Rain Storm -- an online journal of opinion and culture

By the way, I personally do not expect any dramatic developments from all these investigations. AIPAC has powerful protectors on Capitol Hill, and past charges that it was involved in espionage for Israel have always been buried. As for the Neocon cult in the Pentagon, even if they did something illegal, they will not suffer much because of it. Look at where the Iran-Contra criminals are, who subverted the US Constitution and stole arms from the Pentagon to sell illegally to Khomeini. One Iran-Contra figure, who lied to Congress, now serves in the National Security Council as the person in charge of the Israeli-Palestine issue. That is Elliot Abrams, who was pardoned by Bush the elder and now sets White House policy on among the more important issues affecting US relations with the Muslim world. Bush may as well have just appointed Ariel Sharon to advise him on how to deal with Ariel Sharon (though to be fair, Sharon is probably more pragmatic than and to the left of Abrams).

Overwhelmingly, liberal bloggers seem to feel that if they watch the Republican convention speakers any longer they will explode. So they aren't.

Whatever paperwork discrepancies exist between Kerry’s paperwork and diaries and so on are not commensurate with the Swift Vets’ flat-out intentional and politically motivated falsehoods. Contrary to the dogma of J-schools across the country, there are not always two sides to a story. Balance is often necessary and indispensable, but there are times when the media might have to, um, mediate a bunch of information and make a judgment. And in those instances, presenting contrasting information as if it’s equally important is, in fact, the false representation – more false than saying, “I’ve gathered a lot of material and vetted it all, and here’s my assessment.”

Just because you can always find a counter quote, or an “expert” who will say that evolution is a disputed science, or some guy who will tell you that Kerry didn’t go to Cambodia doesn’t mean you should repeat it. Here’s a new principle they might add to the J-School dogma: don’t quote people who are lying just to have “both sides” represented. And here’s a tip: don’t source with fringe nuts. That’s not objectivity; it’s retarded. If you want to saunter around the Time Warner Center looking so satisfied with yourselves as the guardians of information, then the least you could do is live up to your role. Don’t be afraid of judgment. It’s all you have left.

A GOP delegate handed out bandages with purple hearts on them Monday night at the Republican National Convention in a swipe at Democratic nominee John Kerry's war record, but national GOP officials have asked him to stop.

The bandages were handed out by Morton Blackwell, a longtime GOP activist from Virginia, with the message: ''It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it.''

Kerry won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for his service in the Vietnam War. A group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking Kerry as a liar through campaign ads and media interviews, but Kerry's wartime experiences have been backed by crewmates and official records.

''It is inexcusable for a delegate to mock anyone who has ever put on a soldier's uniform,'' said Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe. ''It is inexcusable to mock service and sacrifice.''

Blackwell, who gave out almost 250 of the bandages, said veterans have every right to be angry about anti-war comments Kerry made after returning to this country.
Party Chairman Ed Gillespie spoke to Blackwell, and they agreed that he would not distribute the bandages tonight, said GOP spokesman Jim Dyke.

In a later broadcast on MSNBC, former CIA officer and NBC analyst Larry Johnson reported that for months he had been aware of an investigation that had led to tonight's revelation, one that had originally focused on the source of a forged document indicating that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, presumably for making nuclear weapons. Johnson speculated that Israel may have been behind the forgery which was used by the administration to bolster its case for invasion. If so, he said, the espionage case could tie to an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative by right-wing columnist Robert Novak. Johnson also said the FBI was furious that news of the espionage investigation had leaked. Johnson opined that the investigation could lead from DOD to the National Security Council, and that the timing of the leak just before the start of the Republican convention was not coincidental. In a post on the dailykos weblog, one contributor noted that "when Tom Clancy and [Gen.] Zinni were running around flogging their book, they were on Deborah Norville. [During the show, Norville] asked Clancy of his impression of Wolfowitz. 'Is he working for our side?' [Clancy] replied." As an example of yet another intelligence failure on the Bush administration's watch, this latest spy drama could overshadow news during next week's Republican National Convention in New York. It is certainly the type of story cable news bobbleheads love to gibber about.

... The attacks initially made me sorry I voted for him. For most of that day, as my wife and children stayed inside our house listening to the roar of fighter jets overhead, and black smoke from the Pentagon hovered above our neighborhood, Bush failed to return to Washington. My family sat unprotected a few miles from the scene of a terrorist attack; Bush hid in a bunker on some faraway military base.

It infuriated me, as did the subsequent excuses from White House spokesman. There was a risk in coming back, they said. There was a risk in coming back, they said. Of course there was. That's the point: Leaders must take risks, sometimes physical ones. Bush should have elbowed his Secret Service detail out of the way and returned in a display of fearlessness to his nation's capital. I found it distressingly revealing that he didn't.

9/11. Ashcroft de-emphasizes anti-terrorist activities in order to satiate his anti-pornography obsession. Bush completely ignores a document titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the United States" and promptly went on a month-long vacation.

Plame Affair. The administration outs the CIA's top nuclear non-proliferation official in bid to discredit administration critic.

Saddam's WMD. Bush and Cheney make clear they want evidence, regardless the truth. They create a shadow intelligence inside the Pentagon to independently assess intelligence when CIA doesn't offer the expected "truth".

Saddam's WMD, Part II. Colin Powell makes an ass of himself at Security Council when he tries to prove Saddam's evil intent, and proves nothing more than that Iraq has warehouses and trucks.

Chalabi. The Pentagon's top choice for Iraq's post-war leadership lets Iran know we have cracked their communication code. Once upon a time we could listen in to one of the Axil of Evil's most guarded communications, including communications with terrorist groups like Hizbollah. Now we cannot. An intelligence failure of epic proportions.

Administration outs Al Qaida mole. We finally turn one of Bin Laden's baddies, and the administration outs him days later to justify terror alert. Terror alert turns out to be unjustifiable anyway, based on years-old info.

The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in Feith's office, which more-senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up.

[. . .]

The meetings turn out to have been far more extensive and much less under White House control than originally reported. One of the meetings, which Pentagon officials have long characterized as merely a "chance encounter" seems in fact to have been planned long in advance by Rhode and Ghorbanifar. Another has never been reported in the American press. The administration's reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself.