The Prissy Patriot: Take a Cruise on the USS Dubya! Plenty of Rooms Available on the Upper Deck ...Act Now!

Washington Post-Now that is some news...Lawyer: Rice Allegedly Leaked Defense Info

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.
Prosecutors disputed the claim.
The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.

And Prissy charges them with instigating a gag on what was supposed to be the American free press in our democratic society...amongst other things.

CBS Dearest Readers, Corporate media is becoming afraid of the monster they created-they have been publishing some truths as of late...A Spy Speaks Out Another American hero speaking out!

(CBS) A CIA official who had a top role during the run-up to the Iraqi war charges the White House with ignoring intelligence that said there were no weapons of mass destruction or an active nuclear program in Iraq.
The former highest ranking CIA officer in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, also says that while the intelligence community did give the White House some bad intelligence, it also gave the White House good intelligence — which the administration chose to ignore.
Drumheller talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley in his first television interview this Sunday, April 23 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Drumheller, who retired last year, says the White House ignored crucial information from a high and credible source. The source was Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, with whom U.S. spies had made a deal.

And...

They didn't want any additional data from Sabri because, says Drumheller: "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."

Geez corporate owned media, this is not breaking news to Prissy Patriot readers-only breaking news that you are finally printing it.

Kudos to Mr. Drumheller for speaking out. America desperately needs more of your kind, they cannot stop us all.

FindLaw via RAW Story If Past Is Prologue, George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President by John Dean Apr. 21, 2006

Wilson rode his unpopular League of Nations proposal to his ruin; Hoover refused to let the federal government intervene to prevent or lessen a fiscal depression; Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam while misleading Americans (thereby making himself unelectable); and Nixon went down with his bogus defense of Watergate.
George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.
Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.
And this may be his only option: With Bush's limited rhetorical skills, it would be all but impossible for him to persuade any others than his most loyal supporters of his positions. His single salient virtue - as a campaigner - was the ability to stay on-message. He effectively (though inaccurately) portrayed both Al Gore and John Kerry as wafflers, whereas he found consistency in (over)simplifying the issues. But now, he cannot absorb the fact that his message is not one Americans want to hear - that he is being questioned, severely, and that staying on-message will be his downfall.

Great article. Prissy recommends you read it all, if you have time.

With Bush poll numbers still in free fall, the danger from what he will do next, looms in the minds of those who have seen dangerous people before.

The Truth Seeker Bush: the Decider Dictator by Kurt Nimmo

A bit of harping on the part of the corporate media—or factions therein squeamish over Straussian neocon tactics (shock and awe mass murder, institutionalized torture, mini-nuke braggadocio)—will not change the game plan, a stratagem devised by the neocons as far back as the first Bush administration (in the good old days, these guys were called the "crazies," and Colin Powell later added a colorful verb before this pejorative).
Nothing short of a military coup and tanks rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue will put an end to this madness.
On that fateful day, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush will resemble Hitler and his lieutenants hiding in their bunkers as the Russians stormed Berlin.
Either that or they will turn the planet into a living hell.

Or we can bury our heads and pretend Kurt is paranoid...neorepublicans do it daily on Capital Hill.

Prison Planet Former German Minister Says Building 7 Used To Run 9/11 Attack

Von Bülow referenced the command bunker in Building 7, calling it the "optimal place" to run the attacks using remote control technology to guide the planes in and then destroying the crime scene by imploding the building.
"There were two procedures, one was flying in the aircraft the second was the explosions," he said.
When asked precisely which parties carried out the attack Von Bülow said it must have been a "very small group" within the CIA with the help of Saudi Arabian and Pakistani secret service intelligence.
Von Bülow outlined his view that one reason for the execution of 9/11 was to provide the justification for US military bases in the near and Middle East to be built in anticipation for a future confrontation with China, whom the Neo-Cons believe have grown too powerful and need to have their geopolitical wings clipped.

