[Source: http://thomas.loc.gov; johnkerry.com; Marine Corps. Times, Oct. 26]
SENSING THE OPPORTUNITY OPENED BY THE EMERGING POST-CHENEY ERA, DEMOCRATS IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE USED THE "TRAGIC MILESTONE" OF 2,000 US SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ, TO CALL FOR AN EXIT PLAN FROM A WAR LAUNCHED BY DECEIT. While the full Senate held a moment of silence on Oct. 25 in honor of those killed, one by one, Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy, Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, Frank Lautenberg, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, and Barbara Mikulski rose to demand a plan to transfer power to the Iraqis so U.S. troops can come home.
West Virgina's Bryd went after Secretary of State Condi Rice's implication last week, that Bush's "Presidential war powers" permit him to attack Syria or Iran without consulting Congress—a statement he called "astounding." Congress had passed a war powers resolution limited only to Iraq, he said. "Too many lives have already been lost in pursuit of this nefarious doctrine of preemption, unconstitutional on its face.... How can there be a congressional debate if one man may decide when to hit, where to hit?"
New Jersey's Lautenberg noted that 1,855 US soldiers have died since Bush declared "mission accomplished" in May 2003. "We need a plan," to get out of this "catastrophe." Boxer recalled Donald Rumsfeld's Feb. 2003 promise that the war "could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months," and noted that more than 300 Americans had died since Dick Cheney's May 2005 comments that Iraq was in the "last throes of insurgency." Boxer cited the Valerie Plame case as exemplary of how "the administration took us to war on false intelligence, misstatements, and exaggerations." Kennedy, who also cited the Plame case as evidence of the administration's deceit, entered into the record a list of all that could be done—for homeland security, labor, education, health care, etc.—with the $195 million spent each day on the Iraq war. (See MB 10/26 for Leahy's remarks.)
Sen. John Kerry weighed in on Oct. 26, with a speech at Georgetown University, in which he, too, cited the Plame case, and called for a graduated pull-out of U.S. troops over the next year, beginning with a withdrawal of 20,000 troops during the holidays, after the December elections in Iraq. Echoing Lyndon LaRouche's program for Southwest Asia, Kerry called upon the administration to immediately call a conference of Iraq's neighbors, Britain, Turkey and other key NATO allies, and Russia, to work out "a collective strategy to bring the parties in Iraq to a sustainable political compromise," suggesting a new regional security structure be worked out.
From the House side, Ike Skelton of Missouri, the notorious Blue Dog Democrat who is the ranking Democratic member of the Armed Services committee, also joined the chorus on Oct. 26, breaking his ultra-conservative profile, and proposing a formula for a graduated withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
[Source: NZZ; EL PAIS, Guardian, German press]
THE WALL OF SILENCE HAS BEEN BROKEN IN THE EUROPEAN PRESS, AND IS BEGINNING TO CRACK IN IBERO AMERICAN PRESS:
* Die Welt has the headline with picture of Cheney: "Bush advisor Rove about to be indicted. Libby accused of perjury and treason; speculation that Cheney will resign."
* SDZ has the most extensive coverage of all German papers, and writes that "all roads are leading to the Office of Dick Cheney."
* Under the headline "New revelations put Cheney in the center of the spy scandal," the Spanish Daily El Pais for the first time carries an almost full-page article on the evolving Cheneygate.
* The Swiss Daily NZZ carries the headline "Bush's Vice President in center of leak investigation".
* In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland wrote, the issue is one "in which we all have a stake. Now America has its own David Kelly affair." The entire Bush administration is at "a moment of exceptional weakness.... But it's more important than that. Now there is a chance to discredit not just Bush's presidency, but the ideology which led to the disastrous adventure in Iraq."
* A report in the Suedwest-Radio implying that Cheney will be hit, this morning, was broadcast hourly, all day long.
* The Sueddeutsche Zeitung Junge Welt daily wrote that the "noose is tightening in the office of the Vice President."
