Obamination

[Guest Patriot]

The Washington, D.C.- based National Taxpayer Union, a nonprofit group that tries to keep government out of private wallets, has rated each

candidate based on willingness to spend taxpayer dollars. Not surprisingly, Obama is far out ahead of Clinton and McCain.

Presidential Candidate Candidate's Proposed Spending*

Barack Obama $307.2 Billion

Hillary Clinton $226.1 Billion

John McCain $ 6.9 Billion *Based on campaign promises and policies as of March 2008.

I'm convinced that only the looniest of the left wing will actually vote for this tax and spend liberal in Nov.

[Manscape]

The Washington, D.C.- based National Taxpayer Union, a nonprofit group that tries to keep government out of private wallets, has rated each

candidate based on willingness to spend taxpayer dollars. Not surprisingly, Obama is far out ahead of Clinton and McCain.

Presidential Candidate Candidate's Proposed Spending*

Barack Obama $307.2 Billion

Hillary Clinton $226.1 Billion

John McCain $ 6.9 Billion *Based on campaign promises and policies as of March 2008.

I'm convinced that only the looniest of the left wing will actually vote for this tax and spend liberal in Nov.

You got a fool's hypocrisy to cite Barack Obama's standing in your stupid rating index when monkey boy Bush and Ronnie Raygun blew the lid off the precedent for American debt.

You are naked and butt ugly, a deadender like some crusty callous on the heel of a corpse and trust me, I'm being kind.

[Guest Guest]

The Washington, D.C.- based National Taxpayer Union, a nonprofit group that tries to keep government out of private wallets, has rated each

candidate based on willingness to spend taxpayer dollars. Not surprisingly, Obama is far out ahead of Clinton and McCain.

Presidential Candidate Candidate's Proposed Spending*

Barack Obama $307.2 Billion

Hillary Clinton $226.1 Billion

John McCain $ 6.9 Billion *Based on campaign promises and policies as of March 2008.

I'm convinced that only the looniest of the left wing will actually vote for this tax and spend liberal in Nov.

Yeah, right, another right wing group of knuckle-draggers who cherry pick statistics to suit their agenda. You're convinced of a lot of things, including the idea that George Bush is a great president. Your support for McCain is as predictable and as thoughtful as a cow chewing cud.

[Guest Guest]

You got a fool's hypocrisy to cite Barack Obama's standing in your stupid rating index when monkey boy Bush and Ronnie Raygun blew the lid off the precedent for American debt.

You are naked and butt ugly, a deadender like some crusty callous on the heel of a corpse and trust me, I'm being kind.

Whoever named this clown "Manscum" nailed him.

[Guest Patriot]

As reported in NewsMax magazine, "If Obama becomes President, the United States will become the heaviest-taxed country in the world. Considering

this fact in the face of exploding gasoline prices that are not going away anytime soon, it's clear that Obama's "nanny state" mentality will drive the

middle class into bankruptcy".

Proposing $307 Billion in new spending programs shows "Obamanomics" to be the coming Tax and Spend nightmare if he gets elected.

(Of course I've "cherry picked" these statistics, so Kool-Aiders should disregard them).

[Guest Keith]

As reported in NewsMax magazine, "If Obama becomes President, the United States will become the heaviest-taxed country in the world. Considering

this fact in the face of exploding gasoline prices that are not going away anytime soon, it's clear that Obama's "nanny state" mentality will drive the

middle class into bankruptcy".

Proposing $307 Billion in new spending programs shows "Obamanomics" to be the coming Tax and Spend nightmare if he gets elected.

(Of course I've "cherry picked" these statistics, so Kool-Aiders should disregard them).

No, not if we reallocate what we are spending in Iraq.

[Guest Obamaniac]

The Washington, D.C.- based National Taxpayer Union, a nonprofit group that tries to keep government out of private wallets, has rated each

candidate based on willingness to spend taxpayer dollars. Not surprisingly, Obama is far out ahead of Clinton and McCain.

