GOP Warns TV Stations Not to Air Ad Alleging Bush Mislead the Nation Over Iraq They claim that the
ad itself is dishonest, and cite the obligation of broadcast outlets to be free of misleading information. “
Such obligations must be taken seriously. This letter puts you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement.” Despite the implicit threats,
only one station has refused to run the ad, a Fox station.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on Jul 23, 2003 -
74 comments
Tenet tells all! "Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings." Alright, politically savvy mefites, who is it? Register your guesses now, and get the grand prize (umm, a sense of accomplishment?) when the info gets leaked!
posted by hank_14
on Jul 17, 2003 -
54 comments
Cooked intel revolts spooks - Spooks revolt : elements of the US intelligence community are between
outrage and open revolt, and Veterans for Intelligence Sanity, a group of ex - CIA professionals led by Ray McGovern, a 27 year veteran of the CIA who used to brief George Bush Sr., has called for Dick Cheney's resignation in an open letter to GW Bush, reports Nick Kristoff.
"You may not realize the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA" they have warned Mr. Bush.
At the heart of the matter is the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) under the leadership of Abram Shulsky.
Meanwhile, "It's like, duh, the net doesn't forget. Get it?" :
a blogger compiles a chronological list of Bush Administration statements on Iraq's WMD's - from
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (George W. Bush
Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003) to
"They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer." (Donald Rumsfeld, Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations, May 27, 2003) and
"U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction. (Condoleeza Rice, Reuters Interview, May 12, 2003) Also in above link: scroll to bottom for memorandum to GW Bush.
posted by troutfishing
on Jul 15, 2003 -
105 comments
The First Casualty. The New Republic is one of the few left-leaning political journals who supported the war on Iraq. Now it seems like they've come to their senses and have written a very exhaustive story on how exactly Team Bush manipulated evidence to support the war on Iraq: "Rather, interviews with current and former intelligence officials and other experts reveal that the Bush administration culled from U.S. intelligence those assessments that supported its position and omitted those that did not. The administration ignored, and even suppressed, disagreement within the intelligence agencies and pressured the CIA to reaffirm its preferred version of the Iraqi threat. Similarly, it stonewalled, and sought to discredit, international weapons inspectors when their findings threatened to undermine the case for war."
posted by owillis
on Jun 19, 2003 -
11 comments
At first, it appeared that the effort to begin a public probe into the manipulation of intelligence that formed the foundation of the case for the Iraq war was shaking out as bipartisan, with John Warner, and
eventually John McCain on board. Each day we would hear of another Senator or Representative pushing harder for an open review of exactly who pulled which string. It only took a few minutes this morning for all of that
momentum to cease to exist. ...
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on Jun 11, 2003 -
28 comments
Dissent in the ranks. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, source:
US News and World Report Magazine.
According to the report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring,
"I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."
posted by CrazyJub
on May 31, 2003 -
76 comments
Intelligence expert does new kind of spin (as in the 180 degree kind). Intelligence expert (and former National Security Advisor) Kenneth Pollack
appeared on NPR [scroll to 3rd entry for full audio] to retract statements that he made on the
same show in
November. Pollack seems to be the first major wonk to call change his mind not on a single, tangible intelligence claim, but on the broader rationale for war in Iraq, and on the reliability of American intelligence in general.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on May 28, 2003 -
10 comments
As you may have heard, long term FBI Agent and Chinese double-agent Katrina Leung was
charged yesterday. What you might not have heard, if, say, you only read the CNN story, was that Leung was
a prominent Republican, who probably did a good bit to subvert the campaign finance reform effort. However, this isn't being covered by
ABC, CNN, Newsweek,
the New York Times, or pretty much anyone with any name recognition, as TalkingPointsMemo reports. Funny how potential sabotage isn't worth mentioning in these fast times full of SARS and terror, no?
posted by kaibutsu
on May 10, 2003 -
32 comments
Osama Bin Laden Link To Iraq found by a Toronto Star reporter, Mitch Potter. "The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders." [more]
posted by alicesshoe
on Apr 27, 2003 -
72 comments
Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law.
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 22, 2003 -
59 comments
Brains vs. bathing suits. University of Michigan researchers gathered men and women together and had them try on either a bathing suit or a sweater to see which they preferred for 20 minutes. Then they were asked to take a math test to "pass the time." The results? No appreciable difference for men while women scored considerably lower while in bathing suits. Could obsession with appearance be holding our girls back?
posted by hipnerd
on Dec 20, 2002 -
37 comments
On PBS last week, Senator Bob Graham said that there is "evidence that
there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States," but that "It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today." Do you trust the government to keep the right informatin classified, or do we need to know?
posted by cell divide
on Dec 19, 2002 -
16 comments
An official Q&A with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, alludes to some extremely scary/interesting tidbits-- the Office of Strategic Influence is still alive, John Poindexter can do anything he pleases with DARPA, we just might renew nuclear weapons testing.