* Also the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily and the online page of Spiegel carried longer items on the issue, with many details, both playing down, however, the implications for Cheney.
* The Wiesbadener Kurier spoke of the "new Watergate."
* The straightest report appeared in the Passauer Neue Presse daily, under the headline, "Dark Clouds over Cheney," saying that the latest evidence compiled by special prosecutor Fitzgerald proves that "Cheney himself was the driving factor behind the targetted exposure (of Plame), therefore he has to face legal consequences."
And, while newspapers in many key Ibero-American countries continue to bury or blackout the news, others are breaking out:
* Chile's La Nacion headlined its coverage of the Fitzgerald investigation: "Dick Cheney, a Vice President in trouble."
* Argentina's Clarin: "U.S. VP seeks green light for the CIA to Torture."
* Leading Dominican Republic daily, Hoy, headlined its coverage: "Scandal Threatens U.S.' No. Two."
[Source: Congressional call; AP via San Francisco Chronicle, Congressional Quarterly 10-25-05]
HOUSE REPUBLICAN CHENEY-ACS STILL CAN'T GET DEEP CUTS THROUGH. Becoming increasingly irrelevant vis a vis the Senate, as Cheney is increasingly targetted and weakened in the White House, the House Republican leadership appears unable again this week to get a majority vote to pass $50 billion-plus in FY2006 budget cuts. The bunkered-down Hastert-Blunt leadership responded "without DeLay" to last week's failure to muster votes to pass a $50 billion package cuts (and then, of course, $70 billion in new tax cuts for the wealthy), by asking Republican committee chairmen to make even deeper cuts in their appropriations, targetting the poor even more blatantly, without regard to whether the House as a whole can pass them, but to bring them straight to reconciliation conferences with the Senate. So this week's package now includes:
* An insane cut in the LIHEAP heating-fuel aid program, in half, to $1 billion, by the Energy and Commerce Committee;
* $4 billion in new cuts to Medicaid reimbursements to the states;
* Temporary increases in PBGC premiums for companies with pension plans, counted as "new revenue" by the Education and Workforce Committee, even though only the PBGC can spend them;
* $4.8 billion in new cuts by Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, to child-care funding, foster-care payments, and Federal aid to states for collecting child-support payments.
As Congressional Quarterly reported, these new cuts "will make support from Republican moderates even more difficult to obtain."
Two Congressional Republican sources told AP that Hastert et al. will have to "postpone" a vote in the full House again this week. A Democratic Congressional source told LPAC that the Republican House leadership no longer even has the intention to go for such a vote, but will just have the committee chairmen go and negotiate with their Senate counterparts.
But these chairman will have zero credibility in such negotiations with a split Republican Party in the House. Serious policy initiative is with the Senate.
[Source: as stated]
THOUSANDS OF NEWS STORIES ON THE INVESTIGATION OF CHENEY AS REPORTED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE OF MONDAY.
AP Seattle Post Intelligencer, Newsview: Cheney again at center of drama. It was Cheney who all but made a direct link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks, then denied that he had ever done so. He also insisted there was a link between al-Qaida and Iraq. Cheney said in May that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes," an assertion rejected by military leaders.
ABC News, The Note: Lawyers Involved in the Case 12 hours and 1,759 phone calls and e-mail messages later, no other news organization in America has matched the New York Times' historic lede; no one has said the story is wrong; no one has figured out if the Times' source was Libby's lawyer, someone within Fitzgerald's office, someone within Cheney's operation, or Cheney's lawyer. (Or someone else.); no one has figured out definitively what motive the Times source(s) had in giving them the story.
Bloomberg - Looks at the "opening fissure" between Cheney and Libby, and has "one lawyer intimately involved in the case" saying that "one reason Fitzgerald was willing to send Miller to jail to compel testimony was because he was pursuing evidence the Vice President may have been aware of the specifics of the anti-Wilson strategy."
Financial Times.com - By Caroline Daniel. Indictments in CIA leak case about to be handed down. "Mr Cheney himself has also been linked to the inquiry into the leaking of the name of an undercover CIA operative, according to a story in Tuesday's New York Times. However, Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and strategist. said: If [Fitzgerald] indicts, they [the White House] will have no choice but to attempt to demonise him. I think that is going to be really, really tough." Link to Timeline of the CIA leak inquiry for subscribers.
(CNN)—Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity.
[WaPo online] Column by David Froomkin on Cheney "no more at the center of the investigation than ever." Question: "Could the vice president himself be indicted?" given the possibility that he testified falsely to Fitzgerald grand jury about this June 12, 2003 conversation with Libby.
WASHINGTON POST: by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus (who is one of the reporters who got a White House leak), saying that Joe Wilson is considered an egotist, and that the GOP is planning a publicity campaign to discredit him.
NY Daily News says White House damage-control handlers planning their counter-offensive; already putting out line that perjury and obstruction are irrelevant in an investigation which started by investigating leak of classified info.
NY Sun quotes former federal prosecutor Paul Rosensweig saying that if Fitzgerald tries to make a perjury case against Libby or Rove, it will be tough because his key witness will be Miller, who has come under a barrage of attacks on her credibility.
Washington Times says that indictments are "an almost foregone conclusion"—while editor Wesley Pruden accuses Fitzgerald of inventing crimes where there is none, and running a "scam." Plus an op-ed by Michael Barone "Posse in search of a crime."
(GOPUSA) Joe DiGenova (former US Atty in DC) says that the Joe Wilson trip to Africa was a CIA covert operation against the President, part of the war between the CIA and the White House; this is the type of operation that the CIA runs against governments overseas. Blames Wilson for the outing of his wife.
Today's White House briefing: heavy grilling of McClellan on NYT revelations, and also on Cheney/torture story. McClellan was referring reporters to the VP office for questions about what Cheney did, and his previous denials that he even knew who Joe Wilson was.
(AP) In September 2003, Cheney told NBC he did not know Wilson or who sent him to Niger in 2002. "I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back," Cheney said at the time. "... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."
[uruknet] Story on Scott Ritter, saying Cheney WH may stage terror to escape: "Former UN Weapons Inspector: Don't Rule Out Staged Government Terror." "Ritter compared the atmosphere within the administration to that during the time of Watergate, where Nixon considered utilizing America's nuclear arsenal to create a devastating diversion from domestic calamity.
"Nothing this administration would do would surprise me, they're desperate right now. If you go back and take a look at the Nixon administration during the height of Watergate Nixon was talking about using nuclear weapons against the Soviets in the Middle East, insanity of this nature."
AMERICAN PROSPECT: article calling for Jay Rockefeller to make a fight over Sen. Pat Roberts' reneging on the commitment to issue a report on the policy makers' (Cheney, Bush, etc.) use of false intelligence in the buildup to the war. Article is by Laura Rozen.
Washington Post has a large page-3 article portraying Joseph Wilson as a publicity hog and his trip to Niger as a "boondoggle," through quoting WSJ and other "critics" of Wilson.
The UW Daily, (thedaily.washington.edu) by Glenn Kessler of Washington Post - Introduces how the investigation has amplified internal disputes regarding the Bush administrations handling of the Iraq War. Includes mention of Scowcroft's, Wilkerson's, Colin Powell's and other State Department diplomats' speeches and interviews.
The Los Angeles Times, 10/22/05 - Official Says US Rushed to War in Iraq - accuses Bush Administration of pressuring to get into war. Interviews former State Department associates Robin Raphel, David J. Dunford, Lawrence Wilkerson, David Nummy (former assistant US Treasury Secretary), and Col. Philip J. Dermer.
Knight Ridder - "Wilkerson is just the first blast of what's going to come out of [those associated with] the Powell State Department," predicted David Rothkopf, author of "Running the World," a recent history of the National Security Council. Rothkopf said the two men and others may feel more empowered to speak out as support for Iraq policy sinks. "The president of the United States has never been more vulnerable," he said.
