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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (1592)	5/22/2003 9:52:13 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Texas has been the sandbox where most of the tactics of the neofascist movement were tried, modified, and perfected. They are now exploring how to use the Department of Homeland Defense to subjugate any remaining independant thought or action. <font color=green> A day after admitting that it has destroyed all of its records relating to last week's search for the Democratic lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma, the Texas Department of Public Safety on Wednesday attempted to explain why it acted so quickly. By day's end, the agency's actions had added fuel to political fires in Austin and Washington. Democratic lawmakers in both capitals pressed their calls for investigations into the agency's handling of the incident, and the murky role of federal Homeland Security officials. The Travis County district attorney's office is considering a grand jury investigation into the speedy destruction of the documents, a source in the office said. The agency expects to interview DPS officials, the source said. </font> Travis county was the main target of redistricting. It was targeted by DeLay to be broken up into 4 enclaves, each with a bit of the city of Austin wedded to conservative rural centers up to 300 miles away and connected by corridors only 2 blocks wide. <font color=green> The latest explosion came when the DPS admitted that it destroyed records relating to the search even as it was being asked to account for its actions. A spokesman said federal privacy laws require the agency to purge the records, but critics said the destruction might have violated state or federal laws. On May 14, Cmdr. L.C. Marshall sent an e-mail to all DPS captains ordering "any notes, correspondence, photos, etc., that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representatives members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept." Department spokesman Tom Vinger said the order came from Marshall Caskey, the chief of criminal law enforcement. Vinger said he had no details about what types of records were destroyed. </font> The explanations do not make sense, but if patterns hold this will be followed by something equally outrageous to distract the public and press until it blows over. <font color=green> "We've got DPS using the criminal investigation apparatus of the U.S. to track the Killer Ds, and then they destroy the evidence of the tracking on the grounds that it wasn't a criminal matter," Aleshire said. <font color=blue>"DPS knew the first day they were looking for the Killer Ds that it was not a criminal investigation. <font color=green>If they violated federal regulations, if not other laws, in using the criminal investigation apparatus for this political purpose, the destruction of the records that were created could be considered obstruction of justice." Aleshire noted that the federal code the department cited to destroy the records also seems to prohibit it from using its criminal intelligence program to collect information on the missing lawmakers. </font> statesman.com

To: Poet who wrote (1592)	5/22/2003 2:53:45 PM
From: tsigprofit	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 20773

thanks for posting that. sounds like a cover-up. If Clinton was currently the President, the Repubs would demand an investigation! hehe

To: Poet who wrote (1592)	5/26/2003 12:47:50 PM
From: Ron	Respond to of 20773

Iran, Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction Maureen Dowd NYT Monday, May 26, 2003 Hawking the next regime change WASHINGTON The CIA is snooping around itself and other spy agencies to see if prewar reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda were exaggerated. The suspense is killing me. The delicious part is that the review was suggested by Donald Rumsfeld, a main culprit in twisting the intelligence to justify a strike on Baghdad. It's like O.J. vowing to find the real killer. When the CIA reports weren't incriminating enough about Saddam Hussein last autumn, Rummy started his own little CIA within the Pentagon to ferret out information to back up the hawks' imperial schemes. It will be interesting to see how a man who never admits he's wrong wriggles out of admitting he's wrong, after his investigation fingers him for hyping. When Colin Powell went to the UN in February to make the case for attacking Iraq, he raised the specter of 25,000 liters of anthrax, tons of chemical weapons and a dictator on the brink of a nuclear bomb. Flash forward to May. Stymied U.S. arms inspectors are getting ready to leave Iraq, having uncovered moldy vacuum cleaners, pesticides and playground equipment, but nary a WMD. One of the weapons hunters compared his work to a Scooby-Doo mystery - stuff seems pretty scary at first, but then turns out to be explainable. Even before the war, some CIA analysts and British spymasters were complaining of puffed-up intelligence. Now Congress wants to know if it was flawed as well. As Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, put it: "This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time." Her innocence is touching. The Iraq WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda were merely MacGuffins, as Alfred Hitchcock called devices that drove the plot but were otherwise inconsequential. The plot was always to remake the Middle East, while remaking a George W. Bush into a Ronald Reagan. And the Bushies were not above playing on American fears and desire for 9/11 payback. Far from being chagrined about the little problem of having no casus belli, and no plan for smoothly delivering Pax Americana to Iraq and Afghanistan, the hawks are hawking the next regime change. If Iraq was not harboring Al Qaeda and going nuclear, then certainly Iran is. "Of course, they have senior Al Qaeda in Iran, that's a fact," Rummy said at the Pentagon briefing on Wednesday. "Iran is one of the countries that is, in our view, assessed as developing a nuclear capability, and that's unfortunate." Bushies were also hinting that Iran may have been involved in the attack on a Western compound in Saudi Arabia - before our intelligence sources are sure. And the United States cannot let Iran foment desire in Iraq for a Shiite fundamentalist government. Citing newspaper reports that said one of the organizers of the Saudi attacks was hiding in Iran, Bill Kristol beat the drum on Fox News: "Indeed, bin Laden's son is probably in Iran. And that looks like the place where they are reconstituting Al Qaeda. Plus, Iran has been a larger sponsor of terror, including perhaps the terror, indirectly at least, that hit Jerusalem today. Are you willing to get serious about Iran?" (Mr. Kristol is obviously ready to watch another war from his living room.) The administration is panicky about Iran's nuclear program, which the mullahs threw into overdrive after America attacked Iraq. Some neo-cons would like Israel to take out Iran's nuclear reactor, as it did Iraq's in '81; but Israel wants America to do it. Some are pushing shah nostalgia, suggesting that Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, could be the next Chalabi. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent; Afghanistan and Iraq are a mess; the vice police are back arresting women in Afghanistan and looters are tearing up archeological sites in Iraq; Saddam and Osama are still wanted, dead or alive. Yet the MacGuffin has moved on. It is paradoxical that the hawks were passionate about breeding idealism by bringing democracy to the Middle East, but are unconcerned about breeding cynicism by refusing to admit mistakes or overreaching. By the time the CIA delivers its report, it will be time to investigate how our intelligence was hyped in the prelude to the strike on Iran. E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com