Presidential Candidate Candidate's Proposed Spending*

Barack Obama $307.2 Billion

Hillary Clinton $226.1 Billion

John McCain $ 6.9 Billion *Based on campaign promises and policies as of March 2008.

I'm convinced that only the looniest of the left wing will actually vote for this tax and spend liberal in Nov.

Get used to him. He's going to be our our next president.

[Guest Guest]

As reported in NewsMax magazine, "If Obama becomes President, the United States will become the heaviest-taxed country in the world. Considering

this fact in the face of exploding gasoline prices that are not going away anytime soon, it's clear that Obama's "nanny state" mentality will drive the

middle class into bankruptcy".

Proposing $307 Billion in new spending programs shows "Obamanomics" to be the coming Tax and Spend nightmare if he gets elected.

(Of course I've "cherry picked" these statistics, so Kool-Aiders should disregard them).

You couldn't have cherry picked any statistics because you didn't give any statistics.

All you keep proving is that you're an idiot.

[Guest Guest]

The Washington, D.C.- based National Taxpayer Union, a nonprofit group that tries to keep government out of private wallets, has rated each

candidate based on willingness to spend taxpayer dollars. Not surprisingly, Obama is far out ahead of Clinton and McCain.

Presidential Candidate Candidate's Proposed Spending*

Barack Obama $307.2 Billion

Hillary Clinton $226.1 Billion

John McCain $ 6.9 Billion *Based on campaign promises and policies as of March 2008.

We can expect McCain to keep true to his spending promise just like he did with his campaign...oh wait...

And don't forget the Iran invasion he wants, that can easily be another half trillion dollars down the toilet.

[Guest BushBacker]

As reported in NewsMax magazine, "If Obama becomes President, the United States will become the heaviest-taxed country in the world. Considering

this fact in the face of exploding gasoline prices that are not going away anytime soon, it's clear that Obama's "nanny state" mentality will drive the

middle class into bankruptcy".

Proposing $307 Billion in new spending programs shows "Obamanomics" to be the coming Tax and Spend nightmare if he gets elected.

(Of course I've "cherry picked" these statistics, so Kool-Aiders should disregard them).

I see Obama's buddy Resko has been convicted on 16 counts, facing 20 years. But of course (just like Rev. Wright), Obama didn't know anything

about illegal activity.

[Guest Guest]

I see Obama's buddy Resko has been convicted on 16 counts, facing 20 years. But of course (just like Rev. Wright), Obama didn't know anything

about illegal activity.

Obama hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing.

Just goes to show that your kind's got nothing on him. You're forced to rely on weak guilt by association nonsense. I can tell you're upset Hillary's not your opponent, aren't you?

[Manscape]

I see Obama's buddy Resko has been convicted on 16 counts, facing 20 years. But of course (just like Rev. Wright), Obama didn't know anything

about illegal activity.

First, Rev. Wright hadn't done anything illegal!

Second, Tony Rezko insidiously solicited every Dem in Illinois for favors. Obama had the brains to close the door (dirty money was given to charity when discovered) and nothing illegal was ever made of it. It happens often in all political arenas, except maybe..........IN HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY!!!

You Bush deadenders are despicable. After almost 8 years of the most epic bumbling, duplicity and disaster the modern world has ever witnessed from an American presidential administration and the cult that enabled it (YOU!), here you are looking to "swiftboat" Barack Obama with a moron's assertion, blissfully ignorant of the horrors you've licensed via your own brutal political stupidity. Bring it on. We're waiting for you, deadender. The American page of your dark era is turning.

Now....HOT OFF the PRESS.........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_..._intelligence_9

Here's a KEY paragraph for you BUSH DEADENDERS contained in the text. ENJOY IT!

>>>Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.<<<

Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as "phase II" and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

"These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. "We might have avoided this catastrophe," he said.

Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. "We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that," she said.

The Senate report, however, found that intelligence supported most of the administration's statements about Iraq before the war. But officials often did not mention the level of dissension or uncertainty in the intelligence agencies about the information they were presenting.

Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.

The committee's five other Republicans, however, assailed it as a partisan exercise. They accused Democrats of covering for their own members, including Rockefeller and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who made similar statements about Iraq based on the same intelligence the Bush administration used.

