Do you ever get the sense that there's just too much coming at us at once? We've got the Delay ethics scandal, the Downing Street Memo, the no-WMD scandal, the missing $8.8 billion in Iraq under Bremer, the Abu Ghraib and Gitmo scandals, the rendition scandals, the Bolton mess, the whole election mess (some people still think Bush lost) and the filibuster....Information overload! How can one person get mad enough!

I think of it like this: if my kid stole a candy bar from the grocery store I'd scream and yell and read him the riot act and ground him. But if he stole a machine gun, mowed down the store, then stole a car, drove it across country with my spouse and my spouse's lover in the back seat after emptying the bank account and selling the house and stealing all of my journals and selling them on e-bay I think I'd just sit here in a stupor.

Which is what I'm doing.

I just hope to almighty God that Israel or AIPAC isn't involved in this Bolton / NSA intercepts mystery because then we'll never see what this is all about and the issue will all go mysteriously way.

"Do you ever get the sense that there's just too much coming at us at once?" didja ever stop to think that might just be the plan...? didja also stop to think that the list you just reeled off is only the stuff we KNOW about...? then there's the sad reality that most people are so busy workin' for peanuts to keep body and soul together that they have zero time to stay informed at all, much less get to the point of "information overload." they're smart... ya gotta give 'em that...!

Steve,

Excellent article... I'm amazed that the main-stream media has not been investigating into the "uses" or "abuses" by Bolton of the NSA intercepts...

Apparently, when it comes to the CRIMES committed by the Bush, their media lap-dogs are sadly lacking in good old-fashioned "curiosity"...

Until the American people wake-up and start paying attention to the Downing Street "smoking gun" memo-- which is the justification needed ti IMPEACH BUSH-- and, to the corruptions of thugs like Bolton-- we are headed for FASCISM...

Americans who may dismiss the fact that we are headed towards "fascism" and should spend a day or so reading upon Germany between 1935-1939 in the days leading up to WW2...

Go read the front page article in Sunday's Washington Post by Pincus. And then tell me that you trust any of these people. They will lie without any hesitation to get what they want. Why would Bolton be any different?

About Sunday's Washington Post article "Prewar Findings Worried Analysts" by Walter Pincus,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100474.html

Note, kimster says in above post "front page article" as in "Page A01." I saw exactly this too when I went to the WP site circa 7:45 pm EST, but now it is listed that it will appear on "Page A26." Thus, this story was banished from front page headlines to the back of section A. It also seems the story title had more sting to it before it was banished. Remember well that Pincus' article on the Downing Street Memo was relegated to page A18.

I had hoped that the Lies told to the American People story was getting traction with this latest story on page one, but it appears that editors are quashing it. I was afraid that Wash. Post/Newsweek was only putting a shot across the bow of the White House with a front page article suggesting deception into war as a warning to the administration over any more intimidation concerning the Newsweek Koran paragraph, and that WaPo was not serious about the subject, only using it for leverage.

I guess the question is, will Mr. Pincus continue writing in the same vein which naturally leads to "Bush Deceived the American People into Attacking Iraq," or is he merely pushing back on the White House, showing them what could come down if they don't back off on Newsweek, a Washington Post publication.

I hope the media is finally fed up the treatment they get and will now deservedly throw the book at "the worst President ever," and his henchmen.

Unbelievable about the Pincus story. Well not really.

I should say after my rant above Thank You Steve for being one of the few voices of reason. Everyone seems to be reading you. Keep on. Your reporting on the Bolton story is a beacon for others to follow.

thomas, thanks for your perceptive comments about Washington Post's editorial policies. I always wonder how they manage to come up with the most ambiguous and deceptive headlines, even for well-researched investigative reports.

But why oh why do I fail to feel particularly enthusiastic about it all? After all, the Washington Post now threatens to tell the truth about this president to the American people if these sons-of-bitches don't back off their sister publication -- but of course on page A26 rather than as a front page headline...

-- What will it really take to out these bastards out of business?

This test of the powers of the Senate goes far beyond John Bolton. The powers of advise and consent, part of the backbone of the Constitution, are meaningless without clear and unquestioned access to all necessary information. Without that, there is no Republic, only charade.
(It's curious to me that our Senate, like that in Rome, might be the theater of profound change.)

Madhat:

Your "stupor" is their nirvana. Around 11/04, I read a profile of Rove that mentioned his hero and mentor, Lee Attwater. One of Mr. Attwater's primary admonitions was to "Create chaos and then swim through it". Time after time the right has used that single instruction to baffle, confuse and lead astray any scrutiny or comprehension of their intentions. Like James Bond leaving oil slicks, trails of nails and smokescreens in his wake, the right thrives on sowing lies and obfuscation. It's painful to acknowledge how effective this crap has been. And it's amazing how many blogs have adopted individual themes of focus to pound away at the right about and how many are running hard to stay in place while the right continues to circumvent roadblocks and chip away at law and procedure with seeming impunity. If people that work hard to stay informed on these issues are mesmerized by this merry-go-round, it's easy to imagine that the average citizen is just too overwhelmed to make any sense of any of it at all. After all, there is a new X-Box to check out. And judges, what judges? The Return of the Sith just opened.

