LALARRY

Whaddya Mean There's No Oversight ?

We started with really narrowly crafted subpoenas all tied to terrorism," Treasury Secretary Snow said. But because SWIFT "didn't have the ability to extract the particular information from their broad database . . . they said, 'We'll give you all the data.' " Once a suspect was identified, U.S. officials had to present SWIFT with evidence of terrorist connections -- in the form of a name on a watch list, or a classified cable -- and were allowed to access information tied only to that name....

Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey explained to NPR that the program had "3 levels of safeguards" to prevent abuses. Two were described in this WP article:

SWIFT auditors and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an independent firm contracted by the U.S. government, supervised all the searches, Levey said.(and here's a surprise :) "The audit reports have been issued periodically since the beginning of the program, and they have found consistently that the government is not abusing this data, that we are using it for counterterrorism purposes.

"There was one instance noted at one point in an audit that there had been one search that was done that was, in our view, inappropriate. . . . The person who conducted that search is no longer allowed to work on this program. And no information from any search that's even been questioned has ever been disseminated," Levey said. When information appeared that indicated a non-terrorist crime, such as money laundering or drug trafficking, he said the source of the information was "sanitized" before it was passed to other law enforcement agencies.

Oh, and that "third level of oversight" Levey mentioned to NPR: lawyers from the Department of Justice and Dept of Treasury (i.e. the executive branch).

So the program was not questionable legally:

• Congressional notification was minimal, and ongoing oversight from the legislative branch did not exist.
• There was no judicial oversight because it was no necessary.

BUT NOT TO WORRY BECAUSE OVERSIGHT WAS BEING CONDUCTED BY

1. A private banking consortium headquartered in Brussels that told the governement here's all the data take what you need, but had veto power over what the govt could see. The govt cited one instance where one search was inappropriate by the auditiors. But it did not cite any instance where SWIFT officials said the US officials would have to present more evidence before getting access to specific transaction data.
2. A renowned private consulting firm, Booz Allen, operating on a government contract.
3. Lawyers from the Department of Treasury and the Department of Justice, the depts. in the executive branch authorizing and conducting the operations.

So stop with your unpatriotic complaints, !!!!

SWIFT auditors and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an independent firm contracted by the U.S.

government, supervised all the searches, Levey said. "The audit reports have been issued periodically since the beginning of the program, and they have found consistently that the government is not abusing this data, that we are using it for counterterrorism purposes.

"There was one instance noted at one point in an audit that there had been one search that was done that was, in our view, inappropriate. . . . The person who conducted that search is no longer allowed to work on this program. And no information from any search that's even been questioned has ever been disseminated," Levey said. When information appeared that indicated a non-terrorist crime, such as money laundering or drug trafficking, he said the source of the information was "sanitized" before it was passed to other law enforcement agencies

Bizarro World at Gtmo

U.S. military: Gitmo suicide attempt a ruse

Prisoner reportedly faked hanging self to lure guards into room

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Guantanamo Bay prisoner staged a fake suicide attempt to draw U.S. troops into a room where they were attacked by other prisoners, military leaders at the camp told reporters Friday.

U.S. troops used rubber bullets and a sponge grenade to subdue the prisoners, who were armed with improvised weapons such as sticks, light fixtures and parts of fans.

"The detainees had slickened the floor of their block with feces, urine and soapy water in an attempt to trick the guards," said Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. "They then assaulted the guards."

When U.S. troops intervened, they were attacked by prisoners and it took about an hour to regain order, the Pentagon said. (Watch how this incident shows growing frustration with Gitmo -- 1:52)

Prisoners in the medium-security area are generally housed in dormitory-style rooms that hold 10 people.

in its on air broadcast CNN reported this area was considered the most dangerous in the prison because the prisoners are free to move around. Say what ?? the most dangerous part of the prison is the place where you put the least threatening prisoners ?

The inmates involved in the attack were moved to the prison's maximum-security block after the incident. The Pentagon would not say how many prisoners were involved.

Earlier Friday, three other prisoners attempted to kill themselves by swallowing pills they had hoarded, but the Pentagon said later that only two of those were serious attempts.