"It is ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence," said Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the committee's top Republican.

A second report issued by the committee Thursday says Pentagon officials concealed from U.S. intelligence agencies potentially useful tips from Iranian agents in 2001, including that Tehran allegedly sent hit teams to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

The Iranians also told Pentagon employees at a December 2001 meeting in Rome of a purported tunnel complex used to store weapons and covertly move personnel out of Iran after Sept. 11, 2001, according to the committee report. In addition, the Iranians told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the growth of anti-government sentiment inside Iran.

The information was questionable, the report suggests, citing the sources: a discredited former arms dealer who was peddling a plan to overthrow the Iranian government and a former U.S. official whose leads had failed to yield any substance for the CIA.

Nonetheless, the report sheds new light on the mistrust and lack of cooperation by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the CIA and the State Department after 9/11.

Committee Republicans, in a dissent, said the report had nothing to do with the original scope of the review — prewar intelligence on Iraq. They said it would be a "disappointment" for people looking for evidence of Pentagon wrongdoing.

The report focuses on the series of meetings in Rome held over three days in December 2001. The U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and working on initial planning for the Iraq war.

Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley authorized the meetings. Two Pentagon employees, one of whom worked for then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, went to Rome to meet with two Iranians — one a current member of the security service, the second a former member. Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, also attended, as did a representative from an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service. Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon official and an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arranged the meeting and attended.

In one meeting, Ghorbanifar pressed for a change of government in Iran and, on a napkin, outlined a plan to do that, saying he would need $5 million to set it in motion, according to the report.

The report said Hadley failed to fully inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about the meeting. But Hadley and the Pentagon were within their rights to conduct the meeting, the report said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Hadley notified all parties concerned appropriately.

The report said Defense Department officials refused to allow "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" to be shared with intelligence agencies. The head of the DIA was briefed on the meeting but was not authorized to keep a written summary or it or to discuss it on the orders of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Ledeen said Thursday that the meetings were not kept secret from U.S. intelligence, and said he had briefed the U.S. ambassador to Italy twice about them.

"Any time the CIA wanted to find out what was going on all they had to do was ask," he said.

One of the two Pentagon representatives, Larry Franklin, now faces jail time after pleading guilty to espionage-related charges unrelated to the Rome meeting. Franklin told the committee he believed the intelligence gathered at the meetings "saved American lives." He passed word of the alleged hit teams to a special operations forces commander in Afghanistan.

SHALL WE NOW DISCUSS SCOTT MCCLELLAN'S NEW BOOK, BUSH DEADENDER?

[Guest Guest]

First, Rev. Wright hadn't done anything illegal!

Second, Tony Rezko insidiously solicited every Dem in Illinois for favors. Obama had the brains to close the door (dirty money was given to charity when discovered) and nothing illegal was ever made of it. It happens often in all political arenas, except maybe..........IN HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY!!!

You Bush deadenders are despicable. After almost 8 years of the most epic bumbling, duplicity and disaster the modern world has ever witnessed from an American presidential administration and the cult that enabled it (YOU!), here you are looking to "swiftboat" Barack Obama with a moron's assertion, blissfully ignorant of the horrors you've licensed via your own brutal political stupidity. Bring it on. We're waiting for you, deadender. The American page of your dark era is turning.

Now....HOT OFF the PRESS.........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_..._intelligence_9

Here's a KEY paragraph for you BUSH DEADENDERS contained in the text. ENJOY IT!

>>>Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.<<<

Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as "phase II" and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

"These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. "We might have avoided this catastrophe," he said.

Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. "We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that," she said.

The Senate report, however, found that intelligence supported most of the administration's statements about Iraq before the war. But officials often did not mention the level of dissension or uncertainty in the intelligence agencies about the information they were presenting.

Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.

The committee's five other Republicans, however, assailed it as a partisan exercise. They accused Democrats of covering for their own members, including Rockefeller and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who made similar statements about Iraq based on the same intelligence the Bush administration used.

"It is ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence," said Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the committee's top Republican.