Right wing nirvana.

Bolton seeing this information and then DOING SOMETHING WITH IT, or better yet, SHARING THE INFORMATION WITH OTHERS, may have crossed some serious legal lines.

I know it's hard to maintain high-mindedness all the time, but I'd really rather see "or worse yet" here rather than expressions of glee. Stay righteous, as in "righteous anger".

Steve,

You wrote,

"Given the obsessive concern over sources and methods being revealed, and about the protocols involved in managing compartmentalized intelligence (as referred to in the last letter of this Biden letter to John Negroponte)..."

Did you mean to say "... as referred to in the third paragraph..."?

Keep up the great work! I'm writing from Tokyo, and it is very helpful to be able to read TNW for the latest inside story on Bolton. Your blog is indispensible.

With Rove using Atwater's "Create chaos and then swim through it" dictum, he is obviously desparately trying to keep the American people away from the profound realization that they were Lied into Attacking Iraq, the biggest Crime.

Thus, we must be relentless in keeping our eyes on the central defining evil of our Criminals, that they knowingly Lied our country into an unnecessary, illegal and immoral attack upon Iraq, and we must relentlessly swim to making this crystal clear, disregarding all the flotsam and jetsam thrown in our way.

Although, our Criminals have an ace in the hole that will be used when we get close; another Attack. An attack to save their own skins, an attack to throw the world into greater chaos.

We are dealing with Evil.

If the NSA was intercepting conversations about Korea between Colin Powell and Bill Richardson (as Wayne Madsen has claimed,) that would have been an illegal violation of USSID 18. And the NSA -- and very likely the administration as well -- would not want Congress to find out about the violation.

I wonder if they shared that information with Bolton.

So this is what we have come to. The extremes of the political spectrum each believing the other side is Evil because they are murderers. The far Left thinking the Right has in effect murdered in their unwarranted attack on Iraq, and the far Right thinking the Left has murdered 40 million babies in the last 33 years through abortion.

Which of the two murderers will win the battle for the soul of this nation?

"George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States."

From: Paul Craig Roberts, John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Read more of his post at
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi

Roberts also says in his article "Whither America?" further down, "Preaching to the choir while demonizing others is a path to intellectual impotence."

" The far Left thinking the Right has in effect murdered in their unwarranted attack on Iraq, and the far Right thinking the Left has murdered 40 million babies in the last 33 years through abortion"

If you're going to set up an equation it helps to start with real numbers. "40 million babies"? You see, you're calling them babies without really knowing the point that they change from a group of cells to a valid life. Is an egg a baby? Is a just fertilized egg a baby? There are other aspects of this question you're carefully ignoring...for example: virtually everyone on the "left" would choose to make birth control widely available so that few, if any abortions are required. The "right" on the other hand, would ban all birth control on *moral* grounds. The same people who talk about getting big government off of our backs want big government ON our backs when it comes to issues that are important to them and they see no hypocracy in any of this.

You're missing another important point too. You speak of the extreme left and right. While the extreme right is quite visible (the current administration represents the extreme right in most ways) there is NO extreme left in American politics. The closest one could come to asserting this would be to point out the lone Socialist in Congress,the hardly "extreme" Bernie Sanders. Virtually everyone who is cast as being from the "extreme left" is, upon closer scrutiny, a liberal, a label that is attached to those occupying the political space just left of the political center. Those who are in control are so far to the right that anyone to the left of them is cast as "liberal" and "extreme left", which doesn't stand up to close study.

Your premise that we are given a choice between two groups of murderers simply doesn't wash. A more accurate depiction would be a choice between moderate/centerists and fascists. If you objectively look at the parties involved and compare their actions/agendas to the textbook classifications of these two groups you'll see that I'm right.

Long Guyland Guy, yes sir, you are right, but the Right still casts the Left as baby killers and anything Left as Liberal, thus extreme. It's the perception of reality that really counts most, however technically wrong either may be, that the other side condones murder and that's where the fight can be styled as evildoers vs. evildoers, each side hating the other in the extreme because they are Evil. This state of affairs can never be reconciled short of separation into two distinct sovereign nations which truly needs to be planned for so that you don't come to violence. You must understand the extreme gravity of the divergent paths of your national logic, that it rends the nation irreversibly in two. Neither side will be able to live with the other no matter who wins in the near future of your politics. The Union is Over in the long run. Those who condone murder must be put out of OUR country, each side deeply believes. You all are in the dilemma that the devolution into a classic religious war brings, and you must stop before you come to blows, and recognize that a peaceful schism is preferable.

Hmmm, I wonder if Chalabi had his finger in this scandal as well.

