Brilliant. I think we've found our "way out" for those who supported the war. Show how everyone was misled by this administration - and they most certainly were. By focusing on this, it asks the question: if the Bush administration had been honest, would you have supported the war?

This is something many anti-war folks don't fully appreciate. Most of the country supported this war, and they don't want their noses rubbed in it. They don't want to admit they made a mistake. They don't want to take responsibility. They see it's going badly, and they want a way out. If they were lied to, we've provided them a way they can comfortably flip and come to us. It's a way for them to be for the war then and against it now. Most of all, it gives them someone to blame: the ones who used cynically used the faith they put in them to further their own pet ideological experiments.

Representative Nadler, as a former constituent of yours (I recently left New York for San Francisco), let me first say how much I appreciate your ongoing efforts to maintain decency in the Congress. 
I fully support your call to broaden this investigation, and ask that you let us know if there is anything that we may be able to do to help you succeed.

Exactly.

Most Americans supported the invasion of Iraq because they had been led to believe that we faced a genuine threat from nuclear-armed terrorism if we didn't do it -- not because they supported the Mother of All Nation-Building Projects, which would transform Middle Eastern societies by forcing Western values on them.

If the neocons had tried to sell the public on their real program in Iraq, it wouldn't have worked -- so they sent their buddy Michael Ledeen to Rome... and the rest is history...  Of course they thought that, once we were welcomed with flowers and the Iraqis embraced secular democracy and all of that, none of this would come back to haunt them...

The TOTIB notion rings true. Instead of filing the indictments last week (anyone hear that rumor?) we've had more leaks, more notes revealed, and ofcourse more rumors of imminent indictments.

Maybe all the pressure is yielding results. Fitz has found something big. Maybe Scooter flipped on Cheney. Maybe Cheney forged the Niger docs and had his pals in Italy pawn them off as the genuine article. That'd justify a new grand jury and some new file cabinets.

But look for small stuff tomorrow. He'll indict the flippers on reduced charges. The main event hasn't yet begun.

here's yet another former constituent--lol, you'd think you're losing them in droves! (I'm in da Bronx now)--thanks you!

and I especially thank you for doing the brave honorable duty thing of going on Fox! :-)

p.s. I miss your newsletters! They were good! :-)

Of course, those who were wrong must admit and take resposibility, otherwise it's off we go into Syria.

And yet another constituent here.  Keep it up Jerry, been voting for you since Ted Weiss passed and plan to keep doing it for a long time.

"...whether the CIA leak incident was part of a larger, deliberate effort to deceive Congress into authorizing war in Iraq"

Representative Nadler,

I'm just wondering when anyone with influence in this world will have the courage to bring up the Paul Wellstone "plane crash," Surely.  Among you Congressmen. There must be some suspicion. 

Funny how first we heard the weather was horrendous, then we found out it was not so bad. But the impression remained with most people that it was a snowstorm out there. And then within a couple of hours the FAA had determined, magically, without finding out what had happened, that it wasn't sabotage.  In this age of terrorism!  They never really did come up with a coherent explanation of what happened, and I hear the pilots in Duluth were themselves suspicious, as the crash followed no normal pattern, and there was no SOS. Oddly, the public was first told there would be a blackbox aboard that should help explain things; but then then oops, no recording found. At one point, there was a familiar-type smear campaign against one of Wellstone's two well-trusted pilots.

Wellstone was Rove & Crew's top target for a Senate seat, as explained vividly in The Nation in two stories before the crash. The GOP thought he was vulnerable, and he represented a special threat to their aspirations - if he won after being the only Senator up for a seat to vote against the Iraq war, he'd come back with the ability to say that standing against this war does not mean sacrificing your career. And say it loud.

There were other damning facts. If he and his family had gone down just one day later, his name would have appeared on the ballot, he's have won in a sympathy vote, and then a special election would have been held in which the Democrats would have had more time to get their act together for a replacement candidate.  On the other hand, if he'd gone down one or more days earlier, again, the Democrats would have had that much more time to organize. From the point of view of the GOP being able to get that seat, if the plane had to go down, it was the perfect day. And then the propaganda around it was suspicious, as if planned. A respectful first few days; but then the fundies were all ready with their "funerally" propaganda: the idea that Minnesotans should not allow his death to be in vain was a predictable theme for that memorial, but they made it into some kind of evil thing. And they went on and on about "booing" Republican dignitaries, when people there said they heard little or no booing.   And then, the woman leading the investigation was ex-CIA, whatever that is. 