A second report issued by the committee Thursday says Pentagon officials concealed from U.S. intelligence agencies potentially useful tips from Iranian agents in 2001, including that Tehran allegedly sent hit teams to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

The Iranians also told Pentagon employees at a December 2001 meeting in Rome of a purported tunnel complex used to store weapons and covertly move personnel out of Iran after Sept. 11, 2001, according to the committee report. In addition, the Iranians told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the growth of anti-government sentiment inside Iran.

The information was questionable, the report suggests, citing the sources: a discredited former arms dealer who was peddling a plan to overthrow the Iranian government and a former U.S. official whose leads had failed to yield any substance for the CIA.

Nonetheless, the report sheds new light on the mistrust and lack of cooperation by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the CIA and the State Department after 9/11.

Committee Republicans, in a dissent, said the report had nothing to do with the original scope of the review — prewar intelligence on Iraq. They said it would be a "disappointment" for people looking for evidence of Pentagon wrongdoing.

The report focuses on the series of meetings in Rome held over three days in December 2001. The U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and working on initial planning for the Iraq war.

Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley authorized the meetings. Two Pentagon employees, one of whom worked for then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, went to Rome to meet with two Iranians — one a current member of the security service, the second a former member. Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, also attended, as did a representative from an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service. Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon official and an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arranged the meeting and attended.

In one meeting, Ghorbanifar pressed for a change of government in Iran and, on a napkin, outlined a plan to do that, saying he would need $5 million to set it in motion, according to the report.

The report said Hadley failed to fully inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about the meeting. But Hadley and the Pentagon were within their rights to conduct the meeting, the report said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Hadley notified all parties concerned appropriately.

The report said Defense Department officials refused to allow "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" to be shared with intelligence agencies. The head of the DIA was briefed on the meeting but was not authorized to keep a written summary or it or to discuss it on the orders of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Ledeen said Thursday that the meetings were not kept secret from U.S. intelligence, and said he had briefed the U.S. ambassador to Italy twice about them.

"Any time the CIA wanted to find out what was going on all they had to do was ask," he said.

One of the two Pentagon representatives, Larry Franklin, now faces jail time after pleading guilty to espionage-related charges unrelated to the Rome meeting. Franklin told the committee he believed the intelligence gathered at the meetings "saved American lives." He passed word of the alleged hit teams to a special operations forces commander in Afghanistan.

SHALL WE NOW DISCUSS SCOTT MCCLELLAN'S NEW BOOK, BUSH DEADENDER?

In other words, exactly what we suspected is now a proven fact: Bush and Cheney LIED us into a war. Why aren't they in prison?

[Guest BushBacker]

First, Rev. Wright hadn't done anything illegal!

Second, Tony Rezko insidiously solicited every Dem in Illinois for favors. Obama had the brains to close the door (dirty money was given to charity when discovered) and nothing illegal was ever made of it. It happens often in all political arenas, except maybe..........IN HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY!!!

You Bush deadenders are despicable. After almost 8 years of the most epic bumbling, duplicity and disaster the modern world has ever witnessed from an American presidential administration and the cult that enabled it (YOU!), here you are looking to "swiftboat" Barack Obama with a moron's assertion, blissfully ignorant of the horrors you've licensed via your own brutal political stupidity. Bring it on. We're waiting for you, deadender. The American page of your dark era is turning.

Now....HOT OFF the PRESS.........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_..._intelligence_9

Here's a KEY paragraph for you BUSH DEADENDERS contained in the text. ENJOY IT!

>>>Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.<<<

Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as "phase II" and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

"These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. "We might have avoided this catastrophe," he said.

Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. "We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that," she said.

The Senate report, however, found that intelligence supported most of the administration's statements about Iraq before the war. But officials often did not mention the level of dissension or uncertainty in the intelligence agencies about the information they were presenting.

Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.

The committee's five other Republicans, however, assailed it as a partisan exercise. They accused Democrats of covering for their own members, including Rockefeller and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who made similar statements about Iraq based on the same intelligence the Bush administration used.

"It is ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence," said Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the committee's top Republican.

