<p>consider it read…</p>
<p>…having now done so, I must say that I found it somewhat “plain and short.”</p>
<p>Kind of like a 17 year old’s wisdom.</p>
<p>I’m chastened…really, and considering the wisdom of those aged ones posting around me not too hopeful over my own future prospects in this regard. Such sadness; “The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”</p>
<p>
From what I’ve seen in this thread, the over-17 crowd has no business claiming that age brings wisdom. And no, I’ve not seen those movies.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/16/11031/3299[/url]”>http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/16/11031/3299</a></p>
<p>"And it does seem as if there are beginning to be oh-too-many casual mentions and well-her-name-just-kinda-sorta-came-up between lots of people for completely unrelated reasons. Rove is kind of like Medusa, if we stare at him too long we’ll turn to stone. I believe we should push for him to be fired, no doubt he is involved, but there are bigger targets, bigger problems this touches on.</p>
<p>So I think it is worth paying more attention to this sire of the story. Remember Seymour Hersh talking about the stovepiping of intelligence. And I think Justin Raimondo’s analysis
deserves thought.</p>
<p>Wilson agrees. (again via Salon book excerpt .</p>
<p>It was through these special offices that so many of the rumors, gossip, and unsubstantiated intelligence about Iraq were passed directly to senior White House officials, notably Vice President Cheney, and were accepted without first being subjected to the rigorous analysis of the $30-billion-a-year intelligence community. American intelligence, which routinely sees and sifts thousands of bits of information daily, has had years of experience developing an analytical capability that can assess precisely whether the information we are receiving is fact or fiction. Short-circuiting this process – or, in the vivid term Hersh adopted for the title of his disturbing article, “stovepiping” information directly into policy-makers’ hands – is dangerous. Addressing his investigation directly to Luti’s enterprise, Hersh added: “This office, which circumvented the usual procedures of vetting and transparency, stovepiped many of its findings to the highest-ranking officials” in the administration.</p>
<p>President Bush could fundamentally change the direction of his administration by firing fewer than fifteen senior officials, beginning with those signatories of the Project for the New American Century and those currently holding government posts who signed a 1998 letter that urged President Clinton to wage war on Iraq. They are clustered at the National Security Council (NSC), in the Defense and State Departments, and within Vice President Cheney’s own parallel national security office. That particular little-known organization – not accountable to Congress and virtually unknown to the American people – should be completely dismantled. Never in the history of our democracy has there been established such an influential and pervasive center of power with the ability to circumvent longstanding and accepted reporting structures and to skew decisionmaking practices. It has been described to me chillingly by a former senior government official as a coup d’etat within the State. That’s all it would take – firing fewer than fifteen officials, and the scuttling of Cheney’s questionable office – to alter this administration’s radical course.</p>
<p>I think that means we need to keep our eyes on the CIA angle as much discussed lately. Ari, Tenet, Scooter, ALL of the people who left the CIA abruptly after this time. Wilson and then Plame could have been symbols for the greater power struggle.</p>
<p>Wilson also mentions tensions in the WH over this. </p>
<p>Apparently, according to two journalist sources of mine, when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear that he held them responsible for the problem they had created for the administration. The protracted silence on this topic from the White House masks considerable tension between the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President."</p>
<p>Too bad you haven’t seen the movies. Age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom. But 17 year olds don’t have it.</p>
<p>Socrates time-tested definition of Wisdom would leave no room for your last sentence: to know that you do not know.</p>
<p>Similarly, an Old Persian saying says:</p>
<p>You can pile a mountain of books on the back of a donkey…but it is still only a donkey.</p>
<p>I do find it interesting that both Xiggi and FS can think for themselves and do not rely on regurgitating cut&pastes from liberal web sites as some of the older members here continuosusly resort to. Nor do they infer that a movie is some sort of unbiased statement of truth.</p>
<p>FountainSiren, you are the one always quoting books. :)</p>
<p>Fundingfather, nobody said a movie is some sort of unbiased truth. I just want to know if people have explored both sides of an issue and if they have seen these movies. I did like these movies. :)</p>
<p>“Xiggi, at your age you should seek out information that may lead to a questioning of opinions. In fact, we should do that at any age.”</p>
<p>Dstark, I understand that one shoud always question his beliefs. However, your assumption here is that I failed to seek information. As for most of the subjects that interest me, I try to scratch the surface and I am particularly careful to try to understand the “other side.” I am always interested to find out why the opinion of so many citizens seemed contradictory to the facts. In this case, I’m afraid that it would require the history to be rewritten to change my opinion.</p>
