Month: November 2005

Bush Is Angry, Not Speaking to Staff, Friends – Even His Father

Jon Ponder

Pouter in Chief: This story comes from Drudge (you know how to find Drudge, right?) and all the but GOP-affiliated Insight Magazine, so it’s probably well sourced.

The president only communicates with four people: his mother, his wife, Condi and Karen Hughes. He has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.

Plus, it’s classic Bush. He’s frustrated that things aren’t going his way, but paralyzed by his inability to make a decision. He lashes out, blames everyone but himself:

President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, INSIGHT magazine claims in a new report.

The president’s reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity.

“The atmosphere in the Oval Office has become unbearable,” a source said. “Even the family is split.”

INSIGHT: Sources close to the White House say that Mr. Bush has become isolated and feels betrayed by key officials in the wake of plunging domestic support, the continued insurgency in Iraq and the CIA-leak investigation that has resulted in the indictment and resignation of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.

Add Your Name to Bill O’Reilly’s Enemies List

Jon Ponder

Are you on the list? As Buck noted earlier, Bill O’Reilly recently announced that he is compiling a list of his enemies which he will post on his website soon. We don’t know about you but if O’Reilly has an enemies list, we want to be on it.

Here’s what O’Reilly – whom Keith Olbermann calls “the Big Giant Head” –
said about his new, exclusive Bill O’Reilly’s Enemies ListTM:

“I’m glad the smear sites made a big deal out of it. Now we can all know who was with the anti-military internet crowd. We’ll post the names of all who support the smear merchants on billoreilly.com. So check with us.”

Here’s an opportunity to join the coveted Bill O’Reilly Enemies List – and let the world know the reasons why.

First, take a moment to write an email to Bill at oreilly@foxnews.com explaining why you are his enemy.

Next, share your reasons for joining Bill’s list with us in either of these two ways:

  • When you send your email to O’Reilly, simply cc: us at newsdesk@pensitoreview.com
  • Or – block-copy-paste the contents of your email into the Comments section for this post

We will post your reasons for joining Bill O’Reilly Enemies List to Pensito Review as they come in.

Please note that this is urgent. The top spots on Bill O’Reilly’s Enemies List are the most coveted. Don’t be at the bottom of Bill’s list! So email him today!!

McCain: Telling the Truth About Torture

Buck Banks

Wages of sadism: In this week’s Newsweek cover story, Sen. John McCain weighs into the current fray surrounding whether, how and whether we should torture detainees, suspects or armed insurgents. His position is opposite that of pro-torturers George Bush and Dick Cheney, as one would expect from a man who was tortured for years by the Viet Cong while in captivity during the Vietnam War.

His reasoning is simple: torture is inhumane and so violates and denigrates our moral superiority in war, and it produces bad intelligence. Here are some of McCain’s main points:

  • In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear—whether it is true or false—if he believes it will relieve his suffering.
  • Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops who might someday be held captive.
  • This is a war of ideas, a struggle to advance freedom in the face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence that creates terrorists. Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas.
  • It is indispensable to our success in this war that those we ask to fight it know that in the discharge of their dangerous responsibilities to their country they are never expected to forget that they are Americans, and the valiant defenders of a sacred idea of how nations should govern their own affairs and their relations with others—even our enemies.

I hope McCain’s reasonable and moral argument will find traction in Congress and that his anti-torture bill will pass. But I fear that the sadists in charge are so dehumanized that they cannot stop the whip.

Team Bush Is Lying about Their Position on Torture – and the MSM Is Letting Them Get Away with It (Again!)

Jon Ponder

Same as ever: They’re doing it again. The Mainstream Media is letting senior White Officials get away with a blatant and illogical inconsistency within their own statements – an inconsistency less generous observers might call a “lie.”

“What is at issue with the McCain [anti-torture] amendment is to try and deal in this issue of detainees and interrogations, and come up with an approach that both allows us to do what we need to do to defend the country against terrorist attack, and at the same time, make good on the president’s commitment that we will not torture and we will act within the bounds of law.”

The subject is torture and the gambit from the Bushites is familiar. One senior official makes a declarative statement, like this one from President Bush on Nov. 7: “We do not torture.”

Fine. That’s settled then, right?

Well, no. Very soon after the left hand says something definitive like this, the West Wing’s right hand says something that’s meant to contradict the definitive statement and muddy the water. Here’s Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, attempting to “clarify” the president’s statement:

We have an obligation — the president has an obligation, the Congress has an obligation to do what we need to do to protect the people of the United States from terror attack.

But the president has said that while we’re going to be aggressive in that effort, we are going to do it consistent with law, consistent with our international obligations. That means we do not torture.

