time,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, an Intelligence Committee member.

 

McCain’s Campaign Manager Announces Contest to Spy on Your Neighbor – In what Wonkette calls “the most tragically awkward video in the history of YouTube,” a dazed McCain campaign manager Rick Davis stares goggle-eyed at off-screen cue cards, robotically making a call for Americans to stalk their neighbors with video cameras, and reveal what secret Islamofascists might be walking among us. The lucky winner will be flown to the Republican National Convention to enjoy a session of “Seven Minutes In Heaven” with Larry Craig at the Minneapolis airport, and then it’s off to Guantanamo Bay!

 

 

 

McCain Changes Position; Now Backs Bush Wiretaps – A top adviser to John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team. In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance. Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power.

 

You May Get to Live in a Toxic Trailer This Hurricane Season – The Federal Emergency Management Agency has promised it will never again use formaldehyde-tainted trailers to house victims of a natural disaster — unless, of course, it does. In a draft disaster housing report, the agency said it would use the trailers if need be, though as a last resort, and for no longer than six months. Some 500 families made homeless in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina are still living in toxic trailers.

 

U.S. to Add to Pollution of Canada – About two thirds of new gasoline refinery capacity in the United States is going to process dirty oilsands crude from northern Alberta, Canada. Future oil refining in the U.S. may soon get much dirtier – including three times more greenhouse gas emissions in the extraction process – as refineries place their bets on a shift away from traditional crude oil to Canadian oilsands. Matt Price, a project manager for Environmental Defence Canada, said called the oilsands “the most destructive project on Earth. Nowhere else are we talking about ripping up an area the size of Florida, creating massive toxic lakes you can see from space with the naked eye, and giving off three times the greenhouse gas emissions to produce oil when compared with conventional crude.”

Regards,

Jim