<p>In the end, it is only MY opinion, and I never advanced that my opinion is necessarily correct. I believe that everyone approaches issues in the same manner: they look at the evidence through their own eyes and then make up their mind.</p>
<p>Xiggi, what bothers me is you said you would never change your opinion. It’s OK to change an opinion. It is not a sign of weakness. I used to be a Republican. :)</p>
<p>If you get a chance, see the movies I mentioned. You might not change your mind. That is OK.</p>
<p>Really, take a class by Robert Faggen. I took a class taught by Andrea Neves (she was great) and she wouldn’t have endowed a chair if he wasn’t fantastic.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/pressreleases/article.asp?article_id=551[/url]”>http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/pressreleases/article.asp?article_id=551</a></p>
<p>“FountainSiren, you are the one always quoting books”</p>
<p>To those of a certain determinate age this is known as the “same to you but more of it” defense. Honestly, I’ve never seen it used with more </p>
<p>Hi FF: “cut&pastes from liberal web sites”</p>
<p>No need to go there FF, it does nothing to inform the public to insinuate that information from an award winning blog is not somehow up to your standards. Information about the methods of the Cheney offices, the influence of the Project for a New American Century on our intelligence and policies is just that. It informs. It doesn’t slant, it doesn’t accuse, it doesn’t imply an inability to think for ones self. It has been well established by Seymour Hersh that stovepiping intell is the practice of the hardliners in the WH.</p>
<p>I don’t need to insinuate that it is not up to my standards - I’ll tell you flat out that it isn’t. Any blog that continues to use Joe Wilson as an expert witness can not be taken seriously. Had Wilson just been discredited by a politically biased organization or web site, perhaps he could still be quoted. However, the Senate Intelligence committee went to great lengths to address his assertions and unanimously showed that they were essentially fabrications. Even the Kerry campaign saw that he was tainted and distanced themselves from him.</p>
<p>Even even even if that were the case, does outing his wife, and if you would pay some attention to the justices reports working on the case, you will see they are taking that very seriouslly, would Rove talking to reporters about her job be approiate? </p>
<p>So, go ahead and slam Wilson, it is just a distraction from what Rove has done. And why hasn’t the President asked him directly? And why does the President himself say he doesn;t have all the facts…that in itself seems very odd</p>
<p>“the Senate Intelligence committee went to great lengths to address his assertions and unanimously showed that they were essentially fabrications”</p>
<p>Check out these sources, you can choose your own, I like Seymour Hersh’s article in the New Yorker so I’ll quote a little from that:
Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic, ElBaradei said.</p>
<p>One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.</p>
<p>The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agencys Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.</p>
<p>It took Bautes team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.</p>
<p>The large quantity of uranium involved should have been another warning sign. Nigers yellow cake comes from two uranium mines controlled by a French company, with its entire output presold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. Five hundred tons cant be siphoned off without anyone noticing, another I.A.E.A. official told me.</p>
<p>This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just dont know, the official said. Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted. Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operationshad become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassadors return to Rome.</p>
<p>Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, confronted the United States with the forgery: What do you have to say? They had nothing to say.</p>
<p>ElBaradeis disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. >>>>>>>>>>>“On March 14th, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally asked Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, to investigate the forged documents. Rockefeller had voted for the resolution authorizing force last fall. Now he wrote to Mueller, There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq. He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated. A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into”</p>
<p><a href=“"New Yorker" Niger Uranium forgery - Google Search”>"New Yorker" Niger Uranium forgery - Google Search;
<p>Larry Johnson, CIA , and General Fulford, a respected Marine General see it differently.</p>
<p>“I point the reader to one final piece of evidence in the Senate’s own flawed report. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger at the time and the Deputy CINC of the European Command (General Fulford) both reached the same conclusion that Joe Wilson did–THERE WAS NO SUBSTANCE TO THE CLAIM THAT IRAQ WAS TRYING TO BUY YELLOW CAKE FROM NIGER.”</p>
<p>Sunday Herald - 13 July 2003
Niger and Iraq: the war’s biggest lie?