Well, one could go on. I was never a conspiracy theorist before this cabal took over our country, but if ever I saw a suspicious plane crash, this was it. Hope I didn't get any of the facts wrong. Wellstone meant the difference between Republican control of the Senate, and not. The stakes were very, very high. I don't think these are casual assassins; I'm sure they preferred Plan A, where they would regain control through their usual sleazy tactics. But unlike the situation in Georgia for example, they don't have control of the Minnesota election machinery. And Wellstone was simply too popular; their ads and parade of top officials weren't having the desired effect; his polls were rising.

Wellstone was my favorite Senator. I was supporting him from Alaska.  I was following his campaign very closely.  The immediate reaction of everyone into politics who I've talked with was, "God. They actually did this!" But then the corporate media message took over and people tended to forget their own initial reaction.

Course we'll never know for sure unless we can get an investigator of Fitzgerald's character on it. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.  I'm just saying this administration is very shadowy very ruthless. When they want something, they don't consider failure an option. They wanted to wrest back control of Congress after Jeffords' defection, and they wanted their war.  Why would they let a pipsqueak lefty professor get in their way?

Wellstone's first Senate speech was against the 1991 Gulf War.  President George H.W. Bush famously asked, "Who is that little chickenshit?"

 
This particular crime, if it was a crime, is the one that makes me angriest, along with the trick ballot in Palm Beach.  In any case in a "free country" where we look for the truth, it ought to have been investigated as a possible crime, particularly in this Age of Terrah.  It's like the investigation of what went wrong with the exit polls in Florida in 2002, which never considered the hypothesis that maybe the exit polls were correct. Okay, well, if you're not going to consider possible assassination in a strange plane crash of a powerful man with enemies -- and if you're not going to consider the possibility that exit polls might be right when they disagree with the "actual results"n-- then public skepticism about such "investigations" will remain high.

The righties are saying we liberals are making a mountain of a molehill.  On the contrary:  Plamegate is the tip of the Iceberg.

Sounds like treaon to me.  Bringing the country into war by deception.  Wow!!

Dear Congressman Nadler (I wish you were mine instead of Delay syncopant Frank of AZ-4):

 I admire your effort to address what the Adminstration has done by this technique.  However, I do agree with others that spending time on a Fox show like Hannity and Colmes on a topic like this almost amounts to a concession that the show, and by extension FNC, serves some legitimate function in the public news discourse.  That is a concession that they do not deserve.

Bob Hetrick 

Kudos to this commentator.

Bravo for speaking out for the thousands who have died in Iraq. Joseph Wilson, himself has often said that this scandal is not about the Wilsons, it is about the White House beating the drums of war from August 2002 until March 19,2003.

May the gods protect Syria from the "White House Syria Group."

How wide a category is the category that includes "the actions of this White House in the run-up to the war with Iraq?"  If the events of September 11 were used to try to help justify the war with Iraq, does the category include a close look at the events leading up to and including September 11, as well as the integrity of the investigations of what happened leading up to that day? 

Those of you who are ragging on Rep. Nadler for going on the Hannity and Colmes strike me as incredibly dense clueless elitists.

You don't acomplish the kind of thing he's trying to do by preaching to the choir in echo chambers. It was nice of him to take the time to tell us here what he's been up to, but it was a far more important thing for him to do to appear on that show.

Others like Charles Rangel and John Conyers put in duty there more often.

It's not only conservatives that watch FOX news. It's by far the highest rated cable TV news. (My life long Dem Dad seems to prefer it, for example.)

Are you into winning people over or just being a minority forever licking your wounds? Actually, I see lots of commenters on this site who seem to be interested in politics who could benefit in political wisdom from watching an hour or two of FOX now and then (try it some time! you'd be surprised at how much world news they cover along with the propaganda compared to the others!) or Rush than the continual dittoing over at Daily Kos, with the consequential reinforcement of mistaken beliefs about "the other". The other night after the NYTimes article on Cheney, I heard Joe Scarborough, a conservative, say this: if the story was that it was a Dem V.P., "Republicans would be screaming at the top of their lungs." If there ever was a time, now is exactly the time liberals should be pressing their case on shows like Hannity & Colmes. The public is primed to turn and you want the politicians to continue to preach to the choir? Rep. Nadler did exactly the right thing by going on that show. He's just looking for help and support in spreading the meme here.

Teddy Roosevelt said he stole the Canal - fair and square.

Such as treason (outing one of our covert agents) and high crimes (deceiving a nation into war).

Congressman Nadler,

Thank you. I'd like to add some fuel to your fire, if I might.

As you know, the White House has been found to be in violation of US laws prohibiting covert propaganda. These violations have reoccured and continue to occur. The Bush Administration apparently believes itself to be above the law.  