Don't worry, though. Rummy sez: "Anyone who is concerned ought not be. Anyone with any concern ought to be able to sleep well tonight. Nothing terrible is going to happen."
posted by LimePi
on Nov 23, 2002 -
7 comments
Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans And this is justified because of National Security. We will lose much that is personal, private, but in turn we will be protefted against the bad guys. Or will we? When NASA and CIA claim they need to spy domestically, and computers gather all data on Americans, what is left that is not what Orwell had suggested might our future be like?Or, as Morth Sahl once labelled a comic record: TheFuture Lies Ahead."
posted by Postroad
on Nov 9, 2002 -
97 comments
Who is Delmart "Mike" Vreeland? The strange case of a man who made a handwritten note while in jail during summer 2001 predicting details of the Sept. 11 attacks. He claims to be an agent for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) with advance knowledge of the attacks. The ONI claims he is a conman and compulsive liar trying to save himself from extradition to the
US.
In the end, this six-month investigation for GNN confirmed what many already know: Delmart Vreeland is a liar and an accomplished conman, adept at spinning tales, and manipulating allegiances to further his own goals. In other words, he is the perfect candidate for work in U.S. intelligence.
Who is Delmart Vreeland? - Conman, Intelligence Agent, or both?
posted by tranceformer
on Oct 11, 2002 -
19 comments
White House: Bush misstated report on Iraq A senior White House official acknowledged Saturday night that the 1998 report did not say what Bush claimed. 'What happened was, we formed our own conclusions based on the report ,' The photograph in question was not U.N. intelligence imaging but simply a picture from a commercial satellite imaging company
Did he think no one would notice?
posted by bas67
on Sep 7, 2002 -
32 comments
A search engine to help you find things you don't know about. gnod stands for The
Global
Network
of
Dreams, and is a test of artificial intelligence. Building a database from the user choices, it helps you find books, music and misc. other by having you enter in things that you like, and based on what other people like, it shows you stuff you ought to like, too (which is slightly different from what Amazon does, showing you what other people have
bought). Don't know if all the Amazon Associate links detract from it all or not
posted by crunchland
on Aug 30, 2002 -
25 comments
Is bin Laden dead? Some people in the intelligence community are apparently beginning to think so and are even quietly speaking to reporters about it.
posted by TBoneMcCool
on Jul 27, 2002 -
77 comments
Musicians are really smart. They have larger and more sensitive brains than non-musicians, and their collective IQ is much higher. They have 130% more grey matter in one area of their auditory cortexes. The question of how this explains Ozzy Osbourne nonwithstanding, I'll bet if you're really, really smart, you could be
one of the new members of Men Without Hats. Must be very knowledgeable in midi, sequences, and sampling.
posted by iconomy
on Jun 25, 2002 -
18 comments
MI6 warned US of Al-Qaeda attacks MI6 warned the American intelligence services about a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings two years before the September 11 attacks....
I do not subsribe but this is summary of article and may prove very "annoying" to the agencies and people involved. The Sunday Times is too reputable to be readily dismissed as off the wall.
posted by Postroad
on Jun 9, 2002 -
38 comments
U.S. had agents inside al-Qaeda U.S. intelligence overheard al-Qaeda operatives discussing a major pending terrorist attack in the weeks prior to Sept. 11 and had agents inside the terror group, but the intercepts and field reports didn't specify where or when a strike might occur, according to U.S. officials. ... But later in the article it says: Electronic intercepts as late as Sept. 10 of al-Qaeda members speaking cryptically of a major attack. Two U.S. intelligence officials, paraphrasing highly classified intercepts, say they include such remarks as, "Good things are coming," "Watch the news" and "Tomorrow will be a great day for us." Yeah, that whole "tomorrow" thing...that's a little tricky.
posted by dejah420
on Jun 4, 2002 -
40 comments
How the U.S. Missed the Clues Time magazine assessmeznt of what went wrong in evaluation of intelligence pre-9/11. I am not yet sure why I find the conclusions a bit evasive but it seems to me the article tries to satisfy differing perspectives rather than taking a stand for a specific point of view. But then that may be my reading and wrong headed.
posted by Postroad
on May 27, 2002 -
7 comments
Last night, ninety-five thousand British Internet users took part in '
Test The Nation', an IQ quiz, broadcast live on BBC television, which attempted to survey the intelligence on the national. As a simulcast it was only partially successful -- the questions appearing on television sometimes five minutes before appearing on computer, but the results from those who coped with the technology were quite interesting. Any other UK Mefites take part? The test is still available for the curious.
posted by feelinglistless
on May 12, 2002 -
46 comments
Was the Venezuela coup another Chile 1973? Two months ago, Narco News called attention to the striking similarities between the situation in Venezuela and CIA plots against leftist Chilean president Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. The
CIA's own version of what happened in Chile discusses its "sustained propaganda efforts, including financial
support for major news media, against Allende and other Marxists." Hmm. Chavez shut down five private TV stations after they repeatedly aired what he called misleading footage of the protest deaths last week, after months of relentless attacks against his government. Sure makes you wonder.