An article demonstrating that concern than foreign countries have of Bolton...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/22/news/diplo.php

The approval of Bolton would tell the world that we don't give a damn about diplomacy...

Well said, BigIslandGuy, about the silly comparison between left and right wing "murderers."

Jay: I agree. If you recall, Lee Atwater died an early death from cancer (divine justice, perhaps?) and belatedly expressed remorse for his multitude of sins, especially political. Will it take an untimely illness to Rove or Bush, etc., before they relent and do the same?

For Steve Clemons: A more fundamental question to ask is whether Bolton having received the NSA intercepts is not a serious violation of law in itself. You only seem to discuss the question what did he did with them. I think the recent articles on the Online Journal by Wayne Madsen should be read more carefully and taken more seriously by our members of Congress. We are not looking nearly hard enough at Bolton crimes and misdeeds. The only issue should be how many years in prison should Bolton be sentenced to. Taking a seat at the UN is absurdly OUT OF THE QUESTION.

...in the meantime (and not really OT), Raw Story reports on a new website, which has garnered a surprising amount of coverage by the MSM:

DowningStreetMemo.com

Over 130,000 hits in nine days.

It's all part of the same issue - and this is encouraging.

JF

Banger, I'm afraid that your idea of a peaceful schism could never work. A mainstay of the American Right is evangelical conversion... I doubt that they could "let it be" without converting anyone they could to their paticular form of mental illness and those who couldn't be converted would require *punishment*. You see, we're replaying Cromwell and the Roundheads all over again!

BigIslandGuy:

Oliver Cromwell? Well, if you limit your analogies to fact... But it's always so challenging to shoe-horn historical coincidences into a world-view that makes any kind of sense. Cromwell's not a bad fit, though.

Personally, I find more apt (if disquieting) comparisons to Nehemiah Scudder than Cromwell.

Of course, Cromwell's 'leadership' had a more palatable duration. Hopefully, Bush will take your point of view...

JF

Jaime:

I think you are right on topic. downingstreetmemo has been pointed out here some time ago. No doubt -- people who have managed to escape, one way or another, from corporate-media-induced stupor are finding the information they need to stay free.

As long as the Wash Post is struggling with itself over the question of telling the truth to the American people, tyrannical rule is effectively in place. I think it's imperative to face up to this and think through the consequences.

Right now, the Wash Post threatens the country's rulers with telling the people the truth -- perhaps even on the front page, one day..??
The crucial thing to understand here is that public discourse has degenerated into an internal conversation between the corporate-owned media and the corporate-owned administration. The people are not involved at any stage -- public opinion is nothing more than a bargaining chip between corporate media and corporate government.

I maintain that the administration has set itself up for a major smack-down on a huge number of issues. Bolton is just one of them. They have created a credibility gap as wide as the Grand Canyon. They are vulnerable on a thousand issues.

Galloway's testimony *should* stand as an example to those who seek to expose their vulnerability.

It is our duty to deliver the blows that will take them down.

btree:

"It is our duty to deliver the blows that will take them down."

I agree. But keep in mind that revolutions can be bloodless - that is, in fact, the preferable course. Note this quote from the E Pluribus Unum Project, at:

http://tinyurl.com/b5d92

"Revolutions cannot succeed without effective communication among the people who are rebelling."

It is not the Press that will keep us free, or allow us to regain the freedoms that we've surrendered in our complacency: it is the press. The Press surrendered long ago.

But the Internet is today's equivalent of the printing press. It is more effective - but much more fragile - than the presses of the 18th century. One man, in one hour, with one database, could silence every website that the government didn't care for. Shutting the Internet down would be the clarion call that the theocrats have stopped caring about even a semblance of freedom - and their excuse would be that our nebulous enemies (the 'terrorists') were using it to communicate their nefarious plans.

Of course, that would render the 'effective communication,' noted above, useless.

And yet, the technology is in place - with the widespread use of wireless networking - to create a renegade 'internet' of sorts, entirely independent of the government's ownership of the Domain Name Service upon which the functioning of the Public Internet depends.

Have you noticed that all our talk of distrusting the government depends on that government to facilitate our conversations? That was not the case with the pamphleteers of the 1760's and 70's. But that's kind of what we are, you know...

JF

In all of this I am reminded of the movie 'A Man For All Seasons' (the Paul Scofield version).

Henry VIII had this overwhelming desire that the man generally perceived to be the most upright and honest in the country - Sir Thomas More -would approve his maneuvring to get a divorce.

The pressure to confrom that is brought to bear is palpable. There is a memorable exchange between Thomas Cromwell (Secretary to the King's Council -played by Leo McKern as only he could) and the Duke of Norfolk (More's closest confident[Nigel Davenport]): Norfolk says, "Cromwell, are you threatening me?" and Cromwell replies, "My dear Norfolk, this isn't Spain, this is England!"

I have seen this film a number of times, most recently 4 - 6 weeks ago. I was struck this time, in a way that I had never been, by the parallels with what we are living through now.