Political Punch:

ABC News has learned that President-elect Obama has offered the White House chief of staff job to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.

Emanuel, a knowledgeable source tells ABC News, has not yet given his answer. The sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed, keenly intelligent veteran of the Clinton White House is said to have ambitions to some day be Speaker of the House. But he also has a keen sense of "duty."

I actually think this should be viewed as good news for progressives in the long run. I'd rather have Emanuel playing gatekeeper in the White House than in the House of Representatives. This may allow us to push the House even further left in 2010.

For you fellow political junkies, a new site has been established, Cabinet Newsladder, to track information on Obama's future Cabinet.

   Raw Story:

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico's Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer's behalf. In it, Richer declared, "I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book."

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer's own remarks in the transcript.

"Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?" Suskind asked.

"No, no, no," Richer replied, according to the transcript. "What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'"

"Which is the White House?" Suskind asked.

"Yes," Richer said. "But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

"But he didn't say that specifically," Richer added. "I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president."

"But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president," Suskind continued.

"Nope," Richer said.

"It just had the White House stationery."

"Exactly right."

Later, Richer added, "You know, if you've ever seen the vice president's stationery, it's on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don't remember that, so I don't want to mislead you."

Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, "This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way." It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein.

But wait, there's more...

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Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...

Our very own Murray Waas has been looking into the possibility: 

I have two new stories on the Huffington Post- one this evening and one from yesterday- about the various investigations being conducted within the Department of Justice of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Department.

What is clear from both, as well as whatever scant other information we have been able to glean about what investigators are focusing on, is that they apparently are not shying away from examining the role and conduct of the White House- in either the initial White House role in firing the U.S. attorneys- or as my story tonight shows- also the role of White House officials in working with senior political Bush administration appointees to provide misleading information and testimony about the firings to Congress.

I have no inside information about whether a criminal investigation or a special prosecutor's probe will derive out of the current probes by Justice's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility. (I either don't have sources that good, or that ones that might talk to me aren't telling.)

But based on what investigators have been looking into, the possibility that a special prosecutor might be named to investigate the U.S. attorney mess might not be as remote as one might have thought.

It still appears much more unlikely than not that one would be named, but with the conduct of so many White House officials being scrutinized, the possibility for one being named for the first time appears to be a threat to the Bush administration.  Read on...

Of course, it could just be another sternly worded letter too.   However, it is becoming increasingly clear that those aspen roots are deeply, deeply tangled throughout the Bush administration and there is definitely a movement afoot to look at this much deeper than they have before.

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

On Sunday's Q&A, host Brian Lamb sat down with National Review columnist Kathleen Parker to discuss her take on the comings and goings in Washington DC.  My buddy Heather noted this odd little bit of unsound morality and logic.  Parker wrote a scathing piece on McClellan's book What Happened for the NRO, coming thisclose to likening him to a serial killer (No, I'm not kidding, read it yourself).  See, for Parker, McClellan has reached the apex of immorality, because he listened to the Bush administration's plans, apparently put up no fight (of course, this is according to the White House, whose veracity should have dubious credibility) and then said nothing until he left the White House and wrote a book.  

Don't get me wrong, if I had been in Scott McClellan's position, you could be damn sure I would be speaking up loudly and longly while in the White House.  And I'd probably be out of a job and smeared within an inch of my life by the Karl Rove machine (see how they treated Paul O'Neill as an example).  But for Parker, the fact that he left the White House and then spoke up makes him more deplorable than those he spoke up against. 

Parker: ... I've met Scott and he is, comes across as just the sweetest, nicest fellow. I took great umbrage at this primarily because, whether the... you know, if... if he were... if he sat in those meetings where evidence was being trumped up and people are actually dying and never so much as cleared his throat or raised an eyebrow--which is what I'm told by everyone in the White House--then I think that he is guilty of something much greater than whatever he presents to the public in this book. You don't sit there and listen to what you now consider lies and know... you walk out the door. An honorable man walks out the door. And you can go and call a press conference if you are the Press Secretary of the President of the United States. You can call a press conference. You can walk out and get a book contract that day, but you don't sit through it for years and years and then say 'well, I think I'll go get a book contract and you know present basically my notes that I've taken all these years knowing that these people were doing wrong.'  So I simply don't trust a person like that.

But you'll trust the ones that did the lying and put the Americans in harm's way and continue to do so?  They are actually LESS offensive to your mind than someone whose conscience was so burdened that he left the job and spoke out against what happened?

Methinks someone needs their moral compass re-calibrated.