Hat Tip to Fitz: From Texas Monthly Without DeLay

DELAY UNDERSTOOD ALMOST everything about power in Washington except the insidious power of scandal. He had plenty of precedents to learn from; in his career, he had seen two Speakers brought down by ethics violations, Democrat Jim Wright, of Texas, and Republican Newt Gingrich, of Georgia, as well as his own handpicked successor to Gingrich, Bob Livingston, of Louisiana, who confessed to an extramarital affair and quit the House. Three lessons were to be drawn from the dethroning of Wright and Gingrich. The most obvious was that they were intense partisans whose political style—Wright’s stretching of parliamentary rules to run roughshod over the opposition, Gingrich’s (and the entire Republican leadership’s, including DeLay’s) loathing of Bill Clinton—made the minority party hate them and look for ways to bring them down. The second lesson was that if you’re going to make yourself a target, you’d better not give the opposition a reason to shoot—and in today’s Washington, that reason is usually ethical transgressions. The third was that scandal, once contracted, is a virus with no known cure. The only safe course is to stay within the rules, but DeLay lived on the edge. He painted the target on his own back.
With the possible exception of John McCain, no member of Congress had been so much in the news over the past three years. The difference, of course, was that the media’s treatment of the senior U.S. senator from Arizona (and presidential aspirant) had been almost universally favorable, while the opposite was true of the 59-year-old DeLay. Nicknamed the Hammer for his mastery of the dark arts of persuasion, the man who had arguably been the most powerful figure in Congress for a decade had taken so many hits from Democrats and the media, and faced so many perils for so long, that what’s amazing is not that he fell but that he survived as long as he did. Indeed, at the end, every political reporter in Washington seemed to be on the DeLay obituary beat. Under attack in his district, under indictment in Austin for money laundering of campaign funds by a political action committee he created, under scrutiny in Washington in connection with the Abramoff scandal, under an ethical cloud that earned him repeated admonishments from peers charged with enforcing the rules that he flouted, and unseated (voluntarily, though with much prodding) as a high-ranking member of the House leadership, DeLay nevertheless retained influence, as he demonstrated when he said in February that Congress would overturn the Dubai ports deal, ruining the White House’s efforts to salvage it.

Dubya sure knows how to pick 'em...

Truthout Grand Jury Hears Evidence Against Rove by Jason Leopold Thursday 20 April 2006

Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said.
Fitzgerald told the grand jury that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters.
Additionally, an FBI investigator reread to jurors testimony from other witnesses in the case that purportedly implicates Rove in playing a role in the leak and the campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence lead to his wife being unmasked as a covert CIA operative.
Luskin said Rove has not discussed any plea deal with Fitzgerald.

Look for that indictment coming soon...if there are three of them-here are Prissy's best guesses: Rove/Hadley/Card. Ladies and Gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts and stay seated. The fun is about to begin...

UPDATES: Bloomberg News Nepal's King May Be Close to Reinstating Democracy

The U.S. ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty, today said the king may be forced from power within days unless he makes concessions to the demonstrators, AP reported.
``His time is running out,'' AP cited Moriarty as saying in an interview with reporters in Kathmandu. ``Ultimately the king will have to leave if he doesn't compromise. And by `ultimately' I mean sooner rather than later.''
The European Union today said the use of live ammunition ``marks a watershed in the crisis,'' according to a statement from the EU presidency, held by Austria. ``The presidency of the EU roundly condemns the use of these and other excessive measures by government forces to curb pro-democracy protests in Kathmandu and elsewhere in Nepal.''
Nepal's seven-party opposition alliance has vowed to continue the rallies until the monarch ends his autocratic rule, which began when he fired the government in February 2005. More than 1,000 people have been arrested during the past two weeks

Note to Dubya: Nepal is demanding democracy. Keep going and Americans will soon be demanding it here...

