This all seems like a semi-retarded fusion of Richard Nixon and Monty Python to me (“wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean?”):

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/16/snow-memo-tar-baby/

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120006

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605170006

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/31/romney.racialremark.ap/index.html

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/08/14/george-allens-macaca/

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2006/aug/17/fl_sen_blacks_may_not_even_know_how_to_swim

Seriously, the desperation is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

In light of the Rumsfeld-McGovern exchange, people have already pounced on Rumsfeld’s denial that he had previously said he knew where the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were located.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/04.html#a8164

However, he appears to have stepped into another pile of B.S. here:

McGovern: Well we’re talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. Was that a lie? or where you mislead?

RUMSFELD: Zar..., Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.

McGovern: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's where he was.

RUMSFELD: He was also… (crosstalk) He was also in Baghdad.

McGovern: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.

 

This appears to relate to that red-hot intelligence distributed to the media prior to the invasion that Zarqawi had gone to a hospital in Baghdad – to have his leg amputated.  Here’s something to refresh your memory, in case you’ve forgotten:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067876/

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/17/al.zarqawi.statement/

Obviously, this tip didn’t seem so hot once we saw the video of a two-legged Zarqawi decapitating Nick Berg (along with numerous other videos since then).  Yet Rummy still clings to this fraud, despite its obvious and almost comical refutation.

The recent article by Murray Waas has gotten a lot of buzz recently, but misses a crucial point about the uranium tubes hoax.  Waas reported that a summary of the NIE which called the uranium tube story into question made it all the way up to President Bush, proving that he should have waived off the claim:

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002.  The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."   

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm

 

What Waas didn’t mention was that the State Department and Energy Department didn’t just believe that the tubes were meant for conventional weapons, they proved it.  As 60 Minutes reported in 2004:

[Greg] Thielmann was a foreign service officer for 25 years.  His last job at the State Department was acting director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, which was responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat.                                                                                                                                                             

He and his staff had the highest security clearances, and saw virtually everything – whether it came into the CIA or the Defense Department.                                                                       

[Snip]                                                                                                                                       

Intelligence agents intercepted the tubes in 2001, and the CIA said they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium -- fuel for an atom bomb. But Thielmann wasn’t so sure.              

Experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the scientists who enriched uranium for American bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program.  At about the same time, Thielmann’s office was working on another explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an Iraqi conventional rocket.                                                                         

“The aluminum was exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery,” recalls Thielmann, who says he sent that word up to the Secretary of State months before.                                     

Houston Wood was a consultant who worked on the Oak Ridge analysis of the tubes. He watched Powell’s speech, too.                                                                                                         

“I guess I was angry, that’s the best way to describe my emotions. I was angry at that,” says Wood, who is among the world’s authorities on uranium enrichment by centrifuge. He found the tubes couldn’t be what the CIA thought they were.  They were too heavy, three times too thick and certain to leak.                  

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml

 

From the story above, it appears that there is documentary proof that the specifications in the uranium tube reports matched previous intelligence reports.  I hope some enterprising journalist out there is working with Thielmann to file a few FOI requests and make those reports public.  Could be the most damning proof yet that Bush lied, and people died.

Looks like all the big dogs at Fox News are lining up in a neat little row on the UAE ports debacle.  Consider a sampling of what’s on tap over there:

Bill O’Reilly has declared:

The USA cannot win the War on Terror without the help of moderate Arab nations. "Talking Points" believes we will actually lose the terror war unless we build alliances in the Middle East. Right now, there's no reason to fire the Arab company, except that they are Arabs. Isn't that racism? Can America afford to send that message to the world?
 
Think about the unintended consequences of that. They're staggering. There's nothing bin Laden would like more than for the USA to alienate the United Arab Emirates.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185673,00.html
 

John Gibson has advised his viewers not to bother getting worked up about it, because:

Here's the bottom line: The port deal is going through.
 
When I said that it wouldn't go through and that the president's underlings who approved it should be fired, I was wrong. They're considered the smart guys who made a smart, globalizing deal, and the port deal is going to be pushed through.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186365,00.html
 

Brit Hume countered administration critics:

I don’t recall them having that concern when the foreign operators were British. I don’t recall them having that concern until it turned out that an Arab country was going to have operational control of or at least partial operational control, any way, of six U.S. ports.
 
Is there not an element of ethnic discrimination here?
 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186755,00.html
 

Likewise, Neil Cavuto has accused critics of the deal of “country-profiling” and suggested nixing the deal would make the U.S. “look like scaredy-cats.” 

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/02/22/do_gop_leaders_oppose_port_deal_hard_to_tell_on_fox_news.php

To an ordinary observer, this might appear to be just another example of the talking-whores in Rupert Murdoch’s house-of-ill-repute lining up to service the President.  But on closer inspection, there may be more going on here than meets the eye.

In fact, it turns out that there is ample reason why Fox News would fear a public backlash against a corporation owned by the UAE, where two of the 9/11 hijackers were born and raised.  Because guess who owns a big chunk of Fox News?  It’s the Saudi royal family, rulers of the country where fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were born and raised.