Transcripts below the fold: (thanks to Heather)

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Dear Iraq, sorry the war hasn’t gone well. But now that the surge is wrapping up, we hope you won’t mind that we need several dozen permanent bases in your country. Oh, and did we mention that we’ll need you to approve some no-bid contracts for our oil companies, too? After all, what’s a few bases and oilfields among friends?

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

Daniel Altman provides some helpful context: “Imagine. At the precise moment when demand for oil was the highest in history, a recently democratized country with enormous reserves had the chance to sell extraction contracts to the highest bidder. This was a country that desperately needed the revenue to help rebuild its schools, power grid and water supply after a long internal conflict. So why did it hand out the contracts with no auction at all?”

And Andrew Sullivan answers the rhetorical question: “Because the US told them so. You don’t get to conquer a new province and not get any spoils, do you? Who needs ANWR or a carbon tax when you can drain Iraq at record high oil prices?”

When General Taguba talks about this issue will the media listen? Remember when Sy Hersh reported that the General was one of the casualties of the Abu Ghraib?

How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

When we first started talking about torture on C&L and much of the liberal blogoshere we were called anti-American, traitors, unpatriotic and the like. The White House and their media enablers like the Bill O'Reilly's proclaimed that Abu Ghraib was only a few bad apples. Nothing to see hear so move along little sheep. Well, the evidence is flooding in that refutes this nonsense and now I'd like to ask them something. Who is the traitor to America? Who has been unpatriotic?

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Starr: One thing perhaps worth noting in this report, heidi, is the forward, the preface to the report was written by retired major general Anthony Teguba. He's the army general that led the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. in this report the general says, "there is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes."

The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held into account. pretty tough words from a man very well regarded inside the army when he conducted the investigation into Abu Ghraib. For its part, the pentagon continues to say that it deals with detainees in a humane fashion, that there is no policy towards torture, and if there was any misconduct, any abuse, it was in violation of government policy. but this report clearly a pretty damning indictment if it stands on its own.

I'd like all those that went out of their way to attack us to come out and apologize to us, our country, our soldiers and the victims of this abuse known as torture. Barbara Starr gave this report on CNN. There should be numerous investigations for war crimes on Bush Co. and everyone involved. The sooner the better. (rough transcript below the fold)

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Because keeping track of all the Bush White House scandals is a full time job, here is the latest edition of "Bushed!", courtesy of our friends at Countdown.

First up is the economy, where global markets reflected the fear and instability of the American market yesterday. Today is shaping up to be only slightly less volatile than expected due to the Fed cutting 75 basis points, proving as Bonddad dubbed it, the Fed is Wall Street's b*tch.

Next is the politicization of the military, which in BushWorld, is merely business as usual, but has taken even more overt and blatant tones of quid pro quo with the news that the Pentagon is considering Gen. David Petraeus for the top spot at NATO.

And finally, the disappeared emails that don't ever quite go away. It turns out that the "missing" emails that the administration claims it cannot furnish in response to FOIA and congressional subpoena requests are for some 473 business days, including (surprise, surprise!) 16 days from Vice President Dick Cheney's office. One of those sixteen days is September 20, 2003, the day the DoJ and FBI announced their investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. Quite a coinky-dink, isn't it?

I'm not sure if this is enforceable, but it's a good ruling:

A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes.

The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.

In their lawsuits, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suggest the e-mails were improperly deleted from White House computer servers. Over 5 million White House e-mails are missing, CREW alleged. Recently, the group said it has been told by reliable sources that the actual figure of missing e-mail is over 10 million.

In asking that the complaints be dismissed, the Bush administration says the president's record keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not reviewable by the courts. Also, the Federal Records Act does not allow the far-reaching action the two private groups are demanding, the administration contends...read on

Good job by CREW. And it's not surprising that the White House will do everything it can to prevent these emails from being exposed. 

MSNBC: 

White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret.

The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which has fought the release of records showing visits by prominent religious conservatives.

We know they will never give them up because that's how BushCo operates, but I'd love to see them explain why Jeff Gannon visited Karl Rove's office like 137 times. <snark>

Dana Perino was asked if Musharraf had crossed the line in implementing martial law in Pakistan on Monday. I'm sorry I didn't post this yesterday, but things were so busy.

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Think Progress posted it so I'm quoting them here.

She said that the administration is “deeply disappointed” by the measure, which suspends the country’s constitution, and believes it is never “reasonable” to “restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism”:

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Too bad the BushCo. doesn't adhere to those same principles. One has to wonder if the General didn't get a little coaching on what to say after he quoted Abraham Lincoln to the Pakistani people:

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.

He accused the country’s Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy.

Pakistani analysts said the emergency order was, in effect, a declaration of martial law because there were no constitutional provisions allowing such an order...read on