Why deal with bad news when one can bury it?
By Steve Benen Monday Feb 11, 2008 5:59pmTowards the end of 2003 about nine months after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Army commissioned the RAND Corporation, a federally financed research center, to conduct a detailed study of the planning for post-war Iraq. In the summer of 2005, after 18 months of careful research, RAND reported back, including an unclassified version that the think tanks hoped would contribute to the public debate.
Fat chance. Given that the Bush administration’s planning was rather pathetic, the RAND study was not only ignored, it was hidden.
The Army is accustomed to protecting classified information. But when it comes to the planning for the Iraq war, even an unclassified assessment can acquire the status of a state secret. […]
[T]he study’s wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key.
A review of the lengthy report — a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times — shows that it identified problems with nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war. That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts.
Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was given too much authority, Powell’s State Department didn’t have an “actionable” plan, and Central Command had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the military needed to do to secure postwar Iraq.
No wonder the Bush gang decided a cover-up was preferable to disclosure.
At least they're consistent!
What a bunch of incompetent nincompoops in this administration and their corollaries. Pathetic, pitiful, evil, and criminal...
How much more is it going to take to impeach these clowns?
OK. How about a major motion picture staring George Clooney, Johnny Dep, Nicole Kidman, et al about this. Maybe then it will garner some attention with the general public.
That wasn't the only Rand study they buried. Remember this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47913-2002Aug5?language=printer
Whatever you think about Laurent Murawiec, and the imperialistic tenor of his presentation, he was clearly on to something:
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
That's like saying the dog ate my Iraq report.
And he ate the people that wrote the report too.
He was hungry.
IMPEACH
Surprise, surprise, surprise (G. Pyle)
IOW, Bu$h and crew weren't equipped to run
a Saturday afternoon charity car wash ...
Nice. Teh whole world ends up down the tubes because of that ...
GO_Pliars! @ 3:
Short of starting an Apocolyptic world war nothing. Of course by then impeachment won't matter.
Operation Mockingbird.
google it.
I am sending a video of Ralph Nader. He is quoting why Democratic Senator John Olver of Mass. won't support impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Massachusetts Democratic congressman John Olver is quoted as saying to his constituency that he has "'vehemently refused' to support impeachment...rather he expressed his opinion that the 'current autocratic executive would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, institute marshal law, and call off the 2008 elections were the democrats to initiate impeachment.'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIO-tCPSfHA
Thank you for your hard work!!
Like the real reason of WaterGate
...not only that people have been spied on, but what had been uncovered during Watergate.
and the policy where a deal was struck, in a back room:
--> U.S. policy on assassinations
In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order
11905 to clarify U.S. foreign intelligence activities.
The order was enacted in response
to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had....
Research Needed:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/04/us.assassination.policy/
Someone who should know alot about Impeachment...
Hillary Rodham
During 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C.,
advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
Lies, distortion, obfuscation. Those are the keys to success in Bushland.
But there's a deeper secret. Have you ever wondered how idiots like Bush, Romney, Huckabee, McCain, et.al. could wake up in the morning, look at themselves, and believe they are qualified to be president of the US?
Way back in the Reagan years, part of the giant CIA slush funds that had accumulated so much money from selling heroin flown out of the 'Golden Triangle' in 'Nam, Laos and Cambodia, that was not used for subverting South American governments, and bribing the Iranians to hold onto our hostages until after Ronnie's election, was spent on a mysterious, very secret, highly classified program.
This program had one purpose, and upon it's completion, everyone associated with it was 'terminated with extreme prejudice' by the CIA.
The program's one and only purpose was to develop, of all things, a very special shaving mirror. During each political campaign season, each potential republican candidate is given one of these mirrors.
These mirrors have the magical power of being able to distort the reflected image of the viewer to look like the image the deluded candidate has of himself in his secret, warped, tera-maniacal mind.
Lie, distort, obfuscate.
That's the secret.
We should ask the candidates...
Who would run the CIA and the Justice Department?
That would tell us alot.
You can place CentCom's failure squarely on Rumsfeld who micro-managed DoD. Remember Gen. Shinseki's testimony which directly contravened Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and his reward for that testimony?
I'm sorry, but after 7 years of this administration's gross incompetence, I can't even get outraged any more. It would be news if they did something that wasn't a monumental f*ckup.
Small surprise. Ed Brayton's FOIA request for information about our government's WTO settlement in the internet gambling case was denied on the grounds of national security.