Washington Post The Power Player Who Faces Charges for Talking (It was really what he was talking about)

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty said last year when he announced the charges against them that the lobbyists had simply gone too far. "Washington is a town in which the flow of information is virtually nonstop," but the law "separates classified information from everything else." The charges, he added, "are about crossing that line."
Rosen's case is undergoing preliminary motions and could go to trial as early as next month.
The FBI monitored Rosen and Weissman during a series of meetings between them and Lawrence A. Franklin, an Iran specialist at the Pentagon who in January was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for passing government secrets. Both lobbyists deny they did anything wrong.
The FBI raided AIPAC's Washington offices twice in 2004, obtaining computer files and serving grand jury subpoenas on four senior executives. It also listened in on several encounters between Franklin and the lobbyists -- at restaurants and a Pentagon City shopping mall -- dating to 2003, as well as on a phone call from Rosen to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler

Having a cause is wonderful-but not when one puts the cause over loyalty to your own country...at the very least, they have some explaining to do.

AIPAC sounds rather defiant over the whole matter. Lobbying reform should be on the next presidents agenda.

An African-American friend of Prissy's would like to know why Israel even needs such a strong lobby in America. She points out any discrimination suffered has never stopped Jewish folks in America (and most other places) from making money-unlike the discrimination suffered by other minorities.

Rolling Stone Magazine The Worst President in History? Apr 21, 2006

No historian can responsibly predict the future with absolute certainty. There are too many imponderables still to come in the two and a half years left in Bush's presidency to know exactly how it will look in 2009, let alone in 2059. There have been presidents -- Harry Truman was one -- who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. He still does his best to deny it. Having waved away the lessons of history in the making of his decisions, the present-minded Bush doesn't seem to be concerned about his place in history. "History. We won't know," he told the journalist Bob Woodward in 2003. "We'll all be dead."
Another president once explained that the judgments of history cannot be defied or dismissed, even by a president. "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln. "We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

The latest generation says "Thanks for nothing!" Well, kids -all Prissy can say is that she is sorry, along with many others who foresaw the entire mess. We tried to stop them-but could not.

Public opinion, which indeed governs this democracy-was against us. They got fooled, just like mAnn Coulter fooled so many of us.

We have to forgive them and they have to admit they weren't looking for that in their Dubya. But admit he did con them all the same. Then the lost lambs can feel safe in returning to the American fold.

The great thing about America is the freaks who entertain us, the geeks who invent and our general melting pot of custom and culture. That is what liberals are telling us when they say "celebrate diversity". Besides that, its fun and the food is usually good. Americans are supposed to be a different lot. They and the rest of the educated world, wondered how we could have elected Dubya twice.

Turns out we didn't, but that Dubya sure makes us look bad.

Just ask our Canadian friends, they will certainly vouch Americans are "different"...

Flashback from Daily Times Pakistan The secret war on FBI whistle-blowers June 23, 2002

Next, say those who've taken the ride, comes a gamut of retaliatory tactics: harassment from supervisors, the loss of office allies, a stripping of security clearance, the monitoring of activities, inter-office relocation , one Department of Agriculture informer was moved to a desk in the hallway outside the bathroom , demotions, psychiatric or medical referrals, or "administrative leave," to put it euphemistically. "The FBI never fires whistle-blowers, directly,"says psychiatric social worker Don Soeken.
In the late '70s, Soeken worked for the US Public Health Service, and his job was to perform "fitness for duty" examinations for federal employees whose supervisors thought they were mentally unstable. But Soeken noticed something curious about his clientele. All his patients seemed to be whistle-blowers, Soeken says, and he was asked to label the muckrakers mentally unfit, giving the government the green light to dismiss them. Soeken refused. He became a whistle-blower himself, reporting the shameful practice to Congress, and now helps whistle-blowers recover on a farm in West Virginia that he calls the Whistlestop.
"There's only one commandment in the FBI, says one of his patients, Fred Whitehurst. "Thou shall not say anything bad about the FBI." Whitehurst used to be the FBI's chief forensic scientist for explosives analysis; he examined the powders left on the rubble from the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. For over a decade, he watched other lab scientists fudging reports to make quick criminal convictions. He howled. Now he lives in the backwoods of North Carolina and runs a forensic watchdog group.