There have been 41 suicide attempts since the camp opened in January 2002, with a number of those made by the same inmate, Pentagon sources said.

The Associated Press reported that Juma'a Mohammed al-Dossary, a 32-year-old from Bahrain, has attempted suicide 12 times

The military also called this another incident of the prisoners' war against the United States. Yes they're waging war by attempting suicide and refusing to cooperate with US soldiers who force feed them to break their hunger strikes. While they have been held with no charges for 4 12 years and have been told they may be there indefiinitely. Got it

bizarro world

Am I The Only One That Finds This Logic Twisted ?

We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Mr. Bush said before leaving for a commencement address in Mississippi. "Our efforts are focused on links to Al Qaeda and their known affiliates."

but

One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States

so the efforts are focused but they include access to records of most telephone calls in their entire  country (over close to 4 yrs).

But the official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of tracing regular contacts of "known bad guys."

So if they know who he bad guys are:

1. why do they need to keep track of virtually every phone call in the United States ?

2. Why in the close to 4 yrs  since 9/11 have they only picked up maybe a dozen terrorists (and charged them almost all with minor offenses)  and broken up no active al qaeda cells ? And please don't tell me they have but have kept it secret. With W's poll numbers Karl Rove would have made sure to make it public.

"

To perform such traces," the official said, "you'd have to have all the calls or most of them. But you wouldn't be interested in the vast majority of them."

Bizarro World at the Office of Professonal Responsibility

With Access Denied, Justice Department Drops Spying Investigation

By SCOTT SHANE (NYT)

Published: May 11, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 10 — An investigation by the Justice Department ethics office into the conduct of department lawyers who approved the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program has been closed because investigators were denied security clearances, according to a letter sent to Congress on Wednesday.

Threats & Responses

The head of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (sic!), H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in the letter to Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, that "we have been unable to make meaningful progress in our investigation because O.P.R. has been denied security clearances for access to information about the N.S.A. program."

Mr. Jarrett said his office had requested clearances since January, when it began an investigation, and was told on Tuesday that they had been denied. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," the letter said....

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the N.S.A. program was "highly classified and exceptionally sensitive" and that "only those involved in national security with a specific need to know are provided details about this classified program." He said the legality of the eavesdropping program had been reviewed by other Justice Department offices and by the N.S.A. inspector general. (now i really feel better)

btw the security clearances are granted by....the NSA

This One from The Right Wing Blogosphere

Just to give you a taste of the nonsense in the right wing blogosphere I though I would dissect a post on the mega popular blog of Repub acolyte and radio talk show ranter Hugh Hewitt. This entry was written by one Katherine Ham . She wrote in ire about the following WP article:

Bush Weaves Rug Story Into Many an Occasion
President Uses His Oval Office Floor Covering as a Metaphor for Optimism and Leadership
(wp in black me in red)

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; A15

Nothing says power like the Oval Office. The paintings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The desk used by both Roosevelts.

And then there's the rug. Don't forget the rug. President Bush never does.

For whatever reason, Bush seems fixated on his rug. Virtually all visitors to the Oval Office find him regaling them about how it was chosen and what it represents. Turns out, he always says, the first decision any president makes is what carpet he wants in his office. As a take-charge leader, he then explains, he of course made a command decision -- he delegated the decision to Laura Bush, who chose a yellow sunbeam design.

Elizabeth Vargas, the ABC News anchor, was the latest to get the treatment. She went by last week to interview Bush before his trip to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Sure enough, she wasn't in the room but a minute or two before he started telling her about the carpet.

"You know an interesting story about the rug?" he asked. "Laura designed the rug."

"She did?" Vargas said.

"Yeah, she did. Presidents are able to pick their own rugs or design their own rugs."...

....He loves his rug," said Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director. "I've heard him describe it countless times."

..."When you're giving a tour of the Oval Office, you're trying to point to things that emphasize what you're trying to do" Wallace said. "For him, the optimism is very symbolic of what he wants his presidency to be about."

Not only does the president describe the rug to journalists and foreign leaders, he does so to virtual visitors. During "An Oval Office Tour With President George W. Bush" on the White House site ( http://www.whitehouse.gov ), he wastes no time pointing out the carpet. "It helps make this room an open and optimistic place," Bush tells viewers.