Investigation: Neil Mackay reveals why everyone now accepts that claims Saddam Hussein got uranium from Africa are fraudulent … except, that is, Britain’s beleaguered prime minister and his Cabinet supporters</p>
<p>"Wilson is no rogue official. He was lauded by George Bush Snr for ‘fighting the good fight’ after he became the last US diplomat to confront Saddam in the run-up to the first Gulf war. The irony isn’t lost on Wilson, who says: ‘I guess he didn’t realise that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son’s administration.’</p>
<p>Greg Thielmann, director of the State Department’s Office of Strategic, Proliferation and Military Issues, says the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research ruled the Niger connection implausible and told US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Thielmann also said Iraq posed no nuclear threat, and Team Bush distorted intelligence to fit its drive for war. Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director now leading a review of the agency’s pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMDs, says intelligence was ambiguous and the CIA was under pressure from the Bush administration.</p>
<p>The CIA, in what one British intelligence source described as a ‘wise attempt at an ass-saving manoeuvre’, also tried to have reference to Iraq’s uranium links to Niger deleted from Bush’s State of the Union address. CIA officials say they ‘communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence’. Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, disputes the claim, saying the CIA cleared the reference made by Bush."</p>
<p><a href=“Scottish Sunday - Scotland's Independent Sunday”>Scottish Sunday - Scotland's Independent Sunday;
<p>“Xiggi, what bothers me is you said you would never change your opinion. It’s OK to change an opinion. It is not a sign of weakness. I used to be a Republican.
If you get a chance, see the movies I mentioned. You might not change your mind. That is OK. Really, take a class by Robert Faggen. I took a class taught by Andrea Neves (she was great) and she wouldn’t have endowed a chair if he wasn’t fantastic.”</p>
<p>Dstark, I appreciate you taking the time to reminding me again about the movies and Professor Faggen. While I did not get the opportunity to watch the movies yet, I took good note of your recommendation. Professor Faggen is indeed very well-known on and off campus. You may want to add John Farrell to your list of wondeful Literature professors at CMC.</p>
<p>As far as changing opinions, I am very open to change my thoughts on broad subjects such as politics, but less inclined to do it about politicians who leave a record and a legacy. For the future, I like to see the development of more options and … better politicians. I have my own set of favorites and they are well divided between both sides of the aisle. I have already mentioned that I like the accomplishments of Bill Richardson -and he was -or is- a staunch ally of the Clinton’s. I have also cheered loudly when a local democrat named Chet Edwards defeated the Republican candidate in the George Bush district. There are many issues on the Republican platform that bother me greatly and I look with bated breath to see alternatives from the other party. So far, I see a sea of nothingness … but I may have missed it because the dems insist on picking candidates who are unable to deliver the correct message, let alone develop one. Trust me that I would not be hard to convince if the dems had the courage to change their old habits and look in another direction next time around … (Hint: look to the center for positions and to the South for a decent candidate who is not a flaky retread). :)</p>
<p>PS As far as wisdom goes, I agree that it comes with age. However, there is nothing wrong to try to get a running start and debate with the wiser crowd.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I agree with you about the failings of the democratic party.</p>
<p>Besides Clinton’s sexual escapades, I don’t get the hate (from a large part of the population). He had Greenspan and Rubin in his government.</p>
<p>I’d like to see better politicians too. </p>
<p>I’m glad you noted Faggen, and I will try to remember John Farrell. I will bug you if I forget. :)</p>
<p>PS As far as wisdom goes, I don’t mean to pick on the younger guys. It’s just a universal-- Everybody needs life experiences. </p>
<p>I find the older I get, the less I know. :)</p>
<p>“PS As far as wisdom goes, I agree that it comes with age. However, there is nothing wrong to try to get a running start and debate with the wiser crowd.”</p>
<p>Never trust anyone over 30. I was told that at 15, and at 55 I can confirm that it is good advice. ;)</p>