Hat tip to What Really Happened- The Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy Let The AIPAC Spy Trial Begin: Opinion -Why Prosecuting Weissman and Rosen Matters by Grant F. Smith

"There's a disjunctive, your Honor. The disjunctive says 'injure the United States or assist or benefit the advantage of a foreign country.' How can anybody apply that in a context in which good foreign policy for the United States, that clearly is intended to help make the United States' foreign policy better, may also have a derivative impact that makes it an advantage to an ally of the United States, whose interest are exactly the same?[iv]" Abbe Lowell (line 17 page 22)
This assertion by the defendants may prove to be the heart of the upcoming criminal defense. But only if Judge T.S. Ellis III refuses to throw out the case based on technical disagreements over the Act's musty phraseology. If Judge Ellis does allow the case to move forward, it will allow a legion of analysts, from Mearsheimer and Walt to IRmep, to educate the court through amicus briefs with evidence that Israeli and US interests are often times diametrically opposed. There is ample evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the documented subterfuges of the Israel Lobby as personified by Weissman and Rosen not only endanger the US, but have eroded the principles of liberty and justice upon which the US was founded. The illicit overt and covert activities of an unregistered foreign lobby committed to deceiving Americans that Israeli and US interests are "exactly the same" can only be revealed and terminated through a high-profile criminal trial.

A well cited article.

Chicago Sun Times Novak: Feds know who outed CIA agent April 20, 2006

Still, he did say, "If I had gone before a grand jury and taken the Fifth Amendment, Mr. Fitzgerald would have that on the street in about two minutes."
Novak also claimed that investigators know who leaked the information, although he did not say how they know.
"The question is, does Mr. Fitzgerald know who the source was?" Novak asked. "Of course. He's known for years who the first source is. If he knows the source, why didn't he indict him? Because no crime was committed."
Novak said he doesn't believe his source violated laws forbidding the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity.
And...At an appearance in December, Novak said President Bush knows his source, too. On Wednesday, he called those remarks "indiscreet."

Hey Novak, your pants are on fire...

CNN Gas shortages hit the East Coast April 20, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some gasoline distribution terminals from Virginia to Massachusetts are seeing shortages as the industry phases out a water-polluting additive, the U.S. Energy Department said on Thursday.

The Energy Department has reported shortages at terminals near Richmond, Virginia, as well as the Tidewater area near Chesapeake Bay and Virginia Beach which distribute gasoline to service stations.

The terminals, which hold millions of gallons of gasoline in giant tanks, distribute supplies from refineries to gas stations.

Northern Virginia, Baltimore and Boston are also seeing shortages, the department's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability said.

Harper's Magazine The CIA's 'Wehrmacht' Wednesday, April 19, 2006

With the war in Iraq an utter debacle and public opinion turned against the White House, anger within the armed forces towards Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Administration is growing, and the Pentagon is fighting back (see 'Pentagon Memo Aims to Counter Rumsfeld Critics' in the April 16 New York Times). But what's been little noted thus far is what looks to be a similar revolt brewing at the CIA. An ex-senior agency officer who keeps in contact with his former peers told me that there is a "a big swing" in anti-Bush sentiment at Langley. "I've been stunned by what I'm hearing," he said. "There are people who fear that indictments and subpoenas could be coming down, and they don't want to get caught up in it."
This former senior officer said "there seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people" at the agency to avoid involvement in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially "renditions" "the practice whereby the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the CIA: "There's an SS group within the agency that's willing to do anything and there's a Wehrmacht group that is saying, 'I'm not gonna touch this stuff'."

Remember, A Few Good Men? Truth tellers are disparaged, while liars make the rules. Not much longer...