Some visitors have the impression that the rug story is revealing. In his new book, "Rebel-in-Chief,"

This is what fellow Bush acolyte wrote about the rug (hilariously without irony)

Fred Barnes recounts how Bush told him about the carpet: "His job, he told me, is to 'stay out of minutiae, keep the big picture in mind, but also make sure that I know enough about what's going on to get the best information possible.' To stress the point, during our interview in the Oval Office Bush called my attention to the rug."

So an example of the Commander in Chief, most powerful state leader in the world avoiding minutiae  but keeping on top of the best information is obsessing over his rug and making sure the color is "optimistic". Got it Fred.

..... Lately he's been taking the story on the road, sharing it with workers at a moving company in Sterling on Jan. 19, then with students at Kansas State University on Jan. 23, and again with supporters at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on Feb. 1.

I'm not sure how much of the "best information" on conditions in Iraq he relayed at those appearances.

Similarly without irony Hewitt blogger Ham writes:(she in blue, I'm in red)

Now, I think it's interesting that Bush tells everyone about the rug. This is an interesting story. It offers some clues to his character, a little window onto what the President believes is important about himself. It shows his optimism is important to him-- that's the way he wants to be seen. By choosing furnishings for the Oval Office that reflect that optimism, he shows he wants to impart optimism to visitors and world leaders.

I'd say that's about as apt a metaphor for the Bush doctrine as any. No wonder he uses it all the time. Frankly, I think it's pretty clever.

So a rug is a window into his soul, and his obsession with it and its optimism is symbolic of his foreign policy doctrine and his ability to keep up with the best information possible....

Is the rug fraying rapidly but the Prez hasn't quite noticed it yet ?

she also includes this ridiculous "proof" that the Prez is no different than others though the WP won't acknowedge it:

Presidents have been manipulating its furnishings and appearance for years to reflect the images they want to cultivate. The Post concedes this point by listing some other examples:

"They use the office's imagery," said Fred I. Greenstein, a professor emeritus at Princeton University who has written on presidential leadership. He recalled John F. Kennedy's son John peeking out from under the desk, an image that conveyed youth and family. Lyndon B. Johnson, who was obsessed with breaking news, kept a ticker-tape machine and three television sets in his Oval Office. Ronald Reagan's aide Michael K. Deaver revamped the lighting to make it better for television addresses.

Yet the Post won't give Bush any credit for recognizing the Oval Office as a symbol of his presidency and decorating it accordingly.

So W stretching to point out the rug he is so proud of years after it was installed and he personally chose it's theme is equivalent to:

• JFK having his young child visit him in the office
• LBJ modifying the office to keep up on minute to minute news as the country was involved in a war halfway around the world
• and Reagan having an aide adjust the lighting to improve his presentations to the American people.

And I don't recall any of them pointing out those changes to each and every visitor to the Oval Office or bringing it up, unprompted in a nationally televised interview.

makes sense to me....not

I know this is long but it's just to give a taste of the nonsense on this extremely popular right wing blog.

Ever Wonder About those Top Level Briefings and Aides that Keep the Most Powerful Man in The World Constantly in Touch With Developments in Real Time ?

stop wondering, it doesn't exist

to be aired tonight on abc

VARGAS: When you look back on those days immediately following when Katrina struck, what moment do you think was the moment that you realized that the government was failing, especially the people of New Orleans?

BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked — the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was — could have done a better job of comforting people.

Bizarro World Watch : Iranian Division

Iran Proposal for Shoah Probe Rebuffed by Europeans (from the Forward)

......With an international showdown fast approaching, Iran once again upset Jewish organizations and raised Western ire by questioning the Holocaust. This time, Iran proposed sending a team of investigators to conduct on-site inspections of Nazi concentration camps, in advance of a Tehran-sponsored conference to debate the "real scale of the Holocaust."

The plan was quickly rejected by Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Miller.

"Under no circumstances should we permit this," Miller told the Polish press agency PAP. "This is beyond all imaginable norms that such a thing is discussed."