Covered NYT story: MTV.com Guardian Unlimited The Independent.uk Baltimore Sun LA Times (Over 7 thousand others)
[Source: La Repubblica.it, American Prospect, Oct. 25]
ANOTHER SHOE DROPS IN CHENEYGATE: THE NIGER YELLOW CAKE FORGERIES. One day after widespread reports that the Italian Parliamentary report on the Niger forgery is in the hands of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the White House in the Plame case, and of U.S. Attorney McNulty, who is prosecuting the Larry Franklin/AIPAC spy case, a series of articles from the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, began circulating in Washington, D.C., which allege that the White House, through then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, had secret meetings with Nicolo Pollari, the chief of the Italian intelligence agency, SISMI, discussing alleged Niger yellow cake uranium purchases by Iraq.
The several-part series says that separate channels to the White House and to the Pentagon were created, because the CIA had dismissed the Niger documents as bogus. In addition to Hadley, the series mentions that other non-CIA channels included Dick Cheney, and Michael Ledeen, as well as Paul Wolfowitz. The Ledeen, Cheney, and Wolfowitz references are contained in an Oct. 25 article called, "Pollari Went to the White House..." This article also zeros in on the fact that Ledeen was in Italy, when he made contact with SISMI, while he was on a mission from Wolfowitz's parallel intelligence apparatus—a point that only EIR has stressed sufficiently. On the Italian mission with Ledeen was convicted Pentagon spy, Larry Franklin.
The La Repubblica articles were all over the anti-Iraq war Internet, following an article about them published for The American Prospect by reporter Laura Rozen. However, Rozen, inexplicably, doesn't mention a word about Ledeen.
The full series is being reviewed by EIR's Italian members in Europe. Stay tuned.
[Source: Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25]
WILKERSON KEEPS BANGING AWAY AT CHENEY CABAL. In an op-ed published in today's LA Times, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, reiterates what he said in his speech last week, and he elaborates:
"The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced President's hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the Secretary of State, would fix it. And he did—everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the Secretary's constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.
"Today, we have a President whose approval rating is 38% and a Vice President who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a Secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces...."
[Source: interview on uruk.net]
RITTER WARNS OF TERROR HIT BY DESPERATE WHITE HOUSE. In an interview Oct. 25, entitled, "Former UN Weapons Inspector: Don't Rule Out Staged Government Terror," Scott Ritter warned of Nixon-like desperation setting in in the Bush-Cheney White House. "Ritter compared the atmosphere within the administration, to that during the time of Watergate, where Nixon considered utilizing America's nuclear arsenal to create a devastating diversion from domestic calamity.
"'Nothing this administration would do would surprise me; they're desperate right now. If you go back and take a look at the Nixon Administration during the height of Watergate, Nixon was talking about using nuclear weapons against the Soviets in the Middle East, insanity of this nature,' Ritter warned."
[Source: Washington Post, New York Times, Oct. 25]
CHENEY DEMANDS TORTURE EXEMPTION. Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss in tow, had a 45-minute meeting with Sen. John McCain last Thursday, to demand that McCain modify his amendment barring torture of prisoners, to exempt the CIA. McCain, whose name is attached to the anti-torture amendment that passed the Senate 90-9 earlier three weeks ago, rejected Cheney's proposal.
In the view of EIR and other knowledgeable sources, the "CIA" operations involving the capture and interrogation of "high-value" prisoners in the war on terrorism, are conducted under the ultimate authority of the Department of Defense, and Cheney's gambit would appear to be a ruse to exempt Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's "hunter-killer" squads—composed of military special operations personnel and CIA operatives—from the requirements of the McCain amendment, which would require all military personnel to abide by the Army's Field Manual on Interrogation. Cheney and the White House still oppose that provision as well, and have threatened to veto the defense bill if it is attached to it, but obviously they fear that a veto could be overridden.