A second report issued by the committee Thursday says Pentagon officials concealed from U.S. intelligence agencies potentially useful tips from Iranian agents in 2001, including that Tehran allegedly sent hit teams to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

The Iranians also told Pentagon employees at a December 2001 meeting in Rome of a purported tunnel complex used to store weapons and covertly move personnel out of Iran after Sept. 11, 2001, according to the committee report. In addition, the Iranians told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the growth of anti-government sentiment inside Iran.

The information was questionable, the report suggests, citing the sources: a discredited former arms dealer who was peddling a plan to overthrow the Iranian government and a former U.S. official whose leads had failed to yield any substance for the CIA.

Nonetheless, the report sheds new light on the mistrust and lack of cooperation by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the CIA and the State Department after 9/11.

Committee Republicans, in a dissent, said the report had nothing to do with the original scope of the review — prewar intelligence on Iraq. They said it would be a "disappointment" for people looking for evidence of Pentagon wrongdoing.

The report focuses on the series of meetings in Rome held over three days in December 2001. The U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and working on initial planning for the Iraq war.

Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley authorized the meetings. Two Pentagon employees, one of whom worked for then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, went to Rome to meet with two Iranians — one a current member of the security service, the second a former member. Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, also attended, as did a representative from an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service. Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon official and an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arranged the meeting and attended.

In one meeting, Ghorbanifar pressed for a change of government in Iran and, on a napkin, outlined a plan to do that, saying he would need $5 million to set it in motion, according to the report.

The report said Hadley failed to fully inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about the meeting. But Hadley and the Pentagon were within their rights to conduct the meeting, the report said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Hadley notified all parties concerned appropriately.

The report said Defense Department officials refused to allow "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" to be shared with intelligence agencies. The head of the DIA was briefed on the meeting but was not authorized to keep a written summary or it or to discuss it on the orders of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Ledeen said Thursday that the meetings were not kept secret from U.S. intelligence, and said he had briefed the U.S. ambassador to Italy twice about them.

"Any time the CIA wanted to find out what was going on all they had to do was ask," he said.

One of the two Pentagon representatives, Larry Franklin, now faces jail time after pleading guilty to espionage-related charges unrelated to the Rome meeting. Franklin told the committee he believed the intelligence gathered at the meetings "saved American lives." He passed word of the alleged hit teams to a special operations forces commander in Afghanistan.

SHALL WE NOW DISCUSS SCOTT MCCLELLAN'S NEW BOOK, BUSH DEADENDER?

You need to dilute that Kool-Aid, you're a raving idiot.

[Guest BushBacker]

In other words, exactly what we suspected is now a proven fact: Bush and Cheney LIED us into a war. Why aren't they in prison?

More Kool-Aid dreams. The only people that should be in jail are Bill (I did not have sexual relations with that woman) Clinton and Hussain (I never

heard Rev. Wright say anything wrong / I never knew Resko was a crook) Obama. But since McCain will be our next president, I'll overlook their

crimes.

[Manscape]

More Kool-Aid dreams. The only people that should be in jail are Bill (I did not have sexual relations with that woman) Clinton and Hussain (I never

heard Rev. Wright say anything wrong / I never knew Resko was a crook) Obama. But since McCain will be our next president, I'll overlook their

crimes.

Will you "overlook" these BULGEFACE nuggets, deadender? Notice the contradiction and ambiguity of the BULGEFACE statements. Did you know that BULGEFACE fails to recall his own senatorial voting record? It will be fun watching the desperate and the despicable continue to cling to the Bush malignancy, the dance of the deadenders!

McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too

By Ryan Singel June 03, 2008 | 5:06:25 PMCategories: Election '08, NSA

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty.

But Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.

[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001.

McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is," McCain said.

The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."

McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back from Fish's comments, made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month. When liberal blogs picked up the story that McCain had moved to the left on wiretapping, the McCain campaign issued a letter insisting that he still supported unconditional immunity, as well as new rules that would expand the nation's spy powers.