The White House conspiracy to deceive Congress, that you believe must be investigated, can be seen as part of ongoing pattern of beligerent covert propaganda activities by the Bush Administration. Moreover, the activities that you reference could also represent violations of a more significant law, Title 50 USC Section 413b which defines the President's authority to "authorize the conduct of a covert action by departments, agencies, or entities of the United States Government" and also states in subsection (f),

"No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media."

p.s. to above, for the clueless:

Grandma and Fox News

By WinstonSmith

So after a recent trip to Florida, my George Bush hating 84 year old Grandma tells me she knows she's not supposed to, but she loves watching Fox News....

the Repugs still hold the power, and the reason they do is that the Democrats lay down -- not only on the material from Fahrenheit 9/11 but across the board, in the 2004 election.

 I have often commented that this Moore film not only deserved all the accolades that it received but that as the years pass it will become one of the most important documents of the time.  I good friend of mine defines our response to 9/11 as the beginning of the end of western Civilization.

I hope he's wrong but what's so disturbing about the fall of the Bush Reich is that it is not at the hands of a popular movement.  It is the slow, grinding wheels of justice and almost a back story.  It may mean nothing.  The conservatives have years to totally bury the country and no one is taking the shovels out of their hands.

I must also add this.  There was a time before the war that the Charlie Rose show for a brief time was more than bullshit.  Rose had a series of shows featuring a number of guests who rightly speculated that the war would stretch ten years or more, cost over a trillion dollars (if you did the math), and that the idea of a democratic Iraq wouldn't sell in Disneyland.  For a short while, America had a reluctant and unlikely  journalist in Rose.

The diocumentary that is worth making is one that features all the commentators who spoke the truth.

And I, too, am simply disgusted with the spinelessness of the Democrats in aggressively attacking Bushco. The paradox is that the Liberal Hawks are the sheepish wing of the party. They behave so much like imprinted ducklings.

There have been three investigations of the Wellstone Crash, and they have been widely discussed in the Minnesota Press, and I believe are available on line.  There is the NTSB investigation, Because of Insurance Claims, there was an independent Insurance investigation, and finally, Paul's lawyer who specializes in this sort of litigation hired his own experts and did his independent studies.  And yes, the conclusion of all three was Pilot Error, and it was an accident. 

As someone who knew Wellstone since he first came to Minnesota, worked on all three of his Senate Campaigns, and worked with Paul on any number of political movement projects over the years -- yes, we profoundly miss him, and the hurt does not go away.  But the suspicion of a totally unproven and in fact evidence-less conspiracy so detracts from the real work of Paul and Sheila Wellstone.  Keeping it up is a total disservice to their memory and their work.  What's important is what they accomplished.  Paul did beat an incumbant who spent 11 million with a grass roots campaign that cost just one million -- that story is about organization.  Paul did stay true to representing the interests of the "little feller" and not the corporations who have quite enough representation.  That's what needs to be studied seriously -- not a conspiracy that wasn't, and that detracts from the truth. 

I am also afraid you have little correct information on how Minnesota Election Law works when a change has to be made after filing date.  As someone who served ten years on the DFL State Central Committee -- I do know those rules.  Essentially the reason Mondale lost by about 40 thousand votes in 2002 was because after Paul's death all the funds for GOTV were in his campaign, and by law could not be transfered to Mondale.  Most of the people who had been organized for GOTV could not bring themselves to actually work the week before election day -- and any analysis of that 2002 vote shows that what GOTV would have targeted was simply not done.  It was lost because the elderly, the minorities, students and Gay voters simply did not turn out in 2002. 

Certainly the American people were deceived about the reasons for war as was the Congress, but  it does not take an investigation  to reveal the facts of the deceptions.  The deceptions are out there as a matter of record and the media was a part of the process of deception. George W. Bush was the point man, the cheer leader for the war, and the media followed him everywhere as he beat the drums for war.  

Many people, however, were not deceived.  They knew that they were being lied to from the very beginning.  They knew Iraq was not a threat. They knew the Iraqis  couldn't make a move under the sancations or they would be bombed, strafed and destroyed with American aircraft fire. The war had been going on a long time before it started.  If that does not make sense, well, what does?   They did speak out but they were marginalized and ignored.  The people in Europe and many many Americans were in the streets rejecting Bush's War.

Back in February of 2003 I wrote the following, really out of a sense of desperation, and sent it to Poets Against The War.  You can Google  Poetsagainstthewar.org  and read thousands of poems by people who wrote before the war started and were predicting exactly what would happen with a war in Iraq.  There really have been no surprises, except. perhaps, how long it has taken for the American people to begin to see the light. 

  (Statement of Conscience - Virtual War)

 This was all written before the war.  If we can't have an honest government, we at least need a free press, not a Fascist Propaganda Machine.

'If we entered an unjust war, you bear the responsibility.  "I was lied to" is not adequate defense.  Why were no limits placed on the authority of the president to use force?'

 What kind of limits, one like 'You can go to war Mr President, but only if you have not lied to us', would that do?

