Spy fired for questioning WMD evidence. Go figure!
Topic: General News.

In yesterday’s NYT James Risen reports, an unnamed CIA veteran of twenty years has filed a suit in Federal court in New York alleging the CIA was informed in the spring of 2001 by an informant that Iraq had given up its quest for nuclear weapons and that, the agency “did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers.” The informant claimed Iraq’s uranium enrichment program had ended years before and the “centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even sale.”

The agent’s suit claims he was cashiered for “questioning the agencies assumptions on a series of weapons related matters.” Big surprise there!

North Korean nukes:

From the NY Times (July 28th), an article says US negotiators showed their North Korean counterparts evidence that the hermit kingdom had “secretly obtained uranium enrichment technology from a founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program, two administration officials said.”

This would be the infamous A.Q.Khan, the man who is suspected of spreading around the nuclear wealth to many sketchy regimes around the world. Since the Pakistanis won’t allow the US to interview him, no one knows for sure who exactly got his technology or how much.

The point of this apparently is to pressure the North Koreans to come clean on a suspected second nuke program that they have admitted but now deny having. Chief negotiator Christopher Hill, who is doing a much better job than John Bolton on this issue, is getting down to brass tacks with the North Koreans, now that it appears the administration has decided to drop the macho crap.

Saudi Nukes??

Speaking of Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf is in Riyadh today for the funeral of King Fahd. The Saudis have been very, very, good to Pakistan all these years. Lots of cash, lots of Pakistani workers taken in to clean the royal families homes and take out their trash. Something tells me Saudi money went through Pakistan on its way to Afghanistan during the Russian occupation, too. oh, and the Taliban.

The madrassas we are hearing so much about these days are funded by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, thank you very much, so who’s to say A.Q. Khan didn’t help them out with a little nuclear know-how? The Saudis have Iran to worry about and Israel too; they’ve got the cash, maybe this is why Musharraf won’t allow the CIA to interview Khan?

Iraqi constitution: rush job.

The US wants Iraq to get on with it so we can leave. All those contentious issues like Kirkuk and the regional-versus-central-control of-oil-profits can wait. The NY Times writes many Iraqi leaders have been alienated by the American pressure to get it done and “warn that the country’s differences can be set aside only at great peril. ‘The Americans are the ones who want to have this done quickly,’ said Mahmood Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi National Assembly and a member of the constitutional drafting committee. ‘And they are doing it so they can begin to implement their exit strategy.’” The Kurds say if their concerns are not addressed the Kurdish people will use their numbers to nullify the constitution in the referendum, which requires a two-thirds vote.

The Arabs on the other hand have problems with what the country will be called. Some committee members want to call it the “Federal Islamic Republic,” while the Kurds oppose a name that is religious in nature. And the Arabs are not prepared to discuss the reversal of Saddam’s “Arabization” of Kirkuk in the constitution, another Kurdish demand.

Ahmad Chalabi:

Ahmad Chalabi on the other hand is fine with chaos as long as he’s making money. His convoy was attacked on Saturday, the same day 5 US soldiers were killed, but he escaped with the loss of a body-guard. Hannah Allam in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes that Chalabi after being dumped by the Americans and having his house wrecked by Iraqi security forces has “emerged more powerful than ever:"

From his deputy premier's seat in the elected Iraqi government, Chalabi, 60, oversees Iraq's vast oil resources as chairman of the energy council. He presides over a board that regulates multimillion-dollar rebuilding contracts. He commands the controversial purge of former Baath Party members from government posts and the Iraqi Special Tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein. Until an oil minister was named, Chalabi held that job, too.

One of his top aides, Entifadh Qanbar, is headed for a plum job at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington. Chalabi's Harvard-educated nephew is the finance minister; rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is an ally."

He might be the Shiite strong man we’ve been looking for all along.

Bush treatens veto for defense bill.

As important as it was to pass the Gun shield law and pay off the energy industries with gobs of taxpayer money, what didn’t get accomplish before congress went home was the defense appropriation bill. Seems that darn John McCain is at it again.

He wants a provision put into the bill that would outlaw cruel and inhuman treatment by US troops in our various prisons around the world. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John Warner of Virginia are also along for the ride. Obviously, they are all dangerous liberals who must be stopped.

The law McCain is pushing for would also limit interrogation techniques to those spelled out in a new Army field manual. Along with these senators many former military officers and JAGs support the move. They feel that the lack of guidance in the law so far has led to abuses and undermines our moral authority and endangers our troops who might find themselves as POWs in a future war. Now, who knows more about being a POW? John McCain and his black baby or George W Bush? Bring ‘em on!

The administration argues these amendments to the defense bill will interfere with their ability to fight the “global struggle against violent extremism.” The president has threatened to veto the defense bill if these amendments are attached. I’d like to see that. ‘Sorry guys, after my month long vacation on my ranch in Waco I’m back to veto a bill that will provide for your equipment and ammo.’

Abuse of detainees! Rigged tribunals! Monstrous lies!

NYT has obtained emails from two senior military prosecutors written last year, prosecutors not defense attorneys, involved in the war crimes trails set up by the administration in Guantanamo that say the system is rigged. They allege, “The trail system had been secretly arranged to improve the chance of conviction and to deprive defendants of material that could prove their innocence.”

"Among the striking statements in the prosecutors' messages was an assertion by one that the chief prosecutor had told his subordinates that the members of the military commission that would try the first four defendants would be "handpicked" to ensure that all would be convicted.

The same officer, Capt. John Carr of the Air Force, also said in his message that he had been told that any exculpatory evidence - information that could help the detainees mount a defense in their cases - would probably exist only in the 10 percent of documents being withheld by the Central Intelligence Agency for security reasons."

Oh, who care, they're all terrorits right? or are they "global strugglers?"