On another note, did
eyewitness accounts widely disseminated over the Web help doom the White House spin that "government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors"? If the Web didn't exist, would the final word have come from articles like this
now out-of-date, pro-business analysis in yesterday's Washington Post?
posted by mediareport
on Apr 14, 2002 -
47 comments
On flight simulators, Tetris, and the CIA The Sunday Times Mag has a feature on Gilman Louie, popularizer of Tetris who was recruited by the CIA in 1998. " Louie's marching orders were to provide venture capital for data-mining technologies that would allow the C.I.A. to monitor and profile potential terrorists as closely and carefully as Amazon monitors and profiles potential customers."
posted by brookish
on Apr 12, 2002 -
13 comments
so which "officials" do we believe? is this a final salvo from the "now disbanded" office of military misinformation?
i don't know which is spookier the thought of the threat, or the folks in charge getting their "credible" info from some clown in las vegas??
posted by specialk420
on Mar 7, 2002 -
4 comments
Take the Wonderlic test. The Wonderlic is a 50-question
IQ test administered by the National Football League to all prospective draft picks. Teams use the test results to varying degree, in part to determine the ability of athletes to learn systems and grow as a player. Interestingly, offensive tackles and centers have the highest average NFL Wonderlic scores. (The test here is a fast 15-question sample; you'll need a piece of paper to jot down your answers.)
posted by werty
on Mar 1, 2002 -
31 comments
The Robots Are Coming (Yawwwn...). Yet another corporate futurist (with a
bizarre 1996 Mosaic-type website) telling us that A.I. will deliver the "homework" robot by 2006 (now, is that January or December?). Also, look out for an
emotionally responsive Barbie:
"We already have technologies that can measure stress, using simple cues like skin condition and temperature and it will be easy to put these in Barbie dolls which will be able to talk to little girls when they are upset and ask what is wrong." Ech.
posted by theplayethic
on Jan 22, 2002 -
21 comments
Is intelligence hereditary or environment? A
new theory sees the brain as a plastic mold of potential with the more neuron connections the better [hereditary] and environment stimulation shapes the mold untill maturity.
"You could present a person with an IQ of 200 with the appropriate phenomena when they are 20 years old, after the critical learning period, and they would not have the capacity to adapt their brains to the new phenomena". People of low IQ perform poorly because their brains do not adapt well to environmental stimulation.
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 21, 2002 -
15 comments
Does genius exist?
According to commonplace descriptions, a genius creates artworks beyond the abilities of the merely talented. A genius's achievements are uninfluenced by vagaries of taste and marketplace; in fact, a genius may be shunned at first and only later acclaimed.
But genius has been far more flexible a concept than its critics recognize; it is less a reflection of a rigid ideology than an attempt to characterize an infinitely variable phenomenon.
[
NYTimes, registration required]
posted by Blake
on Jan 6, 2002 -
23 comments
Travel Makes You Stupid. "As we roam wider, we spread ourselves thinner. The greater the geographical extent of our 'known world' the lower the level of resolution at which we can know it. As the volume of information overwhelms the human capacity to make sense of it, people are compelled to adopt ever cruder filters." Does hypermobility make us more shallow? (
from openDemocracy)
posted by jacknose
on Dec 10, 2001 -
21 comments
California Governor Announced that there is a credible threat against the bridges of the state of California. Including the Golden Gate Bridge. The attacks are likely to take place between the second and ninth of November, during rush hour.
posted by yevge
on Nov 1, 2001 -
57 comments
Marijuana's effects on the brain are reversible "It appears that cognitive impairment from marijuana use is temporary and related to the amount of marijuana that has been recently smoked rather than permanent and related to an entire lifetime consumption."
Hmm, I suppose it's good to know I can go back to being smart after being stupid for a little while.
posted by iceblink
on Oct 18, 2001 -
12 comments
What did we know? And what are we doing now? The best background summary I've yet seen, and the concrete info on the difficulties the intelligence agencies are facing is sobering.
posted by rushmc
on Sep 23, 2001 -
3 comments