Could you please explain what 'limits' you would like placed? 

I'm not sure you're aware of just how much "iceberg" there is, Representative.

I questioned Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower,  yesterday on whether it was "reasonable" to raise the possibility that the same people responsible for her being gagged are the same people responsible for the outing of Valerie Plame.

Remember that she has been gagged for being able to reveal FBI wiretap information that "senior elected officials" of the US government are involved with organized crime groups involved in drug and weapons smuggling - possibly including the nuclear black market - in the Middle East and Central Asia. The same people Valerie Plame's group was dealing with...

Her response: "Very reasonable..." 

I would also point out that now we know why Porter Goss was sent to the CIA - to prevent exactly this scenario from being played out - where the CIA, whose primary WMD operation has been broken by Administration officials, ostensibly for a mere "retaliation", have now considerable motivation to "break" the White House by revealing information as to who actually forged the Niger documents, and possibly what else might be involved in the rationale for outing Plame. 

What we are seeing here is the unraveling of a very long thread which reaches into the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the White House, Tel Aviv, Turkey, Eastern Europe and perhaps Russia. The same neocons who handed over classified US intelligence to Israel may also have passed orders the other way to shut down a CIA WMD operation that was impeding the Russian-Israeli Mafia from conducting "business as usual".

The dovetail comes from the forged Niger documents. With Plame's operation possibly involved in tracking down the forgers, it became expedient for the neocons to cripple the operation, which happened to suit the dealers in black market nuclear material just fine.  The spin was easy - "We'll just cover it up as a smear campaign against Joe Wilson. That way we keep the forgeries under wraps, keep from embarassing our supporter Berlusconi in Italy, and cooperate with our (criminal) friends in Israel."

Major treason, however you look at it. 

The question is, as Sibel says, "Will it come out?"

So I suggest Mr. Fitzgerald had better be prepared to follow his mandate to investigate ANY Federal crimes in connection with his underlying investigative purvue - regardless of where it leads.

If he does, I suspect he may find assistance from the CIA agents who have been compromised by the actions of Bush cronies and whose efforts at removing black market nuclear materials have been destroyed at the behest of unknown parties known to the neocons involved.

What is crucial to see is that it goes beyond the 'spinelessness' of this or that group of leaders, way beyond.    The media lockdown during Votergate 2004 should have been like a gong in the ears of the internet liberals.  How is such a thing possible?  Who orders it?  What kind of system is it where such a thing can be put into effect?  I extend that reasoning, although existing for me beforehand, to the topical 'lockdown' on the flipflop spin, to all these other issues.

   Let us suppose that a critical mass of those in power -- who form in my understanding an unaccountable oligarchy whose members can neither be removed nor replaced by the mere 'public' whatever might happen in the theatrix called elections -- decide that there is to be silence on the flipflop spin among anyone with any ambition at all.  Why?  Because the agenda was to put W Bush in again.  Agenda.  That's what is really going on, and it is as far beyond mere spinelessness of these or those Democrats as outright fascism is from what we have.

The question of American politics AND media has long been  -- where is there any significant group (in my view it would have to be rooted primarly internationally, including on the global web) that will challenge this seamless web of machine politics?  To expose the reality in responsible ways that differ from the ridiculous parodic "conspiracy" theory of those insisting that simultaneous explosives brought down the World Trade Center 9/11?

Civilization started its decline with 9/11?  Oh no -- as someone subjected to eggplanting (later to be followed inevitably with eggplant tennis anyone) in the 1950s with no one in the last half century to meaningfully step forward to make a serious attempt to reverse it, I can tell you that the decline of the enlightenment in America hardly started after 2000.  You might want to study the classic by Penny von Eschen, Race Against Empire documenting a crucial turning point within the US press (ordinary black-owned daily newspapers in the nonglitzy cities like Pittsburg) that took place in 1947 as the Marshall Plan was put into effect and the Cold War/early "McCarthyism" set in bigtime.
With the end of the FDR period, and the political reactionary swing after WWII in the US, something the right was focusing on during the war while the liberals were focused on winning the war, is a crucial 'flex point'.   Another downward flex point was in the assassination of JFK and the successful elite-wide sweeping of the issue under the rug.  There have not been any serious remissions since WWII, with the  Civil Rights movement and the 60s only posing a possibility which was unfortunately not sustained in hardnosed mass activism and resistance to what was happening at the level of power.

     All throughout this period, while going for the kudos, the mainstream of not only the elite but the upper middle class have continued to 'take off your britches and sell out under ice' , to 'get with the program' and 'justify the lying'.  That's always the best way to get for yourself and maybe your particular group's demands if they don't genuinely upset the apple cart.   But as for any real change in power -- well that's just not accepting "the facts of life".