Figures... Just another in a long line of bullshit Bushco coverups.... I'm thinkin it's really all this sadass Bush administration knows how to do... lie and cover up their stupidity... Meanwhile people are dying and getting maimed over lies amounting to crimes... But if anyone tries to bring up that uncomfortable reality, the meme is, they ain't supportin the troops, ain't frikkin patriotic....And if that doesn't work, someone up and says 'oh lookie over there, Britney ain't wearin her underwear agin'....Fuckin bullshit! All of it.....JD
If you take this one step further, the RAND study was really unnecessary. Because the white house threw the baby out with the bath water, not only did they lose Generals Shinseki and Zinni, but they totally ignored the plans that Zinni, an actual real combat veteran, had helped draft.
Profit margins rule. Common sense is not common. Greed is good. To defeat evil, you must create it, and then become it. Only the rich deserve privacy. War is hell on other people. Sacrifice is for the poor.
Did I forget anything?
Army Faulted For Failing to Plan for the Leak of the Rand Study
Bush wanted a war in the same way little kids want ponies. They have no fucking idea where they'll keep it, how they'll feed it or what they'll do with it once they get bored with it. But they HAVE to have one.
(And no matter what lies he had to tell)
He HAD to have HIS war.
Ah, yes, the year 2003, a year that will go down in infamy in American history because of all the corruption of the Bush/Cheney mal-administration during that year.
A Rand study, about how the Bush/Cheney mishandled the aftermath of its starting a preeemptive, unprovoked war in Iraq based on lies, gets censored.
Valerie Plame Wilson is outed as a covert CIA agent by top officials in the Bush/Cheney mal-administration. The CIA immediately conducts an internal after-incident damage assessment study, then contacts the Justice Department and demands that criminal investigations begin into the top Bush/Cheney mal-administration officials responsible. Ashcroft initially sits on the CIA request, but then recuses himself, allowing his Justice Department stand-in to appoint Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to look for the traitors responsible for outing Valerie Plame Wilson.
Oh, and during this same time in 2003, the Bush administration is having CIA agents (and private contractor personnel) at overseas black-sites use waterboarding to torture information out of anyone detained.
Hmmm, I just wonder if this is what eventually caused Ashcroft to recuse himself, which led to Fitzgerald being given the green-light to conduct an investigation into who outed Valeried Plame Wilson? Maybe something about the CIA threatening to go public (before the 2004 presidential elections) about the Bush/Cheney mal-administration using torture against detainees in contravention of established U.S. and international laws? Was this what finally caused the legal weasels in the Bush/Cheney mal-administration to give in and let an investigation into who outed Valerie Plame Wilson go forward?
Yep, 2003 is one of those Bush/Cheney Red-Letter years that will go down in American history as the beginning of the end of the American dream.
I suspect that it's 2000 that will go down in infamy, the year the supreme court agreed that a suit to keep people's votes from being counted was worth hearing. Everthing else follows directly from that.
Oh, so what! Fer fuck's sake!! All these new and insightful revelations of what most anyone with half a functioning brain-cell already knew at the time that it was happening doesn't mean jack shit now, okay?! Too little, too damned late! Bush and the rest of his White House whores are going to get off scott-free!!!! Get it yet!!!? SCOTT-FUCKING-FREEEEEEE!!!! No criminal trials, no prosecution----absolutely nothing! Bush and Cheney and Gonzo and the rest of those arrogant munchkins all get to tra-la-la away to Never-Never-Gonna-Get-Me-Land and smugly laugh their asses off at the utter pathetic and apathetic Sheeple that not only allowed them to steal their office but STAY there as well! Who gives a shit about all these new 'insights' ! Until I see concrete evidence of their agonizing pain and suffering for their criminal abuses of power all in the name of National Security being and smart and smarmy and 'See-I-Told-You-So!'-ish just makes us look completely childish. We, the Sheeple, let one administration get away with it. Okay. The Sheeple fucked up and we're paying for it. So be it. We deserve it. We can only hope that in the new political clusterfuck coming our way that we, the Sheeple, will NOT make the same mistake twice! Let's not be naive and think that Obama and Clinton can be any better or worse than that cretin McCain! Let's just try and not fuck this up again!
I suppose O'Hanlon and the other supporters of the war will give the Rand Corporation a failing grade. Forget the facts on the ground, just keep repeating: the surge is working, the surge is working, the surge is working, the surge ....