Letters to the Editor
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State Dept spending
I know this is off-topic but I want to ask if you could do some reporting on where the State Dept's budget is coming from for the hiring of contractors like Blackwater at 5 to 10 times the pay that our soldiers get. Is it part of the supplementals or is that money just for DOD? Is it being factored in to the total cost of our war in Iraq? And what about injured contractors? Are they treated at military hospitals in theater and then left to seek their own treatment once they return to US? So many questions when you choose to privatize...
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What's with that frozen expression?
The thing that bothers me about Dana Perino is that her face doesn't move. She seems to have the same expression no matter what she's saying. I think she's had massive botox injections--which is fine except if you have a job where people are trying to judge the completeness and truthfulness of what you're saying. I say we agitate for a non-binding resolution from Congress outlawing botox for Presidential spokespersons.
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Fired for Being a Bad Liar?
I think the case is as you suggest--if she is fired it won't be for the whoppers she's flung to our national stenographers, it will be for being a really bad liar. What made Fleischer, McClellan and Snow good at what they did was that you knew they weren't shy about the lies. Basically, both had this look that said: "you know I'm lying, but do something about it you pansies".
Somewhere deep within the vast expanse of the Perino psyche lies a shred of integrity that her ambitions have not been able to get at, and you can tell.
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MarieA
There are questions about the leaked source for the Bin Ladin video.
Was this leak simply a blunder?
Consider Rita Katz's bio. Katz served in the Israeli Defense Forces and studied politics and history at Tel Aviv University.
Her improbable story is filled with enough spy novel stuff to be worthy of Robert Ludlum. Born in Iraq, her father executed for spying for Israel, little Rita goes to Israel and becomes a spy to avenge daddy.
For a spook, she sure does do a lot of bragging on herself and her company.
She's more like the Middle Eastern version of Hollywood Confidential. She gathers and distributes, or withholds and parses information as she sees fit and either sells it, or gives it away as she sees fit.
Let's get real. I'd wager that the NSA, or DHS, and the CIA have nothing but suspicion about Rita Katz and her freelance spook-for-hire business.
Her own website contains this explanation of her services:
"The SITE Institute works regularly with and provides important and often unique information to journalists, law firms pursuing civil litigation, major corporations, law enforcement, U.S. Congress, and numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), the FBI, Customs, and the Department of Justice. SITE provides clients and interested parties with well-documented and comprehensive reports on terrorist entities and the individuals and organizations supporting them."
Notice the order of priority here: Journalists first, then lawyers, then "major corporations." Finally she lists the spook agencies. I bet that they love being so far down the list.
Why the hell would any U.S. government intel outfit trust this obviously biased source beyond how they can use her while she is trying to use them?
Given the Valerie Plame betrayal, it's possible that this incident is reported exactly as it happened. But Occam's razor not withstanding, I don't buy Ms. Katz's loud protestations as an innocent victim of either ineptitude or skulduggery. For one thing, if her methods really were completely compromised, a real spy would be the last one to come out and say so in public.
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What am I asking for?
What would I like to see in a person whose job, in this White House, involves lying for a living?
As it is the policy of the Bush administration to hire liars who lie for a living, the rest of us would be best off if the Bushites would hire the worst liars they can find.
This shouldn't be much of a problem, since they've already used up the competent liars. The liars were evidently the only competent people Bush had in his administration.
The trick is to get these people in front of a grand jury and let them lie their pointy little heads off. Bush himself would be a real spectacle. I'd pay top dollar to see that.
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What's with that frozen expression?
Botox for sure, all the way into her cerebral cortex. She's been lobotomized for your protection.
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Perino Watch
There are 2 things that at this point we shouldn't be surprised about:
1.) The press secretary is lying for the administration.
2.) She's another Bush administration appointment chosen because of her idealogy, not her competence.
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@jbinmo...
who wrote:
think the issue is that because we revealed that we had the tape when we did, it let al queda know that we were accessing their network. We had the tape before it became public, which means we took it from them. The can now figure out how we got it and make sure we can't access their network in the same way.
-- JBinMO
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it's worse than that. SITE apparently sent the *URL link* to Fred Fielding, and someone else in the West Wing. The link was almost immediately accessed by a number network users at the Defense Department and the CIA.
I think the issue was the URL. Had SITE simply downloaded the video and shared that, stripping away all other information about its origins, al-qaeda might have had a harder time defending its site.
The way I read the story, it was the repeated accessing of the video URL that tipped al-qaeda. If this is true, makes you wonder who at SITE was stupid enough to share the URL, instead of the video. Maybe they couldn't capture just the video for some reason.
No doubt this story will fade because it's too complex for most people to understand.
And perhaps others more network-literate than I am can expand on what exactly it was that happened here. I know I'd be interested in understanding this story more thoroughly.