What is at issue with the McCain [anti-torture] amendment is to try and deal in this issue of detainees and interrogations, and come up with an approach that both allows us to do what we need to do to defend the country against terrorist attack, and at the same time, make good on the president’s commitment that we will not torture and we will act within the bounds of law…

It’s a difficult dilemma to know what to do in that circumstance to both discharge our responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attack, and follow the president’s guidance of staying within the confines of law. These are difficult issue.

Of course, Blitzer failed to ask what everyone watching the interview was screaming at their televisions: Does the United States torture detainees? Based on what Hadley said, a cynical observer would have to say, yes.

And then there’s this from our Vice President, speaking soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks:

“We have to work… the dark side, if you will.”

These people are a menace to society.

X-treme or Main-stream: You Call It

Trish

There’s an interesting debate going on in the comments section of a story posted by Popular Pensito Review Editor Buck yesterday. The original story was about Bush’s poll numbers, now reportedly lower than his grades at Yale (thank you late night TV).

The discussion at hand is what constitutes “extreme” views in today’s America. Are people like us, who have opposed pretty much everything Bush has done, right down the line, from Day One extreme, or are eternal optimists, who hold out hope that noncompetitive Halliburton contracts, jailing people without charges, and occupying a Middle Eastern country will just all work out extreme? What do you think, and where do you fall in this continuum? We’d like to hear.

You Too Can Be On Bill O’Reilly’s Enemy List!

Buck Banks

Beware the ire of the Irish: This is an e-mail being circulated among a group of like-minded friends that was just too good to not post. Kudos to MH.

Here’s something that’ll make you feel a little better. As many of you know, Bill O’Reilly last week said this in response to a San Francisco ballot measure that barred military recruiters in city schools:

“And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”

Then, when everybody got mad at him for this, he popped his cork and said he was going to post an enemies list on his website. How wonderful!

Why is it so many loony, list-making demagogues seem to have Irish names? Father Coughlan? Joe McCarthy? Bill O’Reilly? I’m sick of it! Gives my people a bad name.

Anyway, now you too can ask Bill to add you to his enemies list by writing to him at oreilly@foxnews.com. I just did. This is what I said:

Dear Bill O’Reilly —

Please add me to the enemies list you’re compiling for your website. I feel I deserve to be on the list for the following reasons:

  • I think you’re an ugly stain on the fabric of this nation.
  • I think you play to the lowest, most hateful of human instincts.
  • I think you drag the level of political discourse in this country straight into the gutter.
  • I think you’re willing to twist the facts any way at all in order to advance your views, and truth be damned.
  • I think you purposely drive wedges deeper between groups that might otherwise find common ground and work to address our nation’s problems.
  • I think you’re unbearably rude. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?
  • Finally, I’m embarrassed that your ancestors came from the same country as mine. Please tell me your name is really Cromwell. I’d believe that.

Thank you for your time —

Matt H.
Brooklyn, New York

Bob Woodward Testified Monday in CIA Leak Investigation

Jon Ponder

Curiouser: Bob Woodward’s relationship with the current administration and its Nixon 2.0 proclivities has raised doubts about the moral compass of the man who broke the Watergate story, with Carl Bernstein, in the early 1970’s. Now comes word that Woodward, who is now the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, was told the secret identity of the CIA agent by an unnamed White House official one month before her identity was disclosed by rightwing propagandist Bob Novak at the behest of operatives inside the White House.

Woodward’s testimony changes the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation when he indicted Libby, making the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

According to the Post, Woodward’s testimony significantly alters the timeline of events developed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official — not Libby — the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source

A spokesliar in Karl Rove denied that Rove was the unnamed official who spoke with Woodward. Whoever he or she is, the unnamed official belatedly told investigators about the June 2003 conversation with Woodward one week after Bush staffer Scooter Libby was indicted. Here’s how the Post reported on its most famous employee’s testimony:

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 — one week after Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official’s name or provide crucial details about the testimony. Woodward did not share the information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation taking place.

The Post reporter is Walter Pincus, who had this to say about Woodward’s sworn statement that he told Pincus about Plame:

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

“Are you kidding?” Pincus said. “I certainly would have remembered that.”

Bush: How Low Can He Go?

Buck Banks

Rockin’ the bottom: From National Journal’s PollTrack

The media is flush with reports about President Bush’s falling ratings, and today is no exception: A new CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey shows Bush’s job approval at 37 percent, a 4-point drop in just a few weeks and its lowest number to date.

Four other polls released this month have also put the president at new lows:

  • Newsweek: 36/58 (Nov. 12)
  • Fox News/Opinion Dynamics: 36/53 (Nov. 10)
  • Pew Research Center: 36/55 (Nov. 8)
  • ABC News/Washington Post: 38/60 (Nov. 3)

Has Bush hit bottom? Conventional wisdom suggests that eventually the president will be left with only the hardcore base of supporters who will stick with him no matter what, and his ratings won’t have any further to fall.