The campaign's response was consistent with McCain's past positions and votes. But it riled Andrew McCarthy at the conservative National Review Online, who read the campaign's position as a disavowal of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, and a wimpy surrender of executive power to Congress.

"What does it mean when he says Sen. McCain does not want the telecoms put into this position again?" McCarthy asked. "Is he saying that in a time of national crisis, the president should not be permitted to ask the telecoms for assistance that is arguably beyond what is prescribed in a statute?"

That's when the campaign issued the letter explaining McCain's new views of executive power, and revealing that McCain would, in certain future circumstances, rely on the same theory of executive power in wartime.

A spokesperson for McCain's camp did not respond to a request Monday for an explanation of the difference between the new policy and the December interview.

[Guest Guest]

More Kool-Aid dreams.

No, simply reality.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Study...r_01222008.html

[Guest Guest]

More Kool-Aid dreams. The only people that should be in jail are Bill (I did not have sexual relations with that woman) Clinton and Hussain (I never

heard Rev. Wright say anything wrong / I never knew Resko was a crook) Obama. But since McCain will be our next president, I'll overlook their

crimes.

What's it like to be such an enormous piece of shit?

[Guest Guest]

More Kool-Aid dreams. The only people that should be in jail are Bill (I did not have sexual relations with that woman) Clinton and Hussain (I never

heard Rev. Wright say anything wrong / I never knew Resko was a crook) Obama. But since McCain will be our next president, I'll overlook their

crimes.

In other words, getting thousands of people killed with a lie is OK, but anyone who disagrees with you should be in prison.

[Guest Guest]

Will you "overlook" these BULGEFACE nuggets, deadender? Notice the contradiction and ambiguity of the BULGEFACE statements. Did you know that BULGEFACE fails to recall his own senatorial voting record? It will be fun watching the desperate and the despicable continue to cling to the Bush malignancy, the dance of the deadenders!

McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too

By Ryan Singel June 03, 2008 | 5:06:25 PMCategories: Election '08, NSA

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty.

But Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.

[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001.

McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is," McCain said.

The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."

McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back from Fish's comments, made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month. When liberal blogs picked up the story that McCain had moved to the left on wiretapping, the McCain campaign issued a letter insisting that he still supported unconditional immunity, as well as new rules that would expand the nation's spy powers.

The campaign's response was consistent with McCain's past positions and votes. But it riled Andrew McCarthy at the conservative National Review Online, who read the campaign's position as a disavowal of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, and a wimpy surrender of executive power to Congress.

"What does it mean when he says Sen. McCain does not want the telecoms put into this position again?" McCarthy asked. "Is he saying that in a time of national crisis, the president should not be permitted to ask the telecoms for assistance that is arguably beyond what is prescribed in a statute?"

That's when the campaign issued the letter explaining McCain's new views of executive power, and revealing that McCain would, in certain future circumstances, rely on the same theory of executive power in wartime.

A spokesperson for McCain's camp did not respond to a request Monday for an explanation of the difference between the new policy and the December interview.

So much for being a "maverick". Those days are long gone.

[Guest Guest]

In other words, getting thousands of people killed with a lie is OK, but anyone who disagrees with you should be in prison.

Kool-Aid alert !!

[Guest Guest]

Kool-Aid alert !!

How does an idiot like this cross the street without getting run over?

[Guest Guest]

Kool-Aid alert !!

Yes, the people who think we weren't lied into war drink deep from the Kool-aid well.

[Guest BushBacker]

Yes, the people who think we weren't lied into war drink deep from the Kool-aid well.

God Bless GWB. He has protected America from the terrorists and from the Defeatocrats.

[Guest Guest]

God Bless GWB. He has protected America from the terrorists

lol, stupid little liar. Bush completely ignored the memo that said Bin Laden was determined to strike America, and that he was probably going to use planes as missiles. Tell the 3,000 corpses created on 9/11 that Bush protected them from terrorists, punk.

Then there's the inconvenient truth that Iraq had no Al Qaeda in it UNTIL Bush invaded. There are more terrorists who want to kill us now than there were before 9/11, all thanks to the Bush administration.