ATTN ALL Sane Military personnel, from Turkish paper-Zaman Online US Ready to Stop Iran Alone if Necessary Thursday, April 20, 2006

Having convened in Moscow Tuesday, the United Nations" (UN) five permanent members and German representatives failed to agree on imposing sanctions on Tehran.
US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said America is ready to act on Iran alone solitude if necessary. They will collaborate with other countries to prevent Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, Burns warned: "Washington explicitly released its attitude. We will do our best to stop it."

Defense Link Pace and Rummy's Press Conference April 18, 2006

GEN. PACE: Let me say something, if I could, about the process because it's really important that our fellow citizens understand that the process of making decisions and all the things that the secretary just talked about, as far as issues, all were handled basically in the same fundamental way, which was a great deal of dialogue amongst the people wearing uniforms and those wearing civilian clothes.
A normal day for me, a minimum of 30 minutes a day -- today's much more of an example, three to four hours per day; sometimes as many as six, seven, or eight hours per day, the chairman and the vice chairman are with the secretary of Defense listening to all of the information that's being provided to him, giving our best military advice. We are reaching out either formally through a war plan staffing process or informally just through a discussion process to the combatant commanders and asking their opinions about whatever the issue of the day is. And if it's important, the combatant commanders have either gotten on video teleconference or they've come to this city and sat down with the secretary, and it comes to the tank and then with the chiefs.
And the chiefs, individually, are with the secretary at least once a week, if not more often, in the meetings that he holds. And then, the additional meetings that have been formed during the course of the last several years, where all of us, of the senior civilian leaders in the department and all of the senior military leaders in the department get together, not for an hour, but for two or three days at a time. It used to be the combatant commands would come to town twice a year for two days. Now, they come to town three times a year for three days to sit down for quality time, three whole days with the senior leadership of the department just discussing various issues.
There are multiple opportunities for all of us with whatever opinions we have to put them on the table, and all the opinions are put on the table. But at the end of the day, after we've given our best military advice, somebody has to make a decision, and when the decision's made by the secretary of Defense, unless it's illegal or immoral, we go on about doing what we've been told to do. (Emphasis Prissy)
SEC. RUMSFELD: Don't even suggest that -- (laughter) -- illegal or immoral.

Was that nervous laughter Rummy? Prissy will give it the General, he isn't expected to be a lawyer-but he is expected to ask the lawyers what they think before he gives it the go ahead.

Yes, we have laws regarding the conduct of war- and treaties too. Contact West Point or the U.S. Army War College should you require further legal information regarding use of military force.

NY Times China's Leader Makes First White House Visit April 20, 2006

The Asian woman shouted in Chinese, but also broke into English, yelling "Stop the torture and killings!" and shouting the name of the Falun Gong, a religious and exercise sect that is outlawed in China. "Falun Dafa is good," she yelled.
Mr. Hu looked at first confused and then hesitated before continuing to speak.
"You're O.K., " Mr. Bush said to him in a low voice, prodding him on.
For at least a minute, the protests punctuated both Mr. Hu's remarks and the gaps in which he fell silent as his words were being translated into English.

"You're O.K." Oh Please, more like, "Is she yelling at me or you?" isn't that so, Dubya.

Funny Flash for Friday: Hat tip to Fitz I'M THE DECIDER (Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo) Turn down the volume if you're at work. To the tune of the Beatles "The Walrus".

Quotes of the Day

"A retired Air Force colonel said that U.S. military operations are already under way in Iran. You know what that means, time to break out the old 'Mission Accomplished' banner." --Jay Leno

"During a Pentagon briefing, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said we're making progress and we're very close to capturing some high ranking officials. Unfortunately they are all retired U.S. generals." --Jay Leno

"Bush said, 'We spent some time talking about the Iranian issue and the desire to solve this issue diplomatically, by working together'... Of course, it s a lot easier to be diplomatic when we've only got two armies left to deploy: Salvation and KISS." --Jon Stewart, on Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. -- Robert Fritz

"It's been reported that in the event of an emergency situation with North Korea the U.S. is prepared to send 70% of the Marine Corps to the region. According to President Bush this will still allow us to send another 70% to Iran and keep our other 70% in Iraq." --Tina Fey