That makes Bush’s coattails the next logical battleground. A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey shows Democrats coming out 8 points ahead of Republicans in a generic 2006 congressional matchup. That gap has actually narrowed slightly since the previous poll, taken before Democratic gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia.

The split widened when respondents were asked about the Senate specifically: Fifty-three percent said they would choose the Democratic candidate and four in 10 said they would choose the Republican if the election were held today. (The GQR survey puts Bush’s job-approval split at 41/54, with both the approval and disapproval rating down one point from the previous poll.)

And 62 percent of a half-sample said they’d prefer the country to go in a different direction than the one Bush is headed; 35 percent said they wanted to continue in Bush’s path. The other half-sample gave Congress a similarly harsh review, with 64 percent saying they wanted it to change course and about a quarter saying they wanted it to stay on its current path.

Forty-six percent of CNN/Gallup/USA Today respondents said the country would be better off if Democrats were in charge of the legislature, and 34 percent said the same of Republicans. Those numbers are about the same as a mid-October survey that found 45 percent preferred Democrats and 32 percent preferred Republicans.

But pundits have also pointed out bright spots for the GOP. Presidents’ second-term beginnings are notoriously difficult, and Bush’s low ratings aren’t unprecedented. Other presidents — Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, according to analysis [PDF] from the Republican consultant at the George Washington Battleground Poll — have garnered similar numbers. And another number from CNN/Gallup/USA Today suggests the country is still conflicted about its president: Respondents were equally split at 49 percent when pollsters asked if he is a strong or weak president.

When Christian Kids Kill – Metal Detectors Proposed for Home Schooling

Jon Ponder

Nature or nurture? The latest crime out of Middle America on cable news is the murder of a couple found dead in their home in Lititz, PA. The husband and wife had been shot in the head at close range. Their 14 year old daughter, Kara Beth Borden, was missing, as was her boyfriend, David Ludwig, age 18.

The teenagers were on the lam for about 24 hours and were caught this morning in a police chase near Indianopolis. Ludiwig is accused of murdering Kara’s parents because they opposed his relationship with Kara because their age difference. What is not known at the moment is whether Kara was an accessory or a victim in the matter.

One thing we do know is that both Kara and David were home-schooled at the behest of their devoutly Christian parents – a fact that provoked the Pugbus fake news site to come up with a spoof story, “Home School Movement Needs Metal Detectors, Says Pat Robertson.”

Another sign that we have entered a new era is the fact that both Kara and David maintained multiple websites. From these we learn that they were into Christian rock and that they had a tight circle of friends.

(Spero News went through the kids’ sites so you don’t have to.)

Whether she’s a victim or a perp, Kara is blonde, which all but assures that, before it is all over, cable news will provide us with way more about her than we’d ever want to know.

Ritter: Iraqis Thwarted CIA-Organized Coup against Saddam in Clinton Era

Jon Ponder

Too bad it failed: In the mid-1990’s, the CIA infiltrated the UN’s weapons inspection efforts in Iraq and used their position to engineer a coup against Saddam Hussein. This is according to Scott Ritter – who was one of the actual weapons inspectors in Iraq at the time – in an interview that just went up on Buzzflash:

Iraqi intelligence discovered that the CIA was “using the inspection process to facilitate a coup d’etat by another group of Iraqis that was being handled by the CIA outside the framework of the weapons inspections.”

BuzzFlash: At some point during this process, Iraqi intelligence officers learned that the CIA was planning a coup. How exactly did they learn about the coup, and what happened as a result?

Scott Ritter: By … 1996, the Iraqis had put together a fairly sophisticated matrix of who the inspectors were and who they ultimately worked for. So whenever we submitted a roster of inspectors to the Iraqis, they were pretty locked in on what kind of inspection it would be, and what kind of emphasis there would be, and who on the inspection team they should be concerned about. So they have a good feel for that.

But the Mukhabarat [the Iraqi intelligence] also had to deal with aspects of protecting Saddam Hussein that had nothing to do with UNSCOM [weapons inspectors], such as the CIA’s own efforts to recruit people inside Iraq to target Saddam. And what the Mukhabarat did is they were tracking these two separate issues and found that there was crossover – that the CIA was using the inspection process to facilitate a coup d’etat by another group of Iraqis that was being handled by the CIA outside the framework of the weapons inspections.

And the Iraqis tracked this. They infiltrated the coup and they pulled the plug on it, executed the plotters and terminated the CIA’s effort. But in the process, they got definitive proof that the CIA was using the inspection process as a vehicle not only to gather intelligence, but to trigger a coup d’etat. And it destroyed the integrity of the inspection process.

The CIA infiltration into the weapons inspection efforts – and its discovery by the Iraqis – dampered, if not ruined, the efficacy of U.N. weapons inspections in the future as a peaceful means for disarming predator states.

Ritter also believes that had the CIA undercover effort not been exposed the inspections might have worked:

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