The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum said in a statement that it would not allow Iranian experts to visit the camp. .....

During a visit to Europe, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki sought to tone down the rhetoric.

"Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered," he told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee. "We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is — to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?"

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime

Now that makes me feel better. They don't mean that Israel should be removed from the map. I guess that's because they need the land for the new state that replaces it after they drive all the Jews into the sea.

In case you weren't sure if they are serious, at left is a picture of the Iranian leader meeting with the new head of the PA less than a week after he took office. Doubtless some checks are in the mail.

Bizarro World Watch: Environmental Department

Though he didn't say so publicly, Bush is a dissenter on the theory of global warming....He avidly read Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear, whose villain falsifies scientific studies to justify draconian steps to curb global warming....Early in 2005, political adviser Karl Rove arranged for Crichton to meet with Bush at the White House.  They talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement.  The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalist s all the more."

--Fred Barnes, Rebel-in-Chief:  Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush, pp. 22-23

From a speech by Crichton (who by the way is an MD)

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. ...

....To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands

....Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups

WP today, seems to me there's plenty of field research going on in the field and it's showing the computer models underestimated global warming.

Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels

By Shankar Vedantam

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 17, 2006; Page A01

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday.

The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide....

We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around the glaciers," said Eric Rignot, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but also such things as plant and animal habitats, coral reefs' health, hurricane severity, droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional climates

from the LAT coverage:

The models we had were not terribly alarming about Greenland," said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who was not involved in the research. "This paper is a real wake-up call."

Condi's Testimony From Bizarro World

This one sent my head spinning a bit today. I don't know if it was better than yesterday's gems. I guess it depends what you're meaning of better is .

Rice grilled over Iraq rebuilding
Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:43 PM ET

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With water, sewer and electricity services below prewar levels in Iraq, a leading Democrat told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday that patience was waning over the pace and cost of rebuilding efforts.

Congress has given more than $20 billion for projects aimed at improving Iraq's dilapidated infrastructure and winning over Iraqis with better utility services, and Rice told lawmakers that conditions were better.

But in three key areas -- access to drinking water, electricity and sewer service -- Iraqis are worse off than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to statistics released last week by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

"We have the inspector general saying things are getting worse even though we have provided a lot of money," said Sen. Kent Conrad. "Who are we to believe?" the North Dakota Democrat asked Rice in a Senate Budget Committee hearing.

Rice, who had told the committee more Iraqis had access to sewerage and water services than before, argued that what the United States had improved was "capacity" and the United States had made a difference.

"I think this may be an issue of whether we are talking about delivery or capacity. We have increased the capacity for clean water for several million Iraqis," she said.

What mattered to Iraqis, Conrad said, was not the potential to get water and electricity but to actually get it.

You know, when you turn on the tap or go to flush the toilet that unusable capacity well it ain't worth a ...

Memo from Bizarro World #2

325,000 Names on Terrorism List
Rights Groups Say Database May Include Innocent People

By Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A01

The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of international terrorism suspects or people who allegedly aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials.

The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) -- created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency -- contains a far greater number of international terrorism suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of people is estimated to be more than 200,000, according to NCTC officials.

U.S. citizens make up "only a very, very small fraction" of that number, said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency's policies. "The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," he added. An NCTC official refused to say how many on the list -- put together from reports supplied by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies -- are U.S. citizens.

So let's deconstruct this one. Somehow, this is the time to give the public the number of terrorists it is watching. Releasing that number doesn't compromise anything relate to national security. It's just a coincidence that the number is released for the first time since 9/11 when the country is in the midst of the wiretap controversy. And of course, it must be stressed that the vast majority are non US persons outside the US. Which coincidentally is the same group the administration is the sole target of the wiretaps.

But my question is this: let's say 10% of the people on the list around 20,000 people reside in the US. We know who they are and even aiding a terrorist group is a federal offense. Also it is quite easy to revoke a visa of a non US citizen suspected of  being a terrorist or aiding them. So why have there been only a handful of arrests of terrorists over the last few years ?

We know who they are, it would seem we have some knowledge of their whereabouts, but we don't make any significnt numbers of arrests or deportions.

now that's bizarre