In particular, its Prince Al-Walid bin Talal who owns a 5.46% interest in News Corp., parent of Fox News, according to Forbes.  Lest any one speculate that Saudi-ownership of News Corp. is actually affecting news coverage on Fox News, Prince Walid helpfully resolved the issue in a December 2005 interview in which he was discussing the recent riots in France.  He recounted:

I was in America watching Fox News when I saw a news report being labeled as Muslim riots.  I immediately called up [Rupert] Murdoch and informed him that it was wrong to label any riot caused by whatever reason as Muslim.  After a short while, there was a change, and the news report about Muslim riots was simply labeled as riots.

And it’s no wonder that Prince Walid carries so much clout.  According to Forbes, he has become a critical ally to Murdoch in recent boardroom brawls. 

FYI, Michel Gurfinkiel, the editor of  Valeurs Actuelles, has reported of the rioters in France that, “most of them explicitly pledge allegiance to Islam and such Muslim heroes as Osama bin Laden, [and] the Islamic motto - Allahu Akbar - is usually their war cry.”

One more note on Prince Walid: he was the Saudi royal who Rudy Giuliani told to go to hell after 9/11, when the Prince publicly suggested that the U.S. change its policy in the Middle East if it wanted to avert further attacks.  Here’s what Giuliani had to say about his encounter with Prince Walid at Ground Zero in his book Leadership:

In the month since the attack, I had accompanied many world leaders to the site.  Without exception, seeing Ground Zero up close overpowered them, as it had me.  When the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, visited, he had tears in his eyes.  Jacques Chiraq, Tony Blair, and Vladimir Putin all were devastated—Putin whispered, as if to himself, “This could happen in Moscow.”

           

When Prince Alwaleed arrived he was wearing an opulent gold robe and headdress, along with seven or eight aids in black robes.  He gave me a cashier’s check for $10 million, for the Twin Towers Fund.  Looking at the site from the small podium, the Prince was saying the right things. . . . But something wasn’t quite right.  I thought there was a smirk to his face, which seemed to carry over to his entourage.  He was the only visitor who was unmoved by what he saw.

 

No wonder they’re sweating bullets over at Faux News country.

Sources:

Forbes on Prince Walid:

http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/06/alwaleed-murdoch-billionaires-cx_gl_0906autofacescan02.html

Prince Walid Interview:

Michel Gurfinkiel on the French Riots:

http://www.nysun.com/article/22671?page_no=2&access=759097

Giuliani on Prince Walid:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786868414/104-4293507-0398305?v=glance&n=283155

Once again, Deborah Howell’s favorite “liberal” columnist gets it absurdly wrong.  In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Richard Cohen plays the race card in the Dubai Ports World scandal.  Just weeks after Mary Matlin proclaimed on national television, “I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists,” Cohen praises the White House for stalwartly defending civil rights by kowtowing to Arab billionaires.  But even the basic premise of Cohen’s column could not be more off-base.

The simple fact is we have not been repeatedly attacked by Rastafarians, or Gauchos, or Maori.  We have been attacked by proponents of a violent and hateful ideology which has its roots firmly planted in Arab soil.  This could not be more clearly illustrated by the attack on 9/11 itself.  All of the hijackers, planners and supporters of that operation were Arab Muslims.  Does Cohen really believe this fact is a mere coincidence?

As mentioned in my previous post, the idea that a UAE government-run entity could be infiltrated by an Al Qaeda member or sympathizer is not a mere hypothetical question.  It's happened before.  And consider the point that Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, made on CNN this morning.  Regardless of who patrols the ports on the ground, any port management firm will have to have access to highly detailed information about our port security procedures.  They will need that information to comply with those procedures and run the business efficiently.  Given what has happened before, how can the UAE guarantee that this information won't be passed on to Al Qaeda and exploited in another attack on the US?  This is not about prejudice, this is about common sense.

FYI, here is the Ervin interview: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/23/ervin/index.html

The pundits of the MSM keep prattling on about the possibility that a UAE government-run port management firm might be infiltrated by Al Qaeda.  That’s a very valid concern, but what about the pertinent facts?

It's been widely noted that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE.  One of the two was Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot-hijacker of United Flight 175.  It was Al-Shehhi who piloted that aircraft into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, killing over 650 people.

Al-Shehhi first joined Al Qaeda while he was a student in Hamburg.  He went to school there on a military scholarship, which he received after joining the UAE Army in 1995.  In fact, he continued to receive stipend payments from the UAE Army through December 23, 2000, using part of that money to pay for the flight lessons he took in preparation for the attacks.  So the same government that will be running our major eastern ports helped finance the 9/11 attacks.  I haven't seen anything to suggest this wasn't inadvertent on their part, but if they had no idea that one of Al Qaeda's deadliest killers was on their military payroll, how can we trust their assurances about Dubai Ports World?

FYI, this is covered in the staff reports of the 9/11 Commission.  The reports are silent on whether Al-Shehhi was ever actually discharged from the UAE Army prior to September 11, 2001.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrFin_App.pdf